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?!
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
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.
Goats, how did you know? That’s totally my mantra.
Monday, April 09, 2007
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.
Saturday, April 07, 2007
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:
This one takes the cake:
(I think I will respond.)
" 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(I just love this one)
INTERESTED??
SEND A PHOTO
POR FAVOR"
"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.)
Friday, April 06, 2007
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.
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.
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.
Thursday, April 05, 2007
spring fling in the city
My trip to New York was very lovely, and included the following highlights:
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.
- 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.
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