Overly Verbal

Few people will remember Thursday, June 29, 2006. As it happens, that day held the very first entry to this here blog. And I should do something about that, what with tomorrow being Friday, June 29, 2007 and all, but I’ve got a couple of issues surrounding this anniversary.

First off, anniversaries are stupid. Birthdays are stupid. Commemorating an event just because it happened exactly 365 days ago is stupid. Calendars are, really, kind of stupid (except insofar as they help you keep track of stuff like how many first dates you’ve been on without wanting to go on a second date). Arbitrariness is stupid, basically.

Worse yet, the word blog is kind of stupid. The word blogiversary? Makes me almost as ill as does using the word blog as a verb. Or capitalizing it. (Putting an apostrophe before it, to indicate that the letters “we” have been removed? That’s fine, but you gotta make sure the apostrophe is facing the right way, because if you accidentally use a single open quote mark, that’s all wrong.)

Okay, what am I bitching about again? Right. My blog is one year old tomorrow. You know what I’m going to do about it? Sometime over the weekend I’m going to change the archives links so that there’s just one link to the 2006 archives, instead of links for each month in 2006, because otherwise that list of links is going to get all unwieldy.

Okay, one other thing. I’m going to ask, again, that you get your own blog. My odious ghettolord did, and someone else I know did (but then got too busy doing other junk to keep it up, which makes me sad), but I think the rest of you should go ahead and get your own blogs too so that I don’t have to do everything.

Thank you in advance for your cooperation in this matter.

In the course of my day I had good cause to get both “Cemetry Gates” and Split Enz’* “I Got You” stuck in my head.

The first was at work, when I had a conversation that somehow included Yeats, or Keats, I can’t remember which just now. At work. Thanks, remaining-anonymous-here co-worker, for actually being a literate person. That makes me happy.

And the second one was when iTunes sent me an e-mail to tell me Crowded House has a new album coming out. Unfortunately, iTunes, I’m still mad at you. And now even more so, because I need someone to remind me what the hell movie “I Got You” was in, and you can’t do it. (Can one of all y’all do it instead? You know the song I mean: “I don’t know why sometimes I get frightened. You can see my eyes and tell that I’m not lyin’.” Anyone? It’s starting to drive me nuts.)

Also, I currently have “Always Something There to Remind Me” stuck in my head. Thankfully, it’s the Naked Eyes version, and not some other (more) cheesy one, but still, if Burt Bacharach was aware that I totally have the hots for him, well, I don’t even want to think about what might happen. There are a lot of “What Would X Do?” episodes in my life. Sometimes it’s actually Jesus, other times Mr. Rogers, but now I think I have to add “What Would Burt Bacharach Rhyme?” to that whole thing. People aren’t going to like it, but I can’t help but me.

Also, today I got something I really wanted. Mostly because I present problems to people that matter, but I don’t just present problems, I also present potential solutions, said solutions revolving entirely around things I want to make me happier. And my potential solutions usually don’t suck, so when they’re presented to someone in a position to effect change, they generally fly. This one in particular is going to be a little hard to spin without it seeming like I’m a demanding bitch who has very little tolerance for people who exhibit the general not-like-Jenniferness that I so can’t tolerate, but you know what? I’d rather be right than well-liked, rather be happy than considered a person tolerant of sloth, rather be me than someone else, rather stir up trouble, rock the boat, whatever. So there’s that. Even thought I bitch a lot, I also usually get whatever it is that I actually want. Take that, gods who are trying to bandy me about. Ha!

Tomorrow I’ll try to be slightly less weird, and also slightly less high on myself.

In the interim, though, I’ve been tasked with creating a reading list. If you were a modern American Jew, and needed a reading list of all of the master works of Modern American Jewish Literature, what am I missing? Here’s the short list:

• Saul Bellow - Henderson the Rain King
• Philip Roth - The Professor of Desire (bearing in mind that everyone, but everyone, should have already read Portnoy’s Complaint, and you should start there before reading what I consider to be one of the most amazing novels ever written in English - if you don’t like The Professor of Desire, you’re dead to me. Dead.)
• Chaim Potok - The Chosen/My Name is Asher Lev (I can’t decide, and so I won’t. Just read both of them - what the heck else are you doing?)
• Jerzy Kosinski - Being There
• Paul Auster - The New York Trilogy. (I know from New York City.)
• Alan Lightman - Einstein’s Dreams (sometimes, one particular passage makes me cry:

  “There is a place where time stands still. . . . As a traveler approaches this place from any direction, he moves more and more slowly. His heartbeats grow farther apart, his breathing slackens, his temperature drops, his thoughts diminish, until he reaches dead center and stops. For this is the center of time. From this place, time travels outward in concentric circles–at rest at the center, slowly picking up speed at greater diameters.

  Who would make pilgrimage to the center of time? Parents with children, and lovers.”

  Sure, sometimes I’m overly sensitive, but it makes me fucking cry. And it’s just words, right? But if you put the right words in the right order, you can move someone to tears. To goddamned tears. With words. Reason enough to wake up in the morning, if you ask me.)

• Woody Allen - Something I can’t put my finger on right now, but certainly “The Whore of Mensa”. Maybe “My Speech to the Graduates”?
• Frank Conroy - Body and Soul (I love that book, and if you want to tell me I shouldn’t, you should probably just shut up.)
• And here’s where I go even more ridiculous - Erich Segal’s Love Story. (There’s no telling whether I’m actually named Jennifer because of that novel, or the movie made because of that novel, but honestly, if you haven’t read it, you should.)

Sara? Weigh in here, if you would. You’re literary like I am, no?

___
* Have you ever had a conversation at work that lasted for days and was centered solely around whether names that end in Z should take an apostrophe-S or simply an apostrophe when they’re made possessive? I have, and that’s why I have enjoyed my life this far so goddamned much. It really depends upon how many syllables the names have. Really, it does, and I can’t understand why more people don’t care about these things the way I do.

I didn’t make muffins over the weekend. Instead, I ate PopTarts for breakfast. Same effect, less work.

And I’m aggravated, so here’s a series of letters:

Dear Everyone engaged in the sale of subscriptions to paper copies of the Washington Post or New York Times, term life insurance, pre-approved car loans, gym memberships, digital telephone service, cable television, and gutter-cleaning services,

I don’t need you. I don’t anticipate needing you any time soon, and when I do need you, I’ll find you myself. Persistent insistence that I might have lied when I told you last time you called me that I didn’t need your services is not getting any of us anywhere. Really. Knock it off.

Dear Planned Parenthood, Amnesty International, PBS, Shakespeare Theatre Company, Smithsonian Institution, NPR, and Police Assistance Leagues and Volunteer Fire Departments of everywhere I’ve ever lived in my entire life,

Nice work, but I don’t have any money. Really. If I did, I’d give you some. Please save the postage and stop mailing me things. I’ve told you each at least twice now.

Dear ASPCA,

I’ve already instructed everyone to give money to you instead of giving my cat presents for his birthday. That’s all I can do right now.

Dear Juggling Guy on the sidewalk between my work and the Metro station,

The first couple of times I bumped into you on the sidewalk I was all like, “Hey! A juggler! What fun!” Now I just wish you’d just go juggle somewhere else, especially because the humidity is 67% and you’re slowing everyone down, including the people immediately in front of me on the sidewalk. (I understand Montana is pleasant this time of year, and completely bereft of jugglers.)

Dear Apple,

What the hell is so hard about figuring out how to alphabetize artists by their last names, instead of by their first names? You can make a fancy phone that can do everything I need it to do (save pay for things and make coffee), and you can’t get somebody to make iTunes alphabetize correctly? You’re starting to make me sad.

Dear Netflix,

My dad has Netflix. My friends and co-workers and each and every one of my ex-boyfriends? They all have Netflix. If my cat could use the DVD player, he’d have Netflix. You’ve entirely saturated the market, and while it may be true that some of my neighbors do not have Netflix, I refuse to interact with them long enough to find out whether they are in desperate need of DVDs, because they exhibit a general not-like-Jenniferness that is alarming. So please stop asking me to ask other people to subscribe to Netflix. I will continue my subscription until I have watched every movie I have ever wanted to see, and many, many movies I did not want to see, but I can’t add any other people to your revenue stream. Okay? Okay.*

There, I think I feel better now. I really am aiming at the being positive, but it’s, if you will, a long shot. I’ll try again tomorrow.

_____
* If you happen to be reading this and are the very last person on earth without a Netflix subscription, for the love of God, get a life already. They mail you movies!

I have that Natasha Bedingfield song “Unwritten” stuck in my head. It’s now in a television commercial for shampoo or something equally unimportant. Thing is, I secretly like that song, but it’s better if you’re in a car. (Lots of songs are better if you’re driving in a car, not least of which are Madonna’s “Like a Prayer”, Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car”, and Peter Gabriel’s “Solsbury Hill”. Don’t ask me why - I’m not in charge, I just work here.)

I happen not to be in a car at the moment, and so I’m just wishing it would stop. I’m working on figuring out a way to write entries to my blog from a moving car, but that will require buying some sort of mobile computing device, and a car, so it’s gonna be a while.

I also wish that this week had played out differently. Nothing I can do about that now, and I’m still committed to this whole positive outlook thing, but it’s a struggle. Earlier this week I sat through a meeting during which I repeatedly had to endure someone pronouncing the word “ask” “ax”. Honestly. Three separate times. That about did me in, and that was only Tuesday. I really still haven’t gotten over it. Even when I worked at Burger King no one ever mispronounced three-letter words.

I get the not knowing how to pronounce words - I didn’t know how to pronounce, say, Goethe, until someone said it out loud in my presence. You read a word, and maybe you don’t have an unabridged dictionary easily at hand, so you say it wrong when you say it out loud. For example, my fifth grade teacher always said “integral” “integ-ral” instead of “inte-gral”. I still do that. (Of course, the second accepted pronunciation is not technically wrong, so I’m, as usual, right, but I can accept a different approach to pronunciation. Just not of words that consist of only three god-damned letters.)

Other words are also hard to pronounce - facetious, for example. I had a friend in New York who did not have English as a first language, and his mispronunciation of facetious is still funny to me. I’ve even convinced many other people to mispronounce it with me - I really am easily amused. But it’s not like people say facetious out loud every day, where ask is sort of a common word. So you know how you doodle when you’re in a meeting and someone is doing something obnoxious? I made a very solid, very large, very dark rectangle with my freshly sharpened pencil, where if I hadn’t been sitting directly next to an important leader at my firm, I might have instead written, “For the love of god, is there some way we could only hire people who possess basic communication skills?”

Wait, was I being positive? Damn. I’ll try again tomorrow. My level of aggravation is reaching epic proportions. Something’s got to give, and I trust it will, but in the interim I’m going to use baking as a coping mechanism, and make some truly lovely muffins for breakfast. That might help. Muffins are good.

These things are awesome:

• provolone
• making up elaborate stories about your clients, if they were Revolutionary War heroes instead of modern Americans
• looking forward to getting enough sleep over the weekend
• my cat

These things are not-so-awesome:

• calling a cab, and being told that the cab will arrive in 10-15 minutes, and then calling the cab company again 25 minutes later to inquire as to the whereabouts of the cab, only to be told the number of the cab which was to have arrived no more than 10 minutes ago - I’m glad that cab 218 is coming to get me, but I’d be more glad to have simply had cab 218 come get me 10 minutes ago. How does it help me to know the number of the cab which is making me late? I know I’m sometimes thick and all, but really.
• 78% humidity
• there never seems to be enough time to do the things you want to do, once you find them*

Hey! Look what I just did! I refrained from listing another not-so-awesome thing, and thereby listed more awesome than not-so-awesome things. This whole taking a positive outlook thing is totally working out! (Or else I am actually bi-polar. Whatever.)

____________
* Do I have Time in a Bottle stuck in my head? Well, yeah. Is that awesome, or not-so-awesome? Only time will tell.

I’m still here, but I’m whiny. Some things are not going my way, and as we all know, I get grouchy when things don’t go my way. So I thought that instead of whining here, I would make a list of my recent simple pleasures, because people are always advocating finding joy in unexpected and/or obvious places. So here goes:

I like working from home instead of going to my office, because even though I end up spending the whole day without talking to another human being, which is sometimes lonely, Mouse likes to sit on my lap, and when he’s sitting on my lap while I’m working, it’s like killing two birds with one stone.

I like my new flash drive. It’s super-small, and has a flip-top thingy instead of a removable cap that would always end up in the bottom of my bag. And it can store way more stuff than I actually need to ferry back and forth between work and home, but it’s so small it’s like not even a thing at all. I like small things that are also useful, but small things that are not useful make me happy too.

Baby ducks, for example. There are ducks that live in the creek, and they’ve had three babies - the babies are so cute it’s almost too much. And there’s a baby bunny in the bush out back too, and although I’m sure baby ducks and bunnies have some utility, that doesn’t matter - they’re just cute and small.

(And just so you don’t think I’ve been abducted and replaced by someone who can make a whole list of things that make me happy, I’ll just go ahead and complain for a little while - why can’t I have one thing that allows me to make phone calls, store files, listen to music, take pictures, and read the Internet? “Oh, you mean like an iPhone? You can have one of those, Jen.” Yeah, that would be great, but I also want it to act like a credit card, and the SmarTrip card that allows me to pay for bus and Metro rides. I think you can only get something like that in Japan, and I am not moving to Japan. I don’t actually know what the hell I’m doing, but I am not moving to Japan.)

Other things that are simple which I like are

• Dr. Pepper
• buying two new skirts even though I already own enough skirts for something like 11 people
• having friends and (certain) co-workers who are as smart as I am
• The Pogues (and the fact that on my iPod The Pogues come right before Poison, which fact sometimes makes me get “Every Rose Has its Thorn” stuck in my head)
• and being nice to strangers who also happen to be service personnel, like the guy watering the plants outside - would it kill more people to say to him, “Those plants look great! Considering this weather, I’m surprised they’re not all dead”? Makes him feel good, and then you can feel good for making someone else feel good.

Oh my god, I have been abducted. Did I just say you that you can feel good by making other people feel good? I probably ought to have my head checked. Anyway, I had to write something, lest you all think I’ve wandered off permanently, and I really am trying to keep a positive outlook, even though certain things aren’t going my way. So far, so good, eh?

So I was just thinking about how I should really write something, on account of I have a blog and all, but I really don’t want to sit here complaining about my co-workers, because that’s not nice, and several paragraphs about how I am dying of seasonal allergies would be frankly boring.

So I visited Wikipedia to see whether June 14 is a day of any sort, and as it happens, it’s Flag Day. So now I have “You’re a Grand Old Flag” stuck in my head. (I love that silly song. It’s got the word “auld” in it, which is always good in a song, and it’s a march, which is rousing and whatnot.) So Happy Flag Day! (I think I’ll make a pinata.) I don’t own a flag, but if I did, I would make a point of not flying it outside today, because my neighbors would likely steal it.

And it also happens to be World Blood Donor Day, which just makes me feel bad, because although I made a commitment to give blood three times this year, I haven’t done so once. I couldn’t if I wanted to today anyway, since I feel slightly dizzy as it is, without also having one-twelfth of my blood removed. But there are only 200 days remaining in 2007, and I’ve made almost no progress on the list of things to do (and don’t have the energy to make a link to that list even, let alone review it and then actually do something listed therein). Anyway, you should go donate some blood.

Other than the feeling bad about not giving blood, the sneezing, and the annoying co-workers, I pretty much got nothin’. Is anything happening to anyone else, so I can live vicariously through someone? Anyone?

Okay, so I guess things are getting a little better around here. The air conditioning works, but I would like to display the following picture of the ladder that was set up in my home in order to achieve this feat:

I’m not really that concerned that they had to use Satanic powers to return my air conditioning to working order, because I really, really wanted my air conditioning fixed. But Mouse does not approve:

So the air conditioning was fixed on Thursday night. They left at 11:15 p.m. I would have written sooner, because I know you all were eager to know whether I had expired or not, but I was busy. Basically, if your house is super hot, you can’t clean it, and having a house that was not clean did not make me happy. But Saturday, when I could have cleaned my house, I was stricken by nasal allergies so severe I could hardly breathe, and breathing is an important part of cleaning, so I just laid around appreciating my air conditioning and sneezing repeatedly.

Today, though, having seen a serious reduction in the number of ants in my kitchen, I decided I would clean my kitchen and return all the things to the counter that had been in the living room since the ants first arrived. (Having done so, I invited someone over for pancakes, because pancakes are delicious, but if I make pancakes for only myself, I eat way, way too many pancakes.) Since that time I have seen only two ants. Two is better than 4,538, so I’m glad about that.

Then, I took a walk through my neighborhood. The picture below makes me happy because of the tire on the far side of the creek. It’s like “Frog and Toad are Friends”, only with a shopping cart and a tire as protagonists. (I think the shopping carts are really starting to get to me.)

And the one below I decided to call “A Study in Orange”. The way the orange flowers represent nature, while the orange shopping cart represents, well, an orange shopping cart? It’s like a juxtaposition or something. I don’t know, I can’t even appreciate art anymore, because the shopping carts are starting to get to me.

Finally, at least one source of the behavior that leads to shopping carts and tires in and near the creek was revealed when I shot the picture below.

So, yeah, things are getting better around here. It’s cool inside, there aren’t nearly as many ants, and my neighbors are at least not breaking the beer bottles in the parking lot. They’re just leaving them under the bushes. I hope you’ve had at least that much joy in your weekend.

The air conditioning repair has been rescheduled for Thursday.

The forecast temperature for Friday is now 97. There’s some benefit in that, because it will likely be a poor air quality day, what with the excessive heat, and on poor air quality days, I get to ride the bus to and from the Metro station for free! For free! That’s a forecast savings of $1.60 a day, on every day that small children, the elderly, and those with respiratory difficulties are likely to have trouble breathing, simply because people won’t give up their cars and ride the bus. Granted, I’ve already saved $3.20 this year, and I may just walk around all day Friday shouting, “Ca-ching!”, but could you all try to consolidate trips a little more or something? Please?

And there are still ants, in spite of an exterminator spraying the outside of my building and my applying copious amounts of an ant-killing gel to a number of non-food-preparation surfaces in my kitchen. (I’m expecting a film crew any minute. Since I expect they’re coming, I’d bake them a cake, but it’s a little too hot in here for the baking.)

What else could I possibly have to write about? The Republican debates? That would have required watching them, and while I could have gone to a bar for the event, I didn’t, and simply turning on the TV would have generated unnecessary heat. Suffice it to say that without having watched the debate, I’m pretty sure Ron Paul is the best presidential candidate of all time. (I think he and I might disagree on the whole library records privacy thing, but that’s because I’m a fascist and he’s not.) And he’s a Republican now, instead of a Libertarian, which means I can in good conscience cast a vote for a candidate who has a chance of actually winning - someday I hope we advance as a society to the point where a third party has a real opportunity to effect change. Probably right about the time my air conditioning is actually repaired.

Otherwise, I got nothin’. I asked someone the other day whether it was wrong to pray about having air conditioning, believing in my heart that one shouldn’t pray for material possessions, and he, an air conditioning repairman, told me that he thought it was okay to pray for air conditioning, so I would like to take a moment to ask all who know and like me (or secretly hate me but get a kick out of reading my blog and then making fun of me, and would therefore like me to continue writing here) to take a moment and ask your own personal Jesus for help in this matter. I just can’t see how it’s going to work without divine intervention.

Thanks in advance for your cooperation in this matter.*
_____
* Come hell or high water, I promise not to end my next entry here with that sentence. Four times in a row is enough already, no? (But really, nobody knows de troubles I seen. It’s a wonder I can write at all, and we should probably be glad that I’m only overusing a sentence, and have not sunk so low that I’ve started spelling the word “Thanks” “Thx”.)

So lately, I haven’t had anything nice to say. Mostly just complaining. But today something good happened to me, so I think I can finally write again.

I woke up this morning determined to solve at least one of my problems. So I looked around, and made a list of some of my problems:

1. Ants. In my kitchen. Either the original ants have sprouted wings, or they’ve simply been joined by a colony of winged ants, which is awesome, because I was thinking about making a documentary in my kitchen, so all I need now is a French voice-over artist to describe their migratory habits. Well, and a cinematographer. And someone to do the lighting, because the lighting in my kitchen sucks. Oh, and night vision goggles, to see whether the ants are nocturnal.
2. A complete and ongoing lack of air conditioning. I literally can’t write about this anymore without breaking down into tears (okay, I’m exaggerating a little, but I’m none too happy about it). The short version is that the third potential air conditioning repairman was to come Friday night, rescheduled for Saturday morning, arrived and came to a different conclusion than the first air conditioning repairman, and will return on Tuesday evening, I hope, with a part that will make my air conditioning functional. I have half a mind to start keeping track of the days without air conditioning on the chalkboard, using the same sort of tick marks one would use to mark off their days in prison on their cell wall, but I’m afraid I’d run out of room on the chalkboard - it’s small.
3. Since I got my DVR, I haven’t been able to watch a DVD without unplugging the DVR and plugging the DVD player in, reversing the process when I want to watch TV again.

So problems one and two are sort of out of my control. I did buy some ant killing gel early that they’re supposed to eat, and then when they return to their homes they’ll poison all their friends and neighbors. I’m not sure if it’s going to work, but the cat can’t get at the gel, and I don’t think he’ll eat the ants, so if it works, that’s great, and if it doesn’t, no one who lives here suffers nerve damage. And I can’t fix my air conditioning myself, although I must say it does occur to me that in the time I have been waiting for various trained personnel to fix my air conditioning, I probably could have become certified to repair air conditioning myself.

The third problem doesn’t seem that bad, considering all the other troubles that have been inflicted on me since I moved to the ghetto, but at least it was a problem I could solve. It’s been on my list of things to do for a long time, buy a switcher thing, and so I did. Thirty dollars later, and I just have to push a button if I want to watch a DVD.

See how I just found a spot of light in a world full of hot air and household pests? I think it might be the new anti-depressants.

Okay, I really haven’t had to see a psychiatrist (yet). It’s actually somewhat cool inside right now, due to a lovely rain and an outside temperature in the 70s. But Friday it’s forecast to be 92 degrees, and there seems to be a pretty strong correlation between my inside temperature and the outside temperature, give or take five degrees. At least if I perish from the heat (or the winged ants) I can die happy, knowing that I once watched a DVD without having to unplug the DVR first. And that’s not nothing.

Speaking of dying, I would really like to donate my body to science when I die, and have the parts they can’t use be cremated, but if I do die because of an ant infestation, I would like instead to be buried. Would someone please take responsibility for ensuring that my gravestone reads as follows?

Here lies
Jennifer M.
1971-20??
It was the ants
what took her.

(If it’s the heat what takes me, just edit as appropriate.*)

Thank you in advance for your cooperation in this matter.

_____
* And I wish I was not such a dork that I was just reminded me of Benjamin Franklin’s proposed epitaph, but do I wish I was just dorky enough that I could ever remember which was an epitaph and which was an epithet.