Tag Archives: Me talking about myself again

Shards and splinters

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Ok, so I know it’s Friday. I usually post on Thursday. I’m trying really hard to get my shit together and I needed the day yesterday. Sorry if I’ve ruined anyone’s blog-reading schedule. Really, what are the odds of that happening? But I guess time just got away from me. Funny, the way we talk about time like it’s a thing you can keep or use or save up. I’m reading a cool book about time right now, actually. I’ll blog about that soon.

Meanwhile, in the spirit of keeping my shit together, I’ve made a list for this week. Because I don’t have a real blog post and making lists makes me feel like I’ve actually done something. Helpful? Or delusional? I don’t know. But as a stopgap measure it’s working for now. A list of hopelessly disconnected but still somewhat relevant thoughts from this week, as well as a sublist (ooh, fancy!) of things I want to write about. Eventually. Soon. Ish.

Urm. Here you go:

List one – my stupid actual life:

I’m still working on quitting smoking. Down to about forty a week. A big improvement, but the real story here is: I only had one yesterday. One! Take that, nicotine addiction. If you were a person, I’d kick you in the balls.

My dog had puppies. She’s a little special needs, has a bad back, so it was super stressful. But everybody’s fine. Five pretty babies. They opened their eyes a couple of days ago and are acting like they want to learn to walk now. Screechy wee buggers. We’ve all just given up on sleep completely.

It’s tremendously geeky, and I’m prepared to be made fun of for it, but I’ve started RPGing my life. Because, you know, setting attainable goals and quantifying behavior and whatnot have never been my strong suit. I’m an aaahh-tist. A ninja list maker, and painfully organized, but trying to do the math on why I accomplish or do not accomplish the things I want is really hard. Graphs and charts and character sheets are helping. I suppose I should thank the ghost of Gary Gygax.

Jackie Kashian started following me on Twitter. Holy crap! She’s a stand-up comedian and I love her stuff. Check her out. I have no idea why she started following me, though. Unsolvable Twitter mysteries are one of those modern living problems that I just can’t wrap my head around.

List two – my awesome blog life (or, things you can look forward to hearing me bitch about):

SCOTUS, DOMA, Prop 8, hatred and morality in America. I’m waiting until we get a verdict before I take this one on. Mmm, bigfatjuicy ranty rant. Delicious.

Season four of Eureka is totally off the rails. Seriously, what the fuck happened? I’ve got to watch season five (which I think is only a half season) to see if they get it together or blow it completely.

All the conventions and festivals that I can’t go to. If I were vastly wealthy, this is what I’d spend my money on. Because there are awesome people I want to meet, congregated together in warm places in the world right now, you guys. And I’m jealous. And bored. And cold.

The ebook imprint argument between Random House and the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America (of which John Scalzi is the current president – he documented this pretty thoroughly on his blog, but I want to chime in).

Google Reader is going away. This is really just a petty inconvenience for me, but the guy who invented RSS killed himself recently so I think it’s interesting timing. What does RSS do for the interwebs? For us? What does it all mean? Also, I hate Feedly.

Tomorrow, March 30th, is International TableTop Day. Table top gaming is making a huge comeback. How weird is that? Thanks, Wil Wheaton. (Check here for local events, and keep me posted if you go to a cool thing. Again, bored and jealous.)

Jonathan Coulton versus Glee, and the changing nature of copyright law. I’m waiting for a verdict on this one, too. It’s kind of related to a bunch of things, including the Random House/SFWA argument, Amanda Palmer’s TEDTalk, and social media culture. It’s big. It’s sprawly. I’m so stoked to write it.

I’m still waiting for my buddy to get that short story back to me so I can post it here. I haven’t forgotten. I’m not backing out. But editing is the most important part of writing. So be patient. You’ll see a piece of fiction from me. Soon. I promise.

David Foster Wallace and this weird awesome thing.

And oh so many other things that have been going on. They found Richard III’s body. The Phelps granddaughters left the WBC. Neil Gaiman wrote a crowdsourced book. Hipster zombies. It’s a really strange, wonderful time to be alive, y’all. I want to write it all down. I will. Just not today.

Self-improvement makes me cranky

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Oh, great. Another blog post where Vanessa just talks about herself. Bleh.

Shut up. You love me. I’m awesome.

Wow. I wrote that little hypothetical argument with the theoretical “you,” but it totally sounds like the inside of my head. That’s tremendously unsettling.

Sorry. I’m all scatterbrained and out of sorts. I’m trying to quit smoking. I know this may not be a blogworthy subject, but it’s bringing up all kinds of interesting questions. Introspection. Self-analysis. Icky things like that.

This started because I had a really weird moment the other day. I was driving down the road and I thought to myself, “If I get to live to be an old lady, that means that I’ll have time to do a lot of cool things. I could learn to speak Chinese. I could rebuild a classic car. I could walk across the country.” This is a weird moment because I don’t usually think that far ahead. Like, old lady far ahead. I can think maybe someday future kids or maybe someday future bookstore, but that’s about where it all gets fuzzy for me. I’m very comfortable with my own mortality. It’s inevitable, and death can just show up on your doorstep uninvited whenever he wants. It’s why I’ve written my own eulogy many times and keep a current will. But I had this unexpected little string of extra-long-term thoughts and I got a butterfly flutter in my gut, like you do when you’re excited about something. I don’t get excited like that, physically, very often. I get nervous a lot, but that feels different. I’m much more familiar with being nervous. Anyway, point is, if I want to live that long, I should probably not beat up my body quite so much. I’ve only got the one, you know. Such as it is. And the grossest thing that I do to it is smoking.

Ugh. It’s so fucking gross. My teeth are all jacked up. I smell like an ashtray. My fingernails are yellow. And it’s completely unfulfilling. The only thing one gets out of smoking cigarettes is the enjoyment of smoking cigarettes. That’s it. There’s no bonus. There’s no upside. It’s not like smoking weed where you get the extra added benefit of being high at the end. There’s no reward system to smoking except you get to keep wanting to smoke. Seems fallacious. In retrospect. Oh! And it’s ridiculously expensive. Let’s do the math. I pay $7.50 per pack for cigarettes, now, in California. When I started smoking I paid about $3.50 per pack, in the 90s, in Virginia (the holy land of smoking). I smoke half a pack a day now, but at my worst I smoked about a pack and a half. So let’s call that an even pack a day at $5.50 per pack, just taking the median numbers because I suck at math. Over sixteen years that’s $32,142. That’s almost half my college education. That’s three used cars. That’s a down payment on a house. That’s a good chunk of the therapy my children will certainly need. That’s money that I pretty much just set on fire. And as much as I love watching things burn, that figure hurts to look at.

That’s a little off-track. Money is good motivation because I seem to be consistently broke, but this should really be more about my health. I’m not a terribly self-aware person, in a physical sense. I’m extremely clumsy. I don’t give a shit about clothes. I tend to think that I’m invisible in social situations (which is either an unhealthy delusion or a superpower, I haven’t decided yet). I ignore my body most of the time and pay way more attention to my brain. And if I’m being brutally honest, both of them need (and deserve) work. That’s the crossroads where I find myself, hoping to reconcile these two concepts. Because I just turned thirty, right? Physically it’s all downhill from here. So I’m trying to train myself to think of my brain as just another organ in a bigger system (which is really hard) and to think of my body as being a healthy vehicle to carry my brain around in (which is actually more difficult than the other thing). It can’t be one or the other, it has to be both. Neither is more or less important. Although every time my brain goes to shit, my body follows. Oddly, having always had a less-than-healthy body, I never thought of it as also being directly related the other way around. But it is. Obviously. And I’m not talking about how I look, by the way. Let’s just clear that up ahead of time. I have allergies and asthma and a weird heart thing, as well as depression and anxiety which affect the body more than most people think. One of my legs is shorter than the other. I’ve got a fun inventory of exciting skin conditions. I have freaky tiny hands. Not a great combination of factors. So I’m just not really “connected to my body,” or whatever enlightened thing I’m supposed to say. I think of it more like driving a car. Or that lifting robot thing from the third Alien movie.

My mother was a champion bodybuilder in the 80s. There’s a long list of awesome things she’s done, but I think that’s the weirdest. She’s a total badass, my mom. But her being a wicked hot health nut made it very difficult to be an awkward little fat kid with glasses and braces and asthma, right? “Hey, sweetpea, let’s go lift weights! Let’s go to an aerobics class! Let’s go for a run!” Sounds like fun to her, torture to me. I wanted to be an athletic kid so I could hang out with her, do things that she would think were a good way to spend one’s time, and make her proud of me. As opposed to sitting under a tree, reading books, eating my secret stash of Oreos, which sounds like little Vanessa’s perfect day. I’m not good at all that sporty stuff, though, and I don’t like doing things that I’m not good at. I really tried, I swear, but I couldn’t help hating it. I tried to play softball (and got cut from the team three years in a row). I tried to play volleyball (and broke my nose twice). I even tried cheerleading (they did not appreciate sarcasm or eye-rolling from the goth girl). See the problem? I’m physically much more suited to playing games like chess, Magic, and what-can-we-turn-into-a-bong?.

So on top of all that hating-my-body-because-it-doesn’t-work-properly bullshit, I’ve been smoking since high school. Half my life. My dad was a heavy smoker. As are most of the friends that I’ve had since childhood. And my sister, until last summer. And my husband. Not that being surrounded by a thing is any reason to not quit that thing. That would be a cop out. I’m just saying that it’s not the easiest environment to work in. Peer pressure is a bitch, and always has been. Maybe that’s why I smoke in the first place. If I’m going to hang out with smokers, I think it’s important to tell myself that I don’t have to be totalitarian or dictatorial about quitting. I don’t have to pick a cigarette and say “this is the last one ever ever ever,” because that’s just setting myself up to fail, right? Moderation is an easier goal than abstinence. And one every once in a while is worlds better for me than the half a pack a day I go through now. Which isn’t that much to begin with, relatively speaking. In college I would smoke a pack and a half a day, easy, and more if I was drinking heavily. How did I survive college? Seriously? I should probably not be alive.

Now that I’ve spent a thousand words talking how gross and broke and broken and weird I am, I’d like to follow that up by saying that I’m fucking charming as hell. I’m smart and funny and a blast to hang out with. Let me assure you that none of us wants me to die over something as stupid as smoking. It’s a dumbshit way to kill myself. It’s slow and painful and just not dramatic enough, frankly. It’s the most boring kind of suicide ever. And I’d like to think that if I go through this process now, tough as it may be, one day I’ll get to be that fun old lady who speaks Chinese and drives a little sports car she restored herself and has stories about walking across the country. And more. More than I can even imagine now, from where I’m sitting. If I kill myself, I kill her, and that’s not fair. I should give her a fighting chance. Wish us luck.

“And it makes me wonder…”

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It was a gorgeous day, sometime in the summer of 1997, and I was riding through the woods in a red convertible Jensen-Healey with my friend David. I said, “Hey, I really like this song. Who is this?” At which point he calmly pulled over, turned off the engine, and started lecturing (screaming) at me. Which I totally deserved. Because it was Stairway to Heaven.

I know, right?

I was fourteen! It was the 90s! I should’ve known Stairway. Or at least have heard it. Especially considering that my parents had every Led Zeppelin album on vinyl sitting in my living room. Guess I just hadn’t worked my way through the catalogue of awesome records yet. I got through Queen and Howlin’ Wolf and stopped, maybe? Anyway. David made me a mix tape (that’s right, I said tape!) with Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and a bunch of other classic stuff on it. He filled in the gaps in my rock canon knowledge, and I taught him about Nine Inch Nails, industrial, and electronica. And we talked music for the next sixteen years, among other things. I still have that tape somewhere, I just don’t have a tape player anymore. (Which is kind of a drag, isn’t it? How many mix tapes have been abandoned in the past decade or so? How much love is just sitting around in boxes collecting dust?)

So that tape started a kind of cascade, right? An avalanche of music stuff and life stuff. I firmly believe that some things are put on your path for a reason. (Even if they come along with, weirdly, a cute boy in a hot sports car. That doesn’t happen too often, let me tell you.) I became obsessed with classic rock, abruptly ending my goth phase and starting my pot-smoking/tie-dyed-shirt-wearing/Kerouac-reading phase. Maybe that all would’ve happened eventually on its own, but at least this way I had a badass soundtrack. The Doors, Hendrix, Joplin, the Grateful Dead, The Who, Aerosmith, the Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, Pink Floyd, Fleetwood Mac and, most importantly, Led motherfucking Zeppelin.

Oh, Led Zeppelin. How I adore them so. And it’s been forty-four years since the first album came out, so I’m not going to waste your time telling you how awesome they are. You live in the world. You know how awesome they are. I do not need to plug Led Zeppelin. But I’ve been listening to them a lot the past couple of weeks and they’ve been on my mind so I want to talk about them. So there. And I should probably go ahead and tell you that if you don’t share my stance on Led Zeppelin being the greatest rock band ever, I respect your opinion. But bringing extra special snark to the blog comments table (and/or just telling me that I’m wrong) does not strengthen your argument. You know who you are.

Led Zeppelin received the Kennedy Center Honor in December, along with David Letterman, Buddy Guy, and Dustin Hoffman. All greats in their fields, obviously. In tribute, a bunch of artists performed their songs. That’s got to be nerve-wracking. I’ll say the Lenny Kravitz was alright (no worse than any of his other songs), and Kid Rock just needed to sober up and sit down. But, luckily, Ann and Nancy Wilson from Heart nailed it (nay – they fucking slaughtered it!) with their version of Stairway. And that gentleman on the drums? That’s Jason Bonham, son of John Bonham. He may never be as great as his dad, but no one else deserved to be playing that song on that stage. Amazing. It made Robert Plant cry, which, in turn, makes me cry every time I watch it. I’m such a sap.

Go ahead. Watch it again.

I always thought that song needed a gospel choir. Seriously, I did.

So after that show happened, I may have gotten sucked down a Led Zeppelin/YouTube rabbit hole. I think humans are hibernating mammals. This is not a widely accepted theory. However, I will submit as evidence that every winter I want to curl up with a book and a blankie and listen to the same five albums over and over and just eat chicken pot pie until spring comes. And this time I’ve been listening to Led Zeppelin albums constantly. (In my nest. With my chicken pot pie. It’s like heaven, except it can’t be because snow exists.) Also watching old concert footage of them. And documentaries. And I might have ordered a couple of biographies about them that haven’t shown up in the mail yet.

Yes, this seems obsessive. It happens. But for good reason. Their music never fails to melt my face. There’s pure blues in there. There are notes that shouldn’t be possible. There’s mandolin right alongside blistering electric guitar. There’s drumming that makes you appreciate madness. There’s sex and drugs and hunger and loss and love and death. There’s even fucking Hobbit stuff in there. A lot of it. Somehow Robert Plant makes Hobbit references sound very British and literary and deeply poetic and just a touch sexy. Not nerdy at all. I’d call that a superpower. But it might be the accent.

(Later, with caveats and addendums)

I spent about a week trying to find a way to end this blog post. There’s really no good way to do it. And I finally figured out that, while the Kennedy Center Honors make the subject convenient and topical, it wasn’t Led Zeppelin that I was trying to write about at all. Basically everything above just amounts to me saying, “I’ve always tended to geek out over music. Led Zeppelin = good.” And that’s boring.

Is it okay that it’s boring? I don’t know. My goal here has been to tell you about new and exciting things that I’ve run across in my efforts to try to be more well-rounded in my newly-minted digital paradigm. It’s been a year and I can’t say that I’ve plumbed all those depths yet, but I definitely feel like my writing is suffering for trying to maintain a sense of wonder about it all. It’s getting a little disheartening, frankly.

And I realized that with writing even this boring nonsense, as with all art, once you get past the surface, past the shiny colors or the new medium, all that’s left is the artist. It’s been creeping in. I’ve talked about myself more lately than I ever did in the posts a year ago or even six months ago. That’s a little scary. But good scary, right? Can I talk about what makes me mad? Or sad? Or terrified? Is it safe? Is it good? Is it art? Does it matter? Does talking about the best rock band ever change anything? No. It’s a drop in a bucket, a ripple in a pond. Is it going to make you run out and buy a Led Zeppelin album? Probably not, if only because they’ve been around long enough that by now if you were going to like them at all you already would. They’re not new and exciting, but they’re important. And more than that, they’re important to me.

So I took a little while and stepped away from this post and when I came back I saw that what I really wanted to write about was that long-ago mix tape from my friend. That makes me cringe. It’s just a tape. But it isn’t. And writing about why it’s so important to me seems self-indulgent and silly. Something worthy of conversation, but not necessarily of expository ramblings. But then, who’s to decide what’s “worthy”? (The voice in my head is saying, “I am, motherfuckers.” I have to fight her because clearly that’s just crazy talk.) As much as I don’t like to go on and on about myself it seems inevitable. It seems right. It seems, oddly enough, relevant. How the hell did that happen?

I know it sounds stupid, but there’s no way for me to thank David enough for making me that tape. Because of the aftermath of the thing, more than for the actual thing. First of all, you have to understand that I grew up in a place that exists about ten years behind the rest of the normal human timeline. So when I received that tape, our town was about where the everyone else in America was in the mid-1980s, feathered hair and all. A mix tape was hard work. And it meant a lot. I may technically be too young to appreciate the “Love is a mix tape” philosophy á la High Fidelity, but I’m damn close in practice.

Because of that tape, I learned about classic rock in the obsessive way that I learn about anything. I just swam in it for as long as possible, making it a part of everything that I did or thought or was at the time. That’s a fucked up way to live a life. Doesn’t make it wrong, though. And becoming well-versed in Led Zeppelin changed me in two very important ways. (I can’t believe I’m about to write this, you guys. Bear with me.)

1 – The Husband is a drummer, and he learned to play the drums by wearing out many a Led Zeppelin cd. (You know when they skip that fucks them up, right? Try playing drums next to a mid-90s boombox.) One of the first conversations we had, that wasn’t about me getting bumped out of a Magic tournament, was about how awesome Led Zeppelin is. We bonded over it. We dated. We got married. Our favorite song to sing together is Fool in the Rain. We actually take walks in the rain because of it. How dear and how precious are those moments.

2 – I learned enough about classic rock to be able to talk about it with my father. In the last year of his life, we talked about music constantly. He was a blues guitarist. We’d stay up all night discussing who was the better drummer, Ginger Baker or Mitch Mitchell. We’d go through albums and talk about why this note was best at this key change or that register wrong for that singer. We bonded over it. He died. But I’ve got all those lengthy conversations. And they’re not going anywhere. How dear and precious were those moments, as well.

I wonder if David realizes what he did with that tape. I don’t know if I’ve ever told him. (Sorry, buddy. But at least I asked your permission before telling that opening story. Hugs!) He’s one of a very few friends who knew my dad before he died. They had the same birthday. And they talked about music, too. Funny, at the time I thought it was weird that my dad knew that much about Led Zeppelin. And The Husband was the best man in David’s wedding. Everything comes full circle, somehow, with that. Maybe it’s just in my head. Probably.

So, yeah. Now I’m feeling all raw in the nerves. Maybe we’re starting a new phase here on the blog. Maybe not. I really don’t know. But I’m sorry I got all squidgy on you without fair warning. I didn’t expect it, either. But you’ve gotta write what wants written or it’ll drive you crazy. That particular hamster wheel is a bitch.

A made-up holiday

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So, The Husband and I don’t do Valentine’s Day. I hate greenhouse flowers and would rather get presents or candy for absolutely no reason on a random day. And I live in the forest so I don’t really notice those weird holidays when the banks are closed and everyone gets off work (except when the one store close to us sells out of beer – the horror!). I only do holidays when I’m required to either hang out with my family or blow shit up. So it pains me deeply, on principle, to tell you that I may be accidentally inventing my own personal ridiculous holiday. Maybe not “holiday.” “Repetitive celebration of an important landmark”? It’s a bit wordy. Whatever.

Point is, this week is my one-year Blogiversary! This might seem somewhat self-indulgent. I assure you, it is. However, in my little world where nothing much happens and when it does, I usually cringe and quiver over it, Blogiversary is a big deal. Because I never would’ve had the balls to do the writery thing in this way a couple of years ago, and I am shocked and amazed at how much I enjoy it. And at how much I enjoy knowing that you guys are reading it. Like, for example, last week? I more than doubled my standing record for number of hits in one day. That totally blows my mind. I still get the all-overs thinking about people reading my fiction, but the “my blog is published for the week so now people can read it” feeling? Amazeballs. (Also, do non-Southerners say “the all-overs”? It’s like the heebie jeebies and goosebumps had a baby. The creeps, if you will.)

Anyway, I just wanted to say thanks. Big, fat, juicy thanks. You guys are awesome and it makes me want to cry how much I appreciate you.

In other news, I just got back from my three week trip home for the holidays. Which is why I don’t have a real blog post for you this week. And why I’m posting this tidbit a day late. I am absolutely brain fried. I need a vacation from my vacation, basically. Two days on my own couch with local beer and a Star Trek marathon, and I’ll be good as new. I’ll be back next week with something deep and meaningful, I’m sure. Probably. Meanwhile, here’s a list of fun facts that I learned while I was away:

Hipster hunting in the airport is getting easier, and becoming a less fulfilling pastime.

Apparently I quite enjoy watching college football, now that I know the rules (I’d like to thank my obsessive sisters for that one – if I have to get cable over this I’m blaming them).

Old people and babies can smell fear.

Pabst Blue Ribbon won said ribbon for being the best new beer at the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago. I think it might actually say so on the can, but who reads the can? I had to read a book to learn that.

Finding a spinach salad in Alabama is a task worthy of Sherlock fucking Holmes.

Always take the big suitcase and leave room in it when you’re going on a trip that may involve gifts of any kind.

Long-term parking at San Francisco International Airport costs eighteen dollars a day. Aren’t you glad you know that ahead of time? You’re welcome.

Fudge is not a food group.

The bum with a stroller full of goods for sale outside of City Lights Bookstore is surprisingly friendly.

Security will go through your backpack if there’s nothing in it but books. I don’t know what they look like on an x-ray machine, but it scared the shit out of them. Twice.

That’s all my kernels of knowledge for this week. Thanks again for reading this nonsense for a whole year, you guys. A whole year! I did a thing for a whole year! Hooray! Happy Blogiversary. It’s as much your made-up holiday as mine. Couldn’t have done it without you. Hugs. So many hugs.

Is it always going to be weird?

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I got to come home for Christmas this year. I didn’t think we’d be able to, but my in-laws (correction: my awesome, awesome in-laws) bought us plane tickets so we could make it out to the east coast. I haven’t been home in almost two years. And it’s weird.

Why is it weird? It shouldn’t be. I know this town like the back of my hand, right? I lived here for thirteen years. As much as I hated growing up here it is, undeniably, home. This juxtaposition of comfort and anxiety kind of bugs me out. I feel like I’m always looking over my shoulder a little. Waiting for someone to recognize me or want to talk to me or, horror of horrors, reminisce about high school. Do they all have collective amnesia? Why does no one remember how they didn’t want to talk to me in high school? It’s like the one grocery store in town exists in some kind of awful sorcery bubble. Whatever. It’s fine. All angst is forgiven. But just because we’re all thirty now doesn’t mean that we have anything in common and I sure as shit don’t want to talk about sixteen-year-old me. She was kind of an asshole.

The town itself hasn’t changed much. Small southern towns don’t really do stunning transformations, barring some natural disaster or major financial revitalization. A couple of things have moved around. Some buildings are gone. Some have been renovated. There’s a new crosswalk on Main Street. Apparently the gymnasium of my elementary school recently caved in (twenty years too late for that little piece of serendipity). It’s like when you have a friend who you see every day and then you don’t see them for a long time, and suddenly you can see how drastically they’ve changed. Whereas before you wouldn’t have noticed because the weight gain or the weird hair seemed gradual, right? I don’t know. It’s a small town just like any other small town. But this one is mine. And that’s weird.

Again: why is it weird? I don’t fucking know, you guys. That’s the point. There’s this cultural assumption that coming home should be easy, especially at the holidays. You get to see your family and sit on familiar furniture and eat your mom’s cooking and tell stories and laugh and bask in the glow of comfort. And all of that is true, I suppose, about this particular trip (except that I’m eating my mother-in-law’s cooking so there’s way more deep frying involved and it is fan-fucking-tastic). But there’s an undercurrent of weirdness that I can’t quite pin down. An almost undetectable hum of anxiety. Maybe that’s just operant conditioning. I’m here therefore I’m anxious. Is that why I’m freaked out by being here as opposed to somewhere else? I don’t feel this way when I go other places that are familiar. But I never lived anywhere else for as long, either. I only grew up here. I only got my metaphorical battle scars here.

Another point that’s worth mentioning: I don’t really have a place that’s mine here anymore. My in-laws’ house is comfortable and familiar and I spent a lot of time here when I was younger, but this isn’t the house I grew up in. That house got sold several years ago and I can’t go back to it. There’s a lovely family living there now, fixing it up, raising kids, farming the land, doing right by the place. But it will never be my house again. It will never be the place I get to go for Christmas. That particular warm fuzzy does not exist for me. I could drive there with my eyes closed (and have, actually, with assistance – don’t tell my mother), but I can’t turn down the driveway anymore. I can’t walk the trail through the woods where I spent most of my childhood. I can’t take my maybe someday future kids to the river where I learned to fish. I can’t go sit and have a beer in the sunshine under the tree where we planted my dad’s ashes. This is all sounding really bucolic and sappy, isn’t it? A weird contradiction from my bitching about living here? It’s true. My childhood was a study in contradictions. But that’s a long story.

Don’t get me wrong. My in-laws and that whole side of the family are amazing people. I want to make it very clear that I love them and I’m always welcome here. Also, my sister is here, so I’m always able to hang out at her house. The other day she told me that she’s glad I’m comfortable enough to take a nap on her couch. Made me want to cry a little. So sweet, my little sister. And I have friends here who always make me welcome, unconditionally and without hesitation. They’re family, too. Their homes are my home, in their own way. I think that’s really what makes home home, more than a specific house or any set of particular places. When I’m with any of these people, that anxious hum goes away for a while. And maybe that’s the point. Maybe that’s what I fail to remember when I get all tense thinking about coming home. That the hum can be alleviated, the anxiety made into a less formidable opponent.

Anyway. I didn’t mean to go off on a sentimental rant about the nature of home and family. But I guess it’s at the forefront of my thinking this time of year. It’s tough, being so isolated from friends and family like I am in California. Those people you want to hug when something good happens, or who you know wouldn’t care if you showed up on their doorstep sobbing at two in the morning? Those are the people who make it hard to live three thousand miles away. They’re what the “away” refers to (that sentence doesn’t technically work – my grammar seems to abandon me whenever I talk about this emotional stuff, please forgive me for that). I should probably try my best to absorb as many comfy home feely things as I can while I’m here, store them up. Here in the south, those feels seem to disguise themselves in the form of about eight kinds of fudge, which one must eat constantly to appease the gods of Christmas Fat. We’ll be back to nerdy things next week, I promise. Stay warm. Stay snuggly. Have a happy New Year.

Sometimes life gets in the way

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I’ve had a rough week, y’all. Ok, that’s not entirely true. I’ve had a rough summer. But this week in particular I just can’t seem to wrap my brain around anything.

And that’s the epic tale of how we ended up having no blog written at ten in the morning on blog day.

I tried to come up with a funny story I could tell, or a witty way to call myself out on my blogging ineptitude, but frankly I’ve got nothing. Besides about eighty things that I need to get done that I just…haven’t done.

Those of you who know me may be starting to get worried at this point. I assure you, I’m fine. Please don’t call the psych ward. Or my mother.

It’s just that in a bigger-picture sense, the dishes don’t fucking matter. Finding that thing that stinks in my fridge doesn’t fucking matter. Picking tomatoes or finishing any number of started-and-then-ignored projects or taking a shower – they don’t fucking matter. And I’d like to think that that attitude could motivate me to do something that does matter. Could I cure AIDS babies or end world hunger? Probably not. But I could do my part, right?

And then I feel very disconnected from the world. Living out here, there’s no outlet for altruistic action. Besides giving money, which will probably be misused, and which I seem to be chronically lacking anyway, so what’s the point in even thinking about it?

See? This is a vicious cycle. “Nothing matters. So do something that matters. But I can’t do anything that matters. So what’s the point in doing anything at all?” And we’re back to square one. With the extra added bonus of now being forced to think about all the people who have super shitty lives and who I’m not helping with all my I-could-be-doing-something-constructive time. Square one is a monument to defeatism and negativity, I have to say. And it seems to be full of dirty dishes. I hate square one. I want to burn it to the ground.

“Well, buck up, little buddy. Things aren’t that bad.” Fuck you, patronizing voice in my head. I know things aren’t that bad. My life is fantastic. It’s the world inside my skull that’s the problem. (Clearly. I mean, I’m having a hypothetical internal dialogue with myself and typing it out so I can post it on the internet. There is something fundamentally wrong with this situation.)

Anyway.

I’m sorry for being a downer. I don’t mean to bum you guys out. I just wanted to explain myself for not being on top of my game this week. I’m sure I’ll have something fun to talk about next time (Buckaroo Banzai, anyone? Mars Curiosity Rover? The extra-hilarious t-shirt I just got that says “Blogging Nerd: Because I Said So”?). Meanwhile, you should all watch this. It’s my current motivation. Sort of. A little. I’m going to go do the dishes.

The Dreaded Birthday (or: Self-indulgent Sentimentalist Bitchstravaganza with Accompanying Random Thought Spillage)

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Disclaimer: this might get sappy. Or bitchy. Or both. Buckle up, y’all. (Also, for our interactive segment at the end, you will need at least one rum and coke with two limes.)

I’m turning thirty tomorrow.

Yeah. That’s weird, right? (No, Vanessa, it’s not. It happens every day.) Yes I know that! But I don’t know how to feel about it. I mean, I know it’s all relative. I’ll probably feel just as weird about turning forty. Or eighty. I don’t feel old. I just feel weird. Like I should be a grownup by now. But what does that even mean? I have a job. I pay my bills (most of the time). I have car insurance and a will. I have a dog and houseplants and a pretty low level of bullshit in my life. That all feels grownup, I guess. But you know how when you’re young and you think you’re invincible and the thirty-somethings in your life seem sooo old? I don’t feel like that. I don’t feel like anyone should look at me and think “There goes a responsible adult. Good for her.” Maybe they do. Fuck, I don’t know. A hundred years ago I’d be a total grownup by now, no questions asked. Two hundred years ago I’d be a grandmother. Five hundred years ago I’d be dead. Or some kind of revered clan elder. Or something.

I’m not really articulating this very well. Whatever. I’m weirded out, is all. Off-balance.

I just thought I’d have some switch in my head that said “ding” and then I’d feel grownup. It never happened. I’m still just me, goofy as ever. Awkward, certainly, but more comfortable about it. I suppose that’s fine. That’s the trick, though, isn’t it? That self-acceptance? Why does that take so long? My generation is the first to be allowed this weird extended adolescence. Maybe it is our longer lifespans. Or our lack of something to rally around, anything to define us. Takes us longer to figure out what we want. What we stand for. How to get our shit together, basically.

But thirty’s going to be great. And damn it, if it’s not great on its own I will pound it into submission. I had this discussion with a friend a couple of weeks ago and we agreed that in your twenties you have memorable times, and in your thirties you have enjoyable times. Even though they may seem boring, and there’s nothing new to report, you genuinely enjoy things more because they’re not all new and weird and scary. Your twenties are like an acid trip. Your thirties should be like a good glass of wine. Or four. Or eight.

I’m glad I survived this long. That’s actually a pretty impressive feat, all things considered. How many times have I had to say “Dude, we almost just died”? Thanks for that, friends and other hangers-on throughout my teens and twenties. On the other hand, some of us didn’t make it this far. And I miss them. But they’re still around. I think of them and smile. They live on in a way, don’t they? When you smell a particular scent or hear that one song? They’re not here, but they’re not gone. Mostly, I’d just like to hear what they’d have to say about stuff.

Wait, wait, let’s go back. I got all maudlin and missed something important.

I’m glad I’m still here, yeah, but more than that: I’m glad I was even born. Thanks Mom and Dad. Seriously. People don’t thank their parents enough for having sex. I know that sounds ridiculous, but think about it: if these people weren’t attracted to each other you wouldn’t be here, so maybe give them a thumbs-up for having good taste. (And all that raising me stuff they did was pretty cool, too.) But really, more than our parents all having good timing, there are a ton of circumstances that had to line up for each of us to be here. And to be who we are. Eons and eons of time stacked up on itself, and somehow we all ended up here together. I love that.

Urgh. It’s just so weird. Thirty. I should’ve done something by now, right? All I am is here. And happy. Guess one can’t ask for more than that. Here with my thick glasses and my silly sweaters and my typewriter collection. At least I’ve embraced my…whateveryouwanttocallit…weirdness, awkwardness, nerdiness, blah blah blah labels, these past couple of years, stopped trying to cover it or overcome it (but clearly not tried to stop naming the bastard). Fuck that noise. I spent far too long doing that. If people don’t get me, they don’t get me, and that’s fine. Wonderful that our culture has shifted to a point where anything goes and that’s ok. Especially for young people. Hopefully they won’t have to be as angsty as we were in the 90′s (way back in the 20th century, you whippersnappers). What a weird time to grow up, the 90′s. Stuck between hair metal and emo, by way of grunge. Between cocaine and meth, by way of ecstasy. Between pay phones and Facebook, by way of cell phones as big as my head. “We are the middle children of history,” quoth the great bard Chuck Palahniuk. But, urm, anyway, like I said: I’m embracing. That’s my birthday resolution: to embrace. (I make birthday resolutions. I don’t make New Year’s resolutions anymore. Because really, who can stick to anything in the dead of winter?)

I suppose while we’re talking about self-acceptance and the 90′s and moving on I could ramble a bit about getting bullied in junior high and high school. Could? Alright, fuck it. I’m gonna. (Plus I said I would a couple of posts ago.)

You can get used to having no friends. Made me sad, but it made me stronger, I think. I didn’t go down a dark and scary route and get angry, at least. I never got legally committed. And I never got the shit kicked out of me, which is a bonus. I don’t think nerdy girls get beaten up the way that nerdy boys do. Which is not to say that there weren’t fights (redneck ladies can scrap, let me tell you) but I usually talked my way into fights and then talked my way right back out of them before anyone ever actually hit me. I once kept myself from getting beaten up by calling a girl (no, no, a very large girl with a pool cue) a “lugubrious pugilist.” Totally shut her down, like I’d hit restart on a computer, like I wasn’t even speaking English. Awesome. But here’s the unsolvable circular argument: Did I get picked on because I was weird? Or did I get weird because I was picked on? Maybe both. We’ll never know. Doesn’t really matter. Could’ve been worse.

As a point of good karma, though, if any of you happen to be those people who picked on me when I was young, I’m not going to tell you to fuck off and die. Oh, no, I’m totally over it. I’ll just be the bigger person and tell you that I hope you and your eighteen three-eyed flipperbaby crackerspawn are healthy and happy living in your meth lab trailer by the factory/railroad tracks/industrial runoff. See? Embracing. Forgiving. Moving on. Acting like a grownup. (While we’re on the subject, you guys should all watch this – and it’s my birthday so I won’t bitch about the grammatical error in the title, my gift to you.)

Ahem. Anyway. (Cue your rum and coke with two limes.) So here’s to another good year. Many more, hopefully. To embracing, accepting, and letting shit go. To writing snark and learning to do cartwheels. To probably not drinking ourselves to death. Much love and many blessings. Cheers.

“You’re not poor, you’re just broke.”

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It’s planting season in these here hills. I’ve not had much time to geek out on anything fun these last couple of weeks. Therefore I must give you guys my unadulterated thoughts on things from real life. (It’s ok. We can still have a good time. I promise.) We’ve been here a year last week. My mind is still a little blown by that. Seems the older I get the quicker a year goes by. That’s normal, right?

I’ve been thinking about that line from the blog a few weeks ago. Something about “nerds off the grid.” We were nerds long before we decided to go off the grid. (That kind of goes without saying, doesn’t it? I said it anyway.) I met The Hubs in high school. At the comic book shop. During a Magic tournament. (Go ahead, you can laugh. I’ll wait.) Yeah, yeah, it’s freaking adorable. He’s freaking adorable, actually. The sort of guy who can drop science about comics and geeky stuff, but can also build a house by himself and looks like an organic farmer in that hat. We won’t talk about him making samurai armor out of old flagpoles (I’m not even kidding, he hammered them flat and cut scales out and sewed them together for six months in the middle of my living room). So when he said he wanted to move to Cali to try to do something different I figured I had nothing to lose because it’s awesome in Cali, right? It’s true. It is awesome.

And we’re not technically off the grid. Compared to some of the places people call suitable human dwellings around here, our house is Babylon. But still. It’s in the middle of nowhere. I guess it’s all relative. (Cue visual aid.)

I live here. Well, down the road from here.

That there is a far flung cry from Asheville. The Ville is a small city, but it’s still a city. With people. And sidewalks (haha). And restaurants. And, well…people. In the county that we moved to, there are literally more bears than people. Have I mentioned this before? Because that’s a pretty astounding statistic, isn’t it? It’s a mindfuck to think that you are more likely to run into a black bear on the trail than a dude just trying to smoke a doobie. It’s the opposite of Asheville. And really, getting off the grid was never our goal (by the way, every time I say that I feel like I’m making a Tron reference – no likey). But living with a whole bunch of middle men between us and the things we needed for basic survival was getting pretty old. This living out here, forever away from anything? This is an exercise in self-sufficiency, self-reliance, existence appreciation. Very Thoreauvian, but without that pesky pond.

So here I am, in homesteader heaven, really enjoying my happy life with my happy husband and our happy dog and our happy garden. Everything is blissful.

However.

I miss nerds. Ok, ok. I won’t pigeonhole. Let me be more expansive. I miss people with whom I can have discussions on things which I think are cool and since I consider myself relatively nerdy those things would, by extension or association, be perceived as nerdy within the contexts of conversation. Yes? Alright. Snarkypants. Making me use all big words and clauses and shit. God. Seriously, I’m not bitching. The people I’ve met here are lovely and I wouldn’t trade their company. It’s a question of math, really. Fewer people equals fewer nerds.

An example: I was feeling lazy last night and I wanted to watch a movie. So I go to the shelf where the DVDs live, and started listing them off, wanting to appease everyone (including the housemate, who is noticeably cooler than me). “So, we’ve got Alien, Batman, Futurama, Matrix, Stargate, Star Trek, Star Wars, X-files…” At this point I trail off (see the ellipses? That means trailing off…) because he’s giving me the face. That Don’t-You-Have-Any-Normal-Movies-You-Tremendous-Nerd? face. The Face.

Don’t give me The Face, goddamnit! I love movies! I have seen a million billion movies! Even ones without spaceships in them. Sit down with me and my sisters and try, just try, to win a game of Six Degrees to Kevin Bacon. I challenge you. But apparently my shelf is populated with only geeky things. Why is that? What do people think when they walk into my house and see the movie shelf? Not that I care. But it’s interesting to think about, isn’t it? Don’t you look at people’s books and movies when you’re in their houses? Do you then form an opinion of them? It’s instinctual. It’s not me being a bitch. Hopefully.

Anyway. Just another one of those moments. Feels a little high school-ish. It’s stupid, really. It’s not like my feelings were hurt or anything. But there are people who get me and people who don’t. And I miss having people around who see the bigger picture, you know? Who, even if they don’t understand the nerd references, let it go and let me talk and let me make my stupid jokes. I live on a farm. I am more than an hour from cell service. I am two hours from Chinese food. That’s just not natural. My conversational opportunities are pretty much limited to “How are your plants looking?” and “Did you hear they’re logging the forest on our road?”. It’s insane. But it’s gorgeous. I really like it here. Maybe I’m just not used to it yet. Maybe I just need to find some hip people (like you guys) to nerd out with about fun stuff online. My freakin’ lifeline, the interwebs. Keep me apprised of the happenings in the real world. Please? Seriously, please? I have email for a reason.

All hail the Stephen!

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A while ago I mentioned in passing that I planned to write a post about my rabid Stephen King fandom. He’s got a new book coming out in April (the 24th, a Tuesday), so I figured now would be a good time for that post, while my booknerd dander’s all up in anticipation (dander? hackles? I think hackles). Furthermore, this new one is in the Dark Tower storysphere, so I’m extra squishy excited about it. If you never read another Stephen King book, at the very very least, read the Dark Tower series. In. Cred. Ible. (I love that breaking-up-words-for-emphasis convention. I love being able to say “Ible” in a sentence. Go to hell, spell check.)

So when I was in sixth grade somebody (probably my sister, she’s a bad/good influence) gave me a copy of The Stand. For which I got sent home from school and my parents got called in to a meeting about my “emotional development.” Keeping in mind that my parents are very bright people, it should come as no surprise that they told the school administrators to get fucked and that an eleven year old who could read and comprehend and enjoy pretty complex adult fiction was the least of their redneck, backwoods, puritanical little concerns. When you’ve got kids in middle school with kids of their own, it blows my mind that these people took the time to gripe about my reading habits. My father, ever the confrontational atheist, made a point to ask them whether my reading level was the problem or the material. Specifically: “If she had a copy of the Bible, would you be throwing this shit fit?” And then we walked out. And went to the bookstore. I honestly don’t know that the principal understood the question. No one down there thinks of the Bible as a book. But that’s a conversation for another time.

I guess that experience meant a lot. Not because the book was hyped up and made taboo, but because it wasn’t. Tell a kid that they can’t do something and they’ll want to do it even more. But tell them that they can keep doing something that they really enjoy and you won’t judge them for it, and they’ll go apeshit crazy. I spent the next couple of years reading mostly Stephen King. I read them all and then suddenly there weren’t any more. Which is torture, isn’t it? You try to find something to fill that hole where your favorite writer goes and nothing quite fits. It’s a square peg situation, and I was too young to have really discerning taste so I went through a wicked horror novel phase during which I would read pretty much anything with ghosts, demons, death, destruction, serial killers, fucking ancient space alien monster gods. Whatever. Did not contribute to my middle school/early high school goth weirdness period at all. Nah. Not even a little. I swear. “Emotional development.” Pfft.

And then Kerouac came along and I went through a Grateful Dead phase and started wearing tie-dye and taking a lot of hallucinogens and Stephen King kind of took a backseat for a minute.

I kept up. I wasn’t a total slacker fan. But let’s face it. He had some weird shit come out in the 90′s. There are three distinct periods to King’s work. The early stuff when he was poor and raising kids and drinking too much. That is the Golden Age (to use a comics analogy that doesn’t quite fit) of Stephen King. Very punk rock. And then he had the middle years when he was sober and his kids were grown and he was kind of bored and it showed. Not that it’s not good writing. Some decent stuff came out of that period, but it all felt like he was ripping off a Stephen King book. Between Insomnia and Hearts in Atlantis, pretty much. And then some drunk asshole hit him with a van and he almost died and his career was invigorated again! Thank the gods for drunk assholes in panel vans. No, not really. I wept when I heard it on the radio because they got a bad report and said that he had died. (It’s called due diligence, people. Give it a try.) My sister had to sit on the floor with me and listen to me babble and cry. Oh, it was awful. But then when they said they fucked up we all did a happy dance. He was risen! Like, um, who was that guy who came back from the dead in the Bible? No, no, the other guy. Shit, I’ll remember it in a minute…

Anyway, everything since then has been awesome. King said after the accident that he wasn’t going to write anymore, that he had three books in a safe deposit box that were finished and he would publish those and complete the Dark Tower series and that would be that. But the books kept coming. The dude’s got an addiction, frankly. Drank too much, did too much coke (that might just be a rumor, I honestly don’t know if it’s true), plays the guitar. These are all things writers do to distract themselves from the fact that writing is their real fix. You don’t have hobbies or habits when you’re a writer, you have procrastination tools. Bonus. Score.

Lazarus! It was Lazarus.

But I guess I should get to the point, hmm? (Sorry, too many procrastination tools. But wine’s so cheap in California.) Why do I love Stephen King? It’s a conversation I’ve had quite a few times, actually. Not foamy fangirl “you’ve gotta gotta read this” kinds of conversations, which is what you’d expect. No, most of my Stephen King discussions are in his defense, oddly. Fucking literature people are snobs, man, for real. In college I had so many folks scoff when I said he’s my favorite. Apparently being a #1 bestselling author forty-something times makes your talent questionable? Who knew? “But it’s so pop,” “But it’s just fluff,” “But he only writes horror,” and so on. Which is exactly the sort of thing that people repeat because it’s what they’ve heard. It’s petty name dropping in reverse, basically. King got too popular and his reputation suffered for it, I guess.

I don’t give a good goddamn how many books you sell. A fine storyteller is a fine storyteller is a fine storyteller in my book (icky pun, sorry). Stephen King’s work falls into what I have dubbed the “weird shit happening to normal people” category. Which is a style that sucks you in with a quickness. Usually I’m hooked by the first chapter or so. In fact, I tend to chop two days out of my schedule when a new one comes out and do nothing else until it’s finished. (Now you all know why I always called out sick on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.) And here’s where the clichés kick in. It’s intricately woven storytelling. He tends to start with a big cast of characters and either whittle it down to a nub of important players, or just make all their stories eventually collide. Excellent worldbuilding. Most of it is horror set in our world, but there’s a big whack of his work that’s fantasy, a few I would call scifi, the occasional supernatural love story. With two distinct personalities and writing styles (he used to write as another author who died of cancer of the pseudonym; occasionally one of his lost manuscripts will “surface”). And that’s just the novels. He’s also a master of the short story, which I think is an even harder form to wrangle with, but he does it well. Another point in his favor, that he can do both. Not a lot of writers like that. And nonfiction! Danse Macabre is one of the best books on the history of horror.

Anyway, I’m just gushing now. I’ll stop. But seriously. Don’t believe all those stuck-up book people who say Stephen King’s no good. Or don’t knock until you’ve tried. Even if you do see his work as just shallow pop fiction (which it’s not), we all occasionally need some junk food for our brains, don’t we? There’s some cheap therapy opportunities there.

A Dialectical Question

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I’d like to go ahead and attack what I think is one of the central questions on my mission: what is the difference between a nerd and a geek? (Dorks we’ll leave alone for now, because I feel like everyone is in agreement that they’re in a little subcategory all their own.) This seems to be a hotly debated question, and there’s more about it online than I’ve had time or energy to plow through yet. But I will say this – it’s a fucking linguistic nightmare.

Basically, the distinction may come down to mere geographical vernacular. I grew up in the South (where, yes, we do capitalize “south”) and to my understanding a geek was someone with more – for lack of a better term – “useful” knowledge. Someone who would obsess over computers, science, math, literature. But a deep, loving comprehension is key. And a nerd was someone with – again, pre-apologies for word choice here – “trivial” obsessions: comics, scifi/fantasy, RPGs, numismatics.

Having said that, there is a lot of overlap here (a lot, a lot, a lot). Where I come from the issue is further compounded by the use of “geek” as a verb. Anybody can geek out over anything they’re really into. As in “Billy Bob’s geeking out over the new parts he got for his Chevy.” (True story.) But you’d never say “nerding out.” You could say someone was “nerding it up,” but then there’s a certain implication about the activity itself. You would nerd it up with a Star Trek marathon, but not a Metallica listening party, get it?

Contrarily, my friends and family in the Midwest (Kansas and Oklahoma, mostly) use these backwards. You’re a computer nerd but a comic book geek. And here in California I’ve run across so few of us that the issue hasn’t really come up yet. I’ll keep you posted. Northern California’s weird on so many levels.

For the time being, I feel like I can self-label and co-opt both terms pretty comfortably. Not to say that they’re interchangeable, because that would really offend some folks, but the line is so fine that I’m having a hard time staying on one side or the other. I’m secure in both my nerdy geekitude and my geeky nerdism. This whole idea, learning all I can about relatively nerdy things, is me geeking out on being a nerd. Right now. I’m doing both. Actively. It’s fascinating.

But let’s get one thing straight: I am not a hipster. Someone (my cousin, who fills a very Tyler Durden-ish role in my life) recently called me a hipster and I wasn’t sure how to react. Offended? Confused? Encumbered? Yes, I wear Daria glasses and Converse and play the ukulele and drink PBR. But I don’t own a fedora and I do not embrace either pencil jeans or music with clapping instead of drums. Nerd? Cool. Geek? Fine. Don’t call me a hipster. I’ve got this one nailed down.