Toasty

Alrighty – the fireplace at the coffeeshop is on! I hope that when I get a condo I can either have one with a fireplace or get one of those corner units that uses a gas tank and doesn’t put off noxious fumes. I’ll always remember when we were kids and we had one of those kerosene heaters to heat the house. We’d fire that sumbitch up and it would toast the entire house. We all thought we slept so much because we were cozy and warm – it was only later on when we wised up that we realized it was probably because of the high concentration of carbon monoxide displacing life-sustaining oxygen. That and we always had the argument about leaving it on at night and would dad or mom wake up in time to turn it off before it burned out on an empty tank – filling the house with a massive stink. Or would we all just burst in flame. Of course – this is comparable to when I let a gas leak go un-noticed in my previous apartment for months before Brigitte threatened me with the idea of an Easter Party immolation. Back to Gehenna!

I wrote a musical called Gehenna Boulevard when I was in high school. It was a blatant rip off of Sweeney Todd except in this case the human remains were being cooked in pizzas next door to a crematorium. I managed to blend all of my favorite obsessions: dark humor, cannibalism, Sondheim and serial killers all into one. That’s like the Rocky Horror Show rip-off I wrote in middle school where Jack the Ripper sings a song to the tune of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. Most parents would have thrown me into some kind of Christian education camp but mom and dad took it all in stride. They knew I read Poe too young. I remember that Poe anthology from K-Mart and the first time I read The Cask of Amontillado and it totally freaked me out for life. And look how normal I turned out. Yeah, Abby Normal.

Green tea cooling. I set my teddy bear out on the bed to greet Ron when he comes in. He had an all-nighter and my guess is he’ll go home and drop his stuff off and then come to my place and crash. I left some trance music on for him as well. He likes to sleep to 150 beats per minute. It soothes him – figure that shit out. He’ll probably sleep until 5pm tonight and then be bouncing off the walls just when I’m getting drowsy.

I want to welcome any of my coaching and blogging colleagues to my blog. I made it public and am sanitizing previous employer angst in case I decide to run for office some day – though all the talk of dance clubs and same-sex flirting may hinder that. Plus, I figured if I lead classes in blogging that I should have my personal blog up for viewing. Up for grabs. It’ll probably take a few months before Google re-indexes everything. Before all the hits from RATEMYPUSSY find their rightful place. I am putting a disclaimer in place for those that link from my professional sites saying that this personal blog is entirely a work of fiction and is not to be contrued as the color of my kin or the content of my character.

I’m setting up dad with a TypePad blog – I think he’ll like the interface.

Watched Richard Pryor: Live on the Sunset Strip last night. I realized I hadn’t watched his stuff – his concert films. It really is a snapshot of how controversial is politics and profanity was. This is the film where he decides to never use the word ‘nigger’ as a point of comedy. And he recounts his battle as a burn-victim after setting himself on fire while freebasing. I might rent Stir Crazy. My parents love that movie. God bless Gene Wilder and go to hell whoever thought they should remake Willy Wonka – no disrespect to Johnny Depp but the original Wonka remains one of my favorite ‘evil kids movies’. Wonka is such a prick to the kids and they just eat it up.

“It’s television.”
“It’s Wonkavision.”
“No it’s not. It’s television.”
(Pause. Wonka invades Mike TV’s personal space)
tube sock craze of my childhood.

I can tell winter’s coming because my feet are drying out. My toes regularly split if I don’t moisturize them every night before bed. I feel like mom or dad – they always grease their feet up before bedtime.

Checked out Margaret Cho’s site yesterday to see that her movie is due to come out in a few months – I look forward to seeing it since we saw her opening night for the tour and I thought her material was a little unpolished and her timing sloppy. Plus, I felt she didn’t have the political bite that I enjoy in her – though her blog is more than a headful on a regular basis.

Oooh – I love this fireplace. My right side is so toasty. I remember our cat Pumpkin (the one that got hit by a train) sleeping in front of the kerosene heater all the time. Or when I shared the apartment with the girls and I’d fall asleep in the front room in the sun like a cat on the floor. And every fall I say I’ll get an Electrolux light to pipe in some sunlight and UV into my dungeon apartment so I don’t stare at the walls in a season affective affectation. I was surprised to find them at the health food stores. That’s sometime I’ve noticed – sometimes I forget that I live in a city where just about anything can be found. I’m always searching online and forget that most products and services can be found here in the city and that that is part of the adventure.

Maybe I’ll drag Ron out to the used CD stores to scout out some Andrews Sisters CDs. It’ll drive him nuts though that I am goal-centered shopping instead of floating around looking at everything. Did I blog that already? That I learned how much shopping for him is a sensual entertainment. He’s enamoured by touching everything and enjoying the fantasy of owning things. He and Gilbert can spend three hours in Linens and Things and that’s before they even get downstairs to DSW Shoe Warehouse. My Adbusters side sees shopping in boutique stores as a ploy to generate a craving for products you don’t need for a lifestyle that is unachieveable. I’m such a buzz-kill sometimes.

Got a lot of work work done yesterday. It seems there’s a lot of disconnection between what the projects I’m managing are supposed to do and what people think their roles are in them. I’m assuming way too much that everybody communicates to eachother and understands what they need from eachother and how processes and procedures work. That’s because I’m still learning the ropes.

The S21 movie gave me some great ideas for a play or video project. I’d like to see what kind of study there is on comparative genocides and that an archetypical genocide looks like. Economic chaos seems an essential to then drive a totalitarian regime into control and then the need for scape-goating an invisible menace that leads to the mass killings. “It takes centuries and sometimes thousands of years to create a natural culture, but Genocide can destroy a culture instantly, like fire can destroy a building in an hour.” The impact of technology on mass murder is what makes it all so scary.

I’m so toasty with this fireplace! Maybe I’ll drag my down comforter and duvet over here and set up shop. Or not.

And yes I noticed my transition from genocide to furnace. Eeeek.

That article about two-income families really gave me pause. I might force Ron to read it. That couples should plan on all their bills being met with one income so the second one really is extra. That and the detail on Metafilter that families like the one I grew up in – two parents, one working, and kids – is only 10% of the poplation now (eat that Moral Majority assholes!). Though when mom went back to work, much of her income ended up paying for their taxes from their combined income. I guess we could always home school until high school (I can hear my sister ranting from Nashville already – we do sprinkle a little derision on our cousins that proudly announce their rugrats are ‘home schooled’). I still wonder if they’d be able to send us to Catholic high school today with how much the tuitions have increased. With all the talk of bankruptcy and debt – part of me takes a staunch “you brought this on yourselves” point of view and a real lack of compassion for my generation and welfare. I just don’t think people my age can claim ignorance as a scapegoat – I know how lazy my generation can be. On the other hand, I’ve had friends like Matt who grew up in one room with his dad and siblings and lived that way for years or Monica who taught us all about food stamps when we first moved here to Chicago in case we ever needed them. I assume so much about education and parenting. And I can’t sympathize with those that overspend into oblivion. At the same time the article’s mention that we are one fo the only first-world countries without caps on interest rates. On one hand you dig your own hole. On the other if the finance industry gladly hand you the best velvet-handled shovel and points you towards a new hole and cheers you on – how responsible are they? I seem to see so many conflicts in strictly economic terms. I guess that’s my distrust of people explanations that hinge on God or spirituality or morality.

7:07 now. Good God – I love not taking the train to work. I see these poor blokes trudge with their lattes towards the Brown Line and I thank the Good Universe that I am fortunate enough to work from home where my punch card is just logging into Windows Messenger.

Oooo my neck is finally loosening up. I try to end every workout these days with a lot of stretching of my hamstrings and my neck – usually by ending in a plow yoga position and I can sometimes get my legs over my head and my knees touching the floor. This is hard to do in the cruisy environment of Bally’s. Some guys see it as advertisement – I’m really not in heat, thank you very much. That or I’m trying to achieve autofellatio. If that ever happens, Ron better watch out – he may become obsolete.

I have to finish a little personal project plan for one of the coaches that was in a training call. I was the client in a coaching demo and managed to find myself agreeing to share my plan for accomplishing a task with her and also finding a buddy to stay up to date with. I had a fellow coach to buddy with but he ended up pooping out on me. But I think I know who else I should call. Essentially it’s about finishing a project all the way through to completion. I design a training, make the site, do reams of documentation, pilot the thing, market it once and when it isn’t an immediate success I move on to the next thing.

I like that guys cologne that just walked by. I think it’s Cool Water. I need to harass Mierka into securing some fragrances for me. That has been one of the best trades for web design services – HTML for smelly stuff. She told me she’s got a bottle of Izzy Miaki for Ron. I’ve settled on Angel with it’s chocolate ‘taste me’ undertones, the Armani which is a little lighter and Herrera for Men which has a nice deep dark spice to it. I would never have this many colognes if I didn’t know her. I just can’t justify spending $80 on a bottle of spiced water. Though I did like the article in Men’s Fitness about making your own spa scrubs. Using honey and sea salts mixed with ginger or mint for exfoliating. And that soap Ron got at TJ Maxx on sale – citrus and ginger is so yummy. I want to eat it. I chopped it in half so I can take half of it to the gym showers in a little Ziploc container.

Alrighty – time to start the day. 7:18am.


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