I Now Own A Ridiculous Pair Of Shorts

Yes, my shorts actually say "I heart USA." I'm not sure what the most offensive part of these shorts is.

Is it the lower case "i" in jaunty font? Is it the stripey heart of darkness? The "usa" in lower case letters with no periods making it seem that I love a Russian woman named Usa?

Oh, the plethora of sins these shorts present!

In my defense, they were an emergency purchase. In my move to Austin, I somehow neglected to bring a single pair of shorts with me, and since I frequently like to ride my bike, shorts are a must. I saw these the other day as I was leaving target and discovered that they were a mere $4.99. Holy foreign slave labor, these shorts are the answer to my prayers!

However, when I made my ill fated purchased I neglected to note the inscription on the fold over waist band. Yes, apparently that's what the young girls do these days: they take already fairly short shorts and roll the band over so that they can go from zero to ho in less than 5 seconds. Nothing says "I love America" like ho-shorts with a patriotic message emblazoned across one's ass.

I feel like Britney Spears already.

Even My Gay Friends Think This Is The Gayest Picture Ever.

Sorry, I couldn't get it to cut & paste - you'll have to follow the link.

Honestly people, what in the Sam Hill is going on here? The two guys seem like they're about to get in a fight with an opposing musical gang a la West Side Story (Sharks! Jets!). Meanwhile the girl over there seems to have caught a fatal case of jazz hands.

If this trend continues they'll have to change the name from American Idol to Show Tunes Alley.

A Bad Day of Work Followed By A Considerably Better Day of Work

You'll be happy to know that I though I have continued to sniffle disgustingly, I feel much much better and my head no longer feels like a black hole. My improved physical condition arrives just in time for me to get my first assignment, which I received Wednesday morning to be due the following morning. This assignment was for one of the lawyers who interviewed me and who I really like, so I really wanted to do a good job. The assignment is interesting and I'm excited to do the research -- except they don't have our lexisnexis (law research database) passwords setup and though I can use my own school password I can't print to the network printers and I *have* to print the cases --so basically I am screwed.

Meanwhile the office lady who takes care of all this is dealing with people on the phone every five minutes because her father is dying and has been moved into hospice care so the last thing I want to do is go hassle her about passwords and crap. So I email her (passive agressive I know) to help me "when she gets a chance" and then spent the next five hours with my thumb officially up my ass.

I decide to wisely use the time to read a lot on the internet, especially about this Eurovision song contest (which is a sort of cracked out American Idol) where Finnish group Lordi, who dress like monsters were the big winners. The internet is ablaze with Lordi -- from Slate to Go Fug Yourself, Lordi is everywhere. God bless the Finnish. But I digress.

At 3:30 the lady comes around and we finally start getting setup which takes another hour so at 4:30 I finally get started on the project and realize I'm fucked. 6pm rolls around and I am exhausted and realize I need a journal so I figure I'll take my work home and pick up the journal at the UT library on my way. I gather up my stuff and roll out to the garage.

As I opening my trunk to toss my bag in the car, this fat sparrow half flies/half falls into my trunk. At first I'm all "awww, wook at tha widdle engwish sparewhoah" and then I'm like "get the fuck out of my car so I can go home." Fat Sparrow has other plans and flies deeper into my trunk. Fuck. I get an umbrella and try to poke the sparrow out. No dice. And then I can't see where sparrow has gone. Damn. I start taking things out of my trunk-- which since i just moved here has a bunch of crap in it like my bike rack and a random box of crap and cd's, etc. My car crapfest starts attracting people who think I have a flat tire, but then I explain to them that a bird has flown in my trunk.

The crowd is now intrigued. One guy actually crawl in my trunk to find the bird, but alas, it does not appear. Crowd now things I am crazy girl, which is a bad development. I finally just thank my would be helpers, throw my crap back in the trunk and drive off. I am terrified that bird is going to somehow get into the cabin of my car and go all Hitchcock's "Birds" on me. Or worse, die in some panel in my car and smell hellacious. At any rate, I stop by UT on my way home, and of course the library is closed. I take this opportunity to open my trunk though while I'm parked and yell inside it at the bird in hopes of "encouraging" it to leave. Again, no dice.

I go home now thoroughly weary and notice there are about 10 people in front of the house where I'm subletting. Oh fuck. My housemate, who is a supernice guy and I really like is having people over to grill. And normally this would be great -- except that this is sooo not my day. Jesus, Tupac, and Santa Clause could all be coming over to grill and I would still feel the same level of aversion, becuase contrary to popular belief, I am actually shy and really have to force myself to be outgoing. Also contrary to popular belief, I cannot talk to *everyone*. Especially when the people at this party are entirely law review students and all you have in common is that you're in law school, and not even the same law school, and they're like 15 times better at it than you are. Fuck. But they are all really nice and under more normal circumstances I would psyche myself up for this and be more talkative but I am so tired and stressed because project is nowhere near complete that I am not in a good frame of mind.

In an effort to seem not-crazy and like a decent human being as opposed to resentful housemate (which I am not, let me be clear), I drink some beer and try to chat with people, but as I previously mentioned topics are limited. It's starting to get dark so I decided to go check on cujo-bird in my car. I open my trunk and the fat sparrow squawks at me and looks pissed. I'm like what the hell bird? Screw you too, and then thankfully it flies off. That's right -- I love the environment

So I rejoin the party and think I swiftly drink two beers which = bad and before I know it I'm feeling kind of bleary. Panic now officially sets in, and I crazily run around and tell the LR students it was nice to meet them but I have to go draft a memo. Hopefully, I do not seem too strange, but hell they're on Law Review so they should understand. I work on my memo until about 1am at which point project is not finished but I certainly am so I crash.

At 4:30 a.m. my sister calls to tell me she got accepted to her program in London (she'd just finished her interview and they ofered her a position) which I am so proud of her for -- just not at 4:30 in the damn morning. I get up one hour later and go into work to finish my memo, which I turn in twenty minutes late. I spent the rest of the day trying to focus on my computer until it's time for the meeting at 3:30 where we'll be talking about what was in my memo.

This is the good part -- the attorney told me that i did a "great job." Yes, I will work like a complete crazy person for two words of affirmation. Thank god tomorrow is friday because I cannot begin to imagine what else could happen to me if this week were any longer.

My Awesomely Bad First Day of Work

I'd been having sniffles and a sore throat for a few days, but on Sunday my allergies turned into some sort of full blown pathogen. I slept not at all and when I got to work (for my first day) I was in anti-histamine induced waking-coma. As I was trying to fill out the HR paperwork first thing in the morning I kept thinking "Is it really necessary for me to personally write my name, social security number, and address on 15 different forms?" and then kept having the HR man repeat things because I had completely lost my ability to focus on said forms and the parts that required more than just writing name, address, and social. Also I forgot to bring a voided check, which was printed boldly in my instruction letter. Points for me already.

Our little new employee orientation also featured a fun little "introduce yourself" talk, but thanks to my pathogen, I sound like Tara Reid after a weekend bender of booze and cigarettes. I croak out my name and school and then say I'm a second year student, forgetting that I'm in fact now a third year student which led to awkward retractions later in the day. Best part of the day was the get-to-know-you tour where my handler took me and the other new clerk around to meet everyone we'll be working with. As my nose is leaking like a faucet, I have a wad of kleenex bulging in my suit pocked and one constantly in my left hand. It's awkard to talk to people while having to dab at your nose and then shake their hand. I wanted to shout "See, I only use the left hand for the tissue, not the right hand -- that's just for shaking hands. I'm clean I promise." Except clearly, I'm not clean. By midafternoon I resemble a full-on coke addict complete with bleary eyes, rudolph-red-nose, and vacant facial expression. Best part is that this look has been captured for posterity in my shiny new ID badge that was made for me today and which I must wear at all times while in the building. There is no doubt my fellow emplyees think highly of me and will refer to me behind my back as "snot girl" or some other similar term of "endearment."

After work the sinus pressure in my head is so bad I think of calling a friend to ask where the hospital is, but that would be giving in. Before law school I enjoyed horse-like healthy state, and and resent now being on a first name basis with the staff of the Tulane health center. So instead of seeking medical help, I proceed directly to Walgreens because as EZ pointed out earlier (and before the pressure had reached critical mass) that my sudafed-claritin-benadryl cocktail I've been taking is not going to help because what I really need to get is a decongestant. You would think I would know this, but am not really functioning at full capacity by any means.

Also, since you are really supposed to take each of those items once in a 12 hour period it is quite possible I am od-ing and have already lost critical brain cells. At any rate, in walgreens there are totally out of Claritin D (D being for decongestant). This produces wild lumbering by myself up and down the aisle until I locate some sort of Claritin decongestant substitute. My eyes are nearly swollen shut when I go to pay and the check-out man is eyeing me suspisciously and asking weird questions. Not sure where this is going, I assure him I am not trying to take the stuff and turn it into speed like the kids do today and am instead very sick and can't he scan the shit any faster because seriously my head is about to explode?!

I think maybe I scared him a little.

I come home and take meds, wrap self in quilt, and proceed to sleep until my mom wakes me up at 9:00 and then yells at me to go see a doctor. I argue that I have no doctor here, nor days off to go to a doctor, and I have other problems as someone backed into me at the post office on Friday and I have to get an estimate on my car from the insurance adjustor and I can't be both sick and have had a car accident in the week before starting my job. No one will believe that this can happen and that I am not crazy/a hypochondriac. I finally agree after much mom-like haranging that if I don't get better soon I will go to the doctor as otherwise, like a lame horse, I will otherwise have to be drug out back and be shot (in which case car estimate becomes a moot point).

In addition to my car accident, Austin has produced other excitement. On Saturday, I was carded at a bar --which I considered flatering except that once the guy looked at my license he whistled and goes "hey, you're oooold" which is just what one wants to hear two month's before one's 29th birthday. Bartender further noted how unhappy I looked in my picture, which I might add I had taken after I'd had my wallet stolen --so you too would look unhappy. Mark my words, bartender will be buying me a drink or five on my birthday.

Yes, all around the past three days have done wonders for the old ego.

Why Is Your Alt-rock So F*ing Loud?

You know what I hate about funky Austin coffee shops? Their funkiness. I can generally tune out the bad art. A typical example would be a series of photos of drawings done in the foam of a cappucino. To complete the look, the photos are in frames made of popsicle sticks. While horrifying, these are more or less avoidable.

However, while there are many things I can tune out, alt-hippie-guitar/accordian
-whiny-girl-rock is not one of them. Especially when it is turned up WAY TOO LOUD. I had my headphones cranked up to drown out the noise, and even that didn't mask the banshee wail in the background.

I'm sure one of the coffee mistresses is in a funky band and this is her plan for getting the band noticed: someone will hear their "music" over the loud speaker and say "My god, what talent! Where is this wailing woman and how quickly can I get her a record contract?!"

This delusion is only rivaled by people who "perform" karaoke thinking they'll be spotted by a talent agent. Come to think of it, wasn't this the plot of the Coyote Ugly movie where the girl tended bar/jiggled all in the hope of becoming a songwriter?

Speaking of Coyote Ugly, has anyone seen the cable show where the Coyote Ugly bus travels around to locate new "coyotes" (aka girls) for the bar to open in Austin? I saw about 20 minutes of the show one night as I was getting dressed and I was thoroughly appalled.

The girls auditioning see Coyote Ugly as their career gateway, like it's the marijuana of career moves. One girl, a professional cheerleader, was crying when she got cut by Lil, "the tought-talking founder of the bar." The girl was crying not just because she got cut, but because Lil' called her "a cheerleader" - I'm not sure why this is upsetting as she is in fact a cheerleader. She seemed to be most troubled that her cheerleader-ness was all Lil' could see about her. And honestly, it seems like cheerleader is pretty good street cred for bar tossing as opposed to, oh say, a graduate thesis on Sartre.

Another girl wanted to "share her gift of song," which is admirable, I guess, but I'm not sure how prancing around at Coyote Ugly will allow her to do this. But hey, since it came true for Piper Perabo in the movie, I'm sure it will come true for her as well.

By far the most gut-wrenching (?) audition was by this 40 year old woman with 2 kids. She was on the tour bus crying all the time because she missed her family. I can just imagine the conversation by Dad in that household. "No baby, Mommy can't be here, she's got to pole dance on a bar for strangers." I guess I'm an old fashioned girl - give me the good ol' days when girls used to strip to pay for college.

All this to say, I am going to open a chain of Donald Judd/Phillip Glass inspired coffee shops where everything will be square and black and atonal music will play softly in the background.

Spamtastic

Ever since the hurricane, my school email account has been plagued by spam. I keep reporting the spam to my system administrator as requested, but it does no good. Just one more way my school sucks. But every once in a while the sheer ridiculousness of the spam amuses me. Take today's sample, courtesy of one Chang Simpson:
______________________________

-S'ensationall revoolution in m'edicine!

-E'n'l'a'r'g'e your p''enis up to 10 cm or up to 4 inches!

-It's herbal solution what hasn't side effect, but has 100% guaranted results!

-Don't lose your chance and but know wihtout doubts, you will be impressed with results!

Clisk here: http://300wainani.info


decry cocktail ginseng flabby wrangle hostess behead ambassador turbinate thug urgency bedroom circumflex clerk bayesian handshake spaulding knuckleball envoyconcordant dreamboat margin reserpine cheap eigenspace channel fruit thayer chunk aeneas bamboo persevere trivia throaty baseband singlet dart homicidal presence manpower dewdrop seance debugger leadsman labour kirov casualty sweet arteriosclerosis regimen sparling yankton kerosene heterostructure

_______________________
I'm not sure what I like best about this email. The fact that I don't have a penis and that nonetheless I have been targeted for this marketing campaign? The gross misspellings, abuse of punctuation, and general disregard for and cavalier use of the English language? Or the stream-of-conscious-beat poem that follows the ad?

But somehow I think these spams bring some balance to the universe. For ever Cosmo article, Victoria's secret catalogue, etc. that make women feel insecure about themselves, there's a spam email out there reminding guys that hey, your penis could be bigger.

Personally, I would be happy if these emails were advertising a product that was concerned with keeping men from being dicks (e.g. a how-to guide on remembering your girlfriend's birthday) rather than increasing the size of it.

6 Weird Things About Me

Oh, my friends, you are always making me do things. This time you're making me play the "6 weird things about myself" game. I am not sure if I have much to add because my blog makes it clear there are far more than 6 weird things about me. Holy hell, I wrote a blog about hoarding dill. I think the weirdness speaks for itself. However, I'm a team player, so without further ado...

_______________________
RULES: Each player of this game starts with "6 weird things/habits about yourself." People who get tagged need to write a blog of their own six weird things/habits as well as state this rule clearly. At the end you need to choose six people to be tagged and list their names. Don't forget to leave a comment that says "you are tagged" and tell them to read your blog.

1. I like to sing all the time. I prefer to take road trips by myself so that I can sing at the top of my lungs to my music and maybe listen to the same song 3 or 4 times if I so chose. I also generally sing when I walk. Sometimes I forget that I'm not by myself or that I'm singing out loud (yes, I sing in my head) and then I get really embarassed.

2. I have to pee all the time. I am 5'9" with a bladder the size of a peanut. It's like they put the wrong size model on me. My doctor says that I pee a lot because I drink too much caffeine which is bullshit since I've been like this since I was too small to know the deliscious elixir of caffeine. On the upside, I don't generally stay drunk long* as I pee twice and I'm sober.
*drunk meaning having a reasonable amount of alcohol. If I have had 6 or more drinks in less than 2 hours, I am not going to sober up and you will probably find me napping in the corner.

Note: Since I have to pee all the time, and I like to sing all the time, perhaps I should combine these two er...talents? This reminds me of a similar story -a performer at the Moulin Rouge called "Le Petomane."

3. I like to cook, I hate to buy groceries. The grocery store makes me insane. Invariably I forget something, things are never organized properly, and it always takes me forever to get ten things. I used to cook a weekly dinner for my friends and I would always drag Steftastic Stef with me to mitigate the evil of the g-store.

4. Gay men love me. Seriously. They love me. You won't believe me, but walk with me through the gayborhood because gay men come out of the woodwork to talk to me. EZ thought I was making this up - until we walked through the West Village one day and it was like a scene out of Love Potion Number 9. It's like I give off the wrong pheromones.
N.B.: I also have straight male friends who I love and adore too. No diss to you guys intended.

5. People tell me things. People I don't know well ,or sometimes at all, are always pulling me aside and telling me their innermost secrets. I have no idea why this is and it's often things I really, really don't want to know. I have been told that I have "nice eyes" that make me always seem friendly so I've called this the "dolphin eye" effect. Meaning, dolphins look like they're smiling so we like them. Similarly, my eyes make me look nice, and therefore I seem to care, and consequently you will tell me things you really shouldn't. On the upside, I think it's given me good insight into people.

6. I cannot flirt. It's totally true. I am lousy at it. If I am interested in someone I will do my best to avoid him, and if by some miracle we do happen to talk I make sure not to make eye contact. To up the ante, not only will I not make eye contact, I'll pretty much stare at the ground, grin/blush like a fool, and blurt out total nonsense thereby gauranteeing no further conversations. This behavioral pattern has grown out of a fear of being "obvious". However, I am totally witty and charming if you are:
a. someone I'm not interested in
b. a jerk
c. gay (see 4)
d. someone I barely know (see 5)

Tagged: Big N, EZ, D, Tiny, MBabe, Rabbit (little sis). Those of you who have been tagged: if you lack your own blog, just fill in in the comments section here. Anyone else not tagged, please feel free to participate as well.

The Dill Dealer

Grocery Store and I are currently in a bad relationship. I'd like to break up with Grocery Store, but I *need* things from it, so I can't make a clean break. We keep fighting, but I always go back for more.

Case in point, I needed some dill. I finished my exams before all my friends, so I thought I would be a good friend and cook dinner for them so they didn't have to take time out to cook for themselves. However the healthy dinner I planned required dill.

For those of you unfamiliar with wonderful Dill, it is a simple universal spice, common in summer cuisine. Or so I thought. I stood in the spice isle on my errand, and lo, there was no dill. I looked everywhere. I looked behind spices. I went up and down the aisle. No dill. This is simply not possible. Dill is the critical ingredient in my recipe -- where is the F*ing dill?! I re-searched the spice aisle. Still no dill. I was getting more and more frustrated and by my final pass, I was fuming.

Finally I just stormed out of the grocery store and drove to one in the suburbs. No dill there either. Are you kidding me? Does this part of the world have something against dill? Unless it's some mayonaisse based product or hot sauce, apparently Louisiana doesn't consider it a worthy spice.

By my third grocery store it had started to rain, and still no dill to be found, so I drove home seething. I thought about pulling over on the side of the road, letting the rain beat down on me and shouting "DILL!" with my clenched fist raised to the rain. But then, I'm not crazy.

No, I decided to take the sane, high road, I started calling all my friends to see if they had some dill at home, which made me feel like I was scavenging for drugs. Everyone was like "no man, I don't have any, sorry."

But then I talked to Big N, and she was like "Of course I have dill." I should have known that Big N would have the Persian-dill hookup. She had had the same bad grocery store experience, and consequently, had asked her mother to ship her some from the Persian stores in LA. We agreed that she'd send me the dill with one of our friends. When EZ arrived at my apartment he produced a full on kilo of dill, like he was a drug-mule. I am not exaggerating. I felt like I was in that scene in "Blow" when Pee Wee Herman gives Johnny Depp the giant bag of weed and says he doesn't deal in dime bags. The look on my face probably mirrored that of Johnny Depp: What the hell am I going to do with all that dill?!

The best part of this enormous bag of dill is that it came with a free packet of saffron. Which to quote Big N is, "worth it's weight in gold." I guess this is the Persian version of the free prize in cracker jacks. Buy one spice get another free other spice in your kilo-sized spice bag. Seems perfectly logical to me.

Good god, it's just so much dill. What am I going to do with it? I thought about divinding it up into smaller baggies, and standing at the end of the spice isle in my overcoat full of dill baggies. I could be the new dill dealer. "Hey man, you wanna buy some dill? It's real sweet stuff, it's amazing. You won't find anything like it here, man."

And then a slow deviously smiled crossed my face. It's my dill, and I'm going to hoarde it. And for the time being grocery store, I am free of you.

Deja Vu All Over Again

When Yogi Berra is right, things must be horribly, horribly wrong. In this case, I'm referring to my university, hurricanes, and hurricane preparedness plans.

This morning in my in-box there was a shiny new email telling us that the university has revised its hurricane plan post Katrina. This is good news because before Katrina there was pretty much no plan other than "flee people, flee!" which to me seems a plan from a Samuel L. Jackson movie.

I can just see him yelling this in say, Deep Blue Sea: "A shark ate me. Now flee people, flee! Or maybe Pulp Fiction: "I just shot Marvin in the face. Now flee, bitches!"

While simple in its approach, The Samuel L. Jackson plan does seem to cry out for a bit more fleshing out. This new plan, let's call it Jackson II, has added a new layer to the original plan: this time let's make a plan. However, under no circumstances will we make the plan in a timely fashion.

That's right, the new plan consists of the university administration informing the other departments of the university that they "are now required to develop a departmental plan of procedures to prepare for the possible strike of a hurricane." POSSIBLE? Are you KIDDING me? Right now the levies are in such disrepair that if the ocean throws us so much as a hurricane fart the city will flood.

But back to timeliness. The administration made this announcement mid-april. Hurricane season begins JUNE 1st. Do you think we could have started on the plan to make a plan (aka Jackson II), oh just a touch sooner? Since there is pretty much zero time to make such plan, I think we can pretty much expect the final plan to fall somewhere along lines of Jackson I and be pretty sucktacular.

Hey, but they are making it mandatory to have a plan. Wow, good job guys! Supposedly all plans were to be due by May 1, which only confirms my hypothesis that the plans must suck. Shit people, we had like 6 months to be thinking about this and to getting things really together, so instead we'll spend two weeks. Yes, clearly, that will be sufficient. I want to know what was so much more important than this? Was it firining people over the internet or figuring out how to effectively embezzle money?

In either case, when the shit hits the fan, rest assured I'll be employing the original Sam Jackson plan and head straight back to Texas. See ya'll soon, no doubt.