i have to respect this.

i hope it gave her what she wanted in the end.  i hope she took all the pills she had and enjoyed jumping from a bridge out into whatever she got next because she at least deserved that final thrill.  i love her so much.   i don’t know what i’m going to do with my days or how i’m going to fill my time, but it’s more important that she did what she thought she had to do and now it’s done.

 

 

i’m going to be so fucking alone now

i am mourning for every phrase she won’t start for me to finish.  i won’t get contests on the burrito anymore.  no one will ask if i’m wearing mascara.  no one will martha washington me and i will have no one for whom to martha washington.  i don’t have my disciple anymore and i can’t see how she’s going to turn out,

i’ve lost another person.  not just that, but another friend, and i don’t have that many friends to lose.

i’m alone again and she’s gone and there is so much she is missing out on.  but she knew i loved her!  she was surrounded by the things of me loving her, making her things, giving her things, and maybe that helped,  i hope it did.

unreal

my friend killed herself last night.  my best friend.  the one i email twenty times every day.  the one i see several times a week for media and substance consumption.  i need to know what happened, for sure, but i don’t even know who to ask.  it’s not real until somebody tells me, but i have to ask to make it happen and i just don’t want to.

i am so, so sad.

so i got a call around midnight

and it was a friend of my friend, telling me she’s sending the sheriff’s department to her house, but she assumes it’s too late and she’s already dead.  and then that’s it.  and i don’t know what’s going on.  i check my emails, there are goodbye emails.  does that mean she’s gone?  what does it mean?

i have lost so many people.  i don’t want to keep losing them.

_mr. penumbra’s 24-hour bookstore_

over my trip to portland this last weekend, i lovingly devoured _mr. penumbra’s 24-hour bookstore_, by robin sloan.  in fact, as i was reading the final half page of the book, my friend came out of the room where he’d been napping, and i nearly snarled at him to “give me a minute!”  it was good up ’til the end, which is getting more and more rare, it seems…and it also freakin’ ENDED.  maybe it’s the fact that i spend most of my reading life in the YA world, but i am sick-to-tears at how nobody just writes one book that they take the time to actually finish, edit and then publish.  everyone just gets a good idea, spits out the first third of it and rushes to publish, tries to figure out the point of the series as they write pablum for the middle one, spit out the supposed final volume with a tiny cliff-hanger or hand out of the grave just in case they can keep flogging the dead cash cow…

but i digress.

this book isn’t like that.

this is a good book, with good writing and interesting characters and events.  it’s a book with that gawky sort of charm and humor, just how i like ’em…plus, it’s got san francisco in it, so, you know, there you go.  it’s sort of like a combination of the mission district as seen in _little brother_ and the barbary lane characters from “tales of the city”…the bookstore made me remember carroll’s, down at church and 24th.  man, that was a good bookstore.

_mr. penumbra’s 24-hour bookstore_ also reminded me a little of _ready player one_, by ernest cline, for the fun and puzzle-ness of it, as well as the D&D references.

all in all, very satisfying.  i already bought it for the library, which is the copy i read, but i think i’m going to buy my own copy, too…it also glows in the dark.

just what i needed.

my trip to portland this last weekend was pretty close to perfect…i think it was just what i needed to restore my severely depleted store of support and love.  breakfast and a ride to the airport friday morning and an unexpected pick-up waiting for me in the meetings area when i got home to sfo courtesy of one of my newest friends, book-ending a perfect visit with some of my oldest friends.  i was with people who love and value me in a city full of fucking amazing food and drink–yeah, that’s the good stuff.

so, a couple weeks ago, i saw a preview for _gravity_…

and it looked so stupid that i laughed about it and made fun of it mercilessly until about this very moment, actually.  well, maybe not that *whole* time.

anyway.

today i left school a couple minutes early to rush home and meet up with my partner in crime to pregame and rush downtown to see the imax 3D gravity…but there were muni issues, so we just ended up with regular 3D gravity and that was still pretty good.  cheeseball writing.  oh, my fucking god.  and they didn’t need to, either, because there was more than enough going on there because they were out in fucking SPACE.  are we really so jaded that SPACE isn’t good enough and we have to throw in a dead kid for extra pathos?!  anyway, i was easily manipulated and cried a couple times, but i couldn’t really respect the movie afterwards.  i think i have a more meaningful relationship with my shower…but a fun movie!

and, then, when that fun was over, we cabbed it to the hotel zetta bar to frolic with the unsuspecting public and such.  i very much enjoyed a lovely chartreuse and gin drink, which really is my favorite combination, should i be going the fancy cocktail way.  and i went that way, a couple times.

after we’d drunk our allowance and played enough plinko on the wall-sized game, we cabbed back home–weren’t we fancy ladies tonight?–and ate leftover pizza and watched a trashy ep of the OC–like there are other than trashy eps!

my morning kind of sucked.  it wasn’t the sort of day that makes me know teaching is my life and it loves me like i love it.  it was more a day that makes me think i could probably sell shoes and do as well for society…so, you know, fun times and  big flashy science fiction movies and drugs and alcohol and cabs and friends…it makes it all worth it.  even when it’s not that good.  and you probably shouldn’t.  and plinko isn’t even a game of skill.

mail

i just sent out a giant pile of handmade postcards to various members of the international union of mail artists and i hope they all make it to their homes and are enjoyed.  i posted a couple of them here on my craftster gallery, if you’re interested and if that link works.  here are a couple i like…

_don jon_

i’ve always really liked joseph gordon levitt–possibly not enough to make sure i’m spelling his name correctly, but you know who i mean.  he was charming and funny on “third rock from the sun” and i’ve almost always liked him in movies, even when the movies are a little weak, like that brick one or the 500 day thing.  he was always compelling in some way, even if what he was working with wasn’t exactly golden.

there are a lot of things i liked about _don jon_ tonight. overall, i enjoyed it and will likely watch it again on dvd at least once more in my life–not sure if i’ll like it more or less the second time, but i’m interested to find out.

first off, though it seems like a backhanded compliment, i really appreciate that jgl made a movie that was an hour and a half long.  that was how long it should have been.   it didn’t need to be any longer than that, even if everyone does make two hour and counting movies these days, particularly as first movies.  i felt like the local color element of the movie was a little overdone and caricature-like, but maybe that’s what new jersey is really like.  i have no idea, and it worked for me as comedy, at least.  i thought scarlet johanssen was not very good in about half the scenes and pretty bad in about another quarter of the movie.  she was obviously not comfortable with the gum chewing and didn’t do a very good job, petty criticism as that might seem.  i liked that jgl looked ridiculous.  i think he’s hot as can be, but liked that he made himself look like a schmuck.  julianne moore can do anything and i’ll probably love her, so, you know, i loved her here, too.

i don’t like to read about movies before i see them because i like to be surprised.  now that i’m done with this one, i’ll check it out and see how people liked it.  i can see a few things people will likely fixate on thematically, but i’m more curious about the strange fucked up focus and weird hand held and how people feel about that.  some of it seemed clumsy and i can’t tell if it WAS clumsy or if it was something he was goin’ for.  overall, jgl is totally dreamy and i’m interested to see what other movies he might want to make.

dude, we can SEE hydrogen bonds. SEE THEM!

http://www.businessinsider.com/first-images-of-a-hydrogen-bond-2013-9

seriously, i’m reading that article and looking at the pictures and the voice in my head sounds like keanu reeves in bill and ted’s excellent adventure, and i’m all “they can see atoms now?  they can see them, like, for real?”  and i know my mental voice sounds stupid, but this is, quite simply, AWESOME, in the classic sense.  wow.