My sweet peacock Allen sent us some photos
of mostly Guatemala. Lord I miss that boy. Which is a little odd, considering we have pretty much been email friends most of the time I’ve known him, but he did smell awfully nice.
December coming home
1,2,3,4, We don’t want your – hey, the Gap’s having a sale!
Yesterday in my Government class, the prof handed back our papers and gave us some virtual head-patting for a while, which was satisfying. Then she wrote the following in HUGE LETTERS ON THE BOARD:
ITS
IT’S
She made us identify which was the possessive and which the contraction. “Learn it, know it,” she said. “It’ll be on the final. I marked down for this, people; some of you lost a whole letter grade because of ‘its’ and ‘form’ or ‘from’ and other basic mistakes. I blame California public schools, but you have to fix it.”
YAY!
In contrast, my English teacher, writing on the board, spelled ‘caricature’ with an ‘h.’ “No ‘H,'” said English John. We had previously discussed this as being our biggest problem with the class: teacher can’t spell. This prompted a five minute discussion where most of the class, including the teacher, insisted the word was right, and English John quietly negated them while I sat in my corner and chortled, periodically agreeing with him when there was the least chance of anyone hearing me. Finally someone looked it up and he was vindicated.
But mostly State is a very good school.
Here’s what is fun: Walking around downtown for two hours tomorrow between 11 and 1. Come for the protest, stay for the chain-store shopping! Come on, sheepies. Everyone and my mother are doing it.
ENGLISH JOHN VS. WHITE DAN IN THE WRESTLING MATCH OF THE CENTURY
So I met another Us, who may or may not have a website for Us to inundate. He’s in my English class; his name is John; I call him English John, but not to his English face. Now he has a nickname; already, his Us-ness is clear.
English John reads books. So far, he has only admitted to reading the Bible, but I know he has a secret sci-fi soul and he certainly has the vocabulary of a literature addict. Also, he has a friend (another Us, quite possibly) who makes movies about zombies, for fun. English John got to play an English zombie in the last one, but not English.
Hobbies include: regular head shaving, Bible reading, zombie acting, being English.
I’m planning on introducing him to the rest of you as soon as I can trick him into it. Let’s have a big Us welcome for English John and his fabulous dancing spiders. Except for the spiders.
And we kept minor movie stars in the yard, as pets…
I watched the full audio commentary on “Can’t Hardly Wait,” which I guess is the obligatory activity for new DVD owners. It is a process totally without enjoyment, even when Seth Green does a fake English accent which he refuses to drop until all the other people commenting gang up and yell at him to quit.
What I did like about it: the other commentors clearly had a thing for Jennifer Love Hewitt and just as clearly did not find Seth Green at all amusing. At one point during a Love scene, one of them said “And of course Love was filming Party of Five at the same time she was filming this. I think she actually pulled a few 24 hour days. But she looks just sensational, she’s so amazing.”
Seth said, “Hey, I was filming Buffy while I was doing this.”
Long pause. “Shut up, Seth.”
Saturday my parents are taking me to my first anti-war protest. (Unless you count the time in middle school when, seeing that the high school next door had gotten news vans to cover their anti-war rally, about sixty of us sixth graders decided to stand around on the playground after the final lunch bell had rung, yelling slogans our parents had taught us and hoping Wolf Blitzer would run over with a camera. But I don’t count that, myself.)
I always tell people I had a standard-issue California childhood. The 1989 earthquake was on my 10th birthday; my parents were friends with drug dealers (really just one, who dealt what my mom refers to as “the soft drugs” in order to be a stay-at-home mom); and my dad used to tell me that when I was ready to try pot I should let him know and we could all do it together in the living room. We had a swimming pool and fruit trees and a semi-famous cousin. We talked about sex. We had a Mr. Natural postcard and a quote from Gandhi on the bulletin board. And now we’re protesting together. Good times.
Nothing beats the small pieces I’ve heard about Pants’s
childhood, however. He hasn’t blogged about his all-health all-the-time diet but maybe he should, hint ahem hint.
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Thanks, y’all.
Yesterday, I joined Netflix.
Now my laser eye project is complete. (If by “laser eye project” you mean “life.” And who doesn’t?)
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That’s why the lady is a…
Yesterday my mom and grandfather came by to drop off some stuff at my apartment and we made my grandfather wait with the illegally-parked car while we hauled things back and forth. When we finished, we came out to find him ogling a young blond Marilyn-type in a tight red dress and spike heels stalking down the street. “Holy criminy,” he said, because he talks like that, “would you take a look at her.”
“Him, Dad,” my mom said.
“What?” he said, entirely engrossed by the nine-foot legs.
“That’s not a woman,” she said.
“Well what is it, then, a rhinoceros?” he said, because he still talks like that.
“It’s a man, Dad,” she said patiently.
“No,” he said. “Her? In the red?”
“Yes, Dad. Why would a woman be dressed like that on a Sunday afternoon just to walk down the street?” Astonishingly, the counter argument to this (why would a man be dressed like that) did not seem to occur to him.
There was a moment of silence,
And then a lot more silence.
“What?” he said finally. And then, “Slow down when you pass her. I’d like to see her from the front.”
I would have thought he’d be more disturbed, given that he is an 80 year old man who is in many ways prejudiced like other people are breathing. But I guess when you’re 80, a fine ass is a fine ass no matter what it comes equipped with.
Kicking is never the answer.
“Are you going to go on your ride tomorrow?” I asked The Lad at dinner last night, because I am The Stupid. The Lad had been planning to drive his motobike 1,000 miles in a day to get an obscure certification which would profit him nothing in the real world, much like a Bachelor’s Degree.
“No,” said The Lad regretfully. “I haven’t had a chance to fix my bike yet.”
“What’s wrong with your bike?” asked my mom, who might also be called The Sharp Ears but won’t be.
“Oh, I laid it down last weekend,” said The Lad blithely, as if he didn’t know this would land me in a mess o’trouble. I began gently kicking his ankle with all of my strength under the table. (For those of you who just like normal 4-wheeled vehicles, ‘laying down’ a bike means anything from a minor fall to a near-death experience.)
“What,” said my mother, in a tone which to me clearly meant “You have ten seconds to pretend you’re joking before I forbid you to ever see my daughter again,” but to The Lad apparently meant “How interesting, please tell me more.”
“Yeah,” he said, “I was going about ten miles an hour on the freeway…” While he told his story, under the table my foot was frantically WHAM-WHAM-WHAMming his anklebone. My mom finally looked at me and said “Kicking isn’t going to help.”
When he finished his story, she turned to me and said “You understand that you can never go on his bike, ever again, ever, whatsoever, ever, never. Right?”
“I understand,” I said solemnly. Then The Lad decided this was a great moment to begin telling a story about this time he and his wonderbike hit the side of a VW Bug…
Danny for my sins
When Danny – monastic Danny, not Brian Austin Green Danny – left for the monastery I said “You have to come back, though, to marry The Lad and I if we ever get married. That’s how I always imagined it.”
“Okay,” he said. After a pause, “You’ll never get married though, will you.”
Me, “Well, I retain the right to your services in the event.”
I wrote him a letter – him Danny not him The Lad – and sent it off, hopefully with enough stamps to make it to Greece. I wrote about sushi night and the musical and Katie’s causes and school and those abortion-picture people. I figured he doesn’t get enough of that kind of stuff, living with the monks.
Even though he turned out not to be dying for our sins (I know Michele was disappointed not to have her sins erased), I still feel like I have an ace in the hole. Somewhere in Greece, Danny is being spiritual so that I can whore around and lie to people and steal pens from work and occasionally hide a body in the woods. And also be slothful and gluttonous and covet my neighbor’s wife (who, in the Castro, is generally a very good looking man). I bet this is not how Danny intended that to work, but I find I sin a lot more knowing someone is working to balance it. What the hell, he’s there anyway. Why have a full tank of gas and not drive anywhere?
And if he is anything, he is a full tank of gas.
Blogging for a better tomorrow
Today while leaving Cala Foods I got asked for change by a ubiquitous street person. I declined in my usual manner, by shyly shaking my head while walking and half-smiling, in an attempt to communicate through mime my disinclination to part with my cash even though later my suburban white guilt would give me no rest. A few steps away I glanced back over my shoulder at the guy. Sure enough, he was Fred Abramson, this kid I grew up with whose parents are best friends with my parents. The last time I saw Fred he was all cologne and cynical wisdom and big pretty eyes. Oh, and rich. Why would Fred need my spare change, I wondered?
Noticing that I had been standing directly in front of him and staring at him, Fred stood up and raised his eyebrows. “Take off your hat,” I said, wanting to see his face better and, as always, incredibly rude. (Somewhere in my teens I decided that being rude to everyone without prejudice was just as valid as being polite to everyone. Unfortunately, this belief sort of stuck. Sorry about that.) He took off his hat.
“My hair’s all messed up,” he said, looking self-conscious and rubbing his hair. I found this incredibly cute. Here he is begging for change and he’s worried about whether I’ll like his hair.
It occurs to me that this story would be better if the kid really had been Fred. But of course he wasn’t; Fred’s all studious and lives in the Haight and is, more to the point, not homeless. It was just an eerie resemblance. So where was I going with this? I think it was just homework avoidance.
Well, back to my essay.
In which she contemplates serial insomnia
At the Exploratorium, there’s an exhibit featuring small golden fish which led me to a fascinating discovery. I found that just by pressing a button and using my incredible mind powers, I was able to make the fish start and stop swimming according to my whims. The conclusion is so obvious (though it was not explicitly stated on the experiment’s accompanying plaque): I am the god of fish.
So that happened.
Last night my schizophrenic homeless friend spent an hour (between 3 and 4 in the morning) screaming her mantra outside my apartment (“HolyshitHolyshitHolyshit…”) When I say “my friend,” what I mean is “the disembodied voice who comes along every few days to wake me up and creep the shit out of me.”
I know my only real option to stop the voice is to call the cops. But I’m reluctant to have someone thrown in the clink just because I can’t sleep. Well, I guess the other option is to go out there with some soup and a smile but Francisly she scares me.
I did try to use my mind powers on her, but it turns out she is not a fish.
You know what, if I ever have the opportunity to design a fantasy city, I will totally include a hands-on science museum exactly like the Exploratorium. Because that is seriously solid.