I Read The Back Of The Cereal Box

Coincidence? I think not. . .

Thu, 31 Dec 2009 16:43:22 GMT

I just realized that The Lemonheads have a song titled, "Alison's Starting To Happen" AND do a cover of "Mrs. Robinson."

I'll leave you, dear readers, to ponder the significance of such things, but remind you to be afraid. . . be very afraid--the truth is rumored to be out there.

Time for Checklists

Mon, 28 Dec 2009 15:08:16 GMT

Coffee. . . check.

Toast. . . check.

Gathering up my stuff and getting packed to fly out today. . . OHMIGOSHIDONTWANNAPLEASEDONTMAKEMENONONONONONONONONO

I could do work, or I could think these things. . .

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 17:42:35 GMT

How cool would it be if I ended up marrying a guy named "Katz"??

Lol. . . I could go through life being Ali Katz.

Okay, back down the rabbit hole for me.

Weekend Hijinks

Sun, 13 Dec 2009 22:42:59 GMT

I've spent two awesome days helping the guys over at Celluloid Simple (check them out!) shoot a couple spec commercials. I didn't realize I could be this exhausted at 5pm on a Sunday. . .

However, in a new personal best for weekend coincidences and awesome juxtapositions, I managed to:

1. Work with yet another Texan.
2. From the greater Dallas area.
3. On a zombie project.
4. With a guy that wants to move to Georgia.
5. Two blocks away from my house.
6. AND find a killer recipe for sausage balls from a Tennesseean (just like the lady who gave me my original recipe for them).
7. That requires a generous glopping of Chipotle Tabasco sauce.
8. Later, we had to shoot upstairs from my gym.
9. Before going to my old neighborhood.
10. Where we watched football.
11. While we shot a football commercial.
12. And debated the Falcons and the Lions (my two NFL affiliations).
13. Before agreeing that pro ball was stupid.
14. And also agreeing that any team using orange was stupid.
15. AND agreeing that the SEC has the best college ball.

Brrr!!! I'm cold, I'm wet and rain-logged, and I'm still at zero for presents under my tree, but I don't think I could have traded it for anything. After all, I had this emailed to me last night--and you can't get that kind of glee just anywhere:

(FYI, this actor's name is "Rawb." We found it hilarious that he became a zombie.)

A Pernicious Self-Perpetuating Pattern of Productivity Prohibitiveness*

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 19:13:34 GMT

Difficult days leading to sleepless nights leading to exhausted, mistake-prone days leading to exhausting, nightmare-prone nights leading to. . . you guys know where I'm heading with this.

And the snake ones are the worst. Last night I was trying to find a new apartment, was moving in with an old roommate who can occasionally be just a little difficult to get along with. She insisted on looking at this ONE STUPID COMPLEX, that I hated anyway, and we're touring units and there are *snakes* writhing up and down the floor, and occasionally flinging themselves across the room, and Jenn just WOULD NOT let me leave, and I knew that at any moment one was going to come into contact with me and I wouldn't be able to get away from it AND keep watch on where all the others were, so I'd end up in contact with them too, and. . .

Anyway, there have been a lot of long days over here, but after I get through this, I've earned ten glorious days home at Christmas.

We're just going to stay focused on Saturday, December 19th, at 6am.

Okay, back into it. Here I go!

*Prohibitiveness is so a word, as of now.

How did I do THAT to spaghetti sauce!?!

Sat, 05 Dec 2009 03:54:53 GMT

Tonight I was cooking, which seems to occupy my hands enough to let my mind wander creatively. (Hmm, I wonder if I would become a creative genius if I pursued a career in manual labor? My most prolific period was certainly when I worked in retail...)

Anyway, my mind was wandering, and it decided to replay bits of Notting Hill. Do you remember the sequence where Hugh Grant's friends are all bringing girls to dinner for him to meet? His slightly-New-Age-artsy-punk-rock little sister introduces a friend who proclaims herself a "fruitarian"--for our purposes, she only eats fruits and vegetables that fall from plants on their own. (I am all New-Agey and enlightened enough myself to realize that actual fruitarians are an eensy bit more sane than that, but we will deal strictly with fruitarians as they are defined in the film.)

The dialogue is, roughly:

Fruitarian: I only eat fruits and vegetables that fall from plants on their own.
All the friends at the table blink at one another. Bunny (Hugh Grant's sister) looks faintly embarassed.

Hugh Grant: (blinks affably and stammers in befuddled, charming way) Oh I see. . . so, er, these carrots?

Fruitarian: Were murdered, yes.

All exchange looks. Hugh Grant appears affably befuddled and charming.

Aside from Hugh Grants attributes (let's admit it, folks--the man can act precisely ONE character. . . but damned if it's not an affably charming one), the scene raises a question that I feel really needs to be addressed. The writers claim they ignored it for something about "storyline" and "pacing" and "are you seriously asking us this", and a quick google search didn't give me the answer, so I shall lay the quandry bare before you, Gentle Readers.

Would this woman cut the grass in her yard?

She's not going to be eating it, and she's not going to kill the plant itself, but if one follows the metaphor, it would certainly be week after week of assault and amputation.

Thoughts?

Well, that was quite a streak...

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 03:49:04 GMT

Am not posting today's word count because it's laughable.

It's laughable because a) I didn't even leave work until almost 8:30. and
b) I got home to find that Erika had started a taunting war on Facebook. I can't resist *that*.

What the facebooking-public will never know. . .

For every taunt, there was an accompanying text message with commentary on the status of the war. Yup, that would be me and Lizzie--we simply *fail* at engaging via a singular medium.

*Dorks*

:D

Deep, slow breathing. . .

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 05:12:22 GMT

Since everybody's doing it--

1,506.

I'm actually kind of psyched--I couldn't write yesterday, so that number consists of the train ride this morning, the train ride tonight, and about two hours at home. I used to be able to knock out a 3-5 page paper in that time, and those generally ran 2,000 words. Man, am I ever feeling the dropoff from college, though! Still, 1,500 is my personal daily goal--I know that to hit 50k I need to be at 1,666 (and THAT's intimidating enough to make me believe in evil numbers!), but it's better than I thought I'd start with.

The pros: It's strangely liberating to write for word count. I noticed how many times today my instict was to say, "Stop! That's an unflattering way to present that concept! You can't keep that there!" Not that I'm writing useless information; the moment that it struck me most strongly I was debating having a character find something hidden in an "office" drawer, a "sock" drawer, or a "lingerie" drawer. I made myself pick one and move on; I'm aware that it's something to check for nuance later, but for now the concept will hold, and I didn't derail my writing process!! (And I wanted to... I *really* wanted to.)

The cons: I feel like I'm in over my head, and completely inadequate to the task at hand. What am I thinking? These are *real* writers, the kind that can generate high-level output. There's a lot of pressure in thinking about putting up these kinds of numbers every day for the next 28 days.

I'm at my best when I'm up against a dare, though, and this IS kind of fun.

"Whore", From the Germanic "Horaz". . . "One Who Desires"??

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 18:04:35 GMT

Okay, so. . . there are some inherent negatives to living in a place like New York. One of the most complicated to deal with is homelessness. It's a problem I don't have an answer to. . . . and can also inadvertantly become a source of comedy.

When I hang with J in Queens, he generally walks me back to the train. Last night, I tried to tell him that he really didn't need to--I am more than fine negotiating the four well-lit blocks between his door and his station solo. He gestured over to the gentlemen camped under the tracks and explained that they were part of the reason why he did; they'd tried to bother him before. I scoffed a little and smiled and decided that he was just being a gentleman, and besides, I always kind of enjoy walking back to the station with him. In short, I decided, I would indulge this chivalrous quirk.

Folks, this is a little thing I like to call "hubris." Keep it in mind.

Yesterday was Halloween, and I was even less worried about getting back to Brooklyn than usual. I usually switch trains at 34th Street--a station I HATE; the platforms there just have a creepy vibe to them. However, I knew that this time I would have half of Manhattan waiting with me. New York takes any opportunity for dressing outlandishly and drinking heavily seriously, and I knew I'd have plenty of company as I waited for the F train to arrive.

Was I preoccupied in the station? Perhaps; a long delay on the N train had led to a 30 minute conversation with JJ about the total meltdown at the Georgia-Florida game. Little Brother and I broke down the offense, the "defense", the coaching, the recruiting, and sissy uniforms. Distracted after that, I settled into a long session of Bubble Breaker and pondered the future of the Bulldog Nation.

34th Street arrived, I put the phone away, tossed my scarf across my chest (it was chilly, and my blouse had a sheer collar), skirted the beach umbrella that languished forlornly on the stairwell, and hit the platform just in time to see my train pulling away.

Rats.

Oh, well. The night was young, and I had blue glitter in my hair. I couldn't complain.

I began my trek to the other end, weaving around drunken anime chicks in platform heels and drunken "sexy" bumblebees in stilettos, grateful for my jeans and flip-flops--and yes, for the blue glitter. I have my vanity, thank goodness, because smug satisfaction was pretty much all that was keeping me from shoving the idiot people onto the tracks. I hate it when fun is used as an excuse for bad behavior.

There was a homeless guy shambling towards me, muttering, but he was moving like an old-school zombie and I had plenty of room to skirt him. I didn't pay a great deal of attention until he maneuvered himself in front of me and made a general proclamation to the bystanders.

He informed them, folks, in a word, that I am not at all selective in my choice of sexual partners, and am also generally paid for my services.

I stopped, surprised, because given the people surrounding us, I would not have identified *myself* as the whore in the crowd, and looked more closely at the elderly gentleman in his dirty grey sweat suit. I wondered what his critera for licentiousness was, and then I wondered WTF he was doing.

What he was doing was raising his arm to take a swipe at me.

I mean, seriously? SERIOUSLY?

The only person who has EVER raised a hand to me *in* *my* *life* is JJ; and I think I was nine years old, making him five, and I'm pretty sure I had instigated that fight by demanding Gummi Bears over Care Bears on a Saturday morning. That would have driven anyone to violence.

I wasn't in any actual danger; there was no way he could have moved fast enough to get to me, so I dodged, gave him an incredulous look, and continued on my way.

For the record, I *hate* it when J's right.

Such a silly, simple thing. . .

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 02:39:57 GMT

Ya'll, it was a-maz-ing.

Absolutely, breathtakingly wonderful.

Something that still has me smiling, and holding the sensation close inside, a giddy, bubbly feeling that makes me feel good all over.

--------

I walked to the store to grab toilet paper and paper towels.

Yeah, that's it.

But you see, for the first time in a month I walked at MY pace, speeding up and slowing down at whim. Once, I even broke into a brief jog to beat the light.

No wincing. No limping. No counting steps to distract myself from how much farther I had to go.

No practical math at all.

Just me, in jeans and tennis shoes and a hoodie, my hands stuffed in my pockets, moving fast enough to feel wind in my face. That's about as close to 100% Ali as I get.

**contentment**

Tomorrow, I think we'll try the heeled half boots. And I have a week and a half 'til I'm cleared for cardio.

It feels so good to be back. . . so very, very good.

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 19:01:14 GMT

*slow*

*deep*

*breathing*

I canNOT be held responsible for things that HARVEY'S FREAKIN' OFFICE doesn't do.

canNOT, sadly, does not equal willNOT in my world.

It's okay. . . I'm okay, you're okay, we're okay. . . only 20 hours left in the week.

Thanks for listening, Interwebz!

~Ali

Vhat zee patient ees tryink to say ees. . .

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 04:08:38 GMT

An informal (meh, make it formal, go ahead) poll of people who know me well would tell you that one of my greatest faults is that I am, by default and until last extremity, a chicken.

BOK!

(Ahem. Sorry, I'll try to keep that under control.)

When presented with an Opportunity For Feats Of Derring-Do (bad and good luck tales, oo-ooh--er, sorry, again. . .)I will wriggle and distract and delay and, in short, hide until that hornswoggling monster has passed on to greater imaginations and more reckless souls than mine.

It's true. Want to see a display of verbal chicanery that would strike double-talking fear into the to the double-hearts of your double double chex chex? Try to engage me in a conversation that I don't want to have, *particularly* if I think I won't be able to handle it well. Multi-syllabic punditry will fly fast and furious, as cliches so long forgotten they're practically new again are urged forward in a defensive line of dazzling asides and pithy strikes of inane metaphorical absurdities.

Do you remember the story of Proteus from Edith Hamilton's Mythology? (I assume that Bullfinch told it also, but to be honest I never read Bullfinch. I'd already nestled happily in to Edith's wry evaluations of Ovid and his ilk, and had trouble taking anyone named after an overimportant sparrow seriously. So Hamilton it was, and Hamilton it has remained, and I am, regretably, the worse as a scholar for it.)

I will confess that I don't remember which hero Proteus had to face (presumably that was covered more extensively in the Bullfinch), but I felt a curious kinship with the mercurial sea god who would deliver an answer only after an exhausting series of desperate mutations were rendered futile.

This wouldn't be much more than an exasperating quirk, or an opportunity for moral growth, or cause for muttering and threats from friends... except that my brain will do it to itself when under duress.

I've almost made up my mind to participate in NaNoWriMo. Fifty thousand words is an astronomical figure for me--I would be astonished if I've ever bested *fifteen*. I am, however, a huge fan of high goals, and am a sucker that will be snookered into a dare every time. Beyond that, I believe that I can, with commitment, render a respectable thirty, since I won't be agonizing over the cadence of every line (a psychological cop out, yes, but it's a wonderful trick for a perfectionist--never finish the work, and never fall short of the dreaded perfection). If my "perfect" goal is word count rather than shining literary gem, I believe I can generate that level of output.

We will say right here, right now, before God, LJ, the writers I respect, and the forebearing friends who have read thus far, that participating in this event would be a Fear That I Am Facing.

Pause to pass around cupcakes. Cupcakes with gooey icing, and extra sprinkles--the little multi-colored-ball-kind(non-pariels, maybe?), not the long-ones-that-look-like-bacteria-under-a-microscope-kind. We don't use partially hydrogenated paramecium on Ali Courage Cupcakes. Not on THIS blog, we don't.

So, if I do NaNo, I need to have a story. And I have one--something that's been bubbling in my brain for a while, something that is outside the genres I've traditionally worked in, something that Anne of Green Gables would have been proud of me for attempting--i.e., it's a story about a character that I can relate with well, because she's very close to me, and I would be Writing What I Know.

Pause again to pin a Big Blue Ribbon on me, because I've done What Every Writer Should Do. And also to give all of you napkins. Sorry, forgot about those in the heat of my anti-amoebic rhetoric.

One of the reasons I haven't built the story out earlier is because there's a very integral element of the character's journey that I'm not certain I *can* write. It's something that hasn't been resolved in my own life, and while I have faith in my ability to extrapolate psychology, part of me feels like too much of the story hinges on this plot point to write out of my depth. I haven't quite made a decision yet, but it's something that I've had percolating in the dusty, drafty corners of my mental writer's garrett all weekend.

And then. . .

Today I watched a couple of movies--both old favorites, both with themes that have always been tremendously important areas to me, and I was reminded of a story that has been with me for a long time. A very long time, as it first came when I was still young enough to be reading only YA literature (and friends, I starting bringing mature books into the mix back in fifth grade), and hit me with enough force that I cried myself to sleep a couple of nights from the strength of pathos involved. I knew at the time that there was a "children's" novel in it (I didn't know YA *existed* as a classification), and made a few attempts to put it down. . . but the characters were older than me, and they were talking about things that I didn't understand (and yes, the parallels to my statements in the paragraph above have JUST been noticed). I'm older now, and see some of the shadings that I couldn't grasp before, and, as one of the main characters pointed out, it's *her* turn, *she's* been waiting longer. (She has. That poor girl had a series of particularly unfair events in her story; beyond that, it's the last of my early stories that I never developed.)

Ultimately, it doesn't matter which of the stories I write; they're both sound and would make excellent candidates for next month, and that's not really what this entry is about.

My question is: am I turning chicken, and hiding from the JBD story because I'm afraid of it? Is that why my mind is furiously demanding that I attend to the Well story--that that's a childhood remnant, safe and unthreatening and (most of all) not as relevant to emotionally tender areas that I'm working on in Real Life?

Is it a tactical move to a position of strength commensurate with my technical abilities and emotional experience, or an attempt to take refuge in a retread of an already-closed catharsis?

Hmmmm.

Guys, if you've read this far, thank you. . . but I suspect I'm about to veer off from the already wandering point of this post, so I'll excuse you from your overly-indulgent-and-quite-completed reading duties. You're welcome to stick around, of course, but I can't guarantee it will be interesting; I'm going to muck around in my protean psychology and see if I can get some answers. :)

Was the Well catharsis for me?

I don't think so. That story was the second of a trio that appeared in a burst of creativity; the first and third had structural and thematic similarities to each other, strong echoes to my earliest baby stories, and main characters that featured dualities and foils that were very much a manifestation of my own competing desires--i.e., the good person versus the competent person, loyalty versus duty, the heroic versus the mundane. In short, they looked pretty much like every story I've ever written as a type of wish fulfillment.

The second one never quite fit that mold, and I've often wondered if I moved on to the third one because it scared me a little. As a child, I "found" stories fairly often--I think the grown-ups in my world were a bit concerned that I was schizophrenic when I discussed the characters and what happened to them as friends who had given me their histories over an imaginary tea-time chat. I never sat down and plotted--. . . and then I want this to happen, and I want them to go there, and then that will happen. . .--I just knew the main character and what *had* happened to them. Later there came a period, when I was too old to "believe in" what I was saying, but too young to understand some of the idiosyncracies of the creative brain, that *I* worried that I was, well, whatever the seven-year-old's vocabulary word for schizophrenic is--discovering that this sort of thing is common for writers was an amazing relief for me.

But this story--*the* story--she popped into my brain one night, angry and abandoned, and dead--she's a ghost, you see--and there was such a rush of imagery and emotion that came along with her. I could see the inn, I could see the well, I could see the battered old typewriter that one of the guests was carrying in with him, and I knew that the man with the typewriter would be connected to someone that could help her. I could also feel her lonliness, and how cold she was, and, (this I will say I would have preferred *not* to have had in my brain), I could feel what she'd gone through as she'd died. I knew her story had a happy ending, in a way--someone was going to come that would help her--but I remember the way my brain balked at the fact that she was dead. . . "how can it be happy," I argued, if in the end she will still be dead, and she and this friend will lose each other?. . .

(J, if you've read this far, you will understand why there were parts of "9" that I found unforgivable.)

The story disturbed me in a lot of ways. I generally found stories set in Antebellum South or ancient periods, or else full fantasy--she was from the Gilded Age, and her friend came later--I couldn't tell then (and haven't checked yet now) if it was Thirties, Forties, or Fifties; just that the technology made it somewhat more modern.

I generally found a "nice" character first--someone non-threatening, generally non-powerful, an influencer rather than an actor in their world. A sidekick, someone who was pleased to share their story with me. She bristled with antagonism from the beginning, was a bully, and seemed to want to talk to me as little as I wanted to talk to her. I never could understand her friend, the one who ended up helping her--how they became friends, what possible ground they could share as a foundation for that relationship. Because of that, I couldn't build out who her friend was--the character remained a shadowy, faceless blur; a place-holder who did critical things anonymously, even as I began to understand the greater arc of the narrative itself.

Finally, I was generally influenced by something else I'd seen or read. Not plagarism--I'd heard about plagarism early on and thought it was a horrible, horrible crime--it combined lying and stealing, and I've always had a sensitive conscience--more like, I would experience a movie, and some emotion or another would stick with me afterward, and later a character would shyly appear around the edges of my mind, and whisper, "I know how that feels--for me, it happened like this. . ." I still write with a heavy degree of empathy. I usually have a song or sequence of songs that strike a particular chord (pun fully intended, because the songs rarely have anything in common with the story at hand), and I will play them almost constantly while I'm writing.

Curiously, I can trace the links to this story, but they don't help anything really make sense.

There was a book I loved called The Root Cellar. It was set in Canada, and a modern girl moves into an old farmhouse. Sometimes when she goes down into the root cellar, she comes up into a different time--Civil War time. Eventually, she and the children she meets in that time have to go on an adventure to America to find a brother (he'd joined the Union Army, and had been hurt). One of the characters--I think it was the time traveller, but it may have been the sister--was named Rose, and in my mental image of the house's garden there was a trellis with ivy growing over it. There are two links here--first, the ghost in my story is named Rosemary, or Rosemarie, or something like that; it was never entirely clear to me. Second, the inn in my story has a garden with a rose trellis in it--not the same one, not laid out in the same manner, nor even the same plant growing on it, but trellises (trelli?) are not common images for me, and I bothered to remember that link all this time. QED, Jeung and Freud would infer it's somehow significant.

But a link off of a trellis and a name? Furthermore, "Rose" is a family name for me. . . common sense says there has to be something else. I went through a ghost story phase later, but in each instance I remember thinking, "this reminds me of That Story," a quick shiver, and I'd stick that unpleasant story and that unpleasant character back into the nooks and crannies of my mental morgue.

(HA! Take THAT, you bitch! All those years of being difficult have led to a labored pun about newspaper archives and a dig on your current state of mortality. . . OOH! See that? DIG? Get it? SO THERE! Er. . . I expect the Family Guy writers to be calling soon.)

I feel like I'm going to leave this post open-ended. Still not sure if my mind blitzed itself with the Well story because I'm scared of chick lit and the JBD, or if it's a logical and plausible alternative (I *have* been thinking, very frequently, lately, that there's no shame in writing feel-good family fare that will resonate with children forever). . . I may never decide.

I may not do NaNo.

I may wake up tomorrow and discover the writing bug that's had me thinking creatively lately (and buddy, it has *effed* *up* my sleep schedule) has gamely retreated into winter hibernation so I don't end up fired for staying up 'til all hours, daydreaming, and generally failing Responsible Adulthood.

Maybe I'll write more fanfic. (My roommate would be very disappointed in me if I did that. . .)

Anyway, I'm going to bed. Let's see what my dreams look like tonight--maybe I'll know more tomorrow.

Good night, ya'll. . . and if you read this far. . . wow. Get help! :P

Love ya!

This is more a Facebook status update, but hey. . .

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 15:05:38 GMT

Ali: is worried that the relationship between the two main characters on XKCD may be headed for trouble.

There have been moments lately that indicate a growing distance between the two nameless, faceless stick figures.

This distresses me--not only because they *are* nameless, faceless stick figures, but they're also my second-favorite couple (The Hat Guy and The Girl Who Stole His Hat top that list by several orders of magnitude).

The girl does have a point, though--if I was chillaxing with my Person Of The Moment, and some guy burst in with a "Ali! Come quick! There's a Plebiosaurus and no line to ride! OH--BUT DUDE CAN'T COME!" I would totally be all like, "Love Of My Life, I'll take pictures. Why didn't you put yourself on the dinosaur-riding list when I did?"

To the Peanut Gallery: There. It's not about shoes.

Cha-cha cha-cha cha-SQUISH!

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 14:45:54 GMT

Yeah. . . .

So, um, turns out the bottom of those shoes (well, the important one, at least), is no longer waterproof.

Discovered that this morning, I did.

Cha-cha cha-cha cha-CHA!

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 00:22:37 GMT

Okay, so we're calling last night a *slight* setback (it involved being lost and in pain in Harlem). . .

BUT

I'M BACK IN SHOES!

BOO-YA!

Granted, I was limping hard in my flip-flops on the way home yesterday, but apparently all was forgiven as of this morning,'cause I was able to wear my Cons to church tonight.

My blown-out, dilapitaded (dilapidated? actually, I like my J's word better--decrapitated), ought to have been trashed last year Cons, yes, those ones, are the superhero-like shoes that managed to lace up without causing agony, and let me walk, more or less, normally.

Let's have a barefoot dance in celebration!

CHA-CHA CHA-CHA CHA-CHA!

C-H-I-P-M-U-N-K

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 14:47:34 GMT

I picked up my body wash instead of my shampoo bottle today. If there's any truth in advertising, my hair will soon be glowing and fully moisturized.

That'd kind of rock, wouldn't it? Never fear--should it happen, you shall most assuredly see pictures.

To the Lady Who Stood Shrieking Her Business Under My Window All Bloody Morning:

Dear Madam,

In light of our recent time spent together, please be advised that I have downloaded the entirety of the 80's Alvin and the Chipmunks Theme Song. I have a continuous loop function and speakers that will fit in my window, and I will deliver catchy jingles unto you with a force of falsetto power that would make Manuel Noriega *crawl* *begging* to the U.S. military for a return to decent harmonics. Do not think that The Weather will keep me from moving forward with this course of action--I will gladly freeze if it will ensure that you suffer.

Love and kisses,

Ali

Watch. Out. 'Cause here we come. It's been a while, BUT. . . we're back in style.

Chekov's Gun. . .

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 12:26:45 GMT

Anton Chekhov famously instructed writers, "If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there.""

Granted, this is an LJ post and the stories I'm about to share are self-edited for significance, but even so, I am occasionally mystified by the intricate little tropes my sub-conscious hides from me. I spent a good portion of the afternoon amused by my own random actions and only put the connections together on the way home.

Enjoy my own personal Chekhov's Armory, and I've added a link to Chekhov's Depot at the end.

--My boss, D, is in sales, which means that 93% of his productive work hours are spent taking clients to upscale restaurants for lunch. D has friends in every restaurant in the city, but has a special place in his heart for the Brooklyn Diner. The Diner doesn't take reservations, but D's assistants learn early to invoke The Holy Name (I'm not sure if it's the owner, the chef, the maitre'd, or The Godfather, but simply mention it and suddenly tables are held safe and the person you're talking to becomes *extremely* deferential), and D eats there fairly often. I tend to forget most of the other places, but drop The Holy Name once or twice, and the memory will linger.

--Whenever a New Yorker hosts out of town guests, a certain pressure exists to have "a place you know about"--be it a LES dive bar, a Midtown bistro, or the greatest underground rave the five boroughs have ever hosted. It's harder than you'd imagine to explain that you really only know *your* subway line (and, honestly, only to your stop) and the highlight of recent society shenanigans was the night you got a *pepperoni* slice (not just cheese!) from the walk-up window at that place down the block.

You may remember earlier this summer when my mother came to visit me (her first time!)--the same weekend as a very good friend and colleague from the ATL theater scene was in town. I had NO IDEA what to do with two tourists in tow, so when I turned the corner and saw Brooklyn Diner, the choice was easy.

"Shall we dine with the town's film executives?" I asked suavely, positively *dripping* with coolness (and rapidly calculating the chances of getting a table without invoking my boss's buddy's name--luckily, we were a good hour and a half ahead of the dinner crowd).

I know why D likes it--even at the less-popular Times Square location, the decor was interesting, the menu was eclectic, and the drinks were *strong*. Still assured of my coolness, I ordered their award-winning "15 Bite Hot Dog", expecting, naively, a hot dog.

I didn't know that coolness could bottom out so quickly. . .

What arrived at the table was a footlong phallic symbol of legendary girth that by virtue of its very existence trumps any and all iterations of "that's what she said." The meal was placed and my *mother* and my *friend* (a distinguished gentleman of my mother's generation) laughed until they cried. I let them laugh--I was overwhelmingly preoccupied with figuring out a way to EAT the damn thing without reaching uncharted levels of awkwardness!

--There are some foods that people just aren't supposed to like, mostly because the general concept of them sounds more like a grocer's back alley during a trash strike than actual comestibiles. Really, who can get excited about liverwurst? What twisted soul decided tripe was meant for dinner? I'm with the general population on those two, but I actually *like* some other offenders (like licorice, and mushrooms, and coconut), and that night at The Diner, The Hot Dog From Hell was served with another Food That Shouldn't Be: juniper-berry sauerkraut. It was, to be honest, absolutely delicious.

--Wednesday was a long day for me.

I had a doctor's appointment early that morning (Fun With X-Rays, or, Did I Break My Toe or My Foot?), and was slightly terrified when I realized his office was actually In A Hospital. I don't like doctors. I HATE hospitals. And I was completely unprepared to find myself lost and in a nurses' station where beepy things were going off. YIKES! I don't think I've been in a hospital since. . . um. . . Nic gave birth?. . . so five years ago?? Not enough time has passed, in my opinion. It is perhaps not my fault that being in the hospital unexpectedly hit me hard--after all, my mother was having three surgeries that morning, and I'd been up and on the phone since 5am. Conditions were not conducive to maximizing Ali efficiency. Also, yay--it's just toe!/Boo! You'll be limping for a month!

I wasn't on my game later, either, as I juggled updates from the relatives with scheduling a lunch with D and TWO clients. Double the clients, double the schedules, double the location arguments, quadruple the fun! Their assistant is a buddy of mine, though, and she suggested Brooklyn Diner, since "D always likes it." Let me state for the record: Ariana is a GODDESS! I made the call, and was immediately hit with a new sensation--a craving for saeurkraut.

Correction: it was the mother of all cravings,and it was specifically for a reuban (pastrami, saeurkraut, and swiss on rye, and not one of my favorites).

Mom's surgery went well, and aside from a pretty grim headache she had a peaceful night. I was finally able to talk to her today, since the medication had been scaled back and she was lucid. She has my dad, my grandmother, my aunt, my uncle, and both of my brothers on call, she's well taken care of, and we agreed when the surgeries were scheduled that she doesn't *need* me there, but it's very, very hard for me to know that she's going through this and I'm not with her, even if it's only to wrangle the boys and keep my dad from going nuts. Very hard. So mostly I'm ignoring that part of it, and focusing on being upbeat and cheerful and supporting my brothers via phone. (Being protective runs in our family, and neither of them is comfortable with Mom hurting and they're not able to stop it.)

And I still had that craving for the reuban.

It was so strong I had to order it for lunch, and I'm not exaggerating when I say that stupid sandwich made me feel like I actually had a chance of getting on my game for the first time all week.

--When I was a little girl, I spent every summer in Michigan with my mother's parents. I love my Grandma, but I was really PaBuck's baby. I adored my grandfather, who wore seven-league-boots, was only scared of big water, and could make anything better with a joke and a ride on the motorcycle. He had his own unidentifiable brand of magic. . . he understood me, had complete faith in me, and never made me question myself--a rare gift for anyone who had to deal with Little Ali.

My great-grandmother (Grandma's mom, who was deaf, wicked cool, and another one of my heroes) would occasionally need medical stuff--which meant a trip to her retirement home and then on to Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit. Gram would take Great-Grandma up for whatever had to be done, and PaBuck would suddenly claim to be starving. Did I mind going with him to get something to eat? Grandma could find us later. . .

We would leave those green, cold, plastic-smelling hallways and go down to a blessedly grimy little deli decorated in horrible 60's mafia chic; all that brown blurry glass, orange lights, and cracked leather bench seats. PaBuck always ordered the same thing--Hot Pastrami on Rye, with mustard. And because it was bad for his sugar balance (he had diabetes, and rheumatoid arthritis, and his diet had to be carefully maintained), we would agree to split the sandwich. Problem solved.

Later we would retrieve "the girls," and probably have a proper lunch, but I never had to sit in the hospital waiting room. . . and suddenly those little coping mechanisms make an awful lot of sense.

That's the story, folks.

As promised--Chekhov's Depot--all the ways we've taken it too far. . .

Oh, Ali. . . .

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 14:51:21 GMT

This morning I was so impressed with my abililty to put the filter in the basket that I went ahead and turned the coffee maker on.

Ali, it only *makes* *coffee* when there's coffee IN it.

Does anyone else consider it cruelly ironic that we humans are forced to get up and make coffee sans caffeine?

Fashion WIN!

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 16:03:51 GMT

I am wearing a delicious embroidered (yet non-itchy) print kurti that an amazing friend gave to me, and if you will indulge me in a moment of total shallowness. . . I'm having so much fun rocking it!

(Misht, you would be particularly amused by the double-takes I'm getting from Indians on the train. Well, *I* am being particularly amused, anyway.)

Lovin' it, and love you for giving it to me. You, amie, are the absolute best.

Stolen from a Facebook Friend. . . .

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 18:27:06 GMT

Don't settle for being blessed--be a blessing to others.

(Exactly--and being a blessing to others is more fun, anyway. . . how could you resist being a superhero when someone needs it?)

Love you guys!

Quick, J. . . Hide your eyes!

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 15:23:54 GMT

While I have no intentions of becoming a political blogger, this bit on GAWKER disturbed me on several levels, in good and bad ways. To be honest, I'm not entirely sure *how* I feel about it, but it's making me think enough to share.

The pertinent parts of the main article, which I found interestingly stated, although perhaps too flippant:

The New York Daily News says the FBI fears a "Madrid-style" subway bombing in New York, and the man reported to be the mastermind will hold a press conference today. For better or worse, this is what we voted for.

It's truly a new world. Remember that weird anti-terrorism raid in Queens on Monday that no one was talking about? Well, the Daily News says it was an attempt to break up an Al Qaeda cell that might be planning an attack on New York City's subways, and that the FBI has dispatched it's "elite hostage rescue squad" here to stage more raids. And the Colorado man whose visit to Queens sparked the whole thing is now back at home near Denver, chatting with reporters in his apartment and talking with his lawyer about holding a press conference to declare his innocence. . .

We don't know what to make of it. It's just so damn strange when our law enforcement institutions act deliberately, lawfully, and without sowing panic as a political strategy. It's so gratifying to know that the man at the center of a terrorism investigation wasn't immediately hooded, drugged via suppository, and strapped to the floor of a C-130 for a flight to Romania.

And then, this comment was posted. The first line is a reference to another poster, not the main article. Emphasis is mine--

"You DO know what you were talking about. The trouble with ideals like due process and freedom of speech, though, is that sometimes innocent people die for them. You could be next!"

My instict is to say, "shouldn't ideals be the things that we're willing to risk death for? If not for ephemeral concepts, then what?

Yet More Deep Philosophical Insight. . .

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 15:40:45 GMT

Y'know, there are days when XKCD goes directly over my head.

That's a little intimidating.

Questions of a Deep and Philosophical Nature

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 20:58:30 GMT

Does it make sense to do an hour-long train ride for 45 minutes of retail therapy? There are days when a girl just really needs a mall.

Queens isn't *that* far away.

Mon, 07 Sep 2009 15:50:25 GMT

Greetings from the Atlanta airport!

ostarella, I monitored the train carefully for any illicit Face behavior (DB WAS in town for con, after all), but as yet have observed nothing untoward. If the team is around, they are clearly focused on the job.

Speaking of con-I've discovered a new trick!

You see, over time I've acquired several friends that I know from fandoms-my lj peeps being a prime example. I know that they'll be at con every year, and yet every year i run out of time to coord meeting up with them. Complicating matters is that i only know them from their writing-tears_of_nienna's clever crossovers, for example, or djcati's slyly ironic way of lampooning overinflated universes, but i've only seen most of them once, three or four years ago, and TBH, i sometimes struggle to recognize my j's-and i see them almost daily!

My clever con scheme, then, consists of peering at other attendees and weighing them against the following criteria:

1. do they look like an ohioan?
2. a scot?
3. a michigander?
4. a texan?
5. a librarian?
6. a shiny orange cape?
7. a mad scientist?

If yes to any of the above, glare at them suspiciously until they notice. Hope that they know to say "ALI!" at suspiciously glaring people.

Oooh, here comes one of the J's. . . gotta run! More updates as I get bored!

Counting Down to Kickoff '09

Thu, 03 Sep 2009 16:43:23 GMT

One of the things I'm thankful for. . . that I am able to be a passionate, committed, slightly intense sports fan. It gives life joy, even if it also occasionally gives the people around me puzzled expressions.

GO DAWGS!

PLAYING FOR THE HONOR OF THE SEC--
(video doesn't want to start until :40 seconds)

AND FOR THE GLORY OF OLE GEORGIA!

SIC 'EM IN '09, BOYS!