Sara's X10 Blog

Oh, travel. I'm thinking of those Playstation 2 commercials from ages ago, the ones imagining Playstation 9. That was clever. Along those lines, I'm ready for the X10 Teleportation System. See your friends and family face-to-face via molecular diffusion and reconsolidation. Of course, I would probably use this less to hang out with my friends and more to roll out of bed and be at work five minutes after that. Dreamy. My favorite technology is always that which allows me to be that much lazier. (For what it's worth, our Video Calling System is pretty groovy for now. Maybe they'll let me work via Video Calling! Of course I couldn't work in my pajamas and thigh-high American Apparel athletic socks, but it's still a nice idea.)

So I went to Chicago to see a show and had a pretty spectacular time. I saw two bands I like a crazy lot at a really tiny venue with a great crowd, and a bunch of guys from this other band I really like were also there, which made for a pretty surreal time all around. I spent a lot of time running around downtown with my friends, and bought a bunch of things (yay! things!) and all I really want to do now is go to more shows and buy more things and hang out with my friends. I'm ridiculously in love with Cobra Starship right now, and I need them to get more famous so I can go see them headline some shows. Therefore you should listen to them and like them and get their record when it comes out.

We Are Scientists on October 7th, then nothing for almost a month! Sadface goes here. Maybe I'll get a ticket for Cute Is What We Aim For, but that's not 'til November. Oh, life. Secretly I'm just waiting for Owen to get famous so I can be his merch girl and go on tour. Get on it, graphics boy.

Other things I'm ready for: cheaper travel, all of my friends to live closer to me, Panic!'s fall tour to start already (November 9th, why aren't you HERE YET?). Dinner. Okay, yeah, right now mostly dinner.

Posted by Sara at 10:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

Today, in Sara's Awesome Eating Habits: teriyaki beef jerky, an Asian pear and a cup of coffee for breakfast. Thank you, thank you, I'll be here all week, though probably not much longer than that, because I will be dead.

My nice older housemates - by that, of course, I mean my parents - are out of town for the week in Mexico celebrating their anniversary, so I invited a friend of mine over in hopes that she would cook for me and I would not die of malnutrition. I am unspectacular as it is as to attending to my own health, and predicted straight nights of getting home and getting online and then looking up four hours later and thinking maybe I should eat something. So Kimberly's over for the week, making sure I don't decide that just staying really still so I forget I'm hungry is a superior alternative to getting up and going to the fridge and probably eating an avocado with hot sauce and maybe caramel syrup right out of the jar for dessert.

Kimberly's been cooking me food - actual food! - so I can eat when I get home and then we chat and/or watch Veronica Mars and a lot of MTV Hits and get into socio-political analyses of Beyonce videos. Then I get wily and sneak off to talk to my [insert word here which encompasses the relationships I have with various friends around the country, originally and still to some extent based on going, "Wait, but no, why is Panic! At The Disco so good? No, seriously, I don't understand? Why are they so pretty? If I bit them, would they taste like candy, or would they shy away from me like unicorns?" on a regular basis, but which are yet so much more important than that], right, anyway, to talk to some people online and then she sidles in and reads my books and we take occasional breaks to poke inquisitively at my cat Lucy (still fuzzy? check!) and then we go to bed and it's neat, basically.

Tonight's activities include watching the season premiere of The Office (!!!!!) with Kimberly, probably shrieking and clutching each other all the while, probably finishing up the chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream between the two of us, and packing. Packing! I suck at that. Hopefully I'll have the two new hoodies I ordered from Urban Outfitters - these in addition to the green one from American Apparel that Rae will be bringing me in Chicago.

Tuesday was all about intense amounts of work and also shopping remotely. The hazards of texting me to say you're in American Apparel in Atlanta: I'll be like, "Ooh get me the bright green hoodie, they don't have it online and I don't know when I'll be able to make it to AA in Seattle," and then, "Yeah, the green one like Brendon's wearing in the pre-VMAs pictures," and then, "No, the bright green one?" and then I'll get a text back that's just a picture of a hoodie and I'll go, "Yes, that one, size large, thank you, I'll pay you back" and then probably there'll be a less-than-three heart (<3) and possibly some sort of internet-slang acronym and a few decorative exclamation points.

And then after writing and rewriting some copy (working with Ben, who is not so mythical as I previously espoused) I hunted around the Urban Outfitters website and, upon failing to find the two products I wanted, used my break time to call the UO stores in Seattle and after one unsuccessful attempt, reached the 5th Avenue store, found out they had the two hoodies I wanted, did a happy dance in the back hallway and then arranged to have them sent to me. Actually going to stores is so 2005. I prefer clothing be brought to my doorstep or hotel room.

Tomorrow I fly to Chicago to see Gym Class Heroes and Cobra Starship, but more importantly, to see a bunch of my internet BFFs. Ahh, fandom means never having to be alone in any city. So, yay for hotel rooms with bunches of girls and running around Chicagoland (I've never been!) and really awesome music.

All the boys have been hawking our X10 Fantasy Sports Tracker, so I'll throw that link on the pile. If you're into fantasy sports (and the tracking thereof) go on and check that out.

Right now I'm listening to Send My Love To The Dancefloor, by Cobra Starship, and it is so good I wish I could broadcast it over the PA and let everyone hear it, and then we would all dance and a discoball would extend from the ceiling and I would sing, "Hey Mr. DJ you gotta put a record on, yeah!" and it would be awesome. The movie of my life would be packed full of lies but it would obviously be a musical and therefore better than my actual life. Usually, anyway - I think this weekend will be pretty excellent, and there's always November to look forward to. As I posted to the "Why do you work?" bulletin board, I work because Sallie Mae has a chokehold on my financial security, and also so I can afford to see Panic! At The Disco seven times on their fall tour. And so I can buy hundreds of hoodies and slouch around in them like a disaffected fifteen-year-old. Although I also enjoy the occasional satisfaction from a job well done, when I've gotten it right and been told as much, or when I can bat around suggestions that are actually listened to.

I also enjoy the emotional satisfaction of eating this Asian pear from Kimberly's pear tree. Go get more coffee? Okay!

Posted by Sara at 09:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

On September 11th, 2001, I was eighteen years old. I'd been in New York for maybe two weeks, was barely into my second week of class. That morning there'd been a fire alarm in my dorm room at six thirty a.m., and I stood out there, cold and in my pajamas, surrounded by people I didn't know. I didn't know anybody, actually; when my plane landed in NY I had no friends I knew well there and no family. My particular brand of friendliness doesn't lend itself well to group situations like the ones that formed in the first few frantic weeks on campus, when the entire fourth floor of Brittany Hall began to break into groups, a bunch of kids clinging to each other, getting fake IDs and exchanging the banalities of small talk in a desperate bid to not be alone. I walked the city, visited churches and roamed Fifth Avenue and got hopelessly lost, I went to class and tried to get to know my roommates and was constantly thirsty.

The first time I blogged was September 12th, alone in my dorm room because one roommate had gone back home to Long Island and the other had gone to the Jersey Shore with some new friends (that I didn't share). I wrote for an audience of no one but putting it out there made me feel better, even though I knew it wouldn't be read.

For awhile it seemed like that was all anybody wanted to ask me about, and all my stories are equal parts memory and words, the same practiced phrases I fell back on when people asked. In my head they're all just pictures and feelings: smoke in the sky, a candlelight vigil at dusk around the fountain in Washington Square Park, listening to the radio in my dorm room, sitting on the hardwood floor, leaning against my roommate's bed. Watching Bush make his address from inside the library, cross-legged on the cold tile. Windows closed in my room so smoke wouldn't get in. The missing person fliers that covered every spare surface, listing identifying marks (I remember a girl, Asian, pretty, worked on one of the top floors, had a tattoo of a dragon), fliers gone overnight only to spring up the next day, a riot of them over mailboxes, scaffolding, pinned to chain link fences. Everything below 14th Street was closed, and I lived on 10th. It was like a ghost town, tinted with sepia smoke, the streets deserted, no people, no cars, no noise. It was a ghost town, as much as I've ever seen one.

I think about it now and I feel weighted down. I didn't leave. I didn't lose anyone because I didn't know anyone. It was a beautiful day and I went to class, wondering about the people on the streets crowded around radios (the professor said: "We don't know what's going on," and then lectured for the full hour and fifteen minutes). I sat in the lecture hall and didn't think much of it; when we were released the crowds were larger, gathered around tables of silver jewelry and streetside booksellers, most silent, some crying, all listening to the voices on the radio. I don't remember what I did after.

I don't think about it much anymore. I didn't even realize it was today until Carrie said something. I wasn't going to blog, but I'm still here at the office. I'm not in New York anymore. The luxury is in the forgetting.

I flew to New York last week and I wasn't scared, I go to work every day and I'm not scared, I wake up in the morning and I'm not scared. That's all. That's enough.

Posted by Sara at 06:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Summary of today: By four o'clock I was listening to Wanted Dead Or Alive by Bon Jovi on my iPod. On repeat.

Further details: I bullied Marko and Owen into Wendy's for lunch, which was rather easily accomplished because I was all low blood sugary and when that happens I sometimes get a bit manic and frightening. After a hearty meal of french fries and chili I was ready to pass out, and then alternately psychotic, elated, exhausted, and/or crabby for the next few hours. Owen later compared my typing to Beethoven pounding the piano keys. I can't help that I get so passionate about writing copy! The persecution I have to put up with, man.

Anyway, we have some new kids on the playground so go check out the brand new blogs of the following people:

Scott: Is, at this exact moment, apparently too good to have updated his blog yet. He's our Director of Marketing, and sits over in the corner just out of range of my paper airlines. I'm working on an alternate method of communication involving tin cans and a string; we'll see how that goes.

Carrie: She's a graphic merchandiser like Owen, only instead of being five feet away with computers between us she sits right next to me. This means we can have hushed conversations where we occasionally mutter disparaging comments about Owen just loud enough for him to hear his name, but not what we're saying about him. Carrie is excellent.

Ben: He's the other copywriter in the company, and you know what that means - cage matches! I know very little about Ben; for awhile I was convinced he didn't actually exist. Though I've actually met him now, I still have my doubts. Step up, Brockhaus! I don't think I've seen him since. Possibly they keep him chained up in a corner somewhere.

Or you could just keep reading mine and quietly long for the day when you too can work at X10 and get all my sparkling wit firsthand. Stay strong - I mean that.

Posted by Sara at 04:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Back from New York. I would briefly summarize the events of the past five days, but...I'm not going to.

Coincidentally we're currently working on something that would make expensive cross-country trips less necessary, which will be nice to have since I'll also be spending a lot of money flying places to follow around some dorks in a band. I would talk more about that, but every single person who has an X10 blog has already been doing so (Man, I am not lying to you.) and I loathe redundancy. We have something awesome coming up, so batten down the hatches and put on your dancing shoes and brace yourself etc. As head copywriter on this project I spend all day talking about it and then writing about it and then talking about it some more, and I feel to do more of that here would give you, faithful reader, too much of an advantage over the less fortunate people who don't read this blog, and I'm all about fairness. Except for when I'm about elitism and privilege, which would be usually.

(I just said head copywriter like I'm in charge of some legion of lesser copywriters, and...you know what? I'm just going to let you go on thinking that's how things are around here. Please imagine me sitting in front of my computer with a league of scurrying minions eagerly submitting to my authority, occasionally begging audience, eyes wide and fearful of my disfavor, bringing offerings and cowering when I scold them for not being good enough. Yeah, just like that.)

Obligatory blah blah blah Panic! At The X10 Blog:
1. Video of the Year, that's right!
2. Tickets have been successfully secured for all seven dates I’ll be attending, complete with early admission since we got them all presale. A pretty nice gesture on their part, since last tour was clubs and similarly small venues, while this one is arena. This way the first 150 people to buy tickets get to go in first. Awesome.

Which isn’t to say my life is free of musical conflict – of course the day in December that Death Cab For Cutie hits Seattle with Jenny Lewis and the Watson Twins I’ll be in Las Vegas seeing Panic! for the sixth time. This isn’t so bad, because although I was a huge Death Cab fan for years, their last album didn’t do it for me in a really intense way, and I was pretty okay with missing the last tour and I think I’ll be fine missing this one in favor of seeing my favorite baby discopunk kittens in their shiny, shiny hometown. Bummer to miss Jenny Lewis, though. Oh, I’m not even going to think about the possibility of her coming on with Ben to do backing vocals or something, that’s just too painful.

Posted by Sara at 11:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)