Guess where I’ve been. Give up? I’ve been home working on my next novel, or at a coffee shop working on my next novel, or at my friend Ashley’s house, working on my next novel while she paints her next painting.

Or, more likely than that, I’ve been procrastinating and making excuses for not working on my next novel. Other than that — including that, actually — life is pretty great here. Hope yours is, too.

Come see me at the Inprint reading in Houston, at the Alley Theater on May 3, if you want to see me. They let you submit questions, so someone submit a hilarious one. Don’t submit something like, “How did you become a writer?” or “What advice do you have for people who want to be writers?” because someone else already submitted those. Also, don’t submit, “How are you Hispanic if you look white to me and I don’t know you or anything about you and I’ve never read your writing but you look white to me so is that your husband’s last name and why are there Hispanic people around you saying they’re your dad and your cousins, I mean you look white to me so why are people saying that you’re Hispanic?” because someone will undoubtedly stand up and ask that at the reading without submitting it beforehand. It’s pre-ordained.

(My answer is always, “Meet me outside after the reading for a Taco-Off and we’ll find out who’s Hispanic, then, motherfucker.” Then, after the reading, I just leave. But I do usually have a couple of tacos at Taqueria Laredo on Washington Avenue the following morning. They make the best picadillo — reminds me of my Aunt Sylvia’s.)

Pop Culture Obsessions

I was going to ask y’all if you knew of a DJ/electronica/hip-hop person named Dabrye, and if you liked him as much as I’m starting to, but then I refrained because I’m starting to realize that i have sort of unusual taste in music.

I used to think that I had excellent taste in music and that most other people didn’t, but now I’m just accepting the fact that there are different kinds of tastes in music and everyone has whatever works best with the active nerves in their brain. See, I’m reading Oliver Sacks’ Musicophilia right now, and all the stuff he’s saying fits in with my newly hatched theory that the brain of any given human who likes music must like it in a certain range of frequencies. A lot of people enjoy a higher frequency range than my brain enjoys. Like Passion Pit, Fleet Foxes, the Raveonettes, the Whatever-Os, and the Whosits… all those people sound too high and tooth-grindy to me. I like stuff that I can only describe as lower, but which my husband might describe as too minimal, too repetitive, too subtle, too depressing, or just too. Just too not-Passion-Pit, he means.

And that’s okay. Our brains are different. Why would you want to be married to the same kind of brain as your own? Wouldn’t that be boring?

We had this raging argument about taste in music the other day — it’s one of the few things we really argue loudly about — and it lasted us all the way home and ended up concluding in front of the kids. But we took little breaks to add footnotes for the kids’ edification, and each of our footnotes had the same gist, which was that we’d rather argue about who has better taste in music than live with someone who doesn’t care about music at all.

Oliver Sacks says that people whose brains keep them from loving music have “amusia.” The very idea makes me feel sad and sick — it’d be like losing my peripheral vision or something.

Not to be an asshole. I’m just saying. Well, and maybe saying that makes me an asshole, anyway. But I can’t help it — I’m just telling y’all that it freaks me out when people say they don’t care about music, and I can’t even imagine.

Um… I subtitled this part “Pop Culture Obsessions” and not “Raging Music and Neuro-Type Snobbery” because I wanted to also ask who else out there is watching RuPaul’s Drag Race and letting it eat their insides apart, like I am. Anybody? Anyone? Crickets in the back? No? Well, whatever.

Oliver Sacks instructs Dallas and me.

I hardly get to see my son Dallas anymore, because as long-time readers know, he lives with his dad while his two brothers live with me. And all three of them are teenagers now, so they have weekend stuff going on all the time, just like little adults, and we’re all at the post-divorce phase, thank-God-fully, where we can be flexible and miss a weekend visitation here or there for the sake of the kids’ scholastic and social obligations.

But, so, the other day…

[I’m about to say something to do with Dallas having Aspergers, and you might wonder why I’m saying it here and not on my ChronMomBlog, and I will tell you that it’s because the Chronicle now has two mom blogs about moms with kids with autism, so I feel like talking about my kid’s autism there would, at this point, look like horning in on other writers’ territory.]

So Dallas was here the other day, and I was reading him little bits from Oliver Sacks, because Dallas has synesthesia and absolute pitch (which I used to refer to, incorrectly, as perfect pitch) and Mr. Sacks talks about each of those.

Synesthesia is when someone mixes the senses a little bit. In Dallas’s case, he sees a different color for each note on the musical scale. Some people might see different colors for each letter of the alphabet, or different shapes for each number, but Dallas has the color/music variety, which we’re interested in because he’s a musician.

So I’m reading aloud to him that, “Composer John Doe sees D minor as a bright yellow.”

And Dallas interjects, “Well, he’s wrong.”

I say, “Hold on, baby,” and read that John Doe, furthermore, sees D major as blue.

“That guy’s totally wrong,” says Dallas.

I read from the next paragraph: “When I told this to composer Joe Blow, he said, ‘That seems all wrong to me.'”

“Yeah. Because it is,” says Dallas. “What colors does that guy see?”

“He says D minor is light green.”

Dallas snorts. “At first I thought that guy might have some sense, but now I see he doesn’t, either.”

It cracks me up, his confidence. His arrogance, you can go ahead and call it. It took me forever to convince Dallas that not everyone can see what he does, and not everyone can tell what note a rubber band makes when it snaps against a wrist. He would not believe me — he couldn’t imagine a mind that didn’t work like his. But eventually I managed to convince him, and he finally said, “That explains a lot, actually.” It explains the infuriating confusion caused by certain band teachers, apparently. He wondered if they were lying or purposely tuning the instruments wrong, maybe because they didn’t like him and wanted an excuse to give him bad conduct grades when he argued or covered his ears in annoyance.

I read in Mr. Sacks book that synesthesia occurs in one of every 2,000 people and absolute pitch (the ability to identify a note on its own) is more like one in 10,000. That surprised Dallas and me.

Mr. Sacks said that having very fine absolute pitch can be a nuisance for some people — that hearing very slightly off-tune notes can irritate them while the rest of us can’t even tell the difference.

“Does it ever bother you when I sing a tiny bit flat?” I asked Dallas. Because I know that he knows that I sometimes do. Not flat enough to lower my score on Rock Band, but flat enough that he’ll very honestly tell me if I ask.

“My pitch isn’t that good,” he says.

And I see that he’s learned, finally, how to tell white lies to spare feelings. And I’m glad that I’m one of the people for whom he’ll commit that sin — number one on the list of Asperger commandments: “Thou shalt not lie,” followed by “Thou shalt not not make sense.”

But I see, also, that I’ll never understand the way he sees the world, or how much it bothers him to put up with the rest of us. No matter how hard I listen. No matter how much I love him and want to understand.

What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger, right? That’s what I have to tell myself, to keep from crying when he gets on the bus to go back home.

Hola, peeps. Have y’all missed me? If so, you should check out my Houston Chronicle blog, because I post a little more often over there.

Alternately, if you’ve been wondering how sexy, nasal, gravelly, or flat-aspect-y my speaking voice is in real life, how I waste my time on the weekends when I’m supposed to be writing, what the secret is to my goat whispering, or exactly how fast my husband cuts up tuna for spicy tuna sushi roll filling… you can check out the home movies I’ve been posting to Qik.

In other self-promoting news: I’ll be reading at the Houston Public Library, downtown, on Saturday morning, September 26, at 11 AM., for Banned Books Week. I’m gonna read from my fave banned book of all time and then ask attendees to tell me their secrets in exchange, so come on down for that, if you live in town.

Right after that, I’m going to do a Scype interview for my very good peep Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez’s new site, Las BMW. If you’re interested, you might want to run over there and register right now, while it’s free.

Beatle Non-Mania

We bought the Beatles edition of Rock Band last night and played all the songs I liked, which didn’t take long, and then that was it. I was kind of annoyed by the fact that you can’t work your way through Story Mode without playing each and every song, as opposed to 3 out of 4 or 4 out of 5, like you do on the older editions. Basically, I didn’t appreciate Harmonix forcing me to sing yet another 1963 Beatles song with the same chords as “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” and that other one.

Not trying to be mean. I’m just saying. I mean, I really love “Dear Prudence” and “Get Back” and some of the other stuff. But don’t force me to sing everything else in order to unlock additional songs, is all I’m saying. We gave up Story Mode after two venues and switched to Quickplay. Oh, but the new vocal harmony functionality was cool. I did appreciate that.

I would dearly love a Rolling Stones edition or a Led Zeppelin one. I’d also like a few Heart and Van Halen songs. Do you hear me, Harmonix? I know they have a suggestion box on their site now. I need to get on that. That’s on my to-do list.

My Pop Culture Recommendations for This Quarter

I saw District 9 twice and loved it even better the second time and can’t wait for the sequel.

We also saw Extract over the weekend. It had its moments, but I’m not gonna see it twice.

I’ve been listening to this one album a lot lately: “In Ghost Colors” by the Australian band known as Cut Copy. My favorite songs on it are numbers 6 and 14.

Oh, and we’re totally obsessed with True Blood, that vampire soap opera on HBO. I’m calling it “a redneck-y, vampire-y Nip/Tuck.”

I’m not getting paid or gifted to say any of this, I swear.

Haven’t been reading anything lately. I read a lot of sad but beautiful books over the winter and spring, and now I’m supposed to be writing toward a deadline, so I won’t let myself read. Even though I just found and purchased an interesting-looking short-story collection and it’s sitting on my nightstand atop the mound of magazines. Even though my son really wants me to read The Lightning Thief and I’ve already read the first chapter of it and will probably download the rest this week. But serioiusly – no more reading until I’m done writing this next book. I mean it!

I just typed and deleted, twice, the list of books I read and enjoyed over the past year.

Sometimes I feel weird saying what books I read in a public forum because… I don’t know why. Like I worry that certain people will get upset that I’m not reading “enough” stuff in the genres that I write in, or enough stuff by authors who share certain demographics with me. Or that I suck for not reading and promoting all the books by people I know in real life. And I also worry that listing books now will tempt others to pressure me to mention certain books in the future.

Like a lot of you, I have a really long list of books I want to read – just not necessarily enough time to get to them all. And I don’t even feel like a list of what I read recently would be representative of what I value most as a reader. You know? Because sometimes I read something just because it catches my eye, or just because it was in the doctor’s office, or just because I accidentally downloaded a sample chapter of it on Kindle.

So I’m not gonna make any lists of books. Instead, y’all tell me what you’re reading and loving. At least two of the books I loved last year came from y’all’s suggestions, in the first place. And for that, I thank y’all kindly. Thanks, peeps.

Will write again when I can.

If someone were to torture you mildly a little – say, for information, or because he/she was a crazed stalker – would it make the torture more tolerable to have one of your favorite mellow songs playing in the background?

Probably not, I guess. Or could it depend on how much you liked the song, and how mild the torture was?

Then, afterwards, could you ever like that song again? Or would it just be bittersweet?

I would tell y’all what song made me think about this, but I don’t want to give potential crazed stalkers any ammunition.

something less weird (but related)

Since iPods have been invented, are y’all hearing your old favorite songs in a new way? For instance, do your earbuds, shoved all the way up in your earwax, suddenly help you to hear lyrics that you couldn’t hear before?

Or do you hear the instruments and harmonies more distinctly?

Maybe I just need to get my hearing checked, in general. But I have to say that I never noticed until the other day how awesome the background singers are on Todd Rundgren’s “Hello It’s Me.”

something weirder than the first part, suddenly

I went to Wikipedia to see if they’d tell me the names of the women who sang back-up on “Hello It’s Me.” Instead, they told me that “[o]n the day he shot and killed John Lennon, Mark David Chapman left an eight-track tape of Rundgren’s album The Ballad of Todd Rundgren, along with other artifacts, in his New York hotel room in an orderly semicircle on the hotel dresser.”

But more fascinating and curiosity-whetting than that: “Stephen Colbert, on his Comedy Central show The Colbert Report, invited former Cars vocalist Ric Ocasek to add anyone of his choice to the ‘On Notice’ board. Ocasek chose Todd Rundgren.”

This requires further investigation. I see that Rundgren briefly took Ocasek’s place in a reformation of the Cars called The New Cars. How come no one told me this? Plus, how come nobody told me Ric Ocasek was going to be on the Colbert Show? Is it because I never watch the Colbert Show? Come on. I need people to help me out, here.

Wouldn’t it be cool if

you could have an intern (or even a paid assistant) who would spend all day finding things that would interest you? For instance, I loved the Cars and Ric Ocasek, but not so much his solo work. I loved him with Paulina P, but don’t love him enough to keep up with a fan site or anything. I’d read his Twitter, maybe, but not his blog. Meanwhile, I love the song “Hello It’s Me” but never felt compelled to buy a Todd Rundgren album.

A skilled Interest Mining Assistant Professional could take all those parameters and deduce that, while I don’t want to see The New Cars in concert, I do want to be informed if and when public cattiness occurs between Misters Ocasek and Rundgren.

I mean – hello. It’s all right there for someone to figure out and act on, isn’t it?

As soon as I get rich, I’m putting an ad on Craigslist….

Warning: this contains spoilers about the movie Watchmen. Don’t read it if you want to be surprised by all the comic book cliches.

Twilight is for 13-year-old straight girls and emotionally-13-year-old women because it’s about a nonremarkable girl having a romance with a hot, all-powerful person who protects the girl and does everything for her so that she doesn’t have to do anything but watch her classmates be jealous of her. Or whatever.

Watchmen is for 13-year-old straight boys and emotionally-13-year-old men because it’s about how all the problems in the world are caused by hot chicks sleeping with people other than you. What’s a slut? A women who’s sleeping with someone other than you. Right? Or maybe, in this movie’s case, a slut is just a woman. Any woman.

My boyfriend wanted to see Watchmen, and I told him to go without me. People I know and trust have told me that the Watchmen graphic novel was awesome, and I believed them and had it on my to-read list, but I suspected I wouldn’t like the movie. But then a couple of our other friends wanted to go, including my friend Ashley, who generally has excellent taste but can be guided off course by pretty girls. So I went along for the ride, lowering my expectations so as to be able to enjoy myself.

The theater was very crowded and we had to split up. Ashley and I sat together, and my boyfriend Dat sat with our friend Richard, several rows behind us.

The opening credits were interesting. Especially when the one hot chick kissed the nurse hot chick — Ashley and I whispered “Awesome!” while the woman seated next to us whispered, “Oh, no. No they did not. They are wrong for doing that!”

Then the Rorschach guy started voicing over in what, at first, I thought was a parody of right-wing extremism. But it wasn’t a parody — it was serious as hell. After that, the movie started sucking full force. I was surprised how badly and how suddenly it sucked.

“It’s just the characters who suck,” Ashley whispered to me. “The plot’s good.” She repeated that for a couple of minutes, then whispered, “Oh, God, this movie does suck.”

At the end, we waited for the guys to join us and Ashley asked if I thought Richard and Dat liked it. I said, “Richard might have, but Dat probably realized it sucked.” Of course, they both pronounced it awesome. (I don’t mind admitting that in public — that my boyfriend might be 13 years old, emotionally. That’s why I avoid all things Twilight — because I’m afraid I’ll end up succumbing to its temptations and being marked as a 13-year-old, myself.)

Please don’t write to me and tell me why the movie wasn’t really bad, or why I misinterpreted it as bad. Or, if you do write to me in that vein, don’t expect me to listen. I’ll tell you now that I never read Watchmen, but I don’t think that should matter. Yes, reading it ahead of time may have filled in the missing plot points and characters’ various motivations, but I doubt that would have kept the movie from sucking. As Ashley put it, every character in the movie was an asshole, or boring, or a boring asshole. I couldn’t tell who we were supposed to root for. I didn’t care what happened to any of them. If they’d all died in a nuclear holocaust, I would’ve been relieved that the way-too-long movie was over. (I wanted to leave the theater, but Ashley wouldn’t let me.)

I don’t aspire to be a film critic, so I won’t try to get into what was wrong with the film. Instead, I’ll tell you what was wrong with the story, as told by the film, by telling you what I was able to take away from it.

The beginning: In the ’40s, there was a group of superheroes who called themselves the Minutemen. They retired and were replaced by other superheroes (presumably called the Watchmen?) whose super powers consisted of wearing costumes. None of the Watchmen liked each other or had anything in common. Then, they disbanded because Richard Nixon made them. Because they existed in a dystopian alternate future where the Viet Cong surrendered to us and Nixon stayed president until the ’80s.

The Comedian was a major asshole who hated humanity and enjoyed killing people, and had a habit of raping and killing women in particular, because they deserved it for turning him on. The other Watchmen hated him but none of them had the guts to keep him from killing or raping innocent women (sluts). Neither did the Minutemen — he beat and tried to rape “Silk Spectre,” one of the female Minutemen, yet somehow remained part of the group. All that gets told in flashback, because someone kills the Comedian at the beginning of the movie, but we don’t know who, and that person strangely never gets a medal for it. His superpower is misanthropic rage.

Silk Spectre is a self-hating attention whore. She wore a sexy costume and capitalized on her looks. A few years after the Comedian tries to rape her and beats the crap out of her, she has sex with him and gets pregnant. She does this because she retroactively realizes that his rape attempt was flattering, as she explains to her daughter, Silk Spectre II. Because now she’s old and men don’t want to rape her anymore, and that makes her sad. Her superpower is sluttiness.

Silk Spectre II is a self-centered attention whore. She’s dating fellow Watchman John, but is petulant because he’s always busy saving the world with his unique godlike supernatural powers and therefore doesn’t spend enough time with her. So she turns to fellow Watchman the Owl Dude for comfort, because God forbid someone as hot as her should go without male attention for more than half a day. Her superpower is hair-flipping.

Rorschach is another misanthrope who’s hell-bent on doling out justice ever since he met a psycho who murdered a little girl. But, guess what? Rorscach’s mother was a whore. A literal whore — she slept with men for money, thereby making his childhood hell. So Rorschach thinks all women are whores. Also, he idolized the Comedian, which is weird and confusing since the Comedian is just as psycho as the psycho who killed the little girl who haunts Rorschach’s dreams. So… whatever. His superpower is misanthropic rage combined with a cool mask that’s made of shifting Rorschach patterns.

John was a scientist who, through a mishap involving radiation, obtained godlike powers and glowing blue skin, complete with glowing blue penis. Mind the size of a planet, but he chooses to date someone as shallow and histrionic as Silk Spectre II. Oh, well. That’s the breaks, right? Smart super dudes get the hot chicks, and therefore they have to put up with annoying behavior. That’s just life, right? Besides, he’ll eventually have to leave Silk Spectre II for a younger, hotter chick, just like he left his aging first girlfriend for Silk Spectre II.

The Owl Dude is just some Clark-Kent looking guy who lives alone and has owl-shaped stuff in his basement. His father’s an investment banker or something. I don’t know. His superpower is being the Everyman who’s standing in the right place at the right time when the hot chick needs sexual attention. Oh, and he has an owl suit and an owl copter.

Adrian is the gay Watchman who has Greek and Egyptian costume and decorating fetishes. When the Watchmen are disbanded, he becomes a corporate gazillionaire and secret master villain. He has an accent that I can’t place — is it made up, like Madonna’s? His superpower is being the Smartest Man in the World. At least, that’s what they kept telling us.

The Hot Lesbian One, who was the best superhero in the movie and whose superpower was insane macking skillz, died without a speaking part, right at the beginning of the movie.

The middle: People got killed. Sluts got killed or else had blood splattered all over their pretty, slutty faces. Silk Spectre II got kicked in the boobies and in the cunt. Hee hee. Boobies! Cunt! Rorschach referred to himself in the third person and shared long strings of psuedo-poetic cliches about how effed up the world has become. John tried to save the world but his current slut girlfriend and his former slut girlfriend got in his way and messed everything up. Silk Spectre II slept with Owl Dude in long, lingering sex scenes that were almost as good as the ones on Cinemax’s Witches of Breastwick 2. Each of the main characters tells their sob story, and most of their traumas are caused by women, who are all bitches and deserve to be punished. There’s a random burning building rescue and a random subplot about a prison break that makes no sense, at all, on earth, ever. And Lee Iacocca gets shot in the head. And gore, and sluts, and depressed rambling about human nature.

The end: There’s some long, drawn-out virgin teen boy fantasy in which the selfish hot chick begs the godlike Everyman to save her world. Then, Adrian comes out (heh) as the best character in the movie when he inexplicably renames himself Ozymandias, starts wearing costumes full time, makes a saber-toothed tiger pet appear out of nowhere, and locks himself in a tower so he can watch TV all day. It was like his character stood up and said, “Hey, this movie makes no sense. Therefore, I can do anything I want.” Kind of like you do in a lucid dream. But then the other fools showed up and everyone started punching each other (extra points for hitting Silk Spectre II’s chest or crotch), and then you realize that they don’t actually have super powers, even though earlier in the film their heads were going through granite countertops and stuff. And then God — I mean — John shows up and acts like God, and then one of the oldest sci-fi plot devices in the world is revealed, leaving you saying “WTF? WTF??” over and over again, and then, thank godfully, the movie ends.

Scariest part: The people in the audience who laughed at the rape and violence. I literally had nightmares, later, that I was trapped in a parking lot at night, surrounded by people like that. Why didn’t I dream that the Watchmen came to save me? Well, why would they?

Basically, it was Sin City all over again, but more confusing and way, way longer.

The end.

Oh, P.S., if you liked the movie and want to comment and tell me how misguided I am, know now that I’ll probably delete your comment. Know why? Because I’m either: 1) a dumb bitch, 2) a dyke, 3) an old bitch who’s just jealous that no one wants to rape me anymore. So, too bad for you! Toodles!

I keep wanting to write stuff here but haven’t had time. Meanwhile, I know all too well how the lack of updating causes readers to slip away. But that’s life, right? Hope y’all who’ve slipped away are doing it temporarily and finding awesome substitutes until you return.

I shouldn’t be writing this right now because I have so much “work stuff” to do, instead, but oh, well. Right now I’m going through this phase where I’ve planned a bunch of publicity events – traveling and all – months in the past, and then these dates come up on me and I’ve almost forgotten, and it scares the crap out of me. But then I see that the Me of the Past has taken care of everything. I click the starred document on my email and out pops everything – maps, itineraries, tickets, packing lists…. It’s still a little scary, though. The Me of the Past is way more organized than the Me in the Present, and I’m starting to worry that the Me of the Future will be a total flake.

I just read a good/sad book and now I’m all enmeshed in that. You know how that goes. I’m gonna be sad for a couple of days, but I don’t regret it.

My work (day job) is all insane right now, as anyone who watches the news and knows the name of my workplace could tell you. The news is bad, and yet somehow that doesn’t translate into less work for me, personally. I hate to say this, but I’m kinda just counting the days ’til they lay us off, because uncertainty bugs me. Plus, I need more time to write. But I don’t want to be poor. But I haven’t been poor for years, because I really dislike that. So things should work out okay, if they want to lay us off. Plus, I’ll get more writing done.

I recently finished my next novel. Well, in my mind, it’s the “last novel,” but for you, it looks like the “next novel.” That one comes out in 2010. The next novel, in my mind, hasn’t been started yet. But I already know what it’s about, and I’m excited, which is good. I hope to stay excited until I’m 97% through writing it, at which point I will of course be sick to death of it. That’s how it always happens – no way to avoid it.

I’m hyper-conscious, right now, of writing all these sentences with the word I in them. Like that’s a big bad thing. But I’m trying to tell y’all what’s going on with me, real fast, without time for fancy faux-un-self-centered metaphors, so there you go. What else can I say?

I really want to tell y’all about:
1. this laminating machine that used to be at an old workplace
2. my current unusual living arrangement and why I think more people should try it
3. the cats’ misadventures
4. the truths about Twitter
5. annoying entitled people on the carpool
6. people I’ve met and why they’re awesome
7. awesome books I read recently
8. Indian condiments and the bloat-causing, frightfully addictive sodium within them

but I don’t have time So I’ll do that soon.

Also, I updated the other site, gwendolynzepeda.com, by hand, by myself, which was difficult because I’m not a good coder but I know too much coding to justify paying someone else to do it… So, yeah. I’ve been doing that, in addition to everything else.

And… Salome! I saw this show called Tim and Eric’s Awesome Show – Good Job! – just one episode of it, twice – and it semi-traumatized me, but in the good way, when something makes you laugh and creeps you out at the same time. And I’ve been watching Flight of the Concords, a little, and I’m resisting having a crush on Jemaine because I think that would be a cliche, but the whole thing with them loathing/fearing Australians is killing me. If you know what I’m talking about, hollah. If not — um, go ahead and holler, anyway, if you feel like it.

And, ble-e-e-e-e-e-e-eh. I hate writing entries like this, but it’s better than nothing for the 8 dedicated readers who are still checking back for updates once a month. Right? Not really? Oh, man….

xoxoxox
Gwen

It’s always cold on the bus. For that reason, I kind of hate riding it in the mornings, especially when I’m wearing a skirt without hose or tights or leg warmers, as is sometimes mandated by fashion in the summer time. But everyone has their crosses to bear, right?

This morning I got on the bus without hose or tights or legwarmers, and it was very cold. I put my iPod (my Sony Walkman iPod) into my ears and hugged myself into as compact a shape as possible.

The bus starts filling up, and this guy gets on. He’s a small guy, ethnic origin somewhere on the Eastern Hemisphere. He sits by me, and I take care not to sigh or jut out my elbow or even look at him, because I hate it when I’m forced to sit by someone else on the bus, and that someone else makes it clear that they’re annoyed and that they’d been wishing that their $3 fare would have somehow paid for two seats. I mean, I get annoyed when strangers sit next to me, too, and I wish my $3 bought me a force shield from strangers, too. But that’s not the way Metro works, is it?

So I’m sitting there, trying to be polite and only feeling a little bit sorry for myself, when I realize that the guy sitting next to me is hot. Not attractive-hot, but temperature hot. He’s radiating heat like a furnace. I peeked at him as much as manners would allow, but he didn’t seem to be feverish or on fire. He was just radiating heat, somehow. Like, from the inside.

I decided, then, that he must have been a demon. Either that or an elemental, but most likely a demon, because I don’t imagine elementals looking like people or wanting to ride the bus. I glanced again and saw that he was reading a text full of arcane-sounding words. (Cold fusion? HP 3200?) That seemed to confirm his supernatural nature.

I turned my face away from the demon man and, for a split second, felt uncomfortable. Then, I felt good. I felt warm. I’d been cold before, but this demon dude was literally generating enough heat to make up for the fact that I had no pantyhose on under my sandals and knee-length skirt. It felt nice, like a cozy fire.

I wondered, then, what it meant to take comfort from a demon. Was it safe? Was I unintentionally giving away my soul?

Really, there was nothing to fear. In every story I’ve ever heard on the subject, demons can’t possess your soul unless you give them verbal permission. And you have to invite them onto your premises, in the first place. Right? I’d invited this demon nowhere, as we were sitting in a public place. I hadn’t said anything to him at all. As long as I kept my Sony Walkman iPod in my ears and minded my own business, I could warm myself with the demon fire and keep my soul and its first serial rights. He wasn’t even a big demon, anyway. I didn’t think he could carry me if he wanted to.

The warmth made me sleepy and I drifted through dreams as pawn shops and Adult Video Stores sped by. “Is this,” I wondered, “how it starts? Can people get possessed in their sleep? Is demon heat a roofie?”

But we made it downtown okay. Someone rang the bell and, like zombies awoken, several of the passengers stood up and stumbled out into the sunlight as filtered by skyscrapers. The demon got up to let me pass and didn’t even spare me a glance.

I didn’t realize why until now, after typing all this. I’ve already been marked by someone else. My soul is the property of Corporate America.

intro to bus stories 2, 3, and 4

So I recently bought myself an MP3 player as a reward for a job well done. (What job is that, you ask? The job that is being myself.) And, now that I have one, I see that there’s a secret world I’ve been missing out on but am now a part of.

Before I had an MP3 player, I didn’t want to know anything about them, because I hate window shopping. You know? I don’t want to hear about stuff I can’t afford, in general. But then they got cheap, so I decided to get one, so I did my research and picked the one with the most battery life.

(Also, I waited to get one because I just had no use for one before. But now that I have a job where we’re allowed to listen to them (and where our laptops have no soundcards), and now that I ride the bus instead of driving my van and listening to my own CDs…)

Before I had an MP3 player, I ignored people who had them. I purposely spaced out when people talked about them. But not anymore.

Now, when I ride the bus, I notice who’s listening to music and who’s not. And I notice that other people notice it, too.

bus story 2

The other day, I was on the bus and I busted out my [Sony Walkman] iPod (which I will call an ipod from now on, because screw Corporate America and their branding. kleenexes! xeroxing!! orange and lemon cokes!!!).

I turned on my music and went to the place where I go to when my music’s on. It’s a place in my mind, and it’s a combination night club, costume party, trip abroad, and Houston’s Galleria mall.

So I was there, and I don’t know if it showed on my face or what, but the guy sitting across from me smiled at me.

Not in a creepy way, but in a sort of empathetic yet wistful way. Like he could tell that I was happy, and he was glad for me, and yet he maybe wished he had an ipod, too.

He seemed like a nice guy, actually. But I didn’t smile back. I just blinked at him and then looked away.

I don’t smile at strange men. Especially not on the bus.

bus story 3

Right after that, the angry-looking man next to the nice-looking man gave us both a glare. Really, he just gave a long, long glare that encompassed us, all the other passengers, and everything else on earth.

Then, the angry-looking man looked at my ear buds. Then, he took some earbuds out of his pocket and attached them to his phone.

I don’t know if y’all know this, but a lot of newer phones are also ipods now. Seriously. They are.

The angry-looking guy turned on his phone ipod, and then he closed his eyes and pretended to sleep. I hoped that his music made him feel better. I wondered what song he was listening to, but there was no way I could ask.

bus story 4

Today I rode the bus home and I listened to my ipod. Of course. Across from me, an older woman sat there with white ear buds in her own ears. And she kept glancing at me.

“What is this woman looking at?” I thought. But that question didn’t make me as angry as it used to, because I had my ipod on and it’s hard to get angry when I’m in my music place.

The woman glanced and glanced, and then, when I had to adjust my volume, I pulled my ipod out of my bra, out of the neck of my shirt, and did so. And then the woman kept looking, but her look became very thoughtful. I thought that maybe she was noting my clever idea of going hands-free with the use of my bra. She was maybe thinking, “Wow. It fits in there so well. I wouldn’t have even guessed she had an ipod in her bra.”

Then, the woman lifted her own ipod from her lap. It was a real iPod, and it had a leather case with an apple on it and everything. When she lifted it and opened the case, she glanced at me again.

I couldn’t help but suspect that she wanted me to notice her. I suspected that she’d just gotten that new ipod, maybe for a gift or maybe she went right into the apple store and bought it for herself, for a job well done.

She flicked at the buttons and I wondered how many songs she had. I wondered which ones were her favorites.

She glanced at me again. I smiled at her and then I closed my eyes.

moral of the story

If we were in Japan, our ipods would send out signals to each other, and we’d know when we were near another person who likes the same songs that we do.

But we’re not in Japan. So all we can do is imagine, and then empathize.

Right?

Sorry I’ve been the worst blog updater in the world lately. But you know how it goes. Blah blah excuses go here.

Important Stuff

I got some awesome sandals on sale at TJ Maxx today. I ate some awesome Indian food. The cats are doing good, but won’t stop date-raping each other.

Books!

I read The Yoko-something Officers’ Club, by Sarah Bird, and enjoyed it.

I read The Bostonians, by Henry James, and it totally upset and traumatized me, until finally it led to understanding of my own young life.

I read Maurice, by E. M. Forster, and it made me feel sorry for Victorian gays and for Victorian peeps in general, because they never had sex, and it messed with their minds.

I read a bunch of cookbooks, even though I don’t like to cook.

Suburban Woe

I accidentally burned up all the grass on my front lawn, with fertilizer, and finally ended up replacing it with sod. It took a long time, because St. Augustine sod is hard to find in Houston this time of year. Apparently.

So I bought all this new grass, which looked half dead, and now I have to water the living hell out of it every single day. Just like my neighbors, who don’t even have new grass. I bought a new kind of sprinkler, too. It hasn’t rained at all lately.

So then, yesterday, they started warning us that there might be a hurricane or, as British people pronounce it on NPR, hurrakin.

And my first thought was, “Oh, hell yes. Please let there be a hurracane.”

And the news was like, “Jesus Christ! Fill up your gas tanks now! Governor Perry is readying the school bus fleet in San Antonio!”

Then I talked to some neighbors and coworkers, and they were like, “I kind of hope we have a hurricane so I can quit watering my lawn.”

And I was like, “Me, too!”

Before the Lousiana/Mississippi tragedy, we were never afraid of hurracanes in Houston. They happen in the waters near here pretty often, and as long as the ground isn’t saturated beforehand, nothing really happens.

But I’m glad we have disaster plans in place now. Better safe than sorry.

But I hope we get a few thunderstorms, at least. We really need some rain right now. I hope it’s not a sin to say so.

Movies!

We saw The Dark Knight and it scared me, to imagine people being so evil and crazy.

I hate crazy people, lately. If you’re crazy and you’re reading this, don’t mess with me. Don’t talk to me. Stop leaving me comments. Got it?

We saw Wall-E, and it was beautiful. I saw it twice, actually. Tears ran down my face the whole time, both times.

You either saw that one already, and you believe me, or else you haven’t seen it and you don’t. It’s okay. I understand that some people categorically hate Disney, or hate animated movies, or hate leftist conspiracies to make conservatives feel guilty. (Or whatever.) But if you saw Wall-E and liked it, then I’m glad for you. Write to me privately and tell me what your favorite part was. If you want.

That’s all for now.

I need to get off the computer and go work out. I’m in the mood to work out! Y’all wish me luck setting up Dance Dance Revolution, without my kids here to help me. My kids are all with their dad for the moment. That means I can’t play console games or even watch TV, pretty much, because I don’t know all the wires and controllers like they do. Feel sorry for me, y’all. Wish me luck figuring it out.

But mostly, send my grass vibes, okay? Send it “grow well soon” vibes. And wish for us to get a lot of rain, but not enough to hurt anyone.

Love,
Gwen

You guys, I have been so overwhelmed with good stuff lately, and I’m trying to do the extra bit of work it takes to make the good luck snowball. You know? I’m growing my snowy ball of goodness, as they say. (Well, no one says that. But you know.)

Twitter Changes You

So…

I’ll admit it now. I’ve been cheating on y’all with Twitter.com. That means that, instead of taking time to write a thoughtful, or at least thought-filled blog entry, I fill up my Twitter page with 140-character blurbs that only a few select people can see. And now that I’m in the habit of doing that, it seems like there’s nothing that can’t be expressed in 140 characters, and therefore I have no right to blog anymore. Kind of like people used to feel about haikus, back in the day, in feudal Japan. Maybe. Maybe, right? People started talking to each other in haiku only, and quit having so much to talk about, outside of the falling of the leaves and the koi fish in the water? No? Okay, pretend I didn’t say that, then.

The other thing, though, is that I’ve gotten into the habit of repressing the details of my Real Life here. And then, on Twitter, I’m lulled into this sense of safety, wherein I can post stuff like, “I just put a blue sock on my foot and thought about murdering my coworker.” For example, I mean. Not that I actually thought that, because I love all my coworkers to death. But you get what I’m saying, right?

I have to go now, but

here is something I started to write for y’all the other day, real quick, about Gong Li, before I opened up the Internet and realized that Gong Li is a world unto herself and doesn’t need the likes of me trying to encapsulate any one facet of her life into blog words, whether 140 characters or more or less:

The Curse of Gong Li

Every time I see a movie with Gong Li in it, no matter how awesome Gong Li’s character looks or how well her life starts out, she ends up dying and/or going crazy and/or being miserable in the end.

And then it makes me think about how, even though she’s freaking awesome, Gong Li has only gotten crappy roles in US movies. Miami Vice. Hannibal Rising. Second banana (who ends up crazy/miserable) in Memoirs of a Geisha. She admits it’s because she can’t speak English well enough. I feel bad for her. I mean, I’d be sad as hell if I had to learn Chinese in order to further my career.

I looked her up online today and found out that famed director Zhang Yimou was sleeping with her when he cast her in her most famous role. Cheating on his wife with her, actually. She broke up with him and then he didn’t put her in his movies anymore.

Sad. Old-Hollywood-glamor-style sad, right?

I said that McDonald’s wouldn’t be able to compete with Starbucks, and I should have believed myself. But they sent me a coupon for a free “premium iced coffee,” so I thought I’d give it a shot.

At McDonald’s, iced coffee means pre-sweetened latte. The drive-through guy asked if I wanted hazelnut or vanilla. I said, “Can I get it with just Splenda?” He said, “Yeah. Hazelnut, vanilla, or regular?” I said regular, with two Splendas.

They gave me a latte with I-don’t-know-what-kind of dairy product, obviously presweetened and then with two Splendas thrown on top. Annoying. Now I can resume my practice of avoiding McDonald’s entirely, though.

Uncharitable thought of the day: I told my boyfriend, afterwards, that the McDonald’s “premium iced coffees” are for people who can’t afford Starbucks and don’t know what espresso is, but want to pretend they’re drinking it, too. I predicted that, soon, McD’s drive-through customers will order like this, “Two Big Macs and two vanilla Starbuckses.” And McDonald’s will serve them that, and Starbucks’ market dominance will be complete.

Yes, I know that Starbucks is for middle-class people who don’t know what real espresso is. And that’s okay — I’m fine being that.

A sad, sad, sad, sad thing about my life.

A million years ago, when people were first going from “newsgroups” to “bulletin boards,” I used to hang out on a bulletin board called Mediarama, hosted by writer Daniel Drennan. And I used to love the living shit out of Mediarama and most of its posters.

While at Mediarama, I began to create web content, myself. Then, one day, I left Mediarama. Since then, I’ve tried various online forums and even started my own, but never found anything as good, smart, or fun. And, before you say it, I’m more than willing to admit that it’s me who’s changed, and not the Internets.

“Forums” have become blog-comment threads, for the most part. All the names for things change, but it’s all still people trying to hang out online, trying to find others they want to virtually get to know. Less and less frequently, I try to find an online hang-out. More and more frequently, I find myself bored with the repetitive interactions and personality types. And then I get disappointed. And then I sigh and feel sorry for myself.

The pattern I find lately, on boards that attract me, is that there’s a good mix of straight guys, gay guys, and straight women, most of whom I assume are white — maybe with a few non-white people clearly identified either by their names or constant reminders in their posts.

What always starts to turn me off (other than the possibly imaginary pressure to identify my ethnicity) is the way the straight chicks will fawn over the straight guys. Eventually, so many boards devolve into the female characters competing to sound sexy for the straight male characters. (Who knows what these people are in real life? Maybe they’re all neutered cats and dogs.)

I don’t know where other women like me go — women who like to talk to men and maybe sometimes like to joke about sex, but who don’t want to participate in a cyber-sex contest. And don’t want to talk about lip gloss or DHs. (Dear Hubbies. Barf. Just typing that makes me feel ill.)

This is not a request for suggestions. Please don’t tell me to visit your favorite forum, because I’m a very negative, judgmental person and therefore I won’t like it. But tell me your favorite forum if you want, keeping in mind that I’ll never visit it. Then it should be okay — no expectations or awkward excuse-making.

something different to do

Recently I’ve tried doing my rush-hour commute with my car windows open. At first it scared me a little, then I felt self-conscious, then I was puzzled as to how to deal with men who took open windows as a social invitation.

But now I like it. I like the breeze and the sun, and driving unenclosed makes me feel more human (like a herd animal, maybe?) and therefore, overall, less susceptible to road rage. Try it if your weather permits, and if your traffic is slow enough to keep the wind from messing up your hair.

A Puppet Show

Prudencia is a weathered wooden puppet in a checkered smock, with tangled orange vines on its head.
Hortensia is a big clay puppet made up of purple balls.
Griseld is a wiry leaning puppet all swathed in olive drab.

Prudencia and Hortensia are bobbing around two pyramids of fruit.

Prudencia: What is this you say? You’re taking three of my apples?
Hortensia: I say that you can have three oranges!
Prudencia: Did you say that you’re taking three of my apples for Griseld?
Hortensia: Did you say that Griseld is taking your apples?
Both: Yes!

Hortensia bobs away. Prudencia does a monologue.

Prudencia: For too long has Griseld coveted my fruit. This is the last straw!

Griseld comes onstage with a single leaf.

Griseld: Prudencia, have you seen the Anderson file?
Prudencia: Oh, I’ll teach you to covet, little monster!
Griseld: Uh, what?
Prudencia: Oh, I’ll smile sweet, as sweet as the fruit you covet. But soon you shall know the bitterness at the heart of it!
Griseld: Um. Okay.

Curtain closes. Curtain opens. Griseld and Hortensia are standing near a pile of leaves and a single cube of glass.

Griseld: Prudencia, have you seen my Anderson file? Also, do you know who deleted our entire database.
Hortensia: No.
Griseld: Hmm. I guess I should ask Prudencia. You know, I don’t think she likes me very much.
Hortensia: No! You’re imagining that!
Griseld: She keeps saying weird things to me about peels and pith and paring knives. In a really creepy, passive-aggressive way, too.
Hortensia: Oh! That makes sense, then!
Griseld: What does?
Hortensia: The other day I told Prudencia that you wanted all her apples, and she said you had obviously been plotting against her from the start.
Griseld: What? Why did you say that? I don’t want any of her apples!
Hortensia: You don’t? Oh, well. Hey, can I have that leaf?

Griseld faces audience with tragicomic puppet expression.

Griseld: Jesus freaking Christ.

Curtain closes.

FIN.

I’ve spent the last few days either writing stuff for money, or else dealing with domestic dramas. Toby is sick, for one thing. We (his vet and I) think his stomach is upset by the dietary change. We hope he doesn’t have some cat digestive disease. Other people in the house get sick, on and off, but they’re way easier to diagnose. Toby keeps rolling in dirty things, like a dog. I need to give him a bath tonight, if he’ll let me.

Did y’all watch the Super Bowl? I saw the last half. I don’t care about any one team, but football is an interesting game to watch, so I was especially excited by the thrilling conclusion to this one. I was kind of sad that the Patriots didn’t get their perfect season. But, oh well. Perfect season or underdog victory: they even out, right?

Are y’all watching the primaries? Isn’t it fun, to see everyone so excited about them? It’s like football, in a way. Our local paper did one of those “Let’s ask black women if they’re voting for Obama or Hillary” pieces, and I was aggravated and embarrassed. The more often that white men ask those questions, the more it makes me think those white men would never vote for anyone other than white men.

Also, I wonder why everyone calls Hillary Hillary, but no one calls the other candidates by their first names. I’m doing it, too, you see. Hmm. Benefit of the doubt: It’s not because most people are sexist — it’s to distinguish her from the other famous Clinton. Right? Sure.

There’s an article somewhere today in which people are freaking out that Latinos didn’t vote for Barack. Meaning that Latinos must be… racist! Because anyone who doesn’t vote for Barack hates black people, right? And it is so, so shocking to the author of this article that Latinos would be racist against blacks. (Another majority culture idea — that all minority peoples are united in their non-majority-culture-ness.)

And I was waiting for someone to point out that Hillary could be the Latino’s Virgin Mary, but no one did. Because, while that would have been offensive, it wouldn’t have fit in with the offensive theme of this election process, which is that everyone is racist. Racism!!!

I mean, it’s to the point now that I’m more interested in media attitudes than I am in the candidates, themselves. You would think we could just consider electing a non-white person, or a non-male person, without it being this much of a mirrored maze of accusations, suspicions, and flat-out hatred. But that’s not how America operates, apparently. Embarrassing.

Meanwhile… the more I have to see photographs of people from that show The Hills, the more I hate that show and vow not to watch it. Those people from The Hills are clogging up my magazines. All I want from magazines is famous women in fancy dresses. Not faux-famous girls who are marrying Spencer or breaking off their engagement with Spencer or cheating on Spencer with Zach and Gossip Girl. What is that crap? Who forces my pretty dress magazines to talk about that?

I feel sorry for Britney Spears because, at this point, she has no one she can trust.

I keep having to watch this show called Drake and Josh. Over the weekend, my youngest son explained to me why iCarly has all the same actors as Drake and Josh, but isn’t the same show. My fave is Ned’s Declassified, but I don’t see that as much. (If you know what I’m talking about, you must have kids.) Besides those, I get to watch reruns of The Fresh Prince of Bellaire on a daily basis. It’s held up pretty well, if you listen to it from your kitchen and don’t see the primary-colored sweaters.

I heard the other day that Nickelodeon is doing a new show called Ni Hao, Kai lan that looks sort of like Dora the Explorer. That’s funny to me because my boyfriend’s niece Alyssa, who is mostly Chinese, is really into Dora. On one episode a while back, Dora and her friends celebrated Chinese New Year (which is today, coincidentally — Kung Hey Fat Choi!) and busted out speaking Chinese. Alyssa, who was three at the time, reacted as if she’d found a Virgin Mary in her tortilla. It was a big deal to her. So I wonder if she’ll like this Kai-lan show even better. Or am I being like one of those reporters here, making the racist assumptions? Maybe she won’t like Kai-lan at all.

Happy Year of the Rat. What does this mean for me? Nothing. My boyfriend is going out to dinner with his family. I’m staying home with my kids, and we’ll work out and watch Project Runway.

I’ve lost 40 lbs total now. Fifteen pounds to go. Over the weekend we went to the mall and I picked up a pair of clearance corduroys at Ann Taylor Loft in a size I literally haven’t worn since I was 18. That was nice, even though I’ve ruined the moment, in my mind, by deciding that Ann Taylor vanity-sizes everything.

Still, though. It may be a vanity size, but it’s a smaller vanity size than I wore last month.

That’s it. More later. Stay warm, y’all.