Do other people think things like, “Oh awesome–this dirndl inspired shirt is totally perfect for the Holocaust denier lecture I am going to.”
I totally wish all clothing was dirndl inspired because they look particularly awesome on me. Not because I go to a lot of Holocause denial events.
While looking for something online, I found a torrent of Mormon films. I have watched three so far and they are really interesting. They are all pretty comedic/romantic because they almost always (so far) center around Utah and getting married. And all mention how they don’t like swearing. Frequently there are some references to no caffeine or alcohol. I think it’s interesting that Mormon movies are pretty much playing into every Mormon stereotype ever. They also all seem to have a rockin theme song written for them with the title of the movie in it.
I am in the middle of “Church Ball” about the mean streets of Mormon church basketball. An odd topic to be sure, but odder still it stars Andrew Wilson, Clint Howard, Gary Coleman, ad Fred Willard with an eye patch.
What? How did that happen? Fred Willard?
Next up is Mobsters and Mormons, starring the former host of Studs, Marc DeCarlo. I cannot wait to be offended by see it.
I have something I call the “Creep Vibe.” It’s a completely irrational gut feeling I get off of people (well, honestly, men) when I meet them. These people are usually introduced as cool friends of friends, but no matter what, I just get a bad feeling from them. It’s super awkward, especially since some of them I have to hang out with in a social or professional situation. I would say I get the creep vibe once or twice a year. None of the creeps have ever ended up doing anything to me personally (mainly because I would do my best to avoid them), but yet I still trust this instinct. Yet I feel like an ass when describing why I don’t like them. Does this happen to other people? Has your creep vibe been confirmed? I can think of five of them off the top of my head immediately. Usually it’s an extreme feeling, not, “Oh I really don’t care for that person.” but “I think that person is not a good person and will do something bad.” Also it has nothing to do with what we talk about, what they are interested in, etc. It’s just immediate.
To become an expert means truly being able to answer questions you never thought would relate to your field at all. I salute Curtis!
Is anyone else riveted by this story?
“Hi Bento! It’s Mommy Bento!”
This is infinitely better than my mom’s usual nickname for me, Poops. This is not due to any bodily function, but a shortening of poopsie. Explain this to my roommates, who have always enjoyed my mom calling me poops on our communal answering machines.
My mom:
“You are not effing up your life, or I will kick your ass. I will. Do you feel guilty? You better not! Or I will kick your ass! I will!”
I think I need to sell merch with this new mom catchphrase, “I will kick your ass! I will!”
“There’s no such thing as a perfect man. You should just stay single. It’s very hard for two people to live together. And then a baby comes and the men get crazy because they don’t get attention.”
From my mom, on the phone this morning:
“Why do gay men like Dolly Parton? Well she’s nice. Gay men are nice people. The women are usually bitches though, I think. You know <insert one gay man I know here> and he’s nice, right?”
I never thought I would see Spike Lee tell someone to stop talking about racial issues. What would Mookie say?
I would not call it a rampage. In fact, it’s a little bit of a ruckus followed by grocery store workers being completely subdued about the fact that a naked man is in their store breaking shit. But by golly I can’t pass up a title like NAKED MAN GOES ON RAMPAGE! Seriously though–why do none of the employees seem that concerned?
On a layover in the Cincinnati airport (which may actually be a bus station that my plane happened to land at), I had about three minutes to pick up a sandwich. I signed my credit card bill with my usual haste (my signature includes 6 letters, tops) and rearranged everything I was carrying. The woman behind the counter stopped me and asked if I was an artist. I replied in the negative and she began listing off other creative occupations. Musician, maybe? I was starved, sleep deprived, and in a hurry so I couldn’t figure out what she was getting at. I wasn’t dressed odd, but I thought to myself, “Maybe I look hip for Cincinnati?”*
Finally she said that my signature is indicative of high levels of creativity. She was sad when I said I do things “with computers (hey, I was tired).” I was interested in this assessment, but when I said something self-deprecating about how messy my handwriting was she said it was so, but in a designed/artistic way.
Take that Queens Board of Elections, who finds my signature too arty to allow me to vote. And now I am sad to have let down an airport newsstand clerk who has an awesome hobby. I didn’t want to tell her I pretty much do the opposite of art, though I do use the whiteboard more than my coworkers.
*Though I spent scant minutes in Cin City, and they were all in the airport, I definitely did get a sense that even boring me was way hipper than your average person coming through the Cincinnati bus station airport.
I lied to a man on the street to get out of a conversation with him. Usually this means Greenpeace. But today, I told a man I was saved so that we wouldn’t have to pray to Jesus together. It came naturally to lie about being saved, but it made the man really happy.
Is this speeding my progress toward hell?
Heidi did this seven odd facts about yourself. Mine are super Freudian, unintentionally!
1. My mom is an alcoholic. I have started to say this out loud more often, mostly in a “haha my alcoholic mom” jokey sort of way. But my mom’s really an alcoholic. Honestly I am not as upset about this as it seems like I should be when saying this. She’s pretty functional, and has always been an alcoholic, so it’s nothing new. I am sure this somehow affects me on some horrid deep level I am suppressing, but it is not really a source of negativity, and if I mention it people get weird and quiet and don’t know what to say. So I mainly don’t mention it.
2. My half-brother is autistic and I wasn’t allowed to have a relationship with him until I was 18, because of details of my parents’ divorce unknown (by choice) to me. Another statement which has a buzzkill effect to conversation but yet I am not upset about. Still it’s hard to forge a sibling relationship with that history and I am pretty bad at it.
3. My family generally knows little about my life. I think they think I am a dorky naive sheltered goody two shoes. Which is not to say I am smoking crack and killing hookers, but I kept everything a secret as a kid. Like, I hid my period from them for years. While I no longer actively attempt to cover anything up about my life (as I did in high school) they don’t ask and I don’t go out of my way to tell. Like for example, I have never admitted to dating anyone to my parents. Seeing as I am pretty open about my life to anyone who asks, this is somewhat demented but based on the bizarre overprotectiveness of my parents when I was a kid. But my first inclination is to lie to them when they ask me something. Laura Palmer was so a rational actor to me.
4. Though as a child I was right-handed, I did a lot of things in a left-handed way, which made my dad make fun of me. Later on, I had to get goofy hand eye coordination tests taken to make sure I didn’t have a tumor (I did not), and it was determined I am technically left handed. Like, incredibly better with my left hand. To the point where the doctor thought for a second that I was lying/crazy about saying I was right-handed. I have no idea what to do with that information. Do I switch over?
5. I have cheated on everyone I have ever dated. I am neither proud nor reticent about this really. But I have good intentions for this to be different. And to be fair, the last three were duly told beforehand that this would happen. And I am totally getting better at it.
6. I count and spell in my head all the time. Like, if I am going up or down stairs, I use a letter of a sentence for each stair, like, “I- -A-M- -S-O- -H-U-N-G-R-Y-.” Usually an apostrophe is four stairs, spaces or dashes are one, and periods are three, unless there’s a lot of stairs in which case I will spell the word apostrophe out. Sometimes I just go through letters, and sometimes, when I am in a wordy mood, I’ll just do a word a stair. I spell out whatever I am thinking at the moment. The only mention of this kind of counting is in OCD things, but I don’t do it in a compulsive way (like, I don’t have to redo it if I do it wrong, and I don’t have to do it.), I do it because I FIND WALKING UP STAIRS (or something else) BORING. Basically, more than 20 seconds of not reading or doing something mental bores me, and so this is the mind trick thing I have developed to cope. I remember doing it as a child on car rides with street lights. I also do it if I am walking home and have to pee, so I don’t have to think about how I have to pee. This admission makes me feel like there is some obvious psychological thing wrong with me. Is it shocking I am related to someone with Autism?
7. I frequently realize things I have always thought were totally normal are completely bizarre, and wonder why no one I know has mentioned it. Like only recently my sister pointed out that everyone doesn’t immediately take off their pants when they get home. Totally shocking to me. Has everyone I have lived with or dated thought, “Why the hell must Jenny get out of her pants immediately upon getting home?” Or peanut butter in the fridge–I was 22 before I learned that PB did not have to be refrigerated. Had I THOUGHT about it, I would have figured that out, but who thinks about peanut butter?
As a person who wears mostly black, hated high school, listens to metal, and shoots guns, I feel my brethren are giving us a bad rap what with all the school shootings. I mean this current guy and I pretty much watch exactly the same movies and love the same books.
So I have a new freelance service. I will come to your high school and hang out. I will turn the metalheads onto metal that happened after 1997 and outside of Germany. I will chat with them about how there is no god, and how jocks suck, and how cool conspiracy theories are. And then I will show them the Anarchist’s Cookbook, and tell them about the old days when we had to go to the library to learn to make a pipe bomb. I will chat about French existentialism. I will also give them some punk rock because oddly, punk rockers never really fuck up the establishment. And then I will snitch. I will tell you, after five minutes which of these kids is your school shooter. Because it is PAINFULLY OBVIOUS. It’s social profiling. I might even be able to read a few blogs and tell you. And then I will also point out the “cool kids” who are totally forcing the metalhead’s hand to blow up the school.
On the grounds that they are both held equally responsible.
It’s good to see the education system in other countries is making kids just as miserable as it is here!
stay classy, K-fed, stay classy.
Why would anyone dump a catch like that? And how sad is it when BRITNEY SPEARS is the more responsible parent?
Well, evangelicals have finally done it. Made me believe in a kind, compassionate, and just god. If there was no such thing, would a story as perfectly amazing as this one exist? I think not. I mean what are the odds that someone of a restrictive faith would hypocritically do exactly the thing he rails against in public all the time? Oh wait. Pretty large. Oh well.
person 1: “William Shatner–is that that guy in the new sitcom?”
person 2: “uh what?”
p1: “Nonono he’s that guy from ‘Meet the Parents!”
p2: “Oh I didn’t realize he was in that. I don’t know what else he is in!”
This made me feel really old. It was followed by “Mrs. Doubtfire? I don’t remember that movie! It came out when I was like, 5!” and “Holly Hunter, I have never even heard of this person.”
I spoke to a neighbor who previously has always given me dirty looks in the hallway and seemed unfriendly. But oh boy did we bond over the crazy landlord. Her quote: “He doesn’t respect you unless you hang up on him at least a few times.” Also, people have been leaving stuff that is good (ie not trash) in the hallway for people to pick up if they want. It’s been going pretty well. But there’s now a crazy note mentioning the police will be called if it continues. When did leaving free stuff for your neighbors become illegal? What might you get charged with? Having good garbage?
I hate the Man.
I think becoming a landlord is to the sanity like turning 30 in Logan’s Run. 90% of all landlords anyone I have ever known people to have are complete and utter crazy people. Why, all of a sudden, when people buy land to rent, do they turn batshit crazy? And
how do the other 10% survive the crazy?
This is all prompted by the fact that I am moving to a new apartment here in Champaign. And I called my landlord (1 of 2) to ask if/when/where he wants his keys back, as there has been no communication about it thus far, even though I am moving TUESDAY. So I mentioned the date 2 said I could move out on. And my landlord 1 started screaming at me and hung up on me. He wants me to move out the day before. Bummer, that ain’t going to happen. I get that might be an issue, but dude, chill out and we can talk about it. Perhaps the new people can move in while I move out? I would have offered had he not gone crazy, yelled, and hung up on me AGAIN the second time I called.
Holy crap, man, you are retired and your only gig is running an apartment building. I get that this might be the highest stress time of the year for that as all of our leases expire, but I don’t think repeatedly rudely hanging up on me is the way to go.
The ridiculous part is, I still don’t know where to drop off my keys. If this man is so concerned about the new tenants, you’d think that would be a central fact he would want me to know. Guess not.
