Uncreated Conscience

Looking back on some of my blog posts since starting work here at St. Martin’s Press, I’ve become slightly baffled by how much I talk about work. It’s like I have no life, you guys! How horrifying! It’s time I return to a self-centered, narcissistic monologue about my life.

(Not really. Except kind of really.)

Masquerade! Paper faces on parade!

I started this blog long before I was ever in publishing, but slowly and insidiously, the industry has infiltrated my entire existence–including social media. Cap’n Sweet Valley has me tweeting and Facebook-ing as part of my job description (not that I mind) and when I come home, it seems that all I can discuss/think/eat/breathe are books. I used to have hobbies! What happened to them?

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Those who know me and Bear know that I have excellent taste in romantic partners but unfortunately, my discerning judgment doesn’t extend to television shows. I have had deplorable luck with the two to which I’ve been (slavishly) faithful: first The X-Files and now Lost. I have come to hate both shows in ways I could never even begin to dream, yet I kept watching them to the bitter end. Lost, of course, is not yet finished and rest assured, I will stick this relationship out (because I am monogamous, apparently), but I simply cannot stand it anymore. I have been manipulated and confused so many times that I’ve essentially given up.

When I first started watching Lost, the relationship had been new and intriguing and mysterious. A number of seemingly unrelated persons crashland on a deserted island which may or may not be in the South Pacific. But what? There are hints that maybe the island isn’t deserted after all, that maybe there’s a vast conspiracy, and there’s simply mystery after mystery after mystery to be solved.

(The first season still kicks all the other seasons to the curb.)

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Last night I took a bit of a trip on the wayback machine and spent the night at my darling Sofa’s apartment to have a TV marathon, gorge on Chinese food, and drink fruity pomegranate wine coolers. I became friends with Sofa over the length of a cigarette. She likes to believe she was the first friend I made in London, but that is not true; Charlie was the first friend I made in London. Sofa was the first person I met, but our friendship didn’t come about until later when we both went outside by The Guardian building to have a smoke break.

Upon first glance Sofa and I are certainly not people you would ordinarily expect to be friends, let alone best friends. Hell, I didn’t expect to be friends with her either: when I first arrived at our flat, she answered the door in a white skirt, green Lacoste polo, Rainbow flip-flops…and a genuine pearl necklace. I had eyeliner smudged across my lids and was wearing torn jeans, my ratty old chucks with drawings all over them, and a Ramones t-shirt. She was a charming Southern belle from Virginia with aspirations to a diamond ring by spring; I was a quirky sprite of an Asian girl from California who came to England to stalk Carl Barât and be a Libertine. That was our first meeting.

Of course, we are each more complex than the personas we put on; I was the one that ended up with an engagement ring on my finger (a pink plastic heart with a smiley face on it from the Jersey Shore, thank you) and she was the one who had the more libertine lifestyle when we returned to New York. We lived together for three years before I decided to leave Manhattan for more space and less rent, but what I miss about our time as roommates were the weekend afternoons being less-than-productive: watching hours of TV (…we once spent an entire day watching Kyle XY on ABC, running to the bathroom only during commercial breaks), eating the entire Chinese food menu, and drinking the girliest, fruitiest wine coolers we could find. So we made do on a Thursday night after work and she introduced me to her new favourite show Bones.

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Stolen from Molly and every other recovering X-Phile out there:

They totally had sex once they moved the making-out out of frame. YES, THIS IS WHAT MY SHIPPY MIND BELIEVES. I DON’T CARE IF THEY’RE FICTIONAL. Ten years after the fact and I still can’t seem to get over them. Oh Mulder/Scully, I wish I could quit you.

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I had thought that The Golden Compass DVD would be released today but it appears as though my anticipation has run away from me because it isn’t released until next week. I had hoped that the DVD would come with the deleted scenes, which include the sky bridge to Cittàgazze and the confrontation between Lord Asriel and Mrs. Coulter but alas, the now defunct New Line will not oblige me. I would have also liked to see a director’s cut, which ordered the panserbjørne fight and the escape from Bolvangar correctly. Chris Weitz, I was mistaken in my estimation of your love for the source material and for that I apologise. New Line, you suck.

Because I had not heard back from my aunt before I left work last night, I went about my routine as per usual. She called after I had officially settled down to sleep to arrange a meeting today. I am not pleased.

It’s really quite unfair of me to say that because I really and truly do love my aunt, who taught me to whistle and throw a frisbee and make snowmen when I was eight. I thought she was the coolest person in the world then: she was single and independent and a grown-up tomboy, something I thought girls had to grow out of when they got married. My aunt is great with children and knows how to play properly and I always felt that she knew me, that she knew what it was like to be a little girl who didn’t necessarily like feminine things.

Funny how age changes your perspective on things.

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Number of headache-relief pills taken today: 6
Number of times resisted urge to vomit: 58,963,259
Number of times tried to do anything today: 69,853
Number of times failed doing anything today: 69,853
Price of gas: $2.15 per gallon

~Urgh. *squints at monitor* Headache has dissipated somewhat. No more piercing pain, no more 390 lbs. overweight men jostling and dancing jigs with metal shoes in skull, no more vampiric reaction to sunlight, and no more urge to vomit.

Well, almost no more urge to vomit.

I had never had a headache this bad before. Sure I’ve had persistent aches, but never something this piercing. I think it could have been a migraine, but I’ve never had a migraine before and I don’t think anyone in my family has a history of migraines either.

Goddammit! Would you stop the ringing in my ears?!

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