t-shirts and sneakers, every day. sometimes, a sweater.

done with this blog!

2007-09-04T13:15:00.000-07:00

having moved away from portland, i no longer feel qualified to write this blog, although i will continue to wear t-shirts and sneakers, every day. here is my new blog.

celebration

2007-04-24T21:02:00.000-07:00

this is why i got taken to burgerville last night.

"giggle bite"

2007-04-23T00:58:00.000-07:00

amazing

i'm pretty sure that queen song about bi-cycles isn't actually about riding bikes

2007-04-22T12:46:00.000-07:00

sometimes i think that if anything like zombies ever did happen, i would be the only one ready because i would be the only one ready to believe. i don't fall prey to the notion that i can fight just because i've seen a lot of movies with fighting in them, or even that i would be a survivor of some sort of supernatural disaster just because i was one of the first ones aware of it - in movies, those people often survive, along with a handful of people who were naive and just lucky, but in reality it would be people who are mentally prepared (check), rich enough to have just the right supplies lying around (crossbow, silver bullets, motorcycle), and incredibly physically fit. in some ways, this readiness for the completely unreasonable is an advantage. i would be one of the only people who recognized the warning signs for what they were (flu epidemic resulting in complete hospital blackouts, whole towns changing their sleep cycle), and my everday life is a little more exciting than yours. strange scratching sound - mice, or malicious spirit? flash of blue light - superhuman powers, or car hitting telephone pole? it's exciting to believe in things that most people don't believe in. in movies, once the curtain is drawn back for someone, suddenly good and evil become intensely clear and day-to-day problems, like money or grad school, just drop away. he or she is exposed to a whole new subculture of people, or creatures, who understand what he or she has recently come to understand, that myths are true stories and evil is real, but so is good. yeah, this has not happened for me yet, but i'm ready. it's a real shame that it mostly happens to skeptics though.

my openmindedness has its pitfalls as well. on the other side of the coin it's called gullibility. last night i was watching "death of a president," a fictional account of the hypothetical events leading up to and consequences of the assassination of president bush, and i began to believe that maybe he is just a guy who got stuck with an enormous burden at the wrong time, whose values were right but whose actions just weren't getting results fast enough, that maybe 9/11 would have happened no matter who was in office, that protesters are maybe just too impatient and hate too much.

in other news, i got a new bike yesterday. i got my tax return a while ago, and since my mom did it for me, my return was bigger than usual, and i planned to spend around 200-300 on an awesome bike + new helmet + set of lights and stuff so i could ride around with jake all summer. it's been getting warmer, and i've been watching people ride their bikes around on the esplanade or over the bridge and i've been getting pretty jealous. so we set out to the recyclery, planning to hit community cycling center and maybe this dude i know's bike shop over in nw. at the recyclery we looked at some as-is frames, some of them in pretty not-bad shape but still needing a little love - my favorite was a light green 18" columbia with working brakes and derailers, just needed some pedals, a seat and some new tubes - that the guy said $20 for. now, that is not a bad deal, especially if you know how to work on a bike. i don't but jake does some, and our friend bike master andre is pretty into it, so we were heavily considering it. then, the guy (who was really friendly and not condescending at all - jake and i both came out of the experience really surprised at how good we still felt about ourselves) was like, "oh, is this for you?" and brought out this little red huffy with pink (!) brake cables and completely new tires with steel rims (expensive), which had also just had a complete going-over, didn't need any work at all. it fit me just right, and even though jake says huffys are "a little gay," i liked it and i really liked riding it around the block. also, it's a girl's bike. mostly in portland you see girls and guys riding guys' bikes, but it is a girl's bike and i kind of like that because it won't jam me in the crotch at a stoplight. so we got it and it was $30. i ended up doing the whole bike experience for under $100, and that included:
helmet
front and back lights
four pro-bike patches, two for me and two for jake (both mine have hearts, one of his says the work "fuck")
bike
brand-new car rack so we can drive awesome places and ride bikes in them
yes!

can't get enough. you know.

2007-04-18T16:40:00.001-07:00

i actually really hate it when the cats fall, but it's worth it to see them jump really high

2007-04-18T00:00:00.000-07:00

i am pretty much over the whole wizard rock thing

2007-04-17T23:40:00.000-07:00

i realized i was just using harry potter as a crutch to avoid larger issues, and this was giving me a growing sense of impending doom, so i confronted most of them and called my grandparents. that always makes me feel better. here are some of them:
- where i will be in the fall
- staying here in the summer after jake is gone (probably no, i can't imagine some craigslist roommates being way into me privately freaking out and ignoring my needy cat)
- leaving would mean quitting my awesome internship early
- what if i fucked up this whole grad school thing and end up not doing what i want to do, or taking a long time doing it

here are some answers:
- probably in boston, almost definitely not where jake is but we will try and make it work, it's only a year anyway and we'll both be real busy
- we can both stay til around the beginning of august so we will probably just get a two-month sublet together or something and ride bikes
- i would only have to quit a month early, and i think they will be cool with it
- made myself feel better and figured out a way to still apply for an MAT in the fall

it's weird how anxiety and depression seem like opposite ends of a spectrum when really they are two sides of the same coin. i have been reading a lot of batman lately and i think that came straight out of a twoface pun. but really - anxiety builds up until it is depression. you get this feeling of helplessness, this unbearable restlessness, until all you can do is think about harry potter and not move. and depression, well, that leads to all kinds of anxiety. never going anywhere alone for fear that people will recognize you as a loser, never getting dressed because you look lame in everything you own, trying not to spend money for fear that one day you will be poor and go to jail over a misunderstanding. not that i have serious anxiety or am seriously depressed, but everyone encounters these kinds of feelings every once in a while. while i studied it, it didn't make sense at all, but now i completely understand why they prescribe anti-anxiety meds to the depressed.

also, i just switched texting methods from the one where you tell your phone which letter you want by pressing the number a bunch of times to the one where you just press the number once, and it sort of guesses. it gets it right way more times than i thought it would and my life is suddenly way, way easier. even though the only person i ever text is jake. i would text my mom but her phone is broken.

knut

2007-04-16T12:45:00.000-07:00

i like that he has his own opening sequence for just this one video.

if you want to go around thinking that you are too cool for harry potter, you can go ahead and do that, but you are wrong

2007-04-05T17:55:00.000-07:00

as you may have surmised from the video i posted, which i've actually never watched because it loads slowly and sometimes not at all, i have discovered a tween subgenre of literary rock, wizard rock. wizard rock is something participated in by hundreds of bands inspired by literary, audio, cinema and fantastical phenomenon, harry potter. these bands are often fronted by a singer or musician dressed up as and pretending to be a character from harry potter, who writes and sings songs from the perspective of that character. for example, some of the more notables and some of their hits:
harry and the potters - we've got to save ginny weasley from the baselisk
draco and the malfoys - my dad's rich and your dad's dead
the remus lupins - i don't remember the name of the song, but it's sort of pop-inspired with some awesome building keyboards and he says it gets colder and he has to wear his awesome scarf, it's pretty good. he's my favorite, although the whomping willows, the moaning myrtles, and the parselmouths are all pretty good in their own emo ways.

well, it goes without saying that all of these bands can be found on the internet. where do you think i found them. it also goes without saying that i want to start one. we would be called "the ravenclaws", and here are some lyrics i came up with:
we are the ravenclaws!
we belong to ravenclaw!
we love ravenclaw
because we belong to ravenclaw!
(this would be accompanied by a small parade, where we bang on things and carry a flag and wear awesome scarves. it highlights how useless ravenclaw really is. i mean, cho is a bitch, luna's insane, and cedric is dead.)

i saw harry potter holding cedric diggory's hand
ginny potter is a man!
ginny potter is a man!
this one would probably mean we couldn't play at "lumos," the big wizard rock festival, which has to be all-ages because most people in the bands are pretty little. the lead singer of the hungarian horntails is only seven. but that's ok because this will never happen anyway - i have to go into the basement to practice the drums, and the last time i was down there i saw a centipede.

things that amaze

2007-04-02T11:45:00.000-07:00

check this out as well.

also, as it turns out, what i was hoping was portland's first superhero appearance was actually just a car hitting a lamppost.

whoa II

2007-03-30T23:21:00.000-07:00

it's friday night in america, so we are getting in the car, hungry, at around 9:20 to take off for an epic trip to fred meyer's, attempting to plan our attack so we make it back in time to watch law & order with some tasty snacks. we get in the car, which is parked in se portland facing north, across powell from the train yard/omsi-related construction site. we see a bright flash of blue, almost turqoise light coming from around where water st. is.

"aliens! superheroes! i think all the streetlights are out!" (me)
"what streetlights?" (jake)
"oh . . . i guess just that one." (me)
lights are on in houses, there's no power outage or anything. but i am thinking, aliens, superheroes, zombies, could be anything. what follows is a drive to freddy's, with me pleading with jake to just believe in those things for like five minutes. if he took me seriously, he could become a famous journalist overnight! after that i just forgot about it.

UNTIL we got home and the clock was flashing. there was indeed a power outage, probably only seconds long because i was observant and on top of it. this led me to search for "blue flash of light portland or," which led me to this website.

whoa.

whoa

2007-03-26T20:23:00.000-07:00

news on the mouse in the house problem: there is a dead mouse under an overturned trap under the sink. i know someone saw it, because i had closed the under-the-sink doors with a big spoon (you know, through the handles, which would never fool a three-year-old but which would definitely fool my cat, preventing a different sort of problem altogether). this person opened the doors, saw the mouse, and just left it. god, i hate them so much. i have never felt such pure hatred for another person, except for other people i have lived with. just some of them, maybe one in particular. i left it because i don't want to deal with it by myself because i'll cry and be overcome by the urge to light a candle and have a small procession for this tiny animal whose back i broke because of my desire to not die of the huntavirus. i mean, sometimes you have to be practical. you can't live your life like every day is an episode of pete & pete. also, this person, either before or after the mouse's tragic death, i'm not sure, took the rest of the traps that jake and i had 1. bought 2. baited 3. set up strategically and scattered them around the house. what a retarded thing to do. someone is going to step on them. god, i hate them so much.

the important thing is, i survived

2007-03-24T12:39:00.000-07:00

yesterday i heard on the radio that there is a man in Finland who ran thirteen miles over the ice barefoot, and now he plans to climb mt. everest in only boots, shorts, and a baseball cap. he claims to have an extreme tolerance for cold and pain. my first thought was that finally superheroes are showing up. then, i realized that he probably just has chronic insensitivity to pain, and has a dozen broken bones and frostbite and doesn't even know it.

aside from this possibly thrilling news about superheroes, yesterday could have been a pretty bad day. i ate my bagel in the morning and found that there is a large chunk missing from one of my back teeth. i have no idea how or when this happened, but i can tell you the exact size and shape of this missing chunk because i just cannot leave it alone. it doesn't hurt because i think i had a root canal on that tooth a couple years ago, but i'm paranoid that it will start hurting so anytime i feel anything i start to panic about being in pain and then suddenly i am in pain, at least until i realize i'm imagining it. i went home and made an appointment at the dentist for 7:00 on monday morning and then went to take a nap, because anytime anything happens that i don't like, that is what i do. napping is my coping/hiding mechanism.

when i woke up from the nap, the first thing i saw was a mouse running across the floor. i knew there was a mouse downstairs, in the living room and occasionally kitchen, and have been a little mad about that for a while because the reason the mouse is down there is because my roommates are incapable of cleaning up after themselves. but i live on the 3rd floor - how was a mouse going to get up there, i thought. well, probably through the walls, is the answer. the true horror, however, is yet to come. we only have one mattress. previously, i liked this mattress. it is a chiropractic matress and pretty comfortable. but, it is only one mattress, and therefore pretty close to the ground. like, a mouse could jump from the floor onto this mattress. i saw the mouse run right by the bed, inches from it, and i pretty much went into hysterics. not crying, but a little hyperventilating and also some hyperbole about how much i hate my roommates. jake came upstairs and i pointed out where the mouse was hiding, and we discussed our options while i was standing on the bed, pillows around me like a shield-fort, the cat cowering behind me, completely oblivious to what was happening but catching on to the fact that it was scary. then the mouse ran behind the bed. the cat took one look at the mouse and fled, and i screamed a little bit but just for a couple seconds.

i immediately put shoes on, my first thought being, as it always is, rabies, and my second a host of other possible illnesses. then we picked up the mattress to try and find the hole, and found that on the side closest to the wall, the mattress had been stripped of its covering and a lot of its stuffing, a perfect place for a mouse to hide, right underneath us as we slept or napped or read comic books or held hands and watched the simpsons. that is the true horror. well, i had already decided that i wasn't going to sleep upstairs until we knew the mouse was gone, especially on a mattress so close to the floor, but at that point i was infuriated. i almost threw it out the window, but then i fell under the weight of it and screamed because the mouse might still have been in there. after jake lifted it off of me, we moved a few essentials of our own and the cat's (damned if i was going to abandon him up there, he was more terrified than i was, and also rabies) and moved into the previously-mentioned, still-empty room that my roommate is too spoiled to rent out to someone he doesn't know, although everyone he does know has too much self-respect to move into the shithole he and stephen have created. the room is ok. a little small for the cat, but there are two mattresses that, if we catch the mouse, we're going to move upstairs. i've been told i can burn the other one if i can find a safe way to do it.

catching the mouse, though. how to do it? we went to fred meyer's, jake for some aspirin without gelatin and me for some mouse traps. secretly in my heart, i hoped that they would have tiny versions of the humane traps we had when one of our cats ran away - ones you put food in, and when the animal goes in it triggers the door so they're trapped. we never caught our cat in one, but we caught the neighbor's a few times and a skunk probably three times. but when i got to the pest control section, i realized, of course they don't make those. people talk a lot about animal rights and make noise about boycotting companies who participate in animal testing, but those are for animals like monkeys or rabbits. when it comes to an animal that comes into your house, they want it killed. we opted out of the glue traps, because what happens then is the mouse struggles to get out until all its legs are broken and then either you smash it or it dies of starvation, and also out of poison because of the cat/state of retardation that is apparently popular in the kitchen. i mean, who does not empty a dishwasher before putting dirty dishes in it, or leaves leftovers on the counter for two days and thinks they are still good? people who might eat poison, that's who.

so it could have been a terrible day, but it wasn't, really. the tooth doesn't hurt and it's going to get fixed soon, and jake and i managed to squeeze a few laughs out of the whole mouse thing. also, two other possible solutions to the mouse problem, both of which i like:
get another cat who is braver and less useless
move out
if it doesn't get resolved with the traps in a certain number of days, i may implement one of these. yes.

also, i am pretty happy that my cat was just as scared as i was of the mouse. i once read a short story where a woman saw her cat kill a mouse. i mean, they play with them. they are cruel. it's like the avada kedavra, mean and painful. she never felt the same way about her cat again. also, i have this impression of my cat as a huge wimp, and it was reassuring to see him act in a manner consistent with that impression.

Stan Lee Fan Letter Project

2007-03-22T15:26:00.000-07:00

As you may know, Stan Lee is the force behind Marvel Comics and the contended "father of the modern superhero." Were I Harold Bloom, I might argue that he had invented the modern individual's sense of morality, but I think Harold Bloom is crazy and fat, so there you go. Stan Lee will also be 85 this year, so I feel that if you know who he is, and have enjoyed his comics or any of the other forms of media that have sprung from them, now is the right time to send him a fan letter.

As a pretty big nerd and fan of Stan Lee myself, I have decided to take on the Stan Lee Fan Letter Project as a way of making this easier for you. Here is my vision for the Project: I will collect hopefully a couple dozen fan letters for Mr. Lee and send them in a package with an introduction from myself, approved by those who have written the enclosed letters. I know that these letters will encompass only a fraction of the letters Mr. Lee must receive on a regular basis, but I feel that by sending them together we can provide an example of the web (ha!) of lives his comics have informed and the kind of community that they can create. If you think that sounds corny, well, on one hand, you're right, and on the other, you don't know Mr. Lee's comics well enough to be familiar with that certain brand of earnestness that is corny and compelling at the same time.

If you want to participate, there are a number of ways to do this. You can:
write a fan letter as a word document and email it to my email address (if you know it, great for you - if not just send me a message through the blog or something. can you do that?)
handwrite a fan letter, scan it and send it
handwrite or type a fan letter, physically sign it (which i think is a nice touch, especially if it's in a different color so it's obvious that you signed it) and send it to my address (same deal as the email)
or, if you live near me or work with me, you can just hand it to me.
Ultimately, I'd like to have this done by the end of next week, but if you tell me you want to send a letter I will wait for yours.

dear reptilian civilian

2007-03-17T17:12:00.000-07:00

i see you saw that i'm not that into you guys. that's fine. i'm not. i'm pretty sure you don't give a damn about my opinion anyway. i am a little sorry i called you "local retards," but remember, that's only one person's opinion, one that you don't care about. and the frontman does kind of look like a retard when he takes his shirt off. i mean, you've all got to know that already, so it's not that big a deal to say it. on the plus side, you guys have some really great hookups in terms of the shows you play. that must be really fun for you. see you around the bear paw.

in other neews, i'm now an intern at tin house magazine.

heading home

2007-03-16T14:33:00.000-07:00

i'll be there tonight. i love little vacations, and shepard's pie.

dear tiny readership

2007-03-15T18:33:00.000-07:00

here is the wikipedia article on just war. it's interesting that it was developed and then polished by people of faith, yet our president who claims his own faith as a value has so blatantly ignored it. last resort? right.

i've been having a lot of debates about faith lately. it's difficult because i'm not all that sure where my own opinion comes out, so talking about it to someone who thinks religion shouldn't exist at all, i feel a little picked on. i understand that there are zealots going out of control, and that sadists claiming to perform the will of or do things in the name of god, a god, or gods have been the driving force behind the majority of human catastrophe. but i also feel that faith can be a uniting force, and that any system of belief that encourages people to act kindly towards each other can never be a bad thing whether it turns out to be true or no. the argument on the opposite side is that the everyday people who are just trying to lead good lives don't do enough good to balance out the crazies in powerful positions, and so religion should be eradicated altogether, by way of a public interrogation of religious figures culminating in a. their humiliation b. a lack of proof that god exists, therefore proof that he doesn't and the simulaneous rejection of faith by people all over the world. of course, this will never happen, so why do i always get up in arms? because i think it's a terrible thing to believe. so there.

also rad

2007-03-12T22:01:00.001-07:00

beedogs beedogs

a good use of the taxpayers' money

2007-03-12T21:38:00.000-07:00

but still pretty rad.

fine, so i like cute things. like, a lot.

2007-03-12T21:24:00.001-07:00

chased me outta there with a bamboo stick

2007-03-12T16:19:00.001-07:00

get it together, movies

2007-03-11T18:39:00.001-07:00

so i went to another movie by myself today. again, totally awesome. i laughed any time i wanted to without worrying about whether the person i was with thought i was a nerd. as it happened, the nerd next to me and i laughed at all the same times. i saw omega man, which was great. i am way into that post-apocalyptic stuff. i like to think of them as training films, with a plot. each one is another possible eventuality i have to prepare for, at least emotionally. charlton heston was killer and there were lots of interracial makeouts with one of those 70's afro women.

two things, though. i am pretty tired of visual cruxifiction references. i am also tired of every movie happening in new york. what has happened in san francisco that didn't suck? it's a pretty short list: the graduate, mrs. doubtfire, the rock. a lot of movies happen in fantasy places (hook, labyrinth), some in foreign lands (mad max, road warrior, beyond thunderdome, ninja turtles III) and a few in london (human traffic, 28 days later). a very few happen in the wildnerness (homeward bound) and a couple in suburbia (bill and ted, donnie darko), but other than that pretty much every movie takes place in new york (ninja turtles I and II, spiderman I, II, and more than likely III, pretty much everything else). why is that? if most movies are made in la, why do they take place in new york? life happens plenty of other places too.

friday night was pretty much fine

2007-03-11T12:52:00.000-07:00

it was fine, with very little eye contact and a lot of sweaty hands on my part but pretty fine. it was nice to see these people i've been scared of for almost two years now because they have changed too. they've gained weight and gotten balder, adopted makeup styles that make their eyes look small and piggish and grown small social awkwardnesses of their own. they're just people, after all.

jake and i have this friend. he knows every little band in this town. as a natural extension of his ability to schmooze and through schmoozing bring people together, he's starting to plan parties. last night jake and i went to a party he had planned. as it turned out, so did an entire high school. it was hilarious to fall back into an old habit of making fun of an entire room of people at once, but i just hope no one got in trouble.

i finally have something cool to do on friday night

2007-03-09T16:52:00.000-08:00

the one problem is, i have burned a lot of bridges in this town. i just hope none of them show up. aw-kward.

i think the people in the background should be hugging them way more

2007-03-08T15:21:00.000-08:00

kotohiki

2007-03-04T18:12:00.000-08:00

that is the name of a girl who was killed pretty late in battle royale, which was stuck in my head the whole time i was sick and kind of feverish (the last four days). today i felt better, so i cleaned the room a little bit and then took myself to see a movie. the only other time i have gone to a movie by myself, it was because of a misunderstanding - i think it is actually pretty common here in portland because we have the second-run three dollar movie theaters. you can weed out the movies that just have good previews from the movies you actually want to see, and if those are different from the movies the people you usually go to the movies want to see, no big deal because it's only $3 to go by yourself, pretty much the same as renting, and sometimes $2 if you go in the afternoon, better than some renting. well, i had a great time.

i saw stranger than fiction. my opinion is, i am no longer going to listen to lizzy acker's opinion about movies. she panned it, but it was totally fine. i completely enjoyed it and it was a fine use of a sunday afternoon. then again, if i had paid full price for it, i might feel differently.

what's your dad like?

2007-03-01T20:43:00.000-08:00

my last impression was that i should get a real digital camera instead of relying on my phone

2007-02-27T20:48:00.000-08:00

okay, so i will probably catch some flak for this one for a few reasons; having "feelings," being "crunchy," liking that song when i had it on cd from a cd that i had that you could order from commercials (i bought mine in a jewelry shop on cape cod, and then when it wore out i bought another copy at the mall) but which i don't remember the name of anymore. it was pretty crunchy, it had some enya on it and the theme songs from the exorcist and twin peaks, a lot of chimes and stuff, you know. i think the word "sounds" was in the title . . . man, what i would not give for another copy of that, as well as my copy of the 2nd spice girls album. my high school boyfriend's little sister gave it to me and we used to just ROCK OUT to it even though we knew it was totally silly. maybe i will look for those when i go home. anyway, i posted this video because at first it made me laugh and then it made me jealous of all the places that guy has been and then it made me think, what is the whole point of this blogging thing anyway? to get in touch with other people. the internet is a great way to downplay the negative effects of globalization and really concentrate on the possibility that you could have a penpal from another country, just like that internet commercial where everyone in the world watches a boy dancing in a video that someone, one can only assume a parent, took on their cell phone.

ps - this was my favorite song. i hated the enya one, and the exorcist one terrified me, and i can't remember any of the other ones, but i used to just listen to this on repeat. i had a lot of patience as a kid. not anymore.

you win, ana punye!

2007-02-27T20:06:00.000-08:00

here is the rest of my story.

so we got to the shanghai tunnel, and as soon as we sat down he was again complaining about the dark and the smoke. i ordered a beer, he ordered a vodka cran (another red feminine drink), and we got some noodle dishes. i probably do not even need to say this, but he complained that his was too spicy. then when it was time to pay and walk to the movie theater, he offered me cash if i would pay with my card. i'm not really one to get my meals paid for by boys all the time, by which i mean i never expect it, but i'm also not really one to drive some dude across town to pick up a computer he had bought on a date. so it threw me for a loop when i took a closer look and the amount of cash he had handed me was way short of the cost of his dinner.

at this point, i had completely checked out of the entire thing. it may have been before dinner, when he spent the ten-minute walk between the first bar and the second complaining about smokers. not just smokers in general, but one or two friends he had who were smokers. he implied that by smoking socially, they were throwing their lives away, and appeared to come to the decision to burn those bridges while we were walking. i never suspected that he was trying to take me in any way - that he had needed a ride, and now he was paying for like half his dinner and getting a free movie and a ride home out of the deal. this guy was not slick, not even a little bit. i'd like to think that if he was slick enough to play the not slick role and get away with it, something i have encountered before, i would be able to tell. my grocery-store peek into his current lifestyle (overweight, fooling himself) is proof positive of this conclusion. had he actually been slick, i would have been extremely upset but playing the naive fool and plotting some volleys of my own. as it was, i couldn't wait for the whole thing to be over so i could ask jake to take me back because i had realized that other people are terrible and not for me.

so we walked to the movie theater, where we sat down to watch "kontroll," which was playing as part of the portland international film festival at the independent theater. it was the perfect date movie. a little spooky, a little magical, a little romantic - it's a great movie. i couldn't wait for it to come out on video. when you go to an independent film in portland, it's mostly an aging hippie crowd, and the entire theater is talking and really into it. it's sort of an experience, and you really can't be a codger about it. at first, when my date stopped shushing the people behind us, i thought he had just given up - actually, he had fallen asleep. when he woke up at the end of the movie, he said it had been "too dark." i dropped him off and never, ever talked to him again. and then i saw him in the grocery store yesterday and felt good that he was fat, and now i've completely ridiculed him on the internet.

not lame

2007-02-26T22:58:00.000-08:00

lame

2007-02-26T20:39:00.000-08:00

i saw a guy i went on a date with once at trader joe's today, and he was fat. like, in the way where he's pretending he isn't, and squeezing himself into jeans with the same designs on the back pockets as the ones the hipsters wear, but really his are stretchy and have an elastic waist and he is fooling nobody. this made me feel great. this makes me a terrible person.

to be fair, the date went terribly. jake and i had broken up for a little while and i met him through this online thing i joined just so i could look at anna forsher and maria galindo's profiles. i didn't even have a picture up, and everyone knows that if you don't have a picture up you are a. ugly or b. not taking it seriously. i will leave it up to you to decide which one of these i was. anyway, he "messaged" me and sounded nice enough and had read some things that i had read and i had some free tickets to a movie i wanted to see and i desperately wanted to stop drinking and crying to anna forsher, so i "messaged" him back and we agreed to meet. first, he didn't have a car. that is no crime, certainly not it portland. however, it is a crime of love to ask someone to drive you around on an errand on a first date. he had bought a computer from a girl at reed college, all the way across town from him, and asked me to drive him over to pick him up. i might have thought that he was using the mercury's lovelab personal service to bum rides from lonely girls except he was pretty unattractive, at least by portland standards, and so devoid of any ability to interpret social signals that i'm sure he thought this was ok. well, anyway, i did it because he asked me like twenty minutes before i was supposed to pick him up and what was i going to do, say no and crawl back into the bath to cry? no, i am way stronger than that. strong enough not to be able to refuse an extensive favor (it involved a lot of waiting around, pulling around to the back and carrying) for a guy i didn't know. so we got his computer and then went to this bar i liked at the time, with greasy food and good, strong drink specials. the second we get in there, he complains about how smoky it is, then how dark. when the waitress comes, i order a whiskey & ginger and take a look at the menu. he doesn't know what to order - i tell him the mixed drinks are pretty cheap, figuring he knows the basic combinations that will not make a person look like they would rather be eating a popsicle. when the waitress comes around again, he looks frantic, and practically shouts what is obviously the first thing that came into his head - "a sloe gin fizz!" when it came it was redder than my shoes. then he decided he didn't want to eat there because all the food was too greasy, so we finished our drinks and went to another bar i like where the beer is cheap and the noodle dishes are delicious.

i have to go watch heroes now. i trust no one will be disappointed if i continue this story later or fail to do so at all.

sometimes i encourage people to compromise their principles

2007-02-14T16:31:00.000-08:00

also, i am a purse hoarder.

this is the toucan we helped today

2007-02-13T20:04:00.000-08:00

it makes me feel better, or at least different, to think about it. do you think if i called the zoo tomorrow, they would tell me how it was doing? i hope so because i don't think that i will be able to sleep tonight for worrying, about both the toucan and my future.

as usual my predictions for a crappy day were totally wrong, more evidence that i get bent out of shape for no reason

2007-02-13T14:41:00.000-08:00

it was a GREAT day at the zoo.

first, we saw the sea lions. i am from california, and so i have seen seals, sea lions, and elephant seals probably more times than anyone from other states. but this was the first time that their size and unexpected underwater grace really took hold of me. out of water, it was obvious that they are intelligent, boisterous, and probably pretty fun to care for, but they are awkward and ungainly. underwater they were beautiful. i think that word is used too often, but it really was true in this case. it was like they had coreographed it beforehand; they swam in sync, and were obviously showing off. it was very impressive.

then came the otter, who was also a showoff. we got to see him get fed, retrieve a stick, rub his belly, and do a bunch of flips. it sounds mundane, but it was way, way cute.

then we saw the polar bears. jake has this habit of sort of rushing through things like the zoo, especially if there are children around. he was done with the star wars exhibit probably 45 minutes before i was, and he was the one saying "let's move on" after we saw every animal. but he was just entranced by the polar bears. when one went into another part of the habitat, he wanted to go to a different window to follow it, and the dozens of children screaming at the bears to play with the ball or play with each other or roar didn't bother him at all. when the biggest one dove into the water to tackle the smaller one, he cheered along with everyone else, and we even went back to see them again later. i found out after that that after his grandparents retired, they drove around all over the country, including alaska, and took pictures of bears. i was really glad for his enthusiasm because then i didn't end up feeling like i had dragged him there for an afternoon of me oohing and awing over everything while he stood around and waited until i took him home. the grizzly bear was asleep, though - we went back three times to see if maybe he had woken up, but no luck. that was pretty much the only disappointment.

the hairiest part of our trip to the zoo was the "flooded rainforest" section. when we got there, a couple dads were talking about the caiman that was staring at a toucan that had fallen in the water. i thought maybe they had seen this earlier, because i could see a toucan hopping around on some branches above the caiman. then, just as we were walking past them, i saw the caiman go for something behind a tree; i just couldn't see the toucan from where i was standing, but he was stuck in the water and the caiman had gotten some of his tailfeathers and was right behind him, hissing. i flipped out, and ran toward what i thought was an information booth but turned out to be an abandoned cafeteria. i grabbed what looked like a maintenance guy and tried to explain what was happening, half-crying and pretty hysterical. he couldn't understand me and apparently didn't work there anyway, but he ran behind a door and came back out with a guy wearing an apron. since i was hyperventilating and pretty much incapacitated, jake explained the situation calmly to the teenager in the apron while i made frantic hand gestures. the guy sort of laughed at me and said he would "call". when we went back to check on the toucan, someone was using a rake to shoo the caiman away, and then he took both toucans out of the habitat. i don't know whether he took both out because they like to be together - the mobile toucan was pretty obviously concerned when the other one was stuck in the water - or because this incident made someone realize that it's not safe for the toucans to be in there with the caiman, but either way i don't think it's a good idea for all those animals to be in there together. i mean, some of them are endangered, and they're at the zoo to be protected! when jake first pointed this out, i was sure that zoologists, or whoever works at the zoo, would never put animals that have a predator/prey relationship in a habitat together. but even if the caiman doesn't usually prey on toucans, most carnivores are opportunists and if something goes wrong for someone else, like falling in the water and not being able to get out, something bad is going to happen. on the other hand, maybe this just happens sometimes and the toucan is going to be fine - i do tend to really freak out about stuff like this. the frustration i feel about the global political situation is nothing next to my desire for a toucan not to get eaten by a caiman, at least not somewhere where i know it is happening. sometimes i care so much about animals it makes me feel crazy.

this is what a caiman looks like. creepy, right?

we also saw the elephants doing their stretches and the giraffes eating. we went through "lorikeet landing," where you feed these lorikeets a bunch of nectar and they land all over you. they must have them specially trained or something because i have never seen a single person get shit on.

one really encouraging thing about going to the zoo was seeing all the animals hugging. the polar bears hugged, the sun bears hugged, pretty much all the monkeys were hugging each other, the hippos can't really hug due to lack of any sort of functional appendage but they were snuggling, the elephants kept touching trunks, and there was a pretty obvious relationship between both the musk oxen and the toucans. maybe it was just a chilly day, but it was an awfully nice thing to do for valentine's day.

it is difficult to have a positive attitude under circumstances like these

2007-02-13T09:37:00.000-08:00

it's raining and the first of the rejection letters just came in. jake seems to only actually want to go to the zoo because i told him i would buy coffee beforehand. it is shaping up to be a pretty CRAPPY day at the zoo. i don't even think that having cookies for breakfast is going to fix this one.

nell really likes otters, and also i know we will see some when we go to the zoo tomorrow. tomorrow! i can't believe it's almost here!

2007-02-12T13:16:00.000-08:00

this is a sea otter. there are also river otters, which are darker. that is pretty much the extent of what i know about otters.

i saw nell today

2007-02-12T12:56:00.000-08:00

i know, i know. nell is a terrific name for a friend to have. anyway, this is how it started.

last year, before i moved back to san francisco, i lived with nell. my good friend emily had moved back to san francisco early in the fall, my awesome friend carl had gone to japan and subletted the room next to mine to a girl i liked but not as much as him, and nell was sort of my saving grace because it seemed like everyone was just getting less and less happy. not just at the house - everywhere. myself included. then nell told me that she had decided to move, that she wanted to live by herself for a while. i completely understood her reasons for doing it, but having moved into the house specifically to live with her, i felt a little abandoned. i had thought i was still (immaturely and ashamedly) pretty butthurt about the whole thing until I JUST SAW HER AND EVERYTHING WAS FINE.

here is another way to approach the story.

this year, i have really been dressing like crap. at work i open cardboard boxes and take out the garbage. am i going to wear my limited edition search for spok promotional tshirt to work? no. nor am i going to wear a sweater, a sweatervest, a nice sweatshirt, or pretty much anything but one of the numerous crappy tshirts i own and a pair of pants that i won't get all butthurt about if they get a weird stain from packing materials (has happened) or i accidentally cut them with a boxcutter (has happened) or they get dripped on by the unrecognizable, possibly toxic material that drips from the ceiling in the back hallway (has almost happened). when i tutor, sometimes i'll put on a sweater or a nicer sweatshirt to cover up the crappy tshirt, but it's immediately back to the tshirt when i get home. i won't even go into the kitchen if i'm wearing anything i actually care about. the days that i don't have work are probably the worst though. i sleep in, and then feel guilty and rushed to try and do something with the day so i leave the house without even washing my face, usually in the tshirt i just slept in. then, inevitably, i see someone i know at the library, or trader joe's, or the post office (the three places i go on my days off). no matter who it is, i pretty much do not want to see them because i feel terrible and am pretty sure i look terrible, which is a shame because i know a lot of nice people that under other circumstances i would be very pleased to run into. but today was different. yesterday i went on a raging domestic kick, and cleaned my entire room (vacuumed, even) and started the 2-3 loads of laundry i have been putting off for a week. today, i got up early because i wasn't scared to face my surroundings (usually i just lie in bed and read comic books or stare into space, anything to put off getting up and looking at the shithole i live in. you would think this horribly depressing routine would have encouraged me to clean my room sooner. the only thing i can say is, i am just really lazy). i got dressed, washed my face and EVEN BRUSHED MY HAIR. that is when you know it is going to be a red letter day, where everything gets written in the day planner and then crossed off, the plants all get watered, i have a grocery list to take to the store, and i am on time for everything. i dressed in a nice tshirt i got months ago and hadn't even worn yet. i'd thought about wearing it before, even taken it out of the closet, and then thought, "why? i am only going to get dirt on it, so why put on a nice tshirt just to sit in front of the space heater and not look around?" i put everything i needed in my bag, gassed up, and was off to probably the most efficient and fulfilling round of errands i will enjoy all year. i had mailed everything i needed to mail and was parking in front of the post office, and who should i see walking by my car but old nell. AND FOR ONCE I DID NOT LOOK OR FEEL LIKE CRAP.

so there you go. i saw nell, it was great, we are hanging out on friday, and just like that i have a friend again.

i have allergies, and it's hard to concentrate and/or keep my balance, so here are just a couple things

2007-02-10T18:32:00.000-08:00

this whole anna nicole smith thing is just a cover for the fact that the government has been DOCTORING INTELLIGENCE. yes, that was announced two days ago. terrifying. that said, i am also terrified by the fact that a.n.s. left her baby in the bahamas when she left for hollywood. less terrified, much less, but still terrified.

having a fever is not sexy. even if you have a fever because you are near someone you have a crush on and you are just an awkward person, it is pretty much the farthest thing from sexy. it's sweaty, and kind of headachy, and even if a shower provides temporary relief, you still have a fever when you get out and then you have a fever and are squeaky clean with your pores sealed shut and you feel like the finger of a really big latex glove.

i have a strange relationship with valentine's day. ever since i stopped going to an all-girls' school, i wanted a valentine, but the timing was always off, so valentine's day has always been a pretty big disappointment romantically. one year, a couple weeks before valentine's day, i was hanging out with a friend in his dorm room. i went to the bathroom on his hall and found his hallmate and a girl he was dating shaving each other. they said it was a date they had thought of. this led to a nightmare where i got an envelope in the mail and it was full of their greasy hair. then, on valentine's day, i opened my mailbox and saw a big envelope. i was so excited! my first real valentine, not from my mom or grandparents, ever! i opened it and it was full of max's hair. i cried. the first year jake and i were together, we got together right after valentine's day. the next year, it happened during the week or so we were broken up (jake sent me a card anyway. it was big and heavy, with a dark red heart with lace around it. i have no idea where he got it - i can't for the world imagine him actually buying it - but i do still have it). then, last year, i was home and jake was here in portland (although he sent my flowers and candy anyway - a dozen roses, and a big box of chocolates. i ate all the chocolates immediately). this will be the first year i will have a real valentine's day. i guess i'm excited. that said, my mom has always done a little something for valentine's day. sometimes i would wake up and there would be a new mug and some ghiradelli's hot chocolate on the kitchen table, sometimes special valentine's day socks. that always meant a lot to me, and it might sound retarded but my mom is the best valentine i could ever have. i think my mom is totally rad.

confessions II

2007-02-07T16:46:00.000-08:00

i forgot, this is lizzy's blog, in case you want to be as obsessed with her as i am. one other thing i forgot, i also started watching deadwood because she likes it so much. lizzy, this is a confession for you: i like it, but i like carnivale way more. i see how you could be crazy for calamity jane and all the swearing, although my personal favorite is the widow garrett (the more conniving she is, the better i like her), but i am just hooked on that crazy supernatural shit and i love clea duvalle (leftover from how every time i see "but i'm a cheerleader" i think maybe i could be a lesbian [i can't, i've never even really tried and i still know that]).

anyway, admitting that i am really into pretending to be lizzy when she's not around felt pretty good. admitting things to the internet is not that hard, and even though i'm pretty sure there's not a whole lot of things that are secretly true about me that aren't secretly true about millions of other people, i've decided to get a few more off my chest.

sometimes i have fantastical, mildly violent fantasies about people i severely dislike. my roommate for junior and senior years sort of decided that she'd outgrown me, and started knowing absolutely everything and getting whiplash from how hard she looked down at me. of course, i reacted defensively, which made the situation much fiercer than it would have been had i sat her down and talked about how ANGRY she made me. i think i sort of understood this, because my recurring fantasy in this situation was shooting her through the neck with a crossbow - not to puncture an artery or anything, just to nail her to the wall through her vocal cords so i could give her a serious talking-to without any crappy backtalk. when jake and i broke up for about a week and i suspected one of his fellow philosophy majors of trying to get with him, i imagined pushing her down, putting on some enormous boots, and stepping on her womb, which would crack just like an eggshell. when jake made out with another girl while i was away, i imagined scalping her - not in a bloody way, but in a way where her hair would peel off like the back of a sticker and i would have a trophy and she would have humiliation. wow, maybe i am crazy! i think a lot of other crazy things too, but maybe that should be all for today.

i have this friend

2007-02-06T21:43:00.000-08:00

her name is lizzy acker. here is a picture of her i found on the internet:

i wish i was just like her. she is crazy in a hilarious way that charms people and makes them laugh and leaves them with the impression that she is intelligent (true), while i am crazy in an awkward, sweaty hiding-in-my-sweatshirt way that leaves people with the impression that i am just weird (true). she goes to graduate school. now i want to go. she got a tattoo of oregon. now i want one. she got a blog, so i did. i want to be just like her, and i know she reads this blog, so really this is a confession.

my mom has this special way of making me feel really, really guilty when she needs technical support and i am 300 miles away.

law and order is doing hillary clinton being politically faulted for bill's indiscretions tonight. they could be doing a better job.

jake and i are going to go to the zoo for valentine's day

2007-02-04T11:08:00.000-08:00

i can't wait. i wish this was us, except i do not wish that jake had a ponytail.

keeping mum

2007-02-04T10:57:00.000-08:00

jake is very superstitious and never tells anyone about job interviews or articles he's reasearching, and if he does tell them, he doesn't tell them what they're for or about. i am just very afraid of failure and judgement, so if i don't tell someone about something i'm trying to do, it's because i'm afraid it won't happen and then they'll keep asking about it and then i'll have to admit my failure, ashamed. what makes it worse is, i talk a lot, and sometimes it's hard to keep things inside, and they just fall out of my mouth and before you know it family members with a possibly inflated sense of my potential are calling to ask if i've been accepted to berkeley yet (never. going. to. happen.). so lately i've been trying to keep more things on the d.l., like where exactly i am applying, what my aspirations are, and what i did while jake was at work this morning (a lot of places, i'm not really sure and that in itself is embarassing, read comic books and ate toast in bed which is not allowed). it's kind of fun to try and keep bizarre stuff secret by being vague. "hey, i like your pants. where did you get them?" "oh, thanks. just somewhere," (old navy). "hey, are you going out? where are you going?' "oh, nowhere," (the gym). see, the answers are boring, but when you don't admit them, they don't sound boring at all.

it has been way too long.

2007-02-03T10:59:00.000-08:00

what?

a great thing happened this week

2007-02-03T10:43:00.000-08:00

an old friend of mine came to town to interview at a hospital as a candidate for their med school program. but we actually didn't talk very much about that. we went to the bookstore, where all we looked at were cards, we got indian food which was not too spicy (anyone who orders the medium is a fool, and is going to end up on the street corner with frostbite in their extremities and the seventh circle of hell in their mouth), we went home to feed the cat where my friend was very generous to insist that his room is just as messy as our house (no way), we went to the nickelcade (the japanese game with video instructions, the biking game from which my entire body still hurts because the bikes are made for children, the dance dance revolution for your hands, a little gambling, a 3 nickel shooting game, more gambling, more nickels, tekken, more gambling. the amount of nickel-gambling was almost terrifying. we couldn't stop, and then when we were out of nickels, we waited around the machine on the off chance that some might just fall. thank goodness all we had were nickels. then we went to cash in our tickets. i told jake i would get him a prize, and i was just going to get a parachute man that we could throw off the bridge or something and then spend the rest on candy, but GUESS WHAT. the parachute men were NOT regular parachute men. they were star wars figurines, with parachutes! weird, because i don't think anyone ever had a parachute in star wars because they were all in space, but still cool, and even though i didn't have enough tickets the guy let me get one of each because i told him that for my birthday this year i went to the star wars exhibit at omsi. the COOLEST.), then we went to the bagdad for a delicious beer. all in all, a terrific time. nothing bad happened, everything good happened, and we both walked away feeling awesome about being friends.

dave hill dave hill dave hill

2007-01-29T14:44:00.000-08:00

i also found this. it's amazing. i think the pet psychic and the comicon ones are the funniest.

update: that link doesn't seem to be working, so here is the address: www.davehillonline.com

mint chip milkshake

2007-01-29T14:30:00.000-08:00

the other night i was kind of in a crappy mood, for some different reasons. first was that it was friday night and instead of going to an awesome party, i wanted to stay home and watch law and order. so i did, and that was pretty good. but then everyone came home all drunk and loud and made me feel bad for not going out on a friday night. they didn't actually say anything to make me feel bad, i just inferred that i was a loser. so, i got dressed up and took myself out. to carl's jr. for a milkshake. but it really wasn't as lame as it sounds. first, carl's jr is pretty far out there - it's kind of a drive. i actually didn't even know exactly where it was, or if i would be able to find it at all. so i got in the car and put on dookie and cruised around for a while feeling a lot like a teenager, you know that feeling when you are upset for no reason that you can really figure out so you try and pin it on a bunch of different things but it's not really sticking so you just listen to green day. then, right at the drum solo in emenius sleepus that i thought was awesome when i was like twelve, i found carl's jr. fortuitous! so i got one of those mint chip milkshakes that they have been advertising in that commercial where "milkshake" comes on and those two guys are rubbing cows. every time i see that commercial, first i laugh and then i have a desperate urge for a mint chip milkshake. so then i drove home and put on st. etienne's good humor, which i also listened to as a teenager but which goes a lot better with a milkshake. it does a really good job of making you feel like you're going to pull a thelma and louise, even when you're on your way home to not be mad anymore.

since that nothing has really happened. i went to work once, went to a show once, and finished the second season of carnivale, damnit. that show is so good and they cancelled it. people are retarded! oh, that's what happened. a guy i work with said that his mother has been teaching special ed for a lot of years, and he once heard her call someone a "fucking retard" on the phone, so it's okay for me to say it. oh, also another thing that happened is i finished the first two books of neil gaiman's "lucifer," which is AWESOME. i've been to the library twice since then to see if maybe they'd gotten it in and forgotten to email me, but they hadn't. and the library's not exactly close, either. i also finished the first volume of brian k/ vaughan's "runaways," which was really good. "y the last man" is pretty much one of my favorite series. i think vaughan is becoming my favorite writer - i feel like the true test is when someone who has done well on their own is asked to write for an ongoing series, or at least to write a plotline for an existing character, and it works. i read a volume of vaughan's mystique, and it was really good. i've also read some of grant morrison's x-men, which was terrible. i don't blame them for kicking him off the project early. you just don't mess with stan lee's work like that.

nerd out!

2007-01-23T19:55:00.000-08:00

even though i was a marvel child, i never really got into ghost rider. i'm not really sure why; it's kind of right up my alley. i actually never got into spawn, either, at least not until i raided jake's comic collection, although it also rests on themes that are pretty appealing to me; vengeance, chains, a battle between the higher powers. anyway, i think that the new movie coming out is going to be pretty cool, so i decided to check out the backstory. as it turns out, both ghost rider and spawn are, like the green lantern, roles that are filled by various people through the years. unlike green lantern, however, both spawn and ghost rider end up in these predicaments (they are considered predicaments rather than an honor, like the ring) by promising their souls to the same demon, mephisto. mephisto is based on the demon mephistopheles (which comes from a latin phrase meaning "friend of faustus), a demon who has become part of christian mythology but who is not mentioned in the bible. the character of mephistopheles is believed to have evolved during the rennaissance, from the popularity of the story of doctor johann georg faust, the basis of goethe's "faust."

i love mythology. i'm going to spend my next three days off in front of the space heater reading a book on greek mythology i ordered from the library.

nothing to report

2007-01-23T18:40:00.000-08:00

this is the first time i've had three days off with nothing big to do in quite a while. i know there's some stuff i should do: laundry, returning library books, getting ahead on grad school applications due in february, calling relatives, making any kind of decision. but i didn't do any of that! i read a stephen king novel in front of the space heater, watched numerous episodes of carnivale, and made a bunch of playlists for the car. it was great, like a mini vacation without travelling anywhere. but now i have all these playlists, and no long drives on the radar. i realize that the solution to this would be to clean my room while listening to one of them, but come on. the more time i spend in front of the space heater, the more time i want to spend in front of the space heater. actually, i wanted to go to the park today because it was nice, but jake didn't want to go, and i wasn't about to go by myself, so instead i sat in front of the space heater. tomorrow i'm going to buy a new rpg to play in front of the space heater. space heater space heater space heater space heater

HAHAHAHA

2007-01-22T10:21:00.000-08:00

hey sarah, hope you feel better

2007-01-19T01:15:00.000-08:00

so i went to a show tonight at dante's. it was pretty fashionable.
going out:
- fauxhawks
- their bastard brother, the rattail
- gwen stefani up-in-front do
- hooray!
coming up:
- pigtails (long and curly, short and nubby)
- mini bangs
next show:
- bring scissors
- cut off all pigtails in sight
- glue them to foreheads of people with mini bangs

i saw the hunches open for the black lips. thankfully, we missed the set of the opening-opening band, local retards reptilian civilian. they are pretty terrible. actually, the bassist is pretty good, but the whole band is dominated by this terrible frontman who thinks his shitty band is so awesome that they should be locally famous. they're obviously never going to get there on any kind of musical merit, so every show he takes his clothes off and tries to pull some stunt. but then the hunches played.

let me tell you what i know about the hunches. well, actually, i don't know that much about the hunches. but my roommates have some pretty terrific impressions of their frontman, hart. at the mention of his name, stephen cocks his head at a slightly retarded angle and says, over and over again, "i'm so fucked up, guys. guys, i'm so fucked up." andy says that hart claims it's his birthday every time andy sees him, and jake tells a story about hart shouting "what do you want? what's wrong with you?!" to repel unwanted advances. i was pretty excited to see him onstage, and he didn't disappoint. onstage, he was like a retarded three-year-old. i realize i've used the word "retarded" a lot so far today. first, it's really the only way to describe hart in person. second, i want to use it all the time and i'm tired of holding it in to be politically correct. anyway, i spent a lot of their set debating whether he was actually extremely fucked up, and that was why he was practically a dead ringer for an inebriated keith richards, or whether it was just his stage presence. i decided it was probably an act because there's no way he could be that fucked up and make it through a 45-minute set. also, there's this unspoken hierarchy in portland; who can be coolest by acting like they don't care at all about being cool. by acting retarded, hart had bested us all. the set included a mournful application to voltron, an impromptu standup but about "portland bee-ands, everybody loves ;em" and an extended metaphor about how portland bands are like restaurants and want to serve their audiences, which ended with hart's announcement that he didn't want any food, and then about thirty seconds of him shouting "bunny" into the microphone. but it wasn't a weird performance thing or anything - the band was great, but also hilarious.

the black lips were great, too. i mean, i really love them, and was excited to see them again, but their show did seem a little routine. but terrific. one of the guitarists had a grill. it was awesome and everyone had a great time. but it didn't end there. here is what happened while jake and i were in line for the merch table:

heart falls over, pushes his friend into me. his friend says, "sorry, don't mind him." and i said, "its okay, i don't." then heart says to this friend: "sorry. do you want a hug? DO YOU WANT ONE?!" and the guy is like "uhhh . . . no thank you," so he offers one to the guy on the other side of his friend by yelling "DO YOU WANT ONE?! DO YOU?! IT"S A TRAIN" and the guy was like "uhhh . . . no" and got out of there. then heart turns to me, and i thought he was going to ask me if i wanted a hug, which i probably would have agreed to, but instead he just yelled "DO YOU SEE ME?!" and i said "ummm . . . " and then he said, in a regular voice, "noooo, you like the black LIPS." i said back, using my voice i usually use on small, unreasonable children, "yeah, i do like the black lips, but i saw you too." "noooo," he said. "you like the black LIPS." "i do," i repeated, "but i saw you too. you were great." "TERRIBLE!" he shouted. "no!" i said. "i thought you were great! everyone did!" "TERRIBLE!" he shouted again. then he went on to say something to the effect of "you should get into the black lips before they get big. they're going to be the next best thing." "it's too late," i said. "i already like them." "NEVER!" he screamed. he actually reminded me a little of jack sparrow. "THEY'LL NEVER GET BIG! And then you can tell everyone that you liked the black lips before they NEVER GOT BIG!" "okay," i said. "i . . . i'll do that." "But NEVER tell anyone you knew the hunches. never admit it!" at this point, he straightened up and became dead sober. in a normal business voice, he said, "my name's heart, by the way. pleased to meet you" and shook my hand. i told him my name, and he repeated it, and then he spun around and walked away. as i stared after him, he turned back around, squinted, and pointed prophetically at me with one shaky hand, mouthing the word "NEVER." it was amazing. then on my way out he pretended to collapse on someone else and poured a drink all over me. at first i was like "aw crap, i'm going to smell like booze and be all sticky" but as it turns out, it was only water. i want to be just like him. AMAZING.

i've hit 1,000, most of which were me refreshing a couple times because i only like nice, round numbers, or at least multiples of five

2007-01-18T17:50:00.000-08:00

i think the other themes have gone as far as they can go, so now it's on to animals just doing anything remotely human.

thank you for reading this, arya. in the future i will try harder to be in public places and report on those around me.

2007-01-16T19:17:00.000-08:00

for now, i can report on jake or the cat. i try really hard not to be one of those people who talks about his or her cats on the internet, so i will stick to jake. it's freezing in our house, so we are watching jim lehrer and looking at the internet in front of the space heater. i think he's actually reading my blog as we speak. he didn't seem to be interested in any of the videos, nor did he seem to read very closely. that's fine, i like to tease him about not reading my blog, but i don't really care whether he does or not. my gums hurt from all of the cookies we just ate; i assume he feels the same way. wow, now he's using html to do something new to his blog. that's pretty impressive, and i have no idea where he learned how to do that. i feel like i've been taught that stuff about eight times and it just never sunk in.

today it snowed. i drove in snow for the first time, and it was pretty hairy. i have all-wheel-drive, so i was fine, but of course there were a bunch of yahoos on the road driving around like it was a regular morning, a bunch of buses with their ass ends swinging around when they tried to get up small inclines, and dozens of accidents on the radio. but i got to work just fine. in fact, i gave a ride to some individuals whose bus couldn't get up onto the bridge. they didn't look dressed for the winter; they looked cold and downtrodden at the prospect of a snowy walk across the river, no matter how MAGICAL everything looked (that is, totally magical). my new year's resolution was to try to do more nice things for strangers, like giving someone who is lost directions about what bus to take, what stop to get off at, and where to go from there (i did this on new year's day and it made me feel like a great person, so i resolved to do it). also, i have a pretty good idea of how much it sucks to walk in the snow in sneakers, having fallen on my ass on the way to the car. i also resolved, sort of seperately but kind of attached, not to lie to strangers so much. i lie to strangers a lot - sometimes because i feel uncomfortable sharing personal details, which is completely understandable and okay, sometimes because i want that person to think i'm a good person, which is understandable but it would be better if i was just honest, and sometimes just because, which is unacceptable. i did not tell any lies today.

at work i got really nervous that it would snow really hard, or warm up enough to rain but stay cold enough that the roads would freeze, and i wouldn't be able to drive home. so on my lunch, i went and got some boots so i could walk home if i had to. the boots i got are awesome, and were $5. i can't find a picture of them, but they are bright red and RAD. well, they're a little big so i scuffle around in them like a shy five-year-old with a runny nose, but when i'm standing still they're rad. as it turned out, i did not have to walk home, and then when i got home we went and played in the snow (which did NOT end with me pushed into the snowbank, crying, as jake predicted) and got some italian sodas. at the coffee shop, i read this book called "sole survivor", which is about the phenomenon of children murdering their parents for apparently no real reason and showing no real remorse but also not appearing insane. it made me want to have kids even less than i do now, which is not that much. i mean, i'm not going to lie, my body always wants me to stop and look in the window of baby gap at all the tiny little t-shirts, but my mind knows that a lot of cool stuff could still happen to me and doesn't want my body to ruin it. and now, i'm at home in front of the space heater watching bush bomb his interview with lehrer and the cat is snoring.

i think this would piss me off

2007-01-13T20:16:00.001-08:00

a coffee shop: a hypothetical

2007-01-13T20:06:00.000-08:00

hypothetically, if you are at a coffee shop where they are playing music that is pretty generally acceptable, and you have headphones and therefore the opportunity to listen to something that you REALLY like, but you are with someone who does not have headphones, it is polite not to use them, no? it's like in court, when the defendant can't have a glass of water because the jury will subconsciously be jealous. you would look like you were too good for both the coffee shop and the company. so you leave them in your bag, especially if the outing has been declared a "date," even just sort of. but what if the other person goes "el crappo," and then asks you if they can borrow the headphones that they know are in your bag? they are depriving you of an opportunity you had denied yourself as a courtesy to them, and if that isn't thoughtless, well, i don't know what is.

i think i am just bitter because the music is no longer "generally acceptable" and i have to listen to it, my headphones are going to come back having been in someone else's ears who i happen to know makes no effort to clean them, ever, and i can't just go home because it is TOO COLD and when i get there i have to get mad at someone about it and i hate confrontation so i'm just going to sit here and complain on the internet for a while. all in all, a pretty good example of how i am totally crazy.

tiny's: a coffee shop

2007-01-13T19:04:00.000-08:00

i suspect my roommate of pocketing some money the rest of us gave him to buy heating oil, because we gave him enough to last the entire winter, or so i was told. then again, i suspect another roommate of turning the heat up to 70 degrees every time i'm not looking. either way, we are out of heating oil and the house is freezing, so i made a den out of blankets for the cat and headed for tiny's: a coffee shop. tiny's is awesome. they put cream cheese on your bagels for you, and a lot of it too, not like places that will half-assedly toast your bagel and then hand you some dinky little packet that always has a bunch of disgusting cream cheese juice in it too and juice included is never enough to satisfactorily cover even one half of your bagel. i hate that so much. but something i have decided i'm okay with is paying through the nose for fresh orange juice, because it is delicious and you feel good all day afterwards.

another thing i am pretty okay with is this couple at the table next to us. they are for sure dressed for prom: nice suit with boutonniere, sparkly blue dress with gloves and corsage. she's going to trip on her heels, though. ten dollars says she does it before they even get out of here. she definitely has braces. it's been so long since i've been an age where i didn't pity anyone my age with braces that i forgot how normal it is to have braces in high school. like, you can get a relatively attractive prom date, even with braces. it's not a handicap at all. anyway, they seem to be killing time with some sort of word game. this whole time i've been trying to figure out what the rules are, but it's impossible. for a while, they both had their cell phones out - you know, something you can look at so you don't have to look at each other (i know all about this) - and were saying cell-phone related words, like "ring," "voicemail," "message," etc. but then the guy also said "wormhole," and she thought he said "hormone." that was a tense moment. omg, i just heard him say "orgasm." well, my mind is blown.

i think they might just be saying things they can see. although, i'm pretty sure he did not see an orgasm from where he's sitting, so i guess i don't really know what the deal is after all. whatever it is, it's pretty retarded, so i hope their ride shows up soon. oh, "aurora borealis." how romantic. ooh! she countered with "tongue"! bad move because if she doesn't want to make out at the end of the night he's going to be pissed. now i have to go look up some stuff on urban dictionary so i can understand all the rap songs i downloaded from itunes.

i have been like this for as long as i remember

2007-01-11T22:14:00.000-08:00

i have recently gotten pretty into visiting the dry sauna. at first, i couldn't stay in there very long because it got hard to breathe and i freaked out a little. then i slowly learned that if you roll with it, you breathe just fine. it's the panic that's inhibiting. it's especially nice when the swim team has temporarily taken over the locker room. if there is one thing worse than a gaggle of prepubescent girls, it's that gaggle in bathing suits and swim caps, giggling. during those times, the dry sauna is like a little fort. it's dark in there, and wood-panelled, and it just feels terrific to think about yourself in the world's tiniest, warmest ski lodge while all heck breaks loose in the shower. well today, i was there in the evening, and very much enjoying the world's tiniest ski lodge after a long day of hard work when a naked woman came in. as previously mentioned, i am pretty much a deer in the headlights around naked people. i said hello, but what to do after that? you can't look. i mean, you cannot look. you don't even want to! so do you look at the ceiling? the ground? it's horrible, and tangibly awkward, and the worst part is usually the other person is so cool with being naked that they think you are being insane and maybe you are but it is still terrible and no matter how hard you try you just can't be cool. the thing is, in the dry sauna, it's okay to close your eyes, because you're relaxing. so i did, immediately. but my posture may have belied my feigned nonchalance, because not a minute later - not a minute - i heard the door open and she was gone. i was relieved, but why had she left without even trying to experience the benefits of the dry sauna? i mean, she maybe took like three breaths. well, maybe she freaked out, i told myself. i know all about that. to tell the truth, the maybe half-minute she was there, i spent trying to decide when would be a good time to leave. even with my eyes closed, i didn't want to be in there. what if my eyes just flew open by accident, and i looked, and she saw me looking? a nightmare. but i didn't want to leave right away, because then it would be pretty obvious that i was like "oh god, a naked person! i gotta get out!" and that is not cool. so, when she left, i felt guilty because i thought she might have sensed my discomfort, but mostly i felt relieved. then, when i left the dry sauna, she was there, loitering outside. she made like she was going into the steamroom, but i knew that she had indeed sensed my discomfort and was angered by it, by my complete inability to deal with the concept of clothing-optional public spaces. when i turned into the shower, i peeked to confirm my suspicion of my own complicity. there she was - going into the steam room! not the dry sauna at all! nothing was my fault! except then, she turned and saw me looking. for shame.

i have been thinking this hard about things that happen between me and other people since i can remember thinking at all. you can imagine what my experiences with boys have been like. HORRIBLE. even just watching the o.c. leaves me emotionally exhausted. jake is the most low-key, minimal-drama person i have ever met. that is why this is to date the most successful relationship i've been in. sure, we both like comic books and star wars and some kinds of music, but those things are like trinkets you buy at the thrift store that look nice in the afternoon light coming through your window in the fall. they really don't matter.

oh no look at these

2007-01-11T16:59:00.000-08:00

more to come.

recurring dreams

2007-01-10T13:22:00.000-08:00

i have two sets of recurring dreams. in one, i have a beard, and at first i freak out and cry in the mirror but everyone else seems pretty cool with it, so i just leave it alone. i'm not sure if the second really qualifies as recurring, because it's different every time, but it's always about the same thing: this one old boyfriend. i haven't talked to him in probably around six years, except for this one horrible time when i was working as a waitress and he sat at one of my tables with someone who was obviously a girlfriend. i was so wired after that that they let me go home early, which NEVER EVER happened even if you cried. i got a ride home that night and made a new friend who had two lop-eared bunnies and a copy of rosencrantz and guildenstern are dead on laser disc, but that story leads to an ashram and no one wants to go there. so starting around two years ago, about twice a month i have a really strange dream about this old boyfriend. this time, he had run away from a halfway house after being "rehabilitated" in some sort of institution, which he refused to tell me about. he found me staying at a hotel with my aunt in an unfamiliar city for a funeral. he came to our hotel room, i think handcuffed to someone and with a present he had made for me in a crafts class, an enormous pin with feathers tied onto it. the feathers were beautiful, but there was no way i could wear it without stabbing myself, it was so big. it was the most illogical present i had ever received, but how are you supposed to say that to someone who is insane? we hid from my aunt in the bathroom, and i got his handcuffs undone and told him i would meet him at a donut place around the corner from where the funeral was. when i got there, we decided to run away together, and it was the most satisfying thing in the world. all of the dreams end that way: i decide to dump jake for him and we are together forever. it's not like i wish we were still together, or getting back together. i don't even want to see him. we were in high school, so of course it ended badly, although i think it ended particularly badly even for high school. either way, it would be incredibly awkward and probably a little backhanded and evil if we ran into each other now. under no circumstances would we ever, ever decide to run away together, unless it was to some sort of duel or match of wits. so i have no idea what these dreams mean. i think freud was a crackpot with some interesting theories about society but little to nothing on the human psyche, but i can't shake the feeling that sometimes dreams mean something. i myself have had a few significant dreams that have told me some things about what i really think about people. usually, they're the sort of feverish dreams you have when you nap, so maybe they take on extra significance because of the fever; or, maybe all dreams are significant, but you only remember the ones during which you wake up, so you see those as significant. either way, these dreams keep coming back and really unsettling me, and i have no idea what to do about them. i tried looking him up on myspace just to make sure he's okay, but that's ridiculous. if he weren't, why would myspace tell me anything about it? maybe i'm just watching too much carnivale. i'm pretty sure my dreams aren't going to tell me about anything besides what's going on inside my own head.

if you are like me, you will know you have to read this as soon as you find out that it exists

2007-01-08T21:09:00.000-08:00

awesome.

2007-01-07T11:38:00.001-08:00

also, tim burton directed it. AWESOME.

this is slowly turning into a comic book blog, but i'm sort of impressed that i know enough about comic books to write this much

2007-01-07T11:13:00.000-08:00

i realized that lately i have pretty much only written in this blog when i've had something to complain about, and while it's been pretty cathartic, i can't imagine that it reflects very well on me. let's talk about some things that i am pretty happy with right now.

i really love my mom. i had a great time with her when i was home. yesterday, i got a call from the company that's in charge of the security system at my house, and the fire alarm had gone off. i flipped my lid, because what if something happened to her? i know that sounds a little like a complaint, but really it's just evidence that i really, really care about her, which makes me happy. i'm really lucky to have a mother that is so awesome that it's easy for me to feel that way.

the cat has been surprisingly patient lately. usually he is up at five, and the second you move your hand or so much as sigh deepy, he is all over you trying to get fed. today he let me sleep until ten. ten! and i didn't even have to yell at him!

jake and i cleaned the house in preparation for finding a roommate, and it is still sort of clean. sort of. i mean, i can use the kitchen without too much trouble. that feels way good.

i saw the prestige again. still awesome. now, though, my ideas about nikola tesla are inextricably entwined with david bowie's music. and, christopher nolan is putting out a new batman - "the dark knight," although not based on frank miller's work - and heath ledger is playing the joker. my knickers are not in a twist over them picking a pretty boy, though. first of all, heath ledger is not a bad actor. second of all, in the original movie, the joker was played by jack nicholson, and portrayed as much older than batman (played by michael keaton). while this made for a great dynamic in that one movie because they were able to imply that the joker played a role in the deaths of the waynes, in the comic books the joker and batman are the same age, which leads to a completely different kind of adversarial relationship, which i feel will be reflected with this younger choice. not to pooh-pooh the first batman movie, though - of course, jack nicholson was terrific, but i feel that michael keaton doesn't get enough recognition for really setting the standard for how batman was going to be portrayed cinematically. he really distanced himself from the goofy adam west character (channeled later by george clooney in hands-down the worst batman movie ever), nailed the seemingly carefree drunkard millionaire playboy, and struck terror in the hearts of villains with the dead-serious, almost deadpan gravelly voice from the shadows. one of the reasons that i like christian bale in the role so much is that he takes pretty much all of his cues from this performance. also, i am really excited about the new spiderman. at first, i was sort of dismayed that they picked topher grace to be eddie brock. not that i don't like topher grace, but he's just so little and young. i always pictured eddie brock as older than peter parker, and much bigger. but then i talked to some coworkers who are even nerdier than me and reread some venom storylines, and eddie brock was much smaller before venom came along. i was also a little worried that they were going to try and tackle so many storylines in one movie. i mean, look at what happened with x3. gwen stacey, the sandman, and venom. they could probably make two movies for each of those plotlines alone. also, ten bucks says something's going to happen with both doc connors and the hobgoblin. but, i figure that like x3, this movie will probably be a jumping-off point for at least a couple different storylines, if not a couple different characters. they could do a whole venom movie, and it would be awesome. ron howard's daughter playing gwen stacey, i'm not too sure about, especially since the trailers make it look like he goes after gwen while he's still with mary jane. but she does look okay in the blonde wig. and i'm really excited about the dude from wings playing the sandman. i think he'll be great.

this is not my cat, just to be clear

2007-01-05T12:40:00.000-08:00

today has been a pathetic day

2007-01-04T16:59:00.000-08:00

work was fine. it usually is.

home kind of sucks. i don't know how obvious this is, but it usually does. my roommate moved out, and the other two roommates touted some high standards for who they wanted to move in but none of those people worked out so it was left to me to troll craigslist to try and find someone relatively sane. i came up with the perfect gentleman, a young man from shreveport, louisiana with the most darling accent you ever heard and a manner like a cool glass of lemonade in the summer. also a large collection of southern hip-hop and a wide-eyed wonder for the amusements of portland. i immediately grew attached to him, cleaned the house for his visit, and agitated for his primacy as a candidate. as soon as things looked like they were going to go my way, a faraway (sacramento) roommate came down from on high to say that his girlfriend, or maybe a former roommate of hers, was maybe going to take the room, so he would handle this month's rent and we would figure it out. i don't dislike his girlfriend, or her former roommate. when i had been clutching at straws two days ago i would have been ecstatic to hear they wanted to move in. but now that i've found my own person, a good person and a potential friend, i'm overwrought and being pretty melodramatic about it. part of it is that i like him, and if i have to turn him away we'll never be friends. the other part is that i have been feeling pretty pathetic lately, what with my almost complete inability to connect with any of the friends i had considered "real" (besides the inimitable jordan pierce, who i consistently fall short of believing has actually conceded to being my friend). the opportunity to make a real friend, not just one that i go to a movie with because i know her and she is a girl, made me really excited. but, aside from my temporary delusion that i should just tell him to move in anyway and no one will be mad, that opportunity is pretty much gone. it's pretty pathetic that i can feel so terrible over the failure of a friendship that hadn't even happened yet.

also, i had a flat tire and when i brought it in they said i needed new tires. that sucked.

ack

2007-01-02T21:51:00.000-08:00

they're still all good stories

2007-01-02T20:50:00.000-08:00

there's this idea floating around, that new wives or new mothers are prone to crazy, lonely adventures, like ceasing to sleep entirely and using this time to read anna karenina over and over again or packing the kid and a flask of gin in the car and driving as far as she can by noon and telling the kid they're going to the zoo. i used to think that is was an idea that male authors had about women that they thought stayed home all day with nothing to do or who they suspected were suffering from postpartem depression, but i'm starting to think it's kind of real. i always thought that if i married rich, i would stay home with the baby and take fistfuls of antidepressants and spend a lot of time telling the baby that it's ok that i haven't put pants on yet, and then when the father came home i would say "oh, we went to the park." real stay-at-home moms take care of kids all day and do chores and really take them to the zoo. at least, on law & order they're always well put together and pushing a stroller at the park. but i'm not even close to being married, or having too much time on my hands, and i'm still starting to get weird ideas, like shoplifting or picking people up from the bus stop and taking them to their houses or going to the zoo by myself during a storm. i'm also becoming sort of a hypochondriac. sometimes it's just a fake cold or a stomachache. this week it's the beginning symptoms of scurvy, so i bought myself eight bottles of orange juice and dared myself to drink them all tonight. it doesn't have anything to do with jake, i don't think. i don't want to cheat on him at all. just all of a sudden these ideas come into my head and i really want to do them. maybe i'm going insane.

new year's eve

2007-01-01T10:35:00.000-08:00

this year, i spent it at home losing really, really badly at monopoly and being kind of a brat about it. it wasn't the killer party, but it was pretty fun and i had a good time. it was pretty much exactly what i wanted, except partway through i realized that i also wanted a bunch of my friends to call me and tell me what their wacky schemes for fun were and ask me to join them, invitations i would politely, although not self-righteously, decline. i just really did not feel like doing the same thing i do every year, which is drink a bunch of champagne and see what amber young is doing and maybe get some donuts, which is all fine but slightly disappointing when you've spent days trying to come up with some kind of grand plan that will make everyone as happy and excited as possible. i didn't want to do or be subject to any of these grand plans or the inevitable disappointment this year. i didn't want to do or be subject to any of the hooting and hollering that goes on when two girls kiss at midnight, or someone throws up their burger downtown after the fireworks. i just didn't feel like it this year, so i stayed home, and none of my friends called. some friends who were in different time zones texted me some pretty funny versions of "happy new year" two to three hours early, but that was it. i don't know, maybe i told everyone i was staying home and not to bug me and then completely forgot about it; maybe everyone else had the same idea. either way, this year i was left out of everyone's plans. this sort of suits me just fine, but it makes me kind of worried that i severed a bunch of ties and will never see these people again. when i first went to college, i was terrified that this would happen - that all the friends i had made would forget about me, or that none of us would ever talk to each other again. obviously, that didn't happen, but it does sort of feel like we all started to not care about each other that much. i mean, can i really call someone my best friend if i only see them twice a year? of course i care about these people, but i sort of feel like we've all started to be less inclined to do favors for each other, or less inclined to call each other if the other one didn't call first. then again, every time i hang out with them, i have a terrific time, way more fun than with most other people, and it's really comforting to be around people who have known me for so long. maybe everyone was just busy and we are all still awesome.

lorenzo the flying frenchman

2006-12-29T22:53:00.000-08:00

omg. i wish i was going to grad school for this, or this was me or someone i was married to. except i'm pretty sure "lorenzo" is not a french name.

greens

2006-12-27T20:29:00.000-08:00

that is the restaurant where we went to dinner tonight to belatedly celebrate my birthday. it was incredible, as usual, but i really wish i could stop going so that each meal there would be like a shining gem in my memory instead of one of dozens of dusty gems in a chest that's lying around. but how do you stop yourself from experiencing maybe the most delicious thing ever, especially when you've been eating snack food for what feels like years because even the microwave is disgusting? you don't. period.

on the ride home, i saw a guy carrying his groceries in his arms on the sidewalk. probably lives like a block from a grocery store. pretty normal. the thought that went through my head was, "how quaint." i think i believed that we had come so far since the days of carrying groceries that we had invented something so no one ever had to carry their groceries, especially if they lived a little bit of a walk from the grocery store. ostensibly, i could have been thinking "shopping cart" or "car," but i think my real thought was something more like "grocery transporter." i have no idea where this came from. maybe encouraging myself to think like a small child again is an experiment gone wrong; maybe delicious food is doing something to my brain.

can't stop posting. i'm in the airport, on the internet! it's so novel and i can hold it over my fellow passengers!

2006-12-23T20:03:00.000-08:00

nsync is so full of mistakes.
the girls in the video. the horribly generic lyrics matched with generic video clips but oddly mismatched couples. everyone's hair. EVERYONE's. i know the dreads and the curly blonde stand out, but if you look closely, they are ALL mistakes.

i used to know someone who would teach dogs "horse sense" by putting them in an arena with a horse who would do this. sounds terrible, but was great.

2006-12-23T19:43:00.000-08:00

this is something someone is doing all around portland. sometimes i just love portland so much.

2006-12-23T19:41:00.000-08:00

pdx schmdx

2006-12-23T19:40:00.001-08:00

i am at the airport right now. the portland airport has its own wireless network, which makes it totally worth having to take your computer out of your bag at security. especially when your flight is delayed two and a half hours. a one and a half hour flight, delayed two hours. silly. and actually, security was a breeze. there is no one at the airport right now. when i dropped jake off yesterday morning, it was a zoo; we stood in line for 45 minutes while two attendants helped the line of people who actually needed to talk to someone because they were old or going to denver, and like eight attendants were helping people who were in the self check-in line. silly. i wanted to scream. but there's no one here today - checking in took about eight minutes. i got here really really ridiculously early because i thought i was going to have to stand in line for hours (i never stood in line at all) and i was sure i would forget that i had lotion or a drink and get in trouble ( i didn't), and now i'm just bored. i've eaten a burrito, an oreo fixnmix from wendy's which was pitifully far from an oreo milkshake, and a bigkat kitkat and my original boarding time hasn't even rolled around yet. any time i have kitkats, i could just eat them forever, but the second i take a bite of a bigkat i'm already satisfied. i threw away the entire second half.

awesome. orbitz just called again to tell me my flight was delayed a little bit more, and then during that call i got a call waiting, also from orbitz, telling me my flight was delayed even more than that. i wonder if orbitz gum is by the same people as the ticket people. i think their marketing campaigns are pretty similar.

on the train on the way to the airport, there was this woman talking on the phone. usually i get pretty annoyed at people talking on the phone in public places - not that they're being intentionally rude, just that they're apparently dumb or self-absorbed enough not to be able to read social signals that tell them that it's inappropriate. you know, people rolling their eyes when they laugh like a horse or sometimes just straight up glaring at them (this is my style, especially if they are using swears). i mean, i am not an extra perceptive person, but i can tell that when i'm on the phone on the bus or in an elevator, people are annoyed and don't want to hear whatever i'm talking about, even though it's usually delightful. it's like reverse privacy - people on phones don't care what other people know about their lives, but other people don't want to know even a single thing. anyway, if i can tell that it's not an appropriate thing to do, most other people should too. i think the majority of people know this by now, so when someone does do it, especially in a horsey voice, it's especially irritating.

as should be obvious by now, this woman had a horsey voice. i didn't really get irritated, though, because her end of the conversation was so transparent and pretty pathetic. she was obviously talking to a family member, and trying to impress upon them how many people cared for her and how many different households she was invited to for christmas and not to worry about her spending christmas alone. all well and good, although she also told the person that she was walking to her car, which she obviously was not because she was on the train right across from me. it made me feel pretty sad, and really lucky that i'm going home for christmas to people i care about and haven't seen in a while and we're all going to have a terrific time together.

i know my work friend/boss reads this blog, but hopefully i'll post a bunch after this and it will be so far down that she'll miss it. this christmas, she decided not to let her husband by her something pretty expensive that she really wanted. instead, she spent money on buying presents for children whose families couldn't afford to. then, on christmas day, she wants to go to mcdonald's and buy a bunch of breakfasts and hand them out to the homeless. her selflessness just shames me. sometimes we talk about people who are so awesome that we are simultaneously ecstatic to have them as friends and hate them for being way more awesome than us. when we talk about these people, i almost can't believe that she would be jealous of a friend of hers for being more awesome than her. look at the stuff she's doing for other people this christmas! also, her apartment is totally awesome! i'm really glad that my cat is spending the holidays there. maybe he will learn a little something about selflessness.

this would be great except for the needle marks on the monkey's leg, and how the dog looks a little strangled. but if you ignore that, it's great.

2006-12-20T17:48:00.000-08:00

caffeine puts me in an awesome mood

2006-12-20T16:49:00.000-08:00

i am SO excited about christmas. all my shopping/crafting is done, my cat's things are all packed for his vacation at a friend's house where i hope he will be thoroughly enjoyed or at least laughed at a lot, and i am going home on saturday. the only thing left to do is wrap presents, which i am really really good at. i can't wait to see my mom, eat her food, hang out with old friends, see my horse, and watch law & order. she even said we could watch a muppet christmas carol. and also we're going to greens, pretty much the best vegetarian restaurant in the bay area. it's funny, when i was a kid we would always go to mel's drive-in for my birthday, and that was the best treat ever. now it's this upscale joint with tiny if incredibly delicious portions. i guess even if i don't act like it, i am a little bit of a grown-up.

well i win

2006-12-18T11:35:00.000-08:00

i was right.
it was just some british kids making fun of american teenagers. hey, i make fun of them too. it's cool.

why i eyes ya

2006-12-18T11:13:00.000-08:00

this is pretty funny.

this is terrible, but also funny.

and then there's this.
is this even for real? ten bucks says it's another lonelygirl15, but either way, it is hilarious. jake seems to think that it's stupid enough to be real, but i'm optimistic enough to think that even teenagers aren't this dumb.

we all want to change the world

2006-12-17T12:15:00.000-08:00

so sometimes i tend to overrepresent my circumstances. maybe not overrepresent, really, but guild a little bit so that people don't feel sorry for me, or like they need to do something to fix what's going on because i don't like people meddling with my life and whatever mess i'm in, i got myself into so it's really no one else's responsibility. if i was ever in trouble - like arrested, or things being reposessed trouble (somehow when i picture my future, i always assume that i am going to make some horrible mistake, or some horrible mistake is going to be made and somehow related to me, and i will end up in jail. i don't think i've ever done a single thing wrong that has merited jailtime, and i'm pretty sure i never would - not because i'm afraid of jail, although i am, but because that involves hurting another person pretty badly and as a basically good person i spend most of my time trying not to do exactly that) - i know that there are at least half a dozen people who would help me and still love me, even after giving me a stern talking-to. thankfully, never in my life have i been in that kind of trouble. while i am not awesome with money, i'm getting better and i've never actually had enough money to buy anything big enough to put me in debt far enough to have anything reposessed. also, i don't think anything i own is worth enough to erase that kind of debt anyway.

one way in which i've misrepresented my circumstances lately is my living situation. i live with four boys, which superficially is awesome. there are no passive-aggressive notes anywhere, ever, there's no kind of time limit on how long dishes can be in the sink, and the washer and dryer are always free. always. i'm never asked to turn anything down, clean anything up, or change in any way. i also like all of them, every single one, and i like hanging out with them. they are all good people and hilarious in their own ways, which is important. i never have to put up with friends of theirs i don't like, listen to music of theirs that makes me want to beat them up, or question their motivations for donning ridiculous clothing because they all have different but pretty good tastes in all of those categories.

those are the things that i tell people about when they ask how it's going, where i'm living and what it's like. the things i deal with daily, though, are forcing me to secretly hate the people that i live with and spend all of my time up in my room alternately pouting and being furious. the kitchen is an absolute atrocity. i used to eat frozen food almost exclusively because it was impossible to cook, but now, with the sink and the dish situation what it is, i pretty much just eat snack food. i'm dying to go home and eat a real meal. i feel sick almost all the time, but the thought of clearing myself a place big enough to fix something real just makes me lose my appetite. the living room and den are extensions of both the kitchen and my roommates' closets. discarded clothes, overdue library books, bike parts and sewing materials are littered across whatever areas pizza boxes and leftover chinese food don't have covered. i don't even want to discuss the bathroom. it's not just the mess, either - if it was just the mess, i would probably clean it up myself every couple weeks and then be disheartened when it looked exactly the same way two days later and fancy myself a bit of a cinderella. it's also the complete disrespect for any kind of schedule, boundary, or basic need. the minute my head hits the pillow, either the revived-from-the-80's song of the minute is blasting from my roommate's stereo, there is a major session accompanied by 60's pyschedelic garage across the hall, or band practice is starting up. there is always someone jumping up and down the stairs, practicing guitar, or talking loudly on their phone somewhere in the house pretty much anytime i want to be sleeping, which is more and more often now that i don't interact with my roommates pretty much at all. if you lend anything, don't bother trying to get it back, at least not in the condition it was in when you owned it. if you're lucky, you'll find it downstairs either scratched to hell or taken apart. don't even think about buying any food that is mildly delicious or comes in attractive packaging - it will be gone. this is my biggest problem with living here, and i have told them all several times that this can't continue. they inhabit this shithole on their parents' dimes; they can go on a gourmet shopping spree anytime they want. they all eat out with some regularity and keep at least $40 worth of food on their shelves at pretty much all times. i have a job and pay for my food with my hard-earned money, and they steal it right out of my mouth. every time i go down to the kitchen, something else is gone. i have thought about keeping my food in my room, but there's no space for it - i have thought about getting some kind of foot locker for it, but every time i think about that it just makes me furious. i pay rent to live here, why should i need to take measures to protect myself from theft in my own home?! it's so disrespectful it disgusts me. i can hardly think about anything except how much i hate it here. i would move out in a second, but i love living with jake and don't want to stick him with my half of the rent, and also the rent is way cheaper than it would be anywhere else living on my own. so i've come to a crossroads - do i boobytrap my food withy laxatives and ipecac, duct tape abandoned items to the couch, and label messes with the offenders' names, since frank discussions about my dissatisfaction have gotten me nowhere, or do i take a stand? what should that stand involve? maybe some kind of negotiation, where i let them have the living room and the bathroom if the kitchen situation changes and the stealing stops. but no human being should have to live this way, why should i settle for a half-assed attempt at revolution? my instinct tells me that a roundtable will have the same effects as the sincere anger i have expressed so far - absolutely none. guerilla tactics it is.

thank you for pointing that out

2006-12-14T22:46:00.000-08:00

so yes, i do recognize the fact that being entirely content - no, more than entirely content, totally ecstatic - to learn about star wars and read comic books for my birthday makes me a complete geek. i knew that already and if you didn't, well, surprise! i have tried in other years to get together with a dozen plus friends and have them all buy me drinks, but that never really turns out being as much fun as you think it's going to be. mostly, all my friends just don't have things to say to each other, and then i vacillate between trying to draw them together by talking to them all at once and trying to make them feel special individually by withdrawing with them and asking them about their lives. it never really works and it's not that fun and honestly i don't really drink that much anyway. these days i prefer a small adventure with one, maybe two friends (they have to know each other beforehand) or a warm evening in. on one hand, this makes me feel extremely old; i still know a lot of people who just want to go out on the weekends and spend $40 at a bar or get dolled up and go to a party. i'm not that kind of people anymore, really; the big party always turns out to be a disappointment and i usually want to smack the majority of people at the bar. on the other hand, i don't really want to meet anyone, i already have most of the friends that i need, and what kind of friend do you meet at a bar anyway? so, i did not want to "go out! whooo!" for my birthday this year, and honestly, it was the best birthday i've had in a really long time.

if you think i'm putting how old i am on the internet you have another thing coming

2006-12-14T12:32:00.000-08:00

yesterday was my birthday. i had a great day. i slept in and had a delicious cup of coffee and read the paper. then, jake took me to the star wars exhibit at the oregon museum of science and industry. it was AWESOME. the website said plan on it taking about an hour to get through; i think i was there for about two and a half. i watched all the videos, touched everything you were allowed to touch, and took pictures of jake next to the most awesome stuff like darth vader, the robots and the wookie costumes. darth vader's costume was HUGE. it was the first thing i saw when i walked into the exhibit and my jaw just dropped at how ENORMOUS it was. that was pretty satisfying, because what if i had gotten there and it was my size? not intimidating. the best interviews were with the sound guy, who said he used bear noises for chewbacca, and anthony daniels, who played c3po and was way, way into it even though putting on the costume was obviously like relegating yourself to being in a tin can for hours. then we went to burgerville and i had a chocolate peppermint milkshake. it is just not my birthday without a milkshake.

then i went to tutor. the family i was tutoring for found out on monday that 1. i love comic books and 2. wednesday was going to be my birthday. when i came in yesterday, there was a bag of home-baked delicious goodies and a pretty heavy present waiting for me. i was awed by how thoughtful they were, and then i opened the present - the new "Absolute Sandman", a hardcover set of the first 18 issues of neil gaiman's celebrated comic. unbelievable. not only expensive, but obviously carefully researched and purchased.

also i got two messages from jordan pierce while i was at the museum, both of them parts of a song he had written, composed and scored for me for my birthday. best day ever.

let's think about this

2006-12-13T10:30:00.000-08:00

should i feel bad for thinking this is funny?

2006-12-11T14:27:00.001-08:00

my favorite is the vampire

JUST IN CASE YOU WERE WORRIED!

2006-12-11T09:10:00.001-08:00

the deadline wasn't friday! it is today! i win!

when i got that email i almost wrote back telling the dean's secretary that i love her and that i'm going to send her some cookies and a copy of my christmas mix. then i realized that no i do not love her and if i actually got my act together and did those things she would probably think it was really weird. also, maybe she's jewish.

it's fixin to be a long one

2006-12-11T00:07:00.000-08:00

it has been a real long time since i pulled an all-nighter. i feel slightly hysterical but surprisingly competent. the key is to not get too wordy; that way, it's much easier to edit with a clear head the next day. a lot of ten-dollar words can confuse a mind full of coffee (and maybe a pastry? maybe. but not if i hit the snacks hard tonight. it's harder not to think about chocolate on the even hours, i find). another key is music with no words, or maybe words in another language or that are so soft they're like water. so pretty much, air exclusively.

here is the situation. when i was putting together my little checklists in october (i'm applying to sixteen grad schools, if i'm going to stay on top of the various deadlines and weird small requirements, i'm going to need checklists), berkeley's website said that applications were due on the 11th. that is what i wrote on my little checklist. the admissions webpage says that everything needs to be postmarked the 11th, "not December 8th as listed elsewhere" (see for yourself). when i read that, i was like "ok cool, still the 11th." well, now when i log in to the online application, it says i've chosen a major for which the deadline has passed, and sure enough, when i re-looked at the grad programs & deadlines website it said the 8th. screwed! well, i sent a few mildly upset/slightly confused emails to who i hope are the right people, and i'll find out tomorrow if i can still submit. so, tonight's long haul may or may not be completely necessary and/or completely disappointing. either way, i will most likely not come close to getting in because it is the number one program in the country, but at least i will have enjoyed some late-nights snacks combined with some late-night truths about myself and how i always wait til the last minute and how that is just silly.

stan lee is 84

2006-12-10T14:17:00.000-08:00

if you want to write him a fan letter, here is his fan mail address:

Pow! Entertainment
9440 Santa Monica Blvd., Ste. 620
Beverly Hills, CA 90210

you're running out of time. i would do it before the year is out. myself, i'm going to do it as soon as i finish these applications.

no way they can keep this, although i would probably try if i were them

2006-12-10T13:47:00.001-08:00

slow wave

2006-12-10T10:54:00.000-08:00

this is my favorite new webcomic.
there are some weird trends: superman and wal-mart are pretty common themes, and goats, chickens, and dinosaurs pop up a lot. also, a lot of people get stranded on deserted islands.

as long as no one who lives with you figures it out, it's still a secret

2006-12-09T22:47:00.000-08:00

well i did finish it, and it turns out it was about a lot more than kissing a sixteen-year-old. it was partly about how sometimes when you try your absolute hardest to be a good person, terrible things still happen (i know all about that), and also how a certain code of morals that includes chivalry and an appreciation for the outdoors is somewhat obsolete (although i'm not one for camping, i know a little bit about that). it made me cry really hard and now i'm going to go take a shower so no one can tell.

down in the valley

2006-12-09T21:07:00.000-08:00

i just got halfway through it, and unless life while not watching this movie gets incredibly more painful i will not be watching any more of it. i am the kind of movie watcher who can sit through guts being ripped out and eye stabbings and continue to put popcorn in my mouth, but i could never make it through an entire episode of the wonder years because there was always a point where something so embarassing was going to happen to kevin that i had to change the channel. i watched most of the squid and the whale through my fingers with my hood pulled halfway over my eyes; i just plain walked out of meet the parents. at the moment i checked out of this movie, ed norton had taken the little brother of the main character (who he is dating, which is forbidden by her father, who is a police officer and owns a ton of guns) on a trail ride on a horse he does not own (which you can legally be shot for and which he has already gotten in trouble with the law for once in this movie, to the knowledge, chagrin and fury of the main character's father) to shoot guns in some kind of aqueduct because he thinks the kid needs some "fresh air." this is going to end terribly and i am not going to be there to see it. this has been pretty much the worst procrastination ever.

my question for ed norton: why did you make a movie where you kiss a sixteen-year-old constantly? we all love you, but no one is behind you on this one.

new rule - animal touching animal of completely different species, aok.

2006-12-09T00:09:00.001-08:00

well i'll be darned

2006-12-08T23:41:00.000-08:00

how real do you think this is?

i'm not sure. the people who have researched it will probably tell me that the government wants me to doubt its existence. well, the government's kind of getting its way. what kind of forces, in terms of people, weaponry, and transportation, would they need to enact some kind of feat like rounding up all the liberals and putting them in these "camps"? how could they hide that kind of stuff? i'd like to think that, especially now with a democratic house, the government is transparent enough not to be able to keep something like this from the people. i don't think bush has the power to pull this off. granted, i'm not into nascar, so i've never actually discussed politics with someone who fully supported him, but i can't imagine what would happen in at least any of the urban centers i've ever visited if anything like what this website predicts even attempted to transpire. riots in the streets, baseball bats with nails in them, homemade snares. enough of us are prepared for the zombie apocalypse that we could hole up and ride it out with short periods of running and violence. jake might think i'm naive and unprepared for the reality that the government is trying to disarm its citizens so that it can round up the free thinkers. but what kind of event in the next two years could possibly "force" bush to sign those executive orders? he doesn't have a lot of time left, so something really serious would have to happen between now and then. an enormous threat to our country from the inside. first of all, i don't see that happening, and second of all i don't see the president having the support to pull something like that off. while i understand that it is satisfying to wholeheartedly believe that our president is a man ethically capable of pulling something atrocious like that on his own citizens, i don't think it's going to happen. it's exciting to think that you know a secret and it's exciting to think you know what's going to happen and that you need to inform people about it, but even assuming that the information on this website is totally for real (doubtful), how likely is it to happen, really (not very). who knows, maybe in a month or a year i will be biting my tongue and brandishing a katana in the streets on a motorcycle. actually, motorcycles are niosy, so probably on a bicycle. slower, but sneakier and more fuel efficient. but as my car payments reach their end, this end-of-times form of escapism is becoming less and less a part of my daily daydream routine, slowly being replaced by scenes of domestic bliss (me, alone in the house, and it's clean. maybe i'm reading, maybe i have my feet up on the coffee table and i'm listening to some records, maybe i'm jumping up and down on the couch trying to run my finger along the molding to show myself there's no dust there. the point of the dreams is, 1. it's quiet except for the noise of my choosing and 2. it's clean. really clean.)

housewives have it made

2006-12-08T21:56:00.000-08:00

this is for sure my new favorite website.

of course, no one will be cleaning the bathroom nor the kitchen anytime soon, and also none of my roommates look anything like that. but it's fun to dream.

i hate almost everyone

2006-12-08T20:07:00.000-08:00

right now i hate anyone who is writing a paper on a film, anyone who is sleeping in tomorrow, anyone who is a roommate of mine and whose dishes are in the sink, on the counter, or pretty much anywhere downstairs except clean in the cupboard, anyone who turns the music at the nightclub across the street from my house up so loud, anyone who has not seen the prestige and still has so much to look forward to, anyone spending less than me on christmas presents, anyone who has ever met patrick stewart, anyone who is making noise downstairs, anyone who isn't cold, and anyone who is done with grad school applications. all you people can go suck on a lemon, because i hate you and probably will until at least monday. i love my friend jordan because i missed his birthday yesterday but i know he will still call me on mine and not even be a little upset and i love my cat because earlier i gave him catnip and he freaked out for my amusement and then when i was done being amused he fell asleep on a pile of jake's (mostly black) clothes. awesome.

i found this while i was looking for pictures of doctor strange's house

2006-12-07T22:40:00.001-08:00

this hamster lives in this tiny house. people are so crazy.

i win

2006-12-07T21:45:00.000-08:00

today was a terrific day. i stopped by the bakery at work to get some cookies, but their credit card machine wasn't working so they just GAVE them to me. and that was only the beginning. after that, i got my friends and myself some delicious orange soda, which we all enjoyed to the tune of some christmas carols. then, later, one of the bigger (as in nerdier, not as in heavier) nerds and i started a pool: everyone was going to pick a superhero who deserved to be pulled from the archives, and we were going to put money on the one we picked to be the first to appear in a comic book movie or have a movie of their own. the rules were, no one who already had a movie or one obviously in the works, and the hero had to have his or her own series. well, i have been on a real doctor strange thing lately. i just read the issue that frank miller did where spiderman saves doctor strange from "the dread dormammu," and doctor strange is the ish. honestly, as a little child reading my dad's "origin of marvel comics," he was my favorite. as i got older, i abandoned him for flashier and more popular superheroes; spiderman, the x-men, iron man. but he deserved more from me. his powers aren't the result of an experiment-gone-wrong or the benefit of technological know-how combined with gobs of money; he studied for years to be able to understand the power behind the mystery he controls. while he was more or less a product of the late sixties, as is obvious by his sensitive and open-minded perspective on his playboy lifestyle and his new-age approach to the concept of magic (astral projection, entering dreams, crystals) the time is ripe for a reinvention of doctor strange. he has a very batman begins-esque backstory, complete with intense training on a mountaintop and a later adversarious encounter with his former master. what with the popularity of harry potter, the entertainment industry is rife with stories about magic and the supernatural; if they just got rid of the clouds of pink smoke that come out of his hands and some of his hokier mumbo-jumbo, doctor strange could fill both a superhero and a magician niche with panache. as everyone knows, x3 is being used as a jumpoff point for four spinoffs: wolverine, emma frost, xavier school and magneto. i predicted he would appear in at least one of the wolverine films, as wolverine went to doctor strange for help uncovering his past when professor x first refused him. maybe this would lead to his own spinoff, who knew. then, my bubble was burst: doctor strange has his own animated film slated for release straight to dvd next year. they could have really done this up right: big-name actor, maybe even two, one for a younger and one for an older doctor strange. big-name actress who he saves from trouble in various dimensions. tie-ins, amazing special effects, everything. but no. animated, straight to dvd. this was a heartbreaker. definitely the biggest bummer of the day. but you know what i realized? i had had probably a half-hour conversation with someone at work who i wasn't sure was even really my friend anymore about my passion and predictions for doctor strange, and he kept this information from me because he wanted me to enjoy my optimism. a lot of good things happened to me today; that was probably the nicest. i think now i'll put my money on thor and hope they don't make him as much of a weenie as he was originally. let's just hope they leave the silver surfer buried.

then a work friend gave me a tip, and i found that i could get a christmas present that i was feeling guilty over how much i had paid for it for twenty bucks less tomorrow! that felt great, especially since it's a really good present that i'm excited about giving. then, on my way out of work ( i work in a mall), i waved to santa and he asked me if i "still wanted that pony." "how did you know?!" i asked him. he winked and held his belly while he chortled, then he rang a little bell at me while i was on the escalator. it was perfect. then, when i was crossing the street outside, the light was red and this guy i had covertly stared at a little before was like, "let's do it." "i'm in," i said, and we jaywalked together. i don't jaywalk, but how could i refuse? when we got to the other side of the street, we shook hands. yes.

the weird thing is, yesterday i ate really healthy and felt awful. today i ate nothing but sugar - the cookies, the orange soda, the cranberry bliss bar, the peppermint cookies i found at trader joe's - and i feel totally awesome. sugar is like the sun to my superman. people use kryptonite metaphors too often. don't they know that superman gets his power from the sun? kryptonite is so negative.

oh HECK yes. am i crazy, or did doctor strange make a cameo appearance in one of the x-men movies, or at least an x-men i've read recently? i feel like there is a shot of them flying over his house ("sanctum sanctorum") with its extremely recognizable skylight (a real house in greenwich village, next time i'm in new york i'm going there gosh i wish superheroes were real so i could meet them i wish that so hard) but he's not home or something.

best things i learned from looking up doctor strange on wikipedia just now:
his address is 177A Bleecker Street
he is mentioned in pink floyd's song "cymbaline" and appears on the cover of a saucerful of secrets, and is mentioned in a t rex song
dr orpheus in the venture brothers is modelled after him (he is the best character on the venture brothers, ask anyone)
he has been in like a million dimensions and time periods
doctor strange is totally, totally rad

let's blog about the pictures i have on here instead of doing real work

2006-12-05T19:13:00.000-08:00

i'm going over to a friend's house to watch elf in like half an hour anyway. i can't wait! first time this season!

i was thinking about that chris isaak picture. look at the sneer thing he has going on with his lip. my friend says that he sounds like if bing crosby and roy orbison made it, but you know what? after watching the christmas special, it is pretty obvious that elvis is his idol. i'll bet when he was little he practiced that lip thing in the mirror so much that now it just comes naturally. he never talks about how much he's into elvis, but he does cover an elvis christmas song on his album. but he also covers a roy orbison one. i guess my one gripe with chris isaak is that he never comes out and just says "okay, everyone, i know you know this already, but i wish i was elvis. there you go." i mean, we do all know it. wait, i have another gripe - i have been waiting for the chris isaak show to come out on dvd for like five years. i never watched it because it was on way too late for me or i was busy watching sifl n olly or i just had no idea i liked chris isaak so much back then, but i wish like hell i could watch it now. remember that one video he had, the one where it was on the beach and like a million girls were in love with him but he was too sad for all of them? or maybe that's an amalgamation of several of his videos, i don't know. memory is weird. anyway, if you don't think chris isaak is cool, here are two things that probably won't change your mind but have served to reaffirm my own opinions: two guys whose opinions i have a lot of respect for both think chris isaak is awesome and both have used the term "modern-day roy orbison" to describe him although they have definitely never met, and also one guy i who i just plain admire came down to the city for a punk show he wanted to see (i forget the band, but i remember thinking "man he is so cool, i wish i'd gone to that show") and saw someone at the show. guess who that person was? it was chris isaak, and he was dressed like a greaser. awesome.

a friend commented the other day that the guy in a tux is actually riding backwards. amazing! i wish i could meet him. although i don't think he speaks english, so i guess i wish he learned to speak english and then i wish i could meet him.

i just realized i can't wait for the snl christmas special. i love the steve martin sketch where he is wearing that ridiculous sweater and he does all that wishing. it makes me laugh every year and then i reference it for like two months after christmas is over.

another picture i keep thinking about is the one of the rabbit stealing a cookie. look at that steely glint in his eye; he knows this is wrong, he's not even sure if he's going to like the way the cookie tastes, but he is going to take that damn cookie and nibble it under the couch! he's looking the person taking the picture straight in the eye. that bunny is bold. also, i'm always confused as to the setting of the picture. the paper cups make it look kind of like an office party; why is there a bunny in an office? or maybe it's just a gathering in a house where the people don't want to do too much clean-up. so why is the bunny out? he might get stepped on. also, bunnies are afraid by nature. why would this rabbit be doing something so bold with a bunch of company around?

the one picture that grates on my conscience is the one of the panda eating cake. at first, i thought it was a triumph, in the way that funny things on the internet that you find and show to other people can be a triumph even though they were put there by other people. the context of the picture is, it's the panda's birthday. he has a little crown on, and he's eating a piece of cake with a fork. it makes you feel terrific to look at it. but then i thought about it, and i realized that pandas don't know the meaning of celebration. i'm glad the panda doesn't know that the tiny crown is demeaning because it mocks his giantness. and as for the cake, if it's bad for people, it's probably terrible for him! i thought that animals in captivity were supposed to lead lives as close to the ones they would have led in the wild because that is what's healthy, but it's obvious that this panda is just an oversized pet. he's being forced to do "people" things and then being laughed at for them. and with that diatribe, my attempt to force my cat into a tiny polo shirt i bought at target officially comes to an end.

i wish i was going to the galapagos

2006-12-05T17:21:00.001-08:00

my grandparents went to the galapagos and took these picture

the variety of birds is pretty neat (especially the one where one bird is eating another bird's head), and of course i think the seals are great, although the turtles (tortoises?) are my favorite. i never really thought of lizards living in a colony like that. maybe i don't want to go to the galapagos. seeing them in large numbers like that is disturbing.

every year i try to dress up my mom's cats in christmas decorations and every year i get scratched

2006-12-05T13:31:00.000-08:00

i can't wait for the cookies to start coming

2006-12-04T22:09:00.000-08:00

i love christmas. i used to be kind of a bah humbug and i only liked the holidays because there was no school and i could go home and eat things that i didn't pay for and watch tivoed episodes of all my favorite shows, which my mother is gracious enough not to delete for me, as well as a million episodes of law & order all and then stay out with my friends until four in the morning. that is all pretty fun and i plan on doing it this time around, but i used to get pretty down on the whole caroling, red-and-green holiday spirit stuff. then, last year, the parents of a girl i was babysitting were going to be home very late, so i let her stay up and watch elf with me. the next day, i went out and spent $300 on christmas presents. while i still maintain that red and green look terrible together (although i find myself wearing them together by accident pretty regularly), and i have a much smaller budget for presents than i did last year, the holiday spirit has not yet worn off and i think christmas is awesome. honestly, i really don't care if i get anything. honestly, i know i really won't be getting anything because i already used up all my birthday and christmas presents on getting my car fixed and applying to sixteen graduate schools. but i'm still excited, partially for the little things that my relatives will send me (now that i am working in the real world the presents i took for granted in high school are awesome treasures, and things that i would never have worn before are suddenly wardrobe staples) and partially because it's a time when everyone can feel good about everyone else in their lives. while other christmas shoppers are kind of a pain, even on the weekdays ( i am constantly surprised by how many people are at target instead of at work. what do these people do that so many of them are around and in my way on a monday?), spending money on other people is pretty satisfying, especially when it's something that you know will make them happy or at least something that they will appreciate if you include some way-back memory in the card.

another reason i love christmas this year is that i found a bunch of christmas songs that some great artists have done. obviously, you've got the bing crosby and perry como standards, but the beach boys and ringo starr also both have christmas albums. there is a country christmas album, featuring johnny cash's rendition of the little drummer boy, as well as a motown christmas album and a collaboration album between john denver and the muppets. elvis, roy orbison and louis armstrong all have original christmas songs, and the sonics wrote and recorded three (although one is just a bunch of talking over music and bells). there are a few by dion, some by the platters and the ronettes, and even chubby checker has a version of "jingle bell rock." then think of the movies! again, you've got the muppets, who are the supporting cast to michael caine's scrooge. michael caine made a feature-length movie with the muppets! and that movie is about christmas! patrick stewart played the same role in a slightly darker adaptation, and then there is the untouchable jimmy stewart in perhaps the most recognizable christmas classic of them all. of course, we don't watch these movies in our house. i can only get partway through it's a wonderful life before i want to throw myself off a bridge, and god forbid i make it through to the undigestably sugary end. that movie is just too much of a rollercoaster for me. and my mother thinks tiny tim is "smarmy." our holiday tradition is to finish wrapping presents and watch chris isaak's christmas special, with special guest stevie nicks. let me just put this out there: i love chris isaak. i think he's the modern day roy orbison. sometimes when i'm home i will make up excuses to drive up and down the great highway on a sunny day, hoping to see him jaywalking with his surfboard. well, he has a christmas album, and a christmas special to go along with it that airs on pbs every christmas eve. he changes his outfit three times, and every time he comes out with a new elvis suit on, all with holiday decorations in sequins on the lapels. it is amazing, and it makes you wonder how many he has in his closet. is there one for easter? one for first dates, or his mom's birthday? obviously, copious celebrities are way into christmas, so who am i to abstain?

yessss his name is on his guitar - is that in case he doesn't know which one is his? yesssss

it's time to get to work

2006-12-03T10:27:00.000-08:00

i work best under pressure. i know that it is smarter to do a little bit a day over a long period of time, and i was into that for a while. it was going ok, but one day i didn't do anything and suddenly it was "oh i'll just watch this episode of the oc on youtube first," or "oh it's payday well it's obvious that i should go to a movie." i'm not saying those aren't worthwhile things, i'm just saying that when i decided to do them in the back of my mind i knew there was something else i was supposed to be doing. did that make them less enjoyable? no. more enjoyable, if anything. because at this point in my life, i know one thing about myself; that if i do useless things like browsing youtube or going to a three-dollar movie enough times, at one point i will break, get really stressed out about something i have to do, and get to work with a vengeance. well, today is the day. time to put aside the cat sweater i started, time to decide that my christmas mix is exactly right and stop searching for "christmas," "holiday" or "snow" on the itunes store, time to abandon youtube and stop taking two showers a day. i know a million ways to procrastinate and even more ways to justify doing it, but today is my breaking point and i am going to git 'er done.

i especially love it when it stretches out their cheeks

2006-11-29T23:50:00.001-08:00