this day sucked

This day sucked, I had a day off from shoots and was going to work at home on miscellaneous design projects, and just take it easy as I am still fighting off a cold. I woke up at 7:45 to the crashing of shingles being ripped off our roof and power tools drilling and vibrating the house. Hubby went and fetched me his heavy duty earphones he wears to the shooting range. I had to lay on my back and couldn't turn on either side or my stomach. I passed out for 3 more hours.

When I woke up I walked out to my office and my carpet was coated in a blackish-brown dust as well as all of my computer equipment, scanner, printer, etc. In denial I walked right past it, and then upon returning noticed that one of our skylights was ripped out and debris was just flying into my office from the gaping hole. A man's fat ass was sitting in the bottom ledge of it so I tapped his back and started to talk to him. Then 3 dusty Mexican faces appeared and apparently not one of them spoke a word of English. I just kept saying "shit" and pointed to the debris coated room.

Then I went back into my bedroom for about 4 minutes and upon walking out of it (you can only access the bedroom through the office) a man was standing there with bags over his shoes and a mask on his face, standing on a huge plastic tarp he laid out over my floor and our desks. I tried to talk to him but every time I spoke he just looked up at another man leaning in the huge hole and they conversed, and then completely ignored me.

Anyway, now the genius' nailed the huge tarp to the ceiling and instead of coming straight down on my entire office, the debris slides along the plastic and pours out conveniently on all of the wiring behind my desk. This day sucked.

check this link out

I just found this link on Slitely Askew's blog and had to spread it.
To quote her: The blacks "loot", the whites "find"
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robert johnson

Today at work while searching through a new boss' music collection I spotted one of my favorites: Robert Johnson. I put it on the stereo partially to test the boss, to see if it was his (it's a shared studio space) as a person's music collection is very important to me...very revealing. [Quick digression: I once went to the house of a classmate and upon asking to see her music collection I immediately knew we could never be friends as she had only 2 CD's: The soundtrack to The Titanic and one very lame country compilation CD]

Anyway, I really dig New Boss so I wanted this to go a certain way. I put the CD on and walked over to stand beside him then waited while watching the profile of his face as he worked on an image. Then suddenly he jerked and smiled saying "Ahhh - you like the bluuues" while peering up at me over the rim of his glasses. "Precisely..." I nodded slowly with the music "...precisely" ...smiling all the while.

Not familiar with Robert? Legend has it that he went to the crossroads where he met with the Devil and sold his soul to him in exchange for musical talent (guitar namely) and fame. My brother passed that information down to me when I was young and it instantly captivated me, that may have been one of the catalysts for my adult obsession with the American South (it's voodoo/religion/soul/blues/music). Anyway, you can have a listen here if you'd like.

cuckoo

[This story was just emailed to me and I found it funny. ha. ha.]
Why females should avoid a girls night after they are married: The other night I was invited out for a night with "the girls." I told my husband that I would be home by midnight, "I promise!" Well, the hours passed and the margaritas went down way too easy.

Around 3 a.m., a bit loaded, I headed for home. Just as I got in the door, the cuckoo clock in the hall started up and cuckooed 3 times. Quickly, realizing my husband would probably wake up, I cuckooed another 9 times. I was really proud of myself for coming up with such a quick-witted solution (even when totally smashed), in order to escape a possible conflict with him.

The next morning my husband asked me what time I got in, and I told him "Midnight". He didn't seem pissed off at all. Whew! Got away with that one! Then he said, "We need a new cuckoo clock". When I asked him why he said, "Well, last night our clock cuckooed three times, then said, "Oh shit.", cuckooed 4 more times, cleared it's throat, cuckooed another 3 times, giggled, cuckooed twice more and then tripped over the coffee table and farted."

up by 7am

This is the first sight I see every morning these days. Because I work in the photo world and every day is a new shoot with new call times, different studios, etc, I have to write a note to myself on a 1/4 piece of recycled paper every night and tape it to my alarm clock with three pieces of tape.

I always have to figure out my wake time, leave the house time, and call time. It sucks and I hate it but otherwise I'll be all anxious in the morning and not know why I'm waking up and then I can't enjoy my snooze time which is crucial to my having a pleasant morning! It also serves to cover the digits on the clock so I can't see what time it is, therefore I avoid my night time insomniac anxiety where I have to look at the clock every minute, and then deducting that from the time I have to wake up the next day to see how mow many hours and minutes of sleep I'd get if I fell asleep right that instant!

ssa ym ssik!!!

I'm going to ramble because I'm sick and delirious right now. Ssa ym ssik.

Saturday I got Elliott Smith's album From a Basement on the Hill when I was on my way to a housewarming/block party. I was feeling sick and nauseous but we made it to a music store, made the purchase, then cabbed it to the party. I needed his little face peering out of my purse all night, it somehow soothed me every time I saw his little face.

The block was barricaded off and there were kids whacking piñata's and a huge 3 story King Kong balloon in the middle of the street. Every door on the street was wide open, every stoop was cluttered with people, music and barbeque smoke whirled in the air. My eyes were closing and I had to sit down often. Somehow 6 hours passed by. At least two of them were spent talking about the Civil War to a friend I hadn't seen in a few months, and she was genuinely very interested and enthusiastic about hearing it all!


Sunday I got Beck's new album Guero. I wasn't going to get it after I heard he was a scientologist because they're all evil nut-job zombie's. Anyway, I wasn't going to let them interfere with my universe in the end. Ssa ym ssik Ron L. Hubbard!

I don't have the strength right now to back up my hatred of Scientology. I don't hate many things in this world, hate is a strong word which I learned at a young age not to use lightly. In any case I lived with one of those zombie's for a year of hell and that's all I'll say...great my blood pressure is rising now.



Anyway, then we went to a lounge bar and watched a drag queen falsetto singer and a drag accordion player do Aerosmith polkas and opera duets. We met up with a bunch of girls I had met in a photo class last year, it was all girly and fun.

Then a friend I hadn't seen in half a year was at a bar a block away so I walked over there and he came out and met me on the street corner on my way home to give me a warm hug and a 10 minute run-on sentence before he hailed me a cab and sent me off home where I quickly crawled into bed.

And now I will do the same...it's only 7:17PM...actually Brown Bunny just came in the mail today. All I know about it is Chloë Sevigny gives Vincent Gallo a blow-job, he supposedly has a huge dick, and he is a motorcycle racer. We'll see if I have the stamina to watch it tonight...

burping hubby

Hubby woke up with a nasty hangover this morning. He shouted across the apartment asking me if he could have some of my hoha-hola (coke). "Ob gourse!" I was in the bathroom brushing my teeth. Then when I lifted my head and looked in the mirror, Hubby was standing there chugging a glass of hoha-hola so I turned and watched him lower the glass, and begin little throat burps, his eyes were burning red and watery.

This was such a sweet little sight, I went and put my arms around him and patted his back. Then I heard him say in my ear "Are you burping me?". "Yup". Then I heard little bubbly fizzles and gulping as he drank some more and while I still patted his back, our chins resting on eachothers shoulders, and then silence and we waited there a moment until finally ".....grrrp...rrrrp". Then we giggled and I let him go and we walked our separate ways.

my best fiend klaus kinsky

We just netflixed the documentary My Best Fiend Klaus Kinsky and I highly recommend it. Werner Herzog traces back over the 6 films he directed Germany's star actor Klaus Kinsky in and tells of their love-hate relationship. My favorite was when one of the tribal chiefs that was an extra in one of the films, offered to kill Kinsky for Herzog, and he wasn't joking. And that Herzog actually hatched a plan to kill Kinsky himself at one point later on. Klaus Kinsky, what a freak...

now there's a sexy red-head

Last night I dreamt that I married Willie nelson. Here's how it started: I was about to enter a grocery store and while I was walking through the empty parking lot I noticed Willie Nelson walking my way so I whistled at him (the whistle you make when you see a sexy person) and shouted "Now theeeere's a sexy red-head!". I kept walking and he looked over at me suddenly and then shouted back in his grainy voice "You said it, now THERE'S a sexy red-head!". I proceeded into the grocery store and a few minutes later he came walking up to me, he had been looking for me, we started talking and then I walked him out to his red beat-up truck in the parking lot. A little 4 year old boy was sitting in the driver seat who called Willie "Daddy". That's when I realized that I had blonde hair and that Willie was drunk and about to drive with this little boy in his car. I was bummed at this minor imperfection as I had felt strongly attracted to him.

Willie told me he felt a strong attraction to me and that he wanted to take me out sometime and I told him that I didn't date drunks and that if he wanted to do that he'd have to sober up for at least 6 months first. I drove them home and then we went our separate ways. Then my dream proceeded to follow Willie around as he cleaned up his life, sobered up, bought a house in the town I lived in to settle down in (because he was only passing through on tour).

Then he came and found me at work one day and professed his love and told me he had changed and that he wanted to take me somewhere. He drove us to his new home in his red truck and in the meantime he had all of my family and his at the new house waiting to surprise us. They had all been there a while as they were moving all of my things into his place and when we arrived they all shouted 'surprise!' and he got down on his knee and proposed to me. I accepted and we all got in a circle holding hands and danced around a huge world globe in the middle of one of the rooms.

Then the scene swapped to him on tour and he and I were walking with our arms around each other and my long straight blonde hair was blowing back in the breeze as he and I looked each other in the eyes and smiled. I loved him something fierce.

Then I woke up and mumbled my dream to Hubby while I wiped my eyes. And he said "Hmm, a 40 year age difference...that should be nothing to you since you already had a 30 year difference." See that's the one drawback about being friends before lovers, neither one of you forgets any of that shite. Anyway, in the meantime my heart is all-a-flutter over this picture of my second red-headed husband, I am experiencing one of those painful dream-induced crushes.

my little pussies are going ape-shit!

The incessant and horrifically loud noise the roofers are making these past few days is making my cats crazy. Aside from hiding in strange places and acting like little ape-shit monsters, they won't eat their food. When I see their food dish still half full upon returning home I am shocked, they usually eat it all as soon as I pour it in their dish. Instead of being worried about them like I should I am actually a little pleased by this because they are overweight according to their vet (and all of our meaner friends who laugh and call them fat names). So I stood there shamefully thinking "yesss, good...they could stand to shed a few pounds heh-heh".

What a dip-shit I am. And I'm actually thinking of having kids someday? I can't help but think I'm prone to be a bad parent whenever I catch myself thinking things like that in my head about my cats. I had always thought The Little One was little until his first vet visit 2 months after we got him. The visit started like this:

Vet says as T.L.O. popped his head out of his carrier "Oh what a tiny little head you have..." And then when the rest of T.L.O. stepped out "...on such a big body!" And then turning and saying scornfully to me "Oh he has to lose weight, he's much-much too big Lorena!"

He ended his sentence by saying my name, I was mortified. The cat isn't even that big! In any case, ever since that day, I look at T.L.O. as a mini beach whale and now sometimes we joke and call them little fatties and make fat jokes.

The bigger cat was always big but that's because he's italian. I got him as a kitten whil I lived in Italy, and then I brought him back with me when I moved back to the U.S. The cats in Italy are larger, like raccoons. When I call him fatty I say it in Italian so he'll understand me. It's mean I know....bad Lorena. Bad.

big brother a.k.a. the patriot act

"The FBI, using its expanded authority under the anti-terrorism law known as the Patriot Act, is demanding library records from a Connecticut institution as part of an intelligence investigation..." read more

yay - you're not my brother anymore baby!

Two months ago I decided to dye my hair dark brown, partly so that my husband and I would no longer be mistaken for siblings as we both have the same red hair color, same dark eyes, same pale skin and freckles (same color palette as I like to refer to it).

Anyone who knows my husband and I know that I attack him on a regular basis with hugs, kisses, and love punches. Apparently strangers have been offended by this to the point of voicing their disgust to ME by approaching me and telling me to "stop kissing your brother inappropriately". Yes, this really happened, twice now. The effect this had was that I became insecure about showing my affection to him in public.

So I told my hair stylist to make me super dark at my last appointment. A few days later he and I were standing in line at the airport when I first realized I didn't have to fight the urge to throw my arms around him in public any longer. I jumped up and down once and then leapt at him, throwing my arms around his shoulders and squeezing him and shouting "Yay! I can kiss you in public now and no one will yell at us for being brother and sister!" Then I accomplished one or two quick cheek pecks before he turned crimson and put his hand up to cover my mouth and then put the index finger of his free hand over his mouth and "Baby! shhhhhhhhhhh"-ed me.

"wwwhaaaat..?" I whispered slowly while grinning really big. He simply shook his lowered head and added a big smile to his blushing face. This is very typical of our interactions.

bound for glory

The Farm Security Administration heavily photographed and documented American life during the Great Depression through to WWII. Few people know that the FSA photographers were also given color Kodachrome film to go out and shoot with in addition to the standard B+W film. This is the first publication of these color FSA photographs which were lost for decades due to being wrongfully stored with the WWII slides. These images are striking to me because they show us a period of American history which we only understood through B+W prior to this book, not to mention the fact that I've always been fascinated by the Great Depression.





When we have dinner guests, sometimes I'll bring out my photography books as Hubby prepares our after dinner espresso's and dessert's (I bring them out as a reference if the conversation strayed in that direction at some point during the meal). When the night is over and our guests have gone home, I always clean up the dining room table, leaving only the books out, as a temporary souvenir of sorts. I find it sweetens my mind with memories of the evening's conversations as I walk by later, so sometimes I'll leave them there for weeks at a time. (NOTHING else in our place is allowed to lay around for longer than a day as I am an obsessively neat person). My whole point - this book just got shelved finally moments ago, and I thought I'd share it as it's one of my favorites.