On being laid off

Laid. The word is much more fun when it has to do with sex than with being fired. The temp agency I work for came back from the holidays with an email, "about the future of our company"

Hey look! It's the corporate version of, "baby, we have to talk."

Interlude, if you've just joined the party here's the deal. I took a job from a friend a few years ago when I returned to Richmond to finish my degree. I would help her by adding another web designer to her temp agency, she would help me by giving me a stable source of income I could rely on while I couldn't travel for modeling because I was taking classes three days a week. It was the perfect situation! I had a stable income and health insurance!

Oh health insurance. I'm going to miss you so.

Anyway. My job was web design and maintenance. Lots of small companies need a web person but can't afford to or have no need to have a person on staff full time. The agency would send me out to them and I would work howeverlong they needed me to. Usually they wanted someone to update or create their site and then didn't need me again. Some of my favorites (like the one where the boss commented frequently about my footwear being too sexy) wanted me once every few weeks to update the site, keep backups and/or do security updates. So that was what I did. We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.

So this email. The company is being rolled into another, larger company that does similar stuff. I don't know whether the owners sold it or the other company offered to buy it or what. My friend left the company a few months ago so I can't pry the answer out of her with margaritas. The office I kept my stuff in will be closed by the end of January and the employees the boss negotiated to keep will be moving on to permanent positions in the larger company. The larger company already has its own web people so me and the other designey-type tech are outta there.

My boss was really nice about, "I'll try to keep you on however I can! All the former clients already know you and they'll want you to work on their sites." He says that he knows for certain I have one more website to finish and at least three hours of work a month for one client. The other design tech we have has already sent me an email asking if I'd like to work together doing freelance work "on the side".

Of course this all comes after I've found that I do -in fact- owe my college almost 6 grand and took out a loan for a new car. I'd gotten used to the stability of the day job, having some place to be every Monday and knowing that I'd most likely have at least three days of work in a paycheck at the end of the week. Not having to canvas up modeling jobs and travel all over the place was nice.

...But I was getting bored. Antsy, restless. It was hard to concentrate on anything so I stopped doing everything. I was falling behind in my website work and my modeling work. I was starting to resent the day job. Starting to feel boring.

Maybe this is good. Perhaps I can use the skills I learned in the day job to add structure and time management to my freelance modeling and do better at modeling this time around. Time to spread my wings and soar? (in a more controlled manner than last time) she adds, under her breath, picturing a dove sailing out over the valleys with a watch on one feather and a briefcase full of actuary tables in the opposite claw.

...Hm.

Well. Anyway! I think this is a good thing. I think I was getting distracted. Doing something because it was easy and felt like a grown up thing to do. It's time to take stock of what I really want to do and chart a new heading. I'm open to ideas!

How to lose the job

I'm hiring for someone to assist me in my business, doing the website, photo editing and things like that. I know that I'm offering a low rate for tech work but it's menial, entry level work so I'm offering an entry level wage. The following is an exchange with an applicant that I will title, "How to assure that you'll never work for me."

"I can help you with all of your needs - but I'm looking closer to $25/hr as $10 is entry level to work in a kitchen or something like that and with 20 years of experience my knowledge and experience is worth the price of admission."

I respond, "Thanks for your interest in the position but that's [25$ pr hr] over double what our budget is. If that's what you require, this opportunity isn't for you."

He replies, "I understand budgets and also know what my worth is to a company when I assist them."

Nice. Way to stay classy there with your attempt to bully me into hiring you even when I've said twice (once in the posting and once in my reply) that I can't afford such a rate. Hang on, let me think about this a little bit. For it to be worth it to me to hire you, you'd have to bring in -from the work you do- double your wages. So that's 50$ pr hr, 800$ pr week. How exactly will you be able to do that by editing photos and video, helping me with the scheduling and posting those updates on my sites and clips stores? You wont. That's why I'm hiring someone at a lower rate!

I just think it's incredibly egotistical to respond to a job posting with qualifications I'm not looking for, demanding a rate that's double what I posted. Perhaps in the future I would be looking to hire someone for higher level web work and search engine optimization but I would hire someone with experience in the adult industry and it certainly won't be this douche bag now.

I'm only 12 inside

Esther and I both have guests staying with us this week so I was really looking forward to coming home to a house full of people. Everyone had gone somewhere so the house was empty and depressing when I got in. I got set to eat dinner, mope around and go to bed when I saw the new bucky ball art on our fridge.


Amusing, to be sure, but it had to be changed. A few minutes later and we had our new masterpiece.

The original artist had left a half-completed face made from the rest of the bucky balls on the freezer. Not one to leave a task half complete I fixed it up for him. I'm quite proud of his little erect dong sticking out from the fridge. That actually took some doing. It's the simple things, really....when one is still 12 years old inside.

Don't make me go all Vanilla Ice

I'm telling RP I want to train the dog to go apeshit on a verbal trigger in case of mugging, etc.

"I'll say, 'she's ferocious.' and she'll go nuts and scare them off!"

"Nah, you want something you don't use otherwise like, 'Vanilla Ice'."

"What?! How do work 'Vanilla Ice' into a mugging conversation?"

"I think you're allowed a certain leeway in a mugging situation. 'Don't make me go all Vanilla Ice on your ass!' ...and then it would be what everyone was saying the next year."

He promptly launches into an involved story about how the mugger would tell his friends and then they'd start using it and Vanilla Ice would eventually hear it "up in his mansion somewhere and then he'd be all offended, 'I don't know where that came from! I'm a really nice guy! I mean, I would never go all Vanilla Ice on someone. Oh no! I said it!'"

Yes, I posted this solely to see if I can make that actually happen.

How to play the "woo" game

Preforming the woo test of drunkenness is quite simple and extremely entertaining. I live on a road with two popular bars on one end and one on the other so on party nights there's a lot of foot traffic around 2 am which is when bars and clubs in Va close. There's traffic at around 11pm going TO the bars, but sober people or vaguely pre-gamed people are not nearly as interesting as drunk-as-shit people.

How to play the woo game.

1)Get a group of friends together. If you live in a suspicious city like I do a smaller group is best so as not to intimidate the drunkies.

2)Hang out on your porch around when the bars are closing. Chat, hang out, that sort of thing. Have some drinks yourself. Why not?

3)When you hear people walking up on you who may possibly be drunk the first of your party casually lays out a happy, "woo!" You know what I'm talking about. You must lower yourself to make the annoying celebratory crow of drunken frat boys. "Woo! Yeah brah! Awwright!" That noise. Just the woo is okay, the rest is just a little weird, and douchey.

4)If the strangers "woo!" back, they're drunk. You win a point.

5)Rinse, lather and repeat with the next of your group and the next possibly drunken passerby.

Additional notes:

-If the people don't woo and instead look at you like you're an idiot they're not drunk enough to lose decorum. If you had any points, you lose a point. If you have no points yet, nothing happens, you simply don't gain a point.

-Turns out that there's a fine balance of acceptable woo to drunkenness. The woo game is fun to play as a team for this reason. In each team there's a chief woo-er and an assistant. If you're playing boys against girls, for example, the girls can add extra woo-ness to the boys' chief woo-er by woo-ing in addition to him or saying other douche-isms, ex "Yah brah! Hey you! Yee ha!" This generally cock blocks the woo-er as too much woo spontaneously erupting from a nearby porch frightens strangers into silence. Within a team the secondary woo-er can add just a touch of needed woo or simply lean sexily into view to coax out a reluctant woo....this is probably why an arrangement of girls against boys is a bad idea.

There really is no point to the woo game, it's just a way for friends to hang out and chat and play a little fun with drunk people. I'm sure that you could make the points mean something, hell make the points be some kind of drinking game and get drunk yourselves! ...You may want to cut back on the drinking a little when the people walking by woo at you first.

Drunken Super Stealthy Sorority Girl

I was woken from a sound sleep by a couple arguing outside my window. I knew, in that kind of sense memory you get from things that happen all too often, that it was 2 am. 2:17am, said the clock. I shifted under the covers and listened to the latest in a long series of drunken quarrels I've been privy to, living on the main thoroughfare between three popular bars in the Fan.

Whatever she'd said before I'd woken up had really pissed him off because, aside from the one thing he'd shouted that had woken me, I didn't hear much more from him aside from a deep, enraged, hissing whisper.

"Oh yeah?" she replied snidely, "And then you're just what? Going to walk away?"

His answer came in rapidly retreating footsteps. She shouted after him, mocking him. Seconds later, she realized he really meant it. Her tone changed, wounded outrage. "Come back! You can't just leave!"

I didn't hear his reply.

"Please. Please!" She begged, "I'm not asking you to. I'm asking you to call my friend. I can't be out here alone. Please. Please just call someone for me."

She begged him more, becoming more and more desperate. I could picture her sodden brain, working through the facts. She was probably wearing all her fancy, doesn't-cover-anything club clothing, her high heels probably hurt and now she was tired and sore. They had a fight and he'd left. Now she was drunk and alone in the dark Fan with its flickering street lamps, cracked sidewalks and low hanging trees. She was just sober enough for this to all be terribly frightening and just drunk enough to not really know what to do.

He left. He must have left because everything was totally silent for a moment before I heard her back thump against my house and her flimsy heels skid against the pavement as she sunk down the wall, crying.

I got out of bed and went outside with my phone. Her friend probably wouldn't pick up the phone if I called for her, but it was worth a try, I just couldn't leave the poor kid alone out there. Maybe I could call a cab for her, wait with her until it arrived.

There wasn't anyone underneath my window. I walked the length of the building, went around the corner. Coming to myself I realized that I was standing in an alley, barefooted, in a t-shirt that just barely covered my panties. I stepped into the side doorway, unseen by a drunken foursome concentrating hard on stumbling home.

Where was she? It had taken me only seconds to get to the door, I would have seen or heard her clip clopping down the street. I listened, nothing. I walked back to my front door, alert now to threats for both the mystery woman and myself.

"Miss?" I murmured. "Miss? I'm here to help."

A young man in an untucked button down ambled by, changing the focus of his scrutiny from his topsiders to me. He frowned, full of child-like confusion. Was he really looking at a lady in bed clothing? Shouldn't she be in bed, looking like that? Why was she on a porch?

I was just as confused as he was, where was the woman I'd just heard? I waited a moment after he'd gone, listening for her, but she had disappeared if she was ever there at all.

Settling back into bed I wondered if I'd actually been woken up or if I'd dreamed the fight, rushing out the door to aid a figment of my imagination. That would make sense, a lot more sense than her being the punch line of one of those "hitch hiking ghost" stories, "every August 27th her spirit fights with her boyfriend but when a kind soul goes to help her...she disappears!"

In any case, if she was real I hope that the same super stealthy powers she had that kept me from finding her got her home safely.

How it should have ended

This comic strip (sorry, blurry iPhone photo) is basically just a preachy lecture about how Katie (the girl) can't keep the fawn Lucky b/c he's a "dangerous wild animal".

In the last panel she responds, "Not Lucky...He wouldn't hurt anybody, would you Lucky?"

It's so after school special you know that in the next few strips she'll gain valuable knowledge about wild animals through Lucky's wacky hijinks. Yet. The comic is drawn in that dramatic, Prince Caspian style so I read it as a cliff hanger instead of a pause.

"...would you Lucky?" dun dun DUN!

I really want it to be. It would be way better if the next comic has Katie withered away in bed w/Lyme disease. A lecture on deer ticks via jaundice would be way funnier than wacky hijinks.

And THAT'S how it SHOULD have ended.

Farmer's market

CSA this week brings us a yellow watermelon, 1/2 lb of baby onions in
red and yellow, a head of garlic, sweet peppers, parsley, a pound each
of baby carrots and tomatoes and a jalapeño so hot that they recommend
you chop it wearing gloves (holy shit!). I'll be hard pressed to find
use for this jalapeño but it's in my CSA so I paid for it so I'll take
it.

Wandering around the market I found a South African turned Virginian
wine maker. He offered a wine tasting and I'm not one to turn down a
wine tasting regardless of it being 9 am. I bought two of his
whites...there's probably something funny in buying whites from South
Africa.

I have like, 5 heads of garlic from past weeks at the CSA and from the
grocery so I think it's time to start the garlic roasting and go clean
my room for my shoot today.

Farmer's market weekly

This week we have Yukon gold potatoes, red beets, scallions, basil,
tomatillos, leeks and one each of garlic and cucumber. The last look a
bit sad and lost, don't they?

I wish I'd thought to ask the guys at the market what kinds of
tomatoes we have this week. I had two lb allotted to me so I picked
half and half but damned if I know what they are.

Bounty of the farmers market

I forgot to do it last week! Well. This week we have two kinds of
beets, a pound of new potatoes, scallions, patty pan squash, some
rather piqued looking basil, red and purple raspberries (that I
couldn't resist buying), cucumbers and a pound of lettuce.

The CSA has given us both beets and lettuce for 3 wks in a row now.
I'm starting to get really creative w the beets but I'm all lettuced
out.

Back to work today

I headed back to the day job today. Before I left I put this note in
the bag of mini candy bars on my desk. In the case that you can't see
the photo, it says, "I know I have 20 candy bars in here that aren't
yours".

When I returned the note looked like this. Again, for those browsing w
images off, someone had scratched out the 20 and written in 18.

I KNEW that was going to happen! Lol

Bounty of the farmer's market

My CSA started this week! From subscription I got spring onions,
beets, salad greens, two different kinds of squash, parsley and more
swiss chard than I know what to do with. Also a cojoined patty pan
squash that Esther was mesmerized by. I bought additionally sweet
cherries and leeks, the latter bc the only recipe I have for swiss
chard is "Swiss chard and leek quiche" and it is fantastic!

Eating in Japan

I was looking through blog entries in my, "incomplete" folder so that I could finish one and make a new blog for today when I came across this one. I'm sure that I had planned on some interesting things about eating in Japan like how it's rude to ask for a doggie bag and what fun and adventure you can have by trying rice balls at random but reading back over what I'd written so far I think more text might ruin the impact of what I'd already written. So here's the "incomplete" food in Japan blog.

Food In Japan

Traveling with strict dietary requirements is tough. It's especially tough if you're an adventurous person for whom part of a trip is trying out the local food. It's made even more difficult when you don't read the local language and can't speak more than a few basic survival phrases (and have forgotten the phrase, "please speak more slowly"). This is why traveling is fun.

And involves lots of nausea and stomach cramps for the poor vegetarian model.

Japanese restaurants generally do not have English language menus. During our week and a half long trip, only three of the restaurants we went to had special English language menus that were only more or less in English. The good news is that almost all Japanese restaurant menus are pictorial. If the picture looks good you can just point to it and say, "Kole, Kudasai" (this please). Food in traditional restaurants is served in "sets" with the main dish, a salad, pickles (everything is served with pickles), rice, and if the main dish isn't soup, a soup, and if the main dish is soup, a sauce or pudding of some kind.

Sometimes when you point to a picture, you've chosen a set that requires answers from you. This is always going to be stressful and confusing. The server says something you can't understand and points on the menu to words that you can't read. Clearly a choice of some sort needs to be made. Even if your server remembers the English from class in school, he probably doesn't have enough vocabulary memorized to translate a restaurant menu. I quickly memorized the phrase, "what do you recommend?" and used it every time I was asked to make a choice. The server would think and then happily reply something else that I couldn't understand. I would nod like that was a great idea, close my menu and say "Yes please". Only once was this not the right answer. That server was very confused with me. I figure she said something like, "well I don't know. I like the Karabonara, but the Udon is good too." and I replied, "Yes please." while nodding like I knew what I was talking about.

The bounty of the farmers market

This week I showed up at 10 am after walking dogs (if you're in RVA
and looking for a dog at the SPCA I highly recommend Cedric) and just
about everything was sold out already!

I got broccoli, sugar snap peas, strawberries, mint and garlic
scrapes. I had to change the game plan after I found that the things I
wanted were sold out. I missed out on leeks, spinach, edamame and
whole chicken.

The haul from the farmer's market today!

Leeks, half lb teeny asparagus, teeny radishes and not so teeny, very
fragrant strawberries!!

Outfit

I always tell you guys I'm going to show youwhat I wear to work and
then I forget. Here's today.

You know you want to see pictures of my hooch

Horrendous Foods

I have discovered the book, "Wild Fermentation" by Sandor Katz and, as he says, I've been infected by fermentation fervor. I've started a batch of Gundru, Nepalese bitter greens pickles and I'm onto the second stage of distillation of my first ever batch of wine. The wine is dandelion. I recommend making your own hooch (HAH! Hooch jokes. always funny) but I do not recommend making it from dandelions.

A gallon doesn't sound like a lot of flowers, does it? It is. It is an even more mind-boggling amount when you take into account that dandelions are small and fluffy. You're going to remove the green parts, which are the bulk of the flower because they make the wine bitter. So you spend two days harvesting the stupid things and a week cutting the green parts from them. At this point you discover that you've only got half the amount you need. You're pissed and bored and your fingernails are all stained green and when you went to the wine supply store they told you that the flowers don't add flavor, just color so "Fuck it, cut 'em up" and you just dump that shit in there anyway.

*hyperventilates for a moment*

Anyway. So I've somehow gotten really into cooking and slow food. Seriously. I cook my own beans from dry beans (24 hours), I bake my own bread (3 hours) and now I'm making my own pickles (a week) and wine (3 months). Somehow this started a discussion w/ my friend Graeme about food and weird shit that people eat. These are the top five-ish disgusting foods that I can recall from my life of outgoing eating.

Gravlax - Let's pack a fish in moss and bury it underground for a year! I bet that'll be tasty....hm, or it'll just taste like moss. Until I had gravlax I'd never eaten anything that tasted like mold, smoke and dark green.

Lutefisk - "We have lots of fish. Let's soak it in lye until it turns to jelly and then wash the lye out with another caustic chemical and eat it!" Though the idea of eating fish jelly is appealing you can only have 3 mouthfuls of it before you are struck with violent and long-lasting runs. Ppl who routinely eat lutefisk think this is charming and hilarious. Diarrhea is never charming and rarely hilarious. I use lye often. Know what for? Making soap. I don't want to eat that either.

Who thinks, "Hey, when we touch this stuff to our skin it bubbles and gives horrible burns and hurts like getting anal raped. Let's make food with it!"

Haggis - Well, I've never had it, but I'm vaguely to really grossed out by most sausage (yes, even American favorite, hot dogs), so this doesn't sound tasty and it smells really bad. Incidentally Durian smells really bad but tastes like custard, so maybe Haggis isn't too bad.

Natto - Do NOT google pictures of this unless you're not planning on eating any time soon. It's the worst of the soybean ferments. I don't know how it went so horribly wrong. The other soybean ferments are great. I love soy milk, shoyu, tamari, tofu and tempeh. Natto is one of the fewer-than 5 things I've ever eaten in my life that I had to immediately spit out for fear that I might vomit if I swallowed it. Still I retched for the next few minutes. If someone with a yeast infection pissed on a shoe and made that into cheese from the athlete's foot in the shoe, that's what Natto tastes like. Plus it's gooey-slimy.

Kim-Chee - It's cabbage, which I don't like, added to Daikon, which I also don't like. Then you're going to add spices and put it in a jar and stick it in the sun until it gets moldy and tastes like hell? No. That's cool. Everyone I know likes Kim-Chee so every once in a while I try it again and I still hate it. It still tastes like vegetables that I don't like allowed to rot and then made spicy.

Just about anything made in Malaysia, but especially fermented fish head soup, bulls dick soup and fish sauce. They're REALLY big on fermenting or rotting shit in Malaysia. It's understandable b/c they're a large population that until very recently had relatively abundant food resources but no access to refrigeration and a humid climate (so unsuitable for preserving food by drying). That it's understandable doesn't make it any tastier.

When I was a kid we had a Malaysian missionary stay with us. He was SO happy to be making some kind of delicacy they have there. It had like, eggs and fish and onions or something. It was in a big earthenware crock that was in the carport and he was going to open it up for the first time in front of mom when it was done. She made me come with her. It smelled so bad that I threw up on my shoes. That was the ONE time I didn't have to eat the crap he made. He was embarrassed, Mom was mortified and I couldn't look the guy in the eye for weeks. Thinking about it almost 20 years later still turns my stomach. It was like...bodies and onions and...I don't know, the same spicy smell Kimchee has. God it was awful.

Hot dog

Toasting my vegan hot dog it blew up. That just looks vulgar.

Turandot

Kitty has decided that I am a nice enough sort -for a human- and
besides, my laptop case is pretty comfy for napping.

Pictures of kitties

It's hard to take a picture of a moving cat w an iPhone. This is my
sister's cat. She has an upside down heart on her face! It kinda makes
her look like she has no nose. So cute!

Everybody wants a rock to wind a piece of string around

Now that's just wrong.

Have to run a virtual machine for a few windows programs. It looks so
screwed up in my beautiful little mac!

What a world, what a world! Who would have thought that a good little
girl like you could destroy my beautiful wickedness?

Why NYC is my favorite city.

Reasons NYC is basically my favorite city. Tokyo now has a place in my heart too, but it's essentially the other side of the planet from my family and I barely speak the language so I have to admit it's not the most practical choice. Since I was supposed to post this blog when I was in NYC I thought I'd write about the reasons New York is my favorite city.

I love that the Time-Space continuum appears to be broken in NYC. Manhattan is 22.7 square miles (don't doubt me, I totally looked it up) but it takes a huge amount of effort and time to get anywhere. I used to stay with a friend in Columbia (the upper west side of the island) and it took him an hour to get to work in Midtown. It takes you pretty much an hour to get pretty much anywhere. It's only 22 square miles!! The most amazing thing about this is that it will also take basically an hour to get anywhere between Brooklyn and Manhattan. Cross Brooklyn? An hour. Trans-Brooklyn? An hour. From Brooklyn to Manhattan or vice versa? An hour. Upper East side Manhattan to Canal street? It'll still take an hour. Want to walk from a subway stop to somewhere in the Village? It's going to take an hour.

It's only when you start to travel from the outer bits of the boroughs to Manhattan or from Manhattan to Jersey that it starts to take longer. At that point whatever magical time rule it is that keeps NYC in its own little space-time bubble breaks and travel kicks you in the nuts. Want to go from Dyker Heights Brooklyn to Preakness NJ? Four hours. Need to take public transit from Allen and Canal to JFK airport? Three hours.

Due to this travel weirdness and some kind of bizarre geography class war people are reluctant to travel outside of their own areas. People from Williamsburg Brooklyn act like Brooklyn is the end-all be-all of the world. People from the Upper East Side seem to think they're royalty. People from any part of the island seem to regard Chinatown like some kind of mystical, magical land that one must take day trips to visit. One day the boroughs are going to descend into Gangs of New York again. I'm telling you.

Speaking of geography class wars, I love the Marsha and Jan Brady relationship that New Jersey and New York have. From my experience, all NYC commuters seem simultaneously apologetic and defensive about their outsider status. Nowhere is that mixed sense of longing, jealousy and hatred towards "the city" felt as strongly as in New Jersey. I will probably never figure it out, but people in New Jersey behave exactly as a younger, snubbed sibling to the older, popular sibling. I have only ever met one person from New Jersey who doesn't seem to care about New York one way or another.

I love the diversity of people in the city and all that it gives rise to. The fact that all these people crammed together, interacting with each other brings into the world stereotypes, the destruction of those stereotypes, hybrid culture, culture pockets and tolerance is something amazing to me. All of my Brooklyn friends' landlords are jewish and notoriously stubborn, every bodega I've gone into has had a middle eastern person behind the counter and yet drivers of the taxis I've taken have been incredibly racially diverse. I'd be willing to believe that "fusion restaurants" were invented in Manhattan. I've encountered entire neighborhoods in Brooklyn and Manhattan where the houses and people could have been clones. Seems that "opposites attract" is crap. Despite this "stick to ourselves" feeling that many neighborhoods have, people themselves try new things and do new things all the time. There is a group of elderly people doing Tai' Chi in the park that I pass every time I come to the city. They look like a stock photo for diversity. It's amazing.

Trying and doing new things. That's another reason I love NYC. Everyone you know knows somebody who doesn't know you. Hey, my graduating class in high school had 80 people, knowing someone who doesn't know you is a big deal! Beyond the fact that you can -in NYC- meet someone who is truly a stranger to you, many of these strangers are interested in doing new things. There are always new restaurants and new bars, new parks and new gallery openings. If you're adventurous you could do something you've never done on every day of the week. Talk about broadening horizons!

Not only are there new things to do, but there are old things to do. Museums. Tons of them. They are awesome. Though I don't think anything will ever top the elephant in the grand hall of the Smithsonian in DC the Met is, well, The Met.

Vaguely related to the whole "people who don't know you" thing is the fact that you are almost constantly surrounded by people. For me as a people watcher, this is amazing. It's 3 am on a Wednesday and I'm taking a cab to the train station. 3 am is the time that I largely regard as no-mans-land time. It's too late for late people and too early for early people. Are bakers up at 3 am? Maybe. People coming home from night clubs? People closing the night clubs? Sure, I guess. So what's up with that guy walking his dog and this girl over here with groceries and cut flowers?!

It's 3 AM! There are fewer people around now than there will be at noon, but there's still a full compliment of people doing normal day stuff. What grocery store is open at 3 am?! I don't know who these people are or why they're up and doing mundane things at no-mans-land time, but I think they are fabulous. This is the place where vampire-run all night dry cleaners might actually work out.

Cut flowers, another thing I love about NYC. What is up with all the cut flowers in all the grocery stores? I don't get it, but it's amazing.

Resuming prior tack. People. There are a select few cities where you can be surrounded by people and totally invisible at the same time. New York is one of them. I truly believe that a grievous crime could be committed at any time on the streets of New York and maybe half of the people who saw it would actually see it. This is fascinating to me in the same way that sharks and the third rail are fascinating.

I'm totally loving all my segues here. The subway. That's awesome too. I read somewhere that the overwhelming majority of adults in the USA use cars to get around. This is totally flip flopped in NYC, where only 18% of adults even own a car (thank you US Census 2000). I'm a big green energy person and I truly believe in my heart that reliable public transportation is where it's at. This works for NYC. You can feel free to ask me how I feel about that later, when I'm stranded out in Dyker Heights and the D train isn't running back into the city on the weekend.

Here in Richmond, the busses stop after 10 pm and many of them don't run on the weekends at all. The most one can say about NYC transit is that it slows down sometimes...or goes on strike. That too.

Anyway. I don't care that the subways are dirty. I even kind of dig that they've got their own smell. There is nothing that smells like that other than subway. Everyone oohs and ahhs about how clean and pretty the DC Metro is. I don't dig them. On the DC Metro I feel like I"m 5 again and sitting on my great aunt's hermetically sealed, plastic wrapped couch. Don't talk, don't use your phone, don't chew gum, fuck, don't even bring FOOD onto the metro. It's bullshit. Sure, it's pretty, it's even been carpeted, but when you're on the 70s colored, fluorescent lit, clean, sterile and bright train hurtling towards Dulles at 5 am and everyone on the train is polished, silent as the grave, staring ahead, not making eye contact with anyone or reading or anything you will think it's creepy too. Give me a normal, organic subway with people doing normal, organic things any day.

All of this and I haven't even gotten to the shopping yet and I've never even visited Central Park. New York isn't THE city of dreams, but it is MY city of dreams.

Poor Wisebread

It looks like WiseBread.com threw up on itself this morning.

Poor guys, that sucks.

Preparing dinner I find this on my fridge

I got "pick up lines" refrigerator magnets for graduation. Nobody has
used them until today.

Dating as marketing

I started my day job to sustain me while I was in school. Now I just kinda keep it because I like going out during the day and working with other people. I know that people are rare to like the job that they have, and I like mine so I feel I should appreciate the blessing that I have and keep it :)

Anyway, I do glorified temp work. I come in on a per project basis for firms that need web design work. Sometimes it IS temp work and I fill in on a big project when the other folks are out of the office and sometimes I just design one website or do little fix up work for small firms that don't have a web design person. In one office I work in regularly I share a room with the internet marketing team.

I wouldn't say I'm a big fan of marketing and sales departments, in my short sojourn into the corporate world I have already learned that they are the natural enemy to developers like myself. However, I've definitely learned a lot about internet marketing from listening to these guys' meetings. Normally I apply said knowledge to marketing my porn. This last meeting though sounded a lot like dating, so that's what I'll apply it to.

Dating, as "landing page analysis"

Most of my friends are guys, nerds like myself and for some reason they assume that I know a lot of other girls. I don't know why they think this, I've never begged out of a D&D game to go "hang out with the girls" or anything. Maybe vaginas are magnets for other vaginas and I just don't know. I've never attracted other vaginas though...shit. Maybe I've put my vag on inside out and the polarity is reversed.

I'll have to check that later.

Anyway. Landing page analysis is all about deciding who your markets for your product are and putting the stuff about your product that each market wants in a place where they can find it. This is what dating is all about too, finding the people you like and showing them how you are the person they like in hopes that they like you.

Step one, steal underwear. Oh no, sorry, different tutorial. Step one, figure out the kind of person you want to date. I know that having a "type" of person is "so 1997" but no matter how evolved you are you've got certain people you enjoy being around or like looking at. My friend Geoff* is an artist who really likes athletic girls. Your sub-step here is to figure out why you like this person and then why this person would like you.

That sub step sounds like a lot of soul searching, and true enough, it may require that. It's mostly put there for you to analyze your decision. Like, say you decide you like Asian girls b/c you expect them to be subservient or you like goths because you want to listen to nothing but Morrissey forever. Got news for you pal, Asian chicks are people who have different kinds of temperaments like everybody else and most goth kids these days haven't even heard of Morrissey (also, have you considered therapy for depression?).

I don't know why Geoff likes athletic girls, but I could tell you what he has to offer them. He's an artist, so I imagine lots of really cool afternoons spent like Titanic where she lounges and he sketches her portrait and it's all sexy-like. He has a good sense of humor, and is articulate (it's cliche because people are actually looking for it). He also has a job, car, friends, and good personal hygiene. The latter often needs to be noted.

Now that you've figured out who you're looking for and made sure that there aren't unrealistic expectations (and perhaps had some therapy) we're ready for step two. Find where the person you want is most likely to be.

Though I've never been a bar-going sort my parents were always fond of saying, "you're never going to meet your true love in a bar". Though I did read a cute story just the other day where life partners had met in a bar I'm going to go with my parents on this one. I've heard more, "I totally fucked this guy I met at a bar while we were wicked wasted and I probably shouldn't have done that because I never want to see him again." than I've heard, "We met at Cruisers and have been happily married ever since."

Online dating has been a big thing ever since Al Gore invented the internet so you could always do that and read another tutorial out there somewhere to teach you how to write a great profile for gay-hating Match.com. There are plenty of those out there so I'm going to talk about something else.

Going back to Geoff. He likes athletic girls and he likes girls who like dogs. If you didn't have a friend who could set you up with this girl, where would you find an athletic girl who likes dogs? At the gym, at a dog park, volunteering with an animal rescue league, walking her dog in the park, taking a job as a dog walker, anywhere that the Venn diagram of "likes dogs" overlaps with the one of "likes physical activity".

Now that we've located our quarry we must locate ourselves in the same locale! Geoff doesn't have a dog, so he can't take his own dog to a dog park, but he could volunteer to walk a friend's dog and he could certainly volunteer to work for an animal rescue. Heck, he could take out the middle man of chance and go straight to volunteering with a singles' volunteer club that works with animal rescues. Let me Google that for you:

Results 1 - 10 of about 187,000 for singles volunteer group. (0.28 seconds)

Similarly, Geoff could join a gym and ask that the cute chick on the treadmill or in spinning class if she likes dogs.

There you have it, basic dating via marketing. Find your "market". Figure out if it's the right one for you. Find your marketable product. Bring the right product to the right market. If we want to fine tune it, or take it a little more advanced, we add one last step.

Now that we grok our audience we make ourselves more attractive to them. This is related to the sub points in the first part. You know what you have to offer, now you have to figure out what they're looking for. This part is kind of tough. You're LOOKING for your audience, so you haven't found them yet and until you have some experience with them you can only guess (based on your superb market research and after school specials) at what they're looking for.

What do athletic girls who like dogs look for in a partner? Basic human knowledge tells us that they're like everyone else and they're looking for people like them. Athletic people who like dogs. If this is true, Geoff has a hurdle here because he's fat. The only way to test and see if this is true is by getting out there. Find the athletic girls, spend time with them. Maybe they'll date you as you are. If so, win! If not, remember, this is an anthropological marketing study here. Pay attention, see who they do date. Don't change yourself to something that you're not, but play up those characteristics in yourself.

There you go. Again, find your market, find your product, paint your product in the best light for your market and go to market. Refine your approach with sophisticated market research. Isobel Wren, naked AND informative.

*Names changed to protect the innocent (and keep Geoff from beating my ass)

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Ick.

I'm making this blog post simply so that I don't have to see the picture of that lump of "soup" first thing when I load up my blog page. It's getting to the point where it turns my stomach looking at it. I still have a few bowls of the stuff in the fridge and I'm not going to be able to eat it any more if I keep getting sicked out by it on my blog page.

In related news, it's totally funny how blogger is all, "Your blog has published successfully!" I picture it in a proud, Disney kind of tone. I want to congratulate the software back, "No no, I did nothing, it was all you my friend."

Soup?

The crock pot cookbook says this is soup. Chunkiest. Soup. Evar.

How Models Pack

I am endlessly interested in the way things fit together and organize themselves so I find the way I pack my suitcase -as a model- really interesting so I like to share. I'm pretty sure that I've already talked about this, but I can totally do it again :) I practically get off on this shit.

In the first layer of packing things in the suitcase it's important to pack things around the spines in a way that allows things to move but not crush or break.

Step 1)Pack toiletries and curlers. I've had a ton of beauty items asplode so they're all in that little baggie. Minimum damage. Also, it's at the bottom of the bag (I shot lots of this upside down and I didn't feel like turning the photos over) I'm hoping that gravity will work with me in case things burst.












Step 2)Pack other things that need to be straight and protected, like corsets, in amongst the spines of the suitcase.
















Step 3)If you pack the shoes like they came in the shoebox in the tightest, closest way you can you can fit more shoes. This is seven pairs of shoes. SEVEN. Oh, and I forgot my curler clips, so I put those on top of the curlers themselves.















Step 4)Pack in amongst the shoes small squishy things like panties and socks, bras. I love my little bra ball up there in the corner.















Step 5) Now we start the second layer, everything that needs to be folded fits in like puzzle pieces. Shirts, skirts, pants. This is half of one layer shot sideways to sort of show how it is all layered and shit.









Step 6) Now that the clothing is layered I add my running shoes and (in this case) a latex dress, carefully protected in its plastic bag.















Step 7) To bring small amounts of things to shoots and since my suitcase is basically always overweight (I'm maybe too efficient with the packing) I add this little canvas bag. I've had this bag since I was a kid going off to summer camp.










Step 8)Small stuff that I've forgotten to pack and then delicate things like pantyhose and stockings in bags go in the front pockets. And we're done!

*an after-note, this time my suitcase was 3 lbs overweight. That's two pairs of jeans and three dildoes. Aaand it's sad that I have it so much down to a science that I can tell you how much things like that generally weigh.

Wow. Wonder if they did that on purpose

Holy shit it's raining hard!

Kitteh sez model's clothes are de best place for sleeps.

Eeeheheheee! [pic nsfw]

Look what I got in the mail today!

There is a baby monkey here! [pic]

Land of Opportunity

Falling asleep I realized that I hadn't packed lunch for work in the morning. I got out of bed, threw my flannel jammie top and padded down the hall to the kitchen. Looking in the refrigerator I noticed that the small remainder of a beautiful fruit bouquet I received for my birthday was looking piqued so I took it to the furnace room to dispose of it. Once there I saw that some pieces were still edible. Crouching over the compost bin I pulled the little fruits on sticks out of their foam, nibbling off all the little bits that didn't feel like hairless Chihuahua skin. Gnawing the innards out of a suede-y cantaloupe slice I fiddled with the decorative kale that had come packed around the sticks.

"I bet you I could boil this up and eat it!" I thought, immediately moving to take the kale I'd just thrown away out of the compost bin.

The pathetic nature of these thoughts and actions suddenly hit me. Recent college grad, 45$ in the bank, asking my roommate to hold the rent check so that I can deposit enough to cover it, squatting like Golum over the compost, eating old veggies and contemplating pulling more out of the moldy bin.

"Is this the land of exciting opportunities the graduation speaker promised me?" I mused aloud.

"I dunno," my roommate called from the other room, "but eating a fruit bouquet pantsless seems pretty damned decadent to me."

Thank you Esther for putting it into perspective.

I love this flyer.