psychobabble

I am having a lot of anxiety which I am recognizing as a symptom of anger I have.

In Madonna's new documentary she reads from the Zohar. She reads, "In all my days I forgave and made peace with any man who did evil by me. Thus I did not harbor hatred all that day for the harm he did me. Moreover, from that day on, I tried to do kindness by them."

Then she says, "Can you imagine forgiving people that fucked you over...to get to the end of that day and not only forgive them but to wish them well."

I don't know anyone who I think has "done evil" by me. I don't believe that people are evil. I believe that for whatever reason, people who appear to "do evil" are doing what they think is right. They are protecting themselves or something that they think is important.

However, throughout my life I have had situations where I think I have been treated badly and am hurt by it. I'm sure that I have done the same to others. And maybe, sometimes, I have "brought it on myself."

I usually avoid, minimize and or ignore when I get hurt rather than call it out. I'm trying to get better at adressing it before I bury it in my emotional cellar where I think it will die. But, I have learned that hurt and anger does not die. It spreads like a cancer and in my case-- turns into an anxiety disorder.

So, now in a tiny, virtual, cyber way I am adressing it. Me hurting others, others hurting me. All of it.

jeremy's best picture oscar pic

I think it's pretty clear that it's going to be a BIG night for "Big Business." Although it wasn't oficially nominated, the buzz is huge- especially around my apartment. While Lily and Bette are sure to bring home some gold doorstoppers, Seth Grenn as Bette's son is the one everyone is talking about.

This year I made a point of seeing all the Oscar movies. Big mistake. Big waste of time and money. Even the Milk Duds and Twizzlers and Cherry Pepsis and Large Popcorns
with extra butter and "napkins" made out of toilet paper didn't do anything to make these cinematic crapsicles any better. As for the real nominees here are my reviews:


Bareback Mountain
Beans. Wrestling. Beans. Sex. Wrestling. Shirts.
Contrived unrealistic relationship.(Although real relationships to me seem contrived and I've never had a boyfriend, let alone a cowboy boyfriend, let alone a barebackin brokebackin, cowboy boyfriend.) I did like Michelle Williams, although she was laughed at in the theater when she was crying. She is the only one I related to in the movie. And she was in "Dick" with Kirsten Dunst, another favorite of mine, which I hear might be another contender this year.


Munich
Guys run around blowing up beds and phones and shoot each other for two and a half hours. Fell asleep twice. Bullet holes with blood squirting out of them does not a good movie make. Big Business did not have any violence and yet it still made a statement about an important issue. Careless nurses who don't have good eyesight are mixing up newborn sets of twins all around this country. Big Business should be an A-Ha! moment for this country. This is an epidemic.

Crash
This one. Don't get me started. I only watched the first ten minutes, I get the point. We should be aware of the undercurrent of subtle racism in this country. Got it. Not gonna watch anymore. Why? Because there is another movie with not one but two Bette Midlers and not one but two Lily Tomlins. Need I say more?


Capote
Phillip Seymour Hoffman was great! Just a smidge caricuture-ish, but Capote was a caricuture of himself. Like I have any idea. Anyway, so he was good.
BUT WHAT THE FUCK WAS UP WITH THE EDITING. Seriously they'd get to the end of a sceandthen they would jumpinto something else and then one sceeennneee woooulldd beee waayyyy too looonggg foooorr nnnnoo rreeasson and then theyd jumpINTO another scen and it was AllOVeR the Pllace with nNNo rhyme or reas-

Good night, and Good luck
It was the first one I saw out of all of them and didn't go to see it because it was Oscar picked but because we learned about Edward R. Murrow in school and blah blah blah. So, it was good. Have an issue with George Clooney but I'm learning to like him. It was pretty good. I enjoyed myself. The only thing it could have learned from Big Business is to end the movie with all the characters pairing up and living happily ever after and to have "(Bring Me A) Higher Love" play over the credits. If you want to seal the deal in my book, you have to have "(Bring Me A) Higher Love" play over the credits. It just sends a positive message to the audience and that's what you want to do whether it's a movie about terrorism at the Olympics or Joseph McCarthy.

Well, although the winner this year is clear (Big Business) it should be a fun night. I'll be watching Joan and Melissa on the TV Guide Channel like everyone else.

a day in the life

My current routine. I get up at about 6 AM-ish when I have school. Smoke a cigarette in bed, dangerously half asleep. Put some coffee on. Usually turn NPR on but don't listen at all. Take my pills: Lexapro, Trileptal, Prilosec. Brush my teeth, put on some deodorant, get dressed. Set my microwave timer for when I have to leave the house. Sit down at my computer, smoke and drink coffee and an Ensure, surf the web.

This is my favorite time of the day.

The microwave timer goes off. I push it another ten minutes or so. Finally get up and put on my jacket - making sure that I have my cellphone.

I go out to the bus stop which is, thankfully, very close to my apt. I study the other people waiting. Decide who is hot and who is not, all while listening to my iPod on shuffle.

Get on the bus, saying hello to the busdriver- probably very loudly becuase I have my iPod on. Sit in my usual seat. I like this bus route because I can see the lake in the morning. As people get on, I am continuing my scan for my boyfriend. Deciding which one I am in love with and try to decide if he is in love with me.

I am drinking coffee out of a stainless steel travel mug so I start to get all hyped up on caffeine and the initial yet very temporary speedy effects of my antidepressants. I decide to text message people stupid things. These text messages are usually regretted by the end of the day.

voltron

today in documentary class we watched the first 30 minutes of "fahrenheit 911", "fahrenHYPE 911" and "outfoxed," which i thought i would hate- just because im so done with those documentaries- but that blank screen with just the audio in "fahrenheit 911" when the twin towers are hit always gets me. so effective as you sit there and your imagination paints the picture- incredible.

i went outside for two smokes on my break and this guy literally jumps me for a cigarette. "give me one of those camels!" for a minute i think about saying no, but he is essentially mugging me for a cigarette, so i pull one out.

"I shouldn't have done that, jumping up on you like that."

I am silent.

"I'm from New Orleans. Chicago is crazy. There's actually burros and shit. I thought New Orleans was big," as he lights the cigarette he mugged me for with the lighter I give him.

"You a student."

"Yes."

"Music?"

"Television."

"Television? So you go to school and when your done here what do you think your gonna do? Direct?"

"Writing"

"Well they sure need more writers. They're running out of ideas in Hollywood. Now I see they are doing 'Curious George'. I saw that and I said shit... Next they're gonna do 'Puff the Magic Dragon' or some shit."

"You are right."

"When they do a movie of Voltron, you know it's all over."

On my way back upstairs to watch more movies that I've already seen I decide that he has put into words basically about the same amount of information that I am paying $900,000 to hear.

That's not exactly true. My self esteem and general sanity is worth all the money that I am putting into this college song and dance. Being forced to get up, to read and to write, to be exposed occasionally to new things

lets keep it confidential

Dream I was totally making out with this guy I totally shouldn't have been making out with...mmmm. Good dream.

then

I'm taping a television show with Barb slash Kara. Not Barb or Kara, a fusion of the two in one person. I don't know what the content of the show was but it was in someone's basement on a modular couch. They have these really crazy robotic arm cameras that flip around and look real simple and real difficult to operate at the same time. The producer tells me that she is fighting with her boss on her cellphone because he is not happy with the way our show is going. She tells me that the only reason she decided to do our really bad tv show was because she was sick of looking for other shows to do. She says that she is sick of the television business and just wants to go to Austria.

pizza guy

just before i woke up- bad dream of some sort and then dream of sandra bernhard with really short hair. need to leave the house.

ordered a pizza last night at 10 pm and the man delivering had the nerve to come into my apartment so he could find something on which to rub an impression of my credit card. lots of small talk coming only from him, "nice little place you got here," "it's really snowing out." he was distracted by "Reno 911" which I was watching and then finally decided upon the top of my computer monitor to do the rubbing. i don't know if the snow comment was supposed to make me want to give him a bigger tip. didn't work on me.

he told me to fill out "every line" on the credit card slip. yes sir. $21.32 on a disgusting pizza that i had to reheat in my own oven, which involved climbing on a chair and taking the battery out of my smoke detector. the pizza was still gross.

i have been really into lifetime original movies, so i found one to watch as i fell asleep. joanna kerns in "mother knows best" IMDB Plot Description-A woman urges her daughter to get married. And when her daughter does, she doesn't think that she made a good choice. So she goes out and hires a killer to kill her son-in-law. pretty typical plot outline for lifetime original movies but Joanna Kerns as a murderess really didn't do anything for me.

barbara mandrell and george bush

ok, i've seen it. you've seen it. we've all seen it. the video of george bush and barbara mandrell shaking hands with george bush on his recent visit to the grand ole opry. he was running off his mouth with another one of his gobbelty gook speeches about working hard, evil doers and tyranny. we're all a little shaken.

but we must remember as barbara mandrell's biggest fans- that she did have a head injury in the 1980's when she got into that car wreck. so we can't blame her. someone put her up to this.

so don't throw out all your records and t-shirts. do not burn your satin tour jackets and crush your vhs copies of "barbara mandrell and the mandrell sisters" that you bought on ebay. she knows not what she does.

we all saw the confusion in her eyes as she limped her way through her last lifetime original movie, "The Wrong Girl." she's a shell, a husk of what she once was.

not to say that we can't bring her back from the dark side. i'm sure it all boils down to an addiction to painkillers, like everything does nowadays. she's probably just hooked on the junk.

we all know her website hasn't been updated in 3 years. she had to move out of her beautiful log home mansion and move-- into a subdivision! a subdivision!! no, no. you don't go from being the only woman who won entertainer of the year the most times to living in a subdivision. it's unthinkable and absolutely unacceptable.

perhaps dolly parton should give up some of her precious amusement park money and help the BM out.

the kids from fame

the summer after my sixth grade year, my family and i went to england for two weeks. my sister and i hated every second of it. lots of going to visit "relatives" and staying in guest houses- which was like staying at somebody elses house. which i guess is what a guest house is.

my sister and i ended up getting in a big fight in one of the guest houses. i don't remember what it was about but i know i told her to, "HAVE A HEART, JENNIFER!" I thought this was very dramatic at the time, I wish I knew what it was concerning. It was the only time I remember physically fighting with her. I whipped her with my yellow walkman headset cord.

I remember reading "Petals on The Wind," the sequel to "Flowers In The Attic." I also listened to a lot of my "The Kids From Fame" album.



We flew to Jersey, an island in the English Channel that was occupied by the Nazis. We saw a Nazi hospital and a bunch of other creepy Nazi stuff. I would have been really into this now, but I wasn't having any part of it then. We visited another "relative" who lived in a studio apartment similar to the one I live in now and I thought it was very depressing. Lots of knick knacks. The bed was in the same room as the couch! I turned up my nose at the whole thing.

On the way back from Jersey, my parents decided it would be fun to take a hydroplane back to England, rather than fly. Again my sister and I could have given two shits about anything my parents suggested- we just wanted to be home. We both had our walkmans on. She listened to a "Berlin" album and I listened to my "Kids From Fame" album as we sped across the notoriously rough English Channel in a hydroplane.

The English Channel got rougher and rougher and stormier and stormier as we "floated" across. I think it takes like three hours or something to cross the English Channel. But the hydroplane kept stopping because it was too rough. When we did start up again the hydroplane literally dipped into the ocean and back up again and dipped in again and back up again. We were on the bottom level so at times, the water was completely covering the windows. My parents were visibly nervous and they usually keep a good front up so we knew that this wasn't good.

At that age, I wasn't as neurotic and anxiety ridden as I am now. If I was on that thing now, I would have swallowed my entire bottle of klonopin and probably would have jumped into the English Channel. But at that age I remember listening to a synthesized version of some classical song over and over from my "Kids From Fame" album. We eventually made it out of that boat alive and everyone acted like the trip was totally fine and normal. Whatever.

Anyway, I recently received my "The Kids From Fame: Live From Royal Albert Hall" VHS that I bought on half.com for $3.00. I only got about half way through it before I shut it off. It's still good, I guess you just can't go home again. Does that cliche fit? Anyway, I still like the song "Starmaker" one of the Kids From Fame's big hits.

Maybe we can listen to it sometime when you invite me to go for a romantic trip to England with you. I wouldn't mind going as long as we don't stay at a guest house or ride a hydroplane.

only the wind

Joel Sternfeld
McLean, Virginia, Dec 1978 (1978)


its been one hell of a bad day. All of it occurring in my head and in my apartment. its just winding down now at 1:24 AM. i am listening to my "sleep" mix, which contains "Appalachian Memories" by Dolly Parton.

With nothing more than high hopes
We hitched our station wagon to a star
But our dreams all fell in on us
'Cause there was no land of promise
And it's a struggle keepin' sight of who you are

enough of the dramatics. time to go to bed.

really ripped abs

So, on Saturday morning I woke up with the mission of getting Madonnas new (not so new anymore) documentary "I'm Going To Tell You A Secret" off of my computer and on to a DVD. I decided I would buy an external DVD drive. This was my mission my, my dream. As Madonna fans we should just level with ourselves- we don't know when or if this movie will ever be released on DVD. So I thought I would be safe and buy a DVD drive and make a copy so I could watch it and force others to watch it. It has been tough but not impossible to make people sit in front of my computer. But by transferring it to DVD, I would be able to carry a copy in my backpack.

I went to Staples and purchased an external DVD drive solely with the purpose of transferring the movie off of my computer. $186.54 onto my debit card.

Well, I tried it and it didnt work. I tried a different type of dvd and it didn't work. I tried to shorten it and fuckedaround with the settings and it didn't work. I went through about six different dvds and each time I did it it took four hours to record it and never worked. It looked too pixelated and eventually froze up in my regular dvd player.

I gave up and decided we're all going to have to wait until this movie is released officially on DVD. You may remember me posing as a tv executive trying to get a screener copy from the company that holds the rights to the distribution. That failed.

So, I took the damn dvd player back and decided "Kids! We're going to Target!" I have my mom's car for a couple days. I drove around for about a year trying to find the damn Target. I eventually found the two story Target at Addison.

I bought:
some blue blue wrangler jeans
a red t-shirt
a yellow long sleeve t-shirt (that probably won't fit)
some boxer briefs (Target's "Merona" brand- which isn't sexy)
a swishy brown windbreaker (that's too big and makes me look like the homeless woman who is real shaky and talkative and asks for a cigarette and then keeps talking)
some honey roasted peanuts

then I accidentally stopped at Jewel and bought:
some Marie Callendars frozen fish dinners
garbage bags
2 cans of Pringles (1 dollar each!)
Doritos (accidentally bought the "Taco" flavor, SHIT!!!)
and

I found some bodywash called "Bod- Really Ripped Abs" for 50 cents
Hahah "Really Ripped Abs" hahahahaha, ahh
It smelled good and kind of gave me a charge. Like I was buying lube or a sex toy or something.

Anyway, because it was a clearance item and only 50 cents, they had to do a price check for my "Bod- Really Ripped Abs" bodywash. Nice. Standing there with greasy hair and without a body type that could even came close to having "really ripped abs." I had to have the manager come over and override the computer so I could buy my 50 cent "Bod- Really Ripped Abs" bodywash.

I should not be allowed to go shopping without an escort. I should have an escort like a retarted person living in a group home.

"Jeremy, no you can't buy Doritos and Pringles and a bottle of Bod bodywash. No put them back. Put them back."