01-30-05

The last paragraph kind of makes it sound like I'm being sarcastic, but I really do love this commercial.

My computer is still gone, and I have been watching more tv, which makes me feel simultaneously pathetic (because everyone who's cool says they don't watch tv, right? (and the very coolest people manage to work the fact that they don't even own a tv into any conversation you have with them)) and proud (I made a goal and I stuck with it!). However, although I do have mixed feelings about this whole tv watching project, I like to think that it has been a journey of self-discovery.

One thing that I have discovered is that I always pay close attention to commercials because. . .actually, I'm not sure why. I do know that I've been taking notes on them. Notes on tv commercials. Like with a pencil and a notepad. Which all of a sudden seems kind of embarrassing. Anyway, according to my notes, I always have either very strong feelings of love or hate for commercials (although there is one commercial that I hate intensely except for about three seconds in the middle that I absolutely love. it is slightly bewildering.).

One commercial that I love is for Orbitz, and it features an animated choir telling you not to think twice about traveling. Part of the reason I love it is because I like the song. I always wish the announcer would shut up and let the choir sing. Part of the reason I love it is because it is animated (I don't like it when real people tell me to buy things) (or when real people talk to me at all).

But I mostly love it because of this part:

Guy with cocktail: But who will feed my goldfish?
Choir: DON'T THINK!
Girl getting sawed in half by magician: But who will fill in for me?
Choir: DON'T THINK!
Guy lying on ground: But both of my legs are broken.
Choir: DON'T THINK!

I love that my tv is finally yelling "DON'T THINK!" at me. It is something that I think it has been meaning to tell me for quite some time.

11:16 p.m.

01-24-05

Keep Manhattan, just give me a liberal supply of exclamation points.

Friday night the roommate and I went to Trader Joe's so that she could buy truffles and strawberry soy milk, and so that I could price frozen waffles and cereal (they have the cheapest cereal ever). Trader Joe's is apparently the place to be on Friday nights, and it was crowded and noisy. The lines were all long, and finally we just got behind a guy who was only buying booze and hoped for the best. The woman in front of the guy buying booze had a lot of groceries, so we ended up standing there in silence for a while, until I said, "HEY, THAT GUY OVER THERE USED TO BE MY PHONETICS PROFESSOR!"

"WHO, THAT GUY?"
"NO, THE ONE BY THE LETTUCE."
"THE ONE IN THE BLUE COAT?"
"YEAH. shh! Don't look at him."
"SHOULD I POINT?"
". . ."
"He looks. . .young."
". . ."
"What's his name?"
"I don't remember. Jose something? maybe? I don't know. I'm sure he doesn't remember my name either, so we're even."
"You should go talk to him!"
"Maybe I could ask him for a letter of recommendation! Ambushing a former professor in a grocery store for help getting into grad school . . . there's nothing inappropriate about that, right?"

And soon after that (it was the word 'letter'), the conversation dissolved into whether or not he had possibly stayed in touch with our semantics professor (the roommate and I both had him, but in different semesters) , and if he would give us his address so that we could send him anonymous post cards of adoration. And then it was time to pay and go home.

I really do enjoy seeing professors out in the world, though. I often see my sociolinguistics and metaphor professors at the library, and once I saw my medieval lit professor examining apples in the produce department at Meijer. I just like to see people outside of their natural habitat. But only when they're people that I am not obligated to talk to (I really don't like seeing coworkers outside of the library).*

Anyway. My computer is out getting its keyboard fixed, and I've been trying to watch more tv so that I'm still getting my money's worth out of the Comcast bill. As it turns out, a lot of tv shows are bad! Who knew? Last night on King of the Hill, though, Hank sang the Green Acres theme song, and if they had also worked in a Futurama reference it would have been everything that I love about tv in one place.




*And speaking of seeing people outside of their natural habitats, a former housemate just entered the library! I also love it when things happen in real life that are directly related to things that I am talking about or thinking about or writing about or whatever! Like the time the roommate and I were discussing The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou while I was simultaneously reading this comic!

7:02 p.m.

01-18-05

Party!

Yesterday I got up while it was still dark (and 6 degrees) and drove my parents to the airport. Seventeen hours later, they called me to report that Hawaii was hot and humid (and also that my dad hadn't worn his life jacket during the entire flight, as he said he was going to ("I'll be the only guy wearing a life jacket over the great plains states!"), but I didn't feel very sorry for them.

It's weird because despite the fact that I no longer live with them (and even when I did live with them they weren't particulary oppressive), I feel exactly the same euphoric sense of freedom that we are currently not on the same continent that I felt when they went to Europe while I was in high school.

10:09 a.m.

01-11-05

I hope you appreciate how hard this was to type without a properly functioning space bar or m key.

I don't sleep very well in my apartment. I think it's because there's something wrong with the heat, because even though I usually sleep in shorts and a tank top (sometimes with my window open), I always wake up at some point in the night, sweaty, disgruntled and stressed out about the fact that I'm awake when I should be sleeping. (And actually, I'm not sure that there's anything wrong with the heat because I'm always freezing during the day. I'd blame menopause, but I'm only 23.) Anyway, I average about 5 nonconsecutive hours of sleep a night, and since I am unable to nap, I just figured out the best way to cover the dark circles under my eyes and have been living my daily life feeling slightly tired, but not really as bad as it seems like I should feel.

Last night, though, I got even less sleep than usual and when I got home from work at 1, I laid down on my bed and actually went to sleep. Not only did I sleep, but when I woke up at 2:15, I had absolutely no recollection of my morning at work. I looked at the clock and thought, "Oh no! How did I manage to oversleep for 7 hours! Wait, maybe today isn't the day that I work in the morning. No, I'm pretty sure it's Tuesday. Is it 2:15 in the morning? No, I SLEPT THROUGH WORK! Wait, why did I wear jeans to bed?" And then my phone rang and (1) I just changed the ringtone, so it took me a while to identify it as my phone; and (2) My phone hardly ever rings, so the fact that there was a phone ringing in my bedroom just threw me off even more.

It was my manager from the job that I just quit. And since I sounded totally bewildered and out if it during the entire conversation, she is probably glad to have gotten rid of me.



ps: You know that face transformer that everyone's talking about? Here is me when I'm old:

It's weird because just the other day I was talking to the roommate about how ugly I'm going to be when I get old. On the other hand, I make a moderately attractive apewoman:

Small victories

7:59 p.m.

01-05-05

It has been a slow night.

I realized at some point today that it can't be true that I've never quit a job before, because I am not still making deli sandwiches at Meijer store #50. I guess what I meant is that I've never before quit a job with such sour feelings in my heart.

It is a cold and snowy night, which I have used to discover that I secretly enjoy the music of Three Dog Night. I especially like "Joy to the World," because I like the thought of those joyous fishes in the deep blue sea. After listening to the song about 600 consecutive times, I was compelled to Microsoft Paint my impression of one of those happy fish:

*

I also like "Never Been to Spain," because so much of it rings true in my life. I haven't ever been to Spain, but I do kind of like the music. And I haven't ever been to England, but I do kind of like the Beatles. And I've never been to heaven, but I have been to Oklahoma.

Right now I have a cup of tea balancing on a stack of cd cases beside me on my bed, which seems like a rather unneccesary risk to be taking, so I am going to go back to holding my tea while contemplating the happiness of marine life.





*While this fish is wearing a top hat to disguise his hideously misshapen head, it is a little known fact that I used to draw fish wearing top hats all the time in my high school Spanish class. The fish spoke Spanish and said things to each other like, "Soy un pez!" and "Cantas bien!" People made fun of my Spanish fish, but they were a little ray of sunshine in an otherwise dreary class (all of my friends took German) (the biggest ray of sunshine was when my teacher did her impression of a washing machine).

11:27 p.m.

01-04-05

Maybe soon I can live my dream of returning to retail.

I think I'm going to quit my second job:

(1) It involves a lot of driving around that I was not previously made aware of.

(2) At 4:44pm today, my manager sent me an assignment that I have to go out and do tomorrow. I already have other things that I have to do tomorrow.

(3) My manager emailed me an expense report that I needed to fill out in order to be paid for my mileage, but she sent me the shortcut to the document instead of the actual document. I emailed her last Monday about it and didn't hear back from her until today, and even then she didn't say anything about the expense report and just gave me a list of things that I'm supposed to do tomorrow.

(4) None of the problems that I encountered during the first job that I did for these people have been dealt with at all.

Luckily, I will not experience any shock from a sudden lack of a second form of income because

(5) I haven't been paid for anything.

All in all, it just seems to be more trouble than a several hour per week job is worth, but I've never quit a job before and I'm afraid that I'll chicken out. Is it ok to just email them about it? I usually only hear from them on email, so it seems like it would be fine.

8:36 p.m.

01-03-05

Rememberable is not the same as memorable.

A lot of stuff happened during the last two weeks, but writing about it all was long and boring. Here are selections from the much longer entry that I originally wrote. As far as history is concerned, none of those unrecorded things ever happened.

I went to see The Life Aquatic and I liked it, which I'm very defensive about. Somewhere near the beginning I remember thinking, "Oh MAN. This is BORING. Also, it is really hot in here, and OH NO! Owen Wilson has a MUSTACHE," but by the end I had been won over. Yes, it was the worst of the Wes Anderson movies, but a bad Wes Anderson is better than a good movie by, I don't know, some other director (I don't usually care that much about directors, and the only names I could come up with offhand were Alfred Hitchcock and Stanley Kubrick and I like both of them, so that wouldn't prove my point). And it's definitely better than no Wes Anderson at all.

Sometime back in mid-December, the roommate had said something about how she wasn't sure she wanted to see TLA: "Oh, you know how people are. They all think they're great and smart and intellectual because they like Wes Anderson," to which I had shrilly responded, "IT IS NOT WES ANDERSON'S FAULT THAT THE HIPSTERS LOVE HIM" (even though it is totally Wes Anderson's fault that the hipsters love him). And I guess that is the major reason I feel defensive about liking it. Would I have liked TLA if it was directed by someone else? How can I even figure that out when it is so obviously a Wes Anderson movie? Does being a Wes Anderson fan inevitably link me with a bunch of people with messy hair who wear wool scarves inside of boilingly hot indie rock venues? Yikes.

Moving on, remember that coat I was previously so fond of? It might actually be more trouble than it's worth. It is pink (the trendiest (and also the girliest (and by far the prettiest (although green does have its moments))) of all coat colors) and dry clean only, so every time I wear it for reasons other than simply admiring myself in it, I'm afraid of getting it dirty. I can't eat or drink or play or climb trees or frolic or LIVE in it. The other night when it was cold and I was going to drive to my parents' house, I made some tea to take along with me. I made the tea, put it in my Big Boy travel mug (I got it for Christmas a couple of years agao and it looks kind of like this*, except it is a travel mug), shoved the mug in between the passenger seat and the emergency brake (no frills like cupholders in my car!) and there it stayed, because I never wanted to take the chance of picking it up and spilling tea on my coat.

note: This paragraph is marginally funnier if you replace every instance of the word coat with the word goat. Goats are funny!

On New Year's Eve during the day, my mom taught me how to make jam, using the black raspberries that we picked back in July. As it turns out, I'm good at making jam! I'm so used to being bad at things that I was surprised when it turned out edible and jam-like. Black raspberry jam isn't very good because it's so seedy, but just you wait until strawberry season! And then peach season! And cucumber season, if my grandma will teach me how to make mustard pickles.




*If I had known that you could buy your own Big Boy statue, I probably would've skipped college in order to save up for one. Do you have any idea how many photographs of me posing with Big Boy statues all over Michigan (and that weird one in Kentucky?) exist? A lot. I have a picture of me in my graduation gown and mortarboard with a Big Boy statue. If I ever get married, you can count on a wedding picture with a Big Boy statue. (oh my gosh, now I really want to get married. and soon!)

8:33 p.m.

previous | next