facebook is stalking me!

many facebook proponents have tried to convince me of its goodness+usefulness with the argument that it offers more privacy+control than myspace (not that i care about the latter, either) so you can keep in touch while being choosy. still not interested in joining, as a privacy freak, i was willing to believe that facebook was superior because of this. thus it's very disturbing to find in my inbox (especially since they shouldn't have my email address since i'm not a fucking member!) this email from facebook, that i was tagged in somebody else's facebook photo album:
Hi "sweet trini",
Sara tagged a photo of you in the album "Cast Party for WSC's
Contemporary Play Repertory @1360 D".
To see the photo, follow the link below:
http://www.facebook.com/p.php?i=655816351&k=S5D2Z2U3WYTOYBA1TC6Z
Everyone can join Facebook. To register, go to:
http://www.facebook.com/p.php?i=655816351&k=S5D2Z2U3WYTOYBA1TC6Z&r
Thanks,
The Facebook Team
when i clicked this link to see the photo, the top of the page contained links that claim to go to my "profile" and "other photos" of which there are none. so if i didn't give them my email address and all she posted was a photo, how the hell is facebook emailing me? i feel a little dirty...
walk good.
ps: sooncome, adventures in british ink- grims and that crazyfool are about to get inked by this dude who appears to be a master- plus, walking distance from home, very affordable, amazing portfolio, ridiculously encouraging consultation...love this dude!

they say you can never go home again...

…but then i wouldn’t be myself if i believed that “they” know better. thus far i’ve done and continue to do much that “they” claimed wasn’t feasible…
so we purging+packing+cleaning and trying to sell house+contents and hoping timing works out to get rid of the furniture as we get the house under contract and might still live comfortable until we sign the papers, then fly while the realtor handles the rest. i already had to come to terms with missing carnival, and making this timing work will be another wuk. but say wha’. we coming.
boxes stacking in the basement, things to give away leaving as fast as we can push them out the door, things to sell selling. the book rate no longer exists and we dread the crating of our art; for a control freak like me the thought of the journey that our books and paintings and music will make without me is scary. plus, the fact that they have to start going away when i need them keeping me company, providing the soundtrack and setting for this next life-change brings me to the verge of tears daily, it seems. i only just got my beautiful books out of years-long confinement in boxes in dark corners of basements and under stairs, thrilled to see+use them again.
of course, the questions never stop: why you going? when you leaving? what you going to do? where you going to live? how you sending your shit?
@ this point i just want the d.c. house on the market, thus closer to “under contract” and know we making some $ to put down on the trini one; how we know how much house we’ll afford in trini when we don’t know how much we can convince them to pay us for the one we in now…and yes, we want our own production company, but how hard that might be to get off the ground somewhere i haven’t lived in a decade and he never lived is a whole ‘nother question.
but still. say wha’. we coming.
at least, that’s what i tell myself as i read for the millionth time that successful trini writers don’t actually live in trini and hope that akashic won’t be the 1st+last publisher to ever pick up my work (trinidad noir, august, so excited!) and that the inspiration doesn’t shrivel as soon as i’m finally somewhere i want to be…
to all doubts+fears i can only answer: say wha’. we coming…
walk good.
ps: we didn't make top10 in the pom tea competition, but if you like the ads you can still vote for us, for "most original", "best comedy" or "best pom spirit"...

our pom tea commercial (edited next morning)

so the other day this crazy fool asked me to be in his commercial. there's a competition to come up with a 90seconds-or-less spot for pom tea, to potentially win airtime and some $. he had an idea, i had time (+talent, we hope) and a bass-player friend who'd hopefully hook up an original score- luckily, the crucial musician said yes.
in the end, we made not just 1, but 2, good commercials, if i do say so myself (individually scored by bass-magician, neither longer than a minute)- i'd blog it and link up the videos here, but figure it makes more sense for the editor/idea/cameraman to blog it, including storyboards and other creative-process details, so go see...
if either makes the shortlist of 10 finalists, once the finalists are announced it's viewer voting time, so we hope you like the ad(s) too...
you can vote for us (if we make the list) from monday january21-february15...
walk good.
[edit: sorry i wasn't clearer about links to the actual videos- the last link in this post is to a post containing the storyboards and 2commercials, embedded- if you don't care about storyboards+process and just want to see the ads, scroll directly to the bottom of that post for our youtube videos...]

poking cadavers

poor grims had no idea what he was in for when i said we should "check out the lab"...
we went to collect the birth control pills mom sent up (so much cheaper in trini; over the counter) with a friend who happens to be a medical student. when she handed me my pills and black cake, then asked if i wanted to see the lab, this science geek was thrilled. grims came along, unsure why i was so excited until he asked her what she was working on in said lab, and the answer came back, "cadavers".
right up my alley. we went into a massive room full of maybe 50 cadavers and stink. she says the student teams each work on the same body for the whole school year, so these've been in use since october-ish. they started last semester by dissecting the foot+leg.
the room smelled of dead+antiseptic, thick enough to stain the inside of one's nostrils. they spray the cadavers and reclose bodybags each time (conscientious students, anyway) to keep them hydrated so they can keep using them until june, and there are catchment trays under each gurney(?) for body fluid runoff- grossest body fluids ever, collecting+sitting in metal trays, which means the bodybags don't really help with the stink. i can't imagine how they get used to it, but i stuck around for as long as grims let me. i got gloves so i could poke around and basically stick my hands into everything, like the shredded leg and neck (current project). she said it'd been her idea to cut the breasts off to access the thoracic cavity after watching others try to saw through all that fatty tissue, and showed us another team's fat guy for an idea of how much work that could be (the fat guy's runoff+stink were also in proportion to his size).
it was so cool- her dead lady still has hair+face and pink nailpolish and everything. i saw+touched everything from lymph nodes to inside the fat guy's testicles- oddly, when a body's been dead+preserved it looks+feels so much more like cooked turkey than the seemingly raw, fresh, red meat i saw @ the bodies exhibit and in my imagination, and testes, which seem so soft when not preparing to pop are the part (of those i poked, anyway) that stiffen most post-mortem...
the only truly disturbing moment for me was when she opened up the fat guy's bodybag, turned to her other friend and said, "i think the dental students stole the head..."- her class hasn't started heads yet and apparently fat guy had his head on for the entirety of that day's neck dissection, but it's not unusual for dental students to bag that particular part for their needs- i don't know fat guy's medical team, but i'd be pissed if somebody else ran off with my dead head before i got to poke around in the brain, especially after months of hefting dude's dead weight to turn+cut him, and smelling his stench...
anyway, the experience was too cool to not mention, and i figured everybody's tired of hearing about my show (closing weekend as i type; i'll miss the house of fuck yeah! as one audience member called it).
next up, once the project's primary posts the storyboards themselves, storyboards and finished product for our pom tea commercials...
walk good.

house of burlesque?

i know i said i was walking prepared for anything the rest of the run, but going into the last days of 2007 we planned to see some burlesque; i didn't count on being burlesque.
the weekend's shows began with receiving freshly laundered costumes in the dressing room- i was there plenty early, well before half-hour for a speed-through. i put on blue eyeliner (soon to become "runny mascara"), jeans, socks, sneakers, sweater and jacket, got soaked and entered scene1, and shortly realised that i'd forgotten the bra- it hadn't been in my pile of clean costume, and having not worn one since high school, i didn't think of it in its absence.
in the "livingroom" i debated my few options: i don't exit to the dressing rooms once i enter and didn't know where the bra was or have time to look anyway (i'm mostly on); the light-fade that ends my sex-scene goes with me removing my shirt, so it was a choice between baring my boobs or having the lights potentially not go out for awhile, requiring major improvisation, on a night when i knew for a fact that we had teens in the audience for a show that doesn't post a nudity notice next to the live-firearm/adult-content/language warning. i figured i'd lose the shirt like i'm blocked and use the added "danger" to the following scene's advantage (i don't get redressed for awhile).
the one thing i didn't count on was, after rolling off "anthony" in the blackout and stepping away from my clothing in time for lights-up, the realisation that what i'm usually doing while facing the audience in those 1st solo moments is rebuckling the bra i wasn't wearing. so there was a second of deer/headlights, but then i did what i'd planned as he entered, groped for my clothes, used it to our advantage, and we were cool. the audience didn't know they got a special show, but i'm letting my boobs take credit for the fact that our next show was sold out and we had to turn 25 away @ the door. and i found out that the light cue actually goes off my dropping my pants, which i lose 1st...
old years night, me+stiles("marty") did our "seduction of lady anne" from richard3 (which we love) for the new years benefit and it went over so well people came up in the lobby saying they had to come see us in the house of yes (which just extended, yay)...me+grims did the reception then a friend's party, and for people who usually stay in for old years, had quite a time, even came back to the house for champagne+smoke+movies to round out the morning. i napped for about an hour and a half on the couch, and woke to a lazy new years day off with grims.
plus, we saw a very fun+funny cabaret-style burlesque show @ palace of wonders- a good time was had by all, especially some youth named adam experiencing burlesque for the 1st time- the ladies loved adam and adam loved them, ecstatically. i'm trying to catch @ least 1 more show there before we fly.
our realtor's seeing the house of yes this weekend; we'll see how soon after closing (now january19) i can make my way to sweet trini...
walk good.