so much crank in my pants.

i think i have read everything of interest on the internet, i haven't been particularly engrossed in a book in weeks (months?), and my apartment is colder than it should be in los angeles.
also, my job has ceased to hold any possibility of greater interest, but the idea of pretending to be enthusiastic about a different sort of job in a cover letter seems downright nauseating.
in other news, the clothes on the drying rack have been dry for several days, but the prospect of hanging them in the closet overwhelms me.
finally, i have purchased several containers for the purpose of greater organization in the home, but they remain seated where i left them upon returning home post-shopping.
bill and i have finally succeeded in watching virtually every episode of virtually every show to have received high praise in the past few years.
i have experimented with improving my french via podcast, but alas, je cherche encore un divertissement.
Et aussi, le dimanche passe, un homme s'est adresse a moi en francais, et je n'ai que compris le mot "jamais." Je pense que cette anecdote est relevateur.
O forse, ho bisogno practicare il mio italiano.
Ho imparato molte cose che non sono piu importanti.

wheee

Bill and I have been the proud owners of a wii for about a week now.

I am quite satisfied thus far with our purchase, though I must say it brings out some less attractive boyfriend-attributes (how incredibly seriously he takes his ability to roll strikes). However, the seriousness with which Bill practices his boxing surely will bring out more attractive boyfriend-attributes (guns!), so I suppose we will soon be in balance.

spit rock story

does anyone remember reading a story where someone (i think a man, i think the protagonist & narrator) picks up what he thinks is a pretty rock but turns out to be a blob of spit?


i really need to know what that story is...

exhume.

i notice a lot of tv drama focuses on the exhumation of bodies, and various people connected to the body requiring exhumation causing a big fuss about not wanting the deburial to occur.
i personally don't see what the fuss is all about.
i want to go on record that should i be murdered, die of a mysterious disease, etc, i do not mind being exhumed. it doesn't trouble me, and i should hope it won't bother any of you.

ink.

I am beginning to wonder if I am not appropriately expressing my individuality by remaining untattooed.

Adult Matters

Man, I so wish this was about porn or something.

Alas, more pedestrian adult matters. Actually, I'm not sure if dental care is more pedestrian than porn...

But, how does one choose a dentist? I've had the same dentist for as long as I remember. Unfortunately, I have to choose a dentist for my dental hmo. It appears I have to make some sort of official dental care proclamation, before having ever seen a dentist outside of my mother's zip code.

And a dentist, of all things. The most challenging of all health care providers. I mean, I have heard horror stories galore of greedy dentists ordering multiple unnecessary procedures.

I assume, however, that perhaps some of my readership has faced this challenge in the past... so, what did you do? Help me choose wisely.

hip hood

Bill & I's neighborhood made the New York Times! We are so totally cool (if too poor to eat at the restaurants featured... but we walk by them all the time!)...

In Culver City, Calif., Art and Food Turn a Nowhere Into a Somewhere

$52 feminism

California NOW, why do you make your awesome feminist hoodie so expensive??? It's so much cuter than any other hoodie I have ever seen. I have wanted you for over a year now, but at $52 the chance of me ever buying you is slim to none.

I know that a reasonably crafty person could buy some fuzzy letters and brown hoodies and construct a near-identical sweatshirt, but I am not reasonably crafty.

$52 is the equivalent to half a day's work, roughly 1/25 of my rent. Obviously, not something I can part with lightly. But that's not even the real issue, which is, why a hoodie would cost $52 in the first place! Sweatshop-free & USA-made, OK, but come on! This is totally a for-profit hoodie. I mean, American Apparel's retail of their basic men's hoodie is $41. However, I have determined that their wholesale price is roughly 25% of their retail price, making the approximate cost $10. I appreciate that there are printing, administrative, etc costs and that NOW also likely uses the sale of their products to raise money. However, $30-40 is surely fair. My $30/annual donation should surely get me a hoodie-hookup...


Note: Friends, family, gift-givers-- don't take this as a buy-me plea. I scorn $52 hoodies.

oh, the sickness!

i have the flu.

i had to go home sick from work, which would be cool, except i don't have sick leave yet. and my lame boyfriend is going to be at school until like midnight, so no one is here to take care of me!

and i had to go to the grocery store all by myself to get popsicles and seven-up. and, now that i'm home, all i want is sourdough bread.

wah wah wah.

update: i also want cheez-its.

lost the touch

so, i just sat down to draw you the most picture-worthy of things... but i couldn't do it. i fear that i've lost my touch, after probably a year or so of not drawing any pictures for my blog. perspective totally baffled me, and i felt sad about my inability to render the world as i see it, and yet, unwilling to produce the charmingly simplistic vignette i no doubt would have come up with.

i suppose this serves as a useful metaphor for lack of event in my daily life of... get this: going to work, cooking food, watching gilmore girls season six on dvd (finally! blockbuster online had totally been holding out on me), and reading about sex. the reading about sex is a relatively new development, enabled by a christmas gift i received, sex & single girls, a collection of essays written by a number of individuals very inclusively defined as 'girl' and 'single.' fascinating stuff, to be sure.

but, back to what i wished to render for you in visual form.

on my way to work today, i had the great fortune of witnessing a man drag a body from the back seat of his car in the middle of an intersection and begin either life-saving measures or unspeakable violence. obviously, traffic slowed as this atrocity went on, so, being stuck in my car, i had the opportunity to rubberneck. as i slowly drove past (the police and an ambulance had since arrived), it became apparent that this man had pulled the mother of his child out of the car and began beating her in the middle of an 8-lane intersection! I was able to ascertain the facts of this scene as he was being handcuffed and yelling "you're a liar! you can't do this to me or my child! you're going to jail."

i know. it is so awesome that they have a child.

anyway, i know violence against women is a terrible terrible thing (unless, of course, it's consensual, and, i don't know, approved by whatever governing body bdsm has. but sometimes, it's just too absurd not to entertain. just so you know, the victim was standing and more or less ok when I saw this fascinating tableau unfold before my very eyes.

finally, this is actually the third scene i've witnessed in los angeles of a man being handcuffed by the police. i don't think i'd ever seen that before.

well, i have returned from a lovely trip to kansas city, where sadly i got no snow. this may very well be my first totally snow-free winter, which i find pretty disappointing. hopefully, bill and i will get to take a mountain vacation, but no guarantees.

i must say, i thoroughly enjoyed the lack of waiting in traffic, in line, for a table, etc, that came with my kansas city visit. there is surely something to be said for relative tranquility. i also enjoyed drinking copious amounts of booze with friends. i did not enjoy flight delays, etc.

while bill was suffering with the denver fiasco, i frequently thanked the powers that be that i would be flying through balmy dallas. the powers that be, no doubt peevish about my usual lack of attention, saw fit to bring tornadoes through dallas, cancelling my own flights. so, that was a bit of a bummer.

a bit bigger of a bummer, of course, as the 3,000 us soldiers dead in iraq. a tragic headlines day when i hoped to be reading feature-y predictions about the year to come. let's hope that 2007 brings less violence.

Celebrity, etc.

Today I sold a turkey to Diana Ross.

Faye Dunaway asked me for the time.

Yesterday, I observed Kirsten Dunst to eat a chocolate from the bulk bins. Stealing a chocolate. In pink converse.

And finally, last week I saw Leonardo Di Caprio, who departed Whole Foods in a large BMW. Not a hybrid. Fraud.

In conclusion, I miss truly crappy weather.

Funnestness

Alt+Clicking at the New York Times Website.

Tips
To find reference information about the words used in this article, hold down the ALT key and click on any word, phrase or name. A new window will open with a dictionary definition or encyclopedia entry.

This is awesome. I want the whole world to be like that.

Christmas shopping, joyous new finds

Etsy is my new obsession. For those unfamiliar, it is a virtual bazaar of all things wondrous and handmade (and bargainful!). I purchased a most beautiful umbrella print, and am eagerly scouring the site around the clock for presents.
I can not begin to tell of my excitement in finding such treasures as a burnt Patti Hearse lamp, or perhaps a Derrida onesie. Look for yourselves, and, crafty friends, sell your wares!

Nasi Bungkus

Bill and I sampled Indonesian cuisine at our local Indo Cafe. It was supremely delicious, and I ate something called Nasi Bungkus. Unfortunately, I learned that Nasi Bungkus basically means wrapped rice, which so totally does not describe what I ate today.
Bill and I were also complimented on our spicy-eating, which of course, made us feel totally special.
Anyway, here is a picture of Nasi Bungkus. It is insanely cute, even if the name is pretty vulgar.

longing?

i don't know if it's because of lack of fun in my daily life, but for some reason, i am driven mad with longing for a Nintendo Wii. I just know that I have to have it.

New Experiences, bad.

For the first time in my life, I live below someone. Someone who apparently has some sort of incredibly loud menagerie, with things like stampeding antelopes and perhaps a handful of elephants. They are new to my building, and I miss the old, silent, above-me residents.
I think they now have chimpanzees jumping on some sort of trampoline. I can't be sure, but it's mighty loud.
One of the words that greatly pleases me is "misspellings." Blogger assures me that I have none.

For some reason, Bill has held off on posting on my eminent greatness as a girlfriend. I baked cinnamon bread yesterday, and, if I do say so myself, it tastes and looks just like real cinnamon bread. And, at the estimated cost of about $.50 a loaf, definitely trumps the cost of purchasing speciality bread at the grocery store. However, it is messy, and cleaning is Bill's job. Perhaps this is why he is not singing my praises to the moon or whatever.

Yes, my new hobby on my days off is "baking." It's not my preferred day off activity, as it's not as fun as drinking, shopping, etc, but it is more productive. And sadly, I have yet to acquire any friends in Los Angeles of the girl-persuasion, whom, let's be honest, are vastly preferable to friends of the heterogametic sex. Possibly this is the first time I have used the word heterogametic. I will continue to do so.

one of the things...

People from Los Angeles (by this I mean those that feel some sense of ownership in this bizarre city--which basically means anyone who has lived here longer than me) like to do this crazy bait and switch thing, where they ask you about your celebrity sightings and the joy you must take in their proximity, and then, when you express any interest at all in continuing the conversation, announce their total indifference to celebrity while recounting their own Julia Roberts sighting at Starbucks that very morning.

Of course, since virtually all of my readership lives outside of Los Angeles, I will now talk about all the celebrities I have thus far seen.

1. Guy who plays Uncle Vic on Queer as Folk.
2. Ed Begley, Jr (see a few posts ago).
   
3. Less-hot Doctor on Nip/Tuck (hotter than expected, to be sure).
4. Emily the crazy one on 90210 for one season (Christine Elise is her real name).
5. Thora Birch (on the red carpet at the AFI Film Festival).
6. Debbie Mazur (also at AFI).
7. Guy who plays John Abruzzi on Prison Break (in track pants, cheap slip-on sandals with socks, and a "Superlative Conspiracy" t-shirt). We had a passing-the-time at the check-out line conversation. I am glad that I did not make a joke about Whole Foods superlative turkeys, as I see now that Superlative Conspiracy is merely a brand.
   

In any case, I've just passed the two-month point with life in LA. So this is where I stand. The only celebrities I have recognized without assistance have been Emily from 90210 and Uncle Vic. I need to work on sharpening my eyes.

Progress

I made bagels. I'm not generally a baker, and I've never journeyed into the world of yeast, so this is a pretty big deal for me. They taste good, but don't look so pretty. I'll try again another day. They are topped with chives (from my garden), garlic, and pecorino.
Here they are: