My favorite sentence of the day, here: "I made kissy faces at him, and his little black eyes only looked vaguely murderous."

I�m feeling too scattered for paragraphs today and this entry is going to devolve into a list. Tick tock.

Last night I met one subset of Steve�s oldest friends, at an ad hoc event at a Wedgwood bar. We talked about Ali G., Susan Faludi, the scourge of Starbucks, internet porn, JetBlue, and Matthew Barney. (Among those present: a Brooklyn-dwelling artist on his way to catch a redeye and his sister, who currently works in porn marketing and was a bubbling font of interesting demographic statistics. She looked like a lower-maintenance Kyra Sedgwick and I admired her unapologetic work ethic.) Am I going to see all the Cremaster movies when they play at the Varsity in July? Yes I am. Do I anticipate that they will be pretentious wankfests? Yes I do. And I don�t feel like this has to pose a contradiction. The artist, who had seen a few of them and didn�t "have time for it" anymore � I thrilled to some impalpable yet tantalizing New Yorkness in his dismissive judgment � seemed scornful of the internality (insularity?) of Barney�s mythology, the ethos that if it was a product of his creative mind then it was necessarily awesome and necessarily Art, and of course he was also bewildered by the way popular and critical response seem to have confirmed that self-apotheosis. "The real subject is me but I felt bad about that," Nils wrote, and even if he�s being disingenuous because correct me if I�m wrong but how can you maintain a diary if foregrounding yourself in the narrative makes you uncomfortable, this makes for an effective contrast, I think, with what Barney�s doing, which is to exalt that foregrounding, to cram it down people�s throats while looking them unwaveringly in the eye as if to say, "What, me cram something down your throat?" In a way, he makes masochists of us. Masochists and voyeurs, because how can it not be titillating � I don�t say "exciting" because this is the kind of titillation that can also contain boredom � to be on the receiving end of so much self-absorption, like trying to drink water from a fire hose. And in that sense I don�t care if the movies are good or not. And, not that I am comparing myself to M.B. in any way, shape, or form, take a look at what I do here in my diary: does not the evidence suggest that at some level I believe I�m necessarily awesome and worthy of documentation, am I not engaging in a smaller-scale and anonymous version of self-apotheosizing? I don�t write comedy and I am not about community-building. I spew out an average of over a thousand words a day that are essentially all about me, and, OK, that is not normal. Most people don�t do that. Why do I? Why am I re-posting the entries I deleted last July? Most people would call my diary a pretentious wankfest, and maybe they would be right, and why do I not feel more shameful about that? I am kind of looking for answers to these questions, or at least I am interested in ways in which they might be got at, and art that proclaims I matter because I say I matter, I matter most of all because how can it be otherwise is, I am sorry, deeply appealing to me. I, I, I, I, I � it�s the Kushner, stupid. (Though the Kushner is as external as the Barney is internal.) I have often said that I wished I had a diary to read that would be to me, in all its pretentious wanking that if-I-may-say-so also deserves credit for trying to resist the snark and have integrity, what mine is to other people � hi, specter of Rich � and, again, this is not because I think mine is all that and a bag of chips but just because I want the objective experience of what I�m subjectively putting out there. What is it like, what is it like? Even stripped of a linear narrative and translated into visuals, what is it like?

Obligatory disclaimer: then again, what do I know. I could be totally full of shit, and I probably am. And also, self-apotheosis is one thing and self-marketing is very much another. I know.

1. Last night at the bar someone used the word "spate," and I said that I�d also used that word during the day, in fact I�d managed to use both "flummox" and "spate" in the same sentence. How? asked someone else. I recited: Dear Ida, I am flummoxed by the spate of e-mails you�ve sent today. The artist regarded me for a moment. "You writer types," he commented inscrutably.
2. Is it that obvious, even to a stranger who doesn�t know Thing One about me?
3. If yes, what if anything that I�m not doing already is implied by that?
4. Am I fishing? Honestly I�m not sure, but I will stop. I have stopped.
5. Howell Raines looks a lot like Brian Cox in "L.I.E." Steve, I realized two nights ago while reading the Betsy Blair, looks not quite a lot like Gene Kelly. Especially in profile. But with more hair. And not so much while he�s smiling.
6. Me, I look peachy today. I had to run an errand to another part of the hospital first thing this morning and in the course of doing so, I was flirted with twice, once by one of the administrative eminences. If I wanted to snag a rich doctor husband, this is how I�d dress every day: some men dig booty and some men dig gams, but they all like a waist. Ah-ooga! I want a red bikini and a black one-piece for when I go on vacation.
7. Also in the elevator I saw three-week-old twins. They looked like preemies who had just been allowed to leave the NICU. I caught myself observing them closely � they were really wondrous, in a way � but as for the hormonal stirrings that people keep telling me such sights ought to be provoking in me, the experience was a big zero.
8. Here, e.g., is a meme I myself have kyped, lest anyone think that Minister of Information + Diaryland Memewatch Inc. = I am a persnickety bitch. In the Ernie Pook�s Comeek entitled "David Branica," the text in the first panel reads something like There�s a new boy in school I am liking, David Branica, well you know he is wonderful. I often use that comma + "well you know" {whatever} � so often, I suspect, that regular readers will already have felt the ping of familiarity. I document, I do not indict. And "gather �round, children" from yesterday�s entry is Steve�s. Also I was thinking about this in the car this morning, and if I ever had to account in some generalized way How I Got How I Am, I could do worse than to boil it down to two formative influences, Lynda Barry comics and the collected works of Elvis Costello. And here is a good game in case you are in a solipsistic frame of mind next time you get stuck in traffic: make yourself come up with two formative influences the way I did. Then you can have another, and what is the third? (Latin.) And what is the fourth? Etc.
9. "Like trying to drink water from a firehose" is from an Ethan Canin short story, I forget the name.
10. During the part of the drive before I dropped Steve off at the Montlake cut, we were talking about the special section in this week�s Economist, which addresses the theory that the U.S. real estate market is a bubble that�s about to burst (and if yes, what is implied by that). It�s a shame I don�t know anyone with whom I could talk in person about that, whether or not it�s true � all my possibilities are so financially and hence emotionally invested in the issue that I don�t think they�d be unbiased. Are there any real estate economists in the reading audience? Having that conversation (a) in my black sedan (b) on my way to work (c) with a Mr. Man I would be dropping off all domestic-like (d) in my office-girl clothes and heels made me feel scarily like a grown-up. I seem to be handling it, though.
11. Steve is down with my FG vacation plan. I�d meant to talk to him last night but the subject came up in e-mail yesterday afternoon, it came up and then it went and I felt like a jerk for thinking that he might have to be placated, and all he said besides hell yes I should do it was that he enjoys the way I write when I get all indignant and righteous and fed up about something. Ha ha, dude has no idea.
12. I forgot to mention, on Tuesday night while I was cooking I watched "America�s Next Top Model." The counter that separates the kitchen from the dining area faces the corner where the TV is set up, and I have been known to watch crap realizing that if anyone calls me on it I can say that I only had TV on to provide background noise while I was chopping and slicing. I�ll miss this about Steve�s, where I will not only lose my crap vantage point but also gain a potential crap monitor. Therefore I should suck up all the crap I can over the next few months, no? The most salient feature of the model show, it seems to me, is the self-criticism and the implicit message that self-criticism is good. In the last segment of Tuesday�s two back-to-back shows the would-be models were put to some kind of test and then the panel of judges evaluates them and they have to evaluate themselves, and the eagerness with which they pile onto themselves, seeking approbation for their self-estimation of unworthiness, is both creepy and fascinating. I know I can do better and I�m sorry they say, terrified and also, yes, masochistically. The coolest contestant is the short-haired atheist who�s going to medical school in the fall. The program�s constant repetition of the word "top" � top makeup artist, top magazine, top photographer, top stylist � is hypnotic.
13. "Crap" is making me giggle today. Crap crap crap crap crap.
14. I do not like the word "task" and where I realized this once and for all was when I read Sulzberger Junior�s (crap crap crap) statement, "Now our task is to go back to doing what we're here to do � publishing this great newspaper. Our readers deserve no less." Do real people ever talk like that, do they use that word at all, outside of meetings that have program managers in them or in situations where they know they�re going to be quoted? Task task task task task, blecch. An exception is possible for especially jaunty use of "the task at hand," or if, in saying this, you dress it up with a hint of laconic drawl.
15. On second thought, if the persnickety-bitch shoe fits�
16. Per Nils�s comment, which is qualitatively worse and more Costneriffic, "imbue" or "lyrical"? They both smell like Rick Bragg. How would the responses of a random population sample differ from those of a group of so-called writer types?
17. Try typing "soi-disant writer types" and see if you can take yourself seriously for even one second.
18. Is my diary getting better or worse these last few weeks? Wait, don�t answer that.
19. More internal or more external?
20. If you�re coming to my house for Book Club tonight, this is what I�ll be feeding you. Suspend your judgment � it�s so good, I promise. The watermelon is icy cold and the tomatoes are at summertime room temp and I warm the sauce up just a little bit, mmm, and I can�t wait to try it with a gin and tonic, heavy on the lime please. This suggestion is unorthodox but if you happen to have some spanakopita around the house, you could also try the sauce with that. Too much feta, you protest? I say there is no such thing.
21. Everyone at Gastro keeps giving me the do-you-have-a-secret look today. They squint at me and make angry-cute faces and demand, "*What*? What is it?"
22. Dr. Blahblah has a little Phi Beta Kappa-off going with me. I think he is under the impression that the letters are bestowed far less frequently than they are and in any case is used to being the only one wherever he goes, and I got off on the wrong foot when in my first few days here he announced to me that he�d been Phi Beta Kappa in college and I said So what so was I. Now he comes in every so often and tries to catch me not knowing as much as he does about something, he�ll mention a political development or some bestseller � "Bobos in Paradise" was the latest � and when I know what he�s talking about he gets visibly crestfallen and sometimes leaves the room muttering while I�m still speaking in response to what was ostensibly a conversational opening. Don�t hate, Dr. Blahblah. Anyway, today�s smarts quiz concerned Rick Bragg and Jayson Blair, not that it helps his case that he gets their names mixed up, and this time he stayed to chat about stars vs. stringers and noted that everyone wants to be famous, lots of people he knows would choose being famous over being rich. Not me, I said, I kind of have this privacy thing going on, and I�m really more comfortable if people don�t know my name or what I�m up to, if I were ever to write a book or anything it would be my dream to do it anonymously and have it recognized as a thing and not the product of a thing. "Yes, I�ve noticed that," he said, "it�s one of the most interesting and individual things about you."
23. How would he have noticed? What is there to notice? Is he making things up?
24. Am I?
25. I made peace with Melissa by making her my office confidante on the shacking-up tip so that it�s her I have chosen as my secret-haver-with and now we have a secret together. I go over by the copy machine and in a tone of voice that contains both happiness and concern for my welfare, she asks me all kinds of hushed questions. I don�t like when I have to machinate like that because the cynicism that wells up in me from seeing how well it works � and it always does � is not, I know, good for me.
26. I�m doing all I can about this license thing. All things considered, I am being downright heroic.