Neck braces!

Since I’ve been talking about my personal hygiene habits a lot lately [aside: I notice that I’ve developed an odd fondness for the phrase “a lot” also…I had to stop myself from using it about 400 times today], I’ve decided to revisit a favorite topic of mine that gets sorely neglected here: television. You know, as everyone knows because I’m a snob and I shove it down people’s throats, that I don’t have a TV. But unlike most people who don’t have TVs, I can still admit that TV is awesome and that I go through phases of mild addiction.

My live-in friend and I have lately been watching some a little more embarrassing than usual. I know, I know; you’re asking yourself what could be more embarrassing than my recent foray into the world of watching Xena. And if you are patient I will enlighten you. There is something a little more embarrassing than heavily melodramatic fantasy television with a lot of gratuitous female nudity and that, my friends, is sports melodrama with gratuitous cheerleader nudity. And what’s worse, I don’t even understand football.

So yeah, Kevin and I have been watching Friday Night Lights, mainly because Ira Glass watches it but also because we are easily overwhelmed by emotion in fake teenagers. I got a bit misty eyed when this one teenager (who was paralyzed) told the coach that he was sorry if he’d let him down. When he muttered that from behind his neck-brace my head all but exploded. Coming from a town where football was given little funding and even less notice, the idea that someone would remember that there had been a game going on during their catastrophic injury is perplexing.

But then again, I’ve never been much for team spirit and all that. Mainly I was always into jaded female warriors fighting the forces of evil. These two facts are probably related.

Hours without email: 3 and counting

I am going on vacation in a few weeks and I can’t resist reporting this any more than I can resist picking at the little “Intel Pentium Inside” sticker on my laptop. I understand the risk of raising the bar too high by constant discussion of the trip, just as I understand the risk of the sticky residue that will remain in the sticker’s absence to catch at my shirtsleeves. But I’m taking both of those risks today.

I am going on vacation to celebrate a year of being ball-and-chained to some guy I know (grudgingly I am allowing his attendance) and I am supremely excited because neither of us has been on a vacation for a couple of years, unless you count impromptu sleepovers at family events when the alcohol has been served too liberally. I won’t play the sympathy card – everyone knows that my wackadoodle employment status is a bed of my own choosing – so I’ll just say that the dude I live with deserves a vacation, whereas I just like going on vacation.

Because I don’t like admitting my own faults and because I can make rampant justifications here, I will excuse my lazy-man’s love of vacations by calling it a hereditary curse. My parents raised us to love vacations by taking us on plenty of them with little regard to cost or compulsory schooling. In my formative years I was always confused traveling with friends whose parents packed lunches and got up at 4 a.m. to drive to Tahoe. In my own family eating out on vacation was a given and my sisters and I never shared a hotel room with our parents after our youngest sister was potty trained. Oh yes, we were spoiled, though I like to temper that realization with the knowledge that my parents elected to vacation constantly instead of installing modern conveniences like air conditioning, a dishwasher or cable TV to our home.

These days my parents continue their vacationing cycle, though somewhat subdued by the general shit-show that is the economy, while my sisters and I languish outside of their special universe. We can’t afford to vacation with the frequency or in the fashion that my parents so foolishly led us to believe was the norm.

But I am going on vacation soon and it ignites all of my dormant vacationing genes. I’ve already thought about packing. (I know what you are thinking; didn’t I just go off about packing? I did recently, and don’t worry, I won’t do it again.)

So here’s the thing that I meant to get around to in this discussion of vacationing: the place that we are going is devoid of cell phone service because it is so close to the ocean. That means 3 days phone-free and I am irrationally excited about this despite the fact that I rarely use my phone. I think that the excitement about being without cell coverage is symbolic of a larger need to unplug from the world – specifically from my laptop. I suspect that my creative process has been hampered lately by my constant internet-use and email-refreshing. As a test I didn’t check my email at all yesterday until 9 p.m. and it was more of a struggle than I’d like to admit. (Especially when my only emails when I signed in were from Facebook or my mother; ego = destroyed.)

Occasionally we all need a break from our Bloglines…a very small break.

P.S., The Intel sticker is off and the result is a sticky mess. Why do they put these stupid stickers where they bubble up at the corners and taunt you? Worse idea ever.

Pack ratting

Today’s blog should be about hugging and the trials of hugging your extended family, because my own mother took the trouble to g-mail chat me about writing a “story about how you do the bob-and-weave when people try to hug you.” Everyone knows that I love shit-talking about family functions; however, it is with a heavy heart that I report that this blog post shall not be about hugging. When I started to think it out it sounded a little too much like a Seinfeld episode. And if I’m going to be sounding like any TV show from the late-90s it’s going to be News Radio, ya dig?

So, I’m going on a trip at the end of next week to an undisclosed location for an undisclosed amount of time. But it occurred to me as I was driving home that no matter how much I enjoy a vacation, there is something extremely fun about thinking about going on a trip. And I don’t mean the count-down crap that the girl in the cubicle next to you is practicing. No, I mean the hardcore thinking, like thinking about what you are going to pack and whether you have mini-sized toiletries. I wondered as I drove whether I would need to do laundry or go to the bank, and my brief outing is still a week away. I considered what to leave my domestic-person to eat and what book to bring for the plane. That sort of domestic planning really floats my boat.

But I think that I have mentioned on this blog before how I love packing. Putting everything that you imagine that you will need into a bag is very soothing for me. I like placing things carefully, knowing full-well that they will shift around and that I will end up stuffing dirty clothes in on top of them while away. Looking into a well-organized bag (you know, clothing folded, pajamas on top, toiletry bag tucked into a corner of the bag, extra sneaks set neatly at the never bottom of the bag) is like looking into a well-organized mind. I figure if I can’t have one, I might as well have the other.

Stupid instrumental music

I think that I have written before on the subject of my unerring promptness but I don’t mind repeating myself and besides, this time I have a new slant on the topic. My “slant” is that since I am unfailingly prompt I have exhausted my sleigh of Christmas related gripes and anecdotes prematurely and find myself with nothing to say about the holiday. (Further inspections shows that this is not a new slant on the topic, but actually a poor excuse for a lead-in to an entirely unrelated topic.)

The new and, I imagine, not particularly interesting topic is film trailers and more specifically, my overly emotional reaction to them. In order to justify the seeming left-fieldness of the topic I will begin with a small story about my day that ends with me getting teary over a YouTube clip and dribbling snot all over my brand new laptop (!!!).

So today I was doing what I generally do during the day. I wrote a little, screwed around on the internet a little, read all of the features sections of all of the hippest websites and completely ignored any of the pressing economic or political news, and then stared at a variety of blogs. One of these blogs (and I’m not a blog name dropper) discusses the Edwardian period, fashion and social trends of the 19th century and a whole slew of other literary nerd topics. Today the bloggist was on about the movie The Young Victoria, which I had never heard of. My ignorance is not startling as I rarely know about movies because I do not patronize the ugly younger brother of film, television, but I like to think that I keep abreast of high-budget period pieces.

Anyway, so I was watching the trailer that the blogger posted and the usual trailer dramatics unfolded: swelling music, cutaways to bold words on a black background, lovers staring at one another in ecstasy, someone walking purposefully with a pistol, ect. Exactly the sort of cookie-cutter antics that you would expect someone with the frightful disposition that I’ve got to get all disdainful about. But here’s the thing: I never get disdainful about movie trailers; I tear up, I giggle, and my heart throbs in time with the stupid instrumental music.

I honestly think that I have the exact susceptible disposition that they use to gauge the effects of images and sound on the rampant, impressionable masses. When the trailer director wants sympathy, he gets it from me by the bucketful; when he wants me to feel uplifted by the idea that Sandra Bullock is saving some impoverished future footballer, I feel uplifted. And when someone stares into the camera and yells something about how their lover is their whole life and how their fate belongs to their country and the music gets louder and hyperboles flash across the screen like an ugly, sentimental crack dream? Sometimes I get a little emotional.

Afterwards I might re-watch the trailer to recapture a little of that prosthetic emotion but I never want to watch these movies. The whole thing is very funky and definitely un-Christmasy.

Me and my personal shredder

I sometimes find that I can't summon the appropriate emotions for certain occasions. I worried about this during my flurry of wedding-induced panic attacks; I was worried, yes, but I wasn't have nearly as many deep thoughts as I suspected the occasion warranted. I wasn't looking up to see dove's flying, and I wasn't subconsciously weaving bread dough into love-knots and I couldn't make my mind equate rings with dramatic symbols of unity. And for someone whose mind has been so warped by a stiff liberal education that I think Thomas the Tank Engine is a symbol of industrialization, this was a very low point.

I was considering this emotional stagnation at my sister's high school graduation over the weekend. I was sitting with my family in the summer sunshine, shading my eyes with a free program as the wind blew majestically (read: coldly) through the millions of balloon bouquets on the field. The kids were marching in time to the band, and the outfits that I remember as stifling seemed regal from afar, but even sandwiched between the tears of my older sister and mother I was sort of thinking: what crap.

Obviously I was not thinking "what crap" at my little sister, of whom I am very fond. I was directing my malice instead toward the do-gooders making speeches all about the unity of 2009, kindergarten besties, and the scary ledge of adulthood on which they all stood. I was wondering whether these kids (alright, these girls) could really muster this much emotion and hyperbole over graduation.

It's not as though I wasn't nervous about high school ending, I spent many weeks prior to leaving for college being upset that I couldn't get a clear mental picture of what my life would be like so that I could worry properly about it. I packed consciously for my dorm room (gargoyle bookends, personal shredder). But I didn't bath myself in happiness on the day of graduation and embrace the world anew. In fact what I remember worrying about most is how stupid I looked in my mortarboard and taking it off directly following the ceremony, photo-ops be damned (sadly I worried about the same thing at my college graduation and pushed nervously at it to the point that it fell off my head as I was jostled crossing the stage).

So I'm not sure if I envy or mock you, high school girls with real emotions at the ceremony. On one hand I wish that I was moved to tears by the idea of closing epochs and the exchange of friendship necklaces. But on the other hand (surely the more evil one) I wanted to take each of those girls by their Hawaiian lei and shake them until they realized that in a few years the majority of their high school classmates would become a reason to switch lines at the Walmart to avoid awkward conversation.

Social network name dropping.

I divide my internet free time into three clean categories: stalking via blogs and social networking, reading liberal slant publications, and looking up horses to buy on craigslist. I have found, much to my utter disdain, that lately two of these have been overlapping beyond my level of comfort.

I won’t leave you guessing any longer than it takes to build a rudimentary level of suspense (A horse with a blog? Craiglist has a twitter?). I mean of course, that social networking sites have been gaining an alarming degree of legitimate mention in the press. I’ve been reading articles as of late that take great pains to praise Facebook as a serious and useful social networking source (the counter-argument being that it’s an unbelievable waste of time disguised in charming blue and white) to call out Facebook-outsiders as making a grave and damaging social statement. And when I happen to chance across an article that doesn’t list Facebook as subject matter, it often commits a more grievous crime by quoting a status-change or a twitter post as news.

To be clear: I love wasting time on the internet and when I’m not harping on about nothing on twitter I’m subduing my general angst with the calming blue-and-white of Facebook. But perhaps that’s why I find this sudden shift toward popular acceptance by what I would term “adult industries” like journalism so very disconcerting.

You see, in my prime Facebooking (I can verb it, I’m fb old school) years there was nothing legitimate in the least about social networking, beyond the sheer egotistical satisfaction of wracking up friends and drunken photo tags. In those days (let’s call it circa 2005) anyone over 25 on Facebook would have been branded an automatic creeper.

“Get back to myspace, you skeeze-bag,” the collegiate masses would have shouted metaphorically, rejecting this aged friend request with a practiced click.

Now, however, the actual news sites are covering the introspective quandaries of Facebook while I’ve got friend requests from three uncles sitting in my inbox. Man do I miss my youth.

So here’s the clincher for me, Facebook is a subject for satire, not for actual news because it’s damn ridiculous. Maybe I’ve penned too many “Caterday: Drink on Saturday” Facebook invites and spent too many hours perfecting my “Buffy Fandom” score to respect anyone who can reference it with a straight face. And I hope any journalist quoting twitter winces every time they attempt to sign in and get the little cartoon birdie proclaiming “Opps, technical error!” in its cutesy font.

Ask yourself, ladies and gents, whether you’re really taking a suped-up chat-room with photos and a “Poke” option seriously. If you aren’t interested in being taken seriously, just contact me using the Build-Your-Vampire-Army application, because I'm always looking to pad out my friend list.

Humbuggery

Again I will dabble delightedly in clichés.

Boy do I hate Christmas music on the radio while I am driving around. Which is not to say that I hate Christmas music all together; I don’t mind it in the least when I’m trying to listen to it. But I like to groove in my car, and oftentimes the Christmas jams are too sanctimonious for grooving.

All of this whining does have a point, albeit a stupid one. Last night I was driving home and I turned on the radio, only to hear I Want to Wish You a Merry Christmas done by some sappy oldie-goldie beboppers. For years my go-to Christmas song has been Little Drummer Boy (so sue me; I like repetition). But I found myself awfully uplifted by this Merry Christmas song.

I’m awash in confusion; I don’t even know what Christmas means to me anymore. Probably it means something about egg-nog, but I’ve never had any of that.

Lucille Ball's secret, as told to me by a centipede.

It smelled today on campus like hot mud. That smell of mud that has been allowed to sit too long without nature's equivalent of refrigeration. That smell always reminds me of bees for some reason. Actually, not "some" reason, really two reasons.

Reason one is that when I was a sloppy barefooted youngster running amok (a-mud?) in my parent's orchard after a bout of irrigation, it always seemed that there were bees hovering near these particularly smelly, clear and shallow puddles. My solution to this was of course to stomp with great deliberation in the cool, clean mud in order to create a sole of mud on my foot to deter the bees from getting any ideas about stinging my under-foot. Hence hot mud smell = bees.

The second reason is a lot less down-homey. I recollect reading somewhere in my literary travels through the midwest that the solution to a painful bee sting is to slather it in clay. And since I got a flat B in geology way back in freshman year, clay is mud to me.

My day was relatively uneventful and glum, so I guess I will talk about what happened to me at school today. I suppose that I should have mentioned when undertaking my great blog revolution that I am absolutely shit at transitions, and so am likely to bellow on about school more than usual as good old card-board-hat-day approaches.

Today in my sociology class we were supposed to be talking about doing queer readings of straight texts, which mostly boils to reasoning out exactly why people were sure that Xena wanted to get with her sidekick, that chick who fought with a staff [non-phallic-ly]. What we actually did amounted to watching a centipede chase the professor around the room at a very slow clip. This devious centipede was prowling about the front space of the room, causing the professor to often stop her rant on why Lucy was in love with Ethel in order to shift slightly and place the podium between herself and those 100 legs of evil. This happened repeatedly throughout the hour and a half lecture until both the professor and the centipede had made several circuits of the podium. Noticeably no one offered to remove the offending bug. I certainly would have, if gloves and extra credit had been offered.

After some more education I tottered off to my internship where I amused myself for a long time color-coding my databases and pretending that the office was mine. I sometimes try to think of what my own office would be like. Would I go totally Spartan or would I display pictures of family and pals? Would I paste up comics torn from the newspaper and copied/enlarged? Or maybe particularly lol-ish forwarded emails where the punchline involves Hilary Clinton being somewhat harsh towards Bill Clinton in their domestic life?

These issues require greater consideration than I can now afford, since I should be reading a book about "Colonists, Christianity, and Community." The one thing that I know for sure is that when I have an office I will be 103% behind comedy mugs full of pens.