Prepare the wedding sack!

A short list of things I'm sure only Tiff and I think are funny:

1. The above plastic pickles in a plastic jar. I heart Target's dollar section. There's all kinds of fake food, but nothing else struck me as quite as hilarious. I kept doing that thing I do where I'm intensely amused and/or enchanted by something, so I shake it. Like a baby with a rattle. I know, it's weird.
2. Giant Sized Wolverine! Who is actually the height of a normal man!
3. Giant-Sized-Wolverine-Who-Is-Actually-the-Height-of-a-Normal-Man getting drunk with Jimmy Stewart.
4. (BORAT SPOILER) At one point in the Borat movie, they get a bear and small children are frightened away. And you know nothing makes me 'n' Tiff laugh quite so hard as bear humor.

The mixture is all of us and we're still mixing.

I went to the new city this weekend to look at apartments. Because I'm a huge fucking stereotype, I rock the NPR in any city. In fact, I've actually figured out vaguely what time I should drive through the middle of Ohio when I go home for holidays, so I can listen to This American Life and Le Show.
And yet, I always forget about Louisville's 2 goddam hours of What Do You Know., which Cara and I like to call "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me for people without a sense of humor".
There's also this show I hadn't heard of yet, called Weekend America. It annoyed me. A lot.
For starters, it's the weekend before a ginormous election (that I'm not going to be voting in, but that's a story for another day), so of course that's all anyone's talking about. They had a "blue stater, red stater, and a purpler stater" divvy up things, like an argument about whether the Hubble telescope is more blue or red state.
I hate that red/blue state crap. I mean, I live in a--wait, red, right? It's confusing when you think of yourself as a red diaper baby, but red means the opposite thing now, I guess? I don't fucking know--
In any event, I hate the idea that everyone in the state thinks that way. It's like all this "Hoosier values" bullshit. Technically, I'm a Hoosier. I also think 2 girls should be able to marry each other if they want. Is that a Hoosier value now?
So anyway, I'm driving, and it occurs to me--how much of this red/blue crap is a function of the electoral college?* If it was a popular vote, maybe we could stop pretending that everyone in New York City is in love with Hilary Clinton, and everyone in Indiana thinks she's the devil.
***
And it's not enough to offend the good little liberal in me; after this mess, Weekend America pulls out some new cds from the past week, including the produced-by-Ryan-Adams Willie Nelson album. The "Amazing Grace" cover was pretty interesting, but kind of reminded me of how after Jerry Garcia died all the hippies acted like Bob Dylan was their new messiah. But with Johnny Cash instead of Jerry Garcia. The worst, though (oh, I should probably also mention I'm not much of a Ryan Adams fan...), was the song that started with just Willie and a guitar, and I'm down, and it's good, and then the chorus starts and Ryan has all this "rockin'" start and he didn't adjust Willie's voice and it just gets smushed out.
Yuck.
***
Oh, and I did find a place.

*Yes, I'm perfectly aware that I'm the last blogger in the universe to bitch about the electoral college, and that it's totally 2000 to do so.

She's got tofu the size of Texas.

The thing about looking for a new place to live is, you open yourself up to meeting and talking with all sorts of strange people. I think I might have told you guys about the time I was accompanying a friend while she looked at apartments, including one whose tenants had clearly not been told about the visit, as they were in the middle of getting it on when we all trooped into the bedroom.
Like a lot of the weird occurences and people that flock to me when I'm least appreciative of them, there was more than a bit of the faux and/or washed-up hippie about those two crazy kids. I've also lived above washed-up hippie homeschoolers and been drawn into extremely revealing (for her) phone conversations with rabid Dave Matthews fans, for example.
Now, this isn't to say that I haven't had some hippie-ish friends that I've loved. In fact, until I moved here, I've pretty much always had a hippie girl buddy. Like my super-awesome junior year dorm floor-mate Liz, who was always a good person to visit if you wanted to make a huge dinner (we had a teeny little kitchen on our floor. In fact, most of my friends from that year were girls I hung out with in the kitchen while we waited for pasta water to boil or Jiffy corn muffins to bake.), bitch about a women's studies class, or concoct some insane reason to take two buses to Michael's. I've also had good luck with friends of the so-punk-they're-hippie variety, with the added bonus that so-punk-they're-hippies are usually too surly to have any of the above problems I've had with hippie-types.
But, of course, I was still surprised at the level of flakiness I got when I called a woman about an apartment last night. Granted, she wasn't as bad as the gentleman I spoke with before her, who felt that it was necessary to have the tv on at TOP volume while speaking with a potential tenant*. However, it doesn't really bode that well when the best thing someone can say about an apartment is how cute the windows are, over and over.
She was also surprised at my gas/electric stove question, and then kept saying how sure she was that it was gas. That's when she shifted gears and began to tell me how small the kitchen was. But cute.
Then she asked me if the jerks were declawed. Which, hell no. But I mentioned that they don't tend to scratch much, which isn't really a lie if you've completely forgotten about that old mattress, which I had. Then she starts describing the floors of the apartment, and trying to remember if there were "Berber rugs". At least I think that's what she said. I should also maybe mention here that everything I know about Berbers comes from an episode of Tony Bourdain's A Cook's Tour. They make tasty-looking bread, those Berbers. And roast sheep (or was it a goat?) in pits in the ground. Tasty-looking sheep.
I didn't remember any mention of rugs or cats from the episode, so I basically did the phone equivalent of nodding noncommitally while thinking, Get on with it, lady. But I'm really wondering, if she so didn't want her cute, tiny apartment scratched, why not just say no pets? I'm a librarian; I know how to limit searches to get the most valid results for my query. Had she, like another listing I found, said something like "one tiny quiet declawed cat which isn't a cat at all, but is actually a kitty robot like that creepy thing Cara has," I never would have called.
Some of the notes I made while on the phone with Berber rug lady:
"only declawed cats!? or not"
"kinda flaky?"
"deck"
"too flaky!"

seven weeks of staying up all night

Tale of 2 Summers by Brian Sloan.
I started reading this book, was charmed by a couple details, and started taking notes to remember things for a review.
Then I realized my notes were becoming a post all on their own. So this is kind of a review, kind of a commentary track.
I wrote all this while I was reading it, when the thought occured to me.

• There’s this future thing—takes place future summer—spiderman 3
  • Harold and Kumar sequel—KUMAR’S BARE ASS
• Ferris quote at the beginning
• Queer boy fart jokes
• “bloody”—some librarians are going to shit themselves, b/c they’ve apparently never met a pretentious teenage gayboy anglophile: “Why’s there British slang if it takes place in DC!?”
• LOL-ing?
• Lang use—dueling bloggers
• Keep referring to Henri as a “euro-punk”—in light of his not-at-all punkiness and the whole gay thing, kinda weirdly icky/funny
• I approve of the word tits.
• “I don’t really dig on guys who are uber-gay”=scary Ken flashbacks
• Unless you know what Lambda is, no clue that this is a GAY BOOK from the cover
• Weird anti-drug moment/channel 1 reference p41
• Yum, Nutella
  • Nutella DOES NOT TASTE LIKE DOUGHNUT FROSTING. However, it would be quite tasty on a doughnut. Like a cake one? Yum…
  • And now I want some Nutella.
  • Stupid gay boy and cheese-eating butt/surrender monkey.
• I think the 75% of the way through, big teenfic crisis moment is going to involve Joey—the guy no one likes
• “emoticoning”—heh
• uh-oh, Henri is breaking into a construction site. Is he bad news? Will he be horribly injured ¾ of the way through the book?
• Also, Henri is a stoner. Which GayBlogger seems to be against, but in a very low-key, TV told me you were bad kind of way.
• You know, this weird anti-drug commentary is making me wonder if someone is going to find their blog. ¾ of the way through, of course. b/c if they did, all those construction site trespassing pictures would totally make things sucky for Frenchie’s govt-working maman.
• Frenchie looks like StraightBlogger! The plot thickens!
• I’m getting a telegraph from the book…StraightBlogger winds up with unassuming MK stop
• Omg—they’re making driver’s ed kids DRIVE ON 495. THE BELTWAY AROUND DC. That’s just crazy talk.
• I think GayBlogger made a move on StraightBlogger on New Years Eve. This book has a terrible poker face.
• Ugh, box wine
• Jim Carrey—outdated reference?
• Frenchie’s dad is dead! That’s why all the death-defying and stonering! And the stupid mausoleum conversation! Or, at least, that’s my current theory.
• I’m finding myself caring less and less about these characters. Except Brett, the Joysey girl who refuses to learn how to drive. I bet there’s a great book in her whole story.
• These kids live around DC and StraightBlogger’s afraid of NYC b/c it’s a “terrorist target”?
• StraightBlogger doesn’t know it , but he’s totally trying to Vlad it up here.
• Such an asshole!!
• IS NO ONE GOING TO POINT OUT THAT MK ISN’T PISSED B/C STRAIGHTBLOGGER HAD A WET DREAM ABOUT HER, SHE’S PISSED B/C HE TOLD HOT GIRL HE WASN’T THAT INTO HER (MK)!?
• I’m also confused by the fact that no one is calling it a wet dream.
• Oh, Frenchie’s dad’s just an asshole. Anti-climactic.
• Frenchie says there’s no French word for bitch. Um, chienne? Look, I did research.
• So, in their tiny crappy boring suburb, there’s a locally-owned coffee place, a comic book store, an Ethiopian restaurant, and a gay bar? I mean, I know it’s around a big city, but yeesh.
• Why does 2 teenaged boys making out in a suburban gay bar sound like a REALLY bad idea to me?
• Also, GayBlogger just expressed surprise that an Asian guy didn’t have an Asian accent.
• You know, a lot of the nonstereotyped gayboy stuff in this book has become a moot point by what a stupid boy asshole archetype StraightBlogger is.
• Pot brownies
• You can’t see Before Sunset without seeing Before Sunrise—that’s just stupid.
• StraightBlogger thinks Julie Delpy was lying about not meeting Ethan Hawke because her grandmother died! I kind of hate this book right now.
• THE BOOK JUST GAVE AWAY THE ENDING TO THE MOVIE. I really hate this book right now, and you have no idea how pissed I’d be if I still hadn’t seen Before Sunset yet.
• I like this MK girl. She says she doesn’t want to “hit all the bases in one night”; she’s a big pushy drama girl; and she totally told StraightBlogger to his face that he “had his chance last Monday” to have sex with her. Why can’t I just read a book about her?
• What moronic bar owner would let 2 15yrold gayboys come to his bar on a Saturday night? Am I the only one who thinks this is a bad idea?
• Oh, it’s under 21 night. OK
• When your boy says to someone that he’s not your boyfriend and you’re an overly emotional wreck, this is not the time for a Long Island Ice Tea.
• GayBlogger thinks Frenchie said it b/c his mom’s back and things are weird; Brett’s got some weird Rules-based theory. Or, he’s a 15yrold boy who doesn’t want to admit he’s gay with a boyfriend. Anyone think of that!?
• I hate when I’m annoyed with a book but want to know what happens so I can’t stop reading. I would totally stop reading this book if I wasn’t so damn curious and 40 pages from the end.
• Now, maybe this is just wisdom that comes with age (oh, I am so age-ed and learn-ed), but he’s not your boyfriend until you’ve had The Conversation and he’s said, Yes. I am your boyfriend.
• Now there’s a hurricane coming!?
• Tornados!
• Apparently, summer romances/first loves aren’t drama-ful enough for Mr Brian Sloan. He’s gotta get Acts of God all up in there.
• MK is so not going to get to have the most fun a girl can have with StraightBlogger. In fact, I wonder if the mook even knows that a girl can have fun.
• And now GayBlogger is taking relationship advice from Dr Drew.
• OMG! Is Frenchie DEAD!? I thought they didn’t kill off teenlit characters just for being gay anymore.
• Oh, ok. He just disappeared for a few days. The Frenchie is still alive, folks.
• The moral of the story? Bros before hos. The moral of the commentary? I want my 250 pages back.
• No, wait--if the moral of the story is bros before hos, where's my girl Brett? What happened to her? And why'd they do so much complaining about that Joey dude only to have him not show up for the last half of the book. Way to not deliver on your foreshadowing, dude.

ETA: You know what's annoying? Blogger publishes drafts under the date you started the draft. Luckily, you can go in and edit to a more correct date and time, like when I actually finished reading the stupid book and writing this thing.

Stepping down off my platform shoes.

I figure starting this whole blog-every-day-in-November rigmarole with my big announcement is a good idea.
You know how I'm always talking about moving? Well, I am. Moving, that is.
I've accepted a job elsewhere. At the end of November, me, my boxes of other people's prom glasses, library discards, records, and thrift store mugs, and the jerks, will be getting the hell out of town.
I've taken a job as the teen librarian at a brand new branch in a multi-branch system where there are other teen librarians, in the suburbs up against a large city with other teen librarians.
I've moved a lot. I'm not particularly looking forward to the actual moving part, especially since the last time I moved more than 3 blocks away* with cats, my grandparents took my sister and I to McDonalds to keep us out from under everyone's feet. There was a train to play on at the McDonalds. I had just turned four, and I swear I remember watching my older cousins walk up my new, big-ass hill with Callie and Melina in their arms.
I'm also kind of dreading the apartment hunting, which I think I may be starting this weekend. For all its issues, I really like my current place. When the heat is working, that is. It gets a crazy-ton of light, has hardwood floors, a big balcony, and a gas stove. That only half the burners work on, but still--not electric = I can cook on it.
I don't necessarily need a place the size of this apartment. Granted, my kitchen is kind of huge, but there's no counter space to speak of. And a lot of the size comes from the long-hallway-with-rooms-coming-off layout. And that extra room, while nice for crafty storage type behaviors, is mostly a mess catch-all that I'm really dreading having to organize/trash half of/pack. So if I could find a one bedroom with hardwood floors and/or dark-colored carpeting, decent water pressure, a gas range, and a decent-sized living room, I'll be happy. Extra points for balconies, bathrooms without windows, double sinks and/or dishwashers, and a separate water heater from the rest of the building.
Apartment listings just add to the confusion. When I moved here, I was shown several "one bedrooms" that were actually, to my mind, more like studios. And some of the "one bedrooms" I've found on my current search also list a "den/dining room". Maybe it's because I tend to live in student ghettos/kinda sketchy areas, but where I come from, that's a damn 2 bedroom.
I've been thinking a lot lately about the place I lived in the summer after my sophomore year of college, and how much potential that place had. You know, if it hadn't been smack in the heart of College Student Central and stuffy as hell, with decades-old beige carpeting and a frat sticker (not put there by me or any of my roommates) on the toilet. Oh, or the David Hasselhoff picture opposite the toilet, but that's what I get for living with goofy boys.
The front door opened to a longish hallway, with the afore mentioned bathroom at the end. Two decent-sized bedrooms were off to the left. The right side was one big, long room. There was a fireplace with a weird kind of storage area behind it (the tv was in the fireplace, of course. Did I mention the goofy boys and the fact that I was 19?). At the other end of the big room was a kitchen area with a bar, but it was angled so that there was a distinct living room/kitchen/other roomish area set-up. Oh, and there was this kick-ass 1970s chandelier in that other space, hanging dangerously low given the height of at least one of the boys that lived there.**
Also, there was an excellent cleaning products still life that Conor thrifted at the Red White and Blue before it got a big head and starting overpricing the hell out of everything.
So if I could find a set-up kind of like that, without all the roommates, the grubtastic couch (that we once built a fort out of when we were all bored), the broken air conditioning, or the shitty carpeting, that'd be great.
The goofy boys are welcome to visit, of course.

*Ah, the Tiff/Jessy/Jenny move, literally down the street.
**Jason and I once had the following conversation:
Jason: "You aren't that short. You're not that far from my height."
Me: "um..."

Don't care if this archive's destroyed.

I spent the other night getting some old nonfiction on its merry way along the weeding track. So, yeah, I typed the barcodes from a truck of books into the computer. And then pushed them into the back. Ever pushed a truck stuffed to the gills of heavy, heavy books over carpeting? It's not fun. I kept having ILL flashbacks, hating the microform and Asian language departments at Hillman because I visited them after the bound journals and that floor was carpeted.
I love old nonfiction, though. There's a certain time period, post-WWII to about 1970 I think, that manufactured books that now, with age, have a great smell. The best used bookstores smell this way.
The design of the covers from this time period is good, too.

At my old clerk job, one of my duties was taking the deselected (nice use of librarian-speak, eh?) children's nonfiction out of our catalog. I also got first dibs on any discarded books I wanted. This is why my copies of the first 4 Harry Potters have broken spines, multiple repairs, and look like library property.
Mostly, though, I like out of date nonfiction. I have a book about Communism from the 1960s, written for children. I published a zine at one point of pictures of scientists from 1950s science books for kids.*
One of the sections adult services was weeding was all the old space exploration books. I wanted to adopt them all, even though I suspect I already own at least one of the titles we were getting rid of. Artist's renderings of space travel, the future, and the surface of other planets are something I never get tired of.
Plus, sometimes old books are just fun to mock.

I don't know if you can tell, but every single one of those pictures is identical. A more accurate title would be, 24 Table Saw Projects, All of Which Look Exactly Alike.

I like to think this entire book is dedicated to making sure you don't buy a ring this ugly.

Killer bison!!! I know you can't tell, but it's eyes are totally red, too. And it may or may not be foaming at the mouth. I also like this one because it looks like the awesome caveman hunting/TRex double-sided mural they used to have at the Carnegie Museum (behind the TRex). Its historical inaccuracies always irritated my dad, but I miss it.
It's a short jump from mocking books to mocking authors. For example, if you had written this book:

Wouldn't you choose a bigger horn-thing to hold in your picture?

And here, finally, is the best one. I giggled like a schoolgirl for about twenty minutes over this, plus showed my coworkers and made them giggle. I am, after all, so good at my job because of my stunted maturity.


*I still have copies, if anyone wants one. Darren, I'll trade you one for a nudie pen.

Verse and chapter sat in her inbox.

Billboard

• Why the hell do I never have any damn pens at my desk?
• I need a goddam Ghostwriter pen around my neck.
• Which I never understood:
• Like, if they're all carrying pens around their necks, why can't they also carry a mini version of the alphabet or something, just in case?
• Or maybe I just think waaaay too much about Ghostwriter.
• Wait--is this magazine from months ago, does The Game have a new album out, or am I horribly out of touch?
• Also, Courtney Love's on the cover, too. And sober, apparently.
• Oh, could someone tell me what my myspace picture is right now?
• For some reason, our computers at work aren't 99% of myspace profile pictures.
• Ah, our teen service tech skills are unstoppable.
• Really, I'm just sick of telling teens that it's not us, it's the new filter, and we'll unblock Yahoo games or whatever for you.
• Radio wants teens again.
• "Could Video-On-Demand Be TV's Answer to the Web?"
• Um, I think they mean like The Box.
• Anyone else remember the Box?
• No, of course you don't, because you guys all probably had parents who got cable in the late 80s.
• I, on the other hand, had the extremely grainy, extremely ghetto, Box.
• You'd call and request videos, except they didn't really have a back-up for slow times, so there was a lot of watching, like, 30 seconds of "Push It" and then a scroll of the available videos and my sister and her friends discussing which they wanted to see.
• And a lot of Digital Underground.
• I swear, someone was calling The Box and ordering "Humpty Dance" every hour on the hour for awhile there.
• I once got busy in a Burger King bathroom.
• Except I seem to remember them beeping out "busy", because I vaguely remember expending more 11yrold mental energy trying to figure out what the bleeped word was. I assumed it was something much more than just "busy".
• I'm also pretty fondly remembering the In Living Color "Push It" parody right now.
• Which I tried to find on youtube but couldn't.
• Instead, here's "Mr Ugly Man", the Shaggy parody. Which I totally have running through my head right now.
• OK, who watched "Heroes" this week and was weirded out by Mall Cop's reading his wife's mind, realizing she's had a song stuck in her head for ages, and then PLAYING THAT SONG!?
• Mall Cop, I'm totally with you on the using your powers for sexy and/or romantical good, but if I've got a song in my head for weeks, the last thing I want is to hear it.
• During a romantic interlude.
• Of course, that may have more to do with the quality of song I get stuck in my head.
• "Into Your Arms", for example.
• ...new Weird Al...
• Billy Joel's oldest daughter is dressed in a manner appropriate for an old-timey house of burlesque.
• Speaking of old-timey, I'm reading And a Bottle of Rum right now, and boy-howdy! is it great.
• Some colonial keeps describing himself as being "feloniously drunk", which I believe I'm completely stealing.
• Why does the ALA think I want to buy my own subscription to their publications?
• Yes, I've got a $100 and more to drop on School Library Journal for my home use.
• She's very pretty, though.
• Billy Joel's daughter, that is.
• You know how Joel has those freaky, bug-out giant eyes? They work on a girl.
• I kinda like the shoe The Game designed. It's got checks.
• I'm trying to convince Tiff that Claudia's Room needs a Cafe Press store.
• ...all kinds of Australian crap...
• No surprises here: Courtney Love's working with Linda Perry.
• Who isn't getting paid to do so.
• hmmmm...
• New Shins album January 23!
• That's exciting.
• Ack! Jars of Clay!
• What's the name of X's country/sort-of-joke side project?
• Wasn't it The Wreckers?
• 'cause that's what Michelle Branch is calling herself these days, along with some other chippie.