Not a stained-glass cinderblock

People often tell me that when they see me driving about town I have a very intense (some venture to say, however abstractly, "uncool") look about me...or at least it seems that way as they zoom past me at a more "reasonable" speed. I usually take these observations in stride, because it allows me opportunity to gloat about how unfailingly prompt I am.

I would categorize being punctual as one of my more positive personal features. Of course it can be a little awkward to be on time, especially since I have a romantic affiliation with an equal punctual person and thus we are always the people browsing the dollar-store next to a restaurant when we arrive 15 minutes before they start serving lunch, but mostly I find it very satisfying. At several teenage-era employments punctuality was lauded as my most redeeming quality (not surprisingly, since I spent most of my time at various office jobs building catapults out of rubber bands and binder clips). And to this day I try to be on time to work, mainly because there seems something moral about it. Obviously this is a secular morality, since I claim possession of the same spirituality inherent in a cinderblock, provided that the block is of a shape and quality in no way suggestive of the facial features of certain saviors and/or key biblical babes.

A mere glimpse of my secular moral code is included below:

1. Be on time to work.

2. Don't comment when you think someone is wearing a new shirt. People in new shirts are nervous enough without you bringing it up.

3. Do not, even under the most tempting of situations, read another person's e-mail or text messages.

4. Don't yell at people in service positions, even when they deserve nothing more than to be strangled by their lanyard and left in a shopping cart to die.

5. Never drink enough that you are unable to wait until you get home to puke.

6. Give people rides in your car and never ask for gas money.

Old-town-of-work

Last week I went back to the town that I used to work in for the first time in over 6 months. Strange as it may seem, I felt oddly nostalgic for the surroundings of my old job, though not the actual building, my sentiments for which are recorded earlier in this very blog.

The creeping nostalgia began as I got on the I-5. After months of trolling up and down 50 and 80, I was struck by the recollection of crossing the causeway on foggy mornings, partially awake and very grumpy. Living in Midtown and working in Woodland was my first taste of commuting, and I hated it with every bicycle loving fiber of my being. And yet I caught myself thinking with near-fondness of my trial-and-error theories for selecting the best exits and routes.

I cruised into Woodland and observed the scenery during the long stop-lights at key intersections that I had resented so vehemently in bygone days. I was surprised to feel the first inklings of the strange exposed feeling that I get in my hometown Dixon, and to some degree, post-college era Davis. When I’ve lived somewhere and left it, I feel weirdly guilty, (or potentially just embarrassed) to be back there. Thus I shuffle with great stealth around the Safeway of my youth.

So I felt nostalgic about my old-town-of-work, and it was brought to my attention afterward that we might have lived there, if I had gotten that newspaper job back last September. (Remember kids, I didn’t get that job because my car alarm went off without cease in the parking lot for two hours, not because I was under-qualified). Probably in some raunchy duplex, making peanuts and writing Peanuts (the comic, because I think journalists in regional papers just write it themselves to save money).

What is the point of this tirade? Only that things are very strange, and I might have lived in a town that now makes me feel equal parts embarrassed and nostalgic.

Soda-Pop, minus Pony-Boy

Of all adolescent eating habits, I enjoy having a soda for breakfast most. On Saturday morning I popped open a Hansen's soda slightly before ten and settled with my laptop on the couch. My main squeeze, upon entering the living room, gave me a look to communicate his disapproval.

I held up my soda in defence and announced obtusely "Soda for breakfast."

My main squeeze, always more agile with the rejoiners in the morning than I, replied, "And diabetes for dinner."

And yet I still maintain that there is something awfully refreshing about drinking something cold, carbonated and distinctly sugary from an aluminum can before you are fully awake. But then I think a can of spray cheese and a Edwardian novel is the perfect evening.

Fine and Dandy

There is nothing that I like better than a little recreational sexism. You may argue that there is no such thing as recreational sexism, that each slightly sexist joke is a reflection of an evil corroded soul full of bad anti-suffrage inclinations. Come on folks, being sexist can be good clean fun.

Sure, I like voting, and being allowed to wear pants and to sue people and not having my ribs broken to fit into a corset. Empowerment is all very good and dandy. I relish the idea of independent young ladies and wives with separate checking accounts. However, I also like not having to carry heavy things, yell at mean waiters, and know remotely about plumbing.

This small prejudice of mine came up the other day at work, when a dog at the office bit the mail carrier. My initial shock was of course that a friendly dog would do such a thing (my own dog being far too lazy to undertake such a hunt), but my second shock came as I realized that our mail carrier was a woman. It had never occurred to me that dogs bit ladies.

I’m feeling a bit tired today, but I had intended to rail on further about the joys of not feeling bad about yourself when you have to ask for help replacing a windshield wiper, reveal that you are crap at BBQ-ing, or do not know about pouring beer in an appropriate fashion. I’ll just assume that you get the picture and skip to the thrilling conclusion.

The unfortunate thing is, although I partake of the joys of sexism, I do not return the favor of female stereotypes. I’m not a very good cook, I rarely offer a suave social presence and I often have a wretched coif. And so here is my paradox: I’m not very maternal, but I’d sure like to retain that status so that no one thinks of asking me to screw in some light bulbs…or join the draft.

Probably a dog calendar

My parents are coming to visit this weekend, and thus I have devoted no small amount of time to tidying my house. It's not like I have a spectacularly messy house (and I have lived in some spectacularly messy apartments, so I know the difference) but the house does seem to accumulate clutter very easily.

When I was younger I used to adore clutter, and would spend hours arranging my various clutter items on shelves. However, somewhere between here and there I got a bit more OCD about things, but because my clutter-gathering habits haven't changed, I now find myself with an alarming amount of crap stacked on every flat surface and an insatiable urge to tidy.

I will make this brief, because the vacuum is rebelling and I feel a little guilty pawing away at my computer while my indentured co-cleaner attempts

to fathom the mechanical innards, but I had a few random thoughts of note during the process.

Firstly I would like to voice my concern over buying furniture. Our house is filled with a variety of second hand and loaner items, the crown jewel of which is my rickety plaid loveseat. When I look around at the menagerie I wonder how a person could undertake the creative and fiscal responsibility of buying a set of furniture. I may be a lady, but charge me not with choosing a motif for my house.

My second point is in regards to photos on display. As any internet savvy procrastinator does, I rarely manage to print photos out physically. As a result of this coupled with an alarming lack of photogenic tendencies, our house is devoid of any pictures of the occupants together. And though I do think that pictures add to a certain quaintness, I think this might be nice. I don't want to look at me. Yetch. And I feel silly buying a frame to put myself in for my own looking enjoyment. So back to framing pictures ripped off of calendars.

Cheesy chips with stealth

When I was driving home, I planned on blogging about my discomfort with the gobs of pop culture references in novels these days. The concept was already in my mind, since I had gulped down a new release for nefarious purposes over the weekend and was been rendered unable to shut up about the topic since. But now, having been molified by a burrito dinner, I don't feel quite the need for such carrying on. Furthermore, I suspect that it might have come off a little hoity-toity, especially since I was, with careful phrasing to spare my feelings, told just yesterday evening by the the sole reader of this blog that I was being pretentious.

And here I'll stand my ground: though it may seem pretentious to want a little purity in the novel, or to write a blog post about how people should never reference YouTube in an attempt to ground a story [the internet, as its sole determining feature is intangibility, should be ignored as a method of defining characters or space, and here I'll stop as I'm sprouting undergraduate bullshit], but I am not pretentious.

Worshiping the novel is a not a symptom of snobbery, though it can be a reaction to it. As a note of interest, worshiping the novel also does not mean that you recycle, love the homeless, and eat hummus with the cat that you've named Chaucer. And so, because I love lists and I love talking about myself, I offer to you the list of reasons that I can talk relentlessly about the allure of literature without being pretentious:

• I have on occasion been forced to wipe my cheesy fingers on my socks while secretly eating cheesy-chips at work
• I have a messenger bag that I'm too embarrassed to use it in cities where I know even one person.
• I have lately been accused of loving sitcoms.
• I have lately affirmed that accusation by ordered one on netflixs.
• I once ate McDonalds while very drunk in London (a classically American move).
• I am whole-heartedly a spaz-ish person and pretension requires a certain poise.

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.