i think this would piss me off

a coffee shop: a hypothetical

hypothetically, if you are at a coffee shop where they are playing music that is pretty generally acceptable, and you have headphones and therefore the opportunity to listen to something that you REALLY like, but you are with someone who does not have headphones, it is polite not to use them, no? it's like in court, when the defendant can't have a glass of water because the jury will subconsciously be jealous. you would look like you were too good for both the coffee shop and the company. so you leave them in your bag, especially if the outing has been declared a "date," even just sort of. but what if the other person goes "el crappo," and then asks you if they can borrow the headphones that they know are in your bag? they are depriving you of an opportunity you had denied yourself as a courtesy to them, and if that isn't thoughtless, well, i don't know what is.

i think i am just bitter because the music is no longer "generally acceptable" and i have to listen to it, my headphones are going to come back having been in someone else's ears who i happen to know makes no effort to clean them, ever, and i can't just go home because it is TOO COLD and when i get there i have to get mad at someone about it and i hate confrontation so i'm just going to sit here and complain on the internet for a while. all in all, a pretty good example of how i am totally crazy.

tiny's: a coffee shop

i suspect my roommate of pocketing some money the rest of us gave him to buy heating oil, because we gave him enough to last the entire winter, or so i was told. then again, i suspect another roommate of turning the heat up to 70 degrees every time i'm not looking. either way, we are out of heating oil and the house is freezing, so i made a den out of blankets for the cat and headed for tiny's: a coffee shop. tiny's is awesome. they put cream cheese on your bagels for you, and a lot of it too, not like places that will half-assedly toast your bagel and then hand you some dinky little packet that always has a bunch of disgusting cream cheese juice in it too and juice included is never enough to satisfactorily cover even one half of your bagel. i hate that so much. but something i have decided i'm okay with is paying through the nose for fresh orange juice, because it is delicious and you feel good all day afterwards.

another thing i am pretty okay with is this couple at the table next to us. they are for sure dressed for prom: nice suit with boutonniere, sparkly blue dress with gloves and corsage. she's going to trip on her heels, though. ten dollars says she does it before they even get out of here. she definitely has braces. it's been so long since i've been an age where i didn't pity anyone my age with braces that i forgot how normal it is to have braces in high school. like, you can get a relatively attractive prom date, even with braces. it's not a handicap at all. anyway, they seem to be killing time with some sort of word game. this whole time i've been trying to figure out what the rules are, but it's impossible. for a while, they both had their cell phones out - you know, something you can look at so you don't have to look at each other (i know all about this) - and were saying cell-phone related words, like "ring," "voicemail," "message," etc. but then the guy also said "wormhole," and she thought he said "hormone." that was a tense moment. omg, i just heard him say "orgasm." well, my mind is blown.

i think they might just be saying things they can see. although, i'm pretty sure he did not see an orgasm from where he's sitting, so i guess i don't really know what the deal is after all. whatever it is, it's pretty retarded, so i hope their ride shows up soon. oh, "aurora borealis." how romantic. ooh! she countered with "tongue"! bad move because if she doesn't want to make out at the end of the night he's going to be pissed. now i have to go look up some stuff on urban dictionary so i can understand all the rap songs i downloaded from itunes.

i have been like this for as long as i remember

i have recently gotten pretty into visiting the dry sauna. at first, i couldn't stay in there very long because it got hard to breathe and i freaked out a little. then i slowly learned that if you roll with it, you breathe just fine. it's the panic that's inhibiting. it's especially nice when the swim team has temporarily taken over the locker room. if there is one thing worse than a gaggle of prepubescent girls, it's that gaggle in bathing suits and swim caps, giggling. during those times, the dry sauna is like a little fort. it's dark in there, and wood-panelled, and it just feels terrific to think about yourself in the world's tiniest, warmest ski lodge while all heck breaks loose in the shower. well today, i was there in the evening, and very much enjoying the world's tiniest ski lodge after a long day of hard work when a naked woman came in. as previously mentioned, i am pretty much a deer in the headlights around naked people. i said hello, but what to do after that? you can't look. i mean, you cannot look. you don't even want to! so do you look at the ceiling? the ground? it's horrible, and tangibly awkward, and the worst part is usually the other person is so cool with being naked that they think you are being insane and maybe you are but it is still terrible and no matter how hard you try you just can't be cool. the thing is, in the dry sauna, it's okay to close your eyes, because you're relaxing. so i did, immediately. but my posture may have belied my feigned nonchalance, because not a minute later - not a minute - i heard the door open and she was gone. i was relieved, but why had she left without even trying to experience the benefits of the dry sauna? i mean, she maybe took like three breaths. well, maybe she freaked out, i told myself. i know all about that. to tell the truth, the maybe half-minute she was there, i spent trying to decide when would be a good time to leave. even with my eyes closed, i didn't want to be in there. what if my eyes just flew open by accident, and i looked, and she saw me looking? a nightmare. but i didn't want to leave right away, because then it would be pretty obvious that i was like "oh god, a naked person! i gotta get out!" and that is not cool. so, when she left, i felt guilty because i thought she might have sensed my discomfort, but mostly i felt relieved. then, when i left the dry sauna, she was there, loitering outside. she made like she was going into the steamroom, but i knew that she had indeed sensed my discomfort and was angered by it, by my complete inability to deal with the concept of clothing-optional public spaces. when i turned into the shower, i peeked to confirm my suspicion of my own complicity. there she was - going into the steam room! not the dry sauna at all! nothing was my fault! except then, she turned and saw me looking. for shame.

i have been thinking this hard about things that happen between me and other people since i can remember thinking at all. you can imagine what my experiences with boys have been like. HORRIBLE. even just watching the o.c. leaves me emotionally exhausted. jake is the most low-key, minimal-drama person i have ever met. that is why this is to date the most successful relationship i've been in. sure, we both like comic books and star wars and some kinds of music, but those things are like trinkets you buy at the thrift store that look nice in the afternoon light coming through your window in the fall. they really don't matter.

oh no look at these

more to come.

recurring dreams

i have two sets of recurring dreams. in one, i have a beard, and at first i freak out and cry in the mirror but everyone else seems pretty cool with it, so i just leave it alone. i'm not sure if the second really qualifies as recurring, because it's different every time, but it's always about the same thing: this one old boyfriend. i haven't talked to him in probably around six years, except for this one horrible time when i was working as a waitress and he sat at one of my tables with someone who was obviously a girlfriend. i was so wired after that that they let me go home early, which NEVER EVER happened even if you cried. i got a ride home that night and made a new friend who had two lop-eared bunnies and a copy of rosencrantz and guildenstern are dead on laser disc, but that story leads to an ashram and no one wants to go there. so starting around two years ago, about twice a month i have a really strange dream about this old boyfriend. this time, he had run away from a halfway house after being "rehabilitated" in some sort of institution, which he refused to tell me about. he found me staying at a hotel with my aunt in an unfamiliar city for a funeral. he came to our hotel room, i think handcuffed to someone and with a present he had made for me in a crafts class, an enormous pin with feathers tied onto it. the feathers were beautiful, but there was no way i could wear it without stabbing myself, it was so big. it was the most illogical present i had ever received, but how are you supposed to say that to someone who is insane? we hid from my aunt in the bathroom, and i got his handcuffs undone and told him i would meet him at a donut place around the corner from where the funeral was. when i got there, we decided to run away together, and it was the most satisfying thing in the world. all of the dreams end that way: i decide to dump jake for him and we are together forever. it's not like i wish we were still together, or getting back together. i don't even want to see him. we were in high school, so of course it ended badly, although i think it ended particularly badly even for high school. either way, it would be incredibly awkward and probably a little backhanded and evil if we ran into each other now. under no circumstances would we ever, ever decide to run away together, unless it was to some sort of duel or match of wits. so i have no idea what these dreams mean. i think freud was a crackpot with some interesting theories about society but little to nothing on the human psyche, but i can't shake the feeling that sometimes dreams mean something. i myself have had a few significant dreams that have told me some things about what i really think about people. usually, they're the sort of feverish dreams you have when you nap, so maybe they take on extra significance because of the fever; or, maybe all dreams are significant, but you only remember the ones during which you wake up, so you see those as significant. either way, these dreams keep coming back and really unsettling me, and i have no idea what to do about them. i tried looking him up on myspace just to make sure he's okay, but that's ridiculous. if he weren't, why would myspace tell me anything about it? maybe i'm just watching too much carnivale. i'm pretty sure my dreams aren't going to tell me about anything besides what's going on inside my own head.

if you are like me, you will know you have to read this as soon as you find out that it exists

awesome.

also, tim burton directed it. AWESOME.

this is slowly turning into a comic book blog, but i'm sort of impressed that i know enough about comic books to write this much

i realized that lately i have pretty much only written in this blog when i've had something to complain about, and while it's been pretty cathartic, i can't imagine that it reflects very well on me. let's talk about some things that i am pretty happy with right now.

i really love my mom. i had a great time with her when i was home. yesterday, i got a call from the company that's in charge of the security system at my house, and the fire alarm had gone off. i flipped my lid, because what if something happened to her? i know that sounds a little like a complaint, but really it's just evidence that i really, really care about her, which makes me happy. i'm really lucky to have a mother that is so awesome that it's easy for me to feel that way.

the cat has been surprisingly patient lately. usually he is up at five, and the second you move your hand or so much as sigh deepy, he is all over you trying to get fed. today he let me sleep until ten. ten! and i didn't even have to yell at him!

jake and i cleaned the house in preparation for finding a roommate, and it is still sort of clean. sort of. i mean, i can use the kitchen without too much trouble. that feels way good.

i saw the prestige again. still awesome. now, though, my ideas about nikola tesla are inextricably entwined with david bowie's music. and, christopher nolan is putting out a new batman - "the dark knight," although not based on frank miller's work - and heath ledger is playing the joker. my knickers are not in a twist over them picking a pretty boy, though. first of all, heath ledger is not a bad actor. second of all, in the original movie, the joker was played by jack nicholson, and portrayed as much older than batman (played by michael keaton). while this made for a great dynamic in that one movie because they were able to imply that the joker played a role in the deaths of the waynes, in the comic books the joker and batman are the same age, which leads to a completely different kind of adversarial relationship, which i feel will be reflected with this younger choice. not to pooh-pooh the first batman movie, though - of course, jack nicholson was terrific, but i feel that michael keaton doesn't get enough recognition for really setting the standard for how batman was going to be portrayed cinematically. he really distanced himself from the goofy adam west character (channeled later by george clooney in hands-down the worst batman movie ever), nailed the seemingly carefree drunkard millionaire playboy, and struck terror in the hearts of villains with the dead-serious, almost deadpan gravelly voice from the shadows. one of the reasons that i like christian bale in the role so much is that he takes pretty much all of his cues from this performance. also, i am really excited about the new spiderman. at first, i was sort of dismayed that they picked topher grace to be eddie brock. not that i don't like topher grace, but he's just so little and young. i always pictured eddie brock as older than peter parker, and much bigger. but then i talked to some coworkers who are even nerdier than me and reread some venom storylines, and eddie brock was much smaller before venom came along. i was also a little worried that they were going to try and tackle so many storylines in one movie. i mean, look at what happened with x3. gwen stacey, the sandman, and venom. they could probably make two movies for each of those plotlines alone. also, ten bucks says something's going to happen with both doc connors and the hobgoblin. but, i figure that like x3, this movie will probably be a jumping-off point for at least a couple different storylines, if not a couple different characters. they could do a whole venom movie, and it would be awesome. ron howard's daughter playing gwen stacey, i'm not too sure about, especially since the trailers make it look like he goes after gwen while he's still with mary jane. but she does look okay in the blonde wig. and i'm really excited about the dude from wings playing the sandman. i think he'll be great.