pantoum's Diaryland Diary

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HOUSE ARREST

Allrighty, am taking a much-needed break from work to catch my breath and catch up on the news. Busy day. Crunched numbers and realized that we sold over $3,000 worth of books at our onsite bookstore this past Friday. Wow! $10,000 in sales in a single week was our best previous number and over 1 million in sales in a year was our best number before that. I'll take those numbers.

Have been frantically checking our publications catalog and annual report proofs, both of which need to reach the printer in about two weeks. Ugh. Same story as the chorus program insert (typical publishing story, actually)—we can't finish our work until people give us the content and we're still missing content so will be scrambling at the end, thereby increasing the likelihood of printing errors.

I may have one more year of this left in me, then I think it's time to throw away the suits and don my flip-flops, find something that will lower my blood pressure. Maybe I'll do something completely different such as oh maybe sell Oranginas on the beach or something, at least until I have the time to finish my novel and, with luck, find a teaching gig.

Doesn't really matter what I find really—at least in my fantasy—so long as I can afford to live and am not just sitting on my ass all day looking at spreadsheets and stressing over these tight deadlines. It does have to leave me with enough energy to go home at the end of the day and write though. And enough money for a lobster dinner every now and then.

And speaking of writing, Refusal wrote this in his blog today:

Everyone likes a bit of chicken breast. And vultures will stick their heads into almost anything, no matter how dirty it is. They'll even go in up through a dead horse's rectum to eat all its insides out, and that's why they're bald. I'm bald due to an excess of testosterone, but if you've got somewhere nice you'd like me to put my head, I'll surely consider it.

Ha. I like his irreverence.

Was surfing Tickle while talking on the phone today and discovered that my horoscope says

Hope you're in the mood for love, Aquarius because, according to the stars, it's very much in the mood for you. Don't even bother with getting all gussied up—it's your brain that's undeniably sexy now.

Hmmm. And, apparently, my Mars sign (a sign that is supposed to define what I desire, how I express that desire, and how I satisfy it, or something) is Leo, which indicates that I am

overflowing with passion, love of life, and personal magnetism!

Never been accused of lacking passion. Patience maybe, but not passion.

Love is fun, and appreciation of the bigger and better things in life will always be [mine. My] energies are often organized and directed.

O yeah and I

would make an excellent lover, as it gratifies [me] to see others enjoying themselves with the same intensity [I] do.

Do tell.

I am

creative and playful, and of course, passionate about it all!

Uh huh. And in matters of the heart, I should protect myself from my own ego! LOL LOL LOL!!!!! because

it means well, but is so enthusiastic and powerful, it may begin to disrupt ... domestic bliss!

I am willful—that's for damn sure—

so just a little bit of effort will go a long way!

Reciprocation. There's that word again. I am going to have to focus some thought on this topic because it keeps coming up....

Am frustrated because I keep googling but STILL can't find the Lammy award winners online. I did discover that I want to purchase Judith Frank's Crybaby Butch though (after I read the eight or nine books that area already piled up waiting for me to have time for them).

Oh wait. Lambda Literary just replied to my query. Duuuuurn. Poetgrrl did not win ):

A shame. Her book is good, does such a great job of describing women who are trying to put words to the unspeakable (that's marketing flap, not my own words, but accurate—and a subject that has always fascinated me).

Well, if she attended the gala, then she at least got to be entertained by Lea Delaria who, at a May 14 benefit for the AIDS Assistance Program in Palm Springs, experienced the organizers shutting off her microphone and dragging her off stage for her Bush-bashing jokes. Unreal. ...(She hasn't been here in a while; wish she'd come back and bash him here.)

I also want to read this award-winning memoir—Name All the Animals by Alison Smith (Scribner)—and this award-winning biography—Warrior Poet: A Biography of Audre Lorde by Alexis De Veaux (Norton). And am happy to see that the hilarious David Sedaris won a Lammy too.

In other news, I find it damn ironic and more than a little frightening that Jerry Falwell not only has a legal wing to his so-called ministry but that he calls it the Liberty Counsel.

•

I started reading The Washington Blade online because queer news rarely reaches mainstream media. For example, raise your hand if you know about the diversity training video put together by the San Francisco 49ers PR director.

This little jewel features off-color humor such as a soft porn topless lesbian wedding taped in a strip club, with the PR director (impersonating San Francisco mayor Newsom) officiating, plus racial jokes and nudity.

Or how about the lesbian adult under house arrest for over a month now in Allahabad, India, for running away with her dyke lover? She's being held just 100 miles away from a town where another lesbian couple attempted suicide after their parents forced them to marry men.

We have so many more options than we realize here, yet so many gay kids here also attempt suicide with alarming regularity.

(What's that Ferron line: "Before you get to plea for freedom, you've agreed to being ruled.")

Thank goodness I was always at least bull-headed enough to think You may stop me now because I'm a minor, but you can't stop me forever.

Have decided that I don't have the time or the inclination to try to second-guess why the Ginger is suddenly writing. We're all adults here, so, if she wants to talk with me, then she's just going to have to come out and say it, say what it is she wants and stop sending seemingly random messages.

5:18 p.m. - 2005-06-06

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