Things that Made Me Smile

1.  Fries at lunch.  I could live on potatoes.

2.  Seeing trade authors with sales numbers in the low thousands. Very low thousands.  Heh.

3.  Speaking of authors, Dooce writes four times a week AND she pulls in an upper middle class income?  And gets to stay home with her dog?  Let’s all take a moment to daydream about that together…

4.  But wait!  My daydream about staying home with my dog has been interrupted by the thought of my new cute neighbor strolling down our street this morning, one hand raised in a graceful wave, the other cradling a beer can.  He’s got these shoulders… You know those good wooden hangers nice suits come on?  The way they give the suitcoat a nice kind of triangle shape along the top, but really accentuate that line across the upper back of the coat?  That’s what my neighbor’s shoulder muscles do to his t-shirts, stretch them out in this solid straight line from shoulder to shoulder.  And the man has the cutest stroll.

At least, I’m assuming he’s a neighbor.  He waved and was headed towards the dead end.  And had a open beer.  But maybe he’s just a hobo beer thief… still, that would be kind of cool.  As long as he doesn’t steal my beer. 

 

Full of Complaining

I am fried, like those delicious golden wiggly fries from the stand at the Southern Festival of Books.  I’m supposed to be at work right now, but I can’t bring myself to get up out of this chair and go get in the shower.  I’ve got to get on a plane on Sunday and fly across the country and am I ready?  No.

Plus, I’m having trouble sleeping.  And last night I dreamed I got to the airport and I checked my ticket and discovered that the government would not let me fly to LAX, but I could fly to San Diego on next Thursday, if I would just wait at the airport.

I’m letting things drop.  I hope they’re small things that I’ll be able to pick back up later, but I have this nagging suspicion that I’m neglecting big things and I’m just too frazzled to see what they are.

L.A. will be fine once I get there.

I just need to get situated.  Put some Diet Dr Peppers in my mini fridge and find me a map of the city.  If I have a mini fridge.  If I can find my hotel.

Some days, I just feel like I suck.  Like the problem must really be me, that I don’t know what I’m doing and the things I do know how to do, I don’t do as well as I should, but no one’s saying anything.  I feel like I have no discernable skills and no other options.  I’m just hanging on until someone finally points out that they could hire a monkey to do what I do and a monkey would not still be sitting in her pajamas at 8:10, when she should be at work.

I am never, ever, scheduling myself like this again.  Seriously, two trips, with a week of meetings between them, no time off for almost three weeks?  Look at me.  We’re just now at the halfway point and I’m depressed and fucked up. 

And stupid enough to admit it in public.

In Which I do Jamey Tucker’s Research for Him

Jamey Tucker says:

So why aren’t more people ticked off about this? Why do the majority of people and decision makers in this country turn their heads when someone mentions the problems of a sex and porn saturated society? Why do we not hear from women’s groups such as NOW and the primary women leaders in this country stand up and speak out? Why do we continue to allow porn spammers and porn websites to function?

[…]

So speak up Oprah. Speak out Hillary. It isn’t going to get better.

I find:

1.  It is not true that women leaders are not speaking out.  Katie Allison Granju is a feminist.  She is speaking out against our "porn saturated society," which Mr. Tucker knows because he’s quoting from her blog.

2.  Even though it’s totally fashionable to throw out the parts of the Constitution that get in the way of us tramping all over the rights of U.S. citizens, pornographers do have a first amendment right to say whatever they want, just as racists have a first amendment right to sit around and watch Birth of a Nation 50 times in a row, and wacko militia folks can read The Turner Diaries.  That’s how our country works, or at least, how it worked before yesterday.

3.  Oprah regularly already does shows that look at the "problem" of pornography.  She’s already speaking out.

4.  Clinton’s own website is full of her "I hate sex and violence" rhetoric–"I have also spoken out against the culture of violence and sex in the media, comparing this growing problem to a disease that, if left untreated, will become an epidemic."

5.  I was able to discover that there is a well-known radical feminist blog here in Middle Tennessee, complete with email address for Egalia, so that someone could write her and ask her for some insight into how women’s organizations feel about pornography and for how long the ones that have been against it have been active. 

In other words, I have discovered that doing the things Mr. Tucker thinks need to be done will not prevent him from chastising you for not doing them.