Old Man Winter Is On My List

I hate the winter. This year, it's been unseasonably mild here in the Northeast right up until... about a week ago. Last Saturday, I even ran my first 4.4 mile race in 40 degree weather. Alas, the winds of change have swept through - literally; it's so windy outside today that someone's car alarm went off. I've been able to ignore how much I really loathe being cold and shivery, wondering why the hell I still live in a place where half the year makes me want to kill myself, until this week. I forgot how hard it is to get out of bed in mid-January... I probably wouldn't even be up now, if my cat hadn't started doing suicide dive-bombs off my bureau onto my head at 7 this morning. Winter just sucks. I will never understand people who would rather be cold than hot... I'm such a summer person. Long days, green grass, leisurely strolls, drinks with umbrellas in them... THAT'S the life, right there. New York anywhere from January through March is absolute hell. But New York, anywhere from June through October, is one gorgeous place. North of Manhattan, that is. Manhattan in the summer is a fucking sewage pit.

Heads Up, Guys

Gentlemen, take note. If you need a few pointers to improve your relations with the ladies, this MSN article is there to help. I'm not quite sure that I've ever actually seen two guys perform a chest-bump in front of me, but I'd imagine that once would be plenty...

C is for Cookie...

A student left me a message today, (on my birthday, after the most painful transfer advisement I've ever encountered) wanting to negotiate her math credits transferring in for NEXT fall from a community college. They're not coming in. She doesn't understand why. Would it be wrong if I called her and said, "Because MAT 004 and MAT 005 - 'Cookie Monster Teaches The Numberline' is not college-fucking level algebra!!!"? That would be wrong. Right?

Does Anyone Have a Garbage Can?

On occasion, people make me want to vomit.

102 and Rising

I do apologize, everyone. I really have been bloggeruseless of late. Not that it's an excuse, but I seem to have hit a period of transition in life that has kept me rather busy. I love every moment of my new status as an apartment-dweller, but seeing as how I'm too poor to afford the Internet, it cuts down on my ability to blog at will. Also in recent months, I have somehow stumbled into a new position at work (I say "somehow" like I didn't get on the floor and beg for it) that involves an almost-liveable wage and actual, grown-up responsibilities that don't involve being verbally abused on the phone for hours on end. Because I have actual work to do, I am now forced to do things like homework for class outside of my normal 8-5 day, decreasing the amount of free time I have available for witty reparte.

Having said this, I miss you all. In brief review... I was thrilled about the November elections, and can't say the tiny optimist left in me didn't hope it was coming (if you call screaming, "fuck the Republicans!" in your head "optimistic"). The Baker Hamilton Commission is right, but I could have made those recommendations 2 years ago. I still hate Britney Spears, and I found her departure and quick return to skankdom less than surprising. Barak Obama is fabulous. I hope they make a poignant, touching movie about James Kim, who walked 16 miles in the snow to save his family. I've developed a weird fascination with the WE channel, and I'm pretty sure a pod person has taken over my body - I asked for a mixer (like, for baking) for Channukah.

By the way, I'm on the way to the doctor's office so that I can get medication for this very bad head cold I've developed. Anything I've said here today is inadmissible in court as the rantings of a feverish lunatic.

Decision 2006

I miss Tom Brokaw. And Peter Jennings.

Rot in Hell, Bill O'Reilly

Did anyone see Letterman on Friday? If not, here's a quick synopsis. This is why David Letterman is awesome and Bill O'Reilly should drop off the planet. He was on Oprah on Friday as well, which I listened to while cleaning my apartment and doing laundry. I'm pretty sure I yelled, "rot in hell and die!" at the tv at least 6 or 7 times, like a kid with tourette's. The fact that Oprah would even bring a conservative, misogynist asshole like him on her show disappoints me. I've decided he's up in my Top 10 Republicans Who Should Vanish list.

Explosive Combination

I'm looking up punch recipes. WHY do people think it's okay to mix vodka and beer? In the same bowl? This is NOT ACCEPTABLE, people!

QAD 10/11/06

What can you ever really know of other people's souls - of
their temptations, their opportunities, their struggles?
One soul in the whole creation you do know: and it is the
only one whose fate is placed in your hands.
--C.S. Lewis

Wag The... What?

I saw a terrible movie (for free) the other night. Employee of the Month. Now, I'm a Dane Cook fan most of the time. I enjoy his comedy, he makes me laugh, and it's fun in general to watch people get hurt. The prominent players in this particular piece of film making are Dane, Andy Dick, Jessica Simpson, Dax Shepard and the guy who played Pedro in Napoleon Dynamite. Clearly a cast with a range. The jokes and sight gags were funny, though the script was awful (and I'm not being a movie snob... remember, I loved Dude Where's My Car).

My beef here is that the writers put a Glengarry Glen Ross reference, pretty blatantly, in the movie. Talk about a waste of an excellent reference to both a great play (yes people, it was a play first) and a great movie with an awesome cast. How can you actually put that in the movie and expect the viewers (the 2 in the audience who actually GET it, that is) not to compare Dax, Dane and Andy to Al Pacino, Kevin Spacey, and Jack Lemmon? Let us take a moment and picture the way the conversation between the head writer and... say... Jessica Simpson went. "Yeah, I'm going to reference David Mamet... you know, the guy who wrote Wag the Dog? No? the Untouchables? No? State and Main? No? Joan of Bark:The Dog Who Saved France? YES! YES! THAT'S the guy!"

Comeback Bill

If only Bill Clinton would return to us as President, how happy I would be...

QAD 9/22/06

The deepest craving of human nature is the need to
be appreciated.
--William James

QAD 9/13/06

Whatever we expect with confidence becomes our own
self-fulfilling prophecy.
--Brian Tracy

We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not
by mechanical aid, but by an infinite expectation of
the dawn.
--Henry David Thoreau


I'm sad today.

Give Me a Break

The world we live in really concerns me when one of the top stories on the news this morning was, "Lindsay Lohan loses her purse at Heathrow Airport!" Maybe if she could bother to carry her own shit, this wouldn't be a late-breaking 'news' story. Oh, to be back in college discussing the state of the media today...

QAD 9/6/06

If I were asked ... to what the singular prosperity and
growing strength of Americans ought mainly to be
attributed, I should reply: To the superiority of
their women.
--Alexis de Tocqueville

An army of principles can penetrate where an army of
soldiers cannot.
--Thomas Paine

War is not the continuation of politics with different
means, it is the greatest mass-crime perpetrated on the
community of man.
--Alfred Adler

Education is not the filling of a pail,
but the lighting of a fire.
--Wiliam Butler Yeats

Peace is constructed, not fought for.
--Brent Davis

Hiding from Evil

Casey: i saw him at the mall sun.
Casey: didnt say hi
Casey: on purpose
Me: ooooh
Me: you're a badass
Casey: i dodged
Me: did you hide?
Me: like duck behind a garbage can?
Casey: ducked behind a rack at forever 21
Me: that's awesome

Grave Digger

I've been hearing quite a bit about Forbes article that some pigheaded moron (Michael Noer) wrote recently about the evils of marrying career women, so I finally decided today [while cementing my position in the land of indentured servitude by being forced to work 6 hours on a Saturday] to take a look at it. First of all, I think the definition Mr. Noer has placed on the term "career girl (not woman)" is offensive. Never mind the "girl" clause, but his definition is, "A career girl has a university-level (or higher) education, works more than 35 hours a week outside the home and makes more than $30,000 a year." I'm sorry, but in her mid-20s or higher, it's appalling that a man thinks that 30k and 35 hours a week is anywhere NEAR slaving away at a high-powered position. In today's global economy, 30k for a woman with a 4-year college education is barely enough to pay the rent and put food on the table for herself, never mind a family. It's practically an un-liveable salary in our nation's largest cities. We're also lucky if any job finds a 35 hour work week acceptable... this coming from a woman who has worked a total of just about 50 hours this week alone.

In the broader sense, I think this article brings to light some serious problems with regards to the way our patriarchial society pigeonholes women into 'acceptable' and 'unacceptable' modes of behavior. The "career girls" that Michael Noer is criticizing are doing nothing more than what society has pressured them to do for decades - be JUST LIKE MEN. "You throw like a girl," and "why are girls so sensitive? Why can't you be more like us?" are phrases we hear every day of our lives. So what have we done? In our effort to "please our men", we've gone ahead and done exactly that. They say immitation is the highest form of flattery. If so, why are men suddenly so vocal about their complaints? It's ok for men to be disgusting pigs around the house, it's socially acceptable (or at least understood) that busy "career men" have affairs at the office, it's alright if they don't want children, and they get a carte-blanche for behaviors that basically amount to inexcuseable in women. Is it really the women and their behaviors that Noer has a problem with here? I tend to wonder if it's not the fact that, when a mirror image of 'acceptable' male behavior is held up, they find that they don't much like what they see. If your expectations for women are held to such a high standard of excellence, maybe the critical lens needs to be turned inward. After all, Mr. Noer, you should be flattered - we're simply following in your footsteps. We want to be just like you. What part of that do you have such a problem with?

QAD 8/18/06

To love. To be loved. To never forget your own
insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable
violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you.

To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty
to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or
complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never
power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand.
To never look away. And never, never, to forget.
--Arundhati Roy

In this war – as in others – I am less interested in
honoring the dead than in preventing the dead.
--Butler Shaffer

FYI

Just for the record...

Do not, I repeat, DO NOT, ever call me and ask for your student ID and PIN number... and then tell me you don't have a pen. This is unacceptable. I am fully aware that I am experiencing hormone-induced rage blackouts, but that is just ridiculous, infantile bullshit. If you are calling an institution with the specific purpose of obtaining a series of 15 non-sequential numbers that serve the purpose of identification, unless you have some kind of verbal photographic memory, PICK UP A FUCKING PEN!

Take Note

I saw this on MSN and thought it was amusing.

1. Remember in old movies when women used to swoon and "take to the bed" for days at a time? That never happens. We're stronger than that. That being said, if we ever decide to "take to the bed" for days at a time, there's not a thing you can do about it.

2. Sometimes we think we really understand men. Then we regain consciousness.

3. Superskinny women really irritate us. We hate when they say, "Sometimes I just forget to eat." Now, I've forgotten my anniversary and where I parked my car. But I've never forgotten to eat.

4. We do like to have sex, just not at midnight when we have to get up at the crack of dawn to feed two kids, three dogs, and a pair of fat goldfish.

5. We'll gladly agree to stop complaining about our "time of the month" if men will kindly take over the little chores of childbearing, morning sickness, and postpartum emotional swings. Deal?

6. Women really do want to be on time. It's just that everything starts so darned early.

7. We know high heels are sexy, but we'll take our comfy black Uggs any day of the week.

8. Homespun wisdom from someone who knows: Just because we're southern belles doesn't mean we have bats in our belfries.

9. We really do like to cook. It's just that we cooked so much for our boyfriends before we got married that we're sick of being in the kitchen. Sorry you missed it.

10. Men are free to think they're the boss, as long as they know we're the chairman of the board.