hoyle
They say misery loves company -- certainly it likes to creep into your ear and whisper its own name. As J and I pack up to head to the inevitable, I find myself accidentally immersed in songs, shows and movies all about break-ups break-ups break-ups. Some of my favorite pop culture splits of the moment:
1) The collected break-up songs of Mr. T Experience, but especially "Now That You Are Gone." Dig these lyrics: "I shifted gears / I faced my fears / I cried some tears / I did a lot of heroin." I'll admit, my plans involve more arts & crafts and Belgian waffles, but still, how can you hate on a break-up song that rhyme "macrame" with "
outre"?!
2)
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. My current all-time record on watching this without weeping: seven minutes and forty-three seconds. J and I are tentatively planning on watching this together the night before the big b-u. Yes, this is definitely why it pays off to have an amicable parting with your best friend.
3)
Legally Blonde: The Musical -- really the whole darn thing (what's not to like? Break-ups, moves to Boston, and puns galore), but especially the full-on break-up song "Serious." I mean, who can fault the guy for leaving? He needed somebody serious: "Less of a Marilyn / more of a Jackie / Somebody classy and / not too tacky."
4)
How I Met Your Mother. More like "How We Left Each Other." Seriously, how many break-ups are there in season two of this show?! (Trick question: NOT ENOUGH!)
5)
The Last Five Years. Remember that great musical that was all the rage a couple of years ago, about a starter marriage? The relationship moves backwards from the woman's perspective, and forwards from her (ex-)husband's. What can I say, I'm a fan of the time-release break-up. That, and as the musical shows, sometimes there just isn't anyone to blame.
Great. I should be packing, but I have a feeling I'm going to spend the next twenty minutes playing maudlin Wiki golf trying to narrow down a few other great historical break-ups. Hamlet? Henry VIII & Anne Boelyn? The Liz Taylor oeuvre?
bouquet
If Jack Nicholson can still make movies (debatable?) with concepts as poignantly banal as The Bucket List, guys, I feel perfectly within my rights to create my Suck It! list. The following entities are cordially invited by me to suck it.
Suck what? The hollow, metallic aftertaste of despair, I guess. Or a ColdEeze (highly effective placebo!) if the summer sniffles are encroaching:
Suck it:
- o! you boxes and bags of nonsense that accumulate over the years, to feel the brief joy of usefulness for precisely the second it takes to look at you, unsurface some pleasant memory, and throw you back in your musty confines;
- wimpy, passive-aggressive attempts at non-confrontation that inevitably end in derisive snorts long-distance plosived across the empty, angry hallway;
- Cadbury-Schwepps, for discontinuing 7-UP Plus in favor of 7-UP Cherry and, subsequently (deplorable, deplorable, oh most deplorable) 7-UP Cherry Antioxidant;
- endearingly masculine men who are, alas, not as clever by a quarter as all involved would like to pretend they are and aren't very gracious about hiding that disquieting fact;
- hot days spent packing gritty-dusty books and de-molding the potato trees growing in the hidden kitchen cabinets;
- assymetrical sleep cycles spent laying next to your partner trying not especially hard to not accidentally-on-purpose wake them;
- moving. Moving from a house into a corner of an interim condo, to half a living room of another interim apartment across the country, to finally -- finally! -- one's never-before-seen final destination.
Have I mentioned that moving is making me just a bit on the cranky side? All is going as well as it can, but I'll be happier when all is gone. Period.
ps: sorry for referencing a dumb movie just as an excuse for bullet points. But you know those days when you just want to tell the world to friggin' suck it? You don't? Then I have a house for you to move into...
why i love dating a google engineer (for at least a little while longer)
We're laying in bed, discussing the sale of my elliptical before the move:
K: The guy who said he was going to buy it now is only offering $200. Maybe I should just donate it to a charity. At least I won't have to pay someone to move it.
J: Maybe you can get a tax deduction.
K: A non-profit offered me a $2200 tax deduction.
J: That's great.
K: Yeah, but I don't earn enough money to pay taxes.
J: [points to himself a la "this guy"]
Truly, one of the great all-time bedroom discussions of money/power dynamics -- right up there with the "How much do you need?" in Goodfellas. (And yes, I know the latter was in a kitchen, but when you're that rich, truly, what is the kitchen but another bedroom?)
socializing well in captivity
Interviews with temp agencies today -- mostly useful, I suspect, as a practice arena for being jocular but not too jocular, trading smug little dog-eared employee/employer jokes. OSHA, oh, you shouldn't have!
When I took the typing test at my first one, the agent looked at my score (93 WPM) and her eyes bugged out. "That's the highest typing rate I've ever seen." "Oh, thanks." "No -- no really, it's almost ... magical." Thanks, madam, but I cannot take all the credit. You see, I'm dating the internet.
At the next interview, I picked up the pace a little -- 98 WPM. Didn't crack that dang 100. I don't think these people know that the majority of my typing time is spent lying on the floor, my face scrunched into a pillow, groping for portmanteaux. So actually. I guess that's How To Succeed In Business (trying, trying, trying) #1.
I wish I'd broken 100, though. Alternately, I wish I were a different person, in a different life. When I was younger I always dreamed I'd be the asshole prodigy who, in this scenario, say, might type 99 WPM then smirk up at the dazed receptionist, "Sorry, it took me a bit longer because I translated everything into Norwegian."
---
Packing yesterday, I found a spiral notebook full of insecurities. Literally, when I was 18, I took a notebook and made lists and sub-lists of everything I was insecure about. My favorite was the color-coded "List of Things I Can't Decide." All the mysteries are solved now, which is nice. Maybe I should hide a new list of unponderables for new future Kat to laugh at in a few years.
a eulogy, of sorts
As I finally clean my closet in preparation of finally moving out of this house about a week from now, I keep coming across crumpled garbage bags, suffocated by pounds of clothes, holiday decorations and unidentifiable old electronics. Some are half-stuffed with junk, some only hold a few cracked old ice cube trays. Brave soldiers lost over the months, on the frontlines of this ceaseless battle.
I salute you, old men, pioneers in your field, as now I go in and finally fell the beast. This is a job that calls for ruthlessness, grim determination, and, hopefully, a glass or two of wine.
[Edit: Holy christ. Every time I sort through a box of books, I think to myself: 'Well, that's got to be it. Hm, though, must have lost my copy of
Love in the Time of Cholera.' ...another box of books. Hmmm, where's that fun poetry anthology I picked up sophomore year...? Damn this curse of literacy. Some youth literacy program in the area's going to get plenty lucky this weekend. I mean, assuming I can bear to part with more than fifty or so.]
notes from the under-employed
Made of skin: the book Eugene Sue bound out of his dead mistress's skin. (Look, a bequeathal is a bequeathal.)
Made of gin: rickeys, gimlets, Chelsea Sidecars, and -- if in a particularly frisky mood -- herbal tea.
Made of win: the episode of "Golden Girls" I'm currently watching, in which Dorothy becomes a lounge singer, Blanche congas with unsuitable men and keeps up a catty running commentary on the undergarments (foundation garments?) she allegedly is not wearing, Rose and Sophia take up wake-crashing, and Sophia laminates my to-imitate list by throwing her own funeral. Morbid!
[Edit: Gracious, Blanche is up on top of the grand piano singing "I Want To Be Loved By You." Glorious. Why aren't there bars like this in real life?!]
a drippy situation
Hunting -- any kind of hunting -- is just about the worst. Job-hunting, apartment-hunting, hunting for a new dress to go with your cute shoes. Heck, I'm pet-friendly, but give me a six-pack, a case of ammo and a neon vest and I'd be happy to go for-realsies-animal-corpsing Dick Cheney-style over any sort of metaphorical hunting. Is all I'm saying.
Today I put down a deposit on a place in Boston, is the good news. Fingers crossed. And hopefully I won't have to take any low-level con man jobs to hold down the rent. I mean, recreationally is one thing, but...
Walkthrough on the current place in a bit over a week. Room's strewn with boxes and books (take some, please!); it's too hot for all this packing.
Something curious about the current landlord: After a year of very minimal contact (minus some frantic phone calls on April Fool's Day in re: a very very real infestation of tropical rat mites), she emails us when we tell her we won't be renewing our lease. The gist:
"I've wanted to ask, but haven't found the right chance: You all went to Stanford. Can you please give me some advice for my daughter (who is eight years old [assuming she makes it through high school without a complete nervous break-down])? Winner gets a $20 Starbucks gift card!"
Clearly she doesn't know much about Stanford, or she'd have offered to enter us all in a raffle for a free iPod Nano.
Anyway, after much joshing among the housemates, I wrote her an email telling her a bit about things I've seen in my experience as an SAT / College Admissions tutor, things I've heard from former Stanford Admissions officers, and just some junk from high school. The basic gist was: "Read. A lot. It helps in math, it helps in science, it helps with the essay. PS: The essay. Seriously."
Apparently no one else answered. Anyone want some free, slightly embarrassing Starbucks?
everything is EVEN BETTER!
So that job at 7-eleven I was already ashamed of applying for? Even better! It's actually a money laundering scam!
The gist, from the email I received at 3am Boston time last night: $1800/month for three hours a day! Work from the convenience of your home! Act as sales bookkeeper for an internationally acclaimed Swiss watch company! Clients will send you checks, and All You Have To Do(TM) is forward the checks to the (Swiss) company's Swiss bank account! Take a 5% commission for all the hard work you do!
Sounds infinitely plausible, right?
But in the interest of prolonging my unemployment, of course I had to be a total lame-o and send them this polite, regretful refusal:
Oh man, this is an exciting job opportunity! There's so much I'm curious about -- what will my responsibilities be?! Money laundering? Distributing stolen or fraudulent merchandise? Just straight-up defrauding?
And how will you ultimately scam me? Claiming you sent a check, maybe, and forcing me to pay you up? Or having me send you the value of a "held" check that turns out to be counterfeit? And of course you're no dummy -- of course you'll withhold my wages! Oh gosh, guys, how I wish I could join your team so together we could laugh and laugh about this, then defraud some Swiss dudes and fall over, clutching ourselves, and laugh some more!
Let me be the first to tell you: although I left it off my cover letter, Matchstick Men is like totally one of my favorite movies! And there is pretty much nothing I'd love more than to take you up on this opportunity to become a low-level scam artist! Unfortunately, I've already accepted a position as the financial manager to a Nigerian prince. Can you imagine?! Royalty!
Best of luck (you wacky scamps, you!)
K
things that are true
- Moving is expensive. Very very expensive. Which is all the more distressing because...
- ...after receiving a degree from an uber-elite university and a year more or less of relevant job experience, I still find myself applying for jobs that a) stipulate heavy, repetitive lifting in the job descriptions, and/or b) are at 7-eleven. And...
- ...I probably won't even make it to the second round of interviews for them.
- Unrelated, but I'm currently hypnotized by the phrase "an astonishing quantity of bloody urine," which I picked up from a Robertson Davies novel.
- Put all your eggs in one basket and watch. that. basket. --is another thing going through my head, especially with regards to my non-existent career as a published author...
- ...which remains non-existent no matter with what tenacity my mother fills in "Freelance Writer" under occupation on all my tax papers. Which is sweet, but gives me a bit of a prickly sad feeling. I am a secretary.
- Er, an unemployed former secretary.
- I should probably stop writing this and start baking a pie.
- Anyone wanna cut out the middle man and give me a job baking pie for them? I'm also excellent at cleaning and scheduling appointments!
fun fact
While for most intents and purposes, gin is nearly indistinguishable in appearance, taste, and (sinister, sinister) character from plain ol' garden variety rubbing alcohol, heed my words: when the latter is required for the purposes of soap-making, for the love of god, DO NOT GET THEM CONFUSED.
...because when you inevitably fuck up batch after batch of babies-could-make-it melt&pour (for completely isopropyl-agnostic reasons), you're going to be pissed when you reach for the gin and end up with a mouthful of rubbing alcohol. Is why I caution.
some pretty stellar moments in human reasoning
Hey, guys, let's like totally be resolved to take the course of action that does the greatest good for the greatest number of people! And also, when I'm dead, I'm going to put my head in a bucket of formaldehyde where it will cast votes of abstention for all of eternity! But no funny hats, you guys. I said no funny hats!
***
Dudes, let's hike out so far into the desert that our blood ferments into cognac then build a town -- nay, a glittering mecca -- devoted to debauchery, libations and really cheap, really bad seafood! And in this dry, choking desert pit of despair, let's not get too crazy worrying about the water supply. How many man-made lakes, you think? One? Oooh, that Indian graveyard looks cheap.
***
PS: Later we'll film the "The Cougar" finale there.
***
Sure, hydogen gas when mixed with oxygen can catch fire, but if we contain it tightly in a dirigible made of highly flammable materials then dude, like unambiguously safe flying apparatus. Also, it's the old days when everybody smokes.
***
Some impudent knave has libeled me as a homosexual! I mean, I am. And that's super-illegal. But surely my litigious personality won't unleash the blinding scythe of utter, utter desctruction.
**
So picture it. Two brothers. One: young, dumb and weirdly sexually compelling. The other: mid-forties, balding, Italian plumber. Riveting buddy action comedy! Dinosaurs and princesses! Sure to be a sequel! Yesiree, boys, the world isn't ready for Bob Hoskins, action hero.
not unrelated?
Yesterday I wore non-flipflop shoes without being forced to for the first time in a very long while. The shoes were cute (metallic loafers -- old man aesthetic meets retro-futurism, like steam-powered Van Buren chops!) and besides, I figured, who among us knows what slight sidle into the unexpected will make us the people we're going to be?
After about ten minutes of stomping, my heels were ripped up like rice paper. Forget this, I thought. Maybe I can make flowerpots out of them. Because why would I want to continue to do something that was unpleasant?
But other people do it, and they do it every day, because it's non-optional. Why do I wake up at 3am every day the week before I throw a party, scouring through guests' fbook pictures to photoshop mug shots, downloading fonts to fine-tune keepsake party favors, sorting and resorting playlists to make sure everyone will chew at a comfortable tempo. Because it wouldn't occur to me that I could simply choose not to.
So I guess the moral of my story is that ... we should forget that we can not do stuff, and therefore force ourselves into doing things that are uncomfortable and, at best, very ambiguously worth doing?
Man, I'll bet Aesop is effin' pissed he didn't come up with that first.
***
A couple of hours later, I decided to eat solo in a restaurant, and was digging through the trunk of my car to find a book to dine with. Apparently I've been eating out more than I thought, because my portable library (ie: the three boxes of books I was too lazy to unpack after moving out of undergrad housing) had dwindled down to one book: Ulysses.
Haha. Very funny beyond-the-grave shenanigans, Joyce. Clever. I WILL NOT READ YOUR STUPID NOVEL. Not even if I do become the kind of person who wears real shoes.
Labels: fucking ulysses
don't call it a comeback
You guys, I'm not going to pretend the hiatus didn't happen. Because it did. Yes, future internet scholars in some distant year will whisper in reverent tones about the lost year. And they'll be talking about the year Randall Monroe went some forty-odd strips without creating a real-life meme, I'm sure. Nonetheless.
No big recap. We laughed; we cried; we laughed when we probably should have been crying, and oh brother let me assure you that ne'er was the vice versa-ed. And we ate drunk quesadillas, oh verily, many of them.
In a couple of weeks I'm going to leave pretty little Palo Alto and live alone for the first time in my life, and single for the first time since I was 18. Am I excited? No. Kind of. I guess maybe.
All that aside, after having spent a year writing nothing more pressing or brilliant than an email, it occurs to me that the foremost difference between writers and pitiful would-be writers is that writers ... write. Well, and the could-have-beens are more prone to ironic facial hair. So I guess that is what this is, is all I'm saying.
an instant-classic drinking game...
...and a Kat original.
I bring this blog back, temporarily, from its disquieting death to share an issue of some importance. Recently I invented a drinking game called Extremes. You guys, seriously, it's kind of turning into a thing. I've only shared it with a few people, but the other night, Spin and I were drinking, and we suggested playing a game to the people we were with. One of them was like, "oh, I just learned a great one" and suggested MY OWN GAME back to me!
I've scoured the internet and see no hints that I've independently discovered buddhism. So I'm writing it now to stake a little claim in what is possibly my greatest achievement yet:
EXTREMES
The game is a rough hybrid of Never Have I Ever and High-Low. To play, you need three or more people with filled drinks. Everyone takes turns posing to the group questions with numerical answers. Everyone answers the question honestly. Then the plays with the highest answer and the lowest answer drink for the number of seconds equal to the difference in their answers.
If the difference between the answers is unfathomably great, then one can either cap it at ten, or drink to an acceptable order of magnitude. (If, for example, the question is: "How many cigarettes have you smoked this month," and the low answer is 0 and the high is 300, you could drink for three seconds.)
Other solutions to common problems: players may answer in whatever order they wish, and do not have to take set turns; estimates are acceptable only when an honest attempt at counting has failed; there are no skips; nobody cares how many people you've had sex with.
The thing I like most about this game is its versatility: questions can be raunchy or tame, silly or thought-provoking. Some of my favorite (non-obvious) questions that have come up: how many rooms have you lived in? How many near-death experiences have you had? To how many people have you said "I love you" without meaning it?
EXTREMES! It's happening. Get on-board. (And don't forget who invented it.)
