Gentlemen don't get caught.

Nabbalicious did this letter meme and I wanted to play too, plus I figure it's good to break up the xboy meanness with frippery, so she gave me B.

1. Books. Yeah, obviously, right? But it's not just the reading. I love the physicality of books, the way old ones smell, the way paperbacks get brittle at a certain point in their lives, the way new ones or ones that weren't chosen well for a specific library crack a bit the first time they're opened, when you can tell that a previous owner had loved this copy. One of my favorite comics is Andi Watson's Dumped, and one of the things I really love about it is Binny's library of used books and his interest in the notes and things in them. There's a word for that, isn't there? (Marginalia—thanks Wikipedia.)
2. Butter. Damn, butter's tasty. Buttery toast is a favorite snack of mine. Butter cookies (and their hardcore cousin, shortbread) are awesomely good and fun to make. I loved every buttery mention in Julie and Julia, and believe me, there are a hell of a lot.
3. Black tights. Making appropriate dresses inappropriate and vaguely punkish for more years than you can shake a stick at! Screw that leggings noise, black tights are where it's at. Now, lately I've been seeing a lot of hipsterish catalog girls in white tights, and I'll try that, but nothing beats owning 5+ pairs of black tights. Or those mornings when I think, which would look better with this skirt and at least 2 layers of shirts: colored fishnets, or black tights? Lately, I've been thinking more and more about pairing some black tights with a short, slightly ratty denim skirt, so I think I'm going to need to rock that soon. (Really, black tights are also the only wardrobe staple of mine that starts with a B, so I figure they can stand in for my whole obsession with clothes, right?)
4. Bring It On, Baseketball, etc. I heart dumb comedies. “Steve Perry…Steve Perry!” “These are jazz hands; these are spirit fingers.” I could go on and on.
5. Bravado. Deep down, I'm kind of a pansy and a wuss. I'm also really shy. Thanks to bravado, though, I can totally play it off like I'm the ballsiest girl in the room. Or 3rd largest city in the state, as the case may be.
6. Belle and Sebastian. Definitely in my top 3 bands, if not the top. And a great show. But really, don't I go on and on about them enough here? Was the link to Stuart's Diary listed under “My Soul Mate” not enough? What about the period where I kept posting giant pictures of Stuart in various hats? My love of Belle and Sebastian, and my interest in not only being a B&S completist, but a vinyl B&S completist, keeps my indie stereotype cred nice and shiny, no matter how much I heart the new Killers single or pretend my favorite song is “Summer of 69”. When I was in the Austin airport, waiting for my plane back to Pittsburgh and admiring the 12” of “This is Just a Modern Rock Song” I had just bought, a boy sauntered past, Fold Your Hands Child, You Walk Like a Peasant under his arm.
7. Being in a city again. Damn, it feels good. People keep talking shit on this city, but trust me, they don't know how good they have it. I've been to shows and record stores and people are friendly and not all the same. And there's 2 free weeklies: a real one, and one of the fake kind real newspapers came out with when they realized that 20somethings weren't buying their classified ads--uh, I mean newspapers.
8. buffet, Indian. Yum. After the holidays, it's time to start figuring out the best in my vicinity. Or go to Louisville and rock some Indian buffet with Stacey and the World's Faggiest Boy Scout Troop.
9. Banal things as art. Like this. Or Warhol. Or that installation from 2 Carnegie International's ago where the artist built these intricate, site-specific installations using styrofoam, matchbooks, floss, and the like. And incidentally, how's that for showing off my pretentious vocabulary and ridiculous taste in art all in one section?
10. Big thrift stores. Seems like most thrift fans either like the tiny, all piled up willy-nilly neighborhood thrifts or the giant strip mall variety. I'm a giant strip mall, myself. You get a shopping cart and fill it with shoes and lamps and sweaters and coffee mugs and prom glasses and plush things that shouldn't be plush and you can spend all day there. Good times.

(I've got the REM song “Carnival of Sorts (Box cars)” running through my head now. Stupid B.)
Now I'm guessing I can assign letters to other interested parties as well. Leave a comment if you want one. Especially you, Kim. It can be the first post in the blog you're going to start.

No talking like a grizzled 1890s prospector, consarn it!

My New Year's resolution is to talk like a pickpocket. Good thing there's a lot of reciprocal borrowing agreements in my new neck of the woods.*
One of my nerdier interests is slang and slang dictionaries. Especially old-timey slang--and this is another Simpsons chicken-or-the-egg: do I find old-timey stuff funny and that's why I love those jokes, or do I love those jokes because I've been watching a show written by fans of old-timey jokes since I was 10?
The current obsession with Deadwood isn't hurting either. I've been sorely tempted to keep a notebook next to me while I watch, so I can jot down all the great outdated euphemisms and slang.
I was looking through the reference section at the new library and found Casell's Dictionary of Slang by Jonathon Green, who also has a LibraryThing, which is pretty cool.
I kind of feel like working my way through all of his books tagged with "reference" or "slang" at some point. Teenlit and etymology, that's what I read!

As a middle-of-Chanukkah present, here's some fun outdated slang, from the aforementioned Cassell's:
back-row hopper someone who goes to bars, hoping they'll find someone who will buy them a drink
bacon hole mouth [I think I may have found a replacement in my heart for pie- and/or cake-hole.]
baste someone's coat beat 'em up severely
cross-cove and mollisher a man and woman who work together as thieves
crusty-beau an aging dandy who takes lots of care with his complexion by using cosmetics
dandysette a female dandy
get a spark up strengthen one's spirits with a drink
coffin varnish Prohibition era liquor
pick up a nail get vd
sweetheart and bag-pudding baby momma
snaffle to steal; to arrest; to seduce
Liverpool kiss blow to the mouth or face

I've determined that what I really need isn't a slang dictionary, but a reverse slang dictionary. That way it would be easier to skip past all the hundreds and hundreds of words for penis, vagina, and sex, and concentrate on what I really want, which is archaic euphemisms for getting drunk, thievery, and general debauchery.
What's interesting though, is that I'm not really as much a fan of Cockney rhyming slang. Like, it's interesting, but not nearly as much as slang with more of a history.

*As opposed to the last town, where it was every system for themselves unless you wanted to pay like $50 a year.

There were 15 teenagers in formalwear, but we were the most obnoxious table.

I'm entertained.
And now we must ask ourselves, should John Green be informed?

You’re lucky to be drinking here for free because I’m a sucker for your lucky pretty eyes.

About a month or so after I finally completely lost patience with 20yrold, I decided to swing by the local library and do a little low-level stalking on the clerk I had been crushing on earlier that year. (Yes, I knew which night he worked. Shut up.) We wound up going out for a drink or two, and, since there’s really only one bar everyone goes to, we ran into some other friendly acquaintances and their friends.
One of those friends was an alarmingly intense for 30 guy* who attempted to woo me by, among other things, buying one of my etsy hankies but then never coming up with the money and having to bow out of the arrangement and sending a 3AM myspace message that, amongst other things, assured me that he was not drunk.
Another one of those friends was a 23yrold with a similar look, but a much better sense of humor. Cuter, too, and nicer, in a jackassy sort of way.** As I left for the night, he turned and asked if he could get my number and “call me sometime”. In a move that’s socially retarded even for me, I told him that our mutual friend had my number and he could get it from her.
Except, yeah—she didn’t have my number. I’m a spaz.
Then Melissa and I decided to have another picnic and this boy was the only other person who showed up, making it the awesomest awkward first hanging out ever. Melissa makes a great Victorian era chaperone, you guys. Pip and I would trade strange stories, or the three of us would get hit up for change by some random guy who then hit on me, or there’d be a bit of silence, and there would be Melissa, small-talking it up.
Which is good, because my small talk skills suck. I don’t small talk; I non sequitor. And then I wonder why people think I’m weird.
On our first date, I made him wait in my living room while I changed out of the white t shirt I was wearing, since he showed up in a white t, cuffed jeans, and Docs too. Later that night, we wound up in my room due to the magical mixture of beer and my excellent record collection.
So, for a couple months, this was like the greatest casual relationship ever. I’d go about my week, we’d hang out on like a Wednesday, watch the Simpsons, hook up, and then I’d go about the rest of my week, hanging out with Melissa and being a Dance Machine and such. Then he didn’t call for a couple weeks, I assumed that a break in the calling pattern meant I would never hear from him again (as it frequently has for me), and went out with a boy who will be cataloged at a later date. Except a couple weeks after that he did call again. I saw his band and met some friends, which was confusing because I was obviously brought in for the friends’ approval but then he stopped calling again. Maybe I didn’t pass muster.*** Then Pip randomly showed up at my apartment a month later and we talked for a bit, awkwardly. He remarked on the loudness of my menorah candles but it was really the rattley noise my living room heating vent made that I never wanted to question too deeply.
Except I could never remember his last name beyond it starting with an H and having 3 syllables, so I referred to him as Mr Havisham (see how I did that? How I started calling him Pip here? Remember about the non sequitor?)
A Teaching Moment:

• Forcing a boy you maybe still have a crush on to hang out with you on a Monday night is always a good plan.
• I like picnics.
• Your Iggy Pop live TV Eye album may just get you laid.
• See my footnote re: assholes.
• If a boy hasn’t called in a few weeks and asks what you’ve been up to, tell him you went on a date and watch him try to act like he doesn’t care. It’s funny.

*He had the strange punk intensity of a 23yrold, that would impress a girl a couple years younger than that.
**Pip fits in quite nicely with my theory that sometimes what you need is an asshole. A nice sensitive boy stops calling you, you wonder what you did wrong and why you’ll never ever find anyone and die alone. An asshole stops calling you, you think, yeah, well—he was an asshole. No surprises there.
***I’m kidding, obviously.

7 weeks of staying up all night.

At the garage sale/scene of my maturity with zombie comics, I sold some old Echo and the Bunnyman tapes to a cute, energetic and friendly 20yrold.
I had been hanging around with a group of guys who were in their late 20s, living at home and working the jobs they had started in high school. And they all had the maturity level of it, too. In my head, the logic looked something like this: If a 27yrold acts like a 19yrold, maybe there’s no difference and dating someone 6 years younger won’t be an issue.
It should come as no surprise to pretty much anyone I’ve ever met or who has ever read PoBaL that my head-logic kinda sucks.
20yrold, like most of his fellow townspeople, also assumed that any single childless girl over 20 is looking for a big serious relationship and got scared and kept doing that stupid boy not calling thing. And, finally, I lost the last little bit of patience with that.
We’re still friends, though. A couple months ago, we both got new phones with much easier texting capabilities, and we became texting buddies through that. And for the last couple months in the last town, we lived only 3 blocks apart. We went out for Indian food one night, and as I dropped him off, I could hear his neighbors (a couple of those aforementioned 20somethings who act like 19yrolds) harass him about his “date” and then refer to me as “Myspace Jessy”.
The thing that really got me about 20yrold was that, while he was really the only boy I met in that town who seemed to have true real friendships with girls, the girls he’s friends with seemed kind of…um, toxic.
And I’m not just saying that because I heard high school stories. I rely pretty heavily on my instincts, and I’ve learned at this point to differentiate between “This girl doesn’t seem like someone I can trust completely, who would have my back almost without question” and “Damn those are some ugly shoes.” A lot of these girls, like a lot of girls I met in that town, just aren’t the kind of girl posse I’m looking for. I need to know, for example, that a girl isn’t going to flake out on hanging out with her female friends because a boy suddenly has the night off. I need to know my friends aren’t talking shit behind my back. Aside from Melissa, I really don’t think that kind of girl is in that last town.*
But anyway, early on in the hanging out with 20yrold, we went to his friend’s house to hang out with friend and friend’s girlfriend. I immediately got a weird vibe from friend’s girlfriend. No reason, really; just instinct putting my guard up. She was playing around on a computer, showing us all pictures. Zombie Comics was in a couple of the pictures, and she asked me if I knew him. I played it down and didn’t think anything else of it that night.
But then later it occurred to me that if they were really as good friends as this girl had intimated, she already would have known that I knew him, and how. Whether or not this is a petty, silly thing to do to another girl is kind of a moot point to me.
What bothered me about this encounter, and still kind of gets my goat, is that she did this to 20yrold, supposedly a great friend of hers. It kind of blows my mind that any girl would meet the potential new girl of a shy boy friend and decide to, however subtlely, bring up some other boy who had hooked up with that girl.
So, lessons learned:

• 26/20 is too different.
• Sometimes you need to have a State of the Relationship talk to discuss how all you want is a makeout buddy.
• I really need to buy some Echo cds to replace those tapes.
• I have absolutely no patience for stupid boy not calling.
• As hard as it can be to find a suitable boy, it’s a million times harder to find girl posse members.

*Not, of course, that we don’t talk shit. What I always go back to when I think of friends talking behind each other’s backs was the casual way Tom the xRoommate would describe his friends in unflattering lights, to people who may have only known them through Tom.

Colin did not laugh. Instead, he thought, Tampons have strings? Why?*

A couple products have been pissing me off as of late.
We all know I love my big black eyeshadow circles, right? I use Cargo eye shadow (black isn't on the link, though). One of the reasons I went with Cargo was because of how big and deep the little dish-thing looked.
Well, it isn't. There's a steadily growing silver spot at the bottom of my eyeshadow, and I'm pissed off.
Plus, I was on the phone with my mom when I discovered this and got subsequently riled up, and there was a long explanation involved.
See, you have to understand, too: I looked FOREVER for a black matte eyeshadow. Not dark grey, but black. I used to have the perfect one (also Cargo), but it cracked in several pieces and then everytime I used it I was also playing CSI: Jessy's Apartment and collecting fingerprints from every damn surface.**
***
A box of 40 regular absorbency o.b. tampons is $7-fucking-.50 at the Walgreens near my apartment. Luckily, they were running a buy-one-get-one sale, or I would have been really mad. And I've been watching a lot of Deadwood lately, so that's kind of a scary thought.
I noticed that the box was talking up some sort of new and improved grooves along the outside of each tampon that are supposedly going to absorb more, but I didn't think on it too much because that's about when I passed the Reese's Peanut Butter Cup Christmas Trees*** and had to buy one.
Yeah, those grooves? Not real absorbent. More like imcompetent. They're like little slides for the icky and the goo. It's like a water park of unabsorbency, and I keep picturing Napoleon at the water slides.
Where's my Ziggy Piggy, o.b.? Where!?
(Incidentally, you can tell I've got a crush that's getting a bit out of hand because even during the 2-boxes-of-applicatorless-tampons-and-a-Reese-Christmas-Tree Walgreen's trip, I was wondering if I'd run into him.) (And I'm listening to Belle and Sebastian cover "Don't Fear the Reaper" right now. It's pretty damn sweet.)

*Green, John. An Abundance of Katherines, 2006. My MLA/AACR bastard citation style is unstoppable. Dude, just read the damn book. I'm auditioning for a Hassan, incidentally. Except I think the ruckus I caused earlier tonight at Applebees puts me in the running for Tiff's Hassan. You know, after she comes back from her Grease reality show callbacks.
**The theme song to CSI: Jessy's Apartment is "Boris the Spider".
***Not as good as the eggs, but better than the pumpkins.

Elligible, not too stupid, intelligible, and cute as Cupid.

Melissa and I were discussing yesterday how, now that I’ve moved, I can tell a lot of stories I had avoided due to some vestige of propriety.
Basically, I can now talk shit on a bunch of stupid boys. You know, the ones she refers to as the I’ve Gone Out With Jessy At Least Once Club. Now, I’m not just doing this to be a bitch. Au contraire! I’m doing this to be a funny bitch. And because they’re good stories. And to clear some air, and my head about some things.
But mostly for the mocking. Let’s take a boy a post, shall we? These will be in chronological order from what I thought of as our first date. A lot of these stories overlap. Not because I overlap boys, but because sometimes you meet people at different times, and sometimes, especially in a small, small city, people pop up again. And they’ll all have nicknames. Because I like giving boys nicknames.
***
(A bit of backstory:
When I moved from library school to that last town, I had also just broken up with Andy, who was and still is my longest and really only serious relationship. Then I had a crush I didn’t act on because he was in Louisville and long distance exhausts me; a crush on a brick wall [who is also a dodged bullet]; and I hung out with a few different guys, one or two times each, that I don’t think of as dates because it’s before I realized that there’s no such thing as a platonic male/female friendship in that town,)
***
I met Zombie Comics at a going away party for another boy I had a crush on. As I’m a practical girl, when I’m faced with two cute boys, one who is leaving and one who isn’t going anywhere, I choose to chat up Mr Local.
According to a later entry in this list, however, Zombie Comics was apparently doing me the favor by keeping me company while the boy leaving town “ditched me”.
I call bullshit.
Anyway, Mr Comics was nice; he was funny; he took me to the Mongolian BBQ place. Unlike his fellow townsmen, he was gracious about my awkward, “well, I owe you the next dinner then.”
We had a lot of chemistry, nudge nudge, and a lot of other ham-fisted euphemisms.
He didn’t have a coffee pot. One morning, we went out for breakfast at a greasy spoon that only took cash. We were less than a dollar short. Our waitress chased us out into the parking lot, and I decided that it was a greasy spoon I could live without going into ever again. (Bacon wasn’t that great, anyway.)
We went out 3-4 times. The last time, he seemed distant, claiming he thought he was coming down with something (remember this: it’s a theme throughout this list). Later that week, I checked my myspace and found a message from Zombie Comics saying that “someone special” to him was back in town and, while he wanted to remain friends, we would have to be friends without benefits. Except he used the phrase “naughty bits”.
Unfortunately, the benefits were the part I was interested in.
More unfortunately, Zombie Comics had apparently forgotten or not paid attention the multiple times I mentioned that I only had internet at work.
Needless to say, I was pissed. So pissed, in fact, that I pulled the always mature obvious turn-away when I saw him at a garage sale about a week later. Unfortunately, once I was no longer pissed off and remembered that he was cool, smart, and a lot of other things that were a rarity in that town, Zombie Comics had moved away. With the “someone special”, I believe.

Lessons learned:

• Don't stay over if he doesn't have a coffee pot.
• Don't get too drunk the first time you meet a lot of the townsfolk.
• Don't believe a boy when he says he thinks he's getting sick.
• Don't make out with boys whose creative endeavors revolve around zombies.

I can’t stand to look at my face when I don’t know where you are.

You know, I’m not really sure how much I’m going to continue here. I started (damn, Tiff, the auto-correct on this Word is fast. And I like that your name is an autotype)
Sorry.
I started PoBaL when I moved to the last town and hadn’t been at the last job that long. I needed a way to vent. I needed a place to share all my random theories about pop culture, teen librarianing, etc.
And that’s not to say I won’t still need that, but I’m definitely in a different place now, mentally, physically, and professionally. So, you know, don’t be surprised if I’m not as verbose around these parts as I used to be. At least for a while, while I settle into things. I kind of suspected this would happen, actually. It was a big part of the thinking behind doing nablopomo (even if I didn’t finish). I figured, even if I was going out or slowing down, I might as well do it with a bang. Right?
Speaking of my physical place, damn! I got out of shape over the past two years. Everyone remember that this was really my first experience with car-commuting, and living in an environment where everyone drove. Compared to a lot of my other moves, this one wasn’t that bad, but it totally kicked my ass. Luckily, my neighbors here are much less shifty than they had been in the last town, and one was nice enough to help schlep boxes up 3 flights.
A little feminine wiles didn’t hurt, either. But I’ve been getting the impression more and more that this particular Wacky Neighbor* would have helped either way. And that’s the way I was raised: you see someone carrying heavy shit, you offer your services.
I walked around for an hour and a half (at least) today and it felt so nice. Even nicer was that I wasn’t the only person enjoying the late fall/early winter sunniness. And I bought the latest Rogue Wave album. It’s really good. And the hill I live on now isn’t as steep as it seems when you’re driving up it.** This is nice when you’re a girl like me, who grew up on the kind of hill you could pause at the bottom of, to look straight up and think, “damn, why didn’t I wait for the 67F?”

*Melissa has some theories about this particular neighbor that will probably be a part of a future blog post.
**Plus, there’s like an inch thick layer of salt on it—good to know that they overboard when it comes to iciness. Now I just have to convince everyone else on my street to turn their wheels the correct way when they park, so no one’s car comes drifting into mine. Which actually happened to my dad.

Gold teeth and a curse for this town.

Who wants to see moving pics? Or, well, pics of cats in boxes and such.

***
So, you may have noticed I'm back. Thanks to Tiff, whose laptop I'm borrowing (and typing horribly on) until I can manage to get one of my own.

I cleaned out my toaster:At Melissa's, the boys taunted poor Miss Mabel:

This one has nothing to do with moving. I conned my mom into buying me the Playmobile advent calendar awhile ago. The first few days are a leafless tree, a black bird with its wings stretched, and an owl. So, you know, fucking creepiest Christmas ever.
My new kitchen:
Legs in my old kitchen's cabinets:
Facing a potential box shortage, I packed some things in my microwave. Not, however, including my microwave plate. In other words, I'm a moron. Legs investigates:
Moving with cats=cats in boxes. A lot.