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Question for you about Wednesday's live show

By on October 25, 2009 in The Daily Alison, video

Hey all of you. So as you may or may not know, which for the first time is striking me as redundant because hello, doesn’t “may” suggest there’s a possibility of “may not”? It isn’t “as you definitely know.” Anyway, as you sure as hell probably might know, I’m doing a live show on Ustream on Wednesday, Oct. 28 at 10pm Eastern time. You can RSVP here. (RSVPing as far as I can tell just indicates that you may or may not watch but I enjoy watching the number climb so you should totally RSVP.)

So here’s my question for you: Do you prefer when I have a guest or would you guys rather be alone with me? And if you prefer guests do you want to chat with people you’re familiar with like my dad, Trevor, Dustin or would you rather talk to various luminaries in the fields of automotives and health/wellness? Note: I know no such luminaries. Had the fields been aerospace and mechanical engineering this might be a different story. Or it might not be a different story. But you know what I mean. Assorted notables.

Also, and I really like Emily Blunt and John Krasinksi but in the photo below doesn’t look like they both just sucked on lemon wedges?

blunt

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If I drew cartoons for the New Yorker—in my sleep edition

By on October 24, 2009 in if I drew cartoons

So I used to do this recurring thing on Red Eye and also on this blog where I’d mention cartoons I’d draw if I drew cartoons for the New Yorker. They were always kind of purposefully lame with perhaps a wee ribbon of clever in them although really, there was no guarantee of clever. If there was a clever surprise in there you would feel fortunate but realize it was nothing to depend on. Sort of like when the results of any sort of blood test come back and you find out that you’re not dying, if you happen to be a hypochondriac which I’m not but I’ve known a lot of them, some of whom are still alive.

Anyway, I woke up this morning with the following in my head. It’s only semi-amusing if you realize that this was dream logic—it makes little sense in waking life.

Here is the cartoon.

I’m on a corner. A cat is, well, I just realized the cat is positioned “catty corner” (ugh, sometimes my dream brain is so cliche) and the cat has its paw extended as if giving me the right of way. The caption is, “And they say feline chivalry is dead.”

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My creative process; Michael Ian Black; my dream about underwear

By on October 22, 2009 in Michael Ian Black

Sometimes my creative thoughts sort of spin in place, kicking up an ever widening circle of brain dust, instead of moving forward. An example: the way I tend to write a bunch of beginnings of an article and then slowly work on more than one of them until the best one suddenly announces itself. Or the way I’m sitting here with numerous versions of the same section of a book proposal and instead of moving on to the next section I keep tinkering slightly with all of them. I tell myself it’s part of my creative process—because I’m creative and this is my process—and yet I wonder what it would be like if I didn’t do this? I imagine I’d have more time.

Last night while totally not wasting time on the internet I stumbled across this post by Michael Ian Black which I thought was fascinating. I identified with it enormously and thought he was brave to put it all into words. I had no idea he felt this way about his level of success—I think of him as someone’s who’s successful, hilarious, well-respected and who’s unquestionably “made it”—and yet upon reading this I realized how naive those initial thoughts were because everything in this business is relative and infinite and it’s incredibly hard to keep in mind anything you’ve achieved and derive satisfaction from it because by the time it hits you’re already thinking about how you should be on some other level or in some other realm.

I have more to say about this but in the interest of getting actual work done today instead I’ll tell you that last night I had a great dream where on my kitchen table was a bag of clean laundry—my laundry—it had been cleaned without my even having to take it to get cleaned! And while I’m sure this is about some deep shit possibly involving figurative “dirty laundry,” I also think it’s sad and funny that this was a great dream.

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Hey you guys

By on October 21, 2009 in Uncategorized

Hey you guys,

I’m working on a book proposal right now so I’m severely limiting my access to fun—I had to put Chutes & Ladders in the freezer and I flushed my Mad Libs—which is why I haven’t been blogging as often as I usually do and also why my Daily Alisons have been even less daily than their usual slightly-less-than-dailyness. And then there’s the live Ustream show about which I have two thoughts. 1) I really need to set a schedule for that fucker and stick to it. 2) Instead of naming it The Alison Rosen Live Show I should have named it Daily Alison Live. I tend to have the second thought when I’m showering. In fact I ALWAYS have that thought while I’m showering which means I have it at least a couple times a week.

Just kidding. I shower daily even though right now I have one of those irritating shower liners that sticks to me when  I’m taking a shower, leaving me needing to shower after I shower. “Get off me, you clingy needy bitch!” I usually yell while showering. It’s relaxing.

So but anyway I miss you guys so I don’t think I’ll be able to stay away for much longer. Think of you guys as me in a shower and me as that shower curtain liner.

And now a question: Do you guys listen to music when you’re working and if so what do you listen to?

Alison

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This one's sad.

By on October 19, 2009 in goth, nostalgia, the angoras

Twelve years ago someone close to me died. If you’d have known me at the time it was all I really talked about and I also wrote poetry about it and strange prose poems and short stories and marveled at the way the pain caused this preponderance of words, this spillage, really, and not the frozen numbed out wordlessness you’d expect. If I may be precious for a moment, you could say the pain existed in hypercolor, even though when I remember that period of time it’s usually in a smudgy grays. Pardon me, I think I made myself puke.

Anyway, and this is a tangent, but I still feel a bit sheepish about the fact that I so clearly allowed everyone around me to witness my mourning but perhaps even more sheepish that my mourning outfit consisted mostly of (more…)

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I love Christmas

By on October 19, 2009 in meringue experiment, santa claus, shopping

I love Christmas and the only thing I love more than Christmas is nothing.  I’m happy to report that I just had my first fullblown holidaygasm of the season while standing in the kitchen thinking about Muppet Christmas Carol and cracking eggs into a bowl so I could make meringues which seems like a holidayish activity though I do it year round. Granted holidaygasm is a pretty crude term for what I mean—that visceral fluttering childlike excitement that comes from contemplating the impending season. I used to have the same feeling when I’d see the spinning “Special” letters on TV back in the old days when the world was simpler and I didn’t have this deadline hanging over me.

Oh, did I not mention? Yes, I have a deadline looming which means that everything I’m doing short of actually working on said project is both procrasturbatory (note: I didn’t invent this term) and beside the point. A quick inventory of the things I’ve done today which are beside the point? Wait, no! I will not! I will not spend time making a list when I could instead tell you that before repairing to the kitchen to think about Christmas I got up from my computer with a strange feeling of writerly satisfaction as if I’d actually accomplished something and yet I knew I hadn’t. And then I realized it’s because I was proud of a tweet. It’s upsetting on many levels.

But back to Christmas, I was standing there feeling overwhelmed and all woe is me ish and then I started thinking about how from  here to New Year’s is pretty awesome and filled with twinkling lights and carols and holiday cookies with sparkling bits of colored sugar on them and holiday parties with eggnog and going to California and seeing my California friends and going to the mall where it’s all holidayish and everyone is pissed and angry and the lines are insanely long and you can’t find parking. I love that!

January soon begins to suck though because not only is it another 12 months till Christmas again but some kind of mischievous Christmas elves snuck into your closet while you were sleeping and replaced your jeans with ones that look identical—even down to that frosting stain—but are actually a couple sizes smaller. I’m probably going to have to start putting a lock on my closet. And then maybe I’ll even put my clothes in my closet instead of crumpled in a heap on an array of available surfaces. Sometimes I like to fling a garment so it creates something I refer to as a “clothing bridge” in that part of the item is on my bed and part of it is resting on a nearby table. It’s not a beginner move but I’ve been at this for a long time.

Ughhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Ok, back to work.

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If you can't afford a sandwich alarm

By on October 19, 2009 in Uncategorized

This story from the Post about lunch bags with mold effect on them to prevent coworkers stealing your stuff from the office fridge makes me so happy I no longer work in an office. I’d all but wiped from my memory that particular aspect of office life—the angry emails about purloined yogurt and MIA roast beef sandwiches.

Side note: Am I the only person who stared at the bag Paul grabbed from the refrigerator last night on Mad Men, trying to figure out whose name was written on it? I rewound three times and finally decided it said Paul, though the P looked like an S. Maybe his late night alter ego is named Saul.

Another side note: let’s just say you had a big hunk of cheese in the bag, would the faux mold still be a deterrent?

Another side note (this blog post is a hexagon, methinks): what are some good names for faux mold? fun mold? silly mold? fool’s mold?

Another side note: I’m procrastinating

Another side note: Ok so I was ambitious when I said hexagon.

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