THERE IS ALWAYS MORE WORK AND THERE IS NEVER MORE MONEY.

/bitching about my job

Got my schedule together. Now I just have to start working on getting the time off to perform on the 23rd. Gonna have to start sucking it.
But for now I'm stoked to be attending Julia's bachelorette party on Saturday and seeing Thao play the Casbah on Sunday. This weekend is going to be fucking amazing. Oh, and I'm getting my hair did by Lissa. She just so happens to be the bomb.com. I'm really looking forward to cutting loose and looking foxy. Fuck yeah.

Sometimes I just get home from a long day or whatever and I just look at my cat and he makes me feel like nothing is wrong in the world. Look at that guy. He's just so soft and handsome and he waits up for me because he thinks he can sweet talk a snack out of me. And he can. I am such a fucking cat lady. But it's probably better for me right now if I'm practically a nun and take out all my affection on my cat than if I get tangled up with some drug dealer, kid toucher or man whore as has oft been my wont.

There's some bird shit on the rear drivers' side window of my car that looks like a small child I'm about to run over in my peripheral vision. I should probably wash my car sometime this year.

Saw The Dark Knight last night, in imax. Imax is too crazy big, or maybe I was just too close to the screen, but wow. Shit is huge. It was a really good, suspenseful flick, but I prefer a campier Batman. This one stressed me out a lot and all the obvious terrorism, patriot act parallels were distracting and irritating. At least I got to bask in the glow of Christian Bale and they replaced Katie Holmes with Maggie G.

Wrote some music and added words. I have a couple different pieces to work with now. It feels really good to be working that way again. Got out my acoustic guitar and wrote 3 pages of lyrics.

Stressing out about work. Somehow I have to get Saturday and Sunday night off because I have adopted the shoot first ask questions later strategy for my off time, namely buying my ticket and hoping for the best. I need to go to Julia's bachelorette party and I must see Thao at the Casbah. I'm just going to go in there and start shouting about who do I have to sleep with around here to get my life together? I'm sure Silverballs can help me.

Quoth the Buzzcocks: What do I get?

Just got home from work. After about nine hours I start getting a little loopy. It's weird.

I was talking with one of the little girls there about deflowering virgins because she hasn't and I have. She asked me what my "number" was and I told her three because it's true and she was like, "Oh, it's okay daddy!" (note: it is really easy to get 17 year old girls to call you "daddy") and started hugging and consoling me. I was like, I happen to be kind of picky about the kid-touchers, drug-dealers and adulterers who I allow to enter my quivering woman flesh, okay?

One of the other servers went home early because he felt sick and started puking his guts out immediately after his dinner break. I should probably pack a lunch tomorrow. I should probably stop referring to other human beings as "servers". We're supposed to say it in our little script at the beginning of the meal but I refuse. Instead of "My name is Megan, I'll be your server." I say, "My name is Megan, I'll be taking care of you this afternoon/evening." Server sounds like I was born to refill diet vanilla cokes. Taking care of you this afternoon sounds like I choose to devote myself to others for nine hours at a time because I'm just nurturing like that. It's probably unhealthy that I've even thought about it that much.

Went to the Ocean House last night. Got the fuck down. There's nothing like getting drunk and shaking my ass and then filling up on doritos and vitamin water to make me feel good. I also like telling people I don't want to talk to again that my name is Emily and I work at Chili's. There are so many fucking Chili's around here that even if they ask if I know so and so I can say no, I work at the other one.

Man, I HAVE to go to the store and get some kitty litter. Toby deserves better than this.

Irrational fears: I have some.

I'm dancing in a piece next month in Balboa Park and I have to fall up. I kind of dive into the group with a little arabesque and they lift me up and I ride around in the air and then they put me down. The first time it was cool because I just closed my eyes and I tried not to cry or pee myself but the second time I totally fucked up. I opened my eyes. I'm gonna have to work on that. I don't want to look super miserable on stage. When Gina does it she looks completely blissful and I want to feel that way but it makes me really anxious. The theme of the piece is allegedly "longing" so I guess the lifts are supposed reaching out for whatever it is that I'm longing for and I should probably not look like I'm having an anxiety attack.

A couple months ago I got vertigo cleaning the back shelves at work and Silverballs had to help me down. I think I just need to trust more that they've got me and it'll feel better. I need to get used to it. Ray used to pick me up and I liked it because I knew or "knew" or whatever that he loved me or anyway that being dropped by him wasn't within the realm of possibility. When he had me, it didn't bother me at all. I was nothing and it was easy to lift me up. I want it to feel like that. It scares me and I want to do it again. It feels almost as good as making bad decisions and I love me some of that.

Speaking of bad decisions, I saw Wolf Parade at Canes on Sunday. Not that that was a bad decision, just that those are a few of my favorite things: Wolf Parade and bad decisions. I was so close to the Krug I couldn't believe it. He definitely sweated on me. His music has been really important to me. The last few years have been kind of shitty/lonely and his music has made me feel less lonely in a way that I don't think a real person that I actually know could do. Wow, that sounded really gay. We're dropping a ponygirl video on it soon because if we had to battle to write about the show that shit would get gnarly brutal. We don't want to do that to our pretty little faces. But I guess it's cool if I let some really homosexual things out here, in the interest of not being a total ass in the video.

I don't know if maybe I'm just projecting or what, but I feel like the emotional landscape of those songs is like looking in a god damn mirror. Bad decisions, impossibilities, infidelities, snippets of conversation and the shape of your hands. Thwarted desires. Maybe it's just being human. Even "I'll Believe in Anything", a song that seems so optimistic and romantic has the underlying tension of impossibility. It's all in his delivery. Listen to "Three Colors" and ask yourself if you think the person he's talking to gives a fuck about the wind in his window. That show made me want to write music again. The energy was incredible. Been doodling with my guitar. See what happens.

Fuck. I have so many bruises on my legs right now. Shit looks like Courtney Love in the '90's. Thanks a lot, modern dance.

Last night I went on a ponygirl field trip with Stina to see Rocky Votolato at the Casbah. I was pretty dunrunk. I told some dude who was friends with Zach my favorite shitty things happen when you're sixteen story and he was like yeah, when I was sixteen I killed a cat. Cat killing has to be the biggest dealbreaker EVER. My story was just about this girl asking me to have a threesome with her and the guy she was cheating on her boyfriend with. I said no. I didn't even come close to fucking killing a cat. shit.

I'm a little hungover today. Not bad, just a little tired, little headache. My mom has food poisoning so I went to the store to get her saltines and gingerale. Picked up some tampons too. The bagger boy offered me carry out service. Sometimes I just want to be really inappropriate and yell, "NO THANKS I CAN CARRY MY TAMPONS OUT MYSELF". And just drag the bag behind me like it's really unbearably heavy. But I don't because I know they only say that because they have to. I worked there for like three weeks. Hated that shit. Saw my old boss today. David Lynch. What a douchebag.

Wonder who got kicked off Project Runway. I hope it was Suede.

On my way to work, I take the lagoon road. It goes through the golf course, behind the Four Seasons and past a whole bunch of gated communities. Basically there's a crap ton of rich people who live there so there's never any cops and I can speed like a demon. True story. I go about 60 in that 35, no problem.

Last weekend I turned a corner on my way and saw this future president type guy: crew-cut, tan, apparently drunk in the middle of the afternoon, hanging between the shoulders of two other fratty looking guys who were dragging him into a gate community. People in front of me were all pulling over. From closer to, I could see that his chest was covered in blood. I kept going but I felt irrationally bad about it. I hadn't witnessed anything so I couldn't help with that. I'm not a doctor. All I could have done was get blood on my apron and get a demerit for being late. There was nothing there for me to do.

Remember that video where Tom Cruise talks about Scientology? He says something wild and woolly about how if there's a car accident he wants to be there because he's a Scientologist and therefore he will know what to do? I kind of wished for a minute that I was a Scientologist. Not that that would actually give me any idea of what to do that might be helpful, but just so I could feel like I knew what to do. This is how cults get started.

Last night at work I had a guy ask me how much he should tip me. I was like, don't ask me that! Seriously, how uncomfortable is that? I was like, hey, it's up to you. 20% would be cool but I'm not going to tell you what to do. He was like, you did a good job. You were cheerful, effective and very sweet. You deserve a good tip and you should ask for it. This was really frustrating because people who don't understand the way the world actually works are frustrating.

This is how the world works: I am taxed on a set percentage of my sales, whether I actually receive that in tips or not. I usually receive more than that because I bust my balls but only because I get enough good tips from people who appreciate me to cancel out the cheapskates and foreigners who don't know better. I have to be pretty detached. I can't do it with an entitled attitude because that leads to hissyfits and hissyfits lead to bad service. I can't say, I deserve this or that percent because no matter how much I try a lot of people either don't know how to tip or don't tip based on my service or anything I could do for them. I've gotten sheepish piles of quarters from people who just didn't have anything else. It doesn't bother me. I can flirt my way to a forty percent tip from someone else. Basically, I don't care about a bad tip as long as I know I did everything I could for that person to make them happy. That's my job.

So to have somebody talking to me about "deserving" or whatever was awkward and irritating. Things we "deserve" are mostly imaginary. He was old enough to know what a good tip looks like. He also chastised his date for ordering for herself. It was uncomfortable. At least he wasn't the guy who made out with his girlfriend until their burgers came, with his eyes open, ogling me. That was pretty fucking uncool.