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.