an occasional feature

December

12/30/98

Hmm, english muffins and popcorn for dinner ... the sink is so full of dishes that I have to go into the bathroom to get water for my coffee ... which there's no milk for anyhow cuz I forgot to get some at the store ... which is half a block away ... but I would have to put on pants ... which I can't find ... because the floor is so cluttered the cat is playng that "the floor is molten lava only these islands of magazines are safe" game ... if it weren't for the glasses I keep breaking, I'd never sweep at all ... must be ... Winter! The incredible downside to this utopian vision that is Seattle where we don't see the sun for months at a time and all get a little ... weird. I think I have all those signs they tell your parents to look out for to tell if your child is using drugs [except that I am not missing any objects that could be converted into cash, and my friends were always unusual...].

12/28/98

Instead of ruining Christmas this year like I usually do, I think I assisted it in becoming an unmitigated success. I spent the money I got for returning a gift sweater on tons and tons of Chinese food and went over to my friends Ben and Kara's house where I stayed in a more or less prone position from noon til past midnight watching movies with an everchanging assemblage of friends and aquaintances. Here's what we saw [in no particular order]: Creature Comforts, Barbarella, South Park [the one with Meca Streisand], The Unbelievable Truth, Year Without a Santa Claus, Schizopolis, Wallace & Gromit [Wrong Trousers], Madeline, Music of Chance and Cookie Monster songs of indeterminate origin. I left before Princess Bride came on.

My houseguest did not die, and eventually recovered to the point where he could eat solid foods. He did, alas, go back to San Francisco where I will be in March attending the Anarchist Bookfair with the Left Bank Books crowd.

12/23/98

I've got a visiting houseguest who's laid up with the flu so I haven't been doing much except assisting in tea preparation and snoozing. I did catch the Solstice sunrise yesterday which was lovely [and late, 7:57] and then ate bacon waffles and went back to sleep for three hours. Yesterday was big " Holiday Card" day, by which I mean christmas cards in disguise, since everyone I know who sends cards, either celebrates Christmas, or used to and now doesn't. One of the cards was a lovely woodcut that said "Happy Holydays" which got that Jesus message across without being specifically about Christmas... Also, both my mom and grandma sent me holiday cards with polar bears on them. What could that mean?

12/19/98

It snowed in Seattle today. This may not seem like news for those of you in real winter climates, but in Seattle it snows about once every two years. And the city seizes up. I was on a bus heading to the University District and the bus couldn't even make it up a small bunny hill. The wheels just skidded and skidded and then the bus driver got on his microphone and said "well, it's obvious we're not going anywhere and I'm not sure what bus you could get on, but there it is..." so I trundled home to spend the evening with my cat. Fortunately, this kind of near-disaster ["do you think the power's going to go out? can we eat all the ice cream now?"] always brings out people's neighborly instincts and friends of mine from nearby that I don't see too often decided they wanted to go out in "the snow" [now only a thin sheet of ice covering everything] came by and we went out to get soup.

12/15/98

In my everpresent search for more reading material, I was searching the Shoreline catalog [while working in an abandoned library] for books on freaks which is my current reading craze. The catalog here has exactly one book that comes up when you enter the subject freak, and it's about Jesus. Hoping to find an interesting subject heading [you non-librarians can just scoot down to the Vegas trip info], I checked out the MARC record only to find that the category of record for this subject is "Jesus People" with only a hidden 450 field with the term Jesus freaks.

12/13/98

Okay, I really feel that I am in eat and sleep mode lately, and I can't say for sure if the sun ever came up today. I just booked a vacation to Las Vegas for February when I will need it even more than I do now. My friend is turning 30 and we're all meeting in Vegas for some R&R. Some people go to Vegas to gamble, and some go for the cheap liquor, but I generally go to ride roller coasters & other attractions [and spend $2 in the nickel slots] and be someplace sunny for a change. I got married in Vegas, the place still holds some appeal for me.

12/10/98

This past weekend I went to a meeting of Women Who Make Things, where we all get together and either do craft-y type projects or work on those irritating mending project that we can't seem to get done at home. I'm one of those irritated menders. Last meeting I fixed some jeans, this meeting I made a new hat. The most fun part of the meeting is that everyone, without exception brings with them armloads of craftmaking stuff, including rubber stamps, old books to cut pictures out of, fabric swatches, hot glue guns and lord knows what else. I found this picture:

Also, Jack is back. Send him some email too.

12/7/98

Did I mention that my basement [the level below my apartment, I know it's dark, but it's not subterranean] flooded about eight hours before I was due to go to Portland last week? Anyone who thinks that having a caretaking job with free rent is somehow glamorous or some sort of constant anarchist fun world should try scraping up dried toilet paper from the floor for a few hours while you worry about whether your bosses really do or do not control the entire world economy.

Actually, I had an inspiration as to how to deal with all this crusty scuzz. I simulated another flood in the basement by pouring buckets of water all over the place and then sweeping it up with the push broom. I will, of course, have to throw the push broom away after this but hey, I'm on an expense account.

12/5/98

The holiday season makes people do strange things and I am no exception. Yesterday I went to a giant mall to return an ugly but well-meant sweater. The day before yesterday I took my first cab ride in this country because my friend didn't want to wait 15 minutes for a bus. It's kind of odd how cabs are just not part of my reality. I think I would probably sleep on a bench rather than have to take a cab home. There were people roaming the streets with giant thermoses of Starbucks coffee on their back giving it out free to people in the street. They looked just like exterminators.

In less Jessamyn-centric news, yesterday was the anniversary of Fred Hampton's murder by the FBI as part of their fuckwitted COINTELPRO program.

12/3/98

I thought for a minute that the guy I saw playing guitar last night at the Tractor Tavern actually didn't have a zillion web pages about him and I was magically transported back to a time when finding information was more difficult and librarians roamed the earth like kings and queens. Then I woke up and my pillow was gone ... I had been spelling his name wrong.

His name, properly spelled, is Vic Chesnutt [see why I had trouble?] and he's the whiny guy to beat all whiny guys. He filled the club to capacity on a Wednesday and no one was bummed out when he played stuff from his new album. People were even really quiet, it was amazing.

12/1/98

I was suprised over this past weekend how few of my friends knew that Thanksgiving as a regular national holiday is a fairly recent event. In fact, the reason we have Thanksgiving on the fourth Thursday is because it was originally the last Thursday of the month but FDR pushed it back so the shopping season could be longer. Don't believe me? Take another quiz

Speaking of shopping and rampant consumerism, I actually managed to buy nothing on Buy Nothing Day quite handily. I was even out of town. I stopped short of hassling my friends about going out for coffee, but did manage to turn down an offer of a free beer. In fact, I even lost my hat, which means I think I came out ahead of buying nothing. If anyone has an extra large hat lying around, my head is kind of cold.