Marathon Interrupted

So, I gave up the book marathon because, after all, I am starting a new job tomorrow. Me being me, this means I spend all of my time freaking out, convincing myself not to freak out, freaking out, and feeling generally like I want to cry, laugh, dance, and throw up.

Book Marathon Book 2

Next up is Summerland by Michael Chabon. It's a young adult book but I kind of need to get more familiar with that stuff. Anyway, it's awesome. It's a little Wrinkle in Time-esque (which is a good thing) with the missing father and the world leaping and stuff but it is full of baseball and everyone always loves a story where someone bad at a sport becomes good, don't they? Well they should because if they don't they are evil.

I love Michael Chabon. I love everything about his books. Except The Mysteries of Pittsburgh. That I thought got a little cloudy but if you've ever had a conversation with me about books in the last five years, you would know that I consider The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay to be required reading for everyone.

Book Marathon Book 1

So, as I said, I’m having a book marathon this weekend. I started with Why Girls are Weird by Pamela Ribon and I was nervous that I wouldn’t like it because I’ve read a lot of this author’s stuff online and really liked it. But, no worries, it’s good stuff.

I like that it goes off in directions you don’t expect, that it’s smart, that it’s fucking hysterical in parts and literally breaks your heart in others, and that Ian’s new girlfriend was not Tess. I like the fact that she can incorporate e-mails and instant messaging exchanges in a way that is not the usual, “Look, I can be different in my different way of writing my different book that has different things. See? See? Aren’t I different? AREN’T I?” I’ve read those books. They are not good.

I do not like the fact that I am doing such a craptastically bad job of describing why I liked this book but I haven’t showered yet today and am full of yuck and ick and my brain isn’t working. But, I think the truest sign of how I felt about this book is that I actually read every word of it. I’ve been known to zone out and skim over pages and paragraphs when I think I know what’s going to happen. I didn’t though, and that is a good thing, Martha!

Hi. I'm Snow White.

That was unsettling.

I’m sitting here, staring at a blank page when I hear this sound.

“whoo-WHIRRRRR-whoo”

It’s not so much a bird sound as it is a sound someone makes when they are trying to sound like a bird to lure someone else outside for the purposes of kidnapping or smooching.

I hear it again.

“whoo-WHIRRRRR-whoo”

My mom comes in and says, “Is that a bird?”

We laugh.

No more noise.

My mom leaves.

I look at apartments online because even though my job has not even STARTED and I will not get paid probably until the middle of APRIL everyone wants to know where and when I am moving. Plus, I love looking at apartments. It’s my porn, apartments.com.

Anyway.

I hear it again.

“whoo-WHIRRRRR-whoo”

I get up, all Inspector Gadget-y, “I MUST find the bird!”

And there it is…just chillin in the bathroom window, which for some reason no longer has either a closed window, screen, or storm window. Good thing my dad put up the shutters otherwise we would have had a bird IN the house and we all know what that means…DEATH!...or something, I don’t know.

Now, I didn’t really think I had any particular feelings about birds. They fly, they don’t, one shit on my cousin at the beach and that was kind of funny, whatever. But once I realized that this bird could be in my house I realized that I very much did not want him in here. Especially because I think he’s been trying to get in for a while.

I think he wants to hang out with me. He’s been loitering on all the windowsills of the rooms I have been in for weeks now and sometimes he just stares at me like we’ve made plans and he’s on time and I’m late all, “Hello, it’s me. It’s cold out here. Let me in already.”

Which is impossible, because I am always on time if not early.

So, I do a little tap tap on the shutter, he flies away and hopefully that will be the last we hear of his kind because I don’t need that kind of guilt.

In other news, I’m having a book marathon this weekend. I just read Why Girls are Weird by Pamela Ribon. I’m glad I liked it since that was the one I bought. Everything else came from the library.

Speaking of the library…have you been going? You need to go. Right now. We can’t be friends otherwise. Actually, of course we can, but it would make me feel good…and depending on where you live, possibly contribute to my salary! Because I’ll have one. Because I got a JOB! Yup. It’s still fun to say.

Anyway…book marathon. I shall be posting reviews as I complete them. I’d post the first review now but I am fucking starving.

A Result of Being Psychic and of You Having No Faith

I cannot read your mind. I cannot move things with my mind and I do not have x-ray vision. I’m not really sure that x-ray vision is a psychic power, but I do not have it. But y’all, I think I am a little bit psychic. Just a smidge…a teeny tiny bit.

Here are the things I can do:

Make a movie appear on tv.

“Give me an example,” you say?

Fine, doubty-pants.

Why do you think Doc Hollywood appeared this year again out of nowhere? I brought it back. One day, out of the blue, I was thinking about Doc Hollywood and then the next day, and almost every subsequent day? There it is. Michael J. Fox and the only actress short enough to appear with him in a full body shot Southing it up in the little town with the pig and the cranky old doctor and I TOTALLY MADE THAT HAPPEN!

Also, I recently brought back While You Were Sleeping.

“That shit is always on, fool,” you say?

Well, watch your mouth AND it is not always on. It is usually on during the Christmas season and it is on HBO. It is not on in March, on TBS, is it? No. I did that. Me and my psychic friend, Myself.

Make songs play on the radio.

Songs I think about always come on the moment I think of them. Always. Random songs that should not even be played on the kind of station I am listening to, people!

You might say, “Everyone fucking thinks they can do that. It’s a result of radio stations playing the same songs in the same basic order so often that your brain becomes used to the order and may occasionally correctly predict the next song played.”

To which I would respond: You are really starting to bother me. Please shush or I will shush you and you will cry. OK? Perfect.

Examples of songs I have made play:

Peter Gabriel, “In Your Eyes” Yes it is on a lot, but why does it always come on when I am sad and need it to?

Madonna, “La Isla Bonita” Why was I thinking of that song? I don’t know. But I think a better question is, why did it come on three seconds later?

You again: “Um, psycho, you probably heard the dj say it was coming up, maybe?”

This just proves how little you know about me. I do not listen to people talk on the radio. That is not what it is for. If it is a talk show, that’s one thing, but I have no time for the talking of the non-talk show crowd and if you had ever paid even the slightest bit of attention to me while we were in the car together, you would have picked that up. Now, feel free to SHUT IT!

Predicting who will hook up in a given situation.

This absolutely should not be confused with any sort of matchmaking ability on my part. I can’t do it. I don’t think I’ve ever done it voluntarily and I never ever will. It’s just a bad idea. It immediately puts things on the date/relationship level and that is too much pressure and it never works out and nobody should ever do it.

You, not having learned the shushing lesson: “Didn’t your parents meet on a blind date?”

Me: Did I not tell you to shut it? It still needs to be shut whether you have a point or not.

Anyway, as I was saying before you so rudely interrupted AGAIN, I can look around any bar and predict who is and who isn’t going to either smooch or go home together. And I can more accurately predict who will be very very sorry the next day that they did.

Example? Well, the night that my friends and I ended up eating cheese sandwiches on the porch of a man named Randolph, let’s actually call him a boy, we had earlier met a bachelor party group and I predicted two things just on first sight that turned out true.

1. The lone girl in the group was the bachelor’s “best friend” who was secretly in love with him and was out to sabotage the whole wedding thing.

2. The bachelor was not so much ready to get married.

How did these two predictions prove true? Well, bachelor boy and random blondie blonde were making out at the bar within an hour of arrival and best friend? Doing nothing to stop it. I wonder why. No, I don’t. I know why…and so do you.

You: “Well that’s…just because…hey, that hurts!”

Did I not warn you about the shushing and the crying? I think I did.

Make crocuses pop through the snow.

I’m not sure how I did it. I thought about them. I pictured them. I walked a block. I saw them. I don’t know how, but it made me a little uncomfortable because really it was not warm enough for that to happen.

You: “Crocuses are very common in your neighborhood and…”

Me: This not learning of the shut and shush lesson is very disappointing. No cookies for you…and they’re good cookies.

I have also predicted:

Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner way back when they were on Dinner for Five together and she was quite the smitten kitten…he was just starting the j.lo nonsense, but I predicted this eventual couple, and I was right. Ha!

Dick Clark’s long stroke recovery. Ask my sisters, they’ll tell you. I was on that story from day one. I knew it was worse than they said. You canNOT FOOL ME!!!

Aaron Carter’s little secret. We’ve covered that though.

But what I have done recently, which I am most proud of, is use my psychic powers to bring about the end of one of society’s greatest ills. I don’t know if you’ve seen it. I don’t know if it was on in your market. But nonetheless, I needed it to be removed, and so I have removed it.

I Cancelled “Good Day Live”

Yes, I did! It was me! I did it! You all didn’t do it. You did not hate it like I hated it. You did not sit at the table in the cold cold Georgetown University food court where it was projected on the entire fucking wall for your entire lunch hour and wish that all television would end just so you would never ever have to sit through this horrific horrendousness ever again! You did not! It was me.

You: “Um, I don’t think I said it was me.”

Me: Seriously, the shutting of the it and the shushing of the you needs to begin immediately if not sooner.

As I was saying, I strongly strongly believe that I am responsible for the end of this show. From the moment I saw this monstrosity of daytime television, I have wished for its departure from this world.

Every time I listened to the useless co-hosts interrupt each other every fucking second and make every non-funny joke available to them, I wished it away. (And I mean the old co-hosts and the new ones. All of them were shitty in the exact same Star Jones celebrity boot-licking way. And I think they may have tried to make fun of celebrities on occasion, but that shit doesn’t work when it is so obvious that should you meet any of them you would, if you could, sit on their lap, lick their ear, and ask them to rub your belly.)

Every time I listened to that fucking sanctimonious faux-Regis old man host claim after every story about reality television or celebrities to be so above what he was doing every fucking day without fail, I wished it away. “Does America really care about this?” Well, Steve Edwards, apparently they should have and then maybe your ass wouldn’t be out of a job right now, you think? As my dad would say to any Yankees hitter up against any Red Sox pitcher...SIT DOWN.

Obviously, low ratings may have played some role in the end of this monstrosity, but explain this: on Friday, I was thinking how much I hated that fucking show and wished it would be cancelled and I of course turned it on because I need to remind myself periodically of why I don’t watch it so I won’t be sucked into watching it when somebody I’m vaguely interested in seeing makes the mistake of showing up on that show. And what do I hear? It’s cancelled. At the moment I wish it is cancelled….Poof! It’s gone. Or it will be at the end of this week. You’re welcome.

You: “Huh, well the timing of that is sort of strange. I mean you think about it being cancelled, you turn it on at the exact moment that it announces it’s being cancelled…that might be something.”

Of course it’s something and I don’t need any help from you so just shuffle off there, buddy.

Ladies of “The View” I’m coming for you next. Specifically, Meredith, Star, and Barbra, though not necessarily in that order. Starting tomorrow, I’m wishing you away. Good luck.

Shopping Stuff

I have now heard three different people make the eye poke joke. Is this a saying? Really? I would like it if it was not, ok? Thanks.

In other news, I’ve been shopping my little heart and my even littler bank account all the way out. Before today, I had been having distressingly bad luck. It’s not so much that nothing fit, as it was that nothing was not ugly. Today was a step in the right direction. I found pants! Pants!

I usually have very much difficulty finding pants because they do not make pants for me. And I mean me, specifically. The shorter, the taller? The fatter, the skinnier? They’re all taken care of. Have all the pants you want and then go have a big pants party but Erin cannot come because there are no pants for Erin.

Until today.

Today I went into the Limited for the first time in, I would say, three years. And I tried on billions of pants. And they all fit. I actually had to pick which of the ones that looked good to buy! So, I picked two pairs and I was ready for them to be super expensive although I thought maybe one pair was half off.

This is where my legendary shopping mojo at last returned to me. The pair I thought wasn’t on sale? Half off. The pair I thought was half off? $9.99. Ridiculous. So, I got $150 worth of pants for $46. These are the things that make me happy. Oh, and last night online I bought one pair of $150 pants for $40. We shall see how they turn out but I’m excited that they weren’t my best bargain.

Now, I still have much to do because all of my clothes are black. All of them. I need to remedy this because I just bought brown shoes. I don’t know why. Sometimes I’m not so much with the smart stuff.

Strangest Day Ever

So, remember when I told you all that I blew the interview for the job I went to graduate school to get and I was very sad and mopey and very much the "leave me alone or I will spill out my uncontrollable rage on you" type of girl? Me too...um, sorry about that.

I got a job.

I got the job I blew the interview for.

I got the job I was convinced I didn't get.

I got the job I went to graduate school to get.

Huh.

And to think I was going to consider today a success if I didn't fall down again, seeing as how I had on the potentially dangerous shoes and was taking the potentially dangerous bus at the exact same potentially dangerous time as last week.

This morning I had a meeting with a guy who does library temping placements and he was super nice and kind of a jolly old man which I never expect to come across in job interview situations (not that it's ever happened before today) and I left feeling pretty good about what he had to say. Except when he said, "It won't pay the rent but it's better than getting poked in the eye with a pointy stick." I wasn't really sure how I felt about that.

Then I got home (safely, no fall, not even a wobble) and there was a message from the library temping chick I met with last week with an interview opportunity for a long-term temp. That's good, right? I didn't really want to temp, but again, I have zero dollars (although I did get a cut of my dad's refund...he's nice) so I can't really be picky but I have to move fairly soon and temping I don't think would make that happen so much.

Then the phone rings again and I don't answer it because I'm trying to eat my sandwich while the house reeks of paint fumes and that requires concentration.

The message is from Library Lady and she wants me to call her back. I immediately think, "Why is she calling me all this time later just to tell me I didn't get the job? That's kind of mean."

So I call her back and she offers me a job.

And I am rendered incapable of speech and kind of blabber on and tell her I need to call back because, you know, this job had been mourned. I had gone through the five stages of grief for this job. I know it seemed like I got a little caught up in anger, which I did, but I swear I really did move on.

I call my sister, genius-at-large, and tell her I don't know what to do because hey, I could temp or I could get the job I've been working toward for two years. Her response?

"So what's your question?"

Exactly.

A Result of Watching Two Minutes of The Company

I don’t like the ballet movie. I would like it to stop being made. Because it is bad. Bad for ballet, bad for girls in general, and bad for movies.

Nice, economically challenged, beautiful girl wins scholarship/competition/audition to the world renowned Something Something Academy of the Dancing Something in the bustling city of Someplace. For some reason, everyone else is already there when she starts and everyone knows everything about everybody. Why is this? Why does NECB always arrive in the middle? We’ll never know because the people who have written this story twelve billion times now still haven’t figured that out. Frustrating.

NECB struggles struggles struggles to become the Best Dancer Ever but all of a sudden she sucks. This is NEVER explained well. Why is she so bad? How did she win her spot if she sucks so much? I think what these fools would have us believe is that her teachers push her SO hard because they know she is the Best Dancer Ever and they have to be extra tough. That is a bullshit teacher lie. You know how I know? Well, in 8th grade my Social Studies teacher tried to fail me…which, ok, several ensuing teachers did successfully (I’m a smarty, but I’m not so much for the doing of the work), but this fool did so with no warning! None! And I was little! And my mom was really not on board with the F so there was a meeting and the teacher actually pulled out the line, “Well, I didn’t send a warning letter because I was so surprised she was doing so badly.” Good one. His argument basically that was because I was SO smart and should be doing well, all his behavior was absolved. Not so much. I still wonder what would have happened if I had blown the whistle on the fact that he spent most of basically every class getting this kid to do George Bush impersonations. This isn’t to say that I wasn’t doing a slack ass job in that class. But let’s remember…I was little.

Anyway, back to NECB.

She meets Evil Dancer #1 who everyone knows already is the Best Dancer Ever and she tells NECB to go home or makes fun of her clothes or calls her poor or fat or all of the above. Her mother is very overbearing and loves her daughter’s career if not so much her daughter. Many scenes of pressure to be skinnier, dancier, or sluttier with the director, end with the mother exiting and the daughter staring wistfully at her back. Later we will learn that what she really wants to be? Is a regular girl. Bullshit right there, nobody wants that.

The Evil But It’s OK Because He’s an ARTIST Director of the school/company/production is a middle aged allegedly handsome man who everyone knows is sleeping with the World Famous Ballerina who never actually shows up in the movie (cover story, Mr. Ballet Guy? I think so). How do we hear this?

From Spunky Bad Dancer (a.k.a. Automatic Best Friend to NECB) who the teachers call fat and untalented all the time (which leads one to wonder why this school/company/production keeps letting in bad dancers--Is it just to fuck with them? Seems mean.) and she just kind of takes it and her friends never stand up for her. Lovely.

Washed Up Ballerina is always a teacher who serves no purpose other than to follow EBIOKBHAA Director and tell all the dancers how bad and fat and bad they are.

The Best Dancer Ever: Male Category is usually some sort of sensitive, all knowing, all understanding welder-turned-ballerina who rides a motorcycle and falls for NECB immediately and ballet dancers give it up awfully quick in these movies. He is superbly perfect because only girl ballerinas are evil and mean. I’m sure. Baryshnikov was a super bitch on Sex and the City and he hadn’t pulled on the tights for decades. And Evil Dancer #1 either is secretly in love with him or they’ve already gone out and broken up.

So, rehearsals start and Evil Dancer #1 gets the lead in the whatever it is they’re making of course and OF COURSE she either breaks something, overdoses on something, or throws up a whole bunch of something a whole bunch of times. She then must drop out, make peace with her mother who Surprise! realizes she’s been a little too hard and She (tears) Loves (tears) Her (sniffle sniffle hug!).

NECB is the star and becomes Best Dancer Ever, Best Dancer Ever: Male Category love love loves her, Spunky Best Friend decides ballet just isn’t her thing and her friends pretend to protest but are really thinking “Oh good, because she fucking sucked,” and Evil Dancer #1 and NECB automatically forge a new understanding and are the bestest best friends ever in the history of best friends. Then there’s a bow, and flowers, and Neve Campbell still really needs to deal with the fact that she ain’t no ballerina.

This Will Surprise Exactly No One

Now, I’m sure some of you who read this, assuming anyone does, have thought to yourself at least once, “This girl is a mess, it’s a wonder she doesn’t fall down and hurt herself.”

Well.

So, today, blah blah interview, we’ll see what happens and I’ll let you know and until then don’t ask me, ok? Feeling pretty good about myself and my new shoes that are still comfortable after the first four hours, I head off toward home after the interview is over. I’m waiting for my bus, and I of course have just missed one and the next one is coming in half an hour. Of course it is! Because it’s not like it was freezing and windy. Except that it was. But, no problem because I have on comfortable shoes and I actually think to myself the following things over the course of my wait, “I’m so glad these shoes are comfortable,” “I wonder what would happen if I fall down,” “Shit, my heel just got stuck in the dirt,” “That would be so embarrassing if I had fallen down, good thing these shoes are easy to walk in,” “How funny was it when I fell in the mud? It was funny but that’s enough with the falling,” “Or how about when I fell in Mary Ann Mayer’s boyfriend’s garage? That was funny but again, let’s be done with the falling, especially when we are doing so well with our new shoes.” “Excellent point, definitely let’s be careful.” And so on and so forth and I think it’s pretty obvious that this dialogue in my head was serving as karma’s alarm clock.

Then, the bus comes! Yay, bus! There are approximately 0-1 people on the bus and approximately 0-1 people waiting for the bus. Not exactly packed. Yet, somehow in the hustle and bustle of one person disembarking, and one person (it’s me just in case you’re not catching on) getting on the bus, a bus that isn’t scheduled to depart for yet another ten minutes…I. Wipe. Out.

Where once there was my head, there is air. Where once there was my ass, there is my head. Where once there was curb, there is my ass. Where once there was shoe, there is no shoe. Where once there were two functioning ankles, there are not so much two as much as one functioning and one aching. Where once there was one fucked up back there is still a fucked up back, only now it is cold because it is lying where there once was sidewalk.

Awesome.

Anyway, I bought new shoes and they make me very happy. That, apparently, will have to be enough because the One. Good. Thing. has yet to appear.

One. Good. Thing.

I get the whole universe-yin-yan(g?) give a little to get a little but can I please get One. Fucking. Break.

My car won't start.

Well it wouldn't start. It's started now thanks to helpful tow-man but there were a few dicey moments where I almost blew up the world with my rage. Fun stuff.

How Do I Know Everything?

While in the checkout aisle today I saw this on the cover of the National Enquirer:

Guess Which Teen Star Got Caught Using Drugs?

You don't need to guess though, because I already told you!

Oh, and National Enquirer? If you want people to buy your magazine to find out who is in that picture, you probably shouldn't have his name appear when people scroll over it...just a thought!