Meme from eyelid:

"Take the closest book to you, turn to page 45, and read the first sentence. That will describe your sex life for 2012."

So the closest book to me happened to be Lois Duncan's Daughters of Eve, because I like reading crap. And my sentence is:

"Have you ever seen the mess three boys can leave in the mornings?"

WHY EVEN.

There is a man sitting in front of Uno's in Harvard Square, singing Christmas carols. He's homeless; I've seen him before, sitting out there silently, jangling his coffee cup every now and again. But today it's three days before Christmas, and so he's singing Christmas carols.

He has a good voice. Rich, strong. Not the kind of good voice that would make a professional career for him, and not the kind of good voice that you are astounded to hear from a guy jangling coins in a coffee cup in Harvard Square, but the kind of good voice that I would be glad to have in either of the choirs I direct. He has a good voice probably at roughly the same level that I have a good voice. Nothing astonishing. Nothing to write home about. But a good voice.

He grew up with a good voice same as I did. He liked to sing. I know nothing of his life or how he ended up where he is now. I don't know if he sang in choirs when he was a kid - maybe church choirs, he knows the words to all the Christmas carols he's been singing - or if there were things hectic or things messed up or just things that got in the way. I don't know if he was a National Merit Scholar or if his mother blew up his house cooking meth like I saw on TV recently in an episode that could have been titled Look Here We're Explaining What a Fucked-Up Childhood Looks Like. Or both. I don't know what kind of music he likes best. I don't know anything.

Except I know he has a good voice. This is the one thing I know, the one chip of humanity visible to me. I like to think about that because I have a good voice too and it's just a thing about me, not the most important thing, not anything I could make a living on or that anyone would write home about. But it's important. It's part of what makes me me and makes my life what it is. Which, fundamentally, is human.

I could make up sob stories to explain why that man has the life he has or I could make up self-righteous blaming stories or I could make up any other kind of story I wanted to, but they would just be stories, a way for me to settle things in my mind, nothing to do with him. He has this whole life that's a mystery to me, the same as any stranger's story is a mystery, but we only think about that, the mystery of the life of another, when the person in question has a life that we want to have an explanation for so we can rest a little easier at night, certain that everything is in its place and everyone, from the 1% to the homeless, has a reason for being where they are. Or for being the way they appear to us in that second or two we see them striding out of Burberry or jangling their cup. The reason might make us sad or thoughtful or empathetic, it might make us rage against the injustice of society or against the great mass of the poor leeching off their betters, but it's a reason that we can keep to hold on to. And sleep well.

I don't know that guy's reasons. Somehow, at this moment, they don't matter to me much. Because he's not a story, he's just a guy, a guy with a good voice singing The First Noel outside of Uno's three days before Christmas. Just a guy with a personality and a history and a life, but all I know is he can sing and it was nice to hear him singing.

I gave him a dollar because that's what he was asking for. We smiled at one another. He'll forget me soon enough; I'd forget him if I hadn't written about him, but I did, so now I'll have a marker of it, the fact that on December 22, 2011, I met a guy who could sing. His face, his smile, the rest of this day will slip away in the wind.

I wish him well.

I am the awesomest person in the world and here's why:



Who knew a kids' size 5 was an adult size 7?! A WHOLE NEW WORLD IS OPENING UP BEFORE ME

λ: Oh, they gave you a pair of white shoelaces, too.
ME: Oh, yeah. I guess.
λ: That's cool. You could change out the silver sparkly ones for the white ones if...
ME: *raised eyebrows*
λ: Right. Never mind.
ME: I did think of tie-dyeing the white ones. Then I could switch them out.
λ: *laughs* You're lying.
ME: Yeah.
A brief pause.
ME: I'm thinking of it now, though.
λ: I know.

I'm doing NaNo, sort of. Would anyone like to be my NaNo buddy? I can have more than one.

When I say I am "sort of" doing NaNo, what I mean is this:

1, I am going to work on the Rain book every day.

2. I am not going to worry about whether or not I have 50,000 words done at the end of the month, because
a. 50,000 words is too short for a book written in my style (i.e., not ultra-concise), and
b. I don't generally measure the work I do in terms of word count, because I always edit as I go and trying to adhere to the NaNo philosophy of "throw it all on the page and dea lwith editing it later" wouldn't work for me at all. If I didn't edit as I went along I would look at my first draft and sob for days, because my raw material is really, really shitty. So some days my word count will go down and not up, but I will still have been working on the book.

3. Some days I may take notes instead of writing new material. Some days I may spend primarily doing research, and the only writing I will produce on those days will be notes on said research.

4. I may write chapters out of order, such that I will wind up with some disjointed material at the end of the month.

5. I am not the slightest bit interested in any NaNo rules that conflict with my own writing style or that try to manage my productivity in ways that I do not like.

6. But I am going to work on the Rain book every day, and I am going to produce new material most days, and I am going to set a goal of 1,000 words a day on every day that I spend writing, as opposed to researching or outlining. Also, I'm deciding right this second that on days when I research or outline, I have to spend a minimum of two hours doing those things, and that after the 15th I am not allowed to spend more than two days a week on research or outlines.

I'm pretty sure the guy who runs NaNo would tell me I'm not really doing NaNo at all, if I'm setting all these rules up that differ from the ones he set. If so, fine, I'm not really doing NaNo. I'm going to work hard on my new book all through November, though. And if anyone would like to be a writing buddy for me, that would be awesome.

I'm off to look for pictures of my characters that I can upload into Liquid Story Binder now. By the way, if you ask me what Liquid Story Binder is or why I use it, I will leave you a huge long comment that will read like a paid advertisement, but it won't be. Liquid Story Binder is really just that great, IMO.

So I'm doing therealljidol this year, under the username winterberries. I've done it once before but this time I'm doing something different -- instead of personal essays, I'm posting one piece of short fiction a week. If you're interested in that, you're welcome to follow (and, of course, if you're not interested in that, you're welcome not to). After this week I'm just going to assume that anyone who is interested in this project will follow winterberries and that anyone who's not will not friend that journal, so I won't be posting updates about the project (I guess technically it's a competition but I expect to get kicked early because I don't think fiction does very well over there, so w/e). This one week, though, I am noting in this space that the poll to determine who continues on to next week is located here. (Although I have a suspicion that it's not going to determine shit because I think Gary is going to declare this an amnesty week... but maybe not. He may be pulling a Purloined Letter on us with all his "may be eliminated" crap.) I'd love to stay in for at least the first week, so, you know, if you feel like dropping winterberries a vote over in Tribe 8, it'd be appreciated.

And now I will never spam you about this again, promise. :)

I just finished the Beth book. It goes into my agent's inbox on Monday morning. I am cross-posting this everywhere. It gets a little longer with every cross-post though.

There is a song from Sweet Charity called "I'm the Bravest Individual I Have Ever Met". That is a blatantly untrue song for me to sing and I am perfectly aware of that and would never claim otherwise. But I'm singing it anyway.

Posted via LjBeetle

I just posted this to bipolarowls, and I realized as I wrote it that I was articulating a lot of things about bipolar and identity that I hadn't fully put into words before, and it felt important. It's not that well-written, but it feels true. So I'm reposting it here, partly for my own future reference and partly for other people to see. I'm cross-posting everything lately.

The mod of bipolarowls asked people what they thought about the concept of bipolar and identity: whether people feel like they *are* bipolar or they feel like it's something separate. What I came up with is a cross between a meditation on that idea and a self-history.

( cut for lots of self-disclosure that a lot of people probably don't care about )

So... update!

My life has been quite literally crazy for... oh, for six months easy, I guess, but I only picked up on it a couple days ago, when I finally swung out of a fairly lethal depressive state and into hypomania. Hypomania! It is incredible! I can just like do everything! Until it changes to a mixed state and I start sobbing with rage because, for example, there was an offensive line on Harry's Law,* a show that I only watch in the first place to ogle Karen Olivo. But mostly, I have found hypomania to be a relief after all those months of hating myself and wanting to die and telling myself over and over again that I wasn't really chemically depressed, I just really was such a horrible person that it would be best for me to die.

And no, I don't talk about those things with anybody except λ. I figured I was being self-indulgent enough as it was without whining to the rest of the world about it. Sometimes it is odd to look back over my Internet records from the worst periods of my life and see the blogs and tweets of a girl whose biggest apparent concern was what Julianna Margulies wore to the Emmys. I don't even care about Julianna Margulies.

At any rate. Right now I am perched very precariously on a thin rail of what neurotypical people call "normal", although teetering slightly in the direction of manic. I kicked up my meds a little last night and got a full night's sleep for the first time in a week or so, and I'm not hypomanic anymore**. I'm not depressed either. But... I can do things. I don't really think that anyone who has not had to deal with depression can understand the meaning of that. I mean that I woke up this morning and decided, after six months of sobbing and wanting to kill myself every time I thought about writing or doing any other kind of work, that I should be doing some freelance editing work in addition to the writing that I had been busy not doing until two days ago, when I finally managed to get busy doing it again. So I printed up a flyer advertising a college essay editing/SAT tutoring service and I went to post it on some community bulletin boards. While I was out I ran some errands, many of which I had been meaning to run since we moved into this apartment. Then I came home and decided that since we live in a nice apartment which is not only entirely undecorated but still not totally unpacked, I should work on that. I unpacked the boxes in our little game room** and then decided that I should try to cobble together some decorations for our huge expanses of entirely bare wall. I dug around and found paint, some old coloring pages I'd done, construction paper and popsicle sticks. Awesome! I thought. I will make a series of homey yet polished pieces of artwork with these supplies and they will not look like a kindergartener made them at ALL! I will decorate our entire house for absolutely no money! This will be so great!

I'm not hypomanic anymore, but here and there you do find traces of it still.

Anyway, so I had this idea that I was going to make frames and matting for some of my coloring pages with popsicle sticks, paint, glue, construction paper, and a big cardboard air conditioner box that I cut up before λ could tell me that we needed that to repack the air conditioner to store it for the winter. So I'm awesome. But still! It was going to be very easy and simple and after a few hours or so I would have like an artwork series!

Five hours later (five hours later) here is what had happened:



Clearly that deserves pride of place over the mantelpiece we haven't got. I'm especially a fan of the way the stray glue smears catch the light. And the way the popsicle sticks frame has that charming, one-of-a-kind unevenness going on. And the way that the super glue we had wouldn't bond with wood and we didn't have any other glue in the house, so I had to secure the popsicle sticks frame to the murdered air conditioner box matting with thumbtacks. Which don't really stay in the cardboard very well because I measured the cardboard wrong and it's a little too small, so the tacks are riiiiiiight at the edges of it. And also they're thumbtacks. Holding together popsicle sticks. And cardboard.

Since this took me five hours I determined after some judicious thought that I would save the rest of the series for another day. Or a series of another days. Next time I will be smarter about it though. I will actually measure some things and stuff. Really getting professional now.

Anyway the only thing I have not done yet today is write, but I am going to do that now, because I am capable of doing that now. I sent my agent an email in the middle of the night the other night telling him to expect the revised book on Monday, after having been out of touch with him for I do not know how many months. His reply sounded a little startled and confused, but he was perfectly receptive to this suggestion and now I am sending the book back Monday.****

The thing I am not talking about now because it does not do any good to talk about it now, really, is that this okay period is going to vanish in about three days, if I get that long. And I cannot bear to go back to being depressed. I can't. I had forgotten what it was like not to drearily hate every breath I drew. I called my doctor (who really should have picked up on this before and done something about it, like maybe one of the two times I made overt suicidal gestures, but then we mustn't ask for too much) and I am planning on telling her she needs to fucking do something about this, because I have just had a breath of fresh air for the first time in six months and I am not going back down in that coal mine with the dead canary fifty feet ahead. Somehow I am going to make this okay.

Man, fuck bipolar disorder right in the ear.

___________________________

*Granted the line was really offensive. The lawyers were doing an interview with some weird guy who seemed to me to be suffering from some combination of sociopathy, autism, and addiction to horse tranquilizers. Later one of the lawyers asked another one what was up with him. "He's bipolar," Lawyer 2 said. "At least, he'd like to be bipolar. Bipolar's very chic now. It used to be bisexuality was the hip thing, now it's bipolar." FUCKING SERIOUSLY, HARRY'S LAW. Get a better show, Karen Olivo, I don't feel like watching this one anymore.
**This means my thoughts aren't racing, I'm not talking too fast, I'm not finding everything in the world to be the most brilliant and amazing ever, and I managed to sleep through a night. Other residual traces of the hypomania are slight enough to be more or less disregarded, although they do make life kind of silly at times.
***If I'm telling the truth, what it actually is is a stuffed animal room. It has a bookcase full of stuffed animals and toys which is the dominating feature. It also has a lot of board games and a digital piano. I call it the game room most of the time, the music room when I'm trying to sound a little more upscale or when I remember mid-sentence that people will think we have a pool table and a poker setup if I call it the game room, and the toy room when I'm talking to λ.
****The reason I can predict Monday with confidence is that I froze up with virtually nothing left to do. It was unbelievable. I spent months on end crying about how I couldn't write, knowing full well that all I had left was to write one half of one chapter, edit the framework for another chapter, and add some seasonal references here and there so that the entire book doesn't seem to be happening in the span of a week and a half. That's it. That's what has been making me want to commit suicide for months now.

My wife is scared of birds.

λ: So I was on a conference call today and the woman we were conferencing with had a dove in the background!
ME: A dove?
λ: It sounded like a rooster.
ME: The dove sounded like a rooster?
λ: It was crowing!
ME: Okay.
λ: It was a noisy damn dove. *shudder* I don't know why anyone would ever have a bird anyway.
ME: I sort of like them.
λ: Euh!
ME: But I promise I will never get a bird without giving you at least 48 hours' notice.
λ: Okay, you do that, and we'll just start living in separate houses.
ME: You'd rather live without me than with a bird!
λ: You don't have to get a bird!
ME: What if I go blind and it's a seeing-eye bird?
λ: Why don't you get a seeing-eye cat?
ME: They don't have those.*
λ: Why don't you get a seeing-eye dog?
ME: Seeing-eye birds are better. They can fly up high and tell you... um... if your balloon is going to get tangled up in power lines.
λ: Uh-huh.
ME: It's very necessary!
λ: I have bad news for you then. Because they don't have seeing-eye birds either.
ME: They do in my head!
λ: Okay. You keep them there.
ME: *sulkily* I want a seeing-eye bird.
λ: I told you, you can get a seeing-eye cat.
ME: I don't want a seeing-eye cat. We have two cats and they are useless in that regard.
λ: They're not trained.
ME: Well, my seeing-eye bird is.
λ: You couldn't get a seeing-eye bird anyway. Ariadne would eat it.
ME: I'll get a seeing-eye eagle. She won't eat that.
λ: Oh my God if you got an eagle I would move three states away.
ME: Only three?
λ: ...for starters.

Our house, ladies and gentlemen.

_____________________

*I have no idea if this is actually true or not. Probably not. But never mind.

I got TKTS money for my birthday! And I was going to post a poll asking everyone what I should see. But then I realized that it would have been dishonest for me to pretend that there is any chance that I will be using my TKTS money to see anything but Follies, with a Hiptix chaser of Anything Goes. And one must never be dishonest on LiveJournal! So I am not posting that poll.

Of course, there is a chance that Follies will not be at TKTS when I get there, in which case I will be sad and all bets will be off. Actually, I can make a poll after all!

Poll #1770233
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 18

What should I see if Follies is not at TKTS?

In related news I am seeing Porgy and Bess in two days. I am extremely excited, Stephen Sondheim's opinion notwithstanding.

Okay, say you were a person with the worst outdoor allergies in the world, and you were having to spend the weekend in a place that is basically made out of mold. What would you do to make this survivable? Can/should/would you combine Allegra-D with Claritin, Zyrtec, etc.? Do you have any homeopathic voodoo recipes to share?

RIP Jane White

This makes me sad. I know she was 88 and had had a plenty full life, but she always held a real fascination for me and I had hoped to meet her someday, whether at stagedoor or maybe for an interview. It was something I'd kept in the back of my mind for awhile. And while I knew she was old, I didn't know she was sick.

She was unusual and very talented. The world, big and anonymous as it is, nevertheless just lost a little chip of uniqueness.

SIMS WHY ARE YOU TERRIBLE YOU MAKE MY LIFE TERRIBLE I HATE YOU.*

( In the Heights: WHO went out with Yolanda? )

( Phantom of the Opera: STARVE FOR ME, MY ANGEL OF MUSIC )

_________________________

*BLATANTLY FALSE or else I would stop playing, right? BUT
**Which he didn't, for those of you catching up at home.
***NB: The reason that Christine and Raoul are "Absent-Minded" and "Clumsy" is that "Stupid" is not an option, and that was the closest I could get.

So I've been playing Sims again. Sims 3, this time.

( f!pregnant Nina, friendless Evita, Don Juan Quixote and Sweeney Todd in srs sunglasses )

Poll #1761531
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 39

Best character?

No, you don't get any other options.

DEAR TONY AWARDS



IS NOT A PLAY STARRING CHRIS ROCK

CUT IT OUT

LOVE

KYLIE

P.S.

MOTHERFUCKERS

Isn't it funny when nice people post blatantly fatphobic things to the Internet without the slightest bit of awareness that they might be doing something douchey? It's like they think, hey, if I can't see you being fat on the other end of this Internet connection, I couldn't possibly be insulting you! Or anyone else!*

I love you, all my fat friends, and I like the way you look. I'm tired of seeing you be sad over these things and I'm tired of being sad over these things.

Chins up, Kylie.

And, incidentally, I don't want apologies because then I have to say it's okay, and it all gets uncomfortable and I'm sick of being uncomfortable. You be uncomfortable for a change, fat-shamers. Don't apologize and for Christ's sake don't explain. Just cut it out.

__________________________________________

*I mean, don't worry, anyway; I'm sure you're not that kind of fat. You wear it really well, I bet! And even if you don't we all love you because of your personality. You don't have to be pretty the same way that the people I'm insulting are supposed to be pretty! You're different because you're my friend and I'm never casually cruel to my friends.

An Easter poll.

Poll #1733850
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 39

Which is creepier?

It's been a weird day, guys. Happy Easter.

( sexytimes photo (maybe NSF your particular W) )

Poll #1731163
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 41

This ad is primarily geared toward:

So if it's really an ad for those who are (bi)curious, why didn't they put a man and a woman in the ad, thus ensuring that it would appeal to all bicurious folk?

Are you the King of Wishful Thinking?

I know, I know. There is in all likelihood no need to worry as long as I can pay their rate.

ETA: Super triple bonus points to anyone who can tell me what that pink thing on the blonde's leg is. It doesn't appear to be a dildo. I'd scan it for you in high-res to give you a better shot at identifying it except for the part where I don't feel like doing that.

So this test (that "shapes" one) is kind of amazing, in the sense that the process of taking it is pretty amazing. Unfortunately, my results did not conform very well to reality. Witness:

Handy in the real world manipulation of objects and events, you are easily enthused by practical projects. You often ignore or conveniently forget rules and boundaries that limit your freedom. This need for freedom extends even to the personal sphere and though you are kind and gentle, you will often be hard to pin down to a monogamous lifestyle. Because you tend to verbalize so seldom, you can be seen as phlegmatic or impassive. In moments of high tension you can often surprise those around you with a lighthearted or humorous remark. Because of your facility with the physical world, you are often engaged in sports that require dexterity, such as motorcycling or hang gliding. You will rarely have time for flights of fancy or unproductive discussion. Constraints on your freedom will be regarded as a personal attack.

The test may wish to know:

1. I am terrible with real-world manipulation of objects and events and am not the least bit enthused with practical projects.

2. I do in fact frequently ignore and/or forget rules and boundaries that limit my freedom (and this has been a struggle lately in a couple of specific ways)...

3. ...but I have no problem with monogamy. I cannot comment on whether I am kind and gentle.

4. Usually in moments of high tension I can be found overapologizing wildly, then crying in a corner.

5. The thing about me verbalizing so seldom is just side-splittingly hilarious. Lollerskates.

6. My manual dexterity is the worst in the world. Seriously. SO BAD. I would be the most immediately dead motorcyclist ever.

7. I spend huge amounts of time on flights of fancy and unproductive discussion. In point of fact unproductive discussion is probably one of the most productive things that I do, although I understand that this is more a commentary on the pointlessness of the rest of my life than anything else. But seriously. Would I be taking/explicating this test if I weren't into unproductive discussion?

8. But, okay, I do regard constraints on my freedom as a personal attack. Hey, if you're going to get one right, the last one is the one to pick!

The funniest part of all of this is that when I got that result my immediate thought was not "this test doesn't work" but "I must have taken the test wrong." Like I must have thought too hard about my answers, or defaulted to putting my considerations into words and then selecting based on those words, or something. (Which would totally explain why it told me I never verbalize things, right.) I honestly don't know what that says about me, but it doesn't seem to have been covered by the test. But truly, my reaction was kind of like "but they had all that sciency stuff at the beginning of the test! It must be real!" ON THE INTERNET. There was a bunch of sciency babble at the beginning of an INTERNET PERSONALITY QUIZ MEME and I actually bought into it.

Well, it's early in the morning.

In any case, if I could ever get hold of an actual scientist I'd be curious to know whether my answers to these sorts of questions, or the things that my answers would reveal about my personality (assuming there's anything at all, but then, I tend to think all behavior reveals *something*), might be affected by my nonverbal learning disability and the dent my doctor put in the left side of my head with the forceps at birth.* I never considered whether that disability might have affected my personification of geometric shapes before. For obvious reasons.

Well, this quiz ate up all my "I woke up early and don't want to get up yet so let's fuck around on the Internet" time. Time to shower.

*Not visible anymore, but the brain damage stayed.