A Blog is a Treat

Okay, these photos aren’t as good as I want them to be, but I don’t want to put off posting about this anymore! This weekend I got a treat!

They’re a couple of those little [illegal] Chinatown turtles! They’re red-ear sliders, I’m almost positive, except they don’t have red ears – not sure if that’s just a natural variation, or if that’s something they’ll get when they get older? They’re VERY young – like maybe one-inch right now. (You’re not supposed to be able to buy them legally in America at less than four inches – I think this is both because of the risk of salmonella, especially to little kids [though that doesn't make a ton of sense, because if a turtle has salmonella, it doesn't somehow magically LOOSE it when it gets older/bigger...I think maybe it's just that very young children, who are most susceptible to salmonella, aren't as interested in holding/playing with big lumbering 4-inch turtles as they are with tiny cute one-inch turtles?] and because I can only imagine the shipping/storing conditions for these Chinatown turtles are abominable and abusive.)

Speaking of abominable and abusive…their tank’s a little rough right now, admittedly. I’ve ordered a better ramp/basking dock and some plants and things online, but right now they’re making do with some cereal bowls and a hacked dish drier from the dollar store. (I raised the water level after this photo – they couldn’t figure out that they were supposed to climb the ramp to get up onto the bowls, so I had to make it so they could swim up onto the bowls.)

I actually probably need a bunch of stuff…a UVB light, an underwater heater, a thermometer…though…pretty much whatever your setup looks like, YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG, according to the internet. The one thing I have learned from looking around online, absolutely, for sure, is that YOUR TANK IS TOO SMALL. Pretty much no matter what. All the time. Also too dirty and your turtle looks bored and sad. But mostly your tank is WAY TOO SMALL GO DIG A POND IN YOUR BACKYARD YOU CRUEL-HEARTED BASTARD.

Anyway. This is Betty. She’s slightly smaller and has a belly button:

Look how pretty her shell is!

And this is Tom. He’s an astronaut:

I actually will have no idea whether they’re boys or girls for like 2-4 more years, I think, soooo…I hope I’m not terribly damaging their psyches.

They weren’t eating at first, but last night I finally got them to do so by offering them some lettuce, and now this morning they’re eating their regular food, too.

So far the cats have been pretty much ignoring them, surprisingly. Let’s hope that lasts.

Apparently these things can live to be 70-100 years old. So, uh. Whichever one of my friends has kids first: I hereby bequeath Tom and Betty to those children. You’re welcome in advance.

This is (was?) my supply closet at work.

I tried to clean it out today and found some interesting things. Here are some of the things I found:

A double-issue “fill-it-in” crossword book.

(Already entirely filled-in, every page.)

A Windows 98 start-up disc. Actually, a LOT of Windows 98 start-up discs, for some reason.

Also…sigh…this.

A box of dead flowers.

Masquerade in Venice: A Novel of Suspense.

A box of candles old enough to have this adorably-illustrated warning guide included with it:

A box labeled “broken glass.”

Guess what was inside it!

A piece of sushi.

I’m cleaning out the supply closet at work and finding all these awful/wonderful things! Will update with indignant sputtering and funny photos soon, but in the meantime: artsy friends, do you want me to save you any of this? An unused Rolodex? (God I want to write a story on that, somehow, right? Some kind of A-Z tale told on cards? I am trying very hard not to keep that for myself.) Funny old yellowed ledgers and receipt books and stuff? Kelly, I’ve basically already decided that I’m sending you a couple solid blocks of weird-looking unfolded staples, so…too late on that count. A fucking TYPEWRITER with ribbons and correction tape??? (Um…fucking pick-up only, dudes.) I dunno…other things that could make neat art projects and I’m loathe to throw away but which I have absolutely ZERO use for in 2012? Let me know if you want me to save anything for you!!

I don’t remember exactly why I bought House of Leaves, but I did actually BUY it, in a bookstore, for $21.67. (The receipt is still inside my copy. In fact, coincidentally enough, I bought it just over exactly six years ago – April, 2007.) I feel like it was a semi-impulse purchase. I’m not sure if that’s really true, but I feel like maybe I had heard of it before or maybe not, but I feel like I saw it on a table, saw that the typesetting was all weird and interesting, that some of the text was blue, that it was a big impressive-looking brick of a book, but also maybe a horror novel? and I just sort of said, okay, and bought it, which I never really did all that often – books are kind of expensive and kind of a gamble and have never really been a popular impulse buy for me. Though actually I think probably that’s all a fib, because I apparently bought it in New York, but I thought I remembered it from KU somehow? Like maybe I read Chris’s copy or something sometime in Lawrence? And I thought I remembered discussing it with Chelsea in Lawrence? Or Levi, even? So I don’t know. I’m sure they can correct me. Anyway. Somehow: there’s this book.

But I do remember, right from the beginning, both loving and hating it. It’s fucking cool, for one thing. It’s a text about a text, the physicality of the way the story is told is so cute, it’s meta in the way that I was super-into meta back then (and still am, I know, it’s embarrassing). It’s clever as shit. And it’s also actually kind of scary! In, at least, a sort of creepy/disturbing/intellectual way. But on the other hand…oh, god, it’s SO FUCKING CLEVER. Ugh. It just makes your fucking lip curl, these stupid fucking tricks he keeps pulling. Yes, yes, the book is the house, the house is the book. We all live in the book. But also – part of the reason I fucking hated it so much was galloping jealousy. But also – ugh, it’s all so OBVIOUS and YOUNG and COLLEGE-SOPHOMORE-WRITING-CLASS-y. But also – how come HIS obvious young college sophomore crap got published?? But also – UG.

It was one of the very few books I moved with me to New York this time around, when I was trying to bring as little as possible. So…something? But still.

Anyway. I went to see the author speak last night. (I’m not writing down his name out of my old people-I-work-with-googling-this fear, though that’s feeling less and less relevant now that I no longer, like, go out drinking with undergrads, and now that I work in NYC, rather than Providence, but, whatever.) It was a “conversation,” not a talk. He was speaking as part of some series about literature, religion, and technology, though he really didn’t hit on…most of that…too hard. He wore a straw hat. The other conversant was very impressed with his green and gold shoelaces, which were QUITE MEANINGFUL, and his cat t-shirt. He has a lot of cat t-shirts, it turns out. His next novel is 27 volumes long and is about a girl and her cat.

Okay, nevermind, I’m going to write down his name.

I fucking hate Mark Z. Danielewski.

I’m still not entirely sure how I feel about House of Leaves. (Oh, fine, I like House of Leaves. Probably A LOT, but I also kind of hate it.) But man. I know how I feel about Mark Z. Danielewski. I fucking hate Mark Z. Danielewski.

In person, Mark Z. Danielewski tells stories that, if you don’t listen carefully enough, sound like really good stories. But if you listen to them without looking at him, or if your lip is accidentally already half-curled when he starts to speak, you can hear that he has told this story already a thousand times. And whatever, maybe that’s what people who have to tour to sell a product do: come up with great stories and then tell them to every audience they see. But goddamnit, Mark Z. Danielewski, stop, like, pausing thoughtfully, and then emphasizing the right…words as though you’re just now this second thinking of them.

He also says the kind of things that make me want to fucking throttle an artist. He says things like how the act of writing is “mystical.” He said at one point, and I swear this is true, I realize that you might think I made it up because it’s probably the worst thing any human being has ever said in the history of communication? But he said at one point: “I remember once having dinner with Susan Sontag and talking about structuralism….” He told stories about his father (who was a filmmaker) bringing home “sixteen millimeter films of Kubrick and Wells” and how the other kids who were at those sleepovers TOTALLY GOT THEIR MINDS BLOWN, man. At one point, he used the phrase: “the poems of Mallarme.” When he mentioned David Foster Wallace, I literally retched audibly. He said, “They talk about death and taxes, and here’s one guy who dared to write about both, and we can speculate about what it cost him,” and uuuuugh shut UP, Mark Z. Danielewski. He said that his work “will never be dated,” and I think he was talking about one particular trait of one particular work, but still, who says that about themselves with such slimy confidence? At one point in my notes (which are littered, over and over, with “gross” and “shut up” and “fuck you,” sometimes in big bubble letters or curly or block fonts) I have quoted him as saying “that’s interesting, because…” and I don’t remember what he said that about or why I hated him so much for it, but I did note next to that quote, with a little arrow pointing toward it: “emblematic of your douchiness.” He described another one of his works as “almost like a quantum particle” because it “exists” both between House of Leaves and Only Revolutions, as well as between Only Revolutions and The Familiar. I hate him. He was speaking to the director of some museum I don’t remember “and when he saw this work, he said, ‘I want to do an exhibition with you.’” And one point, there was a little slideshow, which included photos of tattoos people had gotten based on his works. It wasn’t actually either of these, but it was something like this – a very long, large quote on someone’s side – I think they said it was the entire first page of Only Revolutions, maybe?

“That’s commitment,” the other conversant, the host or whoever, said. “Well, writing it was commitment, too,” Mark Z. Danielewski said, as thought affronted, slighted, that he wasn’t getting enough praise. He told this story: “Steve asked me at Cal Arts: ‘Will you do a reading?’ and I said: ‘Fine.’ I got a reader from Breaking Bad, a great shadow caster to cast the shadows, and I ended up being not the director, but the conductor.” He mentioned the lady from Breaking Bad at least three times, but only actually used her name once, the last time. He also told a story about “an old man” who came up to him somewhere and asked him, “Are you Mark Z. Danielewski? Did you write House of Leaves?” and he said yes, and the old man said, “I want to THANK YOU.” And Mark Z. Danielewski thought that the old man was just a fan, but the old man had never even read House of Leaves! The old man told him that his daughter had tried to commit suicide, and that upon waking (that’s how he said it: “upon waking”) he had asked her, “Is there anything I can get for you?” and she had said, “Yes. Get me House of Leaves.” He also told a story about a mystical encounter at Burning Man where a guy gave him a grapefruit and where he went around telling people: “My name is Mark; I’m an author,” and handing out his notecards from the writing of Only Revolutions via some kind of elaborate tarot-esque card reading system, but OF COURSE HE DID, so that’s hardly worth mentioning. Apparently, this is how he signs his books:

I hate him.

Last night was the end-of-the-year party at work! It was cute. We had quesadillas and Prosecco. Oh, and a crasher named Mike.

Here he is showing something on his phone to a guy from the bookstore down the street, who we had brought in to sell books at our party.

Heehee. Here’s him catching me taking that photo and giving me a dirty look for leaving him alone with Mike.

See, in a story that he loudly (but showily stammeringly, as though wanting you to know how embarrassed he was about the whole thing) retold to everyone throughout the night, Mike had been downstairs on the sidewalk talking to a security guard about how crazy women are, and how they own men, when he happened to see his cleaning lady walk by. Apparently, his cleaning lady is also our caterer. So he followed her upstairs to our offices. I guess he used to work here, 15 years ago, as part of his “community service” during high school? I did not ask him whether or not it was, like, jail-related. He was high on Aderall and FourLoko. And he was a bum. Could we smell him? He hadn’t showered recently; he didn’t usually look like this. He was just out smoking a cigarette and talking to the security guard. Hey, look, that’s his cleaning lady! His sister, who is an actress, said to the cleaning lady: “Can you go vacuum somewhere else? I’m practicing my lines.” He lives over there, by the park? You know…the park? Also, he’s going to try to kiss me now, in the elevator, okay? No? Oh. How about now? Or now? Okay? No? Okay, later then, maybe.

Mike refused to stop introducing himself to people in pretty much exactly that way. I tried to tell him to just shut up and drink some free wine, and maybe tell them he was a Sociology grad student if pressed, but he refused. He said he didn’t know what a dissertation was. (His father is a professor here.) He said he was very, very old: thirty-one. He said that he lived at home with his parents, because he broke up with his girlfriend six months ago and quit his job. He said (after I told him what a dissertation is) that if he had to write a dissertation, it would be about how all the people who rule the world are evil, and how come that is? And how they’re making it really hard on the real people, who are poor white people, who are the most oppressed people. I had to go check my email for a little while then.

Mike also – and, god, I wish this had been performance art, or a long elaborate joke, but I really don’t think it was – Mike also thought that some tv anchors are robots.

I…don’t know how to explain that he wasn’t…joking, or exaggerating, or making a metaphor.

(If you keep linking and searching around on there on youtube, people also sometimes think they’re just being mind-controlled by…someone…or maybe that they are aliens or reptiles or whatever. Very few people suggest “stroke” or “nervous stutter.”) (Also, I’m pretty sure that might have been the video he was showing the guy from the bookstore, maybe?)

He kept insisting that, fine, he knows I’m making fun of him for saying “robots,” but I HAVE to admit that there is at least enough evidence here to suggest the possibility that it’s robots. He said that he had a friend who met a robot at a party in LA. (I know. It sounded like a Bret Easton Ellis story to me, too.) She had to run away from this robot, because she was so scared. So NOW I HAVE to admit that there’s at least enough evidence to admit that it’s robots, right? He also thought that the US government caused 9/11, but he didn’t elaborate, because he knew I would just make fun of him.

He kept asking me if I was mad at him. He kept saying that he didn’t WANT to say the things he was saying. He kept saying he wasn’t racist. (He described people as “big black ladies” and “my black friend.”) He said that probably, in real life, like, actions as opposed to words, he was a better person than me, anyway. “Why?” I asked. “Well, like, do you ever just go into the ghetto and talk to people there?” he asked me. (Touche, Mike. Touche.)

I’m making him sound more racist than he was. I mean, no, he was totally racist. But, like, it didn’t come out all at once like that, and it was interspersed with the really truly astoundingly wonderful robot stuff (WHICH HE BELIEVED, REALLY) and the talking-too-much-to-well-respected-academics thing. And the trying-to-make-it-better by telling women in the Women’s Studies Department that, no, really, women rule the world, I mean, we know that, right? Women own men, it’s true, I mean, you guys know you’re in charge, right? We’ll do whatever for you. If it wasn’t for women, would men even do anything? No. Of course not.

I just told this story to one of my work study students, and then found myself having to defend him. “He kept trying to kiss me in the elevator! I had to physically push him away with my hand!” “Jesus! Should we call campus security?” “Oh, no, I mean, he wasn’t that bad, he was just…well, no, I mean, he was totally awful…but, not like, in a really bad way?”

It’s hard to explain how innocent he was, sort of. He was a bad, racist, classist, sexist person who kept trying to impress people by telling them that he had a cleaning lady (this is his cleaning lady, you guys!!) and who tried to kiss me AGAIN after I physically pushed him away once already. But…he also believed, in his truest heart, that some people are robots. You can’t hate a guy like that. (Well. Okay, no, but you can.)