Month: June 2010

living on small tragedy street

Word of the day – Gesamtkunstwerk: the total work of art, or rather, the idea of design for the totality of an object instead of individuation of its parts

How do you tell when you’re overly tired? I have certain mental tics that arrive, stupid songs that play in my head, this shit is bananas, simple, repetetive lyrics I would never otherwise be conscious of knowing, b-a-n-a-n-a-s, and I hold little conversations with myself, dumbed down to the point of ridiculousness, where the words like “yo” and “dude” and terms like “for reals” feature heavily. It seems that on the point of exhaustion, my brain dissolves into a ten year old internet pixie, the sort that spells “you” with only one letter. Not quite lolcat, but something similar, insidious, and slightly worse, as if a children’s television show producer has snuck into my skull and started scribbling on the walls in mile high luminous letters completely devoid of meaning.

I have so reached that point. In fact, I reached it a couple of hours ago, back when it was still yesterday, but instead of curling up in my giant cozy bed like a person who has good ideas then follows through with them, I have been fighting with my printer. My amazing, life changing, totally bonzo photo printer. That I love. When I do not hate it. Like I do right now. Because the damned thing, (though I coddle it as if was alive and cute, squalling like the useless infant it so obviously is), ran out of gray ink and will not go.

If it was only the printer that was giving me a hassle, I would have simply gone to bed upon this discovery with the full intention of getting up tomorrow, purchasing some ink, installing it, then letting it all ride wild, but no. My computer, as well, is refusing to run. I spent four solid hours using it yesterday, and let me tell you, it’s a freaking joy to work on, that screen is like staring into the caring eyes of some technocratic deity, and then it asked, ever so nicely, for a reboot, as there was some update that required such and oh, won’t it be sweet when I restart and everything is shinier? I figured, alright, sure. I need to pop out and pick up a tuxedo anyway. So I saved everything, hit restart, and head out the door. Upon my return, what did I find? A dead black screen.

My body, at this point, actually filled with dark, cold dread.

It seems that it did shut down, but failed to properly restart. Trying again begat identical results. Awful, terrible results. Running all the diagnostics possible brought me to the same dead screen, without even the comfort of a useless blinking cursor. Rolling back the boot failed, the memory test failed, the safe start failed, the whatever that other thing I found that I guess comes with Win7 failed. Everything. Failed.

So that was three hours of my life.

At which point, I finally turned to my laptop, though as photo editing goes, I’m not sure if there’s anything worse to colour correct with than a laptop screen. I figured, ah well, I will do my best, and my best will save me, it will be enough, and this project will lift from the ground and soar, even so. Hooking it up to the printer proved a bit of a chore, as at first it didn’t want to take directions from such a paltry machine after knowing the full glorious might of my desktop computer, but after a bit of a wrangle, I won, and it submit to my tender ministrations, as gentle and pure as a metaphorical lamb. By midnight, I was ready. Course, as soon as the pictures were all settled up, the printer joined in the technology hate party, mocking me with a dull red refill light, even after I was so damned nice to it, head cleaning, running a re-alignment, all of those things you do when you’re starting up such a beautiful machine after a sad month of sorrowful neglect. Which leads me to now, after two a.m., deciding upon the third recitation of the stupid banana song, (who is responsible for that terrible thing, anyway? I refuse to look it up. Or know.), that it is time to abandon my original plan, and instead go tomorrow and pay filthy dollars to some dime store clerk and have them do all my printing for me. Out of spite, you ask? No, out of worn to the bone exhaustion. It’s the wedding rehearsal tomorrow, the wedding the day after that, yet my rent needs be paid, and so I stay up and up and up, though I don’t have time for this. I don’t. Nor do you, probably, so I wish us luck and good night!

because I don’t already have enough photos to work on, obviously

Tony and I took advantage of the latest Threadless $10 sale and my street team points to stock up on some new t-shirts for summer. Aside from finally snagging matching Damn Scientists shirts, which I assure you we will wear while out together like the cutesy couple we are, oh yes, I picked out The Mississippi Phoenix, Globetrotter, and RED, and he picked out two of my absolute favourites, Ways of Making You Talk and Midnight Showing. We’re going to have a t-shirt photo day when they arrive, the better to stock up more street team points. Do you have a Threadless shirt you’d like a picture of for the site? Drop me a line. It’s going to be a really fun shoot.

when Ray asked what I would like for my birthday, I don’t think this is what he had in mind

A very nice man at Sacred Heart jabbed a new hole in my left ear today. He had short black hair and a kind smile and only made fun of me a little bit when I chickened out on the rest of the planned piercings. Part of it was the shock of the needle, (AND THE SOUND), but mostly I had reached my pain tolerance for the day, as I had been walking too much, and the blast of heat from my ear reached down to my broken toe and together they screamed until I said, “stop”. Soon I will get more, perhaps even finish the job in one go, adding new tiny rings until I get to my lucky number, all the way up to the top.

Honestly, I was hoping to have my right ear pierced in time for the wedding, the better to fit in, as I feel a bit like the odd one out, the overly unique creature tacked on to a traditional ceremony, vivid and different and possibly too bright. I wanted, at least, in the very least, to no longer be lopsided, especially given how together the people are who I’m standing with, as I help walk Kyle and Lisa up the aisle. Instead, I now have two holes in my left ear and zero in my right. Plan: excellent. Execution: could have gone better.

The new plan, which is, I admit, the old plan that I didn’t go through with, is to dope myself up with pain pills, then have them go through and give me a total row of six on the left side and two on the right. (There’s something about odd numbers I dislike.) Possibly, when I am so threaded with holes, I might finally get around to putting a small stud in my nose as well, though when I think about them all at once, I can’t help but think I’m crazy. Not as mad as planning a tattoo, but still, since when was this the sort of thing I craved?

light as a favourite song

I was reading when when the tiny, bright bird flew in through the window and attempted, I suppose, to drink from the bright colours of my hair. To my credit, though it nearly surprised me out of my skin, I did not give in to my initial impulse to swat whatever was thrashing, panicked, a few inches away from my head. Instead I froze. I froze, and very gently began to turn, hoping sincerely that it was not a mouse, while putting my hand up, the better to support the creature as it was lifted from the cushion, held only by the tangled net of my hair. Imagine my surprise as I gathered the mystery in the palm of my hand, still swaddled in threads of hair, only to discover a hummingbird!

It was a beautiful thing, vibrant, green and red and amazing. I was astonished. Not only by the random luck of it, but the pure shock of discovering hummingbirds can be so far north. To my mind, they are practically tropical, another reason to love California. To discover one here in Seattle, a block away from the I5, against the backdrop of a gray, middling day, was shocking. It looked like a creature escaped from a fairy story, too much like a living jewel for rain or brick buildings, yet there is was, bound in my hair, beak like a black pin, feathers gleaming, chest thrumming, a lucid dream in the palm of my hand.