i feel like Cousin Avi from Snatch, only with a slightly better attitude. i'm goin' to fuckin' LONDON, one of my few life-long dreams. am i ready for them? the sweets, the kippers, the architecture, the bangers, the accents? are they ready for me? muahahahahaHAHAHH.......... happy new year's to me!
i went to go get my two loads of laundry out of the dryers.. and found a pile from one dryer stacked on the other, with no new laundry drying. thanks, bitches, ran my thinking, but then this guy came in saying 'cheers' in an odd manner, to say the least. i just watched lock, stock and two smoking barrels - he reminded me of the stoner pot growers. he came in, looked around, saw his sock on the floor, was extremely happy and effusive about finding it, and left. ...and just as swift came back in, gushing about how warm the socks were and how many pairs of underwear (one silk) he wore today. all the while i'm thinking, it's 11:30 at night in a cold laundry room with a strange man going out of his way to talk to me about silk underwear.. do i have a situation here? thankfully he went about his merry way with no harsh words or fisticuffs, billowing 'cheers' on his (second) way out.
all together now: ...
i've been dealing with a corporate holiday gift-giving disaster at work - for a large order of fleece jackets for which i was responsible, Land's End charged my boss's credit card thirty-five times - while recovering from a cold and heading into the full blossom of PMS. but at the end of the day, i still get to come home to this:
yep, that's my kitchen cabinet coming apart at the joints. i noticed a few days ago that the doors weren't staying closed anymore. i looked closer last night and realized the top part of the cabinet was coming off the wall. called my building manager whilst at work. when i got home, i found it in its above state, doors wide open not due to flinging or to carelessness, but to gravity. looks like the frame is separating from the staples up at the top, for a reason i cannot fathom at this point in time. good thing i stopped off and bought booze on my way home, is it not?
let me tell you a little about PMS. it varies from woman to woman, sure. varies in duration, intensity, symptoms. with my own variety.. it's like suddenly waking up hogtied in a mental institution with only the vaguest idea of how you got there. you don't know you're there till you're there. and after you're there, you can only wave a sullen goodbye to sanity for the next two weeks.
this is not my beautiful house...
today i considered conjuring some kind of PMS 'brand' for my person, so as to warn fellow humans (i used to easily pass for your kind only two days ago!) of my current condition. maybe a shirt with a large P on it, or some manner of pink. that'd be a definite scare-all right there. my personal favorite idea is a football helmet with a one-way mirror covering the facehole that just has 'GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM ME' painted on it. crude but effective, no?
fact A: i am at work.
fact B: i have a Pantera song in my head entitled "Fucking Hostile."
coincedence? i think not.
it's not what you think. honest.
i've been playing this horribly time-, money-, life-sucking game called Project Entropia. it's an MMORPG, which translates to 'fantasy game spent mostly running around killing animals and wearing cowboy hats which is so SO NOT GAY.' seriously, you can wear a cowboy hat in it. a colored one...dare i say a purple one. not gay at all.
anyway, you have a person that runs around this fake planet on a virtual continent (there are two, but i've only checked out one so far). your person, or avatar, can kill things, make things, or mine things. it cannot, lamentably, fuck things, otherwise i'd have made a small fortune as a madam already.
oh, btw: this is based on a real-life economy. the in-game monetary units are called PEDs for Project Entropia Dollars (hence the title, GET IT?? please say you get it), which are worth 10 cents. so if i, say, craft some boots with my super-über-boot-making powers, and they end up being worth, like, 60 PED.. i could transfer that money out to my bank account and use it to buy a Whopper. ain't the internet a beautiful thing?
i have way too much of it. i drew a very bad comic inspired by my recent wacky adventures with Terre de Google.
I apologize sincerely.
so a few months ago, as previously noted, they knocked down the house next door to my apartment complex. the aging owner came into some troubles, i guess.. he really was one of those typical weird-old-man types who would sit on his front porch and glare at passersby. had 'beware of dog' signs all over the place. apparently he couldn't take care of his dogs or himself anymore and ended up somewhere far away. at any rate, the house got trashed, and in the process the destructors took a chunk out of the house on the other side.
i should have known something was up when that chimney never got repaired. furthermore, i never saw any lights on in that place, not even when i'd come home late at night after clubbing or shows. (makes my life sound so glamorous.. i love it) eventually the ubiquitous condo sign went up and its days were numbered. it's not even the same condo company that's building on the site of the first house. so two new condos right next to each other. i can't wait.
in the meantime.. they knocked down the second house today.
i noticed it as i was trying to flag down the UPS person parked in front of my building. saw the backhoe parked atop all the rubble and just said 'oh, fuck.' creepy little white house, i hardly knew ye. here's hoping they don't put up a fence first thing tomorrow so's i can take some better pictures.
more pictures anyway:
one good thing about having a terrible memory is that ordering things online becomes a unique self-gifting opportunity. i just now remembered that i bought a 250 gig hard drive on friday. christmas every day, i tells ya.
ps - harold and maude is a fantastic movie. as if you didn't know. (yes, YOU)
so yesterday chicagoist had an interesting article on the ever-looming expansion of o'hare...which would necessitate the removal of two cemeteries on its land, st. johannes and resthaven. these are rather tranquil graveyards, considering the surroundings. not their fault the busiest airport in existence built up around them.
anyway, a stink is being raised, and in the last paragraph of chicagoist's post on the subject, the notion is brought up that daley might do the same thing with st. johannes et. al. that he did with meigs field.
...and i think it would go a little something like this.
i just spent ~an hour cleaning up old mouse turds behind my refrigerator and ridding my cupboards of bug-infested flour. all because i wanted to make some cheese dip. wtf.
in case you're wondering, no, i don't have mice.. i used to. the house next door had a potent mouse problem, and when they lovingly tore it down to make future condos, the little buggers ran straight for my apartment complex. i'm in a basement pad, so i got it pretty nasty, but my building manager on the floor above said she saw some as well. cripes. the best was having a friend stay over and us both hearing the aluminum foil in under my stovetop crinkle ever so slightly in the middle of the night.
as for the flour, i dunno. i left an extra bag out atop my cupboard (2 for 1 deal), so it's no wonder how insects got in that lot. i picked the fucking thing up and saw them crawling all over the bottom. that's only after i opened my flour tin and saw the distinct movement of foreign bodies.
on the bright side, i discovered i'm not really that hungry.
listening to: mirwais - disco science. damn this song is hot. thanks kim!
tomorrow is girls' weekend, which takes place in a mobile home in wisconsin somewhere. this will be my third year. to be honest, i've been thinking about it all week. last time was awesome.. nice weather, open roads, the amish. (if you look closely, that's a buggy in the distance.) it truly is a way to get away from it all for a few days while not being too far away. and we can drink and belch and fart all we want! (and do!) it's not exactly 'roughing it', since the mobile home is fully decked and even expanded to accomodate more beds and a TV with digital cable. still.. beats spending another weekend in my studio. here's to my mini-vacation...
saw the boys from airiel tonight @ darkroom. despite putting in a brief appearance at the double door last time they played (see post), i haven't actually seen them play in a while. as i was standing there, beer in hand, swaying gently (and not-so-gently) to their ethereal music, i thought.. i'd give my left ovary to hear this shit. i've heard it over and over and over.. and it never gets old. sure, i'd love to hear new material, but their old stuff suits me just fine. lordy.
plus i wore earplugs for the first time and i could actually understand what the fuck jeremy was singing. i swear, airiel's one of the loudest bands i've ever heard. (hoping that makes it sound like i've seen a lot of bands, heh) well, i'm a beer over my limit, so i'm gonna spill into bed now... nite cory, you wonderful manwhore.. <3
flying over cities again with google. one interesting aspect of google earth is overlays. one kind of overlay you can have is notes tagged onto the viewscreen by other users. there's a guy who's been going thru major cities marking urban decay and housing projects. naturally i've been hooked.
in addition to letting us know where not to go when we get off the highway, he (she? seems like a he's work) gives a link to a website wherein there are photos of the various cities and whatnot. lacking in webpage style, but heartstopping in neighborhood snapshots. seeing pictures like that is like seeing someone with half his face missing. in an instant you know something is terribly wrong, yet you can't look away. the worst i've seen so far are detroit.. 45 pages worth of photos of urban decay. christ, even chicago only has 8. what's more, google earth shows many many detroit houses in the process of natural selection. to have them sit around that long, untouched by developers or the city, so that they crumble away to nothing...
it's official: i am addicted to google earth. apparently the same photos are used in both google earth and the 'satellite' feature of google maps, but damn if google earth isn't 20x cooler. you can zoom in/out with yer mousewheel, fly across the world (makes for some dizzying travel), change the angle of the terrain, and get overlays of parks, restaurants, schools, cemeteries, etc. one thing is, pics of anywhere outside the US are poor at best, and little overlay info exists. that will change with time, i am certain.
so i've spent all weekend looking at the Winchester Mystery House, Cabrini Green and the Robert Taylor Homes (sounds like an awful band), Cook County Hospital (still there!), cemeteries at O'Hare airport, and another cemetery i have visited.. for as hard as it is to find, it's nice they put a label right on it. thank you, google earth!
note: how interesting/sad is it that i spent all night looking at overhead views of chicago projects, while due to neglect, my own apartment looks like one of them...
i am beat. put together a lingering cold, an ass-kicking, death-wish-affirming workday and a local show with four very loud acts, and you get utter celebrity-style exhaustion. i didn't even make it to the second act. that may make me officially old, but YOU try it and still get up at 5:30 in the morning. i rest my case, suckos.
'sides, leaving early allowed me to snag this plush photo from my cab window.
colds can suck it. even if i wanted to go out and do something - which i shouldn't, but i have the damndest urge to shop - i'm too weak to complete the task. i now cannot pop my right ear, either. screw you, whoever infected me at the party last saturday. you should be forced to drink a bucket of other peoples' mucus.
beam me up, snotty.
there are worse things than being single, right? i could be attached to a psycho fuck who likes to use me as a punching bag.. i could be going with a druggie slacker.. i could be involved with a mafia hitman. hell, i could be dating a bush voter. so why does being single still suck?
i think i'll be much happier when i finally come to terms with being alone.
found whilst perusing Google news this morning, via the Chicago Tribune:
Fantasy football is serious business. There are an estimated 12 million to 15 million fantasy players. Or in other words, 12 million to 15 million people who need to get a life.
truer words are seldom spoken.
i loathe fashion. is it this bad everywhere else, or just chicago? all i see are girls who dress to accentuate their paunch, which wouldn't exist if they sat up straight. guys are just as bad, but most guys don't have any fashion sense anyway. i guess i'm just cheesed at females. jesus, flip-flops and a business suit do not a decent outfit make. and yes, they're flip-flops...fuck the thong euphemism. last time i wore those i was about.. 9, max. how can you begin to call yourselves adults?
i'm seeing layers more often these days...layers that just look, well, stupid. two camisoles atop one another? hey, that's not gonna keep your glh's from hanging out all over, sorry. try wearing a pair of jeans that fit once in a while.
i ain't sayin' i'm the fashion epitome to which young women must aspire. i'm as square as a box. but.. i like it that way. at least i can look at myself in the mirror without wanting to take confession. please say there's someone out there in this big city who agrees with me.
so.. there's this chick at work who has a daily pinup calendar on her desk. yeah, like those old '50s type pinups. being a twock - that is, a derogatory term for a bisexual or bi-curious girl (i'm the latter) - i've flipped through it now and again after she's gone home. good stuff. but i never imagined she'd do what she did today: she gave me my birthday day pinup. yowza. (note: not work safe)
i realized the other day that while i have lived my life and remember too goddamn much of some parts and not enough of others, you out there in Readerland (all one of you who *isn't* related to me) don't know anything about me or my life. my friends, that's alllll gonna change right here and now.
i am a self-proclaimed geek girl. i have a lust for computers and peripherals and shiny mechanical things. (just ask my friend snow about my psu.) my current obsession is Das Keyboard, but ever since I found out it's merely a blank version of a much cheaper kb, i've been fixing to just make one myself. i also game, but it's less of a play-every-game-out-there kind of thing and more of a find-one-game-and-play-the-living-fuck-out-of-it type thing. i currently play Call of Booty.. ahem, Duty: United Offensive. i've also been dabbling in Nethack again. RIP, my earthly responsibilities. i do not currently possess a fab pair of hipster glasses, but i have an eye appt on Wednesday, so who knows?
when not sitting in front of this steadily obsolete box, i live and work in Chicago. it's got its perks and its antiperks. perks: good city-wide public transport (take it from someone w/out a car), architecture, art, diversity, options, late-night goings on. antiperks: rude people, trixies, frat boys, traffic, cost of living. i work downtown with bond traders. it's not the 'Boiler Room'-esque chaos that you might think, but it does get a little intense now and then. those guys know how to party.. much to my chagrin, on occasion.
i'm on the 'boring' side, i guess you would say. what other people would find mind-numbing or off-putting, i really dig.. like electronic music, or Photoshop tutorials, or life in Europe in the Middle Ages, or cemeteries. it's just a matter of something tickling my fancy bone.
and that's about it. for now. i'll just keep the blog vibe real.. by posting whatever comes to my shrivelled, pop culture-saturated mind. woot!
yeah. it's mah birfday. i am now 26 freakin' years old. i am at the point where athletes start to go downhill, where lifelong careers should already be established, where going out and drinking with friends is already getting old because of the bodily wear and tear. luckily my lack of friends precludes this. i guess it'll just be me. :D just kidding.. man, diets are no fun..
how uncool is it of me to be excited about going to outback steakhouse for my/my mom's birthday dinner? so far, anyway. plans may be changed. know, however, that i am crossing my fingers to get another taste of that sweet, sweet bloomin' onion. < /geek >
