ELEVATOR GOING UP

I was nervous and drank more than I ate; my father carefully dispatched his steak. Then he asked me what my plans were for the summer, and in the flush of some strong emotion or other I said, more or less: It's the beginning of the summer and I'm standing in the lobby of a thousand-story grand hotel, where a bank of elevators a mile long and an endless red row of monkey attendants in gold braid wait to carry me up, up, up through the suites of moguls, of spies, and of starlets, to rush me straight to the zeppelin mooring at the art dco summit, where they keep the huge dirigible of August tied up and bobbing in the high winds. On the way to the shining needle at the top I will wear a lot of neckties, I will buy five or six works of genious on 45 rpm, and perhaps too many times I will find myself looking at the snapped spine of a lemon wedge at the bottom of a drink. I said, "I anticipate a coming season of dilated time and of women all in disarray."

And so begins Michael Chabon's "The Mysteries of Pittsburgh." If I haven't urged you personally to read it, I'm urging you now. This is the perfect time. It will have unfortunate effects on your speech, and probably your dress as well. But you can't let this alarm you. I am convinced it is the right thing to do.

WITH A GUN AND A PACK OF SANDWICHES

So, okay, the library isn't that bad. It is kind of physical work sometimes (especially exhausting today because I got up early to clean my bedroom and the third floor), but that's not necessarily a bad thing. I feel like I've got a pretty good handle on what I should be doing/when, and for some reason all of the information about where things go/what to do is staying in my head a little easier. I guess it does take a little while for those kinds of workplace instincts to really fix themselves in your mind.

It's a little disgusting how much I can latch on to any job and hammer away at it until it's perfect. Employers of the world: I am the perfect new hire because I'll probably freak out if I do something wrong, and I will always be nice to you because I'm afraid. Don't be surprised when I come to work 15 minutes early in a starched dress and kitten heels and ask you how you like your coffee and spend a few minutes making sure all the papers on the desk are at right angles. Jesus. I'm ridiculous.

I am completely serious when I say that I dream of being the kind of employee who doesn't give a damn about anything, sneaks out to visit people on the clock, takes advantage of the office supplies, and shirks all of their work without ever being noticed. Unfortunately, I know this will never really be me. My parents say that I have a really strong sense of self-discipline, and while this can be an extremely worthwhile skill to have for freer, less tangible efforts (like writing, or playing music), they are XdeathXcoreX if you have any kind of mindless job. Trust me. You'll only get tweaked out.

Maybe you're asking yourselves right now if it's really a good idea for me to become a librarian. Well, that's the seminal question, isn't it? I'm so glad you've asked.

Now go away. I have to check the second floor for scary old guys and sleepers. Wish me luck.

I

HOW TO THICKEN THE PLOT

Okay, working at the library isn't so bad. (If you asked me yesterday, though, I would've told you something completely different. Anyway.) The good thing about working in the library is that you get to be constantly around books-- so much that you begin to notice patterns in them, and begin to pick up so many random facts that your mental universe is suddenly populated by bizarre, unlikely connections. For instance: I checked out a book yesterday called "From Girls to Grrrlz: A History of Womens' Comics from Teens to Zines." It's a pretty interesting history of representations of women in comic books (and the influence women have had in illustrating and writing comic books). A small segment towards the end shows the work of Dame Darcy (Meatcake) and Christine Shields (Blue Hole). The thing is, though, that the Blue Hole comic is exactly like a certain popular internet comic (maakies, for those of you in the know). I'm serious: not only is the drawing style the same, but the characters and quirky gestures are all the same.

Now I'm trying to find something about Blue Hole comics so I can read more, or know more about Christine Shields. What happened? Did she start using the pen name Tony Millionaire? Did some real guy named Tony Millionaire rip her off? Why don't more people know about this?

Am I rambling? I wouldn't even know. I have that same excited feeling I used to get when I played the detective game when I was younger: you would look around for some inexplicable, mysterious thing, and figure out why it happened. You would make it up, but it had to be plausible enough to spook you. And all the time you knew it wasn't real anyway. It's exactly like that.

That, or I've just had my first taste of intense/crazy research. Maybe I like it a little.

YOU'VE GOT A DOLLAR SIGN RIGHT THERE WHERE MOST WOMEN HAVE A HEART. PLAY IT SMART.

We watched "The Killing" tonight; the above is a quote from one of those hard-boiled, just-out-of-jail, has-a-heist-that'll-make-it-all-okay-from-now-on-baby types. I really enjoyed it. It's been a long time since I've seen an honest to goodness noir where everybody's greed and hatred undoes them in the end. And there's still room for silly physical comedy! What a good deal.

I know my comments here have been brief recently, but I think that's because I'm trying to save these epiphanic morsels for my zine, the Patron Saint of Small Things (issue four currently in the works). I think blogging keeps me from writing for the zine because it gives me the immediate satisfaction of having my impressions recorded, if not for the sake of brevity. Nevertheless, the zine is starting to shape up really well: pieces on my desire to work at a library, the rhetoric of political marches, burrying a goldfish in the middle of winter, sleeping in cars, crushes, danger, young love, and all the other classic zine fodder. (Hint: this is where I start hyping the new issue so all of you interesting, anonymous readers can get your copy. Hi there.)

It feels really great to be working on a zine again. For a long time I had trouble figuring out what I even wanted to write about, I think because it's been hard for me to see the small things and minute details that I used to write about all the time. Also, I think my intentions in making the zine have changed significantly, especially because my initial goals were to make something apolitical. I have no idea why I construed art as apolitical before, but that (as well as so many other constructs) have changed meaning significantly in the last year. But this is a great way of gathering my scattered thoughts and impressions, which have been rather mercurial in the last year.

Projects are good.