We Have to Take the Car...

I <3 my bike. It's a fun and functional way to navigate the streets of Chicago.



Arienette (my bike) kind of looks like that but fewer doodads on it (like tire guards and gears). I had to go all the way to the suburbs to buy it which meant that by the time I got to the guy's house I would have pretty much bought anything. No way was I going home empty handed. So even though I could barely ride a fixed gear bike at the time, I was determined to learn.

The progress was slow but steady. I eventually made a few modifications like getting rid of the world's most uncomfortable bike seat ever and adding a bell. And then winter came and like the wuss I am I retired Arienette in favor of not dying in a slushy gutter.

Sadly, last weekend tragedy struck. Long story short, my back tire went now flat. Last time I had that issue with a bike people started stealing it bit by bit. True story, people are jerks. And even though Sarah was kind enough to find me a seller on Craigslist with a tallbike for sale ($200-cheap!) I decided to suck it up and wheel my baby across the sidewalk for a repair.

The downside of having Arienette good as new means I have no justification to pursue this:


(the bike, obviously, not the rider-ha!)







Which is sad because as some of you know, I have wanted to ride a tall bike forever. Or at least since I first read this:





Courtesy of Nothing Nice to Say.

Although my birthday is coming up...

In Your Phone, Listening to Your Conversations

I know there are a million "Overheard in..." sites but whatever. Funny things I heard people say recently when they thought only the customer service agent could hear them. (Most are "that's what she said" statements because I have the mentality of a 12 year old and watch the Office too much)

1. "Does my mom need it? Ok, I'll give it to her."
2. "I like to be high. It's a pleasant surprise for my customers."
3. "Thank you for sharing your children with me. I always enjoy that."

-all heard on 6/10/08

Miau Miau, Field of Catz-ah!

Miau Miau, Field of Cats-ah!
I enjoy Stereo Total a hell of a lot for not being able to understand the vast majority of their lyrics. Although I am of German descent, my communication abilities are limited to English, Spanish and a random ASL signs (and the alphabet). None of this helps figure out what Stereo Total means when they sing "Miau miau wilde Katze." C'est la vie.

I hate losing touch with people. It sucks. And I'm especially good at it, it seems, which sucks even more. And I worry that I've changed too much or not enough in the interim. A couple of friends have theorized that if the you from 5 years ago would hate the today version of you then you're probably doing something right (did you follow that? sorry!). I don't know if I agree. I think maybe me five years ago would be puzzled by some of my choices and I'd certainly have some advice to dispense to younger-me but I think we'd get on pretty well for the most part. And I think that's a good thing overall.

I think maybe it's better not to regret too much. Everyone screws up and you'd learn very little by making the "right" choice all the time. I love playing "what if..." but at the end of the day it's your little red wagon, and you've got to pull it (as ani difranco might say). Which is to say that I was always going to fuck up certain things and I try to just accept that. I think it's important to act as though you have free will but I also think that given a set of circumstances you're pretty much always fated to make the same decision given your character and experiences.

Indeed.

It Would Be OK

I am aware that growing up in small-town Wisconsin gave me some unrealistic expectations. Going to college in Madison probably did not help as I still find myself stunned at the things I've heard my co-workers say in complete seriousness.

A sampling for your enjoyment (paraphrased):

1. "If we had a woman president, other countries would not respect us and they would attack the US."

2. "If a woman wears that out in public, she is asking to be raped." (Female co-worker commenting on a rather modest bikini in a Victoria Secret catalog).

3. "I don't understand why someone would live a good life and then at 80 decide that they're going to get married to someone of the same sex and therefore condemn themselves to hell." "Imagine the honeymoon-cobweb city!" (and then she hung up a picture of the couple in her cube-as a reminder to be a good Christian or something).

4. "Ms. is ONLY an appropriate title for divorced women."



WTF?

Hip or...?

Sarah-Sarah and I have started playing a new game when we go to shows. It's called HIP or PEDOPHILE? Essentially the game involves pointing out other concert attendees and deciding if they are HIP or if they are PEDOPHILES. Sometimes they are BOTH.

Once we played using a the video of I'm From Barcelona's song "We're From Barcelona."* Those members of the at-home audience can play along if they have a copy (conveniently found on Youtube ).

HIP or PEDOPHILE is derived from 'the Burg mini-episode titled HIP or DANGEROUS .

Which is my way of saying you should watch the 'Burg.



Indeed.









*Disclaimer. I in no way mean to imply that any member of I'm From Barcelona is, in fact, a pedophile (or hip for that matter, for those who find the term offensive, or even that any member of I'm From Barcelona *has* hips). It just happened to be the music video we had On Demanded when we created our version of the game. I do mean to imply, however, that some of the band members have creepy facial hair.

**I am slowly teaching myself HTML tags. I imagine it's as annoying as people learning to make signs in Paintshop and using five billion fonts on a single page. The internet is fun!

I'll Never Let Go

So is there ever an ok time to admit a Celine Dion obsession? Because seriously. Part of it is watching Titanic to many times as a young adult (which some people can probably relate to even if they won't admit it). Somewhere I have a tape full of different radio edits of THAT song spliced with actual film dialog ("the ship is sinking and there aren't enough lifeboats." You know what I'm saying, don't pretend otherwise). So that's about a third of it.

I don't even really like Cathy Griffin but she has certainly contributed to the problem. I caught part of her stand up routine on Bravo once (sometimes there is just nothing on cable). She was describing seeing Celine Dion in Vegas and the way she tells it makes it sound like an amazing show. Specifically the part where Celine comes out on stage and is shocked (!-Simply shocked!) that anyone came to see her despite the fact that she apparently sells out the house every.single.night. And, from the way Kathy tells it, she's so appreciative and gracious and gentile that it seems like going to see Celine Dion in concert would be a total ego boost for every member of the audience. (And I bet she does the song from Titanic like eight times complete with radio edits-seriously, I'm not getting over that any time soon).

Around the time I saw this on TV, a friend from work actually went to Las Vegas where Celine Dion had residency at one of the major hotels. And so of course I jokingly suggested that she go see the concert and report back (and then later not-so-jokingly begged-I'm not a proud person). To strengthen my case, and because I have to entertain myself somehow, I ended up drawing my imagined photo montage of Celine Dion's show. Celine Dion singing at the front of the stage, Celine Dion gliding over the audience on a swing (didn't she do that in a perfume commercial once?), Celine Dion on a faux-Titanic prow, Celine sprawled on the top of a grand piano and so forth. It was a marvelous artistic achievement for all that it only resembled actual fact insofar as the figure looked vaguely lady-like with a long face and even longer hair.


(Essentially what I drew)

And maybe this would all be fine and normal and within the realm of acceptability except for the fact that I often find myself referencing a deep-seated love of Ms. Dion with people who are not privy to the joke (or at least the back-story to what was once a joke but is maybe bordering on sad reality if loitering in Walgreens for the sole purpose of hearing the rest of THAT song is any indication, sadly without the movie quotes).

If there were any defense, it would be that my obsession is really with an intentionally fictional Celine. I'd liken my love of Ms. Dion to an ironic infatuation (intentionally defining irony the way Alanis Morsette did or in the way people say some T-shirts are ironic when they are not). I don't really want to see Celine Dion live or run her fan club but it amuses me to claim to want to do both. And it amuses me even more to try to convince others to want to want to do those things too.

Which is a not so subtle reference to my obsession with (quoting) The Breakup (a movie I have not and will not see though I did see the preview a billion times), which I will probably not ever explain in this space because doing so would be a rehashing of the whole Celine Dion thing.

Sportz Night

Ok, seriously SERIOUSLY (?!)

I generally feel kind of miserly when I tell people about the (no longer cute) neighbor's Sportz Nights. I can never convey my true disdain because most people like sports of some sort and to those people, Sportz Night is tailgating 101. Essentially there's a lot of grilling, beer drinking and theoretical game watching. I can't explain why I want to rain on their parade, but I do. Maybe because I'm not-so-secretly a bitch. Because when I complain about Sportz Night I'm kidding-but not really.

As a non-sports enthusiast, Sportz Night sucks. It's always loud and sort of awkward because our dining room windows look out into the space between apartments where they grill and also their dining room windows (side note, neither room seems to be used much for actual dining). Thus walking around in my apartment makes me feel like an animal on display in a zoo. And, since I'm judging them (that's right!) I get sort of paranoid that they are judging me, too.

Mostly I hate Sportz Night because of the beanbag game the neighbors play. I do not understand the beanbag game and I do not want to. In and of itself it's actually pretty innocuous looking:



The object of the game appears to be tossing the beanbag into the hole in the ramp. If there's more to it, I don't actually care.

The issue is more of what the game represents than what it is. Specifically, it means we live next to ex-frat members. I remember walking down Langdon St. in Madison on game day (aka Sportz Night) and all the frats would have this set up on the sidewalk. Thus it will forever be negatively associated with meatheads, sports fanatics and the smell of sloppy drunken assholes who yell in your face for no reason as you try to navigate past them. It's one of the few things I don't miss about college. And I kind of thought I'd escaped all of that.

But now it's 1:35 A.M. and Sportz Night, which is almost always an afternoon activity, is in full swing.

Beanbag games after midnight-seriously?!