FantasyFantastik

What better way to say thank you thank by showin' asses?

2009-05-31T13:11:58Z

On Friday night, Jen and I got home from drinks with friends and we were just chilling before going to bed, flipping through the channels. And Jen suggested we watch "Dominican USA", a public access show. We love "Gay USA" and I guess she wanted to compare the production values, I don't know.

Anyway, we put on Dominican USA and there's some guy sitting in the back of a car service car, acting like that makes him a pimp, thanking all the fans. "You guys have kept me going, I just have to say thank you for all your support. And what better way to say it than by showin' asses?"

And then asses were shown. My, how they were shown! Pretty much the only qualification to get on this ass-stravaganza was size. Just a montage of large ass after large ass, clothed, unclothed, whatever. Many were being shaken, either by the ass owner, or by a helpful gentleman. There was also a pile of asses, all these chicks in boyshorts laying with their asses on top of each other. I felt bad for the chick at the bottom. She had three huge ass ladies squishing her. And they appeared to be at a party. What kind of party? Where?

What really astounded me was HOW MUCH someone must love asses to find this ass montage at all pleasurable, let alone an awesome thank you gift. Cause many of these asses were nasty, you could see better asses lots of places. AND it was JUST ASSES. Once in a while, some pussy would sneak in there, once in a very great while they'd splice in a boob shot. But you never saw the face and rarely even the waist of the person who's giant ass was being presented. Just disembodied asses. Asses gone wild.

I did some research on "Dominican USA" and it turns out that the whole show is ALWAYS just asses! The host goes around filming asses and just puts em up on his show. a)That's fucked up of him. and b)Public access is amazing, truly a forum for freedom of expression that more of us should take advantage of. I sincerely appreciate this. I want to say thank you to those who make it possible. But how? Oh, I know!

ffantastik @ 2009-05-25T22:08:00

2009-05-26T02:11:58Z

John and Kate + 8 is pretty tragic tonight.

I was talking shit about them and now I feel bad about it. They chose to live a public life, but watching people feel like they want to get divorced is just truly sad. Especially when they do love their kids, and their kids love them, and their kids have no idea what the problem is really.

events

2009-05-25T13:57:43Z

Friday - I "worked" on my "paper" in the morning. Then Adam came over and we had dominican food and chilled in the park. Then I had a glass of rose. Then Adam left and Jen came home and I had a bottle of rose. We got in a dumb fight about me turning off the TV. I realize I must maintain the illusion of choice for Jen to go along with my master plans. mwahahahahaa.

Saturday - Jen and I went down to the seaport and shopped around, watched annoying tourists be annoying, and eventually wandered back to peck slip. Peck Slip rocks! So many cute restaurants and bars. It felt like (baltimore x philly)/detroit. We had already eaten lunch but we got a glass of wine and dessert at a great italian market cafe. We also bought some amazing sun dried tomatoes in artichoke oil, and artichokes, also in said oil. We walked over the brooklyn bridge at sunset, grabbed a fountain diet coke at McDonalds in brooklyn and then chilled at my moms house until she came home and we could take her car. On the drive back to manhattan we stopped at fairway, cause we needed bread to go with the italian deliciousness. I accidentally bought a million dollars worth of cherries.

Sunday - We babysat my cousins while their parents (and other members of my family) went to a wedding. The small guys are 4 and 7? something along those lines. They are too cute though. We were changing the little one into a t-shirt before we left for the park, and when he was shirtless he was like, yeah! and broke into that song LET IT ROCK. Cause you know, that's rockstar. We went to a playground that had old school death toys like that big spinny thing, you know? and that weird toucan with a spring underneath. Then, the unmatchable delicacy of Wendy's chicken nuggets (seriously, those mofos are tasty), back home for the bubble olympics (standings are published and available on their dining room table), some online game called Wizard 101 that was like, a fancy way to dress up time wastey puzzle games like Bejeweled, out to Borders, where the little one reached his exhaustion point and got kinda weepy (we had tried for a nap before but he just lay there fighting off sleep, literally going "no. no!" when his eyes started closing), pizza and french toast sticks and then a Scooby Doo samurai movie that was way more intense and fighty than Scooby Doo used to be. And then YAY! Mom and Dad returned.

Over the course of the day, I made a few wrong turns, cause I have no idea where anything is in their town, and you can't make any lefts in Jersey so that makes it all worse. And the 7 year old was like, "Rose, if I could drive, we'd be there by now." Which was totally true.

We had a good time, and they are very sweet and well behaved children. Oh, and we saw a rainbow!

Today - I should do some more paper. But it is SO NICE OUT. Hmmm. maybe one hour of paper. Then back to enjoying my life.

ffantastik @ 2009-05-21T17:23:00

2009-05-21T21:38:30Z

I'm finishing up my last paper of the semester. It's chock full of awesomeness about gay archives...although since I of course procrastinated as usual, it will probably be lamer than it should. Still, I heart gay archives, and like pizza or bahn mi, they can never be that bad.

I'm obsessed with the Lesbian Herstory Archives. I went and hung out there yesterday and it was 2 hours of the best time I can possibly have without involving Jen and/or alchohol. I just had some coffee and chatted with the intern and rifled through their stashes of lesbo comix and queer ass special collections. Its just amazing that a) the archives are in a beautiful townhouse in a very classy part of park slope and b) they let you have coffee and food while you paw their stuff and c) its really about interacting with the community there...they're not fucking around about basing their work on a collective mindset rather than an institutional one. That's sort of what my paper deals with, the difference between the two the movement of materials from one to another... Its just so fun, liberating and empowering to actually experience that difference. If you are at all lesbianically inclined, or if you just love archives, or if you haven't seen enough drawings of vaginas lately, stop by the LHA. You'll be amazed.

I'm also obsessed with late 90s sitcom Cybill. Remember Cybill? Cybill Shepard and Christine Baranski and some ex husbands and a lot of martinis. Its the best EVER, mainly because of Baranski. Although also partly because its a show about ladies who are pals, which you just don't get enough of anywhere. Anyway, I love it and I DVR it every morning and watch it while i eat my breakfast and take my vitamins. I just posted about this on my facebook status and a bunch of gays were like YEAH!!! Which was just tiny but great.

It's just nice to get a camp moment in the day. Or engage in the feminist sepratist ethos of the LHA. Gays are always being so professional and mainstream these days. And of course I want and deserve equal rights. Let's just not lose sight of the things that make us weird and superior.

Judy Blume needs a supportive shout out.

2009-05-07T03:52:53Z

Judy Blume is very awesome. When I was working at symphony space, Anna and I wrote her an email and she emailed us back, in all seriousness and fairly promptly too. ANd once when I went to a book signing, she listened to me babble about my love for ...Starring Sally J. Friedman as Herself and was responsive to my gush. For these reasons, and so many others, Judy Blume ROCKS. Her books are among the most challenged in libraries, and for years she's been active in the fight against censorship, because she knows that is totally fucked up.

So, Judy Blume wrote a very positive message on behalf of Planned Parenthood for mother's day....and now she's getting death threats from anti-choice extremists. She certainly doesn't deserve that. Send her a supportive shout out. Tell her that you love how she stands up for choice. That she stands up against censorship. That Superfudge rocked. Whatever. Just tell her you're not out to kill her. I'm sure that would be a welcome change of pace.

http://www.ppaction.org/campaign/supportjudy

Dance Fever

2009-05-03T01:50:10Z

What have I been up to? Unfortunately, nothing productive. I have a paper due in a week and a half, and another two weeks after that. One interests me greatly, the other hardly at all, but not in that order. Regardless, I should get crackin' on both. But instead, I've been enjoying these you tube videos of two gentleman who know how to shake it.

ffantastik @ 2009-04-24T13:28:00

2009-04-24T17:41:22Z

The other day I was driving down the west side highway in the pouring fucking rain and I slowed down to avoid hydroplaning across a huge, lake-like puddle. As I was doing this, in my rearview mirror I caught sight of a white SUV, moving horizontally across the three lanes of traffic, exactly in the wrong place for it to be, but moving slow, or at least that's how I saw it, so it was kind of beautiful and fascinating. It was behind me, and not coming for me, so as I moved further away, as I got safer, I watched the SUV roll up the embankment on the left hand side of the road and flip right the fuck over, strewing peices of itself across the road.

It freaked me out. I was glad I had been safe, of course, but then I doubted that I was. What if I had slowed down more, or what if I had left just a little later. What if I *had*? I thought maybe I was dead, crushed, mangled and I just didn't know it yet. I called some people. They said I wasn't dead.

ffantastik @ 2009-04-12T21:42:00

2009-04-13T02:06:27Z

Apparently, over the past few days, LGBT books have had their sales rankings removed on Amazon. The excuse, as you can read below, is that - for the protection of the entire customer base, they don't rank books with adult content. As you can see from some of the titles listed on the second link, some of the dis-ranked books have no explicit content at all, they're just about gay, trans or other non-normative sexual and/or gender identities or relationship structures. For example - books on alternatives to suicide for teenagers who want to kill themselves because they're considered freaks, manuals on lesbian pregnancy (one of which I own and is the antithesis of erotic) and biograhies of queers and transpeople (Harvey Milk, Kate Bornstein, Dan Savage), grouped in with trashy erotica like Ann Rice's Beauty series, queer themed literary fiction like Oranges are Not the Only Fruit, a bunch of queer theory books, and of course there are a ton of YA books on there too.

It seems like people are just finding out about this, trying to figure out what books are affected and deciding how to collectively proceed, but it's fucked and at the very least I will be boycotting amazon until corrective action is taken (and needless to say, you should too). Sure, the books are still for sale, but removing their rankings, they're basically taking them off public display, excluding them from best seller lists, and search results. Its like if the library or a book store took all the gay books and physically hid them somewhere secret. And then said, but no, they're stlll here, you can still have them, if you already know that they exist and where to find them. No problem right?

Fucked up. An I personally feel betrayed because I've been loving my Amazon Kindle. Although I can at least say that every text I have on there has been gotten for free, and none from Amazon. (In other news, I heart Creative Commons licenses)
---------
Further info -
http://markprobst.livejournal.com/15293.html
http://community.livejournal.com/meta_writer/11992.html

In response to an author's query about the deranking of his book:

In consideration of our entire customer base, we exclude "adult" material from appearing in some searches and best seller lists. Since these lists are generated using sales ranks, adult materials must also be excluded from that feature.

Hence, if you have further questions, kindly write back to us.

Best regards,
Ashlyn D
Member Services
Amazon.com Advantage

ffantastik @ 2009-04-04T08:15:00

2009-04-04T12:38:26Z

So. Jen and I thought about it and talked about it, and for the legal protections it confers (especially because we want and are actively planning to have a child), and of course because we want to be 2getha 4eva... we're gonna get married.

It's funny. it doesn't really change anything; our lives, our hearts, our futures were already knit together and never coming apart. But somehow telling people we're getting *married* seems like a mini coming out all over again. It's a serious public pronouncement of our relationship.

Which makes me even happier that we've decided to do it. Our relationship will just be that much stronger, that much more protected, that much more powerful. But everybody's OMG, when's the party? is kind of intense.

We plan to go CT and get the marriage license this summer, which will be fine and manageable and probably just us and a few people. But everybody does seem to be rarin' to celebrate in a much bigger way, which is amazing, awesome, I feel so blessed to have such support from my family and friends, but we also have no dollars, and I fear being the center of attention, so it really freaks me out. BUT...then again, I do like dressing up pretty and getting presents and I want Jen to look and feel beautiful and and love the whole thing and I know we are awesome and deserve the big fanfare and fun times. AND the public celebration is kind of the whole point. My mom was like, if you have the big party, it helps people change. And I'm like, well, whatever form our wedding takes, PSA is not really the one I'm gunning for, but I do see her point.

We have to figure out how to do this in a way that's organic to us, and doesn't make me want to hide under a table. And is also somehow magically free.

!
!!!
!

Jen and I are totally gonna get married!
That is like, the sexiest thing I ever heard.

computer book

2009-03-22T12:35:59Z

remember Penny on Inspector Gadget? I always coveted her computer book. And Friday, I sort of got one.

Alright, the Kindle 2 is nothing like her computer book, but it is still AWESOME. I know some people are weirded out, and I myself wasn't 100% sure what it would be like, or if I would like using it, but I think it's fabulous, mainly for the following reasons, many of which have to do with the way I personally read.

1. I like to read a lot of different books at one time. The fact that carrying a kindle allows me to have hundreds of different pieces of reading material at my fingertips is amazing and I love it.

2. I like to read a lot of different kinds of fiction books. And since I'm not picky, there are lots (literally 1000s) of free books that I can get for the kindle - from classics to self published cyperpunk. I have 17 books on there - the house of mirth (my fave), some dashiell hammett short stories, a novel by PG Wodehouse I had never heard of... - and I haven't spent a dime on any of them.

3. I read a lot of PDFs for school and I refuse to print them out. That wastes paper, ink is expensive, and I don't need random library science articles floating around my house. So I've been reading them on my laptop, but now I can read much more pleasantly and portably on the Kindle. You can highlight, and make notes on documents too.

4. I am obsessed with checking my email, and I can easily do that from the Kindle.

I think the problem that people have with the Kindle, from reviews I've read, is that it's not more dynamic. Its not in color, way you control the mouse is a little clunky (with this weird 5 way joystick, when a trackball would have probably been easier). But that's because the primary use for this thing is reading texts that don't change. The internet stuff is a bonus. Which is a really different endeavor than usual computers we're used to that are for documents and webpages that are changing constantly. And as a plus, the internet connection is really really fast, at least in the places I've been in NYC.

Whatever, I love it. Its totally awesome for reading nerds. And already, because its so easy and free, I'm reading stuff I never bothered to pick up before. Leaves of Grass, for one. I always kind of hated Walt Whitman, from the stuff they made us read in school. But while he is an asshole like I always thought, his work is also pretty exciting and fun to read. AND on the Kindle you can look up words you don't know from within the text. So I was reading and Whitman was going eidelon, eidelon eidelon and I was like, eidelon, what is that? I'll have to look it up later. And then I was like, NO, I can look it up RIGHT NOW.

Learning, reading, the cyborigification of humanity, yay.

The L word is...La What the FUCK?

2009-03-09T10:05:38Z

The final episode of the L word was last night and it was just...the inverse of satisfying or appropriate. The negative reciprocal of what the finale should have been. To compare it to another finale I've blogged about, for a show I loved with almost equal fervor, the where the Buffy finale was clumsy but relevant to the overaching theme of that show, honoring the sacrifices and growth that the characters had gone through, this L word finale was just a bunch of crazy shit that resolved nothing and pissed off all lesbians everywhere. I can't imagine one person who would have found this ending sufficient or pleasing in any way. I can't even imagine why someone who created these characters would want to treat them this way. Maybe its like cutting the feet off all your Barbies. It seems like it'll be a huge and wild statement...but now all your Barbies are just completely fucked up.

Where to begin?

First of all, we knew Jenny was dead from the beginning of the season and all season long everyone was threatening to kill her for various fairly good reasons. None of which really made it realistic that someone was going to actually kill her. Take shears to her new Balenciaga dress, ruin all her lattes from now on, talk shit behind her back, or even to her face, SURE. But kill? KILL?

The editing for this episode is all fucked, so I'm just gonna go through a list of bullshity items, order is devolving here.

Bette and Tina are getting ready to have everyone come over their house for a big going away party. Which is hilarious because apparently they're moving to NYC (yay!) with none of their belongings or anything. All of their stuff is still out, in their house, books and dvds are on the shelves, art is on the walls, they are full on living there. Maybe they're gonna start packing the next day, but you'd think they could have at least gotten some boxes or something.

Whatever, maybe Bette forgot to pack cause she's all in a tizzy because Jenny think she fucked Jessie Spano. Which she TOTALLY didn't. Which absolutely nobody believes. But you know who'd probably believe her, funnily enough? Tina, her fucking wife. Who she should just fucking TALK TO and explain all this and then maybe everyone could get on with their lives without resorting to murder.

Kit took her new drag queen boyfriend and her niece Angelica to the zoo. When they come back, Bette and Tina are like, did you guys have a good time? And the kid is like, yeah, we saw a giraffe. And the drag queen goes "We saw a giraffe with a big goiter on his neck." What? WHAT? Why did they need to include that? Is that a joke? Is that a shoutout to a particular giraffe out there? It's gross! They have 55 fucking minutes to wrap up 6 years of plot holes and we're discussing giraffe goiters?!

ALSO in that ridiculous, unnecessary scene, the kid calls the drag queen Daddy, for no fucking reason at all. She's well aware of the fact that she has two mommies and no daddy, i'm sure they've been over this with her, she's fucking FOUR at this point and her mothers are complete psychos who want nothing more than a well adjusted fancy ass baby. She also has had tons of other men in her life, including a male full time nanny and a man her mother dated and semi-lived with and was never prompted to call either of these two more constant presences in her life Daddy. This drag queen shows up and after one afternoon at the zoo he's Daddy? I have a feeling it might have something to do with the drag queen being black and Angelica being mixed race, but who fucking knows. It was just weird and along with giraffe goiters, not really a needed complication at this point. Also no one bothers to tell the misinformed child that the guy ISN'T her Daddy, which is just silly. Bette and Tina aren't going to let their kid go around calling every black guy Daddy. Especially not Bette.

OMG. What else? Jenny was kind of likable again, just in time to get offed. I spent the whole episode wondering whether she was a monster, misguided, or under medicated. It was really really really hard to say. But when she was found dead, since I knew it was coming, it didn't really have any emotional impact, although Leisha Hailey did a decent job of freaking out when she found the body.

Bette and Tina's sex scene was the least awesome they've ever done. A final tibette sex scene and no boobs? Really? No tongue? I think the scene was meant to convey that they had been fucking all night but they looked pretty...dry for that to be the case. Bette sweetly asks Tina to marry her and Tina is psyched, so that was nice. But I'm going to go out on a crude crude limb and say it would have been nicer if she had done it with Tina's pussy juice all over her face. Also, a lot of the scene was shot almost upside down. Why? Why? Why?

Helena's having trust issues, drinking and being paranoid, which her girlfriend helps her with by pulling a knife on her. Frankly Helena's character, although she sustained wild shifts of circumstance, actually ended up being one of the more consistent ones in the end. Or at least the behaviors she exhibited were reconcilable. Cheers Helena! You always were an ice cold hottie.

Shane realizes that Jenny has betrayed her and been a crazy crazy bitch all along (welcome to fucking earth Shane) and as she uncovers the evidence of this, also finds the negative that Tina has been accused of stealing. Basically everyone's running around between Bette and Tina's new monster house and Shane and Jenny's next door and seething, writhing in the misery of miscommunication and obfuscation of truth.

So naturally, everyone decides to watch a DVD. A really nice tribute DVD that Sweet Jenny put together. I kept fearing that Evil Jenny would have included the incriminating footage of Bette and Spano, but she didn't. It was a sweet present for TiBette, but while everyone's watching it Jenny's getting dead outside. How she's killed is anybody's guess, because although they've mentioned a missing balcony railing above the pool 9 ZILLION times in the episode, the ONE STORY fall would be enough to break a leg or fuck you up, but I'd think unlikely to result in the death of a grown woman. ALSO, as people with a child, you'd think Bette and Tina would have put some sort of makeshift barrier up in place of the missing railing so their completely ambulatory daughter didn't get up to look for her mommies at night and accidentally die.

Everyone's hauled into the station by Xena Warrior Princess for questioning. Which reveals nothing and happens all out of sequence, throughout the episode. The only part of that I liked was that at the end, everyone starts to break down, fall apart, and we have mad close ups of Jennifer Beals and you're like wait, maybe Bette DID kill her? (Although i find it very very very hard to believe that none of these rich ass lesbians would have demanded to call their lawyers before submitting to police questioning.)

And before anything happens its curtain call, and they're all walking toward the screen and sharing secret little smiles and you're like, are we non-diegetic now, or are they just thrilled to have gotten rid of Jenny as a team?

And that is that. Except its...not. Now they are adding web content that contains the "police interrogation footage" to clear up some of the gaping plot holes. I watch Tina's interrogation and it explains her biological family situation, which has never been discussed (even though all the other characters families have appeared on the show) and it was vaguely interesting. Although it introduced the bizarre detail that Bette was not, after all, Tina's first lesbian sexual partner...her own sister was. Yeah, Tina had sex with her (3 years older) sister when she was an adolescent, starting at age 11 or 12. For three years.

Tina was and is one of my favorite characters. This revelation is in keeping with her excessively forgiving, rather passive nature. But does this really really strange, kinda gory detail HELP in anyway? If anything it takes Tina's issues with negotiating power in her sexual relationships and makes them specific where they were once general, which I think is less interesting. And I don't think this does anything good for the misconception that all lesbians (and queers in general) are all reacting to damage, or abuse. Also, I feel really sad for tiny Tina now.

God knows what the rest of the tapes will reveal.

I'm not like, BETRAYED or anything by how it all turned out, but I am disappointed. There was an hour retrospective before the finale, which was ridiculously self-congratulatory - this show CHANGED television, it CHANGED lives. I think it did, on both accounts. And frankly, I think the actors should be awarded some kind of special Hazard Emmy for pulling off this material in a way that was even remotely watchable, let alone likable and relateable. But then when they had just made the case for these stories being so important and groundbreaking and end them in a way that was really depressing and retrograde (the lesbians die, are punished, are miserable... Hey, can I borrow your copy of The Well of Loneliness? I need to cheer myself up.) is a bit of a slap in the face for the people who took the ride. I wouldn't wonder if the actors are really pissed too. Especially when it was quite possible, even within the context of the actual set up of the episode to have just pulled out the complete opposite effect. To celebrate instead of mourn, to heal instead of hurt, to fucking talk to EACH OTHER instead of to the police. The fact that the big new millennium, post post modern lesbian story ends with deadly communication problems is sort of funny, but also really really really sad.

Thanks Mom!

2009-03-07T13:44:34Z

So my mom called me up yesterday, when I was sitting in ridiculous traffic, and said, "Hey, would you want a Kindle2?"

And I came back with a Leave it to Beaver-ish "BOY, WOULD I?!!!"

Cause all we do in library school is talk about paper and books and screens and the internet and to have a kindle 2 would be to participate in the bloodless coup in a very intriguing way. PLUS I read so much crap online, for fun and for school and for work, and lately I've been like, damn, it would be awesome if I could just carry this stuff around on like, a handy, tiny little screen. Cause I've made a moral and economic decision to not print anything unless it is a dire or legal necessity. Also cause my printer broke, and it got tossed.

So whatever, I'm getting a present, and I'm psyched.

Just in time too, cause with the L word ending on sunday, this spring is gonna be a fanfic binge and now I can read smutty tibette fic EVERYWHERE I GO.

ffantastik @ 2009-03-01T08:09:00

2009-03-01T13:27:54Z

We went to the movies last night with my mom and Dale. My mother *insisted* that we see Madea goes to Jail. I was the only one who was like, Oh MA god, srsly? So I looked like a curmudgeonly old bitch, but whatever, I knew the movie was gonna be lame. But, I knew my mom would take it personally if I made TOO big of a deal about it, so I sucked it up and we went.

I will say this, there were occasional funny moments. If it had just been the silly funny stuff, I would have been fine. But the whole deal is it swings...wait, swings is too graceful word...it *careens* between comedy and melodrama and the drama part was completely ridiculous. It was a lot of nonsense a guy torn between his fiancee who was really pretty hot, but a horrible person and an unethical lawyer, and Rudy Huxtable, who we all know is plain, but to whom this dude felt a lot of obligation because he let her get raped this one time and then she ended up being a drug addicted prostitute. I'll spoil it by letting you know that in a completely unromantic conclusion, obligation wins out. I certainly did learn some important lessons, though. Mainly to be better at it if I'm going to bring up trumped charges against prostitutes who are fuckin' with my love life.

My favorite line was when the bitch girlfriend got fed up with her fiancee getting all involved with this hooker (cause she has no clue about all their childhood history and the rape and all that) and says in exasperation "I can't compete with a heroin addicted prostitute!!!" And I was like, you can by being HILARIOUS.

My other favorite part was when I realized in the middle of the movie that the bitch girlfriend was played by Ion Overman, who played Candace on the L-word, a short lived but crucially home-wrecking role. And in the middle of the theater, I turned to Jen and shouted out "HEY! SHE FUCKED BETTE!"

And then my other other favorite part was when it was over.

Where have I been?

2009-02-22T13:08:21Z

I've been cataloging all of the books in our apartment. We have 494 books, and if you're wondering what they are, you can now, finally, satisfy your curiosity - http://www.librarything.com/catalog/ryndigoyen
I'm sure that's thrilling to very few people, but for those nerds, library thing is VERY cool.

I've also been writing a ridiculous lword fanfic where bette and tina and helena and alice and dana(!) go to an all girls camp and perpetrate ridiculous summer camp hijinks and make out a lot. Its unabashed teen romance and all the camp details are based on stuff like The Parent Trap and Summer Switch cause I've never been to camp in my life. I heart this fanfic, it is my favorite new toy.

Jen and I also had an appointment at the lesbian alternative insemination program the other day. An intake appointment where we went over my medical history, our outlook on this as a couple, all the basic info and what i need to take care of for the next step, which is yet another preliminary visit, sperm don't get involved for a couple of months yet. It was actually kind of fun, the program is new and the dr. who runs it really just lights up when talking about a fertile mucous with lesbians. Its like, her favorite day. Jen and I really enjoyed being told that we're well informed, awesome, doing the right things, eating good food, etc. We're such goody two shoes, the only thing that could have made us happier would have been an actual grade.

Where does that expression come from - goody two shoes? Isn't everyone (with shoes) going have at least two? How is that distinguishing?

the talent

2009-02-06T18:37:07Z

A few weeks ago, this marketing chick wrote to me and asked if I'd be interested in being filmed for some Kaplan marketing videos. (They always use real teachers, for nerd street cred.) I was like, yeah, then wait no. Cause I had final papers due and I was like, I just can't deal with that right now. But then she asked again, when I had absolutely zero to do, plus it pays money, so I was like, aight, and agreed to go in for a day of being filmed. Which turned out to be yesterday.

It was the longest, least eventful yet most exhausting day ever. I got there at 9. Makeup and hair took an hour plus. Cause my hair takes forever to blow dry. Then I had to stand and deliver lines, they had a teleprompter, but they also decided i shouldn't wear my glasses, so I was like, oh, nice. blurry. I did a decent job with that stuff though. Although they were like, more energy. And I was like, Practice Tests!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! CREEPY GRIN.

I had to change my clothes for like, every different thing they wanted me to do, at least my shirt/jacket. And I stupidly brought shirts that required different bras, so it was a lot of ducking into the bathroom to change. Oh yeah, this all took place in a regular office building, not like a specially equipped studio or anything. It got SO hot being filmed in a small conference room, my cleavage was sweating, the mic tape kept unsticking. Glamorous.

Then there was lunch, and a long wait while they changed some stuff around. Then they like, interviewed me, for a little "here's Rose" profile, which I sucked at. Which makes no sense, because i just love talking about myself, but thinking of marketing type answers while talking and remembering where to look and and all that, it was harder than it should have been. THEN I had to do fake teaching to some extras, and by this time I was getting tiiiiired. I made a mistake on the board, and if they use that footage that has wrong math in it I will be mortified and maybe fired. Then I had to fake tutor the extras and they were hilarious about doing math. Then I was done and had to go really teach a class and I was about to fucking pass out of tiredness.

All in all, it was funner, easier and more grueling than expected. I can't imagine how people do this all the time, for a job. And actually acting, instead of just reading stuff enthusiastically. Actually dealing with feelings and moving around and energy. I couldn't handle that at all.

I did get my hair blown out all nice though. And it was novel to wear makeup, I very rarely do. The makeup lady was like, come on, moisturize and spend like, 2 minutes putting some lip gloss on, you can do it. So today I was like, ok, lets give it a shot, moisturizer, lip gloss, blush, mascara. It wasn't very taxing, and I have gotten compliments. Sarah Hartley even went so far as to tell me I look very Bette Porter. Which was just patently untrue, but awesome to hear.

I was at Atlantic to show off my barcode scanner and explain how you can make a lending library out of a private collection using LibraryThing. But I spent the majority of my time talking L word shit with Hartley. Much more in my element than yesterday.

She and I joked around that we should do a staged version of the L word. Which is the worst idea ever. But I would love it. Maybe I will write a terrible L word play and force people to perform it. At barcode point.

ffantastik @ 2009-02-04T10:31:00

2009-02-04T15:32:24Z

I like not having to sit in an office all day, but sometimes I get lonely, with no one here to talk to when I find random amusing stuff like this.

ffantastik @ 2009-02-02T09:11:00

2009-02-02T14:38:37Z

I went out with my brother on saturday night. We don't usually move in the same circles, since he's an upwardly mobile straight young party animal and I'm...not. But he asked me to be his date for a charity event and I said cool. He then said "Uh...I don't know if you own heels but..." I reassured him I do know how to dress like a girl when occasion demands.

I didn't know what to expect, young people's charity thing at a hot club location. I wore basic black and showed up on time. We took a cab to the club with one of my brother's friends who had just had some massive fight with his girlfriend. She had gone on ahead and would meet us there. When I mentioned in the cab that I am 29, they were like, that's ALMOST THIRTY.

The club was really nice actually, and the music was all 80s/90s dance hits, which I guess is like, oldies now? Whatever, its fun to hear anything blasted out of a zillion dollar sound system.

There was an open bar and these young people were monsters for the alcohol. Every bar was 3 deep and clamoring. I had two vodka sodas and a white wine and was wasted because the drinking pace was so fucking fast.

The benefit was to raise money for kids with cancer. And there was definitely some money being raised, silent auction, all that jazz.

I shouted at my brother "All these girls have the same hair!" he glanced back at me, "All these girls are the same person."

They were kinda. All clean, smart, pretty enough without being really stunning. Wavy, curly hair that had been blown straight. Mostly girls from long island, which meant a substantial amount of cultural jewishness, if not actual practicing jews. To be honest, it was kinda fun being in a roomful of cute young healthy girls. Like the girls I went to high school with, but only the nicer ones, in both the social and socioeconomic senses of the word.

My brother knew tons of chicks there, and was apparently avoiding one in particular, for a reason that was sort of dickish on his part. This little glimpse into his social life revealed nothing specifically new, just new ways for old patterns to exhibit themselves. My brother still thinks he is very cool, and is fortunately for himself, perhaps unfortunately for some girls, right.

I had a pretty good time, but I knew I couldn't keep it up for very long. I had work in the morning, I have a wife at home, I'm almost THIRTY. My brother got my coat from the coat check and said goodnight and then plunged back into the scene.

I drunk dialed two west coast people in the cab on the way home, Julia and my cousin Matt who's at Berkeley. Julia didn't pick up but Matt did. He let me slur at him while he did his music theory homework on a piano.

When I got home, Jen was here, and her brother Sean who stayed with us for the weekend. I had a beer and in a fit of industriousness, made rice-a-roni and chicken nuggets. Hardcore.

ffantastik @ 2009-01-30T14:02:00

2009-01-30T19:06:59Z

I smelled that weird maple syrup smell yesterday and the day before. It drives me fucking nuts. My personal theory is that its some sort of test, to see how air currents in new york city (which are wacky air currents) would carry some airborn toxins or disease. There's gotta be some reason for a pervasive syrup smell that has been popping up for well on FOUR years now. And the mayors office is always like, oh that? yeah, don't sweat it, no problem, just smells like syrup. That's not odd. I mean, come on. Wouldn't they investigate, if they didn't already know the cause?

Or maybe the maple syrup smell is part of some nefarious plot to turn sane new yorkers into raving conspiracy theorists.

ffantastik @ 2009-01-28T15:03:00

2009-01-28T20:10:17Z

I just finished watching The Incredibly True Adventures of 2 Girls in Love. I know, I'm such a bad lesbian for never having seen it before. Teen lesbian cuteness explosion! I really enjoyed it.

I sometimes get mad, like why didn't I ever see/read/know about this movie/book/clearly relevant thing before. But I guess I was just not looking around for this stuff on my own. I was such an un-self-aware ass to myself.

Whatever. Randy Dean and Evie should grow up and come live in my aweseome-o queer suburb. I'm totally going to make a map of it and write down everyone who can live there and what their jobs are. Like when Harriet the Spy plays Town.

ffantastik @ 2009-01-27T08:29:00

2009-01-27T13:38:27Z

School's about to start, work is getting busy, and I need to remind myself I can't just be like, YEAH, sign me up to do EVERYTHING anymore. Pleh. Its also fucking freezing out.

I try and enjoy the little things. There's semi-functional lesbians on the L-word for the moment, that's a change of pace. I do realize that lesbians being happy and enjoying their relationship is actually a really boring compared to the psychologically unbalanced hijinks of the rest of the characters, but its sweet and relaxing. I would love it if someone would come up with a middle of the road sitcom about lesbian domestic bliss. The Dyke of Queens. Everybody Loves Those Lezzies Across the Street.

I think in general I'm enthused by the functional queer these days. THat's why those romance books at the gay library were pissing me off. All drama, no reason for it other than ridiculous behavior that made no sense. I want to make a queer suburb where the transgression is just being inherently better than everybody else.

ffantastik @ 2009-01-24T05:07:00

2009-01-24T10:10:07Z

Hung out with my old theater colleagues tonight/last night. I got unnecessarily WASTED. Now I'm up in the middle of the damn night watching l word youtube videos. Note to self: Beware of theater people with an open tab.

ffantastik @ 2009-01-13T10:58:00

2009-01-13T16:07:52Z

Along with everything else in NY, the zoos are facing a huge funding cut. Believe you me, I get the realities of budgeting constraints. I SLEEP with the realities of budgeting constraints. But these cuts are severe, and zoos are one area that is difficult to trim, most of their positions are directly related to caring for the animals, or raising money to care for the animals. Do you want to lay off a porcupine?

Prickly Situation at the Bronx Zoo from Gothamist on Vimeo.

Not to mention that zoos do provide a lot of employment and generate significant revenues. There's a petition up, holla at the Gov. in defense of NY state zoos and aquariums.

ffantastik @ 2009-01-04T18:32:00

2009-01-04T23:33:33Z

Jen and I both cleaned out our closets this weekend. We have BUSHELS of clothes to give away. I'm trying to freecycle them, but the first pickup fell through. But things are getting tidier around here. In celebration, lets dance.

girl talk

2009-01-03T04:29:21Z

I've been seriously digging Girl Talk's album Feed the Animals. A bunch of people had it on their year end best of...lists, and I'm always like, well, if you say its the BEST the least I can do is listen to it. Plus, its a pay what you wish album, so i was like, whatever, 3 bucks, even if I hate it, its like a shitty cup of coffee.

But its awesome!

I guess I'm late to the Girl Talk party but for anyone else who is too, its basically a whole album of samples stitched together. Which sounds like, ok, what, a mashup album? The first time I listened, I was sort of like, well, some of this is random, but whoo, there are some awesome little pieces in there. Then I listened again and I started loving it. The sheer volume and breadth of samples used and the witty way they get mixed really turns it into its whole own thing. And its just like, all the beats and hooks and melodies you've ever heard in from 1980-2008 made into one long album length song, like someone shook your head and all the music came out and it yelled DANCE DANCE DANCE.

For example - there's a part where Salt & Pepa's Push It comes up against Dee Lite's Groove is in the Heart and it segues into the bass and shouting of Nirvana's Lithium and it all sounds so fun, like all the best parties you've been to rolled into one.

And for whatever you wish to pay, you too can party up.

Day 1

2009-01-02T15:19:22Z

People always say the way the year starts augurs the events of the year to come. I think thats bullshit, but I hope its not cause this Jan 1 was all about sex and beer and cheese fries and people actually visiting us in inwood, so it would be fine with me if it keeps on in this vein.

We were just spending a relaxing day at home (this is the sex part) and then Jennifer called to say she was driving back from CT to DC, were we home, did we want to have some coffee? It was weird, because the night before I had dreamed that Jennifer was on Saturday Night Live and I was like, wtf, why is she on SNL? And everyone was like, JEEZ, don't you know she's on 30 Rock?! We don't see Jennifer all the time or anything, so it was really strange that I dreamed of her and then she called that very day. Jen was creeped out. Anyway, whatever, she came with her girlfriend, whose name I think is...Melissa. And we had a very nice time having some beers and coffee and olives and hummus at the Indian Road Cafe. I have very few lesbian friends, so its a good thing Jen has one decent ex we can socialize with or else I'd never get to have a conversation about insemination methods or when the church outlawed dildos with someone who isn't secretly gagging and horrified.

THEN it turned out that Andrew and TK were also in inwood, visiting some other friends. After Jennifer and (I'm just gonna call her) Melissa left, Jen and I made a brief stop at the Liffy II for a couple of beers, and then we met up with them and the people they were visiting and ended up at the Piper's Kilt for more beers and Irish Nachos (which are fries with cheese sauce and bacon on them and are the best thing ever in life). Kiersten was almost willing to come uptown if we were going to stay out, but that had bad idea written all over it, so I dissuaded Jen from heading back to the Liffy, Andrew and TK left, and we went home.

We watched CAMP and danced around and had the beers and then got slutty and had a generally awesome time. If every day of 09 is some version of yesterday with different people rotating into the guest spots, I'll be quite pleased.