Dis-Missives from the Fourth Row

Tofu Stir-Fry Recipe! Or, How To Succeed At Cooking Without Really Trying

2011-01-13T12:36:00.004-05:00

We came up with a fantastic recipe last night. I will now share it with you.

Tofu and Whatever Stir Fry

Stir-fry components:
Some chicken
Some tofu
Some broccoli
Some onion
Some red bell pepper
A few carrots
Cashews (whatever you have in the cupboard)
A little peanut oil
A little sesame oil
Some garlic
SRIRACHA!

Sauce-thingy:
Copious amounts of internet research
1 tbsp + 2 tsps soy sauce
1 tsp of sesame oil
1 tsp of mirin, or not
Some rice vinegar
A little less than a tsp cornstarch
A little more soy sauce to top it off and get you up to 1/4 cup of sauce-thingy

Rice on the side! Any kind you like, cooked how you like.

OKAY COOKIN' TIME.

1. Realize that recent dinners have been wholly unsatisfactory. This includes but is not limited to earlier "stir fry" which came out too sweet or too saucy, depending on who you ask (not Boo), and the "avocado fries" at Rosepepper which resembled ankylosauruses and tasted like breading. Just breading. Let's not get into the entrees, swear to God.
2. Decide to stop at store to facilitate home-cooking on way home from picking up barely-a-licensed-driver-really girlfriend from work, since she has decided that a declared snow day means "too snowy to drive," and look here, you're off work, SNOW DAY, why don't you drive her, yay!
3. Present plan. Alter plan when girlfriend says, for the 180th time, that you cannot do anything directly on the way home from work because she really has to pee and she didn't pee at work before she left, because the bathrooms are, like, far away and sometimes the guards are sitting around and it is awkward and sort of fraught.
4. Rejigger plan. Home first, then copious amounts of internet research, part un.
5. Make ingredient list while GF goes to the bathroom like a big girl.
6. Stick recalcitrant dog into cage. Wave bye-bye!
7. Go to Turnip Truck.
8. Get yelled at by Turnip Truck patron in parking lot.
9. After perturbment, realize Turnip Truck patron was telling you that Turnip Truck is closed, despite it not yet being 7 PM, wtf.
10. Go to Kroger. Grumble grumble grumble.
11. While procuring necessary groceries, stand for a while at poultry section. Stand for a long while, considering the relatively scant options. Notice that girlfriend has wandered off. Watch girlfriend approach, holding up a random box from the freezer case, saying, "Look! I found Superpretzels! Can we get a pie?"
12. Say FUCK IT to the overpriced and/or unacceptable chicken options Kroger has on display. This will be a tofu night only.
13. Ignore girlfriend raising eyebrow at sudden vegan tendencies.
14. Self-checkout!
15. Home. Don't die slipping on ice all over street, sidewalk, stairs to house.
16. Let loose canid from enclosure.
17. "DOWN."
18. Encourage girlfriend to begin chopping vegetables while you go walk the dog.
19. Walk the dog. Come inside.
20. Chop all vegetables.
21. Ignore girlfriend when she says, "Are you done chopping the red peppers? Those look kind of long. I think it's supposed to be chunks, not strips."
22. Encourage girlfriend to make saucy thing in light of recent successes with potsticker dipping sauce construction.
23. Take out sesame oil, sriracha, mirin, soy sauce for girlfriend.
24. Start cooking tofu.
25. RUDELY tell girlfriend she always makes too much sauce, and to keep it under a quarter cup total. When she replies that the problem with the last stir fry was that it was too sweet, not that it was too saucy, respond that in fact it WAS too saucy, and also she always makes too much potsticker dipping sauce. So.
26. Ignore dark looks, under-breath curses from living room (copious internet research, part deux), other side of kitchen.
27. Step on dog.
28. Move lightly cooked tofu to bowl.
29. Begin to saute garlic.
30. Quickly throw garlic onto surface of the stove with the spatula thing because the wok is too hot and the garlic is burning, oh shit oh shit.
31. Okay, no garlic.
32. Begin cooking vegetables.
33. Toss them like a madman until know-it-all-ass girlfriend says, "So, are they cooking at all? I think you can let them sit for a minute, then stir, then sit, then stir, like the dudes at the med school cart, who are like, WAH, stir, put the lid on, okay, do something else, okay, lid up, squirt bottle, stir again, lid again..."
34. Conclude that test-piece of broccoli is cooked to the point of "warm salad."
35. Consider whether girlfriend has a point, despite literal sense of "stir fry" implying constant stirring.
36. Put lid on wok.
37. Make appropriate noises of sympathy when girlfriend pinches finger in misguided attempt to clean as she goes, by putting soy sauce back in sticky lazy susan cabinet.
38. Remove lid, stir vegetables.
39. Make more appropriate noises of sympathy when believed-pinch is actually disgusting cut/crimp thing in girlfriend's finger. Wish she hadn't insisted on you looking at it. Immediately order, "Band-aid, soap and hot water, neosporin." Ignore smart-ass girlfriend who says, "Not in that order, presumably."
40. Marvel, silently, at endless clumsiness of girlfriend who took ballet for YEARS, for Pete's sake.
41. Ignore whimpering noises from sauce-thingy-making girlfriend.
42. Realize that girlfriend cannot be ignored when she cries to the heavens, I CANNOT GET THESE CORNSTARCH LUMPS TO GO AWAY, AAARRRGHHH.
43. Take over sauce-thingy construction.
44. Continue to cook vegetables.
45. When vegetables are quite al dente, throw tofu back in. Have now-relieved-of-duty sauce-thingy-maker throw in cashews. Two handfuls or so. Stir.
46. Drizzle sriracha; stir.
47. Remark that using squeeze bottle on wok makes you feel like a real chef.
48. Ignore eye-rolling from direction of now-relieved-of-duty sauce-thingy maker.
49. Realize, OH MY HELL, I forgot the rice. And now this is almost ready.
50. Decide, FUCK THE RICE, healthiest dinner EVAR! Lots of brightly colored vegetables! No starch! Awesome!
51. Have now-relieved-of-duty sauce-thingy maker taste-test bit of broccoli.
52. Kvell with pride when she pronounces it "delicious. Almost as good as the dudes at the cart."
53. Transfer to bowl.
54. Transfer from bowl to plates.
55. NOM NOM NOM (concurrently: "Law & Order" rerun from 2001. Marvel at detective needing to explain what a Blackberry is to older detective, and what blood diamonds were to everyone. Ask girlfriend when "Blood Diamond" came out. Decide "Gerard" is L&O-code for "DeBeers." Marvel at how relatively uncraggy Sam Waterston was back then. HEY IT'S DANIELS FROM THE WIRE, wow, he's got a nice African accent here, huh? Remember that episode when you saw Daniels with his shirt off and his waist looked like Scarlett O'Hara's and his shoulders and chest looked like He-Man? Wasn't that NUTS?)
56. Come up for air.
57. SECONDS!

That's how we cook. This may be why eating out, despite travel time, is faster.

Out With The Old, In With The Poo

2011-01-01T02:46:00.003-05:00

Silly me, to get sentimental about New Year's.

Silly me, to think for a few minutes there that if I just tried harder and had a better attitude, 2011 really could be less shitful than 2010 was.

Silly me for thinking what might be fun after the Old Crow show would be coming home, cuddling in the bed with boy and dog alike, eating some candy at 1 AM and watching a Netflix free-trial episode of Friday Night Lights.

Because instead what we came home to was the dog, for the first time in almost 18 months, having shit himself in the house. Possibly it happened at midnight when people hooted, hollered, and presumably fired some guns. Or he just relearned some unbelievably bad habits while boarding for the past four days. In any event, liquid, occasionally aerosolized, dogshit, on his crate tray (some solids on this too, HUZZAH); his towel; his crate itself (large amounts considering the only surface area it had to adhere to was a wire grid. And yet!); our bedroom floor; our really lovely still-newish duvet cover (which he's not even allowed to sleep on); our actual duvet (having soaked through the duvet cover); eventually, his bed; and his own fucking nose. The shit on which would not come off, first with a wet-ish paper towel and then even with a moderately-forceful scrub with a wet wipe. D had to do it because after two tries of trying to get dogshit off my dog's nose while we both stood outside in the rain and then screaming at him, "STOP LICKING IT, OH MY GOD," I very nearly had heart failure. Our house smells fucking horrible and the dog just had his second bath in one day and oh Lordy does this not bode well.

More Appropriate Myths Obama Could Have Suggested for His Appearance on "Mythbusters"

2010-12-08T21:24:00.002-05:00

"Republicans are reasonable and want the best for the American people"
"I will close Guantanamo Bay"
"bipartisanship"
"I am a real Democrat"

Awesome: Swiss Miss Pick-Me-Up

2009-03-03T14:49:00.003-05:00

New idea: I will review things I buy, when I feel like it.

First up: Swiss Miss Pick-Me-Up, aka Super-Caffeinated Hot Chocolate.

Uh, brilliant.

I can't drink coffee. I like the way it smells, a LOT, especially when in a can that's kept in the freezer (what? I can be specific), but it hurts my stomach oh my god and I feel queasy for the rest of the day.

Until I realized it was the coffee (this was like, late middle school, early high school), I kept thinking I had food poisoning. And then when I hadn't eaten anything, and it was just the delicious cappuccino in my stomach (aren't I so-phis-ti-cat-ed), I decided that it was, like, the oils in the coffee that were doing it, making my stomach feel fucking horrible like that. (My dad said, No, kid--that's the caffeine, which I am skeptical of, because in a pinch, I can take caffeine pills and chew caffeine gum and down Mountain Dew, and all I get are the shakes--no queasiness, so I don't know about that, Pops.) Anyway, whether it's "the oils" or just the caffeine, or some interaction between the two, but I do not drink coffee. It does not agree with me.

Nevertheless, I am a student. I have needs. They are needs for stimulant chemicals, and since it's a good idea for me to stay on the right side of the law, caffeine's the way to go.

So I drink tea. A lot of tea. In semesters when I have morning classes, I generally have tea every week day morning. Then sometimes another cup after class if the hot water's still out. I like tea, definitely, yes. It's awesome and there are lots of varieties and I luh-huh-huve the way it smells.

But.

One needs variety.

Enter: Swiss Miss Pick-Me-Up. Hot chocolate "with as much caffeine as one cup of coffee"! (As trumpeted on the box.) Uh, brilliant. As I said.

Also: delicious. Just like regular Swiss Miss, which, as you may know, is awesome. I need to get some marshmallows for this shteez, because they don't make a Swiss Miss Pick-Me-Up Marshmallow Lovers', unfortunately.

But this is totally worth buying, if you want variety in your morning caffeine delivery system and also like Swiss Miss. Which you should, because it's delovely.

I definitely felt energized, but it's hard to say how much was just the placebo effect. But I did do a little dance.

Pros: caffeine; hot chocolate; yummy.
Cons: no marshmallows; placebo effect.
Score: ****

From the Department of Unintentional Hilarity:

2008-10-14T10:25:00.002-04:00

"...Kevorkian criticized the Supreme Court, the American people, and national security legislation passed after September 11, 2001. 'The country is sick, very sick. And it needs lots of help,' Kevorkian stated."

--Andrew L. Kalloch, "Kevorkian Reconsiders 9th Amendment," Harvard Law Record, October 9, 2008, p. 2.

Funny because: How Dr. Kevorkian help the very sick, as a rule?

Redacted. Poop.

2008-10-03T09:53:00.004-04:00

Oh, fine. Redacted.

New Product Review: Skittles Chocolate Mix

2008-02-27T13:01:00.002-05:00

Aww. Full circle, y'all. I started out in the early days with a (terrible) review of Skittles Smoothie Mix, and now I'm going to give a slightly less terrible review of Skittles Chocolate Mix. It makes me feel young again.

Disposing with the first obvious question, namely, "Why would you get chocolate-flavored skittles when there are, like, you know, M&Ms less than eight inches away from them," to which I have no answer, I will answer your second question. What flavors are in the mix? Answer: five flavors--vanilla, smores, chocolate caramel, chocolate pudding, and brownie batter.

Vanilla tastes sort of nasty. Other candybloggers like it best, but I don't really like vanilla all on its own, and it's just really really sweet to my taste, without a lot of actual flavor to distract you from the sweetness.

Smores tastes sort of like a tootsie roll. That's the note I'm getting. In the way that Tootsie rolls don't really taste like chocolate, that's the way that these don't really taste like chocolate, but more so. There's maybe the tiniest hint of graham cracker flavor.

Chocolate caramel tastes like cheap chocolate-flavored lip balm. I wanna say Bonne Bell, circa 1995, when they were trying to be hip, and branch out past Lip Smackers, and they started packaging new lip balm with lots of black accents. That's what this tastes like.

Chocolate pudding is my favorite. It tastes like expensive chocolate-flavored lip balm. Fine, a little bit like pudding. And a little bit like hot chocolate mix.

Brownie batter was the one that got some of the highest marks from other reviews I've read. They noted that it indeed had a relatively strong chocolate taste, and that there was a sort of unbaked aspect, to connote the "batter" element. Well, friends, I will tell you what this tastes like. It tastes like Chocolate Play-Doh. It is disgusting. Yes, there's chocolate, SORT of, and yes, there's the unbaked-ness, but that is not batter, it is dough, and it is dough of the "Doh" kind, by which I mean, omfg, PLAY-DOH. Oh GOD is that disgusting. Blech blech blech blech blech. But also sort of amazing--look what they put inside a Skittle! It makes me believe that some day, some scientist really figure out a way to put a full three-course-meal into a stick of chewing gum, without any unfortunate externalities.

New Expressions of the Very Essence of Futility

2008-01-21T17:08:00.000-05:00

Last night, I had a dream about my Legislation & Regulation final. Yes, the one I took just over a week ago. It was one of those terrible anxiety finals-dreams, the ones I hear about but don't have, where everything just goes horribly and and and and.

In this one, there were three questions (unlike the real exam, which only had two).

The first question was terribly difficult; I don't remember what it was, but I was very upset about it. In the end, though, I just wrote down "fishes" and resolved to come back to it at the end.

I don't remember what the second question was; however, my answer to it was in the form of a picture, drawn with colored pencils (I think; could've been crayons or cray-pas or some appropriately mushy medium) on a brownish kraft-kind-of paper. I think there was a teddy bear and some quilt-y elements. It may have had edges like a postage stamp.

The third question I also don't remember the question. However, in response to this question, on my Legislation & Regulation final, mind you, I made a pair of earrings. They were mixed media--metal wires and findings, some glass beads, and then the major design element was a sort of bell-shape made out of reddish-purple paper. The earrings ended up looking sort of like lily-of-the-valleys, but, you know, red-purple, made out of paper, accented with glass beads, and earrings. Also somewhat bigger than lily-of-the-valleys.

It was at this point, just finishing up the earrings, that the TA came up and told me that time was up, that I had to hand in my exam, and I realized that I hadn't had time to go back to the first question. All it said, still, was "fishes."

The panic and the anxiety induced--Do I try to keep going and risk getting called out for cheating? No, I can't do that; but I can't hand in two thirds of an exam either, and hope to pass!--were enough to make me cry, in the dream, and then, delightfully, lovelily, cry in real life, too.

I woke up in the middle of the night, crying and stressed out, over an exam I took last week, where the issue I had was the insufficiency of the word "fishes" to constitute an answer to one-third of a LegReg exam answer (notwithstanding the fact that apparently a picture of a teddy bear and a pair of earrings would be just fine for the other two thirds). Crying over spilled milk indeed.

Then today, I started to pretend to be the rug pad as Dan trimmed off its edge (it was ever so slightly too wide), and made high, keening, crying and whimpering noises, and then suddenly I was crying again for real. Whoops.

The question now is whether I need to be meds-d up, or whether I should give trying-really-hard-to-get-my-shit-together-and-then-perhaps-I'll-be-less-stressed-and-
less-prone-to-weird-crying-fits a try first.

Deficiencies

2007-11-30T16:13:00.000-05:00

You know how we all learned in My Side of the Mountain and a recent episode of "House" that your body is MAGICAL and makes you hungry for foods that have nutrients that your current diet is lacking? So Sam suddenly and inexplicably craves liver because he was Vitamin D deficient from living on a mountain by himself? Or possibly Vitamin K, I don't remember? Or hell, it could've been iron, actually, now that I think about it?

Given this, I have a very serious problem. Two days ago, walking down the hallway in the tunnels underneath the law school, I was struck by a sudden, strange craving: a Flintstones vitamin.

Oooh, Now I'm Mad.

2007-10-04T19:59:00.000-04:00

So I checked my statcounter (which is delightfully fun in a navel-gazey kind of way), and someone in King of Prussia has been googling "zakaria backpack."

I am not being vain, only factual, when I say that this is clearly in reference to how I made fun of the choice of Class Day speaker anonymously like a big chicken-shit on the interwebs and then he mentioned it in the speech on Class Day.

So. I googled it myself, to see how many pages our poor KOP'er had to go through to find my claiming of the credit for my funny funny funny joke. Happily, I was the last link on the first page! But.

But.

Slightly earlier up on the page was the official Yale page with the text of Fareed Zakaria's speech. I clicked it to see how accurately I had remembered what he said.

Here is what he said: "Y ’07 agreed: 'Having a Yale Corporation member as Class Day speaker,' he wrote, 'is like talking about your backpack on show-and-tell day because you forgot to bring something more interesting. It has zippers and two pockets,' he wrote."

DOES ANYONE ELSE SEE AN ANATOMICAL ASSUMPTION WHICH MIGHT BE PROBLEMATIC HERE?

Dear Everyone, Ever:

Penii are not a prerequisite for meanness, nor for funny funny funny jokes such as the ones I am making ALL THE TIME. FURTHERMORE. It's not polite anymore to assume people are male unless told otherwise. So CUT IT OUT. Because I AM A LADY AND NOT A HE. NOT THAT YOU GIVE A SHIT, CLEARLY, BECAUSE ONLY PENIS-HAVERS ARE EVER RELEVANT.

Fanks.

Love, Dash

In seriousness format: Part of the reason I sometimes hate being female is that being female, in our day and age, and despite our efforts to deny it, is never really the default. And sometimes it is nice to be the default. Or so I would imagine. Or, so I know, from being white.

In any event, I'm a lady, I made fun of you, get over it. (Does not have the same rhyming niceness of "We're here, we're queer." Must work on this.) (Suggestions welcome.) (Not if they rhyme "fly honey" and "I'm funny." Lame.)

Liveblogging Legal Writing and Research

2007-10-04T16:08:00.000-04:00

You never believe how painful it is until you're there.

I have officially run out of websites with which to procrastinate, and may be forced to start paying attention.

At least, all the websites I can read without the people behind me looking over my shoulder thinking I'm a freak. So, no bridal websites and no Crime Library. Ahem.

Was anyone aware that legal citations A) make no sense and B) are no better than Chicago and C) are so intensely preoccupied with the most MEANINGLESS MINDLESS MINUTIAE? Because now I am. And I felt that I should share that with you.

I miss my big beautiful Chicago Manual of Style. Come give kisses, Chicago.

I feel as though I am being hypnotized. Possibly I just need a nap. Everything feels heavy.

EVERYONE STOP ASKING QUESTIONS NOW. I have got BUSINESS to attend to. LET US GO, CLIMENKO FELLOW/WRITING INSTRUCTOR and also STUDENT ADVISORS.

GO GO GO I WANT TO GO NOW.

We have half an hour left officially.

We just got a new assignment. I am personally overjoyed by this. It will take approximately forever and be worth nothing to us.

My neck is starting to twitch.

AHA!

I forgot about Solitaire!

Peace out, sugar boogers.

From the "No Shit, Dumbass," Department of News

2007-09-19T01:54:00.000-04:00

Cnn.com headline:

"Man puts rattlesnake in mouth, gets bitten."

Yeah, I Know. Whatever.

2007-05-28T21:25:00.000-04:00

Anyway.

I graduated today. I missed the 70th percentile by .04 or less, which is irritating and meta-irritating, the latter because the fuckers got to me. Four years ago I wouldn't have given even the remotest semblance of a shit.

Thanks, Yale, for making me a crazy grade-grubber! BFF! Neva forget! C U L8R, KIT!

So today was 10 pounds of shit in a five pound bag (I do so love packing). Penultimate high point: discovering that the smell from under my bed was not a dead mouse as had been feared (since, oh, Spring Break, way to get on top of that, yo), but rather an old box of hair dye remover from the week after Halloween when the red dye for my Pippi Longstocking costume was not washing out after the touted 8 shampoos. I can still see glints of pink in some lights, at certain angles.

Ultimate high point was taking a shower right after I got my diploma. I made my apologies to friends and family and popped in. Reason for bliss: it was real hot, real muggy this whole weekend. I remember from graduating high school that curly hair does not look super-hot under a mortarboard, so I decided to get my hair blown-dry straight on Friday. In order to keep a blow-out intact for four days in the best of conditions, one's hair must not even entertain the idea of water. So I'd been showering the whole weekend without getting my head wet, which I have to say was really starting to make me insane. And then getting our diplomas, sitting in the courtyard and the sun just really obscene, my hair was frizzing out anyway and also sticking to me and it's truly a miracle I didn't go postal. Anyway, does it strike anyone else as ironic that the high point of my graduation day was getting rid of the hairdo that actually made me feel more confident and prettier throughout the weekend? I haven't worked out the mechanics of the humor yet, but I'm pretty sure they're in there someplace.

Anyway, funny ass shit. Our Class Day speaker was Fareed Zakaria, journalist, neocon, former chair of Yale's Party of the Right, current member of the Yale Corporation, class of 1986. I was one of many, apparently, who was disappointed by this choice, seeing as how Harvard got Bill Clinton and Bill Gates. I shit you not. Columbia had Matthew Fox, which I frankly would have preferred, since I am low-brow.

So Fareed started off his speech with a few notes about campus reaction to the choice of himself as Class Day speaker. He quoted the YDN article about it, including "Daniella Berman's, '07, comment" that blah blah blah whatever, she didn't think it was an optimal choice. But, he said, to get the real reaction, you have to go to the blogosphere. "y09 on ivygateblog.com," he said, "said that 'Fareed Zakaria was low-hanging fruit for Yale, considering that he's part of the Corporation,' while y07 said that having Fareed Zakaria for Class Day speaker is 'like talking about your backpack on Show and Tell Day because you forgot to bring in something interesting. "Um...it has a zipper...and some pockets in the front."'"

He got a big laugh, because being self-deprecating is funny. I laughed too, especially at the backpack line. Hey, I thought, that backpack line is pretty funny! About ten minutes later, though, something about the line struck me as familiar: the "um" construction at the end of the comment seemed strangely reminiscent of...something. I just couldn't put my finger on it.

By the end of the speech, though, it was impossible for me to deny it any longer: our Class Day speaker had just quoted my anonymous internet insult of him. My parents laughed/were mortified; my friends thought it was funny. I think.

Moral of the story: Who needs general honors when you're quoted during the Class Day speech?

Losin' It

2007-03-14T15:41:00.000-04:00

So. I'm in New Haven writing my senior essay this week, and it's been very lockdown-library-computer-cluster-perhaps-you-may-get-dinner-but-perhaps-not sort of deal where I just work all day. Or try to, and instead procrastinate. (Meta!) But so for like three or four days, I only talked to people for half an hour tops a day, on the phone with Mom and Danno (both of whom only called right when I was about to get down to work this time). So after four or so days of this completely hermit like existence (think lots of takeout), I found myself in the computer cluster so starved for interaction that I had a short conversation with a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup. It was about how I was going to eat it, which I did in short order.

I think I may have an antisocial personality disorder--first for talking to inanimate objects, and second for telling them of their impending demise.

Anyway. Back to the essay.

Answer and Observation

2007-02-26T13:03:00.000-05:00

The answer was that it was my solitare score. From left to right, as they appear onscreen, my bonus, my total score, and my time. To the best of my knowledge, I've never broken 9000 before. My dad got it immediately. We both waste a lot of time.

And oh my. Last night at the Oscars, when they had the nominees stand up, Leonardo DiCaprio winked at Kate Winslet and I fell off the futon. I love both of them so much.

ALSO IT'S NOT FUNNY ABOUT AL GORE. PLEASE. COME BACK. SAVE US. THIS IS NOT A JOKE.

A Riddle

2007-02-18T14:15:00.000-05:00

I am going to post three numbers. Once you figure out what they represent, you will know why I posted them. First person to guess right in the comments section gets Girl Scout cookies. If no one guesses right within a week, I will tell you.

Here are the numbers, in sequence:

8610 9314 81.

Hint: it has to do with the computer.
2nd hint: I am proud.

[Cough One More Time]

2007-02-07T20:26:00.000-05:00

Harvard FUCKIN Law School, beetches!

Read: the reason I was so damned incommunicado last semester was because I was so bogged down with school and law school and the show and all of it that I mostly could not breathe and occasionally woke up in the middle of the night and cried from sheer stress. Then I went back to bed, because if there is one thing I am not, it is an insomniac, unless I forget that I am not superhuman in this respect and drink a can of Coke or Mountain Dew within a half an hour of bedtime. Alas, to be superhuman. Point being that I fall asleep easily.

But the end result(s):

I got a part in a show which finally went up two weeks ago and was soothing to my poor auditioning-and-getting-rejected-constantly soul, by assuring me that I really don't miss it that much and going to law school is not, you know, the biggest mistake of my life.

I got an A in the hardest class I have taken at Yale, based 70% on the longest paper I have written to date, which I wrote in two days because I have a death wish, graded by the professor (aka World-Renowned Genius Man) who so graciously wrote me a law school letter of rec back in October.

I rocked out hardcore in a class at the School of Public Health (which SOME PEOPLE were hesitant to think I was smart enough to take) to the point where my TA wrote on one of my homework assignments, "Are you thinking of pursuing a PhD in Epidemiology?" (Sidenote: hahahahahahahahahahahahaha. I mean, I kind of want to. Well, not a PhD. But one of those MPH thingerdoodles would be nice. But I was taking this class to fulfil my science requirement.)

And I made the law school admissions process, which had so often thoroughly owned me, into my bitch. Minus all the anti-feminist and misogynistic connotations (hell, denotations) of that phrase.

It was misery, it surely was. Between the LSAT hysteria, and the subsequent letters of recommendation hysteria, and the subsequent personal statement hysteria, and the subsequent do-I-apply-to-Yale hysteria, I was not sure I was going to come out on the other end with my hair still the same color, and, you know, attached to my scalp. But I did, and I fucking owned it. Because somehow, with my puny and miserable resume and extracurriculars, and my sort-of-mediocre and definitely-preachy-as-hell personal statement, I suckered the nice people at the Harvard Law School Admissions office into letting me in. (Sidenote: HOLY FUCKING SHIT. HARVARD FUCKING LAW SCHOOL. Hee hee hee.) Goes to show you what the happy combination of a good LSAT score and the Y-bomb will do for you.

Now there's just the logistics angle left to work out. Visiting schools (what if I hate it? What's Plan B?), housing, Danno finding a job which will not make him resent me, writing my goddamn senior essay, graduating, oh holy mother of god. oh shit. don't wanna be a grownup don't wanna don't wanna don't wanna dont dont dont dont

Okay. I just inhaled a packet of Fun-Dip and now I feel better. I am aggressively juvenile, and what are you gonna do about it? Nothing. You know why? Because I am leaving and going to watch "American Idol."

[Clears Out Cobwebs; Coughs]

2006-12-27T21:46:00.000-05:00

Hi there! Things have been inactive, because I have been very very active. Heartbreakingly, soul-wreckingly active. Kill-yourself-with-a-butter-knife active. Stomach-flu-and-muscle-relaxant-active. Law-school-admissions-process active. Hideously active. "To the pain" active. I'm out of descriptives. I will be back shortly with amusing anonymousized anecdotes, as is my wont.

Because Nostalgia Is the New Black

2006-11-01T20:44:00.000-05:00

So, nu. I was going through my brown accordion folder, a.k.a. that which is full of stuff I like, and I found the laminated copy of the drawing I did for the t-shirt we had made for my class's semester in Israel. The theme of the drawing, as I recall, was "The Last Hike," and it's basically cartoon eleventh-graders standing at the bottom of a large rock while our teachers look down at us and make fun of us for being pusses. David Mitchell is saying, "It's more of a nature stroll." Wow did that dude piss me off.

The path on the rock is filled in with very small quotes from our semester, and reading over them, I laughed out loud a number of times. I figured I'd reproduce a few here, and try and contextualize them, so everyone can laugh along with me! Yay! Right, guys? Guys? Hello?

"Can I get my soda? I left it in the soda machine."
--said by pretty much everyone at some point or another, as an excuse to leave the room during sequentials, which were our regular classes (French, math, English, etc.) as opposed to Core, our "Jewish-History-in-the-Land-of-Israel" class, which we, on the whole, enjoyed and did not try to get out of with bullshit. You could tell the sequentials teachers stuff like this though because they were all South African.

"Rooms 5 and 6, Etty was in TEARS this morning."
--said by our Madricha (counselor) Rivka. Etty was the small wrinkled Sephardic woman who resembled no one so much as Mother Teresa; she was allegedly the person responsible for cleaning our dorm's bathrooms. She never, ever did so, despite our seeing her street clothes hanging up in one of the girls' bathrooms. On Muss, the girls lived upstairs and the boys lived downstairs. We figured that Etty had a routine: she would come into our bathroom, change for the job at hand, and then go directly downstairs. She would do this because apparently the downstairs bathroom for (you guessed it) rooms 5 and 6 was like the monkey house at the zoo. Pee on the floor, poop on the walls--or so I heard. Thus, no one would or could blame Etty for getting overwhelmed, going outside to smoke a cigarette, and declaring herself done for the day. So no one's bathrooms ever got cleaned. She was a wily old bitch. On a related note:

"I know why Etty doesn't clean the bathroom: because I jizzed all over the walls!"
--anonymous, to protect the jizzer/s. I can't believe they let me put this on the shirt.

"Oh, Cecilia, your mom is a man..."
--Sung by our resident sad sack to the tune of "Cecilia," quietly, to herself.

"Can I BORROW your toilet seat?"
--Okay, so this is a longish one. Our headmaster from home came to visit us in October, I think, and we got to pow-wow with him about, you know, how everything was going, blah blah blah. Muss does this thing where they kick you out for two weeks (my best guess is so that they can send exterminators through the dorms again) and stick you with local families under the guise of "home-hospitality." I believe our headmaster came just before we were scheduled for our home-hospitality weeks, and he wanted to chat with us about it to relieve some of our anxieties. He told a story about a kid from a previous year who was staying with this Israeli family in the area, who put him up in his own wing of the house. Everything was lovely and peachy, except for one thing: his toilet didn't have a toilet seat. But this kid was a smart kid, and assertive, and he simply asked his family if they were aware that there was no toilet seat. They were surprised and laughed, and answered that they had been renovating that area of the house, and had forgotten all about the fact that they hadn't outfitted that bathroom with a toilet seat, and thank you for bringing it to their attention, and the kid got himself a toilet seat, and, presumably, was able to shit in comfort and in peace happily ever after.
We're all like, ha ha, okay, duly noted, Rabbi Redacted. Like that's going to happen.
See me. See me eat my words.
So I get to my home-hospitality house, and there's no toilet seat. But I'm not in a separate wing of the house, there's no renovation happening, and everyone's using the toilet as is. I suspect that this may be a classic "when in Rome" situation. Thus, I do without a toilet seat. I tell my classmates about it, and my friend Jack tells me that HIS h-h family has an extra toilet seat, and he will bring it to school for me. He does so. It is green. I didn't take it back to the house, but it was a lovely gesture.
A week into h-h, Rabbi Redacted comes back to talk to us about how everything's going. It comes up, as you may have imagined, and RR fixates not on the fact that I'm seat-less, but that Jack has managed to procure one for me. "What," he says, "did you just say, 'Can I BORROW your toilet seat?"?!

"Cancer break!"
--said by smokers when heading to the smoking lot. Irony will never be dead. Or not-irony. Or whatever the hell this is. Black humor, I guess.

"Deep-six me!"
--I have no idea what this is actually called; I can't find it as a definition on Urban Dictionary or a reference to it on the first page of Google for a search "'deep six' asphyxia," so I guess I'll just have to describe it. Stupid Person leans up against a wall with his arms crossed over his chest while Idiot Friend and Sadistic Weirdo push against Stupid's arms very very very hard. They do this until Stupid starts to pass out, I think, and then they let go. Stupid slides down the wall, twitching, and apparently newly enamored of the possibilities of auto-asphyxiation. This was as popular among the boys on the trip as hula hoops were in the late '50s. Let's just call it a craze.

"There was a fire."
"Do you want to see someone? Maybe the nurse?"
--Rob, then Susan, our South African math teacher. So what happened is that some combination of some of the boys set a fire in the dorm. One person got sent home for it. Rob's backpack, some school papers, and some clothes got slightly to moderately burnt in the fire, including a t-shirt that had pretty serious holes and scorch marks all over it. Rob decided to wear it, nipple-baring holes and all, to class shortly after the incident. Upon arrival at class, our math teacher took one look at him, and her mouth fell open. She asked him, "What happened?" The ensuing conversation is relayed above.

"Any of you guys do drugs?"
--Reuv, said in the middle of class, vaguely related to something he said, or was about to say, but I remember it as quite the non sequitur. Which is funny, because people who are on drugs often pipe up with non sequiturs. Form! Content! Form! Content!

"Don't fart in the Dead Sea! It burns!"
--said by Matt, in the Dead sea, speaking from recently-gained experience. He had, along with the rest of the class, been warned about this event by David, our teacher, who explained the anatomic mechanism that made it so. We learned so much about our anal sphincters that day. I suppose Matt didn't believe him, but then, in his anguish, chose to make his story public so that other might not suffer as he did. A true hero.

"If you can make it with Rosemary, why do you need a chicken?"
--said by Reuven, almost to himself, after Jack exclaimed, in a moment of culinary frenzy and anticipation, "I need a chicken! I can make it with rosemary!" Thanks, Reuvy, for that singularly disgusting image. That's why I share it. As Calvin (not John, "and Hobbes," silly) once said, "Nothing helps a bad mood like spreading it around." The same holds true for those things that make you ask for the brain bleach. Enjoy your night!

Let's Talk Rude for a Second, Shall We?

2006-10-30T22:42:00.000-05:00

You know what's rude? Fantastically, blazingly, obscenely rude? Perhaps not the rudest thing in the world, but still undeniably objectively rude?

Watching a fucking Spanish-language movie--WITHOUT HEADPHONES--in the Saybrook computer cluster while OTHER PEOPLE ARE TRYING TO WORK. Can you imagine? I mean, if I wanted to fill out law school applications while listening to loud talking in foreign languages, I would go to Gourmet Heaven, n'est-ce pas?

Beeetch.

Blast From the Past: A Poetical Work on J. Joyce

2006-10-24T20:10:00.000-04:00

A Poem by SRB

Why don't you write books that people can read? --Nora Joyce, to her husband James

Do you like James Joyce's work?
Do you like James Joyce's work?
I do not like it, nosirree,
James Joyce's work is not for me.
But didn't you like Dubliners?
I did not like Dubliners,
I did not like it here or there
I did not like it anywhere.
Would you like it on a shelf?
Would you like it by yourself?
I did not like it on a shelf,
I did not like it by myself.
I did not like it here or there.
I did not like it anywhere.
I do not like James Joyce's prose.
I do not like it--this I knows.
Would you read him with a group?
Would you read him in one-fell-swoop?
I have read him with a group.
I have read him in one-fell-swoop.
Not on a shelf. Not by myself.
I did not like him here or there.
I did not like him anywhere.
I think that he's a real asshole
For rejoicing in his sole control
Of the minds of the literati--
He's actually a little snotty.
Would you? Could you? Ulysses?
I would not, could not, if you please.
You will like him. You will see.
You will like him--we all agree!
I would not, could not, can't you see?
Not him, not now--you let me be!
I did not like him with a group.
I did not like him in one-fell-swoop.
I did not like him on a shelf.
I did not like him by myself.
I did not like him here or there.
I did not like him anywhere.
I do not like James Joyce's prose.
I do not like him--this I knows.
You do not like him. So you say.
Try him! Try him! And you may!
Try him and you may, I say!

LOOK!
If you will let me be,
I will try him. You will see.

"The fall (bababadalgharaghtakammi
narronnkonnbronntonnerronntuonnth
unntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoor
denenthurnuk!)of a once wallstrait
oldparr is retaled early in bed and
later on life down through all christian
minstrelsy. The great fall of the offwall
entailed at such short notice the
pftjschute of Finnegan, erse solid man,
that the humptyhillhead of humself
prumptly sends an unquiring one well
to the west in quest of his tumptytumtoes:
and their upturnpikepointandplace is at
the knock out in the park where oranges
have been laid to rust upon the green
since devlinsfirst loved livvy."

Say!
I still don't like James Joyce!
I don't! I hate his obscure voice!
And I'd not read him in a group,
And I'd not read him in one-fell-swoop,
And I'd not read him on a shelf,
And I'd not read him by myself!
His attitude just makes me ill,
Though he creates words with such great skill.
I'll admit, I value craft,
But Joyce saw rules and simply laughed.
He has no care for old traditions:
Iconoclast on a holy mission.
As "innovative" as he was,
Talent is as talent does.
And literature, I do think,
Ought to be shared, not used to shrink
The reader's ego for not knowing
Where "King Author"'s head was going.
So I still dislike James Joyce's prose;
I'm still among his ardent foes.
I think that time can only aid
My resolution to invade
The hallowed halls of lit departments
(If need be, going through the vents),
And as surreptitiously
As circumstance dictates I be,
I'll delete his works and name
From all book-lists and end his game.
I do not like James Joyce's prose.
I do not like it--this I knows.

Why I Hate Sports

2006-10-12T21:18:00.000-04:00

Reason Number One: Sweating makes me break out.

Reason Number Two: This story.

I just...I don't know. That poor kid. That poor mom. That stupid fucking idiot coach who just didn't stop to actually think for more than two seconds tops about what he was doing. And for what? For something with, literally, zero real meaning. That poor, poor kid. And oh, God. His name just sort of makes it all perfectly clear. Harry Bowers? Age nine, doesn't play Little League as well as Keith or the other kids, but his mom Jennifer wants him to go so he can try and make friends? And she named him Harry when he was born, and she hoped that it would be the cute, retro kind of Harry, who is happy and popular and cool in a not-trying-too-hard kind of way, sort of like Prince Harry, maybe. And now he's this--he's this story? I don't even know how to describe how seriously and deeply sad this whole thing makes me. Like, I am sitting in the computer cluster typing this when I should be doing my problem set, and I am, seriously and literally, fighting back tears.

That poor kid. Unbelievable. And he's not going to be okay. He's really not.

Ode

2006-10-09T19:07:00.000-04:00

The defective door:
A lazy girl's new best friend.
I love you so much.

What a Nice Day

2006-10-05T22:18:00.000-04:00

Today I had a perfectly wonderful lunch. First I went to the Yankee Doodle and had pretty much the platonic ideal of bacon-egg-and-cheeses. Which was nice. Then, I crossed the street to Gourmet Heaven to go and get something to drink. I chose orange-strawberry-banana juice. Then I also picked up a two-pack of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, for dessert. Then, as I was leaving, I realized I didn't have a straw, so I went to ABP to go get one, and then the chicken noodle soup looked tempting, so I got a cup of that and sat down with it, my newly acquired straw, and my o.s.b.j. (Hee, "b.j." I'm eight, yeah, thanks.) Then I started to eat my soup and read my book. Then, Bianca called and started talking about LSATs again and my head exploded and I died.

I Am Awful

2006-09-03T21:21:00.000-04:00

I signed up to audition for the Laramie Project production that's going up at Yale this semester because emotional masochism is my number one favorite pastime, and I thought I'd have a look at my script tonight, the one from four years ago, when we did it my senior year in high school. It's got all of my old acting notes in it and stuff, which is saddening, but then I laughed my ass off at a transcript of a short conversation that I had written down on one of the title pages. Notes are in brackets.

Eric [the director]: Yeah, I heard before, someone missed the narrator's line, "Jonas Slonaker," and Phil just picked it up, so good job--

Me: NO, I GAVE Phil that line; don't call me incompetent unless you know the story. Jesus!

Anat [stage manager]: Also, someone missed the "Marge Murray" line.

Me: Yeah, that was me.

Bait and Switch

2006-09-02T13:04:00.000-04:00

A few days ago, I found out that Yale put me on Health Hold. That means that I can't register for classes until my vaccinations are up to date. I was confused; I remembered getting my meningitis vaccine before freshman year, so I called Health Services to see what was up. She told me that I had actually gotten my meningitis vaccine in 2001 (before Israel), and that they were only good for five years. However, she explained, that since I was a senior and not a freshman, I could simply come by Health Services and pick up a waiver. I said that was fine, and I would do just that. When I showed up later yesterday afternoon, the lady at Health Services said, "Oh, actually, you don't need the waiver, why don't you just get that shot right now?" So I did. It hurt. Now I have to go to Career Services to pick up some practice LSATs, but I am a little afraid; with the way things are going, I know the person is just going to say, "Oh, why don't you just take the LSAT right now?"

Those Who Help Themselves

2006-08-27T20:53:00.000-04:00

So, we're not doing especially great with the planning, here. This morning, Dan has to go to the garden; we figure it's fine for him to take his keycard (building access) and key (elevator and room access) with him, as I will almost certainly be in the library for a significant amount of time. Unfortunately, as I find out some two hours later, summer hours for Sterling Memorial Library dictate that said library is CLOSED on Sundays. Harrummph. Fine. I will simply go read something worthless (Us Weekly or similar) at the Yale Bookstore. This decision (a good one, I think) is followed by the sojourn in the rain to the bookstore, only to discover that the bookstore has closed its doors, as their computers are down. I am unable to think of a single place where I can rest my weary wheels. I call Dan; he told me earlier that he should be done around 1, 1:30. It's 1:24. However, he tells me that he probably has at least an hour left to work. Huh. I cart all my shit (those LSAT books weigh a lot) to Urban. I use my gift card, and then some. At around 2:30, I call Dan again. He tells me that things are "just beginning to wind down." I tell him that I am wandering, cold and wet, around New Haven. He tells me that he will see what he can do. I begin to get sort of irritated. He calls me back about five to ten minutes later, saying that he is leaving work now, an hour and a half later than he was supposed to. Something about the program being very poorly organized. Eventually, I do get out of the rain.

This evening, Dan remembers that he has to attend dinner and a meeting for freshman counselors at his Dean's house. I decide that I will NOT be a huge pain in the ass and make him go get takeout for me in the rain, even though he is the one that doesn't own an umbrella and will not let me wear his raincoat (it is apparently "dirty"). We decide, though, that the likelihood is that I will get home before he does, and so I should take his keycard and key. However, he realizes that he will need his keycard to gain access to the Dean's house. We sort of decide that I will gain building access some way; perhaps I will ask a passerby to let me in. When I arrive home from dinner (which I stretched way, way out, to the point where every waiter in the place asked me if I was all set, twice), I text Dan to get an ETA. He tells me: "an hour?" This begins to sound familiar. I end up gaining access to a classroom building and settling in with my book for about half an hour. Then, maintenance/security arrives and kicks my ass out. Now, I am truly stuck, cold and wet and alone, in the rain. Dan did not answer my last text message. There is an open window on the first floor, but it is about six and a half feet off the ground from the outside. It seems to open up onto a stairwell. However, on the exterior wall, there are two little protruding slanty ledges. I sort of step up on one, and feel my wet foot start to slide off my flipflop. Hmmm. I consider my options: throwing my flipflops inside first presumes I'll make it inside and won't have to stand here in my bare feet if I don't; leaving my flipflops outside will mean that Dan will have to pick them up when he eventually gets back, assuming they are still there; the same choices apply to my enormous shoulder bag, with the added variable of, you know, valuables. I stand, in the rain, contemplating my options. No one has walked by in this entire time. I suppose they are all having freshman counselor meetings. I decide to text Dan again: "considering trying to climb thru window. ideas?" I wait five more minutes in the rain, with no answer. I give the protruding ledgy thingy a couple of test runs, hopping up, grabbing the edge of the window, stuff like that. Then, I think, the hell with it, and, with my flip flops on and my enormous shoulder bag on my shoulder, I slowly and painfully (and certainly with a few stops and starts) make my way up the wall and through the window. My jeans got filthy in the process, and I seriously hurt my elbow.

The correct course of action, in retrospect, would have provided me with the keycard for two major reasons: 1) Dan has already proven--today!--that he does not tend to have a good handle on his schedule; and 2) he was going to an event where others were expected at the same time; any one of them could easily have let him into the Dean's house and back into the dorm, where they all live and would presumably be headed at the end of the meeting. Thus, it is only fair that I refuse to answer my phone when Dan calls and would like me to meet him on the first floor so that he can use his key to take the elevator up, and not have to walk up to the fourth floor. Serves him right.

TWICE. IN ONE DAY.

A Surreal Moment

2006-08-25T09:28:00.000-04:00

[Note for the squeamish: this is yet another entry that deals with gross things. Sorry. One-track mind.]

A couple weeks ago, I went to the Willow Grove Mall with my moms. We parked up by the third floor carousel entrance, as is our wont, and began walking toward the doors. This entrance is set up so that the carousel, which is inside the mall, is nevertheless visible through large glass panels, and the actual doors by which you enter the mall flank the carousel on either side.

My mother does this thing. Whenever there's a choice to make about left or right (e.g. entering a movie theater, which lane to drive in, how to find an unfamiliar place, etc.), my mother makes it a point to always choose the left. You know, because of left wing. It makes her a better Democrat. Duh.

In any event, I've learned not to argue.

So NATURALLY, we start to walk towards the left-hand entrance. As we are walking, a boy comes out of the entrance and walks a few steps towards the parking lot, toward us, and then takes a few steps away from the mall, to the side. This kid was probably fourteen or fifteen, about 30% hipster and 70% Hot Topic. He had on fairly fitted straight-leg jeans, some sort of black tee, could have been vintage but was more likely "vintage-style," and a navy blue bandanna tied, a la Blue States Lose, around his dark, shaggy, baby-hipster 'do.

And as the kid starts to walk away from the mall, he suddenly pukes all over the pavement.

SO CRAZY. He didn't even lean forward, or hunch over. His head moved a little forward, but it simply looked like he was about to take another step, but instead of his legs following the forward motion of his head, his breakfast did.

My mother and I looked at each other, and silently agreed that the best course of action, just this once, was to go rightwards.

(Postscript: We left the mall some time later; it was probably about two hours or so. When we left the mall--yes, on the left side, which, from the inside of the mall, makes it the vomit-free side--we saw this young whippersnapper looking utterly, totally despondent, sitting on the bench. It made me so sad! Poor kid! Still waiting for his mom to pick him up! And his mean friends just went on their merry mallrat ways! I was going to ask him if he was okay, but then I thought it would make it worse, since, after all, he didn't know that I'd seen him toss his cookies two hours previous. And frankly, for a boy that age, the less people who see you barf, the more cred you have. So. Since the Hot Topic is going to give him enough cred issues as it is, I left him to his happy fantasy that no one saw him boot that Saturday two weeks ago.)

INSANE with RAGE

2006-08-24T13:45:00.000-04:00

Or, How My Job Search Makes Me Feel.

Whilst perusing the job board at the Student Employment Website, I came across this listing:

[redacted; don't want to get in trouble!] - Education Office Assistant

Employer: [redacted; see above!]
Category: Office/Administrative
Job Description: The Education Office Assistant will help with general office duties, assist in special education projects and gallery events, and help to advertise and document programs.

Awwwwwwwww. How special. This is my job! That they could regretfully not hold for me! But that I should feel free to reapply for in the fall!

For shits and giggles, I clicked on the button "Apply for this job." Question number 11 is: "List Your Qualifications For This Job."

Now, I'm no dummy. I know that I have the proverbial snowball's chance in hell of getting this job back. Firstly, I am a senior, and they will want to hire a freshman in all probability, so that the little darling can commit to four years of hell (here's a hint: they commit however much you want, but then QUIT). Secondly, if they even remotely wanted to have me back, I would have gotten a little bit more of a send-off than I did. That "send-off" (read: email) is now in the dictionary as an example for the word "unceremonious."

Nevertheless, I thought it might be fun and amusing to try and, as they say, List My Qualifications For This Job. Enjoy!

1. I held this position since February 2005. [Pause] What, you want more? Fine. I can do that.
2. I am uniquely qualified to understand office culture, since I already know exactly when everyone in the office is on their respective periods.
3. I have familiarity with many organizational systems in the office, since I created them all, in response to a request to, "You, know, just, sort of deal with my files? Also, the supply closet? And also my desk?"
4. Some of the crotchety senile volunteer docents may just finally recognize me. Good luck getting that to happen with the new kid.
5. I know all the passwords to all the programs and websites, including the office email account.
6. After perusing some of the sent mail in said email account just now, I can state with a surety that I write better and with far fewer spelling and grammatical errors than my ex-boss, who now actually has to email people who write in to the department again, instead of spending her time on her friend's website and looking at her boyfriend's Flickr account.
7. I am extremely good natured about going to the post office and dying six slow deaths while waiting in line, even though we have a postage machine, but because no one can get their shit together, said ex-boss realizes that, omigod, these mailings? Have to go out, like, now? Oops?
8. I can keep very quiet about sensitive subjects, such as that time when ex-boss-of-boss got yelled at by her boss for being incompetent, or how ex-boss often googles her ex-boyfriend. Wait. Oooh, my bad.
9. I know how to work the button-maker.
10. I know to what extent you are lying in the job description, and I am okay with that. I know that "general office duties" means fielding tour requests and booking them without ever discussing it with ex-boss, whose job it technically is to do that, that "assisting in gallery events" means making sure the coffee pot is constantly refilled for the aforementioned crotchety docents, and that "helping to advertise programs" means running all over campus in the rain to put up posters that will immediately be rendered illegible by the rain, and that "documenting programs" means walking twenty minutes in 20-degree weather to return the digital projector because ex-boss was too lazy to do so. Furthermore, the fact that I know all of these things in advance, and will not have to be enlightened, means that you will not see a drop in morale, as you most certainly will in the new kid you hire once she realizes the bill of goods you sold her.

I would be happy to furnish a resume on request. Thank you for considering me for this position!

R.O.U.S.--Rodent Of Unusual Size

2006-08-03T09:28:00.000-04:00

Dan appears to have a bit of a problem. On Sunday, there was a bat in the house (though he is no more). This morning, there was another rodent.

Oh, no! Was it a mouse?

No, it was not a mouse.

Oh, NO! Was it a rat?

No, it was not a rat.

...Just what sort of rodent was this?

This was a squirrel.

Please do not ask me how a squirrel got into Dan's house and why it is running around in the area right outside his bedroom and above the stairs, i.e. on Dan's reading armchair, i.e. next to all the food.

I do not KNOW how the squirrel got into Dan's house or why it is hanging out around his room. What I do know is that this squirrel has a lot of chutzpah. The first time, in retrospect, I noted its presence, it was probably no more than a foot away from me (that is, it made a noise that I figured I must have made by brushing up against something). The first time I SAW it, it was on Dan's armchair. I yelled, hoarsely and deeply, "JESUS FUCKING CHRIST," and slammed and locked the bedroom door.

I breathed. Tried to calm down. Called Dan at work.

We caucused, and decided that it would be best if I left the house via the window and fire escape. We hung up. I got ready to go. Then I ran into problems with the fan, and the other fan, and the security grate, and I got frustrated, and remembered that a squirrel is not a bat, and I have often thought about having a pet squirrel, like Veruca Salt, and I decided that it would be very easy for me to just leave through the door, and probably the squirrel wouldn't be there anymore anyway.

I opened the door. The squirrel was on the arm of Dan's armchair, exactly where he was when I last opened the door and screamed.

Cue me: "GO THE FUCK AWAY GO THE FUCK AWAY." [SLAM.]

I breathed. Tried to calm down. Figured that the little bastard didn't hear me for a while, and came back out, rather than being the biggest baddest motherfucking squirrel on the block who just don't give a fuck what bitch be screamin at him, shit, yo. Decided that the best course of action was to open the door, scream at the squirrel or the armchair, and make a lot of noise. (This plan is perfect, unless the squirrel is a rabid squirrel, which crossed my mind.)

I opened the door, yelled, "GO THE FUCK AWAY GO THE FUCK AWAY GO THE FUCK AWAY" while vigorously shaking the sleigh bells Dan has hung up on his door. I did not see the squirrel, so I yelled at the armchair.

It seemed to work, and I quickly left, padlocked Dan's door and went stomp stomp stomp down the stairs.

WHAT THE FUCK. WHAT. THE. FUCK.

Any ideas?

PS: It is an R.O.U.S. because it is not teeny like a mousie; it was big, like a big motherfucking squirrel.

Oh MY God.

2006-07-30T23:27:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, Dan called me and told me that he awoke the night before at 3 AM because there was a bat on his forehead.

[pause. breathe. again. one more time. screaming will wake the baby.]

Indeed, ladies and gents. A bat. A MOTHERFUCKING BAT. ON HIS MOTHERFUCKING FOREHEAD.

When he told me this, I had grave, grave doubts about coming to visit this week. Tonight, those doubts were simultaneously dispelled and confirmed. How is this possible, you say. Simple, habibi. Very, very simple.

There was a bat in the house this evening. I saw it and ran to cower in the bathroom, ultimately ascending to Dan's room via the handy-dandy fire escape. Dan went back downstairs to close the grate.

Ten minutes go by. This is a two-minute job, tops.

Hmmmm.

I think I hear something; I go to the door. I crack it open; I hear Dan ask me for "something very heavy."

CHRIST FUCK JESUS.

I give him a dictionary (second choice after one of his truly enourmous but slightly unwieldy CD binders). I go to shut the door, when Dan, from the stairs, says I need to put the dictionary on the lumpy towel, which is on top of the tennis racket, which Dan is holding with two hands.

CHRIST FUCK JESUS.

I am unable to do my duty. I give Dan the dictionary and run back into the room, locking the door.

Fifteen minutes? Twenty?

Loud thumps. Many, many loud thumps. I crack the door open, close it quickly as Dan tells me to stay in the room.

More loud thumps.

Tonight, Dan beat a bat to death with a tennis racket, a dictionary and a corkscrew. Two towels lost their lives in the mission. I am a big fat weenie who couldn't help. Now I am having full body shivers, Dan is on the bed acting like a Vietnam vet (angry at the world, directionless, maybe some light post-traumatic stress disorder), and it's hot as fuck up here, because GOD KNOWS no more windows are allowed to be open this century.

Night!

Snippet from Lunch with Girls, Hvar, Croatia

2006-06-05T06:59:00.000-04:00

C: Oh my God, I really want to start a fight club. Like, with my friends, and just punch people in the face. It would be so much fun, and you could let off lots of steam. Doesn't that sound fun?

(Looooong pause)

S: . . . Have you seen "Fight Club"?

My Friend, Urban Outfitters

2006-04-30T18:16:00.000-04:00

On any given day, 60% of my outfit was purchased at Urban Outfitters. That includes shoes, but excludes underwear. (Damn you, boobies!) Yes. I know. I'm a tool of the man. Urban Outfitters manufactures derivative "cred"-focused clothing, all based on some corporate idea of a "hip," "urban" lifestyle that is some combination of Blue States Lose, fraternities, and a calendar from 2004. Also, don't they use sweatshop labor? And aren't they always getting in trouble with my mom?

For reals about the 2004 thing. They, like, JUST got on the footless tights bandwagon, which is a bandwagon, incidentally, that, I swear to God, I will never climb aboard. But seriously: people I hate were wearing footless tights last August. And Urban is just now offering footless tights (for like 12 dollars, and ugly ass ones with lace on the bottoms and holy Jesus this trend is so, so bad).

So. Why do I continue to shop at Urban Outfitters?

1. Because I live closer to Urban Outfitters than I do to my residential college.

2. Because the other options are A) J. Crew and B) all eBay, all the time. And sometimes eBay stuff doesn't fit, and their return policy sort of sucks, in that it doesn't exist (foreshadowing!).

3. Because I have become inured to the price gouging.

4. Because I think it's funny to piss off my mom and make her embarrassed that she paid for the "Everyone Loves a Jewish Girl" t-shirt, complete with shopping bags and dollar signs. (Semi-Amusing Aside: I didn't realize those were shopping bags until months after the shirt was taken off the market. My best guess was that they were some sort of stylized synagogue, or perhaps a tzedakah box.)

5. Because sometimes, you can cheat them. For instance: This summer, I tried on one cork-soled purple strappy platform shoe at the Urban in Philly. It was sort of on a lark, and then I had to leave the store. Anyway, when I got home, I looked them up on the Urban website and they were $60 and I had only tried on one shoe, in an 8, and usually I am an 8 1/2 or a 9, and I think this was on my smaller foot anyway, so I sort of don't know what size I should even get, and blah.

And then, like, four months later (no, two), the bitches went on sale, eventually getting down to half-price and I was like, Ska-REW it, especially since you can return things you bought from the website to a real live store, which, did I mention? I live really close to one of those. So I bought the 8 and the 9 (no 8 1/2, go figs) and then they came and I tried them on, and it turns out the 8 really was the right one! So I kissed the shoes (not the 9s, stinking clodhopper shoes, is for elephant, not for Dainty Me), and then set out to return the 9s.

I went to the store to return it at like 7 PM on a Tuesday, and I took them up to the register. Like a good and smart girl, I brought the packing slip with me to act as my receipt, but strangely, although it did say "CLEARANCE" on the packing slip, there weren't any actual numbers to say the amount I paid for both pairs of shoes (for those of you playing along at home: $60 for both pairs). The guy at the register realized I had bought two of the same pair of shoes, and started to get a little snarky, and then I got DEEPLY anxious and self-conscious, because I HATE returning things, it makes me feel like a bad consumer, but then the other girl at the register was like, duh, dipshit, how else are you going to buy shoes online? I felt better.

Then the guy realized that there weren't any prices listed, so he goes to call the supply warehouse, which is in Jersey, I think. So he's calling them, and then it appears he gets some sort of answer, but he looks confused, and then hangs up. He says something to the effect that it's apparently very loud over there, and then scans my shoes. Then he scans the two long-sleeved t-shirts I am buying at $24 dollars apiece. Then he asks, "Do you have the credit card you used online?" And I say, "Oh, sure, here," but am a little confused, but whatever, and am expecting to pay around $18 to make up the difference between the shoes and the shirts, which is when he says: "Okay, so we're going to credit your account for $11.98."

Record scratch.

Whaaaaaaaaat?

Oh yes, Virginia. New Jersey had apparently failed to notice that full price DNE clearance price, and told him they were $60 a pair. Ergo, I was credited for $60 (minus $48 for the shirts). The total price I had paid online, for both pairs of shoes? $60.

Did you catch that? Urban Outfitters gave me free shoes.

And that, friends, is why I continue to shop at Urban Outfitters.

What Dreams May Come

2006-04-25T01:04:00.000-04:00

...on the whole, not one of my better days.

I am so tired.

Minutiae

2006-04-10T17:35:00.000-04:00

Two things:

1. I'm not entirely certain, but to the best of my recollection, I have been kicked in the head by walking too close to the swingset three or four times. I know it's more than twice, because I have two distinct memories of thinking, "Shit, not again."

Have other people done this? Or am I just too stupid to live?

2. I saw a squirrel on the sidewalk today, on his way towards running up the tree. The notable thing about this squirrel, though, is that he had significant fur-loss on the last third or so of his tail. As I watched the sun shine through it, illuminating the rat-like whip of the squirrel's base tail, so to speak, I experienced the same sort of disgust that I feel when looking at those CAT scans of people's heads, the ones where their eyeballs are bright yellow and protruding while their brains repose in shades of blue and violet. It was the very same feeling, which is also the feeling I get upon seeing a cameltoe on a passerby.

Something to Remember:

2006-04-08T22:22:00.000-04:00

The flip side of the pot calling the kettle black is that it takes one to know one.

Taken Aback

2006-03-27T17:33:00.000-05:00

Now, I consider myself pretty up on the attention-grabbing shenanigans of celebrities of all stripes. I'm not fazed by a lot of it anymore. That said, I have to give credit to a stunt whereupon reading the headline, my immediate, visceral reaction is, "She will not."

White Men Get Their Comeuppance

2006-03-25T20:57:00.000-05:00

Let's just call this payback.

How To Embarrass Yourself, Quickly and Effectively

2006-03-24T20:13:00.000-05:00

Step 1: wake up hungry.

Step 2: decide against bacon/egg/cheese at the Yankee Doodle, as you are on a diet and would rather resemble a gazelle than a hog this summer.

Step 3: decide to eat a virtuous imported black cherry yogurt for breakfast instead.

Step 4: patzke (sp?) around for a while, resulting in 7 minutes to walk an eight-minute walk to work.

Step 5: grab yogurt from fridge.

Step 6: run to work.

Step 7: upon arrival at work, notice lack of spoon. Search office for spoon. When search proves unsuccessful, silently debate possibility of running across the street to get a plastic spoon from Atticus. When boss arrives, resign self to eating yogurt later.

Step 8: when done with work, throw cup of yogurt in large tote bag.

Step 9: go about business. Forget about yogurt.

Step 10: receive call from friend. Agree to meet for lunch.

Step 11: meet friend. Walk to restaurant.

Step 12: be shown to your table.

Step 13: opt for the booth side of the table.

Step 14: throw tote bag onto booth-side cushion, as though you have not a care in the world.

Step 15: in the middle of saying something vaguely dramatic, flop down onto the seat. Land your ass on the edge of your tote bag.

Step 16: allow mind to register small popping sound, feeling.

Step 17: reach inside bag, looking for some sort of disaster involving Kiehl's lip balm and/or water bottle.

Step 18: still having failed to remember about yogurt, draw hand out of bag. Marvel at substance on fingers, pen, wallet, loose change.

Step 19: remember yogurt.

Step 20: attempt to explain to friend that you have yogurt all over the inside of your bag. Explain in such a way that amounts to denying having sat on the yogurt, thereby causing the now-infamous Yogurt Explosion. Claim to have thrown tote bag onto seat cushion "too strenuously."

Step 21: retire to single-occupancy bathroom to wash everything in bag, hands, bag itself. Feel anxious each time the door handle is joggled by someone needing to pee; apologize. Take 10 minutes to clean self, belongings, bag.

Step 22: exit bathroom with wet tote bag and belongings, minus one half-full imported yogurt carton and a number of receipts.

Step 23: change the subject.

How was your day?

Bright Idea #67834621

2006-03-08T18:34:00.000-05:00

Scheduling the finale of "Project Runway" at PRECISELY THE SAME TIME as the season premiere of "America's Next Top Model."

You have the very same target audience; we all watch both of them. For our sakes: can't all y'all just get along?

Why Self-Loathe When I Can Do It For You?

2006-02-17T16:49:00.000-05:00

That's sort of an inaccurate title.

Anyway. I am taking a history seminar about politics in the United States post-WWII. Right now we're doing a lot of the 60s stuff: MLK and the civil rights movement two weeks ago, Betty Friedan and feminism last week, and the Great Society and the New Left next week.

The class is pretty mixed, politically speaking. There are a lot of fucking Republicans, is the upshot. Some are Republicans because they're assholes, some are Republicans (I truly suspect) because they are from the Deep South and seem to be missing some essential neural connections. (NB: I said "and seem"! Not "and therefore seem"!)

There is one black person in the class, a girl with alliterative initials. She's sort of famous on campus for being a big ol' tool, but I also get the sense that there's a sort of respect, if only because she was one of the only girls to take Yale's Old Boys' Club 101, aka the world-famous and intensely scary Grand Strategy. Please note: not scary in the sense of the class being hard. Scary in the sense that all the people going into this class fully intend to rule the world (not an exaggeration) and GS merely gives them the intellectual tools to do so, in addition to setting the students up with intensely hardcore internships with, like, Cheney and Rove. GS is more or less a tool of scary Republicans. They say that it's balanced (a "centrist" prof, a CRAZY NEOCON prof and an ostensibly liberal prof share teaching duties), but a lot of the people that take it (and take it seriously) err--and I do mean err--on the side of conservatives.

So C.C. (close, but missing just a bit, typographically speaking, if you catch my drift...) has come out of this program, and she was one of the few girls, and certainly one of the very few (if not only) minority women to take this class in recent memory. But still: sort of a tool. She had a facebook group, something along the lines of "People Against Facebook Groups," inspired by her four-inch-long list of groups, a screenshot of which served as the logo (avec a large red X over it) for the aforementioned group. That is sort of confusing, but parse it, and it will work.

So C.C. is one of the more outspoken conservatives in the class. It's an interesting thing, the way we all sort of step around it, but what do you do when you, as a white liberal, are saying certain things about the politics of minorities and the underprivileged and whatever, when the minority student in the class is about to raise her hand and tell you you're wrong? Is the conversation just over?

Anyway. In Martin Luther King week, C.C. waits until the end of class to bring up her point. And we're all sort of...waiting on it. And she basically ends up saying that MLK's Why We Can't Wait totally had the wrong idea; MLK was pushing too hard, and wasn't focusing on the real issues that would truly lay the groundwork for future equality, like work in the school systems.

In the meantime, I am sighing mightily inside my head, because, yes, I am a bleeding-heart liberal, thank you very much, and I almost cried when reading about MLK's response to those who preached "gradualism" at him, and I was all, you know, yeah, Martin, damn STRAIGHT you can't wait, and then the one black girl is saying, "Gradually."

C.C. agreed on this point with the Florida conservative. They both felt that Martin Luther King was too radical.

Our professor, who I feel must have been having some of the same thoughts as I did, sort of held up the book and said, "So, uh, C---, I guess this ought to be, uh, 'Why We CAN Wait?'"

Funny, yes. Heartbreaking, yes. Oy.

So for Betty Friedan week, at least, there are more girls in the class, so C.C. doesn't have the monopoly on the "minority" status. Nevertheless, she manages to announce that her problem with Betty Friedan is how she "devalues the work that women were doing in the 50s, you know, some women found staying within the home really fulfilling and they--" and by this time my head is all but on the table.

AAAAUUUUGGGGH FRIEDAN SPECIFICALLY COUNTERS YOUR ARGUMENT YOU MORON WHAT DID YOU NOT EVEN READ IT

And then the asshole (girls can be assholes, doncha know?) tries to get a survey going on how many of our mothers worked and how many stayed home, and in the meantime she is making all sorts of seriously demeaning value judgments on women who work "and leave their kids home alone," and it was all just a little much for me, and she sucks.

Again, the only one to agree with her point was the conservative from Florida. C. C. felt that Yale should offer Home Ec and Cooking classes, for credit; Florida felt the same way about Wood Shop and Auto Repair.

Yes, Virginia. That's what they said.

And then C. C. tries to get into this thing, about how Yale says they prepare us for the future, and her roommate doesn't know how to cook (OMG! A GIRL not knowing how to COOK! Yale has clearly done wrong by her!), and I'm just like, Hold up now.

First of all: Dining services do offer cooking classes for outgoing seniors, so if you want to learn how to cook at Yale, there are many ways for you to do so.

Secondly: I am sorry, there is no way anyone should get ACADEMIC CREDIT at YALE MUTHERFUCKIN' COLLEGE for a COOKING CLASS. No. Just no.

"Devaluing the work women did do." Fuckin' asshole. I have to say, I am willing to go out on a limb here and say that working as a physicist, let's say, exercises more of the old neurons than cooking dinner. Not to shit on cooking dinner; I like dinner, and I suck at making it, and anyone who wants to make it for me is a personal hero. But I think I can say that it is objectively less hard to cook a relatively good dinner than it is to put in a relatively good day as a physicist. Feel free to disagree with me; you'd just better have some insane story to back it up.

Oh my word. Sometimes I just am so irritated by people who hold opinions that differ from mine.

Subject: GOD WHY AM I SUCH A FUCKUP

2006-01-31T18:01:00.000-05:00

So the fellowship that I was interested in, where they help place you and all and give you a big old stipend, the one where I got on the stick early and went to the meeting about it back in october? You know, the amazing one?

Application is due tomorrow, including 5 page personal statement on, you know, me and public interest law. Whatever, annoying, I'll do it, all set, hand it in tomorrow.

"A complete application should include:
...
At least two letters of recommendation, one of which must be from a faculty member who knows well the applicant's work. The recommendations must be included with the application."

So, with the application that is due tomorrow (along with the essay I haven't yet written), are due two recommendations that haven't been written, by people I haven't asked to write them.

Chances of my applying successfully for this fellowship: actual, literal zero.

Oh, MAN.

So, scrap that, I guess.

God, I just fucked this up so bad. I AM SO BAD AT LIFE IT HURTS.

I need some ice cream.

FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK.

Love, Sars

Uh, Part Two

2006-01-26T18:15:00.000-05:00

Oh, thank god.

Time Out For Annoying Political Stuff

2006-01-26T14:33:00.000-05:00

Oh, good.

Think of the Children, Won't You?

2006-01-19T20:42:00.000-05:00

Poor Josh! So bored! At work!

I was going to write about physical pain, because it's something I think about when I puke, which I did on Monday. Usually it's about to what level pain is more tolerable then nausea, but sometimes I just sort of think about all the myriad and stupid ways in which I've hurt myself.

When I read really sad things, like truly emotionally painful things (not stuff from the news, usually; it sort of has to be melodramatic lost-love type bullshit and/or My Dead Uncle), the centers of the palms of my hands hurt. Like achy hurt.

Sometimes I think I MUST be Jesus.

Twice in the past year I have wrenched my neck VERY BADLY by moving. This is why I am considering stasis as a life-choice. Don't you judge me.

But the worst pain I've felt in recent memory came as part of the extended aftermath of the Great Tooth-Breaking Episode of 2003, and the subsequent experiences of being a hillbilly and/or unable to hold bottles in my front teeth as I was previously wont to do.

Last semester, Dan and I set a night to go to the local soul food place, where we had sweet--SWEET!--tea. We drank it and we were like, woho, this stuff is so sweet it makes my teeth ache, ha ha.

Next day: "Ha ha, my teeth still ache."
"Wait, for real?"
"Um. Yes?"
"Jesus, what's wrong with you now."

So then I decided maybe I was just having a sensitivity issue, because of my whitening toothpaste, so I bought a toothpaste for sensitive teeth, and la la la.

Pain did not go away. Got worse. Was still cold-sensitive (as it had been in my non-root-canaled front tooth since the breaking of the tooth), but was now also HEAT-sensitive. As I gathered when my dentist told me at the time of the inital breakage, heat-sensitivity is, more or less, really fucking bad.

Sooooo...I make an appointment with my Connecticut dentist. He had fixed my bonding last year. The trick to dealing with his office is knowing the receptionist's routine.

SCENE: dentist's office, day.

Sarah: Hi, I have a really bad toothache. I've had it for about a week, it seems like it might be centered around a tooth with bonding on it, and it's become heat-sensitive, which I think is pretty bad, and it hurts VERY BADLY when I touch it.

Receptionist: Well, Doctor Joe can see you in three and a half weeks.

Sarah: [freaks out in head; recovers] Do you have anything sooner?

Receptionist: Well, we have an opening tomorrow at 11:00 AM.

Sarah: You know what? That would be perfect.

FIN

Anyway, so I got my appointment for the next day, and went in. I explained my symptoms, my tooth history, my previous non-heat-sensitivity. Then he took X-rays, and we looked at them together. He told me he didn't really see anything, but, you know, he would look at the tooth/teeth.

I leaned back, and then he began tapping on my teeth, one by one. When he got to the one next to the front (broken and bonded) tooth, I sort of did a quick little intake of breath from the pain, and he was like, "Oh? That hurt?" and tapped it again.

Gotta love dentists.

Then he moved to the front tooth, and tapped on that. The pain, friends. Like hitting one's facial bones with a hammer. Tears fell out of my eyes of their own accord. Noticing them, the dentist said, "Wait, are you crying because it hurts?" Then he tapped it again. Seeing the increased volume of tears, he used the scientific method to deduce that the tapping hurt so badly that it was making tears stream from my eyes, while I remained sort of speechless.

Then he decided that if I was going to CRY ABOUT IT, he may as well just open it up. Which he did, and apparently found a nerve that was dead and infected and angry and malevolent and exacerbating the snot out of itself all over my set of teeth. He seemed sort of pleasantly surprised. I was more relieved, but that might have been the Novocaine.

Then things were peachy keen (as I INSIST on getting copious amounts of Novocaine) as the dentist sort of made a little staging area out of what appeared to be a dental dam (which...would make sense) and fitted it over my tooth, with just that tooth sticking out, so that my tooth was pretty much like a dead animal to be butchered on a tarp, which was interesting to me in sort of a detached way, because of the aforementioned Novocaine. Right.

And then he seemed to be finishing up, but he had to cauterize the dead nerve area, duh. And I thought nothing of it because of the Novocaine.

Have you noticed how I keep talking about the Novocaine? It's a writerly technique, because I'm about to subvert your (the reader's!) expectations:

Novocaine apparently decided to choose that moment to go on vacation to Tijuana or something, because I think that the cauterizing hurt more than anything I've ever experienced. I knew the tooth was heat-sensitive; I should have anticipated the effects of a very high temperature on the NERVE ITSELF.

The result was basically that every bone in my face hurt for approximately one month. I threw up that afternoon from the pain, which is sort of a neat way of resolving my pain/nausea dilemma: why choose, when you can have both? I made Dan take me with him to the Grocery store so I could buy delicious un-chewy yogurt to eat (he didn't want to because I was basically delirious, but you know how it is, the delirious girl always gets her way), and then we were walking around and I was like, "I...feel sort of nauseated," and he jokingly grabbed a clear plastic produce bag and gave it to me. We continued to walk, and then I tapped him on the shoulder and said, "You know what? I'm going to go sit on the bench by the shopping carts." While he finished up the shopping, I puked straight bile (Hard to eat when your whole mouth has been hurting for a week! Good for losing weight, though! Sorry I said "bile"!) into the produce bag. Then, because I am both couth and nice, I held it up when Dan came out with my yogurt and said, "Look. I threw up."

He is sort of the definition of long-suffering.

I got a Vicodin prescription, but it turns out that Vicodin (you guessed it!) makes me puke. Ambien, however, rocks the hizzy. In the meantime, though, the days when I tried to make believe that Vicodin just made me happy (like House!), my lecture notes are sooooort of amusing. They usually have the date, the word "Colonies," and then pictures of hearts and the sentence "I love Vicodin I love my dolls" on a slant, and then it stops because that's approximately when I got nauseated and stopped taking notes. Five minutes later, I would put my head on my desk and keep it there for the rest of lecture. Then I would more or less crawl home and email-in sick to work.

Good times.

In summation: the worst pain I can remember experiencing is the cauterization of an infected and exacerbated nerve in my front tooth. It literally (not figuratively) felt like the pain of the moment of cauterization simply continued, slooooowly attenuating, for over three weeks.

In the meantime, I recommend sweet tea, as it was apparently not the tea that did it.

Product Reviews

2005-12-16T22:08:00.000-05:00

Doesn't it sort of seem that this is supposed to be a product review blog? I mean, you know, the title, "Dis-missives" and all that. Well, I've sort of let that fall by the wayside, but today I am bringing it back.

I had Dining Dollars I had to use by tomorrow, so I went to the Dining Service's convenience store and just filled my arms with beverages (I am often thirsty). The last beverage I grabbed was Honest Tea's Vanilla Mint White Tea--"Just a Tad Sweet."

I like vanilla tea, a lot. I like mint tea a good deal. I like unsweetened and lightly sweetened iced tea a whole hell of a lot. Sounded good.

Friends, no. The answer is no.

On the plus side, now I have less than no desire to try that Vanilla-Mint toothpaste they were shilling on "The Apprentice" a few seasons ago. NB: I would wager, however, that if you like that toothpaste, you would like this tea. Also, if you like the tea, then try the toothpaste.

As for me, the bones in my face still seem to ache a little from the incongruities of it all. And I only had the one taste.

YUCK.

Update

2005-12-16T00:46:00.000-05:00

Turns out I rocked the snot out of the class. Just goes to show you how fantastic a take-home final really is.

On White Men, Old, Dead, Stupid or Otherwise

2005-12-14T16:46:00.000-05:00

I never actually ended up reading Stupid White Men. Was it any good?

I'm procrastinating again. I'm supposed to go get a flu shot today but I heard or made up that if you get one too early in the season, it doesn't protect you from that nasty February flu. Which I definitely need to be protected from. However, I am in my hot little room, and the flu clinic is way the hell up Hillhouse Ave, so, no.

I realized that at least one of my readers (Hi BHill!) reads this here journalthing to keep herself abreast on what's going on. And all I ever do is talk about what I eat, or stories about people that piss me off, or moan over the Supreme Court. There's really not very much journaling, is there?

I know. But I can't escape the habit; I got a diary when I was in first grade, and I wrote in it religiously, "Dear Diary, I like Sam Wenocur, blah blah, Love Sarah," "Dear Diary, my older brother is a big stupid poop face and I think he read you and guessed that I like Sam Wenocur, Love Sarah," etc, for about one week, and then I never wrote in it again. Did I mention I used colored pencils to write? I went in rainbow order. Those first couple pages are basically a love song to Roy G. Biv.

Anyway, I'm not good at writing about, like, the daily happenings of my life. I'll try, and then I'll get bored, and I'll be like, nobody wants to hear this shit anyway, and then I'll stop, and go get something to eat.

I guess I just do better when there's something to rant about.

Happily! The worlds do come together! And I figured I'd give it a whirl, and discuss one of my classes. For legal purposes, I will call it "The History of America when it was Colonial." The teacher is named, oh, let's say, Mr. HowDoYouSay"People"InGreek, and will henceforth be known as People-akis.

I took this class for three reasons: 1. I had to take a Pre-Industrial history lecture. 2. Stealthfinger was taking this one, and I totally wanted to be her friend because, like, new school year, very anxious, etc. and 3. Ohnnika took very beautiful notes when she was in this class last year, and saved them all.

(Note: Congrats! Your nickname is Stealthfinger, because of the way you totally shot those guys the finger on Saturday night, and they didn't see you, and Danno and I laughed hysterically! If you don't like it, let me know!) (Note: everyone else, it was fantastic. I wish you could have seen it.)

Unfortunately, I have not yet learned my lesson about classes at Yale, which is that if I am bored at the first two lectures, I will be bored ALL SEMESTER LONG, and therefore, do not take this class that is already boring you! Idiot! Fool!

But you see, I had three very good reasons, as stated above, and Mr. People-akis has a very soothing voice, and he's kind of an extremely cute old man who wears a Red Sox cap and then has static like whoa when he takes it off, but doesn't know, and then lectures with his hair sticking up. Cute, right? I KNOW.

The upshot is that after the midterm, I just stopped going. The major thrust of the class after the midterm was, like, the internal life of colonial Americans, and Mr. People-akis would just talk for an hour longer than he had to about how the dark represented unease and mystery and that's why witches were always accused of doing shit at night and also they didn't have electricity. I also went to a lecture in which he said that menopause made women crazy and mean. (I have worked for a boss who proved this theory true, but still. Mr. People-akis.)

I stopped going because, as Stealthfinger pointed out to me one rainy-ish day on Rose Walk, it was a take-home final.

I still had to go to section, though, to keep my participation grade up. Our TA was this small Latin-American woman who HATED Mr. People-akis. It was actually sort of uncomfortable. She would talk about how they had lunch and she asked him why he had us read a certain book, and then she would set her eyebrows in the "get a load of this" position, and tell us, "He said he thought it was a really neat idea, that racism was economically motivated." Then she would suppress a snort. A Republican girl whose facebook picture features her out hunting would protest: "But this book won the Whatsis Prize! There has to be something about this that makes it good--" and our TA would cut her off and say, "Yeah, the author's connections. Let me just tell you, guys, that this particular prize is notorious for having nothing to do with the quality of the work."

Man, she was nuts. All she ever talked about was how you need amazing grades to do anything with your life, and she knew how important that A was to everyone. Then she was a relatively hard-ass grader. Nice.

The last section, she took Mr. People-akis's book, held it up in one hand, and said, "Look, no one really wants to talk about this, right?" And then she let us go, half an hour early.

I have to say, I felt sort of uncomfortable with the degree to which she let her hatred and condescension run free. But Stealthfinger loves her and wants to stalk her, if she (SF) ever catches up on her sleep.

I mean, I see where the TA is coming from. This class gives an extremely telling picture of what Yale, and colleges, and the country was like before, oh, say, feminists and other libbers. It is an Old White Man teaching about Dead White Men, but worse: he doesn't even give a systematic view of colonial America. It's all about how these Dead White Men felt about shit, which honestly, is so boring that I often actively decided against taking notes, as a sort of protest.

Gosh, I wonder how I did in the class?

Kendy

2005-12-14T16:28:00.000-05:00

Or, "candy."

I was eating FunDip I think two days ago, and I was sort of brain-dead, and I went to go for the last of the Cherry, and I turned the whole damn thing upside down, because the candy stick was NOT DOING IT FOR ME ANYMORE PEOPLE, and then all the Grape I hadn't finished (because, uch, grape, disgusting) falls out onto my sweatshirt, and it feels like very very fine sand as it goes down the neck of my sweatshirt, and then my t-shirt, and into my bra.

Sexy, right? Getting candy all over my body because I'm a pig?

I know. Worship me.

The Payoff For All My Hard Work

2005-12-12T22:08:00.000-05:00

This morning, I asked Danno what he was up to today. He ran through a list that included picking up and beginning his take-home final, hardcore laundry, editing a large research paper, working out transportation and dog issues, and other assorted and sundry tasks. He then asked me what was on my agenda for the day.

I said, "I don't know. I thought I might go get a bagel."

BWA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA

PS: Really, I have many things that I should be doing, but I was all about the mellow (and the gloating) today, so I will be productive TOMORROW. Yes indeed.

I Know

2005-12-10T17:09:00.000-05:00

Anyway:

I'm now done with four of my classes, having handed in two 15-20 pagers yesterday, which was tough but ultimately relief-ful. So this morning, lee la lee la loo, I'm working around to getting up, and I sit up in bed, and GOD DAMN I wrench the shit out of my neck.

This happened last winter. I was leaving Dan's room, and I turned my head to look at him, and THAT WAS IT. I cried the whole day while Danno made me neck pillows made of ice. Which made me feel appropriately babied, but my neck wasn't fully better for about three to four weeks.

I think he expected that I expected the ice pillows again, because he was like, "Oh my God, I can't believe you did this," and I was like, "I know, the cosmos wants me to kill myself," and he was like, "This is so frustrating," and I was like, "I didn't do anything," and he's like, "This is so frustrating," and I was like, "I DIDN'T DO ANYTHING," and he's like, "You sat up in bed and immobilized yourself, this is frustrating," and I said, "I think it's more unfortunate than frustrating and you're not supposed to say to someone that got hurt by no fault of their own that they are FRUSTRATING," and then I started to cry.

He felt bad, and apologized. Which was nice. I spent the rest of the day in bed reading Kafka (for school!) and sleeping. Also not eating, which was a good call, because Reading Week done made me fat. I'm trying to see it as sort of a healthy Venus type curvature, but it's hard to keep saying "Goddess goddess goddess" under your breath when you are trying to stuff your long-underweared self into a pair of jeans. Also I made the mistake of looking at the Miss World contestants online. So.

I'm taking a lot of Motrin, and maybe tomorrow I'll see if I can hit up DUH or somebody for some muscle relaxants because this shit A) hurts, and B) looks silly. I look like a meerkat with this posture.

PS If you're not watching Project Runway, you should be. You really do learn a lot!

Oy

2005-11-02T17:53:00.001-05:00

I just went on to CNN.com and saw this article headlined "Your e-mails: Advice for Bush." Sadly, no one wrote in with my first reaction, which was, of course, "Kill yourself." Well, maybe someone did, but CNN didn't publish it. Wusses.

(Confidential to National Security Agency analysts who listen to my phone calls and read my blog: Hi guys! It's just me!)

Anyway, most people's advice was of the "Get the troops out of Iraq, you asslicking moron" ilk, which was fine. But a few people really struck me. Some selections:

Martha Prater, of Rusk Texas, would like to see the troops come home, but fears it isn't feasible, both because of "terroristic attacks" and the likelihood that "pulling out of Iraq now could likely lead to Saddam regaining control of Iraq."

My reactions will be in italics, because italics are fun. I appreciate Martha's attempts at really "understanding both sides of the issue," but I fear that she may have missed the memo that Saddam Hussein is in American custody, and apparently has taken a real liking to Doritos.

Richard Mark Jones, of Purvis, Mississippi, thinks that Bush can recover his approval ratings with "a call for the legalization of medical marijuana and the farming of hemp for industrial uses."

I think CNN published this one because they all had a good laugh over it. RMJ, honey: you're not fooling anyone.

Sandra Crater of Milford, Illinois, thinks that "the president needs to remember who elected him, we the poor and middle class people..Not Big Oil,Haliburton or any of the other big business CEO's he has been courting or paying homage too. If he gets rid of us, who will support the country then?"

All of that is followed by a great big "[sic]," by the way. No further comment, except that this one made me weep.

Bill Hatcher, of Capron, Virginia: "Ignore the posturing of the Democrats and the sniping of the press and get on with the job of governing and leading the country. STAY FOCUSED!"

Apparently, Bill thinks Dubya has ADD. "Get on with" it, indeed. Crikey.

Chris Denney, of Oshkosh, Wisconsin, has an idea that is too long to quote, but is very cute.

Patrick Wright, of San Gabriel, California: "The best thing Bush could do is revive the military draft. This war is something we should all share in and not just the bottom 25% of high school graduates."

Oh, Patrick. You little shit-stirrer, you.

Andrew M. Herold, of Beltsville, Maryland, makes an impassioned plea for Bush to stop spending money "like a drunken sailor," and to "kick out a few million illegals."

How...charming. There are also some syntactical issues that make his final point less than clear. All part of the fun, I suppose. Wheeeeee!

And now, for the "suggestion" that made me hope for a world government based on a non-religious, accepting, socialist ideology:

"Give full true backing (no lip service) to the people that voted twice to put a man in office to gain back our country. No euthanasia, no abortion, no persecution of Christians, no judicial tyranny, no homosexual privileges, no attacks on the institution of marriage, no attacks on the family, etc."
--Pedro A. Delgado, Miami, Florida.

People like Pedro make me give up hope. Honestly, they do. Pedro, apparently, doesn't think that gay people should have "privileges." I guess that means they don't get to sit at the grown-up table, or eat dessert. I want to hit Pedro, because he wants to impose his values on me. And I hate--hate--his values.

These people, they're out there. In large-ass numbers. I can't think of anything quite as depressing.

Scalito

2005-10-31T09:38:00.000-05:00

I think the word you're looking for is "fuck."

Oh Shit! This Was Awesome!

2005-10-25T22:31:00.000-04:00

I TOTALLY forgot that this awesome thing happened that I had to write about. So, all y'all remember "Sam Lenin," my friend who had that thing happen in his brain, and then we weren't friends anymore? It's a very sad story. You should read it.

So ANYWAY. I was walking to class or somewhere last week, and I pass right by one of the entrances of Sam's residential college. Now, he lives off-campus, has for two years, so I assume he doesn't spend too much time in his college. Also, I haven't seen him since the time I waved my hand in front of his face, so whatever, right?

Anyway, I'm walking to class, and I'm either checking my voicemail or listening to my iPod, I don't remember which, when someone comes walking out of the gate to my right. I, noticing movement like an animal does, turn instinctively to see who it could possibly be. Yup. You guessed it. Teeny tiny Sam himself. He's on the phone as well, but people are animals, and he must have been drawn to my movement, and he looks up at the person passing in front of him.

Internets, I shit you not: his eyes went saucer-wide. His jaw dropped.

I was a little surprised myself, but not like that. I started laughing out loud as I realized one possible explanation for his reaction. I laughed all the way to class.

So here's my little shout-out for today: Hi, Sam! I'm sorry I called you short on the internet! I hope you keep reading my blog!

New Post, Such As It Is

2005-10-25T22:14:00.000-04:00

Wow, so I have been fantastically shitty about posting new content. I keep having ideas and half-writing them up, and then getting bored and closing the window. The gist is that midterms suck ass and I hate classes taught by old white men about dead white men where they treat you like a middle-schooler, even if this particular old white man is kind of adorable.

What I'm going to post, more or less as a place-holder, is the poem I submitted to the former Poet Laureate of the United States of America, whose recently-published poem in the New Yorker was maybe notsogood? and that is mostly because Dan wants a copy, and I am get-this too lazy to email it to him. He thinks it's fantastic; I find the language boring and pedestrian. To each his/her own, I s'pose. Here goes. (Ooh, Confidential to Elizabeth: it's not about you! Promise!)

Understanding Elizabeth

The most important thing you need to do is
Remember the fact of the layers.
Without the layers, none of this
Makes any sense.

Don't think of an onion.

Think of Elizabeth like a planet.
She has a crust that wraps all around her.
And when you look at her, you have to
Search for discrepancies.

Because the secret is not to peel. Peeling
Won't get you anywhere.

The secret is: she is already eroding.
Her crust is uneven in places. Underlayers
Show through, and the depth varies.
You can find things like
Fossils, or minerals.

Look for the glints.

The last thing is not to think about the core.
There are more layers than you can imagine.
The core is so deep, and so small.

(No Subject)

2005-10-04T21:13:00.000-04:00

In a world without consequences
I would leave this place
And spend my days smoking
Cigarettes on some front stoop, and never
Doing anything ever again
That I have to fight for.

Vanity of Vanity, All is...

2005-09-25T22:52:00.000-04:00

So I was looking at some pictures of me, and my upper arms are real big. Also, nose is long. But what can you do? It gives a certain witch-like rakish charm, I find. But the arm situation is problematic.

I must lose ten pounds, and do bicep curls, and tricep dips.

Would anyone like to do these things for me? I will pay you.

How to Earn a Spot on the Gold List Forevermore

2005-09-23T19:22:00.000-04:00

Well, you could buy me a corsage for senior prom, because I don't have a date and you're taking my best friend. That works.

Or, as Mitzvah Man did, you can tell me in the dining hall one Sunday morning: "Do you know Larry David? You're, like, a female version of him."

When I smile delightedly and sqeal, laugh and say, "Yeah, I figured you'd take it as a compliment."

Backhanded? Yes, a little, but this is a girl who's been saying "Thank you" to "You're weird" since the age of six.

Uh, Gah?

2005-09-19T12:41:00.000-04:00

The internets haven't been working in my house for going on two weeks now. I'm immensely frustrated, but still (fyi) alive. I hope that settles that. Now, if anyone wants to come and fix it, email me at dashrashi@gmail.com.

Yeah. It's a big Sucks Donut.

Look! Aaaaaaants!

2005-09-04T17:05:00.000-04:00

Yeah. So I've got an ant problem.

Little antsies crawling all over my carpet. Fun.

I kill them on sight, obviously, with a bunched-up paper towel. When I first noticed them, I killed about thirty, and in the two days since then, it's been somewhere between two and six a day. Which is not bad, but I want these fuckers nuked.

Which they will be, with ant traps and Raid, as soon as I vacuum the corpses of their fallen comrades off the floor.

Salut, antsies, and good night.

Sorry

2005-08-27T22:14:00.000-04:00

I've attracted the dreaded comment-spammers. Now, in order to prove you love me, you'll have to take that extra step: word verification. Again, sorry.

Mining "My Documents": The First in an Occasional Series

2005-08-27T20:35:00.000-04:00

writers.doc:

One writer I love is W. H. Auden.

The first poem of his that I read was "Embassy," from the "In Time of War" sonnet sequence, and I remember loving the spare and utterly modern contempt with which he condemns his subject--and in the form of a Petrarchan sonnet! I loved so much that he had this element of his work that took these highly mannered and classical forms, and made them so essentially modern, subverting the form itself, but using it to further the themes and subjects themselves. I love his elegant rhymes, and his constant revisions, though they drive me insane--I'll finally think I understand his word choice and syntax, and why he did it, and how those things further the meaning of the poem, and then I'll read the next edition, and he'll have taken what I've grown to love and value and thrown it out the window. I love his perfect command of adjectives ("Lay your sleeping head, my love/ Human on my faithless arm"), and I love the things he says that are brilliant and perfect in their content ("What mad Nijinsky wrote/ About Diaghilev/ Is true of the normal heart;/ For the error bred in the bone/ Of each woman and each man/ Craves what it cannot have,/ Not universal love/ But to be loved alone."), and I love, perhaps most of all, when I see the truth of his so beautifully-made observations and assertions reflected in my own life.

Also, I really enjoy his dirty limericks.

My other favorite writer is Tony Kushner.

I love that he's not afraid to have immaturity in his writing. I think that quality often makes his work truer, and realer, for his unwillingness to cover up his honest voice. He's kind of the opposite of Auden, and even Dave Eggers (whom I also love) in this respect; he doesn't revise his work--he lets it stand as he wrote it, almost in the way we want to revise old journal entries, but don't let ourselves. He'll give us his thoughts on the work from five years down the road, and he'll give us other versions, but he doesn't take anything away from us. But most of all, I appreciate and admire his courage as a writer. He is so unafraid of the fantastic, or the overtly political, or the simple. And it's almost a cliche at this point, but what i really love about Tony Kushner's writing are those small pieces--"The real San Francisco is unspeakably beautiful," or "The borders are full of holes," or "The world only spins forward"--that are so right that you can't imagine how you ever lived without them in your vocabulary.

Holy Shit

2005-08-24T21:27:00.000-04:00

These Honey-Bunches-of-Oats Cranberry Almond cereal bars? Kick ass. Not too sweet, not too sticky. They taste good, but wholesome. Which Skittles-and-Ramen Girl over here is not so used to.

It's been a weird little chunk of time. I totally fucked up this project at my summer job, and then left before I could make it better. I moved in, lost something like 6 pounds from combined stress, sweat, carrying shit up the stairs, and weighing myself on my "nice" scale, instead of the "mean" scale at home. I will not entertain guesses on how much weight lost is due to which element, thank you very much.

I bought the new edition of The Menu, the New Haven restaurant guide. It's weird, because I've been keeping up with the authors' restaurant reviews for the New Haven Advocate, and they basically didn't bother to rewrite any of those reviews for the book, even though the formats are significantly different. Moreover, since the first edition was basically my bible for these two years past, I recognize quite a few elements that they (kind of cheaply, I feel) barely changed from the first edition, when a more substantive explanation would have been in order. I feel like they also got a lot bitchier.

Oh well.

In other news, a combination of boredom (NO ONE IS IN NEW HAVEN) and allergy meds have me going to sleep at 10:30 every night. Also: no TV, because the common room smells like six kinds of ass, all of them belonging to CAT, and I don't really want to hang out there till it gets a good scouring, and also eviction-of-cat, because, again, the smell, what with the litterbox and the tuna on the goddamn floor. Superyick. I mean, hey, if I knew pets were so welcome, I'd-a brought Killer up for the ride. God knows my parents want his cancery ass out of the house with a quickness.

Also: where is Danno's car? I don't mean to sound alarmed, but I kind of am. Before he left for his trip, he told me his car keys were with our housemate. I saw his car in the morning, then went to IKEA. That afternoon, the car is not behind the house. Housemate went home. Housemate is now back, but since I have not seen Housemate, I haven't asked Housemate where Dan's car is.

If it turns out that it was stolen, and I didn't do anything because I was like, meh, whatever, I am going to feel so bad. Dan will probably dump me.

More people should be coming up to the Have tomorrow, and there's always workworkwork, with the side benefit of moneymoneymoney, so there is that to look forward to.

I'm eating instant Thai noodles at 9:40 at night. I heart college, and its beneficial effects on my waistline.

Classes are in a funny place right now. I'm kind of at an impasse until I actually sit in any of them, because it all depends on History, and my intra-major distributional requirements, and I won't know how I'm going to balance ANY of that until I see which classes I like best and think I'll be able to do well at. The key to success in school is taking classes that don't make you want to die. Your grades are better.

I'm-a end this now, because it's quite rambly. As a final note: my hot pot is sooooo cute.

Dirty Girl

2005-08-17T23:16:00.000-04:00

I have two small pale freckles below my lower lip, on the left side. People always tell me I have chocolate on my face. It's a good time.

Unvocalized Thoughts I Had During the First Class Meeting of "Verse Writing" Which I Subsequently Did Not Take -OR- Your Poetry Exhausts Me

2005-08-13T10:02:00.000-04:00

"I am not interested in your deep personal relationship with the poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay as expressed in verse form."

"Oh Lord. Your artistically draped hair. Unfortunate, isn't it, how you didn't realize at first that you were being addressed because the professor is on the same side as your bangs?"

"Punctuation is not decorative. This looks like your printer exploded."

"I swear, you could cut the pretension in this room with, like, a wooden spoon. Starting with him [the professor], actually, who apparently, judging by his accent, comes from the same place in Europe that Madonna comes from, by which I mean: Michigan." [Note: Exhaustive research (read: Google) has uncovered that he in fact hails from Bryn Mawr, PA. Sorry, Michigan!]

"Your description of your father cutting off your breasts and how you felt the blood flow and pool is no more eloquent than Howard Stern making fart noises on the radio, has a similar amount of emotional impact, and frankly, I suspect, is done for the same reason."

"Do you want to hear a secret? You know how you said that this 'is the first poem [you] ever wrote'? I can tell."

A Very Sad Story

2005-07-31T14:06:00.000-04:00

Once I had a friend. Then something happened in his brain, and we weren't friends anymore. It was very sad.

Just kidding. It wasn't sad; it was infuriating, because the thing that happened in his brain wasn't an aneurysm or a chemical imbalance. The thing was some sort of event that I now refer to as the Wha?, because "Wha?" is the sound that you make when your friend is the one with the brain event.

I'll refer to this friend as Sam, because his real name is also a popular name for dogs. His last name? Mmmm... Let's say, oh, "Lenin," for another Communist thinker.

I met Sam...shit, I don't remember where. A party? Tea Club? Hard to say. He was friendly with the Tea Club administration, to which I had my connection as well. So, we met, at some point, somewhere, and we apparently hit it off. We talked about Dino-Riders and He-Man and other obscure-or-less-so pop culture artifacts of the late 1980s. Good times.

You may ask: Saaaaaaaaarah...did you LIKE him? The answer: No. You may not believe me, but I swear it is true. I can't prove it to you. The only way to prove it is to say something not very nice, and I am a nice person.

Oh, fine. You want to know why? You want me to prove to you that I didn't like him like that? Fine. You made me say it, though, so don't tell me how mean I am.

Sam? Is short. Very very short. Maybe 4'10". Maybe. There? You satisfied?

Thanks.

I knew you'd come around.

At some point later, I was discussing Sam with my Tea Club Connection, and she mentioned how we really seemed to get along. She paused, looked at me sideways, and said, "You're not...um..." and then I cut her off: "No, no no no! I mean, not that...you know..." And, to her credit, she was like, "No, yeah, no, I totally know--." Unspoken subtext: Sam--short; Sars--not interested. But saying that would be very mean.

But yay! Fun! A friend! Who knows about Dino-Riders! Wheee!

I think there were a couple emails exchanged (again, relating to Transformers; I know, I've got a one-track mind), and a few (three?) missed phone calls, a few from each of us. At one point, he was having a party, but the Tea Club Connection and I had tickets to see "The Exonerated" at the Schubert. (Side note: Brian Dennehy is the shit.) So we didn't go to the party. Whatever.

Later on (days, a week, something), I try to get in touch with him. Email? Unanswered. Phone call? Unreturned. Huh. After about two more rounds of each, I just kind of let it go. Weird, I think, and then I forget all about it, because I am fickle like that.

A few months go by. Thefacebook happens; I join, I friend Sam, Sam does not appear on my friend list. Huh. Repeat twice, because at this point, I am a moron.

In my defense: This had never happened to me before. I went to a teeny-tiny private school; as much as you might want to cut someone out of your life, it really wasn't feasible. And I've been blown off by boys before, but usually they kiss me before they stop calling. Or I want to kiss them. But being ignored out of nowhere by a platonic friend (even a relatively new platonic friend) was completely alien to me, and that's one of the main reasons I was a moron and didn't recognize it. Especially since A) I didn't do anything wrong; B) We never had a fight, and C) We were on good terms the last time we HAD spoken. So, verdict on Sarah's behavior: stupid, but understandable.

School year ends, new school year begins. I've basically forgotten about Sam, with the occasional "God, that was weird and random" conversation with the Tea Club Connection. Now. If you'll recall, Sam was himself connected with Tea Club, so our mutual friends remained mutual. One day, I was talking with the TCC's, well, connection, and the subject of Sam came up. "God," I said, "That was weird. We just, like, stopped talking."

And The Connection looked at me slightly askance, with a kind of amused, perturbed look on his face, and said, "He said something about how you were stalking him last year."

Screaming, "Oh No He Din't," squawking, ensue.

So here is my reaction to Sam, which, unfortunately for them, both the TCC and the Connection had to sit through: "You've got to be kidding me. He's telling people I STALKED him? When I attempted to get in touch with him after he had UNBEKNOWNST TO ME decided to cut off all contact? Well, excuse me, [Sam] Fuckin' [Lenin], but I'm very sorry if I didn't immediately pick up on the fact that you're ANTISOCIAL and CRAZY. FORGIVE me if I gave you the benefit of the doubt on the fuckin' SANITY scale! Goddamn! What a dickwad! What a motherfucking dickwad."

Poor Connection. He smiled nervously and said, "Uh, okay."

I saw Sam on the street some time later. We were headed for each other on the same sidewalk, and I waited until we were less than two feet away from each other, and then I looked (down--ooh, I'm mean) into his sunglasses-covered eyes, and I waved. He stared straight ahead, as I waved basically in front of his face, and kept on walking.

I shook my head all the way to work. Ungoddamnedbelievable.

So that's my sad story, about my former friend, and how he had a problem in his brain. It's all very sad.

AAAUUUGGHH

2005-07-26T19:27:00.000-04:00

That's an anguished wail, in case you were wondering.

Danno the Boy Wonder and I were on vacation when Sandy D. O'C. announced her retirement. Said Boy Wonder was forbidden from talking about it because I became despondent, overwrought, and prone to literally hitting my head against the wall within about 90 seconds of thinking/talking about it.

The fact that Dems/Progs/Libs had to hope for Judge "Torture is my middle name" Gonzales? Totally head-hitting-wall-worthy.

I was checking CNN the day The Shrub made the announcement, and all eyes were on a moderate, Roe-friendly, "strict constructionist" named Edith Clement.

And then Shrubbie goes and picks some young whippersnapper named Roberts. Relatively new to the bench, relatively good-looking, seems innocuous enough.

Dems/Progs/Libs go on the attack. Roberts wrote a brief arguing that Roe be overturned. Roberts's wife is a bigwig in some pro-life group. Roberts hates arroyo toads. Roberts may kill babies--we're not sure.

That's the real issue: this guy has no paper trail. He doesn't have a long list of speeches and decisions that liberal Democrats can mine for really juicy offensive stuff. So they can talk about whatever they want to, what his hatred for the arroyo toad signifies, how he really is anti-Roe, but the fact is, they don't have him on tape saying bad things about black people. Which is an easy way of making a SCOTUS candidate unconfirmable.

The Republicans are having such an easy time of this, they look like they're swatting at flies with their pinkies while they counter the liberals' charges: 1) You're being mean; 2) You're not being fair; 3) Fuck you; 4) The brief on Roe was written for a client; 5) You don't understand jackshit about the arroyo toad and you're not fooling anyone; and 6) You Have No Proof Nanny Nanny Boo Boo.

So Roberts, having no paper trail, no decisions, no speeches, nothing, seems like a pretty blank slate, which in many circles has been read as possibly/probably moderate.

No fuckin' chance, kiddos.

Shrub's on the record for preferring Scalia and Thomas; he's just not going to pick another Sandy D. O'C. Why would he? To make liberals and moderates happy? What does he care? It's the conservatives and the fundamentalists who won the election for him; why would he do anything for the benefit of anyone other than those two groups?

The Dems are lying to themselves. I've got a bet going with Danno that Roberts is just another Scalia redux (not redundant; see "Thomas, Clarence"). Shrub and the Turd Blossom really got us but good.

After the fight over the filibuster, they knew that the Dem wing of the Group of 14 was going to be looking at federal judgeships with a more bipartisan eye. They picked someone that those Dem Senators felt uncomfortable about filibustering, because they are pussies, and wah wah wah it was for a client, and wah wah wah, it's just his wife, and wah wah wah he never SAID he was pro-life, at least, not that we can find in print and on the record. So the hardliners and the Group of 14 are enough to prevent a filibuster, which they will do. Because they (the Dems of the 14) are big stupid traitor pussies, and they choose to ignore the fact that THIS IS WHAT THEY WERE FIGHTING TO PRESERVE THE FILIBUSTER FOR, ANYWAY, and Roberts will be confirmed.

Will Roberts surprise Bush and his Turd Blossom and prove himself a moderate on the bench? No. He will not. Don't fool yourself, kiddos. Historically, the surprises have been third or fourth picks after the previous candidates have been rejected by the Senate. The Pres is nervous, angry, and in a rush, and doesn't vet the candidate quite as well as he "should" have.

Roberts is a first pick, and he was a surprise pick. Shrubbie and TB certainly sequestered this boy and vetted him to within a centimeter of his life; there's no doubt about it. He's no Kennedy. They would have rejected him otherwise. He's a Scalia. They had the time to pick someone who would, in fact, be a surprise Scalia, that the Dems wouldn't see coming, or would be too much the cowards to bet on him being superconservative, and therefore filibuster his ass, even though they didn't have the paper trail to back it up.

Give Turdy his due. He's good. He knows the Dems are paralyzed by cowardice and stupid hope.
In twenty years' time, at the ripe old age of 70, Justice John Roberts Jr. will have a long list of decisions that will have proven him to be a testament to his appointers' skill. I have no doubt.

In other news, if the Dems don't grow a friggin pair, I am switching my party affiliation. Do you think the Socialists will give me a membership card? I kind of always wanted to be a card-carrying Socialist. Also, it would make Keith Urbahn's head explode.

5 Songs I Can't Stop Listening to, and am Being Embarrassingly Honest and Rather Forthcoming About

2005-07-12T21:53:00.000-04:00

"Keep it Loose, Keep it Tight" -- Amos Lee

"La Cienega Just Smiled" -- Ryan Adams

"Out There" -- Patty Smyth (no, not Patti Smith; different)

"I Need You" -- Dan Bern

"Bless the Broken Road" -- Rascal Flatts (kill me. Just do it.)

Bonus Songs!

The "Baywatch" Suite:
"I'll Be Ready" -- Peter Cetera
"Current of Love" --David Hasselhoff

Aw Yeah.

Um...Sorry I Didn't Do This Earlier?

2005-07-12T21:42:00.000-04:00

It has come to my attention that all y'all need pseudonyms. It's not nice to write about people using their real names, or close facsimiles thereof. I think you can talk about animals using their real names. If you've got strong feelings about what you want your pseudonym to be, you can email me or leave a comment. Otherwise, I now have a new activity for when my bosses decide (like they did today) to underutilize me to the point where, literally, the most work-related thing I did all day was pee. Twice.

Yay for pseudonyms! Hip Hip Hooray!

And oh: speaking of animals, Killer is a dink. I'm starting a new thing where I make myself pretty by exercising and eating right and flossing and tooth-whitening and whatever because I honestly want to impress the shit out of everyone I know with the fact of what an incredible hottie I am, and to truly make people stop and notice, I need to make a few adjustments in my lifestyle. Ahem, evil Dunkin Donuts sugar-raised goodies so conveniently located in the 100 foot walk between train platform and elevator to office. Anyway. I was going to go do a little jog-walk thing like my exercise plan tells me to do, and Momma says I can't go out by myself, evem though it is 7:30 and still full daylight. She wants me to take a brother; we compromise and I take a terrier named Butthead. I mean, Killer. We were doing our jog-walk and we go by another terrier in a fenced-in little backyard-y area, and the two of them freak out at each other, Killer to the degree that not only do I lose grip on the leash, but so much so that, in the process of my losing my grip on the leash, the ass freaks himself right out of his collar. So we've got a fenced-in terrier snapping and growling and running back and forth, a collar-less tag-less mostly-tooth-less morondog snapping and growling and running back and forth, and a me who is alternately trying to catch the dog without falling over him again and staring in disbelief at the empty collar that used to be around the morondog's neck.

Unbelievable. Moron. Dog.

Oh Just Kill Me Now

2005-07-12T07:50:00.000-04:00

The fuckers have chosen to discontinue one of my top five candy items and replace it with a shittier similar version so they don't have to announce it or anything, and I am despondent.

Fuck "Baja"; bring back plain old "California Fruits"!

Why GESO Is FehPooey

2005-06-20T20:49:00.000-04:00

Because a certain spokesperson-chairlady-honcho-bigcheese is a bitch and an utterly worthless TA?

Yes. But one of many reasons, kids!

Here's the thing.

We all know I'm a hugePinkoCommieAmericaHaterTerroristShutUPKeithUrbahn, which of course means I like unions, like the other Commies do. And I do! I like unions very much! I appreciate their value even though I see how often they become a part of the corrupt system they had previously idealistically intended to change! I love 'em! They're sexy!

And I don't know very much about being a graduate student, although from what I hear it kind of sucks. Okay. Fair enough. I'm very sorry that it sucks.

But GESO is really fucking obnoxious.

As I understand it, their platform goes something like this:

"Hey! You! Dick Levin! [moons him] We want to teach LESS often, for MORE money. And also, you suck and are a racist sexist piglet. Darling NYTimes reporter--did you get all that?"

They're attention whores in the worst way. Because it's not just about attention--ostensibly. It's about virtue, by which they mean "money."

Some key points:

1. They want more money. They don't make enough money considering how much work they do.

2. They want to teach less, because professors should teach more, as that would contribute more to the learning experience and the overall greatness of Dear Old Yale.

3. They know they suck as teachers, because they want training. But Yale should pay for them to be trained.

4. Be nicer to grad students, and let them stay registered students for what appears to be the rest of their natural lives so as to finish their dissertations.

5. But Yale is horrible to them and to their families! They're all on welfare and are crack whores between the sections they teach! More health insurance! The pimp doesn't allow for family coverage, and even the TA/whores themselves only get a round of antibiotics when they get gonorrhea again and you wouldn't believe the co-pay on that!

6. Yale should hire more women and minorities and are evil because they don't. Also they are actively mean and nasty to the aforementioned women and minorities. Fuckers.

Did I miss anything, guys?

So, to me, it seems like GESO would like all the benefits of being an employee and of being a student and none of the drawbacks, thank you, that will be fine. They would like more money. As employees, this would seem to be equivalent to asking for a raise. When do people get raises? Well, they get them when they work longer hours--but op, no, GESO thinks that professors should teach more often. Well, okay, then regular employees get raises when they get better at their jobs, so GESO members should work on improving their skills, maybe take a teaching class or--op, no, Yale should pay them to take the class. Okay.

If you're not working more hours, or making the hours you work more valuable, why should your employer give you a raise?

GESO says: Because we will tell the New York Times on you.

But here's the part I don't get: They all chose to go to graduate school. They're students. That kind of means they've chosen to hold off on entering the job market just yet, because they want to get their degrees. Again, I really don't know jackshit about grad school, but how did it happen that you get paid to get your master's? I know you don't get paid a lot, but you fucking pay out the ass for your BA and just about any professional degree in the land. So what the fuck? Why do grad students get a free ride? Rachel? Anyone?

I'm not mad that they get a free ride; please don't misunderstand my use of the word "fuck" in the preceding paragraph; actually, nicely done, guys. Way to work the system. You-all are getting paid to go to some of the most expensive schools in the country. That's hot, as Paris would say.

But I don't really understand where grad students get off acting like they deserve any of that money, or healthcare benefits, or what-have-you. It's all grants, right? Doesn't "grant" mean roughly the same thing as "present"? Don't you say "Thank you" when someone gives you a present?

So what am I saying? That only the disgustingly rich ought to be able to go to graduate school? No, I'm obviously not saying that. That's like saying only the disgustingly rich ought to be able to go to college, or law school, or wherever. But people who aren't disgustingly rich do manage to go to college, law school, and other schools where you pay them. And they do it through loans, grants, and scholarships, and they usually work part-time. So I don't see why GESO should unionize and all my fellow gofers at the Yale University Art Gallery or Student Health Services shouldn't. (Or should we, Miss Chairperson?) Is it because they're older and probably have families? Not to be flip, but how is that any of Yale's problem?

Yale's position is that being a TA is a part of a grad student's learning experience, and that's why they get paid shit and don't get treated like real employees with job security and what have you. But for their part, GESO doesn't act like its members want to be treated as real employees; otherwise, they would want to get better at their jobs in order to make more money. No? I mean, they say it themselves in their piece-of-shit platform: "In addition to being employees, we are also students." No shit. Me too. Yeah, it's a huge bitch working and studying at the same time. When the gofers and I get together to talk about going on strike at the Gallery, we're definitely gonna bring up that going to section is the most useless thing an undergrad can do with an hour. Because as employees, you know what is totally appropriate? Making sure that our concerns as students are addressed.

God.

But aside from my kind of logical problems with their whole, well, existence, is the fact that GESO DOES NOT REPRESENT A MAJORITY OF GRADUATE STUDENT TEACHERS. It appears that they manipulate the shit out of their numbers, in addition to engaging in pretty sketchy tactics to increase both membership and sheep-ness among the members. If a majority of Central Campus TAs blah blah blah, what does that even mean? I'll tell you what it means. It means GESO is well within the minority, friends, and most of Yale's graduate student teachers are not in favor of unionization. And if you're GESO, it's really shitty to find that out, and be all like, "Oh, don't count the Science Hill people. They're losers anyway."

They purport to represent graduate student teachers. They do not. Ergo, they should shut the fuck up, and start making their platform more appealing to the other graduate student teachers. Wake me when you have a majority, bitches.

And all that shit about Wah Wah Wah Old White Yale is Mean to the Chicks and Other Disenfranchised Peoples of the Earth is really obnoxious. You know they were sitting around and they were all, "Damn. This looks pretty obvious, dude. We're demanding more money for less work. We gotta give a nod to, like philanthropy and righteousness and shit. Yale's fucking us; who else are they fucking that we can lay claim to for our own purposes? DUH. Women. Women and minorities. When in doubt, the question of 'Who's getting dicked over?' is always answerable with 'Women and minorities.' THAT way, anyone who doesn't support us can be accused of being a RACIST SEXIST PIG."

Come ON, GESO. Stop sucking so damn much. Don't parade around like you're the voice of the people when you're not. And be better TAs, or I will continue to THWART you in section. Ask a certain member of your goddamned "Steering Committee" for more information. You have been warned.

Happy Birthday to the Puppy

2005-06-17T20:28:00.000-04:00

Today is my dog's tenth birthday.

His name is Killer. We did not name him. The Colberts did. They used to own him, but they had to give him away because they lived in an apartment. His name was Killer Colbert, so the lady Colbert used to call him KC, or Casey. Sometimes, I call him Quesadilla.

He is a very large Yorkshire terrier. Maybe. He's really too big to be a Yorkie, but we heard that this guy in Florida was breeding enormous mutant Yorkies the size of small cocker spaniels, and that's about how big Killer is, but we also think he came from a puppy mill because he is ill-tempered like whoa, so who knows whether he is a purebred Mutant Yorkie or a damaged-goods-spent-his-formative-days-in-his-own-feces puppy-mill doggie.

In any event, he's stopped pooping in the house quite so often.

He likes to eat carbs. He likes matzah on passover, plain white bread, saltines, and most of all: cold pasta. He loves it. He freaks right the fuck out. Yesterday I gave him some and he dragged it into the dining room like he'd killed it and was taking it back to his den (read: under the dining room table). I'm actually very proud of him, because he probably ought to have a major aversion to pasta seeing as he once ate, when he was a puppy, approximately enough penne marinara to feed a human family of four, and then he threw it all up, again, under the dining room table. GROSS ALERT: He apparently didn't keep it down for very long; the way we discovered it was when my aunt said, "Hey--who spilled the pasta?"

He likes peanut butter a little. I like giving it to him. Smack smack smack smack smack...it goes on for days.

He doesn't have many teeth left. We never brushed his teeth (for fuck's sake, who--besides my insane grandmother--actually brushes their dog's teeth on a regular basis, you'd have to sedate the buggers), and then he would get bad breath, and then we would take him to the doctor, and then the doctor would yank the teeth right out of his head. Currently, on his bottom jaw, he has ZERO incisors and two of the daintiest little canines you ever saw.

No wonder he likes pasta. Gum gum gum gum gum gum...

He bites people sometimes if they piss him off. That's not very good. I don't usually tell people about that.

He's fantastically cute. He looks like a puppy still and he's got the absolute sweetest brown eyes and black button nose.

He freaks out during thunderstorms and tries to hide. He likes to hide under my parents' bed, under my desk, and mostly, these days, in the shower. He shivers. He used to hide behind the television, which is actually probably one of the less safe places to be during a thunderstorm. He still tries to climb behind it now, but he's got to go through the DVD shelf to do it, and that's usually a pretty good deterrent.

He thinks he's hot shit.

He's got some sort of tumor in his mouth. He was bleeding on stuff last fall and my parents were like , oh whatever, and they didn't get it looked at, and then they got it looked at, and my mom was like, oh Sar, it's nothing so stop being a ginormous drama queen. I'm sure it was mad fun for her when she had to call me back and tell me it was CANCER. But it's weird cancer? Invasive? Non-metastatic? I was under the impression that our options were to either LET HIM DIE FROM THE MOUTH CANCER THEY IGNORED or spend a whole lot of money and take out one half of his jaw and give him radiation treatments. Both suck, obviously, but he's pretty young and pretty hearty, so I certainly wasn't in favor of the first option, as my parents seemed to be. Turns out they didn't explain anything to me correctly, so what they did is they cut it out of his mouth, and then it grew back, but it doesn't appear to have gotten any bigger, and he doesn't have any trouble (at least, none more than his gummy self does usually) eating or whatever. So that's why one of his alternate names is KILLER THE AMAZING CANCER DOG.

He gets sticks and stuff stuck in his hair because we don't care about grooming him. When it's been a while since he's been clipped, he more or less looks like the canine Unabomber. All of his leg hair is one big mat. Sometimes there are leaves in the mats. He yelps when you try to take them out. That's when you get the scissors. He mostly looks like somebody couldn't get gum out of his hair and had to cut it out. It's an interesting look, in that he looks like he should be put in a foster home.

Sometimes he looks like he's having seizures. He rolls around on the couch, snarling and curling and sneezing (maybe?), and then he curls himself in the opposite direction and springs up onto his feet, sneezing (?) a few more times and looking kind of belligerent and vaguely bewildered. It's very jarring the first time you see it.

He has a VERY strong aversion to Love's Baby Soft, which is a perfume you can get at the drugstore because he once ate some as a puppy. Oops. But that means you can use it to spritz the things you don't want him to pee on, such as the coffee table.

We got him neutered, but frankly, he still exhibits bisexual tendencies.

He likes cats, but I don't think they really love him so much.

He's a very cute dog and he's got loads of personality, even if not all of it is perfectly nice. And at least he doesn't get brown stuff around his eyes like Danno's dog does. And anyway, that bitch scratched me on purpose.

Happy Birthday, Killkillee, you amazing 10-year-old cancer dog, you.

Open Letter

2005-06-07T23:35:00.000-04:00

Dear Women with Big Ol' Bosoms who walk around Center City on my lunch hour:

I sympathize, I really do. But there comes a point in our respective lives when we realize that the fashion industry just doesn't cut their clothes for girls with the boobies, and so you make your peace with it, and you move on.

What you don't do, however, is continue to blithely buy the tops cut for the girls with the B-cups.

You know what I'm talking about.

Take this top, for example. See where it says "contrasting band trim below the bust"? Those last three words ain't optional, sweetheart. That black band there, it goes below your bust. Yes, all of it. All of the band, all of your bust.

Your boobs better fit neatly into those little triangles they provide, or else that top does not get bought. Definition of "neatly": the "below the bust" band sits on your chest (not on the bottom half of your breasts, and certainly not on your nips, Britney) and you don't have porno-boobs trying desperately to escape from the triangles in every direction (I can think of three major directions: towards the chin, towards each other, and most tragically, away from each other and the general sort of carnage happening).

For the love of God.

I have tried on these shirts. When I get them below my bust, I get porno boobs popping out everywhere. My boobs look at me in the mirror and laugh. "Look at us! Bazonga! Gazonga! Boing Boing Boing! We will go wherever we like! Nips One and Two are barely even covered! Boing Boing Boing! Bazonga! Gazonga! Wonk Wonk Wonk!" That is the sound of inappropriately covered bosoms that flop out of their cups. And that's not what the shirt is supposed to look like. Which most of you know. Seeing as how, when given the choice between 1) ignoring "below" and 2) going for the Bazonga of pornoboobs, you go for Number 1, "The Britney," instead.

Please stop doing this.

A) It makes you look like you don't understand how to work a shirt.

B) It makes you look fat.

There. I said it. When you refuse to put your titties into their rightful places, it makes you look like you are the owner of big-disgusting-cow-boobs that do whatever they please and flop all over the place, disregarding seams, the bottoms of bra cups, and whatever else might come into their path of destruction. They look like they've won.

Don't let your boobies win. Put 'em where they belong, and don't buy those tops anymore. No seams, yes stretch. Keep it in mind.

Love,
Sars

Help Please

2005-05-29T21:03:00.000-04:00

Danno and I watched "Napoleon Dynamite" tonight. We're confused.

So if you can answer any of these questions, please comment on this post. Thanks.

1. The fuck?

2. Why is everyone so in love with this movie?

Thank you!

Bitches. All OF You.

2005-05-25T22:13:00.000-04:00

Grrrr.

It's okay, though. Really. Now he'll at least have some semblance of creative control, y'know?

I just wish he didn't have to lose to that Nashville-by-way-of-Tomorrowland fake-ass bouncing butthead Carrie-bot. I hate that bitch. She sucks.

And my family insisted on watching "Lost" so I missed the part where Bo Bice got to have the fucking time of his life, I imagine, namely: singing "Sweet Home Alabama" with Lynyrd Skynyrd on national television.

In any event, I knew he wasn't going to win. Whoever the internets says is always wrong. Like Kwame. I find that traditional news media often do better in predicting this stuff.

But I do sincerely hope that the fact that he got so much support online will in fact translate into sales out the wazoo of his record, which, by the way, sorry to Danno, I will be buying. I will not line up, and I may even pass on buying it in person, but, in the immortal words of Wayne Campbell, Oh yes...it will be mine.

In short: I still heart Bo Bice, and this was a VERY mixed season for reality TV outcomes.

The Apprentice: Kendra.
Verdict: YAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYetc

Survivor: Tom.
Verdict: Yay. Although he kind of lost me there, towards the end.

The Amazing Race: Uchenna and Joyce.
Verdict: Um. I don't actually watch this; I just keep up on TWoP because I like the recaps, which I'd link to if I had the inclination, which I don't, so Google it, loserfaces. But I think I liked Rob and Amber? So...Boo?

America's Next Top Model: Naima.
Verdict: Boooo. She sucks. She reminds me of Fucking Yaya, with her bullshit about getting a mohawk to "center her thoughts." Idiot. And from what I heard (Thanks, "Lost"-watching family!), she did a fuck of a lot of fake crying during the finale. Plus I love Kahlen, who is mean and funny. Example: "Michelle can be beautiful even though she has scabies." (Forgive me, dear, if I've misquoted you.)

And now this.

Fucking Carrie.

A plague on both your houses.

You know who you are, you ho-bags.

Hi Ho, Hi Ho

2005-05-23T21:23:00.000-04:00

I started work today.

I will attempt not to get dooced (see last entry), so no names will be used. Ahem.

My job consists of cleaning out a room. It is a room filled with paper in many incarnations. My job right now (or task, if you prefer) involves futzing around with high-density shelving (like, apparently, at shoe stores) and comparing the ginormous folders on the shelves with the numbers on the inventory I've been given. The unfortunate part is that the ginormous folders are, like special, because they have big expandable pockets that enable you to put hundreds of pages of subfolders in them, but the accordion panels that make the ginormous folders expand give the ginormous folders their official name, which is: gusset.

Who's seen British "Coupling"? When Jeff says "Gusset" to the Israeli girl because she doesn't understand him, and he can?

So my boss tells me to check the bar code numbers on the gusset list, and to check those against the bar code numbers listed on the gussets themselves, and make sure to jot down both the Gusset ID and the Gusset Subject, and I'm just like, phhtbbththt, trying not to laugh.

Fucking "Coupling." Almost getting me in trouble on my first day of work.

But I had a Sparkle Jerry Cherry Laffy Taffy for dessert at lunch today, and some Lik-M-Aid for dessert after dinner, so today has been a very sugary day. Which is nice. Although my back hurts, from all the checking of the floor-to-ceiling shelves just chock full of gussets.

Gaaah

2005-05-16T09:57:00.000-04:00

I still have font issues. Why won't anyone tell me how to fix this?

In other news:

I don't know if y'all have gotten your grades yet or whether you have filled out your course evaluations or what, but you know how sometimes you rip into a class or a professor or a TA in the evaluations, and then it turns out that they gave you a much better grade than you
expected/deserve, and you feel bad, or, alternately, you give them a nicer-than-they-deserve evaluation and then it turns out they totally FUCKED you, and you're all pissed off, and you'd want to redo that effing evaluation now that you know that they're PISSPOTS about grading? You know how that happens? When you mess up your evaluations in one way or another?

I am proud to say that today, I escaped that cycle. I went ahead, even though I thought I got an A or an A- in [name of class deleted because my dad thinks it's "libelous" and I could get dooced], and I absolutely slammed the class, the professor, and most of all my TA. Quote: "Not to be flip, but maybe [name of annoying grad student wannabe union deleted because my dad thinks it's "libelous" and I could get dooced] would have more undergrad support if they were better teachers." I felt kind of bad. But then I went and checked my grade, and all feeling-bad evaporated because the freaking ho-bag gave me a B+.

Down with [aforementioned wannabe union]. Down with [name of TA deleted because my dad thinks it's libelous and I could get dooced], head of [aforementioned wannabe union], shitful and stupid [aforementioned class] TA.

I hope she cries when she reads my evaluation. I really do. (Danno, this is your cue to skewer her in your eval; I know you haven't done it yet.)

In closing, I recommend that everyone be as mean as possible in your evaluations, because chances are, if you have what to be mean about, your TA probably screwed you.

That is today's PSA. Stay tuned for more as the issues arise.

Doot doot doot.

Note: Y'all should check out dooce.com, incidentally. It's real good. For more info on what it is to be dooced, look here.

Major Fontage Issues

2005-05-09T12:22:00.000-04:00

Please stand by.

Addendum

2005-05-08T18:45:00.000-04:00

I should be doing Formac, but as I was going through my notes, I found an old "note to self" that I thought was rather brilliant. Namely:

Can we start calling all the neo-cons (and rabid Republicans and fundamentalist conservative Christians and right-wing attack dogs...) "the Red Army"? Because of, like, the Red States, and also because being identified with dirty commies would piss them off?

I would totally, like, pee my pants if Carville or someone one day referred to them thusly on CNN.

Whoever wants to see me pee my pants, spread the word.

The Weekend of Me

2005-05-08T13:45:00.000-04:00

Friday was my birthday. That means that I am the best in the whole world, and everyone has to tell me so. Danno made dinner (pasghetti and garlic bread and salad) and I made dessert (dirt) with help from B.Hill. I felt kind of like Iron Chef and kind of like my 2nd Grade teacher Mrs. Diamond. (On the one hand, I was preparing food; on the other, it was oreo-pudding mash.)

Mommy got me the Freaks and Geeks DVD set and I am obsessed and I have already watched the first 5 episodes with Danno. He likes them too.

I am so screwed for Formac.

This will be finished later.

Semi-Embarrassing Revelation

2005-05-02T17:47:00.000-04:00

When I am out walking in the rain without an umbrella or a hood (you know, jacket zipped up, hands in pockets, head unbowed), I feel so totally bitchin' and absolutely badass that there must be something wrong with me.

I'm Faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaamous

2005-04-29T20:24:00.000-04:00

Or, you know, not.

But a couple of months (weeks? who knows) ago, these kids sent out this desperate email begging for submissions to their submission-based humor magazine. But seeing as how no one had heard of it, because it had not previously existed, no one had submitted, etc, you see how the email becomes desperate.

So I passed along the flyer I did for Graphic Design about class-nodders, and they liked it, and they put it in the thing, I think, and so now I am famous for hating people who nod in lecture classes and/or section.

All things told, I'd rather be famous for that than for some shit staged reading or Children's TheatRE play.

(Obviously: not famous. First issue of a magazine that almost did not happen. Regardless, will steal into SY dining hall at 3 AM and take six copies for personal use. Proof, if you will, that someone here thinks I'm great, even if it's some desperate freshman, who appears to be a conservative, or so his thefacebook profile says, unless I am mistaken? In which case, sorry bout that, John.)

Ooh goody. Maybe I'll write about class-nodders tomorrow as a nice relaxing exercise in procrastination. 'Specially since y'all (oh my large and varied readership...Hi Mom! Hi Annika! Hi Laura! Hi Rachel Sussman! Don't think you were getting away with it, Rachel Sussman! I know you read this!) do not have a blogatrice who is capable of, like, hosting things, and putting up links to them or some such nonsense.

Bah. Techmology. I hates it.

Until tamarra, then, kiddles. I'm-a hoping to get me some fine Douglas Adams cinema action on this fine evening. Wish Danno and me luck--I hear mixed things, and he's going to be right pissy if it's not up to his standards, and I'm not so diplomatic on days when I've woken up at 6 AM to finish a paper about bullshit and somehow also have to get to work on time. And it's Passover, so I'm hungry. And cranky.

Should be a fun night, huh? Don't you wish you could be in the car with us when we inevitably get lost?

Oh and Also

2005-04-25T20:05:00.000-04:00

I tried Coke with Lime. It was waaaaaaay too sweet (kind of sickly and cloying and highly artificial tasting) until I ate some candy. Then it tasted like seltzer.

Do with this what you will.

More Thoughts Tangentially Related to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

2005-04-25T20:02:00.000-04:00

And Sister Essie down in Memphis,
She don’t have much patience for this
"Gospel Truth" o' yours;
Like Sister Essie say:
Can’t always be true and good news both.

Now I'm Going to Talk About "The Apprentice" for a Rather Long Time

2005-04-16T22:04:00.000-04:00

This is cobbled together from my posts on the most recent episode of "The Apprentice," in which Kendra rocked the hizzouse (I'm cool like Tana), from televisionwithoutpity.com.

Goddamn, I liked this episode.

First of all: I heart Kendra. 1) She appears to be the only one with any actual business acumen (pizza, mini-golf--her ideas won the tasks); 2) She has been proven not to be a micromanager in the Fuse task, and I think she has actually seemed more like, well, a manager; and 3) and most importantly, she has pulled herself out of the mode that most of these people for the last two seasons have been fond of, namely, once it appears that a task isn't going well, not attempting to win, but attempting to figure out who can be blamed most effectively for the presumed failure-to-be.

Kendra had a perfect situation on her hands to get Craig fired: he refused to listen, basically contributed nothing, and then he went to sleep. If they had lost, she could have simply pointed out that she was at a yooge disadvantage when 2/3 of her team bailed. (And btw, w/r/t the all nighter: I don't think it was poor time management on Kendra's part--I think they probably had about a day and a half to do it, print production takes effing forever [undergrad graphic design student here!], and the other team pulled an all nighter as well.) But what really sets Kendra apart is that she basically said, "Well, goddamn, my team just screwed me. But the hell with them, I'm going to win this task anyway." Many people in the past, when put in her situation, stop thinking about how to win, but start thinking about who they can blame.

And her attitude? "I'll show them"? Understandable, forgivable, and appropriate, considering that Tana basically dared her to.

Craig is a dickhead. I really don't think it's Kendra's problem if he doesn't listen. He was really up in arms about that "theme" bullshit, wasn't he? Kendra had exactly the right idea about how to present the car; it's a frigging roadster, of course you want to emphasize the emotional appeal. Like, okay, Craig? You don't need a fifth-grade type "theme" when you have a well-thought-out grown-up style concept. And for whatever reason, he is always starting shit with Kendra. He gave her shit during the pizza task for no discernible reason. And I haven't forgotten his misogynistic shenanigans in the boardroom about Audrey. I hate him. I want him gone. Why is he there, anyway? A shoeshine business? Kids? Huh?

Oh, and when he walked out, because he was sick of looking at the same pictures, he said he was going to "research the car some more," and, well, went and sat down in the conference room. Asshole.

And jesus, his carping on how sticking a CD inside a brochure does not a brochure make? He's stupid, I think. Not in an uneducated way, in a dense, doesn't-get-it way. Obviously, what Kendra was saying, having DONE THIS BEFORE, was that extras are impressive when combined with a good brochure. God, Craig. Way to just wrap yourself up in the language of the task and stick your fingers in ears.

Tana really was a ginormous bitch. I understand that she was tired, but I will be goddamned, sometimes you have to stay up all night. And it was really mad rude of her the way she told Kendra to just do the brochure while they went to sleep. You know that if Tana had been the PM she wouldn't have acted like that, and neither would Craig, if he had been the PM. And I'm sure they still would have been up at that hour, in any event. So what that shows is their severe lack of a work ethic, and disloyalty to the PM.

The stealing of the presentation--I'm ambivalent. She's a kickass presenter, although not quite as good as she thinks she is. But this was Kendra's baby, start to finish, and what Tana was presenting was not what she or Craig had contributed, but the design and concept of the brochure, both of which aspects were entirely attributable to Kendra.

Man, I wish that Kendra had been able to raise her hand and tell Trump how that shit went down. Editors? TPTB? Next season? Pow-wows with the winning team? MVP gets exemption, not PM?

Alex is useless. Bren is full of himself and looks like the Penguin. Chris, however, is NOT A HOMOSEXUAL, so it was his turn to go.

I'm glad as hell that Kendra's got a spot with the Four Interviewers of the Apocalypse. I think she'll be very impressive. Experienced, creative, well-spoken, and polite. Craig has not a shot in hell of passing through that particular gate, for which I am six kinds of thankful.

MSNBC is recapping the odds for the winner, and they like Tana. I did too, until this task. Kendra is the only one who deserves it, and I daresay, the most deserving candidate since boyfriend Bill. I think I would have had her over Kwame, even.

Here's the thing: I think Kendra really was left alone. You saw her working with the ad guys. She's leaning over an ad guy's shoulder, and he's at the computer, moving the picture of the grille around inside the silhouette of the brochure. She's telling him which picture to use, when it's in the right place, that she likes it, that she thinks the next picture isn't good, etc. It looked to me like all the professional help (so to speak) that she was getting was more of a technical kind (futzing around with Photoshop) than of a creative kind. And with good reason: I'm sure the ad guys were specifically told not to offer any kind of legitimate help that the apprenti could have done themselves. So that being the case, T&C left all of the creative decisions, which were the crux of the task, up to Kendra. When she rocked the shit out of those decisions, she has no one to thank but herself.

I love this girl. My pappy was a Gator.

I saw through Tana's bullshit presentation in a heartbeat. I do that all the time in classes; it's called bullshitting. Teach says: "Dash, why did you place the text so tightly in the corner?" I sez, "Well, Teach, I really felt that the substance of the text kind of demanded a really cohesive feel, almost forced together by the strengths of the words' conceptual bonds, you know? So that was what I was really trying to get across..." Real answer? I fucked up the character spacing, and it ended up printing funny. Or I haven't done the reading for History of China, and make a comment that refers to Huck Finn. Tana, darling: we know you haven't done the reading. Save it.

Here's what I thought was really interesting. What you saw in Bren's overly-dry brochure copy was the same thing that would have come out of Craig's "Stupid Kendra doesn't understand what a brochure is"-stank-ass attitude. With them, you basically had very run-of-the-mill, ordinary thinking about what making a brochure entails. What set Kendra apart was that she tailored the entire idea of the brochure to the whole philosophy behind selling that particular car. Obviously, a stereotypical brochure is informative, and slightly heavier on the text than Kendra's finished product was. But Kendra understood that a cheap roadster is an "emotional purchase" and accordingly, fundamentally changed the substance of the brochure, substantially decreasing the amount of text and ratcheting up the raw emotional appeals. Creativity + understanding the product and your target market = damn fine job.

Quote of the Day

2005-04-08T17:50:00.000-04:00

A certain frequently-cold Argentina-bound California Girl was heard to say:
"Did you hear that sigh? That was an I-want-your-nipples sigh."

Food

2005-04-02T20:26:00.000-05:00

I’m starting to believe that it’s not really about food, after all. It’s not about what you actually literally weigh, or what actual literal skirt size you can wiggle your ass into, or the actual literal second chin you may or may not have.

For the girls I know with eating disorders, it’s about the numbers. The numbers are talismans, magic in their own right. “Saturated fat” doesn’t have any real meaning. There’s a number, however, that becomes associated with the phrase “saturated fat,” and you had better respect that number’s power, or it will kill you.

These numbers are like charms. These girls sprinkle them throughout conversation like Old Country grandmamas would pepper their speech with quick incantations against the evil eye.

“1200” is used regularly. “2000” means she’s pulling out the big guns.

The numbers mean that what she’s doing is science-sanctioned, in a way. It’s empirical, and like all scientifically valid experiments, it’s repeatable. And repeatable, and repeatable…

Eating disorders are misnamed, I think. Because girls with eating disorders live the most regimented, parsed-out, and planned lives of anyone I know. The doctors say that it’s about control; while their lives are spinning out, they grab onto calorie count as an anchor to keep them sane. But I have to say, it doesn’t look like that. The girls I know…their diets are just one of the many things they organize. Their plates at dinner look like their desks.

I’m not that. I’ve lost my keys on three separate occasions, only to find that they were buried in the mess on my chair—that I spend all day sitting on. My life is highly disordered. My desk is covered in trash and empty beverage containers of every kind. My eating is sublimely disordered. On my better days, I go to the local gourmet deli to purchase some nice whole grain cereal and 2% milk and walk out with iced tea, three kinds of cheese, and crackers whose chief selling point was the large type with which “Buttery” was printed on the front of the box. For breakfast. On bad days, I subsist entirely on Reese’s cups, Sprite, and Chex Mix, all conveniently available in the basement for the low, low price of $2.25, in total. To my mind, that counts as an eating disorder. People who eat an apple at 10:20 and a side salad at 6:40—to me, that sounds like an eating order. I mean, they’ve got to have their shit together to maintain that kind of schedule.

And I think that the docs might be right on this one. I think, at least for the people I know, it really is about control. It’s one more thing in the long line of shit that we are supposed to have together. We are supposed to keep our desks neat, we are supposed to get all of our assignments in on time, and we are supposed to police what goes in our mouths.

I know. I know that what I do isn’t healthy either, that I have terrible eating habits, that I need to eat regular meals. But I think the anorexic way of life (or hell, even the bulimic, with its easy known rhythms of eating and vomiting) is due to an excess focus on orderly eating, and the rules for what we can and cannot consume. These girls I know castigate me for never eating in the dining hall, for filling my belly with pre-packaged Thai noodles at 1 AM for “second dinner,” for eating those damned Reese’s Cups for breakfast. But I look at their neat little salad plates—three parts leafy greens, one part protein, one part vegetable of the day—and I see those plates shrinking. And as their salad plates shrink, so do they.

The Usual Suspects

2005-03-30T22:17:00.000-05:00

Who wants to know why I can't get anything done? Ooh, me! Me! I do!

theonion.com
Checked more or less weekly.

cnn.com
Checked constantly.

msnbc.com
Checked constantly, particularly the stellar Entertainment and Reality TV sections.

tomatonation.com
One of my favorite writers. Updates once a week with a new essay, and more or less daily with advice column "The Vine." Ergo, checked all day, as the new edition of "The Vine" is posted at varying times of day.

hissyfit.com
Checked every day. Updated much less frequently than that.

fametracker.com
Checked daily for new content, which is posted a few times per week. Particularly enjoy Hey! It's That Guy! feature.

televisionwithoutpity.com
Probably the Number One time waster of them all. Checked all the freaking time.

imdb.com
Checked every morning for updated celbrity "news."

gossiplist.com
Checked several times a week, mostly for its excellent weblog.

defamer.com
Checked far too often.

thesuperficial.com
Checked daily.

yaledailynews.com
Checked nearly every morning.

yale.edu/dining
Checked nearly every day.

amalah.com
Checked just about daily.

snarkywood.com
Checked several times a week.

gofugyourself.com
Checked several times a day.

awfulplasticsurgery.com
Checked several times a week.

goodplasticsurgery.com
Checked several times a week.

uglybreastimplants.com
Checked a few times a week.

naughtysecretaryclub.com
Checked a few times a week.

cutxpaste.com
Checked a few times every two weeks.

superluckycat.com
Checked a few times every two weeks.

ebay.com
Checked several times a week.

urbanoutfitters.com
Checked a few times a week.

weather.com
Checked every day.

philly.com
Checked every morning.

joepingpong.blogspot.com
Checked several times a week.

realityblurred.com
Checked every morning. Every singly morning.

thefacebook.com
Checked nearly every day.

yale.edu/facebook
Checked when trying to figure out who someone is, i.e. several times a week.

popculturejunkmail.com
Checked a few times a week.

puzzles.usatoday.com
Done a few times a week.

freeipods.com
Checked frequently to see if I've gotten credit yet.

si.com
Checked when my teams are playing (I can't watch--I'm bad luck).

crimelibrary.com
Checked whenever I really don't want to do work.

Well...at least I seem to have stopped the 3D Pong obsession. Not that you should stop. Because it's great.

Me So Pretty

2005-03-25T16:40:00.000-05:00

Or, you know, not.

I'm actually rocking the ugly today, with my sweatshirt and fifth-day jeans; when combined with my patented "Slapped Up and Layed On" "messy bun" (oh, irony), I am not exactly at my Glamazon finest.

But my skin's good! Yay!

I know how to look nice. Or I did, once, a long time ago, before I got a hippie outdoorsy boyfriend who prefers the "natural" look, aka Sub-Minimal Effort on my part.

And so I have been fooling everyone; yes, that's right, fooling you by putting my senior prom glamour shot up on thefacebook. I don't really look like that, folks. My hair is curly, yes, but I generally get more of a puli look when it's not curled with a curling iron. Yes. I curled my curly hair with a curling iron. Or rather, Paula at the salon did. The makeup I did myself, but it was a combination of luck and lighting that makes that picture look so nice. Pictures from preprom...well, let's just say that I'm rocking the dark circles, a bit. Nothing you can do when they are, sadly, built into your face. I'm poking one of them right now, actually, and there's just nothing there. My cheek/face bone is underneath, and then, right above, on the road to my eye, there's just...skin. Like, poke poke poke, hello eyeball and associated viscera, I'm so disgooooooooooosting, you know?

In truth, however, my breasts are much larger than they appear in the picture, because it was taken whilst I was (drumroll, please) sans bra. Bom-da-da-DAAA! I know, I know. Stupid thing to do, because in about thirty seconds I will have to carry them with both hands as I walk down the street, leaving no room to hold the shopping bags that contain the 44F Old Lady Beautiful Olga Brand Minimizers that I have purchased to wear layered, one on top of another and another and another, because knee-reaching boobies are what befalls young stupid girls who flounce around with C/Ds with nary a padded strap in sight. I know, okay?

Minimizers are just so...ugly. Eeew. Padded straps.

But the point is that people have been commenting like whoa w/r/t the thefacebook picture, and I feel terrible, because as Danno can attest, that picture was taken at a brief shining moment, and he personally has never seen me look like that. As I can attest, the likelihood of him seeing me look like that in the future is exceedingly low. But I feel kind of bad, because I've been abusing thefacebook, and friending people who have the same names as people from my kindergarten class, and random other assorted people who have no way of knowing that I'm just not that picture. Even though I make it clear within the body of my profile that I don't look like that. But it leads to terrible awkwardness, like this message I received when I friended one of the aforementioned kindergarten colleague name-alikes:

From: Bicycle Peartree (Midwest U)

To: Dashrashi

Subj: hey you

Message: Hey [Doshroshi], I'm [Bicycle] I am sure you know that. It is nice to meet you. You are a beautiful girl! How did you find me on facebook? You also must be very smart going to yale and all. Well gotta to go I wouyld love to talk to you soon. Do you have a screen name?

[Bicycle]

For the moment, I would like to ignore the fact that he misspelled my name even though it was right friggin there, and would prefer to focus on the pertinent question, which is:

How do I tell him that I A) Have a wonderful darling boyfriend, who, when he makes me cry, runs out in the street after me, B) I'm not actually smart, I just test well, and most importantly, C) that it really gives me the creeps that the kid who sat on my side of the semi-circle thinks my misleading thefacebook picture is good enough to comment on, even though he thinks I'm a stranger?

Gross.

(This was going to be about America's Next Top Model, too, but I got bored.)

I Apologize in Advance

2005-03-21T20:13:00.000-05:00

...but I'm going to post a poem.

Ah, whatever. Deal with it, suckas.

Something I Carry
(with apologies to Tim O'Brien)

On my key-ring
I have as many toys
As I do
Keys:
The freebie keychain from my
Semester abroad junior year
(You can't read it;
the type is flaking off);
A model of a Brancusi that I love
In bright translucent orange resin;
And a key-shaped keychain,
Souvenir from Graceland:
A room-key from the "Heartbreak Hotel"
He brought it back for me
After the first time we kissed
(Though I asked for an enamel pin, for my collection)
Heart-shaped,
I thought it was indicative
Instead of all he could give me.

Clarification

2005-03-21T20:05:00.000-05:00

It just occurred to me that maybe people are really confused by this Dashrashi/Sars nonsense. Let it be known henceforth: I am Sars. I am also Dashrashi. "Dashrashi" is...well, okay. So in 10th grade, we had to use a Hebrew word processor for our Lit class, and it's really hard to type in another set of characters--nothing corresponds!--so we were all just kind of getting acquainted with the keyboard, which necessitated a certain amount of, you know, messing around, and as it turns out, if you type S A R A H into a Hebrew word processor, you get Daled Shin Reish Daled Yud. And Hebrew is mostly written without vowels, so you get kind of this instinctive feel for how to pronounce things, even though all you have is the consonants (smlr tu wrtng lk ths, undrstnd? nt eesy, bt prtty intllgbl), so the natural way to pronounce Daled Shin Reish Shin Yud is Dashrashi, more or less. The "a" sounds, incidentally, are like the "a" in "baa," not like "hat." Emphasis on the second syllable.

Well, I'm sure that cleared up the lingering question that no one on earth had.

Not for the Faint of Heart

2005-03-17T11:31:00.003-05:00

Okay, kids. Today's entry is about puking. If you don't like puking, if you're one of those people who gets all Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee about it, I advise you to check out the archives or something. Or hit up Joe's blog; he mainly writes about, you know, gay porn and injectable drugs.

Why am I writing about puking? Oh, I don't know; lately, though, it's been happening a lot, for no discernible reason, and so I guess I've been thinking about it a lot.

NB: I'm not sick, I don't like to puke, but I do think it has its place, but again, will reiterate, don't enjoy it, don't do it when I'm bored, so on, so forth, et cetera.

I happen to think that being nauseated is worse than most forms of pain. I'd rather you elbowed me in the nose--hard--than be carsick for more than a minute and a half. (Unfortunately, I am often carsick, because reading in the car will result in mad nausea. I know this, but I always think, Oh, just this once...And then I moan all the way home and have to take a nap.) I'd rather have six infected cuticles. I'd rather have a migraine. I wouldn't rather have a root canal, but that's because I had a root canal in my front tooth, and I know that "root canal" is not something to just toss around, like it's nothing, because it SOOOO is not. Nothing, that is.

But I hate hate hate being nauseated, or nauseous, if you want to be incorrect, which is fine, and I say it all the time, and, okay, how much do you hate it when you are sick to your stomach, and somebody asks what's wrong, and you kind of squeak out that you're pretty nauseous, and they get all Grammar Police on your ass, and are all, Well, yeah, cause you're nauseating me! Ha ha! Get it? Because "nauseous"refers to things that nauseate other things, and so people aren't nauseous, unless they smell really bad or something, they're nauseated, get it, so really, what you meant--and then you puke in their lap, because they deserve it.

And then you feel better! Yay!

Because that is the worst, I think, when you have to puke and you can't. Like earlier in the semester, for example, I had hella food poisoning, I think, from a burrito, which is just so sad, because now I am all squirrelly about eating them. And I started to feel sickish just as Danno and I were leaving Astro section, and I dragged him home with me, and I had to watch"The OC" because the roomies were taping it, and then I felt exceedingly gross, and then I went to the bathroom, walking at a bit of a brisk pace, so Danno upped and followed me, cause he's sweet. And then nothing happened; head back to the room, watch Marissa start to feel all tingly about girlses. Ickiness occurs; repeat brisk walking. This time, I hunker down by our toilet, which for some reason, has really just smelled so much like sewage this year? And I'm hunkering, and I'm sickish, but nothing's happening, and I really just think the pee smell is going to make me pass out. So I stand up, and I go over to the sink, still feeling VERY bad, and I forlornly ask Danno to push on my stomach. And he's all kinds of reluctant, and then I do the stampy dance, where I stamp, and put on an unhappy face, and ask very angry-sad-like if he will please just push on my stomach, Danno, it's not like it's a big deal, and then I stand in front of the sink, and I push on my own stomach, you know, to show him how, and he's all joking like, okay, and he puts his arms around me, and says, "Come on, you pussy," and pushes on my stomach, and that's when I surprise him, and myself, by puking the better part of a "chicken burrito with everything, please, and extra guac" into our bathroom sink.

Hee hee hee. In retrospect, it was awesome. Except I was out of my head from the puking, and I kept turning on the water, so as to...dilute it, I guess, and Danno kept trying to stop me, because he had already realized the AWFUL TRUTH:

We were going to have to scoop it into the toilet.

Because our sink at school has one of those drains with the many holes that doesn't allow for solids, and there was quite a bit of solid in the sink at that point. And I kept adding water, you know, increasing the volume of that-which-would-need-to-be-scooped, and Dan kept ripping my hand away from the faucet.

Then the scooping commenced. It was carried out by Danno and myself, with the aid of red beer cups. I found it less gross than he did. Especially because I found it extremely funny to, you know, [Extremely Gross Alert] identify particular pieces of cabbage as we scooped.

All was set aright in the world, when, not two nights later, Danno drank far too much absinthe and puked up said absinthe, wine, beer, assorted other hard liquor, and the hallowed remains of something called a Texas Burger. Into (you guessed it) the very same sink. Scooping commenced. Dan tried to help, but was still drunk and pukey. He seemed to have some sort of very strong aversion to the bathroom, though. We would try to get it all out, and we would go back into my common room to sit, and then he would puke into a cup. This happened more than four times. And all of it smelled like licorice and, oh, puke. Thanks, Absinthe!

This leads me to the phenomenon known as Sympathetic Vomiting.

In kindergarten, Michael Weinstein got sick and puked on the carpet. The janitor came and put that weird stuff on it, you know, that powder that smells kind of...sweet? And the whole thing was just too too much for Ronnie Feingold, and he went into the Munchkin Bathroom and puked into the wee little Munchkin Toilet. (Side note: I recently tried to pee in a Munchkin Toilet and found that it is nigh on impossible to pee when one's knees are tucked so neatly around one's head.) This usually happens to the vomit-haters, amusingly enough. I've never really experienced it--not even Sympathetic Nausea, but Danno has. Ha. That darned burrito.

Insomnimaniac

2005-03-16T18:05:00.000-05:00

If you swallow the first syllable, kind of, you can sing it. Y'all know the tune, don't make me make it obvious.

Today sucks because of my terrible horrible no-good very bad sleeping habits. I fell asleep last night at something like 10:45, and woke up at 3:36 AM. Two days ago, I think, I was sitting on the toilet, thinking (as you do), and I decided that the hour between 3 AM and 4 AM is the most disgusting, worthless, foul and vile time to be alive, with the absolute apex falling around 3:40. Because 2 AM happens. It's not fun, you're not aiming to still be awake, it's a weeknight, but shit happens, we all know that. And 3 AM can be salvaged, if you get to sleep past 9 AM. But after 3, you are heading into the murky territory of whether it is worth your while at all to try and sleep. It depends on when you need to be up, and whether you are willing to be a vampire for an extra day. If you need to be up early, you tend to crack open the next Mountain Dew and settle down with some reading for the end of the week, stopping only when the shaking of your hands becomes somewhat distracting. If you decide to go to sleep, you have to reconcile yourself to only getting about six hours worth of daylight the next day, and then dealing with a screwy Circadian rhythm. It's all very difficult.

I personally usually go for the Mountain Dew shakes. Which, come to think of it, would be a good name for a band. If only the Harlem Shakes hadn't basically preempted it. (Side note: ooh, look at me, saying things would be a good name for a band, just like Dave Barry, oooh, and then being all self-deprecating about it, just like Dave Eggers, oooh.)

The upshot is that 3:40 is the absolute pinnacle of "damned if you do, etc" question of sleep or break on through to the other side. And when I find myself awake at 3:40, I consider just ending it all. Sweet, sweet release.

So last night I woke up at 3:36 in the goddamn fucking morning, aka in the MIDDLE OF THE GODDAMN FUCKING NIGHT, and I was not able to get back to sleep until 5:52 AM, aka, already fucking light out.

I miss Danno. He's a good sleeper when he's not being all diagonal on the bed, forcing me into an isosceles triangle with an area of less than half that of the whole mattress, which in turn requires I push him not-so-gently, which necessitates Danno grunting and then saying, in a cute little boy voice, "heeeeyyy, Bear...why'd you..." and then he's out again, and I start again with the pushing.

I told Danno that I was writing about sleeping and he said, "Sleep is awesome!" I said I would quote him on that. I did. Waste of a paragraph if you ask me.

We have a bit of a problem though, which is that I must sleep with the blinds and curtains open, letting the light in in the morning, and he closes them so as to maintain Bat Cave-ness for as long as possible. The thing is, the Bat Cave makes me sick to my stomach when I actually have to wake up. Like in Israel, while sharing a hotel room with my grandmother, the curtains were completely opaque, and the room is black, and then the alarm goes off, and she gets up, and throws open the curtains, and the light just about rapes my eyeballs and brain, and then I politely excuse myself because I am going to be sick.

Also, in general, whenever I wake up before a certain time (something like 7:15), I am nauseated the entire day. It's very inconvenient, because the major reason I have gotten up early is that I have about a jillion things to do, none of which are helped by me making periodic trips to the lavatory, just to make sure I'm not actually going to lose my shit and puke.

I hate waking up early. Gross.

Also puking. Way gross. But, you know, you do feel better afterwards. So, not all bad. Like, say...

WAKING UP.

Addendum

2005-03-09T16:10:00.000-05:00

So remember how I said that poppycocking, a capital crime, was stealing the last of someone's food? It's also something else. It is also eating the middle 75% (or more) of someone's food, speaking chronologically, without telling them. This is fairly well known, in the context of putting the OJ back in the fridge with less than a third of a glass left in it.

So if I were to eat, let's say, three mint Oreos, and then the next day, come back and find that there were, oh, three mint Oreos left in the package, that means that someone else ate the middle (chronologically speaking) oh, 40 mint Oreos. That person is also a poppycocker, and that person should request his own damn cookies when Mom is going to the supermarket, and that person will receive his just desserts (har), which will involve me hoisting Killer up to his top bunk and having him poop in said top bunk.

Poppycockers, you have been warned.

Three Haikus for Snow in March

2005-03-08T16:40:00.000-05:00

I wait for calls, but
Danny has no reception
Because he's drifting

He calls from land-lines
Though I still haven't showered
I am still better

On moral high ground
I perch neatly, watching him
Drifting in the snow.

Home Again, Naturally

2005-03-07T11:30:00.000-05:00

Home for spring break. About a thousand things I could/should be doing, but I'm taking my cues from OlderBrotherJosh, and sitting on my ass, doing nothing. Awesome.

It's kind of painful being home; there's this material record of me here that feels so foreign. I mean, for instance, every awful thing I ever made out of clay is not only still kept, but displayed prominently and/or actually used. Example: right now, I am typing at my mom's desk, and her primary pen/pencil canister is...this thing. I made it in Pottery maybe seven years ago, at camp. It is slightly non-cylindrical. Hell, I'll just say it: the thing is warped. The top edge is kind of weird and fluted; the back stands up like a collar of some kind, and the sides swoop down to the low point in the front. And still fluted. It's like when you cut a flower stem at an angle, right, but then you hollow out the stem, and kind of fold the top edge out a bit, so it makes just a little bit of a lip, and oh, did I mention? You flute it.

I think we made it by wrapping clay around a Coke can.

But oh, the glazing I did is a work of art.

Prior to the glazing, I appeared to have wrapped the thing in tulle, to give it "texture," said texture ending up looking like a cross between honeycomb and fish scales. Then I glazed it blue. Unevenly. With strokes going in every direction. Some sort of misguided light cobalt blue, looking like a kindergartener's terrible watercolor sky, with the less-glazed parts allowing the fish scales to shine on through. I swear, the brush pattern I used...Daniel Day-Lewis in "My Left Foot." It's a shame. But not as much a shame as my choice to glaze the inside with a purposefully bumpy-gritty seafoam green.

I mean, the thing is just so blazingly goddamn ugly that it's hard for me to think.

And that's why it's weird to be here. Because I, if given the choice, would happily throw this bad boy out of my bedroom window onto the sidewalk, but my mom would kill me, because it's her pencil canister. My life at school is about me being able to make choices and reinvent myself whenever I want. I can erase my past with a day of redecoration, or an unexpected choice as regards housing. But here, I am forced to come into hourly contact with my entire family, yearbooks, familiar carpeting, the fact that I can identify each door upstairs by the distinct sound of it shutting, and every hideous, warty, and regrettable vase I ever made.

Plus, this is the first time in about five years that everyone in the family is home, and I honestly just think we are getting too old for this shit.

Yay! and Boo!

2005-03-04T12:14:00.000-05:00

I found my keys:

YAY

I am running so extremely late right now:

BOO

Poop

2005-03-03T19:40:00.000-05:00

No, not the literal kind. For a change.

This week was a piece of shit. Everything sucked, with the exception of my new earrings, which are gorgeous and dangle and invite compliments from strangers, bosses, and TAs alike.

I don't even know what was so bad, except I had boats and boats of work, and Sarahbel is having school/house/etc problems, and I didn't get my paper back, and I basically fell asleep while studying for the midterm, and had summer job stress, and had sixty billion appointments, and had my new boss change my hours on me, and finally got my paper back and got a shitty grade with no explanation (same grade as Danno; not that that's a bad thing, but he didn't even have a thesis), and ran out of time on said midterm, and didn't make my hours at work, and didn't sleep, and had to skip Color today because I didn't have the thing I needed to have, and lost my keys (still missing), and had a headache that lasted for 12 straight hours for no reason, and have my period, and have to deal with going home by regional rail (biggest fucking headache in the entire fucking world, but the price can't be beat), and the advice columnist didn't answer my letter, and assorted other things that I am forgetting now.

So really, there's nothing to complain about.

Bad News

2005-02-27T16:22:00.000-05:00

Danno would like me to let you know:

Someone pooped on our toilet seat. Not a whole poop, not like however-many-minutes'-worth of effort, but not like a streak or a mark, either. It was decidedly a piece of poo.

At first I thought it was a little bit of a leaf, because I didn't have my glasses on, and I got relatively close to it, in order to blow it away, and then I realized that it is February, and there are no little bits of leaves left, and therefore, that piece of something right there, sitting contentedly on the toilet seat, is, in fact, a piece of poop.

Please let this never happen ever again.

A Very Good Morning

2005-02-27T13:58:00.000-05:00

Before 1:30 this afternoon, I committed not less than three of the Seven Deadly Sins. I'm sure you can guess which three.