Thirty Days

Have September, April, June, and November. All the rest have thirty-one. Except February, it has twenty-eight.

The Non-Job

Not only do I have a non-blog, but now, as my mom pointed out to me yesterday, I also have a non-job. "Doesn't that just mean you're unemployed?" you ask. Well, no. Being unemployed is much better than working a non-job. While having a non-job is like being unemployed in many many ways (i.e. you're not working and you're not making any money), the key difference is that with the non-job, your non-employer keeps telling you that your non-job will start tomorrow. Two weeks and several more unfulfilled "We're opening tomorrow or the next day at the latest" promises later you are still not working and you are still making no money, but at this point it's too late to find another job, so you sit around hoping that the non-job becomes a job as soon as possible.

It's like when I was waiting in line to get hot dogs at the Phillies game on $1 hot dog day. By the time I realized the line was not moving because they were out of hot dogs, I had already been waiting in line too long to just walk away (10 mins). After all, how long can it take to make a couple hot dogs? (15 mins). And since there were fewer than ten people ahead of me in line, I knew it couldn't take too long after the hot dogs were ready.

This would have been the case had each person in line not been buying a minimum of fifteen hot dogs. But by the time I realized this, I had invested way too much time (30 minutes) to walk away without a hot dog. When I finally made it to the counter (45 minutes) to order my two hot dogs, I didn't feel a sense of accomplishment. Just an absence of failure, which, much like the non-Fenway frank, was not that satisfying.

SFB (June 23, 2006 8:33pm)

Because I am bored, and because I find myself incapable of writing anything new these days, I would like to share a poem with you that I wrote on April 16, 2003, which I came across this afternoon as I systematically went through all my college notebooks, ripping out the pages and throwing them into the recycling bin, not out of misplaced anger but the need to downsize my life to fewer than six boxes of accumulated crap (I forget what the assignment for this exercise was, but I think it had something to do with a poem we read that had definitions in it and maybe defining words that appeared in one of the scientific essays we read in a poem of our own. At least that's what I did, if I remember correctly) :

what fine definition, have you been working out?
tidal: moon pulls
ocean: waves good-bye

as
life: (cinnamon cereal, and needed by those who define:
  organic: not as exciting as Herbal Essences would like you to believe
  precursor: before the blinking line in your Word document
  hydrothermal: quick-dry long underwear
  synthesize: to make soulless music using an artificial drum beat)

goes on
as
  atoms: make up cells (jails of our DNA): creating origins: the endings of nothing.



Note: This was not part of my prize-winning poetry manuscript, but sadly it contains a similar level of quality. All I can say is that you should be thankful I don't have a scanner or you might be subjected to full-length reminiscing, like my ten-page analysis on using language to create racial and ethnic identity on MTV's Dismissed.

I Don't Pink So

It's time to admit that there is no longer anything about this supposed non-blog that distinguishes it from any other mediocre blog out there these days. (I don't think there ever was, but I was hoping there might be at some point.) But instead of fighting back, I'm going to embrace this, which means that like every other amateur blogger lacking a focus, I will now use this space for pointless rants.

Pink baseball caps. What is the deal? The whole point of being a fan is that you wear the team colors whether or not they go with your outfit. This is why historically men are more likely than women to be sports fans.

Ha, look, I just made a joke based on gender stereotypes.

Really, though, as someone who once wore a shiny brown spandex unisuit with regularity, I simply cannot understand, say, Red Sox fans, who get to choose from two very attractive colors-- red and blue-- but can't handle it and buy a pink hat instead. But the popularity of this whole pink "girly fan" clothes thing is not surprising when you think about it in the context of the whole sexism thing.

It's now ok in this post-Title IX era to like sports if you're a girl. Heck, they'll even let you play most of them. But being a real sports fan is still something that's a "guy thing." And as with most "guy things" there are women who have no problem taking part, either because they could care less about societal expectations or because they think it's fun to be that girl in the "one of the guys" kind of way. I think true fandom should be left to these women, the ones who can handle wearing the team colors. I don't think there should be an option to mark yourself as a "girly fan" and allow yourself to simulatenously enjoy the best of both worlds-- the wide world of sports and the wonderful world of enforced femininity.

It Annoys Me Too

I hate it when I check my blog and it hasn't been updated. This happens with embarassing frequency. Embarassing not only because of how often I check my blog, but how every time I actually think that it may be different than last time I checked, even though I AM THE ONLY ONE WRITING. Yeah. I guess deep down I refuse to surrender the hope that in my absence the blog fairy has paid a visit and deposited a witty, well-written gem on my website.

Alcohol & Hair Gel

It has been a few days but there are still some quality pictures to post, thanks to our awesome readers. As promised, this one features people you know (although you may not recognize them with their stylish fauxhawks).




Photo courtesy of Shaw.

Happy Father's Day

I know it's not today because today is Monday and Father's Day is always on a Sunday. But then again it wasn't yesterday either and apparently I'm the only one who didn't know this.

I had started thinking several days ago about what I should do for my dad, but of course I couldn't think of anything good. So on Friday I decided to head to the mall to see if I could find something. There I ran into Ellie Dixon in Lord & Taylor (they're having a large store closing sale) and I mentioned that I was looking for a present for my dad (not in Lord & Taylor, I just stopped in because they were having such a massive clearance sale). She said that her family didn't really celebrate Father's Day, not with presents or anything. Hmm, I thought. Since my family is extremely low-key when it comes to holidays (even the big ones like Christmas-- while the Dixons get all dressed up Christmas Eve and eat in the formal dining room, we make French toast the next morning and eat in our PJs), it seemed odd that here on a Hallmark holiday I would be one of those people in the mall thinking I needed to find a gift at the last minute.

Then (several minutes later) I had a revelation. I realized that we don't really celebrate Father's Day either, save for a pan of brownies (which we make for my dad on any occasion, which I guess would just be his birthday and Father's Day now that I think of it), a card, and maybe some lobster rolls out on the boat for lunch. I remembered that I didn't get my mom a present for Mother's Day; I had just sent a card.

So, the pressure off, I decided I would just whip up a batch of brownies and make a card. I had talked to Pam a few days ago and she said she would send a card we could both sign but it hadn't come yet and I figured she had been too busy with work to send it off in time. That night before I went out I made some brownies, joking about how it was hard to do surprise cooking when the kitchen was in the living room but then again how surprising was it anyway that I was making brownies when tomorrrow was Father's Day. When the brownies were done, I gave them to my dad with a card, wished him a happy Father's Day, and went on my way.

Yesterday afternoon my mom happened to mention that she had been talking to her friend the night before and had wished her "Happy Father's Day," which caused her friend to exclaim, "Oh no! It's not tomorrow is it?", concerned that it had somehow snuck up on her. My mom looked over at the calendar and saw that no, it wasn't until next week.

But you already knew that.

Photo Contest?

It looks like Laura was the winner of the recent photo contest. Why? Well, basically she was the only one competing. Not that she was the only person who sent a picture, but she was the only one to identify her email as "Photo Contest!"

However, this is not to say that Laura's submission would not have won on it's own merits had there actually been a competition. Especially if the contest was called "The Scariest Photoshop Collage Ever." If you thought "Amy & the Pigs" was a disturbing use of digital alteration technology, wait until you see this.

Laura submitted a photo collage, but unfortunately it was too big to upload in its entirety. Although fortunately it was a .tif (whatever that is) instead of a compressed high resolution .pdf, so at least I was able to open it and extract the key picture.


Tomorrow we will see the winners of the "Best Drunken Picture of the Blogger and 1/2 Her Readership" and "Best Random Google Image Search" categories, as well as the winner of "Best Napoleon Dynamite Spoof Video."

Smoke

Met one of our new neighbors, Clarence, in the shared hallway last night when I opened the door to try to fan some of the smoke away from the multiple fire alarms that were going off when I filled the house with smoke trying to make sauteed chicken cutlets with lime sauce. He was standing there with a newspaper trying to do the same thing. Apparently the smoke detectors are hardwired and so there is no removing the battery to get them to stop. So we just had to wait an insane amount of time (it seemed even longer because I had set them off and was hoping it would all just quietly go away) while they beeped and beeped until they were satisfied there was no more smoke in the house. So that was fun. Not exactly a great anecdote but I am making myself write something every day and I have to go paint the porch now before it gets cloudy and rainy again.

Can someone send me a picture for tomorrow? I like pictures and I haven't posted one in a while so the blog is looking boring (in addition to actually being boring).

Back in the 'Burbs

There are trees and lawns and yards. I don't have to wake up and go to work. The house is comfortable but unfamiliar (I keep turning doorknobs the wrong way). I feel like I'm staying at a bed & breakfast.