…the who cares girl…

boom headdress, originally uploaded by …the who cares girl….

…I bought “Boom!“, from Amazon, JUST NOW…for 20 bucks. I’ve been waiting years for the price to go below 100 bucks, OH MY GOD after all the years of waiting for the fucking Criterion Collection or somebody to release it on DVD I’ve given up and I’m going to watch it for the first time on VHS, who gives a shit, I CAN’T WAIT!

Now I need to make a special “Boom!” headdress for the occasion!!!

Hunter S. Thompson: My Hero and Role Model, originally uploaded by Zömßiè Inc. Wholesale zombies for over 20 years.

“A Pig in the Wilderness: My Night with Hunter S. Thompson” from the good old Criterion Collection.

If you haven’t listened to Hunter’s commentary on “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas”, try it! It’s hysterically funny!

“The Tremendous, Fascinating and Totally True Adventures of D and Al” is fantastic!

I talked to my parents on the phone last night and my father, shockingly, actually asked about the book. On his own, with no prompts or anything. I told him it’s in the “editing stage”, and that I am currently researching the difference between sending your manuscript to an agent first versus an editor versus a publisher. There are a lot of options out there, but thankfully I can narrow some of them down because 1. I’m a first timer (many agencies won’t even talk to first time authors), and 2. it’s a YA novel (“young adult”), and many publishers don’t handle YA novels. Well and also 3. it’s going to have some illustrations, but I’m not terribly concerned about that yet, mostly because they’re all at the pencil stage now.

Yesterday I worked and then spent some time editing my book, some time working on a new puzzle, some time taking self-portraits (may as well take advantage of the husband not being around), and some time researching agents/publishers. That’s it, my whole day. No painting. Apparently I can only handle one type of creative outlet at a time, because I’ve had zero interest in painting the past few days, even though there is a Louise Brooks painting waiting to be completed.

Today’s goals are outside activities with the girls and to consider what to do with my sewing machine sitting on the kitchen table–I either need to use it (I’ve been thinking about a kicky little skirt) or put it away, the presence of the untouched machine makes me feel guilty.

Recently purchased “Children’s Writer’s & Illustrator’s Market”, the 2010 edition. It’s filled with helpful articles, including a special article on writing for the “GLBTQ” community.

“Q?” I said to the Boy. “What the hell is “Q”? Queer?”

Wrong! The “Q” stands for questioning! Questioning? When did that start appearing after GLBT, and why didn’t I get the memo? What’s next? “S” for slutty? What about “D” for drag-friendly? I like that one.

I don’t know where this came from, but I like it. Strange things just appear in my “saved pictures” file, and every so often I look through it and transfer files over to Flickr. Problem is, by the time I do that I’ve forgotten where I found the picture, or forgot the credits.

When I first joined Flickr I transferred over a huge number of photos from my personal “inspiration file“, but didn’t include the credits, and once in a while someone will ask me who the photographer is and I say “Uhhhhh…”. I started putting a disclaimer under the inspiration photos: “Photo by not me“, in case anyone is confused.

Just for “fun” I looked to see what photos of mine were the most “popular” on Flickr, and some photos of “The Girls Next Door” showed up, from the winter of 2008 when I was obsessed with that show (shame). So I just deleted them. That’s totally embarrassing, I mean, my most popular photos should be pictures of MY ass, not someone else’s! So there.

The Boy is away this weekend to the annual family ski trip that I never attend. Every year it’s the same, I decline, they say, “Well, you don’t have to ski, you can just come up and sit in the cabin!” Why does that sound appealing? Talk about claustrophobia, no thank you. I’ll just stay here with my dogs and my puzzles and my in-desperate-need-of-heavy-revision novel, I’ll be fine, thanks.

kurt, originally uploaded by …the who cares girl….

“The worst crime is faking it.”

- Kurt Cobain

While waiting for fresh books to arrive in the mail from Amazon, lately I’ve been re-reading the books I own by Augusten Burroughs, first “Magical Thinking” and currently, “Possible Side Effects”. What stood out to me this time around were his glowing, over-the-top proclamations of love for his partner, Dennis, throughout both books. Out of curiosity I wiki’d Augusten and discovered, to my dismay, that he and Dennis split up last year. Now when I read lines like “I watch him pee sometimes and I actually sigh with joy” instead of making me gaze over at my furry husband with love and appreciation I feel cranky, and misled.

“Dammit!” I shouted at my husband last night, shaking the book at him. “Do you know how depressed it makes me that Augusten and Dennis broke up?”

“A little?” he guessed.

“A lot!” I thought for a moment, then announced, “Only boring people stay together!”

“We’re boring,” the Boy pointed out.

That made me feel better, because he’s right, we are boring. I mean, when your idea of an exciting Friday night involves crackin’ away at your current puzzle while ingesting 4-5 glasses of ginger ale, you’re not likely to…stray? Is that what I’m trying to say? Oy vey.

Last night I just wanted to watch a little something while I snarfed down a strawberry yogurt before engaging in Pilates, and somehow I got sucked into “Antichrist” by Lars von Trier. The opening sequence features an agonizingly slow-motion, black-and-white sequence of Willem Defoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg fucking while their infant son is distracted by some snowflakes and topples out a second story window–how could that not grab your attention? I watched the entire film, really watched it, meaning, I didn’t even attempt to multitask during the viewing like I normally do.

Er. The film is classified as “horror”, but I’m not exactly sure that’s appropriate, although certainly there is plenty in the film that’s just downright difficult to watch (I covered my eyes (partially) during a moment or two). Evidently von Trier suffered a major depressive episode during the making of this film. My boyfriend John Waters called it “one of the ten best films of 2009 in Artforum Magazine, stating “If Ingmar Bergman had committed suicide, gone to hell, and come back to earth to direct an exploitation/art film for drive-ins, [Antichrist] is the movie he would have made.”

I’ll say this: the cinematography was amazing, the actors were…brave, and it may be quite a while before I watch another Lars von Trier film. The last one had me sobbing on the sofa (“Breaking the Waves”), this one had me cringing on the couch. I still want to see “Dogville”, but not for a while. Ooof.

Don’t try to tell me that you’re an intellectual
Cause you’re just another boring bisexual
“I met Andy Warhol at a really chic party”
Blow it out your hairdo ’cause you work at Hardee’s
80 pounds of make up on your art school skin
80 points of I.Q. located within

Know what you are? You’re a bunch of …
Artfags! Artfags! Artfags! Artfags!
Choke on this you Danceteria types!

- “Instant Club Hit” (You’ll Dance to Anything), by the Dead Milkmen

There’s an episode of “Golden Girls” where Blanche is demonstrating how you can give yourself an instant facelift, just by changing the angle of the hand mirror as you gaze into it. Look down into the mirror–old, old, old. Look up into the mirror–voila! Young young young!

Over the years I’ve practiced this little trick, always secure in the fact that I never really looked all that old when I looked down into the mirror, but then something horrible happened this morning. I was patting my new ultra-thick concealer lightly onto the purple half-moons under my eyes, looking down into the mirror, when I noticed three chins, a tight, unsmiling mouth, and a furrowed brow. 30 going on 65. The Blanche Effect. Shit. Well, welcome to reality, sweetie dah-ling. At least I quit smoking! I won’t develop those awful “whistle lines”.

Today’s goals are to trim down my cookie consumption and go to Kinkos to make a copy of my novel for the Boy to read/edit. We just bought a new printer, but I don’t want to waste all of the ink on my book. I prefer to waste it printing out pictures of the dogs to bring to work and shove at people, bragging, “See my children?” Sad, sad.