November 2004 Archives

Courtesy Something Awful:

Yesterday I was sitting at the reference desk minding my own business, when someone slapped his hands down on the desk, frightening me to bits. I looked up, did a double-take... it was Curran! He's on leave and visiting Melissa, so he came by the library to visit me. It was very natural to see him at Bard... after all, he was always at Bard before. Why wouldn't I see him here now? But it was a real shock when I realized that I had not seen him in two and a half years....

I just got an old Shonen Knife song stuck in my head from glancing at the title of my last post. "Johnny, Johnny, Johnny, Johnny -- he's a regula boy! (yeah! yeah! yeah! yeah!) Johnny, Johnny, Johnny, Johnny -- he's a regula boy. (yeah! yeah! yeah! yeah!) He's the coolest boy in tow-own, he's good at... ping. pong."

(I believe that one is called, get this, "Johnny.")

It's a good thing Shonen Knife didn't hit it too big. You have to sing their songs with a Japanese accent. It doesn't sound right if you don't and... well... it doesn't sound RIGHT if you do. Therefore, you just don't sing it. We have to be sensitive in this day and age.
I believe K stole that CD from me, prooobably without meaning to. I'd like to think he still has it, listening to it in his armored humvee with the grenade launchers in front, over there in Iraq. Wonder where he is now.

Here's the latest.

Wednesday

The electricity was out when I got home. After an hour of sitting in pitch black, my mother decided we should go out and have dinner and go see a movie. So we went to a diner, which was awful, and then saw Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason, which succeeded in making me goddamn depressed. Romantic comedies do tend to depress me. I'm only uplifted by them when there's a bit of tragedy mixed in. I'm contrary like that. The Apartment is an example. It remains, in my opinion, the best boy-meets-girl movie ever made.

Thursday

Thanksgiving was good. I ended up playing a couple games of You Don't Know Jack with two of my sisters, a thing we have not done in at least four years. We always name each other in that game, so Maria called me Wednesday (I was wearing all black), Anna called Maria Corky (our secret is that we are all terrible people), and I called Anna Goiter (stealing a joke from D.S.). When Maria and I had the idea to play the game, we looked for it in Anna's office. When we couldn't find it, I realized it was back home in my closet. So, for the first time ever, I took my mom's car keys and drove home to get the game. I felt oddly joyful as I drove the mile to our house completely alone.

Friday

I have no idea what I did on this day.

Saturday

Oh wait, now I remember what I did on Friday. I saw two movies: National Treasure (in the movies, with my niece, who kept on making weird noises with her mouth) and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (on TV). Guess which one I liked better. Just guess.

The other good movie I saw this weekend was on Saturday, and this was Secretary. Like Eternal Sunshine, it failed to depress me, unlike the deliriously "happy" Bridget Jones. Actually, it uplifted me. I was far too uplifted. It's a romance for the ages. First time I've ever liked James Spader, and he was spanking a girl my age. OK, I just checked. Maggie Gyllenhaal was 25 in that movie. I stand corrected.

I test drove a Forester. I fell in love, but I'm waiting to see if I can actually afford it.

I also brought some stuff over to my apartment. Since there was torrential rain on Sunday, we didn't move any furniture, so that'll have to wait till this weekend. A lot of stuff has to wait.

Sunday

Every day is like Sunday. Every day is silent and gray.

You can tell that nothing's going on in my life when I write long posts like this one. When every day is a party -- ah! Then I'll have nothing to say for myself. Everything I could have said would be said for me.

Just for fun, I made a profile on OKCupid. The couple times that I got messaged by creepy guys on Friendster showed me that I'm really not interested in talking to anyone on the internet. Call this a sociological experiment. Typical of me, I evaded every question in the profile and gave wise ass answers instead of truthful ones. My mistake was in answering the question You should message me if: with "... you have nothing better to do, like play Half Life or watch the Daily Show."

Five minutes later, I had a number of messages in my inbox, most of them with subject line "Hi," asking me which is better, Craig Kilborn or Jon Stewart? Is Half Life 2 any good? Dude, Half Life and Daily Show are awesome!

Should I edit my profile now and mention that my experience with Half Life is pretty much limited to looking over a friend's shoulder as he played it in his dorm room back in college?

Nah.

Okayyyy, so I passed my road test today and finally have my license. Phase One is over. On to Phase Two.

Now I have my interim license in my wallet along with recent receipts I've stuffed in there, making it all too likely that I'll just toss it in the scrap heap, considering the interim license looks like nothing more than a receipt from TrueValue. Why TrueValue? That's what it looks like.

Ah. This is what I wanted to post yesterday, but couldn't find the link. I don't think I need to comment on this one at all. It just sort of speaks for itself. From the Sunday Freeman:

ELLENVILLE - A 37-year-old West Hurley man was arrested after officers found him standing naked on top of a vehicle in a karate type stance, police said.

THE DUDE was arrested Friday evening on charges of misdemeanor resisting arrest, two counts of misdemeanor criminal mischief, one count of violation disorderly conduct and one count of violation appearance in public under the influence of a drug.

At about 8:50 p.m. Friday a woman and her daughter went to the police station to report that a naked man had jumped on top of their vehicle outside the Village Motel at the intersection of U.S. Route 209 and Maple Avenue, village of Ellenville police said. Police said the naked man attempted to pull the driver, the woman's husband, out of the car.

Three officers responded to the complaint and found THE DUDE naked, standing on top of a vehicle in a karate type stance, police said. Police said THE DUDE became combative with the driver and while being placed under arrest on the disorderly conduct charge he also became combative with officers and damaged some police-issued items. The officers used pepper spray, which had no effect, police added. Police said THE DUDE was taken into custody after fighting with officers and then taken to Ellenville Regional Hospital for treatment. He was later transferred to Benedictine Hospital for psychological evaluation, police said.

Investigation showed that THE DUDE had taken approximately two grams of cocaine prior to the incident, which resulted in an extreme violent psychological reaction, police said.

I was getting some pretty crazy spam comments. Regrettably, I deleted them all. It's not that I want spam comments on my bloggo, but they were just so... interesting. Mostly for video poker sites, but the comments all appeared to be famous/semi-famous philosophical and political quotes. I give the following example:

Religion is but a desperate attempt to find an escape from the truly dreadful situation in which we find ourselves. Here we are in this wholly fantastic universe with scarcely a clue as to whether our existence has any real significance. No wonder then that many people feel the need for some belief that gives them a sense of security, and no wonder that they become very angry with people like me who say that this is illusory.

This is a quote from Fred Hoyle. (No, I did not know this already. I googled it, like any sane person.) But somebody/thing called "Slots" left it in my comments. Without attributing it to Fred, the bastard.

The upshot of all this is that I installed the MT-Blacklist plug-in, and it's already blocked 20 such comments. I love MT-Blacklist now, but perhaps I'm not as enlightened as I would have been. I'll no longer have some video casino robot telling me belief is illusory. I am. I was.

Those one or two of my friends who may have come here at the exact moment it was being restructured (in this case, moment = a range of about 6 hours) may have wondered what the hell I was doing to the bloggo. Well, I was doing this to it. Very plain, I know, but I never wanted more than a utilitarian blog.
I would have had it all fixed much quicker if it hadn't been for two things: 1) I fucked up midway through installing MovableType (it's what I get for not really knowing what I'm doing) and had to start again from scratch, and 2) I was at work. But my reference shift, which would have been extremely slow what with NOBODY asking reference questions, just flew by as I FTPed my way to glory. It was bloody, but I got through it.

Today is Friday. This morning, I announced this fact and then put my head on the table. My mother asked me if Fridays are bad for me. I replied that Friday -- or at least this particular Friday -- feels like the end of a long, harrowing journey from hell to the home I knew as a child, where I can finally die in peace lying in the mud. That's not actually what I said, but it was something like that. Then my mother asked me if I had ever actually read Cold Mountain. I said no.

And it was the truth.

I could do with some sleep.

I’m in the community chorus now, after a two-year absence following my graduation. I think I only missed one semester’s worth of chorus back when I was an undergrad, which means that I was in – let’s see – 7 community chorus performances. Now I’m in my eighth. We’re doing Haydn’s Theresienmesse, and it’s coming along fine. Grandma joined the chorus along with me back in September, and I think she’s enjoying it.
Anyone who knows me knows I love to sing… all the time. I used to drive my sister A. crazy while we were on the assembly line for her now-defunct greeting card business – spinning the tunes of the 70s and 80s. I tend to sing or hum while I work, a habit I suppress at the library. Recently my mom pointed out that when I cook, I start to sing, which she claims must be a genetic trait coming from my grandfather, who whistled when he worked.

But I’m getting off-topic. The community chorus attracts students and community members alike (hence the NAME), so it’s about half-and-half. There are a number of older ladies and gentlemen in the group. A couple of the older ladies have that old-fashioned warbly singing voice that is fine when alone but not the ideal voice for choral work. HEAD VOICE, LADIES, HEAD VOICE.

The worst of the warblers is this one older lady who sings with such a tremulo in her voice that she never quite sings the note. I always forget which one she is, so I unwittingly sat down next to her at rehearsal last night. I’m pretty good at sticking to my music and my guns, so it wasn’t a terrible problem, but she threw me off a little initially. As in, it’s difficult to hear if you are singing the right note when the woman standing next to you is weaving and dodging it herself.

So I was cursing her for half the night, until finally the chorus went into full swing and I was able to ignore it.

Invariably, when I think bad thoughts about people, it always turns around and bites me in the ass. After rehearsal, as we carried our chairs into the back room, she turned to me and said, “You sing very well,” thereby guiltifying my conscience a-plenty for the night.

This always happens to me. Half of the good friends I have are people that I did not necessarily like at first. That varies from some short-lived poor judgment on my part (i.e. I think so-and-so is a dweeb until five minutes later, when he’s the most awesome person I’ve ever met until tomorrow and NO I’m not fickle) to initial misunderstandings that last for a good while until I get over them. It also goes the other way. A little bit too much. So what I’m saying is, I’m not exactly the best judge of character.
But character aside, what I’m saying is, DON’T HATE. The warbler is still annoying and I still wish she would use her HEAD VOICE, but goddamn but it’s better when you don’t think bad things about people who don’t actually deserve curses upon their head. Hitler? Pol Pot? Think what you wish about them, because I bet they’re burning in the pit. The annoying kid who drums on the reference desk? The chick in the visible thong? Charles Ponzi? Any of these might end up saving your life someday or at least saving you money. Maybe not Charles Ponzi, considering he’s long dead and also went to prison for mail fraud, but my point is that I try not to waste any hate energy. As Mr. Lemyre, my 9th grade English teacher, said (probably lifting this from elsewhere, but I’m too lazy to even bother trying): When you bother to hate, it means that you care. In other words, if you’re the tough shit cool cucumber you think you are, nothing can ruffle your feathers.

We’re gonna be like three little Fonzies here. And what’s Fonzie like? Come on Yolanda what’s Fonzie like?

I bought a new bed this weekend. Mom talked me into a queen size, so that I have a vast plain of empty space surrounding me, reminding me of the infinitude of the cosmos and my loneliness, alas, alack. Actually, I find it is rather embarrassing to buy a bed with your mother, especially when the only salesman in the store is a 27-year-old Italian (or so he looked) dude with Cal Ripken eyes. Puts everything in a different context. So when I said, “I really don’t need a queen, mom,” and she responded with, “You’ll want it in the future! More room for the baby!” I hope I didn’t look too mortified.
The salesman was an extrovert. People like that scare me, but they’re usually also the only kind that get me out of my shell (for obvious reasons). I’m an extrovert when I’m in a room full of people I know well and who respect me (it also helps for them to be shouting gratuitous praise at me or chanting my name), but who isn’t? The salesman agreed with my mother when she was giving me another, more innocuous reason for buying a queen. All he said was, “You never know!” which vaguely disturbed me. But the thing that really disturbed me, after all this was over, was that I realized that I knew everything about the salesman. I knew how old he was, where he went to college, what his major was, that he has friends making six figures but he’s not even a third of the way there yet, his shoe size, his philosophy on life and love. Most of this was because he and Mom were talking while I was hiding under the beds and jumping on the couches (there’s nothing like shopping with your parents to make you feel young again). When we first came in the store, the salesman asked me if I was buying a bed for college. I said, casually, “No, no, I’m out of college,” and was about to go on and say something else when he blurted out, “Out of college? How old are you?” I just squeezed out the answer, 23, when he put up his hands and started to laugh and apologized for being too outgoing. Don’t apologize, buddy. Being outgoing means you never have to say you’re sorry.

When we finally left, my mother gave me one of her sidelong glances and smiled and said, “I wouldn’t be surprised if that guy called you up for a date.” (He now has both my home phone and my cell phone on his copy of the purchase order, making any action on his part to call me totally creepy.) I made a face and said that I doubted it, considering he thought I was in high school. On the drive home, I complained to my mother that my only social interaction (i.e. with guys) outside of contact with old Bardies who are either totally unavailable or totally uninterested is nil. That I see maybe ten good-looking guys a day, but they’re all STUDENTS at this damn college and probably just as jerky as every other student I was interested in while I was a student here.

I wish that salesman would call me, creepy as it would be. At least he has no affiliation with Bard. At least he’s not 19. I mean, he did sell me a queen-size bed. I’m totally in like Flynn.

Oh yeah… I’m moving to Tivoli in a couple weeks.

I had not believed the weather forecasts yesterday, but this morning I woke up to notice that, between the slats in my blinds, I could see some white stuff flitting around outside. So now it’s all pretty, and the snow is blustering around outside my office windows. Karin and I really do have the best view in the library: we look out on the tops of the trees from on high. When it really snows hard (I remember from last winter), all we see are evergreens blanketed in snow. And then when the wind kicks up a flurry, it’s very dramatic. Manages to draw my bloodshot eyes away from this computer screen for a few moments.

My eyes are bloodshot, actually. It’s chronic.

My sister told me a story recently. My grandmother was reading to Lucy some baby board book about the seasons. When the book gets to winter, there’s some picture of a little smiling kid in the snow, and Mama reads, “The world goes all quiet...” She stops and makes a face. “I suppose.” Goes on to read: “The snow blankets the earth.” (Or something like it.) Mama makes a noise of disgust. “And this is the worst time of all,” she ad-libs, “because you gotta shovel it and you can slip....” N said it was the most hilariously jaded reading of a board book to an infant… ever.

This may be offensive to everything I hold dear, but I just sort of had to laugh. From Something Awful’s Your Band Sucks:

Tom Waits. Apparently he coughed. More specifically, he coughed out a new album. I didn’t bother reading the cover story or listening to the record, but let’s assume it’s a lugubrious, alcohol-fueled collection of raspy ballads about working-class characters. Is that a fair assumption? Please, somebody who’s heard it, e-mail me and tell me that Tom Waits’s new record is NOT a lugubrious, alcohol-fueled collection of raspy ballads about working-class characters. Wouldn’t that be a kick in the pants? What if it were a collection of lighthearted pop songs sung in Waits’s heretofore unheard wispy falsetto that he keeps locked away in that thorny gulch that he calls a throat for special occasions?

The new album is awesome – at least the first few tracks are awesome. That’s all I remember hearing, thanks to D and R. I’m sorry, Tom fills a need.

There’s a chance I might be getting my own place soon. Dude is buying one of them there condos, wants to rent it to me if I like it. So at the end of the week, I’ll be seeing it. I practically have the deposit check signed and ready – hopefully it won’t be a dump then, although I doubt it will be, considering it’s in the SAME BUILDING as N and C, and I know their place is no dump. We would share a living room wall. If we wanted, we could drill a hole through the wall and share cable. N is not too into this idea, because she doesn’t want to “get in trouble.” She also says it would “break the sound barrier” and I would be able to hear Lucy cry at night, while they would be able to hear me “chug 40s.” The only disadvantage to this condo complex (that sounds vaguely… Logan’s Run-esque) is that there are quiet hours, which means I can’t have raucous parties with my friends that don’t exist.

I don’t think I’ll be leaving this county for a few weeks. I need to get my life in order, so friends will have to go by the wayside until I’m more settled in December. Then (wuh-huh) I’ll make them come up here for me for a house warming party. None of this $66 a pop round-trip just to be screwed by Amtrak.

The interesting thing about this whole “getting settled” move is that I need to get a driver’s license. I am 7 years late in getting it, but there are other things more pathetic that I’ve been waiting 7 years for, give or take. On Saturday, I practiced driving around the mall. What a shit fest that was. Drove me nuts. I also had lead foot. There’s nothing like driving badly to ruin your life day.

Well, something’s gotta give. That movie was on last night, incidentally. I really can’t stand it. I don’t know why. Something about it depresses me horribly. Maybe it’s that little speech Diane Keaton gives to Amanda Peet near the end, about how you can’t be afraid and you have to fall in love. Blah blah blah. And then, flash forward six months and Amanda Peet is knocked up and married to a nice, vaguely-geeky-probably-smart-but-still-handsome-and-successful guy. Hope I didn’t ruin the ending for anyone. Still, I’m so glad that she decided to fall in love and have babies. I’m so glad she decided to meet the right guy.

What I originally was going to write: Well, something’s gotta give. I play far too much video solitaire after work. I haven’t been writing. Every night, as I fall asleep, I think of some dramatic scene or other – usually one I have all mapped out, but for whatever reason can never write down. If I don’t make it to the end of the year, my 2005 resolution will be to suck it up and reserve at least a couple hours for what should have been my life’s work.

I can tell today will not be an extroverted day. Today will be a, “Yes, I can answer your question, but only if it is a quiet question and you don’t look me in the eye when asking it” kind of day.

Wish me luck.

Yesterday, trying to track down the rest of my family in the mall (we had an ingenious plan to meet there without a plan), Dad and I went to the pay phone in Filenes to call Mom’s cell phone. I stuck my hand in my pocket, retrieved a quarter, and ended up making three bucks on the deal.
When I got Mom’s voice mail and hung up, there was a clatter in the coin return that sounded a little too violent for a single quarter. I pulled out about eight quarters. Shrug, Laugh. Call Nina and Chris’ cell phone. Get the voice mail, hang up, another huge clatter in the coin return. I couldn’t fight the temptation to call someone else and get more money, but this time there wasn’t as big a return, meaning I only got my quarter back. But still, my pocket was stuffed. Not bad for a Wednesday.

And Amazon offended me! I’m trying to find the price of a DVD, and my front page has this recommendation. Thanks a bunch, Amazon. Like I needed to be reminded.

The only other thing I found to be funny yesterday was my eye doctor. To quote my father, during the exam you have the distinct impression that he’s ready to pull out a pillow and go to sleep on the floor. Also, he’s more soft spoken than I am. A couple times he asked me eye-health-related questions, and I had to look at him blankly and say, “Excuse me? What?” because I had NO idea what he had just said. Perhaps it was all a dirty trick. Damn it, Jim, he’s an otologist, not an ophthalmologist! Sigh… It took all I had to spell “ophthalmologist” and now it took the rest that I had to spell it AGAIN. God! Kill me.

I’ve often wondered what a certain phrase means. So I looked it up. Check out #5. I am less satisfied with having found a definition than having found The Urban Dictionary. Now I have a completely unauthoritative source for all my urban slang defining needs!

[Later] Correction: When I said check out #5, I meant check out #4.

On Friday, I arrived at the station at the allotted time. Asked the station agent if the 5 o’clock to Penn was on time. He said yes. I go down to the platform and wait. Announcement: The 4 o’clock to Penn, which is running 45 minutes late, will be pulling up in 5 minutes. So I and every other person waiting for the 5 train thinks, “Ah. I’d have to wait another 15 minutes for the 5 train to come in. Why not get on the 4 train? ‘Twould be ridiculous to wait for ANOTHER New York train when a perfectly good one is here.” So we all get on the 4 train when it arrives. Twenty minutes later, the train begins to slow, and I think that we must be nearing Poughkeepsie. No. We break down on the tracks. A twenty-minute to an hour wait for a new engine, folks.
And here I had quashed that little voice in my head that told me to wait for the 5 train…. Here I wish for a garbage-powered DeLorian, but I don’t get one.
After 15 minutes (and after the 5 train has roared past us on the other track), our engine has cooled down and we begin to slouch toward Poughkeepsie. There, the Metro North dudes check the engine, while we stand around on the platform, wondering if we can just get on Metro North for free. They tell us that we will only be able to get on Metro North for free if our train is totally and utterly broken down; otherwise, shell out another $12. After 10 minutes, the conductors start coming out and screaming for everyone to get back on the train. “If we can make it to Croton-Harmon, we can make it to Penn!” one of them shouts triumphantly.
Ten minutes later, we drag ourselves into Beacon, and Amtrak dudes announce that the engine is kaput, jawohl, we should get our asses onto Metro North. Stepping onto a Metro North local train, the first thought is of women in babushkas and screaming infants. There’s a definite downgrade in atmosphere. The train seems to be air-conditioned, which would be very luxurious if it weren’t October. But Metro North is at least reliable. We sit in Beacon for 20 minutes, which is a long time considering that when an MN train makes a “stop,” it usually just sort of slows to 5 MPH and the conductors lean out of doors and hold their hands out for running passengers. “Just throw me the bags!” As we begin to move out of Beacon, the PA crackles, and the conductor says, “Sorry for the hold-up, folks. The Amtrak guys couldn’t get their act together and get all you folks on the train in time. This is a local train to New York Grand Central, making stops at…” and so on and so forth. Now I want to write a novel about rivalries between Amtrak and Metro North employees, but I already have a story about a rivalry between a cataloging librarian and a reference librarian. I don’t think I can do that kind of thing twice.
So I ended up getting into Grand Central at 8:30, two hours later than I was supposed to get into Penn. My friends are there waiting for me. They had killed time in a bar in the area, and R. was already Drunk.

The upshot of this whole experience is that, in the future, when I’m a big girl and have a car, I will drive to Poughkeepsie and take Metro North into Grand Central. It’s cheaper and less likely to screw you royally. In the meantime, I will make a t-shirt that says “Amtrak Saves” (in a satirical sense of course… I would never compare Amtrak to Jesus Christ) and wear it every time I picket outside of the station.

When I told A. of this idea, she said, “When you have a car, why don’t you just drive down to Brooklyn?” Clearly she thinks I’m a masochist.