What the doctor should have meant: dishery.diaryland.com

Last night after I put my clothes into the washers I wanted a grapefruit soda, so I walked up to Rainbow. They didn�t have any so I picked out what seemed to be the next best thing, a lemon-lime item, and as I continued on my errands I cracked it open and took a sip. It was awful, it was disgusting, it was to the grapefruit soda I�d been dreaming of the equivalent of a dusty mouthful of carob when you are expecting a delicious chocolate brownie. It tasted like horehound candy with � if you concentrated very hard you could taste this � a squeeze of Realemon in it. I was walking down the hill towards Broadway, sipping and gagging and wondering how the grapefruit kind could be so good when the lemon-lime was so horrible, and suddenly it occurred to me that I did not have to be drinking it. Sure, I went a few blocks out of my way and paid a dollar for the can and it always sucks to have to waste time and money like that, but the buck could stop here, couldn�t it, I could just pour out the rest of the nasty soda and chalk it up to experience. So that is what I did. I carried the can around until I saw a recycling bin, in a transparent ploy to evade some small portion of my consumer guilt, and I tossed away the remainder of experience�s bitter fruit. Sunday night I rented "Things Behind the Sun," which I hadn�t heard anything about but I like Allison Anders and the blurbs on the box suggested that it was a relatively thinky non-dud, and shortly after tape was loaded in VCR it became clear that my optimistic estimation had been off the mark. The script was clunky and the photography murky and the acting mostly stinky, and the second I saw that the part of the rapist would indeed be played by Eric Stoltz, I turned off the TV and without regret hit Rewind. Life�s short, you know? I think I�m just beginning to realize this. In college and for a few years after I used to consider it a point of pride that I�d never walked out of a movie; I wanted to protect my authority to talk about it later, if I wanted to (which of course was ironic because if a movie�s so bad I might have walked out of it, I am sufficiently embarrassed to have been suckered into paying for it that I would rather not even admit that I�ve seen the thing), and because of my classicist school spirit and my streak of perfunctory populism that often is � this I�ll admit � the critical and intellectual equivalent of liberal guilt, I thought that I was required to take a thing for what it fully was, even if what it was was fraudulent. (OK, also because of the masochism.) I assured myself that no matter how cruddy something was in sum, there was a nugget of gold in it somewhere � why, there must be. But no more. I poured out the soda, I didn�t finish "Carter Beats the Devil," and like a gazelle you know is how I flee from the byline that promises Gopnik. I�m not sure, though, to what function the change in me is owing. It could be age and the realization that I�ve only got so many aggregate years to piss away on things which afford me no pleasure at all, or it could be that for the years during which I held myself to grindstones the idea of spending three dollars renting a movie I wouldn�t finish watching was unconscionable. Hell, it could be that I�ve officially given up on the resilient aesthetic optimism that let me believe that shit was not 100% shit, and on, perhaps, the lack of faith in my own critical judgment that required me to try to find the diamond. But I don�t think that�s it, because how I feel about not drinking nasty soda, the fact that I don�t feel like I have to, is good, is righteous � I don�t feel any sense of resignation about it, I feel exhilarated by the streamlining it implies, the jettisoning of excess weight.

And I realize that I *don�t* like Allison Anders. I liked "Gas Food Lodging" but maybe after all only for the reason my then boyfriend thought I did: we went to see it and as we were leaving the theater I said something like Holy cats that was good, and he gave me a sharp rebuking you-disappoint-me-I-thought-you-knew-better look (this was the grad student) and said, "Well, of course you�d think so. It was about you." Sorry, Allison, but like I say life is short, and we know you have scads of other fans so no hard feelings and good luck to you, and anyway this is not a write-off, you could still win me back. (Hint: complexity.) Good things about "TBTS" were the fearless and couldn�t-be-less-than-complex-if-he-tried Don Cheadle � and I was going to write about him yesterday but then one of the sites I read had a Cheadle plug too (in here), and irrationally I felt like a kneebiter and wrote about whatever I wrote about instead � all-growed-up-now Allison Folland, who by the way looks like a younger Anders, don�t you think? (But why did Lulu get dressed in yesterday�s office outfit to make coffee when she knew she�d have to change before work anyway? Doesn�t girlfriend own a bathrobe, or a t-shirt even? Hint: continuity.) There were good things but they were not enough. I have standards and, goshdarnit, I deserve to have standards.

Fund drive time again at KEXP. I wish they could do this without slagging on djs who work for other local stations � it�s one thing to spew the smug derision at corporate entities up and down the dial, in fact I invite you to do so, but calling out those stations� on-air staff for not believing in what they do � because, quelle scandale, some of them have been known to listen to KEXP! � is quite beyond the pale. What�s wrong with earning a living, Crystal Waters and John ITM? What�s wrong with liking both KISW and KEXP? (Note: KISW is just an example, and I picked it because I am defensive about how I often like to rock out in the Honda on Friday afternoons, and also because I resent the KEXP staff for knowing how to make me feel that way and myself for not being intellectually evolved enough to rise above it.) And even if you�re righter than you are wrong, what do you propose these djs do in order to shore up their compromised integrity and be more like you, quit their jobs and go to work for the stadium-extorting, ballot-manipulating, creepy mother-living-with arbiter of integrity who signs your own checks, without whose eternal sugardaddying your station could not exist? Oh, but you�re not exactly hiring, are you. And a refugee from a commercial hard rock station � regardless of the cut of his personal record collection�s jib � wouldn�t exactly jump to the head of the line if you were, would he. It makes me mad; this is the populism erupting for real. And the way the KEXP djs, at least the ones who were shilling during my drive into work this morning, presume to speak for all the djs in town even as they look down on them, as if KISW is an oppressive imperial regime, like it�s North Korea or an abusive husband or something, and KEXP is Amnesty International and the United Nations and Gandalf all rolled into one. Please. When I worked at my college station and I�d flip out about a few seconds of dead air or a sloppy edit in an interview I�d cut, the station manager used to say, "It�s only radio. Nobody dies, nobody gets better." Somebody should have cc�d KEXP on that memo. And also, I mentioned this during the last fund drive, they�re still touting the premiums � t-shirts, hats, etc. � as components of a hipster uniform, so that if you are walking down the street and you see someone wearing the gear, you are supposed to be realize that here is a kindred spirit forged in the crucible of KEXP-sanctioned coolness, so it�s someone you can stop and talk to already knowing how much you have in common. Notice how the hidden assumption is that naturally the KEXP listener would snub someone whose clothes he or she didn�t like? Notice how that�s presented as the moral high ground? It makes me mad.

For the record, about 90% of the time I am listening to the radio, it�s KEXP. They play good music. But I will not give them money until they stop being such assholes in asking for it. (For the record, I am making a charitable contribution this month to a non-profit women�s martial arts school that does community outreach in high schools.)

Thinking more about why I write and what would make me stop. Misleading as entries like this one may be, I do not write to bitch or because my life is unsatisfying hence I�ve found a way to make myself a vicarious master of some pathetic online universe. Right now I�m as happy as I�ve ever been, surer that I�m on the right track and that I have in my life the things I need, I mean as much as I think I can feel that way in Seattle. Writing is not a substitute for something, it is the thing itself. Ooh, back to the Salter: I did not recall these things, they were merely part of me. I did not drift back to them, they were the vessel itself. I write because I want to understand things, in which general category of thingness I place myself. I want to know why I feel this way and why I think this way. I like knowing what I�m capable of and having a record of how I found my way there. And critical analysis requires no defense. I don�t think I�ll stop writing soon. I�ll keep asking myself if I should and if I will � because that is also why I write, to keep asking myself � but I would be willing to bet on my answers.

Vanessa, you�ll like this. At a stop light on the way to Portland Saturday I was flipping pages in the new Entertainment Weekly, half-paying attention in anticipation of the light changing, and I thought I saw a picture of Kelly. I thought: wait, what is he doing in there, is the new game that successful already, is he its public face? Then I looked again: it wasn�t Kelly, it was Weird Al Yankovic.

I�m supposed to mow the lawn tonight but it keeps teasing me, looking like rain.

I think I might have to cut back on my extracurricular reading for a while so that it�s easier to carve out full juicy blocks of evening in which to research and apply for jobs and just be more worker-beeish and less desultory about all that. This is regrettable but makes so much sense that I think I�ll be able to dispense with the flesh-rending. Melissa gave me a ride to the downtown Kinko�s this morning so that I could put something on my credit card that I�m being asked to do and no one will listen to me that the hospital doesn�t have such a machine as to enable it � never mind that it�s far, far out of the scope of my job description � and my ass is apparently on the line until around next Thursday. I�ll get reimbursed but it�s the credibility, the respect, the fact that Nurse Jenny came to my door yesterday to tell me to call Buildings and Engineering about something and that in the time she took to explain the problem and its history to me she could have called them herself three times. In the car Melissa asked me No offense but what is someone like me doing working here and getting treated like this, it is a mystery to everyone. (That was nice of her, though I do have to dock her points for making fun of my majors in college.) You don�t have kids, she said, you don�t have a mortgage, you�re young and you could get a job anywhere � what�s wrong with you that you�re here? Good question. I sent mail to Steve today asking if we can please start shaking a tail feather w/r/t vacation plans � I want a countdown.