Sometimes I feel like there is a sign on my head which everyone but me can read. It says, “don’t keep your end of the bargain and complain about her afterwards if she doesn’t like it.”
–Amelia G
journal Archive
Why is it so difficult to have good collaborations with people? I am so sick of people who have me do my part and then decide maybe there should be a loophole in the agreement when it comes time to do theirs.
–Amelia G
Did good darkroom work today for the first time in a long time. Had to drive to slightly beyond the edge of the earth to get there, but it was worth it. The crazy-making chemistry is better ventilated at this one than it has been at some. Had a really cool camera rig rented which I had to give back at three something this afternoon, so we managed to cram in one more shoot today. I use my equipment so hard that a lot of it is broken. I need some new stuff. Sleepy time now.
–Amelia G
I got some sleep earlier today, but here I am haunting the house in the wee hours again.
A long time ago my brother was up past his bedtime, kneeling on the couch playing a video game and, when his guy died, he reared up and slapped himself on the forehead . . . and fell forward smashing his head on the marble coffee table. He then sat back down, saying don’t tell mom, and started a new game . . . with blood streaming down his face. When the blood reached his eyes and he realized, we both agreed that maybe we should go ahead and tell mom. He had to get stitches and has a scar to this day.
–Amelia G
Yay! I got our hacker problem fixed. I got our hacker problem fixed! Finally, finally, finally! I’d dance a jig if I were not so exhausted. I was asleep by 2am tonight, but was awakened by a neighbor’s amazingly loud sex. I was peeved at the time, but now I want to go over and wake her ass up and thank her profusely. I am sooooooo happy. Okay, I still need to reissue a whole lot of username/password combos, but they will be secure once I do.
Yum, I am eating organic blueberry baby yogurt. Baby stuff has less sugar and carbs than regular and tastes better too. Blueberry is a tasty new flavor of it.
I had a good shoot tonight with two very cool friends who I’m going to put in Swag I’m so pleased to have another venue to support my friends in. This past year definitely had the Nietzsche life improvement plan going. But it actually has made me focus more on stuff that makes me happy, spend more time on stuff that I enjoy, and it helped me shed a lot of dead weight which was dragging me down. It always hurts to find out that someone you thought you could believe in would sell you out for a donut, but it is always better to know who your friends really are.
I’m trying to think of who the best entertainment would be for the Swag release party, but it is hard to come up with what would be perfect. Of course there are a bunch of bands I like, but it is difficult to pick just one that would be a perfect fit thematically for the new magazine. My first choice was inconsiderate enough to break up.
–Amelia G
Since my LJ got suspended, I’ve been feeling a little disconnected in the online world, so I’ve been yakking a bunch on various boards, in particular this one really addictive adult webmaster board. I think it is poetically beautiful that someone who feels competitive with me from a business perspective forced me to do more online business interaction in place of my social online interaction. It has actually been pretty fun to talk to other people who know about some of that stuff. It is only part of what I do, even though the competive jerks put everything they have into their sites. Because the webmaster types I know in real life are all inclined to do things like brag aggressively about how they are so huge they get a thousand visitors . . . a month, it has been really nice to talk to people who understand the weirdness of trying to think of ways to promote your site at 3am when you have insomnia, but who do not really get my fetishes for the most part. A guy on one board said, trying to be helpful, that he thought Gothic Sluts was just too “abstract a concept.” hee hee
–Amelia G
Went to a fashion show hosted by Clint Catalyst last night. Met some cool new designers. Also ran into Mark Splatter, Veronica, and Divaluxe. Was going to meet them at Good Luck Bar afterwards, but I lallygagged. For some reason, I had thought that place was in West Hollywood, but it appears to actually be in Silverlake and not that far east of me.
Need to do some last minute assigning of writers for Swag today. I’m not really awake enough to do it yet though. I wish I had slept a little later. My alarm was not set to go off until I needed to meet with my trainer, but I woke up abruptly hours early. I think I was doing the teeth-grinding thing. Even good things can cause stress and I know I need to get a night guard again. It is just that the dentist I’ve been going to was recommended by the guy who took out my wisdom teeth and my wisdome teeth sockets just will not heal. Partly I am not sure I want to go to a dentist recommended by him. Maybe he did the best job possible and there was no way to know that the anaesthesia would almost kill me and maybe my mouth was just not going to heal properly with any speed. But it is hard to be confident. Plus, I am loathe to have the stuff to mold the night guard in my mouth when the sockets already hurt so much with nothing in my mouth. Besides, I know lots of people with acute TMJ who sleep without a night guard. My dad claims that his TMJ is mysterious because he does not think he grinds his teeth. Technically, I suppose I mostly clench, rather than grinding exactly, but do that for years and I’m not sure there is that big a difference. The oral experts get rich either way.
Note: In this context when I say “oral expert” I do not mean model/actress/kinda pricey hooker; I mean dentist/orthodontist/oral surgeon/pain clinic neurologist.
–Amelia G
I am so not watching the Superbowl. I just finished a pretty darn explicit update to GothicSluts.com featuring the work of an accomplished British photographer. I thought it was appropriate for football day.
The Genitorturers show on Friday was fun. Even in Los Angeles, where nobody shows reaction to a band usually, The Genitorturers still got the crowd going. They even had sexy performers on chains and hooks pulled up high enough that they brought the show to the balcony too. Dead Girls Corp did a good job warming up as well. I thought they got great crowd response for playing to an audience that had not come to see them. The afterparty we went to was pretty chill, but it was fun and somehow I still ended up getting home at like 7am.
The next day, my T-shirt guy came to deliver more of the Blue Blood T-shirts with the artwork by Trevor Brown. Trevor rules! So the T-shirt dude wakes me up in the afternoon calling and I’m drinking coffee and talking to Gen on her cell phone when he actually arrives with the shirts a little earlier than I had estimated. I live in a security building, so, if I am on the phone, anybody at the door can not ring. I finally hear him knocking and run to put pants on. I still have my outfit from the night before on the living room floor and no furniture out because I’m set up to shoot. He did a great job on the T-shirts, but he bizarrely keeps making oblique references to drunken something or other. I was rocking the Perrier the night before. Perrier is probably my favorite beverage. I often buy it by the case. Anyway, the reason I look a little ragged is just that I just woke up and haven’t had any coffee yet and it is definitely a coffee day. Then he sees a plastic sandwich bag on the living room floor and nearly jumps out of his skin. It is a totally powder-free plastic baggie which formerly held toiletries in my suitcase to Vegas, but, hey, if he thinks I’m livin’ large . . .
Travel tip: Get a box of semi-large ziplock bags whenever you have a trip to take. Put anything which could spill in a ziplock baggie. You can put small similar items in the same bag. For example, you might hate it if your powder (the other kind) exploded all over your jeans, but you probably would not care if it got on your eyeshadow case, so you can put those in the same baggie. I sometimes double-bag items which could really rain on a trip including perfume and shampoo.
–Amelia G
Came back from Melrose and Retail Slut and intended to jump right on the computer and work on stuff for Swag Went to karaoke at a local establishment first instead. Very disturbing. However, damn, Michelle Rodriguez is even hotter in person than she is on screen. And she is pretty hot on screen. A certain lead singer and I were all checking out her ass filling out the butt cleavage jeans. In real life, that girl has awesome style and presence too. When she first came up and said cheers, she thought I said my name was Millionaire, but we both agreed that Amelia is much better. She said anyone named Millionare would be too materialistic, at least for her. I think anyone rocking that name would probably be both materialistic and failing at it. Or else they’d have to have really odd parents.
–Amelia G
Hmm, something about the blogger interface feels more like publishing. That is kind of cool. I just need to figure out how to get third party comments which don’t make the page hang.
I am really stoked about this new project. I’m going to write more later about my hopes for it, but for now you can visit Swag and check out the cool site Forrest built for our fab new mag! I am so pleased to be moving back into print publishing.
–Amelia G
So, I must have been feeling the rumblings of some sort of psychic premonition of doom. The day after I duplicated my LJ to Blogger, LJ suspended my journal for a month because someone with a site which thinks it is competitive with one of mine basically complained that I exist. Apparently LJ has a rule that you can not link to a site which pulls in revenue or could potentially pull in revenue of any kind. This means that if you have a personal site with a cam on it and you accept paypal tips, then linking to it is an LJ no-no. This means that if you work for a big company, you can not link your job. Does not matter that it is part of what you do on a daily basis, it is against the rules. I feel that everyone is entitled to make their own rules, but the thing which is really rotten about LJ’s rules is that they are only enforced when someone complains. This basically means that a person such as me could behave in a manner totally consistent with how everyone else in the community is behaving, but just one envious person can get your diary shut down by complaining. Because everyone is in violation, you are always at risk. I sure would be a lot more upset about this if not for the fact that (1) I had just backed almost everything up and (2) the reason they wanted to nuke my journal was to prevent me from announcing the really exciting new project I’ve got going on.
And you know that when the haters are making an extra effort, then you must be doing well. 🙂
People often seem to be surprised that I am not a tougher negotiater on the front end when making a deal. People also often seem surprised that I
am so hardline on the back end once a deal has been made. Some of my views were undoubtedly formed growing up with an attorney for a father.
Here is what I’ve learned about contracts, probably both from my daddy and from pop songs :
1. The purpose of a contract is so that everybody knows what they agreed to.
2. Everything is negotiable until you have signed on the dotted line.
3. You always have to be willing to get up from the table and walk away.
4. Once you’ve signed on the dotted line, you keep your word and you stick to the deal.
5. If you do not like how the deal works out, #2 and #3 are always your own responsibility, not the other guy’s, and next time you should make a
different deal or walk away.
–Amelia
Vegas is always a party and going for a bondage convention just made it that much more of a fun party weekend. Forrest Black and I had a booth to exhibit our photography and our happy niche media empire of http://www.blueblood.net/ and http://www.barelyevil.com/ and http://www.gothicsluts.com/ I think the weekend was productive, but I know it was fun. I just posted a gallery of pictures from our exhibit booth at BondCon to Blue Blood at http://www.blueblood.net/gallery/bondconsnaps/
–Amelia G