i should be so rad
Things that happened today – I exchanged some passive-aggressive catty emails with my landlord, Belissa Cohen. She only recently figured out how to use email – or so it seems, as she previously had not ever mentioned its existence. Her address? Belissa@Belissa.net. Of course. I mean, I guess when you’ve been gifted the rare jewel of a name that is Belissa, you wanna floss it out as much as possible. Also, I suppose it is possible that her first choice, frazzledgingerwithstomachtattoos@manipulativeacidcasualty.com, was taken.
Anyways, it’s been a low-level skirmish of her complaining about some minor issue with the house – some chalk drawing remnants on my door, for example (formerly a tombstone reading R.I.P DAN SIEGAL w/lots of blood – thanks, Sam Cantor. It was a birthday present). She is sending a painter. I say that’s great, but it better not be coming out of my deposit, and that I would be more than happy to clean it. She says it should have already been cleaned. I mention she failed to offer us a preliminary move out inspection, which is our legal right. She says that we are all adults (patently false in this case: I am a 23 year old retard and she is a 30-50 [it's seriously indeterminate] year old space case), and I should have known anyways. I mention that it just slipped my mind, much like it slipped her mind to offer us the inspection that was our legal right, or like it slipped her mind arrange pick up with the city of the massive mound of decaying tree trimmings currently annihilating the side of the house, despite promising to do so 3 weeks ago. She does not respond. So it goes.
I honestly have no idea if I’ll be able to get her to roll over my entire share of the deposit, but I’m enjoying actively engaging her on the field of battle over it. I get to feel like I’m playing hardball. It even made spackling over nail-holes in the living room enjoyable, as I got the smug sense of satisfaction of her coming in with the painter tomorrow and finding the walls smooth and unblemished. WHAT NOW, BITCH? Ain’t gonna charge no damages for wall repair up in this humpty bumpty. Booya. Further updates as the information rolls in. Oh yeah – I’m not on the lease right now, so there is the nuclear option of peace-ing out and using legal recourse to get the deposit from her, as it’s already been days past deadline and she definitely violated enough tenants laws to make it a worthy gambit. I really like my new roommates, Jonah and Kristen, however, and I do love the house, so I’m making an effort to stay in it and get this all sorted so I can get another lease signed with Belissa. Bellissapocalypse2k11 rolls on.
Other things that happened today:
My editor said, offhand in a discussion, that I was a really good writer, which meant a lot. I’ve been feeling mostly like I’m fucking up in my job – not necessarily in writing quality, which is the least of my worries as an Associate Editor (oooh, fancy). Rather, it’s been the organizating, idea-generating, PR-person-networking, omnipotent-knowing-of-events-and-situations aspects of my job that I need to work on. Probably because that’s always been stuff that was ancillary to the writing before in my life – things I did just enough of to have some raw material to write about. But my current job pushes that stuff to the forefront actually – I’m not a reporter, and that kind of blows. However, it definitely made me breathe a sigh of relief to get a compliment from Krista (ze editor) for once.
I finished my Kinect hacking article on time, and it came out ok. It actually didn’t need that much of an edit job – most of the changes Krista suggested were actually fixing things that I had changed when I cut it down to the final draft back to how I had originally conceived of the piece. Which was gratifying – now I know to trust my first instincts a bit more when putting the piece together, rather than cutting everything up just to meet the exact 1-2 sentence blurb structure. Writing a punchy, yet accurate, lede still escapes me, but I’m absorbing. I hope.
Oh yeah, I got this Benoit + Sergio XLR8R podcast and it’s the fucking bees knees. So smooth, it’s like oxycontin-butter pate, rubbed on a supermodel’s ass. Heh. Beware, Ryan Mac, I might just throw that line into a blog post on Treeswingers this week. But seriously, check this shit out. It’s got a mid-tempo techno/tech-house beat (medium-heft kick, tech-y hi-hat, probs 110 bpm if i had to guess) running underneath everything, and then runs through some uber-lush sounds on top – at one point going from a gem of a Talking Heads cut into Round & Round by A.P’s H.G. into I Can Change by LCD Soundsytem, all with that beat connecting them like a spinal cord, like they’re one animal, like you have to question how you ever listened to these songs separately before when they so clearly fit together. Good shit. Of COURSE Benoit & Sergio are on DFA. Midas touch over there, Messers Murphy and Goldsworthy, keep it up.
I skipped the gym, but felt ok about it because i actually got errands done like going to Home Depot and Trader Joe’s. INTERESTING STUFF.
The Lakers won, but I didn’t watch, because I don’t have a TV. Gamecasted Though.
Final thoughts/prognostication/navel gazing: Pretty good day. Handled business, didn’t feel overly sleepy or need to rely on re-caffeineition during the day. Actually wrote this here shit. We’ll see how it goes, but, day at a time, step by step, cliche by cliche, platitude on top of platitude, my march to world domination goes on. Bold predictions: Andrew Bynum wins NBA Finals MVP this year, and I will find true love before I go bald. Huzzah.
