What Can I Say?

I’m just a busy beaver these days, folks.  And I’m afraid I’ve all but abandoned this little blog…for now.

In the meantime, keep up with my food writing here: she eats.

And keep up with my Houston sports/news/arts/entertainment writing here:  Houstonist.

Ouch

Reason #48 Why You Shouldn’t Walk Around Barefoot In Your Office, Even If It’s Intolerably Hot And Your Shoes Are Making Your Feet Simultaneously Sweat And Hurt:

You will most likely get a thumbtack imbedded in the ball of your foot, causing you to fall unglamorously to the ground, wailing and shrieking and cursing the Lord with very unladylike language.  You will then have to hobble around for the rest of the afternoon while people ask you, “What happened to your foot?” and your only reply will be to blush furiously and claim, “Nothing!”  And then those people will ask, “Was that you we heard yelling earlier?  Are you sure something didn’t happen?”  And you’ll have to shamefully admit that, yes, you stepped directly onto a thumbtack while barefoot and sheepishly dart away before they can ask you any more questions.

Reaching New Nadirs

I have about had it with expensive bags (or purses or whatever you want to call them).  It’s one thing to own a nice, well-constructed, chic bag that makes you feel happy and goes with all of your outfits.  It’s another thing to spend four times your mortgage payment on a bag.

For example:  The Legacy Ostrich Coach Bag, for only $4800.

Ack!  What?  $4800?  This is a COACH BAG, Y’ALL.  A COACH BAG.  You know, the same brand that every spoiled thirteen-year-old with a Sidekick, every babymama on food stamps who’s spending her pocket money on LV and Coach instead of her kids, every clubhopping slag who wears shirts from Glam, every annoying person at the mall who runs you over while horking down their Chai bubble tea carries.  It’s PLAYED OUT.  It’s PAST played out.  It’s just over.

And now we’ve got a $4800 Ostrich-skin Coach bag hitting the streets?  Who the hell is going to spend almost five grand on that ugly, bright-blue tribute to chavdom?  Because they need to be slapped, sharp and hard.

Owning a tacky, blue, Ostrich-skin bag that you were suckered into paying five grand for isn’t going to make you feel any better about yourselves, ladies.  I promise.  You’re only helping us reach new nadirs as a society…

Gee, Your Office Smells Like Doll Heads!

Things not to say to the accounting manager at your company:

Hmm. Your department usually smells like Cheerios, but today it just smells like rubber doll heads.

As if I was expecting her to gesture broadly to a box in the corner of her office, filled with rubber doll heads, and say, “Thanks! I just got rid of my box full of Cheerios last week and it’s taken a while for the smell to clear out.”

What the hell, mouth? Do you not have internal conversations with the random-shit-filter in my brain before you start moving?

I mean, seriously. I hear a lot of stupid things at work, but — sadly — the stupidest things seem to come from me.

Only Talent Interests A Woman Of Taste

You may remember my strange infatuation with men who three, maybe four, other people in this world also find attractive. One of those men, who I forgot to mention, is dear Tom Hulce.

Tom is probably best known for his eponymous role in Amadeus. The first time I saw Amadeus, I was four years old. My mother took me, a four-year-old, to see it when it was first released. I’m sure the other patrons were none-too-pleased to see a very young child in the theatre with them, but they had no reason to worry. I was utterly infatuated with the movie, my mother recalls, and stood on my seat in the back of the theatre the entire time, my little eyes fixated on the screen.

I obviously didn’t develop a crush on Tom Hulce until much later on in life, around 13 years old. His portrayal of Mozart is what did it for me: a brilliant, misunderstood, ridiculous imp of a man. Perfect for a similarly-misunderstood 13-year-old who also likes to tell fart jokes and play classical pieces on her viola at the school bus stop while getting teased by all the other middle schoolers. I also adored his antics in Animal House, but it was Amadeus that truly endeared him to me.

While I still harbor the same great and undying love for Amadeus that was born in 1984, my crush on Tom Hulce faded somewhere around the end of middle school and I hadn’t given him any thought at all until today. I was browsing my typical, classless gossip sites and stumbled upon…

What is this???

What has become of you, Tom Hulce, you great wooly mammoth of a man?  Where is my young imp?

This must be where youthful crushes go to die…

They Breed ‘Em Big These Days

Overheard in the elevator after work…

Corporate Attorney:  Wow, Missy!  You don’t look like you’ve gained any weight at all during your pregnancy, except in your belly!

Pregnant Missy:  Are you kidding?  I’ve gained 23 pounds so far.

Corporate Attorney:  You’re gonna have a 23 pound baby?!?!

England

Some time soon, I will sit down and do this amazing trip more justice.  But for today, I am exhausted and so I offer only this photo gallery (with comments!) and a few random videos I uploaded to YouTube.

Enjoy.

Pictures Of England

Driving Through Bollington

White Nancy

Snow

April Fools!

Oy…

So, I’m back.  And busy.  So I’ll cut straight to the chase here.

Absolute favorite April Fool’s Day joke so far?  Belongs to Seeqpod.  No matter what song or artist you search for today, the first song that will come up is Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up.”  Brilliant.

Go give it a try.  You know you want to.

I assume the fine folks at Seeqpod are familiar with the time-honored tradition of Rickrolling, and I applaud them for it.  Well done, sirs.

The Gospel of St. Thomas

This is the meadow by my house
I can’t pass by and not think of you

Nothing happened there to remind me of you
Of any of you
Your home wasn’t nearby
We never sat there together, brushing mosquitoes away in the summer
We never had dinner at the cafe across the street
We never drove the ribbon of road past its tall grasses
But it always takes me back to you

You are always with me

You exist as part of me, inextricable
No matter how far away I run, who I turn to
Where I go or what I do
How many stones I turn

You are always with me

—The Gospel of St. Thomas, author unknown

Oh Dear God

I started reading the Harry Potter books when I was in college.  It was only slightly mortifying at the time to be caught with what were seen — at the time — as children’s books.  But I noticed that other people were also reading them on the sly, and that this whole “Harry Potter thing” really seemed to be catching fire, so my embarassment was mostly tempered by these occurrences.

By the time the last Harry Potter book came out, I was on a downhill slide — not the big fan I once was — from when the books really hit their stride with The Goblet of Fire and The Order of the Phoenix.  Half-Blood Prince had been a mild disappointment for me and I was really only anticipating the last book because I felt that I needed closure for characters in which I’d been invested for almost seven years.

So, it was with a deep sense of irony and self-effacing humor that my friends and I went down to the West Alabama Bookstop (& Theatre!) for the midnight release party of The Deathly Hallows.  Even the release party itself was deflated and tired and smaller than the riotous release party had been for Half-Blood Prince.  Clearly, I was not the only one hanging on by a thread, ready to end this marathon.

After reading The Deathly Hallows, I managed to come away even more disappointed.  And not just with the book, but with the way that the entire series ended.  And also a little disappointed in myself for getting so interested in what eventually turned out to be mostly sound and fury.

But what struck me this morning as I perused the gossip websites was the news that the final book will be released as two movies — and will be released when I am 31 years old.

I am not comfortable contemplating the idea that I will eventually turn 30 years old, much less 31.  That’s one step closer to 40 and then 50 and then 60 and then diapers, bedpans and death.  Say what you will.  Mock me.  But I’m not ready to get any older than I already am, especially since I’ve accomplished about three out of one hundred things that I had hoped to accomplish at this point in my life.

Also…there’s the nagging feeling that perhaps 31 is too old to see a Harry Potter movie without the benefit of Netflix.  Someone please tell me that I’m wrong and being foolish.  And that it’s normal for a 27 year old to be having an overly-early-midlife, Harry Potter-induced crisis.

I always knew that Harry Potter would turn out to be evil in some way…

Boredom

Not having Richard around for a week has driven me to do odd things out of boredom.  Like eating an entire tub of hummus.  And then, later, an entire wedge of blue cheese.  And the night before, I remodeled our master bathroom.  …at least one of these activities was productive.

The master bathroom has been sitting in a desperate state of disrepair since we bought our home last May.  It’s the one room that we haven’t done a damn thing to, and on Tuesday evening, I finally found myself unable to look at it anymore.

I pulled on some pants (yes, I wander around the house pantsless — don’t you? — I highly recommend it) and headed out to the local home improvement store.  Returning home an hour later, and down $100, I set to work.  By 1:00 a.m. the next morning, the bathroom was a masterpiece.

I painted.  I edged.  I patched drywall.  I drilled things.  I grouted.  I undrilled things.  I did minor electrical work.  I cleaned.  I organized.  I built a shelving unit and bolted it to the wall.  And no one was there to take the drill or the tools away from me and tell me that I was going to “hurt” myself.  It was spectacular.

The only thing left to do now is replace the toilet and the tub (both are leaky and require professional work, unfortunately) and tile the floor.  Well, and take pictures.  But I think that despite the continued presence of Drippy McToilet and the Rusty Tub From Hell, Richard will be quite surprised and pleased when he comes home tomorrow night.

Now all I need is something productive to do tonight…

Why I Hate Credit Cards

I don’t like credit cards.  I don’t like the entire notion of the credit system here in America.  It’s too easily disrupted, skewed, abused and heavily-relied upon in general.  It’s a huge scam that we’ve all bought into, but…it’s also not going anywhere any time soon.

The one small, tiny thing that I do to combat the credit system is that I don’t have a credit card.  Not a single one.  Sure, I have a car loan.  We have a home loan.  There are a million other unstickable ways in which I am entrenched in the credit system, but having a credit card is not one of them.

I’m of the mind that I shouldn’t be buying things unless I have the cash in my pocket to do it.  With the dual exceptions of the car and the house, I don’t see the sense in buying things on credit and paying interest to someone else when that money could be in your own accounts, earning you interest until the day comes along when you can finally afford to buy that couch or those shoes or that TV.  But what if there’s an emergency? you ask.  Well, that’s what all that money that should be in your savings accounts, accruing interest, should be used for, since you aren’t spending it on paying credit card bills each month.

My husband, however, is a dutiful consumer and does in fact have several credit cards.  He’s extremely frugal with them and does clever little things like buy a tank of gas and some groceries with one card and pay it off the next month.  To build credit, he says.  And he does have a spotless credit record to show for it, whereas I — the stubborn asshole that I am — don’t.  I have a mediocre credit report with remarks on it like, “No credit history” and “Insufficient credit history,” as if refusing to buy into the system immediately gets you blacklisted.

Back to my husband…  Wanting to maintain his system of buying a few things with one of the cards and then paying it off, he gave me his credit card this weekend to buy some things for our upcoming trip abroad.  I set off to several stores, in the market for some winter boots and a couple of warm sweaters.  And this is where my disgust for credit cards comes into play.

I went to six different stores on Sunday — a shoe store, jewelry store, clothing store, grocery store, drug store, and a coffee shop — and every single one of them blindly accepted Richard’s credit card without thought.  Three of the stores asked to see my ID, which I provided, and pretended to compare the ID and the credit card.  None of the stores seemed to bat an eyelash at the fact that I was not, in fact, my husband.

My husband and I don’t share the same last name, much less the same first name.  My driver’s license has my full name on it, not his.  And I’m clearly not a “Richard.”  Yet every single store let me use his credit card without a second glance.

I watched each merchant, more amused each time, just waiting for someone to point out that my ID and the credit card I was presenting didn’t remotely match one another.  But it never happened…  And right there is why I hate credit cards.

Why put your entire life and well-being into a network which has no safeguards in place to ensure that someone else can’t come along and use the credit which you have so carefully constructed and maintained?  Identity theft is a rampant problem in today’s society, yet the credit system has made little to no adjustment to compensate for that threat.  It’s like knowing that criminals carry guns, yet refusing to protect your law enforcement officers with Kevlar.

Sure, the credit card companies have a few of their own safeguards in place, like monitoring your card to make sure that no “unusual” purchases or transactions are made.  Same thing with your bank.  But what about the credit bureaus themselves?  The Experians and TransUnions and Equifaxes?  Have you ever tried to get a bogus or erroneous record removed from your credit report?  Tried to get your credit cleaned up after an identity theft?  Good luck.

I don’t have a single answer as to what better system could replace our current credit boondoggle.  In fact, with my hyper-Libertarian attitude, I’m probably a really poor person to ask in the first place.  All I know is that in my ideal country, in addition to not having any executive branch departmental agencies (i.e., Department of Education, Department of Agriculture, the IRS) and only a few independent federal agencies (you can stick around, U.S. Postal Service), there would be a complete abolition of all credit bureaus, too.

If E.E. Cummings Were A Female Baby Boomer

Vex me, O Night, your stars stuttering like a stuck jukebox,
put a spell on me, my bones atremble at your tabernacle

of rhythm and blues. Call out your archers, chain me
to a wall, let the stone fortress of my body fall

like a rabid fox before an army of dogs. Rebuke me,
rip out my larynx like a lazy snake and feed it to the voiceless

throng. For I am midnight’s girl, scouring unlit streets
like Persephone stalking her swarthy lord. Anoint me

with oil, make me greasy as a fast-food fry. Deliver me
like a pizza to the snapping crack-house hours between

one and four. Build me an ark, fill it with prairie moths,
split-winged fritillaries, blue-bottle flies. Stitch

me a gown of taffeta and quinine, starlight and nightsoil,
and when the clock tocks two, I’ll be the belle of the malaria ball.

“Vex Me” — Barbara Hamby

Cor Blimey, Mate!

The only good thing about watching 1990s-era reruns of EastEnders on PBS is that when there’s a cliffhanger episode, you don’t have to wait until the next night to find out what happens.  You can just Wikipedia it.

I can’t believe Janine pushed Barry off a cliff after Barry left Natalie for Janine and married her, even though Janine was a prostitute who was blackmailing Ian to the tune of 200 quid a week after Ian slept with Janine and tried to hide it from Laura, whom Janine also killed in a suspicious staircase incident!

See?  Just like Dynasty, except trashier and with more chip shops.

Why I Think I’ve Grown As A Person

I love and am married to a man despite the fact that he does not share — even in a single, tiny way — the deep and abiding devotion that I have for The Royal Tenenbaums and Lou Reed.

I should get a Nobel prize for this.

Happy Leap Year

As I walked out one evening,
Walking down Bristol Street,
The crowds upon the pavement
Were fields of harvest wheat.

And down by the brimming river
I heard a lover sing
Under an arch of the railway:
“Love has no ending.

“I’ll love you, dear, I’ll love you
Till China and Africa meet,
And the river jumps over the mountain
And the salmon sing in the street,

“I’ll love you till the ocean
Is folded and hung up to dry
And the seven stars go squawking
Like geese about the sky.

“The years shall run like rabbits,
For in my arms I hold
The Flower of the Ages,
And the first love of the world.”

But all the clocks in the city
Began to whirr and chime:
“O let not Time deceive you,
You cannot conquer Time.

“In the burrows of the Nightmare
Where Justice naked is,
Time watches from the shadow
And coughs when you would kiss.

“In headaches and in worry
Vaguely life leaks away,
And Time will have his fancy
To-morrow or to-day.

“Into many a green valley
Drifts the appalling snow;
Time breaks the threaded dances
And the diver’s brilliant bow.

“O plunge your hands in water,
Plunge them in up to the wrist;
Stare, stare in the basin
And wonder what you’ve missed.

“The glacier knocks in the cupboard,
The desert sighs in the bed,
And the crack in the tea-cup opens
A lane to the land of the dead.

“Where the beggars raffle the banknotes
And the Giant is enchanting to Jack,
And the Lily-white Boy is a Roarer,
And Jill goes down on her back.

“O look, look in the mirror?
O look in your distress:
Life remains a blessing
Although you cannot bless.

“O stand, stand at the window
As the tears scald and start;
You shall love your crooked neighbour
With your crooked heart.”

It was late, late in the evening,
The lovers they were gone;
The clocks had ceased their chiming,
And the deep river ran on.

“As I Walked Out One Evening” — W. H. Auden

Catch-22

I am so hungry right now.  I am so hungry that I could tear sheets off my desk calendar and eat them.  I am so hungry that the little pushpins on my bulletin board are starting to resemble tiny, delicious berries.

I was so nervous last night that I couldn’t eat anything besides half a tomato sandwich.  Not very filling.  And I was so nervous this morning that I could only take two bites of a banana.  Also not very filling.

And now here it is, less than six hours prior to surgery, that goddamned window of time when I’m not allowed to eat or drink anything at all — not even water — and I’m fucking starving.

What’s worse, I know that I won’t be able to eat anything for at least a half-day after the surgery, because I’ll be so doped up and/or in pain.  So the next time I eat will be…Saturday morning?  Jesus.  And even then, it’ll be hard to get or keep anything down.

Maybe I can turn this into a religious fast or something.  Heh.

I Just Can’t Help Myself

Fresh off a three-week ban from FARK, which was fresh off a two-week ban, which was fresh off a three-day ban, I’ve now managed to get myself banned for a whopping six weeks.  The ban also came with this email:

K:

Looks like you’re banned for the next six weeks. You were on quite a roll today.

-Moderator

None of my bannings have ever come with an email before.  I feel quite pleased with myself today.

Cremaster

Apropos of absolutely nothing (except, perhaps, for listening to a lot of Bjork), I’ve been having very strong urges to see Matthew Barney’s Cremaster Cycle yet again.

Should I see a physician for this or something?

An Updated Valentine

Alright, my little bluebirds, your voices were heard and I now have a completely, brand-spanking-new 90s mix tape for you:

New And Improved!

I included almost every band I could think of off the top of my head, as well as your suggestions, and even bands/songs which I deeply and truly hate (…Dave Matthews Band, I’m looking at you) in an effort to bring you a 90s extravaganza of music.

You will note, however, that I still have not included any Soundgarden.  Suck it, Chris Cornell!