Banana Theory

Literary F My Life

2009-03-01T23:29:00.003-05:00

I was introduced to the site fmylife.com, and I've begun obsessively checking it the way I did when I first found Overheard in New York in high school. A lot of the life failures are very similar: my boyfriend inadvertently admitted to having an affair by sending an insultingly-worded text message meant for his secret lover to me, my parents went on an exotic vacation with my brother and not me, my good deed indeed went punished. There is something compelling about being able to sum up the (perhaps newfound) sorry state of one's life with one particularly telling short anecdote. For instance:

"Today, I was having sex with my boyfriend. When he was about to orgasm, he screamed "Yes Brittany!" at the top of his lungs. My name's not Brittany. That's his sister. FML"

This got me set on a mental game in which I tried to think up how different characters from books would sum up their lives on the site. I now present the results.

"Today, I found out that my mysterious benefactor is a convict, not the aunt of the woman I love. I thought I was being groomed for marriage. FML"
-Pip, Great Expectations

"Today, my best friend spurned the goddess of love, Ishtar. Now one of us has to die. Guess who got picked. FML"
-Enkidu, The Epic of Gilgamesh

"Today, my uncle married my mother. FML"
-Hamlet, Hamlet

"Today, my crush, Ashley, told me that loves me, but that he still plans to marry his fugly cousin. FML"
-Scarlett, Gone with the Wind

"Today, I found out that my fiancé already has a wife. She lives in the attic. He told me it was no big deal, we could just move to France. FML"
-Jane, Jane Eyre

"Today, my mad wife set the house and fire and then jumped off of it. I lost a hand and my eyesight trying to save her. FML"
-Rochester, Jane Eyre

"Today, my wife is going to sleep with another man. What is that man across the street, across cross that hangs in the cathedral. FML"
-Bloom, Ulysses

"Today, I woke up naked. And made out of the parts of several dead men. FML"
-the Creature, Frankenstein

The Accident

2008-08-01T14:23:00.004-04:00

I thought it would be funny if someone got into an accident because of an ambulance. It wasn't.

Zoelle and I were going to work yesterday morning when it happened. We came to a T intersection when we heard an ambulance. We figured out it was coming from the left when we were already in the intersection, and stopped for it. By the time it cleared, our left turn light had turned red, leaving us out in the middle of the intersection, blocking traffic. A woman from our right waved us on.

As we rolled out to clear the intersection, a sedan from the same direction as the ambulance plowed into our driver-side door at thirty miles an hour. We had enough time to register that we were about to get hit, and covered our heads just before the impact.

The worst part about car accidents is the sound they make, that crunching pop of metal on metal. The guy didn't see us and didn't brake, so there was just less than a second of warning before it happened. We saw the car as it was on top of us, and then the seatbelt was jerking against my chest and I couldn't breathe. The last time I've had the breath knocked out of me was when I fell off the zipwire in the third grade and landed on my chest in the mulch. It's a decidedly scary feeling.

My glasses flew off my face and the car filled with dust. I fumbled around my lap in shock and felt these tiny glasses in my hand. I immediately freaked out, thinking my glasses were broken, but it turned out that Zoelle's smaller pair had just flown into my lap and mine had been thrown to the floor. Then, in disorientation, as Zoelle tried to figure out if the other driver was okay, I yanked desperately on my seatbelt, unable to figure out how to unhook it.

We all climbed out of the cars—Zoelle had to climb out of the passenger's side because her door was crushed in a blocked by the other car. We all got to the side of the road and surveyed the damage. The front axle of Zoelle's car had collapsed, and front driver's side was crushed in, the windshield was cracked, and the wheel was at a diagonal to the ground. The other car had an accordianed front and was dripping oil. He had hit us hard enough to turn our car in a different direction. Both cars were totaled. And here's the kicker: No one stopped.

A county police officer was driving by and stopped for us. He asked us, and I quote, "Alright, so who ran the red light?" It was a discouraging day, to say the least.

We all got out with minor injuries, just some bone and tissue bruises, and epic soreness from where the seatbelts jerked us and where our knees ate dashboard. The feeling reminds me of that morning the first volleyball practice of the year, after I'd been bumming around and falling out of shape all summer. Parts of my body I forgot existed are aching.

I think what I'm left with now, rather than trauma or shock, is lingering surprise that it happened at all. When it was happening, I was split between fear, the sense that everything was going to change, and a feeling of inevitability. Now, it's just the thought, "Really? Did that seriously happen?"

I got to see my chest x-ray, though, which was cool. Looking at my spine and ribs, I thought that the human body is really impressively constructed. The only way to make myself feel better and appreciate my newfound awe for human existence was to eat a meatball sub and take a nap. Which I did.

This American Life

2008-07-30T08:08:00.001-04:00

I'm obsessed with it. I've long since accepted that loving NPR makes me a middle-aged, white woman on the inside. But recently, with the introduction of the "This American Life" podcast into my life, I am completely in thrall to NPR. I laugh. I download multiple episodes a day. I try to keep from crying on the BART when listening to depressing segments.

I think part of the appeal is Ira Glass' soothing, public radio voice with its appropriate gravitas. But I think a little bit of it has to do with the movie Sleepless in Seattle, which I watched for the first time two nights ago. (As a side note, I found the movie disappointing. I spend an hour and a half watching a movie and the main characters don't meet until the end? And there's no kissing? What a crock. I would also like to note that it was horribly misbilled by Netflix as a romantic comedy. It was more stalkerish than anything else, and there's a limit on how amusing a movie about a widower and a woman who doesn't love her fiancé can be.)

But the more relevant point here is that Meg Ryan's character falls in love with Tom Hanks' after hearing him on the radio. That one aspect of the movie really makes sense to me. I think I may not just like "This American Life," but also be slightly enamored of Ira Glass. I know he's horribly too old for me, I'll probably never meet him, and that he doesn't usually speak for that long on the show, but there's something really compelling about those few minutes when he is on air.

Inappropriate PDA

2008-07-29T09:13:00.000-04:00

Let me get this out of the way first: Batman was badass. I could talk extensively about many aspects of it, including, but not limited to, Christian Bale's hotness, Morgan Freeman's awesomeness, and the number of people tasting Batman's pointy, flying elbows.

I'm someone who really enjoys action movies. Even if they're crappy and full of plot holes, I can sit through them and be pretty engrossed. Especially if the screen is large and fills my entire field of vision. So, when I'm in a legitimately well done action movie, like Batman, I enter a sort of zone. This is a peaceful mental state which I do not like having interrupted.

Enter the teenage couple. They came in with a gaggle of their loud friends who think they're all very funny. I know. Being with a large group of people you've known for a while is sort of like being drunk: Everyone's much more clever, everything's much funnier, and no one has the ability to control the volume of his voice. I accept this, and think of it as a kind of penance for my own times being in that group who singlehandedly ruins the entire movie/restaurant/walking down the sidewalk experience.

They quieted down mostly before the movie and settled in for a few solid hours of explosions and hand-to-hand combat. About forty-five minutes in, the guy in the couple lost interest in the movie. He started looking over at his girlfriend, who was sitting next to me. She ignored him as he shifted around and tried to make eye contact with her. Eventually, after about fifteen minutes of struggle and a short conversation about how she was tired, they started making out. They would glance at me occasionally. I assume this means they were checking to see if I'd noticed, and if so, whether I was going to throw my soda on them.

And so, the next hour and a half of Batman was interrupted by slurping sounds and elbow bumping. I get it. They have hormones. But if you're going to make out during a movie, why would you sit in the middle of the theater, next to people? Especially when it's a popular movie on its second weekend? The world may never know.

Long story short, I'm bringing a taser and a spray bottle to the movies from now on.

How to handle a de-magnetized BART card

2008-07-28T13:31:00.002-04:00

Retrieve de-magnetized card from the slot. Place hands firmly on top of two metal turnstiles and swing legs over barrier. Walk away nonchalantly.

Happy Birthday, Isabelle Hicks

2008-07-23T00:01:00.002-04:00

I turned twenty on Saturday. As one friend helpfully informed me, this makes me close to 40 than to birth. The celebration has extended into a several day affair, with different celebrations and congratulations. A birthday week, one might call it. This pales in comparison with one person, however: Isabelle Hicks.

On the drive home every night, Zoelle and I pass the local high school. There's an electric sign near it that announces important things in the school. The graduation date, minor news, and, of course, birthdays. It's sort of charming that an inanimate object can greet you with a "Happy birthday!" as you drive by. But Isabelle has taken it to the next level.

She has the fortune of having been born on the last day of school. This is the point at which the secretaries become lazy or leave for the summer. Thus, the billboard remains un-updated for three months. Trumping my measly week by a large margin, Isabelle Hicks has a three-month-long birthday celebration. Cheers to her, and may she have a sweet sixteen until she's seveteen.

Rowr

2008-07-21T15:45:00.000-04:00

On Friday night a few weeks ago, I went to this magazine release party at the Oakland Museum of California with Zoelle and her mother. We started off the evening by eating dinner at this restaurant called Oasis. It specializes in West African food, which seems to involve a lot of beans, rice and plantains. The food was delicious, but there was one questionable aspect to the menu. My topping options for my black-eyed peas and rice were chicken, cod, and “meat.”

I accept that there may be some translation problems, but what is this mysterious “meat?” Pork? Beef? The flesh of naughty children? There are so many possibilities here, I was almost afraid to ask.

The party itself was a bizarre mix of twenty-somethings and fifty-year-old white women. As someone who’s easily pleased, I was quickly drawn to the circle of people standing around the acrobatic children in the courtyard. Apparently they belong to a circus school; they did some tumbling and crazy hanging rope tricks with no netting or safety harnesses. Watching them and clapping like a moron, I felt jipped. Not only did these kids get to join the circus, they didn’t have to run away from home to do it. As I grow older, it has become increasingly clear to me how much my parents hid from me.

There was also a prize table from Amoeba. And I won two four-day passes to this big festival. From the expression of the woman running the booth, this was a big prize. This is disappointing for both of us, because what I really wanted was the $10 tote bag. But I took my prize anyway, and started scoping the crowd.

It became readily apparent, as the night wore on and we wandered through the various exhibits, food stands, and members of a KISS cover band, that the middle-aged women had an objective. They moved with intent, through the throngs of slow-moving couples and . The women moved in packs,

One man behind me summed it up best. With a mixture of incredulity and fear, he said, “This is a cougar den!”

Significant in the way that anything is

2008-06-26T16:51:00.006-04:00

1. My computer mouse only scrolls up. This has led me to discover something very important: I never scroll up. Having a computer mouse that can't go down is like having an elevator that can't go up: It's only good for the second leg of the trip. Which in practice means it's useless.

2. I saw a legless dude on a skateboard today. It was awesome.

3. The largest woman I have ever seen sat next to me on the bus when it was 100 degrees outside and crushed me up against the window for fifteen minutes. There were two things that made me uncomfortable about this. One was that I was pressed up against another human being on a day hot enough to set water on fire, and the other was that I was covered in someone else's stomach. This leads me to several important thoughts about the bus.

One is that I have never gotten on a bus in Berkeley that doesn't smell funny. And I don't mean in the "someone was smoking pot in the back" kind of way, which is what a remarkable amount of the city smells like. I mean in the "someone went to the gym without deodorant and rolled around on all the seats" way or the "a child took a secret dump under the handicapped bench" way. Or just some pervading scent of wrongness that has no origin. There's a line in Beauty and the Beast that goes, "Every day a new surprise!" My mornings align well with this sentiment, only I live in the real world rather than a Disney movie, so my encounters are with a bus rather than true love.

Something else I've learned about Berkeley: People are confused by basic rules of public transportation. One, you don't sit next to someone when there are plenty of empty seats unless said person is sitting in the front and you are missing a leg, 80-years-old, or carrying something heavy. Another important rule is that you let people off the bus or train before judo-chopping the rest of the teeming horde trying to get on out of your way. Every time I come to the Berkeley BART stop on the bus and try to disembark, I am greeted by a wall of people pressed up against door. They're like a mosh pit in density and violence. Only instead of punks it's yuppies dressed in business casual. One day I'm just going to throw myself on top of them and 9-to-5-commuter surf all the way to the escalator.

4. You know that guy on the freeway who drives his car like Speed Racer on crack and weaves in and out of lanes going thirty miles an hour faster than you? I know him. I have been in his car. I think the experience gave me a heart murmur.

Why would you do that?

2008-06-18T21:42:00.004-04:00

My office is over a mile away from the BART station, and I hate walking. There were thus two options available: ride the bus and pay $3.50 a day (actually $4, because the bus doesn't give change—don't get me started) or buy a bike. Being the cheap soul I am, I bought a slightly rusty mountain bike at a garage sale. I bought myself a sweet u-lock to protect my piece of junk, and left it at the station overnight.

It served me well for a good two days. But when I returned to Berkeley on Monday, something was amiss. You might think, at this point in the story, that my bike had gone missing. Not so. I stared at my bicycle for a good two minutes in astonishment. More specifically, at the gaping hole where my seat was supposed to be attached.

Yes, you read that right: The thief left the bike, but took my ripped, old seat, including the pole that attaches it to the bike. Buying a new one would probably cost me more than I paid for the bike and the lock. I was at a loss. It had been such a cost effective plan, but it had been abruptly ruined by some ass with a fetish for old, uncomfortable bike seats.

So my bike has been sitting at the Berkeley BART station missing a vital component for the past three weeks. I pass it every morning and stare at it longingly. Cursed walking.

Videos

2008-05-07T14:18:00.002-04:00

I've taken some time out from my precious procrastination time to bring you the things you should be watching instead of working.

Korean Game Show - My roommate showed it to me, and it's worth it to watch this one to the end. I thought it was Japanese television that's completely insane, but apparently it's not.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_550lyzAqk&NR=1

Stephen Colbert takes on the forces of Korean pop music and his nemesis, Rain
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=beWdU6PE3Xo

What it's like working with an editor - "Isn't there already a book called Jaws?"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zo1XFz0kac0

Ra Ra Rasputin, Russia's Greatest Love Machine...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvDMlk3kSYg

And a cover of the Speed Racer theme:
http://www.youaintnopicasso.com/2008/05/06/de-novo-dahl-covers-speed-racer-theme/

Love,
Meredith

The Gym: Missed Connections with a Treadmill

2008-05-01T14:35:00.004-04:00

You probably don't remember me. It was yesterday evening, at about 8 p.m at the gym. You were grey and had a wide belt. You asked me if I wanted to use manual or cardio mode, and I knew it was destiny. I was the guy wearing the mesh shirt with the short haircut. I know a lot of people use you, but I'm hoping that I stood out. I was full out sprinting on you for over an hour. You may remember me for another reason, too: I had my pelvis right up against your handlebars the entire time we were together.
I thought you were amazing, and I want to get to know you better. Meet up again some time next week?

Reply to: The Gym: Missed Connections

How could I forget? I know sometimes men find it difficult to figure us out, so I'll explain something to you. When you're running so fast that your gonads are flapping up against my heart rate monitor, there's a simple solution. You set me on a higher speed. I'll meet with you, but only if you promise to respect my personal space. Just because I run with a lot of different people doesn't mean I'm a slut.

I'll never use that treadmill again.

Where have I been?

2008-04-18T18:27:00.002-04:00

So, some people may wonder where I've gone. Well, I have gone to parties. I have gone to class. I have gone to interviews. And now I have returned to Banana Theory.

Me, in Old English seminar: Do we know why her husband plotted to kill all of her brothers?
Professor: I don't know. Something involving treasure.

Now, if anyone's ever studied the Anglo-Saxons, you know it's potentially the best summary of the culture available. Why did Beowulf go kill Grendel and then a dragon? Something involving treasure. And that battle between Kent and Wessex? Something involving treasure.

I also encountered something new in my History of China lecture. Now, I would like to note that the professor is one of the most knowledgeable and well-spoken scholars on the subject. As I tried to focus on what exactly the Guomindang was doing, I noticed my roommate looking down at something in front of us. I, alerted, soon noticed and was distracted by a flickering light directly in front of me. I glanced down at the computer screen of the girl in front of me. She was watching a Chinese soap opera. She had her headphones in and everything.

This raises several obvious questions. Most importantly: Why in hell did she even bother coming to lecture? Was she seriously watching television during class? Did she have to sit in the middle of the auditorium, distracting literally dozens of people? I'll admit to some Text Twist and Jetman action during class, but I think this multi-tasking in lecture to a new level.

Hair: Something Different

2008-01-22T22:49:00.000-05:00

This postsecret reminded me of an essay I wrote last year.

I hacked off my hair with Barbie scissors. They were meant to cut paper, so it took a few snips before the clump of hair from the back of my head fell to the floor. I hid the hair at the bottom of the garbage can, pulled the remaining hair back into a ponytail to cover the damage, and went downstairs to eat dinner.

This was the latest debacle in a series of hair woes. The unruly, curly mass of hair that sprouted from my head was the bane of my existence, eating hair brushes and snapping their plastic skeletons in half. It sheered combs of their tines without mercy. It was a malignant, seething life, and I was just an attachment providing it with protein.

After being born bald, I had morphed into a Chia Pet. The hair sprang up and out. When it grew long enough, my mother braided it. When more of it grew, she braided it into pigtails. And when I had too much hair for that, in the months before my First Communion, I trapped it in a ponytail.

For my First Communion, my mother had taken me to get my hair straightened. I emerged from the salon triumphant, admiring myself in store windows and flinging my head to feel the hair flow. When I woke up on the morning of the event, the hair was a ball of wavy frizz. My mother’s attempts to straighten it before Mass were futile. I watched in the bathroom mirror. Her hands flitted around my head, patting the hair down as she reminded me to keep my head firm against the pulls of the hot iron. When she finished, the frizz was just as large. In the few moments I had alone before church, I cried on my bed and wrenched the poof of frizz in frustration. During Mass, I sat in a pew in the front of the church staring at Christ nailed to the cross, thinking about what a luxurious head of hair he had.

It was a life-size, wooden statue, frozen mid-sacrifice, that hung behind the altar. Christ’s head was bowed, his eyes searching the sky. The blood dribbling down his face from the crown of thorns stopped before his eyebrows and welled up in the creases of his wrinkled forehead. His feet were crossed, a single spike driven through both of them; his palms, too, were fixed with nails, the fingers curling slightly around them. But despite his obvious distress, his pain, and his emaciation, his hair remained immaculate, unmatted by blood.

Jesus was virtuous, white, and straight haired. And as a good Catholic girl, he was my ideal. The statue floated behind the altar as a reminder. Hair was the only of Christ’s three qualities the church had not addressed. I had reconciled myself to the fact that I was a sinner. I could receive forgiveness for that. Being white had never been of particular interest to me; the priest had said that souls have no color. But if I was going to go 0 for 2, was it too much to ask that I have shiny, straight hair?

My mother and I had a weekly ritual to subdue the beast. I would have been happy to leave the hair as a single, gravity-defying dredlock and avoid the process, but she had other ideas. Every Sunday night, after church, she sat me down in the bathtub and untangled the hair. She moved around my scalp, methodically yanking apart tangles, section by section; each tug felt like she was pulling it out by the roots. My father made up excuses to leave and avoid the screams that suffused the entire house. He would remark that the car sure could use a wash or remember that a library book needed returning before making an exit.

It was on an afternoon just before the ritual, almost a year after the First Communion disaster, when I took matters into my own hands and cut out a hideous tangle. My neighbor, Hannah, had tried to French braid my hair at a sleepover the night before. By the time she had pulled her hands away, a third of the hair in the middle of my head had conspired to bind together. Putting my hand to it, I could already feel the tug of my mother’s hands, could hear the sound of hair tearing.

When I got home the next morning, the mutant braid hidden in a bun, all I could think of was the impending pain. But until I saw the scissors, I did not know what I was going to do. It was a moment of clarity: the hair would resist being pulled apart, it would hurt, and the obvious solution was to sever it from my body.

When my mother came across the missing patch of hair that evening, she paused. “What happened?” she gasped.

“What? What’s wrong?”

“Your hair’s been breaking off in the back. Almost a third of it is gone! Must be the scrunchies.”

The ponytails that I then used to strangle the beast broke off hairs. It was a reasonable assumption on her part that they were to blame. She did not suspect that my hate of the hair was so powerful as to intentionally destroy it.

I longed for the control that my straight-haired friends seemed to take for granted. They were oblivious to the tortures I endured because of the hair. “It doesn’t get all limp and stringy when it’s wet!” or “It’s just so much more interesting than my hair,” they said. Living with the hair was interesting in the way that living in a cage with a silverback gorilla is interesting. One is always waiting for an ugly end.

I did not have to wait long for it. There was a gruesome resolution, but I was the aggressor. I always had been. The hair was inanimate, a victim of my frustration. It was silent and without intent. My obsession was what had a voice, what had chipped away at my grasp of reality. I had not seen that it was grotesque, to cut off a third of the hair with blunt scissors. But acts of desperation are always ugly. The hair suffered so that I could know that.

My perception of beauty had been tied entirely to hair and my interactions with hair tied to pain. I had amputated the hair partly to save myself from the pain, but also because it felt like carving out the ugliness. I finally had control. But too much hair was gone, and what remained had to be cut short. I came to church the next week with an afro. The hair was back down to its early state, strands only able to curl twice before ending.

I sat in the first pew and tried to stare down Jesus, but he kept his eyes stubbornly skyward. Defeated, I slouched against the hard wood. And for the first time in years, I listened to the homily. The priest paced back and forth in the aisle, waving his hands and evoking the Bible. He said something about welcoming neighbors.

In the end, the hair was not conquered; it grew back and resumed its old ways. It still snapped and spit out the skeletons of brushes. It still tangled. But in the five years the hair took to return, we began to coexist. I could go for whole days without thinking about hair. And set loose from the scrunchies’ stranglehold, the curls exploded in all directions. We were released.

Leggings

2008-01-18T16:46:00.001-05:00

Dear Girls Who Think Leggings are Pants:

No, no, no. Leggings are not pants. I understand the temptation. They are comfortable and don't have annoying zippers or buttons. I confess that I made the terrible decision of wearing my long johns under skirts during junior year of high school, and thought I was super cool. And yes, there were some really nice outfits involving leggings and mini dresses/long shirts. But seriously, your leggings offend me.

Calf-length leggings came in a few years back to be worn under skirts. Which I thought was a terrible and usually unflattering idea, with one with which I was willing to live. And then came skinny jeans. We all squeezed ourselves into them, admired our butts, and went through a series of inappropriate shoes before finally finding ones that looked right. Even guys were in on the skinny jeans, whose pants were/are tight enough to cut off circulation and the possibility of children. It was only a matter of time before someone had the brilliant idea to combine the two trends.

You look comfortable, yes, but also like someone who fumbled around in their closet during the morning and got confused. No one wants to see your panty-lines or the exact shape of your lower body. Leggings are not flattering, and wearing them with a top that doesn't cover your butt is no good. No, I'm not your mother. If I was, you'd be wearing pants out of the house.

Love,
A Girl Who Hates Pants, Too, But...Seriously?

The Lessons of Chinese History

2008-01-18T16:45:00.000-05:00

Since everyone I know is taking the History of China lecture this semester, I have plenty of opportunities to talk about it. We've only had two lectures and two readings so far, but some salient points have already come out. Since in college it's essential be able to distill readings to a sentence for those friends who utterly fail at homework, I've become pretty adept at picking out main points. This is especially easy since Spence's book is much more readable than the majority of history textbooks, and occasionally has these crazy one-liners that give me pause.

The first important point from the Ming Dynasty is this: Don't trust eunuchs. We read 40 pages about the late Ming Dynasty, and that was the one salient point. Sure there was something about court intrigue, massive famine and plague, and the encroachment of the Manchus, but the main problem was the eunuchs.

The second chapter dealt more with the Manchus and the fall of the Ming Dynasty. One of the Ming generals gets trapped between the Manchus and a rebel group. He chooses to side with the Manchus. Midway through the reading, there was one of Spence's one-liners. General Wu seems to have chosen the Manchus either for some completely logical reason, or because the rebel general stole his concubine. After reading this, I was unable to focus on the rest of the reading, except for the portion about a man either committing suicide or being beaten to death my peasants. How can there be an ambiguity there? How are those things at all similar? But anyway, the second point is this: If you want to take over a country, don't steal an important generals' concubines. Or generally avoid stealing anyone's concubine. They might set eunuchs on you.

For Monday: The return of my fashion rants.

In other news, I forgot a password for a site I'm on, and the password hint was, "What is a relationship?" What the fuck was I thinking?

Biblical Disasters, College Edition

2008-01-17T13:44:00.000-05:00

So, I received panicked call from one of my suitemates four days before I was set to return to campus. Hadn't I received the call from the college's master? Our suite flooded! Shortly afterward, I received a cryptic email from the master saying that our suite had indeed flooded, and that some unspecified amount of stuff had been damaged or ruined. My roommate, who found out at two in the morning, called me to flip out. We bitched to each other about how a recently renovated dorm at a college with a lot of money shouldn't have hot water pipes bursting and destroying people's belongings. And we concocted elaborate scenarios that had all of our clothing sitting as soggy messes after the water seeped into the wardrobes, our television short-circuiting, and our walls stained.

I came in on Saturday and found nothing wrong. The only discernible damage was a couple curled floorboards in one of the rooms. But since, due to our pipe, the ceiling of the suite below us fell in, we were exiled to another dorm three blocks away for the month it will take them to do the repairs. I can live with the hassle of having to move all of my stuff at the beginning of the semester and then move it back during midterms. At least none of my stuff was damaged. And I can deal with the outrage that if any of my stuff had been ruined, the college wouldn't have paid me a dime for it. But what I really can't stand is living with a bunch of freshmen. I tried my best not to hate them, but they make it really hard. I try to remember what I probably seemed like when I came in as a freshman, but it's like living with aliens, and I can't even explain why.

At least now when people ask me what I did for break, I have a story beyond, "Oh, you know. I ate, slept and watched television." Asking what people did for break is like asking them how they are: You're not expecting a real answer, but the connection that arises from your shared experience of an unexciting break. It's exciting to me to have a story, even if the reality is somewhat inconvenient, since I usually find small talk so unbearable. Little victories.

Shopping Period

2008-01-15T15:44:00.000-05:00

My shopping period by numbers.

1: The number of classes I walked out of in sheer terror.
2: Number of language classes for which I am inadequately prepared but am taking anyway.
6: Average number of people who wander in late and have to stand uncomfortably in the back of a class.
12: Average number of disgruntled people who are in front of me in line at the copy store where they sell us overpriced course packets, and only in cash.
35: The number of people wearing large, ironic glasses and/or scarves in my Intro. to Theory of Literature class of 200 people.
150: Dollars it cost for two textbooks.
1,000,000: The apparent number of undergraduates who shopped my History of China course.
99,999: The expected number of people who are actually going to take it.

For Wednesday...the epic tale of a pipe bursting, flooding my entryway, and forcing twenty people (including me) out of the dorm.

The Hollywood Baby Army

2008-01-07T22:57:00.001-05:00

*n.b. The Bloggies are back! Vote for mine and other blogs you like by Friday at 10 EST. As a hint: teen, best-kept secret, most humorous, etc.

Being around for the week after everyone else has returned to school has driven me to drastic measures. Some people work out to alleviate boredom. Others watch television. I peruse gossip blogs. In sifting through the obligatory bikini pictures of women I've never heard of and articles about Britney Spears' descent into the patron demon of baby-dropping, hair-shaving, car-crashing, dance-impaired women with cheap weaves, I saw a disturbing trend.

Has anyone else noticed that every famous female in the entertainment industry is pregnant? Because I have. Nicole Kidman, Jamie Lynn Spears, Christina Aguilera, etc. Some came out with it early, like Jessica Alba. And some (J. Lo) sashayed around in a bell-bottom jumpsuit that revealed her five-month-pregnant belly while simultaneously denying that the baby existed. But whether or not feign surprise that million of strangers are interested in their offspring, there's no denying that the women are curiously in sync with each other.

I read Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale when I was in middle school, and I've never been able to shake suspicions about money, modernity and strange women in supermarkets that it raised. The essential point in this case is how a pseudo-religious oligarchy forms. The people have given up on paper money and rely entirely on credit cards. It's just a matter of cutting off people's bank accounts and cards to leave an entire population crippled and vulnerable to a takeover. I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but I never like to rule out the possibility.

Thus, I have decided that Hollywood is building an army. Of drugged-out wastrels who will spread their bad influence to the innocent, unsexed youth of middle America? Legions of genetically enhanced men and women who will slowly destroy the world with their succubus and incubus powers? Or perhaps something even more nefarious. Enough terrible child actors and singers with famous parents to fill every adolescent movie role and corporate-constructed preteen boy band?

My attempt to impress the enormity of my discovery on my neighbor was met with derision. He informed me that there are many at least moderately famous women in the entertainment industry, and it makes sense that at any given time, several of them are pregnant. I tried to explain to him that this is what makes any conspiracy genius, and he tried to explain to change the subject. We both failed.

The Blog Platform Strikes Back

2007-12-30T02:25:00.000-05:00

We all experiment with things. Sex, drugs, and (if you're me) domain names. After a year of glorious blogging on bananatheory.net, I've decided to return to Blogspot. "Decided" is the wrong verb, actually. The story is as follows:

I got free hosting for my site from one of my friends at Random Shapes. I stopped having even a vague understanding of how web pages work after about 2002, so he took care of everything. He told me last month that the hosting was running out soon, and I did that thing I do where I play Jetman on Facebook instead of doing important things like studying for final exams and backing up my blog. Thus, all entries from March until now are gone.

This is the sort of thing that would have given me cardiac arrest when I was younger. But I've recently entered a Zen state in which very little phases me. I'm going to try to piece together the archives from the first sentences I've got from a bunch of feeds. If you saved anything on your computer for posterity, out of love, etc., sending it to me would be greatly appreciated.

Welcome back to Banana Theory, version 3.0 (or, to be honest, -1.5). Please update your links.

Plain Kid

2007-09-28T22:40:00.000-04:00

“Why don’t you mix your peas and your mashed potatoes?”

“Because I’m not flavor-impaired.”

This is pretty much the gist of a conversation I had with a friend during high school. We were eating dinner together. I was eating my dinner in what I thought to be the normal manner: eating each part of the meal one at a time. Apparently, however, this distinguishes me as the Cro-Magnon of eaters. But aside from arguing belligerently that mixing peas and mashed potatoes was a dumb idea, I thought no more of the event.

This summer, however, I was having a conversation about sandwiches (over lunch; my entire life is not consumed by talking about food). More accurately, one of the guys had his girlfriend make him a sandwich, and found it completely inedible because it had mayonnaise in it. And thus began a heated conversation over what constitutes an appropriate sandwich ingredient. And one’s opinion clearly depended on this question: Were you a plain kid?

There are several defining characteristics of a plain kid. One is that all you wanted in your sandwiches as a child was meat. No mayonnaise, no butter, and definitely no lettuce or garnishy crap. You thought chicken nuggets and fries are best eaten without ketchup. And finally, mixing foods was absolutely unacceptable. Everything on the plate was to be in its discrete place, and it was upsetting if some of the vegetable juice dribbled into any of the other items. Green bean juice touching the steak? Disastrous!

I, for one, was a stereotypical plain kid. My idea of a ham sandwich was white bread with three slices of evenly distributed meat. Salad dressing angered me, and I cringed whenever my mother put salt on anything. My father’s liberal application of ketchup over the pile of fries made them inedible. And while I liked peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, I really preferred plain jelly sandwiches. I have since grown out of my plain kid-ness, but my continued satisfaction with my nothing-but-turkey sandwiches reflects my plain-kid past.

Stuff kids, on the other hand, love mixing flavors. These were the kids who would ask for two ice cream flavors in the same cone. They wanted garlic, cheesy fries and experimented by putting onion rings in their hamburgers. A stuff kid definitely came up with and spread the word about the Flutter Nutter. Marshmellow fluff and peanut butter? That sounds terrible - let’s try it! You can tell who former stuff kids are by behaviors like taking two sauces at a fast food restaurant and mixing them with a chemist’s accuracy before applying them to their fries.

Plain kids and stuff kids will never agree, and their battle, even into adulthood, is epic to the degree of that between pirates and ninjas.

Let's Go To the Movies

2007-04-02T22:50:00.000-04:00

I went to see 300 on Saturday. If you don’t have any of the normal expectations of a normal movie: plot, character development, meaningful dialogue, then you’ll be fine. It’s visually great, and going to see it with one of my friends reminded me of my favorite things people do in a movie theater that make other people hate them. Maybe this how to make people hate you in five easy steps ought to be a series. We’ll see.

Top 5 Ways to Make Other People in the Theater Hate You:

1. Come in late and spot your friends. Wave, inducing them to also wave and block the view of those behind them. If your friends are in the middle, make sure you choose to enter the aisle on the side that involves climbing over and inconveniencing the most people. Ask loudly for a summary of the last ten minutes you missed.

2. Grab the person next to you during high stress moments in horror movies. Bonus points for making them shriek. Double bonus points for grabbing someone you don’t know.

3. See the movie more than once, and talk about what’s coming up with a friend. If you can, convince her to see the movie twice, as well, and reveal major plot points. Editorial comments and tangents to what a whore that girl who spilt beer on your cellphone is. If people kick your chair or ask you to be quiet, quiet down for a few minutes, and then shriek about how your favorite part is coming up. Inform the audience of your excitement about scenes that are coming up. Narrate the movie: “He just decapitated the shit out of that guy!” Also, clap and whoop at particularly enjoyable moments.

4. Don’t turn off your cellphone before the movie. When it rings, answer it. Stay in your seat.

5. Be a group of thirteen-year-old girls. Giggle. Throw popcorn at each other. Giggle. Sit directly in front of me. Giggle. Squeal about how cute the lead is. Giggle.

And now for something completely different!

Overheard at College, Part Does It Matter

2007-03-06T22:42:00.000-05:00

Football Player 1: What are you doin’ this weekend?
Football Player 2: Actually, my girlfriend is taking me to the New York Philharmonic.
Football Player 1: Oh, cool… isn’t that a laser-light show or something?

Water polo goalie: I caught the ball, but it pulled my hand back into the goal. I felt like I was being high-fived by Hulk Hogan.

Girl trying on clothes: Does this make me look fat?
Boyfriend: Why do you torture me? I know you’re kidding, but in that way that you’re only kidding if I give a charming response. What is the proper response to that question?
Girl: Seppuku.

Student recommending an NYC weekend outing to a friend: At the Met, the suggested student donation is $10. But the museum is free if you’re a douche.

Surprise!

2007-03-05T21:58:00.000-05:00

You don't know it yet, but your excitement abounds. I've finally made the move to my own domain name. Please update your links:
http://bananatheory.net

All future posts will be on that site.

Boooo

2007-02-27T20:57:00.000-05:00

It's that time again: I've got more work than a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest. A haiku

Dear Psych book: suck it.
I don't care about geons
or Chomsky, either.

The Suite Life

2007-02-22T18:34:00.000-05:00

Well, it finally happened. After weeks of mouse trouble, one of them up and died in our wall. I found it amusing that, the day after I made a joke about stowing a body in a wall, we found out that a mouse decided to die in the wall between a bedroom and the common room and stink the whole place up. I must find something funny about it, because otherwise I think about the fact that our suite smelled like carcass for three days. Now it smells like special pest control air freshener and carcass.

The pest control people came in the first place because we'd smelled something funny on Monday. My roommate called me out into the common room. I should have learned by now that whenever someone says, "Hey, come smell this," you yell, "Hell no!" and run the other way. But, naive as I was, I went to the common room, which she claimed smelled funny. She had me smell the wall, right next to a bedroom's doorframe. I pulled away in revulsion, and she laughed hysterically after confirming that there was indeed something fishy (or decaying carcassy, rather) about the smell.

The best part is that they can't remove the body. Short of breaking down the wall, there's no way to do it. We just have to live with the smell until the "neutralizer," whatever that means, does its work. So we get the pest control equivalent of Febreeze and a look of pity. Pity won't restore my olfaction, buddy!

We called the pest control people that evening, and made the level of smell part of our daily commentary. It was our equivalent of small talk about the weather.
"Mighty stinky today, mmhmm."
"Eeeeya."

And on an unrelated note, here's a conversation I had with my freshman counselor when I asked to borrow his blender for a party on Saturday.
"So, you need it for Saturday night?"
"Yes."
"And what are you going to be doing with it?"
"...blending..."
"..."
"..."
"Delicious fruit smoothies?"
*pause* "Yes, that's right."

Laundry and I are not friends

2007-02-21T23:00:00.000-05:00

Laundry is one of those things I can barely work up the energy to do when it only requires going down a flight of stairs. So having to go down four flights of stairs and to another building means that it gets done about as often as the boy who downstairs goes a day without smoking pot. Which is pretty much never.

To make the laundry process less painful, I have a 4 ft x 2 ft black, rectangular tote bag that sorts my laundry into three washing categories as I create it. It's a good idea in theory, but then it involves lugging a forty-pound bag of pre-sorted laundry around. People on campus, even when it's apparent what I'm doing, unabashedly stare. This bag is GIGANTIC; knowing the dimensions doesn't convey how impressive this volume of laundry is to behold. People feel the need to discuss it, to marvel at its sheer size. As though something like that could escape my notice; the likelihood of my being able to ignore the size and weight of the laundry bag when I'm carrying it is about that of my not noticing my having a 700-pound grizzly bear on my back.

When I was coming back up the stairs, one of my entryway mates, who had never seen me doing laundry before, stopped me.
"What is that?"
"My laundry bag."
"It's massive."
"It pre-sorts my laundry into whites, colors and darks, and it gets kind of full since I hate doing laundry."
"No, but it's really big. I mean, you could kill a man and sort his body parts into whites, colors and darks then carry him up the stairs in that."

He shook his head and wandered away. And then I stowed the body in the wall.

Snoooooow

2007-02-20T20:14:00.000-05:00

Valentine's Day brought with it the first real snow of the year (and probably the last). More accurately, it brought wintery mix. I was delighted when I looked out my window and saw something not rain falling from the sky. I was less delighted when I stepped out of my door and discovered that what was coming down was sleet, not snow. It had snowed over night, and the sleet was slowly covering all surfaces with a layer of ice.

In my typical fashion, I was unprepared and had various encounters of the injury-inducing kind.
The city and the college made no pretense of plowing, much less salting the sidewalks and streets. So instead we took baby steps around campus. I was in a rush to one class, and went through a courtyard. I was running along the path to exit through a gate when one of the maintenance men called out to me. "Watch it over here, it's slippery!" I heard him just in time to slip and go flying eight feet into the gate. I slammed into and held onto the bars to keep from breaking my hip on the ground. I looked back to see where I'd come from, and noticed a nice 9 ft x 9 ft square of ice right in front of the gate.

Later that night, when my friends and I were walking back from a singles Valentine's Day dinner, the second mishap of the day occurred. My suitemate from California had never engaged in a snowball fight. We started an impromptu one. Five minutes in, though, she picked a nicely pre-formed ball from the ground. Before I could stop her, she lobbed it at me. She nailed me directly in the sternum with an softball-sized chunk of ice. I legitimately had a mild bruise under my clothing. But I guess it's a testament to how hardcore I am.

But now the snow/ice has gone from the nice stage it was at to the ugly stage. So instead of sliding around campus, I know have to climb over gigantic, pitch-black mounds of ice to get into the street or back onto the sidewalk. And then it all started melting today into giant puddles at all the corners. Mmm, the joys of winter.

A Day in the Life

2007-02-19T21:54:00.001-05:00

Here's an email I sent to my suitemates over the weekend.

Hey, ladies!

It's been a while since I've sent a list of grievances, and I didn't know what to do with myself....until this morning. (The plot thickens!)

Text: "An Episode in a Moldy Shower"
There once was a girl who liked showers
And took them at all different hours.
She did look down the drain,
and it made her exclaim,
"Egads, a veritable hair tower!"

Summary
The narrator is unnamed in the poem, but we know, from the extensive letters between the poet and the Duke of Toilette discussing the collection of poems it comes from, that the poem is about a girl named M. Some believe this M to be the poet, Meredith Hitchcock, projected into literature. M is the poet herself, but also the everywoman, suffering the world's indignities. In the poem, the reader learns that she showers with frequency, and enjoys doing so at all different times of day. The narrative takes a dramatic turn when Meredith's favorite shower (she has a favorite sink, too, as far as scholars can tell from the fragment of a short story) floods in a dramatic fashion. Curious, she reaches down and pulls some hair sitting on top of the drain. The drain cover comes unstopped, and Meredith discovers a six-inch-long wad of various people's hair that has been hanging down below the drain cover for some time. What she has unsuspectingly pulled on is the dome of this extensive hair tower, braided through the grate. She expresses shock and displeasure upon finding this, and throws the hair wad into the trash.

Form and Themes
"An Episode in a Moldy Shower" is generally considered one of Hitchcock's more poignant poems. There is a contrast between the dramatic, upsetting content of the poem and the choice of a comic poem form, the limerick. It highlights the dark comedy of the experience for M. Note that the pain from the narrative cannot be contained within the limerick, and the last line of the poem has an extra syllable. The pain expands beyond any normal conventions, busting out from the restraints the poet tries to place on it.

So, in conclusion, please throw your hair away or knit a scarf out of it, but don't let it "go" down the drain. I know none of you are really interested in seeing my B-grade horror movie, "When Hair Wads Attack!"

<3
Meredith

P.S.
A short game. One of these things is not like the others:
1. aeronautical engineering
2. putting a new roll of toilet paper in a bathroom stall
3. finding Mr. Right

I'll give you a hint: the category is "things that are difficult."

The god of complaining is appeased!

Valentine's Day

2007-02-14T00:27:00.000-05:00

Well, I guess I might as well write about it. After all, I ignored it entirely last year, opting to write about my superior opinions on obesity. My plans for this day are as follows: a romantic dinner with my suitemates. Oh, and the dean of the college is coming to give a special guest lecture in my psychology class, which is apparently amazing.

I've never minded Valentine's Day terribly much. It's about as significant to me as Arbor Day, except that I receive flowers and Disney-themed cards from surprising people. Oh, and the chocolate I consume is heart-shaped. Come now. Would you cry over not being able to plant a tree on Arbor Day? So why cry because you don't have a significant other in an arbitrarily chosen day of the year? If you answered yes to the Arbor Day question, there are bigger issues than I can address. And I'm no more aware of couples than I am at other times of the year. Valentine's Day is just a one-day license for the gross, joined-at-the-mouth couples to kick it into overdrive, and I filter them out, anyway.

But there's one aspect of it that I do find unbearable: PINK. It's everywhere on Valentine's Day. Back in the day, when my dream was to grow up to be Tom Hanks, I developed an aversion to the color. Part of growing up to be a man meant detesting girly things, like personal hygiene and the color pink. While I've embraced the former, I'm still ambivalent about the latter. I'll admit, I've purchased a couple of hot pink pieces of clothing, but that's because hot pink is obnoxious, and therefore exempt.

Top Five Songs For Valentine's Day (fun music about love, another thing the day is good for):

1. Lovers of Loving Love - The Aquabats
2. 500 Miles - The Proclaimers
3. Happy Valentine's Day - Outkast
4. Crazy Little Thing Called Love - Queen
5. You Sexy Thing - Hot Chocolate

technorati tags:holidays, love, music

I am judging you...

2007-02-13T23:59:00.000-05:00

...when you use a fork to eat ice cream. I may joke and poke fun, but I actually am judging you. It just doesn't make any sense. There as an instrument created that works perfectly for eating ice cream, and it's called a spoon. Note that spoon does not equal fork. I don't know why, but this one of those things which I don't even just find charmingly quirky. It's kind of like when people stab pieces of meat with chopsticks. Just admit defeat and use the appropriate utensil.

It is called a spoon.
Why are you using a fork,
you utter dumbass?

technorati tags:food, utensils, haikus

Monkey Adventures

2007-02-12T23:49:00.000-05:00

I only started working with the monkeys (I'm working in a psychology lab) on Friday, and I already have an arch nemesis. The first time I met him, I was delighted because I was feeding him. After all, I was making a monkey happy. I will call him Wanf (we are not friends). Towards the end of the feeding time, however, he reached through a cage square (bigger so that they can pull larger objects in, as needed in experiments), and took a swipe at me. He knocked down my protective mask, and I stepped back, shocked. Wanf had much better extension than I had anticipated.

On Sunday, I still hadn't learned my lesson. The monkeys know how to trade, and he wanted to trade me the disgusting pellet of food he had for...an identical pellet of food. Hope springs eternal. Wanf had taken the first pellet, bashed it against the floor, and given me a pained look of, "Not this shit again!" When I refused to trade, he threw the pellet to the floor. As I stooped down to pick it up, he took another swipe at me. He came back with a small clump of hair.

Wanf yanked at the strands of hair, licked them, and held his hands out to examine it. It was different yes, but not at all tastier. His look of befuddlement at this equally terrible food he'd protracted from my head was hilarious. Wanf was quite distraught. Even though there was a frizzy patch on the front of my head where he'd yanked a few strands out, I considered that round to have gone to me.

This afternoon, I was determined to do better at protecting myself. I kept myself relatively far way from the cage squares when I saw Wanf. Having kept my head away from the cage for the entirety of the session, and having had no encounters of the head swipe kind, I felt relatively okay. Wanf is a small male, and so I felt that it was probably okay to let him hold my hand, like the females do. I held out my hand, and he grasped my finger. I thought our relationship was heading in a new direction when disaster struck.

Wanf grabbed the tip of my glove and yanked. I'd been warned that monkeys might try to take chunks out of my glove, but I'd never seen it in action before. He pulled on the glove, trying to rip off one of the latex fingers, and I pulled back, shrieking, "Help!" My lab partners stood, watching silently. I turned to one of them to beseech her with my eyes, and she shrugged. Why was I overreacting so severely, and what was she supposed to do?

I finally wrestled my punctured glove away, disillusioned. But I felt better when, five minutes later, Wanf got a chunk out of another lab person's glove, and she was forced to trade the monkey a peanut for the chunk of glove. That's right, the monkeys do it on purpose. They know that you'll trade them tasty peanuts for the chunk of glove that could potentially harm them. And they smile gleefully as lab personnel are forced to acquiesce.

Wanf: 2, Meredith: 1

technorati tags:monkeys, college, adventures, research

Ummmm....

2007-02-09T01:39:00.000-05:00

Dear lovers:

Sorry, we're just going to have to write this week off. It's been what I'd call a hell week. Ice Cube put it best when he said, "Life ain't a track meet, it's a marathon." And if I've said that before, you are not to mention it: it's still true.

Love and apologies,
Meredith

Snow, or lack there of

2007-02-05T19:30:00.000-05:00

I'm being punished for something. It's February, and we have yet to have any accumulation here. The first part of the winter was fine, because it was in the fifties and sixties and we were all toasting to global warming. But now it's just cold, and there's no snow to make me feel better. I have concluded that I, and the rest of the students on campus, are being punished for something.

My dad came up to visit, and one you get five miles outside of the city, there is a foot of snow on the ground. A FOOT. We've had nothing. The cars had snow on their rooves, there was a dirty wall of snow on the side of the road. Just outside of the perimeter of where I can get to.

To add insult to injury, it's rained here. It will be bitterly cold, we're talking 5 degrees F without wind chill, for a few days. Then it will warm up into the high 30s, low 40s...and rain. It will pour rain; we're talking amounts that would mean, if it were seven degrees colder, an epic blizzard. Winter wonderland, a use for that sled I bought, snow men! But then it stops raining, and the temperature promptly drops again. This weather has been going on since January: not having snow and it being cold is one thing, but being teased with intermittent warm spells just so it can rain is another thing entirely.

My dad also called me when he got home, 275 miles south, to tell me that there is an inch of snow on the ground there. Washington D.C., where it snows rarely enough that anything non-liquid falling from the sky incites mass hysteria. There's something suspicious about all this...

technorati tags:weather, snow, winter

Coffee

2007-02-01T12:19:00.000-05:00

I was a conscientious objector in the Coffee War. I ripped up my draft card and fled to Teanada. I've lost many good friends to coffee drinking and their angry debates about the merits of various coffees. I remained uninvolved until Tuesday, when I drank coffee for the second time in my life. I'd drunk my parents' instant dirt water, and it was enough to convince me that drinking coffee was a life experience I could have skipped. Besides, I didn't think it would make much difference in my alertness.

This was false. In the dining hall, about to mix hot cocoa before my tragically scheduled 9 a.m. class, I stopped in front of the pot labeled "Organic Fair Trade Coffee." I debated for a long time; it was for the betterment of the global economy, and I was dragging. Making a quick decision, I substituted the coffee for the water in the hot chocolate mix. My friends tell me this is called a mocha, but I call it my miraculous make-the-taste-of-coffee-go-away hot drink. A mouthful, yes, but a title that gives me credit.

My body, unused to the amount of caffeine, reacted. I came into class feeling buzzed, and I would notice every once in a while that my eyes were open wider than normal. Here's the thing: I was very, very awake, but no more able to function in class than when in a drowsy haze. I was too distracted by how exciting and bright everything was to contribute to the conversation. I'm a fast talker normally, but the coffee tranformed my sentences to continuous one-word psychobabble. I think mixing coffee with an already hyper person is like mixing crystal meth and alcohol. A poor decision on all accounts. (And no, I don't do drugs, I just took 5 years of health classes.)

I drank coffee again today, hoping that this time the results would be better. They were not. I'm just going to have to break myself of the compulsive need to do all the homework assigned to me and get more sleep.

technorati tags:coffee, caffeine, class, drugs

Grape Flavoring

2007-01-31T23:36:00.000-05:00

Why does it exist? Whether it's Jolly Ranchers, popsicles or Kool-Aid, the purple ones are always the ones left and the back of the breezer or the bottom of the bag. There's of course that one kid from summer camp who likes grape flavoring, but there can't be enough of those kids to justify the flavor. I mean, purple's a color worth using, but it doesn't have to be grape; raspberries are never blue, for example, yet there are blue raspberry sno-cones.

I think the first problem with artificial grape flavoring is that it tastes nothing like grape. Admittedly, artificial apple, strawberry, etc. flavors taste nothing like the fruits arbitrarily associated with them, but at least those flavors are good.

Case in point: my suitemate had a crate of Fruit2O waters. "Natural Grape" was of course a lie. It was artifical grape, or else the liquid wouldn't be clear. The premise behind the water is that you dip your tongue in sugar without having to drink soda or gain any weight, since it's calorie free. I sampled her waters, addiction forming. But then we ran out of the flavors that I like.

I started at the crate, scowling at the purple label. Grape. My artifical flavor arch nemesis. I pulled it out, thinking that since the other flavors actually tasted like, to my surprise, the actual fruits mentioned on the label, I might enjoy a grape-flavored anything for the first time. Grape, however, did not disappoint me with its evil taste. Why does grape fail in being replicated when other fruits don't? And why do they keep selling it, despite this deficiency? Yeah, think about it.

technorati tags:grape, candy, artificial, food

BUMP!

2007-01-30T23:59:00.000-05:00

I have come to a conclusion: college students are assholes. But the passive aggressive kind. And only in one particular circumstance (well, some engage in being unpleasant at other times, too, but I'm putting that aside). This time when people are at their worst is while walking to class.

The masses surge into the streets of the city, jaywalking en masse. They jostle, shove, and do anything short of push people moving in opposite directions into oncoming traffic to get to the next class five minutes early (for a power nap before lecture). There are these distinct, fifteen minute windows in which slow walkers are blessedly abused and eaten alive. But with slow walkers out of the way, there is only one concern: not being the one thrown in front of the speeding Jeep.

There are no real words to describe the chaos. I guess the best way to put it is this: I've seen riots less brutal than what I endure two to three times a day. Going off on a tangent, I do this thing where a part of me thinks that if I keep on my present trajectory, the corner of the railing or chair will move out of my way, bowing to my supreme will. They don't, and I run into them. Many of the walkers do the same thing, only with people. There are butt cracks between buildings into which people stream from side stairwells in the buildings. The students rush to turn into the main flow of the foot traffic, wielding their blunt instruments, cleverly concealed in tote bags.

I engage in a battle of wills with these people, especially when people turn to move in the opposite direction as me. Today a girl took a wide arc out of a building butt crack and our shoulders slammed against each other, forcing us almost off balance with the force of our passive aggressive rage. Neither of us muttered an apology, and looked peeved.

Filled with anger and stress that we're not allowed to express, we use these daily rituals to let it out, battering each other. It's mortal combat: no mercy.

Another list!

2007-01-29T23:52:00.000-05:00

Five Events to Summarize My Weekend:

1; I'm in love. His name is "My Super Hot Art History TA." It's like some hand has been strategically choosing my TAs this year in order to maximize my distraction. First Jorge, the anthropology TA, now the art TA.

2. Seeing The Exorcist in no way prepares you see projectile vomiting live and in color. It was at a party, and the shrieking crowd parted like the Red Sea. I felt bad, but only as bad as a spectator to unanticipated, projectile vomiting can be.

3. Sometimes it's time to just turn down eating. I had three dinners on Friday. My suitemate left for the semester, so we were having a goodbye dinner. I had to leave that dinner early, after eating, to attend my pre-orientation group's reunion dinner. Stuffed, I thought I was finished with eating for that day. But then I ran into some of my friends and they dragged me to go eat pizza. And because I have a compulsive need to not just sit in a restaurant without ordering something, I agreed to split the bill on pizza and have a slice. I had two slices, and it was a mistake. NEVER AGAIN.

4. Any expectation that a group of people who were mildly awkward together and unable to hold a conversation without long silences will change just by being apart for a couple months is a foolish one. Everyone will still be awkard, but still wearing different clothes.

5. Those birthday hats that you used to wear at all the pool parties? You know the ones, shaped like a cone and with the elastic that straps it to your head, even through the soda- and cake-induced high? They're not meant for adult-sized heads. The elastic doesn't want to be friends with your chin.

technorati tags:love, college, movies, food, friends, parties

A summary of my day

2007-01-24T23:38:00.000-05:00

In short, today I proved my mother right: I am a mess.

I had a good day, but then I had to write a review of the new album by The Shins, "Wincing the Night Away." And for some reason it just wasn't coming. I knew what I wanted to say, but there were no metaphors or brilliant word plays that I could think of with which to express it. So in the end the review turned out like the digital equivalent of pooping on a piece of paper and turning it in.

My editor had a definite "what happened?" face, because I'm normally pretty good, and editing my reviews doesn't take an hour and a half. I'm going to write this review off, hope people don't hate me for taking a review that a bunch of people wanted and doing it no justice and show their displeasure by hurling flaming bags of dog poo through my window. But I have no guarantees of that. At least I got a free album that's pretty good.

I will now go stare blankly at some text as I turn the pages. Maybe now I'll get my butt in gear for this semester.

technorati tags:music, newspaper, college, reviews, writing

The Rage of the Phone-a-thon

2007-01-23T23:23:00.000-05:00

Well, as is my typical fashion, I've come to be fanatical about my school. So naturally, when the opportunity came to host pre-frosh (recent admits) in my room in April gush at them, I lept at the opportunity. But before I'm allowed to fill my suite with impressionable high school seniors and receive my free t-shirt (for every t-shirt I throw out to minimize my collection, three more free ones appear), I had to participate for an hour and a half in the phone-a-thon.

The went something like this:

"Hi, I'm Meredith and I'm a freshman at ** University. Congrats on getting in! Do you have any questions?"

*insert one of two initial reactions:

1. panicked silence...he has 8,000 questions but suddenly they can't remember a single one. But what if the opportunity passes and he never get to ask the questions? Suddenly an innocent evening hating on George Bush while watching the State of the Union has become one that could determine his future happiness. Oh God, oh God. The PRESSURE!
2. silence.....uuuuuuhhhhhhhhhh

despite the difference in silences, they both come out sounding like this:*

"Um, no, not really."

The instruction sheet said not to leave it at that. Ask them questions, it commanded. Look at their interests, pull one of those 8,000 questions out of the abyss into which they flew. I did as told, and then grilled (subtly) for information on their college plans, the likelihood they would come and be submerged in our propaganda. Some had more questions than others, and I ended up talking to a couple for a long time. The girl I'm supposed to be hosting for the re-visit weekend seemed excellent, so I hope she comes.

But there was a problem: four of the people I was supposed to call go to boarding school. I guess the admissions office figured that would be enough that we had in common to make me a good connection. Perhaps true, if I could have reached them. But as soon as I saw the numbers, I knew what was coming: lovely conversations with parents confused as to why the college would be calling their child when it had a record that he/she goes to boarding school. And of course, as I had predicted, every time I got a cell number, the person didn't pick up.

But my favorite moment of the night was when I called the one person of the night who was watching the State of the Union. His mother picked up, and asked if I could call tomorrow. I said someone else would call back, which I guess she interpreted as indignation. So she called her son over, who repeated his firm interest in watching Bush make a fool of himself and his lack of interest in talking to me.

"Congrats! How are you?"
"I'm watching the State of the Union. How long will this take?"
"Well, it depends on how many questions you have."
"What."
"I'm calling to see if you have any questions about the university. Do you?"
"NO."
"Well, I see you do tennis. Do you have any questions about tennis here at the university?"
"NO."
"Okay, well, are you interested in information on the re-visit weekend?"
"NO."
"Well, then have a great night, and enjoy the State of the Union."
"*ANGRY PHONE CLICK*"

technorati tags:college, admissions, recruiting, prefrosh, conversations

The Belch Game

2007-01-22T23:33:00.000-05:00

I can't believe I haven't written about this before. If I have, someone please correct me. I was reminded when I instinctually said a color after burping today. The situation played out like this:

*burp*
"Green!"
"Poo!"

Kaley insisted that she was trying to say blue and purple at the same time, but we made merciless fun of her anyway.

The game is this: whenever someone belches, everyone in hearing vicinity says a color. If you repeat a color or are the last one to say a color, you have to make a sex noise. The real joy is in being one of a few people who are in on it, and taking advantage of another's ignorance to make them lose the game. Sometimes, however, sensing imminent danger from not succumbing to the flow of the crowd, people will say a color even having no idea what's going on.

That's all for today. No insights, no witticisms, just a request that you spread the game around and enjoy yourselves.

technorati tags:games, burping, friends

Aaaah, bureaucracy

2007-01-19T22:41:00.000-05:00

I didn't post yesterday because I lost track of the week, and thought it was Saturday...don't ask, being at college has made things fuzzy.

I braved a hospital alone for the first time ever yesterday. I'm working at the psychology department's comparative cognition monkey lab this semester, something I mention at every opportunity. It's one of those situations where I thought I had only told a few people, but it turns out that I'd told everyone I know multiple times. I finally caught on when people started saying, "Yes, you already told me," and their eyes went wide like they were prepping for wider-ranging laser vision to eliminate me and my talking more quickly.

I have to get health clearance before I'm allowed near the capuchins. It's not for my own safety, mind you, but for the monkeys'. For the psychology department's purposes, I'm a disease-ridden threat, despite not ever touching the monkeys. I was instructed to get a TB test with the location "Innoculations Department" only listed, and waltzed over to the university hospital to get one.

It was sort of like a board game/labyrinth hybrid. The start is at the front desk. I rolled a four and ended up on the fourth floor at Student Health Services. I was sent back two departments to Employee Services and receive paperwork. Go forward one step and receive information about my last measles vaccination. Roll snake eyes, get sent to Immunizations desk. And then, enter the bowels of the Immunizations department to discover that the reason you couldn't find it in the first place, why it wasn't labeled on any signs, was because it was a sub-department of the immunizations department, something you just have to know. And if you don't, you get punished by being sent on an undesired tour of the hospital building. After 45 minutes of wandering through the bowels of the hospital, it took 30 seconds to get my test.

technorati tags:psychology, college, monkeys, health

Six Weird Things

2007-01-18T22:48:00.000-05:00

I was tagged yesterday, with the powers of Blogger's "next blog" button, by filbert. The game is to list six ways in which (I think) I'm weird and then tag six other blogs. Here it goes...

1. I went to clowning camp one summer, and it was one of the best times of my life. I still know how to spin plates on sticks, engage in comical whipped cream pie antics, paint squirmy childrens' faces, make balloon animals, and juggle (sort of). The student council president my senior year was a certified clown. He juggled knives during one of his addresses to the student body, and it made me recall my fond memories of training to throw pies at people's faces.

2. In elevators with guys whom I don't know, I look at them and try to figure out what it would be like if we were dating based just on their appearance.

3. Sometimes I cross the street even when I don't need to when I see someone I know coming from the opposite direction. It's not even that I don't like the person, it's just that I'm never sure when the exact moment is to wave, how long to avert me eyes from them, and whether or not we'll have to start small talk. So I just avoid it and go on my merry way.

4. I hate pants. I wouldn't shut up about it all during high school, as my friends will verify.

5. For some reason, I am incapable of getting a glass of milk without incident if I pick that up before I get food. Since I arrived at college, I have knocked over a glass of milk, filling my tray and splashing the floor and my clothing a total of five times. It's always a glass of milk, never any other drink. I smack it against the juice machine, I knock it over pulling out salad dressing from under the sneeze bar. I try to pay attention, but I only notice at just the moment of no return.

6. After to listening to a song with mildly intelligible lyrics two or three times, I can sing along with the entire thing. I retain the lyrics for years.

I'm tagging:

Harrison
Elisabeth
Mimz
Bekka
Joe
Kiwiqueen

Also, I have some important news: in the next couple weeks, I'll be moving to bananatheory.net. So be prepared to update your links.

technorati tags:tagged, weird, facts, milk, relationships, clowns, pants

Trash Mountain

2007-01-17T21:25:00.000-05:00

Calling what we have in my suite Trash Mountain is misleading. It's more like Trash Tower, coming closer and closer to reaching heights the proportion of Babel. But when it's finally felled by a higher power (gravity, God, the secular hand of external force, for example), it will end with factions, rather than multiple languages.

In one camp will be the people who take out the garbage diligently while planning how exactly to execute a passive aggressive retaliation. In another camp will be the environmentalists, raising their eyebrows, hands on hips, matter-of-factly stating that if people just recycled their bottles instead of putting them in the garbage, took one minute showers and stopped releasing balloons into the atmosphere to rain down and choke baby penguins, all problems would be eliminated, including the garbage. Finally, there will be those who slink away in silence.

We have a habit in my suite of ten girls of, upon find the garbage can full, just stacking our yogurt carton and still-folded box on top of it, resting the lid of the can so that it sits higher and higher from the can, creating an appealing layer of visible garbage between them. People can't be bothered to take the garbage down four flights of stairs just because they happened to be the one to have garbage when the can was full. The only solution is to pack down the garbage and cram new things in.

The only problem with this otherwise excellent avoidance tactic is that when someone finally decides to be the good Samaritan, they can't get the garbage out. It's a two person job. Someone holds the can while the other tugs furiously, jerking the can off the floor occasionally, despite the spotter's efforts. The garbage rises up teasingly before sinking back in, wedged.

As my suitemate so eloquently put it at the end of today's latest run-in, "I feel like I just gave birth...to a tower of garbage."

technorati tags:college, trash, garbage, roommates, birth

Shopping Period

2007-01-16T22:54:00.000-05:00

It's shopping alright, but not the fun kind. Shopping period, for those not familiar with it, is a practice some colleges engage in; rather than going for the "grin and bear it" philosophy of choosing classes and sitting through a semester in the front row with the professor affectionately known as "The Spitter," you go to as many classes as you're interested in for about two weeks. At the end of the period, you register for the ones that seem the best. It's sort of fun to go to all the different classes, but it presents some problems, such as doing homework for 9 classes until you narrow down the options.

Some people are in the habit of sitting in on a class and leaving midway through to attend another. I don't engage in that practice, but it potentially means sitting through a boring lecture. It reminds me of those times in department stores when someone's making a long-winded sales pitch for something I'm not interested in, like an orange, knitted poncho (in this case, an international relations class), but I'm too polite or too something to tell them to stop.

But my favorite part about reading week is definitely finding the classes. Even if you understand the "building code" under which buildings are labeled on the classes server and therefore have a vague idea of where the class is being held, it may be of no use. For instance, my classmates and I, searching for our seminar classroom at 9 this morning, milled around in a building looking for classroom 266. We could find 265, 264 and 267, all of which were in the same general area, but for some reason 266 was nowhere to be found. The rooms were behind a door, sitting in a ring. 264, 265, SKIP straight to 267. Despair set in after about ten minutes.

Finally, the professor came out into the hallway, wondering why his supposedly intelligent students couldn't find a classroom. It turns out that classroom 265 has a hallway that lets you in to classroom 266. So the reason we couldn't find it was because our classroom was hidden inside of another classroom. Logical enough. Oh, shopping period, and your unending surprises.

technorati tags:college, class

A Couple Thoughts for a Monday

2007-01-15T23:13:00.000-05:00

"A giant filament! A giant filament!"
-kid on the train today

I saw Dreamgirls on Saturday. My favorite quote came not from the movie, but from the man behind me in the theater who asked his wife, an hour and a half in and in a disgruntled tone, "What is this, some kind of musical or something?"

technorati tags:quotes, Monday

You damn kids!

2007-01-12T23:36:00.000-05:00

One of the problems with living away from home is not receiving vital updates from home. For instance, the workings of the house alarm system. For the first time since early summer, I was exiting the house when no one else was there, and had to set the alarm. So naturally I flubbed up this basic procedure and set off the alarm as I was leaving.

I got a call from the security company and gave them the incorrect password, because I was out of the loop. While it occurred to my parents to keep me updated on these changes when I was at home, it was a case of out of sight, out of mind. The woman said, "Thank you very much," and hung up. Then I left.

My mother came home about five minutes after I left. She let the dog out into the back yard, and then a policeman ordered her and our house guest out of the house. She didn't understand what was going on at first, since the words were garbled. My mother assumed it was some of the noisy neighbors getting into some new loud interaction. She said that when she finally came out and realized that it was a policeman and that he was talking to her, the situation felt surreal. After all, she was going on with business as usual, and here was the policeman telling her to come out of her own house with her hands where he could see them.

The policeman figured out almost immediately that she was probably not the criminal mastermind he had been sent to capture. Nevertheless, he wouldn't leave until she flashed her driver's license and called to the company to tell them that her teenage daughter figured out how to set off the house alarm on herself and give an old password.

I felt so guilty when I got back and she told me. The security lady had sounded so casual, I assumed that everything was fine. But of course logically she isn't going to yell, "I CAUGHT YOU IN THE ACT, THIEF, AND THE POLICE ARE GOING TO NAIL YOUR ASS!" when someone gives the incorrect password. I went on my merry way, just in time for the police to show up and order my unsuspecting mother from the house. By coincidence, her cell phone had run out of batteries, so when the company called to ask if the name I'd given them was legitimate, and the password business was a mistake, she didn't pick up the call. She had no idea that the alarm had been tripped.

So here's the take-home message: unless you want to be assaulted by the police, keep your college student up to date on important changes in the house.

technorati tags:house, alarms, police, family, accidents

Haikus

2007-01-11T17:35:00.000-05:00

Zombies in my yard.
I attack with greatly force.
No more zombies. Yay!

My wireless will
spontaneously shut off.
Why? Curse you! Grrr, aaaarg.

No more romantic
comedies, please. My friends are
susceptible girls.

When I play Myst at
night, I think something is in
my house...and flip out.

I check behind my
shower curtain to see if
people are hiding.

technorati tags:haikus

Presidential speeches and liquor

2007-01-10T21:41:00.000-05:00

There's a popular drinking game at my college called the Presidential Speech Drinking Game. The rules are slightly different depending on the topic of the speech. There are anticipated "hot" words that will come up, such as some variation of the word "strong" or "terror." Each time the president says the designated word, the entire room has to take a shot.

Aside from getting people plastered in an immediate fashion, it's also an interesting commentary on the structure of these speeches, if you're sober enough to appreciate it. The repetition of certain words, meant to inspire confidence and drive the point home, are mocked by college students to their own benefit. Watching presidental speeches is so sobering, it requires a little liquor to soften the blow.

I just finished watching Bush's speech about the new plan of action for America's occupation in Iraq (free of drink). I don't really know what to say; the ensuing fifteen hours of analysis by various experts on various television networks should cover much of what I would say, liberal bias included.

But there was one salient idea that arose. The nation needs a Brazilian: the expeditious removal of excessive Bush.

technorati tags:politics, Bush, college, drinking, games

Head implosion and affairs of the heart

2007-01-09T23:34:00.000-05:00

Once upon a time, in the year 1996, my father and I were trying to fly from Orlando to D.C. with an inexplicably located layover in Chicago. This short layover was 30 minutes long when we took off in Florida, and 8 hours when we landed in Illinois. Deciding that we could better invest our 8 hours of unwanted free time in exploring Chicago than sitting in the airport, we departed for a short trip.

My father took me to FAO Schwartz. My seven-year-old head imploded. I'd never been much into shopping, and that included toys. So upon entering this toy Mecca, its sheer power overwhelmed me. My senses were overloaded. The store even had that piano you dance on to play, like in the movie Big. This was more exciting to me than many other children, because it was my childhood ambition to grow up to be Tom Hanks.
("What do you want to be when you grow up, Meredith? A veterinarian? A lawyer?"
"Tom Hanks!"
"You mean you want to be an actress?"
"No, just Tom Hanks.")

Though my father offered to buy me something, I left the store empty-handed, unable to cope with the magnitude of the experience. How could I chose, when the mere thought of picking a single toy from just one aisle nearly sent me into cardiac arrest? Traumatized, I boarded the plane. Later on, after I'd acclimated myself to seeing that many toys at a time, I was able to make subsequent visits to the New York store (which, now that it's returned to specialty toys, is really fun to window shop in) without incident.

My father and I went to New York yesterday, and got back tonight. Though we spent most of the two days together, he had a lunch meeting that left me alone in NYC for three hours. There was only one logical use of my time: shopping (I grew out of my aversion to it). When, after an hour of wandering Bergdorf Goodman (which I'd never visited when old enough to appreciate it) I finally entered the shoe section at a familiar feeling arose within me. The sweaty palms, the increased heartrate, the euphoria all spelled one thing: L-O-V-E. I hadn't recognized it when I was seven, but I knew then what it was.

The younger me, ashamed at how I've strayed from my former aspirations to be as un-girly as possible, cried out, "What's wrong with you? You girl. Where did I go wrong?"

But I can't help it, this dark path I've taken. You can't choose whom you fall in love with. And to you, my new beloved: be still my heart.

technorati tags: shopping, childhood, Tom_Hanks, NYC, love

Smelly Fingers

2007-01-08T02:07:00.000-05:00

Reason #323 I don't trust people with smelly sprays in hand: My most recent incident at a perfume counter.

My mother and I were out shopping for makeup a couple days ago, and we decided to swing by the perfume counter. Innocuous enough, I thought. The plan was to spray on a couple of samples and then go investigate the make-up while the scents set.

I sprayed perfume on my wrist, keeping the other one clean so that I'd have more skin to test blush and eye shadow on. My mother grabbed a couple of perfumes she consistently uses and set them aside with the saleswoman. The woman at the counter, spotting unresisting, easily snared (teenage girl with parent, and therefore credit card) prey and trying to make a sale, insisted that I let her spray samples of "young and fresh" perfumes on each pinkie. That was when I made my mistake.

I held out my hands, unsuspecting, and she coated them with two spritzes of perfume, point blank. I walked through the makeup section of Nordstrom, trying to keep my pinkies elevated and away from the rest of my fingers until they dried. But my pinkies wouldn't dry; there was too much perfume. For fear of leaving the scents on every surface I touched, I eventually had to wipe my pinkies off on a tissue. But still the intermingling smell of the two overpowering perfumes remained.

As I moved through the crowds of people huddled over trays of blush samples, I could feel the reproachful gazes of those around me. In such an enclosed space, the multitudes were hit with the full brunt of my flowery stench. I could feel one woman's stare when I stopped at the Mac counter. I tried to focus on the pitch of the saleswoman trying to sell me 8 different brushes that all do the same thing, but to no avail. To the saleswoman's distress, I quickly purchased only one brush to perform the one task of blending eyeshadow and made my getaway.

When the perfume specialist said "young and fresh," what she really meant was "baby prostitute." Two showers, multiple hand washings, and two days later, I still reek. The perfumes may not have smelled good, but they're long lasting. Every time I move my hand too close to my face, I get a whiff of a flower-vanilla-something. My skin and nostrils gently weep.

Let this be a warning to you all.

technorati tags:perfume, makeup, shopping, teen

Aren't signs supposed to be useful?

2007-01-07T00:37:00.000-05:00

I went to the National Portrait Gallery with my mom this afternoon, checking out a special Josephine Baker exhibit. We were out enjoying the freakishly warm weather (high of 72 degrees). The National Portrait Gallery reopened during the summer after years of renovation and blocking a formerly convenient street. It's a beautiful building, but there are some tricky aspects of it.

One such aspect is that it's difficult to navigate it. Someone in charge realized this, so they set up signs periodically telling us where things are located. For example, "Floor 3: Interpretive Dung Portraits of Disenfranchised, Indigenous Peoples." The museum is set up as a circle, so any direction you walk, you'll end up where you started if you walk for long enough. Unfortunately, the circle route is not an option, but compulsory. There are no cross-hallways from exhibit to exhibit, and getting to one exhibit often means passing through another.

The signs point us in the right direction once we reach the floor of interest. But not the signs next to elevators and stairwells. So here's the basic scenario: you reach the new floor, knowing only that it has four exhibits, one of which is the one you want, "Ear Portraits in Various Mediums." It is listed on the sign next to the stairwell, but there are no arrows. So you have to take your chances and pick a direction. Once you're firmly on the wrong path and wandering through the "Paintings of the Dead, White and Moneyed," another sign appears. The ear exhibit was in the opposite direction, the arrows say. Entrenched in the exhibit, you are unsure of what to do. Do you go back, or would it be faster to just finish walking through the exhibit? After all, there's still a chance that the ear exhibit is behind another exhibit, and therefore farther away.

So here's the key question: why in the world would they put the signs with direction arrows only in places where they're too late to be of use?

Okay, so I posted on Sunday, and I misled you all by saying to check on Saturday. Apologies...my wireless internet was on the fritz.

technorati tags:museums, portraits, signs, directions, family

Oh no! Cop out, part II

2007-01-05T18:59:00.000-05:00

Sorry kids, check back for a post tomorrow.

In the mean time, you should go to a TEA PARTAY!

technorati tags:laziness, tea

50 Things I Learned in 2006

2007-01-04T19:21:00.000-05:00

I'm not normally into these blog challenge thingies, but I've decided to go for it. Taken from Mimz at Illogical Paradox, who got it from Lorelle.

1. Executing Saddam Hussein won't resolve anything.
2. all the words to "Rapper's Delight"
3. how to evade Sephora employees
4. jello shots are delicious
5. how to take photos that capture at least 2/3 of my face without looking through the viewfinder
6. chai tea lattes are highly addictive
7. choreographed a capella performances make me laugh
8. my Hogwarts letter didn't just get lost in the mail
9. the most exciting thing about being 18 is being able to vote
10. people often don't really want your advice, just to know you care enough to give it
11. I sometimes make jokes even when I'm not happy because I'm afraid that people won't take me seriously if I act serious
12. absence makes the heart grow fonder
13. ...sometimes
14. I kind of like that JC Chasez song, "Blowin' Me Up With Her Love," but I will chalk up this admission to temporary insanity
15. the most peaceful place at college is the fire escape attached to my dorm
16. graduating from high school is anti-climactic
17. laser tag never gets old
18. knowing global warming is bad and having social consciousness doesn't stop one from liking it when it's 57 degrees in January
19. trying to move around in D.C. during a state funeral is like trying to go through a maze with no exit
20. 69-pound English bulldogs exist
21. football is far more interesting when you know the rules
22. spending your summer lazing around is not a crime
23. when there's a tie on the door of the bathroom in a frat house, take it seriously and don't walk in
24. Maria Callas' version of "O mio babbino caro" from "Gianni Schicchi" makes me cry
25. Harlequinn romance novels are hilarious
26. people don't care if you spit in your food; they'll still eat it from the dorm fridge
27. how to eat ice cream for breakfast without feelings of guilt
28. how to dance in high heels
29. when in doubt, it's best to say hi to that random dude from English class
30. vegetarianism isn't a lifestyle but an epidemic
31. one shouldn't wear shorts when riding a mechanical bull
32. human birth is a highly improbable affair
33. how to be in a marching band
34. not knowing what you want to do with your life at 18-years-old is okay
35. your mom jokes don't necessarily lose their entertainment value with age
36. youtube is beautiful
37. wikipedia isn't the devil (but it's still up to no good)
38. how to write an album review
39. no matter how many times I pick up my friends' guitars and strum random notes for 10 minutes, that will not be sufficient to teach me guitar
40. hitting a deer can derail a train
41. living on the 4th floor of a building doesn't mean it's quiet
42. I will live to see a female Speaker of the House
43. the relationship between alcohol and feces
44. you can buy Skittles in a resealable bag
45. Hugh Hefner has three girlfriends
46. more about Britney Spears' life than I ever wanted to know
47. how to make a paper written late at night be at least read like English
48. fire stairs aren't for escaping burning buildings; they're an extra closet for all the stuff that doesn't fit in your suite
49. how to parallel park in under 30 seconds
50. how to jaywalk across an intersection, rather than just a street

Oh, and on the shameless self-promotion front: the Bloggies have come around again. If you're interested in nominating me for awards (HINT HINT!), I would like to note that I am a teenager, am absurdly humorous and have a new blog (started in 2006).

Cheers.

technorati tags:knowledge, college, band, wikipedia, internet, youtube, alcohol

Why television marathons cause me pain

2007-01-03T02:06:00.000-05:00

There is a phenomenon in television in which all television on Saturday night is horrendous. More horrendous than usual. I realize that this is because people are supposed to have social lives and not be watching television on Saturday night. But every once in a while, when I want to take a break from my wild, Paris Hilston-esque lifestyle, I spend the night in. These rare times are frustrating. The only way I can describe the apparent philosophy for lining up shows on Saturday night television is: why bother?

The feeling that television stations have given up on providing me with something interesting to watch is doubly prominent around the new year. They make a minimal effort to dress up the fact that nobody wants to work by giving us a series of marathons of popular shows. As a college student, one of the only times I can bask in the downward spiral of entertainment in an unadulterated fashion and sit in front of a television with the single-minded intent to kill brain cells is Christmas break. This coincides with the television marathons.

Mass marathoning presents two sides of a coin of interest. In some cases, I like the show, and therefore spend hours watching it, clutching the remote to my chest and hissing like Golem from The Lord of the Rings when my mother tries to turn on the nightly news. Entire days are wasted. VH1 is showing "America's Next Top Model" for the next week; thank goodness I scheduled things to get me out of the house prior to knowing this, because there would be trouble, otherwise (I just can't resist a catfight between girls who are so malnourished and skinny that their arms snap in two when a strong breeze blows. I sort of understand why they're all so bitchy, since they all look so hungry).

In other cases, I hate the show. I surf through channel after channel, weeping on the inside upon encountering a third straight day of a Law and Order marathon. Having the mass marathons of shows I don't enjoy shove out the occasional shows I actually watch is like falling asleep in a rainforest with sickly trees, only to wake up and discover that they've chopped down even those. And that the paper from those trees is being used for emo middle school poetry.

Alas!

technorati tags:television, marathons, college, Christmas, New, Year

Happy New Year, kids!

2007-01-01T00:46:00.000-05:00

When I was in driver's ed, I took particular joy in silently noting my parents' mistakes. I made sure that I proved to anyone who'd (pretend to) listen how much I'd learned by talking incessantly about what poor drivers everyone else was. It was like verbal diarrhea; it poured forth without ceasing. I'm past that stage now, but I still find my simple pleasures.

My new joy is in being on the lookout for drunk drivers. I watch cars weave out of their lanes randomly and putt behind the car going 30 mph on the freeway. This game was particularly fruitful on New Year's Eve, during which I drove a total of 80 miles. I spotted the irresponsible revelers left and right, glaring angrily at them with a sense of glee and accomplishment.

This anecdote had no point, but I feel that random confessions aren't a bad way to begin the new year. Hopefully, it will channel some of the romance and dramatic explosions a la 007 movies. Enjoy, everyone.

And now an unrelated thought to kick off the new year:

"Stop kicking my baby-maker!"
-Caroline

Holidays!

2006-12-26T23:31:00.000-05:00

I hope everyone had a merry Christmas. I know I did. I won't be updating today or tomorrow because of a family emergency.

Mute Button

2006-12-22T17:39:00.000-05:00

Thought of the day:

"The breast is nature's mute button."

-Caroline

The Christmas Party, Part 3

2006-12-20T01:18:00.000-05:00

The Christmas Party Scenarios, Part 3

The Uncomfortable Clothing Christmas Party

The only thing you will remember about this Christmas party is how uncomfortable you were the entire time. The quality of the part will be irrelevant. These are the ones I most often frequent. They are the parties of former colleagues of my parents and old, formerly close friends. The party will involve some combination of or all of these things:

1. tree trimming

2. bringing an ornament to trim the tree with. (Make sure you have no emotional attachment to it, because you will never see it again. There was some trauma when I, young, stupid and not understanding what was going on, chose my favorite ornament, only to realize I was giving it away.)

3. condescending statements about how much I've grown (I do remarkable work with growth, given ten years). Measurements of my former height, as demonstrated by hand gesture, will put me anywhere from chihuahua height to hobbit height.

4. amorphous, grey blobs passing as hors d'ouevres

5. singing Christmas carols

These parties have one, more salient association attached to them, however: the uncomfortable party dress. It looks very nice and festive. I have discovered that no dress deemed appropriate for the Uncomfortable Clothing Christmas Party is allowed to be without some irritance; thus the name. The dress will be vaguely uncomfortable in varying degrees, and distracting. The dress will be accompanied by the HIP (high in pain) shoes. These are those adorable high heels that I just had to have. They are meant for one thing: teetering from sitting place to sitting place; they are not intended for standing around a tree smiling while people marvel at my growth patterns. The best part of my night will be in removing these shoes in the car.

Thus ends (at least for now) my analysis of the Christmas party scenarios.

technorati tags:Christmas, parties, clothing

The Christmas Party, Part 2

2006-12-19T19:00:00.000-05:00

The Christmas Party Scenarios, Part Two

The Non-Christmas Party

a. You are invited to a friend's house. There's supposedly some Christmas theme to separate it from the myriad other parties that you all attend together. What will make this party a "Christmas party" is having spiked eggnog rather than spiked punch. But you will still enjoy it.

b. You go to a Christmas party at the house of someone you barely know who is not your neighbor. This category of person includes, but is not limited to, that guy you haven't talked to since the 7th grade and the girl from college whom you met twice and invited you solely because you're from the same geographic region. With apprehension and a Whole Foods assorted cheeses tray you bought in a panic on the way over, thinking perhaps everyone else was bringing gifts, you enter.

Immediately the smell of Natty Light, various seasonal scents and smoke assaults your nose. Your eyes sting from the smoke, which may or may not be be just from cigarettes. You awkwardly enter and socialize with whomever is still able to stand and form words vaguely like English. Even hand gestures and smiles will do. Everyone is milling around or dancing, and the occasional person has shown her enthusiasm for the party by putting on pair of fuzzy reindeer ears or a Santa hat.

You run into the host an hour and a half after you arrive, and yell over some techno remix of "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" blasting dully in the background that you left the cheese on the table. The conversation goes like this:

"Hi! I'm glad you came."

"Thanks for inviting me. I brought assorted cheeses. I left it on the dining room table."

Somebody turns up the bass on the stereo.

"YOU WHAT? BEES?"

"CHEESE!"

"WHAT?"

"CHEESE!"

"OKAY. HAVE A GOOD TIME."

She has understood nothing of what you said, but doesn't care. She will find the tray of assorted cheeses on the table in the morning and wonder what's going on. You will have retreated home far before this happens.

Tomorrow: The Uncomfortable Clothing Christmas Party

technorati tags:Christmas, parties, college

The Christmas Party

2006-12-15T19:18:00.000-05:00

The Christmas Party Scenarios, Part One

The Neighbor's Christmas Party

You don't really know these neighbors, and they don't really know you. The only reason they're interested in your attending the Christmas party is one of two reasons: that you'd know if they invited everyone else and not you, and your dog has large poop that might mysteriously end up on their lawn. The second reason is that they're interested in filling the house and not having leftover buffet food. You will attend this party because, if you're not going to another party, the neighbors might be able to tell that you just didn't feel like going. And there are some hazy, unknown consequences that we assume will result from this. Also, you must assess their value as people by seeing what kind of food they provide.

At the party, you stay in a tight pack with your family, separating only to sample parts of the buffet or engage in conversation with other neighbors who've come for the same reason. As the night progresses, you find yourself separated and socializing. Even those who stand in the corner or sit in an overstuffed chair and try to keep their mouths full at all times to prevent conversation are sucked in by the blond, talkative woman who insists on meeting everyone she can find.

You drift through the night, not quite enjoying yourself, but not bored either. Many people who are actually friends with the hosts walk over and try to engage you in conversation. If you're a teenager, they assume not that you're someone they should know, but that you're the child of someone they should know. How could we not have met the child of the (supposedly) dear friends of our host? These people will have infinitely disappointed looks when you reveal that you're simply the neighbor's surly teenager, not the friend-of-a-friend's surly teenager that they were hoping for. They pretend to see another person they know (really just another friend of the host's whom they have yet to pick for information) and waltz off, rum and Coke in hand.

Monday: Part 2, The Non-Christmas Party

technorati tags:christmas, party, teen, neighbors

SCREAM

2006-12-14T19:38:00.000-05:00

I don't know if I'll ever be able to enjoy movies ever again the same way.

The Wilhelm Scream

Watch the video. It's pretty much the coolest thing ever.

And apologies for my lack of updating this week. I've been busy recovering from my freshman fall and eating all the food I can during the reading week study breaks. When they said I'd have a freshman fifteen, I thought it would be a gradual gain, not acquired in a week.

technorati tags:movies, college

where did the money go?

2006-12-12T16:52:00.000-05:00

For Christmas, all you're getting, friends, is an apology note with a copy of my bank statement attached.

Tomorrow: my ruminations and theories on Christmas parties.

technorati tags:money

Titanic

2006-12-11T23:40:00.000-05:00

Finals week is my new favorite thing. It's exactly what we say would be superior while we're swamped with work: all the perks of college without work. I had a three day weekend, including today. I watched four movies yesterday, and I only left the couch to eat and go to church. One of those movies is one that I never properly appreciated when I saw it in theaters: Titanic.

I think what best sums up my feelings is the following sentiment: Titanic is a good movie in spite of itself. Despite ridiculous, cheesy lines, vaguely annoying elements, an unlikable heroine and spawning the worst, most pervasive talent show song of the late 20th century, I somehow found myself swept up in the movie. There were anywhere from 2 to 6 of us watching it at any given time. We all saw how young Leonardo DiCaprio and literally squealed. He was just so cute; The Proclaimers said it best when they sang, "Let's get married, hold hands, and waaaaaaaalk in the park!" It brought me back to the days when it was still okay to like the movie.

Titanic, like everything huge and popular, rapidly became uncool to like. Although all but a few saw it and loved it, within months, we all pretended that we didn't think it was that good. It's a lie. We loved it. We were all sort of devastated when Jack died in the end. And when there's commercial breaks so you don't have to sit through the end of the movie on the edge of the seat, almost crying over the state of your bladder, you're a lover of loving love.

technorati tags:movies, college, romance, Titanic

Before I Die

2006-12-08T13:01:00.000-05:00

There are some things I've decided I have to do before I die. I'm going to mention only a few.

1. Be in a hip hop video. Yes, the portrayal of women in these videos is degrading. But I just want to prance around in the hoochie shorts, wear one of those non-tops that I've never seen sold anywhere, let some man grease me down so my skin is shiny and then dance around. And make stupid, supposedly sexy faces at the camera as it passes.

2. Enter a men's restroom for some other reason than that the line for the women's line is long, as usual, and I'm desperate to pee. The end of the journey will not be my using the facilities after locking the front door and preventing anyone else from entering and coming upon me. I will take time to appreciate how truly inferior men's restrooms are...and figure out what that weird smell is.

3. Go streaking. I've been skinny dipping and wandered through my house naked. The logical next step is to run around naked in public. I looked on with a tinge of envy as the streaker who ran onto the field during the football game with our rival college was tackled to the ground by the police. An economics professor who is widely despised by the student body has a first lecture that sounds something like this: "...Homework is worth 15% of your grade, and if you streak in my class, I will sue you for sexual harassment." Every semester, on the last day of lecture, there are streakers who run through the aisles to show their great disdain for both the class and/or the dismal grade they're getting out of it. Yesterday was the last day of the economics lecture. Nakedness ensued, and I was sad to not be part of it. Therefore, I will remedy this situation.

4. Go to Bonnaroo. I'm sad every summer when I can't go. There's always something...being out of the country, my mother keying into the fact that there are liberals amounts of illegal substances, etc. I'm cool with not getting to shower for several days, not sleeping and listening to ridiculous amounts of live music.

5. Go skydiving or bungee jumping. I'll save these for last. And I'll have to choose between this and breast implants. I watched a documentary about a woman who went bungee-jumping and her breast implants exploded. It broke all her ribs, and she barely survived. And if I'm going to die doing a ridiculous, unnecessarily dangerous stunt, it's not going to be my breasts that kill me, dammit.

technorati tags:college, wishes, music, streaking, skydiving, bathrooms

DISEASE CARRYING VERMIN

2006-12-07T20:15:00.000-05:00

I learned something very important about myself today: I am a girl, and non-domesticated rodents flip me out. There's a mouse that's been living in my suite. The reaction of the 10 of us ranges anywhere from, "Aw, it's kind of cute" to mortal fear. My reaction falls somewhere in between those two at a solid, "Disease carrying vermin, ah!" It's not that I'm afraid of it, I'm just grossed out. I suppose the one who thinks they're cute has a point: if they may give you diseases, it's good that they're at least cute and fuzzy rather than, say, mini-Rush-Limbaugh-like beings scurrying under my door.

I mean, I'm not going to lie. I desperately craved a hamster for several years of my life. My parents protested, but I got to bring home my 2nd grade class' pet, Ratical the rat. My dog almost ate him, and then I almost lost him. Suddenly, my parents didn't seem so ignorant in not seeing the pleasures of pets that require cages. My dad's been against them ever since, as a child, he took his guinea pig out in the back yard to get some air and it died of heat stroke. Just stopped moving and rolled onto its back. He said the only consolation was that it would no longer make those annoying scritching noises in the middle of the night.

Anyway, my roommate just called me to tell me that she had her first mouse sighting. The sightings have, thankfully, been mostly restricted to the girl who finds the mouse mildly cute. That's all well and good, but can it be cute somewhere other than my room? That would be great, thanks. I mean, my parents could buy a condo for what they're paying for my schooling. The least they could receive for the services is my being rabies-free.

In the suite, we've started making outrageous claims about how we'll solve the problem. My plan was motion-detecting taser lasers mounted in the top corners of the rooms that would shoot anything of a certain size (smaller than me). More sane ideas included mousetraps. Nice, but it doesn't have quite the same flair as being long-distance tasered.

I don't want to hear anyone talking to me about how rats and mice are really nothing to worry about. I'm sure that's what the 14th-century Europeans thought, too. But then there was this thing called THE BUBONIC PLAGUE. But what's losing two thirds of the population, right?

technorati tags:mice, rats, vermin, girls, plagues

Deep and Meaningful Thought

2006-12-06T23:59:00.000-05:00

People are always telling you to be yourself. It's also an ingrained part of our society that you have to be modest. All I'm saying is, I'm trying to be myself, and myself happens to be the shit, there's not much I can do about that.

I almost decided to end the entry there, but I've decided against it. I find the false modesty in our America infuriating. If you did something well, you should be able to gloat about it. I don't like pretending that I don't know that you secretly think you're the shit. I'd rather you just admit that you know you did a good job.

There are many people I know who have little joy in their lives. Having to cheapen the good moments by pretending that oh, it's nothing, is pointless. I'm awesome. You're awesome. We're awesome. So let's all admit we're happy about that fact when we're happy about it.

Peace.

technorati tags:self-confidence, modesty

Life Software Updates

2006-11-29T22:36:00.001-05:00

I just nearly pissed myself. I just heard Ben Folds' cover of "Bitches Ain't Shit" by Dr. Dre. It is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard, and I feel really good about it. But this note is entirely unrelated.

In my philosophy class last year, we had discussions about whether or not we live in the best of all possible worlds. I'm not going into my opinion of it. The best of all possible worlds may not be a perfect world, etc., etc. But even if this is the best of all possible worlds, it could use some software updates:

1. No bad hair days. As somebody with an unruly mass of curly, fine, easily tangled hair, bad hair days follow me like the smell of toilet disinfectant from someone who just used a train bathroom. They detract from the quality of my life, and trying to figure out what to do about them slows down my movement to breakfast.

2. A seat always available in my favorite coffee shop. Scenario: I purchase a delicious chai latte, reading to read my Dostoevsky and quietly contemplate the futile nature of my existence. I turn, and all seats are filled with chatting groups and people hunched over their laptops, reading erotic stories, taking personality tests and occasionally actually working. I am forced to take my chai to go and think about something more frivolous like the wildly ugly coat that girl across the street is wearing.

3. I will not watch somebody scoop out the last of the ice cream in the dining hall. There's something disheartening about fighting your way into an ice cream line, only to watch the last of the mint chocolate chip go into the bowl of someone who will appreciate it far less than you would have.

4. A loud whooping noise or similar alert will go off when someone runs a red light while you're trying to jaywalk farther down the road. I was nearly mowed down today. There's only room for one lawbreaker at a time, buddy.

5. Laundry will teleport itself to the laundry room. Currently my laundry options are both located in the basements of buildings that are not my dorm. I am forced to lug my heavy (procrastination and serial clothing-changing is a harsh marriage) laundry bag down four flights of stairs and across the quad. Even worse, however, is the trek back up, involving four flights UP.

6. MORE SPONTANEOUS DANCE PARTIES. I just can't live like this anymore. I turn on the music and start dancing. People avoid eye contact and stay where they are, resisting the beat. "But there aren't that many peope here." I care nothing for your whims, only my own. If you can't find the courage to dance without a horde of sweaty people pressed up against you, you don't deserve to enjoy dancing. And I want you to enjoy dancing.

7. iTunes will stop trying to foil my attempts to own more music than I will ever listen to. You may think you're safe, but when you've forgotten about this threat, when you're least suspecting it...

8. People will make decisions according to the Apple Jacks slogan, "We eat what we like." If you're deciding between two things, do what you like. If you chose something you know you'd hate, knowing the outcome, you don't get to whine about it. I can't help that you chose Raisin Bran. Being miserable for the right reasons isn't a way to live your life.

Installing Best of All Possible Worlds, Version 1.1...

technorati tags:college, coffeeshops, food, dancing, philosophy, life

Some things never change

2006-11-28T09:25:00.000-05:00

I'd forgotten something important about Thanksgiving break. There are many things I forgot, actually. For instance, if you're full, you shouldn't try to eat more. If your father keeps heaping turkey on your plate, you should stop him before he gives you more than you want, therefore obliging you to eat a sickening amount of turkey for fear of wasting food. It will make you lie on the couch in the fetal position and groan immediately after dinner. I moaned and watched Jurassic Park as I recovered.

The nightly news said that the average college student, due to a combination of missing home cooked meals and Thanksgiving being a gluttonous holiday, gain an average of two pounds over the vacation. I'm entirely unsurprised, given my experience this year.

But there is a more important thing I forgot. Boys come back from vacations with terrible haircuts. I don't know it could have slipped from my attention. I walked into a class today and had to keep myself from staring. My shining light, the cute boy in the class, had gotten himself a hideous haircut. A little piece of me dies every time a boy cuts off perfectly good hair. Somehow I thought that going to college would change this, but apparently I was wrong. After all, mothers, after not seeing their sons for months, are horrified at the length of their sons' hair until the men are middle-aged. At that point, men start balding, and cutting hair short becomes a non-issue.

The cute boy had betrayed me with his haircut. He was still attractive, but it wasn't the same knowing he let his mother cut his hair or send him to a $10 barber. He should have been more considerate of my eye candy needs. The look in his eyes told me he knew he looked like a pitifully shorn lamb. But all across campus, men walk seemingly unaware that something is horribly awry.

Some things, like poor vacation haircut decisions, never change, but the nice haircuts of attractive men should not.

technorati tags:haircuts, college, vacation

Skinny Jeans

2006-11-27T13:33:00.000-05:00

Well, I broke down. I bought a pair of skinny jeans. Two, actually. I'd been eyeing other girls enviously as they walked past. The jeans had several things going for them:

1. They are cute.

2. They look really good with the new coat I just bought.

3. Most importantly: even though, like all jeans nowadays, they are two inches too long, because they are tight around the ankle, I can just scrunch them up so that they don't drag on the ground. The draggy pant hems won't get soaked when it's raining, leading to a slow upward invasion of pant wetness. Or rip and get trampled on until the back part of the hem falls off from the consequence of their being designed for tall, Amazon women.

As is my fashion when purchasing new clothing, I eyed myself in the mirror, admiring particularly how nice my ass looked. A certain amount of vanity is only appropriate when revamping a wardrobe.

I resisted for a long time because it seemed like an extension of the leggings trend. I was done with leggings before they even started. It's possibly the dumbest thing I've ever seen, aside from the shirtdress. You don't get to hybridize shirts and dresses; you have to pick one. Just like I will eat you if I see you wearing a skirt over pants, the shirtdress is unacceptable. I tried the leggings under a mini-skirt once, to give it a fair try, and it did not bear repeating.

In short, I have a new love, and it keeps my ankles warm.

technorati tags:skinny, jeans, fashion, leggings

Where did you people learn to drive?

2006-11-23T16:06:00.000-05:00

I saw two fender-benders in a thirty minute period today. I thought that was noteworthy. I was almost involved in an accident, too. A car in front of me on the freeway decided, after coasting along in the exit-only left lane that it was time to merge back into traffic. He figured that just sort of pushing his way in would be sufficient. It wasn't. A car honked at him as he almost plowed into its side, and I almost slammed into the back of the half of the car still left in my lane. Balls!

The first fender-bender was on my way to go shopping. I was on Wisconsin Ave. and this jackass who'd been tailgating me changed lanes. He got ahead of me by a light and I thought it would be the end. The best part of the story is that jackass isn't the one who hit someone. He was rear-ended by a Mercedes SUV. Jackass' car rocked, and I thought for sure, because they didn't move when the light turned green, that they were going to pull over to the side of the road and trade information. Instead, they both drove away without getting out of their vehicles, and then jackass began following the Mercedes, who tried to shake him by wildly changing lanes. I was glad to get away from that mess.

The second fender-bender was on the way back from shopping. One car was turning, and the car behind him, eager to turn before the light turned red, initiated a bumper kiss. Oy vey. And here, too, they both drove on as though nothing had occurred.

Which brings up the important question: where did you people learn to drive? Because your skills are embarrassingly poor.

technorati tags:fender, bender, driving

Procrastination and Delusions, my cruel lovers

2006-11-15T22:48:00.000-05:00

I've discovered something important. Although I don't have time to talk to my friends while I'm writing a paper, but I do have the time to get a high score in Zuma. I was talking to a bunch of people online last night, a la middle school, when I was supposed to be writing my paper on the ecological validity of infant cognition. About four hours from when I knew I would pass out (falling asleep in the library is the opposite of fun: you always wake up to find someone staring at you raptly) I realized that I'd been dicking around for two hours.

I said goodbye to everyone and signed off. After all, I didn't have time to be wasting. Well, it turns out that I did. Two hours after some vigorous writing and deep thoughts on how I could relate infant social cognition and violent conflict, I was distressed. After days of writing, I had reached the saturation point where I wasn't even really reading the paper anymore, just staring blankly at the words as my eyes ran over them.

I went to that most awful of sites, addictinggames.com, and visited one of my first loves, Zuma. I had isolated myself in a library full of hostile upperclassmen with who could sit in the same room as me for three hours and pretend that I don't exist. But it was all for naught. Zuma and I bonded. It was just the thought that I was taking a break from work, that I would soon have brilliant insight and write an award-winning essay. Pretending to be closer to working is comforting.

And now my much neglected favorite thing, a list. I don't have time to...

...study properly for my Japanese test, but I have time to write a blog entry.

...pay attention to my editor while she's making my article better, but I have time to go get ice cream.

...sleep as much as I want, but I have time to watch the entire first season of House in a week.

technorati tags:procrastination, homework, college

For the Longest Time

2006-11-14T16:37:00.000-05:00

Dear Male A Capella Groups:

For the longest time I have hated the Billy Joel song "For the Longest Time." I know it is simple to sing, and that's why you chose it. But please strike it from your repertoire. Not all of you are talentless hacks, so I don't know why you insist on keeping that song around. It no longer makes me swoon, nor did it after the trillionth time a group started singing it. Those initial bumbumbums and snaps now fill me with dread, and I flinch.

It's not that I hate Billy Joel. Though I did for some time, I've come to accept my love of certain songs, such as the great step backward for meaningful relationships, "Only the Good Die Young." But, really, it's time to let the "For the Longest Time" legacy of Billy Joel go.

You're going to have to work a little harder to turn the female part of the audience turn to jelly from this point onward. Now you know: we're on to you.

-Meredith, Who Prefers the Song "Fuck You Gently" by Tenacious D

Old Man, Get Away

2006-11-13T18:27:00.000-05:00

When I think about it, the story of my life is this: once upon a time a girl named Meredith was born. It was really awesome, and she grew up a happy, loved child whom people often found to be of an ambiguous race. For four years, including middle school, she went through the "ugly phase." When it passed, she was intact, and went through high school. But despite not having any abnormal growths (like a third foot) coming out of her forehead, the only males who seemed interested in her were middle-aged men and skeezy grocery store workers.

It is my great talent in life to attract middle-aged men. Then are generally balding, usually encounter me in restaurants, and always overt in their passes. Case in point: I innocently went to get Chinese food with my suitemate on Thursday. We waited at the counter until our food was ready. A balding, red haired man entered to pick up some food, probably on the way home from work. "You've got beautiful hair," he said. I took it as ordinary; people have a tendency to talk about my hair or touch it, asking if I'm okay with it as an afterthought.

We shoved over to give him room to order. My suitemate went to the candy-for-a-quarter machine and bought some Runts, those little, hard fruit candies shaped like the fruit they represent. I may be the only person on the planet who likes the banana-flavored ones, so I took them from her. As is my fashion, I teased her for having inferior tastes in candy and declared my love for the banana candies. The man, watching us from the other side, "Hot and with great taste? What a winning combination."

I exited the restaurant in distress. There was the great possibility that he'd been hinting something about my love of bananas beyond the flavor. And that was something I'd rather have not thought about.

It was certainly far from the most brazen manner in which I've been propositioned. My favorite pick-up line of all time was when a drunk guy at a frat just pointed at his crotch and smiled. But still, I had hoped to get dinner without being bothered.

So here's the question of the day: do I have a middle-aged man magnet hidden somewhere? Also, is there a linear relationship between hair loss and inclination to hit on teenage girls?

technorati tags:middle-aged, men, pickup, lines, bananas

Important Thoughts

2006-11-08T23:21:00.000-05:00

Thoughts of the day:

I had sweet potato pie today, and it tasted like dish soap.

The garbage in my dorm hallway smelled like Kraft macaroni and cheese, but I'm sure no one threw it out there.

I know a man who can kick himself in the head, and I didn't realize it.

Voting!

2006-11-07T21:39:00.000-05:00

Today, I voted for the first time. I called my parents so they could congratulate me. I got a sweet "I voted today!" sticker. It was pretty excellent. Exercising constitutional rights is one of my favorite things.

And you know why I did it? Partly because I'm interested in how the country is run and want to have input in it. But the perhaps more driving force was this: to complain. I think that's actually pretty reflective of the driving force behind much of the youth. We are constantly looking for more excuses to gripe. While we're angry about harsher dress codes, being forced by parents to adhere to curfew, etc., we're also secretly delighted because it's another excuse to find fault with the world. Being dissatisfied is one of our greatest pleasures.

You can't really change the fact that it's snowing. But that's not so for politics. When you complain about how America is run, you have to have at least done something to try to make it better. The Constitution offers you a way to have input for minimal effort. If you're not willing to do even that, you don't have the right to be righteously indignant. People just aren't going to care. I'm tired of people whining about how bad Bush is and how their votes don't matter. Or people only vote for the president. I'd like to point out that there are other important things to vote for, like trying to regain majority in the Senate.

And you don't know until the votes are counted whether or not you were making the difference or just adding to the majority vote. Basing your action on the possibility of not making the difference in an election is foolish. Less than 50% of the voting population voted in 2002. It's outrageous that less than half the country decides something that important.

I must state for the record: we are going to take the Senate back, bitches. As of right now, Republicans have 44 seats and Democrats have 43 seats; we only 8 more to get the majority.

technorati tags:voting, constitution

The Error Box

2006-11-06T23:53:00.000-05:00

The monitor made the ominous whooping noise of an unexpected shutdown and went black. I jabbed the power button on the CPU. A string of white characters appeared on the screen. For the past month my computer had been speaking to me in tongues, displaying random streams of symbols before starting up. Today, however, the screen went black again. I deployed my fix-all technique of whacking the computer. Nothing happened. Panic set in. I pictured all my data being sucked into the black hole in the middle of the monitor into which my screen had flown. A phone call and three visits from a computer professional later, I realized that both the paper I had been writing and my computer were gone.

Worse than losing my hard drive, though, was the computer expert’s reaction to its demise. “How old’s your computer? Four years? That’s about right.”

About right? Her expression told me my indignation reflected my naiveté. I had not bought my computer with the expectation that it would break. Apparently I was the only one. But in the two years since my hard drive’s abrupt end, I have come to accept it as inevitable that computers will commit seppuku at critical moments. Unable to function optimally, stripped of privacy and dignity by spyware, the computer cuts its losses and exits from its mechanical coil. But not before taking valuable information with it. Within five years of your purchasing it, your computer is defunct.

The computer expert made only a perfunctory attempt at resuscitating my computer. She had come merely to break the news to me. Rather than fixing our computers, at the smallest sign of significant trouble, we abandon them and purchase new ones.

It is the same way with many commodities. Radios, for example. My father, a man stubbornly rooted in the New England tradition of wearing clothes until they rot of his body and using electronics until they are old enough to be considered retro (“But it still works fine!”), was shocked to discover that no one would repair his radio. The radio had been built to last, through wear, tear and seemingly nuclear warfare. My father recounts the tale with a sense of wonder, that the man at the electronics repair store told him it would cost more to repair the radio than to buy a new one. The idea of fixing something is increasingly novel.

Our products are built to be replaced. This fact means increasingly short expiration dates. Even those products that still function well have a limited period of use. The average printer, for example, has a life expectancy of one year. Not because that is when it stops working, but because that is when the ink cartridges run out. For many cheap printers, the cartridges are expensive enough that simply purchasing a new printer with included ink cartridges is more cost effective. The same is true of some razors; the box of new blades is more expensive than the razor, so people simply buy a new razor.

At the time of my computer’s untimely departure, I was no stranger to reconciling myself to poor quality goods and services. I grew up in the city that seems to have invented the shrug. Washington, D.C. was one of the worst run cities in America during the 1990s. Within two years of settling in the city, my parents grew accustomed to the idea that some weeks, the garbage men would leave our garbage to rot on the sidewalk. It was unsurprising to us that pizza came faster than ambulances. No part of the city, whatever class of neighborhood, was exempt. The natives of the city simply shrug and flash the weary smile of the long suffering. Our attitude towards public services can be described in one phrase: “Oh well.”

One month, we watched our block’s garbage pile up for three weeks. It was the latest part of a strong tradition to let trash pile up; in 1400, garbage piled up so high in front of Paris gates that it interfered with the city’s defenses. Only then did officials admit to a waste issue. Similarly, only when the juicy, rotting garbage piles on the sidewalk interfered with access to the street did someone grow desperate enough to call and demand service. At the end of the experience, no one suggested that there was something unusual or wrong about being taxed for a service we did not receive.

My computer would never have shrugged and let such poor service stand. Before viruses weakened it, my computer always demanded good service. In the computing world, Microsoft Word was my D.C. garbage man, finicky and prone to withholding service. During my constant fights with Word, which often ended in the program quitting without warning, my computer always stepped up. It would immediately send me a text box, “Microsoft Word closed unexpectedly. Would you like to report this error?” It was the sort of prompt response that comes from a single-minded expectation of service. My computer was persistent in its demands until the week before we parted.

The lowering of expectation in humans is a more gradual process. Within a few years of a new product or service being introduced, we expect the quality to decrease. Righteous indignation fades quickly into quiescence. It is simply easier to accept poor quality than fight for high quality, and we are not programmed to keep fighting. In D.C., we made small, occasional concessions for convenience’s sake, but then came to accept them as commonplace. My computer’s failure to send me error text boxes was due to sickness; our failure to demand high quality, sustained services and products is due to laziness.

I was in deep shock when I lost my computer. I had the settings just right and my favorite games loaded. The computer even greeted me at the start up with Humphrey Bogart’s voice saying, “Here’s looking at you, kid.” It had never occurred to me that our relationship would be so fleeting. The idea of having to construct another Rick Blaine was daunting.

But after giving him up the first time, it was easier. I came to believe that throwing out something almost as soon as I bought it was cool. It was just as well I had to throw my computer out. After all, the next one would have better interface, new programs, and maybe pump my gas. Who knew? Personal computers seemed increasingly built to do almost anything (for about three years). It was my right, my duty to experience the new technology and to make more garbage more quickly

In 1996, my family had owned the same computer for five years. We purchased a new one because we wanted a new computer. Eight years later, my highly advanced, shiny computer was falling apart after three years of use. In the time between, computers developed a threshold of three or four years before shutting down permanently. What initially horrified me almost instantly became a fact of life. Our almost instantaneous acceptance of accelerated product death is perhaps best expressed in the words of Billy Joe Armstrong, “A guy walks up to me and asks 'What's punk?' So I kick over a garbage can and say 'That's punk!' So he kicks over a garbage can and says 'That's punk?' and I say 'No that's trend’!” There is a quick descent after the error box fails to show up for the first time.

technorati tags:planned, obsolescence, computers

Dairy

2006-11-03T01:05:00.000-05:00

For most of my childhood, I was afraid of dairy. I drank milk three times a day because, unlike asparagus, you can't mash it around on your plate and make it look like you've had more than you really have. It's much more difficult to fake having drunk an entire glass of milk, so I didn't even try. I let my mother force it upon me.

It's been a slow progression, getting over my fear of dairy. I was just weirded out by it. I could sense, even without anyone telling me, that there is something inherently fishy about yogurt. I mean, you let it to go bad on purpose. Does that sound like something good? And then finding out about bacteria pretty much confirmed everything I had suspected. You leave bacteria in milk and out comes a foul tasting, almost chunky concoction to which you add fruit? HELL NO.

Yogurt and I have a better relationship now. Cheese was actually the first thing I warmed up to. I struggled with the fact that I was supposed to enjoy a food that was aged 12 years. Usually if a food product has been around for 12 years, it's made the refrigerator toxic. But then you charge $50 for the product and people eat it with crackers. No one but me seemed to realize the absurdity. Worst yet, people seemed to actually enjoy it. And not enjoy like how adults fake laugh at each other's jokes that were told not with the intent to be legitimately funny, but to show that they understand what humor is. It seemed like a genuine feeling. Then I had pizza, and suddenly everything was clear.

But one thing I will never reconcile myself to is cottage cheese. On the water polo bus back from games in high school, someone decided we should have a tub of cottage cheese. She would bring the tub by and eat cottage cheese from it with a spoon. I wanted to cry. It looks to me now like yogurt tasted to me as a child: vile and suspicious. That's right, I could taste when things were suspicious. I mean, just look at cottage cheese:

Why would you eat that? I tried to once, but the texture was just too much.

When I learned that lactose-intolerant people are actually the "normal" ones, and the rest of us are freaks for being able to process cow milk, I was elated. There's legitimate proof that dairy is wrong. Osteoporosis be damned. There is an important lesson in all this that you may have missed: dairy could not fool me because I am equipped with magical powers.

technorati tags:cottage, cheese, dairy, yogurt, osteoporosis

One of the Masses

2006-11-02T21:37:00.000-05:00

It occurred to me today that I am one of the masses. We like to think of ourselves as independents who, faced with a moral crisis, would make the right decision. For instance, slavery. We all say, "Slavery is terrible. Didn't people realize? Why didn't they do anything? If I were living in 1814, I would be absolutely outraged." But the truth is that a lot of the people who owned slaves probably had at least a vague sense that it was wrong, too. That's not the point.

I think if (in fact I would have been a slave, making this perhaps a bad comparison) I had lived in 1814, I wouldn't have done anything. Had I been a white, affluent person in the South, I think I would have gone along with the flow, maybe even fought for my unjust way of life. We are quietly aware of injustice in the world, but I don't think that most of us ever would have or will make a stand. I don't think I will be a leader of the world, at the forefront showing others the error of their ways. I'm aware of my error, but I rarely have the courage to stick my neck out. I would follow rather than lead, no matter what I like to think when I'm reading history textbooks.

I embrace school spirit almost as quickly as anyone I know. I get caught up in the war chants within days or weeks. It is easy to ingrain in me the sense that my team is the best team in the universe, and the ref is not calling the game fairly to keep my team from winning and make the inferior team feel a little better. "Get off your knees, ref. You're blowin' the game!" I like being a team player, and it doesn't bother me to be a lot like everyone else.

Political songs influence me. I get swept up in the strength of the song "Fight the Power." I love the songs that make me want to do battle, to march off into war against whatever the singer is protesting. I like that they want more from me than I want from myself. I'm to be one of the masses because I can't want that on my own, at least not in terms of being an activist.

I was sad at first, realizing this about myself. I will probably end up the mild-mannered worker by day, slightly more obscene liver by night. My destiny is probably not that of a superhero. But I think it comes down to this: if you're not going to lead, it's still your responsibility to choose the right leader. If you have to do some work to figure out who that is, do it. Chosen ignorance is not an excuse for misdeeds.

seriously, step off

2006-11-02T17:06:00.000-05:00

I've been a card-carrying Catholic since I was born. I went through the phase where church meant an hour of monotone chanting which I would have preferred to spend watching Nickelodeon. I hit Confirmation swore to resist my hateful 13-year-old urges or else chance burning in hell. My parents spoke in hushed tones with other parents about a boy in my Sunday school class who had decided he was a *insert gasp of horror* atheist of all things.

Well anyway, I grew up for years without anyone openly questioning my beliefs. Most of the people I went to school with didn't go to church, but they were vaguely some sort of Christian. I was left alone. But when I got to high school, suddenly saying I was Catholic was like saying I believed that the world was flat. It was simply so unprogressive, so passe to believe in God. People begrudged me my religious beliefs. Someone I considered a friend asked me, "Well, you don't think that pro-choice is wrong do you?" as though it would make me some kind of monster. For the record, I am pro-choice in principle, but probably pro-life in personal practice; it's none of my business what other people do with their bodies.

I wish people would leave me alone about my being Catholic. Most people aren't even atheists, just agnostic or not thinking about it; atheism requires more force of will than many are willing to invest. I like faith, and I like believing in something, and it's something better shared. At best (or perhaps worst, depending on your view), God really exists. At worst it's a powerful extension of collective imagination. It's not the sort of thing that you should use as justification to kill others; it's inherently against the agreement you make with the Nonsecular Hand of Power. And despite the Catholic church's bad track record, it does a lot of good things and has some good principles. There's a lot of promotion of the spirit of giving, for instance.

Here's the deal: when you have something better than blanket disdain for all things religious (or belief in a higher power, etc.), like, say, an actual opinion, come back and we'll talk.

BLEH

2006-11-01T23:23:00.000-05:00

Japanese test studying. Not so much blogging. Look for a double post tomorrow.

WEDGIES

2006-10-31T09:52:00.000-05:00

It has long been clear to me that I am not endowed with susceptibility to the usual societal impetii. Cues and requirements are entirely lost on me. I just don't know when to be embarrassed. I have a sense of decorum, I just can't get it to override my wedgie-pulling urges and make me embarrassed by my acknowledgement that my underwear and I are not in a state of bliss, that my underwear exists at all.

It is clear to me when I see other people picking wedgies how unattractive is makes the wedgie-puller to others, but this knowledge is useless. My wedgie picking is informationally encapsulated; understanding of how it looks to others does not stop it. It's okay when I do it because I don't have to look at it. But I at least try to point my back at a wall to make myself less obtrusive. And I'm secretly delighted when I catch other people in the act, even if they're not aware of our solidarity.

My need to destroy wedgies is perhaps integral to my hate of thongs. Why would you intentionally wear underwear that gives you a permanent wedgie? But I digress. I'm willing to take the momentary uncomfortableness of some random strangers realizing my underwear is not perfectly aligned for time spent in comfort.

Imagine my excitement when I looked up the word "wedgie" and thought I had found kindred spirits who were unabashed in their wedgie-picking. But alas, it was just a bunch of pictures of girls giving each other wedgies. I'd forgotten that there were two definitions: when your underwear slides between buttcheeks and when you have poorly-chosen friends who like to pull your underwear out of your pants. These are the same friends who will push over a port-a-potty while you're in it. There was a forum and photo gallery devoted to the cruel wedgie-giving.

Next I found the site ratemywedgies.com. Why I have not linked to it will be clear in a moment. I thought it would be akin to ratemymullet.com, a delightful site where one can gaze unabashedly at the horrendous mullets you can't politely stare at in public. Instead, ratemywedgies.com was just another page for looking at vaginas. I was distraught, to say the least.

So pick unabashedly my friends. There are many travesties in this world (including, for the record, all sites involving GIVING a wedgie). Let unresolved underwear issues because of public standards not be one of them.

technorati tags:wedgies, mullets, manners

Halloween and Miniskirts: not meant to be

2006-10-30T23:28:00.000-05:00

I read a very interesting article a few days ago. It was about slutty Halloween costumes. More specifically, it addressed their proliferation. 85% of costumes sold for women are basically the same costume with a different colored mini-skirt. This was not true at my high school, which had a strict dress code, including skirts short enough to casually flash passers-by.

I went Liq-uor Treating (exactly what you think) in my res. college on Saturday night. On my way around, I suddenly understood what they were talking about in Mean Girls: Halloween is an excuse for girls to dress as sluttily as they want, and no one else can say anything. I looked around me and there was girl wearing a referee costume. The entire outfit was maybe two and a quarter feet from bust line to skirt. Every time she took a step, she gave the world a look at her underwear. I cringed, unfamiliar with what was going on all around me. Everywhere I looked, girls were making true what I'd read.

I took the road less traveled. As my suitemate put it, "There's a line between being slutty and making yourself actively ugly with your costume." I tried to tread that line. And thus my initial idea of being a lumberjack was nixed. Next, I had wanted to be a laundry basket for the Saturday night activities, but I copped out and was too lazy. My costume was one step up from the incredible cop out costume of "I'm a student." I was a kindergärtner on my first day dressing myself. I had several layers on and my layers covered me, so I wasn't freezing away in a miniskirt. It was an exciting time.

My question is this: given all the interesting things you could dress up as, why would you dress up as a slutty referee? Or slutty elf? Or a slutty laundry basket? It's just too cold to have wind blowing up your nether bits. I learned to dress warmly after the no-Daddy-I-want-to-be-a-genie! debacle of 1996. Halloween's supposed to be about imagination, an opportunity to be Darth Vader, if you want to. I guarantee you you're not enjoying Halloween properly if your costume has a miniskirt for no reason related to the costume. I severely doubt that the coolest thing you could think of to be was an inadequately dressed nurse. Why does Halloween have to be sexualized? The slutty *insert persona* isn't even about sex. It's so sexualized that it's not even about the act.

So put on some damn clothing. Just looking at you makes me cold.

technorati tags:Halloween, slut, miniskirt

Latest Confession!

2006-10-18T23:03:00.000-04:00

I often start off these confessions with a feeling of shame. But then I realize what I'm ashamed of is not the secrets themselves, but the fact that I didn't confess for so long. And here is the latest one: I don't get indie music. Seriously, has anyone heard Deerhoof? What the fuck is that? I ask you. Not all indie music is terrible, admittedly, but there's an undual amount of excitement among the surly, condescending hipsters for things that I know in my heart are terrible.

The second part of the confession is that, given the choice between The Backstreet Boys album Millenium and The Arcade Fire's Funeral, 9 times out of 10, I would choose The Backstreet Boys. Just as children fool their parents by pretending that muffins and cupcakes are different, and eat chocolate chip muffins for breakfast, so do indie kids fool everyone else. The characteristic snideness fills me with the righteous indignation that I feel about many things. Most of the music isn't even good. You tell me that the music is good, cool and not mainstream. I'm on to you, though. A lot of the stuff you listen to is shit. You're just trying to make me feel stupid and music illiterate by pretending that I don't appreciate it because I'm not yet mentally advanced enough to understand its brilliance.

I contest that you are not yet mentally advanced enough to chill the hell out and enjoy The Backstreet Boys. Liking a band that's the musical equivalent of dragging fingernails on a chalkboard doesn't make you cooler. I'm tired of being pressured to like things just because they're part of a counter-culture. Most people haven't heard of your terrible favorite new band precisely because they are terrible. Liking a band that plays for music rather than the sake of being inaccessible to the majority, however, does make you cool. I refuse to be cowed.

I like what I like. You like what you like. Leave me alone, and stop silently sniffing when I'm not intimately familiar with that band whose name I can't pronounce. I'll stop griping about you in return.

I know all indie music isn't terrible and that all indie kids aren't snide, holier-than-thou annoyances. But being snotty doesn't make you unique. I know you still have that "embarrassing" CD from middle school somewhere in your basement. Don't be afraid of it. We can all be friends. I'll even tolerate that stupid song that sounds like a fight between cell phone ringers without complaint.

Hummus

2006-10-17T19:49:00.000-04:00

Important news of the day: hummus is delicious.

All people who do not believe that hummus is delicious will not voice their opinions in this matter. Your opinion is worthless and incorrect. Nothing anyone says will convince me that my opinion is false.

So why do we still have these discussions? I feel like I have an argument everyday with someone that goes like this:
"Hummus is really delicious."
"No it's not."
"I really like it."
"That's because you have an undiscriminating palate."
"Shut the hell up. Hummus is great."
"I hate it, it sucks."

Okay. We're never going to agree, so can we just not talk about it? Instead of just agreeing to disagree, we believe that our entirely subjective opinions and backups for our opinions should be convincing enough to make others see the light. It's not happening, give it up. We simply get caught in these endless conversations in which people argue that hummus is delicious because it has chick peas, and the other person says that it's terrible because chick peas are disgusting. No matter how many ways we argue it our what level of detail we go to, there is a fundamental difference in perception that we're not going to surmount.

The best discussion is one so convoluted that at the end you realize you're arguing the same thing in different words. It's even more frustrating than the endless subjective arguments. With the subjective arguments, at least you've been righteously indignant that somebody else does not realize how right you are. With the we're-saying-the-same-thing argument, you've accomplished nothing and taken away from my time spent playing Zuma.

Let us speak of this no more.

Stop, fool!

2006-10-16T20:46:00.000-04:00

I'm beginning to doubt that people have any of the good sense their mothers gave them. Willing things to be a certain way does not make them that way. And there are certain things we were taught in kindergarten that still apply.

One of these important lessons is that you look both ways when you cross the street, even on a one way street. I know it seems strange, but people sometimes back out of parking spaces or think that driving into oncoming traffic is a good idea. Another integral lesson is that when the light is red, you don't walk across the street. Now, not applying these rules separately can be okay. Sometimes I just kind of traipse across the street without looking, and if jaywalking were an Olympic sport, I would have a gold medal. But in conjunction, ignoring common sense can be deadly. If you're crossing a street when the light is red, chances are there's a car coming, and that car will hit you. Everyday I see people wandering across intersections against traffic and then wondering why they almost got mowed down by a bus. Buses won't stop for you. I want to yell, "Hey dumbass, it's because if you're going to break the law, at least do it properly." If you fail to steal something, you walk away emptyhanded. If you fail to jaywalk properly, you walk away without a head.

Oh, and I'm not fooled by your attempts to cut in line. Nobody is. This isn't elementary school where we're going to let slide the fact that you're a jerk. When you try to go for the scrambled eggs I've been eyeing from the back of the line, I will take actions you will not like. It feels like by the time I get to the front of the line, the earth will have reversed it's polarity. And so when you slow the process down by pretending to not understand that the hungry looking string of people are in fact waiting for the food, I want to crack my tray over your head. There's no way to miss the line. An old lady tried to pull the "What, there's a line?" move in Barnes and Noble the other day, figuring that her old lady power would convince the cashier to let it slide. When he pointed her to the line, I cheered on the inside. No one feels bad for you because you have to go to the back of the line.

If, in the computer lab, something doesn't work, pressing the same button over and over again will not fix it. You can't exit the program, you say? Call for help. The student computing assistant may hate you for the rest of your natural life, but your professor will demand your firstborn if you don't get the paper in on time. The wrath of one angry computer nerd is far less important than a hit to one's GPA. Pressing the escape button when the computer freezes does not help. Seriously. No really, stop. And I have no sympathy if you didn't save your paper. That was pretty much the first thing we were taught about computers: they're little bitches who like to delete important things at critical moments. Take preventative measures. I admit I've fallen pray to this: see the time when blogger spontaneously deleted my template and I had no backup. But now that I've put the reminder out there, everyone who is crying over lost 12-page papers that are gone to the Windows blue screen of death will suck it up, learn, and never come to a computer lab while I'm there ever again.

You may think you're getting away with whatever lapse in common sense you're committing, but you're not. I saw it.

Narcolepsy and the Sleep Obsessed Masses

2006-10-12T17:53:00.000-04:00

I have begun to think that college students are narcoleptic. Either that or obsessed with sleep. I sat down in my Introduction to Cognitive Science course yesterday, in the back. Normally I sit in the middle, hoping that the man of my dreams will sit down, sweep me off my feet, and be my study buddy. There are fewer places for him to sit near me if I sit in the back. Anyway, I went to the back because it didn't require my climbing over anyone to get to a seat.

Two latecomers came in and chose seats on either side of me. Twenty minutes into class, I noted that the girl on the left kept jerking her elbow around on the armrest. I glanced surreptitiously at her, and saw that she was resting her head on her arm. When she fell asleep, her arm jerked, and her elbow slipped off the armrest. Thus explaining the bizarre behavior. Ten minutes later, I saw that the motionless guy on my right was motionless because he had been passed out for almost the entire lecture. His notes were slowly sliding off his lap and making their way to the floor. His head was thrown back and his mouth wide open, the crown of his skull pressing against the wall. When I looked up and down the row, I discovered that I was the only one who was alert. Everyone else was in various stages of sleep. I felt like I'd entered some sort of alternate universe where I was the only one able to stay awake.

Then today, the sleeping obsessed bug caught me. I spent the entire hour and fifteen minutes of my English class envisioning the nap I had planned out for directly after it. My professor was talking, and all I heard was, "You cannot take your nap yet!" I was awake but zoned during the entire class; I even participated for most of it. I have absolutely no idea what I said, but I remember that he nodded, so it must have come at as English, at least. It was the most satisfying nap of all time, I would like to note.

The problem with naps, though, is that when I wake from them, I feel lethargic for at least half an hour after I awake. And since that nap was so satisfying, all I can think about now is how the need to write a paper and study for a test I'm taking tomorrow is interfering with my passing out as early as I want tonight. I will read the Japanese grammar points and all I will read is, "You cannot go to sleep yet!"

Cop Out!

2006-10-11T23:14:00.000-04:00

Japanese Learning English

Rather than share my opinion on anything today, I thought I would instead impart to everyone an important life skill: handling being mugged.
Jazzercising makes getting robbed so much less painful. It is ESSENTIAL that you watch this video to the end. This is exhibit A for why I love Japanese culture. If I get mugged, I plan to pull these moves.
If each day has a moment of zen, watching this video was the one for today. How can you be sad when things like this exist?

Mandates!

2006-10-10T23:55:00.000-04:00

Dear everyone:

For the sake of my sanity, you must yield to my supreme will. If I become an evil dictator, these mandates shall be among the first I pass down:

1. Your favorite band is no longer allowed to be The Beatles. Do better. It's like saying your favorite book is the Bible.
2. Trick bikes aren't cool, and you can't ride them. You look like you're riding the bicycle equivalent of a clown car. You know why people rode those small, undersized bikes? Because they stole them from 8-year-old kids. The fact that you're paying for a bike you can't ride properly is dumb.
3. If you friended me on facebook over the summer before we met each other, you're not allowed to just come up and talk to me. You must introduce yourself. Especially if you've got a facebook coverpage (a profile picture that lies about your true appearance). Facebook friends is not the same as real friends.
4. When you stand outside my window and make noise late on a weeknight and I'm try to study or sleep, I reserve the right to eat you and leave your carcass as a warning to others.
5. Skinny girls who talk about being fat will shut the hell up.
6. Thou shalt not smack gum. Thou shalt not chew gum in class, thou shalt not chew gum during Mass. I can't focus when I can hear you chewing.
7. You may not borrow a pencil. Ever.
8. Thou shalt learn that there is a difference between Febrezing a shirt is not the same thing as washing it. I know, everyone else knows, and we demand that you utilize laundry detergent
9. Pet dogs on the way to class. What will you remember? That you fell asleep in that lecture that one time or that you petted a sweet dog? If the answer is not petting the dog, then there are some serious issues to consider.
10. You will stop thinking ninjas are better than pirates.

Don't get too comfortable. I may be coming to power sooner than you think.

Beware, Tours!

2006-10-09T19:58:00.000-04:00

I try to be on my best behavior when tours are coming by, I swear. But for some reason I always seem to do something embarrassing right when they pass by. I am the ideal student to keep in a closet when prospective students are walking around.

My first mishap occurred during the second week of school. While walking with one of those people whom I met in the first few weeks and have never seen again, I was telling a story. The end of the story was a string of expletives. I unleashed them with flourish; there is nothing I love more than telling stories. I looked up to see a crowd of people huddled around a statue. There is only one reason a bunch of people would be standing around a statue on a college campus: ritual hazing or tour groups. Since there were middle-aged people there, I assumed it was the latter. One mother was staring at me, mouth literally agape. The tour guide shot me a dirty look. Knowing that I was being scrutinized, I was unable to change my pace. I avoided eye contact and moved slowly by the group learning about why they should apply to the college of the foul-mouthed miscreants.

The latest incident with a tour group involved a rope swing. Sometime during the orientation week of school, someone incompetent at swinging broke the swing hanging from a tree in the freshman quad. But only one side of it. The rope was frayed significantly, so re-tying it meant making the swing higher. It now sits about four and a half feet above the ground. After passing the swing several times a day for weeks, I was determined that I would enjoy the swinging pleasures. Spontaneously, I put my bag down against the swing's tree and contemplated the swing. I pulled on the wood plank that acts as a seat; it shifts around, so I couldn't use it to propel myself up. I grabbed one side of the swing and threw my legs around the plank. I think tried to shimmy my way upwards and get myself into a sitting position. Instead, I tangled my foot in the rope, let go in surprise, and hung upside-down from the tree. My head was on the ground, actually, because of the height of the swing. As I tried to fish my ankle out of the rope without falling and fracturing my spine (my dignity was already beyond repair), a heard the sound I dreaded most: a projector.

You can tell a tour guide from the way he sounds. You can hear him from two blocks away discussing the historical merits of this chunk of sidewalk or statue or building. I affectionately call these tour guides "the projectors." I knew the group would come around the tree and spot me at any moment; I was in the middle of campus. As he came to me, he paused briefly before deciding to ignore me. He put his back to me and began rambling; this meant that the group, rather than looking at him, watched me struggle to free myself. I have represented my college, supposedly full of the best and the brightest, very well: we can't even figure out how to get onto a swing.

So, here's what I have to say to everyone going through college tours: just because one person looks like a dumbass doesn't mean they all are. I swear.

6-Month Events

2006-10-06T14:48:00.000-04:00

When did sports start having six month seasons? I talked to my mother last night, and she mentioned that there was a severe sporting overlap over the weekend. On the same day there was a baseball game, a football game, a hockey game and a basketball game all at home in D.C. This reminded me of something that has long baffled me: why do we need to have six-month seasons for professional sports? It sort of kills the joy when baseball goes on until November and football starts in August.

I recognize that people are interested in making money. I'm interested in making more money, too. But I don't like watching any one professional sport to endure the coverage for half of the year. Stretching the season is terrible idea. There are enough sports-oriented things going on in America. I have to endure the endless commercials for Madden Football X-treme X7 or whatever ridiculous new name it has. Fifteen different variations of basketball gameplay...play in an alley, on the streets, in the NBA, with freeze frame dialogue. It would make it better if people were not jazzed up for the sports and spurring on the advertisements for half the year. There is no time when I get to rest from sports

I know it's a longer-going phenomenon, but I can't handle that stores started selling Halloween stuff mid-September. It was September, fools! Not time for cardboard cutouts of Jack-o-lanterns yet. And quite honestly, I'm not interested in Halloween candy that someone purchased two months ago. I nearly choked when I walked into a grocery store last year and they were selling Christmas-oriented kitsch before Thanksgiving.

You can have too much of a good thing. Stop killing my love of baseball and Christmas. I refuse to have my joy destroyed.

Fire Hazard!

2006-10-03T00:35:00.000-04:00

Our suite recently received a packet detailing all of the things which will cause to die in a fiery blaze. Among banned things were halogen lamps and a microwave. There are periodic checks to make sure we don' t have halogen lamps pointed over large stack of paper and matches, etc. Also, don't smoke and then drop the still-lit butt in a garbage can full of paper (and if you die, it's your own fault for not recycling). What it behooves the student to know, however, is that they cannot move anything during their search. The way to keep a microwave, therefore, is to cover it with a sheet before an inspection. The security will be forced to say, "My, that sheet is remarkably microwave-shaped," and move on.

There are other things, too, such as blocking the fire door. We are not in that situation, thankfully, but I've seen several rooms with futons pushed up against the door. Another request was that we leave a path among the clothing, food, textbooks, beer cans, etc to the door. What is more interesting than the various ways we were setting ourselves up for a fiery demise, however, was the instructions on how to escape. It read rather like those Goosebumps novels where you choose your own path. To open the door, go to page 81. To walk on, go to page 145. Etc., except with fire. It looks something like this.

1. Fire alarm goes off, activating sprinklers to soak all of your possessions.
2. a. Move your futon from the fire door and run downstairs.
b. If there is a fire in the stairs, put a towel down at the base of the door to keep smoke from coming in
c. If you only discover the fire while you're already on the stairs, run back upstairs.
i. if the guys downstairs were toking up before disaster struck, bask in the glory of their second-hand smoke before running back to your room
3. Cry like a little bitch.
b. sit on your bed to cry, if you must
4. Recover.
a. Hang a shirt from your window to signal that you were too weak to run through some roaring flames and need to be rescued.
b. hang your roommate out of the window if you can't find a shirt
5. Wait for someone to save you.
6. Cry some more. Ignore your roommate's pleas to be let back inside.
7. Feel your doorknob to see if it's warm. Don't try to leave; you had your chance on the stairs.
8. If by some chance you catch on fire, stop, drop from the window, and roll. Roll around in the grass until someone hoses you down.
9. Wait for the ambulance.
10. Have a nice day with your microwave-shaped sheet.

Remember, kids: only you can prevent dorm fires.

NOT Sexyback

2006-10-02T01:00:00.000-04:00

Every day I am bludgeoned with the cudgel that is "Sexyback." It invades the radio and is inevitably blasting from someone's car stereo at least once a day. In my fantasies, I throw myself from the sidewalk, lean in the window and rip with stereo from the car with a scream of animalistic rage. I resent this song's existense with all the feeling I possess. I know that pop music has its place, and dance music, too. I can't have too high expectations for it. But every once in a while, there is a song on the radio that inspires rage in me. Right now, that song is "Sexyback."

I was baffled by its awfulness when I first heard it on the radio. The DJ, in a typical fashion, didn't bother to introduce the artist or the song before playing it. Just as I was confused by Cher's "Believe," so was I unable to determine the gender of the singer of "Sexyback." I thought it was a woman. It turned out to be Justin Timberlake, and I cringed. I loved 'NSync so much when I was young and impressionable, and it hurts me when post-boyband solo careers take such a drastic turn.

It's built on a template for a song with nothing embellishing it and making it worthwhile. There's a repeating series of pounding notes that don't vary in the song. The templatey feel is especially alive when he outlines exactly where the song is going. "Bring it to the bridge!" "Bring it to the chorus!" I may not be expecting some Bob Dylan-esque lyrics, but is that seriously the best you could do?

And I would like to firmly establish that no, Justin Timberlake, you are not bringing sexy back. I don't know where he thinks it went, but if it's gone missing, it's still hanging out with Jimmy Hoffa somewhere. More offensive than the idea that you can singlehandedly restore sexy or sexiness with a poorly-conceived dance cross-over song is that your song doesn't make me want to dance, which is a difficult trick.

I'm breaking off my fleeting dabbles into your music, Justin Timberlake. I didn't love "Cry Me a River," but I could stand it. Now we've just grown too far apart; I don't think sexy went anywhere and just want to dance, but you're saying that I'm wrong, and trying to keep me from dancing. I think we're going in different directions. And I don't know if I'm ready to be friends just yet.

If it seems like a bad idea..

2006-09-28T18:58:00.000-04:00

There are good ideas and bad ideas. There are ideas that seem good at the outset which turn out to be bad ideas. There are ideas that are good in theory and poor in practice. And then there are bad ideas that are just bad all around.

Here are some examples of good ideas:
1. Communism - good in theory, poor in practice
2. smoking poison ivy - poor idea all around
3. having a dance party instead of doing homework - good idea until the test the next morning
4. wearing a coat out when it's cold - good idea all around

Now, since number is so clearly the idea that's poor all around, and it is generally clear which ideas are like it, why do people continue to make these decisions. Case in point...

Two boys emerged from my suitemate's room last week. They looked around sheepishly at the common room full of girls. We stared at them. The only way they could have gotten into the room was through the front door, and we would have seen them coming through the common room. One of them sputtered, "I, uh, I. I think we're in the wrong room."

They said they hadn't wanted to disturb the girl they were going to visit, and they hadn't wanted to call her and have her walk down four flights of stairs to let them in. Instead, they'd climbed up four floors of fire escape, popped the screen out of the window, and climbed into what they thought was the correct room. We went to the window, concerned that thieves would have the same idea with more nefarious purposes, and couldn't see any sort of fire escape. Well, it turns out that when they said "fire escape" they really meant an open, rickety, rusty ladder on the side of the building.
"You climbed up that?"
"Yes."
"As a surprise?"
"Yes."
"But..."

But the story doesn't stop there. We asked our suitemate, "Why didn't you say anything to them?"
"I thought they were thieves."
"So you let them sit on your bed?"
"Yes."

It turns out that they'd missed the right room by a floor. However, the ladder stopped on the fourth floor. Given the choice of going back down the ladder and climbing in the window, they made the logical choice. For having a good idea at the very end, I applaud them. When the girl they were in search of finally appeared, they made a quick exit. But I will now forever associate them with the incident.

The moral of the story is: when strange men climb into your window and sit on your bed, you should ask them questions. Also, if you really think about it, you'll realize that a plan you've formulate is a poor one. For instance, climbing up four floors of ladder and climbing in a window. Stop. Look. Listen to your brain.

Planning...next time

2006-09-27T22:52:00.001-04:00

Next time, we're planning. Somehow my suite ended up with four refrigerators and no television. There was a grandoise plan to stock the fridges with food and have a veritable produce section in our suite. There are two fridges plugged in and a microwave that boils water in 30 seconds. It's not quite the same.

The common room is a crazy acid trip of a room. There's a plaid chair, a red chair, a lime green chair, a forest green futon and a rainbow carpet. Everyone brought their different colored furniture without really consulting with each other. Instead of being funky and rainbow, it's a blinding cacophany to the sight. Boys walk into the room and strike an expression I'm now very familiar with it. It's the look of, "This is the best that girls could do?" Yes, it really is. I know that boys are supposed to be the colorblind ones, and I guarantee you that if they weren't when they entered, they are when they leave.

I brought my hodgepodge of posters that somehow came out as artistic in my old room. I made a multi-level collage type thing on an open wall. When lined up next to each other, though, they look like they were collected by someone with some sort of disorder. Every once in a while someone makes a valiant after to shift the posters around and make them look a little less crazy. It's a futile effort.

There's also a giant painting. It won't stick to the wall. It rests on the top of the futon, instead. Occasionally it falls. On people. The girl sitting on the opposite side of the room will yell, "Painting!" and the futon victim puts up a shielding arm. And then the screen will spontaneously pop out of the window. Overall, the room a frenetic hodgepodge that's attacking us at every opportunity.

In short, sometimes girls simply fail putting a room together.

Flyers

2006-09-26T19:51:00.000-04:00

Dear Flyer-Man-People-Collective,

I do not want your flyers. If I were really interested in your cafe, I would go there with or without the knowledge that there is a 20% discount for students. And I don't really for the political flyers, either. I know that there are starving children in Africa. My father reminded me of that whenever I couldn't finish my pork chop. It's not like I took the food the starving child's mouth and then didn't finish it. But that's a discussion for another day. If I were interested in the political activist group, I would have looked into it at the activities bazaar.

The fact that the flyer is hot pink does not get me excited for it. Neither does its being green. Pictures do not make it more intriguing. Any flyer I receive gets stuffed in the bottom of my bag. Multi-colored paper just means a more colorful selection of crushed confetti flyers mangled by textbooks when I finally empty the bag at the end of the year. The rainbow confetti of mashed flyers floats to the ground, all of them skimmed or unread.

I don't know who decided it would be an effective form of communication. There's something horrifying and offputting when someone rushes at your from the end of the sidewalk. I don't care if it's a stack of papers or a gun, I don't want you running at me with it. I resent that you make me feel obligated to pick up your flyer and not dispose of it in a place where you can see it. After all, you did go to the effort of badgering me without being too obvious about it, and sometimes you actually believe in what you're handing to me. But that's how I end up witht the flyer confetti, not being able to recycle it like I want to. I mean, it does kind of suck that you have to stand there for a significant chunk of the day handing out paper to the unresponsive masses. So why do people continue to do it?

Perhaps it was a good form of communication before there were paper-waving hoards of flyer-distributors. I'm skeptical. But my annoyance factor is increased even more when there's a long line of people shoving paper into my hand. People oppressed, eat our delicious new calzone, come see the up-and-coming band at our club, etc. NO. You can't make me. And if you're all going to do it, at least spread yourself to different blocks. I respect it when you stand there and let me come to the flyer if I want it (as I very occasionally do). If you follow me with the flyer with an expectant look, and then the gaggle of 20 other people follows, I feel harrassed. I may not even toss out the flyers where you can't see it.

Love,
The-Girl-With-Flyer-Confetti-and-Rage

Eating It

2006-09-25T23:35:00.000-04:00

Alright, so I've had my fair share of embarrassing moments. And by fair share I mean lion's share. It's gotten to the point, in fact, where I almost no longer register embarrassment. I have, however, become increasingly aware of the behavior of other people in response to my moments.

Last week, I dropped my tray. Actually, it's the only thing I didn't drop. My milk glass tipped over and poured all over the tray. As I attempted to put the milky tray in the tray rack and get another, I spilled milk all over the floor. And as I balanced the tray with one hand, my soda propelled itself off the tray, flipped through the air, and bounced on the floor, spraying Sprite all over the ground. I stared at the growing lake of Sprite and milk with a sigh.

And then someone started clapping. Which brings me to my first point: clappers are douchebags. I took a bow, but I was annoyed. Okay, someone just ate it, made a huge mess the staff has to clean up, and is horribly embarrassed about seeming clumsy. What would possess a person to do the one thing that could make it worse: show that you were both watching and amused?
I remember that a moment like that brought out the middle shool girl worst in me. I dropped a tray and I girl whom I hated sidled up to me and sneered, "What's it feel like to drop your tray? I've never done it."
"Probably what it feels like to be you every day," I responded. And I walked off.
I was horrified at myself, but I am unapologetic now. I say this simply because she was the talking equivalent of a clapper, and we've already established that clappers are douchebags.

And today, I kissed the pavement. I was on the path to the dining hall when I went down. I didn't step high enough with my flip flop and I went for a full-frontal body slam. I stood up with as much grace as I could muster and kept walking. When you trip you can at least pretend that you were about to start jogging, and no one's going to come up to you and say, "I know what just happened, and I'm not fooled." Eating it like that leaves no ambiguity. The group of guys passing me had the good manners to at least wait until I was past before they laughed.

So here is the message of the day: don't be a douchebag (I'm sorry, it's my new favorite word). Or, to go for the more kindergarten version: don't go out of your way to make other feel bad. I know it's just because you have a small penis. If I had the time to put up the graph, you would see that there is a linear relationship between penis size and likelihood of clapping.

Chair Destroyer! A Tale of DIY Furniture

2006-09-20T23:55:00.000-04:00

I am never purchasing furniture which requires assembly EVER again. I purchased a chair two years ago. When it was shipped up to college, it was disassembled, and it was up to me to put it back together again. It seemed a simple enough task, one I had not failed in two years ago. Lesson of today: previous success does not necessarily future success.

On the second day of school, I tried to screw the chair together. Instead, I somehow managed to embed the metal screw into the metal frame of the chair using my bare hands. When we finally called for help, a guy from downstairs managed to wrench it apart. The screws were sheared in half and impossible to dislodge from the frame. Somehow I had defied the possible.

The chair sat in its broken state for two weeks before a new frame came into the store. When I explained to the cashier that NO, I did not want a new frame, I wanted an already assembled new frame, she stared at me blankly. The discussion went something like this:
"I heard you have new dish chair frames in."
"Yes, I'll bring one to you."
"No, wait. You see, the reason I'm purchasing a new frame is because I broke the old one trying to assemble the chair."
"So..."
"So I'm going to need to take one out of here already assembled, like the one in the display window."
"Oh."

The manager was called, and the staff had a discussion. A member of the staff assembled the chair for me in exactly the manner I had intended. Somehow it worked for him where I had failed. I didn't ask questions. I just went with it.

A salesguy walked the chair out the door, but not before hitting the theft detectors and setting them off. He handed the chair to me outside, and wished me luck carrying it to my room. I stood in the sidewalk, trying to figure out how to best carry it away. The staff laughed from inside, watching me. I finally decided that the most convenient way would be to carry it on my back, like a turtle. This also happened to be the most hilarious looking way to carry it. My head was inside and my arms barely protruded, so it was generally the most bizarre looking thing I've ever engaged in.

People are generally good at ignoring each other and pretending that others are not of interest in the city. There were no pretenses, though, as I carted the chair through campus. My favorite moment, though, was then I saw a girl I knew talked to me as though there were nothing out of the ordinary, as though I did not look like an overgrown, misshapen silver tortoise. I was, dare I say it, the incarnation of THE AWKWARD TURTLE. Two legs, no head...so awkard! Thankfully, my suitemates passed me on the street and got a picture.

Finally, I had to open both of the doors of my dorm to get the chair in and cart it up four flights, waving it in the air in front of me. After crushing another suitemate against a wall as I got it into the suite, I set it down, triumphant. If I had a choice between assembling another chair and walking for a quarter of a mile hunched over with a chair on my back, I choose hunchback every time. Fuck you, assembly-required furniture. You are NOT a good idea and are NOT convenient, no matter what anyone says.

Future Profession #1834 Eliminated

2006-09-18T23:39:00.000-04:00

Well, it turns out that another profession has been added to my list of things I will never become: thief. I couldn't even steal a shopping cart today.

The grocery store is a good mile from campus. One of my roommates and I were purchasing heavy things, including a case of soda. As we stood in the check-out line and saw the food piling up, we made a surreptitious plan to make off with a shopping cart. We would take it back to campus, bring the groceries to our room, and then feel bad for not wanting to take the shopping cart back to the store.

Unfortunately, the shopping cart was more clever than us. Just before we cleared the parking lot, thinking we were home free because no one stopped us, the cart jerked to a stop. We moved it back and forth, but one of the wheels was locked. When we brought the cart back to the designated rolling area, it began working again.

It turns out there was a sign which we had ignored entirely when carrying out our plan. Apparently shopping carts now come with an automatically locking wheel which activates when you try to take it beyond a certain area. The sign warned us that it would work, even if we thought it wouldn't. Apparently there had been too many like-minded folks and hobos making off with the shopping carts. We stared at the locking wheel in wonder. The fact that people jack shopping carts has always just been a fact of life.

I was very impressed, but also very annoyed.

Modern Art

2006-09-15T21:00:00.000-04:00

Modern art is a lie. I admit that I've never been someone who could walk into an art museum and appreciate art the way I'm supposed to. I like portraits, pretty pieces complicated pieces, and unconventional pieces.The definition of art is rather like Potter Stewart's approach to hard-core porn: "I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced . . . [b]ut I know it when I see it . . . " Nevertheless, I expect some sort of effort to go into it, something brought to it that another artist couldn't bring. I may not be able to analyze Picasso's "Guernica" the way my mother wishes I could, I still know when something is bullshit. And modern art is bullshit.

There was a woman who came to my school and presented some slides of modern art. They were interesting, but they weren't what I would consider art. For example, one was entitled "Love," and it was just two wall clocks set next to each other, perfectly in time with each other. It's a nice idea, but not something that I couldn't replicate exactly in my house or would want to purchase. I'm equally baffled by the paintings that simply involve canvas painted all one color. I'm of the belief that a painting should be able to function independent of its clever title.

We all laugh and joke that some trash strewn on the sidewalk is modern art. Only it's not so funny because somewhere out there, someone's probably done something like it and had someone purchase it or treat is seriously for critical review. With all the creativity in the world, there must be somewhere better to go.

I also resent the junk that is filed under "modern" art. The implication is that this is the representation of our current society. If the best we can do it set clocks next to each other, then we're in trouble. Where's the craftsmanship in that? Crap is still crap, even if it's expensive and is labeled with the misleading word "modern."

I'm not fooled, modern art. I'm on to your game.

Guilty Pleasures

2006-09-14T23:33:00.000-04:00

Here is a nowhere near definitive list of things I guiltily enjoy at the moment:

1. The OC (although I am skeptical about the new season). The question is not, am I too smart for The OC? The question is, is The OC too smart for me?
2. Shopping at Salvation Army, even though I can afford expensive clothing. It's all fun and games until I have a reality check and realize that people are actually purchasing pants for $5 because it's what they can afford.
3. Puddle jumping. You look like a damn fool if you're older than nine and still puddle jumping, but I just can't seem to shake myself of the habit. Any time it's warm enough and raining, I go for it.
4. Romance novels. For some reason there's a stigma against supposedly intelligent people reading romance novels rather than, say, Crime and Punishment, for fun. I did read it, and it was interesting, but it lacked an important element: six packs and a whimsical path to finding Mr. Right.
5. Eating an entire bag of cookies. If you leave me alone with a bag of Milanos, you will not find them alive when you come back. I cannot be trusted with cookies. One can also read "entire bag of cookies" as "entire pint of ice cream."
6. Partaking in the implications of the phrase "Thursday is the new Friday." I may have a class on Friday, but Thursday calls to me, and who I am not to respond?
7. Staring at pictures of plastic surgery gone wrong. I thought it was really disgusting and perverse at first, and then I realized that it really was perverse to be looking at them. But it's a definite case of Pringles Syndrome. Once I popped, I couldn't stop. In case you're interested: Awful Plastic Surgery.
8. Jaywalking. Lights are more of a suggestion than a rule. But I still feel bad because most drivers don't seem to have realized that yet. That's perhaps for the best, actually.
9. Checking my email at every opportunity. I know it's sort of dorky and compulsive to check my email whenever I can, which, when I'm in my room, usually means about every ten minutes, but I just can't stop myself. I take a secret pleasure in receive more than one email at a time, and no one can make me feel truly guilty for my joy.
10. Stealing fruit from the dining hall. I steal anywhere between two and four pieces of fruit from the dining hall in a given meal. We're hoarding them for late night snack attacks, another thing I enjoy even though I know it's against what 10 out of 10 doctors recommend.

My discovery upon writing up this list is that I usually don't feel too guilty about anything I do. Another realization that goes along with it is that I have a poor sense of when I should be embarrassed. Somehow that filtered got jogged loose, and it's been lost somewhere where it will probably never be found again. Oh well!