September 29, 2004
So kind, most obliging
My cowboy boss is deep into Virgil right now. He sidles up to my desk every now and then to discuss it. "See, the bad alliances Virgil is talkin' about, that's just common sense at the track. You never team up with someone to buy a horse. You gotta always buy your own horse. And Virgil knew that, that's what he's saying. You gotta go your own way."
Speaking of ridiculous literary parallels, I realized recently that the Lad is Mr. Knightly. He's honest and sincere and does the right thing because it is the right thing. And I, with this chattery blog, I am Miss Bates.
Posted by didofoot at 08:50 AM | Comments (4)
September 27, 2004
Raise your glasses: an anniversary toast in nine wretched couplets
Two years ago, we had our third
First date, although you may have heard
There's some contention in our midst:
Should we be counting from that kiss
Which was third first, or maybe fourth
If you ask me? Except, of course,
There was the time we almost split,
So this is four-point-five, or fifth
Of our first kisses and first dates.
But then the Lad thinks we should rate
More highly still the times he asked
Me out officially; the task
Is now the way to figure those.
(How many times there were, who knows.)
So all that can be certain is:
Our third (fourth? fourth-point-five?) first kiss
Set us upon this primrose path.
So here's to me, the Lad, and math.
Posted by didofoot at 10:47 AM | Comments (5)
September 25, 2004
$99 Picture Frames
Today my six-month Pottery Barn checkup came due so I wandered down there for a few minutes. Every half-year or so I need to enter a Pottery Barn (or a Williams Sonoma, or a Crate & Barrel, or almost any store on Union Square) to sneer at the ridiculous merchandise, thereby reminding myself that I don't really want to live in the rooms displayed in the catalogs, where no one leaves teacups out on the table or owns garbage cans.
"Can I help you?" said the Pottery Barn employee.
"Yes," I said. "I'm looking for something which is both functionless and exorbitantly expensive."
"Allow me to recommend the teak cleaning spray," he said immediately, and my scorn for it wafted me straight out of the store and into my right mind.
Posted by didofoot at 08:52 PM | Comments (5)
September 22, 2004
We get knocked down, but we get up again
I caught my sandal on one of the criminally protruding MUNI rails while crossing Market Street yesterday and went sprawling in the middle of the intersection. Caught myself on my hands in a monster push-up and managed not to rip my jeans, so I thought I was doing pretty well. Picked myself up and got halfway up the hill before I realized that my belt, which is more cool than functional, had come undone in the fall. Ever tried to casually fasten your belt while walking? There is just nothing more suspicious looking than that, especially in SF, where the preponderance of crazies means that someone walking along fumbling at their pants is definitely a cross-the-street moment. Once I got home, I was talking to Michele on the phone and told her this sad story, because sometimes you need a little best friend sympathy. "You fall a lot," she said thoughtfully, and snickered.
If anyone wants to offer me some more solid form of comfort, Elliott Smith's new album will be out on Oct 19, two days after my birthday. I'm just sayin'.
Posted by didofoot at 08:45 AM | Comments (12)
September 15, 2004
Water and big boobs
My arrival at UCSC when I was seventeen was eye-opening in so many ways. I met my first out-of-the-closet lesbian on my first night in the dorms, who lined up a group of frosh on her bed and lectured us on proper fisting techniques. I got my first roommate and met my first anti-shower campaigner--unfortunately the same person. I played my first drinking game and called Dad and the Moms triumphantly the next day to tell them all about my first hangover. And I met SoCal natives, and realized for the first time that not only is Southern California winning the NoCal-SoCal war, they actually have no idea it's happening. I came fully prepared to hate every SoCal resident I met for having big boobs and stealing our water,* but they were all perfectly friendly to me and claimed ignorance of any intrastate blood feud.
Since attending SFSU, I've discovered another one-sided war that I'm on the wrong side of. Everyone knows about the Cal-Stanford war, but how many of you are aware that there is also an intense rivalry between Cal and SF State? Well let me tell you, everyone at State is fully committed to this. Lecturers, professors, and students fill class discussions with snide little digs at Cal, with its "research" and "budget" and "white people." (Since attending SFSU I have chosen to become a sympathetic person of color, because frankly all the cultures here are way more interesting than the one I grew up in. You might be offended by this, but your opinions are meaningless to me, whitey.) Unfortunately, no one at Berkeley has any idea that this conflict is happening. Which only makes us hate them more, of course.
I'm starting to take some pride in my state education, though. SFSU is one of the most diverse campuses in the world, which is very important to me now that I have voluntarily renounced my colonialist white heritage. We may not have Nobel prize winning professors, or a lot of money, or good grammar, but we...actually I can't think of an end for that sentence. We don't have those things. But I like it there, anyway. And we started the campus protest movement in '68, whatever Berkeley claims.
Ok, I will now return to my high-paying job here at Cal.
*Amusingly, my non-showering roommate hailed from SoCal. What are they doing with all our water if they don't even bathe?
Posted by didofoot at 11:48 AM | Comments (9)
September 10, 2004
The unseen good old man
We've gotten a few pieces of mail addressed "To The Estate Of" for the guy who used to live in our apartment. I, in my ignorance of polite euphemisms, thought this meant he was just, you know, rich, with an estate, but the Lad says this means he is dead.
You might begin to wonder, did he die in this very apartment? You might be sitting on the red couch (which for various complex reasons is referred to as the white couch, despite the actual white couch sitting next to it), hating yourself for watching Dark Angel and eating a cupcake Kati Vol left in your fridge. It would be around 10:30 at night, and the Lad is in Boston, and all the other lights in the apartment are off, when you start to think about that adorable little window between the living room and bedroom. You start to imagine the benevolent, slightly pale face of a very old man suddenly peeking through that window, just watching you silently, terrifying only in this context but still terrifying. You might try to decide whether it would be more or less terrifying if he were to say hello. Or maybe the ghost of the old dead man will be angry, angry because the landlord remodeled the kitchen for us after he died, or angry because we're using the mirrored closet for the Lad's monster shelves when the old man would have put them somewhere else. In any case, his angry face would contort and scowl and roar and the difficulties then would be
1) trying to get past him to either the front or back door in this ridiculously circular apartment where he could come at you from either direction, and
2) trying to grab shoes and your wallet on the way out so that you will be able to hop on a well-lit and populated train to the Moms in the far east, and
3) trying to break your one-year lease by explaining that your apartment is haunted by a benevolent (or maybe rageful) dead old man.
Posted by didofoot at 11:25 AM | Comments (19)
September 08, 2004
Hunka broken heater
So things are pretty blissful here in my life, as many of you know now after seeing our new place. The heat is stuck on still, but I'm choosing to look on that as a metaphor for our burning love. I'm so in love with the apartment that I actually mopped the kitchen floor yesterday--not to much purpose, since I never really learned to clean a floor, but I thought it resonated well as a symbolic gesture. Coming home every day is a sweaty delight. I'm really looking forward to getting that radiator fixed so my delight can be of the dryer sort.
And now, here are some conversations between seventeenth-century poet Robert Herrick and his mistress, Anthea.
R: Anthea! I have written a poem about my immense love for you!
A: Oh, Robin, how thrilling!
R: It's about how miserable I will be when you die.
A: Take me, you manly stack of artist!
FIVE YEARS LATER
R: Anthea! I have written a poem about my immense love for you!
A: Oh, yes? Does it involve my death, by any chance?
R: About the depths of misery I will sink to when you are dead, my darling.
A: This is, what? The sixteenth of these?
R: It begins, 'When you are rotting cold and still...'
A: *Sigh.*
FIVE YEARS LATER
R: Anthea! I have written a poem about--
A: This had better not involve my death.
R: It's about flowers.
A: Really? Well, that sounds very--
R: Dead flowers, which symbolize my--
A: Get out of my sight.
If you haven't seen Garden State, fucking do it, man.
Posted by didofoot at 09:31 AM | Comments (12)
September 03, 2004
Just on the off-chance...
...that anyone is reading this whom I or Brian have not already emailed, Mac needs a home by 4:30 today.
If you are interested (and how could you not be?), complete info can be found here.
Posted by didofoot at 01:45 PM | Comments (5)
Four More Years, Alas
I just started looking online for coverage of yesterday's big NY protest during Bush's speech and I'm not finding a whole lot, even on commondreams.org. Can anyone give me a link to an in-depth story with maybe some critical thought behind it? Or if those of our crew who are actually there make your way to this site any time soon, I'd love to hear your stories.
Posted by didofoot at 08:42 AM | Comments (20)
September 01, 2004
In which The Closet Shopper helps me buy some pants
This is a story about pants. Not just any pants: new pants, the scariest kind of pants there are. In case you don't want to read the whole darn thing, the salient info is this: Tracy Miller is an amazing fashion consultant. If you want her to come work for you, check her out here:
The Closet Shopper
Email: theclosetshopper at gmail.com
My best jeans finally gave up the ghost while I was kneeling down to clean up toddler pee a few weeks ago at work. I guess they split from trying to contain all the good karma I was earning by mopping up after someone else's kid. I tried to Frankenstein them for a while with my own special brand of sewing, but like a determined athlete after a car wreck they just kept splitting their stitches and eventually I had to give up on them. Then my second-best jeans split, possibly from trying to contain all the karma that I now store in my ass. So I was left with a choice of enormous raver pants or grey army pants. It was time to do the unthinkable. It was time to shop.
Since today was very hot and since I have been feeling inexplicably large and elephantine lately, today seemed like the very best time to wrap my legs in sweaty denim and stare at my bottom in various mirrors. I pretty much hate shopping at the best of times so I wasn't looking forward to this. Lucky for me that I dragged everyone's favorite fashionista Tracy Miller along with me. I gave her my size and price range and after that she did pretty much everything except actually try the jeans on for me. She picked a store, pointed me towards the dressing room, and then attacked me with several volleys of jean selections. It was like playing Battleship, but with pants. After every fitting, she would ask what my specific concerns with each pair were and then in the next round of jeans those problems would be magically fixed. I had a brand spanking new pair of half-off pants in under half an hour which fit perfectly, are the correct color, and were within my price range. Also, they are Diesel, which I thought was an engine but apparently is also a mark of coolness. And the best part of this whole experience was walking around the store with her as she held up various items and told me how great I would look in them and why. Nothing quite so ego-boosting as a fashion consultant.
She tried to get me into some new shoes (70% off) but I am having a low-budget month and had to decline. However, if any of you ladies out there (she hasn't branched out yet to the mysteriously bland world of men's fashions) are interested in an easy wardrobe revamp, I highly recommend her. Here's her contact info again:
The Closet Shopper
Email: theclosetshopper at gmail.com
Posted by didofoot at 03:07 PM | Comments (9)
