So you know, the yellow conversation hearts are banana flavored. I’ll be over here, scrubbing my tongue with sand.

2:34 p.m.

EMAIL MOMENT!

Subject: In which I send encouragement to an aspiring artist and am rebuffed.

Me: “An artist cannot fail; it is a success to be one.”
-Charles Horton Cooley

Dave: I would posit that I must first
be accepted, or slightly talented, to actually be an artist. If all
I had to do was call myself something to also be something, then I would
suggest that I am, in fact, a raging porn star…

12:19 p.m.

This Slashdot article highlights a North Carolina service that lets high school kids call in and report students that cause them concern. (Someone has a BB gun in their locker? Call in. Someone seems bummed a lot? Call in. Someone just stole your girlfriend and you’d like to screw them over in any way possible? Call in.) The article also mentions that “81 percent of Americans said they believed the Net was responsible for the Columbine massacre.” Right. If you need me, I’ll be under my bed.

10:19 a.m.

I buy some daffodils on my way to work. As I’m walking, I realize that I’m carrying flowers and a book of poetry as I trot along the Streets of San Francisco. Suddenly, I’m the over-the-top “sensitive girl” and my life is a bad undergraduate play.

1:26 p.m.

EMAIL MOMENT!

Subject: Cynicism kicks in.

Excerpt:

“I swear I used to think
everyone kinda had a similar life to mine, but anymore I’m
sure
they have a lot less fun, eat a lot more bran, have
a
lot more low quality sex, and mail each other
inspirational cards that they actually read.”

12:04 p.m.

This guy fights with his girlfriend. A lot. So much that he has a rather lengthy page devoted to the subject, “Things my girlfriend and I have argued about.” A sampling:

• I eat two-fingered Kit-Kats like I’d eat any other chocolate bars of that size, i.e., without
  feeling the need to snap them into two individual fingers first. Margret accused me of doing
  this, ‘deliberately to annoy her’.
• She pours water into the back of my monitor every time she
  waters a plant, which she refuses to have moved to another, less overtly stupid, location.
• Margret doesn’t like to watch films on the TV. No, hold on – let me make sure you’ve got
  the inflection here: Margret doesn’t like to watch films on the TV. She says she does, but
  years of bitter experience have proven that what she actually wants is to sit by me while I
  narrate the entire bleeding film to her. “Who’s she?”, “Why did he get shot?”, “I thought
  that one was on their side?”, “Is that a bomb” – “JUST WATCH IT! IN THE NAME OF
  GOD, JUST WATCH IT”!
• She wants to paint the living room yellow. I have not the words.
• Margret thinks I’m vain because… I use a mirror when I shave. During this argument in the
  bathroom – our fourth most popular location for arguments, it will delight and charm you to
  learn – Margret proved that shaving with a mirror could only be seen as outrageous
  narcissism by saying “None of the other men I’ve been with” (my, but it’s all I can do to
  stop myself hugging her when she begins sentences like that) “None of the other men I’ve
  been with used a mirror to shave.”
  “Ha! Difficult to check up on that, isn’t it? As all the other men you’ve been with can now
  only communicate by blinking their eyes!” I said. Much later. When Margret had left the
  house.

(Thanks, Kevin.)

8:41 a.m.

EMAIL MOMENT!

Subject: Dating woes of a friend in med school.

Excerpt:

All the girls I want to sleep with are not returning
my phone calls, and some of the ones I have slept with
now call for free medical advice. Favorite one of
the week: How much can you drink on Lithium?

2:31 p.m.

Sometimes things annoy me more than they should. For example, the small blue signs someone has taped in our bathroom stalls.

Flush early!
Flush often!
Flush freely!
Help prevent traffic backup.

Yeah. Those are coming down.

11:44 a.m.

After you’ve had your aura cleaned, consider having your ass read. You send Jaqueline “a fanny gram,” she tells you what your buttprint says about your soul. Well, at least now you have an excuse when your boss catches you perched on top of the photocopier. (Click on the “rumpology” button in the upper left corner.)

3:14 p.m.

This is creepy Web art. Childlike drawings with hostile-man score. If you’re at work, bust out the headphones before you click.

12:36 a.m.

EMAIL MOMENT!

Subject: College friend reminisces about his youth.

Excerpt:

My mother would frequently record tape cassettes and send
them to my grandparents, uncles and aunts, et al. to
mark our progress (this was before the invention of
the motion-picture camera). On one these tapes, my
mother tells me “stop that” seventy-eight times in a
matter of fifteen minutes. One of my favorite lines is
when she yells, “you better NOT pee on the couch.”

9:55 a.m.

I’m reading Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri, a short story collection flavored with lots of details about Indian life. I don’t usually like short stories, but Lahiri is an uncommon writer. My favorite passage so far is a child’s description of what “sexy” means:

“It means loving someone you don’t know.”

4:43 p.m.

EMAIL MOMENT!

Subject: Friend tells me to use his car while he’s gone.

Excerpt:

You are perfectly welcome to drive my car around. Just remember to turn the lights off and you should be fine. Oh, and I’d probably prefer it if I could say that I’ve had sex in it more than you have, so try to keep the numbers down.

2:04 p.m.

My dentist supplies headphones for her patients. When you’ve got some quality tunes playing, you hardly notice the smell of burning tooth enamel while she drills. I selected Louis Armstrong.

Two masked dentists leaned over me, backed by a glaring, operating-table light, while I tried not to gag on the spit collecting at the back of my throat. At the peak of my discomfort, Louis sang, “AND I THINK TO MAHSELF, WHUTTA WONDERFUHL WAHHHLD� (cue strings).” I swear, it was like stepping into a Quentin Tarantino movie. I found it so absurd that I had to control the urge to laugh (funeralsbreakupsthethingsIwishI’dknown). But the more depressing things I thought about, the worse the juxtaposition became. When “Life is a Cabaret” came on, I lost it. With my mouth stretched open like a gasping trout, I started to guffaw.

They, mercifully, assumed I was choking. I tried to cover my lunacy with a few well-placed coughs, and hit stop on the CD player while I was sitting up. I shoulda gone with Korn.

10:55 a.m.