I haven't written much for a while. When I was in grad school, I was reading 2-3 books a week and writing trees' worth of papers, so that part of my brain was always active. Nowadays, I don't know--I guess it's more about worrying about finances, bills, insurance, work, rent, etc. Grownup stuff. I'm currently watching 13 going on 30 and just realized I'll be 30 this year. 30. I'll be 30. 30.

Anyway, I spent a while on the phone trying to get my car insurance lowered, and talking about my driving history brought back a memory about 14 years ago...a local in our hometown (I think he might've actually been mayor or something at some point) hit my poor 87 Nova with his half-ton pickup. I didn't get hurt but the side was all denty. This was before cell phones, so I was trying to remember how my parents found out...someone came by...someone from school--oh yeah, it was Robby*. He was on his bike I think, and he rode down to my house to let them know what happened and that I was ok.

Robby didn't fit in. Like everyone I went to school with, I had known him since kindergarten. There was nothing abnormal about him, although he had very white blond eyebrows. He tried to be a good athlete. He was a nice guy. He wasn't popular. Kinda dorky. There's a great picture in our yearbook of him throwing a pie in a teacher's face. I remember another time he came up to my house and asked if he could take me to Dairy Queen for some ice cream. I was really nice about it, unlike some girls I went to school with, but I didn't have any romantic feelings for him. Shortly after my then-boyfriend dumped me (it's damaging to get dumped by a popular guy when you're 15), I was talking to Robbby and feeling horrible. It was at a high school football game, probably a few weeks before or after the accident. We were standing near the edge of the bleachers, and he was trying to make me feel better. At that moment, someone's spit dropped down onto my shoulder (an accident, I hope), and I burst into tears. I could tell Robby felt for me, that he would've done anything to make it better. He had a good heart.

Robby ended his life about 7 years ago, maybe 8. He could never live up to the expectations he felt so keenly. I don't know all the specifics, I probably hadn't seen him for at least the last 4 years before then, having graduated and gone to college. He left a note, checked into a hotel about an hour away, knocked out the ceiling, and tied a rope around the I beam. He was the first person I knew to do away with himself.

I think about Robby randomly. I didn't know him extremely well. I don't know why his death has stuck with me, like a spectre of regret. He was always there, always around, just like everyone else in a small town. His unexpected exit made death seem closer and more possible than I ever thought about. Tragic is too cliche a word. I just feel bad about Robby. He didn't even get close to 30. The last time I was home, I went to eat lunch with my 10 year old niece, and sitting next to her was Robby's daughter. Same eyebrows.

An extremely brief post from an extremely lazy writer.

Me: I started wearing brown eyeliner rather than the navy. Did you notice? I think I like it better.

Mark: Yeah it looks nice. The navy was cheesy.

I've had 25 jobs and only got fired from 1.

That's right, 25 jobs in the last 15 years. A few friends and I were talking about crappy jobs we've had recently, and I figured it was high time I got this down and really examined my employment history. Gladly the job I have now I like very much. Crissy used to be amazed at the range and variety of positions I've held, and looking over the list, it is pretty impressive--I am proud to say I am self-made and hard-working. So, join me on a jaunt down Employment Memory Lane, won't you...hope you have hiking boots.

1. Corn Detassler--what? Yes. I'm from Illinois. Here's a good description, a la Bob Wallace's blog: "Corn has to be detassled so it doesn't pollinate itself. If it does, you get weaker corn that isn't so sweet. The detassling itself consists of walking up and down rows of corn for eight hours a day, doing nothing but popping the tassels out of the corn and dropping them on the ground. If you've ever seen a row of corn, you'll find some of them are half a mile long and five to eight feet tall. Imagine eight hours a day, pop, pop, pop, in the heat and humidity of a Midwestern summer, sweating and sneezing and twitching and getting "corn rash" from brushing against the leaves, for about three weeks." We'd pile on the school bus at the ass-crack of dawn in long sleeve shirts and jeans to sweat buckets all day in the 100 degree summer sun, braving gigantic grasshoppers and an occasional corn smut attack. Sidenote--corn has a fungus on it called corn smut. It looks like green playdough. It is gross when thrown at you. Hey, $6 an hour is a lot when you're in 8th grade.
1. Marina--I worked at a marina on the Mississippi in my hometown when I was 14 with my older sister. This is like a floating gas station attached to a dock. We sold gas and snacks and bait, which meant digging night-crawlers out of a tub of dirt. I learned how to tie good knots to hold boats to the dock.
2. Red Apple--this was around 16 years old, a mom and pop diner run by a dirty Albanian who sexually harrassed his waittresses. Not a fun job, not a good time in my life.
3. Blockbuster--slightly more fun, I got 5 free movies a week. Unfortunately the store was in a horrible part of town and I worked til 11. I shrink-wrapped random objects like staplers and phones when I was bored and worked with an aspiring "actor" named Brandon. I wonder what happened to that guy...
4. Gas station 1 and 2--when I went to Northwestern for college I got a job at 2 of the 4 gas stations in the tiny town. Not at the same time. 1 was when I was a sophomore, the other when I was a senior, and after I returned from a year's stint in Texas. They were across the street from each other, and the radio station that played every night I closed always played NKOTB. I was working at the 2nd one the day the screwed up election results of 2000 came in. I also remember a sunny Sunday afternoon when I spotted about 7 of my male friends flying kites in their underwear in the soccer field across the highway.
5. The Hatchery--1 of the very few restaurants in Orange City run by a guy who was a dead-ringer for Archie Bunker and his wife. It was a tiny joint, and I usually walked with $60 most nights. I walked about 12 blocks from campus to it. Archie was the kind of guy who had no problem asking people to move to another table if he needed to push some together. There was a bartender who would smoke at the bar and I swear, she'd not exhale any smoke. It's like it just stayed in her wrinkly little body.
6. VIP Steakhouse--a "sports bar"/restaurant about 9 miles away in Sioux Center, Iowa, run by an angry Vietnamese man I could never understand who yelled a lot. Also about $60 a night. There would be a regular crowd of Nascar fans who'd show up with their gear on and pretend they were watching a real sport with athletes.
7. Product spokesperson--yeah. When I got sick of Iowa and moved to Arlington, Texas, one of the jobs I held simultaneously while also going to school was being one of those sample people you see in supermarkets. You get paid $10 an hour but it's the most mind-numbingly boring and demeaning jobs available. I hawked hair products and Swiffer. Quite often I'd smile my prettiest smile to the manager on duty and give a convincing excuse, and leave early.
8. Caravan of Dreams--a sweet job. In the heart of downtown Ft. Worth, this place had 500+ seating for live music where I spent the majority of my time cocktail waitressing for the likes of Rev. Horton Heat, Pantera, Mingo Fishtrap and other local sensations. The middle level had a theater for a regular improv troop as well as a reception/party venue with a terrace and a music room. The top level was a double level rooftop bar with a cactus garden and a waterfall. I met Harrison Ford there. He's quiet. After a tornado in 2001 or so, the Banktower building across the street shed 2 inches of glass all over the rooftop and blew out most of our windows, and the Riata people bought it from the Bass brothers and turned it into a fancy restaurant.
11. Refrigerator factory--one of many summer jobs. Probably the most intense. I was the hottest chick in the plant, simply because I still had all my teeth. I learned early on that it got so damn hot in there that underwear was a deterrent--too much sweat. I moved to graveyard shift after a few weeks of nearly dying of heat exhaustion from 8-3. I slept in my parents' dark, cool basement and they tried to be quiet during the day. There was a hole about the size of a walnut in the wall that I'd watch--when there appeared to be some light coming through that hole, I knew it was nearly time to go home. Sad. Everyone there encouraged me to stay in college, speaking from personal experience.
12. Nuclear power plant--another bullshit summer job. Another girl and I cleaned up in various areas of the plant. One time we entered the male shower area after dutifully knocking and thinking we had the all-cllear, only to come upon a naked man obliviously drying his chest hair under the hand dryer. We made a hasty retreat. It's an image I'm still trying to erase from my mind.
13. Hotel maid--you want pee-low? You want towel? Yeah, that. Lasted 2 weeks at 6.50 an hour, maybe 2 hours a day. Total waste of time. Leah and I did this together while at Northwestern. This was the one job I just never showed up again and never called in. The owner finally called me and asked if I was still working for her....uh...nah.
14. Rastrelli's--another mom and pop place. They're mostly the same. I always thought it was pretty decent Italian food. Free pizza. Not that bad, for waitressing.
15. Substitute teacher--if you can do this, you can do anything. Trust me. All grades, all subjects.
16. Cheesecake Factory--Cripes. Nazi Germany. This require completely white shoes, a white long-sleeved shirt (which sucked when you have to walk a half hour to work in the Texas heat), white pants and a white apron, which, if it wasn't properly ironed, management would make you clock out and go to the back to iron said apron to get the proper crease. I didn't really try at this job because I was so miserable, so I was lucky to get 100% rating on a secret shopping one Sunday morning. Lots of snobby N. Austin folk.
17. Real teacher--2 years in East Austin. Webb Middle School, 7th and 8th grade English. Made a lot of good friends here, but couldn't see eye to eye with administration in the light of NCLB and the heavy emphasis on TAKS testing. Honestly I probably might've been fired if I hadn't left, it upset me that much.
18. Alamo Drafthouse--possibly my favorite job, at least in the service industry. Some of the sweetest cash and best shows I've ever seen, and it was fairly easy work. I can't even go into all the good times here, it'd make the post too long.
19. Summer school teacher at a juvenile detention facility--contrary to logic, this was one of the best teaching experiences I've ever had. About a dozen high school boys, doing time from anything to robbery to rape, sat in my room and talked about literature and poetry for a few hours every day. They wrote some of the most painful and raw texts I've ever read, and were hungry for knowledge. I ate lunch in their cafeteria with them once, and offered a kid my pudding--he refused, citing possible manipulation. I ended up doing a lot of research about juvenile facility education--it's an overlooked and vital area of research. Damn my ADD--I should've done more.
20. Long term sub for a juvenile offender--Shauna spent a month in jail after beating the living shit out of a classmate. I was hired to be her bodyguard/teacher/friend for about 2 months at the end of the school year. Half the time she didn't show up, and about a quarter of the time she'd leave campus, so belligerantly crazy and angry. We did have some good conversations, and I like to think I did help her...
21. Facilitator for UT--this consisted of supervising 25 college student doing their student teacher for 2 semesters. I got the call while teaching for IRD, minus an interview--just a new instructor at UT looking for help, within the same week of being let go from the Alamo (I was out of town the opening weekend of Pirates of the Carribean, thinking I had wrote the thing on the schedule--turns out I hadn't. Boo hoo. So I guess technically I've been fired from 2 jobs.) I got to observe student teachers in kindergarten and elementary classrooms and conference with them and their teachers, trying to make them better teachers. Great job.
22. Institute of Reading Development--yet another summer job, and a good one, starting with almost 2 weeks of training in Chicago. For 10 weeks in the summer of 2007, I drove to Killeen, Waco, and Corpus Christi to teach reading courses for kids from 4 to older than me. Good fun. I especially liked the nice hotel on the beach they set me up with . Lots of work, but fun.
23. Summer Institute for the Gifted. Att UT. I taught 4 classes--Pirates Past and Present (seriously!!), Biology, Self-Defense (where my Krav Maga came in handy), and Zoology. More good fun. On the demo night, I used the UTPD dummies to show what my kids in Self-Defense had learned when it comes to kneeing an attacker in the groin, etc, and put a picture of Bush on the head area. FUN.
24. Sylvan--I'm currently at Sylvan as a director of education, so this set me up to know the job in . Tutored math and reading.
25. Director of education at Sylvan. I'm a progress manager for 77 kids currently, have regular progress conferences with their parents and sometimes classroom teachers to best help them, and handle inquiry calls, initial testing, and daily stuff. I love it.

So that's it. What have you done?

where have all the real women gone?

Query--from whence does this bevy of "reality" shows featuring ignorant, uncouthe brats come? Oxygen Channel, you're on my list. At last count, there was Bad Girls Club (which is apparently going to be a new game, sort of like Sims), various Real Housewives of Wherever Rich Bitches Live, Rock of Love Charm School (aka Who Wants to be the Next Carrier of Bret Michael's STDs), Pretty Wicked, The Bachelor, Top Model, Girls of Hedsley Hall, uhhh...I know there's more but those are off the top of my head, and I don't watch any of these shows. I revile them. I miss the way women were portrayed and the example they set with the shows I grew up with: Carol Burnett, Jennifer from WKRP, Wonder Woman, Charlies' Angels, Mary Poppins, Claire Huxtable, etc. These women had class, sex appeal, and intelligence. They were independent and put their men in their place as needed, and didn't waste time doing and saying stupid things. To watch tv today, you'd think the most obnoxious, shrill idiot in the room with the least flattering outfit was something to aspire to. I don't like it. Not at all.

Runners up on my shit list:

The creditreport.com guy

I don't want these jerkfaces thinking they're a real band just because they sing in about 5 annoying commercials.









- This guy, from operacion repo.
I understand why you'd hire a big huge dude to take cars away from people who don't pay their bills, what I don't get is why you'd hire a juiced up antagonistic jerkoff with a trigger temper to interact with people who are more than pissed that they're losing their cars. Seems like a recipe for disaster and lawsuits.








Come back soon for more on Mary Poppins and why it's the perfect movie for everyone to watch right now.

A little Easter haiku for you:
Post church, on Easter
Honey needs cold medicine
I hear Heart playing.

I love Heart, by the way. I've posted it before and I'll post it again--I dare you to watch for 1 minute and not sing along. This is what I mean about real women...

Moxie gets made into an honest woman, or, I'M ENGAGED!!

As I write this I'm very aware of an additional piece of hardware on my left ring finger, and I'm so deliciously thrilled it's hard to wrap my head around it. When Gonzo moved away from Austin my heart broke more than a little, and when Flaming Lips sang at ACL 6 months later and we stood together and breathed it in, the little spark that had never quite extinguished started getting stronger. Two years passed and I tried to keep busy with grad school and not miss him, tried to shake off the longing and the loneliness of a long distance relationship. When I moved from Austin to Lubbock for Mr. W post-graduation, things were obviously starting to get serious. When we spent hours stripping wallpaper, scrapping paint, slapping primer, slinging paint, and wanting to kill everyone in proximity, I knew I was in it for the long haul. When Marky and I drove from Texas to Illinois in one day and he spent time with my entire family, that was another whole level of love.

A few days ago, I called him as I drove home from work, knowing we had stuff to do before leaving for Austin this weekend. He told me he had a list of things and wanted me to look it over, and kept asking me what street I was on, which was kind of strange as it only takes me 10 minuutes from work to home. When I got there, he handed me the list: "pack, change oil, blah blah, ask Jen to marry me..." I half-giggled, half-shrieked, "What's this here?!" and he got down on one knee and asked me. I said yes, or might have just frantically nodded. The dogs began barking happily, and we got a little choked up as they had just had cookies and were clearly approving of this transaction, that we would now be a family for real.

I want to have Golden Years by David Bowie for our first dance. We're thinking Vegas? Maybe?

Mawwage:

horrible bad no-good tv

I feel disappointed in myself that writing didn't return my call after we got back together and went out on a few dates. I wondered if I did something wrong. Then I realize writing isn't a guy I'm trying to get to fall for me, and it's not something that's only possible when the mood and the moon is right (maybe). I didn't fart in bed. I didn't insult his mother. Writing, it's a thing I do when I'm not too lazy or busy and have some things on my mind. Sometimes they're important things, sometimes not. Today, not.

Today I want to vent about the utter stupidity of television. I will attempt to balance the brainless and transparent campaigns to take my money, self-esteem, or patience with the shows that actually make us think or teach something. I will try not to get distracted by the neighbor kid whose eyes are way too far apart trying to ride his bike while holding his dog (which looks like the Grinch's dog, sadly) as his fatter-than-believably-possible toddler brother totters about on his fat little feet.

My most loathed commercials are those that incorporate an unnecessary amount of sexuality.
Exhibit A (this commercial makes me uncomfortable)


What is the message here, that if you drink this shit you can bang your slutty secretary all the way through your lunch break as your wife's picture falls off your desk? I don't mean to sound sanctimonious, I'm just insulted. This is way worse than the Arby's commercial where the wife dresses up like the Arby's girl and serves her hubby in bed as the phallic Arby's hat pops up over his head. That's giggle-worthy, but the 6 Hr one is just in poor taste.

This is way better:


Kenyans.

If you start feeling sucked in my media subterfuge, may I suggest visiting listverse.com. Read about inventors killed by their inventions, coolest transformers, evil children, and the like.

Live and let die

can you see the frog and the horsie?

An actual conversation I had the other night with someone who will remain anonymous:
"what? *long pause* what?!"
"I said what I wanted to say, why are you saying what?!"
"Because I didn't hear you! That's what people say when they didn't hear you!!"
"Shut up!!!!"

Idiocracy is on, I don't know if you've seen it. It's to me almost on the sci-fi edge of comedy, meaning it features scenarios that may be possible in the future--20,000 Leagues under the Sea was considered crazy sci-fi when it first came out in 1954, yet monstrous squid are now ubiquitous. There are more such movies here , as compiled by Popular Mechanics. But what I'm saying is, 10 minutes into Idiocracy when the rapidly-growing and twisted family tree of losers is explained, I wasn't laughing even though it was funny.

The future of health care:


I don't think it's that far outside the realm of possibility that a Bush-driven country could soon be putting Gatorade on crops and letting garbage mountains assemble. And I'm not going to expound on the politics of the situation--living in Lubbock has taught me it's a breath-wasting, migraine-gathering endeavor to argue Democracy in West Texas. The Republican vibe seems to have tinged the TV tonight--the roast of Larry the Cable Guy with big ol' Toby Keith is on next week. And again, I'm not trying to ruffle conservative feathers--you're allowed to think whatever you want. I'm just sayin, your head dog Rush Limbaugh doesn't know the difference between the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence--literally.

It's interesting as a person with a specific background and knowledge set replete with beliefs, attitudes, and whathaveyou watching the world try to reconcile differences and make plans for the greater good while remaining civil. One is bound to overtly or covertly impose their own attitudes as to right and wrong, sensible and idiotic. It seems like those most uninformed are most comfortable in crucifying those those don't share their views. In a loosely related example--I was in the 7th circle of hell (walmart) and saw an Obama shirt with a picture of him being sworn in with the quote "So Help Me God." It made me look at it carefully, my head cocked like the RCA dog. If I'm reading this right, this is a hater shirt saying he's in such deep shit that God better help him, heh heh. Nice attitude, people. For the rest of you haters who can't really make it clear to the rest of us why you think the end of an era of errors and downright criminality is a bad thing, I direct you to this site, which will allow you to pick a reason to not support Obama.

Anyway.
Some things too many people don't know enough about:
- NPR
- The Bronte's
- cobble-stone downtown roads
- Principato Rosato
- Eastbound and Down
- kickball
- Zero 7
- my carrot cake

hiatus hiatus

Hello? Oh, hey!! Uh...how are you? This is my 125th post, but not really because the last one was a repost.

Steven Johnson wrote this book about media culture called Everything Bad is Good for You, and it was pretty okay, and now he has out The Invention of Air--the study of what's all around us and makes us and how it used to be considered empty space until some chemists and scientist started drinking coffee all day and figuring out that plants poop air and we evolved from non-oxygen breathing forms become us, breathing deeply. Man. It'd be nice to have a job where you could wax psuedo-psycho-philosophological all day and get paid.

There's a Chinese lady who lives near the school who is constantly walking her three all goofy-looking dogs. She has horrible posture, probably in her late 50s, rail thin with a kind of curvature that comes with dragging her feet incecessantly for most of her life. The dogs' leashes are always dangled up. It's like driving past the trailing end of a weird circus or state fair.


Ain't it funky now?


Coming back to writing is not quite like seeing a friend you kinda forgot about for a while but assumed was doing fine, nor is it like calling an ex-lover whom you always wanted to impress. Something in the middle. You have to pace yourself. There will be awkward silences. I'm taking a hiatus from my hiatus.

Jen's Patronage of a Local Business for March: Freedom Fitness on 19th steet. No contract, $5 enrollment with current special, $20 a month with free guest passes, massage chairs, tanning, and half price co'oler drinks. And they have a room that blacklit with crazy 90's neon "graffiti. And most importantly, TVs. They're so low key they don't even have a website, unlike this place , which is $199 enrollment and $85 month "investment" for a couple. Although, they do have ridiculously large lions and a fountain and a big elephant and those bikes that are like video games of the Tour de France.

Conversely, I must give a big thumbs down to Big Happy Hair. You must click. I'll wait. Yep, it's like padding your bra but it's your hair. Checkitout. BHH isn't technically a local business, but it may as well be considering I live in West Texas.

Ok, so...yeah. Um. I'll see you around? Yeah, I'll tell you about my aversion to overtly and unnecessarily sexual commercials to sell energy drinks, fast food, and body wash. They make me feel uncomfortable.

Shh, Ghost Whisperer is on.

Mary Murphy needs to be put down. The woman screeches louder than my inner child during church. Not that I've been to church in a while. But I have spent hours theorizing and puzzling sitting on the picnic table in the backyard. And that's where it counts.
I apologize for the listyness of my posts as of late. I've sifted through dense, heavy matter for months and years, and can no longer make sweeping points and thematic texts. I feel like skimming the surface, occasionally touching down but mostly flying.
My cat just took a swing at my roommate's cat---HHHHSSSS. Cats are slightly unearthly. I await excitedly for the OE to arrive with my white people Chinese food, and lament over my cable-less-ness. Friends is unfunny, always. The damn remake 90210 commercials are starting to brainwash me to the point where I actually kinda want to see the damn show.

This is my new house:
I heart it. It needs a little work, but I don't mind.
So cute.

I met my friends out on Wednesday at Maudie's, a Tex-Mex place on S. Lamar. After getting lost around Annie Street and then choosing to stay lost to aw over the sweet houses, I came late and just before the tail pieces of Dolly blew in some hot rain. The noise it made on the tin roof sounded like what I imagine leaving sounds like. In a good way. A ready way. The power went out and we switched from frozens to beer, sweating and laughing til it returned an hour later.

That rain brought out the frogs. Toads, rather. They looked too much like the frogs I picked out of a jar of formaldehyde yesterday for my biology class to dissect, all looking upward at me through covered eyes, arms and legs akimbo. About half of them (the kids) bailed after a scissors was required to cut through the sternum, but the remaining ones enfused their pull towards a career in doctoring by examining structures and seeing how things work.

Anyway.

If you can watch all of this video featuring a woman wearing what appears to be a Hefty bag and singing her own "hit" "song," "Hairdresser," I'll give you $10.

this and that

I don't really have internet anymore. I could surf at work but I don't really have time and would get in trouble anyway. I can piggyback off my neighbors illegally, but I still can't connect on my Dell, just Honey's. So I haven't been able to visit my "online communities" as often I did as a grade student who worked strange hours and read too much and was too often all up in her head. It's been rather freeing. Yet there has been some writing bubbling up for a while.

Having a house of all wood floors, I have to sweep a lot. I got one of those Swiffer WetJets and that works fairly well, except the pads come in 12 packs and cost $5. I need four to do the whole house. So I was thinking as I did it the old fashioned way (mop + floor spray), Swiffers are for lazy people anyway. Then I started thinking about how and why and when we realized we needed such a product, as handy as it is. In the olden days there weren't even floors, be they wood or carpet or what have you. I suppose at some point the introduction of the broom was somewhat radical, and many a back was saved--I know from reading Victorian literature that prior to this point it was hands, knees, and grumbling. Like in Cinderella. So after that,the dustpan was a godsend when you got tired of sweeping the home hearth's dirty all the way to your crewdly-hewn door. THEN after the grime of the Industrial Revolution had settled, we went through a few wars and cars got really big and awful track housing suburbian hell popped up like idential kernals of gabled, picket-fenced corn. Rugs crawled out to the corners and walls and became carpet. Now our workspaces as "traditional females" (where the production of food happened and the cleaning of shared spaces occurred) became more defined and borered. Enter the Swiffer, ideal for cleaning the faux-wood finish of your Americana decor kitchen. You don't have to bend over or strain of anything.

In any case, Titanic is on. Not to be confused with the "original." That's right, before Kate Winslet sweat all over a prepubescent Leo DiCaprio (who wins my respect and possibly my undies with his acting in The Departed years later--What's Eating Gilbert Grape was also great but affected me in a very different way), there was another Titanic. The ending? Same. I'm watching it now, and decided to do a little research. There were actually over a dozen versions made since 1912.

A conversation with Adam while he was up in Chicago visiting David:
"HELLO?!" he screams over a loud racket of drunk people.

"WHAT'RE YOUUUUU DOING??" I yell back, as it seemed like the thing to do.

"DAVID JUST LEFT ME ON A BUS!!"

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING ON A BUS??"

"NO, I'M IN A BAR, DAVID LEFT ON A BUS!! HE LEFT ME ON A BUS!!"

"WHY DID HE LEAVE ON A BUS??"

"WE WERE JUST WALKIN...AND...UH..HE SAID LETS GET ON THAT BUS AND STARTED RUNNING, AND I SAID, HE'S NOT GOING TO GET ON THAT BUS, AND...ow!...ALL OF A SUDDEN HE'S BANGING ON THE WINDOWS OF THE BUS AT ME AS IT GOES BY, AND I COULDN'T...I COULDN'T GET ON THAT BUS SO I'M IN A BAR!!"

I tried not to laugh. It was 5:30 in Chicago.

"WHAT BAR?"

"I DON'T KNOW!!"

"CALL HIM!!

"HE WON'T ANSWER THE PHONE!!"

"DUDE!!"

"WHAT??"

"I CAN'T HEAR YOU AND MY THROAT IS GETTING SORE FROM YELLING, GOOD LUCK!"

In junior league with the devil

Call me stupid--I didn't know what Junior League was til fairly recently. Same goes for Ladies' Auxiliary. Such concepts are lost on a neo-girly tomboy from a small town in the midwest where the richest folks have just multiple cars and newer houses. I still shave my legs and everything, I even enjoy an occasional pedicure or pretty skirt, but this is just out of my realm. In case you're as ignorant as me, such organizations function as a sort of social group hiding behind ridiculous boots and empty wine bottles and talking about how much they do for the community for the real-life well-off white wives from the next town over from Stepford. Maybe that's unfair--just my take.

A few nights ago, I had 2 hours to kill between work and the staff meeting and was planning on spending birthday money on a coat at Kohls (since I lost all of mine in Austin--that's another blog). My boss's wife begged me to go to the Holiday Happening, sponsored by the Junior League of Lubbock. Oh yeah, I said--I remember when that girl came in at work and gave me the tickets to give to you and gave me the poster to put up advertising for said Happening. I deliberately threw that poster behind a desk in the corner. I didn't want to go, but it was my boss's wife, so I did. She lured me with the promise of good food and promised to not be "one of them." The HH has the same basic concept as First Thursday in Austin. It manages to be completely different. For one thing, I have never in my life seen so many things made of pink fuzzy material. Secondly, I do not understand the purpose of live models--in this case, perfectly still women standing on top of big cubes wearing ridiculous and ugly clothing. We know they're not mannequins. The whole concept makes me uncomfortable, and I had to fight off the urge to mess with them. Sidle up and talk about something itchy. Rip an inappropriate noise in close proximity. Something to break up the monotony.

The food was good, I'll give them that. There was a Greek stand, an Italian, Mexican, German, Chinese, and good ole snotty rich people American food. The only people of color I saw at the shindig were those working these stands. Everyone else (mostly women plus a few married shmucks whose ball-lessness led to their being dragged to the function) was deliberate to the point of pain. Deliberate hair, deliberate makeup, jewelry, outfits, boots, manicures, everything. I felt uncomfortable. I felt like I had not spent enouh time attempting perfection. It was a like a huge and indiscriminate sorority for those who were too old for such nonsense. I'm not saying these women aren't nice--I'm saying it's hard to tell under the fakery.

A few days later, a phone confirmed the irony of me being at such an event. Tiffany or some such name said some numbers had been transposed on the silent auction (which was kinda cool--mischief at the Holiday Happening?), and had I bid on a tea kettle? A quilting session? A gift card for Chili's? Clearly, madam, you don't know me.

I did end up winning a 3 month membership to Premier Fitness, but didn't claim my prize, as I didn't have enough money after going out for drinks last night.

Why I set off store alarms.

Oh friends. Where have I been?

Did you know Old Navy jeans set off CVS and Walgreens alarms? I've been setting them off for the last two months, which leads to the obligatory shrug and smile, after which I sometimes throw in a "I'm stealing stuff from outside." It's gone from puzzling to annoying. Tonight Honey and I went to get some chocolate ice cream (it makes us feel better about being broke), and again--beep beep beep. The frumpish cashier said she could think of several reaons why I set them off. As we continue towards the frozen foods, I thought, hey. Wait a minute. What the hell is that supposed to mean? And yes, I had had more than one glass of wine. Mark also thought it was an odd thing to say, and he often accuses me of giving the stink eye unprovoked (it's always provoked). Anyway, when we checked out, Mabel tells us that Old Navy jeans, no kidding, tend to set them off. So do certain kinds of keys. As I was wearing some ON at that very moment, I had to acquiesce. Now I know. Finally. As we were serenaded out by beep beeps, I laughed. It made my night. Fuckin jeans, man.

The job, it's good. The man, he's good. The house, it's looking a lot better. As the old joke whose punchline I can't remember says, "We might be livin on love, but we're killin the chickens."

Happy.

I could do a whole political post, but the wine and the long day are getting to me. 19 days?

Trying to get pics uploaded, we've been at 10% done the entire time it's taken me to type this. It's fall here, rainy and cloudy and sweatshirty.

BRB.

I'm not dead yet!

Right now my life consists of working at work and working on the house, which has turned into a full-scale renovation due to the negligence and downright evil of Amber Ramirez and her boyfriend--if I ever meet you, you're in big trouble. You're lucky I didn't open your mail. How are you going to run up a $3300 electricity bill and skip town? Plus you didn't pay rent the last two months. How you managed to turn this cute little house into a cockroach-infested smelly disgusting pit in a year is beyond me. The neighbors mentioned your abundance of pitbulls and come-and-go traffic at all hours of the night--granted, Lubbock folk are a bit more racy (i.e. racist) than Austinites, but they seem to suggest drug-dealing, albeit not very good dealing considering the stack of debts you left behind. One night while honey and I were painting a red Mustang stalked the driveway for the better part of a half hour. Friend of yours? And you had kids here? Shame.

Anyway.

It's coming along, despite a landlord with no sense of urgency and a bad habit of taking on way too much, mixed with a healthy dose of finding contractors on craiglist who don't like to show up when they're supposed to.

Quick election/political thoughts--I watched 5 minutes of the RNC, all I could stand. Just enough to watch Meg Whitman, former Ebay CEO open for the Bushwannabe McCain. What better way to show how Republicans are primarily rich white folk than have an Ebay CEO speak for you. Her point seemed to be that by voting Rep, you'll get a tax cut (if you're already rich), gas prices will go down (but the initial problem of renewable energy won't be addressed) and doing your taxes will be easier (shit, I did mine online with minimum trouble and I'm a retard when it comes to that kind of thing). Not convinced. At all.


more later, kids.

Shh, Ghost Whisperer is on.

Mary Murphy needs to be put down. The woman screeches louder than my inner child during church. Not that I've been to church in a while. But I have spent hours theorizing and puzzling sitting on the picnic table in the backyard. And that's where it counts.
I apologize for the listyness of my posts as of late. I've sifted through dense, heavy matter for months and years, and can no longer make sweeping points and thematic texts. I feel like skimming the surface, occasionally touching down but mostly flying.
My cat just took a swing at my roommate's cat---HHHHSSSS. Cats are slightly unearthly. I await excitedly for the OE to arrive with my white people Chinese food, and lament over my cable-less-ness. Friends is unfunny, always. The damn remake 90210 commercials are starting to brainwash me to the point where I actually kinda want to see the damn show.

This is my new house:
I heart it. It needs a little work, but I don't mind.
So cute.

I met my friends out on Wednesday at Maudie's, a Tex-Mex place on S. Lamar. After getting lost around Annie Street and then choosing to stay lost to aw over the sweet houses, I came late and just before the tail pieces of Dolly blew in some hot rain. The noise it made on the tin roof sounded like what I imagine leaving sounds like. In a good way. A ready way. The power went out and we switched from frozens to beer, sweating and laughing til it returned an hour later.

That rain brought out the frogs. Toads, rather. They looked too much like the frogs I picked out of a jar of formaldehyde yesterday for my biology class to dissect, all looking upward at me through covered eyes, arms and legs akimbo. About half of them (the kids) bailed after a scissors was required to cut through the sternum, but the remaining ones enfused their pull towards a career in doctoring by examining structures and seeing how things work.

Anyway.

If you can watch all of this video featuring a woman wearing what appears to be a Hefty bag and singing her own "hit" "song," "Hairdresser," I'll give you $10.

What the hell, Charmin?

What the hell, Charmin? Am I supposed to think a post-shit bear would be wiping his entire bear ass and getting bits of TP stuck to it? And am I supposed to worry about this happening to me and hence buy Charmin to avoid this embarrassing situation? Gah. Just horrible and ineffective. These commercials make me physically uncomfortable.

watch dis

Awesome Stop Motion Wall Animation - Watch more free videos

have done essentially nothing all day, except realize how much clothes I have that I don't wear. C's cleared some of her stuff out prior to her Israel move, so I feel inspired to get going on my own packing. two weeks to go.

cause Momma said so

Recent thoughts

1. People with Wii's: don't sue Nintendo for busting your new fancy tv's because you can't hold on to your gamepiece. Just hold on tighter.

2. If the amount of documentation, paperwork, and frustration needed to travel abroad were necessary to get married and people could travel as easily as they could get married, we'd all be a lot better off. Think about it.

3. Wipeout--you piss me off. You're a horrible excuse for an American version of MXC which should never have been touched. On MXC, the games are clever and funny, the contestants are authentic and casually-dressed (and arranged in ironic teams, such as the Organ Donors vs. the Recovering Addicts), and the commentary is rapid-fire English innuendo-laden frivolity that fits seamlessly with Japanese-inspired behavioral hilarity. You just have an impossible, uninspired obstacle course and idiotic contestants with no soul. The play-by-play is unnecessary at best and insulting at worst. Jim Henson, I'm especially disappointed in you.
See the difference?


4. Not to sound self-righteous, but there may just be an 8th circle of hell for those of us who peruse celebrity gossip with the zeal that Rachel Ray attacks her food. There are a lot more important things going on. I'm not saying I'm an expert on these things, but I did say "wow" a few times while Crissy explained the conflict between Palestine and Israel to me, and what might happen if she moves there soon given the US's pendulum swing back to being a non-war country. In a related story, we're running out of land to grow food for all of us on. If we keep going like this, we're gonna be cutting into more rainforest and opening a big can of land ownership issues, in addition to the already-present concern of oxygen supply. 2/3rds of the world's violent conflicts are over land issues. Lot of politics involved. Seems like we have an awful lot of dance/talent/singing/whore competitions going on media-wise (watching my non-cable tv, it seems that way)...

5. I found a sweet little house in L-town for me and honey. Less than 3 weeks til I move...

6. The question of mercy--Does Susan Atkins, killer of pregnant actress Sharon Tate and others in 1969 under the possible brainwashing of Charlie Manson, deserve early release after 37 years in prison, longer than any other female prisoner? She has a few months to live, brain cancer, one leg amputated and the other paralyzed. It costs an awful lot to house a prisoner--1.4 mil so far. Nephew of victim Jason Sebring said, "To sum up these murders in terms of cost efficiency trivializes the victims' lives, and the lifelong impact on the victims' families...there's discussion of dying with dignity.... the notion of dying with dignity is not determined by circumstance, but determined by choice," he told the panel. "Mrs. Atkins should die with dignity while serving out her sentence. My uncle died with dignity in the worst possible situation." It's a tough question. What do you think?

7. Baseball, I hate thee. You are pre-empting my Simpsons. They're playing the first season.

I kissed a girl first.

Dear Katy Perry,

Who do you think you are? May I introduce you to Jill Sobule, 1995? Jerk.



I met Jill, at a club I waitressed at in DFW. She's a button. She kissed me too...on the cheek.

I'm not here to make friends.

the mantra of reality television...


Speaking of reality tv, I'm watching the finale of Hell's Kitchen right now, and I have to admit I'm a bit disappointed Petrozza didn't win. I'm not a regular watcher per se, but I know enough about it to doubt that Kristina, who just graduated, can run a restaurant. I wanted LouRoss to win anyway, but the whole show is so ridiculous and profanity-laden. Kristina's camera confession scene (which came after a dizzying array of suspense-building camera shots for about 45 seconds and a commercial break) consisted of screaming "HOLY FUCKING SHIT!!!" I have to wonder--don't these people realize their grandmas and childhood friends and pastors' wives see all this? I cuss like a sailor, but I try not to be filmed on national television doing it.

Speaking of not making friends, I must vent for just a minute--I've been taking Krav Maga for the last couple weeks, and most of the time I love it. If you haven't heard of it, it's Israeli combat/self-defense. It kicks my ass, my muscles burn, and I leave with my hair soaked and feeling like an old lady. But a tough old lady. Today, I had to pair up with this dykeadelic chick who was, to her credit, a badass. She was however uncoordinated as all hell, and tried to blame my punching for it. I was "doing something weird." Uh huh. I admit I don't always give 100% and I joke around some, but I do work hard. So anyway, we're learning defensive moves and blocks tonight, and she starts blocking my punches with more force than I'm punching with--the point is to defend, you don't have to do it really hard. Plus this is a beginner class. It's essentially non-contact, but sometimes we kinda get physical. So anyway, my forearms are getting bruised like peaches but she doesn't give a shit. Then--she hit me in the face. We were adding combination moves and were supposed to be giving it like 50%--not full on war. I'm tough too, so it wasn't a big deal. Then she did it again. No apology, no oops. The third time she popped me right in the mouth, and I stepped up, towering over her, and said quietly, "Do that again and I'll hit you back. A lot harder." Her sweaty pale face with its set expression of rarrrr fell. I stepped back and put my hands up, ready, but she just stood there. I could see she had been rattled, unnerved. The instructor called us together, gave us a few last tips, and dismissed us, and Blondie hightailed it out of there like her ass was on fire. I resisted the temptation to yell after her, "Yeah you better run, you little bitch!"

I'm a word whore.

But not like a whore whore, cause I won't go home with just any book. More like a high-class literary call girl. I'll cut the booknerd speech short. I'll just tell you about my Half Price Books shopping trip.

I got these:
Light in August--William Faulkner, 1932.
Gods, Graves, and Scholars--C.W. Ceram, 1951.
The Quest for Meaning--William Cooney, 2000.
Dreaming Southern--Linda Bruckheimer, 1999.
Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates--Tom Robbins, 2000.
Media and Society--Michael O'Shaunghnessy and Jane Stadler, 2005.
Vanishings--Library of Curious and Unusual Facts.
Women in 19th Century Europe--Fiona Macdonald, 1999.
Total Cost: $25.18.

Conversation overhead:
"Hey honey, remember your monkey dream? Here's a book that you can look that up in."
Grunt.
"What 'bout Ringer?"
"There's stuff in thar 'bout dogs, too. Look up 'dog.' Under D."
"Oh, it's alphabetical?"

I pulled out my phone to text this to myself for later retrieval. Next the tanktopped, hairy-backed man said to his wife who was parked in front of the astronomy section, "Here, honey, you wanna summon up some spirits?" I let out a half-giggle when she replied, "No, no thank you." I mean, I was standing right there in the religion section across from her, looking at a reject book called, "What's Right, What's Wrong, What's the Difference?" Then her voice kinda changed, and she went on, "I have enough personal demons in my life..." Uncomfortable, I went to a different section.

Filled with book lust, I returned home, trying to choose where to start when another lover (tv) tempted me with a klru documentary--Secrets of the Dead, Battle for the Bible, about the political and religious bloodshed involved in translating versions of the Bible and the roots of modern day religion. I always like it when themes emerge--the reading of stories, my own faith questions, the value attached to objects and texts, our current political climate in the Middle East and religion's place in war.

1380's--the Roman Catholic Church was England and vice-versa. Rituals and readings were performed mindlessly, as they were performed in an ancient language no one really understood. Attempts to translate, publish, or read the Bible in English was heresy, and punishable by death by fire. Forty years prior the Black Plague had wiped out half the population, so obviously that was an act of God. John Whitcliff began a revolution with his Lollards (aka Mutterers) with his message that people could read the bible themselves and the pope was not in fact the sole authority. His followers continued to pass along the banned English version Whitcliff published even after he died--the English church dug up his body and burned it for heresy.

The rest of the story is filled with rebellion, exile, betrayal, divorce-seeking kings, bloodthirsty queens, attempted compromises between Episcopals, Catholics, and Protestants, new bibles and versions, etc, eventually spreading to the new colonies on our side of the ocean, branching out into the many denominations that exist today. According to the Belief-o-matic, I am New Age or neo-Pagan, but I'm not sure if I understood all the questions 100%.
If you're interested: