So is your life boring as hell, or chock full of nuts?

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Mine... boring. Lame... soon to be regrettable. Well, depends on if I get a raise or not.

So what's your life like right now? Fast paced and crazy, or boring and dull? Or boring and crazy? Fast and dull?

Are you happy that way, or would you rather it be the opposite?

-- Anonymous, May 27, 2000

Answers

My life just shifted gears from high craziness to slow-paced lethargy. 'Cause finals ended, you see. Though I suspect it's going to shift back up after this weekend. I find that whether I'm happy is more a function of whether I'm in a good mood or not. It's all circular that way. Anybody ever read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep??

-- Anonymous, May 27, 2000

I had a wild-and-crazy action-packed weekend...three shows in three nights. Two nights of fabulousness with the Magnetic Fields (Mar, you have to hear them...Stephin Merritt is like Morrissey with the flamboyance cranked up to 11) and a night of Elliott Smith...those men can come over and sing me to sleep any time!

Then I had my regular every-time-I-see-him-we-have-to-fight fight with Ray, he left in a snit, and I sat around the house feeling bad for a while.

Work is boring. So boring. I'm glad I don't have to go to work tomorrow. I have nothing to do. I'm so bored that I'm restocking supply trays with post-it notes on a daily basis.

Next week I'm headed to Turkey Run State Park in Indiana for a fun-and-alcohol packed weekend. Wahoo!

Actually, I guess work is the only thing that's boring right now. Life is p

-- Anonymous, May 28, 2000


Not really related to the forum, just curious: Nanette, I saw the two-night Magnetic Fields "69 Love Songs" show in late April (here in Chapel Hill) and I remember them saying they were only going to do the two-night show in a very few other large cities. The only reason Chapel Hill was on the list is because Merge Records is there, so I consider it fortuitous that I moved here. It was the most amazing show! And yes, Mar should hear them, she might like...

-- Anonymous, June 01, 2000

my life ... i would have to say its utterly dull ... but yet at the same time it is totally interesting and chocked full of thrilling things ... i think thats because we are just thrilling people...

-- Anonymous, June 04, 2000

I just answered this question on another forum (okay, so my eyes were unfaithful *blush*) and I'm feeling lazy so I'll recycle, complete with typos. Don't hate me too much.

Hey, I swear I'll write more rengu!

A Week In The Life

"First, gather your supplies and your motivation:

At beginning of month, pick up free monthly music/entertainment magazines. On Wednesdays, pick up free weekly entertainment paper. Start circling.

You want to see every live show that doesn't suck. Because all the promoters refuse to talk to each other or are trying to out-do each other (you know at least five of them and they aren't exactly non- competitive), there's always a booking conflict or NOTHING going on: it is especially a feast or famine situation on weekends. This upcoming Saturday, there are four shows you'd like to see AT THE SAME TIME in opposite parts of the city requiring different hoops to jump through. One requires that you buy a $35 pass to a musical conference that's on this weekend or you can't get in. One requires that you skip dinner at a reasonable hour and book like hell to get over there before the band is done. There's another that will force you to endure three CRAPPY bands before you get to see the one that doesn't suck, and due to whimsy, the non-sucky headliners might or might not actually play last. You don't know when you should be there. Lame.

But I digress.

Okay. It's Wednesday night. You circle all the stuff you want to do that week and that month and then you pay your bills (hoping you remembered everyone this time) and then you count what you have left over. If you're lucky, you have enough for lunch, gasoline, impulse purchases AND cover and a drink (not necessarily alcoholic) at each place you can't get a pass or guest listing for. You sock this money away.

Thursday. If you're lucky, it's PAYDAY. You go to work and workworkworkworkwork. It's not much fun. But you get money. So you type and create and e-mail and edit and cut and paste and design and mess about making j-card liners or reading on-line journals and doing non-work-related e-mailing, then you go home.

Much like Pamie, you hate everything in your closet. Then there's everything leftover from Laundry Day that weekend on the bench at the foot of the bed, and you pretty much hate all that stuff, too. Summertime makes it harder, because you like layers and coats and long pants and it's over a hundred degrees Fahrenheit outside. The only thing you'll survive in is a slip dress, but then you'll freeze once you get inside wherever place you're going to. What you really want to wear are the amusingly tacky animal-print pants you wore two days ago, because they make you laugh, but they are in the hamper.

You go see some music. Sometimes the venue or the crowd annoys you in ways that it wouldn't have even five years ago. Your contact lenses feel smeary. You know your hair will reek of someone else's cigarettes. You play with a toy lighter that has LEDs or something (fire, fire, fire) then light a clove in retaliation. You are pounced on out of nowhere by five vinyl-clad goths all begging for one. These are probably the same people who ignored you up until now because your hair wasn't dyed black and you had no facial piercings or tattoos. You make friends by doling them out. Conversation ensues. Your shoes are deemed cool enough to comment on. One asks you "What's Bauhaus?" and you feel damn old. Lucky you don't consider yourself a goth or you'd be suicidal. You go home and scrub three layers of filth off your body and swear never, ever to go out again on a work night.

Friday: you emerge from a cocoon of sleep-coma after two or three hours of extremely re-energizing sleep. You're ready to take on the day. You're happy to be alive! What a beautiful day. You've never felt better. You're lying, you cow. You drag in to work--sneaking past the anal-retentive tattletale you don't even work with, who always says "uh HUH, mm HMM" when you're five minutes late--and you're wearing the pants you wore Monday (still pressed, damn it!) and a shirt you wore last Wednesday (who'll remember?) and hide in your cube all day doing whatever it is you do. You're not sure, but you earn a paycheck every other week doing it and folks seem satisfied. That's okay by you. By lunchtime, you've forgotten how much you wanted to die earlier in the day and are actively considering going out again. So you get home, cry over your clothes, go out.

You and your friends are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike. No, wait, it's the latest "underground club". Whose stupid idea was it for Not Bad Really Band to play here? The venue has no signs and you just have to know or figure out that it is located UNDER the parking lot of a strip mall. You arrive fashionably late and there's five other embarrassed early birds there, all trying to act like they're not freaked out and worried that they misread the fliers. The Bettie Page girls, the Mod Boys and other Too Cool For A Nine To Five Job people start filing in. The band dawdles, hoping to get a bigger crowd to play to, so after waiting around for two hours, you finally are entertained by the lead singer yelling at the sound guy, who is toking on the biggest fattie ever rolled, to turn up the band's monitors. However, they aren't the Big Name Band, so the sound guy just rolls his eyes, scratches his fresh tattoo and reads his Evan Dorkin comic book. The stand-off ends with the lead singergetting pissed off and throwing his guitar on the stage and storming off. You find friends in the back bar and relate what has happened. One friend leaves to go soothe the lead singer, who is in three other bands with him. The other friend tells you that her ex- boyfriend sent her an unrequested toaster oven, unwrapped, via a third party for her recent birthday. She's not happy about it. You tell her that your ex is the Incredible Schitzophrenic Man who blows hot and cold from week to week (probably depending on whether or not he's had any luck getting a date that week). Consume mass quantities. Get maudlin. Endure bad bands so you won't be tipsy when it is time to go home. Hours later, you get home, ears ringing, and swear never to go to any clubs that don't have the decency to mark themselves ever again. You take a shower to scrape the smell of the sound guy's B.O. and Thai stick off your epidermis. You don't remember going to bed but you mange to find your way there.

Saturday, you sleep until the crack of noon, then roll out of bed. You're blind! You panic, bump into things, scare the cat. You discover that you forgot to remove your contacts AND all of your glitter eyeliner. You are a big dummy. You take another shower. You go thrifting for cheap cool stuff. $50 and two vintage purses, snap- things that go in your hair and a weird skirt later, you emerge and defy E. coli to eat a cheap burrito in a 'quaint' neighborhood restaurant. Your friend complains that her roommate's cats are psychotic. You trade animal stories, complete with sound effects and anthropomorphic descriptions, until people nearby start thinking you're crazy cat ladies. You go vinyl diving and CD shopping. As usual, you confuse the clerk by wanting some weird combo platter like the Who and Crystal Method and Leslie Gore and J-pop comps. You decide to go see some live theatre and go to see the improv show and wet yourself laughing for two hours. The theatre people are having a party and they all animatedly exchange stories about when they were in Guys and Dolls and West Side Story and Waiting For Godot. You realize you are the Least Funny Girl Ever. All these people can remember punch lines and they're animated and witty and attractive. Talk about panic! But you're having a good time and everyone is really nice, and they have wonderful stories to tell. Then the Bad Thing happens. A well-meaning soul with a goatee and a Hang Ten retro shirt and a beat-up fedora toasts you with a martini and pauses in his recitations of his Worst Stagefright Ever stories and politely asks you what YOUR favorite theatre experience was. You confess that you are not, actually, an actor. You don't even play one on TV. Someone overhears this--which is easy because the room has fallen silent like an E.F. Hutton commercial--and he or she sneaks up behind you, pins "LEPER" and "KICK ME" signs on your shirt. You are Shunned. You go home, vowing to volunteer for some art school video project Right Away. God. You're such a loser. You go home and scrub the stink of failure off your body and vow to write ten plays before partying with the cool kids again.

Sunday. Gak! Tomorrow you have to go to work! GAK! What have you accomplished?! You attempt to write some poetry and hate it all. You vow to become a better an dmore productive human, and you'll start by eating a nice heathy lunch. Well, okay, there's nothing to eat in the house that doesn't require a can-opener or a microwave. Except...ice cream. A huge bowl of Edy's Thin Mint Girl Scout ice cream (with that genuine Girl Scout taste!) later, you realize you're a fatty-fat idiotgirl. You have only a few hours before the weekend is over to do chores and to be productive in some way and suddenly you're exhausted and procrastinating. You play with the piano for hours, forget to get up in time for X-Files, go to bed REALLY LATE after getting absorbed in a book.

Then it's Monday. Traffic. Work. Type up weekend report for friends. Read e-mail. Web surf. Lunch. Work. Send weekend report out. Traffic. Home. Long bath. Collapse. Sleep a full eight hours.

Then it's Tuesday. Traffic. Work. E-mail. Web-surf. Lunch. Work. E- mail more. Traffic. Errands. Flowers. Groceries. Cat Food. Drugstore stuff. Bank. Gas car. Home. Make phone calls. Take long bath. Collapse. Sleep five hours.

Then it's Wednesday. You pick up the weekly freebie entertainment paper and start circling...

I pay for my so-called RNR lifestyle with fatigue, generally. My co- workers think I'm just really quiet. I'm actually really, really tired. Today's Tuesday, and I'm going home tonight to just RELAX, I think. Tomorrow is my roommate's birthday..."

-- Anonymous, June 13, 2000



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