Back, in the red

Wow, the last time I posted was...23 march 2009. It is now June 1st.

Where have I been?!

Well, for starters, I haven't been doing nothing. Life has gotten busy, and I have been busy absorbing it, falling behind here to get ahead elsewhere. But I'm starting to realise--or rather, remember--that my life is not mutually exclusive of my writing. They're joined, you see; I'm a writer. Without writing (dare I wax so poetic?), there is no life. I'm like Ursula in THE LITTLE MERMAID, whose job, she claims, is to help unfortunate merfolk. "That's what I do," she tells Ariel. "It's what I live for."

Yeah, I know she was lying. But the words fit my story, so I'm using them.

There's also the trouble that, without documenting what I watch, what I eat--what I live, in fact--quite simply, I forget it all. And despite my somewhat consuming need to nestle myself within the fickle yet passionate grip of Culture, my memory for her shape and form has long been slight and fleeting. Basically, I don't remember which movies I've seen or what I thought about them after a while. I'm convinced my hippocampus is shot from years of sleep deprivation in high school and college; I have sleep debt you wouldn't believe. It's why I watch shows like "The Soup" on E!, to remind me what's what. It's like culture homework.

So I'm just checking in now to say that I'm not gone, I was just absent for a long minute, but I'm back. And I know what's what. I've got a lot of catch-up to do before I'm back in the black, but over the coming weeks (days? months?), we'll get it all down, if it's meant to be. I've been keeping a list.

MORE THAN FIVE THINGS THAT LETOP5 PLANS TO DOCUMENT:
african queen, the family stone, LA cafe round-up (cafe bolivar, funnel mill, panini garden, insomnia cafe, dialog cafe, literati, clementine, cafe muse, 18th st coffee), observe & report, alien, the man who wasn't there, COLCOA festival (the first day of the rest of your life, la fille de monaco, louise-michel, je l'aimais, la cliente), pootie tang, the soloist, kogi at the alibi room, cecconi's, baby mama, rudo y cursi, blindness, star trek, x-men origins: wolverine, be kind rewind, SF movies (brothers bloom, devil's advocate, to wong foo thx for everything, steel magnolias, divine secrets of the ya-ya sisterhood), SF food (dosa, house of chicken and waffles, little star pizza, bar jules, mission pie, out the door, home-made guacamole), puccini for beginners, terminator salvation

There you go. And here I go.