Tag: observations

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.

Tantara– The blare of a trumpet or horn.


3:13 p.m.

Best responses from a magazine blurb about what women call their knockers:

  • The Pointer Sisters,
  • Laverne and Shirley,
  • and, my personal favorite, MacNeil and Lehrer.

Still can’t believe no one suggested the Olson Twins.

11:34 a.m.

MARKETING WORKS!

I recently bought some lipstick because it was named Jezebel. I mean it’s a good color, but mostly the name cracked me up; also, it came in a container that looked like a bullet cartridge. Somewhere in New York, a marketing team is slapping fives. They changed the name from Crimson Punch to Jezebel, took it out of the tortoise-shell tube and packed it in a form of weaponry, and sales rocketed among urban twentysomethings. I am yet another unwitting victim of their plan to dominate the red-lipstick market. Anyway, it was totally worth it. Tomorrow night a bunch of us are getting together to run off a cliff, and I want to look hot.

8:39 a.m.

This is a calendar featuring women with beards. Friends, family members: if you have a birthday in January, you know what you’ll be getting from me.

2:15 p.m.

I’m wearing a new lemon perfume, and a friend told me I “smell like dish soap.” In guy-speak that means, “I want to rip your clothes off with my teeth.”

12:21 p.m.

I booked tickets to Indonesia yesterday because my life is rad. The only problem is, I’m terrified of the vaccinations. I know no one likes needles, but I don’t like them more. One of the most embarrassing things I’ve ever done involved a blood test when I was 14.

In the waiting room I swallowed repeatedly trying to conquer the excessive panic-saliva. When they tried to take me into the room, I grabbed either side of the doorjamb. It took three men to pry me off and hold me down while they drew my blood. My mom was stunned and mortified. “I can’t believe this, you’re practically a grown woman! What are you doing? This is really out of character, I’m so sorry. This is really out of character.” To this day, I have no idea what I was thinking, I guess it hadn’t occurred to me that they’d fight me.

So, yeah. The vaccinations will be a highlight.

10:45 a.m.

It’s time for my very own personalized action figure. For $250 I could have a mini Mighty Girl with a tiny little cape and tiny white go-go boots. That’s some serious first-world livin’.

3:51 p.m.

As I was rummaging for breakfast this morning, the cupcakes on my counter started to look suspiciously muffinlike. I had an internal debate: Muffin? Oatmeal? Muffin? Oatmeal? Then the inevitable self-reprimand: “MAGGIE. Muffins do not have sprinkles.”

9:52 a.m.

Just got back from vitamin shopping. The One-a-Day Calcium Supplement recommended “serving” is two-a-day. Better yet, the side of the bottle said, “Two One-a-Day Calcium supplements offer 1,000 mg of Osteoporosis-fighting calcium. For pregnant women three One-a-Day Calcium supplements offer 1,500 mg of Osteoporosis-fighting calcium.” Because, as you know, pregnancy does render one incapable of doing simple arithmetic.

8 p.m.

Philosophical note to self (and you too, since you’re here):

People who are good to know are also sometimes hard to know. If you want sparky friends in your life, you have to accept all of their eccentricities–not just the cute ones. The things you have to work for are usually better anyway.

7:28 p.m.

I just had my first feature article published. Super sweet.

9:31 p.m.

I like Caterina because she reminds me of a quirky girlfriend I had in highschool named Heather. People thought Heather was weird and pretentious, but she was actually just genuinely surprised when the guy next to her in Driver’s Ed didn’t know what contumacious meant. So, in honor of the girls who don’t dumb themselves down for public consumption, I present these Caterina moments.

12.31.00

My cousin Andrea sent me something: a man
named William Miller surveyed people who were dying. In his
research, he discovered most of them would basically do three things
differently if they had the chance to live their lives over:

1) They’d take more risks,

2) They’d assert themselves more, and

3) They’d have a lot more self-discipline.

3:35 p.m.

1.01.01

Cooking, cleaning, thinking, taking baths, going for walks are things I
hardly have time for anymore, or don’t remember to do. Funny how
these things used to be the stuff of life, but have been replaced by
driving on freeways, conference calls, showers, chinese food delivery
and answering email. Like we want as little contact with our lives as
possible.

8:55 p.m.

1.02.01

Jouke told me that “patatipatata” is French for “yadda yadda yadda.”

2:24 a.m.

12:55 p.m.

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.

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.