I don't have anything interesting to write about today. I am excited to get out of here and go buy foodstuffs for Thanksgiving. It is my job to plan the holiday party and get people to sign up to bring in treats for the month of December. And this from the girl who made a point of never introducing herself to anybody in her dorm in college. When I was a freshmen I would go to parties with my friends and lie about everything: "I used to be a stripper, my name is Candy." My favorite one was when I convinced someone that I had auditioned to be the mascot for the football games: "Even though the costume is designed for a tall, muscular man, they liked my moves so much that they said they would tailor it to fit me. I didn't make the final cut, though." The whole thing was bought hook, line and sinker. I don't have very bad behavior generally. But sometimes I still go through these rebellious periods. In my senior year of college, I got really sick of going to class and writing papers, so I started showing up really late and chewing huge wads of bubble gum. One time I got in trouble for reading the newspaper in class, mostly because I had it completely open and in front of my face, not even trying to hide it. The teacher said, "Is there something in that paper you'd like to share with the class?" And like a Christian Slater character I actually paused, because everything in the paper was more interesting and worth sharing than the load of recycled hash she was mumbling at us.

Shine on you crazy diamond

I just got back from my grandmother's memorial service. There were several family members slotted to speak in the "remembrances" section, but nobody was prepared for the length and breadth of my grandfather's eulogy. He had notecards. He started at the beginning, which was actually the months and days leading up to when he first met my grandma. He continued through their entertaining and highly detailed first encounter, and on to the next day, and the second date, and all the dates thereafter.... including their wedding, births of their children, and after 1 and a half hours, he said "The year was now 1959." I passed through many stages: Obvsiously tears and laughter caused by the stories themselves, but also amazement, laughter again, awe, impatience, and then a sort of zen-like state, where I told myself "I might still be here, sitting here in this pew, tomorrow." All in all, I'm glad he spent so much time. There shouldn't be a limit.

Lucinda Grande

Lucinda Grande. When I woke up I wanted to go back to sleep. When I left my house I told my roommate I just wanted to come home after work and watch movies all night. Then I got to work and started e-mailing people and realized that if something fun came up, I would do that instead of renting videos. For lunch I went to La Bumba, a mexican restaurant I frequent. My coworker and I had margaritas and I had chicken chimichangas. I am about to go get coffee which I don't usually drink. I used to be addicted. My coworker told me this ghost story about a sleeping ghost. That's funny. He wasn't even there to haunt her. She thought she heard heavy breathing behind her and turned around and it was just a sleeping irridescent ghost. And when she told her mother about it, her mom said "oh yeah, that's probably uncle so-and-so." I don't know about ghosts. I knew a guy once who said he didn't believe in anything mysterious. Everything can be explained scientifically, he said. But he had a tattoo on his arm that said "Go down believing." I thought, maybe he meant that if you believe, "you're going down." But he said it meant believing in something else. "What?" I said, ever innocent, and he said "like believing in doing good, doing the right thing," in his lilting Swedish accent. Something I noticed on my walk back from the restaurant, passing the WTC site: They have now displayed the iron cross they discovered in the wreckage. It sits in concrete, towering over the site, with a piece of melted metal wrapped around one of its arms like fabric. It is spooky. Then I crossed Church street and realized its not called synogogue street or mosque street. And then a cold finger wiggled up my spine, which may or may not have been a ghost. It also could have been that ever-sneaking suspicion that I am a cog in a very evil, evil machine.

R Kelly lyrics

Ya know how R Kelly says "after the party is the afterparty"? And then he says"after that is the hotel lobby?" Well for me, it goes "after that is the Q train running in two sections, the second section departing Atlantic-Pacific at 1:30 a.m. packed full to standing room only. And by "room" I mean no room. Speaking of "standing room only," this show that I am in on Saturday just might get past maximum capacity. And then there will surely be a fire. This place is a basement. Very, very deep in the ground. We will all just roast in it like an oven. And now I'm reminded of that hilarious Onion article about the dance club that burned to the ground. The article stated that a good samaritan tried to warn the dancers by shouting at the crowd "The roof! The roof! The roof is on fire!" But all they did was call back to him "We don't need no water, let the motherfucker burn!" Random event: Arriving late at work this morning, I passed a man delivering boxes and smiled kindly at him. He said "I would let you buy me coffee, but I'm busy." I just stared at him. Then I started laughing on the elevator.

sooz is here

SOOZ IS FINALLY ARRIVED! This is the former hilarityensooz site which featured a mountain-topping post of 1 which read "Welcome." Blogging is not so hard, but if you forget your password, and have changed your e-mail address since your initial post, you have to create a new one. Also, here are some other reasons I haven't blogged so much until now:
1. Is blogging sacred enough? I mean writing is really sacred. Not the oldest profession, though. That's prostitution.
2. Who is going to read this? Will somebody be reading my innermost thoughts? Isn't that pretty damn close to prostitution?
3. Why am I so afraid of prostitution? Why don't I just strike out in my heels and make a buck?
4. What if I am boring. Well, this one is probably true. I recommend you never ever coming back to this blog ever again, because you, the reader, will probably totally die of boredom. Totes.
5. If I squirt my excellent writing out now, will I be less likely to publish it in a real endeavor like a book? Oh, the pain of living. But we've got to go on working, Masha, always working.
6. I hate the sound of my clever voice. Why can't I be funny without sounding like a piss-ant?