R.I.P. Blanche

Sigh. Another childhood friend bites the dust.

Thanks, Rue, for teaching a generation of girls you that you could sleep around and still be a classy southern belle.

My favorite song by The National is "Racing Like A Pro." Unfortunately, whenever he sings the chorus "You're dumbstruck baby" I hear "Ya dumpster baby," thus reducing a beautiful song to a Family Guy joke. Fuck you Seth MacFarlane.



I chose this anime video because the song was clear, but it's pretty cool, too...

The Land of Cockaigne

I want to go to there...

Just kidding. In my "word a day" email last week there was a place that sounded magical and wonderful (if you're a female or gay cokehead, that is):

COCKAIGNE: noun: An imaginary land of luxury and idleness.

This was the image that accompanied it. Hmmm, looks any apartment in Williamsburg on a Saturday morning.

Less than 50 years ago...

Damn.

The picture speaks for itself, but here is the info from one of the participants:

Our Woolworth Sit-In, Jackson Mississippi, 5/28/63 was the most violently attacked sit-in of the '60s and the most publicized.   Involving a White mob of several hundred, it went on for several hours while hostile police from Jackson's huge all-White police department stood by approvingly outside and while hostile FBI agents inside (in sun-glasses) "observed."   Seated, left to right are Hunter Gray (John R. Salter, Jr.) -- Native American; Joan Trumpauer (now Mulholland), a White Southern student at our private Black college, Tougaloo College [one of two White students at Tougaloo]; Anne Moody, Black, from Wilkinson County, Mississippi.  I, Gray [Salter] was a very young Tougaloo professor; and Joan and Anne were my students.  All of us are covered with sugar, salt, mustard, and other slop.  I was beaten many times -- fists, brass knuckles, and a broken glass sugar container -- and am covered with blood.

What a way to start an autobiography

"The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness. Although the two are identical twins, man, as a rule, views the prenatal abyss with more calm than the one he is heading for (at some forty-five hundred heartbeats an hour)."

Nabakov, from Speak, Memory.

Gotta love Nabokov, man. This line really moved me (i.e., gave me that special tingly feeling) when I read it yesterday. As did this one (proving that being Facebook friends with weird people whose only link to you is that they share your last name can sometimes be valuable):

"I myself am made entirely of flaws, stitched together with good intentions."

So good! Augusten Burroughs, apparently. I guess I'll have to pick up some books from him, too.


Note: These two lines alone made up for the entire shitty romance novel I read before bed last night. Although it was the most meta romance novel I've ever read, so I guess that counts for something.

I need to invest in ninja throwing stars

I need to invest in throwing stars so when jerks on the street yell out "Excuse me miss, you dropped something," because they think they're funny I can bend over, pull a throwing star out of my ankle holster, and then chuck it at them.

Yes, these are the kinds of plans I come up with to combat catcallers.

UPDATE: It happened again today (day after initial post was written)! "I think you dropped something, miss. You dropped your halo!" What in the flying fuck is up with this? A viral marketing campaign by Beyonce? I need to get to www.ninjathrowingstar.com, STAT!

It's a hard time to be a romantic

It's a hard time to be a romantic. I've been feeling this way for a while, like at every turn there is something to remind me that it's naive to really believe in love. I'm not the only one; even my hairdresser brought it up! Why is the consensus "shit happens" when people hurt each other? Or that you should expect people you love to fuck you over?

I know I'm taking events that have nothing to do with me a bit too personally, but it feels personal. Like the little girl who used to sit and write stories about people who fell in love and lived normally ever after, no expectations of perfections even, and who actually believed in those stories, is getting beat down more and more with reality.

I'm sticking to my guns, though."I want to believe," X-Files style. I just wish more people felt the same way!

Weird dreams

I've been having some weird dreams the past two weeks. The ones that take the cake:

3.) After watching The Wire, I had a dream that McNulty stole a Blow Pop (from Charm!) outof my purse and proceeded to eat it in front of me. Jerk.

2.) Took place in Jersey City. The whole dream was weird, but the strangest was when a (real life)  friend's boyfriend randomly showed up and took me to some box cars that were near train tracks (the location was real). He opened the door and revealed a bunch of black people he had killed and put in the box car. Then, smiling, he explained that he had received orders to do it, but he wouldn't do that to us. When I lookaround I realize that there are 3 dudes who look like they stepped out of the movie Cadillac records standing next to me. They give a "WEll, that's strange" look to each other and start walkign off.

3.) Threesome. with. Bill. Murray. I don't even have sex dreams that much. Fucking weird.

One thing that these dreams make clear is that I absorb way too much when I watch movies.

My BlackBerry, My Protector

I can be a bit impulsive. This is not a trait that goes over well in the digital age, especially when it involves social media and blogging. Sometimes I get worked up and decide I want to vent my feelings on my blog or write something particularly not nice on Facebook. Every time I try to do this using my mini-computer, aka my BlackBerry, it somehow malfunctions before I manage to post anything vitriolic for the world to see. Smart phone, indeed.

Not nice

I know it's not nice to wish bad things on people, but sometimes you can't help it.

Let me get into 90s comedian mode here: What is up with women who apply their make-up on the subway? I don't mean lip gloss, I mean the women who are putting on foundation, eye shadow, eye liner, mascara, lip liner, and lipstick during rush hour. Why not wake upa bit early and do it at home? And why does it always take these people 10 motherfucking minutes to apply some mascara?! This should take 45 seconds, maybe two minutes what with all the bouncing (which you wouldn't have to deal with if you were on solid ground in your won damn bathroom).

But my original point. When these people are mascara-ing away in the middle of a crowded train, am I the only one who kinda hopes they poke themselves in the eye?

Accentuate the positive

Original post redacted because...some shit you shouldn't say ona blog, even if no one reads it.

Anyway, here are some nice things that have happened lately. Nothing deep, just wanted to write it down to remind myself of the good things in life.

For Valentine's Day, Randy took me to a super awesome restaurant for probably the most amazing meal I've had in my life. Not to be hyperbolic, but each course (with the exception of one, which was still great) selected for the Valentine's tasting menu was just about perfect. Great meal, great guy, great night. It was a much needed high note in a time period where I've been feeling a touch of SAD (It's winter, I get to blame it on SAD. I'll have to think of something else for spring.).

I finally moved into into my new place. I love it! I think it's the first place I've lived in since my family's house that feels like home. The only way it could be better is if there was a secret tunnel behind the stove that led to cute-fuzzy-baby-animal-land. That would be kind of creepy actually. It's perfect as is.

Things that annoy me, but shouldn't

When I am the only black customer shopping in a store (doesn't really matter what type) and people come up to me and ask "Excuse me, do you work here?" Next time someone does this, instead of getting mad I'll just have fun leading them on a wild goose chase around the store.

"God bless you": From benediction to booty call

I find it interesting that the most used pick-up line (psssst! And kissing noises do not count as "lines," they count as permission to give a stranger a concussion) lately is "God bless you." It"s across ethnicities, too--in my experience only "ethnic" (black, hispanic, urbanAsians, italian, greek, slavs, etc) dudes use pick up lines on the street. I guess WASPs meet at mixers, and frat dudes pick up girls at bars? But I digress--that's something that can be looked into later.

Back to the "God bless you business." What the hell is that about?! What does it even mean? "You gave me a boner and some jerkoff material for later, God bless you"? Or "God bless you for having a sweet, sweet ass"? How did this become the standard way of hitting on someone? I'm not even religious and it skeeves me out. It does provide an easy rejoinder though: "Go to hell."

So it goes

Yesterday night was girl's night out. Time to get dressed up all sexy-like, head out on the town, and see if you "still got it." The plan began with meeting at Bon's and then heading out to dinner at a fancypants restaurant that had something to do with Buddha and another thing to do with Top Chef.

When I arrived at Bonnie's apartment building, there was a fire truck on the street perpendicular to hers. A police car and an ambulance blocked off the small street where the entrance to her building is located. I called her a couple of time from the foyer since I couldn't remember her apartment number, but got no answer. As I tried again, a man and woman walked past me and out the front door.

"He dropped dead right in front of..." was the snippet of their conversation I heard as they passed by. Oh, the ambulances are for some old dude who had a heart attack or something, I thought.

I walked up to the doorman's desk and asked which apartment Bonnie was in. The doorman was standing behind the desk; in the seat sat a small boy, who couldn't have been more than four, with dirty blond hair and big shining eyes. The kid focused on some toys he was playing with; the doorman stared blankly at me and said he didn't know who that was. Annoyed, I retreated to the side of the desk to call Bon again. The man and woman who had passed me earlier had returned.

"Heeey," the guy spoke in a loud, obnoxiously soothing voice to the kid. "Do you like cookies? Here are some cookies. Do you like them?" The kid continued moving his toys across the desk as they forced the cookies on him.

Finally, he turned to the man and said "I like playing with my dad." The way he said dad was a question thrown into that statement, and then it fell into place. Oh, the ambulances are for some guy who died right in front of his child.


Bhavu finally got me the apartment number, which I told to the shellshocked doorman. I received a blank stare paired with a nod, and fled to the elevator. So terrible, I thought. I hope his mom gets here soon, he doesn't even know his dad is dead.

The doors opened on Bonnie's floor and a couple of feet away from me a young woman lay crumpled on the floor. Two paramedics stood over her, watchi as she sobbed. "I don't know what to do," she moaned. Then she screamed. "I can't breathe! I can't breathe! What am I supposed to do!"

She looked so young. She couldn't have been more than 30.

Her cries echoed in the hallway as I made my way to Bonnie's apartment. When I got inside, I couldn't shake the horrible feeling that had come over me. Grief and death have been on my mind a lot since the earthquake in Haiti; you can't hide from the images of bodies pulled from rubble and wailing mothers. It hit home to me in a way that other disasters hadn't, and the fact that it had directly affected close friends of mine made it even more real. But evena fter all teh videos and pictures and news stories--seeing that woman's unrestrained grief so closely was terrifying. Not only becasue she was so far gone, so deeply in pain that she couldn't even take care of her child, but because that's the kind of grief that hits close to home. Everyone fears dying, but parallel to that and perhaps more frightening, everyone fears their loved ones dying. Especially the unexpected death, not of grandpa or great aunt Julie, but your friend, your lover, your child. Looking at that woman on the floor I wondered how she would go on. She wasn't on the ground anymore when we left, but I could still picture her there.

Dinner was great. The restaurant was really nice, and the food was delicious. We hadn't all been together for a while, so it was good catching up, and I'm looking forward to doing it on a more regular basis. When I made my way home though, I was still haunted by tthe young woman on the floor.

This morning I came into work and to discover via the internet that a little girl with leukemia, who's story I know through a friend and who's ups and down I had also followed in the media had died. Being the person that passed that news on to my friend was terrible; I knew that any sadness I felt was multiplied by a million for her since she actually knew this sweet little girl. Although it is a terible loss for her mother, at least she got to do so many things before she passed. Here is a pic her mom sent around of her meeting Obama:

I don't know what all this death and grief of late means. In the aftermath it's easy to say appreciate your life and do not go gentle into that good night, but that's cliche. Still, all you can do is live and love as hard as you can, because eventually you'll be that person on the floor, and you'll need a reason to get back up. So it goes.

Roommate Stories

This morning as I walked to the train, thoughts of my impending move led to reminiscence of roommates past. A situation I hadn't thought of for years popped up, and I actually burst out laughing on the street. It goes a little something like this:

After having moved out of the house where two of the girls had turned into crazy tyrannical dictators, bringing misery into the lives of me and the other two girls living there (one of my fellow oppressed housemates had literally cut a bitch before, and she was still cowed by the two dictators), I jumped out of the frying pan and into the fire by moving in with my crazy boyfriend.

We (he) decided to temporarily move into a flop house of sorts with a few other strangers. A nice Asian girl; an Indian guy who kept to himself; a Filipino dude who was always smiling; and the white girl who liked to party hard and stay up late yelling into her cell phone--we shared a wall with this girl of course, except the wall was actually a door and thus we could hear every part of her late night drunk dials to her boyfriend. This lead to some loud arguments between her and my boyfriend pretty quickly, and I soon joined in since at the time I was working the 6:30 shift at the faculty club and any sleep I could grab was precious. There was definitely no love lost between us and our new neighbor.

The girl ended up having another great trait: she enjoyed taking massive shits, clogging up the toilet, and then disappearing for a couple of days and leaving the other housemates to clean up the mess. Although this was new to us, it had apparently happened a few times. Even the landlord knew about it. When we called for the plumber, he gave us her number, too, and in my anger I listed her in my phone as Dirty Fucking Slob.

After being acutely embarrassed by my ex confronting her about "learning to use a goddamned plunger you piece of garbage," the bathroom surprises stopped. She was also quieter at night (she probably feared for her life). I even had a conversation with her and she turned out to be a nice person; I'm fairly sure both the abandoned ginormous poops and the loud talking were linked to a little problem called drugs.

After a tentative truce had been established between us, she came running into my room one day.

"I lost my phone! Can I use yours to call it please? I'm sorry!"

Without thinking, I tossed it to her; she looked so distressed I didn't give it a second thought. I continued reading as she dialed her phone, and then a friend's phone, and then gave me a terse "Thanks" as she practically ran from the room. As I checked the top two entries, three horrible words stared back at me: Dirty Fucking Slob.

I felt horrible. Imagine dialing your number into a virtual stranger's phone and seeing that pop up? I apologized, which she accepted without looking at me. I felt bad, but after she left, I couldn't help but laugh. I would say the moral of the story is don't write bad things in your cell phone about people who might use it, but I think the larger moral is don't be a fucking slob.

If I were an SAT analogy

If I were an SAT analogy question, I would currently be this one:

Shauna : roomates ::
A) shoes : socks
B) cats : tuna
C) Elizabeth Taylor : ex-husbands
D) kid : karate

All of this is to say another roommate is moving out, and thus I'm calling it quit on this place. To paraphrase a friend: the universe is trying to tell me something. And that something is you need to fucking move already.

To sum up my experiences at this place, I moved in 7 months ago. A couple of days before I moved in, my original roommate's monster Cerberus dog bit Randy for no reason. That put quite a damper on things as you can imagine.

After that roommate moved out to get married and go have children for the dog to use as chew toys, I chose a guy that seemed nice and nerdy as my roommate. The first night he moved in I woke to find him standing in my doorway at 4:23 am, and it was all downhill from there. After not paying rent, he decided to let me know on the 15th that he ws moving to Philly for a job. When I finally went in his room to prepare to show it to potential roommates, I was pleased to discovered that it smelled like a gangrenous foot collector had been storing his wares there. Many weird things happened with this guy, but the bottom line is when I first met him he reminded of someone. I later realized that that someone was the creepy liver-eating dude Victor Tooms from the X-Files. He was probably trying to eat my liver that night I saw him in my doorway; good thing I woke up.

The last roommate to pass through here is a nice Frenchie named Marie. She's fine, but the same month she moved in, so did the middle-aged punk rocker bartenders next door. Who like to have parties at their house at 4 am on Mondays. This is when I discovered m walls were made of tissue paper. Actual tissue paper. When I forget to pick up some Charmin, I just take a few pieces of the bedroom wall to the bathroom with me. Much to say about them, but they are jerks and I am lazy. One of them broke into my roommates room by accident when drunk because he had lost his keys and thought it was his room, and he didn't even apologize. They're those kind of jerks.

Well, my Frenchie has found a cheaper apartment that isn't noisy, so looks like it's on the road again time for me. I intend to break my lease and move out, as clearly this place is not right for me. I'll move in with another roomie, and when I've saved up enough get my own pad I'll do that. I was very sad and overwhelmed this morning when looking at the listings on craigslist, and I'm sure I will be at other points during this process, but I'm looking forward to moving now. Maybe I'll find someplace where I'm comfortable and happy, that doesn't have grafitti on the front door and is not across the street from the projects, and where I don't have to hear my next door neighbor blowing his nose or blasting speed metal throught the walls. That's not too much to ask, is it?

2010 To-Do

This year, I will refrain from making resolutions. Instead I will have a to-do list that I would be wise to complete before 2011, because I'll only have two years to enjoy my skills before the 2012 apocalypse.

1. Learn Spanish (con Randolpho). I'm pretty good at picking up languages, and I already have a basic understanding of Spanish. I need to put some language podcasts on my phone and listen on the commute to work. Finally, I'll be able to curse out the restaurant workers near my house for trying to sell me rice and beans for $25. Next on the list is Russian, so I can finally go back to my bikini wax place and understand what they're really saying about my nether regions.
   
2. Get some actual bass skills. You don't get to wear kick-ass thigh high boots and rock out on stage if you can't even play an Oasis song through without stumbling. I already have my band name (Tacos at Midnight), now I just need some musical talent.
   
3. Perfect my swimming skills. By the end of the year, people are going to have to ask themselves two questions: "Did Esther Williams get a tan?" and "Who the hell is Esther Williams?" This will come in handy when the tsunamis arrive in NYC. Also, I can listen to Aenema without feeling like the dude is singing specifically to me when he yells "Learn to swim, learn to swim, learn to swim."
   
4. Eat healthier. If all the weight I'd gained went to my boobs, I wouldn't mind, but the fat has a horrible sense of direction and always ends up at the-belly-formerly-known-as-abs.
5. BUSINESS SLOTH. Don't ask, you'll see soon enough.
   

There are more, but this makes a solid top 5.