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.

this is not my cat, just to be clear

today has been a pathetic day

work was fine. it usually is.

home kind of sucks. i don't know how obvious this is, but it usually does. my roommate moved out, and the other two roommates touted some high standards for who they wanted to move in but none of those people worked out so it was left to me to troll craigslist to try and find someone relatively sane. i came up with the perfect gentleman, a young man from shreveport, louisiana with the most darling accent you ever heard and a manner like a cool glass of lemonade in the summer. also a large collection of southern hip-hop and a wide-eyed wonder for the amusements of portland. i immediately grew attached to him, cleaned the house for his visit, and agitated for his primacy as a candidate. as soon as things looked like they were going to go my way, a faraway (sacramento) roommate came down from on high to say that his girlfriend, or maybe a former roommate of hers, was maybe going to take the room, so he would handle this month's rent and we would figure it out. i don't dislike his girlfriend, or her former roommate. when i had been clutching at straws two days ago i would have been ecstatic to hear they wanted to move in. but now that i've found my own person, a good person and a potential friend, i'm overwrought and being pretty melodramatic about it. part of it is that i like him, and if i have to turn him away we'll never be friends. the other part is that i have been feeling pretty pathetic lately, what with my almost complete inability to connect with any of the friends i had considered "real" (besides the inimitable jordan pierce, who i consistently fall short of believing has actually conceded to being my friend). the opportunity to make a real friend, not just one that i go to a movie with because i know her and she is a girl, made me really excited. but, aside from my temporary delusion that i should just tell him to move in anyway and no one will be mad, that opportunity is pretty much gone. it's pretty pathetic that i can feel so terrible over the failure of a friendship that hadn't even happened yet.

also, i had a flat tire and when i brought it in they said i needed new tires. that sucked.

ack

they're still all good stories

there's this idea floating around, that new wives or new mothers are prone to crazy, lonely adventures, like ceasing to sleep entirely and using this time to read anna karenina over and over again or packing the kid and a flask of gin in the car and driving as far as she can by noon and telling the kid they're going to the zoo. i used to think that is was an idea that male authors had about women that they thought stayed home all day with nothing to do or who they suspected were suffering from postpartem depression, but i'm starting to think it's kind of real. i always thought that if i married rich, i would stay home with the baby and take fistfuls of antidepressants and spend a lot of time telling the baby that it's ok that i haven't put pants on yet, and then when the father came home i would say "oh, we went to the park." real stay-at-home moms take care of kids all day and do chores and really take them to the zoo. at least, on law & order they're always well put together and pushing a stroller at the park. but i'm not even close to being married, or having too much time on my hands, and i'm still starting to get weird ideas, like shoplifting or picking people up from the bus stop and taking them to their houses or going to the zoo by myself during a storm. i'm also becoming sort of a hypochondriac. sometimes it's just a fake cold or a stomachache. this week it's the beginning symptoms of scurvy, so i bought myself eight bottles of orange juice and dared myself to drink them all tonight. it doesn't have anything to do with jake, i don't think. i don't want to cheat on him at all. just all of a sudden these ideas come into my head and i really want to do them. maybe i'm going insane.

new year's eve

this year, i spent it at home losing really, really badly at monopoly and being kind of a brat about it. it wasn't the killer party, but it was pretty fun and i had a good time. it was pretty much exactly what i wanted, except partway through i realized that i also wanted a bunch of my friends to call me and tell me what their wacky schemes for fun were and ask me to join them, invitations i would politely, although not self-righteously, decline. i just really did not feel like doing the same thing i do every year, which is drink a bunch of champagne and see what amber young is doing and maybe get some donuts, which is all fine but slightly disappointing when you've spent days trying to come up with some kind of grand plan that will make everyone as happy and excited as possible. i didn't want to do or be subject to any of these grand plans or the inevitable disappointment this year. i didn't want to do or be subject to any of the hooting and hollering that goes on when two girls kiss at midnight, or someone throws up their burger downtown after the fireworks. i just didn't feel like it this year, so i stayed home, and none of my friends called. some friends who were in different time zones texted me some pretty funny versions of "happy new year" two to three hours early, but that was it. i don't know, maybe i told everyone i was staying home and not to bug me and then completely forgot about it; maybe everyone else had the same idea. either way, this year i was left out of everyone's plans. this sort of suits me just fine, but it makes me kind of worried that i severed a bunch of ties and will never see these people again. when i first went to college, i was terrified that this would happen - that all the friends i had made would forget about me, or that none of us would ever talk to each other again. obviously, that didn't happen, but it does sort of feel like we all started to not care about each other that much. i mean, can i really call someone my best friend if i only see them twice a year? of course i care about these people, but i sort of feel like we've all started to be less inclined to do favors for each other, or less inclined to call each other if the other one didn't call first. then again, every time i hang out with them, i have a terrific time, way more fun than with most other people, and it's really comforting to be around people who have known me for so long. maybe everyone was just busy and we are all still awesome.

lorenzo the flying frenchman

omg. i wish i was going to grad school for this, or this was me or someone i was married to. except i'm pretty sure "lorenzo" is not a french name.

greens

that is the restaurant where we went to dinner tonight to belatedly celebrate my birthday. it was incredible, as usual, but i really wish i could stop going so that each meal there would be like a shining gem in my memory instead of one of dozens of dusty gems in a chest that's lying around. but how do you stop yourself from experiencing maybe the most delicious thing ever, especially when you've been eating snack food for what feels like years because even the microwave is disgusting? you don't. period.

on the ride home, i saw a guy carrying his groceries in his arms on the sidewalk. probably lives like a block from a grocery store. pretty normal. the thought that went through my head was, "how quaint." i think i believed that we had come so far since the days of carrying groceries that we had invented something so no one ever had to carry their groceries, especially if they lived a little bit of a walk from the grocery store. ostensibly, i could have been thinking "shopping cart" or "car," but i think my real thought was something more like "grocery transporter." i have no idea where this came from. maybe encouraging myself to think like a small child again is an experiment gone wrong; maybe delicious food is doing something to my brain.

can't stop posting. i'm in the airport, on the internet! it's so novel and i can hold it over my fellow passengers!

nsync is so full of mistakes.
the girls in the video. the horribly generic lyrics matched with generic video clips but oddly mismatched couples. everyone's hair. EVERYONE's. i know the dreads and the curly blonde stand out, but if you look closely, they are ALL mistakes.

i used to know someone who would teach dogs "horse sense" by putting them in an arena with a horse who would do this. sounds terrible, but was great.

this is something someone is doing all around portland. sometimes i just love portland so much.

pdx schmdx

i am at the airport right now. the portland airport has its own wireless network, which makes it totally worth having to take your computer out of your bag at security. especially when your flight is delayed two and a half hours. a one and a half hour flight, delayed two hours. silly. and actually, security was a breeze. there is no one at the airport right now. when i dropped jake off yesterday morning, it was a zoo; we stood in line for 45 minutes while two attendants helped the line of people who actually needed to talk to someone because they were old or going to denver, and like eight attendants were helping people who were in the self check-in line. silly. i wanted to scream. but there's no one here today - checking in took about eight minutes. i got here really really ridiculously early because i thought i was going to have to stand in line for hours (i never stood in line at all) and i was sure i would forget that i had lotion or a drink and get in trouble ( i didn't), and now i'm just bored. i've eaten a burrito, an oreo fixnmix from wendy's which was pitifully far from an oreo milkshake, and a bigkat kitkat and my original boarding time hasn't even rolled around yet. any time i have kitkats, i could just eat them forever, but the second i take a bite of a bigkat i'm already satisfied. i threw away the entire second half.

awesome. orbitz just called again to tell me my flight was delayed a little bit more, and then during that call i got a call waiting, also from orbitz, telling me my flight was delayed even more than that. i wonder if orbitz gum is by the same people as the ticket people. i think their marketing campaigns are pretty similar.

on the train on the way to the airport, there was this woman talking on the phone. usually i get pretty annoyed at people talking on the phone in public places - not that they're being intentionally rude, just that they're apparently dumb or self-absorbed enough not to be able to read social signals that tell them that it's inappropriate. you know, people rolling their eyes when they laugh like a horse or sometimes just straight up glaring at them (this is my style, especially if they are using swears). i mean, i am not an extra perceptive person, but i can tell that when i'm on the phone on the bus or in an elevator, people are annoyed and don't want to hear whatever i'm talking about, even though it's usually delightful. it's like reverse privacy - people on phones don't care what other people know about their lives, but other people don't want to know even a single thing. anyway, if i can tell that it's not an appropriate thing to do, most other people should too. i think the majority of people know this by now, so when someone does do it, especially in a horsey voice, it's especially irritating.

as should be obvious by now, this woman had a horsey voice. i didn't really get irritated, though, because her end of the conversation was so transparent and pretty pathetic. she was obviously talking to a family member, and trying to impress upon them how many people cared for her and how many different households she was invited to for christmas and not to worry about her spending christmas alone. all well and good, although she also told the person that she was walking to her car, which she obviously was not because she was on the train right across from me. it made me feel pretty sad, and really lucky that i'm going home for christmas to people i care about and haven't seen in a while and we're all going to have a terrific time together.

i know my work friend/boss reads this blog, but hopefully i'll post a bunch after this and it will be so far down that she'll miss it. this christmas, she decided not to let her husband by her something pretty expensive that she really wanted. instead, she spent money on buying presents for children whose families couldn't afford to. then, on christmas day, she wants to go to mcdonald's and buy a bunch of breakfasts and hand them out to the homeless. her selflessness just shames me. sometimes we talk about people who are so awesome that we are simultaneously ecstatic to have them as friends and hate them for being way more awesome than us. when we talk about these people, i almost can't believe that she would be jealous of a friend of hers for being more awesome than her. look at the stuff she's doing for other people this christmas! also, her apartment is totally awesome! i'm really glad that my cat is spending the holidays there. maybe he will learn a little something about selflessness.