Collectioun of Cunnynge Curioustes: December 28, 2013

Johann Georg Hainz's Cabinet of Curiosities, circa 1666. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
Johann Georg Hainz’s Cabinet of Curiosities, circa 1666. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

During the Renaissance, cabinet of curiosities came into fashion as a collection of objects that would often defy classification. As a precursor to the modern museum, the cabinet referred to room(s), not actual furniture, of things that piqued the owners interest and would be collected and displayed in an aesthetically pleasing manner. Collectioun of Cunnynge Curioustes is my 21st century interpretation of that idea.
Dear Internet,

Writing

F.U.C.K.

Watching

  • Blandings
    Based on the stories by P.G. Wodehouse, a frothy watch that is coming back for a second season in 2014.
  • Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.  and Sleepy Hollow
    I watched the first few episodes of both and let the rest pile up on the DVR. I found, as time went on, I had no fucks for either show. I was bored, found Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. neither clever or intriguing and Sleepy Hollow was just plain boring.
  • Boardwalk Empire
    Another show, like Homeland, that I stopped watching at some point in mid-season only to have TheHusband keep me up to date on the goings on. Now that one of my favorite characters is dead, the plot is overly messy, another character has been tossed to the side, I am glad this is now over. If this gets picked up for another season, we’ll more than likely not watch this hot mess.
  • Downton Abbey Christmas Special
    This was, it has to be, a parody of the entire show. Two major events were pushed easily to the side and summarily forgotten, no real movement in the plot, and speculation about some of the characters was heightened all dressed under snark about the English upper classes by the characters playing the upper classes. Just meh.
  • Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries Christmas Special
    Yay Phryne. Now what am I going to do until season three comes to fruition??
  • Death Comes to Pemberley
    Based on the novel by P.D. James, this three part series is currently being shown in the UK. I have yet to read the book, but, the series is interesting. It has loads of good actors, Matthew Rhys, Matthew Goode, Anna Maxwell Martin, and others. But the movement is slow, the dialogue is a bit thin, and frankly, I am not caring enough about the characters but I will continue.
  • Raised by Wolves
    Written by Caitlin Moran and her sister Caroline, it is an emphasis of their ramshackle homeschooled life from the ’80s, except placed in the current climes. I have a love/hate relationship with Caitlin, and the first episode got a slow start, but I found myself warming up to the show pretty quick.

Weekly watching: BBC Tudor Monastery Farm, Reign, DraculaProject Runway All-Stars, Breathless, Atlantis,  Elementary, Doc Martin, QIPeaky Blinders,  Sons of Anarchy,  The Vampire Diaries
What have you read/watched/listened to this week?
x0x0,
lisa

This day in Lisa-Universe in: 2011

Fucked Up College Kids

Simunye's Grandfather
Me, my grandfather, and my brother circa 1979

Dear Internet,
When writing yesterday’s entry, I came across the entry I had written about the death of my grandfather, which was 18 years ago today. The piece was part of a larger series I had written for Fucked Up College Kids, a ‘zine that I got involved with in 1997 and  1998. Shortly after my last entry for F.U.C.K., The Lisa Chronicles went live in July 1998.
I decided in celebration of the season, to make these live again on my site for the first time in nearly a decade. Some of the entries can be triggering, could use a good edit or two, and some of it is chaos in the highest order. But it’s glorious in its innocence.
Enjoy.

x0x0,
Lisa

This day in Lisa-Universe: 2011, 2002

cheap and easy

you may notice some changes happening around pronstar.org recently. Paul, my widdle luv muffin (even though he is denying me sex because I had a cigarette today) has been working on a web tool for me to update my site with ease from anywhere in the world without having to use nothing but a web browser. we are still beta testing that out — and while we do, i had gone through and started cleaning up my dead links. You may notice the links in the archive section NOW work (when before they hadn’t) and if you were really hard up, you could read all the back crap i wrote from 1995 on to current.
As of today, I’m up to November of 1998 on cleaning up bad links/images/spelling/typos. If you find anything in “Poetry”, “FUCK”, “Essay”, “Short Stories”, or “Past Journals” that has a dead link, typo, missing image: PLEASE LET ME KNOW! This is really really important to me as I’m making sure everything is organized and good to go when we convert it over. I’ve been doing my damndest to make sure everything is working but I know I missed some stuff.
like a bad penny
there has been a resurgence of activity on the lisa-network. first it started out with someone contacting me via aol im asking me about f.u.c.k. and when i wrote for it. which kind of surprised me because i haven’t had an issue published in over a year (probably going on two) and on the 7th (i think) anniversary of FUCK, jericho closed down it’s doors — and you have to admit, 7 years is a long time to run a ‘zine (especially on the internet). and that got me wondering about dear old fuck and as i was going through the archive list, it got me thinking about the mind set i was in when i wrote that. and then it dawned on me that my style of writing always began with a topic bar and the first sentence. there was never a set subject or topic other than what flowed from my head. sometimes i had an idea and i based it off of that — and other times, it was just words that i strung along to make it look pretty.
but the main point is, i had fun doing it.
i miss doing stuff like fuck, because it gave me someplace other than my website to showcase how i wrote. it wasn’t a matter if someone agreed with me or not or if they even liked it, but they still read it, which was an improvement over NOT reading it.
and moving along this curve, i suddenly got a flux of people who joined the mailing list, emailed me and signed the guestbook. while the domain is eye catching (is it not?), i haven’t been updating like i usually have been (even if sketchy) and there is no reason why this influx should be going on —
but who am i to argue?
so i think it’s spring — the influx of people getting what i have to say and the whole cleaning up issues i’ve been having recently with paul working on the back end of this dealie and me just plowing around on the front end. and i was thinking about this tonight when our new friend corey came over and showed us his old zine, verbosity. and again i got thinking.
and if you smelled smoke in Virginia, you know why.
regardless, i want to start a new zine. haven’t gotten any ideas yet, but i do have a few interviews lined up with a few people who are funny (like doug the advertising hound writer and tony, the vegan porn slut and finally keff, the mega star of userfriendly). i don’t have a theme and i probably shouldn’t be doing anything until i get pronstar.org up and running smoothly again, but hey, i’m just saying, if you want to help out, email me and let me know what you can do 🙂 i just am interested in doing something fun and worthwhile again — and basically kick start pronstar.org back into action baybee!
smoke free for five days
see topic
and in other news

  • my brother came and gone. we had fun. we bought him a laptop. we test drove a durango. damn i miss my brother. pictures will be forthcoming.
  • i’m being sued by shelly for a verbal agreement. the court date got moved to may 5, 2000. while some of you asked me her response to me moving from Virginia Beach to Fairfax, take a gander at how she felt about it.
  • i am now a flaming redhead. i bleached my hair from black to yellow to make it red.
  • we are not moving to boston. i think.
  •  i’ve been working at uunet for almost five months now. paul and i have been living together for nearly four. and we haven’t killed each other. joy! 🙂
  • i am tired and all the wonderful joyful things i was going to tell you, i have forgotten.

good night.
x0x0x0x
moi
 

early Sunday morning

The whole purpose of this, was that the writers block that had been lasting over two months has finally been cleared. Thanks in part to me writing a 21k file entitled “Celibacy: The New Frontier” and passing it on to jericho/d1s to put into F.U.C.K.. It was the first piece written in over two months, and since then, I have felt this need to release my thoughts again to the world.
I’m fairly sure, except for a few small letters here and there, that the world isn’t dying because I haven’t written anything. However, the thing is, that I have felt a sense of ‘loss’ (for a better word) for -not- doing it. I’ve gotten pretty disgusted in the past, and tore the whole site down, but found out after doing so, that people were upset because it my web pages were no longer accessible. And it wasn’t really about my personal web pages, but my writings page.
In that time period, while surfing the web again, I’ve noticed that I wasn’t the only one who whose the idea of the journal was being used. Many sites show feelings/idea’s/dreams/heart-aches of that person’s life. In a way, it’s a bit daunting, because what makes me so much different then the average Joe Blow?
who cares. it is my life and no one lives it but me.
daily trappings:
Woke up later than planned today (2PM) and realized I had to leave at 4 P.M. to head to my job as a tech engineer (sounds more glamorous than it really is). Walking out of my bedroom, I noticed that psycho-schitzo roommate Irene had posted an addendum to her eviction notice yesterday: “If you plan on staying on after the 1st (of the month), I will require a deposit of 300 dollars to cover bills and such.” I started laughing. I have been living in this shit-hole for nearly a year, and -now- she’s requiring a deposit? I don’t think so. In the past couple of months, Irene has started getting -really- strange (more so than normal, this is California after all). For instance, when she got pissed off for god-knows what, she disconnected the heater for four days. Now, it wouldn’t be that big of a deal if it were not early February, and it was never more than 30 degrees outside. She’s pulled asinine stunts such as taking the living room TV into her bedroom, knowing we (Cathleen and I) couldn’t watch television, breaking dishes in angry fits and then turning around and making us presents in happier moments. Cathleen wasn’t as amused as I was. Cathleen had spent the better part of the morning talking to her now ex Ty, and was fairly upset. She and I have been looking for a place to split for a month now. But this being the Bay Area, it’s tougher then a needle in a haystack.
Work was uneventful, except for one thing: I was the only one manning the phone lines tonight.
Again, this wouldn’t be that big of deal, but it is Saturday night (should give you some clue as to my social life if I am working on a Saturday night), and everybody and their damn brother was wanting to get on-line. The calls in the queues were over 40 minutes long, and I was going nuts. Also one of our servers was acting flaky, so I had to speak to the sys admin on duty and attempt to fix it on our end. Not fun.
But, as par usual, since I am so damn charming and talented, I got head hunted on the phone. I should have emailed my resume out to the person, but I haven’t yet, and right now my resume is not up to date. But I will. (I procrastinate so damn much, that I probably won’t get it out till tomorrow at one point.)
I really hate my job. Well, that’s being excessive. I love it because I have plenty of freedom there, but I hate it because I don’t get paid nearly enough NOR am I recognized. For instance, last week I fixed on of the main computers (which was a priority because it was part of the network printer group), and Daniel, my immediate boss says he will email the head honcho’s and bcc me a copy of the letter for thanking me. Has this letter been sent? Hell no! And they wonder why they have such a high turn over rate? Or for that matter, why I’ve been scheduling interviews at other companies?
After work, Deva walked me down 2nd street towards the subway station and I felt somewhat safe. I had just made it in time to catch my train. I was sitting there reading Love in the Time of Cholera, when this guy walks over and sits down in front of me. I’m not sure what station he got on at, but it disturbed me with it being nearly late at night, and that he has to sit by me when there are tons of empty seats around.
He starts talking to me, and I stiffen a bit. It really bothers me when strangers start talking to me about nothing and everything in particular. Some people are nice, but others, well, you really don’t want to meet them after dark.
He introduced himself as Rick, and he asked me my name. I shook his hand and didn’t give him my name, just said “Hello.” I was busily attempting to read my book, and also staring out into the darkened tunnels. He keeps making small talk and I smile and nod and answer a few questions, and attempt to brush him off politely. When he finally gets the point that I’m not going to speak to him, he stops and just sits there. He then starts motioning towards me and moving his lips as if he was speaking to someone. I look up at him and apologizes. I ask sharply “For what?” and he doesn’t say anything at all. A bit disturbed, I get off at the next stop and walk fast to the other train. I turn around and he’s just standing there talking to someone and I’ve been forgotten. Slightly relieved I sit down in a single seat and pick up my book again. I can hear his raunchous laughter wafting in through the open doors. I start panicking and willing the doors to close, but it’s like the train operator isn’t listening to me.
Finally the doors being to close and I notice Rick’s laughter is still coming through the cracks. He’s safe on the platform while I’m safe inside the train. No one suspicious is sitting near me and I breathe a small sense of relief as I begin reading again.