Soon!

I have not been posting, but it is not my fault. I have been busy lately. I am VERY important.

THINGS I HAVE BEEN BUSY DOING

1) Acquiring a (FREE) stress ball shaped like a smiling penis. It is smiling because it is so healthy (I think). At the bottom of the penis it says “Get tested for syphilis five times a year!”

2) Watching The Wire. All of it. I sat through a lot of fake shootings, fake beatings, and fake accents–because the guy who plays McNulty is secretly British, and so is the guy who plays Stringer! My dad showed me a YouTube clip of Stringer (“Idris Elba”) introducing some Masterpiece Theater and calling people “ahtists” in a shirt that I think was SILK. Actors, man. You can never tell how much silk they own!!!

3) Talking to my dad about elliptical trainers. He doesn’t like them because he can’t figure out if he’s going forwards or backwards. Or, as he put it: “I get on them, and I start moving, and I’m like, what IS that?” My dad is a college professor. To all his students who are scared of him: you are also scared of elliptical trainers indirectly. Which means double indirectly, you are scared of walking. Which means suck it up.

4) Buying a bed. It was surprisingly hard (no pun intended) (especially no dirty pun, what would that EVEN MEAN) because whenever I lie on a mattress that is for sale, I want it. It feels great. Lying down is sick. Eventually, I picked (at random) a ridiculously hard mattress–it is like I have an icebox where my mattress used to be, ONE COULD SAY–but I don’t even care. Other people care. Other people think I must be kind of severe. But I am in my extremely firm bed right now, getting enough back support for at least four people, and I am so happy!

So, those are my top four excuses for having no internet presence. I’ll try to write something SOON/tomorrow? Love to anyone who has stuck with my blog through the thick and the very very vanishingly thin.

Now that you’re here I never wanna say goodbye

I just started watching the first season of The Wire, because everyone seems to like it and think it’s groundbreaking. And here is my big thought about my viewing experience so far: People on The Wire never say “Bye” to each other!

I understand that there are variations on “Bye” that people use to express the same sentiment, like “See you later,” “Peace,” “I’m out,” “Omar out” (Omar likes to talk about himself in the third person, I have noticed), “Later,” “Auf wiedersehen,” etc. However. No one says any of these things in The Wire, even after a one-on-one conversation! People just stare into each other’s eyes and then walk away purposefully. It always surprises me that they do this in such a synchronized way without any “now we’re going to do this” verbal cue.

This is why I can’t make it in Fictional Baltimore. I would be having a conversation about drugs and crime and “the game” and at the end I’d be like, “Cool, see you tomorrow!” And everyone would be like, “God, go back to the suburbs!”

Which is a fair point. The title of this post is from a JoJo song, and not even a hit JoJo song. It’s a lesser known… gem…

Overheard in my life: Part Holocaust

[I am reading Damn You Autocorrect with my friend, because it is finals week.]

FRIEND: Did you read the one about the Fuhrer?

ME: No.

FRIEND (enunciating more): The. Fuhrer.

ME: No.

FRIEND (sort of doing a Nazi salute): The FUHRER!

ME: NO I DID NOT READ THE ONE ABOUT THE FUHRER.

FRIEND: Oh, okay.

Why. Why do I look like I don’t know what a Fuhrer is. Or the Fuhrer is. Or whatever. Hitler guys, I’m talking about Hitler!

Okay, time to go learn principal/principle (???) component regression. It’s the worst thing. Actually that is a ridiculous thing to say since like three sentences ago I was talking about the Holocaust…

 

 

Overheard in my life: APOCALYPTIC FIRE

So Chicago was supposed to have the worst storm in seventy years yesterday, and it was even worse than that–the worst storm of all time! In that everyone was expecting like 75 mph winds and rain the size of golf balls and instead nothing happened at all. Unless you count the three to five breezes.

Except actually, something did happen–it just didn’t have to do with the weather. A building on campus caught fire! Big fire! Flames shooting out of the roof and firefighters saying “Code: Fire” on their walkie talkies fire!  It was super weird, because we’d all been kind of expecting this weather apocalypse, and I had geared up by wearing my apocalyptically gross rainboots (they are purple and they have rainbow colored bunnies and squirrels on them… they make me look  seven years old. Also, blind) and then instead of a weather apocalypse there was a FIRE apocalypse and everyone just transferred their ampedness onto that. There were huge crowds in the street watching the building burn, and everyone was excited (because no one was in the building–empathy still exists).

I was standing next to this dude and his friend, and I didn’t know either of them. And we’re all standing there with our mouths open, watching, and then one dude goes, “WOAH.”

His friend says, “I know.” Assuming the guy is saying woah about the fire.

But then the first guy says, “We totally live in a patriarchal society!”

TAKEN

I saw Takers yesterday with some friends. Have you heard of this movie? It doesn’t matter. It is just a bunch of hot men (and Chris Brown, who is not hot) running around stealing. When there are action sequences, it is really fun!  Somebody SLIDES DOWN A BUILDING (is that even an activity?) and somebody else DRIVES INTO A HOLE (a really big hole!). The thing is that when there is not action and they are just talking, every single line confirmed my suspicion that the script was written by a hamster. Not even an elaborately trained hamster. Just a regular hamster.

Quotes As I Remember Them That Are Probably Mildly Inaccurate

[Two guys arguing]

Guy 1: It’s in the shed!

Guy 2: It’s in the shed?

Guy 1: It’s in the shed!

Guy 2: IT’S IN THE SHED!!!!

[You never actually find out if "it" is in the shed. No shed even appears onscreen.]

*

Guy, looking into the distance holding drink: We’re takers. We take. It’s what we do.

*

T.I., very upset: You took my bitch! You think I’m gonna forget that?

*

[Scene opens.]

Guy 1: Sup.

Guy 2: Sup.

[End scene.]

I feel like even if a hamster read this script, it would be get bored. It would be like, “There are no wheels! When are these guys going to run on their wheels?” Maybe this is more a script that was written by something inanimate. Like a drainpipe?

The Situation

So I’m back in real school, where there is work and I have to scrounge up food and do my own dishes (rather than lounging in India, attending serve-yourself buffets that are still inexplicably staffed by six or seven waiters), and I have less time to write this.  It is a fact.  So.  I will post less.  And you will read less.  If you can even read.  (JUST KIDDING I’m sure you read great!)

BUT I want you to know that I am writing something long that will probably drop (ahhaahha wow I am really laughing at my own word choice… Chicago winter, what are you doing to me?) in about a month (??).  It’s for a nonfiction class, and it’s going to probably be more sad and creepy than usual, but if I don’t disastrously mess it up it should be interesting. It’s about MURDER so… basically, I’m hella hard.

But not so hard that I committed the murder.

But still hard.  Very, very hard.

Oh my god, who I am kidding.  I am listening to Justin Bieber as we speak.  It’s pretty ironic that I have listened to “One Time” like, a thousand times.  Even the song itself is telling me that I have taken things too far.

You should watch the video for “One Time” at least once, though, if only to enjoy the intro scene where Mr. Bieber answers his phone and says:

“Yo, Usher!  I’m just playing video games with Ryan.”

Now that – THAT is hard.  JB, you ball outrageous.

(Point being: I’m going to be posting more like weekly now, with a really long one coming soon.  Try not to fall into a pit of despair without, you know, constant Ramayana analysis.  Or whatever I write.  I know it’s tough.  Wow, I really do not even know what I DO up in here.)

English: It’s In

I spent the last week traveling around India and doing tourist stuff like seeing the Taj Mahal (THAT’S RIGHT) and going to bazaars. (My friend Janet thinks it’s really funny that “bazaar” and “bizarre” are pronounced the same, so if you are a nut like her, check out my awesome joke! Otherwise, don’t check anything out! I’m sorry!) And at these bazaars, there were clothes. With English words on them. But it was not quite English in the conventional sense. It was English in this sense:

1)  You know how there are t-shirts that say “Guess Jeanswear”? Or “Pepe Jeanswear”? Shirts with jeans? Feel me? Okay. Well I saw one of those, except instead of “Guess Jeanswear” or “Pepe Jeanswear” or anything else real, it said, “Affliction Jeanswear.”

Which I’m pretty sure is fake, but I made them up a motto just in case they are real and looking. I’m thinking “Affliction Jeanswear: For the trendy martyr in all of us.”

2)  A lot of guys here wear jeans with heavily embellished back pockets. I could explain what the embellishment looks like, but I’d rather you just take a confused man to Limited Too, hustle him and some Flower Fun Flares into a changing room, and find out for yourself. It is, by American standards, very girly. But NOT ALWAYS as demonstrated by a guy I saw outside the Red Fort, wearing pants with “GUN” written in large letters across each of his back pockets.

3)  We saw a shirt in a store that had a superhero comic on it. And the superhero was talking, and he was saying (according to my bad memory) “Ne’er something ere something I will something something.”

Except it was actually “eye will something something.”

And the eye/I thing has been done by De La Soul, but I don’t think it was a De La Soul reference. I think it was an accidental optical reference. (Which totally sounds like something from science, doesn’t it?)

A lot of things happened over the break besides fashion but I need to go to sleep.  So I will just say this: if you have ever wondered “How many people can you fit in an Indian train compartment?” the answer is ALL.  All people.  I swear to god that our last train ride involved every person in India.  Somebody sat on my head.

VINTAGE AND REALLY LONG: The Disability Special

I am about to go wander around India for ten days with no internet, so I figure I should leave something long here for you to chew on (not figuratively LITERALLY CHEW IT) until I get back.  So  here is something that I posted before on my ghetto blog that doesn’t exist anymore.  I have edited it since then.  It is better now.  But still REALLY LONG.  And also BATSHIT CRAZY.  Enjoy it if you have the patience.

The Disability Special

I am about to tell you the sort of story you don’t hear often – a story of screaming, disabilites, and bagging at a professional level. But first, some background.

Back when I was a bagger at The Store, I worked under a supervisor named Rob.  Despite the fact that he was a low-level manager of a grocery store, Rob was one of the few Store employees who harbored the illusion that his job was extremely difficult and taxing.  He was constantly stressed and borderline overwhelmed by his duties, which were watching other people work and, occasionally, counting money. Truly, if he had had business cards, they would have said “Rob: Doer of Difficult and Taxing Things.”  And then there would have been a little picture of a man fighting a dragon.  Or, more likely, a little picture of Jesus getting crucified.

An interesting fact about Rob is that, instead of saying things like “time for your break,” he would increase efficiency – at least in his mind – by pointing at you, pointing towards the break room, and then marching stalwartly away.  His unwillingness to speak was so great that he really could have been thought of as a mime enthusiast.  However, I’m pretty sure that he was actually a minimizing-interaction-with-other-people enthusiast.  The man was not a fan of others.  Especially when they touched him.  If The Store was crowded and people accidentally brushed past him to get where they were going, he would visibly flinch.

On an entirely different (but equally important) note, part of my job as a bagger was to help disabled customers with their shopping.  This typically meant blind customers, or customers in wheelchairs who couldn’t reach the higher shelves.  Disabled customers were defined broadly, though – once, I helped a woman who thought that she was being followed by an all-male choir.

I said, “So like… do they want to sing to you?”

“Oh no. They want something even worse than that.”

In cases like that, the man-to-man customer service got a little taxing – especially when, on her way out, that woman peed in the store’s entryway – but it was usually fine.

Except one day.

Freaky Deeky

My last day at work was a while ago now, but I stopped by yesterday to see Anna, and we had the following conversation:

ANNA: Be careful in India, Mae.

ME: I will.

ANNA: No seriously, be careful.  I don’t want you to die.

ME: I will be careful.

ANNA:  But you have to understand – there are freaks there.

ME: There are freaks everywhere, though. I mean, there are even some freaks here.  [UNDERSTATEMENT OF FOREVER]

ANNA: Yeah, but not like in India.

ME:  Are you sure?  Look outside.

(Outside, there was a panhandler.  But so much more special than our usual panhandler!  This guy had his hair up in some very nice [okay, that's a lie] Princess Leia buns.  He had also taken his shirt off, revealing his stomach, which was visibly moving because he had apparently just eaten something that was alive.  Like a bear.  Also, while most panhandlers display some sort of sign that says some sort of thing like “I’m Hungry” or “I’m Hungre,” he had no sign.  He just stood there silently, swaying back and forth, tweaking so hard that I just wanted to go BUY HIM SOME DRUGS so he could STOP DOING THAT and PUT ON HIS SHIRT PUT IT ON PUT IT ON.  He was seriously scary to behold.)

ANNA [looking at Mr. Princess Leia]: You kind of have a point.

(EPILOGUE: MPL has been sighted since, and he seemed to be in better shape.  His eyes were at least arguably in focus.  So – happy ending?)

Dino Time

Yesterday, I was talking to one of our plainclothes security guards, and he had this beard.  It was very, very thin, and it was just around the sides of his face.  I couldn’t really look directly at him because when I did, I thought, “YOU.  You have spent a lot of time alone with a magnifying mirror and a picture of Smoove B The Love Man.”

He was also wearing this enormous, FUBU-y vest that was covered, mysteriously, in colorful dinosaurs.

I was really bored, so when our conversation lagged, I continued it instead of peacing out on Smoove Dino (as I call him).  I said, “Nice vest!  I’m digging the dinosaurs!”

“Oh yeah?  Which one is your favorite?”

This seemed like a weird question, because someone with such a beard could not possibly know about the different kinds of dinosaurs.  You can’t like dinosaurs when you also like tweezing your face.  It’s COSMIC LAW (and I am a COSMIC LAWYER).  So I told him, “The red one” and not “The brontosaurus.”

He said, “Ah, yes.  The leaf-eater.  Personally, I prefer raptors.”

And then I looked at him and realized that we might be living in a POST-FACIAL-HAIR SOCIETY.  Where like, Santa has a Hitler stache and babies have goatees.  Because if you look like your name is “Smoove Dino,” you should not actually know about dinos, and you DEFINITELY should not know what they eat unless SOMETHING is UP.

I was really upset.

But then I got over it because then we talked about how he had a gun – direct quote from him: “It sounds bad to say it, but… I HAVE A GUN” – and that’s the sort of conversation I enjoy most.

I’m not even really kidding.