Thursday, February 24, 2005

brotherly love

little brother: hey sis, how's the weather?
sister: the weather is bad. you're obviously watching the news.
little brother: yeah, it was so cool, we saw some woman's pool fall into the neighbor's house.
sister: yeah, real cool. you sure know cool when you see cool. hey wait, aren't you supposed to be in canada right now?
little brother: yeah! we're here. it's awesome!
sister: and you're calling me from your cellphone?
little brother: yeah, i love this phone!
sister: you're calling me... from canada... from your cellphone?
little brother: yup
sister: are you by any chance, roaming?
little brother: hey... yeah.
sister: so you're making an international call... while roaming... while you're in peak hours?
::pause::
little brother: shit. i have to go.
::click::

::ring ring::

sister: hello?
little brother: dude... please don't tell mom.
::click::

something tells me mom will find out about this one...
sidenote: while typing this entry i kept putting bother instead of brother... i wonder what this means

Tuesday, February 22, 2005

my pants are sopping wet and i am angry

i will never again wish for rain in southern california. now that we have more rain than SEATTLE and houses are literally falling into the ocean i have decided to give up "wishing" for lent. i've posted cute little stories about lost shoes and wading to work but we're past the point of cute.

the post department is not only forced to work on the second floor- a place where all the windows are tinted gray and there are COCKROACHES hidden in the corners, but we have to park across the street in the evil parking lot of death. the said parking lot is about two inches wide and ten feet long and THEY make us cram about fifty-seven cars in there while THEY valet park in the spacious lot below the building. after leaving your car in the Parking Lot of Death, you still have to play frogger while you cross four steady lanes of traffic. not only do we not have health insurance but THEY can't even give us a crosswalk!

i can assure you everyone working here is bitter for a host of reasons, but the parking lot just brings us that much closer to commiting acts only deranged postal workers should have to commit. i wouldn't be so outraged if my pants weren't soaking wet and hair wasn't turning into its natural scary-white-girl afro. the street in front of our building floods on a regular basis and employees of the second floor usually plan ahead. we bring golashes, use plastic bags and learn to jump amazing distances. it's usually an exercise in creativity. USUALLY. but now it's personal. i know there are spots open in the nice underneath garage. two people just left the company and no one has been hired to take their place. i took a special trip upstairs to ask about garage spots and a very DRY executive had the gall to look at my sopping wet clothes and tell me the lot was full. my ass it's full! "you're probably asking because you have hypothermia" she said with a giggle, her DRY little dog nipping at my ankles. "maybe we can get you a spot when we move". when we move! when we move ! that's a month away and the rain is never going to stop! never ever ever ever ever! this is the apocalypse!

::sigh::
dude, be careful what you wish for.

Friday, February 18, 2005

Become an Esteemed Intellect of the Italian Renaissance!

It's easy! This is all you need to do:

1) Be a man. Women who read are shrews and whores.

2) Come from an ancient aristocratic family that has fallen on hard times, so that you can understand the common people, yet treat them all with condescension.

3) Study law until you realize it's really boring, and then give in to your political and literary ambitions. During this time it is best to be a profligate youth. You should try, if possible, to fall in love with a married woman with whom you have no actual interaction whatsoever, so that you may celebrate her perfection in sonnet form, unsullied by, you know, a relationship of any kind. Best to pick someone who will die while still reasonably pretty.

4) Get forced to flee from somewhere. Being banished from Florence is popular, but Rome will do. This is best done by publishing metrical epistles to the Pope in which you state that the Pope's soul "is already in hell while his body on earth is controlled by Satan." Very effective. Also: always pick the losing faction in a struggle for control of the government. Seething bitterness and extraordinary self-righteousness are great motivations for writing.

5) While in exile, come under the influence of a Great Thinker (dead or alive). Give away your fortune and renounce your mistress(es). Burn the sonnets you wrote about that pretty dead lady.

6) You now have four options:
(A) Catch the plague and die.
(B) Become a monk and die shortly thereafter, before you have really done much; if you choose this, be sure to show sufficient early promise.
(C) Become a monk but continue to father illegtimate children.
(D) Retire to your villa and write a very long history of something. Really anything, as long as it is based on Herotodus or Livy. Then die.

Optional embellishments include nagging a city until its citizens offer you a crown of laurels for being Best Poet Since Dante, writing autobiographical pieces in which you make no mention of any of your vices (i.e. having those bastard children after joining the ranks of the Holy Church), going grey at a very, very early age, and writing poetry that later historians will say is an "epic bore".

Please understand that your name will live on mainly through being printed in bold letters in ninth-grade textbooks and you will basically be known for your one hit single, which will be acknowledged only with demeaning qualifiers. For example: "He won a Lifetime Achievement Award in the category of Works For Italian Theater Written Between 1250 and 1550 By Tall, Handsome-Though-Prematurely-Grey Men From Middle-Class Families With Pretend Lovers Who Were Once Profligate Youths In Law School And At One Time Also Had A Small Dog Named Franco."

You should also realize that position of Best Poet Ever will be taken by Shakespeare and held indefinitely, so there's really no need to try that hard. In short, this is a no-pressure kind of club and you should feel free to be as misogenystic, egotistical, and morally dubious as you please. Don't pull a muscle wrestling against vanity or the sins of the flesh; your reputation will largely be carried by Da Vinci anyway.

Tuesday, February 15, 2005

frustrant

things that currently anger me:
i live in southern california.
i live in southern california and for some reason the heat is constantly running in my apartment.
i live in southern california and i can walk outside in a t-shirt WHY THE HELL IS THE HEAT ON IN MY APARTMENT.
i live in southern california and i get called a "fucking bitch" for turning the heat off in the apartment. who DOES that?
my absolute inability to parallel park.
my absolute inability to meanuever my car in the "reverse" position. i was at a gas station and everything was full except one pump but it was the cheapest gas i could find so i went to the free pump even though i had to BACK into the spot. it took like four tries for my brain to process which direction i needed to turn the wheel. you could see fear in the other drivers eyes as i pulled forward and had to try AGAIN. what's wrong with me?
the fact that my tofu never cooks right. should it be this mushy on the inside? do i need to charbroil it or something? i'm almost positive flame-cooked tofu is the answer. hand me my blowtorch.
i cannot find a post office where i can mail my valentine's day presents. saturday: post office closed due to a power outage. sunday: all post offices closed. monday: post offices close at 5:00, who knew? tuesday: post office i was going to vist on monday was actually demolished a week ago. this is getting out of hand.
a spider drowned in my shower. this should have served as a warning to the EARWIG that camped out all night behind my shampoo bottle (doesn't anyone read this blog?). i even checked for this vile beast before i got in. i am not a cold-blooded killer but if you are going to sit like a COWARD behind a tube of brilliant brunett you deserve to die. darwin approves.
i put my license plates on all by myself. i put the front one on and realized, wow, i'm missing the back one. where could it be? oh wait, yes, i think i screwed them both onto the front. so much for saving time by doing it right the first time.
my mother is a lunatic. i hope she finds happiness before she ruins all our lives.
chocolate is good. it's so good i stopped at vons to buy a bag on my way home. it's so good i had to eat half the bag in the car. whoops.
i ran 189 stairs 5 times to counteract the half bag of chocolate i ate and now i can't walk. i look absolutely deranged whenever i try to go down the stairs because my calves sieze up and i feel compelled to roll the rest of the way. such issues...

Sunday, February 13, 2005

Dream

Last night was the first night in a long time that I haven't woken up at least three times for whatever reason (it seems usually to have something to do with trying to save myself from being smothered by or getting hyperthermia from my monstrously huge comforter). So finally I get some real sleep, and this is what my REM cycle brings me:

The library is a department store. I still work behind the desk in the reserve room. It is going on as usual. Then this kid turns in a book and I go put it away. Then Rebecca comes in and tells me I am doing something wrong, and I realize, oh no, I have shelved that 600-page biography with the Gummi Worms! So I have to slip out of the reserve room without Rebecca noticing and run to get the book from the library's candy section. On the way I pass clothes racks, linens, and parents with strollers containing very cute children. When I reach the book, there's a kid there who wanted to eat it but his father explains to him that it is there by mistake. It is not a Gummi Book.

Then, as I'm walking back to the reserve room, I realize the place is crawling with FBI agents who are dressed like a SWAT team (yes, I realize that's like saying ATM machine) but are carrying Storm Trooper guns. They all kind of point their guns at me as I pass and I see that they are in fact toys with little flashing lights where the laser should shoot out.

When I get back to the desk, I discover that Dana Scully has dropped in. I guess something weird was going on and she was trying to help, but then she told us we should restrain her because she was about to lose her mind or something. (It is this kind of foresight and common sense that might have made certain X-Files episodes more believable.) I am suddenly inside the reserve room with her and various co-workers when an alien craft lands outside the desk and, while we are distracted with Scully, nabs one of our reserve desk patrons.

At that point I started laughing in the dream and then I woke up.

Monday, February 07, 2005

Gaudiam et utilis indeed.

In the words of plasticann, the following is a reconstructed conversation between me and my Latin professor, whose anonymity we shall preserve by calling him Ernie:

Me: Hey, Mr. Ernie, do you happen to by any chance possibly still have Life of Brian out of the library?
Ernie: Yeah.
Me: What, seriously? For three months? Five months? Since October?

Ernie looks taken aback.

Ernie: I really don't go to the library. I have research assistants.
Me: Well they failed you.
Ernie: Well, it was probably me. You could have seen it at the Bardovan, they were showing it.
Me: I don't have a car.
Ernie: You have feet.
Me: To the Bardovan? People get mugged on the path to the THs!

Brief pause.

Ernie: Do not fear the world.



It turns out that by returning Ernie's movie for him, I have saved him the indignity of getting the price of the movie removed from his paycheck. For Life of Brian. I mean, how embarrassing. I should get an A for this.

Wednesday, February 02, 2005

"beverly glen" or "how to maximize your mileage"

i've always had a terrible sense of direction. i panic as soon as i think i'm lost and i'm almost always lost so i spend a lot of car time sweating and shaking and going over landmarks in my head. being lost in small town upstate new york is not a big deal... being lost in boston is a bigger deal. as soon as i got to boston and realized the entire infrastructure was based on bovine feeding patterns i almost cried. what kind of city paves cow paths?! i spent the whole summer getting to places hours after my estimated time of arrival, dangerously close to a mental breakdown, muttering to friends that i would be camped out in their apartment until the train opened in the morning.

things changed a little when i moved to los angeles. the rental car was a challenge, but we crossed that bridge and i found i had a pretty decent sense of north, south, east west. too far west, you're in the ocean... too far east... you're in one of those other states, too far south, mexico, north... the valley. not too hard. of course with my new apartment there is no good way to get to work. either i have to take the hellishly congested excuse for a freeway called the 405 or else take a curvy, scary canyon road all the way up to the top, pray that i don't launch myself off a cliff, and somehow manage not to hit anyone when i get to the parking lot. that's a lot of pressure before 9:30 in the morning. this is the reason i usually brave the 405 and inch along some road in the valley until i reach the parking lot of death.

the other night i was fed up with the stupid freeway and decided to take a road called "beverly glen". sounds nice and sweet, like fern gully or something, right? this road cuts all the way down to my apartment. it's practically door to door service if you survive. i twisted and i turned and i made it down the canyon and i was so proud of myself! yeah! no death! of course the party stopped when i reached the intersection of sunset and beverly glen. now, all the signs say "beverly glen right lane" but what they really mean is "beverly glen, right lane, then please haul your ass across four lanes to get into the left lane so you can make the actual turn: we sincerely hope you got that from the sign". i always miss this turn... always. it's a mental road block. so, as usual, i found myself in a boston-like situation where i didn't really know where i was or where i was going or how to get back to a road that actually led to my apartment. my first instinct was to return to beverly glen. i was like a homing pigeon without an actual sense of direction.

i took a road called hilgard (sounds like a not-so-fierce viking warrior, this should have been my first clue that i was making a mistake) hilgard took me to rochester street which i knew crossed beverly somewhere so i took it, but it curved and i was on something else and the i was on national and i crossed wilshire so i knew i was going the wrong way and i took veteran to get back and then all of a sudden, i was back on sunset! what?! how?! who?! i have no idea how the hell i got where i was going. eventually i got back to beverly glen and made it home. this was two hours later. i was shaking and sweating. i have vowed never to drive again. who wants to let me crash at their apartment until the train opens up?