10-minute prep-time

Today didn’t start off very well. My alarm didn’t go off, there was traffic on the freeway, and through some acrobatic feat of rapid-tooth-brushing I managed to get a splodge of toothpaste on my jeans. But, on the other hand, the day didn’t start off too badly. My alarm didn’t go off, sure, but I got to work right on time, instead of doing like I usually do and getting there a few minutes early and driving the long way through the business park at 8 MPH. And a little splodge of toothpaste on your jeans is nowhere near as demoralizing as a splodge on your shirt. Yup, there was only way thing that could make or break this catastrophic but average day, and that was the investigation and evaluation of my alarm clock’s failure.

You see, today was the first day in the 12 years that I’ve had my alarm clock that it didn’t go off. It went off reliably through middle school when I had to get to the bus stop by 7:10, and in high school when I had a car and would set the alarm for 10 minutes before I had to leave. (A 10-minute prep time is perfectly possible for a teenaged girl. 1-2 minutes for pants and shirt, 1-2 minutes for teeth and hair, 3-4 minutes for finding shoes and agonizing over various zits, 1-2 for debating and deciding not to eat breakfast.) My alarm clock was a supremely reliable sort; it never failed me on early mornings when I had flights to catch, midterms to study for, or job interviews to be ever-so-slightly early for. It even indulged me for the many long years when I left the alarm on during the weekends for the pure joy of turning it off and going back to sleep.

I’m not exactly sure when I got the alarm clock, but I think it was around my 12th birthday. The clunky black plastic seems very 1998, and the sticky tape deck on the front panel matches that time period where CDs existed but cheap stereo companies were still trying to make the tape happen. Anyway, whenever it was, it was back in the time when buttons on electronics still stuck out of the main box of the item, before all of this touch-screen nonsense and the advent of inlaid, flush buttons. My alarm clock has a wire antenna that never works and an excellent sense of humor: I’ve started many hung-over mornings to the tune of Margaritaville.

I realize, in theory, that retiring an aging alarm clock might not be the worst thing. A person needs an alarm clock that can be relied upon to rouse them for work and most everyone I know has already switched to using their multi-purpose cell phone as an alarm. Finally, my alarm clock is old; the tape deck has to be pried open and there is dust between the buttons on that thing that isn’t ever coming off. It’s easy to believe that it might be giving out. Still, I feel bad getting rid of it – it was outdated practically before it came out of the box and I respect that.

Here’s to hoping that this morning was a fluke and that tomorrow will start off better --with a familiar screech from the black, dust-clogged speakers of an alarm clock that doesn’t come with a texting function.

Some American Shit

Dear guy-ahead-of-me-while-I-drove-to-work,

Hi. You don’t know me but I was behind you at about 1:15 this afternoon, headed south on Folsom avenue. You might have caught a glimpse of me in your rear-view mirror with the dice hanging from it, though perhaps not. I try to maintain a very polite distance from other cars. Hatchback and oversized sunglasses? Distinctly hunched driving posture? Yes, that would be me.

Well, sir (and I hesitate to apply this term because your age was so hard to determine from so far away and so strange an angle), I am sorry that I hurried past you as soon as the road opened up to two lanes. The moment that my car hurdled passed yours I realized the implied insult of my actions. When a person who has been following another takes the first opportunity to pass, the sideways glances exchanged are rarely pleasant ones.

I just wanted to clarify that I meant no disrespect. If you felt admonished by my haste, if the sight of my little green car puttering weakly past your window brought you any embarrassment, or if this last indignity was the straw that broke your Model-A’s back, I apologize.

I understand what you were trying to do, guy. You were out driving your classic car in the sunshine on a Sunday afternoon and you stuck your arm out of the window. You had dice on the rear-view, and I respect that. You were probably listening to some righteous jams and you felt no need to hurry. Hell, you were on a Sunday drive and that’s some American shit right there.

I’m sorry that some schmuck in a green hatchback had to pass you at the first opportunity; that I had to be the jerk-wad reminding you that your tranquility is as outdated as your vehicle and twice as likely to break down. I didn’t mean to be a jerk, but I was on my way to the outlet mall to slap on my lanyard and sell some sneakers. That also is some American shit, but with a difference emphasis.

g.d., J.D.

J.D. Salinger died, at 91, out in Cornish at his hermit house. At first glance it didn’t seem like that big of a deal – I’m not one for stalking authors personally and I always avoid reading about J.D.’s personal life in particular because the accounts are so controversial. But as the fact sunk into my infamously dense understanding, I realized that it is a big deal. It’s a big, goddamn deal.

Now I’m not trying to be cute and Salinger-y by throwing around the curse words. I am just trying to get at, in a round about and too conversational way, the fact that Salinger’s works are very important to me. Not Cather in the Rye specifically, though I was overjoyed to hear a coworker mention the novel as the most pretension novel in their name-dropping arsenal. I am more enamored of Franny and Zooey (to don my hipster cap) and Nine Stories and the craziness of Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters with the Tom Collins and the deaf uncle and the terrible, giant paragraphs of Seymour, An Introduction.

I love Salinger’s descriptive passages and his perfectly chosen details. I would rather read Salinger’s description of a chicken sandwich than some other jerk-wad’s impassioned tribute to the Sistine Chapel any day. Salinger was a recluse, a religious flip-flopper and a hotly debated pervert but there is no one, alive or dead, who knew as much about chicken sandwiches and glasses of milk. And don’t get me started on his descriptions of very wet cocktails.

So here, unresearched and unrehearsed, I give you a list of my favorite Salinger moments off the top of my head:

- The scene where Mrs. Glass surveys the bathroom cabinet in Zooey and dumps cigarette ash into the empty wastebasket.

- The passage in The Laughing Man where the narrator says that he has only seen three immediately beautiful women in his life, one of whom threw a lighter at a porpoise from a cruise ship.

- When Franny orders the chicken sandwich at the French restaurant in Franny and Lane thinks about being in the right place with the right-looking girl.

- Anything about Just Before the War with the Eskimos, except when the brother picks food out of his teeth with his fingernail and ruins the romance for me. Another excellent chicken sandwich scene; another great tennis jacket.

- When the whole party comes back to Buddy’s apartment in Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Buddy mixes drinks, gets drunk and lies to the deaf uncle.

- The incredible narrative self-indulgence of Seymour, An Introduction. My favorite line: “Please accept from me this unpretentious bouquet of very early-blooming parentheses: (((()))).”

And since I doubt that I can muster up anything worthy of following that line, I guess I’ll close here.

Wishing that "drang" was a word

It may not come as a surprise, but I am definitely lame enough to make New Years resolutions. (I am realizing, belatedly, that I will be posting this directly above the “Best of” list, a sure indicator that I both think of, and geek out over, the end of a year.) My resolution this year was to be more productive, especially in my writing, but also in my overall lifestyle. And until today, I was doing alright.

I won’t jump out onto any limbs here and say that I was doing awesomely but I was doing alright. I was getting things done, waking up on time, and writing my required 1000 words a day. I was even endeavoring to read about grammar in the evenings. I wasn’t proud of myself, mainly because no one should be proud of themselves for achieving the basic thresholds of productivity, but I also didn’t want to punch myself in the face. And then I woke up this morning.

This morning I got out of bed, felt no usual fatigue or hunger and sat down at my computer with good intentions and the remainder of the burrito that I had for dinner last night. But despite my aforementioned good intentions, the words wouldn’t come out properly. This can be attributed in part to my lack of forethought; I like to know what I am going to write about the night before so that I can give it a good subconscious mulling over. But once I had settled on a mildly promising topic I couldn’t get more than 500 words down. My brain felt absolutely gluey and I conceded that today would be the day that I felt less-than-dandy about the results of my resolution. The words came slowly; the came sentences incompletely, and the corrections seemed insurmountable.

I know that these problems are always problems of perspective and not actually insurmountable, but it’s still a substantial drag. And like most drags (as in outmoded slang for “lame” not dressing in drag), this one stresses me out. Not accomplishing enough during the week stresses me out because without doing so I do not feel entitled to my weekend, and lacking that feeling of entitlement, I can’t relax outside of the burning glare of my own…um…glare. And stress makes me worry that I will soon get grey hair. (Really: I almost thought that I saw some the other day. Thankfully it was discovered to be stray sour cream.)

Moving away from melodramatic exclamations and toward our usual fare of uninteresting personal tidbits, I was considering whether I should write this post as a sort of grateful farewell to the holidays, which to my dismay having rather taken center stage around here lately, for yet another year. Of course I decided against that in my eagerness to air my discomfort regarding my New Years resolution, but it was a strong contender.

I suppose it makes me finally a full-fledged adult to admit that the holidays are stressful and not just a blur of fun and sticky peppermint fingers. But now they are over and we can retire our company smiles, our tinsel, and our special seasonal ulcers for another year.

As a note of general interest, I have written 532 words in the above paragraphs, only slight more than I would have needed to write earlier in order to fulfill my dream of being a semi-productive member of society. What, I repeat, a g.d. drag.

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.

Tales from the Cryptic

I'm ashamed to post two short entries in a row, but I'm a busy lady and blog posts are time consuming. (Or, at the very least, I pretend to be a busy lady and pretending to be too busy to blog is an important part of the illusion.)

Today I wanted to walk my dog and as it was a little chilly I went into the coat closet to grab a jacket. I couldn't find my usual chilly-but-not-cold jacket (blue, nylon/cloth, fake elbow patches of the same color and material) so I grabbed an old corduroy jacket that I used to wear quite often in college. I preceded to I walk my dog and we had various small adventures that were thrilling but not relevant to the story so shall be ignored.

When I got home I emptied the pockets of the corduroy jacket (so that I wouldn't end up with my keys hidden in the closet inside of a jacket that I rarely wear) and found a receipt dated 11/22/2008, which is exactly a year and a day ago.

The receipt is from Original Pete's Pizza. It lists 1 pint of Midtown Ale, 1 pint of Bud Light, and some tax, all equaling the sum of 7.50. I apparently paid with a 20, suggesting that I had more available cash at the time and received 12.50 in change. I pro'lly paid 3 dollars in tip.

All of these calculations are not important but I enjoyed writing them down so I'll keep them. The point is this: a year and a day ago I had more cash on hand. I also had just gotten engaged, lived in an apartment in a different city where I often walked to pizzerias and drank pints of Bud Light, and definitely never had to think of the consequences of putting my keys away in a coat closet because I didn't have a coat closet.

I didn't have a coat closet but I had a 20, a new car, and (apparently) a Bud Light. I had just landed the job that I quit two months ago.

Lots of things are crazy, but mainly time (the passage of and ect.).

Some things would be better as Victorian flatware

My main purse-bag is starting to get an awfully funky smell and my tactic for procrastination (a clever combination of denial and hastily delving into its depths with breath held and eyes averted) is beginning to wear on even my supremely passive nerves. I will ascent that a small oddness of aroma can give something character (i.e., my dog), but the dread “mu-“s of the odor world (‘musty,’ and worse yet, ‘musky’) I make it my business to avoid.

A brief, and I assure you cranky, aside for those maternal eyes who in reading this take it upon themselves to question my commitment to hygiene and cleanliness. I have indeed subjected this bag (an oversized red-white cloth number with a pattern more suited to melodramatic Victorian flatware) to the rigors of my washing machine many times. And while at first this treatment restored my bag to its usual glory, recent washings have done little more than worry the seams.

Having defended my cleanliness, I must admit that I am not particularly surprised by the downward spiral of this particular bag. It is heavily abused daily as a receptacle of essential survival items: car keys, sandwiches, bedraggled wallet, mobile phone, S.S.S. (Small Softcover Salinger), thermos of tea in the winter and off-brand soda in the summer, snooty notebook bound in faux-leather, and several dozen pink pens lifted from my old job, each one advising women over 40 to get an annual mammogram. On top of stuffing the bag with the aforementioned smelly junk, I further debase it by chucking it unceremoniously into the back of my messy car or onto the shifty linoleum of restaurants and coffee shops. In short: If ever a satchel deserved to smell a little off, it is this one.

It does not escape me that the only logical, perhaps the only sanitary, solution here is to disregard the bag for another. But as my perception of logic is always hindered by a judgment-clouding excess of sentiment, I am somewhat disinclined to undertake this solution.

This bag and I have been through a lot together. I toured a few small corners of Europe carrying that bag stuffed to the seams with a nalgene, camera, umbrella, a couple of prairie-themed American novels, and everything that I deemed too valuable to leave in a hostel with the tagline “Hangovers Included”).

The bag has carried my lunches into two separate jobs and one ramshackle internship. Hundreds of sandwiches have been squashed within its generous embrace. The bag has seen me through my hummus in a Ziploc phase, my “white bread is practically wheat bread” phase, and, most recently, a misguided decaf Pepsi phase.

The longer I go on the more acutely aware I become of the strangeness of this post. And so I will close here, hoping to leave you with a feeling of suspense regarding the fate of my bag and my increasingly musty aroma.

Old ladies with studded belts are my peers

If it wasn't enough that I have many signs of old age in physical maladies (carpal tunnel) and disposition (tendency to yell at neighborhood kids for having their music too loud and driving recklessly), I seem to be developing some senility.

Para example: last weekend I was in a used bookstore (teeny aside that is too large for a mid-sentence parenthetical but I don't care: why can't I work in a used bookstore with middle aged ladies with untamed grey hair and studded black belts ala Good Charlotte?) and I was having trouble remembering whether I had read O Pioneers! by Willa Cather.

Once I slid the book out of the heavily populated Cather shelf and looked at the back-cover I remembered it as the story of the inventive sister amongst stagnant bohemian brothers. When pressed I could even recall the vaguest hint of a romantic subplot involving an equally forward-thinking neighbor boy. And though the plot took shape with concentration, I was still floored by my initial indecision. Through my entire academic career (one far more lengthy and arguably more successful than my career-career) I was known for having a good memory for texts. When talking about books I am more likely to name favorite descriptions than to outline actual plots. Don't get me started on my love of re-reading descriptions of milking pans, gin-based alcoholic beverages mixed before 1960, patent leather saddle shoes and medicine cabinets.

All of that nonsense washing around in my brain and I can't remember even remember if I have read a novel!? In a strange desperation I wanted to re-read Oh Pioneers! and also This Side of Paradise, the plot of which beyond prep school fraternities and poetry vaguely alludes me.

I suppose that the difference in my comprehension is logical and the reason two-fold. Primarily I have less time for reading than I once did and so must shove it into lunch hours and the customary time before bed when I have chatted Kevin into stupification/sleep. More than anything I am an endurance reader (less than anything I am an endurance runner). And so these disjointed and episodic reading binges make a novel stick with less cohesiveness than one read in a single, lemonade-y sitting.

Secondly I have been pushing myself to read things that I don't particularly fancy but that I imagine will further my "education." Thus I read Hardy's Far From the Maddening Crowd and Woolf's To the Lighthouse in recent months. I have yet to decide whether these things really further my understanding of anything. Mainly they further a tendency to gloss over descriptions of landscape (a feature that you will notice is consipucously missing from the list of things that I love to read).

So here's to re-reading the classics (term used with ample grain of salt) and never making mental progress.

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.

The font looks weird to me...

While driving home yesterday I invented a new micro-paranoia for myself: crashing my car because of temporary sneeze-related eye closure. Strange, but probably not unheard of. If I felt like validating my claims I might just look up a statistic about it, but as usual I would much rather just make irrational and unfounded statements.

This thought was brought about by two developments related to moving, the first being a new, more congested commute, and the second being a weird influx of allergies. I have had someone suggest to me recently that the allergies in this region are a form of chemical warfare perpetrated by the snooty stay-at-home yoga moms in an effort to keep anyone who doesn't have a shnaz SUV with a built in humidifier the heck out of their glistening Nugget Markets, but I must say this seems slightly far fetched.

So yesterday I was driving with my usual caution (three car lengths away from my kindred dirty cars, four car lengths away from aggressively clean cars) and I must have sneezed about 82 times. Each occurrence found me with hands locked at 10 and 2, wriggling my nose and straining to keep my eyes open.

As creepy guys on car insurance commercials are consistently telling me, it only takes one sneeze-sized second to total a person's beloved hatchback.

I blame those sad seeming dragons

On Thursday night, as I stood in my bathroom trying to floss while reading about defeat of corrupt gods by righteous sorcerers, I realized I have been doing some fairly atrocious regressing over the last week.

Though I know it’ll sound petulant, I can honestly attest to having avoided fantasy novels for a solid couple of years. Sure, I’ve carted their familiar pastel covers with raised lettering and buckling spines from apartment to apartment, but I haven’t actually indulged in some time. It’s not entirely that I’m too ashamed these days to go around with a sci-fi book sticking out of the front pocket of my overalls (read: my adolescence), though that is a hefty portion of the reason. The other slimmer, but more legitimate, reason is that I truly do enjoy reading what might be termed as “classic literature” and as an added plus I feel as though I’ve earned my plastic-rimmed glasses and poor attitude when I’m through.

For example, when I spend the day lying on the floor chronically re-reading Willa Cather, I consider it a day well spent. When I spend the day lying on the floor reading fantasy novels, however, I feel sort of like washing my eyes out with soap and writing really mean anonymous comments on Tolkien fan fiction sites when I regain my vision. And yet, I can’t stop.

It’s terrible, actually. It all started last week when my main squeeze brought home a book rejected by the library. It was a hefty tome with a giant dragon face on the cover and an incomprehensible title; outwardly I joked about the inexplicable fondness of fantasy writers for bisecting names with apostrophes but inwardly I was mighty curious about this sad seeming dragon. My main squeeze laughingly suggested that I might want to read it, and I laughed to in a furtive sort of way.

Unfortunately, I barreled through the dragon book in a few days, and then immediately took solace in another (less commercial, if that is any more defensible) fantasy novel.

To be clear, I know that fantasy novels are crap. I even make a point of reading them quickly because I’ve fond that oftentimes the 300-page subplots about warring amongst the dwarfish people are completely irrelevant to the overarching (and it’s way overly arched) storyline. But there is something strangely endearing about them.

The problem is this: when I read lines of convoluted passages made up of the words “fate,” “empire,” and “moonstone” strung together in 20 different ways, I will snort sarcastically and roll my eyes but this doesn’t seem to deter me from continuing through that book (or its inevitable sequels).

My only hope is a resurgence of my equally unappealing George Elliot phase.

Post-Mary-goes-blind Post

I’m afraid that I’ve been terribly bad about blogging lately. In my defense, I have thought about blogging fairly regularly. I think about it when I’m sitting in my cubicle drinking my re-heated decaf tea (softened even further with incongruous coffee creamer), plucking squashed strawberries from a zip-lock bag and having some thought that I suspect might be clever.

However, lately when I get home (ah, look, a reformed employee who does no on-the-clock-blogging) I have not the least desire to gaze with my usual adoration into the screen of my computer. I don’t even have my usual yearning to look up Amish-made pony carts on craigslist.

I’ve felt very acutely like lying on the carpet and cloud-gazing at the shoddy popcorn ceiling (being opposed to going outside now that the weather has turned dreadfully warm). On days of particularly intense apathy (and now I’m waxing oxymoronical) I’d like to shut my brain off entirely and watch post-Mary-goes-blind episodes of Little House on the Prairie of a specifically sentimental vein. That's right, only the really god-y ones that star Michael Landon, were written by Michael Landon and produced by Michael Landon.

But as usual I have blogging guilt. Not because I labor under the illusion that a multitude of people are awaiting my every post, but rather because I labor under an equally heavy illusion of myself as a master-blogger (and believe me, I've gotten even snobbier since I quit the twit).


On the whole however I can't think of too many snippets of profundity that I've missed posting in my recent reluctance. The world doesn't really need one more person whining about the Kindle and chattering on about the embarrassment of finding the gum that you spit out the window miles ago on the side of your car door when you get home.


But for now I should go to bed so that I have sufficient energy to be lazy again tomorrow.

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.

Out of practice, in a hurry

If I ever got it into my head that I was going to write some scathing and hip-ish novel about the real suburban youth, I would have plenty of terrible scenes to pepper it with.

Not that I’m not tired of people trying to tell me (statistically, artistically, televistically) that the ‘burbs are about the roughest place to live. I recently fled my midtown apartment for the suburbs, and let me tell you: it’s not nearly as hard-core as the WB primetime teen line-up wants you to believe. Another lie from that stupid dancing frog with the top-hat (Am I dating myself a little much here? Viva Roswell. )

These people aren’t plotting and adulterous; these people have garages. And people with garages have plenty more to do than enable their druggy, inevitably promiscuous and so terribly jaded teenagers. They can stand in their garages. And I simply won’t believe that anyone who can wash their clothes without having to hike a few blocks could really be unhappy enough for any real wrong-doing.

To return to my point (and make a quick exit to more sociable waters), I have the perfect scene for my scathing hipster comedy. Within this scene the protagonists go down to the drug store and hang out, wandering down all of the aisles and feeling the shoe-inserts.

Whatever spazoid came up with Napoleon Dynamite wishes he’d thought of that one. And probably also wishes that his lasting legacy wasn’t a bunch of twenty-something’s in ski boots over emphasizing the word “Gosh.”

I don't taunt insects.

When I was a teenager I suffered a spider bite perilously near to my eye (at least in my own narrow and admittedly melodramatic opinion). The only thing really funny about this story, beyond the obvious slapstick resulting from arranging your bangs to cover your eyes, was my mother’s reaction to my plight. And even that is not particularly funny.

When I interrupted my mother’s phone conversation with my panicked and slightly exaggerated assertions that a spider had bitten my eye (“ My eye, Mother, my god-forsaken eye!”) she responded with typical motherly indifference. A few days later, when she noticed my impressive shiner and inquired, she claimed that she’d thought I was joking about the spider because I apparently said weird things like that “all the time.”

Though insulted, I could not deny it: proclaiming my personal atrocities was/is a large put of my (substantial) daily conversational quota.

I was reminded of this humiliating escapade this morning. My mother was emailing me (as is her persistent habit) loads of pictures from the family Thanksgiving festivities. She included among the other unflattering gems a subsection very appropriately entitled “close-ups.”

I have tried to reason with my mother on this account many times. I’ve assured her that no one likes close-up pictures of themselves bopping from PC to PC on the family mailing list. People especially do not appreciate this when the pictures are unflattering or make them look like a goober or feature them wearing earplugs and eating huge pieces of pie. In short, people do not appreciate the Internet publicity if they are me.

After I shuddered my way through the photo selections this morning, I began yet another cap-locked email to my mother expressing my distaste of close-ups. The familiarity of the situation started me thinking about how I have most of my conversations with my mother in metaphorical cap-locks, not because I’m angry but because of my semi-constant state of overreaction.

It would appear that I am the kid who is always yelling “spider bite.”

Fistful of advil in my bubble space

I think that it’s about time to change my image to something more intimidating and awe inspiring. [The last time that I considered changing my image it was because I wanted to be more mysterious. To be clear, my idea of mysterious is to grow my hair out long and wear it in a single braid down my back, but enough about that.] My motivation is this: my spinelessness has become so apparent that even oral surgeons (the yellow-bellied gum-cutters of the surgical set) feel comfortable patronizing me.

Today I went to visit my oral surgeon because a whopping 3.5 weeks later, my gaping wisdom teeth wounds were still throbbing like nobody’s business. Three previous visits had resulted in smiles from dental assistant and plenty of nasty tasting cotton swabs, but no actual relief. I had received several lectures on not taking any crap this time, so I tried to look at stern as it is possible for one to look while wearing a paper bib.

The oral surgeon seemed unperturbed by my glare. In fact, I think he was too busy shouting “You again!” and acting surprised to see me to notice my face…or the mouth bleeding evoked by the prodding assistant with her thin metal stick.

He gazed at me in a kindly manner and asked if I was feeling any better.

“Last night I took a fistful of Advil,” I responded. He didn’t seem impressed. I guess a guy with gobs of Novocain looks down his nose at giant bottles of Safeway Select Advil. He looked inside my mouth. He flushed around with water. He sat back, looking startled.

“You’re wearing Sarah Palin glasses!” he exclaimed joyously. By the time I summoned up enough spit to protest, he was stuffing my mouth with “special” gauze and telling me to come back next week.

Being intimidating would have plenty of fringe benefits that have nothing to do with oral surgery. Maybe I would have fewer people wandering around the side of my desk at work to see what I’m typing while I’m helping them. I know that they probably just want to make sure that I’m spelling their name correctly, but I find this very disconcerting. And not just because I usually have Twitter up. Oftentimes these people have pockets full of tissues and bodies full of excitable germs.

Would it be too nineties of me to say that I want to intimidate sickly customers out of my “bubble space”? Yes, I think so.

Spoons for special occasions

A really marvelous thing just happened to me.

I was sitting at my desk a few moments ago when a very elegant lady approached me with a plastic bag. I was instantly impressed with her hat, which was a little black number with some mesh extending from the front to cover her face. Intrigued, I glanced around my mega-double computer screen. She wore a back skirt-suit and glasses on a beaded chain around her neck.

“This,” I thought to myself, “Is a woman with driving gloves and more than one set of spoons.” I asked her what I could help her with in an extra polite way. I imagined that this lady was a widow with a tragic past, so I didn’t mind coddling her.

Here’s the real kicker: it turns out that the plastic bag was full of slightly-used Time magazines that this charming lady wanted to leave in our waiting room. For months I have been reading the same Country Home catalog, so I was drooling over the opportunity to pretend that I didn’t know how the presidential election was going to turn out.

Also my pal brought me a delicious tea from a certain soul-less commercial coffee house that I dare not frequent myself for loss of street cred.

Sometimes people are awesome.

I'm pro procrastination

I thought of a really great idea for my return to the blog arena last night when I was falling asleep. I quite clearly recall reminding myself to remember the idea, and repeating it to myself to be sure. Quite obviously, since I am biding my time here typing away, I definitely forgot about it.

Shamefully, I didn’t forget about my blog. I wish that I could say that I had forgotten about it and had since been happily cured of my internet amnesia, but really I’ve just been madly avoiding writing. I’ve considered it many times. I have been reminded oh-so-gently by my admiral boy-companion. There have been many days that I’ve been at work, staring in wonder at the automatic spring-operated Post-it dispenser and considering bloggish thoughts.

But instead of laboriously opening up a Word document, I have elected to do a mess of other things. Like getting my wisdom teeth removed and surrendering my face to the dread swell disease for a week. Or failing at job interviews and sobbing into my pleated skirt. Also procuring matrimonial engagements.

I would consider going on here, and whining about the obnoxious sweats-wearing cell-phone obsessed families in the waiting room (why is this a common theme in all waiting rooms?) or about how I want to read some fluffy news stories that aren’t at all about Obama, but I just can’t find any, but I think I’m going to stop here.

I would very much rather read this Fitzgerald story I am in the middle of, and continue my homage to the alter of procrastination.

I'm easily tricked before noon.

In the early morning I was tricked into getting excited by a false railroading tramp. In my defense, I am never entirely at my best in the mornings, mostly because I never allow enough time to properly wake myself up before I shuffle out of the house. Being anti-breakfast, I used to allow only 15 minutes from my bed to the drivers seat of my damned and unreliable vehicle.

I shudder to acknowledge that my efficiency has decreased chronologically until I now need 30 whole minutes. However, since my beautification routine has gone unaltered I’m pretty sure that I spend that extra 15 minutes either pressing snooze or making sandwiches. My old roommates used to remark that I had a certain “sleep face” for the first hour following getting out of bed that involved swollen eyes and an expression of general distaste. In hindsight, this may have just been a nice way of saying that my head looks weird before I put my glasses on, but I'm digressing.

So anyway, this morning I was sitting at a stoplight on my way to work when a young fellow dashed between the gleaming white mass of my car and the truck in front of me, making his way into the train-yard on the right side of the street. I observed his departing form against the backdrop of the boxcars: flannel shirt, knapsack, and dirty sneaks.

Now I’ll admit that I’m predisposed to thinking about hitching rides in boxcars. Not for myself, obviously, since I’m not into being rattled about and smokin’ tabaccy. But I did recently venture with my quite obliging boyfriend to Jack London’s cabin, and I read The Road (his tract on all things hobo-ing and devious) in preparation.

So I’m watching this kid walk off and I’m thinking to myself, “This guy is certainly about to hop on the underside of this train and see America in some fit of anti-capitalist idealism, getting jailed for vagrancy and joining populist armies all Jack-London-style.”

When I passed him it turned out that he was carrying a gourmet iced coffee beverage with a mighty dollop of whip cream, so I might determined that I was probably mistaken. I’m always disappointed when a possible tramp turns out to be a pointedly disheveled youth.

In other news, today I made a massive commitment to my traitorous car and bought one of those little tape-player-converter things. I know, I know, I’m about 10 years late in electronic trends. But until recently I abstained almost entirely from driving, so I was never particularly concerned with entertaining myself in route. But now I can play my little not-Ipod MP3 thinger to my hearts content.

ALSO. I’m reading Sarah Vowell’s newest book, and I am ashamed to say while it’s good, it’s not nearly sappy enough. I was utterly entranced by her complete obsession with Lincoln in Assassination Vacation, as showcased in her lengthy speculations about how it would feel to cradle the weight of holding Lincoln’s bleeding head as he died.

This newest one is mainly facts with a generous sprinkling of very good zingers. Explanations blaming the uninteresting puritans as the crippling factor in this comparision will be firmly ignored.

Friday is chip day.

On Monday I was all set to write a blog about some silly lady-oriented thing when I was interrupted by a most distracting statement spoken by a co-worker.

Then on Wednesday I plotted to write out the story of the distracting statement, and came up with a much better opening line than the above one, but I got too busy with work to finish it. And because I am a bashful and paranoid person, I deleted it without saving it, and so that really killer opening line is completely lost to posterity.

Yesterday I was too busy googling various combinations of the words “money” “chevy?” “check engine light” and “whirling noise” to be bothered with wasting keystrokes on a blog entry.

So today is Friday, and it is overcast. And since the pretentious builders of my current work station decided that overblown windows are more earthy and art-y than glaring artificial lighting (however will I photosynthesize?) it’s pretty dark and dreary in here. As a result I am yearning madly for either a nap or a soda. (Inconsequently I am forbidden from having either at my desk, but one is more harshly policed than the other, so I suspect that the afternoon will pass with me pounding my keyboard with the dread sugar fingers.)

Speaking of things both dread and dreary, I got a job rejection e-mail this very day and since I find that I can be excessively chatty when both chipper and enraged but am quite tight-lipped when glum, I will settle with giving the cliffnotes (does anyone remember when people were using that website called Pink Monkey to cheat at school) of the aforementioned events.

“I have some pictures of fairies that I’d like to show you.”

That was the alarming statement made to me by a co-worker on Monday afternoon. To my discredit, my first reaction was neither wariness nor disbelief but instead a distracted, knowing nod. Only last week this same co-worker seized my hand and while I squirmed nervously (sugar fingers, remember?) informed me that I had a shoddy life line and that my “money line” was all scrambled (like I needed telling).

You see, people are always picking me out as an interested listener to their sci-fi uber dork tales. [GIANT, GLEAMING NOTE: I love uber dorks and their tales.] I’m not at all an unwilling listener. It’s just disconcerting to me that people always know that they can relate their stories about fan-fic editing and learning to speak elvish.

How can they tell? I don’t wear my Sailor Jupiter t-shirt in public and I sold all of those Buffy novels on E-bay years ago. Maybe it’s a glandular thing.

I just discovered that the highly commercialized short story anthology that I’m reading has a story by Arthur Miller, so I’m going to go attend to that.