i have a confession to make.

i find hard-core pornography unsettling.

i don't know why this is; as a liberated young woman of the twenty-first century, i feel as though i should be embracing porn with open arms, as though i should have my own collection. i'm certainly okay with it conceptually. i don't have a problem with people, en-relationship or otherwise, having collections. i don't have a problem with people appreciating or working in porn. i don't have a problem with buying it or selling it (or, at least i'd imagine i'd have no problem selling it; i've never tried). but there is something...

i've got to be honest. walking into XXX dvd and video on 8th ave today (office field trip, best not to ask), i just felt out of my depth. walls upon walls of video cases, each featuring a cleverly punned title and a pneumatic actor/actress, smiling or pouting in an approximation of seduction. an army of coiffed exhibitionists daring me to watch in awe as they shake their collective groove thangs.

really, though, i think what it is is that hardcore porn makes me feel like i'm fifteen again (kindly refrain from boorish comments, thanks), lost and bewildered in the jungle of human sexuality and jumping at all the shadows of lust. things lurk behind those cases that i can only imagine, that i can barely fathom, and that i am nowhere near bendy enough to accomplish. i know there are some who find innocence of that sort beguiling, but i don't relish going back there. and while i'm no longer quite an innocent in the world of sex, i am certainly an innocent in the world of porn; and having fought damn hard to be the jaded prat that i am, i am unsettled when reminded of how much there is left for me to learn, should i choose to learn it.

in the command room, we are bracing ourselves for war. ostensibly, next week is the week that bosslady deigns to grace us with her presence and deliver the annual reviews. how she plans to do this remains a mystery, as she's been missing for the four months she would ostensibly be reviewing, but prepare ourselves we do, nonetheless. and we don't fight cleanly aroudn here, no matter what the stories say.

in a way, i feel almost bad for bosslady, in as much as i can feel bad for someone who clearly has no conscience. when she walked in last week, 45 minutes late, to sit in on our meeting, the temperature dropped palpably. she knows we're not happy, with her, with this office, with anything. our conjecture is that she's going to adhere to the 'best defense is a good offense' school of thought; we're preparing ourselves to be mightily attacked. because she knows we're going to come right back with it.

so it's going to be an interesting time. i wonder who is going to come out the wiser; we've certainly got an advantage, three paeons against one overprivileged and underprepared quasi-manager. hardly a fair fight, really. but that's what we've been reduced to.

this isn't work, it's war.

some unidentified benefactor just sent our office an erotic toolkit.

that's an EROTIC toolkit. not an erotic TOOLKIT. abandon all fantasies of penis-shaped wrenches right now.

it wasn't addressed to anyone in particular, and we have no idea who it's from. it contained:

edible vanilla-flavored massage cream

two bottles of "oil of love" massage oil (spice flavored and raspberry flavored)

a feather tickler

lube (oh, excuse me, "Love Liquid")

massage oil, unscented.

so that appears to be our office's lone christmas gift. it's not chocolates, but, you know. it'll do. interesting gift choice with an added enhancement of mystery.

i took the edible massage cream. i have some calluses on my elbows that need some attention.

it's amazing the power a dream can wield over the person who conjures it in the night. the right dream can wake you with a smile or a laugh, while the wrong one can leave you nervous and jumpy all day.

i dreamt last night that i accidentally detonated a nuclear bomb in my friend's parents' basement. i have no idea how i obtained said warhead; all i know is that i set it off. i believe it involved putting it in the washing machine. anyway. this is after surviving a horrible fight with another girl, one which involved chains to jaws and broken windows (and me mysteriously developing serious kung fu powers). the explosion was a small one, fortunately for us in the dream, who were all bound by that mysterious sleep ailment of not being able to run in the dreamstate. as such, we couldn't get far. though the actual structural damage was minimal, i woke up wondering just how much radiation we had just released, and what it was going to do to us all.

of course, it's an improvement on my typical anxiety dreams, which are a recurring miasma of losing my teeth and crashing airplanes. this one at least had some serious cinematic value.

i was told the other night that i seemed like the kind of girl that should have tattoos, that it was surprising that i hadn't yet gotten one. i'm not going to refute this; i also think im' the kind of girl who should have a tattoo, and i plan to get one as soon as it's feasible. but, as for why the moment of feasibility has not yet arrived? well, i have my reasons, the first of which is the most obvious: tattoos, at least GOOD tattoos are expensive. and every time i save up the cash to get a respectable job done, some sort of catastrophe befalls, such as a three hundred dollar gas bill, and i have to squander my savings on practicalities, instead of indulging my frivolities. alas.

second: tattoos, from what i understand, are rather SEETHINGLY PAINFUL. especially if you're getting it done on the small of your back, just over the spine, as i plan to. so it's taken a little bit of psyching up, as well as the development of some pain circumvention plans (which right now involve some combination of chocolate and gin, but i'm still exploring my options).

third: tattoos are, as far as i'm concerned, forever. while they can technically be removed, it doesn't sound like a fun process and as such i'd like to avoid it. no, i prefer to do it right the first time. which means i've been terribly picky about the design i've chosen to transcribe to my skin. what i have settled on is a roos original, that he designed specifically for me. a printout of it has been hanging on my bedroom wall, placed strategically placed so that i had no choice but to stare it down every morning. so i could determine if i was going to one day regret being emblazoned by it.

i have it on good authority that hearing british idiom falling comfortably from american lips is a disconcerting experience.

can i get corroborations or refutations on that?

it's hardly uncommon knowledge that gotham city is just a nickname for new york, though you don't always catch the resemblance between gotham's eternal darkness and the mercurial sway between seething brightness and slinking shadow that is the living new york. but sometimes, sometimes you really see it. and looking out my window right now, they may as well be twins. the clouds are heavy and purple, like a forming bruise, but not so heavy that they lose their distinct contours. the wind is high and causing them to slink across the sky, occasionally scraping their underbellies on the buildings. the sun will be set any second, but now it still illuminates the windows with an ethereal glitter, only a short hop from the brilliant shades of crimson and salmon they wore only moments ago.

...in the time i've spent writing this, the sky has turned to slate and the lights are slowly popping up piecemeal. it's summer evening light filtered through a charcoal lens, through an icy breath, through a canopy. it's shadows and angles and voluptuous shades...

the buildings are not so much standing as lurking. just as gotham should.

there is something strange in the office today. i'm not sure exactly what to call it, but i believe that it's closest in scope and size to...holiday cheer. early afternoon hennessey and cokes have left us a little giggly, and soon we will be huddling in the warm glow of the aussie's laptop to watch the british phenomenon known as 'the office.' it's really almost...it's the way school would feel about three days before class let out.

of course, despite all this festivity, i am distracted. because i am leaving this godforsaken hole for blightier climes in less than a week, to catch up with this one, and this one, and this one, and maybe even this one and i'm literally keeling over with excitement.

keeling

over.

there are times (not many, i'll grant you) when i adore barnes and noble. largely because the great corporate evil, while devouring such venues as my beloved 7th ave books for breakfast, makes a great celebrity petting zoo. it is where i once met neil gaiman, and where, last night, the biscuit and i managed to come face to face with everyones favorite john and john, the boys of they might be giants. they were there to promote their new children's book and cd, "bed bed bed," which naturally entailed a short performance on the 4th floor at union square, complete with wicked trumpet man (whose entire head turned scarlet when he hit the high notes), a trombonist and a tuba player, and a drummer whose kit included a slide whistle and a giant bongo drum.

suffice it to say, it was awesome. we sat about five rows back on house left, and so were about twenty feet away from the johns as they shook and shimmied their way through 'dr. worm,' 'metal detector,' 'birdhouse in your soul,' 'particle man' (which is apparently the TMBG national anthem) and a whole bunch more. i'm fairly certain that my head did not stop bobbing the entire time, as i danced in my seat.

the spectacle attracted a very diverse crowd, from the mistunderstood 15-year-olds discussing james dean behind us to the bistros and babycarriages crowd populating tmbg's own park slope (that's right. one of 'em lives in our neighborhood!). there was also a healthy smattering of NYU students and uber-geeks...in short, a healthy cross-section of my people.

afterwards, we all queued up for the meet and greet; biscuit and i realized early on that we had failed to bring anything useful for the johns to sign--somehow, the prospect of them signing stuff had eluded us, and we had failed to bring any tmbg paraphernalia. so, being the resourceful little critters that we are, we just had them sign what we were carrying around in our bags: edith hamilton's mythology (biscuit) and harry potter 5, british edition (me).

never let it be said that we're not delightfully obtuse at every possible opportunity.

one of the adornments on my cigarette case, the prized chinese air mail stamp, fell off last night.

i am terribly, terribly saddened.