Once, about 2 years ago, I used hotwire to book a hotel room.  They gave me 6 months of Star Magazine for free.  Though I have moved, I think, three times since then, I continue to get Star Magazine.  A few months ago they sent me some threatening notice that they were going to cut me off, but they never did.  My subscription supposedly continues until March 2009.  Best Hotwire investment ever.

So today I was perusing “Double Takes,” one of my favorite Star features.  It shows two “famous” people in the same outfit and says which one wore it better.  Usually the more famous person wears it better 98% of the time, unless the less famous person has gigantic boobs.

Today it compared Kate Moss’ outfit to somebody else’s outfit.  It was not an attractive outfit, but, my first thought was, “well at least they are both wearing it WAY better than Mary Kate Olsen, because she had it totally open and it looked sloppy and hideous, though, I guess it was her outfit she left rehab in….”

I could be curing cancer, but I am tracking the clothing of Mary Kate Olsen with those brain cells.

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.

Today I unfortunately found really, really horrible pornography on flickr.   In a way, I am shocked I have used Flickr for this long without finding very unattractive people having sex.  Bikers can be very unattractive people, and biker women really don’t like wearing a bra.  If there’s anything I have learned today it is to wear a bra and sunscreen all the time.  Yet all of these very (to my mind) horrifically unattractive people had lots and lots of fans even even though I would say the majority of their boobs fell into the generally accepted as unattractive “pancake” or “stretch mark” varieties.

Of course, I could not keep these horrifying photos to myself.  I shared.  And my friend, over IM, replied:

2:14
you are a classificationist
2:14
you’ve classified tits

And there you go.  They call it a discipline because it puts rules around the way you think.  Even about boobs, apparently.

A man from Craigslist is giving me a free tv.  Dropping it at my house tomorrow in fact.   Will I be raped first and then killed, or killed and then raped?

My family can’t keep track of my friends.  They make fun of me that I have friends in every city. And a friend mentioned today that I travel a lot.  Except I was sad I was doing so little traveling this year.  Ha.  I take for granted never staying in one place, always having someone in the next port.

And I have been in a relative (to me) slump, and lots of people called, texted, emailed, or came by plane, train, or car to help me out.  Not because I asked, or not necessarily just to see me, but that’s how my friends are.  They’ll take a 4 hour bus trip to see me when I am in a town nearby.  And I will do the same.  And you might not think that’s weird, but I think most people do.  Because a lot of people won’t even pick you up at the airport 15 mins from their house.  And my friends will.  Because they are super, super awesome.

And I am not the easiest person to help.  As my friend Grace said, “You are the most independent person I know.”  I take that as an extreme compliment, but I am realizing it’s also a bad thing.  Or it can be.  My favorite movie is Showgirls, and though people ridicule it (as do I), there’s a scene where the main character (who runs out of every scene rather than deal with anything) is told:

“You got your arms straight out, saying, ‘Back off, motherfucker.’”
“Yeah, you got that down. BACK OFF, MOTHERFUCKER!”

It’s my nature to have my hands straight out yelling, “Back off, motherfucker.” (Hereafter referred to as BOMF). I don’t need your help, why won’t you just let me do it by myself?  It’s a hereditary stubbornness, combined with an upbringing where I could never do anything alone.  I am hardwired to do things for myself, by myself, and I am not comfortable with asking for help or even realizing when people are offering it.  Asking for help feels like conning a mark to me.  But my friends are awesome, because they help anyway.  They self-correct for my BOMFy tendencies.  And that’s good.  I know a few other BOMFy people and I think sometimes we just have to be sat down (literally or metaphorically) by our friends and told to accept help.

So, thanks everyone.  You rule.  Whether you force me to leave the house, listen to my late-night calls, take my ims, offer advice, realize when I am roundaboutly asking for help because you know it’s hard for me to ask directly, or get out of the way when I am yelling, “Back off, motherfucker!” you are helping.  And I am trying to put my hands down and shut up more often.

Everything you need to know you can learn from Showgirls, in my opinion.  In the future, all writing will prove that.

I wish Andrew WK were my life coach.

I like to cook.  I am persnickety about certain cooking tools.  But I have never bought good knives.  Because my knife skills suck.  Suck so hard.  My dad, having spent a life doing foot surgery, cooking, and working in the family grocery, has the best knife skills ever.  He also hates waste, so my poor, poor knife skills attacking a steak he has cooked properly make him weep.

Now, let me use a cracker on some seafood, and I will eviscerate that thing cleanly and efficiently.   But the physics of all knives bewilders me.

Which is why cutting things early this morning has resulted in blood and adrenaline and a bandage that I am scared to look under.  I hoped on the train I wouldn’t spring a leak and be “that bleeding freak who passed out on me.”  Mission accomplished.

Were I to grow out my hair, bleach it, get colored contacts, and a lot of makeup, I would look like this:

Truly frightening.  To enjoy a timewaster that will allow you to do this sort of horrifying business to yourself, go to Taaz.

I just compulsively watched the whole run of “Wonder Falls.”  It is so amazing.  Run out and watch it.

Also, I am starting my 29th year on a high note with a bacon and egg salad sandwich for breakfast.  Followed by cheesecake.  Then I will clean my house and make some punch and possibly Jell-o shots.  For gelatinous liquor is an ideal way to celebrate the last year of my 20s.

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?

My email address includes a shortening of my last name Benevento to Bento. When I was little, I could not pronounce my last name, and said Bento instead, very quickly, as if I were saying the whole thing. So my mom has always called me JennyBento. I use it online and now people have taken to sending me actual mail addressed to Jenny Bento. So when I saw an entire page of cafepress devoted to I heart Bento attire, I was very excited! Sadly, they mean the lunch.

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?

I know I am a librarian, and thus know far too many people with them, but apparently it’s illegal to write a blog post today if it isn’t about cats.  Did anything happen today for anyone that doesn’t involve cats?  I was allergic all day at work, and now I am wondering if it’s because of Official Cat Day.  Anyone who has a not cat story to share, please blow up the comments.

Regarding my pets, my new Scooba is broken.  We’re getting him a new tank.  iRobot customer service rocked out.  I still haven’t named the new Scooba, but please feel free to offer names for Fido’s brother!  Perhaps Kitty?

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!

Via Grace, you can ask me any three questions in comments, as long as you’ll answer three of mine. I asked her three and here are mine. They highlight my bizarreness. Read the entire entry …

The frequency with which I have thought to hit on someone who turned out to be with their kid is starting to freak me out.  Not that people with kids are not hot (in fact the two parental types I know read this are both hot), or that I wouldn’t necessarily date parents, it’s just that I am not used to SO many hotties having babies.  I guess it makes sense though, that hot people are getting laid.

I really love Radar Magazine and was finishing an issue today when I got to their back page “100 Reasons You’re Still Single.”  While many of the reasons were hilariously true (hello, 99), I found many of them to be things I would look for in a significant other (starting line dances and eating Bacos as a snack actually sounds like something I would do with my friend Mary on a Friday night).  And certainly many men who cry about Belle and Sebastian are getting laid left and right.  But it was really number 96 that hit home:

96. Don’t like Insane Clown Posse’s music per se, but think their philosophy is sound

I will think about this tonight as I snuggle alone on my ICP pillowcase (by choice).  Well not totally alone.  I have a pitcher of sangria looking mighty attractive.

Well, that’s not certain, but all the things I have been yelling about terrorism and how the US does exactly the wrong thing in response is scientifically explained here in Wired.  Hallelujah!  Now when I get all crazy eyed and sound like a conspiracy theorist on this issue, at least I’ll have something to point to when everyone else gets awkward and quiet.

I hate maple syrup.  While I know most people think this makes me some sort of communist, I just have never liked it.  Yes I have tried real maple syrup.  Yes it is grosser than “pancake syrup.”  I don’t like anything in the molasses/maple alternative planty syrup.  Ew.

But a woman needs to put something on pancakes.  Pancakes call out for a sweet syrup.  While I quickly take the little pitcher of ick and place it as far from me as possible, I ask for honey.  Odd stares.  No honey comes.  I ask again.  Weird looks.  Maybe then someone brings honey, confused.  What could she possibly be using the honey on?  Sometimes they give me huge amounts, sometimes very little, because they are bewildered by this BIZARRE request.  Is the leap from syrup to honey really this mindboggling?
Now I understand not ALL restaurants have a huge honey supply.  But today I went to a Greek restaurant and had pancakes.  From my knowledge of Greek food, it is pretty much bedrocked on olives, honey, and yogurt.  But when I asked for honey it was seriously an issue.  My server was unsure if they had honey.  As I have eaten dessert at this particular restaurant, and dessert to Greek people means phyllo, nuts and honey in various combinations, I know they have honey.  She finally brought out little single serving containers, apologetically, and a bit irritatedly.

Having discussed my honey on breakfast foods passion with others, all syrupeaters (TM) think it’s weird but cannot explain.  Can you?

I hate cleaning my house and find a host of excuses to avoid it.  Today?  You Tube films of Apple Shareholder meetings.  If only there was an iTimeMachine so I could go back in iTime and iSeduce 1983 Steve Jobs.  In fact, with hipster trends, I think 1983 Steve would be quite the ladies’ man.
We’ll forget that I was 4 at the time this was made.

One of the coolest places I have been ever hands down is Dead Horse Bay, or Bottle Beach. I went on an Internet organized field trip there. Basically there used to be islands off the coast of Brooklyn where people in the good ole days put their trash. Then someone got the bright idea to cover it all up with sand and connect it to Brooklyn. Sadly, the combo of landfill and oceanfront waters do not a constant landmass make. Oops. There was also an animal processing plant there. This results in a lot of pre-1960s garbage (mainly glass, some metal, and appliances) and dead animal bones covering EVERYTHING. It is definitely the place I would LEAST like to fall down in.

I was amazed at

• everything that used to come in glass bottles

• how beautiful and sturdy average containers used to be
• that so many shower items came in glass
• that there were so many local sodas and bottlers

I went on Earth Day, which was a great day to think about trash and such, but in a way, I am sort of excited that people threw trash out in such an idiotic way. I wouldn’t have learned so much if they had, and an anti-outdoors person like myself would have never ventured to a national park otherwise. In fact, I think this was my first national park ever.

Last night I finally went to my first NYC Opry show (the only opry where you’ll see someone in a Kucinich tshirt and a cowboy hat), which I enjoyed quite a lot. I recently reread the Chuck Klosterman piece on how hipsters who say they like only like old country are poseur scum. His reasoning being that old country spoke to the people that listened to it in the same way that new pop country speaks to the people who listen to it, so when alt-country bands sing about ranches and guns and whiskey, they sing about some culture they haven’t experienced to an audience who also knows little about it.

This has always grated on me, since I like old country, altcountry, AND pop country (which I would like to now refer to as nu cuntry). And I am 100% cityfolk. Like, seriously the country life only holds terror for me (c.f. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre).
But last night I realized two things. The more broadly applicable being that I think we’ve passed the altcountry phase where people sing about old country themes. Case in point, this amazing song about Ira Glass which mentions librarians. Seriously, is there a song of any genre I could relate to more than one about Ira Glass? Last night I also saw country renditions of “Take it on the Run” by REO Speedwagon and “Home Sweet Home” by Motley Crue. I would be hard pressed to say either of those straight pop songs speak to me and my situation as much as a song about Ira.

The more specifically applicable point is about why *I* like country music.  My friend, and pop country partner in crime Mary pointed out long ago how most city/suburb kids aren’t into the country music enough to like cheesy pop country.  And I haven’t really figured that out.  But then listening last night I realized that most country has these themes:

• guns
• religion/sin/jesus
• caddies
• drinking to excess/alcoholics

All of these things featured prominently in my childhood, what with the catholic schooling, german mom, and italian dad.  It makes total sense why I like country now!  And my upbringing did involve one horse, namely one my dad punched in the face.  And the only thing my dad ever taught me to draw (yes I realize the cliche NOW, but this is completely the truth) was a horse head.

Because of course they are horrible, but also because they are then used my the media and interest groups to justify all these stupid positions, when in fact, it’s social and cultural reasons that these things happen. I wasn’t even going to post about it until I read this:

“This kid never would have gotten a gun in New York, New Jersey or any state that does that in a million years,” Mr. Everitt said. “There’s just no way.”

Oh right. No one in New York or New Jersey has ever bought a weapon illegally and committed a crime with it. Nope. Never.

Crazy people who want to go on mass murdering sprees don’t think about going on mass murdering sprees because it’s easy to get guns. Crazy people go on murdering sprees because they don’t get therapy. Crazy people go on murdering sprees because there is something in the social groups they circulate in, that either no one notices they are crazy, or they drive him (or her) more crazy.
While mass murder is never the positive course of action, no one ever really considers the reasoning behind these attacks. It is totally sane for a poor immigrant to walk onto a college campus and think everyone there is a spolied debaucherous rich kid. Heck, even Tom Wolfe thinks that. Again, it doesn’t make what he did right, but social interaction with assholes seems to be the common reasoning for all of these events. Perhaps if fewer people raised rich, assholey children, there’d be no mentally untreated children to kill them. And if guns are to blame, why not the mental health or school systems? I mean if this guy never went to college, this wouldn’t have happened either. Outlaw college! Oh and immigration of course. And movies. Let’s be Amish!

Oh wait. That won’t work either.

I love Penn Jillette.  So I started watching his game show Identity.  Basically there are 12 people and 12 “identities” and you match them up.  Identities are things like “podiatrist” or “speaks Vietnamese” or “age 35.”  It’s the Malcolm Gladwell blink thinking.

Except many, many of the people are famous.  Like, I know their name famous.  Cindy Margolis.  Craig Newmark.  Mary Lou Fucking Retton.  Seriously, MARY LOU RETTON.  Does any American born after 1980 not know Mary Lou Retton?  Okay so Lance Burton and Christopher Lowell aren’t household names perhaps, but JAIME KENNEDY?  Steve from Jerry Springer?  And while I didn’t know the name of the drummer for Skid Row or the lie detector guy they use on every reality tv show, I certainly RECOGNIZED them.  People on the show mention they know who these famous people are because of a “gut feeling” but it isn’t that.  They are on TV!
So either this is 1. the easiest game in the world or 2. I watch way too much tv.  Except the only tv show I watch is Lost.  So I am bewildered.  Has anyone seen this show?  Is it that I am oddly connected to popular culture, or did they get these contestants from a cave?

My t key is busted.  this is a problem seeing as t is in many things, including my name.  for a while my e and n key were broken.  that was worse because 7/13 of my name is n or e.

sneezing and coughing require no ts, and perhaps that is why I am doing so much of those activities.  i guess not since i am also drinking gallons of tea.
tomorrow my major task will be researching the statehood of esoteric islands.  here are some of them.

• Azores Islands
• Balearic Islands
  
• Bonaire
• Canary Islands
• Chechnya
• Corsica
• Crete
• Curacao
• Galapagos Islands
• Kuril Islands
• Madeira Islands
• Marquesas Islands
• Moorea
• Sardinia
• Society Islands
• St. Maarten
• St. Martin
• Tahiti
• Tasmania
• Wake Island

this is definitely one of the most fun things i could think of doing.  i am way excited.  i hope t doesn’t get in the way.

I always have ideas for library science related bands and hip hop acts.  There’s my metal band DELIMITER!  And MARCy MARC is too funny.  And DJ AACR2 sounds real.  But today I thought of the optimus prime of LIS MC names.

MC P-MEST

This is a joke most librarians wouldn’t even get, but PMEST is  Ranganathan’s classification criteria which stand for Personality, Matter, Energy, Space, and Time.  And that is a very Sun Ra/P-Funk explanation–I mean let’s go to the mothership P-MEST!  I can imagine MC PMEST talking about vaguely spiritual space/time things and shilling Hypnotiq.

Word(z).

Today E and I were discussing which is the most canonical Jenny picture yet. She opts for the one I like to refer to as “Kick out the Jamz:”

However, the best incriminating SXSWi2007 photo of me is also, for different reasons, very canonical in its own right:

The interplay between t-shirt and food/beverage runs deep in my life.  But so does the Mac hugging and group taxidermy loving.

In my old age (it is birthday month after all)* I have noticed I have begun to forget things.  Having an autistic in the family, my family members and I genetically have pretty good, yet odd memory.  Finding physical objects has been my ability, which is helpful since I have been an utter slob my entire life.  However, I can find my keys in that mess.  Well, not as much anymore.

However most of these memory losses have occurred in a happy way.  Past Me does something which makes Future Me  (or Current Me, depending on your (my) perspective) incredibly happy.  Past Me put all these albums by Jens Lekman on my Amazon wishlist.  Current Me has no idea why, but decided to take a chance.  Way to go, Past Me, you know just the albums I would like!

Today I found a pair of jeans in my closet.  I do not recall seeing these jeans….ever.  They are black and I generally don’t BUY black jeans (I think I have owned one pair).  They are also rolled up, in a way I never do, and creased as if I always wear them this way.  And they are much too long for me.  But they fit me perfectly in other respects, so I cut off the bottoms.   Thanks for the jeans, Past Me!  Also they are very very low rise, so I would assume I would have remembered buying pants where my ass comes out.  Apparently Past Me doesn’t remember to cover her ass.
Oddly, while writing this, Jens Lekman came on my iTunes shuffle.  Now Past Me is freaking me out.

*No worries.  I am not one of those “I am SO OLD” twentysomethings.  I am not worried about age at this time.

You know, in the last week I have seen a midget with the largest accordion I have ever seen (think twice the size of a normal one) and mimes asking for directions at Target.

And these people were NOT at the actual circus I attended.  Just saw them in passing.

I met with someone yesterday who works in food packaging/marketing.  I gushed about odd consumer products related to her company, and I think she thought that was really weird.  But eventually I mentioned how there should be Splenda in everything and she stopped suddenly.  “You like SPLENDA?”  And I said of course yes I love Splenda, I wish Splenda was in everything.  She told me all women basically hate Splenda, because it tastes bitter to them.  She was bewildered by my love of Splenda.

When I told this to my friend Jeff he laughed and said “Uh yeah I don’t want to shock you but there’s a lot of ways you are NOT like most women.”  And I agreed, but here is proof on a CHEMICAL level!  I mean my TASTEBUDS are male?

Traitory masculine tastebuds!  Anyone else like Splenda?