8.16.04-- "If my friends could see my now"

Ok, so the main reason I am updating my site is because my old neighbor Natasha wrote me and was like, "Where'd you go? I am waiting for an update." Ah.... I love having loyal readers. This is also a testament to how bored and nosy people are.

You guys are awesome. After my last web update about how my bike got vandalized, I got all these emails from all over the country from people saying, "Oh man, so sorry to hear that." My friend Helena sent me a new set of bike lights from REI! She's the best! I love this website, it's the generous responses from all of you in my time of need that make me feel better about publicly having my occasional "cry for help" moments.

Natasha suspects that my bike was vandalized by the 12 year old boy and his friends who live in the apartment downstairs. Grrrrr.... what the hell? Shouldn't they be trying to get laid or something productive like that? As an activist, I am not supposed to believe that kids are evil when they commit acts of vandalism, instead it is the "system" that enslaves them that is actually guilty of vandalizing my bike. But, ugh, I guess it wouldn't hurt to go downstairs and say a few words to those boys to scare the living shit out of them.

And I wonder if it is just a coincidence that my rear bike wheel went flat yesterday too.

Work is kicking my ass. I know this is a theme that I have reiterated in previous updates, but man, it's hard to be an artist when your focus is split. I have to say I am very lucky to have the job I have. I have health insurance. I get to go see doctors and stuff now. So I try to see a doctor whenever I can. Might as well.

So my doctor was talking to me and she was like, "Do you always talk this fast and change the subject all the time to answer a simple question?" I was thinking about it and I was like, "I guess I do." So she made me take an ADD test. That's right, Attention Deficit Disorder. Oh man, y'all. I think I do have ADD. Because the first thing I did was skip around the test and I ended up skipping to the question that says, "Do you skip around on forms?"

The whole ride home from the doctor I was feeling like I had some kind of disease. And I was trying really hard all day at work to stay focused on one thing at a time. And I couldn't. And then I was like, "Next thing you know, I am going to be a psycho killer."

I found some ADD tests on the web that are similar to the one I took. Go ahead and take this one which is a shorter, less specific version of what I took and let me know that I am not the only one with ADD. My friend took it and said he had ADD too, so I am not alone. I hope they don't prescribe me drugs or make me commit to doing rote "focus generating" exercises every day, like sculpting clay animals for an hour a day. Some of those questions on that test are really goofy. Like, "Do you make interruptions during sexual activity?" and "Have you wet your bed in the past 5 years?" The questions I was the most guilty of were the ones that had to do with organization and jittery legs.

These ADD tests are so moded (yeah, I just said "moded")-- I mean, if you look at those questions, it would be obvious that all of Los Angeles had ADD. Some of the questions were so morally judgemental-- like "Do you have a problem with authority?" I think it's ok to have a problem with authority, because sometimes authority bites.

My roommate in college had some kind of learning disability. She actually took the ADD test, but didn't pass it. (How can you not pass it or at least adjust your answers to pass it? I didn't understand.) But she managed to pass a test that showed she had a learning disability and UCLA let her have an extra half hour on tests and stuff. Man! If I only had known that I had ADD then, I might have been able to score some extra test time and graduate Magna Cum Laude. Having ADD in my adult years doesn't do crap for me.

Anyway, so two weeks ago I went on a cruise. With my mom, grandma and all these other family members. It was a four day cruise that went to Catalina Island, San Diego, and Ensenada Mexico. The best part was Catalina because I got to go snorkeling and rode a bike all over the island. I had never snorkeled before! It was like National Geographic under the water! Fish come up to you.

But what was sad was Ensenada, Mexico. People there are so poor and in the countryside there is trash everywhere, and two year olds offering your chiclets for pennies. Rich people from the cruise ships are so rude to the locals. The ship produces so much human waste that is dumped into the ocean. And the service staff (mostly people of color) get paid all by gratuity, so there is this almost desperate niceness they have towards you. People on cruise ships eat buffet sized meal at breakfast, lunch, dinner and midnight. It's too much. Excessively too much food. I was so weirded out by cruise culture that I remember thinking the first day I was there, "What kind of sadness caused all this?"

But it wasn't a horrible trip or anything. I had a great time. The cruise was just a weird thing for me.

It was so nice to hang with my mom. I felt like we became sisters. There was a "Singles Mingle event night" and my mom was so funny, she was like, "Let's find you a husband." And her, my grandma, and my aunt came with me to the bar to check it out. But when we got to the bar, it was these two guys playing piano. And all these gross frat type folk sitting around. So I just went to bed.

Do you remember those old commercials with Kathie Lee Gifford for Carnival Cruiseships? She's dancing around the ship and talking about how her friends would be so jealous of her if they could see her living it up on the ship? I was wandering around all these sad, lonely, overconsumptive cruise ship folk and couldn't help but remember those commercials and think how Kathie Lee was the perfect rep for Cruiseship culture-- obnoxious, tragically hetero, and with a sad on the inside but big beaming, trying smile.

(Of course, Kristina can't go on something as simple as a vacation without deconstructing the politics of what is going on around her.)

More later,

Kristina

ps Enjoy this Kathie Lee Gifford like pic of me on the cruise ship on "Formal Night". Oh yeah, can you feel it? Are you jealous yet?