December 28, 2002
In which she sort of makes up for the beard comments
So I'm listening to Seeking A Deep Feeling by The John Francis, which is the first solo album by everybody's favorite Jack Small. It is surprisingly fabulous. (Surprising because I knew him before he met Erin, when he lived in the Doom Central room with Danny and the Lad and Sometimes Ryan, and you don't expect someone you've known in that room to turn out talented. They all did though.)
When last we saw our hero, he showed us the room he's renting in the house he used to share with the Lad, a block from my folks. It's actually the breezeway between the house itself and the garage; just this small drafty area with a glass door leading to the outside and annual flood warnings during the rain. The bed is covered in junk because he's been making music twenty hours a day and then passing out in a chair when he absolutely has to.
Think about that for a second. I've never done anything for twenty hours straight. Once I slept for forteen hours, but it sounds less impressive somehow.
Anyway, thus the new album. He has that Vedder/Daly grunge rock quality to his voice, though since I know nothing NOTHING nothing about music it's possible that I only think so because that stuff is all I really recognize. But the rest of the music doesn't sound like grunge. It sounds like Jack.
And you should check it out, is what I'm finally getting around to saying. You can get it from the Lad if you don't know Jack, or on Amazon. (It's so cool to see someone I know on Amazon. Is not that strange.)
And now it's time for me to go be depressed for awhile about my complete lack of creative drive. I hope I have managed to make the rest of you feel bad as well, since I am now vying with Sushi to be the Shah of Sad.
Posted by didofoot at 09:46 AM | Comments (0)
December 27, 2002
Happy Birthday, Bob!
You taught me how to tie a shoe, drive on the freeway, make a pie crust, take a picture that includes everyone's head, hang up a leather jacket, write a resume and get a free birthday hula dance. I love you. Happy birthday, Daddy.
(For some reason I can't find an electronic picture of you. maybe I'll find one and add it retroactively.)
Posted by didofoot at 10:50 AM | Comments (3)
December 26, 2002
Happy Birthday, Eydie!
You're my role model in every way. I love you. Happy birthday, Mom.
Posted by didofoot at 09:53 AM | Comments (3)
December 24, 2002
We wish you a merry Kristen.
I had a nice though short visit with Jack today which enabled me to deploy not just one but all of the following quips in my beard-related arsenal:
"You look like the Wild Man of Borneo."
"It's like there's a lawn on your face."
"No, I would have noticed the horrible hair first but the horrible beard was demanding all my attention."
"I think its mass is actually greater than the rest of your head."
"How do you walk upright with that thing clinging to your chin?"
"You have a little something on your mouth."
Then he gave me free CDs and the ethics of bribery dictated that I shut up.
Posted by didofoot at 05:46 PM | Comments (3)
December 21, 2002
Mmm, forbidden cake.
It's not like you've never said it was your birthday in order to get a free dessert. This really wasn't any worse.
We waited until we were just about done with the main course. We were in that picking-at-the-food phase where you still have a few minutes before the waiter comes along and tries to pimp the cake and coffee to you. "Do it," I said, "I dare you."
"You shouldn't challenge me," said the Lad. "You know I'll do it."
"Do it," I said bravely. He started to stand up. "No, don't do it, don't do it!"
"I'm gonna do it."
"Don't, don't do it."
"Okay."
"Okay. . .Well, okay, you'd better do it."
He stood up. "Um, may I have everyone's attention please?" he said loudly. His is a voice which carries. People gradually stopped talking and looked at him. "Thanks," he said. I looked suitably bewildered. "In a few seconds here," he continued, "I'm going to propose to this woman, and I'm a little nervous. So I'm hoping you all can help me out with a round of applause, just to get my courage up."
Well of course they applauded. And then he did the one-knee thing and said "So what do you think? You wanna do this?"
"Yes!" I said, looking suitably delighted and near-tears with joy. He took the ring off his finger, put it on mine, embrace kiss more applause. I'm sure you can imagine. "Thanks everyone," said the Lad, with that embarassed/happy smile he does so well. He sat back down and we glowed at each other for awhile while people gradually settled back into their lives.
Well I'm sure you can imagine what happened next: the waiter came over with a discreet slice of cake for two with compliments of the house. Making that the tastiest proposal I ever accepted.
You guys understand we're not actually engaged, right? We just wanted the free stuff. Did I make that clear enough?
Posted by didofoot at 12:20 PM | Comments (9)
December 20, 2002
To prevent having this conversation with everyone, here is a handy primer:
Next semester I'm taking:
- Human Biology (Biology for Poets, Underachievers and Retards)
- Psychology: Representations of Gender (For people who couldn't get into Human Sexuality)
- English 214 (English by and for people who don't really like English)
I have class, once again, on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Posted by didofoot at 10:53 AM | Comments (1)
Kissed the bugs and made her cry
People keep talking to me; I'm starting to wonder if some misguided yet well meaning friend has paid strangers to help me overcome my phobia regarding same. Much the same way that my college roommate's boyfriend "helped" her overcome her fear of fire by holding her down on the bed and waving a lighter next to her face. If you can believe her that is but I believe everyone. Well anyway people keep talking to me and I cannot account for it. For example on BART, he said I'm stuck and I said I think this one is not a word and he said you're right and I said I used to do a lot of crossword puzzles. And he said I'm going to PHill and I said oh you look like an Orinda type you look too expensive for PHill. (He had a very small phone.) He said you have beautiful eyes and I said thank you. (I do have beautiful eyes, it's God's truth.) He said will you give me your number or maybe your email address and I said oh, oh, I can't. You can't he said. Right I said well this is my stop and yours too I guess nice talking to you.
Then today here's what happened. I was waiting on the corner and another man said smile it's Friday. (It is.) I said it's cold I hate the cold. He said I took the bus up we were on the same BART. I said oh uh huh. Well have a nice day he said hopefully. You too I said not having been born in a barn. That was about the size of it.
It's weird how you can go out in the world and it's like there's all these people there expecting to be interacted with. I am beginning to get used to it I guess. Confessing to this phobia seems to have done a good part in conquering it. Unfortunately that's not always the case, as witness the time I confessed my bug phobia to the Sicilian and he got mad and claimed he himself was afraid of nothing and did not understand it in me and refused to kill my roaches for me and made me cry. What was I thinking there I wonder, for all those months living with a bug loving communist.
Posted by didofoot at 10:26 AM | Comments (8)
December 16, 2002
Mystery Solved.
Josh Pelham plays for the Lakers I think. Probably not the same Josh Pelham though. Because mine was only my height (though I am tall, like to wear shorts, hookhookdunkdunk and could play in the NBA). He was such a sweet little felon. He used to steal cologne and wear it for me. Every day he smelled like a different person.
Where are you now, Josh Pelham? Are you in jail? Are you an investment banker? Do you still wear flannel every day and steal Whitney Houston tapes from Tower? Once you gave me a valentine with a promise to rock my world, but you never did rock my world, Josh Pelham. You disappeared in a cloud of petty larceny and left my world still solid on its fulcrum, and I went off with someone else to learn how to kiss with tongue. You betrayed your promise to me long before I betrayed you with the Lad. You really had it coming, Josh Pelham. You should have followed through.
Posted by didofoot at 04:51 PM | Comments (4)
December 15, 2002
Beauty is pain; and a syllogism?
Various sinus elements - bad elements, the kind you don't want to see in front of your neighborhood 7-11 - have been congregating under my wig for a few days now. Every morning I wake up and a few more have roared into town on their hawgs of compressed snot. They start drinking earlier, too, than is really decent, and by midmorning they've exhausted all the other available fluids and have begun to suck out my brain juices. It's kind of the equivalent of street toughs getting high on paint fumes. All morning and afternoon I walk around with a dried up brain like a spinster but I don't dare argue with these guys. What if they left the cranial cavity and started to trickle, menacing and mean, down towards the exits? You don't want these guys in the bar but you sure as hell don't want to let them loose on the world. One sneeze and there goes the neighborhood. I have to be careful. It's a big responsibility.
Some days I feel like going up there with a nightstick and giving them whatfor; most days, though, I swallow hard and just let it go. Times are changing. The world is getting harder. How can you fight progress? In the evenings I close the curtains and hide out behind my eyes; I can leave my brain to the tough guys, I guess. I never used it much. Eventually the Advil cops'll get in there and wave their weapons around a little, quiet things down for a few hours so we can all get some sleep.
Posted by didofoot at 05:59 PM | Comments (5)
December 12, 2002
Stop Thinking About Sex
A while ago I started taking pictures of sidewalk stencils. It started with the two photos Michele gave me of two different Monkey Knife Fight stencils we saw on my birthday. After that I started noticing all the different ones around my neighborhood: "Stop Thinking About Sex," "Save The Sewer Rat," "Don't Buy the HIV Lie," etc. It's the perfect project for someone like me, who is so paralyzed by the fear of being looked at by other people that it's often difficult to leave my apartment; this way, I can just stare at the ground as I walk and not risk meeting anyone's eye.
Of course, once I actually find one of these stencils, it's for the same reason really difficult to do something so attention-grabbing as taking a photo of the ground. Often I wind up noting it for later and coming back in one of my rare brave moments, or when I have someone else with me. (It's only alone that I get freaked out like this.) So the project is progressing very very slowly.
It reminds me a lot of one of the projects Frahm was working on when I met him. He was making a series of paintings, all in yellow paint and black marker, of transportation systems. He was really obsessed by stuff like the cables for MUNI trains (I know, no one calls them trains), and the weird hive-like walls of the Civic Center stop. The projects are about equally useless, I'd say.
I wonder if I'm going to eventually turn into some odd indie-everything person like he was, wearing the thick glasses and black hoodie or blue nylon jacket which is that person's uniform, squirreled away in my city home glueing toothpicks into a space station for Barbie dolls, emerging only to drink in cavelike bars with others of my kind, or to procure more pot or vinyl. Occasionally I'll hit a show and stand stoic in the back, retiring afterwards to another dive bar to discuss how Nick Drake did it better. I don't really know how my 19 year old self wound up haunting that scene, chirping around like Pollyanna and unabashedly listening to Matchbox 20. I hope this new sidewalk project won't make me suddenly more fit for the indie life: misanthropic, apathetic and derisive.
Posted by didofoot at 12:39 PM | Comments (8)
December 09, 2002
Keep fingers out of reach of the didofoot. She is cranky today.
I'm researching a paper about the effects of cattle ranching on rainforests in Brazil, and if my research leads me to one more article decrying the knee-jerk liberalism of writers who urged America to temper its grief with awareness of its sins INTHEWAKEOFSEPTETC I will go bananas. Bananas. Bananas.
"Uh, oh, here it comes: that danged moral equivalence again, reminding us that we're not allowed to mourn this one great act of evil without remembering how much we are to blame for it with our past policies."
Fuck you, namless hack from the redundant Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, with your evil rhetoric and your garish flag. Get out of my Google search.
Posted by didofoot at 10:19 AM | Comments (8)
More on my boss, a source too good to use all at once.
My boss is a country kind of fellow. He comes in every day in cowboy boots and a Southwest patterned shirt and kind of has a Northern California Fort Bragg type drawl to his speech. One day he brought in a cassette tape of a honky-tonk song he'd written, played on what sounded like one of the smaller, cheaper kinds of Casio keyboards into a Fisher Price microphone. He hadn't recorded the vocals, just the music, so we sat and listened to the organized BEAT-beat-beat-beat BRIDGE melody and he kind of mumbled the words under his breath. Something about Lola and a truck. It was a long song, the kind of length that gives you plenty of time to start undergoing some intense internal paranoia about what your expression is doing as you enthusiastically nod and every so often laugh in a studied way to endorse how delighted you are by this performance.
My boss also used to co-own racehorses, which I don't know how he afforded it on a Master's degree in Ancient Chinese Military Strategy* but that's not really my business.** He used to bring his son to the race track on weekends and he'd have the kid stand at the stable door to distract the state vet with childish blandishments while my boss "gave the horses drugs and used machines on 'em. Technically you're not supposed to do that, but it doesn't really hurt the horses. It's good for 'em." His son is a vegan now. "It's probably because of all his allergies," my boss explained. "My son is real allergic to animals."
Yup. That's probably it.
*My boss loves two things: Chinese culture and the track. It's like someone invented a peripheral character and gave him two opposing interests in an effort to make him appear three-dimensional. It leads to a lot of comments like this one: "I used to read the I Ching a lot and the I Ching says that a man who does not take heed of his own nature is a foolish man. And my nature's at the track, so I'm leaving at 4:00 today and y'all should too."
**I will just say, if there's a Cowboy Mafia anywhere in the world then my boss is one of the henchmen standing by the door in secret meetings and cracking his knuckles and rushing the Indian hero one at a time with the other henchmen and giving credence to the virility of said hero by facelessly expiring.
Posted by didofoot at 08:43 AM | Comments (5)
December 06, 2002
They live in tunnels now, the Old Ones, biding their time and smelling like fish...
My boss has a theory that the continental drift was actually caused by beavers. Apparently, beavers were much bigger in the Ice Age, more the size of grizzly bears than the cute rodents we know and love. (This is according to a website he's found whose veracity - is that my word? - is anyone's guess.) Obviously this gave them a bigger influence on their surrounding territories.
"Look how much damage they can do right now, at their present size," he explained earnestly. "Now imagine if they were really HUGE animals."
All of which led to the highlight of my day so far: sitting at my desk while behind me the old German woman who works in my office was idly chanting, "Giant beavers, giant beavers, giant beavers...
Posted by didofoot at 04:29 PM | Comments (16)
December 05, 2002
My teacher said "staid" and I love her.
Raise your hand if over the course of this day you either had or anticipate having a conversation like the following:
"Hey."
"Hi."
"What's up?"
"Nothing. 'Sup with you?"
"Nothing. What are you up to?"
"Not much, you?"
"Same. How are you doing?"
"Good, and you?"
"Yeah, pretty good."
The empty triple question conversational introduction. Only after the triple questions are out of the way may you begin an actual dialogue.
I propose that we hereby end all triple question introductions in favor of the more elegant NNG, which stands for Nothing, Not much, Good. An example might be:
"Hi, NNG."
"Yeah, NNG. So it turns out my wife's been sleeping with James..."
And so continues the real conversation.
Pentavirate West (Sean and Aaron V) is probably where I got this from. They did it first and better, but I'm the one who just copywrited it. Suckers.
Begin new thought:
In my government class today, the girl behind me referred to the Gay E-Light while answering a question. I was totally baffled and spent a few minutes riffling through my notes in search of this fringe gay rights group. Finally, of course, I realized she meant the gay "elite."
I'm not making fun of her; I mispronounce words all the time. I was just tickled by it.
Posted by didofoot at 04:48 PM | Comments (10)
December 04, 2002
If your victim is middle management, is it murder or civil service?
My boss does this really adorable thing almost every day I work with him. It's this thing where he gives me an assignment, but without a lot of backup information, you know? And then I ask for clarification and he puts on this maddening (yet adorable!) smile and either tells me it's not his job to explain it or else tells me I need to figure it out on my own.
Here's an example that happened just the other day: He asked me to make a graph in Excel using a spreadsheet he'd given me. It was a complicated spreadsheet, so I was a little confused as to what exactly the graph should be depicting, so I asked him. But instead of just pointing out the two relevant columns, he (aww!) smiled and asked me to figure it out myself.
Forty-five minutes later, he admitted he didn't remember exactly what data was supposed to be used for the graph, just that some of the chart should be depicted graphically. Well we all had a good laugh over it, I can tell you. Forty-five minutes! I've never had more fun in an office.
Here's the thing though: I'm working 24 hours a week, and thanks to my new raise I'm making the same amount that I did pre-raise when working 35 hours a week.
Now that's cute.
Posted by didofoot at 12:39 PM | Comments (15)
December 02, 2002
When left to her own devices, Dido delighted in impersonating middle management...
This is in response to Holohan's letter, which you should read first.
Dear Valued Customer:
We are in receipt of your letter dated NOVEMBER 12, 1989. Please rest assured that your concerns are valid, and that we will make every effort to address them. We here at RALPH'S FOOD, INC. are always eager to hear suggestions for improvement from you, the customer.
In the future, we will certainly attempt to
X STOCK THE ITEM YOU HAVE REQUESTED.
_ RESOLVE YOUR ISSUE WITH OUR STAFF.
_ RECONSIDER OUR PRICING SYSTEM.
_ BAN SMALL CHILDREN FROM OUR STORE.
_ CLEAN THE FLOORS WITH SOMETHING NOT SO STICKY.
_ INSTALL A THUNDER SOUND IN OUR PRODUCE SECTION LIKE SAFEWAY'S.
Sincerely,
Customer Service
RALPH'S FOODS, INC.
[Handwritten] P.S. I have been a customer service manager with Ralph's for twenty years and I've never had a letter from someone complaining about anything cherry-related. Do you know why? It's because the cherry is valued in this country, that's why. Consider some common cherry-related expressions, such as describing a mint-condition (don't get me started on the role of mint in our society) car as "cherry," and referring to the act of deflowering a virgin as "popping her cherry." (May I remind you that in pre-Victorian England, the cherry of a virgin was sold for as much as 500 pounds? I hardly think it is less valued in this country.) In addition, cherries are really tasty. Clearly, the cherry is a fruit whose importance to the good US of A cannot be underestimated. Don't you love America, Mr. Holohan (if that IS your real name)? I would think even a communist like yourself would appreciate the cherry, with its fine red color so like your godless flag.
In short, I suggest you try those cherry doughnuts one more time before you go pointing fingers at the Statue of Liberty, the Bible, and the Bush administration. You goddamn liberal. I hope you and all your kind get shipped to outer space. You'd like it up there, wouldn't you? You pansy? No draft to dodge in outer space, eh, coward?
Sincerely,
Harold P. Waughm
Manager and American
P.P.S. You can try to complain about this, but I'm retiring in 3 days. It would take some sort of instantaneous mail system to reach my superior before that time. Good luck, sucker! Ha ha. -HPM
Posted by didofoot at 11:14 AM | Comments (10)
This just in, winter causes sadness.
This morning I found myself singing that sad song from Disney's Sleeping Beauty in the shower. I wonder why each little bird has a someone. You know this song? Where all the animals of the forest improbably gather to provide four-part harmony like furry little do-wop girls? I think I'm not really used to being half of, if you follow me. It leads me to do things like sing about the single life, and spend nights indoors reading spinsterish novels, and tell the Moms in a pathetic voice, 'It's all right, you can keep that silverware you borrowed--I only need one fork."
Well the silver fact is, of course, that I need two forks and a new song, being that I am coupled now. I still hate the other couples I see walking around, though. Just as a reflex, or to keep my hand in.
I'm moving into my role-playing mode right now, in a way that has nothing to do with D&D so you can just forget it. I'm playing Girlfriend. It's good healthy fun. I futz with my hair before he comes over, and I get growlingly jealous about his female friends, and in general am irrational and emotional and not very interesting and absolutely no fun to be around.
It occurs to me I'm like this every winter, so maybe it's not a function of my relationships at all. Maybe I'm just seasonally dependent. Maybe I should migrate like a fruit picker. I have to say, though, I find it very refreshing to have been in one apartment for 3 months already without making plans to move, so maybe what I need is just more of those lightbulbs that imitate sunlight.
This post is dull. Go read the turkey ones again, they were brilliant.
Posted by didofoot at 09:10 AM | Comments (2)
