A Hooker’s work is never done

While today wasn’t the most decadent day I’ve ever lived, it was certainly an enjoyable Tuesday. Even the long hours of crew didn’t bug me…the paint charge for this show, Anne, is a first year scene painting grad…she and I are gonna be in it to win it together…she’s the one I’ll be graduating with. Fortuitous that she’s also 27. Anne feels like a gift from the heavens to me…Don’t get me wrong, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; I love my 21 year old friends, but there’s a difference. Anne is extremely talented and covertly funny, which I appreciate…and she seems to be a good charge, too.

Today, I spent four hours dipping a turkey-feather duster into silver paint and making fun textures on large strips of plastic screening. I think that I have a repetitive motion injury…either that, or it was the best crash course on how to give good hand jobs to men that I’ve ever had. All day long, up and down, with a twisting motion in between. Painting on the end of bamboo sticks can look pretty lewd, I learned today.

I had a funny conversation with Howard and three of the other Paint Ladies today…we all got laughing about the outcome of A Rumble (inspired by West Side Story, which is the All School Musical next year with the original director and a huge budget and I’m so excited I’ll explode now) between the only two All-Female Departments in the school; those being, Paint, and Wig and Makeup. We decided that there would be a lot of hair pulling and biting, but that us painters would take them, 15 to 7 odds and all. I mean, something MUST be said for vigorous physical activity, including but not limited to: hauling 45 lb. buckets of joint compound or paint, and using our arms constantly for hauling full sprayers about or flogging a 7000 sq. ft. floor. Painters always have rock-hard arms; this definetly sweetend the deal when switching majors.

All that aside, it’s a funny picture in my head…the seven of us Painters, lined up, spattered with paint (war paint would be a cinch!), and brandishing our sharpened bamboo, looking like hardened savages with brightly colored bandanas, Vs. the Wig and Makeup Girls, complete with fancy satin jackets and coiffed hair-dos that wouldn’t move a bit as the pummeling was adminstered. Granted, they’d have scissors and hot irons to stick us with, but we’ve got the advantage of distance…Five foot poles against six inch scissors…easy win, I’d say. Howard seemed pleased by the fact that His Sorority is a bit…tougher…than Martha’s gaggle of women; I like to imagine that there’s a bit of a rivalry between the two of them, vying for the position as Leader of the Pack. I love all the Wig and Makeup ladies (well..most of them) but I sure would enjoy seeing everyone go all Pell Mell and get wild… I can see so clearly Karla grabbing the rope swing and swinging down from the upper deck, whooping a war cry and going all Mountain Girl on somebody’s ass. I mean, I have to amuse myself at crew somehow, right?

I sat down and made my To Do list for the next two weeks…it took my breath away, seeing it all written down in one place. Let the games begin! I anticipate that I will be a nut case until approximately March 10th, when the worst should be over. That, of course, hinges on managing my time well, and staying the hell away from SSX Tricky. No more playing video games til Finals are through! That is my resolution for the day.

Pat bought me a shot at the bar, and it seems to have made me loquacious. But I couldn’t NOT go to the bar on Fat Tuesday. I may have missed Mardi Gras in the hey-day of New Orleans, but I can always make time to celebrate excess.

Isn’t it so weird to think of New Orleans in the past tense?

Today, as Steve and I were driving to Cookout for a burger and a corndog, we passed a van that had letterered on it’s side, “Malachi Boys Home”. In a smaller, subtler script below, the van read, “Reaching the world through Christ, one Boy at a time”. I find this highly unsettling; a cultish boys home Spreading The Gospel with lost children. A good way to build an army is one way of looking at it, perhaps.

Or maybe the militant fundamentalists have an army already: Another drive with Steve, this time to Greensboro…we passed a flatbed BigRig carting two camoflouged Hummers, ready for service in the sand. As we pulled past, I noted the name of the PRIVATE trucking company hauling the army’s business down I-40; the flashy lettering read: LonesTar, only the big ‘T ‘was actually a large glowing cross that dwarfed the rest of the lettering.

I mean, is it just me or are the Christians trying to take the world over? Did they ever lose their grip in the first place?

Ex post facto: I have no beef with Christians as individuals; I love dearly plenty of people secure in their Christian faith, that are level-headed, open-minded, generous, and kind souls. It’s the Christian Machine I take issue with… This Jesus Vs. Allah Beef has been a very ugly catalyst of late, and I don’t anticipate it’ll get any friendlier as time passes. That scares me.

That’s all.

Oh, if anyone knows the HTML code for italics, I’d be your best friend if you’d share that info with me…If I can’t italicize, I’ll have to step my OverCapitalization up another notch.

I heard a story tonight about a lifelong search for the perfect beef with brocolli, eaten once, decades ago in Tokyo. I ruminated on making a Chasing Amy joke, but just didn’t think it would fly. I like the idea, though; a food eaten at a memorable moment in life can be immortalized in a person’s mind, and something so seemly mundane can turn into a lifelong quest for recreation. I mean, for some people. Others would simply enjoy the memory of eating something so good with a particular person or in a special locale. Whatever. I’m rambling.

I am also updating my blog from the comfort of My Bed. I am in awe of this thing called Laptop; it’s a completely new experience for me and I love it. No wires to plug into a modem–the computer magically senses the presence of the internet in the air and then connects to it. It really does look like magic, from my relatively low-tech point of view. Prior point of view, as it were. Playing on the computer in my bed is vaguely sci-fi fantasy weird to me, but I know that those feelings will disappear and quickly enough I will forget how I ever lived without a computer that could go anywhere and always be connected. Not to mention the fucking amazing desing capabilities…I’m about to wet my pants to get Vectorworks and Photoshop and Illustrator and begin the learning process. The only downside I’ve discovered as of yet is that my bold/italic/underline buttons have disappeared from this page I write on now, and I know it’s because there is a funciton button or something of the sort that I could use, but I haven’t discovered it’s location yet. I’m not so much of a nerd that I’d spend my Saturday night reading the instruction manual for my new computer…that’s for tomorrow.

I went to see The Dead for the second time tonight. I’m proud that it looks so good, but I have to say–I’ve seen it twice and I fell asleep both times. Mind you, I may have developed Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, but I think more likely is that it’s not the most rousing play I’ve ever seen. There are some extremely talented actors in it, so I’m thinking that the blame might really rest with James Joyce. Or with the man who decided to adapt The Dead into a stage musical…yeah, he’s the guy responsible.

I had a dream last night that my friends got cloned. Kaylan and Steve Parts One Thru Ten were swarming around me while I was trying to navigate the streets of Asheville, all of ‘em gibbering and babbling. I started kinda freaking out in my dream, thinking Am I Going Crazy? Is this some kind of Mental Collapse? and then I ran into TG, and there was this moment where I’m freaking out and she’s consoling me and hugging me all safe and sound with my face pressed against her collarbone and her mass of dark curls shielding me, and when I look up, I see that there are four more TG’s swirling around…one was pouring coffee, one was sitting down at a table, laughing, and the other two are standing right behind the clone I’m hugging. So then I really lost it…and ran away from them all, crying and totally flipping out. They chased me until I got sneaky and zipped down Chicken Alley.

Any armchair psychologists want to take a crack at that one?

Kaylan’s parents, Steve’s parents, and my mom were all in attendance at tonight’s show. My head felt like it was going to pop a couple of times…like I was still in high school and a Parent’s Get-Together meant they’d start sharing stories and figuring out how Us Kids were being devious misfits while they weren’t looking. I remember feeling much the same way when my mom and Dallas and Adrienne’s moms would get together…it spelled trouble for us, inevitably. Stories wouldn’t quite add up or someone (whoever the Cool Mom was, at the time) would know more than the others, and feel compelled to share…and we’d wind up Talking Our Way Out, again. While tonight had none of that pressure, b/c A) the other parents don’t know much about me to get me in trouble, and B) I don’t have secrets anymore. My mom knows I smoke, drink, do the occasional recreational drug, have sex regularly (at least, fairly regularly…), and that I’m generally kind of a strange bird. It was a nice realization, that I’ve got nothing left to hide. Compared to Kaylan’s parents who believe their baby is a sweet, sober virgin, I can at least say that my parent’s appear to be more grounded in the realities of modern life than some.

I am going to go play with Garageband now, or maybe upload some pictures. Because this computer actually works.

I got my Mac! I got my Mac! Hallelujah, praise jeebus, I have a new Portable Magic Girlfriend…she will assuredly be my new addiction. I am so happy that I have finally joined the ranks of those with the shiny glowing apples on the back of the shiny shiny silver laptop. I have ultimate faith that never again will I lose years of data to a shitty, tempermental hard drive. Glory be! Happy day! I am so so SO happy!

I can’t believe another week has come to a close.  That means that there are only (ulp…) two more full weeks in this term…which means, Holy Shit! all of a sudden I have a whole lot of work to do!  I mean, I guess that’s okay…cuz then I get something like a 20 day spring break, with the USITT conference included in the mix.  Here is the cruel joke that finacial aid likes to play:  spring break is at the ass-end of the term, and therefore we don’t get our Fun Money until we return from our breaks, indigent though they may be.  I think I’ll be heading to Raleigh for a cheap-to-free and mostly relaxing four or five days…then a couple at home knitting, then a couple in Asheville, and then to Louisville, for networking and hopefully scoring a sweet summer job.  At least there is a very bright, sparkly light at the end of this two and a half week tunnel. 

Today was a very productive day for me…kinda.  I got an A on my test in Stagecraft, then went to Rendering class and finished two projects…and one of them looks super-hot!  I did a painting of the chaise lounge that Madonna had built for her "Rain" video…it’s called the Lockheed Lounge LC2, and boy does it live up to it’s name…lots of rivets and a high-gloss silver finish.  And, it was a bitch to paint.  I had been holding off on touching it for weeks now because I didn’t think I could actually make this chaise lounge look metallic, but surprise, surprise! when I sat down to work on it for a stretch longer than ten minutes, I finished in an hour with excellent results.  It makes me really happy every time I do a painting in Franco’s class that I’m satisfied with; it’s something of a rarity.  Then I went to G’boro on a quick mission with Steve to his parent’s house (I love his parents! They are so cute and funny!), and then came home and finished the most tedious and complex draft I’ve done so far. 

Even though it’s three a.m. and I have early class tomorrow, I feel good…pleasantly exhausted from a full and fruitful day.  A day on which I happened to be having one of my Bluntly Honest Moods.  Sometimes I wake up and can’t seem to tell a soul anything but the full truth, which is generally a good thing, but sometimes it’s too much, I think.  Often times, people don’t really want to hear an honest answer, and then get stand-offish because I didn’t blow smoke up their ass.  This happened to me so many times today that I can’t even come up with a good example.  I even dished out some unsolicited truths; I guess I could aptly title my mood for the day, Here to Stir Some Shit Up.  It’s not that I am craving drama in my life–quite the opposite–but I get so damned tired of all this politeness, all the political-correctness, all the cowards out there (and when I say out there, I mean within the five hundred square foot radius of the world I work in) that can talk shit all day long about somebody behind their back and never say a word to someone’s face.  I can’t handle that shit.  If I’ve got a problem, I’m gonna talk about it.  And unfortunately, some days, I have a whole lot of problems with the people around me, and I’m not afraid to say so. 

Funny that these moods generally coincide with my Monthly.  Do hormones make me more honest?  Could be.  Then again, maybe they do just make me a bitch.  I’m alright with that.  Better to be a btich than a doormat.  What is a bitch, anyway?  So far as I can tell, it’s a woman that isn’t afraid to stand up for what she believes.  So where can I get the t-shirt? 

To sum up what took an hour to air tonight:

Everyone thinks Santino is mean, everyone thinks Zelema is a bitch, everyone thinks Nick should have gone to the final three, everyone hated Diana’s voice, everyone loves the Tim Gunn impersonation, Andre is a bad actor (that crying jag of his on the runway early in the season was edited for time, lasting ten minutes in Real Time), apparently Daniel Franco is straight (…uh, yeah…) and Guadahoohoo was seriously fucked up on drugs while appearing on television–her answer to the one question Tim Gunn asked her spiraled into this weird tangent that left no doubt that her pupils weren’t dialated due to set lighting. And then the camera didn’t rest on her for a single second the rest of the hour. That bitch is crazy, yo.

Project Jay was kinda busted, but I maintain that Jay is a creative genius with a real knack for color and texture.

I have two whole days off of crew!! I don’t know what to do with myself. I mean, obviously the answer is: catch up on all that Other Work, but still…I get the equivalent to a four day weekend without crew. On Monday, I start on Orpheus and the Underworld. That show is posted on the board as “Hell with Anne”. The extry cool thing about this show is that it is going on tour in May…Granted, it’s only going to Raleigh, but still! I used to watch my parents dance in the ballet in the same auditorium that the set I’ll be painting on will decorate. It should be an educational, rigorous experience in opera. I’m looking forward to it…I really like Anne, and I haven’t had the oppurtunity to work with her much, so it’ll be fun. I say this now: come the end of April when we’re still working on this show, I might be singing a different tune, but then again, maybe not. I pretty much enjoy anything, so long as I’m painting on it.

And now, back to drafting. This week it’s light plots. Lots of templates for tiny instruments, with a complex system of classifications for color, circuit and channel. Times 100. Ay o de mi o.

So my tempermental sinuses have decided that they are not happy with the rapid changes in weather, and now I am sick.  Again.  I feel like this entire winter has been a battle, Me Vs. My Nose.  I’m over it.  After getting a nosebleed from getting smacked in the face with my own car door this weekend, my nose took it upon itself to start bleeding again in the middle of papering the floor in the paint  shop yesterday; that was fun…and then I went home for the day, an hour early.  Cuz on top of the nose bleed, I felt like Pure T Shit.  I woke up this morning feeling much the same, with hardly any voice to speak of, and a head feeling like it was packed with cotton, and oh, there were the raging cramps too…so I stayed home.  And now I feel guilty about it.  I shouldn’t.  I mean, I’m sick.  It’s legit.  I haven’t missed a single scene painting class all year long, but I still feel guilty.  And I actually was looking forward to scene painting class; we’re doing stencils right now, and that’s fun and totally interesting for me.  I don’t think anyone faults me for being sick, it’s surely going around school right now, but I have been conditioned effectively to feel guilt when I am not present, when I am scheduled to be.  Oh well. 

I watched Corpse Bride last night, and I have to say, again, Tim Burton is disappointing me.  I have been a Burton fan since I first laid on eyes on Edward Scissorhands, but his last two films have sucked donkey dick, in my humble opinion.  I mean, sure…props to the man that is keeping claymation alive in films, but the story was sadly lacking.  The ending was Just Awful.  So predictable.  I had the movie pegged in the first fifteen minutes.  Granted, I was intrigued by what Burton might have been trying to say with the color scheme; the living world was strictly black and white, or shades and tones of grey, while the underworld was rich and colorful.  There’s a statement there, somewhere.  But geez…get it together, Tim Burton.  Stop writing shit.  You’re disappointing legions of fans.  I won’t even open up the Charlie and The Chocolate Factory can of worms again, but needless to say, I won’t be spending the money to see anything he does on the big screen until he impresses me once again.  This is not to say that I won’t see everything he makes, forever and ever, because I will…just coasting on the love I have for several of his films, he’s already earned the Indelible Gold Star in my book…but it’s tarnishing rapidly, lemme tell ya. 

I’m bored.  Being sick is boring.  I don’t feel good enough to work out, which is what I want to do right this second.  I don’t feel good enough to stand at my drafting table for a couple of hours and finish my current drafting project.  I don’t want to go up to school to get my rendering supplies so I could paint.  Essentially, even though I’m sick, I feel like I’m wasting a day that could be used so productively to catch me up on schoolwork.  The worst part is, I can’t even lay on my couch and watch TV, not for a couple more hours when the sun goes down.  And there is the downside of the lovely big screen projection system Daniel had built for us.  I’ve already finished the book that I was reading, this morning, while I laid in bed and coughed.  Magical Thinking by Augusten Burroughs…it’s worth a read.  Funny man, strange and awful and wonderful life.  Generally, when I’m this bored with nothing to do, I’d masturbate, but I don’t feel up to even that.  There’s nothing worse than Sick Sex, even if it is with yourself. 

Whatever.  I don’t want to waste anyone’s time with my bitching about being sick.  I am feeling better than I did this morning, so it’s on the up and up.  I should be grateful. 

This computer I’m typing on is ‘living’ it’s final few hours.  As of Saturday, I will be a Mac user, and this beast will be no more.  Ha.  Ha Ha!  I can’t wait.  Me, the Dell, and a big ole hammer have a date. 

OK. So here’s a headscratcher.  This evening, at my friends Hope and Matt’s house, Hollis signed onto Friendster, from their computer, and my profile was already logged on, on their computer.  Hollis doesn’t know my password, Hope and Matt surely don’t know my password, and I’d hazard a guess that none of them care, or have ever even spent time thinking about, my Friendster password. 

So exactly How In The Fuck is my profile open and logged onto their computer? 

I’ve never touched their computer, never once checked my email there…I’m a little confused and vaguely freaked out.  Is there a chip in me?  Do I have password encrypted data in my body that Macs can access in a five foot radius?  I mean, WHAT THE FUCK? 

By the spirit of Phillip K. Dick, I am Officially Trippin’.  I feel like I’m hard-wired without my knowledge.  How does something like that happen?  Is this some symptom of technology finally surpassing humans as the leading thinkers on this planet?  What happened tonight can’t really happen, isn’t supposed to, more importantly, but it did.   I might have had three beers, but I remember every second of that confused conversation Hollis and I had about my Friendster account magically being open on this new computer of the Spraggs.  I wasn’t drunk, I wasn’t on hallucinogens, and Hollis saw it happen, too.  But how?  Seriously.  How? 

What if I’ve been programmed to emit some special frequency, due to my regular internet usage?  Steve would tell me that I’m being silly, just like being afraid of a homicidal clown with a chainsaw in my basement or something else generally irrational, but there is NO good explanation for what happened tonight.  But it happened anyway, logic or no, and of course I ran right back to the Internet, to tell It all about what happened when The Computers accidentally got a bit ahead of themselves. 

Is this how I get to go crazy? 

It would seem that I may have chosen incorrectly.  I am in the middle of what could be a Big Snow, in a town that is not where I live, not where my Monday obligations are, not where my cat or canned food is…and oh, did I mention, on the other side of a mountain that can become impassable fairly quickly, lacking chains or snow tires.  Oops.  I have an ugly, awful feeling that I will end up buying chains and traversing Old Fort Mountain in frightening weather, come Monday morning.  Thank goodness my Monday morning class is cancelled…I’ve at least got a fighting chance to make it to crew.  Unless, of course, the snow doesn’t stop for a while, and the melts a little tomorrow in the sun and the refreezes into a sheet of solid ice.  I ain’t risking my life to get back to school to wash buckets.  I don’t think I will, at least.  Damn. 

All my worries of getting home aside, it’s GORGEOUS!!!  I f’in love winter snow storms, especially when I am in Hollis’ Hobbit Hole apartment, just across the street from an organic grocery store, and in walking distance of lots of coffee shops, restaurants, and bars.  I mean, that’s the makin’s of some fun, snowy adventures!!! 

I have a date of sorts with TG tomorrow.  I’m a bit nervous.  I’m excited to see her, but I’m apprehensive, too…I don’t think I have it in me to Do It All Over Again.  She is an easy trap for me…I’m a sucker for her, I know this, and I am wary that I will cave to her advances and wind up doing something I will regret.  The problem is, I love her.  I am not In Love with her anymore, haven’t been for almost exactly a year now, but she and I had the most exciting, magnetic, chemically explosive relationship of my entire life, and I have an ubersoft spot where those memories live.  I know that that doesn’t mean I have to be stupid and let myself get in over my head, I can have a functioning friendship with her and not get involved physically again, but man! the temptation is great when the Most Beautiful Woman in the World looks at me with that special fire of hers in her eyes.  I’ve missed her alot over the past year, and I’ve wondered how to get back to a comfortable place with her,  but…I’m a bit scared.  Loving someone like her is a dangerous game to play, and I’m not always sure of the rules we’re playing by. 

But I’m happy, too.  It’s been a long time since we’ve spent time together, and I’m hoping that the time and distance have equipped me with the necessary skills to make sure her Crazy doesn’t affect me too much.  Then again, maybe it’s her Crazy that I miss…  I sure do have a penchance for the Crazy folks.  Never a dull moment, you know? 

The snow is really coming down.  Someone come ‘ere so I can throw a snowball at ya. 

Man!  I love these gorgeous ‘winter’ days…although they do make concentrating in class really tough.  I handed in my drafting project today, the one that was due Wed., really Mon. cuz I got an extension…and it’s like a weight off my shoulders.  I feel like I can breathe again.  I got locked up on this project, and I can’t figure out why…I had my first, honest, mental block since I’ve been a student here.  And it sucked.  I wanted to pull my hair out, knowing there was so much drafting to do and having no motivation whatsoever to do it because I felt like I couldn’t.  And of course I could.  And I did.  And it looked good when I finished it last night at 4 am.  I included a moosehead smoking a cigarette and wearing an earring, for a little bit of flair. 

Today is official Bucket Washing Day for the Dead crew.  This is good news, because this means we are really done.  Minor touch-ups aside, we are really, truly finished.  The set is a thing to behold, for sure.  I’ve heard the term, "A thing of beauty" bantered around by some folks, like the designer and the show advisor, so I’m guessing we’ll all get pretty good production grades this term (as I knock on wood). 

Anybody know where that superstition comes from?  Knocking on wood?  I’ve done it for as long as I can remember, but I have no recollection of anyone telling me why that is done, or that I should do it.  Maybe it’s a chunk of the superstitious Collective Unconscious slipping through the ethers to my brain. 

I can’t wait to be sitting on Hollis’ couch in a few short hours, eating some promised chocolate chip cookies, drinking beer, and catching up on all the goings-on in A’ville and W-S, respectively.  I am going to knit, and probably get drunk, and be a giggly nerd with Hollis all night long.  Sounds like heaven from this, my station in my studio, as I ready myself to go to crew and scrub some rotten paint buckets. 

Who knew paint could smell so bad?