So last night i managed to be really stupid. Really really stupid. You know when you wake up in the morning, you wipe the sleep from your eyes and then you remember what happened? Then you grab the alarm clock, pull it out of the wall socket, slide it to the other side of the room, wrap yourself completely in your comforter, and try to sink your head so far down in the pillow that it swallows you whole with no one being the wiser?
Ok, only happens to me? Great.
Well let’s have the good news first. My DSL connection is officially up and running – yee haw! At some point my french bank account will run out of money and they’ll pull the plug, but until that sad day i’ll be downloadin’ mpegs like a god-damn 13 year-old boy.
Speaking of 13 year old boys, i am pretty positive my whole stupidity disease stems from the fact that i haven’t got any action in basically forever. It is beginning to affect my brain. Now, if the only goal were to find a willing and warm body with a woody, things would be pretty simple. But unfortunately we chicks don’t work that way, at least not the ones i know. There’s gotta be some sort of emotional or cerebral attraction. Not necessarily relationship material, but some sort of somethin. So yes i have entirely too much in common with a 13 year old boy right now. I’ve got sex on the brain. Yet when a french guy starts to flirt with me i get really embarrassed and freeze up. See, 13 year old boy.
I can’t express myself in french with any confidence; i just feel naked without my amazing wit and charm (heh heh). I’m ignorant of this whole “language of love” thing. I mean how you gonna like someone without exchanging fiery remarks? This whole alone thing was fine in brooklyn where i was cynical enough to know how everything with anyone would end up. And if i was feeling real needy in that way i could either flirt with abandon and calm myself down, or check in with an old standby somewhere. Here it is so damn romantic, everyone seems to be on their goddamn honeymoon. And i have 0 standby’s.
So me stupid last night. Slightly sauced up and started shit with the ex, aka guy-i-used-to-date-who-doesn’t-like-to-be-called-an-ex-because-it’s-more-complicated-than-that. (I’m gonna get reamed for that comment, oh screw it). So yeah i started shit, as i always do. Probably because i was lonely, or frustrated with our interminable daily aim flirting, or just because i have this 13 year old boy disease i’ve been telling you about. I crave stability and boundries, yet i move continents every other second and i have not a single “definable” relationship with any male outside my family.
I woke up, after dreaming about cuddling with a really scrawny sys admin guy in the office (wtf?), with the pieces of the evening’s AIM session puting themselves back together in a horrifying way. At some point les asked to continue when i was more sober. Me proud (and drunk, of course) said “i am not drunk and i mean everything i am saying.” Funny, i meant it at the time. I really did.
This time i’m legitamately stumped. Am i too weak or too stubborn? Will it hurt more later if i let things go like now? Will things find a stasis naturally? All of this would be a lot easier to swallow if there was a scrawny sys admin guy cuddling with me, i think…
and what the hell is wrong with my template?!?!?
Right now i’ve got the MS Word help contents on the right and this incredibly long and complicated User Manual i’m trying to format on my left. Me, my head is on my desk, trying to focus on my breathing so i don’t have a brain-frustration implosion. I must take a moment put of my extremely frustrating day to shout into the great beyond – I HATE MS WORD.
Dear Ms Word et al,
Ms. Word you are an overbearing bitch. I just want my bullets to look a certain way, ok? I want them to be nice and strong and black, not a light grey circle with white on the inside so that it looks like a speck of dust on the monitor. And i want the text to be near the strong black bullet, not 4 miles down the road like it’s embarrassed to be seen with it.
Why does this need to be such a struggle between us? We can work together. Just stop autoformatting every letter i type, ok? Let me tell you what i want instead of trying to guess what i want before i’ve even decided. You are not a good at reading my mind Ms. Word. In fact, you are piss poor. In fact, not once have you ever correctly guessed what i have wanted. In fact, I hate you.
I put a curse on you and all your progeny,
n!l
In contradiction to this nyt article, i still surf, thank you very much. I would say ms.harmon’s conclusion is a bit superficial. I like to “browse” through life so to speak, walk on streets i’ve never been to, look through racks of clothes at a flea market. I do the same on the web. There are others like me. There are many more others who have to sit their ass on the couch in their-ass-shaped-hole at 8pm to watch that hour-drama. They know what it’s like, they’ve been there before, they could probably make a scarily accurate prediction on the next episode if pressed hard enough. Those people never did surf, and they still don’t. They just searched for their-ass-shaped-hole on the web, and they’ve either found it or given up.
anyway – good things i’ve noticed today:
Ftrain.com: smarty pants
Textism: another smarty pants
but i think smarty pants are where it’s at. maybe that’s my-ass-shaped-hole. Rock On.
You can’t get any geekier than this:
Notable Quotable: “31337″ design
A Cobra Mk III swoops majestically into view, as an unsuspecting Orbital Transporter falls victim to your front mining laser, jettisoning fragments in the shape of the letters ‘N’, ‘T’ and ‘K’. Plus “WWW.NTK.NET: IN-JOKES FOR OUTCASTS” at the bottom, in BBC Micro-writing.
So I just found about this :
Officials Probe Crash That Killed Aaliyah
A friend AIMed me the news, well actually he alluded to the incident. Me, having no idea what he was talking about was totally shocked. At first i thought he was fucking with me because he knows how much i adore her and the new album. Then the URL proof was legit.
Shit. Really bad. At dinner, I told my aunt here and she said, “Toi, tu as mal au coeur?” Which sounds just about right.
Me, I’m bad in the heart.
A few minutes after digesting the news, the track, “Are You that Somebody” came on in my playlist. And it’s such an upbeat and humourous song. And in fact her whole second album is so good cause it’s got so much humour. I’m listening it to it now; and now, it’s just so sad. And it’s equally bad because the album isn’t sad at all. But me, i’m really sad about it. This is the first time that an artist i am actively into has died. There are those who died well before i knew of them. And then there are those that have died after i was really into them, or at least past the time that their present work was rocking my world, so to speak. And then there’s the fact that she was 22. 22 is Tragic.
I listened to her first album here in paris about 5 years ago. I was particularly thrilled that i loved the new one here because i had this one really clear memory of walking down Rue Rivoli with “One in a Million” in my discman and i caught myself in a mirror (there are all these thin strips of mirror between the storefronts) full on dancing to “Hot Like Fire”. I felt kind of embarassed but i was mostly laughing to myself. And it was a damn hot july day to boot. I remembered this when i packed the CD in nyc. I remembered this when i heard about about the new one. I remembered this when i caught myself dancing at the bus stop listening to “Rock Da Boat” last week. I remebered it when the article sunk in. I wonder if i could dance to it with the same kind of abandon again. Hmm.. Not for awhile, i imagine. I even remember writing, “i’m one in a million you fuck” to some boy who broke my heart that same summer.
I figure it’s hit me so hard mostly because she’s been shooting into my ears for a large portion of my solo explorations of this alien city. And making me feel a little less lonely, and definitely a lot more funky. I’ll miss it. And i’ll miss all the albums she won’t get to make, the movies she won’t be able to be in, the hot guys she’ll won’t be able to date, all the gossip stories we won’t be able to trade… Silly things pop stars mean to me, i guess. But it was more really, there were all those songs on the metro, at the flea market. The time that guy followed me home on the bus, it was Aaliyah i was listening to when he interuptted me. I told him her name and he even wrote it down. I’ve given her mp3 to at least 10 poeple, a few even being frenchies that hadn’t heard of her. Just through the album, she’s been one of my few friends here. I’ll miss her.
Notes:
Songs, prayer lift memory of Aaliyah [Detriot Free Press]
Ok – i had a great day at the flea market. I bought many things. But more importantly, here’s my first pass at taking pictures of the adventure. I am learning (when i actually download them) which ones are interesting, which ones are boring, and when i should have been snapping when i was futzing around instead. Oh putain! That’s french for “Oh fuck it!”
You know when you just feel like you’re getting screwed by everyone. I’m being charged $3.00 by evil chase bank everytime i take money out here. The french don’t have these ridiculous fees, so chase compensated by charging some bullshit “International Fee”. It’s almost worse that Citibank doesn’t have it, because the trouble it would take me to change my account would just about equal the few hundred dollars i’ll be contrubiting to the chase charity fund.
Also, I’ve double paid my last MCI bill. I can’t find a number to call them anywhere. I think my subletters double paid my verizon bill, and are taking it out of the rent. The dollar keeps dropping so my paycheck is effectively shrinking every month. And i’m never going to get a god damn visa. I also had some disgusting chinese food which gave me headache and made me sleepy, but i didn’t realize you had to pay for rice separately so i spent my last itty bitty franc, and left my bank card at home so i can’t even buy a coffee.
i can’t wait for this day to be over.
You know one of those days when everything goes wrong? It’s worse when it’s in french.
Utter Bullshit
CNN.com – U.S. cracks down on American travel to Cuba – August 15, 2001
Notable quotable:
U.S. President George W. Bush said July 13 he was tightening enforcement of the 39-year-old embargo, intended to pressure democratic changes on Cuban President Fidel Castro’s island.
Jeez – get over it dubya. Isn’t it enough to waste heaps of money on star wars? Wouldn’t you rather be playing golf or something? Oh that’s right, you have a quite a few anti-Castro cuban americans to please so you can pay back your brother for uhhh “democratically” electing you. What a load of crap.
New Angeles Monthly, June 2008
Weekend America, March 30, 2008
Los Angeles Times, March 13, 2008
Los Angeles Times, March 6, 2008
Nil by Mouth is written by Neille Ilel. Neille is a writer, reporter and user interface specialist in Los Angeles. If you think that's a lot, she's also got a host of meandering sidelines including improv comedy, tennis, cooking, drawing and thinking about learning to play the guitar.
Nil is her given name. It's a long story.
E-mail her here:
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