A button for a lazy stalker?

The most photographed stop sign ever.

i'm sorry

i've realized i meant moPHOblogging. the possibilities are endless.

please forgive me.

muah, ha ha, ha ha ha

since rereading the past all several posts was insanely dull, i will now subject you to chewtastic 2.0 - mopicblogging! (awkward 2.0 jargon - © by me. not that you'd want to ZOMG use it anyway.)

this pic is from monday during lunch. it's very cute (there's another one on the opposite side of the street somewhere), but i can't help wondering what's going on with all the health-conscious graffiti. is it a backlash against the painfully sweet candy corn? will brushy be far behind? flossy? portion-control-and-regular-exercise-y?

maybe i'll start wheatpasting foie gras posters.

Toothy!

From a walk on duval.

days three and four

yesterday was eh. today, well, i got cut before noon and don't have to go back until monday morning. it'd be a great opportunity to catch up on some sleep... if i hadn't drunk about ten gallons of coffee. i mean ounces. coffee consumption is not nearly as fun if you pour it into a nalgene, because then you see why you're twitching so much your hands are blurred.

i'm bored. this is like that unemployment thing, but worse, and i still won't have any money until next month. who wants to amuse me today? probably nobody. *sigh*

day two

today was the logic and accuracy test. i was partnered with a training troubleshooter who mainly writes software from home, and also does poetry slam stuff. she was entertaining. i thought there was a mistake in the sample ballot's proposed constitutional amendment, but there wasn't. oh fuck, note to self, there was - the spanish version needs to be fixed. stupid memory. then we fucked up a test and had to do the whole thing over. pro: i get to sleep in until noon tomorrow! con: this job is shit for hours. i wonder if it'll ever hit forty hours a week.

inclines are slightly less taxing by bike now. i wonder how much more riding i'll have to do to get my cardiovascular endurance up to pre-smoking levels. probably a lot. there's something wrong with the bike, too. if it was a car i'd say it needs a wheel alignment.

employment! day one, cha cha cha

too bad for you, i forgot and left all my paragraph breaking tools at the council. HA!

i thought i was going in for paperwork today, but it turns out i actually worked. i forgot that a) this job is a pain in the ass because temps don't get keycards, so you have to walk around in big circles through one-way doors all the time trying to get to the bathroom or the copier and back; b) the warehouse is dusty; c) each voting booth contraption weighs thirty pounds, and manhandling a metro shelving cart loaded with ten of those on there is also a pain; d) if you're in the warehouse part, you have to look busy because you're on camera and your management's superiors come in randomly and will bitch them out if you're not futzing with something; e) you don't exactly leave at a set time; f) you have to pick an a.m. or a p.m. shift later on, and i don't do six a.m. anything, unless it's sleeping; and g) there's a lot of trying to look busy. the work has evolved to--let's not exactly say it's been dumbed down over the years, but maybe it's for forks, not knives or spoons. i was told today that apparently i'm in the running already for "rookie of the year," whatever that means. this ain't proofreading, that's for sure. i like the hour lunch; it gave me enough time to leisurely hunt for a crossword and finish a large coffee. i wonder when we get paid. there are people whose faces i remember vaguely from last time, and then there's this one guy from the golden boys that i guess i forgot worked there too. i dunno.

that was quick

oh, the joy of having shit just fall in your lap. with minimal effort, i have landed myself the technical troubleshooter job for the county elections office. hooray for seasonal work! i'll start sometime next week; i'm going in monday morning for the paperwork bit.

day nine, including seven and eight

my life has been subsumed by television, for the most part. oh, the horror, now that i've finally reached the dread grotto of banality; for lo, the next and last stop will be daytime network fare, a maelstrom of judges punch and judy, afroth with the foam of soap operas. intellectual emaciation is my new catchphrase.

i had my first overnight guest wednesday (that's day seven), and we watched some of the futurelovesexsoundslikeabunchofsongsthatotherpeopleprobably thinkarehottofuckto special, until she decided to find out exactly how much people paid to see this shit live. well, the upcoming j.t. show in l.a. has nosebleed seats that start at $100+, and then if you want to sit on a barstool at the end of one of the catwalks and have the opportunity to touch j.t.'s shoe or have him drip sweat on you or something (a la my mom's yanni experience) you can pay $1300. that's right. she decided it had better include a hand job by him as well. you know what else? THERE WAS ONLY ONE OF THOSE SEATS LEFT. i'd extrapolate and try to figure out how much justin timberlake grosses for each show, but i don't feel like math and i would probably rend my garments in fury once i saw the total. if you thought our civilization was doomed for requiring ice sculptures as wet bars at weddings, realizing that people spend this much money for three hours in a giant arena to see a tiny dancing former boy bander won't cheer you up much. we did like all his lushly busty and badonkadonked dancers, though the choreography seemed kind of lewd to me. i must be getting old and prudish.

finally finished re-reading the number of the beast that night too. the last bit with the convention and his "pantheistic solipsism" is rather exhausting if you're contextually rusty and haven't read any other sci fi in a while. "World-as-myth" is an interesting idea, but it seems much more fan-fic, escapist, and a hardy storytelling crutch convention than an actual stabbing viable worldview. although i wouldn't mind reading someone else's paper that dragged it into context with social networking, mmorpgs, and the hairy pooter, lotr et al., as well as how the converse happens, e.g. simpsons quotes used as conversation. whatever. i can bring the book tomorrow if anyone would like to borrow it.

day eight was sleeping, cookie-baking, and television. buh.

today has been sleeping and internet. whatever happened to my bike riding? i can't function without externally imposed structures dictating goals for me. left to my own devices, i take the role of an audience, not a creator. here's to doing something today! *clinks*

let's say today's day six;

weekdays are the problem here, anyway.

the weather was nice, and i didn't get very sweaty riding around. unfortunately, i didn't get anything else practical done either, except for doing the nyt crossword. jennifer's back. today's sandy's birthday. i'm boring, thank goodness. here's to staying away from drama.

day whatever, week two

today was fairly eh. i learned that not only did an unnamed company fucked me tax-wise, but unemployment benefit-wise as well. stupid piece of shit. myers and i went to the record store and then puttered around all the girly stores on first and congress. we ended up getting birthday presents for a birthday girl, and laughing at all the sequined tube tops, ruffled hot pants, and gold lamé pantsuits the eye could see.

i want lemon bars. maybe i'll go get lemons tomorrow. pie crusts are new to me though. i don't like fucking things up, or being bad at doing them. i want twice-baked potatoes too, but then i have to think of something meaty to eat with them. ooh! maybe if it doesn't rain, i can convince jennifer to ride bikes with me! if that doesn't work out, i might dress in all black and ride to spiderhouse and write angsty things in a journal while chainsmoking, drinking coffee, and glaring at pretty people. yes.

also, i'm outing the drummer of the sword for liking justice. (not justice by the sword, but justice a couple of cheesy french djs i like.)

p.s. joolie is perfect, awesome, perfectly awesome, and awesomely perfect. there. i've blogged for today.

p.p.s. i really like the word "crossly." i like to think that i do and say a lot of things crossly. (yes, obviously i've just re-read children's books, and also, i know you're all emphatically agreeing. thanks.)

p.p.p.s. stop reading if you don't want TMI:
i learned today that i am not the only pre-teen who ever harbored sexual fantasies about sandy and dennys. ha. aren't you grossed out now?

p.x4.s. misshapes is finally over. i still don't regret not going to beauty bar that day. although... if it had been at beauty bar - lumberton or beauty bar - des moines, i totally would have gone. in the future, the jennifer needs to go to last night's party or cobrasnake things and tell me how delightfully excruciating they are. there's nothing like a douchebag attack to get you to reach for your coke inhaler. i bet i would feel just as out of place as at cotillion or something. i'm always being oppressed, darn it.

day something

i guess today is day four? my enthusiasm for Getting Things Done™ is totally spent. i'm sticking to my brutal exercise regimen of only going to the 45th street walgreens for cigarettes, and today i got a 15 pound bag of dog food too. i got some unemployment papers in the mail as well. my sense of accomplishment is just completely overwhelming. under. underwhelming.

the kite runner was okay. i'm trying to re-read the number of the beast, but (especially with just having re-read good omens) i can't get into it. maybe you have to be in a certain kind of mood to enjoy lots of math, time travel, naked people, sex, and pulp science fiction, oz, and biblical references, all at the same time. i'm just not a horny old sci fi writer with a predilection for nude redheaded space captains bending genders with every switch of the underwear. maybe tomorrow. the eco book of essays made me feel stupid, but i'll try it again this weekend.

maybe craft night will get me all fired up. i'll go cobble together some shit.

gassin' it!

can you smell it? i was farty with beer hangover today; staci got crop-dusted by a stranger in the bookstore; and i ate popcorn tofu, red cabbage, and pinto beans. it's a gas-tasm!

i'm tired. i rode down to wheatsville, then we went to toy joy, rode up to half-price, rode to my house, rode to ut, then finally rode back to staci's. oof. now i'm entertaining fixed gear fantasies, although i think my strategy for stopping would be the same as for roller skating: find a wall.

the bike auction was a bust. the only cool bikes (like, two out of a zillion) were too expensive considering the amount of work that'll need to be done to them. it was pretty awesome watching (hopefully) normally rational humans get wound up about a bunch of shitty broken-ass bikes with flat tires, wonky wheels, frozen chains (some actually dragging on the ground), split seats, and fucked up paint jobs. one even looked like someone had haphazardly tried to remove the yellow bike paint before just slapping a sticker on it and calling it a day. the sky was gorgeous too. the roof of the parking garage was high enough so that no neighboring buildings towered over it, and the fuzzed out contrails only made the sky more blue. the sunset was okay, wedged between two buildings on the horizon.

staci and i discovered we have a common love of the three investigators, only she went even farther and had an all-girl three investigators that "solved" "crimes" in their neighborhood. i didn't have any friends in my neighborhood.

today's acquisitions: eco's foucault's pendulum and apocalypse postponed, the kite runner, mary poppins in the park, and hello mrs. piggle-wiggle. (all links are to the versions i bought.) yes, i agree that i'm having issues with my self-image as a reader right now. also, i only need one more to have all the mary poppins in this recent edition.


dan, there are zombie duckies at toy joy. i refuse to keep track of what you have any longer. joolie, i've found you a gift that i know you will promptly and joyfully regift.

wholly unfounded opinion no. 001

ATL is an awesome movie solely for the skating sequences, because just one totally beats anything in roll bounce. whirled peas out!

wholly unsubstantiated question no. 001

did goethe drink kostrizer? i guess i'll have to break in my ut library card so we'll know. it's in some beer book we have and also mentioned on some guy's myspace blog. how unreliable. the internets is useless.

mmm, beer. i want beer. i ate two slices of bread instead. i should stop procrastinating since the csi fest is over.

this is starting to sound like a roone post. um, go arsenal! go rangers red sox! airplanes! soccer! general complaining! i didn't get laid!

day one

with the advent of unemployment, i'm going to regale you daily with my whining about the boredom and loneliness, which will hopefully motivate me to keep busy instead.

i got up at eleven - that'll be the latest time i try to wake up this week. biked to the new barbershop, which is delightfully empty compared to the south one, dished and compared gossip updates, and then promptly sweated out the new haircut with a trip to the iga. since i was on my bike, i naturally purchased heavy canned and jarred (wha?) items. genius. at least the coffee was the most important selection, and prevents me from going to the coffee shop to waste time. i registered for unemployment and sent in the first payment request. i've planned to call time warner and bitch, figure out which one class i should take, and clean the apartment to fill out the rest of my day. reasonable, right?

i'd dick around more on the internet, but the computer can't seem to handle more than two tabs open, and if i browse with my usual ten or fifteen, it flips out and then i flip out and have to restrain from chucking it off the balcony. if i had a magic 8-ball, i would definitely see reformatting in the very near future. oh god, i'm boring. this must be what it's like to be my pets. geez. no wonder jennifer's place was always so clean.

maybe i'll try doing book reports. i really don't feel like sitting on hold with time warner. not like i'm not the gross douchebag who poops while on the phone. i usually resist. with friends.

i guess i'll get started on this horrorshow. today will also be day two of abstaining from alcohol. i might break it for free beer saturday at the grand opening for birds north. but only if you go too.