Thursday, April 28, 2005

my new-found inability to sleep

hi, my name is ivan and i'm an insomniac. yes, i'm tired. no i cannot sleep. no i haven't had any caffeine. no, i haven't been taking speed. no, no cocaine either. i have eaten a crap load of red vines, but i doubt that has anything to do with sleep deprivation. i'm feeling rather mean. let me tell you what i'm going to do if i go another day without a few more hours of quality sleep. first off, i'm going to tell the night editor to fuck off and then tell him he makes me want to jam a pencil through my forehead and then i'm going to jam a pencil through his forehead. how's that for diversion. it's gonna be great. next, i'm going to adopt the cat that lives outside my apartment. the only thing that's been keeping me from doing this is the allergic roommate, the one who just announced he's moving out. wow, wait, this person has just proved himself inconsiderate and annoying. what's that you hear? purring? wow, it's nice to have animals in the house. you know what else makes me want to jam pencils through things. eggs. fried eggs. i can't flip them without breaking the yolk. anger. i feel anger. my cat is meowing. did i mention it's nice to have an animal in the apartment? it is. i can't think any more. there are more things that i want to be mean about, i just can't remember them. i'll address them tomorrow during all the hours i'm awake, not sleeping, not drinking caffeine, eating red vines, trying in vain to flip eggs and petting my cat.

Monday, April 25, 2005

Anybody want a peanut?

In professor's office with professor's three-year-old son:

Professor: Watch this. He just makes stuff up. What rhymes with book?
Kid: Pook.
Professor: What rhymes with hair?
Kid: Mair.
Professor: What rhymes with Avignon?
Kid: Ma-uh-mabavingyon?
Professor: Yeah. He's exploring the language.

Sunday, April 24, 2005

this totally counts as a post on account of its being pretty. eh?

because woman cannot live on cookies alone

i'm pretending to be a morning person. maybe someday i will join the ranks of the uber-healthy, early-risers; that special group of people who don't consider cookies and diet coke a real meal... but for now i am content to pretend. my new weekend sleep schedule leaves me totally alone and terribly alert in the wee hours of the morning so i've taken to hanging out with bonafide morning people while i run stairs at 6am. my other early morning activities include rollerblading, beaching, reading, reading, reading, watching tv, calling people on the east coast (my mother actually thinks i wake up this early) and ::drumroll please:: going to work. no, star trek was not the height of my dorkiness. i actually went into work this morning so i could play on the avid all by myself.

but i was not alone. an editor arrived shortly after i did and said he was going to seven-eleven for some breakfast. climbing stairs made me very hungry so i put in an order for "something substantial... i will accept a hot pocket or some cookies". i trusted the him to return with something edible. i knew there was trouble when he gave me back all my money and said "i went out on a limb, you don't have to pay for this". he handed me (very tenatively) a hot dog box. by now it was at least 10:30, so a hot dog was an odd, but totally acceptable purchase. when i opened the box, i was greeted not by an oscar meyer product, but by a giant turd. "it's a cheeseburger dog... i know. it looks like i scraped it out of the backyard". yes, editor friend, you managed to purchase something looking exactly like excrement. why? he stuttered for a bit and failed to find an acceptable answer, so i ate the thing. it had cheese whiz on the inside. a turd filled with processed cheese. who thought that was a good idea? i finished mine and looked at him, and keep in mind this is a 38-year-old bachelor who consumes fast food like its his job, and he looked back at me and rejected the burger/turd dog! after i ate the whole thing, he turned and threw his in the trash! i thought we were team! then he looked at me with a mix of awe and disgust. "your stomach must be stronger than mine," he said. and he's probably right. i spent a whole month of college eating nothing but ramen noodles and freeze pops. and this is the exact reason i am only pretending to be a morning person. cookies and diet coke will always be a meal to me and seven-eleven purchases are a welcome breakfast. long live the turd dog and down with 6am workouts.

Thursday, April 21, 2005

the tape librarian formerly known as intern

yes, this whole post will be devoted to righting wrongs related to the the tape librarian formerly known as intern whom i will refer to as"intern" for this whole post, just because i can. you probably remember the intern from such posts as "dear intern, stop telling us you're going to bring a keg to work. you are such a liar and i am sick of getting my hopes up." and "dear intern, we should have let you drown on lankershim boulevard because you are too tall and take up way too much space in the back of the civic", or the most recent post "dear intern, why can't you understand how freakin' good cookies are". I stand by those last two posts, but the intern has requested, no demanded, that i print a retraction on the keg post. his exact words were "...I keep my word. I expect a retraction in the blog". and they say i have an attitude at work. this whole "full time employee" thing has really gone to his head. but i do retract the keg post. the intern left me a heineken "keg can" in the bottom drawer of his desk. joy! what a good intern. and for this one small act of awesomeness, i will forever after refer to him as "that guy who can't seem to organize the tapes and used to be an intern". upgrade!

Wednesday, April 20, 2005

that special moment when you realize just how dorky you are

so i was flipping channels yesterday and realized my new schedule allows me to watch like, eight hours of star trek "the next generation" a day. imagine my delight. i've always kept my trekkie-ness on the down low because no one likes an out and out levar burton fan, and frankly there's no need for anyone to know how traumatized i was when tasha was eaten by that scary black goo. so i'm watching yesterday and i'm totally overjoyed because it's an episode that i somehow haven't seen and Q is on and bad things happen when Q is on the enterprise and all of a sudden jean luc makes Q mad! jean luc, what the hell are you thinking! Q's powerful! even whoopie goldberg is like, dude, picard, don't go there, and Q snaps his fingers and BAM, they're in another galaxy, light-years from where they should be. son of a bitch. what to do. so they're poking around the galaxy and all of a sudden they come to a new "planet" and data is describing it and all of a sudden they throw it on screen and it's THE BORG. and i'm like, why aren't they running?! what's going on?! no, don't probe them! no, no, don't hail them! and i realize, i'm actually yelling at the screen. wow. yes. the neighbors are probably wondering why i kept screaming, TURN BACK, DON'T YOU KNOW RESISTANCE IS FUTILE with such urgency. well, i suppose there's a chance they understand. i mean, if the enterprise is taken over by a colony of evil, same-minded, partial robots today it means there's absolutely nothing to do tomorrow at two o'clock. and i would almost rather sit through tasha getting eaten again than have that happen.

Monday, April 18, 2005

a gaggle of goats

why must texans talk so slow? i understand by living in texas they've never been exposed to things like literature, history and cars without F-150 logos, but this is no excuse! if i can accelerate your voice to double it's normal speed and still hear you drawling along YOU HAVE A PROBLEM. on the east coast they call it a speech impediment. spit it out! t-t-today, junior! ARGH! i can speak to you freely about the evils of texas because the first episode of our kick-ass reality show premiered last week. what?! you didn't watch it?! how could you miss such an exciting television event?! you are no longer my friend! ...actually i forgot it was on too, but as of episode seven, i think i actually get a credit! do i want my name associated with a show that forced eight of its contestants milk goats? well, we all know how i feel about goats, so of course. you can't have reservations about a show with goats. and if you accelerate the sound of a goat to twice its normal speed it resembles a satanic munchkin on helium. what's not to like about that? it's better than the texans. satanic munchkin on downers. laaaaaattttteeeeerrrrr yyyyaaaaallllllllllll.

Wednesday, April 13, 2005

work! sleep! cookies!

i apologize to all three of our readers (four including katie) for not blogging in a long long time. i switched to the graveyard shift and though this brings me great personal and professional satisfaction, i've learned that the internal clock is not a forgiving thing. i have spent the last two weeks doing almost nothing but sleeping, working and eating cookies. i told this to the tape librarian formerly known as intern and he said it sounded like a terrible life. i thought it over and took the time to explain that the number of cookies i have consumed easily cancels out the bitterness i feel for my complete lack of a social life. i also have no energy to exercise or read. in my non-working hours i lay (lay? lie? lye?) in bed and think about all the things i could accomplish if i didn't sleep for 2/3 of the day. but don't worry about me yet- save your words of hope and wisdom for next week- that's when the oreos go back to full price.

Monday, April 11, 2005

A Spiffing Wheeze

I don't want to give the impression that I don't have anything to do, but I cannot conceal that I just spent half an hour playing around on the BBC's creative writing website. At this fount of wisdom I learned a lot of useless stuff about copyright laws in the UK, but that is beside the point. The point is that I took a quiz on grammar and at the end I was told: "You are in touch with the positive forms of grammatical energy within you and you have discovered a new and exciting concept of your Self."

I'm pretty sure the BBC was making fun of me for taking a grammar quiz on their website.

Thursday, April 07, 2005

Intellectual Food

Here is what I learned today while I was working on my Milton presentation. The presentation is on how Eve's desire for knowledge is sinful according to Milton. So far this is the information I have gathered:

1. Snuffleupagus was only able to be seen by Big Bird until 1988 when the writers on Sesame Street decided that this sent the wrong message to children.
2. "Snuffleupagus" is the name of the species. Snuffy's actual name is Aloysius. Aloysius, I recall, was also the name of Sebastian's teddy bear in Brideshead Revisited. The fact that Sebastian had a teddy bear while at university may have contributed to his becoming an irredeemable alcoholic. I myself would say that is the wrong message.
3. The word "orange" did not come to be used for the color orange until 1542. Before that they called orange "tawny" (or "tenne" in French). There is suprisingly little information about medieval names for colors on the Internet. Very disappointing.
4. The song "Ring Around the Rosy" has nothing to do with the Black Plague. I secretly still believe that it does too.
5. The mucus you spit up when you get the plague has a name, and that name is "sputum." Dah-licious.

And that, my friends, is why you should never disobey God.

Names, dates, translations, and other information included above may be incorrect.