PickledCherub

Saturday, October 30, 2004

 

Working Girl

Sabrina was nice enough to switch shifts with me tomorrow so that I can go tour the potential new Disjecta building. The bummer is that I have to open the shop, then come in later that night to host. It means I won't be able to go to the Disjecta closing party. I'm not really into parties, though, so that'll be alright. My new work schedule, it seems so far, makes it such that I will not have any weekend nights free. I'll close Wednesday and Sunday nights, and work Friday and Saturday nights. Plus openning on Thursday. I wonder sometimes what it would be like to have a real, Big Girl Job, where I had to wear professional clothes and stuff. A job with benefits and regular hours.

Probably, I'd think it medium.

Friday, October 29, 2004

 

New Stuff

I went to see Strength play last night at the Tonic Lounge. It was a great show, not as crowded as the last one, but a lot of fun. They're playing tonight at Nocturnal, openning for The Thermals, so that should be fun. If you're in Portland tonight, you should check them out.

Before the show, I went to my first meeting at Disjecta. It was very, very stressful to sit in that gallery and listen to people talk. I'm tentatively the Director of Operations for the "New Disjecta," which will probably be in the Park Blocks (or not, depending on a variety of factors). The highlight of the three hour meeting for me was meeting Jo Ann Kemmis, who was the Director of Operations for the Modern Zoo. She is genuinely nice, and not all about trying to sound smart and impress people. Anyway, this job (although it ill be an unpaid position for quite a while) will be a great opportunity for me to learn how to financially manage a non-profit organization. Those are the skills that pay the bills. Here's a recent article from The Oregonian about The Move.

Before that, I went to the Lloyd Center Mall, despite all of the recent hullabaloo there. Katy, Marian, Chris, and I saw Napolean Dynamite, then went to Stanford's, a place kind of like all other places that serve food and booze next door to the mall. The drinks were expensive, but the Happy Hour menu was all $1.95.

I'm going to go back to sleep now. I drank a lot last night.

Tuesday, October 26, 2004

 

Clean and Warm

I just took a nice shower and am wearing a nice warm sweater that my sister got me for my birthday last year. I haven't gotten anything for her birthday this year. I'm practicing non-consumerism by not giving people gifts.


Monday, October 25, 2004

 

I knew it!

Ashlee Simpson totally lip-synched! HA!

I am now the Sunday night closer, which is kind of sweet (I love easy closes) but kind of annoying, because I have to put all the desserts away and scrub down all the surfaces.

This has been an incommunicado week for me. Sorry if I've not said hi, because I've been busy.

Friday, October 22, 2004

 

The Darkest Day

Amazing how the weather turns so quickly here. At least, it seems quick, this change. It has been gray all day, not just gray but dark and gray, with no rain. No rain and no sun, just gray.

I finished my proof-reading for 2GQ and gave it to Shauna over brunch at the Tin Shed. I had the tillapia scramble special, and I think I might be paying the price for it right now. Last night Marian and I cooked clams in a white wine garlic sauce, and asparagus and salmon in that sauce as well, and had it with angel hair pasta and garlic cheese bread. Then we went to Dino's and the Viper Room (on 8th and Hawthorne). Ooh, the Viper Room was incredibly ghetto, but not in a Dive Bar way, more in a trying to be a cool Pearl Bar way, but bad. Then we went to the Ladd's Inn and the E-Minorities (Revised) closed out the open mike. Awesome.

Today I'm doing laundry and watching TV until work.

Thursday, October 21, 2004

 

Emergency Resque Squad

Marian, Chris, and I went on a rescue mission to pick Shauna up at work today, since she was upset and stuff. We ended up eating some lunch at the Daily Cafe in the Pearl District. I almost never go to the Pearl if I can avoid it, but I've been venturing to the West Side more and more often these days. Marian and I walked Downtown and back yesterday. It's very different over ther: it feels like a city, more or less. Anyway, the soup was really yummy, Cauliflower and Gruyere. Greg pointed out to me the other day that I pronounce cauliflower "Kally-flower" instead of "Kauluhflower." I wonder how much of my peculiar speech-pattern comes from my Long Island heritage, and how much of it comes from my learning how to read most words before I'd ever heard them spoken. For instance, I used to say "Sal-mon" not "Sah-mun."

Work on the album continues at a slow pace. I'm a bit discouraged now that I haven't heard back from Steve about the whole record label thing. I fell like maybe it's not worth it. But that's just me getting down on myself. I guess if everybody gave up making art when they got some negative (or non-existant) feed-back, there'd be a lot less art. I guess I could just go get an M.B.A. if none of this works out. Then I could sue your ass.

Sunday, October 17, 2004

 

Bam!

Lindsay made us some really yummy dinner tonight (it was good because she knows how to follow recipes) and Greg and Sonya came over. It was nice, but then we watched the computer play T.V. shows for a while.

I cried three times at work today. Cheryl took over and sent me home. It was miserable being all crampy and having customers be super mean. If I ever see this one table again, I don't know . . . I'm trying to forgive them, but I just wish that they could know how bad they made me feel. Maybe, though, they like that. I guess that I hate making people feel bad. Is it just me? Unless, of course, they are big jerks.

Tuesday, October 12, 2004

 

Mount St Helens--In my Uterus!

I just made some yummy salsa. It consists of:

One tomato
One tomatillo
One clove of garlic
One half of a yellow onion (smallish)
A tip-of-my-thumb sizes piece of purple Jalapeno (seeds removed)
Salt

all of which I put in our mini-food chopper and blended. Lindsay said it may be the best salsa she's ever tasted--and she's been to Mexico and Spain! We ate it with some blue corn tortilla chips that were old and the rest of my bag of shredded cheese. Nachos a la Amy! Buenos Dias!

I've had a lot of things happen to me since my last post. For instance, I played my first solo show in forever, using my computer and my classical guitar, and a microphone, and some dude's P.A. It was at Shuana and Katy and Emily's new apartment. The highlights of the night for me:

Katie and Sarah, my Seattle friends, drove down from Seattle to be at the party;
The P.A. was really loud, and I was really drunk;
People sang along with me to songs that I wrote, not just covers!

It was an all around succesful party, and Tiffany from 2GQ showed up, which was great/weird, because she's my Editor and I have not finished editing. John took photographs, and maybe I'll get to see them. Pretty much all the kids I wanted to be there were there. Including Marian!

The other big news is this: I have an I.U.D. now. It was probably the most painful thing of my life, so far. The first lady couldn't get the inserter in, so she called another NP in to insert it. There were many things in my vagina, many, many things:

An Extra Large Speculum
Two (2) long Cotton Swabs
A Uterus-Measuring Device
A Cervical Clamp
An I.U.D. Inserter
A Spray Gun of Anaesthic
"Jelly"
Two (2) Ladies Hands
Antespetic

So, the first lady, Anne, was really nice, and was impressed that Chris was there with me. "That's almost always the sign of a good partner," she said. Anne did all the preliminary stuff, such as signing things like consent forms, and reminding me and Chris that we cannot be slutty, except with each other. She felt around for my uterus, and told me that it was backwards. That means that it's titled towards my butt instead of my bladder. Then she inserted the speculum. It's difficult to describe what that feels like, other than that it is usually cold, and a little rough. You need to take a lot of deep breaths to relax, because normally one does not have something so large inside one's vaginal canal without being aroused. She cleaned out my vagina with this spray gun and some soapy swabs. (Cue Margaret Cho in my head: "Hi, my name is Gwen, and I'm here to warsh your vagina!") Then, the "Hurricaine" numbing gel/spray. Ugh, it felt like Listerine in my coochie, I'll tell you that much.

Now, I'm all scrubbed up and numb, right? Well, Anne tells me to cough so that my cervix comes down into view. Who knew? Then, she clamps it down. That hurt a bit, not too much, but a bit. "You're going to want to take labor-like breaths, because this can cause some cramping." So I started breathing like ladies do when they have contractions, and she inserts the Uterus Measuring Device into my uterus, through my cervix. This is probably the worst pain I have ever felt. I felt like crying, throwing up, fainting, and kicking her out of my vagina. It didn't last too long, maybe a minute, but it felt like forever. The sensation was something like getting kicked in the private and having a charlie horse, too. Chris looked really concerned, so I just squeezed his hand, kept breathing, and watched the parrot mobile above my head.

"Your uterus is a perfectly normal seven (7) centimeters." That's good to know, I guess. I didn't care, though, because my uterus was very angry with me by this point. I was still in a lot of pain, even though the measuring thing was out. I really just wanted to leave at this point, but I didn't want to go through all that pain for nothing. Anne then went back in, this time with the Mirena (the brand-name of the I.U.D.) inserter. And. Couldn't. Get. It. Through. My. Cervix.

Now, it's good that I was staring at the ceiling, because Chris said the inserter was covered with blood. Anne called in Renee, who took everything out of me, and redid the entire procedure, from start to finish, with a lot less pain and in a lot less time.

It's been thirty-six hours, and my uterus is still crampy, and I have a head cold. But, at least I can't get knocked up.

Friday, October 08, 2004

 

"Science is important, but so is Ethics"

So I went into work a half hour into the debate, and made Greg turn it on in the shop, which put me into a miserable mood because I wanted to listen to the debate, not people prattling pointlessly. Grumpy girl I was. I left work at nine thirty because it was slow, but then they called me up a bit before ten to come back and help. I took a lot of tables and left at eleven. I am sleepy.

I made a good dinner tonight: Red Lentil, Mint, and Garlic Dal, and a tandoori chicken breast. The dal was awesome, for sure, and comforting. But I've been making stinky farts ever since.

Tuesday, October 05, 2004

 

Fetus!


This is one of the offending photographs.

What do you guys think?

 

I got it to work! Like a Bad-ass!

So, I figured out how to make the videos work. How? I found an OSX version of Windows media player called VideoLan, for free. Get it here. Was it worth staying up all night? Probably not, but it was satisfying.

Here's some exciting news: I'm going to play my first show in forever at Shauna and Katy and Emily's housewarming party, this Saturday. I don't know what time yet. I also don't know how or what I'm going to play. It'll be an adventure, for sure.

Marian is back in town. She woke me up at ten a.m. yesterday, as a big surprise. She's always surpising us with her arrivals.

Lindsay's photo exhibit opens tonight at Vollum Lounge at Reed at 7:30. The art faculty decided that one of her series is too controversial to be up at Reed. Um, omigod. Too controversial to be up? At Reed College? Where Black Masses are accepted and even embraced as part of our heritage? The photographs are exquisitely beautiful, luminous and ethereal. Lindsay took photographs of the fetus exhibit at OMSI (a dude from the Mercury wrote about the exhibit: read it now )

The deal, according to Lindsay's ART PROFESSORS is that the content of her photographs might be objectionable to women who have had abortions, or miscarried, or might one day become pregnant, or might one day not become pregnant. "Lindsay, that is a totally paternalistic attitude towards women," I said. "But, it's a woman who wants to protect other women," said Lindsay. "It doesn't matter who does it, it's still paternalistic."

I've always thought that the Reed College Art Department sought to defend an artist's right to display her work. The department's argument is that Vollum Lounge is a public space, and as such should not have objectionable content. First of all, Lindsay was not informed about this before hanging her exhibit. Secondly, the photographs are not objectionable. When Greg, Sonia, Chris, and I were helping to hang Lindsay's work, we spent a long time discussing which series of photographs she should put up in addition to her Barn Photographs. The reasons we lobbied for the Fetus Photos were that they are representative of her interest in making art out of science (and the Prenatal exhibit at OMSI is certainly scientific), and that they are some of the most beautiful photographs she has ever taken. Never did we think that the photographs would be objectionable. We certainly never considered that a member of the Studio Arts faculty would request that the photographs be taken down.

All of our friends who know about this censorship have been debating the best way to deal with it. Should the photographs be draped? Should the photographs be flipped in their frames? Lindsay has spent a good deal of her time consulting with various Reed officials, from the Dean of Faculty to the Campus Curator to the Art Department Professors. They have displayed more flip-flopping than our venerable "President" has accused John Kerry of. The compromise: Lindsay can display the "objectionable content" only during the opening. Before and after, the photographs must be taken down.

I think that the Reed Community, and the community in general, has every right to know about this, whether or not they consider it to be censorship. So, I'm sending this text to the Reed College Quest.

Well, that sucks, but you should come to the opening, anyway!

Monday, October 04, 2004

 

Click Here!

I am in computer hell, and as far as I can tell it's a Macintosh problem. I'd ask Chris for help, but he's "in the Terminal" right now doing something with Linux. What's happening is that I'm trying to watch this episode of "The Daily Show" about the debates that I found on BoingBoing.net, but I didn't have any of the right plug-ins, such as Xvid or DivX (aren't computer people so clever with their palindromes?) I knew something was wrong because everytime I opened the file with Quicktime it just crashed. I Googled my ass off, and got all of these things, opened the file, and it was corrupted. Oh, but now I have Torrent so that I can download even more stuff I can't figure out how to play.

On the up side: I watched a Britney Spears video for "Prerogative" that Bobby Brown song from 1991, and the Outkast "Miss Jackson" video, which has puppies and kittens and dancing owls.

And the cats are totally making out right now!

Saturday, October 02, 2004

 

October!

I'm so glad that it's October again. I know, it happens every year. But this one is special because Marian is coming home! Yay!

Chris and I have been cleaning and moving stuff around my room. I think he's a bit surprised about how much of a packrat I am. I am quite a packrat. For instance, I have this E.T. that I can't remember getting, but I'm reticent to get rid of it. But now that we have the new mixer, we need a new living situation. It's wuite impressive, this mixer, it's hefty and it feels like something.

Work was really good tonight. I was super busy and made a lot of money. Plus, the whole restaurant sang along to "Yellow Submarine." Working with Steve is great because we both sing along to the songs we listen to, and dance, and sometimes he beatboxes and we dance. We're also quite good at rhyming battles. We ridin' on diamond saddles. Cuz serving's an uphill battle!

Well, that's not the best ever.

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