The Cat in the Hat turns fifty

I'll admit that I have a bit of a girl crush on this friend of a friend, Leslie. Because we are on some of the same distribution lists for gmail, she is listed in my contacts, and once, while she was online, I clicked on the link for her blog. She is the type of person I really truly want to be. She can appreciate art. She has a favorite architect. She's addicted to apartment therapy and post links to the best small apartment treatments. She listens to all of these obscure bands and goes to see them at tiny, little venues. She collects typewriters, a hobby I have been fascinated by since reading "The Girls Guide to Hunting and Fishing." She's the person I would be if I gave up MTV Hits, the platinum cable package, and celebrity gossip. I am going to add a link to her site, but I am not sure where to put here. Is she a friend or a stranger? Maybe I need a third classification for acquaintances.

I took the title of this blog from a puzzle last night on Wheel of Fortune. It further illustrates the sort of garbage girl that I am. *shakes fist* "I AM A WHEELWATCHER!"

A most triumphant time

Villi and I have been having lots of our talks lately. Every once in a while we sit down for 2-4 hours of marathon talking. Often, we talk about the state of the world and the things that bother us. Eventually, we make our way to the past and talk about our collective history. During our last talk, Villi told me she wasn't going to read the gossip pages any more. By visiting thesuperficial and perezhilton, she feels we are encouraging this appalling trend of D list celebrity worship. As sad as I was to give it up, I knew she was right. If not visiting a webpage is my way of protesting a society that would elevate Paris Hilton to the current level of demi-god, then sign me up. This choice, however, has left me in a bit of withdrawal. Perusing these websites and checking out celebrities and their cellulite took up about 90 minutes of my day. Now, I'm having a hard time filling that time. You know, without doing actual work. Thank goodness school started, or I would be in big trouble.

I have a bad habit of thinking about something to write about and then forgetting it. My new razr has a voice recorder and a 1 GB micro SD card. I'm going to try to record messages to myself to remind me of things I want to write about. So far, though, all I've recorded are lines like "remember a trashcan."

Chalk it up to Carpathian Kitten Loss

School started yesterday, and I already have a panic rising in my chest. Every semester I start out thinking I will never survive and then I always do. Plus I am house sitting this week and trying to go to the gym and all I really want to do is lie on the couch and watch TV. Thank goodness this week is a short week.

I was going to say something about something, but I forgot what it was, so I'll just say "he's a very powerful magician."

So bloody clever

Today, at work, we were building the test domain and trying to come up with a name for it. I suggested the winning domain - eminent. Boy, I'm smart.

Or twice in one night

First, I feel like I'm stealing all of Villi's rant titles, but it's only because we watch all of the same movies and tv shows. Perhaps I should change the title to "The Eskimo Whore Look."

Second, remember all that inherent sexism I was talking about last week? Look at this!



I pulled this out of a costco email I got today and some how the colors got totally jacked, but look. Beneath each of the "grads" is a gift for them. The guy on the left? He gets a mountain bike and a GPS. He's probably taking the summer off, hitting the trails, and communing with nature before he takes that job at his dad's firm. The guy in the middle? He gets a sweet camera, and the picture beside it indicates that he is going to Rome to photograph the Colosseum. He's probably taking the summer abroad to sow his oats before he comes back to the states, marries his high school sweetheart, and spends the rest of his life trying to forget about Paulo and that one incredible night.

And the girl. What does she get for surviving the rigors of academia? Why, she gets earrings. Just what any girl, fresh out of school and looking to make a life for herself needs. Christ, they didn't take her shoes or anything, but what the hell kind of message is this? Prepare the boys for travel and adventure. Prepare the girls for window dressing?

I ain't saying that I don't own jewelry, but with the exception of a Christmas gift from my father, I paid for it all. Jewelry is a nice gift for a birthday or Christmas or an anniversary, when you are really just celebrating an occasion, not an accomplishment. It makes you wonder.

Dignity is an important quality everyone should have

School is over, and, like Villi, I got a gift from a teacher. My Economics of Race and Gender’s teacher gave me an A-. I had expected a C, so imagine my surprise. Not only did she round up my 88.8 B, but she gave me credit for an assignment that I didn’t follow the directions on. I’ve always been old testament (fire and brimstone) when it comes to reading directions and following instructions, so I’m always slightly disappointed when I get away with something like this. If you fuck up, you should be smote down—without argument, without remorse. I feel like these allowances contribute to the general level of fuck-wittedness that runs rampant in today’s world. If everyone, including my teachers, were just a little more intolerant of stupid, careless mistakes, it may force everyone to be more cautious and conscientious. To use an analogy, I’m the dickhead in the LANE ENDS 1000 FEET lane, and my teacher is the car that let’s me over anyways. Part of me wishes she had refused to let me over.

But part of me is super stoked that I got the A.

I flip when a fella brings me flowers

Being a girl is hard. Being a girl in a technical/management role is super hard. There is so much inherent, naturally occurring misogyny in this world. Some people don’t even realize they are being sexist; they get a girl on the phone for technical support, and their gut instinct is that they should be talking to someone else, anyone else, as long as that person has a penis. People are dismissive of your efforts and skills because of your ovaries and it is really frustrating. In my office, where I am the boss of 4 fairly enlightened men, we make jokes about skirts and broads and birds and dames, but it is a joke, right? I’m starting to think that I shouldn’t even encourage this behavior with them, because it seems to increase my tolerance to real discrimination. Almost every time I answer the phone, the person on the other end asks to be transferred to technical support. Oddly, the women ask more than the men, confirming that women are usually way more sexist than men.

Then, as Villi and Dave are playing DOA 4, I get even angrier about the state of women in the world. Half the characters in DOA are women and all of them are accomplished martial artists. In my mind, that makes them athletes, and yet when they fight they fight braless, in dresses and high heels, and with their panties showing and the breasts jiggling. When the male characters in the game complete their stories they train or fight or steal. When the women complete their stories, they some get felt up or use their feminine whiles to seduce skeletons. It's totally fucking ridiculous. I know this game is designed to be played by boys, but that seems like more of a reason to design these women in reality, not less. These boys will, intentionally or not, form conclusions that girls can do two things: flirt and kill them.

DOA is one of many games that has helped me form my theory and evolving opinion on what I call “the booby algorithm.” The booby algorithm was the culmination of one man's love for video games, programming, and pornography. The booby algorithm is a precise mathematical equation that when applied to a video game will make a woman's breasts jiggle just so. This algorithm has been a long time in the making. If you look back at earlier female heroes, they were all stacked like a brickhouse, but their boobs looked like those early breast implants that got all rocky and terrained, like the Sierra Madres. Gradually, the graphics in the games improved and so did the breasts. With 2 million colors, higher refresh rates, and better graphics cards, the world was finally ready for perfectly animated breasts. Presenting the booby algorithm--the crossroads of ascending technology and descending society.

No good deed

A few weeks ago I bought tickets for me and two co-workers to go see Wicked. I accidentally bought them for a Thursday matinée show, instead of the evening show, and so we go to play hooky from work for the afternoon and drink wine for lunch. It was a nice break in the week and there is something about riding public rail transportation to the theater that made me feel impossibly metropolitan. The entire process of waiting on the platform and holding the handrails and going to the theater made me feel more connected to my city and its inhabitants. It was weird.

The show was really good. The two leads were fantastic. It made me remember how much I love live theater and also made me realize how much I miss performing in live theater. As usually happens, I had a few minute fantasy where I dreamed of quitting my job and trying to make it as an actress. Thoughts of my bills, car payments, and rent brought me crashing back to Earth. The moment was short-lived. At the very least, the play will provide me something to belt in my car as I drive home every night.

Two thumbs up!

myspace is the possessor

I created a myspace page like a year ago, mainly so I could view the locked songs for a couple of songwriters. Then, I forgot about it for months. The next time I logged in, my friend Erica had requested to be my friend and I had missed that. I felt bad. Then, I forgot about it for months. Today, I logged in and saw that my cousin had found me and wanted to be my friend. I feel bad. I'm clearly not cut out for the demand of myspace. Maybe I will have to add an alarm to my phone to remind me to check it everyone in a while?

In other news, my new phone doesn't connect to motorola phone tools via a cable. I have to go get a new dongle for Bluetooth, since the dogs broke the last one. This isn't important, but I just love typing the word dongle.

I've wished on the lidded blue flames

I finished my last final last night. I meant to do it 4 days ago, but I can't seem to shake the ghost of procrastination. I am making terrific strides in my fight against it, but I'm only human. Now, it's time to kick back and wait for the grades to roll in. I'm banking on a semester GPA between 3.0 and 3.25. We'll see.

Bored at work today. Looking for something to do, went to IMDB and looked up the cast of A Christmas Story. Had to see what scut farkus was up to. As soon as I opened his profile and saw the grown up pictures of him, I knew I had seen him in something recently. Imagine my shock and horror that it was Resident Evil: Apocalypse; he is one of the Russian mercenaries. Imagine my even more shock and horror that I totally want to watch that movie right now. Those movies have a weird way of reintroducing me to actors I had forgotten about: like Eric Mabius from Welcome to the Dollhouse.

It's a small world after all.

from the end of the stick to the top of the swab

A few years ago, when we were in Vegas, we went to this pub at the Monte Carlo where the shots grow on trees, literally. The usual suspects were all there and we racked up two $700 bar tabs. We was drunkish. Being inebriated, I felt no shame in going out on the dance floor and rocking out to the DJ. Villi and I probably danced for 3 hours that night and we were fucking jamming out. The next day, standing in line for our flight home, a guy came up to us and said, "you are the girls that were dancing at the Monte Carlo last night, right? You guys were dancing hard" We were shocked that not only that we made an impression, but that someone could actually pick us out at the airport. I immediately got defensive. "Is that a good thing or a bad thing?" He just smiled and said, "oh it's a good thing," and walked off. I didn't believe him. I remained convinced that we had been a touch crazed at the bar. I believed this until last night, when I was blessed to see what the phrase "public spectacle" really meant.

Now, on principal, I don't watch Seinfeld. I just don't think it is funny, but even I have seen the Elaine dance in clips and stuff. This scene was never funny to me, because I didn't believe that someone could be that bad of a dancer and still dance in public. It didn't seem realistic, and so, it wasn't funny. Saturday night, though, I found out that there are people out there that dance just as badly as Elaine. At the Dick Dale concert, this group of Jimmy Buffett-shirt-wearing-douche-bags and their scum-sucking road-whores sat just in front of us. For the most part, they just stood there and yelled at the stage. One lady, however, decided to "dance." Sweet fucking Christ. It was the scariest thing I have ever witnessed. It was like watching a prolonged series of seizures. I would say they were set to music, but she didn't even have enough rhythm to be on beat to the music. Mostly, she just flipped her blond hair around; she obviously thought this was wildly sexy, because she did it like every 3 seconds. She also liked to grind into her husband/boyfriend and I was left with the horrific visual of her giving painfully unsexy lap dances to every boyfriend she had ever had. She actually detracted from the show, which was annoying, because every time I felt myself getting into the music, I would catch her flailing in the side of my eye and end up watching her, wondering if the power of Christ compels her.

PoopOnYourPenny.com

Happy Birthday,Yella! In honor of you, hoochie, I referenced the fecal matter in the title.

I's cwazy...or so the rumor goes

So, I bought a Prius last night. I've been talking about getting a hybrid for a couple of months. I thought I was going to get something a little more sedan-ish, but it occurred to me that if I was getting a car to reduce my carbon emissions, I should get the car that does it the best. Inspired by my need for new shit and my desire to heal the world, I called my bank and said, give me $30,000. I expected them to say no and then I could keep my Jetta and live comfortably knowing that I tried. But they said yes, instantly, and then called me to confirm the loan application. With that in mind, I decided to go "look" at some cars last night. I test drove the Prius and pushed some buttons and after several hours, decided I would get it. They took my Jetta away, gave me the key or fob or whatever the hell I have since I don't have an ignition, and I was free to go.

I'll post more later, after I have some time to play with the nav system and all the buttons. It's pretty sweet. I really like the backup camera.

As a Prius owner, I now have something in common with Cameron Diaz and, god willing, the second will be Justin Timberlake.

The ostentatious use of handkerchiefs

I am reading Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale right now. It is a clever and subversive book about a Utopian society gone terribly wrong, and it centers around womans supposed fall from grace in the garden of eden. Oh sister Eve, we still suffer from your folly.

Aside from being a well-crafted, non-linear novel, it also becomes another piece of evidence in my case arguing that Scrabble is the most sensual boardgame of all time. It is the nerd equivalent of spanish-fly. On my old, old page, I wrote the following in December, 2003. You will notice the reference to Scrabble and the reference to the patterns that govern the universe.

Anyhow, once I got mad and we were trying the whole friend thing and I watched Playing Mona Lisa where one of the subplots is a couple that cannot decide to hook up, even though their relationship is rife with sexual tension, and their only outlet is Scrabble©. And I really dug that. It was cool. So when boy asked me to play Scrabble© with him at work two days later, I almost lost it.

I'm one of those people that is constantly looking for the connection, the subtext, the hidden meaning and the destiny. I am a practicing coincidist. Rather than turn the reigns over to a deity or being, I believe that fate has planted little clues and hints along the way and I can figure out the mystery before I get there if I just look hard enough.

From the book

We play two games. Larynx, I spell. Valance. Quince.Zygote. I hold the glossy counter with their smooth edges, finger the letters. The feeling is voluptuous. This is freedom, an eyeblink of it. Limp, I spell. Gorge. What a luxury. The counters are like candies, made of peppermint, cool like that.

While trying to find information about a third instance of Scrabble in pop culture, one that is on the tip of my tongue, I learned that the word for a "Utopian society gone terribly wrong" is dystopia. Makes perfect sense.

Hmmm. Finished my Grammar final tonight. I can finally see the end. Goodnight.

Forgive me father, for I have sinned

I have added a widget to my blog that displays random books from my library, which I imported last night to librarything.com. The online collection tool is fun, since it allows me to see how many other people have the same books that I do. I was delighted to see that 17 other users had stolen the Gideon's Bible from some hotel/motel/motor inn and then, like me, had the balls to put it in their libraries. Bible thieves of the world unite.

I might be the miniture killer

You know you are the product of a truly industrial age when the smell of bleach makes you nostalgic. Whenever I clean with Clorox Clean-up and the bleach fumes fill my nose, I am reminded of Celebrity's - Denver's premier indoor water park - which was torn down at least 10 years ago. It was a fantastic place (water slides, bowling alley, arcade) where any child with a birthday between September and April would have their party. It always smelled strongly of chlorine bleach, even more than other indoor pools. There must have been a lot of children befouling the water or something.

When I was 12, I broke my toe there, but didn't realize it until I got home, because the water had kept my toe cool, numb, and relatively pain free.

When I was 14, I went there with my friend Robyn. I don't remember if it was her birthday or just for fun or what. I do remember her mom and sister being there, so I will assume that it was an event for her and not me. We were playing water volleyball in the pool and having a good time when these two guys came over to talk to us. One was very good looking and the other, not at all. Being a first-rate wingchick, practicing the whole of middle school, I prepared to chat up the unattractive one while Robyn and Senor HotStuff talked. Imagine my surprise when the good looking guy was, in fact, super into me. We flirted and played all afternoon while Robyn and Wingman barely looked at each other. It was the only time that someone sent their wingman after MY friend; it was usually the other way around.

I know Robyn was pissed, because she went out of her way to tell me that she had heard the two boys talking and that Wingman had said to Senor HotStuff that he didn't want "the fat one," but fuck her and her drawn on eyebrows. She knew what was up.

This is what I think of when I clean with bleach.