Slow Food

Dear Fast Food Service Employees-

Good fast food service is like (according to all I've learned from watching The Wire) a good drug deal. Quick, dirty, and with as little eye contact as possible. Both parties involved are ultimately left unsatisfied while a hidden third party at the top rakes in the monies. You heard me, Wendy. Yes, I am comparing that little red-haired Pippi-Longstocking-wannabe with Avon Barksdale, notorious fictional gangster with a troubled soul.

All I want from fast food personnel is for them to swipe my magic piece of money plastic and give me my greasy bag of shame so I can drive away as quickly as possible. Let it drench my entire car, still half filled with stuff I'm too lazy to move into my new house, with its potent fried aroma. But do not, do not, attempt to converse with me. Yes, the regular pleasantries are fine, such as, "Have a nice day," or, "Thank you," and please allow me to respond "thank you" to the latter because apparently I don't understand how language works.

But for Jeebus' sake, please don't do anything more. Being treated like a human being might just make me rethink the entire purchase.

CATS!

For some reason, I feel the need to gain approval of every cat I encounter. It's like cats are the withholding mother I never had (because my mom happens very nice). This is doubly bad because I'm allergic to cats. Some just cause a light smattering of eczema to appear on my eyelids and elbows (as everyone knows, eczema loves the letter "E"), while others cause my retinas to turn to sandpaper and my nasal passages to explode. AND YET, I still pursue the friendship of cats.

This morning, to congratulate myself for getting my circadian rhythm back on track, I decided to treat myself to a bagel in the park. As I was sitting there, eating my bagel and listening to a podcast of This American Life about crime scenes, I saw a most adorable cat meandering around a nearby tree. Said cat was seemingly stalking a rather chirpy squirrel hidden in the tree's upper branches.

 I rolled down my car window (What? You actually thought I got out of my car? Haha as if. I don't like to mingle with the common park people.) which caused the cat to notice my presence. It looked judgmental. I stuck a piece of bagel out of the car, waiving it invitingly for the cat to take because, c'mon, who doesn't love a good bagel? But all the adorable cat offered me in return was SCORN. It gave up its pursuit of Chirpy Squirrel and darted between some fence posts into the unknown.

Chirpy Squirrel was more than happy to receive the bagel bit, I might add. It took it right from my hand with its chubby little paws. (That's a lie, I threw it on the ground and the squirrel came and got it like five minutes later.)

The moral of this story is never share your bagel with anyone. Also, podcasts about crime scenes are really disturbing.

Things I saw on campus today

1. Some dude juggling plastic red bowling pins
2. Children in green shirts swarming the sidewalk, grabbing at my clothes with their jam covered hands
3. Four people and some guy with a megaphone calling themselves "Occupy KU". I feel like they missed the boat with that one. I'm also automatically inclined to dislike anyone with a megaphone.
4. An idiot trying to tie his shoe while riding a bike
5. One jillion (advanced mathematical term) blond girls wearing the EXACT SAME OUTFIT. They must coordinate these things. Should I dye my hair blond? Am I missing out on something amazing?

Yeah... so it's not the best list ever. But I skipped my nap time today. Don't judge me. 

The Pen Dilemma

I take my school/office supplies very seriously. By this, I mean I take somewhat of a perverse joy in buying them. Two weeks (minimum) before the start of each semester, I begin to stalk school supplies like the determined hunter of a Hemingway story. My prey: pens, notebooks, folders, and of course, tabs. Once, I spent the entire afternoon in an Office Depot.

This is why I was happy, nay, thrilled, to encounter a fellow pen connoisseur tonight at the grocery store, of all places. I was pretending my mini-cart was a scooter, semi-surfing it down the office supplies isle just like the faceless people on the child seat tell you not to, when I overheard a rather good looking young gentleman on the phone. He was standing in front of the pen selection, lamenting to his phone compatriot the difficulty he always had when choosing a pen. "The line can't be too thick and the ink can't smear, because then my writing just looks a mess," he muttered with exasperation. Okay, maybe he said "is messy" instead of "just looks a mess", but a girl can dream.

Needless to say, I was tempted to propose on the spot, or at least give him a crisp hi-five. But sadly friends, I didn't even say hello and share pen buying tips with him. Foiled again by this cursed shyness!

I know you are eager to hear what I consider to be the best pen after my years of searching, so I'll let you in on this most precious secret; my favorite pen is the Uniball Jetstream. I prefer a nice 0.7 point, but the 1.0 is good for those who like a bold stroke. No smearing, friends! Check-forging proof!

Also, it turns out Uniball is not owned by Lance Armstrong. I've also been told they don't appreciate tasteless Lance Armstrong jokes.

Isn't it beautiful?

The Mall

 Once in a while, I forget how ABSOLUTELY TERRIBLE the mall is. My brain (the eternal traitor) convinces me I really need something only the mall can offer me.

If you go to the mall in my hometown, here are a few things you will find:

1.     An interesting variety of people, including the power-walking elderly and goth teenagers

2.     Mannequins with eyes that follow you like a painting from a Scooby Doo mystery

3.     People with fanny packs

4.     People with mullets

5.     People with mullets and fanny packs

6.     Voldemort behind the Clinique counter

7.     A friendly Asian woman who is ALWAYS cleaning the food court bathrooms, seemingly stuck in The Twilight Zone

8.     Children running amok and smearing their jam covered fingers on your nice sweatpants (children like jam)

9.     Sales people who will ask you multiple times if you want to sample their perfume, and then spray it directly into your face regardless of the answer

10.  SPANX. For women who enjoy feeling like a sausage.

11.  Someone from your past you really didn't want to see...ever

The mall is a cauldron of blatant consumerism and human misery. You can quote me on that.

Don't try this at home

If you don't know me very well, you probably don't know that I can be exceptionally lazy when it comes to cleaning types of things. Putting away my clothes, for instance. My clothes are stored in a never ending rotation of laundry baskets, despite the fact I have plenty of room to store them elsewhere, in things like "dressers" and "closets". Once in awhile, usually when I've had too many Snapple Peach Teas, I'll actually put all of my clothes away. This is rare, friends, rare. Like Alec Baldwin failing to look at himself as he passes a reflective surface. JK, I don't know Alec that well. We're only acquaintances.

The funny thing is, I actually like buying cleaning products. I do like using them in some situations, like when they dispense the product in fun ways (Magic Erasers) or promise astounding results, like being able to dissolve blood stains in carpet. But eventually, the novelty wears off. This is when the laziness kicks in. And the laziness starts giving me bad ideas... "shortcuts", if you will, to shorten my cleaning time.

Warning: this next tale is one of caution. Never, I repeat, never do this yourself.

Some Web Thing

I told my mom an anecdote from my oh-so-exciting week, and she found it amusing. She said, "That should be some web thing!" That was all I needed. If a 50-some-years-young woman thinks that this anecdote needs to be shared with the masses, what more confirmation could I possibly seek?

The other day when I was on my way home from something that was definitely not getting "chicken" nuggets at Wendy's (because I'm still mad at Wendy's for reasons to be discussed in the future), I saw something odd occurring in front of this income tax place. This happens to be the income tax place where they make some sad individual stand out in the elements wearing a bad Statue of Liberty costume and dance around like they are either suffering from a grand mal seizure or have ants (Claudes*, if you will) crawling all over them. They always remind me of the fits of hysterical dancing people used to have in the Middle Ages. (Otherwise known as MPI- mass psychological illness. You're welcome.)

What I saw immediately intrigued me. I saw not one, but two statue mascots standing in front of the crappy cement hut that served as their place of employment (I think the look it was going for was "recently firebombed"). One was a portly fellow with an astonishingly bushy brown beard, and the other was a scrawny youth. The bearded man was upset. He was gesticulating wildly; his green Statue of Liberty costume billowing around him as he waved his arms about, like a chubby green Jesus. The youth just stood there, looking agitated. I wanted to stop my car and watch this most interesting argument, and possibly befriend this bearded chap, but I had to hurry home. Not because my "food" was getting cold.


The horrible realization I came to is that one of these two men would have to resume dancing after this disagreement was over. Imagine having to embarrass yourself and fake joy by dancing after a terrible fight! That is pure torture. 

I can only imagine what they were fighting about. I like to think it was a love triangle gone wrong or perhaps a disagreement about plans for a jewel heist.


*See Attack of the Ants post. Footnotes are so fancy!

Ninja!

This is the first time this year I have felt inclined to Ninja Attack someone. I took karate for two years starting at age six, so I feel I am prepared to instigate some Ninja Action.

Here I am, trying to take a super serious quiz about what my spirit color is on the interweb, when I am interrupted by the most annoying sequence of high pitched calls. At first, I am convinced it is some sort of bizarre wildlife, because there is a copse of trees outside my window in which wildlife frequently frolics. This nonsense continues for five minutes, during which I detect a human element to the call. I crack my window, and sure enough, I can hear, "Heeeere, kittyyyy kiiiiiiiitty." Someone has lost their cat. And I know exactly who.

My apartment complex doesn't allow dogs or cats. Yet there are trouble makers among us, two idiots who have a pet cat. I assume this cat is named "Kitty", because that's what they always call it. Kitty. I've met a lot of cats named Kitty, but I've never met a dog named Doggy.
I feel bad for this cat. For some reason, they continue to let it out to roam around the apartments even though it obviously abstains from returning home on its owners' terms. Once, it was chilling in the bushes and I came up to it, trying to pet it. It looked so happy to see me. This may be my own vanity talking, but it was sniffing my hand and stuff. Then, one of its idiot owners poked his head out of a window and screamed, "Kitty, NO! BAD!" The cat gave me the saddest look and ran in the exact opposite direction of its owner. What kind of sadist would scold a cat for seeking love? What monsters!?

I've found this cat in the apartment building with the outgoing mailbox when sending mail, I've found it on my back deck, I've even found it sitting at the bus stop. Obviously, this is a cat that likes to do things its own way. And yet these imbeciles let it out, day after day, incessantly calling for it out of their window.

And here they are, interrupting my MOST important quiz-taking with their god awful, sub-human screeching. I knew that cat would make its escape sooner or later. I can see it now, hitchhiking across the Midwest, its meager bundle of cat toys wrapped in an old handkerchief.

So I may just go out there and Ninja Attack! them. (This would consist of me giving one of them a small kick in the shin, saying, "Shut the hell up," and running away.)

I could be exaggerating this whole thing a bit...but I doubt it.
Cats hitchhike all the time.

The Cat

There was this cat on the sparse patch of grass outside my apartment building. A Chartreux, I believe.

So I went up to the cat and was all, “You know cat, you and your outdoor feline comrades are currently responsible for the alarming decline of the wild bird population in the United States.”

The cat gave me this look that was all, “I don’t give a shit. Get off my sparse patch of grass.” I was a little offended, but that’s just the nature of some cats.

I happen to look up and see said cat’s owner standing in the doorway of her apartment giving me a curious look. I suddenly remembered ‘something important’ I had to do, and fled the scene posthaste.

The moral of this story: It’s perfectly fine to lecture household pets.
(There’s a 66% chance this tale stems only from my imagination.)

James Bond vs. Aliens

(This is from about 6 months ago)

So I went to go see Cowboys & Aliens with my mom last week. Mostly I did this so I could get a free meal; I’m not sure if it was worth the sandwich. Anyway, if you are living in a bubble and haven’t heard of this ridiculously over-advertized movie, it stars James Bond Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford. It also has that square faced queen of sulk, Olivia Wilde, but she basically had one expression throughout the entire movie.

The premise is generally ridiculous: aliens invade the American Wild West, and Daniel Craig has to stop them. He plays an anti-hero of questionable motivations who prevails in the end; I know, so different from his other roles. Harrison Ford’s there too, being a grumpy old man. The only one who really did much acting was Paul Dano, but he was only in like a 4th of the movie.
The most unbelievable part of the movie was the reason why the aliens were scouting the earth for a future attack: they wanted gold. Gold?!? Really! That’s some serious bullshit. Also, the aliens were stupid looking. They looked like the offspring of John Cena and Worm Man from the X-files, dipped in tar. I said that to my mom and she was like, “That’s mean,” because she likes John Cena movies. She told me, “He still does WWW.” I think she meant WWE. It’s all pretty homoerotic, if you ask me. (Not that there's anything wrong with that.)

I’d show you a picture of Worm Man, but you’d have nightmares for eternity.

Also, why does Harrison Ford think he can still pull off an earring?

Attack of the Ants

 Today, before class, I was sitting innocently at my desk perfecting the appropriate mix of optimism and disinterest in my expression while listening to my ipod. I kept feeling this light tickling sensation on my forehead, which I dismissed as a stray hair trying to free itself from my scalp to fulfill its dream of being DNA evidence. I surveyed the classroom, taking in the mediocrity of my fellow students, and I suppose I was surveyed in response. Make note: other people looked at me.

The Beast of Indecision

So as you might notice, large blog following, that I didn't move my "funny" posts over from tumblr. The reason for this is I decided to use tumblr instead. Turns out, tumblr still sucks. So I'm coming back to good old Blogger! The towering hulk of anxiety that is my indecisiveness still manages to surprise me. (That first 'r' in surprise really pisses me off.)

To me, tumblr is like a pair of jeans that look really cool but actually pinch your stomach and give you gas pains. Blogger is like my favorite pair of black dressy sweatpants... I may initially think of them as the lesser leg-covering-garment, but time always shows me they are superior.

So looks like I will be doing said transfer after all. Don't expect much, incredibly numerous readers.