maggeh

My friend Katy is 5’2″, beautiful, and blessed with a tangle of curly black hair. I spent New Year’s Eve with her, and every ten minutes or so a new guy noticed her:

“Awwww, I like ’em petite!”

“Ooo. I’ve had wet dreams about that hair.”

“Hello there, little girl. Wanna sit on my lap?”

Like she was going to saunter up, plop down on his lap, and wrap her legs around him. “Oh, Romeo. Don’t be so coy. (Insert bubbling laughter.)” Glah! By the end of the night I felt like my brain needed a shower, and none of it was even directed at me.

2:32 p.m.

My friend Sam is leaving San Francisco, and he made some good points in his farewell note. Another one bites the dust:

WHEREAS, despite the greatly-exaggerated demise of the New Economy,
housing prices in San Francisco are still the second-highest in the world,
and

WHEREAS the Bay Area is swimming in cultural events which are all
within driving distance, but which lack parking anywhere within the same zip
code, and

WHEREAS we spend over two hours commuting each day, and

WHEREAS we and two cats would like to move in together and have a
front porch for something under $1000 a month, and

WHEREAS it might be nice to purchase a house within the next five
years without a Tokyo-style mortgage, and

WE THE UNDERSIGNED (to wit, my girlfriend and I) do hereby declare:

YEA, VERILY, we are getting the Duck out of fodge.

12:07 a.m.

Oooh Virtual Bubble Wrap. Such satisfying pop-like sounds. Must move hand away from mouse to wipe moronic drool from chin.

10:27 a.m.

Jesus Dress Up is an online paper-doll of Jesus on the cross. Ever so tasteful. (Thank you Mr. Justin.)

1:25 p.m.

EMAIL MOMENT!

Characters: Me and a friend-of-a-friend, who I’d never met outside of email.

Subject: I had just figured out that our common friend was trying to set us up.

Excerpt:

Me: Amy is, of course, trying to set us up. I didn’t
realize that until now, but it’s become apparent. To make this more comfortable all
around, let’s mutually agree that it would never work
between us. We’re just different people. Besides, with
my hideous deformity and your overbearing mother, we’d
only be punishing ourselves.

Him: Wow, a pre-meeting rejection! How progressive and efficient of you. You’re
really going to be kicking yourself when you find out I’m the sole heir to
the substantial Huggies fortune. Not that you’re a shallow gold-digger, of
course, I just find that everyone can always use more diapers.

Me: I try to be cutting edge when it comes to rejection.
Can’t get behind the technology, or suddenly your
apartment is filled with belching morons, grabbing at
their crotches and eating all your Klondike Bars.

10:49 a.m.

Nearly all of Jeff Druzba’s posts are interesting. Then again, he hasn’t been at this too long:

“Morning radio DJ’s are the processed cheese of people. Every Monday it’s the same, “Oh ya hate
to get outta bed this mornin’ but ya grab yer cup-a-joe and start the week off right.” Then, every
Wednesday they’re out there with “It’s hump day” and “Here’s hoping the week is almost over.” And,
every Friday, you’ve got your “TGIF baby, let’s part-ay!”

When I was at a younger awkward age, I used to hear them say “hump day” on the radio and I thought
it was some kind of adult joke I didn’t get. I knew that humping was what the big dog up the street did
to your leg if you dared enter his tethered neck radius and it seemed odd to me that they would talk
about something like that on the radio. The usage of “hump” meaning “middle” is not so obvious.”

9:27 a.m.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Ack! I love the “12 Galaxies United in Protest” guy! For those of you who didn’t know who I was talking about awhile back, here’s a site devoted to him that Mr.Kottke tracked down.

4:19 p.m.

Found this fantastic email on a bowling newsgroup. It was a search engine thing, don’t ask:

Kathleen,

Hi sorry it took me so long to get back to you. I would love to se some of
your cross stitch patterns. I am always looking for new project for the
house or the kids. I am finishing one for the bathroom right now and do a
lot for the kids rooms and little Christmas project and stuff. Bowling takes
up a lot of time and so do the kids but I try to get everything in. Anyway,
if you have a scanner and want to EMail them to me that would be great if not
we can do it another way.

Thanks Again,

Sharon

12:18 a.m.

When I’m really tired, my contacts grow fur to keep my eyes warm. Ug.

10:18 a.m.

Stuff that creeps me out (second in a series):

This post from wrong answer: Walking back to the office from lunch this past week, I stepped on a hypodermic needle. Well, I stepped on the rig, not the needle part – thank god. It is things like this that make me think it might be time to leave the big city.

The guy whose outhouse floor collapsed, he fell in and had to hang there for three days until the mailman found him.

This woman walked around with a knife in her neck for a few hours, and nobody noticed.

1:53 p.m.

Things I never remember:

Your birthday.

The Alamo

My past lives.

That time when.

Where I put my glasses.

My manners.

The Maine.

10:44 a.m.

EMAIL MOMENT!

Scenario:

A friend who wants to start crashing more dot-com parties.

Excerpt:

Dot-com parties rule! Ok, so I’ve
only been to one, but it ruled! Ok, it was the most
homogenous party I’ve ever been to but it was oddly
comforting! And they played Pump Up the Jam!

1:55 p.m.

You always know something cool has died when your parents get into it. “Oh, Margaret, I bought that rap album by the blond boy named after the candy? M and M? Anyway, I love it. Just love it. ‘I am Slim Shady, yes I am the REAL shady!’ ” Along those lines, yesterday I saw a Burning Man symbol painted on the side of a … Jeep Grand Cherokee.

12:15 p.m.

Let’s play the “worst way to die” game for a second. Acid bath, wheat thresher, slow consumption by hungry caged lions. (Stolen from Peex. )

9:55 a.m.