chicating

(So these are Friday Five)
1. How far back can you trace your family tree? I know I had a relative in the Trail of Tears, so 1830s?

2. What is the most interesting (or strange) thing you've heard about one of your relatives?The Native side of my family? Crazy into nicknames. I don't know anyone's name on their birth certificate. My mother's birth certificate doesn't have anything to do with RL either...I used to think that maybe my grandfather did something classified or something, but now I think they just took the American passion for reinvention to the next level.

3. How do you feel about legacy names like John Henry Smith IV or naming children after other relatives?If I'd had a daughter and her last name worked with it, I might have used my grandmother's given name, Magda, which she never liked.

4. Would you consider yourself and/or your family to be traditional? We might have been, but, for a lot of reasons we are making it up as we go along. I'm kind of torn about that. It's nice to feel modern and new, but it might have been nice to see myself as a link in a chain and all that.

5. What is one tradition you have passed on to your children and/or plan to pass on to them?Most of our rituals have been adapted for either my disability or because my parents broke up. Not sure I'd want kids to deal with either of those things.

Copy and paste to your own journal, then reply to this post with a link to your answers. If your journal is private or friends-only, you can post your full answers in the comments below.

Would you rather have a fun job that doesn't pay well or a boring job that does? Never made a lot of money, but for today, I'd pick fun.Never had enough fun, either.

2. Would you sacrifice your morals for a job? Honestly? We all sell our bodies/time. Not sure How we fully avoid(I know we've backed up some...troubled candidates in the past to achieve some objectives, for instance. But I do think there are limits.)

3. Would you ever take a job that requires you to be in costume? Given that I grew up a little crippled blonde girl, I kind of feel that I've always had this.(Even definitely in a Certain Age, acquaintances still think they've heard me say "shit" for the first time. @@)I'm getting better at having the inside and the outside match, more, but, like, a chicken suit would seem like a step forward

4. What is your fantasy job? No-bullshit political advisor, successful fiction writer, Chris Hayes Has A Horrible Accident.

5. Would you like fries with that?Pretty much always.

Because I didn't feel well yesterday and didn't get to answer.
1. Have you taken notice of which films are nominated for Oscars this year?
Just from things I've seen on TV...been a bit head-down in politics and my own writing.
2. Do you plan to watch the Oscars ceremony?I don't really like ceremony or all that couture stuff so not my jam.although I've seen enough to know some of the cliches: Telling their kids to go to sleep, etc

3. How many of this year's Oscar nominated films have you seen?I haven't. Still don't feel safe about going to the theater and too many of the streamers have all their exclusives and stuff.

4. Do you plan to see more/any of the Oscar nominated films before the Oscars ceremony?Probably catching up from two years ago...not that I don't enjoy doing that.

5. Do you generally seek out and watch the film that wins Best Picture?I usually like to...I think it can be a real artistic snapshot of the film's era.

Dear Seamus,
You are hardly the only fictional being that feels real to me from time to time. Though I never thought I was posting with Chandler Bing’s father in between sets at the drag show. You are sort of a mental “cookie” that is my souvenir from my encounter with a fabulist—maybe it was all a prank to him—I’ve never felt clear about that part of it and might only consider it again if another reporter gets caught cheating, if not for your occasional appearance in my thoughts. It’s been years that I occasionally wonder if you’ve been dispatched to Uganda or wonder what might have happened if you and ita had gone out. It takes me a moment to realize again that you, at least that particular conglomeration of traits that might have gotten you busted much faster on a less polyglot message board, weren’t there, ever, although somebody might be out there legitimately rocking some of those things. I haven’t met them, but sometimes putting a face on one cheers me up a little so I don’t give myself too hard a time about it. Even though I know how it might sound, a crip of a certain age, not too clear of her own place in the world, being not-quite-paid to make shit up all day, got suckered and now it’s another thing she can’t let go. I know what abled people, especially shrinks of a rather old-school persuasion, might think about that. Especially if there are days when I picture you as hot—there might be some glistening, even, but when I fake-met you, you were just out of college so I can’t surmount the fake age difference…it’s “If I were ten years younger and also a figment” harmless. (Unless I’m sad enough to consider that I might have the “figment” part at least partially covered, but you wouldn’t want to hear about that. Even if there were an actual you to read this.)

Sometimes you are plain-but-charming(such nice manners! Such pretty teeth. And that African accent that’s part British but kind of on a different speed and inflected with something I’ll just say is black while feeling racist because I don’t really know if it’s Twi, Yoruba, or Swahili. If I really met you, I’d have learned, I promise. Enjoy the mental island that you share with all the Buffista sprogs who are off to college while I pretend I could…idk, knit you sweaters—In Africa? Whatever…clueless Mrs. Robinson! Well, I’d send you ramen and Hershey bars.
Your corporeal friend,
Erika

Six packages in one day.(Of course, not in a Samantha Jones way. Still kind of a personal record, though.)

If Fundraising E-mail existed in in 1912, I Might Have Gotten…
Alice Paul- Erika, don’t let the movement go hungry because I am!
Emma Goldman-Purchase the Music For Our Revolution…
John Muir-Touch Grass(But read this first!)
Helen Keller- You Don’t Need All Your Senses To Answer this One Question, Erika…
Helen Keller- Comrade, Don’t Live In The Dark Because I Have To….
Anne Sullivan- Do I Have To Spell It Out? Even Though I Know I Can, And So Do You…
WEB DuBois- Be in the “talented tenth” that donates monthly after opening this…
Alice Paul(Don’t) Sponsor a Meal For a Favorite Suffragette
Helen Keller- Are You Still There? Sometimes it’s hard to tell.

My last biggest publication was in the wake of the Great Recession, and I have submitted to that Big Mystery Magazine...don't know, between every six months and every year and a half. Never got a ton of love back, but they like my baby-shower caper thing? Maybe?(Women editors are essential for my Southwestern faux Lippman side.)

13 women this time, on journalling and found objects. We had someone from London and from Canada--I'm the designated desert dweller, as I usually am when culturally-elitist activities are afoot.(Writing for this one might be a little more challenging than just showing off something that I've already done. Not sure what I can do yet. I try every day, but the *other* job I don't get paid for is claiming beaucoup real estate... maybe I am breaking pattern a bit after all.) Even if I can't do something hot, like salsa-dancing lessons. But then my grandma got seriously fleeced by dance instructors who were definitely money-grubbing and probably gay, so maybe that is not a sexy thought anyway.
Probably should finish J.'s phone list tonight, although, like most things undertaken for the hometown crowd? Not that successful.

Still, it might work out for her today. She did feel a minor flicker of guilt as she added the Big Boss’ info into the section of code that her team, and those fucking kids, hadn’t fixed yet—it was bigger than she might have expected—Kat was fast, too, which put the bitter tinge back in her smile of satisfaction. She did what she could do, and when she hit enter, she did feel a cold pit in her stomach. It was soon replaced by the memory of her aching eyes, pounding head, canceled plans, all to be cast aside. If she could have boiled his virtual rabbit—she might have. But, of course, that would bring suspicion down on her. She hadn’t thought of herself as the gloating type and it wasn’t the kind of expanded possibility that essays about jobsearching touted

Maybe I'll do this every week, but I won't promise. But here is one for today!

But if this blog truly has a job, I wouldn’t feel like I did it if I didn’t read and make notes on “Knife” since there is so much inside it that has also been here, in a halting way: crime, disability/recovery, and writing. I admired when on page 63 Rushdie wrote that he wanted his attacker, known in the book as A, to “look me in my one eye, and tell me the truth.” Because everything the young man did say seemed so painfully inadequate. Rushdie writes that he might not have been there if his airconditioner hadn’t gone out, if his newly-married life hadn’t hit such a high, and, of course, if he hadn’t written a book in “Satanic Verses” that had become That Book for so many. (His assailant barely knew about that, it should be noted, but that kind of notoriety does appear to leave a trail.) It’s hard to read that and not fall back into that perversely-comforting true-crime trap, that in some ways, might be part of the real draw for some of us: Suddenly, instead of a lonely-and-broke Saturday night(again), it seems suddenly perceptive not to have a date for six years, forcing The Friday’s Killer to look elsewhere for his yummy treats