Odds and Ends, Odds and Ends

That picture was scaring me.

I took this picture of myself (not pictured) right after I got this expensive haircut-with-blowout. An incredibly hardworking hair stylist in my neighborhood had made every strand of my hair as straight as a dye, working laboriously with small sections until I wanted to cry: "That one's straight! Move on or we'll be here till dark!" Anyway, it seemed very fake, alluring and glamourous while I walked home, so in honor of the falsity I figured out how to take still pictures on my camcorder and I took about 30.

You can't smile at a camera you are pointing at yourself. I tried a few smiles and they're ghastly -- empty rictus grins. I took a lot of strange grimacing ones that revealed to me I grimace a lot, because I was trying to look pleasant and attractive.

Oh dear, the Anne LaMott tone again. It might be because I have her book, Bird by Bird, in my bathroom and I read it often. A friend very kindly lent me this book and it did rivet me, as she promised, with its down to earth advice about writing and descriptions of a published writer's life. The coolest thing is the title: When they were kids, her little brother had to write an essay about the birds of North America and was fretting about it so their father said to him, "Just take it bird by bird."

Speaking of birds, they're chirping outside my window right now, very poignantly. It's quiet, just birds. Why? Because my apartment is toward the back of a large building and I live in a neighborhood where people's gardens are in back of their houses. So all these ornamental gardens are hidden from the street -- I can just see them from one window if I crane my neck. But they create a patch of nature-type stuff that attracts birds ... if I could just get my neighbors to be as quiet and harmonious (do you hear that, thunder-heels in Apt. 9 above me??)

I wanted to tell you ever so many things -- I just reread some F. Scott Fitzgerald as that statement may attest -- but now I can't remember what they were.

Well, this is pretty momentous. A few weekends ago I went to Circuit City to buy an MP3 player -- finally! I'd researched online and had chosen my one: the Zen Creative. A reliable device costing $149. At the store, an employee told me he didn't think the Creative would work with a Mac. Though I doubted this (I think I know someone who uses one with a Mac) I let myself be persuaded rather easily to buy -- an Ipod! Yes! I spent twice the amount I planned and left the store in confused triumph and emotional disarray. I actually stood outside Circuit City and cried for a short time because I wasn't sure I deserved an Ipod. But I walked home with it. By the time I got to a Vietnamese cafe near my house and had a chicken sandwich and mango bubble tea, I felt happy. I was excited. It was like owning the black box from 2001. I could not WAIT to get it going, fill it with songs, join this small-earplugs revolution.

Enh. I can't get it to work. Simple instructions from the instruction booklet, when followed, produce no results. I keep being told to download the new iTunes and I keep doing it but then nothing happens. And I foolishly set my iPod's language-to-be-in to Polish, thinking I'd be able to switch it back, but I can't, so all the instructions are in Polish. This is really bad when the screen flashes a red circle with a line through it and one urgent Polish word that I know must mean something like "Shut Down!" or "Danger!"

I couldn't deal with my failure with the iPod. I put it away and ignored it. It was too agonizingly frustrating and I felt like too much of an A-hole not being able to get this simple goddam device going that every kid on the subway seems to have mastered.

But last weekend my niece told me from Mexico that she'd set her iPod into Chinese at the beginning, following a similar prankish impulse, and I should go to the Apple page and the problem is under Frequently Asked Questions. So I can get it out of Polish, maybe, and this weekend I'm going to try again but I don't have too much hope. This problem is the reason for the snarky post below about hating technology. I do, because I can't get one tiny corner of it to work for me.

I hoped maybe stick-straight hair made me look like Cat Power. I kept the blowout long enough to play an ABBA song at a party in a slowed down, mournful, Cat Power style. We were all supposed to perform a song from 1977 so I did Knowing Me, Knowing You. Someone did Psycho Killer and someone else did The Book I Read (lots of Talking Heads). There was a cake with the Sex Pistols, Iggy and the Stooges, and other 1977 notables drawn in frosting. It was a lot of fun.

That's all I got.