scrawls.

scrawls

still cheaper than therapy*

29.6.06

sometimes, you get a frozen lunch, and it is so spectacularly repellent that it makes you never want to eat again. which is really awful, because all the other barbecue in this entire freaking STATE is at least edible. how can they get away with selling that shit? *retch* tags:lean cuisine

scrawled @ 22:33

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28.6.06

snort the nose, lucifer, banana, banana

scrawled @ 23:13

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Dear Verizon, if the runaround i get trying to sign up to GIVE YOU MONEY is any preview of the customer service i will be seeing as someone who will (HOPEFULLY, you BASTARDS, if you can FREAKING TALK TO ME) already be giving you money, i am SO GLAD this is a temporary arrangement, because YOU SUCK.

seriously, who lies on their web page about what phone numbers to call about HOW TO GIVE YOU MONEY? if someone was trying to give me money i should think i would make it as easy for them as possible instead of giving them seven different phone numbers to sit on hold with in sequence. tags:verizon

scrawled @ 21:51

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27.6.06

Babygirl 0.4: likes dogs. Specifically, putting her long daddy's fingers into dogs' mouths. awwww. Can roll over, but only in one direction. also, i'm pretty sure that by now it's been proven i can totally sleep through whatever noises babies make. my kids are gonna be so screwed someday (oh, it's different when they're yours, i know, i know, don't tell me).

The french have not won the world cup quite yet, but we will go somewhere this-after and cheer them on, and i have found a blue shirt, which you wouldn't think would be hard what with it being the only color in my closet, after all, but i wasn't sure. if the french lose i think we will have to root for the germans because they will be very near austria. which means i will (or would, theoretically, if the french lost, but it's only spain - wait - eek) miss, a little bit, all those (well, the only two i had) red shirts that went to the salvation army. Not too much: like i don't have enough black. Hah.

side note: what is with all the men in this town wearing pastel pink shirts? pastel pink doesn't look good on everybody. Not by a long shot.

no internet at home yet. i need to practise my mad Worms Armageddon skillz.

scrawled @ 17:00

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26.6.06

babygirl 0.4

likes to kick things. Likes to hang upside-down over the edge of the couch and chew on the bottom rim of the cushion, interestingly. Sometimes topples over while hanging upside-down on the couch. So far, so good. kind of like college: small private space, only with dogs in it, and the wobbly person is very small and doesn't smell like stale beer. but with the go outside and be sociable thing. which is nice.

both dogs covered with burrs and grass and pollen. Slightly Less Small Dog looks scrawny when we cut off his mane (and also, well, less lionish). Getting along well with New Wrinkly Dog (who is probably also about the same size as each of them - Medium Sized Small Dog? Too Much Skin Head? Crumplebudget?).

scrawled @ 16:26

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24.6.06

1. Never get involved in a land war in Asia
2. Never go up against a Sicilian when death is on the line
3. Never throw away your ceramicware boxes

scrawled @ 04:56

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23.6.06

i'm going through old floppy disks, zip disks. and blushing retroactively. sample:

if life is a bowl of cherries, i get all the stems and tie them in a knot with my tongue...

Fifty points if anyone - anyone! can guess whose ancient, old email that was from.

scrawled @ 16:21

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21.6.06

allezallezallez

so if south korea either ties switzerland at zero (which could easily happen) or either one of them wins with any number of goals, and france stomps togo with at least 2 to nil (which one could also believe as perfectly feasible) OR if the SK-Sui game is not a tie and france wins at all, and Ravenclaw wipes the field with the poor sad remains of Slytherin, our froggly friends are still very much in the race. And if the US did very very very very well, they're not entirely eliminated yet in the technical sense either. but really i just want ANYONE IN EUROPE to win because next world-cup go-round, i'll be nearby. And multilingual. tags:world cup

scrawled @ 20:58

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19.6.06

ages ago when i had an actual writing class - or, i suppose, i had several - it was the sort of writing class in which everyone brings in sixteen copies of something and we all criticize each of them and you can very definitely tell who is a decent writer and who was drunk when they forgot to spell-check and there were enough English majors in the class that the people who forgot to spell-check got some very dirty looks. i cannot tell if the affronted English majors were able to affect the non-spell-checkers at all in the long run. but. each of us had a certain style of writing, certainly; you could start reading one of the stories or poems or essays or whatever the assignment had happened to be and almost immediately tell who had written it without looking at the top (some of them were actually deliberately left "anonymous," as part of the class, but that never worked). And after a bit it became clear that not only did each of us have a particular way of playing with (or in some cases, fighting with and ultimately losing to) words, but that each of us also had a favorite topic in mind, whether or not any of them realized it. Punk Rock Grrl wrote about abortion. Mr Baseball Hat wrote about his father. Whatever-is-the-singular-of-Womyn wrote about I AM LESBIAN. Farm kid wrote about horses. Boring Goth wrote about vampires every fucking chance he got, which as one can easily imagine got very tiresome very quickly. (it was particularly funny when after one assignment, Punk Rock Grrl, as usual, wrote about abortion, only without ever actually mentioning it, and when we were discussing the paper none of the men in the class, including the teacher, had any idea what was going on in this little three-page anectode; and they said this, that they were confused, and all the women in the class looked at them in astonishment that they were so fucking dense and we all said at exactly the same time, she's having an abortion, and then all the men in the class looked awfully sheepish. but i digress.)

The best writers were the ones who didn't have immediately recognizable topics, or whose themes were particularly vague. And so of course once you guess what themes the two-thirds of the class who can't write properly are going with, you want to see if the decent writers have them too. Eventually you realize: the West Virginian wrote about Spain. Halfway Decent Goth wrote about marital discord (surprise, surprise, eh?). Brainiac Pothead, probably the most talented of us, wrote about discrimination. and of course it takes you the longest to figure out your own, because of course it's a blind spot; who would deliberately write about the same thing over and over again and assume that it would continue to be even a little bit interesting? because whatever you're writing about obsessively is going to be so basic, so essential to you, that it doesn't even occur to you that it's there, like breathing. and it took forever and then at some point (after the class was over, actually) you manage to guess and it's been glaringly obvious the entire time to an extent at which you get a little embarrased and wonder who else noticed it: i wrote about loneliness. Plain and simple. and you go oh, That's why i like hemingway, then.

and here is the problem with writing real stories, or a novel like FIL wants, or anything: i'm not lonely now. and so i can't write it. all i can do is rant about shit and pretend to be funny. besides, a novel about loneliness couldn't help but end happy, and i'd hate that.

scrawled @ 17:19

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sweet. what else can i get rid of?

and just say if, for instance, just theoretically, i wanted to get a storage place. would i actually want to keep stuff? which stuff? do i mind making the deal that if we get rid of the television now, we can buy an HD projector upon return? they'll be cheap by then, right? but. wait. again. how does storing shit cost more than a fucking uhaul truck?

scrawled @ 16:19

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16.6.06

to Stephen James Joyce

oh. and? i now am fully qualified to celebrate Bloomsday. bitches. Which is, yes, today. because i finished ulysses sans study guides, sans Cliffs Notes (which someone got specifically for me), sans finding and going over and combing through all the worthless piles of chatter everyone else has ever said about it. look, academia, i'm sorry. it's a story, not the fucking Gospel.

maybe it's just me: if i think art is entirely subjective. That the author, the creator, loses control the moment someone else looks at it. That it will never be the same to two people. That i think ulysses is a perfectly fine novel, and does not have to be The Great Irish Politickal Manifesto with cream and sugar and a cherry on top. If people can read as much (if not, historically, well, more) predictive meaning into the rotational movements of the solar system then you really have nothing to be proud of, eh? Joyce is dead. Shakespeare is dead. Sylvia fucking Plath. dead. so what good are you going to do anybody? discover your own damn psyche.

my favorite thing about Rotten Tomatoes.com: it's enough criticism for anybody. If x percent of people liked it or not. All i need to know, thanks. tags:bloomsday

scrawled @ 20:24

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giving stuff away is addictive. we've had several different sets of people come over in the past week or so and we load up their cars and send them home. and it keeps getting easier: you go from Oh i might need that to Well i kind of like it but whatever to Maybe to the right person to Do you like it? here take it, just take it and go to actually sneaking things into their car. And they're happy, because everyone needs more towels, or more servingware, or a nice grill set. And you start thinking, we need to get L+A over here and force the wine rack on them, and that Pampered Chef platter because i know they'll use it and i also know for a fact that we absolutely won't, because we haven't and it's been a year and it's so pretty and really deserves to be put to proper use instead of just gathering dust on the shelf, and, oh, this too. and you really think it's good stuff, because it's yours, but is it? if it's crap, but it's my crap? if i really and truly believe it's nice and not entirely trash?

we're working this on the theory that we had one garage sale and it was okay, but more of a hassle than the maybe $40 we made all freaking morning was worth (whereas we took all the books to the used bookstore and they gave us nearly $100 in five minutes) and that if our friends appreciate our stuff then they should have it, because we like them. Because something you buy from a stranger at a garage sale is crap, always, but something your friend gave you is invested with memory. it becomes a little bit more than an object: it is a gift. i know this because that's not just a futon, it's the futon we got from K. Aforementioned Pampered Chef platter is not just an aforementioned Pampered Chef platter, it's the one we got from R. (and it almost breaks me to give it away, and last week i couldn't have; but it's not like we're going to forget R, we have pictures, and framed pictures, at that.) There is a massive lump of Mardi Gras beads that are going to be little-girl dressup. Which is perfect. E wants the coffee table. O wants the desk. A wants the plastic walmart adirondack chairs. it just keeps getting better: i love the plastic walmart adirondack chairs. they're so much more comfy than they sound. and i love that A is going to sit on his porch and be outside and they're so much better than the canvas ones, you can't lean back properly in the canvas ones, and they're going to be sat on regularly and people will have cigarettes and put their beer on the armrest (the canvas ones don't have armrests, half the time, and when they do have beer-cups, they're all ripped up) and it'll be lovely. tags:kipple

scrawled @ 16:50

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15.6.06

the first big word is hemicolectomy, because the dad had one yesterday. the second big word is four, because that is how many months old (one of) my no-longer-entirely-hypothetical new roomate(s) is.

scrawled @ 15:53

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14.6.06

if i was the sort of person that reacted negatively to stress, this would be a bad day.

scrawled @ 21:14

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9.6.06

why elephants are afraid of mice

the things you can learn from google: it's fast. And since migrating a few bits of the old geocities site to over here, i've been getting hits for one particular thing. what is it? everyone wants to know about the gerbil. Everyone. it's, frankly, a little eerie. Not so good for the early morning, either. tags:kiki

scrawled @ 16:22

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7.6.06

no. no. no. no. no. not that vienna.

it is absolutely astonishing how little americans know about basic geography. i keep saying i'm moving to vienna or to austria and they have no idea where it is. they don't know they speak german. if i say i'm moving to vienna, they ask if i'm going to get to work by gondola. when i say i'm moving to vienna, austria, they ask, oh then, if i'm going to have a kangaroo for a pet. and that's if they realize i'm even leaving the continental united states, which doesn't always happen. oh, europe? why didn't you say so? when i very clearly did, because when i say Vienna, i mean i'm moving to fucking Vienna. THE VIENNA. The one that does not require qualifiers. not vienna, virginia, not vienna, georgia, not vienna, tennessee, not vienna, michigan, not vienna, wisconsin, not vienna, iowa, not vienna, maine, or vienna, illinois, vienna, louisiana, vienna, west virginia, vienna, maryland, vienna, new york, or vienna, missouri. i mean THE fucking VIENNA. the ORIGINAL. the IMPORTANT one. thank you very much. no, it is not a suburb of washington. no, it is not in the finger lakes. no, it was not greatly affected by hurricane Katrina. GOD, you all SUCK. ignorant bastards. but all you can do is very carefully say, no, Vienna, Austria, which is part of the European Union, because it is in Europe, which is not part of the United States. and that just makes them confused. maybe this is why people don't mind war: because these other places don't really exist if you don't know where they are. if one has no concept of the grace and lightness that is Muslim architecture, how can one care if it is destroyed? if one cannot begin to realize that there are people living, people with families and grandparents and little kids and happy cousins, out in the sand and the dust, can one really be expected to care if they are hurt? what is wrong with the educational system in this country when a mother tells her daughter that people in one of the largest, most beautiful, most cultured and nuanced and historic cities in Europe live in teepees? is it any heartbreaking surprise that people hate americans?

on the other hand, when someone does get it right, and i say i'm moving to vienna and they get all big-eyed, i greatly enjoy getting to say Yes, That Vienna.

in other news, i recently got to say in perfect context, no, you can't see uranus with the naked eye. You need a mirror. tags:vienna

scrawled @ 18:16

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6.6.06

it's all a big conspiracy

getting rid of things. All the things we couldn't get rid of yet for whatever reason that we still can't bring with. so basically all of our favorite things are going to all of our favorite people. it's sort of like making a living will, eh? an assortment:

Red dress that i think will fit -> A
Movies we almost can't bear to not have any more -> B
Shiny -> C
Prison book that i've been deliberately saving for -> S
Funny books -> I+M, i've decided this is so

but i have a problem. i want to send A Confederacy of Dunces to multiple different people, but i only have one copy.

scrawled @ 23:39

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i need a way to escape from small talk. i need to carry my timer with me at all times to surreptitiously go off after half an hour of chat about nothing and me not getting anything fucking done. tags:bullshit

scrawled @ 17:35

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