12.29.00

I’ve become so accustomed to sardonic blog titles that I cheerfully clicked on Not So Manic Now expecting some witty little coed and a few snippets of his favorite Eminem lyrics. After reading a few posts, including one mention of a suicide attempt, I realized it was a “support blog” of sorts for people with bipolar disorders. Right� Not. So. Manic. Now. Have I mentioned I’m a bad person?

3:17 p.m.

The best headlines from this month’s Martha Stewart Living:

• The Proper Way to Load Your Dishwasher
• Folding Fitted Sheets and Bath Towels (complete with photo diagrams)
• Smoothing a Table Cloth
• Pistachio Valentine
• Gourd Bird House
• Drying Decanters

That said, I’m off to carve some “natural sake cups” out of cucumbers.

2:30 p.m.

EMAIL MOMENT!

Character: Friend who’s spending the holidays with family in Virginia.

Subject: What’d you get for Christmas?

Excerpt:

My parents bought me a leather jacket last night, and, despite the obvious
conservation of animals issue, I look pretty hot in it. I will probably be
wearing said jacket on my return flight as my mother thinks the airline people
know which bags have the expensive coats in them.

12:54 p.m.

12.28.00

A friend and I were driving through the city when I spotted a spray-painted wall. GAP IS KILLING REDWOODS!

Me: Gap is killing redwoods? I suspect Gap is doing worse things to humanity than that.

Him: Yeah. Like popularizing the color orange.

4:31 p.m.

Thomas Lynch is a poet and an undertaker. I’m reading his prose autobiography The Undertaking and he wrote something I liked:

“The meaning of life is connected, inextricably, to the meaning of death; mourning is a romance in reverse, and if you love, you grieve and there are no exceptions-only those who do it well and those who don’t.”

2:42 p.m.

“Alex, I’ll take Needs a New Hobby, for $500.” Someone collected all the phone numbers from movies and TV shows and put them at the 555-xxxx site.
One redeeming point, as The Ultimate Insult noted, they do have The Simpsons’ phone number.

1:25 p.m.

Catscan is a site that posts scans of cats. The instructions on how to scan your cat are almost as good as the JPEGs.

11:42 a.m.

12.27.00

I’ve never asked my roommate about his living room bookshelf. It’s pretty small, so there aren’t too many books on it, but what’s there is pretty interesting. (As my friend Sam would say, “Interesting defined as something I wouldn’t necessarily want to put in my mouth.”)

• Sex for One: The joy of self loving
• Hitler’s Willing Executioners
• A History of Torture
• Plasirs D’Amour: An erotic guide to the senses
• The Holy Bible (sandwiched between)
• The Satanic Bible (and)
• True Crime Vol. 2: Serial Killers and Mass Murderers
• Fractals Everywhere

5:10 p.m.

I really like this guy. Not only did we go to the same college (yeah, Aggies), but he’s also named Ernie. Anyone who’s gone through life with a Muppet name deserves some support. He posted a great white-girl description a few days ago, racist pig:

“Okay, I try not to play into the stereotypes, swear to god. But after listening to them on the radio, I look up Dream on the internet, expecting them to look like Destiny’s Child, and I come across the four whitest girls on the face of this earth. Not even like typical white girls – they’re like, Sarah Michelle Gellar, let’s go to the mall, swing by Hot Topic and eat a Hot-Dog-on-a-Stick white girls.”

4:04 p.m.

My sister is a full-time parent. Spending all day with little kids has its effects, and one of them is an inability to recognize sexual double meanings anymore. My nephew opened a Christmas gift that contained a soccer ball, a basketball, and a football. My sister promptly exclaimed, “Look at that! You’ve got some big balls, Trevor! You’ve sure got some balls!” When I burst out laughing, she just blinked at me. “What?”

2:19 p.m.

12.22.00

CalFed ad on BART:

“YOU HAVE THE POWER TO CHANGE BANKS.”

Why do I suddenly feel like I should be wearing a shiny gold leotard and a cape?

11:01 a.m.

A quality rant from that other girl:

“I know this is going to sound really un-PC, but damn
woman, get a life, get laid, get something cuz’ this is just
so stupid to me – ‘Snowmen on Christmas cards reinforce
traditional gender stereotypes by reflecting men in
prominent, public roles and women in private, domestic
situations…’ I always just thought they didn’t look like women because
it is so hard to get the snow-boobies to stay on.”

9:46 a.m.

12.21.00

This magazine ad for Christina Aguilera’s new album reads like a blurb for a porn video:

“Like her other hits from RCA’s Christina Aguilera, “Come On Over (All I Want is You)” finds the perky popster piping her tales of teen appetite.”

2:46 p.m.

11:29 a.m.

A woman and man walking up the subway stairs behind me:

She: …all relationships could use a little more communication. All of them. For me, what I need is to know what’s going on with the other person.

He: Did you sleep with him?

She: What? I’m talking about us, not him.

He: Mmm.

She: I’m not talking about sex, I’m talking about communication.

He: Mmm.

9:40 a.m.