NEW MONEYMAKING SCHEMES

Let's see...I believe I've already written about my plans for an alternative homeless magazine ("Several Smaller Issues that Really Add Up") and my tortilla-with-picture-of-Virgin-Mary moneymaking schemes, so it's clearly time to come up with a new one.

Because, of course, I'm broke, and having a full-time job and doing contract work on the side is clearly not providing enough, as evidenced by the fact that I do not own a home recording studio, and have yet to indulge in anything that could be described as "jet-setting". And so far, plans to be a world-famous musician with chart-topping albums, finding a cure for cancer, and being a published author have failed to come to fruition.

For a while, I was considering bagging it all and becoming one of those guys who pushes ice cream carts through the Mission in San Francisco during the summer. Seems like a relatively stress-free life; nobody really expects much of you when you sell ice cream out of a hand truck for a living. Except for the kids, maybe, who are hoping not to get anything too melty-melty.

I've only been approached by a man mistaking me for a prostitute in London once so far (my odds were far higher in the Mission, but I was offended--it wasn't so much being mistaken for a whore as a *cheap* whore that got to me), so selling my body is out. As I've mentioned before, if I could find someone who would buy by the pound, I'd be set.

"Kept Woman" and other variations on the theme are also not doing so well. This is doubly sad because there were all kinds of promising side businesses involving things like the black-market baby trade that now seem forever beyond my grasp.

When I was at college, my friend, Robyn and I, and a great idea. We were going to run a service for women with loser boyfriends. You know how it is--you are doing fine until you talk to the guy on the telephone, and then you hear yourself saying things like, "Oh, no, I understand. You only slept with my sister once, after all, and you *were* drunk...." We figured we could plant little chips in the female client's telephones, and then when the boyfriend was on the phone, we'd conference in, and every time she said something backboneless, she'd receive a small electric shock.

This never seemed to catch on, either.

Perhaps I could rent out myself and other members of my family--we're in constant crisis, and it seems only fair that we capitalize on this, in the very most "capital" sense of the word. There isn't a party you couldn't get out of with my family as yours. "Sorry, I really can't make it tonight--my sister's house just burned down." Or, "I need to take a few days off of work--my niece has finally turned up in Los Angeles, and I think she's pregnant, but it was hard to tell what she was saying because she sounded drunk."

It's all about the marketing, really.

Or what about stalking? I've had four--or is it five? stalkers, now, and I *totally* know how it's done. Are you jealous because everyone else has had a stalker, and you haven't? Jealous of all of the attention? I'm your woman!

Hmm.

That sounds like a lot of work, frankly.

F-ING MAJOR

There's a reason that so many bad words begin with the letter "F".

I am sorry, but whoever decided that the F Major chord should be this difficult to play on the guitar...well, he clearly had bigger hands than I do. And f minor isn't any better.

Coincidence? I think not.

I suppose I should look at this as some kind of a backwards compliment. My, what small and dainty hands I have.

Grrr.

I refuse to give in and buy a kid guitar. Refuse!

Fortunately, my friend Mike is giving me string advice and stuff. (I know nothing about guitars, and yet have already developed strong opinions about nylon strings. Namely: I hate them.) Although, his advice included the following:

"Now that I think about it, you're a chick. bring your guitar to the music store, and be nice to the guy behind the counter. he'll tell you more than you ever wanted to know about changing the strings."

Mind you, I have to admit that I am not always above this sort of thing. There may have been one or two occasions in the past involving police officers. It's not so much the idea, I guess, as having a male person of my acquaintance not only recognize that I might be capable of such a thing, but to go as far as to suggest that I might do it.

Hypocritical, yes, and yet I see no problem with that.

MUSIC

So anyway, yes, even though I know I may be returning to the US, I needed to have something that made it easier to make music here. Will I be able to ship it back? I don't know. All I know is that I needed it, and if I'm just renting, so be it.

After all, music holds you when you cry.

BUSH VISITING

I don't know if I'll be able to make it to the protests because of work, but I'm going to try tomorrow night. I want to carry a sign that says, "STAY HERE, BUSH, WE DON'T WANT YOU BACK HOME."

The Guardian has posted some fantastic letters from famous people. Here's one of my favorites:

Dear George Bush,

I address you, George, in your capacity as the world's leading terrorist fundamentalist. Secure in your multimillions of dollars and your helpfully reinforcing pieties, I doubt you will see any reason to be interested in what the rest of the world makes of you. Thankfully, an increasing number of Americans are beginning to see you through the eyes of the rest of the world, so your reign could be shortlived.

Truthfully, George, you are a disaster. You have managed, in a few short months and years, to identify the first part of the 21st century as the time when a voracious new American empire burst upon the world. In the world outside the US, nobody believes in your calls for democracy. You stole your own election. You try to strangle democracies, like Venezuela, which do not deliver pliant regimes. And everywhere the ordinary people of the earth, the overwhelming majority, will pay the price for your corrupt adventures.

Nearer your home, hundreds of men rot in Guantanamo Bay without access to justice. Thousands have "disappeared" on the US mainland. You preside over the worst witch hunt in public life since Senator McCarthy. Poverty, unemployment, racism are all on the rise. Like most "emperors", you poison your homeland while trying to devour the resources of the world.

We live in a world, George, where we have to live together, to find common solutions to the huge problems that afflict us. The horrific irony is that there are answers to poverty; to war, racism, disease and ignorance. You, in the name of your god and your country, are deliberately drowning out those answers in your patriotic and bellicose clamour, because as you know they imply a world without you or your kind.

Imran Khan

Human rights lawyer

The rest can be read at:

Guardian Letters

GENETICS

I've had two discussions with women friends in the last week, about how men are aroused by visual stimuli, and whether or not this is genetically based, and therefore, whether or not it is okay for men to place physical beauty above all other criteria when evaluating women as potential partners.

This is kind of a new topic. There are a gazillion books, magazine articles, and talk show episodes devoted to it. A lot of them come from men, trying to explain themselves to the female population, and a surprising number come from women.

I hold the unpopular opinion that this is crap. Holding physical beauty as your highest standard is:

a) a conscious decision

b) bad behaviour, and

c) mark of a lack of character

I have met a whole lot of intelligent and successful single men who have said that yes, although they want to meet someone who is intelligent and funny and ethical and all of these good things, they think, hey, why can't I have it all? Why can't she be drop-dead gorgeous as well?

And the other thing that follows nicely on is that women who are all of those things and yet not attractive are nice enough people to have as friends, but I shouldn't feel guilty about the fact that I don't want to have *sex* with them, because I am not physically attracted to them. In other words, they're nice, and just not for me.

Both of these are cop-outs as far as I'm concerned. You're just trying to find a nice way to keep your prejudices and still feel good about yourself as a person. You're still subtly saying that if a woman doesn't look a certain way she's good enough--just not *good enough for you*. That's conceited at best, and condescending at worst.

Incidentally, I worked as a genetic researcher in college. Furthermore, the project I was working on had to do with the genetics of dependency--in other words, addiction. We were, in essence, determining whether or not alcoholism and other drug dependency could be linked to genetics. I believe, based on this research, that it is.

There are a lot of ways in which our physical bodies create psychological situations which then induce us to behave in certain ways. For example, thermoregulation is most frequently accomplished behaviourally--in other words, if we are ill and need to boost up the body temperature in order to fight the infection, our bodies will most frequently induce what is essentially a craving for blankets and warm drinks and that sort of thing.

I don't think that it's easy to fight the body when it decides it wants something. I don't think that alcoholics or junkies should just have better self-control. And I don't, for that matter, think that people who are severly overweight have much choice in the matter, whether the main cause is physical or psychological, for the same reason--I think in these cases, the line between the two blurs or even ceases to exist.

I guess I'm just tired of people finding excuses for being pigs. For a while, evolution was all the rage--well, you see, men have evolved to need to have sex with multiple partners in order to increase their odds of reproducing. Now it's genes.

There isn't a lot of proof for any of this. I don't think you really could accurately prove any of it, since it's a classic nature/nurture question. By the time a man is in high school, he's been socialized to look at women a certain way. I hate to use examples from personal experience, because they're not really valid scientific proof of anything, but you know, when you have a friend who takes everything you say as a sexual innuendo, you start thinking that way whenever you're around them. And really there's no way a man could grow up in an average western town without being socialised this way.

Regardless, it doesn't matter. I'm tired of people pointing out the way species in the animal kingdom act as proof that some kind of behaviour or other is valid. Some members of the animal kingdom also eat their own young. I thought we were supposed to try to rise above animal nature, not emulate it.

I don't think there's anything wrong with trying to look your best, and I don't think that attractive people should have to downplay it or that they don't have a right to feel good about the way they look. But specific standards of female beauty have changed drastically over the years, and most of the current models of perfection are actually unhealthy, or, in the case of images bordering on the paedophilic, even immoral.

It also doesn't just have to do with women--there are segments of the gay community which are equally harsh to their men.

So the point of all of this is that if you're a jerk, you should spend time learning how to change your behaviour instead of trying to find ways in which to rationalise it.

THIS SONG HAS NO TITLE

The other day, I was reading back over some of the archives of this blog, and I was sort of surprised.

I was surprised because Matthew was an abusive jerk from the first time we really went out, and I was trying so hard to put a brave face on it, trying so hard to focus on the very occasional nice things that he said or did, and they're pretty much all I talked about. I didn't even mention the bad things for a long time.

I guess that makes sense in a way, because he had pretty well convinced me that if something upset me, it was because I was a faulty person; not grown up enough, not cosmopolitan enough. If I was only worldly enough, I wouldn't have a problem with him sleeping naked in the same bed as his ex-girlfriend.

But, you know, if you're dating someone and people feel the need to introduce you to him because you're at a pub and he's standing there with his arm around someone else and didn't greet you when you walked in, then it's not about being worldly enough or open enough. It's about being treated poorly.

I'm going to attempt to stop putting so much of a brave face on things.

Right now, things suck in a big way. Not everything--some things are really good. I'm in London, which is where I wanted to be for a while. Part of me wants to go home, but that's all right, too. I have good friends over here, finally. I have a good life in many ways--I can afford to pay my bills, I'm doing well at my job because I'm bloody good at it, and this weekend I have to go shopping to buy something to wear to a small gathering I'm going to next week that's hosted by Pierce Brosnan. I want to go home, but I'm not in a terrible rush to, because before I do I want to go to Italy, and I want to visit Bath and Stonehenge. And I think I have the time.

But on a personal level, things are tough. I've just had to say goodbye to someone I love terribly, and I tried really hard to fix things first. This seems to be an ongoing theme, and honestly, it's just too hard for me.

My family is full of genuinely good people, who I love, and who have obscenely difficult lives. And no matter how hard I work, and no matter how hard they work, it's like throwing grains of sand into the Grand Canyon. It's more than I can do, and I'm killing myself trying.

Sometimes I just want to lie down and be taken care of. Just hand it all over to someone else, and say, all right, you be the grownup today.

I was actually relieved when Rich said goodbye--not because I don't love him, because I do. But he's being the grownup. I didn't have to do it, because he's doing it for me.

So my life, too, is often obscenely difficult. But right now there's something really beautiful about it, too, which is a pleasant change. And the things that are difficult have gone so far beyond my abilities, that some of the pressure has gone. I could stop paying my bills and stop eating entirely, and I still wouldn't have the physical resources to cure anything. And I could devote all of my time and emotional energy to things, and it still wouldn't be enough. So I no longer have to fear that there's something I've missed, and should just work a tiny bit harder.

SKINNY WOMEN AND STONED MEN

First off, I would like to explain that some of my best friends are skinny women. No, really. I have nothing against them in general.

But this is the second time I've worked with skinny women who somehow seem to know whenever I or anyone else is eating anything, and they show up to bum food.

In general, I don't mind sharing with people, but it's the sort of constant, lingering presence that gets to me, along with the knowledge that if they weighed as much as I do, they'd never do this, because they'd know that people would talk about them behind their backs. "Of course she's fat! Do you see how much she eats?"

New life lesson learned: vultures are always thin!

Speaking of fat...today I went to the "hot" counter of a local grocery store, and purchased something sealed in a bag, thinking it was chicken. It ended up being something called a "bacon joint," which appears to be a particularly fatty ham. I'm such a good Jew. I made a ham sandwich, and now I'm fairly certain I'm never eating again as long as I live, so help me David Bowie. (I know that David Bowie is not god, and that God would be upset if I were to imply that he was, but I also think that he must have attained some kind of minor deity position by now.)

Wasn't that just the most fascinating anecdote ever? Moving right along....

I've recently gotten back in touch with a man with whom I went to University. His name's Dan, and I have him to thank for my descent into Rock and Roll Madness. I was kind of a classical snob before I went to school, and Dan was a guitar player who was one of the best musicians at school, and he had an abiding fondness for bands like Led Zeppelin. I figured if he liked them, there must be something there to listen to, so listen I did.

Dan had really long hair when we were in school, and I was jealous because it seems so unfair that there are men who have better hair than me. It was gorgeous and long and curly, and then one day he cut it all off, because he figured he was going to need to find a job after graduation, and he couldn't exactly interview looking like, well, someone who listened to Led Zeppelin.

At any rate, the day after he cut his hair, he walked into the Music Department office, and the receptionist said, "Dan! You cut your hair! You look so clean!"

He responded, "Yeah, I figured if I was going to cut my hair, I may as well go the whole way and start bathing, too."

He talked to me about this, and was talking about how prejudiced people are about various weird things like hair. I was surprised to find out that he was insightful. Not because he was a long-haired guitar player, but because he was too cool to be "wise". Speaking of prejudices.

I went through with the graduation ceremony, mostly because Daddy was about to die, and it seemed important to have him attend my graduation ceremony. Dan showed up so stoned that we eventually made a deal that he would just follow me around, and do whatever I did, to get through it without too much going wrong. I had a plastic farm on top of my mortarboard, and I remember wondering if he'd later think he'd imagined it.

We did somehow get through the ceremony.

Anyway, when we started emailing, I said, "Dan, you owe me for getting you through graduation." He responded with, "Forgive me, but I don't remember why--I don't remember much about graduation...." Big surprise! Then later he said, "Oh, I remember I used to call you Brothel!"

This all seems so unfair. Graduation is a blur, but he remembers that he used to call me "Brothel."

Life is so unfair.

I'M A LESBIAN!

Friday night I went to Matrix III with my friend, Sarah. It was rubbish, but not as rubbishy as we thought it was going to be, so a good time was had by all. Afterwards, we went to a nearby pub.

When we got to the pub, I ended up putting on red Hedwig lips to demonstrate...something. It escapes me at the moment, but trust me, it made sense at the time. A woman who had obviously had more than her share of E that evening thought that my lips were the most beautiful thing she had ever seen, as evidenced by the fact that she told me so at least 30 times in the space of 10 minutes.

After we left the pub, we decided to see if we could find any place to buy alcohol. Of course we couldn't--it was almost 1 a.m. But, knowing that I had several bottles of wine at home, we headed back toward my place.

About 5 blocks from my flat, we saw two men get out of a mini cab. Somehow in the tussle, one of the men got punched and landed on his back, banging the back of his head against the concrete. By the time we reached them, he was standing, and blood was literally pouring out of his nose and mouth. I walked a few paces and called an ambulance, while Sarah tried to keep the man conscious and holding his nose. Both of the two men who got out of the cab were very stoned, but I guess that just goes without saying. The one who wasn't bleeding held several conversations with Sarah's breasts, and with mine.

When the ambulance arrived, the bleeding man's pervert friend turned to me and Sarah and said, "So...are you two...together?"

"Why, yes, yes we are," we responded simultaneously.

And that's how I became a lesbian.

I've never been a lesbian before. Well, that's not strictly accurate. When I moved into my flat, my flatmate gave me the keyson a long chain, because you have to open two door locks at once, and the two locks are kind of far apart. Keys on a chain. Yup. I'm a lesbian.

So Sarah and I stayed up until about 4 am talking, and then spent Saturday wandering around Camden, shopping. She bought a skirt for this Event we're going to later this month. At some point in the afternoon, she said something about not being a lesbian, and I said, "That's not what you said last night."

I have waited my *whole life* to say that line.

In other news, I spent almost all of my remaining money on an acoustic guitar. Mind you, what I really need is a keyboard, but a) I can't afford one, and b) if I bought one over here, I'd have that whole power-conversion thing to deal with when I go back to the States, and so all in all I figured it would be better to buy a guitar.

I had to have *some* kind of a musical instrument. I've been going crazy. I mean, really stark, raving mad. I can't handle going this long without being in a band or something, and although I managed all right when I was too sick to walk, now that I'm mobile again, not making some kind of music is driving me nuts. I have a violin, but the noises I make on it can't really be described as "music."

I'm feeling really guilty about buying this. I guess...well, there are people in my life who are suffering financially, and I could have given the money I spent on this guitar to them. Someone asked me if I could lend her money, and I didn't have it. But then I made the choice to sacrifice eating anything interesting for the rest of the month in order to get this guitar (although that's not strictly true, since I had sushi the other day, to which I am addicted), but the thing is that I didn't make that same decision and send that same money to her.

Mind you, the amount she needed was far more than this guitar cost, and I honestly didn't have it at all. But I feel like I should have sent as much as I spent on this guitar.

I think I rationalise things too easily.

Observations from today:

When, upon arrival at the office, your shoes are greeted with:

"Holy sh**" (x2)

and

"Good God"

from your male coworkers, you have been successful.

POSSIBLY MY NEW FAVORITE ARTIST

I love Edward Monkton.

IT LIVES

All right, it's been six months, but I'm finally going to start updating this again.

So what's been happening?

Well, firstly, I've had what they think was a severe inner ear infection, this diagnosis based on the fact that I was unable to stand up without falling for about six months. I'm actually scheduled for an MRI in a couple of months to rule out brain tumors (I've already had two sets of tests which resulted in the helpful diagnosis of, "yes, you are definitely dizzy and will fall over without drugs"--go, National Health Service!) but quite frankly, I think that if I had brain tumors, by then the defining symptom would be "dead patient."

Basically, the sore throat I had in my last post probably just migrated to other parts of my head. I've now been well for almost two weeks, and am amazed at how fantastic it feels. I'm still slightly dizzy (when I close my eyes in the shower or whatever), but the doctor said that I might sustain some permanent damage from all of this. As far as I'm concerned, this just means that I have an official medical excuse for being the klutz I've always been.

I have a new job--a permanent one. I am working as a half-graphic-designer, half-computer-programmer. The graphic designer part was a bit of an accident--I actually interviewed for just a computer programming position, but they were also looking for a graphic designer. So they gave me a test on my design skills, and now here I am.

I finally caught up with my friend, Sarah--not the one who I may have talked about when I first got here, but the one from South Africa. Sarah's fabulous, and has saved my life. Seriously--between her, Andy, and my friend Glen at work, my life has been saved.

Sarah has to be my friend for the rest of my life, simply because when people ask how we met, I get to say, "Oh, we met at a Buddhist retreat in California." Even if Sarah were dreadful, which she isn't, I couldn't give that up. We met at a convention kind of a thing that was being held there, and almost everyone at the convention was wonderful. Sarah and I became friends, and both of us just happened to move to London. She was gone for a while when I got here (long story about an Australian boyfriend), but then we finally got together again, and spending time with non-insane people (or at least people who are only insane in benign ways), including her, has made life a place where things make sense again.

I'm amazed at just how difficult the last few years have been, in retrospect. Even though I've been sick for the last six months, the lack of personal trauma has resulted in me slowly getting back to my old self again. There are still some residual anxieties, but all in all, things are looking up.

The one person who has been exposed to more of these residual anxieties than any other would probably be my friend, Rich, who is another friend who I have to keep forever because of the way we met. I was laughing about this three weeks ago when we went to dinner with a group of his friends, and the following conversation took place:

Jessica: So, how did you two meet?

Rich: I insulted her on an email list, and she wrote to me off-list saying, "Look, I lack the cerebral testosterone to care who wins this argument." I thought, "Wow. That's good. Why haven't I ever said that to Mike Rosenstark?"

What Rich didn't mention is that I also called him an "arrogant prick." (I can't even actually say that, and typing it was an anomaly.) He responded with a very nice apology, said that he didn't realise at the time that what he was typing would come off that way, and asked if he could buy me a drink the next time we were at the same show, to demonstrate the fact that he is not actually a jerk.

My thought was, "We're going to be friends for the rest of our lives. You know that when you call someone an arrogant prick in your first conversation with him, it's fate."