we are watching; you can see our eyes

Item: I am not sure how to feel about Blue Bell's new cotton-candy flavored ice cream, but it is blue and pink and tastes like Lucky Charms marshmallows. Ciro refers to it as "unicorn food." I leave further actions to your discretion. In other food news, I made meatballs for the first time, to go with gnocchi. Turned out well, but with room for improvement.

Spent today mostly running errands. Movie footage is still not ready to send to the editor, despite Ciro and me tag-team working on it pretty much around the clock. Although we are technically not on a hard deadline, I'm going to freak out a little if this continues into October. There is other stuff I need to work on. It is hard to be angry that people are giving you and your husband lots of prestigious work and compensating you well for it, but I am angry about just that, because damnit I need to work on the film.

My hair is currently dark plum purple, on the grounds that I made a vow that I wouldn't cut it until I got up to Boston but was really tired of how it looked. Now I look like anime Joan Jett. My hair has not been purple since I was 16 or 17, and then it was really more of a lavender.

Recently read Yokaiden, Templar, Arizona (in book form), and Atomic Robo (also in book form), all at the urging of Merlin. I highly recommend them! I would prevail upon Merlin to start a blog for comic book recs, but he hates blogging. I suppose I will just have to pass on what he says when I can.

I am myself busy divesting books to make my move to Boston easier; weeding out the many shelves that contain things that are worth having around but not worth shipping, whether because I've outgrown them or because I don't like the edition or translation or never got around to reading them and think I might not want to. Took several full boxes to Half Price today; will make further trips as needed, then shift to the clothing cull.

Other events of the weekend: Ciro's graduation dinner with Ed and Ash, presentation at the DMA, wrote RE article, talked to Mom and Dad. REL is moving back from Peru out of a breakup and will therefore be in Boston when we arrive. I can't say I'm looking forward to such a crowded house, especially the inevitable comings and goings of REL's friends; it pushes me just a bit over my sociability limit. I will have to establish a habit of walks in the Fels. In any case, we are bringing her several miniature skeletons and she and I are sketching out plans for Canasta and for writing a love song for Vincent Price. Meanwhile, Scarlett and I search in vain for a good mascara now that all the good mascaras we know have been discontinued. We are currently wearing adequate mascara.

After a long dry spell, I came up with a few new metaphors for my book of unattached metaphors. It'll be ready to publish before too long. (Which is its own headache of course, but this is really the sort of thing I want to make a few of very beautifully and leave places and run away; it's a bit more comedy art project than commercial venture, and that sort of thing is more within my bailiwick of past success.)

Context of Rock Star

Discovery 1 (bad):

I've been trying for the last three years to track down a cape gooseberry in the U.S., having picked up a taste for them in London. This quest was met mainly with confusion by produce dealers who wanted to make sure I didn't mean kiwi or kumquat. Accidentally, through seeing a photo online and following it, I determined today that they are perhaps better known as ground cherries here, despite not growing on the ground or looking or tasting like cherries. (They're a small, tart golden fruit related to the tomatillo.) I still do not expect to be able to find any, but am now disgruntled over the name ground cherries, which sounds terribly unappealing.

Discovery 2 (good):

During a tangent while researching letterpresses in the Boston area, I discovered gyotaku, which is (I quote wikipedia) "a traditional form of Japanese fish printing." As in "smear a fish with ink and slap it on a piece of paper." This is maybe my favorite thing ever. I am never finger painting again; I now have superior technology at my disposal.

and so on

I had forgotten that I have a much easier time acting friendly when my hair is unnaturally colored, mainly because it places me contiguous to a punk/drag/black context and a history of left-identified resistance, which roughly means that it scares off the kind of people I don't want to talk to and gives fair warning to everyone else that I am willing to create social discomfort if I don't like how things are going . . . which means I can be nice and friendly to everyone without having to worry that it will turn into a perception that I'm a pushover and "nice girl," with all the baggage of "nice girl." Instead of nice girl, I can just be nice, and I can talk to people much further outside my social circle without them tripping up and saying something casually offensive about minorities.

Otherwise, it gets confusing, because I look like I belong to a certain culture that I don't belong to, and everyone feels awkward and disappointed. It's easier when I look too clean-scrubbed to be a rock star, but not really ordinary enough to be not a rock star. I may be over-analyzing this.