Instead I had coffee late in the day and talked for ages with an old friend about things pretentious and vapid alike and now I feel very intellectually sated but also hungry in my tummy. How I crave a late night cookie.

I’m employed now! Hooray! Fireworks and confetti and champagne and cupcakes! It’s interesting how many things change with the promise of steady income. I have pregnant-woman-glow. I can’t stop smiling. Or using my brain. My poor forgotten neuron-nest, all porridgey and lonely for so long. No lie, I reached a pretty dark place for a while there. My brain had become such an evil vat of malicious goop puddling around in my head, making me feel bad about myself all the time. So I stopped speaking to it for a while. I just gave up. Better dumb than sad, right? Wrong. Anyway, I’ve realized the bugger can also be a great friend (Not at moments like this, when it’s keeping me awake before a rather obnoxiously ring-toned 6am alarm). But for better or worse, it’s a blob in my body and I may as well acknowledge it. No matter how malevolent, if there’s one thing that’ll be there with me from beginning to end, it’s my brain. Unless I lobotomize myself, which, believe you me, is a course of action I have considered in the past.

Anyway, I guess the pointed cold shoulder that I’ve turned towards my brain has kept me from writing and creating and curiosity and making things for some time, and that’s been mellowing me out and sapping the Interesting from my daily life. So I’m going to seize it all back in one big hefty swoop! HUZZAH FOR HEFT! I should start doing some push-ups or weight-lifting so I can handle the seizing of the heft. Which sounds sexual. I can only half-assure you that it is not.

This is what both dating and job interviews feel like. Fingers crossed, fingers crossed, fingers crossed. 2012, be good to me.

Dear world: I have abs. They peeked out into the world a couple days ago. It was glorious. I chose to celebrate by covering them back up with this:

Chocolate brioche bread pudding @ Taste on Melrose = goodbye six pack abs resolution, hello happymouth.

I do recommend to one and all this amazing feat of culinary art. I do not recommend to one and all stopping there on your way to the beach, as I did. They sat our beachy-clad bodies in a corner out of the way so their otherwise very put-together, very well-dressed, rolling-in-the-dough clients wouldn’t see us. Which was fine by me, as long as I could stuff my happy little worked-out body with the nommy-ness. Though next time I will look up the restaurant website before walking blindly into somewhere yelp tells me has something I really want, because like Taste, it might turn out to be fancee instead of a small bakery/cafe. Either way, these 6-day-a-week pilates, yoga, and uphill runs are paying off. Hoozah.

Without further ado.

If I could make a playlist for 2011, it would have one song on it and that song would be Ke$ha’s Bob Dylan cover.

If I could make a movie out of 2011, it would actually be two movies and those would be Bridesmaids and Young Adult.

If I could make a photograph out of 2011 it would be this:

If I could  choose one outfit to represent 2011, it would be flatforms with a looong see-through skirt and baggy top and it would all be so much freakin’ beige.

If I could turn 2011 into a food it would be deep fried kool-aid which I hope to the god of taking-physiologically-normal-bathroom-breaks that I never attempt to try, ever.

If I could have danced all of 2011, I would not dougie! Nay, I would dance as I always do, which is perhaps best represented by this Yelle music video:

If I could turn 2011 into a person, it would be hybrid Amy Poehler/Ryan Gosling. Her head on his body? His head on hers? Either way we would brunch together then look at small kittens while goose stepping happily arm-in-arm.

If 2011 could be a sport, it would be foosball and it would be an episode of Community.

If 2011 could have been a little kinder, I would have appreciated it. But I guess if 2011 were only all the good things that happened without the bad, I would cease functioning and turn into a cupcake with a million golden sprinkles and thousands of cavities worth of powdered sugar. Which means what happy things did happen were exhilarating, so I shouldn’t sweat the bitter things. And the bitter things are actually kinda good since I don’t want to be a cupcake (or do I?)

So it all works out. Lastly, to rap-up this wrap-up, if 2011 was a rap it would be “Fire Fly” by Childish Gambino.

Happy New Year everyone.

May Samuel L. Jackson bless us all.

Anyway, I’ve discovered that my favorite form of punctuation is the exclamation mark because it makes everything sound happy and gung-ho!

War! Incest! Poverty!

See?! (Although when paired with the question mark, it can look a bit accusatory!)

But things are always looking up! Because when things are looking down, you can always go see the Muppets movie again, and everything will be better because that movie is so unbelievably good!

Thank you, Jason Segel, for giving me the means to reverse any and every bout of depression I may heretofore happen upon! You are my favorite!

With all of this stuff going on, my brain has been hearing the word “people” and taking a massive panic shit when it realizes I have to attempt to be the semblance of social instead of collapsing into an inert lump on the floor, which is really all I want to do. Don’t get me wrong–I love people and talking to them and learning new things from new people, but on off-hours, after work, when you’re tired and beaten down, the last thing you want to do is crack a smile and make more conversation. But I have been going out and doing some things by me onesy. I hit up the Silent Movie Theatre in West Hollywood for the premiere of “It’s Such a Beautiful Day,” the third installment in Don Hertzfeldt’s “Bill” series. If you don’t know much about Mr. Hertzfeldt’s work, I suggest you check out some of his shorts, such as the Academy nominated “Rejected“. Anyway, turns out the man has the face of Johnny Depp, the adorable wit of Adam Scott, and the handshake of Brad Pitt. Surprising, for someone whose audience is mostly penises clad in World of Warcraft memorabilia and who makes weird/violent (albeit hilarious) things like this:

I have a habit of taking myself out on dates when I get too tired to socialize, so I’ve spent a decent amount of time alone at movies and concerts and restaurants and places that normal people go to with other people, because normal people are normal. As with every one of these instances, the Don Hertzfeldt show was no different– all the loners somehow ended up in the same row.We don’t talk to each other or anything, heaven forbid (or we’d cease to be lonely!). But there’s an unwritten rule that if you’re alone, you look for the other lonely hearts and settle in the same row. There’s a silent solidarity between those of us who go-it-alone… And while we scroll awkwardly through our cell phones, pretending to be busy, wanting to convince ourselves that we have lives outside of this unending moment before the movie/concert/play/etc. starts and we can relax and watch and laugh and dance and enjoy… there’s a small spark of comfort in the idea that you’re not the only person there by yourself.

I also managed to catch a screening of the Pixar short “La Luna” in 35mm, which was amazing (and also on the Oscar shortlist). I was headachey and hopped up on meds because my immune system has tendered yet another resignation, but despite the hazy cloud of ibuprofen, I thought it was a gorgeous little piece. And somehow it was (oddly, unintentionally) metaphoric for my current disposition towards Los Angeles and life and heartbreak and general things that have been going on with me of late. I won’t spoil it for you though, I’m sure you’ll see it at the Oscars. Here’s an an article on it, as a parting gift for now.

I’m trying really hard to love Los Angeles. Los Angeles is like that finicky ex-lover who abuses the shit out of your emotions until you shake your fist at the ceiling (who is always the best listener) and scream, “Enough!” And you pack your bags, resolve as steeled as Hugh Jackman’s triceps, and step purposefully out the door, never to return… Only to mistakenly take one last glance over your shoulder. And there she is, standing naked in in all her glory, seducing you back with big bouncy tits of deliciousness, and you lose sight of your better judgment and dive back in for more. Of course she’s only going to cheat on you or throw you deep into the unforgiving clutches of traffic, but goddamnit if she isn’t good in bed. I’m still talking about the city, I swear. And “good in bed” mostly refers to the food. Thus the pudge.

Anyway, I guess Halloween is coming up. Past costumes have included R2D2 and Hobbes of “Calvin and Hobbes”… but I also did those costumes in pairs, with Princess Leia and Calvin respectively complementing me. I’ve purchased all the necessary effects to be Vera Cruz from The Skin I Live In, but now I’m wondering if I’m going to want to deal with explaining to everyone who the fuck I am. That being said, I also have NO idea where I’m going or what I’m doing for Halloween, and it’s likely I’ll spend my favorite holiday home alone watching a horror movie, drinking a six pack, and eating a dozen Sprinkles cupcakes all by myself. Which is pretty much what I do every day, except without the horror movie.

Speaking of horror movies, I had the fucked-up-est dream yesterday night. It featured Jon Hamm, so at first I thought it was going to be erotic as all hell. Sadly, I was blue-vag’d. Instead of lustful sexytimes, he gouged my eyes out and made me wander sightless around a creepy attic where in two hours time scary shadow men would come to kill me. I wonder what it means. Probably that I’m eating some naughty foods before bed.

Herp derp. Just so I don’t leave you on that note of horror, here’s a really cool costume I wish I’d thought of.

over & out

I think I’m finally acclimating to being tired all.the.time. O, the joys of pencil-pushing, folks! Getting through the day is 95% wiring my body into a half-hourly espresso drip and 5% stuffing my face with sugar. On the upside, if you ever need anything mailed, I now know every infinitesimal detail about postage.

This part of climbing the ladder wouldn’t be so bad if I could rest my pretty head assured this will all end in an expensive loft apartment equipped with dust-gathering home gym and Igor, a tall, blonde, heavily muscled masseuse who I could also maybe use for making sexytimes. Instead I wonder if I’m skipping my merry way down the road to cardboardbox-ville where my only friends will be one-eyed crackpots spewing the violent word of God at any passerby who won’t give ‘em a dime for alcohol. .

Whining aside, here are some personal highlights from the past month:

• I cut my hair, and am now Johnny Depp’s beardless doppelganger
  
• Steve Jobs died which is sad but I didn’t devote my facebook status to it. I would have worn a black turtleneck in mourning if I condoned black turtlenecks.
• American Horror Story premiere. Teased so hard, blue-ballsed like whoa.
• Caught a Swell Season screening at the Downtown Independent in Hollywood. I like that sentence because it makes me sound like I actually live in LA. I’m trying to insert it into every conversation I have, ever.
• …Might be getting better at driving? ……….Might?
• All the press surrounding the GOP candidates makes me even more tired than I already am. I am going to drink my way through tonight’s debate.
• Pumpkin flavored things.

The Roommate is from Arlington, VA, so 9/11 for her is a vastly different and far crazier memory than it is for me. The Pentagon was hit in her very city. Insane. A west-coaster myself, I woke up groggily around 7:30-ish am PST to my mother telling me about the attacks and my dad chiding her, “don’t tell her that first thing in the morning.” We spent the whole day at school watching the news. It was surreal, since that very July the family had spent a week in New York, and as part of our touristy-whatever, had ventured to the top of one of the WTC towers.

The next couple of weeks were intense. I think pretty much everyone in my age bracket can agree that the connotations of certain national symbols were significantly altered for us by the American response in the following days. I have come to associate the American Flag, pervasive as it was in the aftermath of the attacks, with the events of 9/11 even when it is used in completely unrelated contexts. This came up in an art class I took last winter (and dropped because the professor sucked some seriously hairy man-tits). We were discussing something bullshitty or other and someone mentioned that a picture of the American Flag reminded them of war and 9/11. The prof dismissed the comment as irrelevant to the flag, but the rest of the class agreed that to us–so young at the time of the attacks–the image of the flag immediately recalled its likeness on car antennas and house windows while radios blasted Lee Greenwood.

But things eventually settled down and life went back to normal. I returned to obsessing about who asked who to the dance, and I got my first boyfriend and fell in cute geek puppy-love. We broke up, and I went through a goth phase to assert my individuality. I scared my mom with all the black I wore and screamo I listened to. I started caring more about school and studying my ass off like a grade-A nerd (which I was). I religiously watched the first 3 seasons of Grey’s Anatomy and marathoned all 7 seasons of Buffy in a three-day weekend with my sister. I smoked weed for the first time. I went to concerts. I fell in love, then out of it. The years kept passing and then it was prom dates and “what college are you going to?” I graduated high school and became obsessed with clothes and fancy beer and casual sex. 9/11 and the war were there, but they really didn’t change my life consciously on a day-to-day basis.

However, the events did change me intellectually. After 9/11 was when I first became a news junkie. I subscribed online to The New York Times and started reading every issue of TIME cover to cover. My initial response to the attacks, of course, was black-and-white, good-and-evil, innocent-and-guilty, just the way a child indoctrinated by the American public school system would react. I started reading the news because I wanted to know what was going to happen afterwards… our response, justice, etc. But what happened instead, was that I started learning about the utter web of insanity that is foreign policy and how no one is right or wrong or good or evil and so on and so forth. I became disillusioned in my image of a perfect government and American superiority. Through the years my news-gathering expanded to include progressive sources such as TPM, Alternative Radio, and Noam Chomsky’s various two cents.

I think being ethnic had a lot to do with the way the attacks did/didn’t affect me and my politics. My parents are immigrants, so while happy with America as their new home, they didn’t raise me to fist pump the air and yell “FUCK YES, ‘MERICA!” Also, growing up in the Bay Area, my experience has been rife with exposure to liberal outlooks and a plethora of minorities. Growing up in Fremont specifically, home to the largest Afghan-American population in the US, was crucial in shaping my view of the attacks and the subsequent war. It was difficult to see friends caught struggles between family in their mother-country and expectations from their new home. If America ever went to war with India, I wonder what I would think or do. (Probably flee to Canada, start screaming “ABOOOOT!” and have the maple leaf tattooed on both breasts). Every time we visited India, both pre and post attacks, my sister and I would have to defend ourselves as the Americans. Not necessarily politically, but culturally. Snide remarks from extended family of “I don’t know what kind of things you eat in America” or “I don’t know what they teach you in America” or “I don’t know what kinds of things American girls do” and bold admissions from our grandfather that all terrible Bollywood dancing is “damned American influence” would piss us off. Any time we spoke Kannada, our mother tongue, our cousins would laugh at our American accents. At the same time I found myself defending misconceptions of Indian culture and customs to Americans (who laugh at Indian accents). It’s very strange and stressful to be caught in that dichotomy, and I can’t imagine dealing with that in the context of war.

As a teenager I was militantly opinionated about a number of things, and the war was certainly one of them. I was on both sides of it at various times, and 100% sure that I was correct at the time no matter what I was thinking. Since then, I’ve come to be a chronic waffler. I think college, and the exposure it gave me to an even greater body of information and diversity (ne’er knew so many white people in my life), taught me that. Where I used to be a “Hell yes!” or “Hell no!” I’ve become a lot more of a “Hell maybe!” For everything I think I know, I now realize there’s a number of things I don’t know. (I once took an Epistemology class and have been forever ruined.) I think that’s my conclusion then, if there happens to be a conclusion lurking around somewhere beneath all of this. I confess I don’t think about 9/11 on a daily basis, nor do I have any strong opinions about what is right and what is wrong in relation to it. But I feel fairly confident that the desire for awareness and understanding that I and many of my peers have been cultivating since, comes as a direct result of the 9/11 attacks. I like to hope I would have started reading the news and trying to acquaint myself with what was going on regardless of whether or not 9/11 had happened, but I’m pretty sure my interest would have been passing, or affected for the sake of beating off intellectually. Have I come to believe from my search for awareness and understanding that all people are universally terrible and suck balls? Possibly. But I’m also willing to believe that people do what they do because they have their own brand of strange and stressful dichotomy.

I don’t know. Once thing is for certain though: now that I’ve mentioned waffling, I have an insurmountable craving for sugary breakfast food.

some cliffs notes from my father’s notorious backseat driving:

• “you can’t u-turn from the right lane” (after I mention that I missed my turn and am going to u-turn up ahead)
• “signal when you’re going to change lanes” (at random? I wasn’t even changing lanes)
• “tap the wheel, don’t grip it” (?!?!)
• “you should go as soon as you’re clear” (right turn on red. after I turned as soon as I was clear.)
• “you should never be in a truck’s blind spot” (after I change lanes and PASS a truck)
• “you need to be more careful.” (after an asshole does an illegal lane change in the middle of an intersection in front of me.)
• “you need to let the other car go.” (after another driver stops and waves me to go forward)

I’d like to postscript these with the fact that he doesn’t just throw these tidbits out every-so-often when he feels unsafe; many of these glistening jewels of wisdom are repeated multiple times, and all of them are bequeathed in a constant, unending stream from the moment we settle our cushy bottoms in the car to the moment we exit it. I would also like to point out that he has accrued in his lifetime about a zilliondy speeding tickets, multiple traffic school visits / online traffic school enrollments (a couple of which he had my sister do for him, because he didn’t feel like). Also I have seen him nearly run over pedestrians and any trip in a car with him comes with the euphonic soundtrack of other car horns blaring angrily at us for nearly smashing into their vehicles. My final admission is that when he drives is the only time I ever get carsick, and he abuses the flying babies out of his brakes. Just saying.

So anyway, tomorrow is going to be real cotton candy. Can’t wait.