27 September 2002

Well, I successfully avoided the computer for much of yesterday. I read The Rice Room so that I could feel like I was doing research (because I was), and I read much of Redshift. I'll finish that up this morning. Mehhhh. If Sarrantonio hadn't gone on and on about how extreme and challenging this anthology was, I would probably have enjoyed it more. But there it is on the cover, "Extreme Visions of Speculative Fiction." Bah.

One of the ways that I stayed away from the computer was watching numbers 95 to 21 of VH1's Sexiest Artists of Rock and Roll. They didn't show the top 20 last night. But dang, those things are great. First of all, watching Mark attempt to make his face look like Sandra Bernhard's face is one of the funniest things I've seen in a very long time. And we were all pretty snarky in our own special ways.

And then, I swear, watching that will make you feel amazing. I went to take my contacts out while the guys were still sitting out in the living room. I looked in the mirror, came out again, and said, "Dude, I'm hotter than all of those people, except maybe Barry White." Okay, so that's not quite true. But there were some terminally ugly folks on that show. If you're feeling poorly about your sexiness, go watch it! I swear that you, yes, you are sexier than at least 90 of the 100. Really.

Now some of you are probably saying, "M'ris doesn't even know I exist, surely she can't be talking about me." Wrong-o. I am talking about you. I don't care who you are. You are sexier than Rod Stewart. You are sexier than Kurt Cobain, Eddie Vedder, or Wossname from Creed who stole Eddie Vedder's voice. You are way, way, sexier than Joan Jett, a.k.a. Slutty Ramone. You are sexier than every single Beatle, either now or when they first made it big, and all three initials of TLC, especially the dead one. You are so much sexier than Steven Tyler, it isn't even funny. (Don't try to prove or disprove this to me. I already know.)

The last 20 are on tonight opposite "Monk," so, just, no. There's no way we'd watch that instead of "Monk." I looked at the list on VH1's website, though, and it is to shudder for. Bono. Bon Jovi. Elvis. No no no no no.

And not a single Barenaked Lady on the list. Silly people.

Anyway, my back seems to be doing mostly better today, so that's good. I'm going to try to be careful with computer work and housework today and hope that it stays mostly better.

I'm trying to figure out how to handle some stuff with my writing group. I've had a few issues, not so much personal as issues with how we're going to do stuff in the near future, and mostly I've been dealing with one person about them. And I'm just not sure, at this point, how much sense it makes to try to work them out to my satisfaction. I mean, I like the group, and everybody in it has been trying to work around everybody else's issues while still getting their own addressed. I'm glad. But I have to wonder if it's okay for me to ask for my issues, great or small, to be addressed. I'm a short-timer. In some real sense, this will not be my group in a very short time.

In some ways this attitude makes sense to me, and it only seems fair. In other ways, it bothers me to think like this. Mark and I have been doing it with the church we've gone to. I don't think of it as our church. We haven't gotten our membership papers transferred from St. Mark's. We haven't made sure to sit down and have a talk with the pastor to get to know each other, and we haven't brought up our issues with the Bible translation they're using. Part of that is that they just got a new permanent pastor there -- we'd had an interim guy before. But part of it is that, well, it's just not going to be ours for very long if it's ours at all.

I don't like pulling back from a community that way. I believe that you can't wait to participate in your own life until everything is perfect. On the other hand, I also think it's unfair to try to make long-term changes if you're not going to be around in some form to make long-term contributions.

All of this is going to be moot for the writing group soon, I fear, because somewhere along the line I'm going to be too unpredictably scheduled to be a regular member. I don't know if that'll be sooner or later in the next year or so. Everything is up in the air right now.

It's easier with individuals than with groups, I think, because you can try to adjust individual friendships so that both friends are happy, and you only peripherally have to worry about other people. The people in my writing group are people I relate to individually as well as in a group. We've gone out for meals or coffee or have just hung out and talked. Alec is moving soon, too, sooner than we are, but the others will still be around, and when the schedule gets weird for making meetings, I can still try to have coffee or dinner or whatever, if we can come up with free time in units of two or three people instead of seven to ten. But it's strange to feel so resigned about a lot of the stuff around me, kind of withdrawn from it collectively if not individually.

Well, I'd better get around to some chores if I'm going to do them at all. Which I am. I have an envelope to address, laundry to fold, floors to vacuum, a Visa statement to check...oh, and a couple of books to write. Oh yeah.