orange bottles / silver cans

This girl is my new obsession. She is helping me become promiscuous.

I totally owe her.

I'm in bed at eight pm

I've been re-listening to Lauryn Hill's Miseducation for a week now, and I've realized it's one of the best albums, ever. From start to finish, it's fucking awesome. Like, every song is awesome. Especially That Thing, in which I can rap the first stanza along with Lauryn. (Poorly.)

So I thought I would write a little list of other albums that rock out on every single track. These are the CDs that stay in my CD carrying case permanently, because they never start sucking. In no particular order:

• The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill
• Revolver by The Beatles
• Kanye's College Dropout
• Shrift - Lost in a Moment
• Zero Seven - When It Falls (hard to choose just one album, but this is the one I tend to put on repeat)
• The Best of the Ella Fitzgerald Gershowin Songbook
• Celtic Voice, one of those "mood" CDs that you find at Target with a pretty cover, but this one is so freaking soothing and pretty and makes me wish I lived in a castle shrouded with fog. With no electricity. And a horse and canoe as my only means of transportation.
  
• Justin Timberlake Justified
• Wicked
  
• Dave Matthews Band Busted Stuff (I've actually worn my way through two of these albums and have to get another copy. No one I know has or has heard of this album, even though it got to number one on Billboard.)
• My own personal Erykah Badu mix CD

That's it for now until I find something fab on my new ipod.

sometimes it's uncomfortable how open we are

My mother climbs into the backseat of my brother's CLK Mercedes coup and remarks, "It's so small back here, how do people have sex in cars anymore?"

totally related, totally boring

Several years ago, I got my little brother a shitload of shampoos and body washes for his birthday. It was not a joke. He was thrilled. It was a few months after he had requested (and received) a shampoo shower dispenser for Hannukah.

Today, I got this email from my other brother, He Who Can Finally Stop Using His Fake ID Tomorrow:

For my birthday...

I want the ultimate toaster. Yes, the same toaster that Oprah and the Queen of England uses. I want the Dualit 3 Slice in charcoal or chrome. It's the 3 Slice, NOT the Dualit Lite.

Below are some links where you can find them for a great price :)

1)http://cgi.ebay.com/DUALIT-3-SLICE-TOASTER-CHARCOAL-NEW-IN-OPEN-BOX_W0QQitemZ110116279731QQihZ001QQcategoryZ20682QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

2) http://cgi.ebay.com/WILLIAMS-SONOMA-DUALIT-3-SLICE-TOASTER-W-CAGE_W0QQitemZ110117683146QQihZ001QQcategoryZ20682QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
(I think this one is refurbished. As long as it has no crumbs in it, it should be fine, right?)

3) http://cgi.ebay.com/Dualit-3-Slice-Classic-Charcoal-110v_W0QQitemZ150062496007QQihZ005QQcategoryZ20682QQrdZ1QQssPageNameZWD1VQQcmdZViewItem

4) http://cgi.ebay.com/WILLIAMS-SONOMA-DUALIT-4-SLICE-TOASTER-CHROME_W0QQitemZ110117681958QQihZ001QQcategoryZ20682QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
(4 slice is ok as well)

5) http://cgi.ebay.com/DUALIT-3-SLICE-TOASTER-CHARCOAL-2-1-COMBI-NEW-IN-BOX_W0QQitemZ110116248061QQihZ001QQcategoryZ20682QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
(Look! Here's a brand new one!)

You guys get the point. I'm sure you can find them elsewhere on the Internet but eBay might be your best bet!

I know I'm not much to talk, because I asked for underwear on Hannukah and new sheets for my birthday.

my thesis is due in two weeks

I left for Target with the intention of buying oil pastels, but I returned forty-five minutes later having purchased one million tampons, a pair of black heels, and three puzzles. It took so long because I was busy drooling over post-its and dry-erase markers.

It's a wonder to me too how anything ever gets done around here.

in the saddle

Walk of Shame at seven thirty this morning wearing last night's "Gangsta" party outfit is the best thing I've done for myself since I bought my new car.

pollo is as pollo does

I'm currently on a phone survey about fast food, and the person on the other end is a complete idiot. He keeps talking about El Pollo Loco, but he says, "El Polo Loco," like he's never heard the commercials or has never been exposed to the Spanish language before.

And it's not like he said it once or twice. It was mentioned in every other query. Actually, it seems as though the survey could have been sponsored by the chain itself; there were at least fifteen questions about its quality and appeal.

TigerMouse

I GOT THE CUTEST MOUSE EVER!!!



(Mine is actually not zebra print, it's Tiger, but Logitech didn't have a picture of tiger, so just imagine that all the white spots are silver metallic and the black stripes are more claw-like.)


Also, today, one of my students got stuck in her chair. She had slid down so far that she was lying on the seat bottom, and when I called her on it, she pushed the top half of her body back, under the seat backing. So her head and shoulders were hanging out of the back of the chair, and her legs were hanging out of the front of the chair. The students all started laughing at her and yelling. I took a picture.

spring(ish)

Even though Google has been reporting all day long that Los Angeles was under a thunder and lighting storm siege, it has been rather sunny and beautiful outside. Granted, I've been in the apartment all day and so I can't say for CERTAIN that it's not raining outside, but I'm pretty sure.

Which is to say, THANK GOD it is almost summertime.

If you would have asked me about April back on September 5, I would have said something like, "oh, yeah, the fourth month, Pesach, yeah, it'll be here soon, it'll be fun." But then if you asked me the same question on September 6, I would have amended that last part, the part about the fun. And if you asked me anytime between October 29 and . . . March, I would have said, "April will never come, I swear, this is the loooooongest fucking year ever."

Needless to say the sun and warm(ish) weather are very welcome around here.

new york, pt 2

Some things I forgot to mention in my original New York post:

• Rachel's culinary masterpiece BRISKET, made from scratch, a complete labor of love, a total main course for our first night seder, and apparently "pretty good tasting." I mention the brisket because it was a brought up in conversation at least six times each day I was in town. And also because Rachel doesn't cook (see final entry on this list), so it was a Big Deal.
  
• I suffered an ocular migraine headache while watching Prime, and lest you think it was derived from the movie, think again. (It's a great movie with some great awkwardness.) I haven't had a migraine since middle school. All of a sudden, with no warning, your sight kind of goes. If you're lucky, this is followed by a splitting headache. I developed a blind spot between four and five o'clock and it took me several minutes to realize it was in my brain, and not caused by a light reflecting off the TV. I took some meds and wore my airplane eyepatch for an hour or so, and it went away. But it was really creepy.
• The contents of Rachel and AJ's freezer: a single bottle of vodka.
  

the netherlands

Internet, I’m going to HOLLAND!!!!!

That’s right, land of dykes and windmills and tulips. (And pot and legalized prostitution.)

My mother is giving a paper at a conference in Amsterdam at the beginning of July, and I was invited to come along for the ride because I AM A FABULOUS TRAVELER. So now I have a great trip to look forward to. It’s in good time; I was getting very sick of being in the U.S. It’s been what, A year and a half? Two years? since my last big trip, and I feel it. I can’t wait to take out my pack and my hiking boots and my extensive supply of bandanas and combination locks. Today I bought the Lonely Planet book and have been just been devouring culture and history since.



Did you know that a Dutch wife is a nickname for a prostitute? Also a sex doll? Brilliant, right?!

51 days and counting

Because of a certain shithead who cited “musical differences” as one of the reasons he broke up with me, I abhor all things indie. So I was not really open to listening to many of the artists on my new ipod. But I shuffled it, like my fans suggested, and The Mountain Goats “This Year” came on. I was not AT ALL into it until I heard the chorus, a rousing, “I am gonna make it through this year if it kills me.”

Goats, how did you know? That’s totally my mantra.

English ass

Last week I watched the HBO miniseries on Elizabeth I and became truly obsessed with English royalty, and so I was totally psyched for The Tudors, to see crazy Henry VIII before he got syphilis, but I have to be honest here, the politics are fucking boring and so I am now watching STRICTLY for the sex scenes.

craigslist

Via Couch, I've been perusing the Craigslist Missed Encounters and Personal ads, and boy are they amusing. Here are some of my favorites:

" italian man 6ft 173 p"

(was the entirety of the ad)

"are you sweet and cute? do you want to get eaten and fucked?"

(not really)

"I'M A HANDSOME ILLEGAL ALIEN
INTERESTED??
SEND A PHOTO
POR FAVOR"

(I just love this one)

"Herpes?"

(asking or offering?)


This one takes the cake:

"let's go on a date at the 99 cent store.

this is a great dating place. we will meet near the stale fig newtons and stroll down the aisle past the toothpaste shipped with spanish writing (ultra brite minto). we debate on why there is massive dust on the y2k puzzle box. we see a lady who looks like cloris leachman shoplifting a small box of pink q tips but mums the word, not to mistaken with fisherman's friend (not sold in the store). i decide to spoil you and ask you pick any two items in the store. you select the humungous orange soda and the pokemon earrings. i purchase the products for you and we walk out holding hands as you're aggressively chugging down that 368 ounce orange soda with your other hand.

photo appreciated and i will meet you at any 99 cent store"

(I think I will respond.)

another white and shiny toy!

Internet, I have joined the millennium. I just got an ipod. It's inherited, which makes it even better, because it came with over five thousand songs. FIVE THOUSAND. Most of which I've either never heard of or don't care for, but still. FREE MUSIC. Some excellent songs I'm excited for include the Beatles, Norah Jones, Tupac, and U2. And the OC soundtrack. And Sigur Ros. And Otis Redding. And the Soweto Gospel Choir. (Who the hell is that?? I can't wait to find out.)

My biggest issue right now, I guess, is where to start. Should I go alphabetically, artist by artist, listening and deleting? Should I do it backwards alphabetically? Should I listen to the bands I've heard of first, and then the unknowns? Should I shuffle the entire collection and see what happens?

Stay tuned. It promises to be an exciting time for this girl.

useless and cheap! buy one now!

My landlord is very incompetent, as you might already know. For weeks and weeks now, we have been calling him about the leaky shower in my bathroom. This is not just a drip drip drip leak, this is a constant stream of water drip, so constant that you can hear the water run through the pipes from the hallway. For a while, the landlord just tried to appease me, with an empty promise that he would "come tomorrow" and never showing up. Then I told him that he actually pays our water bill and that seemed to wake him up.

Last week, I came home from work to find the contents of my closet strewn across my bed. Every piece of folded clothing (including all sixty five tank tops) had been taken out of the closet. And the closet itself? There were three large holes knocked into the walls, exposing the pipes beneath, halfheartedly covered with colored posterboard. Posterboard from my personal stock of school supplies sitting behind my desk, posterboard which I had purchased with my own money. There were shards of plaster on the floor and not a single indication that the holes would be fixed up soon. I called the landlord, livid.

Two days later, when we actually spoke, he explained that there was a second pipe in the wall that he wanted to replace and so was waiting for that before he sealed up the wall again. But my closet, my clothes, I want to sleep in my bed, I protested. He told me he would do it after the weekend, after chag, which meant Wednesday. Two days ago.

I returned from New York Thursday morning and was not really all that surprised to see that nothing had been done to the closet, so I left a message on the landlord's machine. He did not return my call. This afternoon, I called him a second time and demanded that he come over and patch up the walls. He informed me that he was actually going to wait until I moved out to change the other pipe, so he didn't want to patch the wall and then break it down later. That's in several months, I argued, and the wall is OPEN TO THE GROUND, dirty, and I can't put my clean clothes and towels back in. You need to fix it, I insisted.

So the landlord comes over, armed with a mini hammer and a piece of cardboard. Torn from a box. That he then proceeds to hammer into the wall to cover the open space. Rediculous, right? Especially because ONE OF THE CARDBOARD PIECES HAS HOLES IN IT. That makes me especially assured that bugs won't crawl from the basement into my closet.

Surprise, surprise, landlord runs out of cardboard before he patches the top hole. He tells me this fact, as if that's that, and I demand that he cover it. That's where I put my clean towels, I say. Well, what can I do? he shrugs, and then adds that maybe he can use my yellow posterboard to cover the hole. I very sternly say no, that is what I use for school. I actually have to repeat this line because he keeps protesting, asking me how much it really costs. (How much does plywood really cost, huh?) I get on the phone so that he can't argue anymore, and when he finishes I see that he has nailed in two scraps of cardboard side by side, edges of the box he had brought over.

It's like we're living in the 1940s and I have no money since I stay at home with the kids and I guess this will have to do until my husband comes back from Normandy, but don't worry, we'll make do, everything for the war effort.

What a fucking cheap moron.

spring fling in the city

My trip to New York was very lovely, and included the following highlights:

• All-Day Metro passes. Love them.
• Rachel and A.J.'s beautiful Chelsea PENTHOUSE apartment. I'm pretty sure that if I moved to NY I could afford an apartment smaller than their bathroom. And that then I would have to come over a lot to enjoy their high ceilings and clock-tower views. And the air mattress. (I guess also the company.)
  
• H&M on 5th Ave. Waaaaaaaay better than the excuse for a store they have at the Beverly Center. I got myself a fabulous chocolate brown bra, aviator sunglasses, and a spherical prism keychain. I'm kind of obsessed with the prisms lately.
  
• Visiting the Lower East Side for the first time and eating pickles straight out of the pickling barrel.
  
• The Hills season finale and ensuing debate rating the intelligence level of Whitney, Lauren, Audrina, and Heidi. (Listed smartest to dumbest.)
• Visiting Ground Zero, which is pretty fucking boring.
  
• The MOMA and the Met. This was my first time at the MOMA (my eight or so to the Met which I could live in), and I got very excited at all the REAL LIFE PIECES of art I like. For example, Picasso's Girl Before a Mirror which we studied in my 3rd grade class, and many by Miro and Paul Klee. At the Met they had a special exhibition on Tiffany stuff from the Tiffany house (did you know he had a house?), which are gorgeous, and it renewed my passion for all things shabby and chic. Like pink cereal bowls and flowers and prisms hanging from the windows. (Mentally planning my next apartment.)
  
• Seder at my favorite cousin-once-removeds' house, Amy and Ronnie, where the volume of food far outweighed the company. It was there I experienced the true horror of several tone deaf people "singing" in "unison."
  
• My very first waxing job, which hurt a lot less than I was expecting, but the pain was more than made up for in awkwardness. The waxing lady definitely got more intimate with me than several boyfriends have. Bizarre that people make a living stripping women of their pubic hair. Think about that for a second.
  
• Trader Joes as tourist attraction. The sole NY franchise has twenty checkout aisles, yet the line still winds around the perimeter of the entire store, ending just yards away from its beginning. This line is truly ridiculous. I tried to capture it in a photo, but my viewfinder is only so big.
  

A low point came at the very end of my trip, when it took me fifteen hours to get from Manhattan to Los Angeles. First there was the delay with the plane from its previous location (three hours). Then there was the Getting The Plane Ready for Customers delay (one hour). Then there was the sitting on the runway with fifteen planes in front of us in line (thirty minutes). I kid you not, fifteen. Then there was the hydraulic system that wasn't working (giant moan emitted from all passengers). Then there was the checking of the hydraulic system (thirty minutes), which yielded nothing, which meant we had to deplane. And wait in the terminal for the new plane to be ready (one hour). In the terminal which had no open shops, for it was after midnight.

In case you can't do the math in your head, I'll give you this: The original flight was scheduled to take off at seven pm, and we actually took off at one am.

I know everyone has their own airplane horror story, many worse than mine, but it was just a shitty way to end the trip. Luckily my dad volunteered to pick me up from LAX at four am. As Glenda says, he must really love me.