I love Jim Carrey. The last two things that have made me laugh are his movie I Love You Phillip Morris and this parody of Black Swan he did on Saturday Night Live.

I saw Black Swan on Christmas night. If ever there was a film tailor made for me this is it. It touched on all my issues—body horror, eating disorders, dangerous sexuality (both hetero and lesbian), stifling mother relationships, mental illness, art-- very well done but very disturbing. Visions of Natalie Portman’s ribcage are going to haunt my nightmares for a long time to come.

The following night I watched Howl, which is inspired by Allen Ginsberg’s poem of the same title. Howl includes the full text of the poem, read by an actor (James Franco) playing Ginsberg and also interpreted by animation, as well as reenactments of episodes from Ginsberg’s biography and the obscenity trail Howl's publication sparked. While I didn’t care for the animation (which I found overly literal but not very attractive) overall it was a fascinating film raising issues of how the merit of art is judged and who has the right to express themselves and on what terms. It also reminded me how much I love Ginsberg and the Beats.

My little brother Jackson (who I’ve taken to calling Lil’ Monster because of his devotion to Lady Gaga) was in town Wednesday through Friday for a long overdue visit.

He’s a lawyer in Washington DC and has to do so much globetrotting for his job that it’s hard for him to get to Upstate New York to see the family (also the family is bat shit crazy, so he probably doesn’t want to come see us but that’s a story for another day).

Jackson really takes charge.

My mother has had a severe cough since September that she’s refused to get properly treated (see bat shit crazy above) and he was able to convince her to go to the hospital for a chest x-ray. We’ll have to see if that shows anything. I’ve been very concerned about mum’s cough, but she won’t listen to me (or our nurse practitioner) and has been handling it herself with the help of an old prescription of Tylenol 3 belonging to my grandmother.

Jackson and I had dinner with Hans, who is my boyfriend at this point. It was really nice, Hans is quite the cook. He made falafel pitas with tahini garlic dressing and spinach triangles and olives on the side. I sort of like that he went to so much effort for my brother’s visit. My last boyfriend would have claimed that I was stressing him out and endangering his sobriety by trying to make him deal with my family.

Hans and Jackson got a long very well, although he’s very curious about what goes on in Washington DC, Hans managed to keep conspiracy theory weirdness to a minimum. Overall I felt really good about that whole evening and about Jackson’s visit. This was the first time I’d seen him since I was living in Chicago and I’ve been back in Upstate New York for over a year.

I’m going to try to get in the habit of posting again. Rather than trying to catch up right away I thought I’d start small and just talk about some of the things that are going on with me right now—

A couple of days ago Hans took me to see a high school musical production of Cats in Cooperstown.

I expected the worst. I’m sorry, but just the idea of a high school musical production of Cats seems pretty giggle worthy.

It turned out, however, to be really excellent.

When I was growing up, my sister had the Broadway Cast Album of Cats so I knew all the songs, I’d just never seen the show before and it was surprisingly engaging. The cast had a lot of talent and energy and the choreography and direction was really tight (it was directed by parents of two of the students, who had actually done professional theater work).

It’s actually a pretty moving show. I felt so sorry for Grizabella the Glamour Cat that I actually started tearing up a couple times which was peculiar as I almost never cry during movies or when I’m reading books or anything like that. I think it’s the music that makes the difference; I am actually much more likely to be moved to tears by song than by any sort of narrative. Somehow it conveys more pure emotion for me.

As a result of going to the show, for the past couple of days when I’m by myself- walking, driving to work, or vacuuming empty apartments -I’ll catch myself belting out “Jellicle Cats” or “Skimbleshanks the Railroad Cat.” It’s sort of embarrassing but quite fun.

I finished reading American Psycho, thank goodness. Extraordinary book but it draws such a vivid picture of its narrator’s psychosis that I felt a little insane reading it.

Though they’re essentially secular horror shows, Bret Easton Ellis novels seem to fill my head with visions of devils and witches.

In an effort to get my bearings back I’m currently reading Anne Lamott’s Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith.

At work I’m training a new receptionist to take over for the woman who quit. Training someone is hard work, as it involves being in close proximity and under scrutiny and requires me to be on and seem like I know what I’m doing for the whole of a shift. Today is the last day of training so I’ll go back to having a bit more solitarily/down time on the job which is actually something I like.

My grandmother has been having a lot of trouble with her knee the past couple of days and has been in fairly severe pain. Getting a doctor’s appointment usually involves a lengthy wait but the local hospital managed to get her in tomorrow so someone can look at it. The question is, will they be able to do anything? My grandmother had one knee entirely replaced about 10 years ago and probably needs the other one done. Unfortunately at 92 she really isn’t up for surgery.

On a lighter note, I'm actually going out this weekend. Hans is taking me to a Steve Earle concert in Oneonta. I'm very excited about that.

I had a bit of unexpected (and unwanted) excitement yesterday. I cut two fingers on the blade of the paper cutter at work. I had to go to the emergency room where I waited for over an hour reading American Psycho as I held a piece of bloody gauze over my wounds. I ended up having to get three stitches on the little finger of my right hand as well as a tetanus shot. Dear me. It hurts pretty bad today but nothing I can’t handle.

This afternoon I got a call that the receptionist who works my shift 4 days a week quit so starting next week I’ll be working four days a week rather than three, which will be nice. It will give me a bit of extra $$$$ (which I need as I impulse bought the complete works on Bret Easton Ellis on my credit card) but I’ll still have enough time off to run errands for my grandmother and take care of stuff around the house.

I read Bret Easton Ellis’ novel Imperial Bedrooms. It’s made my brain buzz like a hornet. A mesmerizing DT of a book.

( cut for spoilers )

Yesterday between my therapists appointment at 1:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m. I re-read the novel Less Than Zero (which I first read in high school) in its entirety. I am now extremely depressed. While the drugs, promiscuity, prostitution and snuff films the book touches upon are pretty removed from my life the sense of anxiety and alienation at the novels heart isn’t.

I’m trying to balance out my immersion into Bret Easton Ellis by reading Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events. When my nephew was visiting a couple weeks ago he talked about being a big fan of the series and it’s important to keep up with the eight-year-old in one’s life.

I originally read Bret Easton Ellis’ novels Less Than Zero and The Rules of Attraction when I was in high school. I was just a few years younger than the novels anti-protagonists but my life couldn’t have been more different. I found sex and drugs almost impossible to come by and far from being detached and emotionally numb everything mattered a great deal to me. Still, there’s something about Ellis’ Less Than Zero, Rules of Attraction and later American Psycho that’s haunted me for years. Apparently it’s haunted Ellis as well, if I correctly understand the plot of his 2005 psuedo-memior novel Luna Park which deals with a writer living in a haunted house.

A couple weeks ago I watched the 1987 film version of Less Than Zero mostly on a whim. A young, drug addled Robert Downey Jr., a ridiculously soft-featured James Spader as a bad ass drug dealer, the Bangles singing Simon and Garfunkel classics… Since then I’ve really wanted to read the book again. Looking up Less Than Zero on amazon.com I discovered that it now has a sequel, Imperial Bedrooms.

I find myself wanting Imperial Bedrooms with a passion I generally reserve for unattainable men. I started reading it in a bookstore in Ithaca. It begins with the narrator’s discussion of the previous book and the movie it was made into, continue to disclose the fate of a leading character, victim of a gruesome murder, their corpse in its blood streaked white Tom Ford suit mistaken for an American flag. I ordered a copy a couple days ago. I feel an obsession coming on….

I found out yesterday that author Harvey Pekar, known for his autobiographical comic book American Splendor and his jazz reviews, died at the age of 70. A real shame. I loved his dry humor and insight.

I watched the film adaptation of American Splendor but only really got into Pekar about a year after moving to Chicago when I went on a few dates with a guy named Bob who was a big fan of his and lent me his American Splendor collections. I eventually bought my own copies and followed Pekar’s new work such as his graphic novel The Quitter.

This morning I went to Oneonta for a doctor’s appointment and stopped at the Palace Cigar Shop, which sells a wide range of magazines. I was browsing through the latest issue of my favorite art mag Juxtapoz and found an article on Pekar’s latest creative effort, an on-line work called The Pekar Project where four artists adapted his stories.

I ended up buying the issue and found that it also had a very interesting and unlikely article—an interview with actor Matthew Gray Gubler (Dr. Spencer Reid on the television show Criminal Minds) by Kirsten Vansgness (Garcia on Criminal Minds) about his drawing, painting, monster finger puppets and other creative endeavors. Really interesting and it’s been a long time since I’ve been excited by a magazine. One of the things I miss about Chicago is making my monthly visit to Quimby’s, a Wicker Part book store with a huge selection of eclectic magazines and independent comic books overflowing with new ideas.

Just yesterday I heard about Rat Girl, an upcoming memoir by musician Kristen Hersh. I'm very excited. I've been following Hersh's career as front woman of the band Throwing Muses and as a solo artist for the better part of 20 years.

I was first introduced to Throwing Muses on Good Friday of 1993 by my friend Justin who played me their self-titled debut album (originally released in 1986). It sounded like nothing I'd ever heard before. Songs like "Hate My Way", "Vicky's Box" and "Delicate Cutters" seared themselves into my memory.

In addition to the music I was taken by the personal stories of Throwing Muses. The was band originally included Hersh's step-sister Tanya Donelly who went on to become a member of The Breeders before forming her own successful band Belly. Between them Donelly and Hersh were full of strange stories of body horror and mental illness, dark fairy tales of what happens when female goes wrong.

My best friend Viviene and I used to say that Hersh was what would have happened if Laura Palmer had lived or if Sylvia Plath had been a singer instead of a poet.

I can't wait to read her book.

THREE NAMES YOU GO BY:
1. Bitterfig
2. Mimibutch
3. Chartruse Lily

THREE THINGS YOU ARE WEARING RIGHT NOW:
1. My red Reservoir Dogs t-shirt with the neck cut out (aka my favorite t-shirt)
2. My black slacks that I’m supposed to keep clean for work.
3. The padded bra I bought at Wal-Mart on the way back home from Chicago (all my other underwear was packed in the back of the truck

THREE THINGS YOU WANT VERY BADLY AT THE MOMENT
1. A decent job—I’m still at the supermarket and my receptionist job hasn’t started yet even though it was supposed to start on May, 24. I interviewed Tuesday for a civil service job that sounds great. I really hope I get it.
2. The Fables graphic novels I bought on E-Bay last week.
3. For the BP oil leak to stop.

THREE THINGS YOU DID LAST NIGHT
1. Laid down—I wasn’t feeling very well yesterday.
2. Worked on compiling the master list for 10,000 Lilies a femslash porn battle I hosted.
3. Watched Bruno for the 2nd time.

THREE PEOPLE YOU LAST TALKED TO ON THE PHONE:
1. My mother who needed me to pick up groceries because she doesn’t have a car.
2. My father who needed me to go with him to pick up m y mother’s car.
3. My conspiracy buff friend (who may become more than a friend) Hans

THREE THINGS YOU ARE GOING TO DO TOMORROW:
1. Go to the Farmer’s Market in Cooperstown.
2. Prepare the Father’s Day card I got my dad this morning.
3. Go to the gym to take a shower and wash my hair (my grandmother doesn’t like me using up all the hot water at home.)

THREE OF YOUR FAVORITE DRINKS:
1. A nice bottle of cheap wine (but I can’t have that anymore)
2. Diet cherry vanilla Pepsi
3. Stash goji berry green tea

THREE THINGS THAT MADE YOU SMILE TODAY:
1. Beautiful sunny weather after several days of gloom and rain
2. Petting my grandmother’s cat who is warm from sunning himself
3. The Hit-Girls cover of Joan Jett’s song “Bad Reputation”

Last week a friend of mine visited for a couple hours. At one point we were talking about my experiences with therapy and I found myself using the term “fucked up”.

I realize it was the first time I’ve cussed aloud in some time. While I habitually incorporate cuss words into my writing I rarely use them verbally. Most of my interaction with others is with family or when I’m at work, both situations were swearing would be unacceptable. I found that I quite enjoyed being able to swear aloud.

I have a pretty complex relationship with foul language.

I was raised very strictly never to say “damn” or “oh my god”, much less my favorite curses, “motherfuck” and “cunt”. I was told that using words like this showed you were uneducated or as my parents put it “low class.” In elementary school I would take great offense when my classmates said “Jesus Christ” or “hell”. When teenage rebellion hit however I became very interested in profanity though it probably wasn’t until I went to college that I dared use words like “fuck” in conversation.

When I first started really cussing as a freshman in college I went overboard for a while. I remember visiting my sister (then a senior at Vassar) and every other word out of my mouth being fuck. After a while however I calmed down. I began to regard profanity as a sort of spice, something to season my language with in moderation. These days I cuss sparingly and in a calculated manner but I remain fascinated by other’s use of colorful profanity.

For instance there’s my obsession with Quentin Tarantino. I love his obscenity laden dialogue. I could (and have) listened to it for hours. Recently I’ve been watching the HBO show OZ and I’m riveted by the swearing (while at the same time thanking my lucky stars that my grandmother doesn’t hear so well).

Cursing also plays a role in my dreams. Maybe because I rarely use profanity in day to day life there’s a backlash when I sleep because in my dreams I swear a blue streak. I’m always calling people “cunts” in my dreams. I’ll dream I’m at work in the supermarket and a lady complains about something.

“No need to be a cunt,” I’ll calmly say as I ring up her groceries.

“You cunt,” I’ll hiss at anyone, male or female, who crosses my dream self.

In some ways I feel like my parents denied me a certain level of aggression when they raised me to distain swearing. Also a certain level of joy. When I was at Whole Foods in Chicago the guys I worked with were always talking shit, humping each other, cussing. Profanity was natural to them as a means of expression. I loved watching it, but I was rarely a part of it.

I also adore bawdy music, from double entendre novelty songs to Peaches and Lil’ Kim’s carnal raps. Listening to Christine Aguilera’s new Bionic album I was delighted to discover one of the songs on it, “Woohoo” is all about oral sex. I think “lickey-lickey” is my favorite phrase ever.

I know a lot of people wouldn’t agree but when it comes to profanity I’ve sort of taken the philosophy that it’s part of the richness of the language. When I studied Shakespeare in college we learned that he could write dialogue for any social class and that his writing encompassed several times the average vocabulary. Shakespeare didn’t shun a word because it was what my parents called “low class”, nor did he depend upon it. It was part of the great mosaic of his language. I’m no Shakespeare but over the years I’ve come to feel that there’s room for fuck and cunt in my own mosaic of language.

I'm very interested (some would say too interested) in sexuality and I recently found a fasinating site, kink_wiki that deals with all kinds of kinks, fetishes and various kinds of play.

Also interesting to me is the way each kink is illustrated with examples of said kink occurring in a pop culture context. These range from the provocative to the hilarious and really show the way what is considered a marginalized kink really is present in the mass media on programs like The X-Files, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Smallville. I've always thought that a lot of fandom wasn't so much about adding sexual content to chaste source materials but more a matter of acknowledging dynamics that were only hinted at.

Definitely worth looking at.

Gradually, I’m getting back into fandom after a lengthy hiatus.

I’ve started posting prompts again for my two multi-fandom drabble communities drabble_a_trois (for threesome drabbles) and of_the_moon100 (het drabbles) and I’ve been trying to do a piece of writing for each of these weekly prompts as well as those at slashthedrabble and femslash100.

Additionally, I’m hosting 10,000 Lilies: A Femslash Porn Battle and I’ve done a good bit of writing for it as well as knocking off a couple Prison Break stories. Prision Break was the fandom I wrote my first fan fiction story for back in 2006, even before Reservoir Dogs or Harry Potter. I only ever watched the first season but I’ve been catching up via Netflix and am up to season 4. I’m also re-watching the harder, more realistic prison drama OZ. God damn I’d forgotten how hot and mercilessly opportunistic Ryan O’Reilly was.

Another big inspiration to me recently has been Tim Burton’s Alice In Wonderland. What an amazing film. I definitely consider it a worthy sequel to Lewis Carroll’s classic children’s stories. Twisted and funny, visually it’s amazing, dark and beautiful. Really very feminist as well, with a young woman regaining the “muchness” she had as a child and learning to slay dragons. I love the fact that Alice dons amour and becomes the champion of The White Queen (who is beloved of both men and women her sister complains).

The little one room library in my hometown yielded up a surprisingly rich bounty on my last visit.

I just started reading Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games. It’s a YA novel I heard about on NPR several months ago that has an interesting premise, a sort of fusion of Greek myth and reality TV. There’s a wealthy capital that governs twelve outlying districts. Each year, the capital, Panem, requires that the districts send a tribute in the form of a boy and a girl between the ages of 12 and 18. All the tribute children are then forced to compete in the televised Hunger Games. I’m not far enough along yet to know the nature of the Hunger Games, but it is a contest to the death.

Also in the YA section I found another book I’ve been interested in for a while, Margo Lanagan’s Tender Morsels, a retelling of the fairy tale Snow White and Rose Red.

And in the adult section (the very adult section) what did I find but Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay. I will admit I’ve been curious about reading Lindsay’s Dexter novels since I watched the television series based on them last year. I’m a little scared to read it. I’ve heard the Dexter books are even gorier than the series which was right on the edge of what I can stomach. Still, I’m going to give it a try.

I watched Kick Ass the other night and it sort of, well, kicked ass. Forget the title character; I’m talking about Hit Girl, an 11-year old in a mask and purple wig who is the most efficient action heroine since Uma Thurman as the Bride in Kill Bill.

While on a logical, responsible level I know it’s wrong that a small child should be trained to be a vigilante killing machine on a strictly primeval, first-thought-best-thought, immediate, irresponsible impression level I found Hit Girl awe inspiring. It probably helps here that I’m not a parent. Someone with kids might think of her as their children and be disturbed. Since I don’t have kids, I could look at her as that unfettered, pre-socialized little girl inside me given free rein, taking out thugs to a Joan Jett song.

I’ve spent most of my free time over the past couple days messing about with my new computer’s DVD burner. I’ve never had one before but since I dislike watching video on my computer I’m never happy to have it. Now I can burn copies of things that I download and watch them on my television whilst reclining on the sofa instead of sitting in my stiff computer chair. Quite happy about that.

It’s funny, I only consider myself a casual viewer but most of the video files I have downloaded to my computer seem to be Dr. Who related—the first 8 episodes of season 5 with Matt Smith as the Eleventh Doctor, adaptations of Phillip Pullman’s A Ruby In the Smoke and A Shadow in the North starring Matt Smith and Billie Piper (aka the Doctor’s companion Rose) and mini-series BlackpoolZ starring David Tennant (the Tenth Doctor).

I’m really looking forward to watching Dr. Who Season. On Saturday might I saw a little fragment of one of the episodes on BBC America and I was really fascinated by Matt Smith. There was just something very strange and not quite human about the way he looked that seemed very appropriate for a 900 year old alien.

I think one of the things that really appeals to me about Dr. Who is that he consistently manages to kick ass and save the universe without using guns or beating people up. I (finally) watched the 2009 Sherlock Holmes last night and one of the things that didn’t appeal to me was how much physical violence Holmes, who I see as the most cerebral of heroes, resorted to. Not that I would expect anything less in a Guy Ritchie film. Beyond this one disappointing aspect the film had quite a bit to recommend it including a satanic Mark Strong, a very slashable Watson/Holmes relationship and a cute bulldog.

Just a couple of days into my new supermarket cashier I got word that I’d landed another part-time job as a receptionist at a senior assisted living facility that’s opening at the end of May.

It’s 2/3 days a week and will involve working nights (the shift is 3 to 11 p.m.) but it pays $11 an hour (much more than my $7.25 cashier position), has some insurance coverage and you get to sit down so I’m pretty enthusiastic.

My first thought was that I would quit my supermarket job entirely and I got into a sort of difference of opinion with my mother over this. She wanted me to stay on at the supermarket in case I botch up the receptionist job (she didn’t put it quite that way, but that was the general gist of it). Dear mum. No wonder I overflow with self-confidence.

I really don’t like being a cashier, but I’ve never been able to stand up to my mother, so I talked to the supervisor at the supermarket and worked it out so I’ll keep on as a cashier, but only for two days a week once my receptionist job starts. It won’t be that bad I suppose and I’ll like the extra money well enough.

My cashier job has actually been keeping me very busy. Even though I’m part-time I was scheduled for 6 days and 35.5 hours this week, about as much as I used to work when I was full-time at Whole Foods, just no benefits. This sort of makes me think kindly of Whole Foods, which I didn’t think was possible.