Thursday, Feb. 13, 2003 - 5:08 p.m.
FUCK THE CALIFORNIA TRANSPORTATION DEPARTMENT! I don't care if you like them, I don't care if you love them, I don't care if your great granny works for them. FUCK THEM. Half an hour after posting my last entry, I left my apartment to find a boot on my car. I have been living in fear of The Boot since I first moved here, having never seen one in person and my only frame of reference stemming from an episode of The Simpsons. Standing in the streets with the rain pouring on my head (of course it is pouring in LA the day I get The Boot) I raised my fists to the sky and yelled at the heavens. Some man pulled up in an old Chevelle and rolled down his window. "Sorry, honey, I just got mine taken off last week! It cost me seven hundred dollars!" Shit, says me, thinking about the 15 parking tickets in the console of my Jeep.
I called my mother, hyperventilating, not knowing what to do, and she swooped in to my rescue. Sort of. She fixed one major part of this debacle which I had no control over: Money. Then I had to find a ride downtown, which was nearly impossible. When I had almost given up hope entirely, my friend Austin called me back and was eager to help, on account of being severely in debt to me on friendship terms. [He had been ignoring me for a while, going through personal problems, and didn't call me for three weeks after I had called him 7 times and left messages-- a Friend Of Sarah No-No.] He picked me up and drove my ass around for several hours in the pouring rain, and we didn't even find the DMV. He said he would help me today before his job interview, and I thought we would be golden. I thought we'd just walk in, give them $800, and walk out with a letter telling me that The Boot would be removed within 24 hours. Horseshit. I spent my entire day getting dicked around by them not once, but twice. And probably thrice, seeing as how nothing came of two days of driving aimlessly with Austin, who is competing with me for the title of Worst Driver of the Century, around Downtown Los Angeles. Kendal even tried to help me out tonight after he had to leave, which was the sweetest thing in the world... she had friends in town, and she ditched them to save me. To no avail, of course, but just when I start to wonder if Kendal really means our friendship, she jumps right in there to prove to me that I can trust her. I am thankful for that, I have so few female friends. She's the only one I pal around with in LA, actually. I just can't understand why my days in this city are so tumultuous, though. It should be called "City of Angels Sitting Around On Their Asses Laughing At Your Struggle." If it isn't one thing, its another, and I almost had a nervous breakdown over it. All of my problems boil down to one thing: Money. The lack thereof, how to get more of it, and hating it. I am just so finished with this Godforsaken town and I can't wait to get out of it. And damnit, Austin has this obsession with Top 40 and I will forever have Justin Timberlake's Cry Me A River on rotation in my mind. If Today were a person, I would take a dump under his pillow.
Another suckage would be my haircut. Bob, my stylist, is wonderful--don't get me wrong, I literally love this man. I told him I'd be moving, though, and that I wasn't going to get my hair cut again until I saw him, so he went nutzo on my quaff. What I love about Bob is that he cuts hair looking 6 months down the line, so that it is properly sculpted to grow out looking decent, as opposed to getting a haircut at any old place and having to get it touched up every month or two to keep a style going. When my hair gets long, it will look good. I literally haven't had a haircut in 4 months. But now I look very butch, or like a little boy, I'm not sure which is worse. Seriously, its so short on top, I could spike it up. I love you, Bob, but why? Why can't I just grow this shit out for the first time in 5 years? I don't even remember what I look like with long hair. Does anyone who knows me? I used to be able to sit on my hair, it was so long. Now? Boys Town.
I'm a little perturbed with my journal as of late. I haven't been treating it as my literary device through which to express myself creatively. I've been treating it as some stream of consciousness jargon that only I can understand and find witty. Of course, I am writing for myself, but I am also writing to develop a style and a bit of skill at it so perhaps I can write for real sometime in the future. I've always liked writing. I had one of my favorite theatre professors in college (head of the department, actually, and absolutely brilliant) pull me aside after class and ask me if I liked writing. "Why?," I said. "Well, I was just wondering if you liked it... you're very good at it, I really enjoy your writing style, and you write like you love it." I had never really thought about it before, although every time I read a novel, I sort of sponge a bit of the author's style into my mind and walk around picturing the witticisms that I have in actual print, as if I was writing a novel in my head. Just little things, of course... just like this diary, I suppose. I think about little things I'm doing and apply them to the grander scheme of things in my life; why do I walk the way I walk? Why do I not have an accent, and what does that say about me to others? Little things about myself and finding my place in the world, which is probably something that should be kept in the introspective, because I have yet to find a way to convey all of these feelings, doubts, and desires to people without them coming off as entirely selfish.
I read a book the other day on my way back from Oklahoma called "The Cheese Monkeys," by Chip Kidd. It is a great piece of literature, although I truly wish I had some sort of book group to discuss it with, because there were one or two instances that I did not understand. You know the end of 1984, where he talks about the bullet entering his brain, and one isn't certain if it is a metaphorical bullet or a physical one? There were a couple of parts like that which I'm not certain should be left up to my own interpretation, and I want to know what other people thought of these instances, too. However, if I join a book club, I will instantly turn 35 and there will be no return from that, so I am forced to make my friends read the same novel and tell me what THEY make of it all. One thing I know from reading it for certain, though: Good is Dead.
I am sending Valentines out late to the people who know I can't get away with saying, "I don't have money for stamps." I don't have a car which can take me to a place to pick up stamps, therefore, they will be notes of love not directly related to the holiday, and everyone who gets pissed about it can kiss my butt. Seriously, folks, my vagina is in a vice due to my lack of vehicle, and you can thank the Department of Transportation for that one. Yes, I accumulated parking tickets. I did not block any sort of emergency vehicles, I did not block an intersection or box anyone in, I simply was out of town for several street cleaning days, slept in on them, or had 3 inches of my car in a miscellaneous red zone painted on the foot of concrete between my car and someone's driveway. Horseshit. I wonder if they get a lot of threats at the DMV. I can almost guarantee you they do, and if not for this smidge of Class that I have been cursed with, I would consider the thought more seriously. I am just very testy about this tonight, so testy, in fact, that even the photograph at the top of the page is entitled "fuckthetransportationdepartment."
I'm watching a re-run of Puck's wedding on good ol' MTV right now. I think that for everyone who hates him, they should take a break from it on his wedding day. So what if we're all media whores? Even dogs like to watch themselves on home video, and these things are a poorly edited one for us. I'm just happy for him, and from what I hear, they're very good together. She seems like a good match for him... cut and dry humor is probably the best way to be with a guy like that. If James had that much energy, I would be worn out, too. Blech, I can't take that opening anymore, the channel has been switched to Buffy. Its a good episode tonight, actually. "Hush." I think it won an Emmy.
I think I'm going to go... I am getting scatterbrained with the writing, but if I have any more to say later tonight, I will hop back on here. I get tired of dumping all of my problems on my friends. I guess this is the place to vent, eh? Until then...