Perfect

What went right:

-We woke up early, got dressed, and went outside.
-It was sunny and warm for the first time in ages, and the New York Times was on the stoop.
-We climbed in our little orange car, and drove for breakfast in the Mission.
-There was a metered parking spot right out front.
-We didn’t have to plug the meter, because it was Sunday.
-There was no wait for the table.
-The coffee came right away.
-There was melted cheese.
-In amongst all the grape jellies, there was one strawberry left.

The Little Things

I’m with Sarah on the annoying nature of the “Up with Grups” cover story in New York magazine. It’s not that I care whether 35 year olds buy expensive jeans, or own iPods loaded with Cat Power, and the Drive by Truckers, and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. I don’t even care if they’d rather raise their kids on a steady diet of They Might Be Giants and dress them in tiny ironic tees.

It’s more how the article keeps insisting that adults wearing cool clothes and listening to current music somehow “erases the generation gap.” Oh no, honey. If you’re not twenty, people know that. You know who knows it most of all? The twenty year olds. They can taste it on the air.

And though urban adults listen to the same music, and wear the same clothes, and buy pot from the same dealer, very few of them are trying to hang with the undergrad set. We may be at the same concert, but please. We have completely different Dodgeball lists.

What the Kids Are Calling Them

I am asleep and having a sex dream. It is Girls-Gone-Wild-esque, save one key element. Everyone in the dream, including me, is a mathematician.

I am amongst a handful of bikini-clad girls standing atop a boat. We are laughing and holding small white boards. The guys in the crowd are raising their beer bottles and screaming, “Show us your solutions! Show us your solutions!”

No More Coffee for You

If your life is too hectic for you to keep a cactus alive, you have bigger problems than a lack of greenery in your environment.

My Buddy

The March/April edition of Mental Floss has an awesome article on parasites. One kind attaches itself to the tongue of a fish, feeding off the blood supply until the fish’s tongue drops off. Then the parasite serves as a surrogate tongue..

Just as good is the female Sacculina, which starts out as a sluglike thing floating around in the water. It finds a crab, and then stabs one of the crab’s joints with a dagger-like appendage. The Sacculina ooooozes into the crab through the hollow dagger, leaving an empty shell outside. Once inside the crab, the gooey parasite takes root, wrapping around the crab’s eyestalks and legs, growing until a little bit of it pops out of the crab’s shell. Then it begins to steer the crab wherever it wants to go. (“Sacculina! You’ve just successfully overtaken over the body of a crab, thereby ensuring propagation of your larvae! What are you doing next?”)

Sort of makes intestinal worms seem cuddly.

Trivial Pursuit: Drunk Edition

-We should have brought some Trivial Pursuit cards with us.

-Ahhh. We don’t need the cards, you can do that shit impromptu. It goes like this: “What the fuck was that one movie, the one where the guy had the sled?”

-Ha. All the Trivial Pursuit cards should start like that.

-Geography, “Where the hell was that one place where…”

-Literature, “Shit, who wrote that thing about…

-Sports, “Who won that fucking series? Why can’t I remember this?”

That Guy’s Life

As we’re leaving the car rental place, a guy at the gate stops us. He nods and hands Bryan a large clipboard with a form to sign. Taped to the bottom of the clipboard are two photos. One is of gate guy holding a giant sea skate and grinning, and the other is a woman in soft focus. She is slightly overweight, her hair has been recently curled, and she is busy seducing the camera. Her lips slightly parted, her eyes uncomfortably intimate.

“Uh, where do I sign?” Bryan asks. The gate guy touches his pen to a line that is just left of his girlfriend’s ample cleavage.

“Thanks.” Bryan says, and we drive away.

Overheard: Lessons on the Five

Hat Guy is on the bus today, and he’s feeling preachy. It’s the noon bus, so most of the people on board are tourists headed into the city for a day of shopping. Hat Guy is making them gravely uncomfortable, which seems to make Hat Guy happy. Here, a sampling of his insights:

On Poverty

The problem is, we got too many folks addicted to sleeping under the sky. Addicted. And then we offer them these itty bitty shelters. Let me ask you something. If you’ve got a great big house, why you gonna trade that for a little small house? Right?

On Marriage

Paul said, if you’re a man, and you’re hot to trot, you should get married. He didn’t put any conditions on that. He didn’t say, only to a woman! You have to marry a woman! No! He said, get married. And that’s the end of that.

On Religion

Bring out the religious stuff and the crowd goes dead.

On Travel

And for those of you who are tourists, this is San Francisco. You come here, you expect to have your mind blown wide open.

On Civil Rights

Does anyone think they might need an attorney in the next couple of minutes?

You’re Disgusting

I was reading an article recently about the recent surge in the market for pre-sliced apples (in the New Yorker, maybe?). They’re preserved in some kind of healthy goo that keeps them from turning brown, and the kids love them. The article asked a “Disgust Expert” why people found an empty bag so much more appealing than an apple core. His response was that the bag didn’t have any of you on it.

Pretty

The counter girl is lovely, striking even. She looks serene waiting behind the counter, but as we begin talking, I realize that something isn’t right. She seems a bit like a computer animation too uniform, too shiny. At first I think she’s just wearing too much makeup, but then she laughs and I think it’s something deeper.

Is she upset about something and trying to mask it? Is she slightly nutty and having trouble interacting normally?

As she shows me to what I’m looking for and laughs again, I realize that nothing on her face is moving but the corners of her mouth. The girl’s entire range of emotional expression has been Botoxed into submission. Which, you know, is pretty hot.