Wednesday, November 30, 2005

Memo to boys who like girl-on-girl action

I just saw a preview for Brokeback Mountain. Now I get it. I really, really, really get it.
Tuesday, November 29, 2005

Form over malfunction

This morning I pulled out a nifty orange button-down shirt I hadn't worn in a while. (It's the same shade of orange as parts of this site, actually.) "Why haven't I worn this in a while?" I wondered. "Hmm, I'm going to guess there's no reason at all. Huzzah, another smashing outfit achieved!"

There was a reason, of course. Some of the buttons, and by "some" I mean the top four, have a seemingly magnetic aversion to their buttonholes. I just looked down and realized I've been sporting an ill-bred aesthetic for Allah knows how many hours. Luckily, my immediate office space is occupied by two unobservant middle-aged women and one elfin, asexual male, so I doubt much offense was taken.

I think my IT guy may have gotten a good ol' gander, however, and I'm going to go ahead and fall back on tired techie stereotypes and say that it probably made his day.
Monday, November 28, 2005

"Girl with good personality" is in a crabby-ass mood

Today I want to be a pretty, boring, Germanic, milk-fed blonde with natural highlights, a J. Crew-driven wardrobe and a 30-year career trajectory. The human equivalent of a golden retriever, in other words. Some days, today for example, it’s just no fun being a scruffy mutt of dubious origin with behavioral problems and an unremitting desire to spend my days sacked out on the couch.

Ah well. I’m about to haul my big honking personality-driven self home in time to catch the MNF game of the season. Less whiny blogging to commence tomorrow.
Tuesday, November 22, 2005

Brief interruption of radio silence

If I had more time, I'd ruminate on past Thanksgivings, such as the time our cat crawled into the cavity of our uncooked turkey or the year my grandmother broke an awkward table silence by announcing that when her brother was dying of tuberculosis, Jesus had come to him in a vision. (She also had some alien encounters to report on that year.)

But my life is full of uncertainty and transition and chaos and fishy independent contracting deals and fishier emails from a new "friend" made while watching football in a bar over the weekend, so I'm too flummoxed to do much writing. Instead I leave you with the most brilliant sentence ever uttered by a man convicted of storing a dead parent's frozen remains in his basement (from the AP):

"A recluse who kept his dead mother in his freezer and shot at his neighbors when they came to his door was sentenced to seven years in prison Monday. Philip Schuth, 53, was sentenced for attempted homicide, reckless endangerment and concealment of a corpse.....

Schuth has said he fantasized about being married to 'Alias' star Jennifer Garner. At his sentencing, he said: 'I apologize to Jennifer Garner and her pool boy Ben Affleck for involving them in my fantasies.'"

If I had been the judge in this case, I would have rejected the man's insanity defense on the basis of his choice causticity. And then granted him clemency for same.
Friday, November 18, 2005

Friday's snausages

-The first eggnog latte of the holiday season was consumed at noon. By 1:30 I was snoozing under my desk. I'd forgotten what a deleterious effect eggnog has on my energy levels.

-As befits a Friday afternoon, I’ve been inventing new ways to fuck around. Today it’s finding my perfect lab-hound hybrid on Petfinder.com. Calvin’s pretty good, although I'd rename him Moakley.

-The other night I went to use the ATM and couldn’t find my card. Searched my wallet, searched my pockets, searched the ground. Eventually I found it: Already in the machine, it was. Shortest-term memory loss imaginable.

-This morning I missed my exit because I was too busy tailing a large truck bearing the word “Bimbo” next to a big cartoon bear. Turns out I’d spotted a delivery truck from “Grupo Bimbo,” the biggest bakery in Mexico. Total letdown. I thought I’d discovered a traveling caravan of furries.
Tuesday, November 15, 2005

Idiot savant, idiocy-wise

Your friend has lost her wallet and feels embarrassed and upset. To cheer her up, you decide to share a few stories from your own crazy, mixed-up files of brain lapses.

You start with the tale of losing the keys to a rental car in the middle of nowhere in upstate New York over the Fourth of July weekend, requiring an emergency visit from the region’s only key maker, who also opened the trunk for you only to reveal you’d actually locked the keys inside there and could have easily retrieved them if only you’d unlocked the trunk from the inside of the unlocked car.

You friend appears unmoved, so you kick it up a notch and remind her of the time you had your car towed around midnight on a Friday night; waited for an hour at the tow lot for the owner to show up and return your car to you for $200; embarked upon the two-mile ride home only to run out of gas halfway there; pushed the car to the side of the road and walked two miles to the local gas station; then returned to the car just in time to see it being towed again.

By the time you’ve recounted the anecdote of flying to London only to realize upon landing that you’d forgotten to write down the address of the private residence you were staying at and had no way of reaching the people you were staying with, and so took the train to their general neighborhood and sat in the window of a café for 14 hours hoping against hope they would happen to walk by and see you, as all the while your traveling companion sat across from you practicing and then perfecting his look of death, your friend is looking at you askance, no doubt wondering if you're really the best person to be driving her to the aiport, and you’re reminded again that oversharing is not always the best comfort strategy.
Monday, November 14, 2005

Is it right or fair to make fun of non-English-speaking lip-synchers?

Sure is!!!!

Awesomely Misplaced Passion, Take One

Afterwards, join me in the Comments section and share your thoughts. I'll kick it off: Why on earth is the little brother on the computer in the background so unmoved by the performance?
Sunday, November 13, 2005

She's still better than Paul Maguire

Sunday Night Football commentary, mom style:

Mom: "Who's that player with the hair?"

Me: "Strong safety Troy Polamalu."

Mom: "Ew, creepy."
Wednesday, November 09, 2005

The end of the affair

We met on a rainy night in Northern California. You: resplendent in your tan canvas soft top and new black paint job. Me: still trying to drop the last five pounds of burrito weight acquired upon first moving to California.

Our problems started almost immediately. Your beauty was both a blessing and a curse, and it was only a week into our relationship when the first assault occurred: back plastic window slashed, CD changer stolen. Soon it became a morning ritual, determining what indignity you may have suffered during the night. Broken front window? Slashed roof? Stolen radio? Ripped speaker covers? Last-minute slumber party with friendly neighborhood drug addicts?

Of course, it was never really just the two of us, was it? There was always a third party in our relationship, wasn’t there? There was Wheel Works, of course, and Community Auto Center for a time; and then there was the long-term affair with that total slut, Brakemasters. You’d smoke or stall or leak a fluid, and I’d cave yet again and tow you away to your nearest auto reparamour.

I know they say you can’t put a price on love, but then again, I was always the logical one to your squeaky-braked dreamer. So I recently tallied up a portion of your repairs over our five years together. Not maintenance repairs, mind you, but unexpected costs. $7500. And for what? A relationship so fraught with anger and resentment that I would dream of the day you’d be destroyed in a multi-car pileup and I could at least recoup your bluebook value?

So when I recently watched your new owner drive you away, I felt the same way I did some years ago when I bumped into an ex-boyfriend of mine and his new girlfriend: vague surprise at the depth of my indifference, coupled with oceanic waves of disbelief that there was another rube out there stupid enough to take on the same endless, threadbare needs that had nearly driven me to madness.
Tuesday, November 08, 2005

...as the college degree sits idle

If you're writing out a check to a Thai masseuse who doesn't really speak English, and she repeatedly tells you to make the check out to "Cat," and you say, “Cat?” and she says, “Yes, Cat,” and you say “C-A-T?” and she says “Yes, C-A-T,” and you shrug your shoulders and go ahead and make the check out to “Cat” and a day later relay this story to a friend who immediately starts laughing and points out that she was telling you to make the check out to “Cash,” not “Cat,” I know you’re all wondering: Does the check clear?

The answer is no, no it does not.
Monday, November 07, 2005

Quick question

If an Amoeba sales clerk asks you, "Do you have a brother who's in a band? You look like the type of girl who would have a brother who's in a band," is this

A. a vague compliment

B. a vaguely sexist insult

C. yet another example of the social retardation rampant among all CD store sales staff
Friday, November 04, 2005

Friday's finger foods

- In the battle of macro- vs. micro-level soulless corporate entities, who’d have thought that McDonald’s would come out on top? Yes, Ashlee Simpson single-handedly brought dignity to The Arch with her McDrunken Meltdown.

- Forget the whole “you can view who’s been viewing you” controversy. You want final evidence that Friendster has jumped the shark? My dad just signed up. (And for the record, I'm very honored to be his first friendster.)

- The resident guinea pig at my private nursery school was named “Perseus.” I have finally decided to concede the pretension of that moniker.

- My insane landlord called me at work every 20 minutes or so yesterday to scream at me about another perceived injury to our now-vacated apartment. I refused to pick up. Finally he called the main switchboard (NO idea how he got that number), then got hold of our front-desk receptionist and called HER repeatedly until she finally called my supervisor and asked her to ask me to pick up the call when it went through. When I picked up and he began yelling, I put down the phone and let him spin his wheels for 15 minutes while I wrote some emails.

Remember the name Ari Strimov: It will be in the news one day, in a Simpson/Blake/Spector sort of way.
Thursday, November 03, 2005

Also, I don't think she's all that pretty

If I were less lazy, I'd take more than a few moments today to eviscerate Maureen Dowd's simplistic, pedantic, misguided, egocentric and sexist-to-both-sexes Sunday New York Times Magazine book excerpt offering a wafer-thin analysis of today's social mores vis a vis the sexes. (Well actually, if I were less lazy, I would have done so on Monday, but I was simultaneously moving and dodging my landlord's verbal gunfire, so cut me a little slack.)

It was quite impressive, really: She quoted like five New York media women and from their simplistic musings (men like to hunt, women like to be hunted, men don't like smart women, women don't like to pay their way anymore, bladdety blah), as well as some primary source reading of women's magazines and a dash of male celebrity commentary, extrapolated to the U.S. female population at large, determining that our generation is universally driven by regressive gender ideals. Babies and marriage good, career bad, first- and second-wave feminism off the mark etc. The fact that I recognized neither myself nor any of my friends in this article means squat, apparently; she seemed pretty firm in the conviction that her pop-psych musings applied to the entirety of womanhood (herself excepting).

But I'm lazy. So instead, I'll just point out that Dowd's ruminations have an ally in the United States Postal Office. Apparently the hubby and I are not considered a married couple because I got all regressively progressive and kept my last name when we got married; therefore, my change of address card didn’t go through and I'm not getting any of my mail. Fuckers.

Oh wait, can't swear! Men don't like uncouth women! If I swear, I'll never ever fulfill my destiny and land a man!

Oh wait, I already did. Whew.
Tuesday, November 01, 2005

At least I remembered to pack the stuffed cow

Seventy-two hours of nonstop packing? Not a problem. Last-minute duct-tape crisis? Schematically minor. Underhanded machinations of insane landlord pushing us towards a small-claims court showdown? Perversely thrilling.

It’s the post-move minutia that has me in a funk today. For example, this morning I entered my old zip code into the gas pump credit card thingy, immediately raising the pump’s ire. It told me to go inside and pay the cashier in person. I refused and tried to restart, but the pump ignored me and kept flashing a warning message saying it was doing this for my own protection. I kicked the pump, but it stood resolute, forcing me to use another credit card.

Also, I seem to have a bit of toothpaste in my eyebrow today, which makes no sense because I CAN’T FIND MY STUPID FUCKING TOOTHPASTE ANYWHERE.