Wednesday July 29, 2003
****Eavesdrop
Returned library books a day before the due date! On the way home on the Green line, I overheard a normal-looking 30-ish woman in a business suit telling her friend, a slightly pudgier, slightly older woman in a business suit, about her lunch with a female boss or superior that day:
So my salad comes at the same time as the fish, and I finished both plates in about ten minutes then I flag down the waiter and ask him for more rolls, and I eat two of those and then I order pie for dessert. What am I supposed to tell her? That I've eaten nothing but cookies for the past four days? Because I did eat nothing but cookies for the past four days, but I can't tell her that! I mean, it was real food and I was so hungry for some fiber and substance!
This isn't word for word, but the last part is pretty much what she said. I know there's a real good story there, but it's not like I can stick my head in and say "Elaborate, please!" Why in the world would anyone eat nothing but cookies for four days?
**** Punch Buggie Transparent
Who doesn't just look at VW Beetles and want to giggle!
Interesting things about this article on the last Volkswagen Beetle being made in Puebla, Mexico (and thus ending a 58-year earth-wide Beetle-making streak):
1. It is now illegal for cabs in Mexico City to have less than four doors. Apparently Beetles, once the national car of Mexico (supplanted by the ubiquitous pick-up truck that seats twenty) were used as cabs (and police cars, sometimes). The "immediate cause of the Beetle's demise was the new requirement that Mexico City taxis have four doors - offering easier escape for tourists, who have sometimes found themselves trapped in the rear seat as they were victimized by bandits." Eeek!
2. I knew Hitler established Volkswagen, but I didn't know Ferdinand Porsche was associated with Hitler and Volkswagen. "The design was commissioned by Hitler, who instructed his engineer, Ferdinand Porsche, that the car "should look like a beetle." About 600 were produced before 1945; most of these went to Nazi officials."
3. And, last but not least, "A Beetle with a propeller once crossed the Straits of Messina from southern Italy to Sicily."
Tuesday July 28, 2003
****www.hummerdinger.com
Interesting site I saw today: The Sierra Club, which I joined briefly as a purely emotional reaction to one of their junk mailings, is a lot cooler than I thought they were. Check out www.hummerdinger.com, their protest of GM's Hummers (the site was done incidentally by the Experiment ad agency). It's Onion-style humor, and done quite well. As an avowed mortal enemy of all SUV drivers (sorry, Mom!), I really really dug it. I especially liked the Pie Chart, "How Americans use their Hummer".
****I got your Back
I lift weights every Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday. Many would deem this a vanity pursuit, but I find it to be a very relaxing and feel-good activity. I took a yoga class in search of a spiritual workout that promotes the mind-body connection... but it bored the life out of me. I tell you, there's no mind-body connection quite like the one needed to do an intense chest/tricep tri-set four times followed by weight-assisted dips to failure.
So my gym is pretty empty at 5:30am until 6am, or at least the weight room is. Then the personal trainers and their clients invade my space. And for the second Tuesday in a row, I was at the smith rack doing stationary lunges when "Baby got Back" comes on via the piped-in music system they have. It's hysterical to me that an all female gym blasts this song throughout.
On one hand, it's an affirmation of what many of these women have: BACK. On the other hand, most of them are at the gym at 6am because they don't want BACK. Hearing Baby Got Back at your all-female gym at 5:30am is either:
I vote for number two. There's also my gym's penchant for running movies that feature concentration camps in the cardio room. I've seen Life in Beautiful, Jakob the Liar, and the Pianist (which had a polish ghetto). Is there anything more twisted than fifty American women exercising sweatily on treadmills and elliptical trainers watching movies depicting starving jews? Is something in the world askance when women can engage in fruitless activity to tone their thighs while images of the Holocaust flash before their eyes (which are busy darting from the calorie counters on their machine to Adrien Brody's strangely sexy profile)?
Monday July 28, 2003
****Found, and How to be Unpopular
Tim sent a link to Found Magazine, which distracted me for fifteen minutes at work today (beating this article about the French/Iraqi conspiracy to hide nuclear weapons under the Eiffel tower, which distracted me for about twelve minutes, after which I declared it a hoax). I also concluded that the Find of the Week July 20-26 at Found Magazine is also a hoax. It's just too outrageous!
Anyway, it was an enjoyable site... thanks Tim. I like to examine random pieces of paper with handwriting on it. A couple of weeks ago I found a science quiz at the bus stop, probably elementary school-level or maybe middle school, in which the quizee identified the closest star to Earth as Moon, and Jupiter was spelled "Gupter."
By the way, Tim also coerced me into signing up for Friendster, no doubt to add another notch to his Friends window. I did it because it's really sad to see him whine, and because to see what it was exactly. I don't think I can make the time investment involved in coming up with a cool profile (especially since I'm in a relationship), but then I see it identifies me as only having one friend - Tim! I felt like a super loser. So I made my boyfriend join so I'd have two, and after he does, he notices that he only has one friend (me) and starts to feel like a loser also.
We'll live with it, rather than perpetuate the vicious circle with our friends. I wonder if people on Friendster invent people as friends to not feel like losers?
Sunday July 27, 2003
****Bored?
Experts say we do give away our gender in our writing styles.
Saturday July 26, 2003
****Moving out of Allston
A lazy, hot and humid day in Boston. I'm preparing to move in two weeks. Haven't actually started to pack... just mentally preparing. My new apartment is a little smaller in size, though it's luxurious compared to my current one. It's forcing me to go through my piles of what is popularly known as clutter, but what is actually just all of my belongings existing in an unorganized manner.
****Johnny Has Been Good
I like Johnny Depp. For some reason, I think he's got more integrity than most Hollywood pretty-boy actors, so much so that he moved beyond the pretty-boy stereotype years ago. One of my favorite movies is Jim Jarmusch's Dead Man (1996), shot in black and white with an excellent cameo by Crispin Glover. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Edward Scissorhands, and Ed Wood were also quite entertaining, and I get the feeling he's a smart, very cool person.
He's been in some real bad ones (From Hell, the movie my boyfriend, another friend and I were watching when some punk broke into our kitchen), Astronaut's Wife, and Sleepy Hallow. Can't say why, but I just get the feeling Pirates of the Caribbean, despite all the positive things I've heard, probably just sucks. I'm not going to see it. I have no interest in seeing Johnny Depp the Pirate... it's slightly cheesy. There's nothing wrong with pirates in film, but leave those roles to the pretty-boys.
Thursday July 24, 2003
****Minuteman
My alma mater, subject to much media scrutiny these days because of disastrous budget cuts and Bulger's naughty brother, has revealed its new logo.
The proposal by the image consultants UMass hired was to become the Gray Wolves. Thank god that visual identity is already taken by a Turkish terrorist organization who may be targeting American interests. So they went with a cartoony-looking Minuteman with a rifle slung over his back. Or is that a bong?
I was disappointed that, even though the female sports teams are called the Minutewomen, there is no actual Minutewoman depicted in a separate logo. Judging from the model-like allure of the Minuteman, she would've been been hot.
I am a little surprised they didn't make the Minuteman more racially-ambiguous looking, like Vin Diesel.
I don't know. I'm proud. It really makes me want to go out there and mow down some British troops. (I probably shouldn't mention 'Gray Wolves' and 'killing British troops' on the same web page. The government's supreme intelligence-gathering software, which is really just Yahoo, will find this page; next thing you know, I'm sitting in a room at the Boston FBI headquarters, trying to explain my way out of being exiled to Argentina by showing the agents UMass's new logo.)
Monday July 21, 2003
****Magazine Review: Harpers
I'm glad to know that I can decline to renew my subscription to Harper's Magazine, since I've discovered Harper's Index, the only thing I'd miss about the magazine, is online.
I used to love Harpers, but for the past year, reading it has become a chore. Very rarely do they have articles that I'm interested in enough to spend the time reading them. I try to read the articles even if they don't interest me, but after awhile the unabashed liberal viewpoint just annoys me. Bye Bye Harpers.
I much prefer Boston's own Atlantic Monthly, which is liberal also but acknowledges the flaws in the liberal mindset, such as the blanket rejection of all Republican policy and doctrine. They have twice as many articles on subjects that are actually relevant to what is happening in the world.
****MTV's Real World
I caught my first glimpse of MTV's Real World Paris yesterday at the gym. I used to watch the Real World in college occasionally, and found it entertaining to watch seven ninnies vie for air-time by complicating their lives, saying outrageous things, and occasionally hitting each other. While every house had a token beautiful girl and guy, and no one was ever fat or seriously flawed, for the most part the casts seemed to be comprised of normal (albeit attention-seeking) humans. That pretty much stopped once the original premise got old, and next thing you know hot people are having threesomes in the hot tub.
I see a few episodes of every season, and I must say that while the Paris house is nowhere near as ridiculous as the Las Vegas house (which was actually in a hotel), these people are morons. I can't say anything about this show that hasn't been said. I can't even enjoy how dumb they are because I feel like they aren't even being dumb for camera time... they really are all beautiful, socially adept morons, and they will never know what it's like to have to work hard in order to achieve something. Until their looks fade, of course.
Sunday July 20, 2003
****Beach Trip
Some people are just natural dancers (click here to see a video of Dorothy, the best dancer in all bars she enters).
Went to Devereux Beach in Marblehead with Dorothy, who is soon moving to North Carolina, and Rosemary. We were the only people at the beach who seemed determined not to let the sun slowly roast our skin. Nonetheless, Rose and I failed, as evidenced by the tops of my feet and Rose's right shoulder. Click here to see photos of the beach and our night out on the town in Cambridge.
****Dummy
I realized that throughout the month of July, I've been writing "June" instead of July above each entry on this website. I am really out of it this month. Work has been busy. I would much prefer to be busy at work during the winter, of course, but this past winter was relatively stress-free.
****Sports Fan Review: Red Sox Fans
These people drive me nuts.
It seems like Red Sox games are dictating whether or not it will be a good day for me... and I don't care which team wins or loses, I care which team is home and which team is visitor. When the Red Sox play at Fenway park, it literally paralyzes a vital subway line in Boston for half the day, the line I rely on to do most everything outside of Allston.
Move the stadium out of the freaking city and make it bigger, so people don't have to pay hundreds of dollars to take their children to a baseball game.
Tuesday July 15, 2003
****Science: Jeepers Creepers
I always hated Peeps. You know, those disgusting Easter marshmallow candies... or those "resilient little birds," as this science site calls them... some of these pictures are freaky. Peep abuse.
Monday July 14, 2003
****Phoenixville, PA
How much can you tell about a person by the town where they were born?
Though I never lived there, this is the town where I was born... and I think it says a lot about a town when the biggest event of the year makes CNN's "offbeat" news. "Hundreds gathered" for BlobFest, where fans of the 1958 movie classic "The Blob" got to reenact the movie, filmed in Phoenixville, PA.
Aside from the Blob, Phoenixville is also notable for giving the world the semi-famous rock/rap band the Bloodhound Gang. I knew girls who effed them! At one of their shows, long before "the roof... the roof.. The roof is on fire" started playing on radios and MTV, they threw a condom filled with beer into the audience and it hit me squarely in the forehead and it broke. I never liked their music. And when I watched them on stage, it was like when the popular jocks get drunk and decide to go to the Karaoke lounge and get onstage together to sing "Fight for your Right to party".
Phoenixville is a run-down, depressing place. My sister lived there before she moved to Phoenix, which I always found amusing... the whole Phoenixville to Phoenix thing. It's an urban landscape with no pedestrians and many abandoned stores. I was born in Phoenixville hospital, and many years later I stood in front of it and held Keep Abortion Legal signs along with hundreds of other abortion protestors, pro and foe.
There's nothing to do in Phoenixville. In high school, no one ever went to Phoenixville to hang out. If you wanted a little thrill to perk up your mundane suburban existence, you went to Norristown, which was more dangerous but in a more glamorous way. In Norristown, muggers wanted money for a drug habit. In Phoenixville, they wanted money to feed their family. Both towns were once thriving industrial centers that are now on hard times with the rise of America's service sectors and the loss of our manufacturing base. At least Norristown is close to the King of Prussia mall. Is there anything worse than former Norristown factory workers working at Home Depot and Pep Boys? Yes, how about Phoenixville former factory workers working at Wawa and McDonalds?
Sunday July 13, 2003
****NH Trip
Escaped Boston to the Mountains this weekend...
Wednesday July 9 2003
****Science: Crabs!
Horseshoe crabs have always scared the heck out of me. I don't know what it is about them, I think it's because they look like rocks with knifes on them. I read this article about how scientists can use horseshoe crab blood in order to test for alien life. Scientists in Cambridge, it sounds like, which is the town where I once again will be residing in less than a month.
The second best thing about this article: I learned horseshoe crabs are 100 million years older than dinosaurs. The first best thing: It's written by Amanda Onion. I never heard Onion as a last name before. I keep putting names I hear in front of Onion... Jim Onion, Ken Onion, John Onion, Amy Onion, Ray Onion. Mr. and Mrs. Onion. Doctor Onion. Merry Christmas from the Onions. Hi, you've reached the Onions.
Tuesday July 8 2003
****Unemployed and Underemployed
The other day on the subway I ran into Steve, a guy who worked at the first company I ever worked at (alas, it went bankrupt about a year after they laid us off) and with who I developed a strictly-pool relationship, along with two other guys who worked there. All I could do was shoot pool and drink with them, and I stopped playing with them after the relationship started to involve doing things other than pool (like going to the Manray). Steve's a good guy though. What's weird is the night before, my boyfriend mentioned he saw Steve on the Green Line, and I thought that was weird because Steve always drove his car and subtly made fun of people who took public transportation.
So I saw Steve and, after catching up on a year of no contact in about two minutes, he tells me how everyone who used to work at our old company was unemployed and moving out of Boston because they couldn't find jobs. He said he knew soooo many unemployed people. I got the feeling Steve was having a hard time finding a permanent job as well, and maybe that's why he took the subway.
Anyway, it scared me. Having been laid off twice in the past three years, I know how it is. It made me absurdly grateful for my job at a truly thriving company filled with really driven people. Today I almost shook myself out of my 8-hour-sitting-and-thinking stupor, stood up in my cramped, windowless cube, and shouted "I'M NOT WORTHY!!!"
****Sports Fan Review: Nascar
Office Park Dads would make a great name for a band.
What's this Nascar Men stuff about? 48 Percent of all men watch Nascar? Or is that 48 percent of all voting men? It can't be all. I don't think I know a single person who ever watched Nascar, except when it's on right before the Simpsons on Sunday nights. I always get that flash of fear: Oh no! Nascar is going to be on instead of the Simpsons! What the hecks so great about car racing, anyway? Give me a bus rodeo any day.
Monday July 7, 2003
****Romneys to the Rescue
Sometimes I read stuff about politicians committing acts of heroism in the course of their everyday lives, and I wonder how much I should believe. This tale is quite gripping: Governor Romney and his two sons were vacationing on a New Hampshire lake and hear the cries of a drowning Jersey family (well, actually it was night and they were just scared, being safely clad in life jackets, ) and the Romney men jump on their jet skies and save all six of them and even the dog, who was actually the only living thing in real danger.
Did it really happen the way 27-year old Josh Romney describes it? Or is he trying to impress some chick? Apparently this is the second time Team Romney has successfully executed a successful lake rescue on jet skies. It's like they're very boring Mormon super heroes. Romney has also been seen saving the Winter Olympics.
****Movie Review: Terminator 3
I gave love to the slimy Hollywood summer blockbuster whore this weekend and saw Terminator 3. And loved it.
I can't help feeling Mitt and Josh Romney saw it too this weekend as well.