I'm burning my college journals

And the first one I'm getting rid of is the one with all the poetry. Most of it is crap, but there are a few I like. I publish them here for posterity. I apologize ahead of time for the pretentious line breaks.

In the Cab
Where to? Downtown?
Say, you were lucky -
Everyone wants cabs on
rainy days like today.
I came as fast as I could.

Say, know what?
My girlfriend
--I call her my girlfriend--
She says to me today,
"I love you,"
Just like that!
First time.

I tell ya,
she's great.
She looks like Linda Evans
She does wonders.

That your boyfriend
you kissed goodbye?
It's hard bein' alone in this town.
Say, you're lucky.


Nibbles
My tongue is
extra-sensitive today, and my teeth feel
sharper
than usual.
Come here,
dumpling,
And let me bite you.

The Moon
He sat in front of me and I was
trying
to ignore him,
But he dropped his pen
and wasn't wearing
any underwear.

Mid-stream
The voice in the next stall,
frail, old and thin:

"Are you a horse woman?"

I stop.
(Is she talking to me?)

"No."
"You don't ride horses?"
"No."
"Oh, I thought maybe.
Because of your boots."

Random as Chicken Tetrazini

I'm not drunk in this picture, I'm just trying to be cute. Obviously, that backfired.

I haven't written for so long. I don't have an excuse, I just thought I'd state the obvious.

I am so often not at my laptop. That doesn't mean I'm not at a computer, but work has gotten both busy and monitored. Because I don't have a portable device that lets me access any social networking sites (no iThing to tweet to or Blacksomething to upface), I have started carrying with me a small notepad I've labeled my ManuTwit.

Most of the things I write in it have lost their relevance by the time I've logged back in to wherever I want to update, I'm left with a tiny notebook filled with hastily scribbled one-liners. Here and now is the perfect place for me to type them up, because I really need to post another entry, but I have nothing pertinent to say (except, of course, how much I love Joel McHale, but my brain has been so fogged since Friday night that I cannot write about the show just yet). So here goes:

Emily thought she might have had a "pass it forward" moment at the airport when the guy in front of her at security grabbed two buckets for her. Then she went into the Hudson News and lost it due to a large number of small children underfoot and a conference of businessmen hogging the magazine racks.

Emily had just sat down in her aisle seat when a guy in a snazzy business suit walked by and farted.

Emily just watched an episode of Third Rock from the Sun written by Will Forte. Whhaaaaaat?

Emily just walked by a storefront with a sign that said "Art and Pie Gallery". Oh, N. Mississippi, you had me at "pie".

Emily was late to her doctor's appointment due to a lady in a Lark failing to parallel park on the bus.

Emily wondering at the Woodburn Outlet mall: Putting Lane Bryant and Petite Sophisticates
next to each other: marketing genius or just mean?

Emily thinks everyone's "fifteen minutes of fame" is turning into everyone's reality show slo-mo farewell montage.

Lists

I have had so many things I could have written about in the past 2 weeks, but my brain has lost the ability to string together many sentences longer than up to 160 characters (140 if I twittered as much as the news shows claim I should).

Phrases that should be expunged from the English language

• You go, girl.
• Back in the day.
• And whatnot.
• Give (giving, gave) 110%.
• It's go time.
• (Anyone calling anybody) babe.

Things I have seen lately that shocked me, but not too much

• A bin of fedoras on sale at the local Walgreen's
• A business man trying to enter a building by choosing to go through the other door rather than open other door for the visibly disabled person exiting through the same set.
• The hat guy from the beer festival last year.
• The link on Yahoo from E! Online's newsfeed, posted under the main headline on Natasha Richardson's death, that read "Who Gets Invited to a Celebrity Funeral-- and How?"
  

I have other lists of things, like commercial personalities and jingles that I hate, but that will have to wait for another day.

Disappointed horse*

I try not to be high maintenance. I try to be nice to any food servers or customer service folks. I don't want to be one of those people.

But sometimes, when it's my birthday, and the waitperson is one of those too-friendly types that sit next to you to take your order, and call you 'hon' and spend 10 minutes racing around a nearly-empty restaurant giving other people who arrived later than you their bread while you sit, blood sugar plummeting, sometimes I just get grumpy. And that was my main emotion during my birthday dinner. 

When our waitperson finally came to take our order, I ordered what I thought was not a difficult option for an Italian restaurant: cheese ravioli and a salad. 10 minutes later, the salad was delivered (but none of the promised bread). We sat eating our salad, all the while watching the waitperson flit from table to table (3 others in all), handing out bread and pouring more water to all the other tables but ours.

By now I had drunk half the wine. The hypoglycemia and brand new old age and lack of bread were beginning to put me in a bad mood. Out of the corner of my eye, I see the waitperson start to approach us (without bread in hand). She kneels down next to me and puts her hands on our table. 

"So here's the bad news, honey,"  she said. "Apparently our cheese ravioli are bad. Just... bad. So we need to find you something else to eat."

I blinked at her. It had been 25 minutes since she took our order. How long did it take to determine a bad ravioli? I guess I appreciate that they didn't serve me putrid, salmonella laced pasta-- or whatever made the dish unservable-- but could they maybe have figured that out sooner? While I looked at the menu, she started yelling out other options-- all of which I didn't want. Sausage? No. Calamari? No no no. She sneered when I told her I didn't eat red meat or sea kittens, like I was purposely making her life more difficult.

She started pushing this butternut squash ravioli, which seems to have avoided the other ravioli calamity, with some sort of spiced cream sauce that didn't sound like my kind of meal. Instead I chose the chicken parmesan. She shook her head.

"Oh, honey. That takes 20 minutes to cook. You don't want to wait that long." I considered saying maybe I wouldn't mind if we maybe had some fucking bread, but I didn't want to be a bitch. Again she pushed the butternut johnsons. The Husband was ever so slightly rolling his eyes (he thinks I'm picky at restaurants, but honestly-- I don't try to be), so I gave in and ordered the dish, even though it was built without any individual ingredients I actually liked. I asked if we could please get some bread.

"It's coming up," she hissed, "It's about ready to come out of the oven."

The dinner finally arrived, and one bite later I knew I was not going to eat it. So now The Husband and I are both in bad moods, eating (or in my case, drinking) in silence. 

Later on, our waitperson came by and I requested a box to go. She looked at me sternly and said "Only if you liked it." 

OK - wait a fucking second. I didn't like it, but I let myself be talked into ordering it, so it's on my head. Why the hell would you care if I liked it or not? If I said no, would you have taken it off the bill? I thought not. 

If she'd brought the bread and cut back on the attitude, I would have chalked up this whole thing as a bad choice. But she doesn't get to judge me for that. I tried my best to be nice and unassuming. I didn't throw the dish on the floor in a tantrum. Maybe I should have.

So, I had a really crappy night. The next morning I called in sick to work, and not just because I had a sore throat (though I did, for a time). Mostly I was just depressed. That single experience, where I had the pleasure of paying $60 to leave a restaurant hungry and angry, ruined my birthday. I know part of it was my fault for thinking that just because it was my birthday everything should have been perfect, and it was also my fault for not sticking up for myself and maybe sending the dish back for something more suited to my apparently difficult taste buds. 

But goddamn it, she could have at least brought the bread in a timely fucking manner.

* To make sense of this entry's title, please click here. Please, please click. There.

On the eve of a certain age

This past Saturday while talking to my 7-year old niece , she referred to herself (for whatever reason) as "young monk". I don't know why; she's just an enigma smothered in silly sauce. Anyway, later on she referred to me as "old monk".

Nothing like a 7-year old to put everything in that really awesome "no really, you're ancient" perspective.

I turn 39 tomorrow, though luckily I'm not one of those women who feel the need to add "for the first time". I hope to never be so fearful of irrelevance that I start doing that.

I've been told that I look much younger than I should ('much' being relative, of course), but this just makes me embarrassed and a little suspicious. That still hasn't stopped me from buying all those schmancy creams and oils to fight wrinkles I don't have yet and bags under my eyes that I've had since grade school.

I don't remember ever trying to imagine what I would be like at thirty-nine. That seemed so far away, so impossibly remote that I must have assumed I would end up like all my teachers who were, of course, polyester-slacksters with a confounding lack of pop culture knowledge.

Well, my pants are pajamas and I'm nothing but pop culture references. So tomorrow is my birthday and I will answer truthfully when anyone asks my age, although I'm sure we will both leave the conversation disappointed.

'Tis a gift?

Every year at xmas, I start to get a feeling of excitement and dread. I like presents and I like my family, but xmas doesn't come with just family. It comes with That Woman. And what comes with That Woman at xmastime are creepy, horrible gifts.

There have been some doozies (The husband once got a book on county fairs, because everyone knows how fascinating county fairs are to the youngsters these days-- unlike those dirty state fairs; State fairs are Sodom and/or Gomorrah with ferris wheels!). She once gave my six year old nephew a figurine of a bear doing taxes. You can count on her giving at least one person something she's received as a free gift.

This year I was afraid she wouldn't live up to her reputation. And then I opened this:

That grey blob is a cat, and I suppose that's why she thought to give it to me, since any time you're at a loss for a gift you can always give a cat lady some sort of cat-related thingy.

This is creepy, right? I gotta say, when I saw this little clay faceless lady holding a blob-- the first thing I thought of was Dr. Who:

And everyone knows Dr. Who creations make great holiday stocking stuffers. Order yours today!

Night fever

Once again, I find myself up at nearly three in the morning, unable to sleep. It seems like it's always the same: I head off to bed between 11:00 PM and midnight, lay awake for two or three hours, then finally get up to waste another hour before heading back to bed and trying again.

I used to think I knew why I couldn't sleep, but after trying various combinations of drugs (2 of these kind, none of those, let's treble this one and halve the other, etc.) I'm left baffled and irritated.

And sleepy, but only at times where I don't want to be sleepy: at work, on the bus, in a planetarium.

[We interrupt this blog post to point out that the picture above is of the caption I added to the existing Shag cat tattoo on my left arm. I got it on New Year's day with Sisters J and K. Well, K was just a spectator, as were my niece and brother in law, but it was nice to have an outing with all my sisters-- it's been a very long time since we've been able to do that.]

I realize that posts about sleep deprivation aren't very exciting unless they are being written after many days of no sleep at all, so I'll recap how things have been during this holiday period:

Xmas: We were snowed in all week, so we didn't make the trip to the Bay Area. While I was bummed that I missed some of the family functions, I wasn't so upset about missing out on the airport experience. Flying during the holiday season is a pain in the ass no matter what the weather, but maneuvering through an airport flush with stranded passengers is not my idea of a merry xmas.

New Year's: I am well beyond the age where New Year's Eve means bushels of drink and dancing in a venue packed with drunks and dancers. The last time we went anywhere public for the changing of the years was the big '99 - '00 deathwatch down at Pioneer Courthouse Square. Once we found out the party would not be ringing in the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and the Camel of ATM Failure, we headed home for microwave mac & cheese and bed after that. Anyway, this year we went to K's and played board games. It was really fun.

But the husband and I forgot to kiss at the stroke of midnight, so I'm not sure how that bodes for this new year.

Belated family xmas on 1/2/2009: After going out with the sisters for a quick tattoo, as mentioned above, we met again the next day to open all the presents from xmas that we missed while being marooned in the house the week previous. Because my birthday is just three weeks after xmas, I had more presents mixed in, to the point of embarrassment, really. I had six or seven more presents for everyone else, which made me feel like a gift glutton surrounded by piles of empty boxes and mountains of ripped wrappings. Counting the xmas gifts alone, we received far more than we gave. I really do feel like a cheap bastard who gamed the system of xmas gift giving.

Still though: we made out like bandits, although not on New Year's where one expects to make out.

Thanks, sisters. Thisters.

A new beginning...

The Chicken Index Device Mechanism has a current reading of "Melt". Unfortunately, the CIDM is not suitable for use with floods, so we are decommissioning her until the next "Arctic Blast". May we not need her for the rest of the season.

Councilman Leviticus

I was swimming through some Chick Tracts earlier today, because I was bored and I'm a sucker for ridiculous, hyperbolic straw arguments with a multitude of footnotes. Here's one about the Ten Commandments (they're from the most proven book in history, you know). I especially like how bitter the teacher is. Chick tracts are a fun way to learn about all those pretty stories.

Exodus is good, with its ten plagues, and Genesis has that awesome story about Lot's daughters getting him drunk and having sex with him, but I always think of Leviticus whenever I read or hear people pointing to the bible to prove god or whatever, because it was obviously written by men, and usually with an axe to grind and terrible fear of women. It's like reading a Star Wars pop up book and then checking your bloodwork for midi-chlorians, or ecoding laws carved by a fiery shrubbery, discovered through E-meter or produced by an angel to be read from a hat.

It's just a bunch of rules about menus and property rights. It's like taking a bunch of county code, burying them for 1000 years and building a religion on that.

This is really how every democratic politician should react

to all the gibberish questions they're asked in interviews.



I mean, really. Sometimes all you can do is ask "Are you serious?"

When the wars came

We are witness to many battles in America right now. Not just Democrat v. Republican, Bush administration v. reality, McCain v. relevance, Congress v. Foresight and Palin v. direct inquiries. Sure, those are important and I'm keeping at least one eye on each of them. But here are the conflicts that have been keeping me too busy to write (no, really!):

The Battle at Alvioli

I have had pneumonia for the past month, but you'd never know it from my work schedule. No, that's not true, I was out about a week (two and a half days one week and four another), but mostly I've been up and out and about, spreading my pathogens, coughing in fits and generally existing in a phlegmy phog. I was given 10 days' worth of antibiotics 10 days ago, and went in for my recheck this afternoon. The lungs sounded clear, my cute brown-eyed doctor told me as he thumped my back with one hand and listened with the stethescope with both ears, though my coughing may stick around a little longer. He thought maybe my asthma was adding some hassle, so I got some free Advair and a prescription for sudafed (which, if I get me chemistry right could score me a meth rock of about .02 mcg. Hot dog). Expected outcome: I think the Alvioli will come out on top, but they may never be completely rid of the terrorism of post-nasal drip.

The Wars of the Stereotypes

I work with a woman who runs our state's SCA, and you can tell. She dresses like a goth at a temp job: dark but without the boots and black leggings (though I should talk-- I don't dress much better). She is loud and opinionated and, like me, not well-versed in the art of constructive criticism. I get along with her well enough, but she is both annoying and easily annoyed. She is pretty competent at her job, although some of her methods I choose not to emulate.

We recently hired a guy for the open help desk position, and he has the familiar attitude of an IT guy at a new job, meaning he insists on relating everything you are training him to how things used to be at his old job. He is still uncomfortable in his position both as the lowest guy on the totem pole and the only guy in our tiny room. He is easily affronted, but won't take on the affronter directly, so he spends a lot of his time sitting at his desk frowning.

These two don't really get along, and today the sparring started over an incident in training. We are all sitting in on this training this week so we can train on it later, and the trainer is our SCA Baroness. Her hackles were raised at one point when IT guy quietly left the room and didn't come back for 10 minutes. While he was gone I had a coughing fit and left the room to spit up goop and get a cough drop.

At the break, the Baroness summoned us to her shire near the InFocus machine and scolded us for leaving the classroom. I protested that I was coughing uncontrollably and she forgave me. She then turned to IT guy and scolded him even more for not having an obvious reason to leave. He went back to his seat and began to stew. When she went to smoke, he turned to me in a minor fury and proceeded to tell me that he left because something he ate at lunch hadn't agreed with him but, he added, there was no way he was going to tell her that.

So, color me Swiss. I get to hear way too much opinion from both sides. As neither side looks like it will back down, I think I may be in for the passive-aggressive long haul. Yay. Expected outcome: Outlook not so good.

The Attack on Meninges

I just have a headache. Probably related to The War of Stereotypes. Oh, and whatever the doctor's office had floating at the time. Ooh, is it Flu? Sinus infection? Pink eye? Rabies?

Probably all of them. Expected outcome: once the Vicodin division arrives to help the dry eyes squadrons and cyclobenzaprine patrol things should be OK.

Oh, the things you don't know

This is a "this is my husband" meme that I want to do (stolen from GolfWidow), but the husband is, in fact, dead set against releasing any personal information to anyone (not just on this blog-- in real life). Therefore, I will confuse my husband's answers to these questions with the answers from the imaginary husband ("Mr. Food Lady") my cat has. I'll let you puzzle out man from cat.

He is watching TV. What is he watching?
Talking heads (maybe the band, maybe not).


You're out to eat. What kind of dressing does he get on his salad?
Friskies classic pate. Sometimes bleu cheese.


What's one food this person doesn't like?
Friskies classic pate. Not ever not bleu cheese.


You go out to the bar. He orders ...
With apologies to the Dutch, Manhattan.


Where did he go to high school?
Ms. Thingy's Academy of Hissing and Pantlessness in Tumwater.


What size shoe does he wear?
(6 - 18)*3.5 +/- the square root of 4ac.


If this person were to collect anything, it would be ...
Books and wives (or vice-versa).


What is his favorite type of sandwich?
The kind that comes with bread.


This person could eat ______ every day.
This person does eat every day. It's crazy!


Favorite cereal?
Hill's KD trail mix.


This person wouldn't be caught dead wearing ...
A vest. He would like to die in a cravat, though.


Favorite sports team?
All sports teams are classified as either Phlyds, Tbones or Newmans. Right now, he's rootin' for the 'bones.


Who will he vote for?

Anyone but Palin (unless it's Michael). Jesus, even an imaginary cat can see that bitch is crazy. Lord make a way, my ass.


What is his sign?
He has two:




What is something you do that he wishes you didn't?
Ruffle his fur and tell him how cute he is.

How many states/counties has this person lived in?
2 States/4 Counties.

What is his heritage?
Welsh, German and Tabby.

You bake him a cake for his birthday. What kind do you bake?
I don't bake, so... Ooh, someone else brought cake? Cake! Caaaaaaaake! Cake please!
Caaaaaaaaake!

Did he play sports in high school?
He played scratching post in the band.

This person could spend hours ...
Sleeping. Wait, that's me. So, sleeping with me!

He wants a new ...
Catbox.

The CD I would probably find in his vehicle is ...
Comedy

What can you do that will guarantee a laugh from him?
I can't comment on the allegation that we smoke catnip.

Does he get along well with his family?
Everybody loves him. Everybody.

If money wasn't an option, I would buy him ...
...a monkey (haven't you always wanted a monkey?)

A Clue

I was walking home from the library carrying a book about detecting and murder (The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective. So far? Excellent). It was the first time I'd been out of the house all weekend, as I am still harboring that crapulent cough that all the cool kids have been carrying around this season.

The library is only 5 blocks away from our house, and every time I go there I wonder why I don't get library books more often. Well, I've only just now shaken the habit of buying armfuls of books every trip to Powell's, and I prefer to zone out with the iPod on my daily Tri-met commute, so I know why. I just like the library because it makes me feel smart (because of all the books) and urban (because of the walking).

It hadn't started to rain yet, but it looked like it might at any time. The neighborhood was quiet, but not that I'd notice since I had my iPod set on "really fucking loud", as usual. I tend to walk with my head slightly down, so I can avoid eye contact if anyone walks or drives by. On the corner of my street and the street that leads to the library, I noticed a small piece of ripped-up blue paper.

"That looks an awful lot like a social security card," I thought. Seeing as the husband's wallet what was taken a few weeks ago contained his social security card, I investigated further. There was another piece, damp like the first one. And another. This was weird, I thought, but it can't be the husband's.

Oh, but it was! I found about 7 pieces, and the last one actually had part of his name on it.

So now we want to know: who tore it up? And why? Did the kids who took the wallet feel at least a little bad, and so they ripped it up to protect his identity? Probably not. Did they rip up the card after making note of the number, to get rid of evidence? Again, probably not. Did a good Samaritan find the card and, not knowing if the owner lived nearby, rip up the card to keep the number out of the hands of those with nefarious schemes? That's the most likely scenario.

Now I want to go detect some more. Grab me a big magnifying glass and comb the streets looking for bits of the husband's former paperwork. Unfortunately, it's raining pretty hard now, so whatever is left is probably down the grate and gone forever. I guess I'll have to go back to just reading about mysteries. Harrumph.

Phlyd update: now that I have stopped medicating him, he is eating and behaving like his old self. I even caught him last night crouching over Newman and growling in what we think is a dominance thing: a way of reminding Newman who's the top cat around here. We call it the neck thing, and although I find it creepy when Phlyd does it, I waited a little before swatting him off Newman's back. I figure, what with all he's been through, that Phlyd deserves a little macho show.

Best friends

"JEERO WANTS TO HANG OUT WITH YOU and Domo. WHY? HE NEEDS YOU and Domo. JEERO THINKS LIFE IS SO COMPLICATED, SO HE SOMETIMES GOES TO THE PUBLIC LIBRARY TO RESEARCH THINGS. YOU MAY THINKS HE IS SMART. WELL HE'S NOT. WHAT TIME IS IT? JEERO HAS NO IDEA. HOW DO YOU GET HERE FROM THERE? DON'T ASK. WHERE'S DOMO? JEERO DOESN'T KNOW! JEERO JUST WANTS TO SIT ON THE COUCH WITH YOU AND EAT SOME SNACKS. IS THAT TOO MUCH TO ASK? JEERO DOESN'T KNOW MUCH, BUT HE DOES KNOW THAT IT'S TIME FOR YOU TO CANCEL YOUR PLANS AND HANG OUT WITH THE UGLYDOLLS."

I am a horrible person

...but I can't be too scared by weather they've named "Gustav".

With this attitude, I expect to be killed by hurricane "Skippy".

It's taken me 35 years

But I've finally realized that shoes really do make the outfit.

Things you may have read were I liveblogging the Olympic Opening Ceremonies but without the timestamps

Why does the prevailing costume design for the female athletes on parade seem to be 'legal secretary' or 'air hostess'?

The best job in the whole of the Olympics? The guy who gets to do the flag flinging during the raising of the Chinese flag:

Involving neither work nor imminent death

Another definition of depression: how you feel when you know that those fantasies* that you've been building in your head** to occupy your time*** while on the bus-- or keep yourself from slamming your head on your desk-- will never come true.****

* Like the one about accidentally running into the drummer of your favorite band (who's cute but seems to live in the continual shadow of the lead singer who you are sure is a dillweed) and you give him directions to Powell's, which he appreciates so he invites you to coffee and between sips of vanilla latte laughs at all your jokes so you exchange cell phone numbers and emails and you start up an endless thread of text messages that binds you closer together than any one night stand would ever do.

** You know, the one with a place in the back, near some unused corner of your Occipital lobe, where you keep your plans for the bookstore or bar that you're going open up in a sleepy part of that European city you like so much where you can play your cool playlists that make all the famous comedians who come in regularly bob their heads in time to while asking you how you came up with such cool names for the cats you let wander unfettered through the bookshelves or bar stools.

*** Time that normally is spent composing the comment that you're going to leave in that blog that's both widely-read and beloved by all; the comment that forces the blogger to cede the point in defeat and generates hundreds of reponses declaring that your comment alone has "won the thread".

**** Not even the one where you don't say something unimaginably stupid to that one cute barista. Not even that one.

We is bloggist

These past few weeks have been pretty tiring, what with all the anger. I've spent so much times obsessing about how stupid the work situation is that I've neglected to bore you with all the other stuff that's happening. Or not happening.

I am currently in Seattle for a week of training secretaries and attorneys to do things they'll never do. That's OK - I like being out of the office right now. I may get myself in trouble, though, since a few office Seattleans have been asking me about the recent hires and fires and I haven't exactly been toe-ing the upbeat line.

Like I ever do anyway.

But I have been doing other things in the past couple weeks. We went to see We Are Scientists about two weeks ago, and they were great. I wish I had done more research on them (besides listening to them), since the place we saw them was small and they were very approachable. And yet, I did not approach. Had I watched their videos or read their hilarious site I would have said something.

Or not. I tend to get giggly and stupid when I'm talking to a famous person*, so maybe it's for the best. They're not really big here, but they are huge in Europe (well, big enough to open for REM there). That'd be enough to turn me into a swooning teeny-bopper. It's for the best, then.

I bought a t-shirt at the gig, the one pictured above. I paid for it twice, because during the purchase the t-shirt lady was insisting I should get a small shirt when I assured her that no, due to my hulking shoulders and poor posture I really should get a medium. Not only did she win that argument (I was confused by something shiny, I think) but she insisted I hadn't paid-- when I totally had-- but I couldn't prove it. Harrumph.

Oh well, I guess it makes up for the fact that I downloaded their most recent album from what I am assured is a legal download site (I mean, it's right there in the name: these sounds are legal. They are legal sounds! Srsly!)

Well, that shirt has already paid for itself, if the currency we are talking about is cool points and attention from strangers. I had four people comment on my shirt, two of which were clerks at the local Borders Books. They each approached me, one asking "Can you please explain your shirt?"

I wish I had a better answer than "It's a band". If anyone has any better ideas to explain "I are scientists" I am totally listening (reading--whatever).

I overheard a couple people say "'I are scientists'. I don't get it." I would be interested to hear what they thought it might mean. Maybe this is a hipster Rorschach test; maybe it means all things to all people. What does it mean to me?

More attention. Yay!

===============

* I once had Garry Shandling come through my line when I was working as a cashier at a health food store in Santa Barbara. Here was my greeting:

"What brings you to Santa Barbara?" He replied, "The circus?"

Bleah.

Just like my desk: messy and full of crumbs from lost lunches

** You know what's surprisingly alarming? A dentist coming at your un-numb mouth with a drill-- even when you know he's just sanding down a new filling.

** Why does Radio Shack sell candy?

** I was napping on the trip home from Canada in April. The radio was on. The Husband was startled when I suddenly bolted upright, lunged at the radio off button and screamed "Jesus Christ, it's Madonna!" I think should always be everyone's response to Madonna.

** Werner Hertzog has a new movie about Antarctica (Encounters at the End of the World) that I will definitely see. I don't know a whole lot about him, but my respect was embiggened enormously when I read the following:

Reporter: Much of [the movie] is very funny but what stuck with me most at the end are the sublime aspects of it. The latter part, where you get the sounds of the seals and the underwater footage, to me they suggest not just otherworldliness, but a divine intelligence. Do you agree?

Hertzog: Are you trying to persuade me to become an adherent of creationism?

Reporter: Not necessarily, but to me the sounds of the seals, for instance, suggests something supernatural.

Hertzog: No, it doesn’t. It only suggests the sounds, and they are wonderful and sublime. I wouldn’t read anything God-like into it. However, creation itself, as it is, has something magnificent, and the film celebrates it, the film names it, the films shows it. And the film ends like that. And I like this notion; you do not often have a chance in a movie to show things that are of utmost beauty, and of course the music has a big part in showing a certain sacredness in what we have in front of us. [Emphasis added]

- John Del Signore, interview with Werner Hertzog, Gothamist.com

That's a great response to the "The world is so amazing it has to have a designer" argument:

No. It. Doesn't. Calm, firm and totally right.