Completely Uninteresting Dispatch #2

DO I ONLY LIKE QUESTIONABLE CONTENT BECAUSE MARTEN LOOKS LIKE DAN PERNIK???

AAAH!!!

p.s. I'm on 771 now. I'm working backwards. It's hella postmodern.

p.p.s. I think this officially makes me an insomniac.

p.p.s. . .LIKE HANNERS???

Completely Uninteresting Whiney Update

Had an accident this weekend on the old vélo. Buying some new front teeth tomorrow with money that doesn't exist. Chris Guess is a seriously stand-up guy for taking care of me during my bloody post-catastrophic hysteria. Only 808 Questionable Content's (what is the plural of this? What is each installation of a webcomic called? Maybe I actually did knock something loose the other night, but 'strip' is making me giggle too much) to go before I find a new obsession.

Everything I need to know I learned from Wikipedia

There's a lot going on. Lots of work, lots of running around, lots of biking in the rain, lots of fucking rain today. Not a whole lot of money, which so far has amounted to a metric shitton of stress.

***

Finally finished a couple books.

First is Edward Abbey's The Monkey Wrench Gang, which is a truly excellent novel, especially for the ecologically-minded reader who isn't particularly interested in the crunchy vegan PETA/Sierra Club-minded fluffy shit. (speaking of PETA, check out how unfortunate their blog name is!) These people want their wilderness back, so they're going to blow up the fucking dam. And then get drunk. And then destroy some more shit. It's awesome. While it may buy into the quasi-misogynistic stereotypical male gender roles of eatin' meat and slammin' beers and shootin' guns, I actually found it pretty refreshing and invigorating, given the tree-hugginess at the core of the book. Definitely required reading.

The other book I've read recently was Joseph O'Neill's Netherland. It was mostly about cricket and New Yorkers who were scared shitless after 9/11. But really, it was mostly about cricket, which drove me crazy because a) cricket is a totally incomprehensible game to begin with, and b) what the fuck is with otherwise great writers and sports? It drives me insane. Don DeLillo won't shut up about baseball, Nick Hornby, soccer, David Foster Wallace, tennis. Et cetera ad infinitem.

Anyway, Netherland was alright, but I don't know what James Wood was smoking when he called it a "postcolonial re-writing of The Great Gatsby", because seriously, it was all about cricket. Yeah, yeah, it's a metaphor or whatever, but still. It's cricket, and the only good thing that ever came out of cricket was one of the best/most ridiculous Bollywood flicks ever made.

Next up: One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Peter Mayle's A Year in Provence. [Edit: Years? Huh. Just noticed that.]

***

But, of course, despite all business there's always time to dick around on Wikipedia (and write inarticulate book reviews nobody will read). Here's the best thing I've found this evening: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diner_lingo.

Check the ice.

Morning Procrastination

Today's supposed to be the day I conquer the world. I literally have a million things to do in the next eight hours, then work, then part three of that photo shoot. The problem is that my bed feels so amazing right now.


By the way, here are the proofs from the first shoot. They're practically unedited, and we've since changed the concept, the location, the outfits, and my hair color. . .so we can't use them, but it was a start.

Ugh, okay. Pluck the day.

Finding My Inner Blonde: Chapter One

[disclaimer: the photos you are about to view are a little MySpace-esque. That's just how it had to be.]

As part of a general effort to simplify my life, I have decided to return to my natural hair color. Yes, I know, my hair is wildly important shit.

In all seriousness, though, I'm sick of frying my hair, redying the roots, spending money and time and effort every six weeks on something so silly as my freaking hair. I haven't seen my natural color in five years, but since then, it's been every shade of brown, red, and for a while, bleach-white (which would unfortunately sometimes turn a delicate shade of lavender because of all the toning products to keep it from looking the color of baby chickens).



This was what I started with on Wednesday:

Then I stripped the color and the result was this hot mess:

So then I tried to dye it blonde. That didn't lift the red. Then I bleached it again. Then I added a demipermanent medium golden blonde dye (which, I think, is something like my natural color). And here's what we've got now:

Strictly speaking, this is not at all what I was going for. The bad news is that I'm going to have to keep dying it with the semipermanent stuff every three weeks or so until it all grows out, and the texture is exactly what you'd expect after all those chemicals. The good news is that it doesn't look completely terrible. It is very ginger. Hm.

I'm in Chicago for a little while in an attempt to sort some things out.


I'll be back by the weekend, probably.

Everyone should have a hobby.

Rolling up to the ranch after a night of showing our Australian couchsurfer the finer establishments of Madison nightlife (read: The Plaza), I noticed a sheet of paper on the ground next to the street sign to which I usually hitch my pony. It turned out to be page three of a sad attempt at some kind of creative writing assignment. So I made some corrections:

You can click on the image to read it, but I wouldn't particularly recommend it.

In conclusion, if I had to compartmentalize myself by means of some kind of visual representation of two finite sets, I am the football shape between People Who Are Total Jackasses and People Who Are Total Nerds.

P.S. I love Venn diagrams almost more than I love editing things with pink markers.

Pttthpthh

It's 3:28 in the morning. Everyone went to bed a long time ago, so I've been amusing myself by clicking 'random' on xkcd for hours. Seriously. And I have come to two conclusions:

1. Randall Munroe is the kind of man (maybe the actual man, he's only 24) I want to marry, if I ever even become a dateable person again, which is unlikely.

2. I totally forgot that the very sentiment for which I love David Foster Wallace was articulated a couple years earlier in Sandman, and I don't know how I feel about this. Which is nerdier? Or does it matter?


P.S. God I'm such a creep.

Nom nom nom

Yesterday was delicious This picture is for Dan.

Happy Labor Day weekend!

This blows my mind.

An't got no liquidity, guess that prevents pinguidity. . .

(952): going out? Paunchy penguins?

This is a text I just received from my friend Mike. It's a Thursday night, but. . .maybe you should be sitting down for this: I'm actually at home. And I plan on staying right here until my first class tomorrow. No money, so no Paunchy Penguins, nor Chubby Chipmunks, nor Beefy Belugas for me tonight.

It all started (as too many things do) with a drink special.


As all good Madisonians know, The Vintage, a decent downtown joint with a massive patio (and surprisingly good pancakes and a Bloody Mary bar, if you're in the mood for that kind of thing on a Sunday afternoon), has a special on Monday nights where any Wisconsin beer is $1 until midnight, which includes many local favorites, including Fat Squirrel, a nutty brown ale from New Glarus.

Now, New Glarus beers also have wacky names, like Dancing Man, or Totally Naked, or the ubiquitous Spotted Cow. They do this because they are a Local Brewery, which is apparently synonymous with Very Quirky. But one day, while I was facing the beer and wine section at Trader Joe's, which is a store that tries very hard to be Very Quirky because they want to seem like a Local Grocery Store (Freal. The emphasis on Tiki-Themed Maniacally Friendly Employee Culture is specifically geared toward making you think that it's like the Willy Street Co-op. Which it isn't), when I came across something called Fat Weasel.


So I'm all like, Seriously? How many Adipose Animal-themed beers are out there?

***

And so it began. Portly Possum. Obese Ostritch. Glandular Guinea Pig. Stout Stoat. Flabby Fox. Et cetera et cetera ad infinitem, literally. Except that tonight I was tired and checked a thesaurus for more fat words. Unfortunately, there was only one that hadn't yet been used: the word pinguid.

pinguid |ˌpɪŋgw1d|
adjective formal
of the nature of or resembling fat; oily or greasy.

DERIVATIVES
pinguidity noun

ORIGIN mid 17th cent.: from Latin pinguis ‘fat’ + -id

Which, until you read the definition, is kind of the most adorable fat-word I've ever heard. If I ever make a beer (and given the current trendiness of homebrew coupled with the desire to redeem myself after that wretched absinthe I made last year, it could happen), I'm calling it Pinguid. And on the label would be something like this:

Which then makes me think of those awful quizzes they put in pamphlets in the student clinic, or sometimes around the gym that ask How many cheeseburgers did you drink last night? (answer: you don't want to know).

***

And this confuses me. Does alcohol really make you fat? Do I simply exist in this magical 22-year-old world where I actually am invincible and I can drink as many cheeseburgers as I want and still stay the fairly slender woman I am? Because I always thought the mythical "beer belly" came from those three Pizza di Roma slices you thought you needed between the Plaza and bed. Or the high-calorie mixers people put in their cocktails, illustrated quite graphically in this sick New York public health campaign. Or the fact that post-bender breakfasts tend to resemble something like this (thank you, thisiswhyyourefat.com).

Oh, and just so you know, I can has fifty-four (54!!!) cheezburgers in one month. Holy shit.

jour 1: la victoire, plus ou moins

First day back went well, I guess. I think I've gotten stupid over the past year. Au moins, j'ai oublié tout mon vocabulaire.

But anyway. Snippet from an old notebook from the last time I was in England:

Stories about Gran’s family: there was her sister Liz, who was a Catholic fanatic, and then there was the nun, who was less religious than Liz but had an eating disorder that prompted her to request odd foods that couldn’t be found on the East End of London, so the kids had to go to every shop in Hackney and suffer the embarrassment of asking if they had Fig Newtons or Cottage Cheese or Syrian bread, whatever that was. And the horrible presents she would give. One time she gave Margaret a green silk cravat—
“What’s a cravat?” asked my little cousin.
“A. . .it’s like a neckerchief. A man’s green silk neckerchief with paisleys on it. And after saying oh thank you, it’s lovely, she said go on, why don’t you wear it? So I put it on and she made me go down to the commons with her. . .”
“She made you what?” My dad asked, wiping tears of laughter from under his glasses.
“She made me”—more laughter—“She made me put it on and then go down to the commons—to the park with her—and walk with her and say the rosary. In public. And she was nearly blind, you know. But she still used to crochet. Did she ever crochet anything for you, Michael, a waistcoat or something? Because I had a green silk neckerchief that would go right nicely with it.”

First day of school!

This morning's playlist:




(I should be sick of this song by now, but I'm not)

Milwaukee's alright.

Oh, jeez.
First day of class tomorrow, and although I didn't make it to the going-away party I should have attended (he probably got too drunk to notice I wasn't there), I also didn't manage to sleep like a normal person last night, staying up until dawn reading the ridiculous Playboy Bartender's Guide and smoking the rest of that terrible tobacco Dan got me last Christmas. And now it's quarter to three and I have so much to do!

Coming soon for your viewing pleasure:
-pictures of the new pad (I have to clean first)
-a new essay on feminism
-updates on the photoshoot (it's taking a lot longer than we'd expected)

Anyway. Last Friday evening, Erica and Chris and I crammed our bikes into the back seat of his old 'Rolla, all three of ourselves into the front seat, and set out on impromptu adventure in Milwaukee. Our first stop was the Milwaukee Art Museum, where there was some kind of event with a band and a $10 cover that allowed you to do arts and crafts and sample homebrew. Unfortunately, the beer was gone, we we hopped on our vélos and rode off in the rain to Riverwest, where we saw a friend of a friend's band play at Live on North, then a place called Nomad on Brady Street, where what they call the "Prix Fixe" special gets you a can of PBR, a shot of Jameson, and a cigarette, all for five dollars. Best ever. And yes, you can still smoke in bars in Milwaukee.

Before passing out for the night, we picked up some Chicago dogs at the Dog Haus off Brady Street. I swear to god I couldn't tell you the last time I had a hot dog, but it did remind me of that old place down Irving Park Road called Bowser Dog I used to go to all the time as a kid, which I guess makes it authentic enough despite the fact that hot dogs are still kind of gross. The guy who sits outside is quite friendly and entertaining, and prevented Chris from leaving behind his "purse" and the camera within it. Nice place.

The next morning (well, noon), we all met back up at a place called Comet on Farwell (their menus described themselves as a 'slow-food' establishment. One of those), where we waited forever to be seated, but were rewarded with stellar coffee, fabulous breakfast sandwiches (fried egg, mayo, lettuce, tomato, bacon, on fresh bread with hand-cut fries) and even better Bloody Marys. Because they were made with Guinness, and were garnished. . .with bacon.