This is the first icon I made with my pirated version of PhotoShop that didn't make me want to kill myself. I'm particularly proud of the gleam on David's halo.

Today, I managed to install a wireless router. I am now actually paying a monthly wireless bill instead of sipping from my invisible neighbors, and so I no longer have to slink around in disrepute. I will tell you that when I signed on with clearwire, the peppy little girl who sold it to me (her eyelashes were clumped together with glittery mascara and she seemed to me almost pitiably young, yikes) and she asked me to make an email address I was actually unreasonably dismayed to learn that there is already a kormantic@clearwire.net. Or dot com or whatever the hell-- I'll never use that email address, I had never planned to use it, and yet... I mean, I write stories with borrowed characters, I am, e'en as we speak, downloading shared music files without paying anyone a dime, and even so, in my head I was all, "Who could even-- why would anyone who is not me--" ::sputtersputterflail::

WHO IS THIS MYSTERIOUS KORMANTIC?

Inquiring minds want to know.

The exquisite tevere sent me the Zombie Survival Guide a few days ago, as well as a blurb about a zombie jamboree taking place in the UK designed to break previous world records for zombie gatherings, and naturally I forwarded it to my friend Vinh, who is intensely fond of all things undead. As it does, conversation turned to The Dodgeball Zombies.

So last night, ( I went to a dodgeball game. )

Does this mean I'm going to write a team fic where they have to play a ceremonial game of dodgeball offworld? Fuck yeah, it does! Ronon + dodgeball=TLF. You know it. I know it. It's just a simple fact.

...that I have the cutest hair that ever freakin' cuted. And I'm really good at acting and my chi is so balanced!

Um.

So, I cut off all my hair. Goodbye shabby ponytail, goodbye! It was damaged and a torn up wretched mess and now it is gone.

I adore it now, but I may hork up a lung come morning.

I'd like to think that it has nothing to do with the fact that I slept 2.5 hours last night.

Now I have a poofy head of fluff. But I can get a brush through it without ripping it and I bought a headband and clips to keep it in check.

Be cool.

Last night, I forgot my ATM card in the ATM machine. Again. Then I forgot my notebook at Whole Foods when I bought a sandwich for lunch today. In addition, I made a rookie shoe/sock mistake. I wore peds with new shoes. They got munched down into the bottom of my shoes, and the shoes started to rub against my bare skin. I applied several band aids to no avail-- the shoes gnawed through them and then proceeded to snack on my heels.

I went to the chiropractor after work with socks that were now a bit gory. Once there, I realized that I'd lost my bank card (I had uncharacteristically paid for my lunch with cash) and wrote him a check. He gave me more band aids and wide medical tape and everything was much better. Then I made a bank withdrawal and had some sushi and blew some cash on The Bourne Ultimatum, which I quite liked. It had nifty suspense and tense action sequences and Matt Damon's little kid nose just kills me. Tragically, lovely Julia Stiles can't act her way from the living room to the kitchen table, plus her careful hair bothered me, but maybe I just missed Franka Potente.

I have been reading a book by Haruki Murakami that I think prillalar would quite like-- Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. It's very right brain/left brain, an exploration of consciousness. It's like reading a dream; cool and random and experimental, with these little descriptions like pop culture haikus: Your plain fat woman is fine. Fat women are like clouds in the sky. They’re just floating there, nothing to do with me. For whatever reason, however, the main character reminds me persistently of my most recent ex-boyfriend, and that's interfering with my enjoyment.

Has that ever happened to you? Has a random association with someone you knew/know ever scotched/enhanced your pleasure in a given form of media?

I wish I could forget the ex. Or actively dislike him. As it is, I just feel faintly ridiculous every time I realize how incredibly ill-suited we were. Stupid mind-warping sex haze. ::shakes tiny fist::

Hello. You may know me from such bitchfests as, "That time that lady did that thing. You know. That thing!" and "I'm pretty sure I was pissed about something, but I can't seem to... oh, shiny!" But today, I'm mad as hell and I'm not gonna take it anymore! Except, you know, I'm not that mad, really, and I'll probably take it for a long time, yet.

( blah blah bitchcakes )

Or maybe just brooklinegirl's lj...

( 32 short questions about Glen Gould )

I had a job interview today for a graveyard shift gig, and when I got there, the interview went well, and yet I sensed that I wouldn't be offered the job. This had something to do with failing to lie about (or even modestly inflate) my ten-key skills and possibly with my own lack of faith in my ability to thrive at a night job. When they asked me to fill out the application, as they always do, despite the fact that they have your references and your resume in their hot little hands, I am afraid that I... didn't fill it out as diligently as I might have. For instance, when it asked me what my ultimate vocational goal was, I wrote "Retirement", and when it asked me where I saw myself in five years, I put "Touring with ROCK STARS!"

The gentleman I interviewed with called me about ten minutes ago to tell me they had chosen another candidate, but that he'd keep my paperwork on hand should anything else become available.

I strongly suspect that he has not (and will never) read my application.

La la la.

In slightly hopeful news, I have a four day temp gig starting tomorrow and I have Sparkling Apple Grape Juice.

Cheers!

I have been booting around town and in Ohio. On my way to Ohio, I got stuck in Vegas. Sadly, although I got a free night's hotel stay and free "food", I lost fifty bucks in the slots.

While in Ohio, it so happened that my brother, The Dipper, was also in town, and so the morning I was flying back he met me at the airport and bought me lunch.

He told me that Sleek (my old roommate) missed me desperately, that Sleek's current roommate has gone all Single White Female on him, that she feels she can cure him of a thirty years worth of active and enthusiastic homosexuality, that she prowls around his bedroom at night while he's sleeping. He also told me that Sleek told him that he'd been abducted by the Yakuza. Apparently, while on business in Chicago, our friend Sleek got into some nice Japanese gentleman's car to... conduct some business. When they wouldn't let him out of the car, he claims to have leapt from the moving vehicle. The Dipper seems to think that this is a True Story, and that Sleek had called him from the shoulder of the road, bruised and shaken. Cakeboy assures me that it's just typical Sleek hysteria and that even if Sleek had gotten in over his head, it assuredly wasn't with the Yakuza of Chi-Town.

I told this story to McSwain! nee inapickle (who is not dead, by the way) and she sent me the following ( picture and caption )

but if I try, at least I can come off as a pompous ass, and that's something.

I wrote this yesterday:

This bus is full of kids who look as slick and clean as new, wet bars of soap. Maybe this is the sort of trip I should have taken when I was 18 or 22, but I've become an adventurer at 32, and that's late in life, I guess. ( At the moment, I'm on the Greyhound Bus to Vancouver from Seattle. )

I don't think I've ever felt quite so crooked as I do today. I tip my hat to the tricksy kids who pointed me down the twisty path. (I wish I knew how to quit you, piracy...)

But as for crimes against man, personal crimes, the kind where you have to be there in looming 3-D, I've trespassed a couple of times. Once with my friend Dan Yell's dad on Thanksgiving-- we all slunk over to a neighbor's house that was in the process of being built and skulked around a bit, admiring the huge yuppy cathedral from the inside. And when I was in school, and my grandfather was still alive, he lived next door to this horrid old woman with a yard full of yipping evil-tempered wiener dogs, and I was moved to become not just a trespasser, but a vandal.

Mrs. F. was constantly haranguing my grandfather about his lawn. It wasn't to her exacting standards, and she reported him regularly to the Home Owners Association. They sent him notices saying that if he lawn wasn't blah blah blah (and it was fine, it was pretty, and my brothers mowed his lawn for him-- the thing was, his garden was supposed to look that way, but because it wasn't a cookie cutter flowerbed, Mrs. F. was always nipping at his heels about it) they'd hire a lawn company to do it for him and stick him with the bill.

In the end, under the guise of 'friendly favor', Mrs. F. happily offered the gardening services of her sadly beaten husband and sent him over to mow the lawn and edge it to her specifications... She herself weedwhacked the hell out of the flowerbed, which was mostly low ivy and a trailing amaryllis vine that twined up the handsome lightpost in the middle of the garden. The amaryllis vine had been planted by my (dead) grandmother, and looked nothing like a weed. Incensed, I took action.

I didn't have a car at the time, so I had to press my roommate MM into service driving me to the neighbor's house. I was smooth like a ninja in my black turtleneck as I slithered up to Mrs. F.'s front porch. After that, the carnage began. SNIP SNIP SNAP! Goodbye to your prized azaleas, Mrs. F.! My vengeance finally sated, I left the decapitated head of every pink flower in a grisly pile of fauna on her welcome-matted doorstep and went back home for some mac and cheese.

Of course, then I felt badly about doing it, because the azaleas, however ugly, hadn't done anything to anyone. They'd been the unfortunate victims of a pruning shear drive-by, and I have to live with that every day for the rest of my life, man.

My grandfather sold the house and moved to Georgia, and he died in October of last year. The chances are good that he never even noticed that the amaryllis had been cut, much less that havoc had been wreaked on his neighbor's Rhododendron occidentale. Still. I wonder if Mrs. F. has fussed quite as much about her neigbhors' lawns since.

I saw Michael Stipe at a bar once. I was visiting Athens, GA with an old boyfreind, and we closed down The Manhattan. Just before last call, he showed up and chatted up some friends of his at the next table. He stood about three feet away from me, wearing his cowboy hat from the Man in the Moon video, smiling and doll sized. I had loved him passionately since I'd been eleven or twelve, and my first rock show, at the tender age of 14, was REM's Green tour. I was very proud of myself for not fainting dead away or tackling him to the ground and swearing eternal devotion-- instead I just sort of surreptitiously mooned over him.

Really, that's the only "I met a celebrity!" story I've got. Most of you are far more glamorous, and have chatted up all kinds of famous types. Tons of my friends have shared elevators with them, or sold things to them at the mall, or know their wives. (My auntie, Joanie Baloney, is friends with the woman married to Eric Avari! Woo, six degrees of Stargate SG-1!)

So, how about it? Have you experienced the thrill of speaking with one of the famed?

Also, check this place out. It's so groovy, I want you to know.

Last night, I volunteered to help set up for a local concert, and I met many charming people, including a pack of local fans. The entire evening was exceedingly pleasant, and I got to hear the choir warm up. There was a sweetness to their voices, a frothy excitement that was completely engaging. I feel I can say with certain authority that you haven't lived until you've heard Rufus Wainwright's "Oh, What A World" and The Little Mermaid's "Under The Sea" sung by a GBLT chorus.

I'd very much like to be in town next year to hear them sing again.

I am writing this on the slick pages of a back issue of West World magazine with a nubby pencil tied to a nail in the wall with fraying yellowed string. Well, I mean, I'm not now, but I was ( this morning. )

It snowed again on Friday, a heap, and I missed some outings with assorted lovely people in town as a result, but I also learned how to use a snowblower, so. Yeah. (g)

Anyway, one good thing about not driving away to the west coast on Thursday as I had originally planned, aside from not coming to a wintery end, such as wiping out en route and being buried in the snow to be found by hikers three years from now or being mauled by a bear or having to resort to cannibalism, etc., is that I got to see angelcreed again. Twice in a week after 18 years! That's something. I went to visit her at her friend A+'s nifty little downtown apartment, and was offered chestnuts that had been roasted on an open fire. I had never had chestnuts, and I was very pleased to try them. Then we bopped around the city a bit and were offered many treasures, such as hand-stitched quilts and Buddha heads and singing bowls and various lifelike vibrators with batteries that last eight hours.

Yes, we went to The Pleasure Chest, and I have to say, the salesclerks were the most helpful, informative and least creepy salesclerks that have ever drawn breath. Go, you New Yorkers, to The Pleasure Chest for all your pleasure accessories! (Although perhaps you could go and then buy the models you have decided upon on the internet for cheap, because, well, you can hold your head high at The Pleasure Chest, but you will leave with a very light wallet should you actually purchase anything there.)

Then we went to three Indian restaurants trying to find one that was open for dinner at 4 PM and ended up at the Ghandi Cafe and I had tandoori chicken and stained my fingers with paprika. Also, Naan. Mmm, Naan. Other things, but mostly tandoori chicken and Naan.

We bought ice and champagne for A+'s party and then went back to string popcorn and cranberries to make garland for her handsome little tree. I had read somewhere that one needs the patience of a soybean to make cranberry/popcorn garland, but it was a sort of zenlike activity, and a lot more satisfying than I would have expected. I also made some snowflakes to add to the festive decorations, and we hung candy canes on the tree and A+ practiced her carols on the keyboard in hopes of inciting some drunken karaoke after the wassail had been handed out. I was obliged to leave the party before it really got swinging, but not before I was able to explain the basic precepts of slash to angelcreed and A+ using Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye in White Christmas for source material. Hee. (If you doubt me, check out the dance number for "Sisters", featuring Bing and Danny in drag, singing, 'Lord help the mister who comes between me and my sister/and Lord help the mister who comes between me and my man.' I rest my case.)

I am writing you from lovely Clifton, NJ. I arrived Saturday night at 10 p, after having Cakeboy drive me to the airport and heave my luggage out of his trunk. At which point I realized that, having allowed Cakeboy to put my luggage in the car in the first place, Cakeboy had packed Sleek's carry on stroller instead of mine.

( Oh, we laughed and laughed! )

Things I learned from ( SG-1: )

Okay, so last season I was riveted by BSG, and this season, it's still good, but it hasn't reached inside as much, ( but when )

Last night I cooked dinner and watched SG-1 with ann_tara, who brought me cookies baked with love! We talked up SGA and all that jazz, and we'll be seeing Serenity together when it opens. (All Hail Joss!)

I also told her about my second day at Huckabees, and upon reflection, I have now worked twice for companies who have a very distinct two class system, one that is very much Us and Them.

( So how should I feel about this? )

This morning, I watched the sun rise on my way out, and set on the way home. It was really quite thrilling: a hot pink ball of swirling light, rising and sinking in the same flare of color.

In between, I was at my new dayjob.

That's right, I'm once again a working stiff!

( Once again, I am working for The Man )

In the last week, my brother The Dipper has called me three times in the dead of night.

Maybe you have one of these, the younger sibling who is forever being tossed out on his ear, losing jobs, getting hassled by the cops?

As it happens, The Dipper was briefly homeless this week, but had once again found his feet, when I got a call last night at 2:30 AM.

Now, even as a currently jobless layabout, I am not usually awake at 2:30, but it just so happens I'd been polishing a story and so answered the phone on the first ring.

"kormantic, am I allergic to Brazil nuts?"

Well, yes. Yes, he is.

( Anaphylaxis and You )

So, there you have it, folks.

Fanfic saves lives!

Meme.

1. Go here.

2. Pass it on.

( my answers )

Aw. I love youse guys!

All this joblessness means more spam for you!

So, first of all, I could French kiss Triple A. Dude. Seriously.

See, my alternator went last week and my car died in the busiest intersection in the city at 8 PM on a Friday night... Three people stopped to offer me help. A guy in a battered blue Ford, a young rich guy in a giant black Escalade, and a tow truck operator who took my car (which no longer had working hazard lights, due to battery deadness) out of the turn lane and into a nearby parking lot to await the Triple A tow truck I'd already called for.

It was very moving, especially as I am not hot.

Then today, my tire went flat. I pulled into an IHOP and called Triple A to change my tire so I could get the other one fixed, if possible. (As I had basically been riding on the rims, I doubt this, but the guy at the Texaco said he saw no leaks in it, and that the screw embedded in it hadn't even gone all the way through the tire. He suspects a broken valve cap let some junk in there that depressed the valve and let the air out of it, and he asked me to let him keep the tire overnight to see if it holds air, and change out the spare in the morning, so I don't have to wake up to another flat tire.)

Anyway, Triple A changed the tire, and I couldn't tip them, as I rarely carry cash, and I hadn't planned on needing to tip anyone for changing my flat tire. Then, as I was cashing out for my egg sandwich, the waitress behind the register kept asking this little old lady if she wanted her to call the cab company again. The old lady was hard of hearing, and the waitress had to sort of bellow at her. She'd already been waiting over an hour for her cab. She was so little, like a person who had melted in the heat, with a tidy white pageboy and a thick Germanic accent. So I said, "DO YOU NEED A RIDE?" and she smiled and said, "Are you an angel?"

Heh. I was florid from the heat and my hair was all mazy from driving with the windows down; not exactly your typical angelic presence. Anyway, I drove her home, warning her that I had no air conditioning, and that Zuzu Hulahee's passenger door could only be unlocked from the outside, so she wouldn't worry that I was carting her away to some octogenarian white slavery ring...

"I am going down Summerlin almost to South Street, on Jacksonville. Do you live that way?" Nope, I told her. But I was full of Triple A love, and she'd been waiting an hour and she was really old.

She paused at the bumper of my car. "I am seeing who you were voting for. Oh, Kerry." She nodded approval, and got in. Would she have let me drive her home had I been a Republican, I wonder? "It was a faith based initiative!"

Then she explained that the No. 3 bus had stopped running and that the No. 6 only goes to WalMart, and that they wanted to turn her apartment building into Condos and turf everybody out. She reached into her tote back and hid some bills in her hand and I told her to put them away. She tried to tuck them in my copy of Harry Potter and The Sorcerer's Stone, but I kept handing it back to her. When we got to her place, I opened her door for her and helped her up. When she'd steadied on her feet, she reached up (she was so little!) and tried to tuck the money down my blouse. (!)

So I just took it. Three singles, rolled up.

I'm going to the 7-11 for some well-deserved candy.