Who in this co-op doesn't own Planet Earth on DVD?

Yesterday I was driving home after an admirable pesto-chicken sandwich and I saw a rainbow, the bright sort that elementary school teachers yearn after but is inevitably only visible from cars on freeways and office windows, stretched over a dilapidated drive-in movie screen. I was in the mood to be contemplative – it was a nice moment to be driving quietly with your radio off, with the freeway wet and the sun shining in that fashion which would be beautiful if it didn’t obscure the dotted lines between the lanes and remind you of all of the spilt oil.

“A rainbow over the drive-in,” I muttered to myself. I’m a huge fan of talking to myself when I’m alone; I react to things very verbally and it is easier on the ego to accept and cultivate my conversations with myself than to try and staunch every “Yikes!” or “Well, thanks” that pops out of my mouth.

Anyway, my mood was such that I wished that “rainbow” wasn’t such a horrifically corny word/natural phenomenon. “Rainbow over the Drive-in” has that special juxtaposition quality (natural/man-made, sensible/absurd, timeless/outdated) that would make a fine title for something, if referencing rainbows wasn’t practically as babyish as name-dropping baby rabbits and cupcakes. If the word rainbow is in your band’s name, you will probably end up dating some washed-up child star, like the youngest brother from Malcolm in the Middle. If your band title includes both “rainbow” and “drive-in,” expect to perform in poodle skirts and roller skates.

Thankfully, I don’t have a band to name. I only write things, and if the word rainbow is in your book/essay title, the light-water majesty is guaranteed to make its appearance just as hope is being restored. I’m not much for being hopeful, so that means “Rainbow over the Drive-in” is headed to the slush pile.

For the sake of curiosity and for the sake of giving me something to do as I finish my cereal, I will place before the jury the essay idea that I would cultivate if I wanted to make use of the corny lyricism of “Rainbow over the Drive-in.” I would write about how I have almost zero regard for nature and an overgrown sense of nostalgia, the elements of which, combined, make me far more moved by the sight of a dilapidated drive-in movie screen than by the rainbow stretched over it.

Having a hollow pit where my love of nature should be is nothing that I am proud of; I very much want to be the sort of person whose eyes well with tears over email forwards of picturesque sights; as things lay currently my eyes only well when there are cute animals doing unlikely things Photoshopped into these pictures, and that’s only because I’m laughing too hard.

Really, though, it’s not like I have absolutely no regard for nature. I believe in the soothing effects of a landscape and I’m going to the forest/coast next week because I think that the removal of a person to nature can be revitalizing. But even in that case I am valuing nature because it isn’t something (the mall) instead of for its innate attractiveness. Of course, I am also going because I enjoy camping for the ridiculous hot-dogs-beer-and-fresh-air aspects – I might want quiet but I won’t live a monkish existence with no condiments.

I was thinking about this indifference yesterday (pre-pesto) while I was chatting online with a friend who is planning a camping trip in the rainforest. (That’s right: I’m the kind of person who has friends that camp in the rainforest. Let me in your co-op.) I was clicking through pictures that she linked, thinking about Jurassic Park when I realized that I would probably never go to the rainforest, just like I’m never going to get stoned and watch the Planet Earth special on Animal Planet. I am pretty much a rotting corpse of a human being.

I was reading some blog the other day that listed something to the effect of “knowing that what is fun for others isn’t necessarily fun for you” as one of the secrets to happiness. There were lots of other things on the list (eat less and better, ect.) but that particular entry really appealed to me, as it would appeal to many other notoriously passive I-don’t-know-what-do-you-want-to-do folks, I’m sure. I guess knowing that some people get into a dither about rainbows and other people get into a spaz over drive-in screens is merely an extension of that.

scantron sanity and misplaced quasi-political rants

I dreamed last night, or rather this morning sometime between 4:15 this morning when I woke up to use the bathroom and 6:35 when alarms started going off, that I was late to class. And this isn’t the first time that I’ve had this dream in the almost 2 years since I graduated from college. Oh, no. I have this dream a lot. And I think it’s pretty weird.

Well, I don’t think that it is ‘weird’ as in unusual, because I know plenty of ex-classmates who also experience this dream on a regular basis. I think that our brains were simply wired for so long to anticipate class-related stresses that when we don’t get that stimulus in the form of a sassy blue-and-white scantron form our brains get a little wonky. But when it comes to my specific dream, I tend to think that it’s a little weird.

First, I don’t like to think of myself as someone whose life stopped when I stopped being able to ride the campus buses for free. In fact, I’m starting to think that people put altogether too much emphasis on college, as both a requirement for future successes and as a transcendental epoch of total personal awesomeness. Obviously I think that going to college is a worthwhile educational experience and a must-have if you love school for the very schoolness of it, like I do. And a degree is, undoubtedly, something that you have for life. But it also sets you up for unrealistic expectations ($$$) and completely fails to set you up (in the liberal arts, particularly) for the harsh unfriendliness of a market flooded with young folks who can do a close-reading of Chaucer but are best suited for answering telephones and making schnazzy spreadsheets.

Don’t get me wrong. College = good. I might even go back to school. But especially with the fee increases (32% this year at my old stomping grounds) I think that it is becoming a very hard thing to justify without insuring a 32% increase in class availability, relevance, and (let’s face it) making it about 32% more challenging to get a B.A.. If it was me, I would want my money’s worth and in the case of college that means 32% more knowledge and 32% less sleep during finals. Somehow, especially in the candy-coated UC system, I don’t see that happening.

It may sound a little materialistic (yipes!) to note, but as the only member of my family with a B.A. I make far-and-away the least amount of money. And I don’t mean since I quit my corporate job; they made more than me when I was pushing paper all about.

Money isn’t the only measure of worth and it sure isn’t the best one, but I think that the UC system would do well to shift a little of the focus away from soul-bending experiences and educational enlightenment via sun-dappled Frisbee games and towards the real financial situation. For one thing, they are inflating the students’ ideas of how quickly they can pay off their loans and credit cards as easily as they are inflating the fees.

So, enough ranting brought on by watching footage of the student protests here in sunny California. My dream went like this: I was late for a class where I had to turn in a paper and my bike had two flat tires. While I was trying to borrow someone’s bike I realized that I hadn’t attended this class once all quarter (this is a common theme in these dreams) and I began to berate myself for my negligence. I finally took off running toward the building where I somehow knew that the class would be meeting, leaving my bike hidden behind a tree. Before I got there, I woke up in a mild panic.

I know that I could push it here, make some reference to dreams of the literal sense and the quickly evaporating possibility of the lower-middle class to achieve collegiate dreams, but I won’t. That would be way too liberal arts-ish.

Not fables, but gory stuff

I won't pretend that I don't enjoy some moralizing literature every once and a while. There is certainly something to be said about books where the willful sinners get the dramatic and allegorical death and the simply foolish ones mostly commit suicide or sacrifice themselves for the betterment of society.

I once suggested to a friend back in my english-ing days that we should amass all of the books about English girls who are awfully fond of nature as a metaphor for their loose morals and then die in childbirth, usually cursing their own weakness and asking for the nature-baby to be baptized. I wanted to try and get 70s and 80s movie adaptations for these novels and compare them (all of them tend to have dramatic hair and lots of saxiphone), perferrably in a marathon format.

Currently I am reading Far From the Maddening Crowd which I chose based on the name, thinking that perhaps it would contain excellent passages on how annoying people are that I could use while cursing people on the freeway. It is actually about some sassy young farm chica who is pursued by three men/metaphors. Thus far the able-bodied, prudent, and wise shepherd is pitted against the sulky and obsessive baron and the flippant soldier for the love of the fickle damsel.

Being a bit of a sap for shepherds I'm pulling for him, but I'm not entirely sure he'll pull it off. The solider is a classic rendition of 18th century, smooth-talking, first-name-callin' sleeze, so I'm not worried about him. He's already damned himself by impregnating a servant and then running off briefly to become a professor of gymnastics. However, the old fellow does pose a threat. 18th Century writers love to put the sassy young woman with the sulky rich fellow, when they aren't setting them up for a martyrs death against a backdrop of smooth jazz.

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.”

Are oversized blazers okay again? And other questions.

I was wondering if perhaps it wasn’t a little too Seinfeld to blog about my trip to the dentist. But a little soul searching assured me that Seinfeld is now too removed from the gooey-grey membrane of social consciousness to do me any harm at all. After all, that Seinfeld chick got herself a new show and no longer does that big-in-front hair thing or those over sized blazers (both of which I found mysterious and intriguing). Furthermore, it’s either discussing the dentist or self-analyzing why I totally choked during the interview I had today, mainly as a result of its location in some big art-y loft with splatter paint and a mandatory legion of artsy folks loitering beautifully around.

So, I went to the dentist yesterday about a toothache. Previously I had never had anything resembling a toothache, and mostly associated the term with people crying and tying strips of cotton nonsensically around their heads. But apparently it’s just pain located in the tooth/gum region. After spending some time in the waiting room (no clocks in there, just plenty of comfy canvas chairs) I was escorted into an examination room.

Shortly my doctor/dentist/fellow bustled in and after lowering his substantial mass onto a stool briskly informed me that he was quite sorry, but I would have to postpone my deployment to the Middle East to allow time for a root-canal.

Endeavoring to be debonair I mumbling “Excuse me?” and waited while he leveled a patronizing look in my direction.

“There is no way around it, I’ve just been looking at your X-Rays,” he informed me, having apparently mistaken my awkward confusion for anger. Oh yeah. No dentist, you will not keep me out of the blistering heat and warfare.

At this point I was flabbergasted. Please excuse me while I air some very trite military stereotypes, but I was amazing that he had mistaken me for an enlisted lady. I was sitting cross-legged on the examination chair, in all of my sloppy glory (the dental assistant had advised me to take out my “hair clippies” for the X-Ray) reading a magazine article on internet dating after forty (“A match made in cyber heaven?”).

Eventually I managed to convince the doctor that I had no military affiliation (“So your husband is being shipped out?”) and that I was not 27 or named Sarah. Thus mollified, he wandered off in search of her, and I was to my own devices for another hour.

Continuing on this theme, I had some comments to make about wisdom teeth. I want to talk about them because a set of impacted wisdom teeth is the source of my discomfort, and because I was lectured on all manner of wisdom tooth protocol by my dental assistant in the waning hours of my visit. She told me that most people have them out around 16 (a time when I was of course busy mystifying the local orthodontist with my chronic bad choice of bracket colors) and that I should have had them out long ago.

This is probably true, but the thing that I took some issue with was the association of anything with the word wisdom in it with a 16 year old. I know that I was certainly not wise at 16 and that there didn’t seem to be anyone particularly sage amongst my peers. I would summarize my mentality as a 16 year old by mentioning that I owned a hat with a propeller on top of it and suspected that the cruise control on my blazer was a “booster.”

For that matter, I can’t profess much wisdom now that they’ve decided to make a surprise appearance and I’m quite aged beyond the average.

Final comment on wisdom teeth: one of the few facts that I retained from a disastrous Human Evolution Biology class that I took is that the occurrence of wisdom teeth is slowly evolving out of humans now that we have more subdued eating habits. Consequently, as time passes fewer and fewer people will probably have them.

In conclusion: I take my wisdom teeth as a personal Neanderthal insult to my intelligence and I will treat them as such, by taking the antibiotics prescribed to me to stop their kooky inflammatory fun.

Salmonella outbreak rocks my socks.

My mexican food experience is always so much better when I don’t have to ask for pico de gallo to be left off of my burrito. Thank you, pesky innards-dweller who thrives on red fruits and raw chicken.