pockets

why don't they put pockets in women's clothes? personally, i think it's to keep us chained to carrying purses. san francisco has been unusually warm lately (global warming no doubt) and i've pretty much been living out of a backpack (couch surfing and storage spaces are a san francisco tradition, seems like--this is my second time around) and i didn't have any summer clothes with me.
seriously, if you don't know san francisco weather, you pretty much can need a winter coat at any moment. and if you don't need one where you are, well, just cross the street and you might. you think i'm joking...i'm not.
anyway, back to pockets.
so, it was warm. i went to the thrift store and bought a couple of skirts, then it got cold. duh. but then it got warm again and i put on one of my new skirts, grabbed my key, phone, cash...you know, the stuff you really need...and discovered i had no pockets.
i didn't think about pockets when i bought the skirts. none of them have pockets. no pockets! where the hell are you going to put your stuff if you don't have pockets? oh yeah, you have to carry a bag.
i hate carrying bags. for one thing, you're chained to it. you can't get up and dance without it swinging awkwardly on your shoulder, or leaving it at the table and worrying about it getting stolen. even if you're not a worrier, you RISK getting it stolen. blech.
for another thing, no matter what size bag you carry, you will fill it to capacity and beyond. i'm going to call this sara's axiom. then you see all these women walking around with mega-bags, overflowing with stuff, and one hunched up shoulder that's probably aching. again, blech.
then too, of course, the bag manufacturers want you to buy a bag to go with each outfit, each pair of shoes...it's all a plot to make you spend more money. (in the u.s.? would they do that?)
men's clothes have pockets. always. yet you see men carrying bags too. why? why, if you don't have to? i don't get it...
i mean, okay, if you're carrying your computer to work at a sunny cafe instead of holed up inside your house, fine. but for every time you want to leave the house and take your damn key and phone? really? fuck that. give me pockets.

russian lit--anna karenina

suddenly having a whole slew of russians in my life i've been a little obsessed with things russian lately. russian films, russian music, russian language...
so lately, i've been reading and rereading a lot of russian literature. to wit:

i reread Anna Karenina--last time was when i was about 13 i guess,  a previous russian lit phase. i was living in tehran, iran at the time and devoured Anna Karenina (tragic love stories and 13 year old girls are a natural mix), Brothers Karamazov (i must revisit that one, i don't think i understood most of it), Dr. Zhivago (who wouldn't want to read it after seeing the movie, recent at the time, and falling in 13 year old love with omar sharif, who incidentally, i met a couple of years ago--but that's another story) and of course War and Peace (nothing like a good epic novel to hold me entranced).

does We the Living by ayn rand count? i think so. it was a fictionalized account of rand's life in russia just after the 1917 revolution.

Anna Karenina is a rich novel of love and betrayal with so many layers i didn't get the first time around. as a mother now myself, anna's heartrending choices regarding her own happiness and continued contact with her son evoked thoughts and emotions that were non-existent for me at 13. her relationships with her husband and lover were complex and torn, her melancholy so deep.

when i fell under a train once (packing my baby sister off to school in toronto--again, another story) i imagined for an instant that i was anna. but the train i fell under was just starting to move and i scrambled out, unhurt. i wasn't anna.

if you've read it before, if you've never read it, if you've been a lover or a mother, been a mistress or had one, if you just like beautiful lyrical tales of life, i highly recommend Anna Karenina.

the weird and wonderful world of writing for the world wide web...

when kaleidoscope closed i lost my home and my job in one heavy blow. damn! 

the past year has been difficult, but it's getting better as i've entered the weird and wonderful world of writing for the world wide web. writing content that is...you know, all that stuff that you read on every site when you go surfing the net.

it started slowly...my first project was an ebook for a site called hyperink. after being accepted as a writer, you go on a spreadsheet page and select three topics you feel confident to write about. one of my choices was iran, i remember, one is lost in oblivion in the nether reaches of my brain, and the one they assigned me was called "The Top Ten Rolling Stones Songs: Lyrics and Analysis." well, if you know me at all, you know i'm a huge stones fan, so this one seemed a no-brainer. but what are the top ten stones songs? by what criteria? i spent hella time researching the best-selling songs, reader's polls, etc. to come up with a list that could arguably be called the stones top ten. i wrote my ebook, got a few formatting revisions, and just like that, i was the author of an ebook. just today i got 64 cents in royalties deposited to my paypal account. watch out world! i'm gonna be rich! 

it took me about 3 whole days to write my ebook for a whopping $90. i think i averaged about $3-4 an hour. when i tried to write another book for hyperink, they told me they were no longer publishing books written to order for them, but instead publishing people's blogs.....hhmmmm....hint, hint???

then i got a gig writing book reviews. now, i've written lots of book reviews for some pretty amazing books, but this was different. the books i was reviewing were ebook summaries of best-selling self-help, diet, and inspirational books. yikes. kinda like reviewing cliff notes. whatever, it paid decently--$25 for a short, 150 word review for amazon and two shorter (just a couple of lines) but different reviews for itunes and barnes and noble. 

i was pretty horrified when i was told to review a certain book and it turned out to be by a televangelist. ouch! i didn't know what to do so i did the only thing i could, i shut my eyes and spewed garbage. the deal was, it had to be a five star review. i could have written a scathing one pretty easily, but praise? nevertheless, they loved the review and sent me a new title with the caveat that if it offended me i didn't have to do it. ha! nothing could have offended me more than the televangelist. i had to laugh though, turns out the new book was a how-to bdsm guide. that one was actually pretty fun. then the titles dried up and i was back to square one.

soon i came on an online agency called odesk that lists hundreds of online jobs. i registered, filled in my profile, took some of their tests so people could see how great i was, uploaded a few things into a portfolio (my rolling stones ebook!), set my hourly rate ($10) and applied for some jobs. nada. i was pretty gratified, though, when a couple of people approached me for work. the first one was writing short articles for $7.50 each. not much money, but i was desperate. the trial test article they had me write was "do's and don'ts for your trip to new york". ok. write it (in their template) off the top of my head, stick in a couple of links culled from 5 minutes of research, and i was finished. 

they loved it. hired me right away. gave me great feedback. then promptly sent me six articles to write on emails. is there really that much to say about emails? like, one of the topics was cc in emails. then the next one was cc and bcc in emails. seriously? but i persevered and was relieved when they were finished with only a few formatting revisions. ready for the next batch, i envisioned writing about new york again, or really, anything but emails. guess what? the next six were on (drum roll) EMAILS!!!

aaaahhhhh......only this time i had to write on stuff like POP and SMTP and PHP in emails. how the fuck do i know? and with only a couple of key words and a template to guide me, i jumped in. i researched, i read, i concentrated and tried hard to understand, and i wrote what i thought were comprehendible short articles on the basics of POP, SMTP, and PHP in emails. turns out, that wasn't what they wanted at all. i ignored the articles for a while. they sat in my revisions folder while i worked on other articles. they instituted a new system where you could choose from a list and i chose a bunch of political stuff (go figure). then the editor they assigned to me started getting bitchy. i quit. i never got paid for those email articles because i never did the revisions but at that point i would only have been making about $1.50-2.00 an hour. they had reached a point of such diminishing returns that i don't give a fuck i didn't get paid.

now, however, i have traded in the $7.50 articles for $25 articles. they're shorter, they have clear instructions, they have topics that are in my field, and i even get a byline! so we'll see. i submitted my first one a week ago and have yet to hear from an editor. i went ahead and wrote and submitted the two more i could choose before an editor worked with me and now i wait. can't choose more. can't contact an editor. i wait. as i said, we'll see.

but there have been some other jobs along the way. i write about insurance for a really nice guy in australia. i write lead paragraphs for a study abroad site, i've been working with a really cool guy from suriname who's taking stanley jordan there for a concert this july in hopes of starting a new jazz festival in suriname. one of the pieces i did for him is apparently going to be in the surinamese airlines' planes. 

see? weird and wonderful...