2006, you weasel! but what a way to go.

i've tossed out all the rancid produce in my fridge, hung up pictures and shelves in my apartment, and am fully ready for a fresh start.

i know i'm not updating much. there is nothing to say that's not sturmundrang, and that's tedious, and exactly what this webpage is not made for.

even though my trip home was short, it felt like i got to spend a lot of time with my family. i updated then deleted that i cut all my hair off christmas morning. i am an asymptote, approaching starbuck.

overheard again

And, once again. FAMOUS!!! [just to avoid the confusion of last time, i did submit this one, and i was not the one who wanted to wear baggy clothes; i've probably told most of you this story already]

offsides

at soccer, the team kindly enacted an off-sides violation to help me understand the rule.

i spent the rest of the practice shouting things like "okay, i'm offsides now, right?" or "i'm not offsides now, right? i'm just being lazy?" continuously revealing that their enactment had done me no good, and that I clearly didn't understand the offsides rule.

why is everyone asleep? godsdamn it, people, wake up! it's barely today yet!

nerdly humor

On Battlestar Galactica, the admiral is always saying on the phone things like: "This is Galactica Actual, go ahead." or "This is Galactica Actual, state your position." Eventually one of us said "You know when they say 'Galactica Actual'?" "Yeah..." "..... does anyone know what that means?" "It means it's actually, you know, Galactica." "But what else would it possibly be? This is Galactica, PSYCH!" "This is Galactica....... NOT!" (a la Borat).

it's at the point in the evening when i will either pour myself a second glass of wine (leaving just enough in the bottle that i would most likely finish off the bottle, paula poundstone and the pop-tarts style), or floss my teeth.

considering how my tummy feels after a day's diet of brownies and cheese fries, i'm guess it'll be the latter. flossing is fun!

k, bye!!

i think it was my brother who once gave me the very sweet advice to "stop being such a bitch." and i don't mean that sarcastically. it was sweet because it implied i am not always a bitch, but i was being one right then. i'm sure there's a verb tense for that in russian. anyway, starting today, i am going to stop being such a bitch. which is going to be hard because i'm not going to be getting much sleep this week.

last night my friend said i looked like the cat that ate the canary. so, resolution #1 of my new goal: stop smirking so much. basically, if i can get it down to smirking 50% of the time, that'll be an improvement. if i can keep the corners of my mouth from curling quite so much, i will instantaneously stop being SUCH a bitch.

is it lame of me to get thrilled when i have an alphebetizing job? i get down on the floor and begin sorting, sorting, sorting all these proxy forms, and i feel so content. it would be even better if i had my ipod.

syzygy: i was thinking "if only there were a course i could take on telling my heart how to behave." and then i read the description of the Informal Class: Claiming Your Emotional Intelligence. It was perfect! Of course there are more details to that story, but I'm not going to tell them because I am Not a Bitch.

Discovery of the weekend: Triumph Cafe. Also, don't assume spice jars come with those tops that are for sprinkling. If you make that assumption, you could very well pour half the jar of spice on your food. Twice.

so, i'm famous AGAIN! yes, you can have my autograph. form an orderly queue.

no, REALLY this time!!

I think I've miraculously not once this semester yet wailed "I'm going to fail both these classes!" like I usually do.

EVEN THOUGH I AM GOING TO FAIL BOTH OF MY CLASSES!

AND yes. because i'm supposed to be smarting myself up with study, i instead am remembering all the important things that i needed to update. things that kept making me smile today:

• me: [pretending to be snobby. pretending, honest!!] what could be better than having LoneStar while riding in the back of a sweet honda civic you ask? well, i for one would prefer martinis riding along the countryside in daddy's jaguar.
  guys who like cars in the car with me: [snickering]
  me: what?
  guys: more like sipping your martinis on the side of the road as you wait for AAA to come get all the way out to the countryside to tow your jaguar back to town.
• one of the same above guys earnestly informing me that he did not put any rupees in my LoneStar. i believed him, too!

i think palinodes are kind of unnecessary in a blog (I mean, just delete the post you mean to redact, right?), but i would like to say for the record, the raisins aren't really jerks. they're okay after all, and so am i. i turned out to not be so smrt (i was psyching myself up for an exam that ended up not happening). anyway, TOMORROW i will be the sharpest, nonjerk raisin in the box.

cleverest raisin in the box!

mediocre people do exceptional things all the time

could have been a genius if i had an axe to grind.

i am so smrt!! right now!

in that certain things should be said to the face, i'm a believer

what's up with this raisin bran? the raisins are as hard as rocks!

the raisins are jerks and as soon as i finish this box off, i am making a mix cd about how much i don't like raisins!

me: mom, you know how sometimes i forget my credit card at home? and i forget i forgot my credit card at home, until i get to the front of the grocery line? but i have that emergency credit card you gave me a long time ago?
mom: yeah.
me: and so every once in a while i use that to pay for stuff?
mom: yeah... have you done that again?
me: yeah, i bought a lot of frozen lunches today at the grocery store, and had to use your card.
mom: that's ok
me: that's so great that that's ok. thank you. oh, and i also might have charged like a few dollars at the coffee shop yesterday because i was so cold.
mom: oh, ok, just like a few dollars?
me: yeah, like $5 because . oh oh! and also, maybe part of a meal at a thai restaurant.
mom: ....
me: and...
mom: ummmm
me: .... i think i lost my credit card. again.
mom: and your debit card?
me: oh, i lost that months ago.

Holy schnikes!!! They just sent a video of a Christmas tree catching fire (really fast!). Don't water your tree with napalm! Here are some other holiday safety videos:

Christmas tree fire (the bunny! so tragic!)
Good old turkey fryer

And another thing I got in the mail, and article about writing sessions at Battlestar Galactica. It makes me feel queasy inside, but I've read it three times now.

Another use of the word literally, that is annoying though correct We all know people who use the word 'literally' as if it just intensifies the meaning of what they're saying rather than assures you they're not talking metaphorically (eg "I literally exploded with rage at that grammer mistake!"). And that's annoying. But I just heard someone say "if I have cable, I literally..... watch way too much TV." Not necessary to use 'literally' in that sentence!! Maybe she had been going to say "I literally watch TV 25 hours a day" but realized that was wrong, and the long pause after 'literally' was really her just thinking of what she would do, literally, if she had cable.

And finally, a story: two little girls, sitting on a bed reading Cosmogirl. One reads:
1: "What feature on your body are you most self-conscious about?"
2: Hmm..... I'm not really sure.
1: [appraises 2] Is it your big ears?

I like my video store 1/2 of the time. It's the 1/2 of the time when Peter Cropes (nice pete) isn't working there. Seriously, Chris Onstad must have been inspired by this guy. When he's there, I don't even want to get my frequent renter card punched, literally for fear that it's what will tip him over the edge and claim me as the first victim of his rampage.

VS

dad says the only people who don't have the proper respect* for his car are Mustang GT drivers. One more reason for me to get a Mustang!

*read "have the proper respect" as "abjectly kowtow"

My brother and I played video games, even though we couldn't find any of the good ones that involve shooting each other. So we played good old Tenchu, stealth assassins, for old time's sake. We played 2-player co-op, and got to the level that took us months to beat last time. The level is a source of the ever-funny (to us) phrase: "OK, sis, you stay up top, feed 'em the rice." We tried that twice before remembering "stay up top, feed em the rice" had NEVER worked as a plan, and that's why we'd stopped playing it years ago. FYI: poison rice is basically useless in the Tenchu game, as it likely would be in a real-life ninja scenario. Who just picks up rice off the ground and eats it?

Friday's "impulse buy" (pictured previous update) has this additional story: Our old TV would take between 30-1200 minutes to warm up, and also it would not tell you for sure if it was on-and-warming-up, off-but-on-standby, or completely off. So if you turned it "on" but lost faith in yourself after an hour or so of staring at the blank screen and pressed the power button again, you might be turning it off for real this time--but you won't know for sure until 30-1200 minutes have passed. Anyway, Thursday night we all as a family sat and stared at the TV for about 3 hours, talking mainly about whether or not we thought it was going to come on. Friday, dad got a new TV.

I had dad hold up a quarter next to the tv to show the relative size of friday.s impulse buy.

'we'broke a plate, so we tried 2 fix it b4 mom wakes up. Brother, on incident:'this is the best thing we've ever done.'

There is no way 2 describe the terror this tableau fills me with. The bear is eyeless.

please confirm

this is really stupid. i feel really stupid for asking this. i'm taking macroeconomics, and i was like 99% sure, but someone was arguing with me so confidently, I'm not sure anymore.

US money isn't backed by any precious metals anymore, right? Most money in the world universe is off any gold or silver or gold-pressed latinum standards, isn't it??

i keep thinking "why do i want burritos so much today?" but the real question is "why am i thinking about burritos so much today?" because if i'm honest with myself, i ALWAYS want burritos, i just spend most of each day forgetting about that fact. i think that's why i irrationally found this SNL skit funny whenever it was I saw it. I am thrilled I am able to link to that so people know what I'm talking about, if they like. re-reading the skit, i am surprised at how short it is, and how it completely relates to my current condition.

Main Street is pretty depressing! Remind me never to get married, especially if it's the 1920s, and Illinois.

Today, I got to see an episode of Cleopatra 2525. No, I'd never heard of it, and now I know why! But it had Gina Torres.

(burrito).

baby steps

somewhat related to the last update's comment about phish vs radiohead being a potential dealbreaker (for the record, it's really radiohead vs. anything), the other night i was very proud of myself for not yelling "ARE YOU ON CRACK?" in the parking lot to someone who said that my Beatles bumper sticker should be superceded by my The Who bumper sticker. I told this story to my brother gingerly, knowing he likes The Who a lot (but, I mean, so do I; I have their bumper sticker after all). My brother's reaction? "WAS HE ON CRACK?" I was relieved; we can continue being siblings.

how i'm overcoming 'love': reality.

here's how it would go. "hmm, so you work in a pet store. yeah. what's that like? my cats really like you. probably because you smell like cat food. oh, you have bills and things like everyone else? oh, you like phish more than radiohead? that's a cool car you have there. oh, it doesn't run? is that why it's always parked outside your work/home? oh, right, you live in the pet store. yeah. what's that like? not that great? hmm. oh, you like dogs more than cats? well, let me just make my cat food purchase and be gone from here."

with this simple exercise, i become in control of these obsessive crush feelings! and you can, too! just think of a few minor things which in a real person wouldn't kill the relationship, but which sufficiently lop off the prettiest flowers of a crush.
i think i'm prepared to go cat food shopping this Sunday. Then the cats will have all the food they need when I go home for Thanksgiving.

Did you know they sell boxing bags at Bed Bath and Beyond? It's true. EVERLAST

maybe this is from all the meditative navel-contemplating we did in kundalini yesterday, but i'm having one of those days where i keep hearing eddie izzard in my head saying "what's all this, please?" not referring to an american indian headress, but rather to the whole entire material world around me.

blue state country and western

I think it might not be all that satisfying to be the person who came up with genre names like "shoegazer" and "Twee Pop" and "Jungle" "Drum n Bass" "Ambient" etc. Because you don't really get credit for it or anything, and if you ever tell people you made that up, like at parties, they probably wouldn't believe you. It's kind of a random claim to fame, because even if it's true, it's not like you saved a life or did anything all THAT impressive. Plus you could never prove it, really. Even if you could prove you were the first person to put it in print, what if your awesome shut-in friend actually said it in conversation through the mail-slot of his apartment? No one would ever know.

Anyway, I'm going to invent a genre name, and then the appropriate musical style to go along with it. And I'm going to tell people about it at parties.

your happiness is just a chemical

So, I saw the Borat movie now. It's true that I laughed a lot.

I swear I had something to update. But nothing is coming to mind right now. Well, some things, but they seem so boring.

Remember in Willow when he threw that magic acorn at Bavmorda, but instead of turning her to stone, she caught it, and her arm momentarily turned to stone as she fought off the magic and crushed the acorn to dust? No? Well, anyway, that's my my arm kind of feels like right now. It's a combination of flu shot and miraculous and painful massage work on my shoulder. Really, I recommend this place highly.

At the theater, I saw a preview for a TV show that kind of made me laugh. It was only after the preview I realized it was a show for the girl we went out with in LA--we went out to celebrate the show's being picked up!

(it is darren hanlon) (he is from Gympie, Australia)

eeeeeeeeee!! I had my first moment on MySpace where (a celebrity) is my friend, and I feel completely, totally special, even though I am one of more than 1600. He, or someone in his employ, hit "approve" next to a picture of my eye, and it's like we connected! Electrons that touched electrons that touched electrons (times a lot more times than I can type) that touched him touched me!! And then I found out he likes Tucson, and it's all falling into place: we'll marry, and move to Tucson. I keep trying to find the flaw in this plan, and the only one I can find is that I haven't been to Australia to meet him yet, so please excuse me, but I have some planning to do.

there are also flies. squalor!

i don't know how this has happened, but i seem to have used almost every vessel in my inventory. That is, I still have plenty of plates and pans and baking dishes, but I'm having to eat my cereal out of a Tom Collins glass. I should just wash, I guess.

summation

I'm just going to sum up the last few updates (now deleted) with this. There's nothing new here, don't get excited:

1) Darren Hanlon - Title Fight: Heart v Mind
2) Aqualung - Strange and Beautiful
3) BtVS - Under Your Spell
4) Leadbelly - Big Fat Woman
5) Yo La Tengo - Black Flowers
6) Radiohead - Lozenge of Love
7) Frente! - Labour of Love
8) PJ Harvey - Oh My Lover
9) David Bowie - A Better Future
10) Willie Nelson - Are You Sure?
11) Emiliana Torrini - If You Go Away
12) Rilo Kiley - Bulletproof
13) Moby - Why Does My Heart Feel so Bad?
14) The Delgados - Hate is All You Need
15) Ben Folds Five - Song for the Dumped
16) Madeleine Peyroux - Dance me to the End of Love
17) Darren Hanlon - Falling Aeroplanes
18) Belle & Sebastian - If You Find Yourself Caught In Love

Overheard in my Life

Me: So the doctor said I have a low resting heart rate and asked if I run, and I said "No! I did that with my mind!"
Mom: Uh huh. Is that when he gave you the referral to the psychiatrist?
Me: No! That was.... uh, something different.

Woman to child at Chuy's [strong Texas accent]: "Tres" is Spanish for two!! And "leches" is Spanish for meats!

Anything Can Happen on Halloween

Happy Halloween. I got a YouTube account just to make sure this got updated.

bend it like the mystic cosmos area

I think the fact that i've been doing all these relatively permanent home-improvement projects without having a level is not a sign of arrogance or stupidity. It's given me a good, lucky feeling (like telling a kid 'good guess' every time they get a math problem right). It's also giving me a good, vertiginous feeling; everything's like a Mystic Cosmos Area in my condo!

While I'm updating: I saw 2 great movies this weekend. I know, they're SO one-year-ago, but I think I'll have a policy where I wait a year to see a movie, and that way I won't waste my time because I'll collect enough opinions I value. Not like Pirates of the Caribbean. What the hell, man?? What I saw: TransAmerica and The Squid & the Whale. What I have from the library: The Devil and Daniel Johnston (did you know he did more than that one song? Well, he did) and Bend it Like Beckham. I'm going to start watching a lot of soccer movies to learn the rules. I thought first of ones I've already seen. Bend it Like Beckham seemed like a better choice than Shaolin Soccer. SS would just confuse me about the rules, I think. Of soccer, and of physics. But what are some other soccer movies?

punctuation cannot capture the comic timing of space ghost. Nonetheless:

• is it bad if a chicken bites you?
• (sighhh)... did a chicken bite you?
• no!! ........ but he's gonna!
• then go away from the chicken!

boy crazy.

i had to meet some contractors somewhere, and the architect was comically, ridiculously handsome. i mean, maybe you wouldn't look at him and think that, but he was all: 9 feet tall (approx. maybe like 6 something actually), perfectly bronzed, with matching bronze hair in a ponytail, with blindingly white teeth which he unsheathed winningly, and often. I felt hypnotized into some kind of feminine stupor!! (is this what they used to call love?) THEN, as we left, he got onto his red motorcycle, and the spell wore off. I just thought "really? A motorcycle? That is just too much." besides, i have to remember my Irrational Crush #1. I must remain faithful. to IC1 (which is henceforth the crush's secondary, subtitular name)

Locked self out of car. Updating from phone. Joining soccer team. Cold now. Will practice soccer kicks on any would-b attackers.

(soccer fever)

sooo, i already told my mom (aka 50% of my readership), because i just have to tell someone, but i have SOCCER FEVER! not that i can watch or play soccer. but i keep thinking about watching or playing soccer, and i keep just wanting to tell people that i have SOCCER FEVER. i wish instead of battlestar galactica tonight, the drafthouse were showing a movie called SOCCER FEVER, and it starred me!

the reason i can't watch soccer is a) i am in america and b) i don't have tv and c) i do have a tv, but it's in my gym, and see next paragraph.

the reason i can't play soccer is because i pulled a muscle in my leg (possibly, ALL of the muscles in my leg), and can barely walk. i did this to my leg through the magic of SOCCER FEVER.

monster hands

we went to this great divey bar that's dressed like christmas all the year round. anyway, i went to look at what all their trophies were for, but i couldn't reach there. i did notice that inside this giant wooden box, under glass, and hard to see with the glare of the christmas lights, was an odd assortment of toys and a scary cymbal-monkey. i made katy come look, and we were fascinated. an eldery gentleman came up and looked with us. i explored what we were looking at and finally realized it was a grand piano! so i said "it's a grand piano!!!" and the elderly gentleman said "Well, of course it's a piano!" and i said "but where are the strings at?" and he said "what?" and i said "i mean, where are the, you know, piano strings at--there's monkeys in there!!"* and he started giggling and went away. i thought that was the end of it, but he came back with a flashlight, so we could better see the piano innards. there was a puppy that did a back flip, that scary monkey doing something obscene with another puppy, a few gorillas, a few santa clauses, and a plastic hand giving the finger to a santa claus and a dachsund. i asked the elderly gentleman if he worked there, and he said "it's pretty, isn't it?" talking about the christmas-tree face he had coaxed to sing by plugging it in.

that will be katy's standard response to people asking her if she works somewhere, except at wal-mart, where they might take that for a 'yes.'

*for some reason i felt like i momentarily was possessed by someone from another era or region, like the time i yelled at my brother "i'm lookin f'you a job, ya bum!!"

Also, I forgot this graffito in the ladies' toilet:

Chuck Norris destroyed the table of elements because Chuck Norris only recognizes the element of surprise.

It turns out there's a whole website. I had no idea.

also blogworthy

i forgot to say that:

i am famous, along with my mom! i feel comfortable blogging this a week later, because that photo is much smaller online. in the paper, we were enormous goons, front and center!!

and if the avatar didn't make sense, to be more clear, i kind of have blonde hair now. leigh said "what?? what happened?" well, there was a terrible accident at the lab...

we used to make FUN of people at the cat's meow!!

wait, this seems like such blog-fodder, i can't believe i didn't already say it, but just in case i didn't, i sang karaoke for the first time. lauren sang Thriller (have you ever just sat down and read the words to that, as though it's a poem? perhaps you should, for the coming Halloween season), and after long deliberations, i chose "take a chance." i mean, what else could i have chosen? it's been stuck in my head for a month. and it was the right choice, because someone bought me a drink, and i even thought he was cute! but i didn't accept it because we didn't stay. anyway. that. and m has listed karaoke as a potential activity for when k's in town, and i was all like 'yep, no problem, i am a seasoned pro.'

lauren mused: have you ever noticed that michael jackson's kids are white? like white? not, like, mixed? and no one ever questions this? i mean, michael jackson's NOT WHITE.

Anyway, if you listed the categories of top 40 songs, you'd get like 56,714 in 'love' and 20,455 in 'depression' and 15,600 in 'hate' and then, Thriller:

It's close to midnight and something evil's lurking in the dark
Under the moonlight you see a sight that almost stops your heart
You try to scream but terror takes the sound before you make it
You start to freeze as horror looks you right between the eyes
You're paralyzed'

Cause this is thriller, thriller night
And no one's gonna save you from the beast about to strike
You know it's thriller, thriller night
You're fighting for life inside a killer, thriller tonight

You hear a door slam and realize there's nowhere left to run
You feel the cold hand and wonder if you'll ever see the sun
You close your eyes and hope that this is just imagination
But all the while you hear the creature creepin' up behind
You're out of time'

Cause this is thriller, thriller night
There ain't no second chance against the thing with forty eyes
You know it's thriller, thriller night
You're fighting to survive inside a killer, thriller tonight
Night creatures call
The dead start to walk in their masquerade
There's no escapin' the jaws of the alien this time (they're open wide)
This is the end of your life
They're out to get you, there's demons closing in on every side
They will possess you unless you change the number on your dial
Now is the time for you and I to cuddle close together
All thru the night I'll save you from the terrors on the screen
I'll make you see

That it's a thriller, thriller night'
Cause I can thrill you more than any ghost who would dare to try
Girl, this is thriller, thriller night
So let me hold you tight and share a killer, diller, chiller
Thriller here tonight

Rap:(by Vincent Price
Darkness falls across the land
The midnight hour is close at hand
Creatures crawl in search of blood
To terrorize y'all's neighborhood
And whosoever shall be found
Without the soul for getting down
Must stand and face the hounds of hell
And rot inside a corpse's shell
The foulest stench is in the air
The funk of forty thousand years
And grizzly ghouls from every tomb
Are closing in to seal your doom
And though you fight to stay alive
Your body starts to shiver
For no mere mortal can resist
The evil of the thriller

you had me at "secret room"

before i go to work (yes), it's important that i update about my trip to the Halloween Store. At work, they said "we're going to the Halloween store, because it's friday the 13th, and then we'll get lunch. I'm not sure where we'll get lunch, but maybe Amaya's." Even though I love Amaya's Taco Village (both for the food and the name) I stopped her from the hard sell with "Stop, stop, you had me at Halloween store."

I really want monster hands!

We went to Baby A's, furthering my impression of that chain as: sticky. The right kick and left punch buttons on the Tekken machine were permanently stuck down, likely from something disgusting. What a waste of 50 cents! I only know one throw-combo that don't involve those buttons.

Speaking of bad eating experiences, I went to the sandwhich shop TB worked at when she first moved to Austin. The permanent impression of that place seems to be "That place is going down," which was TB's impression both upon getting the job, and upong quitting the job. And it is my impression upon my return. The salad tasted exactly like unwashed hands, and I was unable to eat it. I got sick anyway.

i am "doing my economics homework"

this week, i have been enjoying the sorting capabilities of having so many of my favorite songs converted into iTunes compatability. My iPod still doesn't work (hopefully that will be taken care of tomorrow; third time's the charm, right?), but after hooking up my computer to my speakers, I have enjoyed my P section and my 1997 section very much. 1997 was a great year!!

P: Paul Curerri, Paul McCartney, Paul Simon, Pedro the Lion, Phish, Pink Martini, Pixies, Pizzicato Five, PJ Harvey, Poe, Polyphonic Spree, Portishead, Postal Service, prefab sprout, prefuse 73, Propellerheads, Puffi Ami Yumi, Pulp.

1997: Homogenic, Blur, Fifth Element Soundtrack, Be Here Now, The Saint, OK Computer, Surfacing.

I guess 1997 isn't a very big category. But I like everything in it, anyway. It made me think of the LOOONNNG car ride through West Texas this summer when L and I listed every 90's band we liked, and we realized: the 90's were pretty great. Add that to my list of favorite decades of the last century (70's, 50's, 40's, 20's, 10's, 00's-- catch up, fellas!)

But a continued list of 90's music, as they are currently sorted in my iTunes; many of these in need of more detail, but who has that kind of time??: They Might be Giants, Frente, Jeff Buckley, Luna, The Orb, Tom Petty, Emmylou Harris, The Jayhawks, Moby, Spacehog, Stereolab, Trainspotting soudtrack, Belle and Sebastian, Air, Beta Band, Superior, Beck, Liz Phair, Propellerheads, Broadcast, Aimee Mann, Rufus Wainwright, UNKLE, smog, Ben Folds Five, Chemical Brothers, the Corrs, Emiliana Torrini, Gay Dad, Gorky's Zygotic Mynci, Marine Research, Morcheeba, Muse, Old 97's, High Fidelity Soundtrack, Sigur Ros, Travis, Underworld, Wilco, XTC

So, this is my new look, as rendered by Yahoo Avatar. It's pretty straightforward, except for the rat. That is pure fantasy! Wha' happened?

• Watching Lost is like playing Myst.
• Today I was surprised to find out about Grace Park (Boomer) and Lucy Lawless's heights. At the BattleStar Galactica premiere someone mentioned to me that Lucy Lawless was actually shorter than Renee O'Connor (Gabrielle) in real life, but that's not true. LL is quite tall.
• Willie's friend/singing partner won the Delia's model contest! Wow!
• IKEA has everything you need, and cheap!
• ONLY READ THIS ONE IF YOU HAVE WATCHED 2 SEASONS OF BATTLESTAR GALACTICA: at the alamo drafthouse, there are bumper stickers that say: don't blame me, i voted for roslin. This keep cracking me up.
• There were many antique cars at the Continental Club. They look cool and are fast, but they take 4 minutes to warm up. Also at the Continental Club was a wonderful guitarist, known to some as the "Caucasion Sensation." One man told me this 3 different times! The same man! Three times!
• Baking lemon squares in the oven is a time sensitive operation.
• Mom likes about Battlestar Galactica that the ladies are strong, and they really are strong! Or at least, you can believe they are. Like some TV ladies are "strong" but you look at them and know in real life, they couldn't bruise a feather. Well, to be honest, who could? Well, Katie Sackhoff might possibly be able to bruise a feather.
• BC came out during book club today, and he is very soft now.
• After tomorrow, my hair will be the color of Starbuck's.
• Last night we visited an office, and someone had made a pyramid from their La Croix cans (see phone picture). I feel my alphabetized conversation hearts have been challenged!

live from new orleans, it's friday night!!

woooooooooo!!!!!! New ORLeans! yeah. well. i guess i kind of come here a lot. and you know what? It's growin on me.

last night, i took 1/2 of a valium in the hopes of beating my mother to sleep (we were sharing a hotel room,and she snores ever so slightly), but i was so excited about when it would set in, my heart was just RACING waiting for droopy eyelids (example: "mom?? do i look sleepy yet? how about now, am i sleepy now?"). Tonight, instead, I just had 9 martinis for the job. PSYCH! it was just 2.

I've also been slowly transcribing my 1995 journal from my trip to Russia. I am hilarious, and I am a total bitch! Not in that order. Woo!!! It's enough to make you want to punch a concrete wall with your center two knuckles!

AND THE WALL CRUMBLES BEFORE YOUR MIGHT.

well, so much for all that. happy new orleans, everyone! and many happy returns!!!

and wait a minute, everyone--nice job* with helping me find impressive music from the last 5 years that i like. here's my honest to god list that i can think of right now. feel free to embellish: clap your hands say yeah, feist, hem, smile (brian wilson--does this count?), microphones, spoon, iron and wine, esthero, old crow medicine show, and that one song by snow patrol (run, which is 5x as valuable as all their other songs combined). not to say these are my absolute top favorites. but they're genuine favorite that are known-but-not-overdone (which makes them 'cool'). a few are thrown in for eclectic prowess. one (run) is thrown in there to show i am being honest. i could listen 'run' all night (but not all day). but i do genuinely like all of these very much, so i can't feel like a poseur if quizzed.

*not!!!!

[this entry may cause limb loss]

i think... i think i really love that muse song 'knights of cydonia.' it silly... but it's also so rockin'!! i feel like i'm in high school when i enjoy that song. and i also feel like high school isn't sucking! i feel more like high school....... is from the land of rock!

my grandparents and aunt and mom visited this weekend. such larks! cheesecake and scrabble! and multiple trips to the pet store. heh.

Quick, everyone remind me what my favorite, impressive music tastes are from the last 5 years. And even if I don't know them, if they are impressive and from the last 5 years, I will still accept them as my own. It's for a good cause, really!

Dad called this morning at 7 AM !! Even stranger, I had already been up for 30 minutes from a nightmare. He said if I told him about the dream before I had breakfast, it would come true. Nonetheless, I'm pretty sure nothing I could do would make this nightmare come true; it was set in the Netherlands and France during World War II, and featured laser guns. But anyway, after dad called, I asked him what time it was. He said "I don't know, like 9 or something? Shouldn't you be at work?" and I blinked for a while at the barely light sky. Then he went and checked and said "Oh, wait, it's like 7! Sorry I called so early!" then we said goodbye. How can you confuse 7 and 9?? They are like complete opposites!

farmer and the dell

Mom sang herself lots of kid songs and folk tunes on the drive over here to keep herself company.

"When I was singing Farmer and the Dell, I got confused! I think I got to cheese, and I couldn't remember what cheese does!" Of course, we all know, the cheese stands alone. Which is Thing 1 about this song.

Thing 2 is the transition of child taking the dog to dog taking the cat, at which point you begin to question the farmer's relationship to his wife, and the wife's relationship to her child, and the child's relationship to its dog. The companionship/food-chain continuum is one we are taught not to question as kids.

brightest apples in the barrel

i like when people say things like "well, he's certainly not the sharpest cookie in the bag." that cracks me up. it's like mad-libs!

my favorite on this list is "the wheel's spinning, but the hamster's dead."

The 8layer cake i made last night

don't put them away! that's the best part of the show!

So yesterday it was awesome because M--- has some episodes from third season Battlestar Galactica (scheduled to premiere next month) as part of an advance press pack or something. Did you hear me? I SAID IT WAS AWESOME! Plus there were cute pictures of Boomer and Starbuck.

But the funniest part was M--- talking about her Austin Found teammate, who has a morbid aversion to high-fives. He had to leave a sporting event the other day because "There were just...." [long pause and sigh] "too many high fives happening."

Hi, M--!!

recent text conversations from my cell phone:

brother: today is national good looking person day. send this to someone gorgeous. don't send it back to me, i've received f'ing hundreds of them.

me: _____ sux!!
mom: y?
me: dunno. nature?

me: i ate that whole giant potato by myself.
me: i feel like i deserve a reward.
lauren: maybe the potato was its own reward.

brother: who is the country singer paw thinks looks like a thumb?
me: garth brooks.

forever young

i've been trying to think of things i might name my first adopted child if she is young enough to be named. things like 'bingo pajama,' you know, but i guess that might be a little common by now. the best i can think of at the moment is BeanBean McFridge. Any other suggestions?

the other day, i told an utter, blatant, and absolutely pointless lie. i said that i prefer even numbers to odd numbers. the opposite is true. so true that i refused to sit in odd rows of theaters for about 5 years. i still am a little uncomfortable sitting in an even row.

TV: i am addicted to battlestar galactica, but i still haven't decided if i'm enjoying it or not. i am neither enjoying nor addicted to popular, despite a few amusing moments, but i'm holding out for the clea duvall episodes. i think i'm probably going to end up liking battlestar galactica, though. it's got some really good lady-characters in it. one is president, and one smokes cigars and is otherwise awesome. but you have to just go with any of the science--no questioning. it's plot and characters and some not-so-embarassing dabbling in philosophical issues; not sampling the boundaries of what is realistically possible with this universe's laws.

ehh, bedtime. i feel like tomorrow is friday, but i've felt like that all week. i've also felt like the date is way beyond the 15th. i guess i'm already 26 in spirit. god, i hate even numbers. i can't wait to be 27.

things jung didn't note

strange: hearing this sentance come out of my mouth--"I think it might have been part of the motto of the gang from Short Circuit 2" a moment before thinking "Wait, what? What's Short Circuit? Was there even a sequel?"

stranger: hearing two people in the group correct me with the full and accurate motto of the gang from Short Circuit 2

Los locos kick your ***! Los locos kick your face! Los locos kick your balls into outer space!

yes. it's just one of those weeks where i randomly (if inaccurately) remember movies from the eighties, and try to pay off 5-month-old valet tickets to the city of Los Angeles. Also, this morning I burned my ear, and held a bottle of cold water to the side of my head as I drove, and I kept having this thought, irritated: "Why isn't it ringing?" before repeatedly reminding myself it was not a phone, it was a bottle of water, and I had burned my own ear. I don't even want to talk about it. I already did. It's too late.

you say that i waste my time, but...

Wait a second............ remember before when I was trying to pay that parking ticket to Culver City? And having a lot of difficulties? It may possibly be because it's not a parking ticket. It's a valet ticket. Now I wish I'd kept better track of the trip--did we go to Thai Elvis's the night before the Museum of Jurassic Technology?

Anyway. Oops.

Still listening to Erasure. They do a cover of ABBA's "Take Chance on Me" that, if marketed properly, would be far more precious than Prozac.

In fact, I believe an entire P&P could be soundtracked with Erasure. And it would be awesome.

i'm so in love with you, i'll be forever blue

Ideally, there will be (yet) another update/remake of Pride and Prejudice, during which Darcy is somehow associated with the Erasure song "A Little Respect." I haven't worked out how he'll do it... if he'll sing it Bollywood-like, or in some kind of karaoke scene, or perhaps it'll just play during a montage of his winning Lizzie over. More on this as it develops. Right now, I'm going to listen to "A Little Respect." For 6 days straight.

i {heart} the 80's

So, in the past 48 hours, I have only listened to Joy Division, New Order, and now Erasure. I try to make this mean something. If I still had my Excel sheet that tracked every variable in my life, I would add another line with "music cravings." Then I'd be able to construct formulas, and say logical things like "Ohhh, synthesizer strings........ migraine's coming." or "Hmm, have only listened to Sexy Sadie for 6 days...... manic episode imminent." However, without that Excel sheet, I'm just going to be forced to enjoy the 80's on their own merits, with assigning them values. Maybe I just wanna DANCE!

Followups: I did not end up hating Dead Famous as much as I may have led you to believe. Another thing I didn't hate was Pride & Prejudice. I still don't like Keira Knightley. However, as is the result of any version of P&P, I'm currently wrecked about love, as I feel no love is worth having unless it plays out EXACTLY as Elizabeth and Darcy's.

I'm cooking with onions (8 of them precisely) and my cats keep coming up to me with their eyes closed because it stings them so much. Seems like they'd just stay away. I'm trying to get rid of the burnt lentil smell. Only, I've just let the onions burn by writing this. So I'm not sure if that really got me anywhere special at all.

House!!

That's all I have to say about that.

Angela cut my hair exactly like I wanted it!! She gave me bangs which give me the option of a style, but they can also be used as a disguise, like the picture of Sophie with her hair pulled over from the side. Anyway, another salient point about that whole incident is after I sent the i {heart} the thirties update to Angela so she could see my inspiration, her boyfriend sent me a link with the hats I wanted, which was so nice!! Also, his name was Bruce Wayne!

Ideally they'll create a wine that tastes just like grape juice and is non-alcoholic.

culver city, you weasel!!

how hard should it be to pay a parking ticket off? not this hard, i tell you. besides, since when are parking meters in use on a saturday?

i'm reading dead famous, and hating it just as much as an actual reality show.

today i worked for 10.5 hours! then i did useful things after that like got my mail forwarded, and got the credit bureaus to stop sending my name to EVERYONE IN THE KNOWN UNIVERSE. it was a Useful Day. i also watched the daily show, ate a wholesome dinner (topped with two wholesome peaches for desert), addressed a wedding rsvp and a postcard, read for an hour, paid off a poker debt (jazzkat, you turkey!!) and worked out for 30 minutes. how is that possible? how rad would it be if every day was like this? i don't even feel overwhelmed. and it's only just midnight.

today as i passed the pet store, though it was already dark, my heart got fluttery. my petshop boy crush has been renewed since buying cat food sunday. all the better, as my minicrush at work has gone away. where would i be without a crush? where would all that energy go? i might possibly be president by now. and good god, i know i don't want that.

it's not a storm.... it's a fair!

I had approximately 2 weeks that were defined by severe sleep deprivation. In House, when the girl had insomnia, it turned out she had the plague. So, I have that going for me.

This weekend, J (from work) took me to the fair! Well, we just passed by a fair out in the country, and she stopped. We got in free, and we rode the ferris wheel. I took many pictures with my phone. It was just like Carnivale! Except the ferris wheel didn't fall apart in a deadly and bloody accident (not to give anything away). Also like Carnivale was the next night, when I got someone from work to (further) cut my hair. I found scissors, and asked her if she knew Sophie from Carnivale. She unexpectedly said yes, and then gave me the exact haircut I wanted. It could stand to be cleaned up a little bit, but I like it. All this haircutting has had the insurance behind it that a hairdresser has moved here from New Orleans and I plan to patronize her soon; in the meantime, I can mess around.

I don't know why I can't stop thinking about Carnivale. I thought about it all weekend. Despite all this thinking, I can't arrive at a definite opinion about it. Talking to J (not from work) last night, I worked out that it's only the magic stuff I'm ambivalent about. I felt gypped because I potentially would have liked that element a lot, but they didn't have enough, and what they did have was kind of unoriginal. Like they were using the genre itself in place of plot.

At home, my fridge is stuffed with farm-products. Someone sent me a Peta site (one of the scary ones about factory farming), and while I've seen it all before, one thing really grossed me out: about the amount of pus in milk. Ugh!!

I keep having severe deja vu over the last weeks. Which points to it being a short-term memory misfire, induced by lack of sleep. I just now had deja vu again, so maybe I'm not quite recovered with sleep, but I did get almost 7 hours last night, which is my nightly goal.

I've been setting up a picture account, and I've put some pictures from Argentina up. There aren't actually that many, but just as a teaser, here is one:


This is in the company's office building in Buenos Aires.

In the Matrix, a "dejavu" happened when they changed something in the system. But as a friend of mine once said, you have the ENTIRE EARTH as your computer.... get some freaking RAM!

such people in it

You know when you’ve been so sick to your stomach, that you develop an odd palsy in your hands? Do I even need to bother saying after sentences like that that I was like that for about 48 hours? But I did get Brave New World finished somehow. It was pretty good! And here are some choice quotes from book club (I can’t remember in all cases who said what, so they’re going to be brought to you by the first five letters of the alphabet):

A: The problem I had with John [the Savage] is he needed to grow some damn balls!
B: He shot a damn helicopter with a bow and arrow!
C: Yeah, that was pretty awesome.

A: So, I just couldn’t decide if it was good or bad
E: Wait, you mean whether that society was good or bad?
A: Yeah, cause it had some really good qualities, you know?
E: What??? You guys are CRAZY!! You’re CRAZY!
D: I don’t know. Compared to like 1984, where they killed people who were different, and didn’t have sex and drugs all the time…. I choose the future with the sex and drugs.
C: Yeah, they had sex, drugs, helicopters
B: Ooh, I forgot about the helicopters. Those are pretty dang sweet.
C: Yeah, it's like in the future, everyone's George Clooney.
E: You guys are CRAZY!
[long silence]
E: Come on, next topic. I can call you guys crazy about other stuff, too.

A: The problem I had with Linda is she needed to grow some damn balls!
E: Come on, if you were suddenly transported away from D [her husband] to a land where you HAD to have sex with a different guy every night as the moral imperative, you’re saying you wouldn’t have a serious problem with that?
A: BRING IT ON.
D: [covers face with hands]

I {heart} the thirties!

Desperately want my hair to look like either

Sophie from Carnivale

or like Natty Gann

or Sonora from Wild Hearts Can't be Broken.

Depression-era haircuts are inspiring. Cut off 6 inches of my own hair with the kitchen scissors. Died it dark. Will hold off till plan is more thought out. But will upload these two pictures, of my 1930s boyfriends, for future inspiration.

Does anyone know what Tom Joad's hat in that picture is called? I kept googling random hat names, hoping I'd click on a link, and next to the "Fedora" or "Bowler" would magically appear the "Tom Joad" hat. It's kind of like a newsies hat. Spitfire? Gatsby? These come close in what I've found, but I'm not sure. Anyway, the hat search paid off in another way when under "Casual Men's Hats" on one site, they listed "British Pith Helmet":
Good for kicking around the house on a weekend. You know. Casual.

i was oncccce human. my name was larrrry.

I would make fun of my brother for getting addicted to Facebook a few days ago (I mean, more than I already have), but ever since Jamie sent me a link to Fugly Celebrity*, I've had a shameful addiction of catching up on the past few years of horrible celebrity fashion. I was especially fascinated with all their tagged updates on Brittney Spears, and on that Peldon girl. I had a nightmare about Peldons last night. I really have to be more careful about what I spend my last waking moments doing.

Update on the tire(d) situation: it seems two other people I know got flat tires Sunday, too! Tuesday I marched into a tire yard after work and pronounced "I need a new tire!" The three guys there looked at me and said "A used tire?" when I noticed all the signs that said "A-One's Used Tires! We have used tires!" so I played it cool and said "Yes!" but inside I wondered how used these tires were, and what they had been used for, and if this was a good idea. They had constructed a shanty of ripply tin and popsickle sticks for customers to wait under. I watched the Simpsons on a small staticy TV as the guy fixed my car two feet away from me. The best part of all was the stand for the tiny TV was a much larger TV, propped up by tire rims. I took a picture with my phone.

Which reminds me, I would normally direct you to my camera phone uploads at right, but there seems to be something wrong with the side bar (it's down below), but I can't be bothered to figure out when or why that happened. So let me direct you to my camera phone uploads, link below right.

*Significant because Carrie Underwood seems to be doing the Jubilation T Cornpone dance from L'il Abner. Which, now that I see this picture, is also somewhat remniscient of Borat doing aerobics in one episode of Ali G.



No, I'm just kidding, I was never human

did you see what god just did to us?

i don't think flat is the word for what happened to my tired yesterday. you know how you see those shredded tires by the side of the road every so often? it's very exciting when that happens to you. The pavement was hot as we looked for a place to put the jack. The jack was ~%75 rust, making the tire change almost as thrilling as the initial incident.

I've written and erased 5 separate paragraphs. I believe all I wanted to talk about was the tire.

I'm a path of cinders
Burning under your feet

something to blog about

instead of getting all worked up about global warming as i spend these 100 degree days in my car/mobile oven, i'm going to treat each degree over 99 as a personal challenge from god. i hate hot weather, but.... bring it on, big man. i need to get like a ladies fan or something.



Anyway, I'm going to be truly blogger style because I have found things on the Internet that are too wonderful not to share! The first I'll start with a story. In Albuquerque last weekend, I introduced my friends to Wizard People, Dear Reader. They enjoyed it very much, and have already sent another copy to another friend for his birthday. For those uninformed, you can download it here, at illegal-art.org. It is an alternative soundtrack for the first Harry Potter movie, and, willikers!!! I love it.

So my second link was already snagged by Lady Jane, but it seems to be done by the same guy as Wizard People, and I also like it. Washington, Washington.

And since I've only recently discovered the wonder of YouTube, here are some other important finds, for the records:

David Hasselhoff's video for Hooked on a Feeling. Pay close attention. There is a LOT going on in this video. And none of it makes sense.

Tim Curry's clip from the Worst Witch, the video for "Anything can happen on Halloween." Has anyone seen my tamborine? Ditto for above comment. A LOT is going on.

And my second all-time favorite Cartoon Network bumper. Solomon Grundy wants pants, too!

Sun is set, Sun is ris, and here we is, in texas yet.

letter to mom

dear mom,
i am sorry i forgot whether PM meant morning or evening. i'm sorry i freaked out and asked you what day it was. i was not having a stroke. i am just very tired this week. this tiredness probably also explains my irritability about things like our fast food nation and aclu put-downs. i had looked hopefully to a monthly calendar for an explanation of my irratability, but the calendar offered no clue, which only suggested that it was not hormonal, but rather just who i am. however, if i leave work right now and get some sleep before my early dentist appointment, perhaps i will not be an Angry Young Woman tomorrow (i will be a slightly less angry young woman, just waiting to bake wallace something). also, you may tell dad if you wish that after he suggested i not get this elective dental procedure done, i moved the appointment up by a few weeks. not to be spiteful, but because he's not the boss of me, or my two front teeth. good night.

love,

filia

eponymous rage

This story keeps breaking my heart today, therefore, I must share it with everyone.

This story is a story about the family my brother stayed with while evacuated in Austin. It's about his main 'foster brother' E, but when E was 3 years old. He'd just healed from a broken leg his older brother had given him--the cast had come off two weeks before. But then because of a miscalculation, and RoboCop reflexes, his dad, in trying to stop him from falling, grabbed and twisted the same leg, and felt it snap.

Later at the hospital, as the social workers descended, E kept sadly wailing, and I picture him so bewildered and upset as he yelled: "Why did you crack me, Daddy? Why did you crack me again?" Which is funny in the context of the social workers being there, but for some reason just the phrase is like the saddest sweetest thing a child could say. I feel all Hallmarky or Lifetimey about it.

Luckily something that made me laugh a lot was this Overheard in the Office today:

Frustrated employee: I'm gonna build a robot named Microchip, and it's going to look like a microchip and it's going to kill people.

Weaving

It wasn't till Lauren spent the week here that I realized I haven't giggled uncontrollably in well over a year. Luckily, she's the kind of person who can fix that.

Things that cause uncontrollable giggles generally don't translate well in the telling. I took pictures, in the hopes I would remember, and others might enjoy, too.

---

So, we had brunch at Mother's Restaurant. They've got all kinds of crazy hippie art in there, you know, and over our table was a weaving; this one:

In case you can't quite make it out, here is the description that was under it (important to the story):

During the meal, we talked a lot about the weaving, but more about the description beneath it. The first thing we thought to do was to move our drinks and then food away from the piece, as it was composed largely of trash from a river. Then I noticed that the 'E's in the description were inconsistent, as you can hopefully see. A bit later, Lauren said "I think I know when he puts a vertical line on the E. It usually happens after he's done another letter just before that has a vertical line in it." Which, as you may see, is a very good theory, though it doesn't account for every single instance, nor does a vertical line definitely mean he forgot to do the pretentious version. It was however, a better theory than my own, which was that he was having tiny strokes or aneurisms that caused his handwriting to change momentarily.

As the description invites comments (though the implication is he's open to criticism from the highly visible community of weaving purists), Lauren wrote this on the back of our meal receipt:

It was really the first part that I found the funniest. "I like how it suggests currents and eddies."

But then we decided it might be mean to really leave the note, especially if he was actually just being pretentious with the handwriting. Lauren said we should come back and put proper lines on all his Es when we had a pencil.

---

ADDENDUM
Lauren emails today:

I'm going to check out the website for the weaver, and if he has an email address, I'll anonymously review his work. If you go back to Mothers and all the E's have lines, but the paper's stained with tears, you'll know who's responsible.

two stories lauren has already told to my extreme amusement:

her brother kept playing lots of songs he wanted her to hear, but she was trying to sleep. so, being the agreeable sort, she just lay in bed and took it, but secretly rebelled. he was playing her lots of east coast rap music, and underneath the covers, to herself, though she didn't care either way at all, she did the west coast rapper symbol (which she taught me, because i know nothing about nothing, even though this hand symbol was featured in sealab 2021). she herself thought this secret defiance was very funny.

her brother (maybe the same one) gave up lying and sinning for lent. which her family thought was kind of silly. because you're already not supposed to do those things.

craigslist

Okay, this has got to be my favorite Craigslist posting of all time!

Schlotzky's Coupon -- 75 cents off 1 pizza purchase. $1

Will take $1 OBO. Pick-up only, no change given. Will barter for any type of nasal spray or allergy medication, or almost any 90's cd.

Pics aren't good; this coupon really is good for 75 cents off of a pizza.

new movie rating system

From now on, I can rate movies as a value between "0" and "however many times I can say the phrase 'what the hell, man??' during the movie." The added benefit of the rating system is that the longer the movie is, when it's bad, the worse it's rated.

Pirates of the Caribbean has earned a 45 under my new rating system. It also revealed a flaw in my rating system because I can say the phrase in a different, more emphatic cadence in the time it would have taken me to say "What the hell, man?" twice. I'll have to tweak that. Maybe something like:

"What. The. Hell." = 3 "What the hell, man?"s
"What the...... hell? Man!" = 2 "What the hell, man?"s
"What the hell man!" = 1.5 "What the hell, man?"s
"What? The hell?" = 3 "What the hell, man?"s
"Why does not a single piece of dialogue or detail about movie go anywhere? Why is Keira Knightley famous?" = 15....

Anyway, honestly, don't see it. We saw it for free, and felt really ripped off. We spent the hour-long ride home trying to remember scenes from it and shredding them apart (it's hard to remember any scenes from it because none are funny, and none have any bearing on anything at all later in the movie). If you happen to see it, despite my most sincere begging you not to, you'll know what I'm talking about, so I won't list every scene in the TWO AND A HALF HOURS. However, if you can tell me what the point of the jar of dirt (and for that matter, that witch lady, who because of the jar of dirt loses all credibility) was, let me know, maybe I'll be less angry at a world with so much wealth going towards making movies like that.

we are tivo

Original plan was: No TV in house.

New plan is: Build self a TiVo.

Lauren is visiting. I have a new cat, have named him Cringer temporarily (hopefully he will morph into Battle Cat soon; I have his little saddle ready). There is no salt in my house. I have not seen Superman. I initially read the CNN.com headline "Crack found in foam on shuttle's fuel tank" as some bizarre drug trafficking scheme bust. Sometimes, I imagine a scene like in the Buffy episode "The Gift" when they live in the alternate universe where by a fluke, Buffy didn't come to Sunnydale, and Giles is about to destroy the alternate universe and Anyanka says "You fool! How do you know the other way is any better?" and Giles says "Because it has to be," and of course it is; I imagine this, and I imagine the 2000 election as the fluke where people in 50 years who switched realities would be shocked at how much a different one little supreme court election decision can make. Somehow that idea that I live in the scary universe is consoling, mostly because it's the idea that maybe this isn't all there is. Alternate universes seem pretty common, from what I've seen on TV. I'll do more study of the phenomenon after I build the TiVo.

j, on phone to mom

a few weeks ago, a friend sent me an epic series of post cards which cheered me up very much, but which got temporarily lost in the shuffle of the move. the last postcard i got featured a series of quotes from our past, one of which was me saying something like "when you're poor and your life is meaningless, you multitask with whatever's available." it's one of those not-quite-so-funny because it's real quotes. which i will answer in kind, something my friend said on the phone to her mom in december:

No, Mom, everyone knows that Amtrak is spelled with just a 'K' at the end.
No, I don't know why.
Yes, I understand that not literally everyone knows how it's spelled.
Mom! YOU should know how it's spelled, though!
Because we had this exact conversation yesterday!

hearing her say this in my head made me smile for many months to come.

humans are monkey manques

Yesterday was spent trying to use the word manque in a context where it could be humorously confused with "monkey" when spoken out loud. It's actually hard to find a situation where it's not slightly funny, assuming the noun before manque can also be used as an adjective.

damaged genius

can't. stop. watching. house.

Sometimes I think I could handle being a diagnostician, then I realize I'd still have to walk by needles and blood tests and stuff while at the hospital, even if I were as hands-off as House is, and I'd be constantly either passing out, or saying "eww!" out loud to dissapate the passing outy feelings, and that would probably annoy my fellow doctors. So I guess I can never be on Dr. House's team. Still, he's exactly my type. Tragically.

I tried to imagine what ideal relationship I'd have with house, and I decided, it would be some kind of situation where I can watch him do his work, without his knowing of my existence or anything, so that he stays candid and can't be mean to me. I would also want to stay clear because it seems like if you go to him with a slight cough, you and your entire family will be diagnosed with leprosy by the end of the episode.

Then I realized that's just the relationship we have. Hurray TV!

Today I bought a bed. I just up and bought a bed during lunch. and tomorrow I will have a new bed in my new condo. [UPDATE: it's here!!! See camera phone pictures, right. I missed a baby shower waiting for the delivery, but I still got cake and to see the mom-to-be]

i know what boys like

two things related to the same thing that made me angry today:

1. a craigslisting for a bright blue foot locker chest. Quote: "I only have girls, so blue is not a color they want in their room."
2. the playroom of a house I was in today that will be for a brother and sister. the sister's side of the room had butterflies and fairies. the brother's side had rockets and tank engines.

circumstances that might have made me less angry:

1. "my girls don't like blue, so we have no use for it." the "thus" implication of the "so" in the original phrasing makes it sound like the blue/pink divide is a biological imperative. which is just stupid on so many levels.
2. if the sister were older than 2, AND had shown no interest in anything else besides butterflies and fairies her whole life. apparently, the butterflies are an imperative, it's just not biological. girls like pretty, boys like doing.

wait, hang on... let me check the year.... yes, it's still 2006.

it's the color blaster!

there are few things good that come out of a young boy getting his fingers caught in a blender (besides blood). especially when that boy is 18 years old, and my brother. the good things are most likely limited to the following quotes regarding the incident (paraphrased where necessary):

mom: i was up till 4:30 last night, cleaning the blood from all over the kitchen. i felt like lady macbeth. it doesn't come out for anything! it was like it was atomized. and i will say, for willie's health, his blood does clot fast. some of it must have glommed up before it even hit the ceiling. yes, the ceiling.

me: [after a long argument about whether or not they were talking about a blender or a hand mixer. it turned out they were talking about a stick blender--see above--, also called a hand blender by some] So..... did y'all call it a hand blender BEFORE the incident?

mom: i gave willie back those cigarettes i found. i told him "remember how i told you not to play with that blender? and remember what happened? trust me, you'll regret it a lot more if you don't listen to me about the cigarettes. but you're 18, so i can't just steal your cigarettes anymore."

mom: [when asked if she was hopeful about his ability to generalize, for instance about cigarettes above, to heed parental warnings now] No, I don't really think it'll help, i was just being hopeful. i asked what he learned, and then had to tell him that among other things, he learned sharp things aren't toys. i listed some other sharp things that he shouldn't play with, and when i said chainsaws, he just corrected me: 'chainsaws aren't sharp.'


so it would seem we're going to have to have separate learning incidents with the following: regular blenders, food processors, chainsaws, hand mixers, garbage disposal, trash compactors, coffee grinders, fire, electrical outlets (oh wait we already had that one), sofas (oh wait we had that one too), and scissors.

i sent my brother this, and he was delighted.

these are not published figures.

did you ever wonder where doodle-bugs go when they die? so did i, until this morning, when i found out:

they go underneath my bookshelf.

what else did i learn today? i learned how to crochet. it's way easier than knitting. nora and i were talking about knitting (she said "I worry about getting old. Because I'm not sure what I'll do." The context of the conversation meant whether she'd knit or crochet when she was older because she didn't do either now.), and I told her I knew how to knit, i just didn't know how to cast on, tie off, purl or bind. i told her i'd taken a class, i had just missed a few lessons. a few crucial lessons.

yes, sam's

why do i get the feeling that mom is adding pages to old scrapbooks? pages like "baby's first trip to Sam's Wholesale Club" and "baby's first mortgage payment"?

Pillory (last Thursday - Yesterday morning RIP)

It will be hard to update about Argentina and New Orleans for a while (multiple reasons), but for now, a short story about The Kitten That Got Away.

I bought 2/3 of a kitten just before I left for my trip. It was like a downpayment, and the guy was going to keep him for me for the extra week. After careful thought about what I would name a new kitten, the name that kept coming back to me was Pillory. I had slight misgivings about this name, due to the number of times I envisioned myself having this conversation:

Me: His name is Pillory.
You: Pill-or-ee?
Me: Yeah. You know, like what happens to medieval debtors?

Anyway, for lack of a better name to refer to him as, I called him Pillory around the house once I got to New Orleans. It also seemed to annoy mom, and the more I called him that, the more absurd the name seemed, and the more I liked it.

When I got back to Austin yesterday, the owner/guardian said he'd escaped that morning. I'm a little bit heartbroken, because although we'd only met once, I loved Pillory as my own already. I'm still hoping he'll come back. Mom thinks he heard that I was going to name him Pillory and just bolted.

Pillory I barely knew you.

stabbing victims

Two things: since I last updated, Xander managed to make off with the 'C' key and the dash key, and F9. You know, he could have ALL the function keys if he would just leave me the letters! So, now I'm missing x and c. Obviously, I can still type them, but it takes a concerted effort on my part, and I might be risking electrocution. Not sure. But hoping this is fixable. I found all the other keys he took, but I don't know where these other ones are. I also don't have a back arrow key.

Second thing: At work today, I was zoned out. I must have been really zoned out. No coffee was the culprit. That's my line, anyway. But one of my bosses came in and asked what I was doing (always her precursor before asking me to work on something), but I answered completely honestly "Thinking about stabbing victims. What did you want me to do?" And she just backed out of the office and said "umm, nothing." Then I kind of snapped out of it and was like "No, sorry, I was just thinking about... what it's like to be stabbed. It must be pretty awful." It wasn't exactly the "No, the thought I was having was perfectly normal" save I was hoping for. But at least she knew stabbing was meant as an adjective, not a gerund. Um.... yeah. You know, that I wasn't thinking about stabbing people (already calling them victims).

What I really had been thinking was I would probably prefer to drown than to be stabbed, as scared as I am about drowning. Then I started thinking about how they both involve your self's integrity to be breached, but one allows something in (water in your lungs) and one allows something out (your guts on the street). Then I started thinking if this was true of all unnatural deaths--some kind of breach. And also if it meant something about me psychologically that I'm more afraid of being out of bounds than letting something foreign past my security...... again, these are thoughts that I have when I'm unfocused and uncoffeed. I'm glad R-- came in when she did. Even if she's not.

I feel like at some point I promised my mom I'd show her the Yahoo Avatars I made for my brother and me. So, I just figured out how to download them, and

damn do we look fine! With our kitties!

So much to say! But so little of it do I remember. At the moment, all I can think about is my perpetually flat bike tire. Because of it, I had to walk half a mile home, pushing a bike. So I won't get to participate in Ride Your Bike to Work Day and the biking birthday party tomorrow. And the organic gardening tour the next day. And now I have to walk to the grocery store, which I wouldn't mind, but my iPod keep rejecting all of my downloaded podcasts. Which brings me to:

Podcasts
My new obsession. They have all kinds of podcasts! I quickly learned that however much I love Veronica Mars and Firefly, the podcasts of fellow fans sharing rumors, or just talking about what they like about the show is a waste of my life. However, daily lessons on German and Russian, daily updates about word origins, weekly installments on the history of the Byzantine Empire, weekly updates on science news, All Songs Considered, and more---this is all GREAT. I love not taking classes, so that I can learn more. I've felt so free since the end of classes. Which brings me to:

Bragging
My social psychology teacher really liked my paper, and wants to use it as an example! My mom is writing a book! My brother is getting a job! I'm going to Argentina! I'm buying a condo next week! Which brings me to:

HGTV
My second-newest obsession. What I want more dearly than anything in the world is a spongey roller, like they use on so many of their programs. If you would like to see what I mean, I think one is featured on this segment about painting stencils, the segment that got it all started. Okay, so, that segment doesn't feature the spongey rollers. Nevermind. But it's a good segment, anyway. I was at the bank the other day, and mentioned that it was my first house, and it seems like it should be a big deal, but so far the only big change that I've made is I can't stop watching HGTV once I turn it on. The banker didn't answer, and I asked "Have you ever seen it?" and he looked up and gave me this look, which at first I thought said "Lady, I am male." But instead he said "Oh, yeah--when my wife and I got our first place, we must have watched it like 20 hours straight when we found it." So apparently, it wasn't that my obsession with HGTV was uninteresting to him--he must just hear that a lot dealing with people taking out mortgages. And unrelated:

Hat Trick?
The last two works of art (okay, a cartoon and a comic book) I have really enjoyed were recommended to me by TB. Shall I ask her advice for more and hopefully win the triple crown? Because I am not doing at all well choosing my own stuff. I chose: Exterminator! (William S Burroughs) and Tropic of Cancer (Henry Miller). Am I alone in saying those two gentlemen need to be beaten soundly about the neck and shoulders? Not to mention around their man-bits. Actually, I didn't choose Tropic of Cancer--it was a book club book, which was originally this Saturday, but it got postponed two weeks because no one's been able to finish it. I was so happy when the Argentina/New Orleans trip meant I didn't ever have to finish the book

This is all old news to anyone I've talked to in the past month. But I felt I should update. All inspired by finding out how to download Avatars!

noggins

Have you ever been to a pumpkin farm where for a set fee, you can have as many pumpkins as you can hold, as long as you can take 4 steps with them? So you pile up your little brother with pumpkins and send him walking? And it doesn't matter if he drops all the pumpkins on his head at the fourth step--you still have the pumpkins at that point?

That's how I've felt this past week. Pumpkins=knowledge about microeconomics and social psychology. My brother=my brain. Well, I finished the exams, and now all of the information is toppling out of my brain. In a few weeks, there will be no trace that I ever learned anything about these subjects. But because of my masterfully cramming the pumpkins in my head, I will have good grades that will last long past the knowledge's expiration.

Tonight, I'm going to watch Harry Potter at a park, while I finish my social psychology paper about the Veronica Mars episode "One Angry Veronica." Then maybe I'll finish watching Star Wreck: In the Pirkenning. I think it's safe to say I get the randomest mail from my friends in California. Second-randomest comes from Louisiana, and my family.

Save our Bluths

Remember when my version of studying for economics was listening to The Hives' Supply and Demand? Remember that? Well, it seems my version of studying for Social Psychology, which is watching the entire third season of Arrested Development, is equally ineffective. I took the first two exams today. I have a B. Which is unnerving. Because they won't tell me which questions I missed on either exam. I am not good at multiple choice, though, and that's what I now know. I may or may not know the details of the self-cognition approach to blah-blah-blah. How can I know what I know if they don't tell me? Frustration!! And I did learn in chapter 12 frustration can lead to aggression and violence. So they better watch out.

partisan science

So, something strange I noticed about both my economics and my social psychology textbooks is they've cited a few passages of literature in the course of their "scientific" reasoning, to varying effect. I was kind of put off by the social psychology excerpt (to follow) until I read this horrifically clunky one from microeconomics:

Even Nathantiel Hawthorn was troubled by moral suasion, as evidenced by his classic novel The Scarlet Letter in which the humiliation of public exposure was used as the deterrent against adultery. These days, moral suasion is most likely to take the form of ad campaigns aimed at the public.

I didn't even feel that The Scarlet Letter at all accurately exemplified the idea. I felt like they were trying to sound erudite and well-read, and they thought of all the books they read in their life (which I'll assume because of the eventual choice were all in high school) and took the closest one. Even *Nathanial Hawthorne* thought it was a bad idea!! No! Not Nathanial Hawthorne! My illusions have been shattered about moral suasion!

Random pet peeve: Use of the word "troubled" and "troubling" unless ironic. (although an ok example is also "i find your lack of faith troubling.")

Here is the mitigated passage from social psych:

In Harper Lee's novel To Kill a Mockingbird, for example, a mob of white southerners was assembled to lynch Tom Robinson, a black man falsely accused of rape. Only Atticus Finch, the defendant's lawyer, stands between the mob and the jail. But then Scout, Atticus's 8-year-old daughter, walks into the middle of the crowd. Here is what the mob looked like through her eyes:

I looked around the crowd. It was a summer's night, but the men were dressed, Most of them, in overalls and denim shirts buttoned up to the collars. I thought they must be cold-natured, as their sleeves were unrolled and buttoned at the cuffs. Some wore hats pulled firmly down over their ears. They were sullen-looking, sleepy-eyed men who seemed to unused to later hours.

In other words, the men were highly deindividuated. It was night, they were dressed alike, and it was difficult to tell one from another. It was a mob with one purpose, not a collection of individuals. At that moment, however, Scout recognized
one of the men, a farmer named Mr. Cunningham, and greeted him by name:

"Don't you remember me, Mr Cunningham? I'm Jean Louise Finch. You brought us some hickory nuts one time, remember?" I began to sense the futility one feels when unacknowledged by a chance acquaintance.
I go to school with Walter," I began again. "He's your boy, ain't he? Ain't he, sir?"
Mr. Cunningham was moved to a faint nod. He did know me, after all.
"He's in my grade," I said, "And he does right well. He's a good boy," I added, "a real nice boy. We brought him home for dinner one time. Maybe he told you about me. I beat him up one time but he was real nice about it. Tell him hey for me, will you?"

At first, the crowd did not respond, so Scout continued her banter.

I was slowly drying up wondering what idiocy I had committed. I looked around and up at Mr Cunningham, whose face was equally impassive.
Then he did a peculiar thing. He squatted down and took me by both shoulders.
"I'l tell him you said hey, little lady," he said.
Then he straightened up and waved a big paw. "Let's clear out," he called. "Let's get going, boys."

Scout succeeded in turning a faceless mob into a collection of individual citizens, who
had children who went to school together and to dinner at each other's houses. She had unwittingly performed a brilliant social pscyhological intervention by increasing the extent to which the mob felt like individuals who were accountable for their
actions.

Even though I like the passage as a way to describe the concept by showing a scene that hopefully rings true, the way they were talking about "her brilliant, unwitting decisions" even though she's a fictional character was kind of confusing, and as much as I already scoff at the way some actual experiments are designed, this just seemed so beyond scientific, I was astounded.

Anyway, in some ways, the two ideas these passages deal with are one of the "convergences" I've noticed between economics and social psychology in these last chapters. In this case, I guess the similarity would be "threat of public exposure as a deterrant to mob mentality and the tragedy of the commons." Blah. Something like that. Oh, I will not be doing well on these papers and tests.

Umm. Yeah, so you might think this sounds like I've been studying, making connections, really thinking about stuff. But no. I've been blogging about insignificant parts in both the textbooks, discussing the second-to-last episode of Veronica Mars, and going on walks with my iPod, which I got to work right-ish. And now it's almost 1am. Again. It was just 1am 24 hours ago!!

ADDENDUM (24 hours later):

I also wanted to quote this part of my social psych textbook:

Research indicates that reciprocal liking and attractiveness are powerful predictors of falling love amoung many people, including Anglo, Mexican and Chinese Americans, as we as Russians and Japanese.

I imagined all the researching renting romantic comedies of the world and writing their research paper on what they found: "Good looking people who like each other tend to fall in love."

it's one of those days where even though i'm working nonstop, it's not taxing my brain very.... at all. so my brain entertains itself quietly, then eagerly taps me on the shoulder and says "Google 'Fear and Apathy,' and see what it's all about!!" and I comply before thinking, "Wait--what?"

Googling reminds me of two things. One is on some Austin web-forum, a girl asked where one could go to get cheap eye exams in Austin, and the first response was some guy who linked to his Google search of "cheap eye exams Austin" with no other commentary. She wrote back "Um, thanks. I know how to Google." And I just found it very funny. Was the guy's comment hostile, or just clueless?

And second, after years and years, I'm pretty comfortable using "Google" as a verb. I don't know what it is about slang and neologisms I hate so much. Maybe if I were actually a word historian, it would be interesting to see the language in action. But generally I'm put off by the kids today (and yesterday) and their hip speak. I find some phrases moderately interesting, and sometimes funny ("snakes on a plane" finally struck me as hilarious last week). But there's nothing I hate more than apocope, because it's overly-hip AND uncreative. It makes me think of an old SNL-skit for an informercial that would help you shave "literally SECONDS" off the time it takes you to talk by teaching you simple abbreviations (Example phrase "Hey, bud. How's the weath?").

Okay, back to work. Fantastic!

Down the old black hole
Once for you, once for me
Once for the nighttime

I don't have anything to post. I just feel I should write something.

Something something something.

I'm tired. I'm tired of working. And I'm tired of feeling guilty for not working when I'm not working. And I'm tired of worrying about the 5 exams and a paper on social psychology that are due next week. Because woah holy crap 5 exams and a paper, you know?

TinyBehemoth sent a link to an article about Megan McCafferty's books being plagiarized. So this might be a good time to plug Charmed Thirds, which I haven't read, but maybe I will after all this stuff goes down with exams and houses and loans and work and exhaustion.

I got my boss a card today. I am pleased with the lettering job I did on the inside.

I did finally have a dream. It was pretty substantial, but it evaporated like dew in the morning. I posted the residue. Ha. Residew.

• The Old Black Hole, The Fruit Bats

in defense of my spelling

I had no trouble at all spelling anything in the following sentance:

Endocervical canal curettage—endocervical glandular mucosa with squamous
metaplasia and reactive squamous epithelial changes; no diagnostic dysplasia
or malignancy identified.

Heck yeah! I think this covers my obscure word quota for a few updates to come.

LA Stories

Here are some important facts about my trip to California.

---

The town where my brother will probably go to college is kind of spooky. It's cool, too, but it's perfectly constructed. It's like a Hollywood set of a small town. There are quaint record shops and used book shops, and a quaint movie theater:

But all of the inhabitants are either exactly what you'd expect (like hired extras of old ladies walking their tiny dogs) or kids who look like they're in costume as Goth. This shop on Main Street would also imply there is a sizable pirate population. This shop was nothing but pirate costumes and treasure chests. It was decorated with posters from pirate movies and had a projection of pirate movies from the 50's on the wall. There were two parakeets (the most piratic of birds).

---

This conversation:
Mark: You guys are both wearing boots!
Me and Sara: We did that on purpose.
Mark: That's how I know I'm a guy. I've never thought "Hey, Danny's wearing boots. *I* want to wear boots, too!"
Danny: Yeah.
Mark: I guess I've thought "Hey! Danny has a beer! *I* want a beer, too! Then we would both have beers!"

---

We went to a great Thai restaurant. All the greater because of the Thai and Lebanese Elvis impersonators.

---

We had Persian ice cream. I had rosewater flavor. We had just driven on Sunset Strip to get there, so we had this conversation:

Eric: Sunset Strip is where all the cool clubs are.
Me: Oh, so that's where all the celebrity feuds go down?
Eric: Yeah. And people keep track of who goes where. Like if Paris Hilton goes in a club one weekend, it'll be packed the next weekend.
Me: Why? People WANT to go where Paris Hilton might be? Or is it because they know she won't be there two weekends in a row?
Eric: Because her being there confirms how cool the club is.
Me: Yeah. It sure does.

---

We went to the Museum of Jurassic Technology again. I don't want to upload all the pictures I took from that, so you'll just have to see the "MJT" pictures from the camera phone link at right. They are Artistic.

We watched a film about how the Russian space program was founded by crazies. It was a good video, but I fell asleep during Chapter three. We also looked at all the portraits of the Russian space dogs, including Laika.

I also was about 20 minutes into a film about Microminiatures when a kid came into the room, and didn't see me. But when he turned his head from the video, he jumped out of his skin and just said "OH!" and left. Then another kid came in, and stood right in front of the screen, and just when I was about to ask him to move, he just said "Ohh, cool, hey! Mickey Mouse!" and then reset the whole video. Which was kind of obnoxious, but I guess he just didn't see me. That was the day Willie and I were invisible to all.

In the tea room, several groups went up at the same time. A boy and a girl (David and Molly) came in and David said "Hey are you here for the party?" Eric went right with it, and said yes, and we began talking about the museum. A group of girls (Andrea, Carol and someone else) came in, and we all talked. Then we all dispersed as though nothing had ever happened. How many things in LA can I liken to a David Lynch scene? The tearoom was like a bright white box in the center of the dark, bizarre museum. Maybe it was more like that place with the little girl and the panther in Angel.

Speaking of David Lynch, Sara's house is right by the cafe where they shot Mulholland Drive. Also, Pulp Fiction. We walked past it, and it took forever "just to get rid of this god-awful feeling."

---

We passed that diner on the way to LACMA, where we saw Indian artifacts, and Gustav Klimt paintings for free. Sara's friend worked there. I had never seen Gustav Klimt's "Beech Woods," but I think it was my favorite.

---

The last night in LA, we went to a Rock Paper Scissor throwdown under the first street bridge. Willie dressed in drag. (awesome). Sara and I dressed in wigs and various eccentricity. I didn't get very good pictures of us with my camera phone, but hopefully Sara will send me hers. People kept taking pictures of us, too. Here's my brother. He kind of looked like Hyde from That 70's Show with those glasses. So, he was wearing a dress and a cute pink leather jacket, and a pair of purple wings, but I guess I shouldn't say he was in drag, since he's got that beard. He was just dressed up as fairy. I mean, mystically, not derogatorily.



The best part of the night was at the end, when 2-time undefeated Rock-Paper-Scissors champion Caine was being interviewed about his streak, and Sara heard him say "The key to RPS is to have a sense of when your opponent is going to throw Rock."

We got a picture of my brother with Caine's RPS trainer. I hope Sara sends that one.

---

Saturday morning, they were shooting a sketch in the back yard. It was a 3 minute sketch, and they must have shot for 4 hours starting at 6am. So we had it memorized by the end. Willie and I were asleep, and I said from the floor, not sure if he was awake, "Here comes the loud part again..." and he answered "Yeah. Are they yelling the Rime of the Ancient Mariner?" I said I didn't know (it turned out they were), because the only line I could make out clearly was "I CAN'T HAVE SEX IN FRONT OF VEGETABLES!!!"

---

Oh, right, so I met James Woods at a wrap party for a new pilot the first night. It's a legal drama, currently called Shark, sort of like House, but for lawyers. He was a wee man. Sara talked to him for a while. Then I talked to a guy who was really nice and funny, and he and Sara kept talking about Spike. All I could think was either James Marsters, or my dad. Then later I remembered the pilot was directed by Spike Lee, and it turned out the guy I was talking to was his assistant. He was really nice. Then he said I looked like Mallory from Family Ties!!! Remember a few updates ago when that happened? Let me look up a picture of her. Oh, good, I like the way she looks.

Sara, incidentally, has met Mallory from Family Ties because Sara worked on Arrested Development and was on the last episode along with everyone else from her production company.