Dance I said

A combination of cabin fever, Oprah, and some old blog posts of mine got me out of the house and onto the dancefloor Friday night.

I stayed home from work for the second day in a row still feeling sniffly and shitty, but a little bit better than the day prior. Still, being stuck indoors, incapacitated, and feeling like crap is a recipe for madness. My mind constantly craves stimulation and my body needs to get up and out and around into the world from time to time.

I hopped onto my new best friend YouTube, and came upon a clip of Oprah on "Larry King Live" discussing that book "The Secret". It's a bit hokey and gimmicky for my tastes, but she talked about how the book's theme is what she's been trying to get across all this time, which is that what you put out there is what you get. Karmic energy, basically.

I can get down with that.

Then I took to reading some old blog posts of mind from 2005. In my memory, this was a difficult time that involved my recent break up from Sean and my subsequent move to Treasure Island, where, after a month of living there, one of my roommates moved out and I had to cover his part of the rent. It was rough and tough, but I made it through. And I danced despite all of this. I went out clubbing and still had a good time.

I can't tell you how much I love house music. I've innately loved it for as long as I can remember even though I grew up in a very white, straight environment. I can remember hearing Technotronic's "Pump Up The Jam" on the radio in the car and just feeling it. Or when the cheerleaders would perform their little routines to those awesome techno mash-ups at pep rallies in high school, I would get goosebumps. Before I could even get into clubs, I loved club music. In fact, I didn't realize that most people go to clubs to hook up. I just thought they went there to dance. That was all I wanted to do.

And I used to go all the time. To the End Up Friday nights, Universe or the Stud on Saturdays, and back again to the End Up for the T-dance on Sundays. Since moving to Nob Hill, which is closer to the End Up and the Stud than I've ever lived before, my clubbing habits have dramatically decreased. The last time I went to the End Up was in June, and I was accused by a security guard of groping some chicks, which was ridiculous. I've also become a little more self-conscious in my old age, and am less willing to drag my chubby ass on my own to the club without someone to come with.

But I never used to care that much about how I looked since there will always be someone more gorgeous than you regardless. And since the separation debalce with Gideon in September, I think my energy may be a little stand off-ish, which just doesn't suit me. Plus I was sick as fuck of being indoors.

So I took myself out, had a few cosmos, danced under the disco ball lights, and had a blast 'til well nigh 2:00 am even though I was still a bit sniffly. I don't regret it for a second, and really think I should do it more often. You put out there what you get, and I just wanna dance.

Oprah told me to.

Kitty assistance

I'm sick with some bastard cold, and am staying home today. I was up at 4:30 AM sneezing non-stop and have icky muscle aches and a swollen throat. Sugar took this as her cue to begin bugging me for her breakfast, so I had to shuffle over like a decrepit mummy to her food bowl and feed her.

I wish you could send cats out to do personal errands. I would love to send Sugar to the store to pick up some provisions, but I can just see how that would go. She'd pick up turkey instead of tofurkey so that she could have some. She'd buy PMS medicine instead of cold medicine to infer that I was being a bitch on the rag. And although I'd ask for a two-liter bottle of Diet 7-Up, she would just bring back a can of regular 7-Up claiming the bottle was too heavy. Of course, most of her time in the store would be spent in the pet aisle, buying new toys and treats, maybe a new litter box.

Then she would take her dear sweet time getting back to the house, stopping to rub up against every stranger, checking out alleyways, ferreting through the crevices of a few buildings. And she would get home about an hour later, dump the stuff in my room, not give me any change (because she'd spent it on herself), then leap up onto her Mad Hatter chair and take a nap, exhausted.

Smile on, pass it on

I'm a generally optimistic person despite my sardonic disposition. I would say this only because most people around me tend to be rather negative and unhappy when I find that they should be a little more grateful for the things they have and the people they have in their lives. My boss actually said I was a pragmatist the other day. I don't really see the glass as half empty or half full, but I know it's evaporating so you better find a way to fill it up, and enjoy every sip you take.

So when I occasionally hit a bout of depression, which doesn't happen often, it really kind of spirals. It's like I'm wading through the pool of life, and a barbed tentacle darts out from the deep and wraps around my leg pulling me down. And I'm in pain, and I can't breathe, and I keep getting pulled down and down.

Yikes! Call the suicide hotline! No, but I always lift up out of it after awhile.

Yesterday, though, I was innocently tooling around on YouTube when I decided to look up this song called "Ana's Song (Open Fire)" by a '90s grunge band called Silverchair, which is fronted by this super cutie named Daniel Johns. It's a sort of unique song in that there's a key change right when the chorus comes in, and it comes in kind of off the beat, and it's just an epic, beautiful song.

I looked up the lyrics and tried to find out what the song was about, and it turns out it's about the singer's bout with anorexia (ana = anorexia). I'd always thought young Daniel looked a bit gaunt, and here was the reason why. I watched an interview with him now, when he's supposedly healthier, still terribly cute (nipple rings and all--yum!), and he seemed sort of sad. And gay. He talked about when he was younger, everyone either wanted to beat him up or be his best friend.

So a little more research discovered there were gay rumors about him as well. And that in between songs during one concert, he'd said, "I'm not fucking gay." Such staunch declarations of heterosexuality are generally a staple of the closeted.

So I just felt really bad for him. Like, all day. And I'm also in love with him. So there.

Sleeping booby

I made a sizable dent in my sleep deprivation Monday, which was Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday, or President Washington's wedding anniversary, or Lincoln's bar mitzvah or something. Since I knew I had the day off, I convinced myself to sleep in as late as a I could. This turned out to be 11:30, which is pretty late for me since my brain won't allow me to remain dormant without stimulation for too long a a period of time. Even when I was little, I would wake up in the middle of the night, go out into the dark living room, and watch cartoons at 2:00 in the morning until I got tired again. Can you imagine if I tried to meditate?

As a result, I feel a little more lucid today than usual. And I have Monday off again, so we'll give it another try, shall we?

Chirren

I hate children. And I'm not just saying that because Kathy Griffin always says it. It is sort of true. Specifically, I hate teens and tweens. That whole middle school/high school lot. Little kids can be kind of adorable, and babies are just loud lumps of flesh that mean no harm, but teenagers are savages who find themselves unfathomably--albeit erroneously-- clever, and so I make to you this proposal:

Bear in mind that I understand that I was once a teenager myself. That I have nieces who will one day be teenagers as well. And that I remember crystal clear those years of my youth where I was unmercifully tortured by my peers. I can remember walking to school one day and thinking to myself that they should have separate high schools for teenagers who were more mature. An admirable concept that merits expansion.

I propose that every city have a section of it cordoned off and divided into two parts: one part will be the school for the Decent Kids (DKs), the other, the Indecent Kids (IKs). Everyone starts off in the DK School. You take all the same classes that you would take in middle school and high school, but you also take a class on Social Responsibility and Respectfulness. This is where you learn not only your pleases and thank yous, about waiting your turn in line and saying sorry when you may have slighted someone, but you're also taught the value of empathy and compassion.

Think of it as a sort of How to Be Like Jesus class.

If you mouth off, act like an ass, or behave in an unseemly manner--boom! You're shifted over to the IK School. There, you will begin every morning being beaten so as to take the fight out of you (not in a way that leaves any permanent damage). You are forced to wear a brown potato sack to emphasize the virtue of humility. You take all the same classes that you would take in the DK School, but after lunchtime, you're forced to run in circles while being whipped to calm you down before classes resume for the rest of the day.

Think of it as a sort of concentration camp for miscreants.

Sound harsh? I'll give you that. But effective without a doubt. And I invite any naysayers to speak with Mr. Alterhausen, who tells me regularly of terrible tales from the classroom.

The little bastards need to be reigned in. And, like the Jackie DeShannon song goes, "And the world...will be a better place for you...and me...ya just wait....and see!"

Closer to sublime

I was up at 6:00 am today to get to eat brekkies and be at an off site meeting by 8:00. As a result, it's all but 10:00, and I feel like it's 3:00, yet I've 7 hours to go. Let's not forget the menial pre-meeting yapping I had to endure from people chit chatting and introducing each other. God, I hate that shit.

I watched "Jennifer's Body" last night, not expecting much, but I have a thing for Meagan Fox. Her and Jennifer Connelly. It's that dark hair, laser blue eyes combo that I guess gets me. I remember seeing Jennifer Connelly in "Labyrinth" and thinking she was beautiful, but those awful '80s duds. And then later in "Requiem For a Dream" where she's a tortured heroin addict, and she's just stunning. Chicks I would switch for. At least for a mo'.

Leonardo Dicaprio should avoid roles that require him to speak with an accent. Unless it's a retarded accent. He was, after all, great in "What's Eating Gilbert Grape?".

WBM Enterprises, Inc. (Whine, Bitch, Moan)

I came into work first thing Monday with a meeting to go in to. Fine. Then the rain came, my feet got wet as always, and my zombified state was set in motion.

I had to co-present a management training course today that I was so nervous for, I got up at 6:30 something. I know that is nothing for some people, but for me, it's heinous. The training went well even though we were grilled afterwards by two people who weren't in fact managers and really shouldn't have been there. I also have to be on an agonizing conference call in about an hour with people who don't understand you can't put your phone on hold during a conference call because then we all hear your waiting muzak, you nimrod!

I have a big project due at the end of the week that I kind of need my managers' assistance on, but she is in meetings all week for a new system implementation.

And Friday, at the hair-butt crack of dawn, I have to be at an off-site meeting that begins at 8-friggin-A.M.

I feel up against the wire and irritable. But I guess I just need to keep repeating one of my favorite mantras to myself, At least I have a job, At least I have a job, There's no place like home, There's no place like home...

When someone says, "Don't look!", what do you do?

IFC has this fascinating series on film censorship with filmmakers, critics, directors, and actors speaking their piece on the issue. It seems to mostly focus on the censorship of sexual imagery, but they do make mention of the fact that we as Americans are more tolerant of violence than sex in our movies. That is, a movie with gore aplenty can still get a PG rating, whereas a film with two guys kissing--just once--is an automatic R.

But one concept that they really only skim the surface of is that eventually, all kids are gonna see this stuff, whether it's when they're young, when they're a little older, or when they're a full grown adult. But the idea of protecting children now from this incendiary imagery they'll see eventually begs the question of what will happen when they do see it. (Didja catch that?)

It would seem to make sense to me that a kid have an adult nearby when watching a scary movie for the first time, so they can explain it. I remember the first scary movie I saw, "The Shining". My stepdad had taken us over to a friend's house, who had rented it, and there we sat watching the Stanley Kubrick masterpiece. And I was seven. And it scaaaaaared the living fuck out of me. After that old woman in the bathroom scene, I refused to take a bath unless the door was open slightly.

It would have helped if my stepdad had reminded me that it was just a movie, or asked if I understood what was happening in the movie, then explained that this was a haunted hotel, and that the woman in the bathtub was a ghost, that would have assuaged my fears somewhat.

It's that unknown that is as titillating as it is fearful, which is why I think it's so much better to face it and to talk about it, rather than relegate it to some mysterious taboo that oughtn't be touched.

Good eats

I stopped eating sweets some time last year when I joined the gym to assist in getting myself in shape, and only partake of them on the rare occasion. It was a bit of a bummer at first since I'm always used to having a little chocolate chip cookie with my lunch, a little blueberry muffin for dessert, etcetera. But I got used to it, and life has gone on.

Still, I'll occasionally have dreams about eating something sweet, and can fully taste it in my dreams. Last night, I dreamt that I was in Paris celebrating a high school reunion. Oddly enough, the people at the reunion were really only people with whom I was acquaintances for the most part. The urge for something sweet and scrumptious suddenly struck me, and I went over to the buffet table and procured a few old fashioned donuts and tortilla chips.

Then it began. I just kept eating them, and they tasted so delicious. I figured I'd eaten enough to ruin any chance of being healthy for the day, and said, "I suddenly have this craving for chocolate donuts!" You know, the little ghetto packaged kind that Hostess makes? And my boss appeared out of nowhere and suggested we go to Whole Foods to pick some up. So we did, and I ate them, and they were just scrumptious.

I felt a bit guilty, but then I woke up, and felt a mixture of relief that I hadn't actually eaten all that crap, and regret that I hadn't eaten all the crap.