what.

this is me after this week.

(I know all that metal and leather is a pretty loose definition of business casual but I feel like I pulled it off.)

Okay so.

I don't even know where to start.

I moved to San Francisco.  This is a large dense sensory overload of a place with an ocean and flowers all over and all sorts of people.  I have a nice place with cool roommates and with an amazing view of all the sea fog rolling in in the evening.  I have HBO in my room.  (TRUE BLOOD why didn't anyone tell me.)

I have this awesome job where you're just expected to figure things out and work on your own which suits me just fine.  I have clever coworkers and my office is both right in the middle of the financial district and a ten-minute commute.  My first day they handed me a laptop and my corporate expense card came today.  I am the only humanities-type major in like a two-mile radius which we'll see how that goes.  With all they're spending on me, I know that they kind of own my soul but I realized a while ago my soul is not actually that expensive so this is a mutually advantageous relationship.

The seafood is amazing.

But then so also I'm shipping off for Chicago for a month in five days for some sort of consultant-camp.

I have a long weekend so I'll post more coherent/cogent things then but I'd just thought I'd do a brief update.

every prophet in her house

I went to Utah among other things, and it was more than lovely, but I'm still thinking about all that so I'll post about it later.

I did get this guy though.

But while I was there at a bachelorette party, Angie read my Tarot, which ultimately led to a creepy box arriving in the mail for me.

This is a lady who knows what's up.

(She did not mention this box in her reading, rather she suggested I chill the eff out, which, touché, Tarot.)

So this box.  Sometimes modern existence will offer up these little dark-mirror microcosm moments that let you see aspects of yourself a little too clearly.  These moments could be Netflix strongly insisting that prominents category of film in your life are like Dark Twisted Pervy Comedic Thrillers with Emotionally Unhealthy Relationships or Foreign Cartoons with Hilariously Weird Dubs.  Or like anytime you look at your Tumblr in its holistic form. 

My last moment like this came a couple days ago when I received a box from Amazon in the mail.  It included:

1. Leather Lotion for all my million leather things I don’t take care of properly.

2. A box set of all the Werner Herzog/Klaus Kinski collaborations, because my thing for German things is getting out of control as of late.

3. Rider-Waite Tarot deck

4. A book about the Tarot based on the Rider-Waite Tarot deck so I can actually read said deck.

It all came at the same time which I was not expecting, but then was super happy about because you could really package and market that box as Activity Kit for a Creepy Evening.

Which is exactly what I used it for.

I’ve always wanted to learn Tarot.  It’s a fun trick.  It’s pretend magic.  It’s all archetypal and Kabbalistic and arcane in the original sense of arcane.   It’s probably the only card trick I will ever be able to do because I am clumsy to the point of really not even being able to shuffle, where when I shuffle I still do that thing you did when you were four and had to shuffle cards where you kind of spread them all out like you’re fingerpainting for a while until they look mixed up and then you gather them back up again.  (UPDATE: After some practice, while I am not quite up to maybe sexy Vegas dealer yet I have gotten past four-year-old-with-nerve-damage.  It’s a process.)  

I never learned Tarot as a kid because every time I bought a deck my mother would find it on one of her sweeps of my room and throw it away.  A tack that certainly did its job in quelling my interest, let me tell you.

Also, Tarot in Carnivale.  TAROT IN CARNIVALE.

Why don't they sell these.  WHY.

(Also: Carnivaaaaaaaaaale.  This post took all night to write because I took some time off to watch Carnivale.)

WATCH THIS.  WATCH THIS AND TRY NOT TO BE ENCHANTED, I DARE YOU.

I’m only in like the fifth chapter of my book, which is sadly not enough to tell the future but is enough to feel really pretentious ALREADY and to offer readings to family members, were it not for Tarottes.

I should mention first that my family is to a member neurotic enough that nicknaming compulsions is not even a thing any more.  For instance, the TV Volume Game is the fun game to juggle the various volume controls and consanguineous neuroses so that all possible volume settings are an even number that is also a multiple of five and does not shatter eardrums.

This is not a thing I am making up.

My family has two cats, Clochette and Tiger Lily.  Clochette is a neurotic little half-Siamese sausage of a cat that I don’t have much use for.  Tiger Lily and I, though, are sister spirits.  We both for example suffer from a specific form of Tourettes subnamed Clorettes, because it involves an insatiable urge to mess with Clochette whenever possible. I remember something similar growing up with my placid little brothers—I would poke, tease, whatever just to mess up their equilibrium.  But so another form of Tourettes is sweeping my family that could be subnamed Tarottes.

Practicing readings with my family has been really fun, but some of them are not as interested in readings as “accidentally” touching my cards.

One of the (admittedly loose) rules of Tarot is that you do not let anyone touch your cards because the energy gets all polluted.

Once I mentioned this, everyone seemed to develop a new purpose in life, with that good old Tuckfield single-mindedness you may know so well. 

I fended them off pretty well.  Shockingly, it was ultimately Tiger Lily that betrayed me.

Traitor.  And your namesake was so honorable.

Now my cards are all polluted with kitten energy.

This was going to be the whole blogpost because it's late and while I was going to post about, oh, all the things that have happened in the past month (which important things I never talk about, ugh) I got distracted by Tarot and spent most of the now-early-morning looking up Carnivale clips and teaching myself the Celtic Cross.

But since my cards were already tinged with Kitten Energy, I decided to break another loose rule of Tarot and decided to do a reading for myself.

Here is the one with all the cards:

And here’s the one with the Major Arcana which is more fun because the pictures are more fun and the whole thing is more dramatic:

The first two cards are the sun and the moon.

Like these guys but less intense, because, Rider-Waite.

Like the general trend for all my readings which means the general trends of my thoughts/subconscious is that this is going to be a dramatic clean break.  I am going to have to let go of a lot of the authoritative and often damaging figures/experiences/institutions in my life and let go what they do/will think about me.  I need to calm down and stop trying to control every aspect of my existence and just let things happen.  Most of all I need to trust the validity of my own feelings and experiences, and that will help me get to some sort of integration and complete un-fragmented non-cognitive-dissonant self.

Basically and in short, chill the eff out.

(Thanks, Angie.  You lovely psychic lady, you.)

Fun fact: I have loved this time in Austin. 

Like concerts with cute guys.

It has given me time to regroup and reconnect and redefine, etc.

Like go to friends' weddings where we all rocked out to Pulp and Blur like we did when we were 15.

Or end up at surprise jazz concerts in art museums.

Or collaborate on comics about Norse gods for indie publications.  (Hint: I did not do the drawing part.)

 But I am more than feeling that this time is over.  I’m swirling into old patterns and getting sucked down by drowning people who don’t want to be saved.

And at some point you have to admit that you can’t save them against their will, and the most you can do is keep yourself from getting pulled under.

In short, although I love my family, my friends, and Austin, I really am excited there are only two more weeks.

Even those these hills are two minutes behind my house.

Also, but so now we're getting down to the wire I am a little panicked. 

Because holy crap.  Do they know my major was only 30 credits and is kind of made up anyway?  That my last book I read was a comic book?  That the only things on my Kindle are Nabokov and Grant Morrison and the Mighty Boosh?

Like, I got that letter from the Dean that all humanities graduates get, and it went on and on about my increased sensitivity and sophistication and understanding I should have now for the world, and when I read it I was literally eating chocolate chips for lunch and watching cartoons in my Sherlock Holmes pajamas.  

The sophisticated face of BYU liberal arts graduates.  Totally not wearing Nightmare Before Christmas pants or anything. There is not an old film noir on right now either.  I'm not making a weirdly twee face because I have this thing about smiling in pictures.

(And to think that lady from BYU's gender-based complaints department thought I couldn't understand sarcasm!!)

 I might like pin The World card up, or something, to remember to calm down.

halftime show

Above me and to the left is a Norwegian poster for Deathly Hallows asking HVEM DØR? but obviously me and my currently tragic haircut are more interesting.

OK SO.

This is a blogpost in list form, the third-best form for a blogpost.

WHAT IS HAPPENING IN MY LIFE:

--Running a lot.

--Working at Dillards to save up money to move to San Francisco.

--Working on a book, because who isn’t.

--Oh man, it’s so much fun doing that, though.  But not as much fun as this next one.

--Working on a comic with a friend.

--Found a place in SF.

--Living in limbo, I guess.

--At least SXSW is next week.

--Reading a lot of blogs of people whose writing ability I am just experiencing a jealousy manifesting as physical pain over.

WHAT I DID YESTERDAY:

--Dismembered like one hundred mannequins.

--Almost beat a mannequin to death with her own arms because I could not get the stupid arm magnets to connect who even designed those mannequins I looked like the Dillards Juniors Department Serial Killer.

Bits strewn about like I was getting a made-for-tv movie based on me.

--More importantly: Saw Love Never Dies, the sequel to Phantom of the Opera by Andrew Lloyd Webber.

 Which featured the sexy Phantom/Christine thumb war.
(That's about how high stakes it was, honestly.)
(God I loved it.)

THOUGHTS/QUESTIONS THAT WERE BROUGHT UP WHILE WATCHING LOVE NEVER DIES, MORE OR LESS IN ORDER:

--Did my eleven-year old self write this.  No seriously.

--Are they singing a walk of shame song. 

--Are Phantom and Christine the worst parents ever?

--It sure is nice Phantom has integrated into society so well that he I guess stopped being a psychotic serial killer (albeit a very sexy one) and is I guess the only viable romantic option?

--The many failings of this play raise some interesting questions about the strengths and weakness of a proper Gothic romance and Kantean aesthetics concerning the sublime (REDACTED BECAUSE SPOILER THEY ARE NOT INTERESTING QUESTIONS TO ANYONE BUT ME.)

--Holy crap I love freaky dark carnivals.  I LOVE THEM THE MOST.

THE MOST.

--Seriously worst parents ever.

--DID THIS PLAY JUST TURN INTO LAW AND ORDER: PHANTOM OF THE OPERA INTENT.

--How much of my life would I dedicate into getting Law and Order: POTOI to happen?  All of it, probably.  Obviously.

If I were more dedicated I would have posted Goren with a photoshopped phantom mask, but instead there's this.

This picture is the whole play summed up.

THINGS PHANTOM HAD IN HIS PERSONAL LIFE THAT I WAS QUITE ENVIOUS OF OTHER THAN THE ABILITY TO LOOK GOOD IN A SUIT AND A COOL MASK:

--A creepy little goth son he did not even have to deal with till the kid was old enough to watch himself

--A freaky cabaret carnival that he was the owner and artistic director of.

--A dramatic room to swoop around in and write stuff, and cry, I guess.

--Just like every member of the gender he was attracted to violently attracted to him

--An awesome wardrobe.

DOES THIS SILLY POST HAVE A POINT:

Kind of.

WHAT IS IT THEN.

Utah was a bit of a warzone for me.  Recently, on the same day, I found out about two things:  The Randy Bott being a racist (and by logical extension of his imbecilic argument, misogynist) thing going public—although I guess if I’m understanding correctly, that sort of thing had been going on in his classes for years.  That fact--and the fact that he went public--are being swept under the rug, as far as I can tell.  (I'm not talking about the church here, they released a statement which was great.  I'm talking about the public response of the religion faculty.)


This doesn’t surprise me, because that day I got the results back on my complaint about my sexist expletive of a religion professor—the investigator had talked to a bunch of his other students, and they found his “unconventional personality” and “sarcasm” charming, so, they were closing the complaint.  (Because, as you know, if there are two things that I just cannot wrap my mind around, it's sarcasm and anything unconventional.)  This is, I would argue, the tip of the cliché iceberg for all sorts of institutionalized crap in a few different institutions those guys were representing.

Seriously I was incandescent for an hour, there.  (With rage, obv., which is my go-to emotion.  My little black dress of emotion.)  Like white-hot-destructive-anger-of-the-Erinyes upset, which happens every so often. This is due to some good reasons, but that doesn’t make it any more reasonable or easy.

But then I realized it doesn’t (more or less) matter for me any more.  I never have to deal with those people or institutions ever again.  And it’s not giving up—it’s making a life for myself where those things and people have no power.

Choose your battles, and all that.

UGH that’s getting cheesy.  So but IN SHORT:

The new plan is to move to San Francisco and just love it and somehow in the course of my life acquire and head up a freaky-cabaret-burlesque and have a real live lair to write in and a bunch of handsome genius gentlemen friends, and we can all swoon over each other.  In costume.

Spiky spindly costume.

Anyway, that’s how I will be measuring personal deep-inner-self-instantiating success from now on.  

Why did I come to this conclusion while watching the worst/best musical ever?  Because that's the kind of sophisticate I am.

keep on your mean side

 AAAHHH.

Saw the Kills on Wednesday—Alison Mosshart is a goddess that I either want to become or marry or both, jury’s out.  It was my first show back home, and come to think of it my first real show since like Arcade Fire which is a little depressing. 

There was 100% more Mostly if Not All Black and Leather outfits (which percentage I was contributing to) than the Arcade Fire show, and 67% more Cigarettes Being Smoked that Did Not Just Contain Tobacco, which I was secondhand partaking of because what use is a concert if you are not going to be in front, in the crush of people and the haze of smoke.

From which vantage point you can take one thousand terrible phone pictures because you are the one person without a proper camera.

Alison was of course an amazing if weirdly shy performer.  Like she would make eye contact and kind of interact with the audience—but mostly she would just dance and convulse and headbang in her own feverish little sphere.  She hardly spoke at all.  Jamie Hince, however, would play his guitar with this stance and this weird thousand-mile wide-eyed glassy stare like Javier Bardem in No Country and then after I thought that I couldn’t even take him seriously.

Jamie is on the left TELL ME I AM WRONG.

It was fun being back downtown—fun seeing Red River and Seventh, all the fauxglam hipster divebars.  Also I saw people I haven’t seen in EVER which was the best.

In other news I am having tremendous difficulty getting any sort of motivation back.  The last couple of years' crazy workload has been fueled by this really nihilistic self-loathing slash self-destructive streak that I wasn't happy about at the time, but at least I got stuff done.  Now that I’m happy about life I just eat ice cream and watch Law and Order: Criminal Intent with my mom and NOTHING GETS DONE.

Nothing.  Here's a half-hearted running picture.  I walked this.  That's how lazy I am now.

This obviously has got to stop if I’m not to move to San Francisco with nothing to show for the last few months but an enormous butt and a really good Detective Goren impression.  

The key is to turn sideways.

Which impression the enormous butt helps, actually, if I’m imitating post-fifth-season Goren, BUT IT’S NOT WORTH IT.

YES GOREN YOU SHOULD LOOK HURT I AM CALLING BOTH OF US FAT.

OH speaking of being inappropriately happy (which I was, right?) I’ve started the complaint process for that one creepy misogynist professor. Which I have all sorts of feelings about but I’m gonna wait till it’s all done before I talk about it more.

But hopefully it will all turn out great because revenge is justified if it's for the greater good, right?

Here's one last picture to head out on because I have a thousand of these.

meanwhile at stately wayne manor

This is just part of my usual jog.  Whatever.  

Austin.  Austin Austin Austin.  Have I mentioned it's the best?  It's the best.  Bands tour here.  The Drafthouses are here.  Town Lake is here.  Non-traditional gender and identity presentations are here.  There is more than one coffee shop per capita here.  Everything is here!

Seriously though at the risk of sounding really overdramatic I feel like I can like breathe freely here in a way that was not an option in Provo.

Did I mention our art deco power plant?  I should use another image where you can like actually see it but I took this one so deal with it.

So that last week of school was pretty insane for reasons that I will probably talk more about when it's all resolved slash I get my diploma in the mail so I know absolutely nothing can go wrong.  It involves a super-misogynistic professor and some weird power trips where he tried to, in his words, "teach me a lesson."  What a non-creepy charmer!!!!  Luckily, one of my superpowers is writing cutting correspondence.  Hopefully some formal complaints will make a dent.

This was at the bus stop.  SHORTS THAT DON'T COME TO YOUR KNEE??  YOU DIRTY SLUT.  Have some respect for yourself, as modeled by your invasive and judgmental friends.

That was the weird thing about BYU.  Like the vast majority of my experience was really positive and I had opportunities that I wouldn't have had anywhere else (wonderful wonderful friends and mentors and that stupid thesis and all sorts of things like that) but there were some decidedly weird undercurrents going on.

Stuff like this, of course, supersedes all that other crap.

But anyways.  What I have mostly done since I was home was chill the eff out.  This last year was one of the hardest ones of my life and I didn't quite realize the toll that it had taken.  Since I have been home I have done absolutely zero constructive things.

Except pose four of my siblings as the ice skating princesses they are.

What I have done, is I have gone ice skating.

Bradford is freaked out, since I have obviously unwittingly skated into a version of The Grudge starring Sophie.

I have been driven to a tiny Texas town by a closet barbecue connoisseur where we went to what was essentially a smokehouse and were served pounds of meat pulled from firepits in crumpled paper bags and I was convinced that some meat does not in fact need sauce and I ate one hundred pounds of pickles.

Everything was smoky and charred.  See those wooden crates?  That's where they'd pull your meat from.

Because that's where the fire was.

This was our wadded bag of crumpled meat and sausage and white bread.  Also, the most delicious thing ever.

There is a Hook showing and accompanying "feast"at the Drafthouse to which I am bringing everyone and I will be sorely disappointed if they don't give us empty pots at first so I can say PETER YOU'RE PLAYING WITH US in a creepy little-boy voice when they finally give us the food, which is from the movie if you didn't know, I'm not just being creepy.

"Don't try to stop me, Smee" is another family quote.

I have started jogging in earnest, because that's what happens when all you do when you get home is eat Nutella and Christmas candy and watch emotionally exploitative TLC reality dramas and police procedurals.  You gain ten pounds in three weeks.  That is a true thing.  So you run all the time because all the clothes you got for Christmas that fit you two weeks ago do not fit now.

This is literally a three-and-a-half-foot-tall vulture watching me run.  He obviously has zero faith in me.  Joke's on him, though, I didn't collapse till I got home!

I have also gotten a dinky job as a hostess at a restaurant, which is one step closer to my weird fantasy of working as a hostess at a Japanese superhero theme bar.

I have outlined a YA novel that I should be able to have a solid draft of written by the time I leave for SF in April.

And that is pretty much all, other than like the holidays.

I do miss Provo a million times more than I thought--or rather, the people in Provo.  I keep seeing fun things to do, and keep thinking "OH I HAVE TO TELL (Insert Provo person's name here)!" and then I realize they're a thousand miles away and I can't see them, and I get sad.  I also just miss seeing everyone and doing fun things.

I mean velociraptors do not glitter themselves.

But, I'll see everyone again soon, in April! I hope.  Nobody go anywhere.

it's a bright guilty world

Congress bridge at home in Austin at dusk.

Have I mentioned how much I love Austin?  Because I love it.  It has both the most music and the most Mexican Free-tail bats in the nation.  Okay, only the second one is actually vouched for.  But still!  Pretty awesome.

When I was little and we lived in Houston, my dad would come up to Austin all the time for business trips.  We would always go to Zilker Park and then go see the bats and that was pretty much my whole view of Austin—killer playgrounds with seal statues you could pretend to ride, and bats everywhere all the time.

Being home was the best even if it did mean I stayed up ALL NIGHT watching reality television and reading my brother’s scary books about the Amazon and researching shark-diving companies for reasons that will be explained later in this post.

Anyway: the future.

I received the official job offer in my mailbox today which means:

1.     I didn’t just dream it and think it was true and then tell everyone.  (WHAT IF THAT HAPPENED.)

2.     I am asking for all business attire and professional lady accessories for Christmas instead of, like, comic books and silent German films.*

That’s pretty much it, actually.

Here’s my job:

I will be a systems integration analyst for Accenture in their San Francisco office. 

San Francisco.  Obvi.

Here’s what it says I will be doing on the website:

“Systems Integration Consulting involves working in teams with other knowledgeable and highly skilled individuals, which makes for an enjoyable and productive environment. You will likely work on complex projects for international companies. They will look to you to help them define their needs and then design and implement adaptable yet predictable and easy-to-maintain solutions that support their strategic business imperatives.”

Which is all very vague which they tell me is de rigueur in consulting.

Basically I’m a baby consultant.  In a few years if it all goes okay I’ll be a real

consultant.  I’ll go around places and learn things and then in a few years tell other people what to do.

I have been reluctant to post about it because literally I have the same superstitions of like a third century pagan hedge-witch (whaat where did that analogy come from?  I have a lot of superstitions, is what I mean) and I was afraid that if I posted about the job it would somehow jinx it and the offer would be rescinded.

So here’s hoping it’s still valid tomorrow.

Anyways: San Francisco!  I’ve been there twice and it’s extremely lovely.  I researched it online and I was reminded of a fact that I had repressed after reading The Devil’s Teeth.   Instead of bats, it has the most and/or biggest (I forgot) great white shark population in the nation ever. EVER. 

And they are friendly!  You can pet them!

I pretty much have what I assume millions of people share because for sure something weird fuels Shark Week, and what David Foster Wallace pretty aptly named “an atavistic shark fetish.”  Like, I have regular nightmares about these guys.

I don't know why.  He's smiling!  He's all, like, OH HI!!!

Nope, I guess I wasn’t going anywhere with that. 

Anyway:  SAN FRANCISCO!!  

The setting of many a film noir.

In whose Chinatown the finale of one of my favorite movies takes place.

I am kind of flashing back to my Orson Welles phase and cringing, also. 

 So it should be fun and I'm excited and hopefully I'll swim with sharks and have dramatic sexy shootouts in halls of mirrors.

*Hahaha like I didn’t also ask for comic books and silent German films.

oh don't be such a dramanticore

I have read the book this is from exactly one million three times.

This is a picture of Loki, the trickster god.

He is contemplating his children and probably regretting his decision to have children with as many ponies and giants as he did.

So when I'm stressed these days I like regress to childhood/adolescence and consume all the same things I did when I was younger.  In this case, my shiny copy of D'Aulaire's Book of Norse Myths which has an introduction by Michael Chabon so I can pretend it's a super sophisticated thing to do.

(YES I'm supposed to be studying for a D and C test right now that is why blogging is so urgent.)

I was going to make a larger point about how I kind of like the Norse mythos more than the Greek one because the gods are in fact mortal, and they totally know how their lives are going to end--which is bloodily and terribly and mostly at the hands of each other, which you think would make things awkward but they all deal with it pretty well it seems.

And then I was going to relate it to myself and how I cannot even make decisions right now but then I realized THAT IS SO BORING THE MOST BORING.

Suffice to say--I'm almost afraid to write this because it might jinx it, but I heard back from that job I interviewed with today.  The HR person said I did really well in my interviews and she's forwarded my info to the official recruiters of the various cities to see if there's demand for me.

I should hear back within the next week.

Of course that is all contingent on me passing this freaking test and so graduating, so I'm gonna get back to studying/weeping with boredom.

Mostly weeping.