thoughts that only have my head in common

I received this message from my mother recently:

"This morning the Refrigerator Police invaded a home and arrested 43 items for loitering beyond their expiration date. 'We knew a new refrigerator was coming tomorrow and so we cleaned out this nest of dead bottles and cans in preparation.' The oldies are being held in the garbage can without bail. Some, police said, are old enough to collect social security."

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I overheard the following conversation on a rainy morning between two super-bedraggled-arguably-still-drunk-from-last-night women without umbrellas. Imagine, if you will, that both voices have recently smoked sixteen thousand cigarettes and are way louder than anyone should be at 9am:

Woman 1: I don't know why they were asking for it anyway.

Woman 2: Don't you have to carry it around?

Woman 1: No. That's your drivers license, not your marriage license.

Woman 2: You don't carry your marriage license with you?

Woman 1: No. I carry my drivers license.

Woman 2: Not your marriage license?

Woman 1: No. Why would I? When do you need your marriage license?

Woman 2: So you don't carry it?

Woman 1: No. I don't.

Woman 2: Would you carry it if you had it?

Woman 1: No. Why would I? When do you need your marriage license?

Woman 2: So you don't carry it?

Woman 1: No. I don't.

Woman 2: Would you carry it if you had it?

Woman 1: No. Why would I? When do you need your marriage license?

Woman 2: So you don't carry it?

(Repeat ad infinitum, or until your pace far outstrips theirs.)

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I participated in this conversation recently with my friends' seven year old son.

Him: You know what our soccer team's colors are?

Me: No, what are they?

Him: Gold, black, and alabaster.

(pause)

Me: Do you know what color alabaster is?

(pause)

Him: No.

(Now, I have always hated this kind of moment. When you wonder if the other person is going to tell you what it is they know, or if they're just going to lord it over you that they know something you don't. My mother scarred me on this when, as a kid, she didn't tell me what "dildo" meant.)

Me: It's a kind of white.

Him: Oh, I knew that.

(I said the same thing when confronted with the shocking truth of what a dildo was.)

Me: You know what color your face is?

(pause)

Him: Um, white?

Me: No. Dirty Alabaster.

And because we're both seven and dorky, we broke into hysterical laughter.

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Nerdy Word Thoughts:

1. I saw a typo in a job listing indicating that the job was at a top "coorporation." And the idea appealed to me -- a company where everyone really worked together. Kind of works, no?

2. Can you wear participants?

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I found this entertaining. It's an ad for lab equipment.

on typos and other mistakes

1) I was on the train the other day, held captive as we went over the bridge (which, for those of you who don't live in NYC is a really long time not to be able to get out of the car you're in -- say 11 minutes or so?*) when a normal-ish woman got out of her seat and started proselytizing. Except it wasn't for Jesus, it was for some new political party, one that I'd never heard of before. But apparently they have a candidate in an upcoming election and their woman on the street-slash-subway wanted us all to vote for him in the next "governerial" primary.

I don't mean to be a bitch, but if you've got a gubernatorial candidate, you should know the word "gubernatorial," don't you think?

2) I was at work the other day, typing up a blurb about myself and my coaching practice, and instead of saying that I specialize in self-esteem, I said that I specialize in "elf-esteem." I was then forced to spend the next ten minutes cracking up at the thought of my running a seminar for depressed elves on how to cheer themselves up. ("Think big!" "Be elfish!" "It's all about elf-gratification!")

3) If I were looking for a new job title, I'm not entirely sure that this would be the one I chose:

*ok, p.s. this was totally a guesstimate on the time, but when I consulted a train schedule, it turns out, I was completely right! Now you know I'm a reliable source!

what are the odds of that?

So I'm taking an undergraduate statistics course, and boy do I feel old. The cute guy sitting next to me? Born in 1988. You know, when I was twelve. And already smooching boys. (And he's not the youngest one in there.)

We have an exam tonight -- the first of three, one of which will be DROPPED in calculating our final grade, a concept with which, as a Fancy Schmancy College Grad, I am extremely unfamiliar. Dropping an exam? I thought that was something you could only (ruefully) do into a puddle. Oh, I have much to learn!

But instead of studying -- because it's an open notes exam (see shock and astonishment, above), I thought I would share with you some of the brilliant things that have crossed my brainpan while in said idea-factory. However, in looking back over my notes, the things I thought were funny in the classroom of boredom, death, and despair, aren't actually funny.

Well, except this: there was one example where the professor, a native Japanese speaker, was talking about the probability related to tossing a coin. For several minutes, we were all listening to her go on about "receiving heads," "having tails," and "measuring spread."

Even the twelve year olds were embarrassed.

ah, delight!

A collection of wonderful things I've read recently:

1. It's not how you look, it's how you look at the world. (This was an online dater's headline, which I found absolutely charming.)

2. From the NY Times (in a great article on aphrodisiacs):
"[C]hocolate’s reputation as an aphrodisiac is highly exaggerated, food researchers say. Romantic and deeply pleasurable, yes, especially because of its tendency to melt in the mouth at body temperature. And yes, it does contain some chemicals like phenylethylamine, which produce feelings of euphoria. Yet one widely cited study showed that a 130-pound person would have to eat 25 pounds of chocolate in one sitting to significantly alter the mood. But who would be in the mood after eating 19.2 percent of her weight in chocolate?"

and later, it says:

"In one small experiment on sexual response to food scents, vaginal and penile blood flow was measured in 31 men and women who wore masks emitting various food aromas. This was the study that found men susceptible to the scent of doughnuts mingled with licorice. For women, first place for most arousing was a tie between baby powder and the combination of Good & Plenty candy with cucumber. Coming in second was a combination of Good & Plenty and banana nut bread."

[First off, who but destitute college students would volunteer for these kinds of measurements? And second, wouldn't it be embarrassing if you had an abnormal response to something like the smell of, say, egg salad?]

3. From Amy Bloom's book, Where the God of Love Hangs Out,
"[S]he told him that she'd heard that young men shaved their balls now. Ray lifted his head and asked her if she would like that. I guess I would, she said. Is it unpleasant otherwise? Ray said. Oh, I don't know, Ellie said. It's like a mouthful of wet mitten -- what do you think?"

language goodies

Fernando and I were discussing "the bees knees*" the other day, and discovered that there is a lack of consensus about why that phrase even exists. One argument is that bees carry pollen in sacks in their legs (the next thing to be outlawed by the TSA, no doubt) and so if something's really sweet, it's the bee's knees. My favorite, though, is the argument that a bee's knees must be so small, and in a world where small = good, the bee's knees are the bees knees!

However, I was discussing this online with a potential internet date, and he argued that a flea is just as small as a bee, and that he was going to start saying "the flea's knees" just to see if people noticed. He then went on to point out that a flea doesn't quite have the coolness factor of a bee, what with the honey-bees-defy-physics-by-flying thing. I cyber-swooned. (Anyone want to take bets on whether I meet this guy or not?)

*is it one bee, with multiple knees? Many bees and many knees? Tricky, this language of ours.

Later, we were discussing tertiary and quaternary, and wondered if there was anything higher than that. Turns out, there is! After quaternary, there's quinary, senary, septenary, octonary, nonary, denary. There's also duodenary (12th) and vigenary (20th), but, if you ask me, those sound like things a maiden aunt would bring up at the Thanksgiving table, much to the chagrin of the rest of the family.

And here's something else you probably haven't stopped to actually think about: lay and lie. Lots of people get them confused, but there's a really good reason why. The past tense of lay is laid. The past tense of lie? LAY. (Thanks, English.) Laying is something that gets done to an object (like laying a book on the desk, or laying a blanket on the bed) and lying is something one does to oneself (she lies down on the couch, or, if she did it earlier this evening, she LAY on the couch. Then, there's the other lie, like the way she lied to herself about how much of that chocolate she ate).

But wait! There's more!

The best new word I've learned this year turned up when I was discussing some friends the severe manscaping one of my friend's date had shown. (He was totally nut-bald!) The polar opposite of that, though, is when a woman's nether regions get quite unruly; then she's sporting a vajungle.

Class dismissed!

know your blogger: a quiz for the dedicated reader

Directions: Using a number 2 pencil, mark the correct answers on the screen. (If you're blonde and make a mistake, feel free to liberally apply white out to the screen, but only if you've ever been to Disney and seen the sign "<-----Disney Left" and gone home.)


1. What has gotten your favorite blogger up onto the roof four times already this summer?
a) the regional tour of Riverdance
b) blocked gutters that, when they overflow, make a really loud splash against the fire escape and wake her up at four in the morning
c) a cadre of noisy squirrels having sex
d) how would you know, you're not my favorite blogger!


2. When recently hard boiling some eggs, what did your favorite blogger do?
a) join the regional tour of Riverdance
b) start juggling the raw eggs and not the hard boiled ones
c) not scorch, toast, or merely burn her potholder, but aim for more of a potholder flambee, requiring a festive dance while putting a flaming piece of fabric into the sink
d) See d, above


3. What did your favorite blogger's date say as he ascended the stairs to her apartment?
a) "Nice ass! Do you Riverdance?"
b) "Geez, this is the ugliest apartment building color scheme I've ever seen."
c) "Come here often?"
d) "Hi Jesus, Hi Tiger!"


4. What would you say if you saw this in the hallway of your date's apartment building?

a) "Nice ass! Do you Riverdance?"
b) "Geez, this is the ugliest apartment building color scheme I've ever seen."
c) "Come here often?"
d) "Hi Jesus, Hi Tiger!"

5. Your favorite blogger recently celebrated her half birthday. What did her date bring her?
a) half a birthday card, reading "You'll need it when you're swinging on the chandelier by your ass," prompting her to wonder what in the hell the other half said
b) half a book of Tom Robbins short stories and one organic cotton legwarmer
c) half a vegan cupcake that was shockingly delicious (and animal free!)
d) all of the above

6. How many runs did your favorite blogger score in her kickball game today?
a) 0
b) 1
c) 2!
d) she plays kickball? Isn't that kind of, well, athletic?

7. What was the highlight of the kickball game?
a) your favorite blogger's chocolate-coconut cupcakes
b) the way your favorite blogger caught the kickball and made the out, even though it may well have broken her left boob
c) when your favorite blogger did a cheerleading kick that took her foot over her head and somehow knocked her other foot off the ground, causing her to land on her ass and exclaim, "Ow! My pride!"
d) all of the above

8. Which words best describe the weather your favorite blogger has been living with?
a) summery, delightful & lovely
b) June-like, dry & breezy
c) clear skies, fresh & salubrious
d) none of the above (see question 1)

TO SCORE:
The best way to score is to be your favorite blogger's date! (Ba-dump! I'll be here all week; tip your waitress!)

Another way to score is to be on your favorite blogger's kickball team, as they beat the black team 10-6 today.

Or, you could just add up all the correct answers. (There should be 8 of them.)

oh sweet jesus

The Methodist Church in my neighborhood had their annual book sale this weekend, and I managed to score four books for six bucks! (Sweet!) I like going because it's a bunch of Park Slope folks getting rid of their old, hip, deep-thought-filled books, so there are always a few that grab me right away.

This year, however, I think Jesus might have been a little let down by the quality of the merchandise. Because I managed to walk out of a house of worship toting The Best Erotica of 1994.

Yeah, I bought smut at the church (for cheap!).

I called my parents to tell them of my great find, except they couldn't understand what I was saying.

"Do you think Jesus would mind that I bought erotica at the church?" I asked.

"You bought what?" they said in unison over speakerphone.

"Erotica," I said, shielding my mouth while heading to the grocery store.

"What?"

"EROTICA," I said.

"WHAT?"

"Do I have to shout it to you guys while I'm on the sidewalk?? EEEE-RAAAH-TIIII-CAHHHH!"

"Oh!" And then my parents fell into paroxysms of laughter that would make the angels weep.

Francine

This is Francine.


She lives atop the mantle at Union Hall in Park Slope, supervising the indoor bocce courts. Previously buried under a thick layer of dust, she was recently released by a pair of creative geniuses (or genii, if you prefer) and given a new lease on life.


At first they thought Francine was single, ranging anywhere in age from 22 to 35. (He said 22, she said 35.) While Francine is actually married (you can see the rings on her finger), this photo might lead even a creative genius to think that it was her parents' last-ditch effort to get her a husband. You know, one of those portraits they could take around to potential suitors and show them how nice her hair was.* And then ply them with money to take her off their hands before she became a spinster.


It was dark in the bar. He thought she (Francine) wasn't wearing anything; she knew she (Francine) had on a gauzy number that very likely had a scalloped bodice underneath. Possibly in teal or turquoise. She thought Francine's father was in the mob ("Just look at those earrings"); he didn't disagree, but looked around the bar suspiciously, just in case.


Why Francine was wearing a gold bracelet while at the same time sporting diamonds, she would never understand, but that's because she doesn't wear gold herself. He nodded. It was warm in the bar.


The picture was taken in the 1930s? '40s? 50s. Sometime in there. They agreed, drank to that and then posed for a picture themselves.


The frame around Fracine was, to him, the most disturbing part. At the top, the border's frippery was split in two, parted like bangs or theatrical curtains. It frustrated her that Francine could only be displayed in one direction. And that the frame was even dustier than the picture.


Francine could have been Hawaiian. Or half-Asian (which would likely make it a different mafia all together). She could have been anybody.


In fact, she was somebody, and may, actually, still be somebody. That's the weirdest part.


When she put Francine back on the mantle, he looked at her, smiled and said, "You know, a lot of people couldn't do what we just did."


"I know," she said. That's why she liked doing it.



*"When a woman is ugly they always say she has beautiful hair or eyes" -- Sonya, Uncle Vanya (Chekhov)

the dirty license plate game

The Bronco in front of us was trying to turn left from the right hand lane, and Mom and I were having none of it. We were tired, hungry, and teetering on that dangerous precipice between hilarity and disaster.

“Come on,” I moaned, sorely tempted to lean on the horn. “We just want to go home.”

“Yeah,” said mom, reading the license plate in front of us, “get out of the way 3-4-7-P-D-T. You… poddy… doodoo… turd!”

And silence descended on the car for precisely 2.5 seconds (the exact timing used by famously hilarious Norwegian comedians) before mom and I broke into laughter that eventually brought tears to our eyes (and pee almost to our pants).

“That’s the worst you could do?!?” I gasped.

“Well, it’s what came to mind.”

And thus, the Dirty License Plate Game was born. Obviously, the point of the game is to come up with the dirtiest, foulest, most offensive combo that can be made from the license plates of those around you in traffic. You can warm up, as mom did, with some “offensive” language and then work your way up to the more obscene, lewd, and generally reprehensible combinations we’ve created over the years.

As many of you, I’m sure are aware, Thanksgiving Day traffic provides ample dirty license plate opportunities, and we were not ones to miss out on that. However, we grew weary of flinging swears willy-nilly, and mom and I found ourselves much more successful when we limited ourselves to a theme – you know, poop, sex, butts, bestiality, whatever.

And that’s when we came across a pickup truck with the simple license plate “CCSS.” Before our new themed version of the game, that could have been any variety of things – C*nty Clit Shit Sauce, for example, or Creamy Crappy Scrotum Squirt.

With the theme, however, it was merely “CRAP CRAP SHIT SHIT!”

Which, I’ll argue, is considerably funnier. (Especially when shouted out of context and apropos of nothing at the dinner table.)

Ah, family...

some things that don't make sense

I went to a lecture with my mother recently whose title was "Thirteen Things that Don't Make Sense." (The lecture, not my mom.) Here, in my opinion are some of those thirteen things (and I think my mother would likely agree):

-- Why my mother and I thought we could understand a lecture about astronomical anomalies
-- How you can possibly be expected to stay awake in the Hayden Planetarium in dusky lighting after a cocktail
-- Why the website said the lecture was at 6:30 on Tuesday when the guy at the box office said it was at 6:30 on Monday when, in fact, it was at 7:30 on Monday
-- The way my dad dresses (but this has no bearing on the lecture whatsoever)
-- Why, in a lecture entitled THIRTEEN things that don't make sense, you'd only cover four of them
-- Why British accents are so much cuter than American ones
-- The difference between WIMPS and CHAMPS (I'm not kidding, this was actually covered in the section on Dark Matter. Or Dark Energy. I forget.)

Another thing we learned was that way back in the day there was a physicist named Fritz Zwicky who came up with an explanation for dark matter (or dark energy, I forget) that was, according to our understanding of the situation now, not far from the mark. However, in Fritz's day, he was maligned and basically kicked out of the establishment. He responded to this by calling his fellow physicists "Spherical Bastards" -- because any way you looked that them, they were bastards.

Now THAT made sense.

stimulating stultiloquence

(Stul*til"o*quence\, n. [L. stultiloquentia; stultus foolish + loquentia a talking, fr. loquens, p. pr. of loqui to talk.] Silly talk; babbling.)

1. If I had a mariachi band, I would call them the Magic Juans.

2. The other day, Fernando answered the help desk phone to discuss one of our programs, "Hot Dicks." After I picked my jaw up off the floor, and snorted audibly, he made a point of emphatically re-pronouncing "Hot Docs" four or five times in the remaining two minutes of the call.

3. My pantyhose were so tight today, I felt like a sausage about to bust out of its casings. I'll admit to having to cut the waistband just so I could breathe.

4. There is no ghost in the Chrylser Building bathroom, as I had previously thought. Turns out, we have some magical, automatic, aromatic air freshener that just squirts perfume into the air at random, ghost-whispering-like intervals.

5. If there is beforehand and afterwards, why is there no afterhand or beforewards?

6. A quote from the beginning of the book I'm reading, Working Identity:
Then indecision brings its own delays,
And days are lost lamenting o'er lost days.
Are you in earnest? Seize this very minute;
What you can do, or dream you can, begin it;
Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.
--Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

homina homina homina

Because I have a ton of things I want to write, I haven't written a single thing. Instead, I will regale you with the other word game we're playing at work. The three-for homonym game. Name any homonym you can come up with that has three different spellings.

To wit:
your/you're/yore
main/mane/Maine
there/their/they're
pair/pare/pear
way/weigh/whey
to/too/two
for/four/fore
where/wear/ware
right/write/rite
scents/sense/cents
or/oar/o'er
rain/rein/reign
meat/meet/mete
poor/pore/pour
haze/hays/heys

and my favorite, the four-for:
do/doo/due/dew

nerdy word game

Here at work we're playing a very fun nerdy word game. Basically, we're trying to come up with words that can be both nouns and verbs, but have different meanings in both forms.
For example:
shed
vent
fly
dart
run (in your stockings
force
charm
bait
change
ring
rung
stall
stalk
brood
date
mark
sink
pine
quack
season
toll
stick
jam
interest

Additions?

i have so much to say that i’m not saying anything

I have sixteen novels inside me that I want to write here, but I'm too busy. So instead, I'm re-posting an email my aunt sent to me today. It's charming. Basically someone asked first graders to complete the second half of a well-known proverb or maxim, and this is what they came up with:

1. Don't change horses until they stop running.
2. Strike while the bug is close.
3. It's always darkest before Daylight Saving Time.
4. Never underestimate the power of termites.
5. You can lead a horse to water but How?
6. Don't bite the hand that looks dirty.
7. No news is impossible
8. A miss is as good as a Mr.
9. You can't teach an old dog new Math
10. If you lie down with dogs, you'll stink in the morning.
11. Love all, trust Me.
12. The pen is mightier than the pigs.
13. An idle mind is the best way to relax .
14. Where there's smoke there's pollution.
15. Happy the bride who gets all the presents.
16. A penny saved is not much.
17. Two's company, three's the Musketeers.
18. Don't put off till tomorrow what you put on to go to bed.
19. Laugh and the whole world laughs with you, cry and You have to blow your nose.
20. There are none so blind as Stevie Wonder.
21. Children should be seen and not spanked or grounded.
22. If at first you don't succeed get new batteries.
23. You get out of something only what you See in the picture on the box
24. When the blind lead the blind get out of the way.
25. A bird in the hand is going to poop on you.
26. Better late than Pregnant

precipitation on flora and bristles on felines

I could write you a couple of pages on how to navigate our new contact software (and yet another one on how to send five blank emails to six key clients of one of the major billing partners in the firm) (and still another on the best way to call him up, confess and profusely apologize), but instead, I'll save my brainpower for my job.

Here, then, for your enjoyment, entertainment and general procrastination are some of my favorite words today. (I never commit to having a favorite for more than one day. The other words might get jealous.) I like them mostly for the way they sound, feel or look, and disregard what they mean. Although some of their meanings are pretty good, too. (I am not meaningist.)

spatula (of course)
anthropomorphism
lugubrious
laconic
sidewalk
fuck
monstrosity
pernicious
depot
polka
moose
cud
iconoclastic
barf
yam-tastic (technically not a word)
derringdo
nepotism
and
keening

Contributions?