i hopped into a nyc cab on saturday and the cab driver was listening to bachata. he heard me extol its praises to my friend in the back seat and asked me in a thick accent "ooooooooh, you like salsa?" to which i responded with and affirmative "of course" and so he turned it up.

i sat on the bench that simpson discovered ashford, went to a flea market, hung out with tic and tac in washington square park, sat outside at dojo's ...yes outside in late november....went to many, many clubs incl. joe's pub, a gay piano bar, karaoke bar, had a 60 minute chinese massage, bought a hat, took pictures of my friends, stayed up late, awoke to a woman screaming at 4 a.m on 38th and Fifth, visited Grand Central's lovely restroom facilities several times, bought an Earth, Wind and Fire Japanese import for 2 bucks, got screamed at by some Elderly woman with Dementia..."move you sons of bitches" she yelled--it was sadly entertaining, left my white noise maker and books at the Americana Inn, skipped down Christopher street, had a sing-a-long in the car, watched the sunset, read the Village Voice....felt a warm breeze in late november.

i've wondered as of late if it is strange that i tell some of my friends i love them. i actually already wrote this entry and took precautions to not get it erased by writing it in IE, but alas, i got a username error last minute and could not retreive it so im attempting to re-assemble it..will shall see.

i think the universe sensed that i needed this weekend. after a long streak of horrible insomnia, i got to work on friday to find claire busily working. she told me how she had spent the previous night in the hospital with her 82 year old father who has heart disease and some undiagnosed pancreatic issues. somehow she was generous enough to give me an aromatherapy, reflexology treatment. i really have nothing to bitch, moan, sigh or complain about. i really don't.

my friend toby hosted a lamp-shade themed party. i wasn't really planning on doing anything elaborate. i really wasn't, but heather luckily on stand-by for inspiration. i started out thinking i would just do the solar system, but my 3D planets hinged and twisted around my lampshade soon turned into something unintentionally complex and political.

i had some farm animals. two of each. and fake grass and trees. i was originally going to position and glue them on the shade part, but then heather suggested how much easier it would be to just throw all of the stuff on top and the secure it with tape so it wasn't falling on my head. what started out as big bang quickly evolved into this weird big bang versus creationism. i don;t know HOW it happened, but it did and i got a prize for it. a blow up doll keychain named judy and some applause. It was a great novelty until i had to hand it to the lovely, phillipinno cashier at stop and shop so she could swipe my card. she handed it back to me slowly. very slowly.

On saturday i laid low. it was great. then i accepted an invite to Jacques with lar and co. can't pass up an opportunity to Jacques. it was teeming however with rich, newton girl-bacholorette parties that were chauffeured in. i didn't really bother me much, but was really pissing off larry and johnny who looked miserable anyway. i was to into it to notice much . i had a great time. i wish my last entry didn't get trashed. i feel i explained it better then . oh well.

i thank adventured my way over to the bob marley house for a late night soiree. well it was late for me, bout 1:30am. i had a weird experience also. have you ever had someone forget a conversation they had with you bc they were so intoxicated? that happened to me on saturday with a friend who i talked to on the phone the next day and she said "did you ever make it to the party last night"?

i saw van, eddy (newly engaged), some young kids, some punk kids, some hippies from up north. it was actually quite a diverse party. i had an excellent time.

and it was about half way through it that i was sitting on the couch not engaging with anyone. not drinking, with my coat on and someone freed up the bass. i thought about it for about 30 seconds ( i notice any longer than a 30 second moment of indecision is unbearable lately and i avoid it), my heart fluttered, i took a deep breath and took off my jacket. i stood up, walked over and bent down and picked it up much to my own inner protesting.

somehow, it was a five-string bass with an extra "B" string that i didn't know how to maneuver, but i winged it and somehow i wasn't the sonic atrocity that i thought because jonathan asked me to go up again and i was complimented by more than three people. i like it when i have confidence and just say "fuck it" and go. there were ppl up there playing instruments that weren't their primaries so it was all good anyway. i like it when that kinda of creative exploration can happen in a moment and it's comfortable and safe. there was only one other female who did though. a vocalist had done some singing earlier.

now i'm just hoping this entry will save. my west coast plans are still underway although in recent letter to my friend in L.A. i complained about all the pseudo-academic ego floating around boston. she responded by saying "if it's floating around boston, it's driving around L.A. She says there's tons of bulemia there and people are like hyper-shallow..all this I knew. So Brayd brought up the suggestion of Eugene where he is going to become a singer. I'm seriously thinking about it but waiting for that final answer from ..well..
from a higher source than I.. We shall say, but lately trying to make small decisions has been overtime...i wonder how a decision of such a large scale will pan out. I'm sure it will be fine.

why the fuck are people afraid to fly on a plane, but will nearly disembowel themselves for the sake of "looking better"? this woman in boston just died during a gastric bypass surgery because the staple-gun that was supposedly cinching her stomach, misfired. yea. the benefits of modern medicine. it's disgusting.

that said. i am writing in to "Starting over" not because their often-times disengenous pop-psych is awesome to me, but i do want to go to film school and i would not at all mind living in chicago for a few months. oh well, that might make me a sell out.

now, i'm back looking into jp. part of me even feels guilty writing right now, when i could be using the time to find other stuff. like a one bedroom which will likely be insanely exp. but the trip i would have taken to paris could go toward this.

just free forming here...

seems as though i'm back to the drawing board yet again. my paris plans are in the process of falling through. the airline rates are simply too damn high, so i'm gonna have to wait. heather will be disappointed, as will patty, but looks as though dinan isn't even going home for new year for the same reasons as i. oh well.

i quit my hotline job, even though my arm has felt better than it has in years. no i'm sensing that pain in the left that i wasnt feeling due to the worser pain in the right. still, 11-12 intakes per night at 2 hours each is way to much for anyone, Repetitive strain or not.

so i've been antsy. need to fill the space. need to take more action around california residency and stop whining about other people's shit..it will always be there shit..ALWAYS..

hopefully, i'll be in nyc for larry's birthday, and i can find another part-time job, volunteer or otherwise to keep me out of my at-times scary head that tends to work way overtime.

wow. halloween was awwwwsum. obie tryce kinda sucks. man rey http://www.manrayclub.com/ was awwsum. first, we went to phoenix landing which was slightly lame because only about 10 percent of the folks were in costume, which i found kinda odd. i really went to see lisa gene who was planning on being the Queen of Hearts, but she was donning a Medieval Vampy thing that was nontheless fierce. my lovely, butterfly-like roxbury-adoring 19 yr old friend greeted me with a "heeeeeeeeey grrrrrrrrrrrl"...her mom, who did her face makeup shortly afterwords emerged from the bar dressed as pocahantas.

prior to that, i had a ten inch needle in my neck as i crooked it as far to the left as i could on a futuristic looking table. the procedure is currently mimicking all of my worst symptoms. i'm to keep a chart of the changes and rate the pain. i hope it lessens. it was a scary procedure.

i had breakfast with my dad today. it was fucking intense..and scary and great and enlightening and i felt like a huge burden was lifted.. and i went on my way completely changed and grateful that after 28 years my parents are separated..and i can see direct parallels with the stuff my dad has struggled with my own..

it's weird and cool.

so i think i'm going to paris for new years if i can swing a cheap flight. heather, dinan and peruvian patty will all be there at once! it's just too perfect to pass up.

went to van's cd release party and saw eddy and co. --was cool, except my friend kinda jilted me and her male friend that i had just met, for another table of friends she knew. orginally, she said she was sick, which was sorta why i offered to drive even though i always do, but she seemed to liven up once we hit the smokey bar. i told her i was leavin' and her friends offered to bring her home. i'm trying to be compassionate about it, but i thought it was semi-lame and when i left, her male friend was over in the corner by himself.

so man ray is a great freak fest to just be yourself in. there's a different kinda of cordiality there. ppl don;t try and grab at you and everybody was in costume. they played this awesome version of the Nightmare before Christmas theme song that made me very happy. aside from a somewhat pretentious air, i felt really comfortable there and the people/costume watching could not be beat. they even awarded the person with the best costume a trip for two to london. and, looking back, the shear amount of people and costumes in there made me grateful that there was no smoking..not once, did i get burnt, which would have been inevitable otherwise.

vivica fox kinda gets on my nerves....and she should rescind her shout-outs to 50 cent..

i'm supposed to go see larry and heath tomorrow. johnny is leaving. i'm sad and i hope they work it out. i know they wiil, but i just wanna support 'em both through the transition. kinda sucks.

ah, work is so slow. i'm basking in it. i've take advantage of my free time by updating my client's sites, creating a dedication, figuring out how i'm going to pull off my halloween costume, contemplating how annoying my glimpse of the oprah show was today, reading the Artist's way, organizing my applications, paying my student loan, listening to the ambulance diesel engine outside the office window, drinking generic fizzy, flavored stuff...waiting..

yep. I'm a Type-A personality i think. also, i believe my tooth filling is falling out. i felt weird bits of a stony consistency in my mouth during kill bill-felt like i was munching on sand ..and now my grapeseeds are kinda getting caught in this newly available casm in my mouth and it's weird.

and i'm sad about the fires in san diego county. it feels like i just missed it by a few days. i feel horrible for all those displaced folks. i find it surreal how the media is of course focusing on celebrity reactions to the fires and all they can muster up is something like "yea, it's horrible."

i guess i need to rent charlie's angels 2. though i thought it was a deplorably boring and over-the-top movie, though i loved the dylan-as-bowie-like glam chick. her make-up was fierce, so i'd like to get some ideas in my head before i start globbing it on my face.

oh yea, back to the oprah thing. she had some dumb show today about the "angels" line at victoria secret. i've got no qualms at all with lingerie or anything like that, except it's like..here's this full-figured black woman appropriating the "skinny white ideal" and i find it rather lame, particularly since she's certainly not in any dire need for endorsements and she's presented a body-positive attitude in the past. maybe it's O's pressure, but fuck that..there's no excuse. it's like.here let endorse and laud under-fed models one day, than the next do an intimate segment on eating disorders in teenage girls..not cool.

in that same vein, i'm def. disappointed in Dr. Phil for originally appearing genuine about helping people, then jumping on the billion-dollar-diet-industry band wagon. EVIL.

i had this incredible dream about myself and it contained so much material about my life that i can't get into detail here, but one of the very last scenes was me looking at my Rosie-the-riveter type arm..defined and gleaming in the mirror! I've been reveiwing it all week..IT RAWKED. My therapist had a lot to say about it too..incl. that i am celebrating my strength, and not so much concerned with proving anything to anyone else. I do love her.

I got a wicked nice suggestion from this 1st year resident chica at my women's group the other day. She said "do the self-dates..they're yummy" referring to the Artist's way. She had just done a like 50 hour shift too, but then livened up to hi-fi me. It was awesome. Then Elaine, my buddy from way back hugged me and complimented my orangey-bangs. It felt good having gotten weird looks from mostly everyone I come in contact with around here. Then she emailed me to tell me how much i've grown and that she loves me..it was awesome.

Still no calls here...so excited.

So tomorrow, I'll be psyched to sleep some, go buy some costume stuff and hopefully see a movie or something..

I should preserve my arm here, in case i DO get a call.

oh well..

i've decided that maybe i should find me a respectable vampire or something..

cuz the stark class differences in cambridge really annoy me. Monday night i went to the Phoneix for reggae night. The rain made it slow at first, but the first DJ was fierce. Then two other guys came on deck, but I was mostly outside for that waiting on Mary. While I was waiting, I was talking to this 19 year old girl from Roxbury who couldn't get into the club (she stayed outside the whole night. She said, "I hate Cambridge." I was like "do you like Somerville?" to which she replied "No, I like Dorchester, Roxbury..Ashmont..those types of places." Mary heard that segment of the conversation. The girl and I were facing the street and Mary was facing us and the club. Just as said girl was proclaiming her distaste for Cambridge, one of those high-mounted tricyclists rode by. When we finally got back in the club, there were two of the whitest-looking Rude Boys I had ever seen on stage. I mean, it's one thing to appreciate a culture, but to feign a fake accent/patois to do so is rather...um...ODD? I mean, the two looked like they were from Brookline or something and even more annoying was that they kept interrupting these small, snippets of great reggae songs to give a loud "shout-out" and then abruptly change the song. They started to sound like a boot-leg MP3 that one mistakenly downloads instead of the original track and then realizes some amateaur dj has ruined it with esoteric shout-outs. Yea.

I think I'll check out Man Rey this weekend, maybe a party or two. I'm just kinda spent on the whole mentally-ill strangers interrupting my conversations thing (that happened at least 5 times at Someday cafe last night-no joke.) Actually , I think there's like 5 group homes in the area or something which might explain some of that, but I think it's more that Romney sucks and keep cutting Mental health services and now wants to cut Special Needs. So interesting that the platform he ran on was the reclaiming "the disruptive child" in the classroom. I want to do a documentary of all the jaded, overworked teachers in the State and see how they feel about that.

But i digress...and possibly proselytize...

thanks for makin me deeeeeeee snn---yyyyd---errrr"-- Christina Agueilera

saw this horrible McDonald's commercial tonight that features this poor black kid "rapping" about how he has no loot, complete with a dirty look from his presumed girlfriend, when magically he peals a gamepiece off a mcdonald's drinkcup and wins a shopping spree from Best Buy at which point a huge Big Screen TV appears and he's now cuddling with his aforementioned girlfriend who is no longer disappointed by his poverty. This culture so disturbing sometimes, I feel like punching a hot-air balloon then watching it delfate over a Wal-Mart sign.