Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Watery Themes

Lately, I'm profoundly attached to the riverfront. I must have gone there at least half a dozen times in the last month. Before waking up this morning, I literally had three different dreams about it. I just can't seem to stay away for long.

Make no mistake about it, the riverfront will be the setting of my next date with myself. . . myself and NOBODY else. Maybe I'll pencil it into my calendar.

Monday, May 21, 2007

My New Word

Springles n. Tingles that occur only in the spring.

Sunday, May 20, 2007

Forgive Tonight's Clunky Writing Style; I'm Tired

I want to start reading again.

When did this happen to me? You know how it is when you don’t recognize a person anymore? Well, that’s how I feel about myself.

I wasn’t always such a magazine girl. I used to read things besides blogs and e-mails and the occasional newspaper. My bookcase wasn’t always half-stocked with photos and blank CDs. In fact, I grew up with my nose perpetually in a book. That’s what people knew me for: the fact that I could not and would not stop reading for anything. Scholastic book fairs were among the great joys of my elementary school life. Trips to the bookstore were my personal definition of heaven. I actually welcomed the summer reading lists for my English classes in high school. What’s more, I spent hours upon hours hiding out in a library corner instead of socializing during lunch. Let’s face it, I was a huge nerd and I probably wouldn’t have had it any other way.

I think college was when it all changed. . . maybe spring 2001. Yep, I’d say spring 2001 was the point where I officially stopped reading for recreation. At the time, I felt weary of college textbooks and overwhelmed by all kinds of other priorities. I’m pretty sure the number of books I’ve read in the last six years hasn’t even touched double-digit territory. Even if it has, it just barely has.

Something is missing from my life. I want to lose myself in a story’s plot again. . . work my imagination to the max. . . feel connected to the characters. . . feel excited and totally absorbed in the page before me. How could I have given it up for so long? How did I ever lose my focus on something so important?

Frankly, I’m ashamed of myself. I’m hanging my head because I feel dependent on so many sources of sensory stimulation at the same time, and blaring sensory stimulation isn’t really life, it’s just a short-term substitute for it. When I get on the treadmill, I can’t bear to be alone with my own quiet thoughts anymore. Ohhhh, nooooo, I have to turn on the TV right away. . . and put on my headphones. . . and listen to music while watching TV at the same time. . . and it’s all so empty-feeling, especially if I’m watching a crappy movie just to distract myself from the fact that I’m on the treadmill. I mean, don’t get me wrong, the treadmill is great. I think it’ll make my body a hell of a lot stronger in the next few months. What does that matter, though, if my mind is decaying at the same time? Who really wants to share life with a physically fit person who is stupid?

I want to go to the library and seek out a book that really interests me to the depths of my soul. I’d love to broaden my horizons, expand my meaningful experience base, and have something intellectual to discuss with people. After all, I’m sick of having conversations about whatever fitness tip or recipe I saw in a magazine the other day. I need less TV and more books. (Music is still fine. Essential, even. TV, though? I swear, it’s so much better to watch nothing at all than to watch a movie that is truly bad. . . one you’d never watch in a million years if not for your multi-tasking compulsions. Of course, it’s different if you’re laughing at the movie’s or TV show’s sheer, unadulterated badness with a group of friends. However, that’s usually not the case for me.)

I need to sit under a tree branch on a sunny, shimmery day and read. Just read. Not on the treadmill. . . at least, not right away. I need to rediscover what it’s like to give a book my undivided attention, and I know exactly what that book is going to be.

Thursday, May 17, 2007

Wow

So, um, you know that thing I wrote on April 29?

Well, I want you to take the statement I wrote that day and multiply it by about, oh, let's say...500.

WOW.

Wednesday, May 16, 2007

I'm Alive

No, I haven't forgotten that this blog exists. I'm just having trouble coming up with anything to write that is publishable. Check back later.

Wednesday, May 9, 2007

The Double Standard I Can't Help

Don't get me wrong. I'm not the type who would ever act on this sentiment, nor who would condone acting on it...but...

Why do men's levels of desirability and general hotness seem to skyrocket when they snag attractive women (no matter how unremarkable those men seemed before), while the same isn't necessarily true if you swap the genders around? I can't be the only one who has noticed this trend. I've been wondering about it for hours and still can't figure it out.

What are your theories?

Monday, May 7, 2007

I No Longer Know Myself

I don't think I'm a night person anymore, Toto.

Sunday, May 6, 2007

Thank You, Comedian Whose Name Eludes Me

So I'm going through all these old files on my computer. Apparently, I went to see a stand-up comedian in my freshman year of college. I can't remember his name for the life of me, but I must have been impressed enough to write down a bunch of his jokes afterwards. Here ya go...hope you enjoy them as much as I did...

“Anyone having a bad day? You know what I do when I have a bad day? I take it out on other people. For example, I was driving in my car the other day. I looked in the rearview mirror and saw a family in the car behind me. They were all drinking hot chocolate, so I slammed on my brakes.”

“Does anybody really like Spam? They just came out with Spam Lite. As if anybody ate so much Spam that it was a concern for their body weight. There probably aren’t too many people going around saying, ‘Yea, I can eat twice as much Spam now!’ "

“When my wife feels like being sexy, she talks in w’s. ‘I wuv you, my widdle honey.’ It makes me feel like saying, ‘I wuv you, too. OK, I think I’ll weave now.’ I mean, who really wants to be in bed with Elmer Fudd?”

“Remember that blizzard on New Year’s Eve last year? Well, I was driving on the thruway that day, and I saw my proctologist in the next car. It was so hard to see, he had to look through the little hole in the windshield.”

“We were crazy kids at Christmas. We used to suck on our candy canes until the ends got really sharp, and then we would stab each other. The doctor could never figure out where those wounds came from!”

“Every Christmas, we set out hot chocolate and cookies for Santa. Well, one year, my brother decided to put some X-Lax in the hot chocolate. The next day, my dad was in the bathroom all day, saying, ‘I hate you kids!’ "

“My mom is at the stage where she says things that almost make sense, but don’t. Like, I told her I was going to buy an answering machine. She said, ‘Why? You’re never home.’ "

“My brother does that, too. It must run in the family. I told him I would pay him twenty bucks to mow my lawn, and he said, ‘For twenty bucks, I’d do it for free!’ "

“You know how AT&T is coming out with those little pocket phones? I told my mom about those. She asked, ‘Oh, are they cordless?’ "

"Speaking of which, I got my parents a cordless phone, and they’re not quite sure how to use it. They used to talk on the phone standing next to the base unit. So I said, ‘No, Dad, you can walk with that phone.’ Next time I saw him, he was walking around with the phone, CARRYING the base unit. I told him, ‘No, you don’t NEED to be near the base unit.’ So, afterwards, I saw him driving off in the car while talking on the phone, and I was like, ‘No, Dad, that’s just a LITTLE too far!’ "

“Wal-Mart is selling tires now. That’s good for the typical Wal-Mart customer, because now they can fix up underneath their house. I usually get booed for that one. You know why? The reason they boo me is because they can’t whistle, they’re missing their front teeth!”

“You know who Bill Clinton should have dated instead of Monica Lewinsky? He should have dated Lorena Bobbitt. Then, if it were her word against his, she would have the evidence in court and it wouldn’t cost our country forty million dollars to find out the truth.”

“I’m Italian. Italians have their own way of expressing things. They say Italians have a temper. If you find yourself tied up and with stab wounds, it’s an Italian’s subtle way of saying you cut them off on the road. They also have a lot of body hair. Italians usually have tons of hair under their arms and it makes them look like they have gorillas in a headlock.”

“You know why all Italian guys are named Tony? It’s because, when the Italians first immigrated to America, they got letters stamped on their foreheads that spelled out, TO N.Y.”

“My grandmother loves to feed people. Even if you were at the table with her and choking to death, she’d still stuff your face. I found out that my grandpa doesn’t walk the way he does because he’s old. It’s because of all those peppers.”

“I hate flying because there’s always the risk that the airplane roof will fly off. It kind of gives new meaning to the term ‘Flying sucks!’ And then there are those obnoxious little kids sitting next to you. . . you know, the ones who go to the bathroom all the time and then come back with a little blue squirt gun and splash you in the face. Why do people say flying is so much safer than driving? It’s not like, if your car runs out of gas, you’re going to plummet forty thousand feet.”

“Anybody ever get road rage? You can never predict when you’re going to get road rage, but everybody gets it. Sometimes, it gets ridiculous. Once, I flipped off a DOG for running across the road in front of me. I doubt the dog even cared. It was one of those big, old dogs. . . you know, the kind that just waddles around looking so non-threatening and out of it that burglars aren’t scared by them at all.”

“If you go to a Catholic school, you know how vicious those nuns can be. I once met a kid who switched from a public school to a private school and started doing a lot better in math. I asked him why and he said, ‘When you walk into a classroom and see a big cross hanging on the wall to stand for a plus sign and they threaten to beat you with it if you do something wrong, you know they mean business!’ "

One-Sided Advice Column

Never carry a wiggling dog in one arm and a full cup of tea in the other hand. Especially not while you're wearing a brand-new, very valuable shirt.

Granted, I just did this very thing without spilling a drop. But don't try it, anyway.

Saturday, May 5, 2007

"I Respect People So Much That I Completely Stay Away From Them!"

Hi. It's a pleasure to meet you. I am one of the lamest and awkwardest 26-year-olds you will ever encounter.

In the presence of just about anyone (especially anyone whose anatomy includes a penis), it becomes my destiny -- an unofficial requirement, really -- that I will say a minimum of four ditzy things. I'm not talking about "slightly ditzy," either. I'm referring to the brand of ditziness that makes people think very seriously about bashing some sense into my head.

My intellect plummets and crashes to the ground like violent, heavy sheets of rain.

I juggle armfuls of stuff, drop the aforementioned stuff all over the floor, and crash into people and/or stationary objects with the force and fanfare of a water buffalo.

My voice gets extremely giddy, causing every sentence to end in a question mark or an exclamation point. Either that, or it sounds extremely lifeless and flat. Never anywhere in between. Never, never, never.

Without even realizing it, I scramble up the order of my words (which are often poorly chosen) and arrange the structure of my sentences in a most puzzling, unconventional fashion.

I cough and clear my throat incessantly, but to no avail.

I make dumb, "filler" observations, or ask questions whose answers are perfectly obvious, all for the purpose of avoiding silence.

I laugh. A lot. At things that aren't even remotely funny. Nervous laughter.

I stuff forkfuls of food into my mouth at the precise moment that someone speaks to me. Sometimes, I respond to this development by immediately spilling food on my shirt.

Maybe these sound like mindless, mechanical habits, but I'm fully cognizant that they occur. Maybe that's the problem. The more I think about them, the more I seem to do them. All. Of. The. Time.

There are probably hundreds of charm schools out there that would watch my behavior for 10 minutes and laugh me clean out of the place. "Get outta here," they'd say. "Get real. We can accomplish a lot of things, great things, really impressive things, but we're not in the business of performing miracles."

Not that I'd completely blame them.

Thursday, May 3, 2007

Randomness, Part I

How to feel really, insanely fat:
1) Wear elastic-waistband sweatpants.
2) See 1), above.

Now that THAT'S outta the way...

I just have to share this exciting news with you. Yesterday, I went to what I assumed would be the MySpace page of one of my newly-discovered bands. Ya know, write www.myspace.com with /bandname after it, pretty basic formula. Well, lo and behold, it wasn't that band's MySpace page, but it WAS some random person's profile that featured a song I'd been wanting to find for the last 10 YEARS! Yeah, really! I heard it 10 years ago and never got the name of it and never, ever thought I'd hear it again! How lucky is that!

I'm not convinced there are many songs at all that I've ever really liked and not been able to get ahold of. Even if it's wildly obscure, even if it's all instrumentals, I always manage to find it. Somehow. Eventually. I never forget. Mwahahaha.

Why am I writing in this blog on a gorgeous day?

P.S. This post contains more clunky sentences than I care to admit.