Tag: excerpts

I am so sick of reading blogs by women who pepper their intelligent, hilarious posts with frequent mentions of how ugly/fat/flat/unwantable/unloveable they are. (As if pointing these things out weren’t the least attractive thing they could do.) But recently, I came across Accidental:

“In my old age, I am getting vain. I find myself walking the extra 100 yards or so to the bathroom with the mirror so I can check my coif. And let me tell you, I did not realize how cute I am. Hello world, I am cute. Check me out, bad boy.”

I love this woman. As for the rest of you, I’ve seen the photos, girls. Ninety percent of you have bodies that would stop passing traffic and/or eyes big enough to signal planes. Shut up! Shut up! Before I reach through the monitor and thump you.

3:03 p.m.

“Multitudes succumb to the sorrow induced by an inexact vocabulary.”

(From “Doubt” by Fannie Howe.)

9:35 a.m.

Great post from memepool:

“Nothing says ‘My business is all about wretched excess’ more than stainless
steel business cards.”

2:41 p.m.

Short conversations with people who should be slain:

  • -Did you get your hair cut?-I got all of ’em cut.
  • -What a mistake.-You can say that again.

    -What a mistake.

  • -What did you say? I couldn’t hear you.-What?

    -I said I couldn’t hear you.

    -What?

    -I COULDN’T HEAR YOU.

    -WHAT?

2:19 p.m.

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.

Just got back from ladies’ night where we traded mom stories. I told Amy that my mom sends Christmas cards to people she met in the dentist office waiting room. Amy told me that she caught her mom talking to strangers on the bus about her parents’ illnesses. This reminded me of yesterday morning when I was sitting next to a guy on Muni who looked just like Prince William. I was actually turning toward him to tell him so when I realized that if I did, I’d be that woman on the bus telling a perfect stranger that he looked like Prince William. Sobering.

11:44 p.m.

From the “Yeah, I’ve done that” department. Words of wisdom from Booboolina:

“Note to self:

When picking the jeans that you wore yesterday up
from the floor in preparation for putting them on
today, check to see that the underwear you were
also wearing yesterday are no longer in them…
BEFORE YOU PUT THEM ON.”

1:44 p.m.

I just finished Michael Cunningham’s The Hours. I wanted to hate it, because it’s loosely based on Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway. I loved Mrs. Dalloway and expected Cunningham to ruin something essential. Instead, I was pleasantly surprised. Some excerpts:

  • “In school she was one of several authoritative, aggressive, not quite beautiful girls so potent in their money and their athletic confidence they simply stood where they stood and insisted that the local notion of desirability be reconfigured to include them.”
  • “Men may congratulate themselves for writing truly and passionately about the movements of nations; they may consider war and the search for God to be great literature’s only subjects; but if men’s standing in the world could be toppled by an ill-advised choice of hat, English literature would be dramatically changed.”
  • (And a pug quote for Swen.) “Viginia’s eyes met those of one of the pugs, which stares over its fawn-colored shoulder at her with an expression of moist, wheezing bafflement.”

8:53 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.

According to Pop Bitch:

“Ricky Martin has approached Barry Manilow about recording
a version of Copacabana. This will be the best record in the
history of the world. Ever.”

(via Geno who’s just completed a redesign over at Disenchanted Prince.)

3:39 p.m.

My smart, amusing friend Bryan and his smart, amusing friends just started a promising blog called Right On America! One of Bryan’s recent posts:

“I just finished All The President’s Men and have 3 observations:

1.) If every American was forced to read the book, it would be the end of the Republican party

2.) The real winner in the 2000 election is Richard M. Nixon and Gerald Ford – their Administrations are back in force in W’s cabinet

3.) Nixon’s ‘dirty tricks’ group did some damn funny things:

* disributed all over Harlem “FREE BEER” flyers for a McGovern (Democrat) rally –
no beer made lots of people real, real mad

* Sent 100 pizza’s to several Democratic Rally [frat-boyish, but funny]

* followed Ted Kennedy’s campaign and kept calling the owner of the rally sites
to cancel the event – then the Kennedy campaign would show up to a locked building

* infilitrated the Amish [no shit]

God bless us, each and every one.”

11:44 a.m.

One of my friends at work sent me an email titled “Fun with Press Releases.”

For Immediate Release: INVISIBLE.INK LAUNCHES _PLUS-SIZE_ TEEN FASHION SITE

Turnstylz attracts plus-size teenage girls, an ever-growing segment of
the fashion industry, as well as their guardians who often influence
their purchasing decisions.

9:02 a.m.

Looking for an unclean experience? Tune in to “Temptation Island.”

The whole show went something like this: Closeup of a guy rubbing salt on his nipple in preparation for tequila body shots. Cut to the wide-eyed, buxom girl he’s on a date with, “He’s so so DEEP.”

Yeah. He’s the Grand Canyon of humility and spiritual enlightenment. Perhaps he’ll engage in rabid monkey sex with you.

Then again, who am I to talk? The show was so embarrassing that it made my eyes water, but I watched the WHOLE thing. Sure, I showered a few times afterward, but I can still feel the dark stain on my soul.

11:44 a.m.

I’ve unwittingly misled you. One of the Americans for Purity informed me that all of the pages I link to below are spoofs (except the Biblical action figures). I was pretty hard hit until Jason sent me a link to the Church of Latterday Saints’ Steps to Overcoming Masturbation. Mr. Kottke favors step 19, “In very severe cases it may be necessary to tie a hand to the bed frame with a tie in order that the habit of masturbating in a semi-sleep condition can be broken.” I’m a fan of the Church’s take on aversion therapy: “If you are tempted to masturbate, think of having to bathe in a tub of worms, and eat several of them as you do the act.”

10:03 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.

Amazing article about an abandoned National Security Association spy station.

5:20 p.m.

My friend Sam blogged about a bumper sticker he saw that said, “Shake Your Ass for Jesus.” That’s fairly in line with my personal philosopy, which is that Jesus is a big fan of joyous booty motion.

2:44 p.m.

I cut this out of Newsweek a few years ago, and just came across it again:

“A mistake was made by a junior staffer who is no longer with the campaign.”

Dole for president deputy press secretary Christina Martin, on a letter Washington DC resident Irv Rastin received thanking him for his contribution, which began “Dear Cheetoh Breath”

9:49 a.m.

“It is no coincidence that you cross your fingers when you say ‘ready’ in sign language.”

From “Unrelated Individuals Forming a Group Waiting to Cross” by Melanie Bogue.

2:56 p.m.

Another reason I love Jane magazine, this review of the “Buttkicker Shaker”:

A $700 device you can attach to your couch to electrify your movie watching and music-listening experiences. Let’s say you rent Vertical Limit. When snow roars down the mountain, your Buttkicker-enhanced sofa will shake like you were actually in an avalanche, except without the death part. When I watch movies, I never think, “I’m missing out because when the bombs go off onscreen, I don’t feel anything in my butt.”

12:20 p.m.

I had a dream last night that a ’50s-dad type was telling me about taking his family on a trip out to California: “Yeah, we went to Silicon Valley to see the Internet. I thought we’d be able to just walk right up close enough to touch it, but they kept it behind about five feet of glass. The kids were disappointed.”

10:39 a.m.