Some guy in a turquoise Pathfinder backed into my car in the drive-thru line last week. He was very nice about it, and he was kind of cute, in a mediocre sort of way. Anyway, my car was still driveable, but the hood was scratched and dented, and my headlight and fender cracked. I took it in today for an estimate, and it’s going to cost him more than $1300 to fix it. His insurance company is also going to pay for a rental car for me to drive for a week.
I’m kind of hoping for a DeLorean, so I can get in a little time travel after work, but I’d settle for a Ferrari, so I can pick up chicks like Kelly LeBrock.
Gluttony:
I thought I’d have a lazy night of guilty pleasures, so I bought an Us magazine and some McDonalds and curled up on my couch. French fry #7 was en route to my mouth when I realized I’d bought the issue with the cover story From Puff to Buff: The Best Bodies in Hollywood.
Did you know that J.Lo spends $57,256.75 a year to stay in shape?
That’ll put you off your quarter pounder like nothing else.
Zzzzz:
I took a 45 minute nap on the couch last night before going to bed.
Sometimes I like to get in a practice lap before the big game.
A selection of names programmed into my brother’s cell phone:
Big A
Big A House
C RAY
Chan
Hed
Gorgeous Dre
Jonas
MAFU
Margaux
Pulsi
Purple
Smiles
Shamel
Union Fag
Walk
West
Whit
Woody
He ain’t heavy:
My 18 year old brother has been staying with me for the past few days. He drinks all my Pepsi. He Lysols his pants in lieu of washing them. He uses the word “party” as a verb, as in, Do you care if we party here tonight? and, Why not? Ryan’s sister lets him party at her place. He sleeps on my couch until 4 in the afternoon. He clips his toenails over my bathtub. He needs the television to be on at all times, even if he’s in the other room. He does not understand why I’m squandering away all this living on my own and being able to buy alcohol by staying in and reading on a Friday night. He thinks I am so L7.
That’s okay, because I remember when he wore the top to his Superman pajamas every single day for a year.
(Cape included.)
Television with my parents:
Dad: What are we watching?
Mom: “Will and Grace.”
Dad: Will and Grace?
Mom: All I know is that he’s gay, and she lives with him.
Dad: That one?
Mom: Yes.
Dad: Well, she’s sure as hell not going to be the one to fix him.
One Ring to Rule Them All:
“See how bruised this pea made my ass?”
All I have to say is right on.
Like those bitches at The View, I resent Meg Ryan and Bridget Jones and their ilk for being elected to represent my gender (by secret ballot, evidently). All that bland, sexless, faux-quirky crap makes me want to puke. If they can’t hold their liquor or they could shop in the little girls’ department, they’re not really women.
Think Magical Thoughts My Ass:
Peter Pan and his beard broke up.
This bums me out way more than it should. If those two crazy kids can’t make it work, what are my chances?
RIP #2:
I will pour out a little of my Biggie rum & coke for my slain homey dooce.com.
We just got a letter:
Don’t for a minute think that I didn’t just totally write fan mail to Steve Burns. (link via helenjane)
Numero Dos!
How you like me now?
Breakfast of Runners-up:
Exactly how bad would you say a breakfast of several spoonfuls of chocolate frosting is, on scale of 1-10, with 10 being something Mrs. Walton made, and 1 being, oh, crack?
Question:
Is it wrong to make your security question “Who’s your daddy?”
Way You Walk:
One of the most backhanded compliments I’ve ever received was from a guy I dated in high school who told me I walked like a “lady golfer.” I honestly think he considered this a compliment, judging from his surprise by the WTF? face I made at him, but it’s stayed with me ever since. Until that moment, I had always prided myself on my normal walk. Now I worried: do I walk funny? Do I walk like Nancy Lopez? I don’t even like golf! Or sex with women, for that matter! In theory, I mean. I’ve never really given either the old college try.
Last night, while walking through the mall, I decided maybe I should try to put a little more sway into it. I figured, I’ve got these hips, so I should be using them. I felt all cool and runway model-sexy until I caught a reflection of myself, swinging and shimmying like Anastasia Krupnik trying to impress Washburn Cummings.
Lady golfer it is.
Fashion Advice:
I don’t care who you are, ladies: tying a little sweater over your shoulders just screams “bitch.”
And furthermore:
Last night I dreamed that someone had committed some grave injustice to my younger brother, and I was telling them off. I awoke to the sound of my own voice and realized I was dreaming, but I was in the middle of making a really good point, so I went ahead and finished my sentence.
Tick, Tick...
Dear God, do I ever love this kid. He makes me want to spawn.
That urge kicks in every once in awhile, at the strangest times. I mean, I love and adore children, and I know that someday I’ll be absolutely blissful with many of them, but that day is far, far away. However, they weren’t kidding about this whole biological clock thing. The older I get, the more I have to stop myself from asking complete strangers in stores if I can smell their babies’ heads. It’s a compulsion. Baby head is the most heavenly smell in the world, like milk and bath and powder and sleepy sweetness. And just the other night, I babysat for my old neighbors’ kids, and when I used their bathroom, the sight of discarded plastic dinosaurs at the bottom of the bathtub made me all wistful.
A Saturday afternoon trip to Wal-Mart usually clears this all right up.
Trivia:
Little-known facts about people you don’t know. No links, no further info. How fun for you!
My brother currently has a mohawk and can recite pi up to 80 digits.
Tony won our school and city spelling bees in sixth grade.
Emily loves the movie Xanadu so much, her dad bought her tickets to see Olivia Newton-John in concert.
Erin can’t straighten her middle finger on her left hand because once she cut it on a wine glass and was too drunk to go to the emergency room in time.
Laura can breakdance, but gets mad when you tell this to people in bars, because then they all want to see her do it.
Josh wrote me a very nice letter in 1993, likening his affection for me to Metallica’s “Fade to Black.”
My father can run 26 miles in a row without anyone even chasing him.
Brian M. once dyed his hair bright blue and sent me the clippings in a tiny ziploc bag. It was very soft. (The hair, not the bag.)
Kate’s mom won Wheel of Fortune when we were in the sixth grade. Word she won on: eggnog.
Mikey once labeled a videotape of hot girl-on-girl action “Matlock” so his roommates wouldn’t watch it, only to have his parents put it in the VCR when they visited.
Kerry won the Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey’s Pimp of the Year contest in 1997, handing out business cards that read “Momma K’s High-Priced Bitches.”
Brian B. devoted an entire year of his college newspaper column to rating different Chinese buffet restaurants.
My mother maintained a 4.0 grade point average from kindergarten to college.
Alex had her leg broken after junior prom while standing on a balcony that fell off the side of the house.
Christina is the whitest girl I know and dances like she’s a crazed native.
Brian P. came over to my house after school every Wednesday in third grade to give me jump rope lessons. He never saw through my ruse to just have him over at my house until I admitted my intentions in high school.
I use a small picture of Tony Soprano as a bookmark.
Wobegon Girl:
A couple of weeks ago, my wonderful father got me tickets to go see Garrison Keillor speak here in town. I was absolutely overjoyed, since I like to think that if you get to meet God when you die, God speaks in Garrison Keillor’s voice. My friend Emily has decreed that if she is ever rich enough, she will hire Garrison Keillor to read her to sleep every night. I think this is a fine idea, and support her wholeheartedly.
Anyway, the event was at 10:30 in the morning on a Thursday, so I got to relish my unemployed state for once. Garrison Keillor (you must say his first and last names always, just like everyone says my name: Sarahbrown) was superb, and wore red socks with his suit, and made a fart joke and quoted Yeats.
As we left the auditorium, a reporter from the paper asked if she could interview me—I’m guessing since I was one of the only people there without gray hair. (That youth angle always sells, kids!) She remarked that I was a young fan, which was kind of funny since she looked to be my age. I gave her what I thought was a splendid line, which was, “He ended with Yeats, and even had a fart joke. A little something for everyone.”
The next day, my name was in the article—right under Garrison Keillor’s, which was no small thrill. The interviewer opted for a less colorful quote, though; something boring I said about how I would listen to him read the back of a cereal box.
I have got to start giving better sound bites.
Tell Laura I Love Her:
All real! All true!
Laura, Out of Context:
“ … and he kept going on and on and finally I was like, I gotta go, dude… I can’t listen to any more stories about your dad and his brass knuckles.”
Apple for Me:
Yesterday I ran into an old teacher at the grocery store. I hadn’t seen her since high school, and I remember being mildly annoyed by her when I was in her class, but when you’re fourteen, you’re mildly annoyed by pretty much everyone, so I said hello.
After talking to her for 20 minutes, I had a strange realization: she really is a mildly annoying person. Horomones aside, I so called that ten years ago.
That time again:
I prefer to think that when the side of the Aleve bottle recommends not taking more than 3 pills in a 24 hour period, it’s less like sound medical advice and more like a suggestion. Like, I think you should wear the blue, but the red is nice, too.
Under the Sea:
I’ve always liked mermaids, ever since my first Sea-Bee bathtub toy with long blue hair. I have a cool out-of-print mermaid coffee table book, and an old Italian radio poster with a singing mermaid hanging over my fireplace, but other than that, the mermaid factor around here is pretty low. However, wading through the Disney and the dreck and the vaguely-dirty on eBay makes me want to rethink my affection.
This sort of thing happened when I was 19, with Tori Amos: after seeing her in concert and being turned off by her fan base, I never bought another album. I liked Little Earthquakes, but I could never shake the image of those sobbing 15-year old wannabe-faerie girls, bedecked in glitter, wailing, “Tori! Tori!”
