Saturday, February 23, 2008
My very talented friend Dawn Mitchell will be singing the National Anthem at the Dem Debate in Cleveland. I just wanted to tell you, in case you watch it and you're all like "Wow, that girl's really good, I wonder who she is." Well, I know her, and you have to go through me to get to her. Or go to her Myspace page.
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Happy Valentine's Day, St. Valentine!
I think its important to remember that this is a Catholic holiday, so first of all, you are all suckers :)
Second, let's talk about the Saint. I love saints. I think saints are awesome. The sacrament of Confirmation is awesome because you have to pick a saint to emulate, and there's SO much variety to choose from. I chose St. Lioba because we went to St. Boniface Church at the time, and also because she could stop storms with her hands, which is the shit.
Everyone should own a copy of the Lives Of The Saints. It is as important to understanding Christianity as the Bible.
So I'm going to do my duty here and give you heathens a couple "facts" about St. Valentine.
1)There isn't ONE St. Valentine. There's like twenty of them. Which is why this isn't an official Catholic holiday, because they couldn't figure out which one it was supposed to talking about. There's even a Vietnamese one. We also don't know anything about any of them. There's one very brief Roman legend about a guy who had his head cut off, and that's about it.
2)Chaucer invented the whole romantic Valentine's day thing. Remember Chaucer? He was the bawdy son of bitch who wrote that long unreadable thing you tackled sophomore year of high school? He's the reason you feel inadequate today. Which is pretty impressive, since he was the reason you felt inadequate then too.
3)Like all saints, there are various body parts scattered to the four winds at different churches, and people have parades for them. This is another reason why saints are fucking cool.
4)Chocolate makes you fat. And isn't really the same as being in love, no matter how many times Food Network tells you so.
5)Valentine's Day, like every other Catholic holiday we know, was probably created to counteract a Roman festival called Lupercalia. This was a festival to celebrate the birth of Romulus and Remus. They sacrificed animals, cut their skin into whips, dipped them in blood, then ran around the town flogging women with them to bless them with fertility. They also had a lover's lottery, where all the names of the available young women were put into a box, and whoever you picked, you were paired up with for a year. And E-Harmony was born.
6) Valentine is the second most popular last name for vampires.
7) A really good movie to watch today is Year of the Dog. It'll get your priorities in order.
Happy Valentine's Day War!
Second, let's talk about the Saint. I love saints. I think saints are awesome. The sacrament of Confirmation is awesome because you have to pick a saint to emulate, and there's SO much variety to choose from. I chose St. Lioba because we went to St. Boniface Church at the time, and also because she could stop storms with her hands, which is the shit.
Everyone should own a copy of the Lives Of The Saints. It is as important to understanding Christianity as the Bible.
So I'm going to do my duty here and give you heathens a couple "facts" about St. Valentine.
1)There isn't ONE St. Valentine. There's like twenty of them. Which is why this isn't an official Catholic holiday, because they couldn't figure out which one it was supposed to talking about. There's even a Vietnamese one. We also don't know anything about any of them. There's one very brief Roman legend about a guy who had his head cut off, and that's about it.
2)Chaucer invented the whole romantic Valentine's day thing. Remember Chaucer? He was the bawdy son of bitch who wrote that long unreadable thing you tackled sophomore year of high school? He's the reason you feel inadequate today. Which is pretty impressive, since he was the reason you felt inadequate then too.
3)Like all saints, there are various body parts scattered to the four winds at different churches, and people have parades for them. This is another reason why saints are fucking cool.
4)Chocolate makes you fat. And isn't really the same as being in love, no matter how many times Food Network tells you so.
5)Valentine's Day, like every other Catholic holiday we know, was probably created to counteract a Roman festival called Lupercalia. This was a festival to celebrate the birth of Romulus and Remus. They sacrificed animals, cut their skin into whips, dipped them in blood, then ran around the town flogging women with them to bless them with fertility. They also had a lover's lottery, where all the names of the available young women were put into a box, and whoever you picked, you were paired up with for a year. And E-Harmony was born.
6) Valentine is the second most popular last name for vampires.
7) A really good movie to watch today is Year of the Dog. It'll get your priorities in order.
Happy Valentine's Day War!
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
You are not Dick Goddard and I'm going to stop asking you to be
One of the most consistent things about living in Cleveland is that everyone is constantly talking about the Weather. And of course everyone always mentions how much the Weather changes, how finicky it is, what's it going to do next time?! The Weather is more popular than Project Runway.
Yesterday was supposed to be some hellish insane global warming type blizzard. The local news had me all keyed up even before I woke up. I was afraid to go to work. When I got to work, the constant question was "what's it like outside" anytime someone came into their shift. Never mind that I work in a GLASS building, and we can see outside from anywhere on the floor. Or that the highway is RIGHT THERE, so we can see how traffic is moving.
The best part is how biased everyone is. The first person told me it was "AWFUL". The next person to come in said "It's really coming down!" Mary came in at 3pm, and told me "It's not so bad." Terrance didn't even come in because he was stuck in traffic. At this point I'm leaving in an hour and I'm picturing myself stuck on 90 in whiteout conditions for three hours. Finally, right before I leave, Dave tells me that it's freezing rain and everything is super icy now. GREAT.
I got out of the building, and I drove home fine. It wasn't even snowing. There was not very much accumulation. It wasn't icy at all.
This brings me to my point. I'm no longer asking other people what it looks like outside. I am no longer reading the news predictions. I am ONLY going to look at radar pictures myself and draw my own conclusions. This I SWEAR. I will be the Clevelander who never talks about our vaulted idol, WEATHER. If I get struck down by lightning, at least I won't see it coming.
PS I realized this morning that this means I will no longer have anything to talk about with co-workers. So I think I'll replace our Weather Weekend chatter with obtuse and uniformly insensitive jokes about all the candidates.
Yesterday was supposed to be some hellish insane global warming type blizzard. The local news had me all keyed up even before I woke up. I was afraid to go to work. When I got to work, the constant question was "what's it like outside" anytime someone came into their shift. Never mind that I work in a GLASS building, and we can see outside from anywhere on the floor. Or that the highway is RIGHT THERE, so we can see how traffic is moving.
The best part is how biased everyone is. The first person told me it was "AWFUL". The next person to come in said "It's really coming down!" Mary came in at 3pm, and told me "It's not so bad." Terrance didn't even come in because he was stuck in traffic. At this point I'm leaving in an hour and I'm picturing myself stuck on 90 in whiteout conditions for three hours. Finally, right before I leave, Dave tells me that it's freezing rain and everything is super icy now. GREAT.
I got out of the building, and I drove home fine. It wasn't even snowing. There was not very much accumulation. It wasn't icy at all.
This brings me to my point. I'm no longer asking other people what it looks like outside. I am no longer reading the news predictions. I am ONLY going to look at radar pictures myself and draw my own conclusions. This I SWEAR. I will be the Clevelander who never talks about our vaulted idol, WEATHER. If I get struck down by lightning, at least I won't see it coming.
PS I realized this morning that this means I will no longer have anything to talk about with co-workers. So I think I'll replace our Weather Weekend chatter with obtuse and uniformly insensitive jokes about all the candidates.
Monday, February 11, 2008
So Sundays nights are fast becoming my connection with Popular America. I make a wholesome turkey dinner with my boyfriend, we spend the day drinking, and then the crowning moment is 9pm, Iron Chef America. It's a testament to how much Fox TV sucks now that I really feel Iron Chef America is where my crowd is. Used to be Simpsons and X-Files, now its Cora vs. Stupak and I'm all "Holy Shit, Stupak! Awesome!" I know the win/loss records of the Iron Chefs. I remember when Alton says the same fact twice for the same secret ingredient. I am mostly able to guess the secret ingredients based on the time of the year, unless there's no holiday, in which case its probably fish.
But the best part is that while watching Iron Chef, I can secretly watch the crappy shows on the network channels. Like, last week was the Super Bowl. And this week it was the Grammys! Yay the Grammys! America really needs a justifiable reason to see Cyndi Lauper and Hannah Montana in the same frame, interacting! Also to hear that Alicia Keyes song one more fucking time. With John Mayer coming out for a guitar solo, like he's some sort of guitar bad-ass. Remember when we all wrote off John Mayer as crappy but harmless? It's come back to haunt us, we weren't vocal enough in our hatred. This is why we have forums and Pitchfork Magazine, to uphold TASTE. Wake up indie America, we need your generalized hostility! What have you been doing since the last Bright Eyes album? Oh that's right, you're watching Iron Chef. And thinking about how much you'd fucking love a mixer like that. This is why My Chemical Romance is considered a "serious" band now.
I read a very creepy article in the NY Times this morning about whether or not fetuses feel pain. This isn't a new debate of course, but I did learn a couple new facts. Like, for instance, when a fetus feels a scalpel, it recoils. Oh, and ALSO that up until VERY RECENTLY, they didn't use anesthesia on newborns who needed surgery? THAT scares me. I mean, I'm passively anti-abortion, so I kinda think it doesn't make a difference if the fetus feels pain in the womb, cause you're killing it anyway. But a newborn? That's so sick, and so creepy, and gives me that weird "oh my god, history is so not far from over" feeling. You know, the one you get when you realize that people still happily consume Yellow dye #5 with no afterthoughts, and they still think blind people are also retarded? It's an Upton Sinclair sort of thing.
It's very cold. Blindingly cold. The type of cold that makes me feel like a moron for thinking human beings are meant to survive in this climate. But that makes us all morons, cause we've been living North for millennium. My stupid ancestors leached all the melanin out of their legs to live in the ice and the snow. I have albino legs because it was really really important to live where there's no sunlight and lots of freezing rain, preferably a swamp. Why can't human beings learn to not live in swamps? Why do we have this thing for it? Living in a swamp automatically shortens your life span by thirty years.
I've fallen on my ass four times in two days, and I'm having lots of fun leaving my car doors unlocked because I'm afraid I won't be able to get back in. I wonder how high car thefts rise in the winter? I wonder if someone will steal my car? I wonder if they will also lock themselves out and not be able to get the gas cap open for two days? Bully for them! That's a dedicated car thief. Or a very desperate homeless person.
When its this cold, all I can think of are the dogs and cats freezing to death outside. I walk around in a constant nightmare picturing it. It's the worst thing I go through every year.
But the best part is that while watching Iron Chef, I can secretly watch the crappy shows on the network channels. Like, last week was the Super Bowl. And this week it was the Grammys! Yay the Grammys! America really needs a justifiable reason to see Cyndi Lauper and Hannah Montana in the same frame, interacting! Also to hear that Alicia Keyes song one more fucking time. With John Mayer coming out for a guitar solo, like he's some sort of guitar bad-ass. Remember when we all wrote off John Mayer as crappy but harmless? It's come back to haunt us, we weren't vocal enough in our hatred. This is why we have forums and Pitchfork Magazine, to uphold TASTE. Wake up indie America, we need your generalized hostility! What have you been doing since the last Bright Eyes album? Oh that's right, you're watching Iron Chef. And thinking about how much you'd fucking love a mixer like that. This is why My Chemical Romance is considered a "serious" band now.
I read a very creepy article in the NY Times this morning about whether or not fetuses feel pain. This isn't a new debate of course, but I did learn a couple new facts. Like, for instance, when a fetus feels a scalpel, it recoils. Oh, and ALSO that up until VERY RECENTLY, they didn't use anesthesia on newborns who needed surgery? THAT scares me. I mean, I'm passively anti-abortion, so I kinda think it doesn't make a difference if the fetus feels pain in the womb, cause you're killing it anyway. But a newborn? That's so sick, and so creepy, and gives me that weird "oh my god, history is so not far from over" feeling. You know, the one you get when you realize that people still happily consume Yellow dye #5 with no afterthoughts, and they still think blind people are also retarded? It's an Upton Sinclair sort of thing.
It's very cold. Blindingly cold. The type of cold that makes me feel like a moron for thinking human beings are meant to survive in this climate. But that makes us all morons, cause we've been living North for millennium. My stupid ancestors leached all the melanin out of their legs to live in the ice and the snow. I have albino legs because it was really really important to live where there's no sunlight and lots of freezing rain, preferably a swamp. Why can't human beings learn to not live in swamps? Why do we have this thing for it? Living in a swamp automatically shortens your life span by thirty years.
I've fallen on my ass four times in two days, and I'm having lots of fun leaving my car doors unlocked because I'm afraid I won't be able to get back in. I wonder how high car thefts rise in the winter? I wonder if someone will steal my car? I wonder if they will also lock themselves out and not be able to get the gas cap open for two days? Bully for them! That's a dedicated car thief. Or a very desperate homeless person.
When its this cold, all I can think of are the dogs and cats freezing to death outside. I walk around in a constant nightmare picturing it. It's the worst thing I go through every year.
Saturday, February 9, 2008
Corporate thoughts
True, I have only been in the corporate world two years. No one would say that I've paid my dues. I haven't even paid the interest on my dues. I don't even know what my dues are, what the fuck does that mean? No club wants me, except maybe the old man sweater club.
Anyway, corporate life has convinced me that I need a job where I am under no obligation to convince anyone of anything. No selling. No tracking co-workers performance or getting them to participate in contests. No selling myself to every junior manager I meet. No convincing customers they should pay 500 dollars a month for insurance they will never use.
There have to be jobs like this that pay as much as my measly no degree position. But if I work in a factory, I'll lose an extremity. And if I move to the country and work on a farm, it's smelly and constantly under threat of attack from rats.
Everyone's "career" is under attack these days, but in the same way that my mildly retarded brain is incapable of doing math and remembering card games, I am also unable to visualize futures. This has been brought to me as a reason for every failure in my life - no degree, no savings, no weight loss. Can't visualize the future, have no five year ten year twenty year plan. But you know what it also does for me? It keeps me young and relatively stress free. There are always some stresses - no money, no degree, no weight loss. HOWEVER I am not stressed about succeeding! Not stressed about buying a house! Not stressed about losing my job! Not stressed about growing old and getting diabetes like every other fat old person in America!
This leaves me plenty of room in my head to think about how the labels "Republican" and "Democrat" are like Transformers names. Say that last one a few times, slowly. DEM-O-CRATS
RE-PUB-LI-CANS
Who made these names up? They are too comic bookie, too Worlds of Warcraft to be taken seriously. It's like after the Civil War, the guys were just milling around, missing the competition and boyish fun of the battlefield, and they needed some sort of RPG to take their mind off things like Europe and black people. So somebody is all like, "Hey, I'm forming a club, we're the Democrats! It's like Aristocrats, but catchy!". And then the other guys who weren't invited were all like, "fuck you, you pansy intellectual snobs. We're the Republicans! Log Cabins and Hard Cider!"
Here is a list of all the political parties in Albania that have representation in parliament and do not have the word Democrat or Republican in them:
I am partial to the third one, the Socialist Movement for Integration. Integration into what? Who cares? Why do you need to know? Have a curry. Chill. The Integration will be over before you know it.
Anyway, corporate life has convinced me that I need a job where I am under no obligation to convince anyone of anything. No selling. No tracking co-workers performance or getting them to participate in contests. No selling myself to every junior manager I meet. No convincing customers they should pay 500 dollars a month for insurance they will never use.
There have to be jobs like this that pay as much as my measly no degree position. But if I work in a factory, I'll lose an extremity. And if I move to the country and work on a farm, it's smelly and constantly under threat of attack from rats.
Everyone's "career" is under attack these days, but in the same way that my mildly retarded brain is incapable of doing math and remembering card games, I am also unable to visualize futures. This has been brought to me as a reason for every failure in my life - no degree, no savings, no weight loss. Can't visualize the future, have no five year ten year twenty year plan. But you know what it also does for me? It keeps me young and relatively stress free. There are always some stresses - no money, no degree, no weight loss. HOWEVER I am not stressed about succeeding! Not stressed about buying a house! Not stressed about losing my job! Not stressed about growing old and getting diabetes like every other fat old person in America!
This leaves me plenty of room in my head to think about how the labels "Republican" and "Democrat" are like Transformers names. Say that last one a few times, slowly. DEM-O-CRATS
RE-PUB-LI-CANS
Who made these names up? They are too comic bookie, too Worlds of Warcraft to be taken seriously. It's like after the Civil War, the guys were just milling around, missing the competition and boyish fun of the battlefield, and they needed some sort of RPG to take their mind off things like Europe and black people. So somebody is all like, "Hey, I'm forming a club, we're the Democrats! It's like Aristocrats, but catchy!". And then the other guys who weren't invited were all like, "fuck you, you pansy intellectual snobs. We're the Republicans! Log Cabins and Hard Cider!"
Here is a list of all the political parties in Albania that have representation in parliament and do not have the word Democrat or Republican in them:
- Environmentalist Agrarian Party (Partia Agrare Ambientaliste)
- Movement for Solidarity -
- Socialist Movement for Integration (Lëvizja Socialiste për Intigrim)
- Socialist Party of Albania (Partia Socialiste e Shqipërisë)
- Unity for Human Rights Party (Partia Bashkimi për të Drejtat e Njeriut)
I am partial to the third one, the Socialist Movement for Integration. Integration into what? Who cares? Why do you need to know? Have a curry. Chill. The Integration will be over before you know it.
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
Happy Super Tuesday!
Or as one article on young people voting called it... Super DUPER Tuesday!
My weekend consisted of getting drunk often enough, and then Sunday I got very depressed by the Patriots loss. Not that I watched the game. In fact, all I saw of the game were the few minutes I caught during Iron Chef commercials. But some people root for the underdogs...and some people don't. I don't. Underdogs are called that because they are not as good as the top dogs. And I really wanted them to have a perfect run, it would have been so mythical and frankly, transcendent. But I guess tragedies make good stories too.
My mother got back from Honduras, and promptly came down with a killer cold, which I think is some rare tropical disease she probably contracted from being around so many dying species. Or the orphans. Anyway, I now have the disease as well, and I will be making out my will soon, so time to suck up. I know you all have your eye on my CD collection of indie bands from 2003-04, or my amazing paperback collection of Hercule Poirot novels. And lets not forget my bags of "really cool clothes I found at a thrift store that will someday fit me". There's some gems in there.
Or as one article on young people voting called it... Super DUPER Tuesday!
My weekend consisted of getting drunk often enough, and then Sunday I got very depressed by the Patriots loss. Not that I watched the game. In fact, all I saw of the game were the few minutes I caught during Iron Chef commercials. But some people root for the underdogs...and some people don't. I don't. Underdogs are called that because they are not as good as the top dogs. And I really wanted them to have a perfect run, it would have been so mythical and frankly, transcendent. But I guess tragedies make good stories too.
My mother got back from Honduras, and promptly came down with a killer cold, which I think is some rare tropical disease she probably contracted from being around so many dying species. Or the orphans. Anyway, I now have the disease as well, and I will be making out my will soon, so time to suck up. I know you all have your eye on my CD collection of indie bands from 2003-04, or my amazing paperback collection of Hercule Poirot novels. And lets not forget my bags of "really cool clothes I found at a thrift store that will someday fit me". There's some gems in there.
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