What's the one thing you're most neurotic about?

Just one thing!?

Sitting on the bed in street clothes.

It's true that I live in a studio apartment, and that the seating there is quite limited.  It's either one of two chairs, the floor, or the bed.  Just please don't get under the covers wearing the jeans in which your butt area has touched the butt area of countless others riding the MTA New York City Transit.  Thankyou.

I will have to ask the dude his opinion on my most neurotic tic, as he has likely seen them all.  But I have an idea of what he might say.

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Airlines mess up sometimes.  Ok, a lot.  But so do all of us.  We are only human, after all.  Last Christmas I was flying to Cleveland from LGA on C***inental Airlines.  The cab got stuck in traffic and I was the second to last person to check in to the last flight of the evening.  Even though it was pretty close to the hour or forty minutes before takeoff, they wouldn't let me on the flight.  They said it was "overweight."  In my mind's eye I pictured a cabin full of fat, lazy midwesterners completely spent after their F.A.O. Shwartz/ESPN store/MACY*S freaking consumer extravaganza.  To the point where there was so much STUFF on the plane it couldn't handle another 105 pounds of ME.

The airline people tried really hard to be apologetic and to be honest I was just too tired and burnt out to care.  Just get me there, for chrissakes.  Do what you need to do.  The ticket agent said she didn't know if she'd be able to get us on another flight until after the weekend, i.e. AFTER CHRISTMAS.  Just as I started to contemplate how sad and pathetic spending the holiday alone in my studio apartment would be, she found us a flight to Cleveland, connecting after a significant layover in Buffalo, leaving from Newark, on another carrier, at 6:00 a.m. the next day.  They got us both a car service home and then over to the Jerz in the morning, which at that point was just a couple hours later.

So to apologize for causing me this inconvenience and emotional distress, the airline gave me a $400 credit to be used within the next year.  This week I had a full five days of vacation, the last ones for a while, and nothing really to do.  So I tried to think of someplace I could go, something exotic and as unlike NYC as possible.  A place that I wouldn't normally ever think of going unless there was a really, really good reason.  Somewhere like Texas.

So I packed my suitcase and stayed there with my cousin, his wife and their kid for two and a half days.  Most of the time was spent in the 'burbs, but that was nice and relaxing in and of itself.  I also went into Austin proper a couple times just to drive around and do some massive treasure hunting:

[Not pictured is the Cheap Trick record and Captain Kirk button, those weren't for me.]

I even made a personalized Google map for myself to figure out where the hell to go, but when I got to the last store on Tuesday night I found this:

map of vintage shops in austin

I never made it to Barton Springs, but I did swim in the neighborhood pool.  I also never got to see the animatronic LBJ, but I did find this:

hot dogger

which I later found out cooks hot dogs by ELECTROCUTING them.  It's at Room Service and I think it was $7 if anyone wants to go grab it.

So you know how in the beginning I said airlines mess up, like, a lot?  Well, it's embarrassing, but on Wednesday morning I missed my flight.  I had to leave almost six hours later, and fly back into that bitch EWK again.

My cousin was picking up the car later that day when he flew back in to Austin from D.C.  I was instructed to leave the keys inside the car, in the armrest storage area, because he would be arriving with a spare set.  As I readied myself to exit the vehicle, I looked all around inside the interior.  Did I have everything?  Phone, keys, wallet... yes, yes, yes.  Ready to go.  Lock the door and slam it shu... NO!!  NOOO!!!  MY LUGGAGE!!!  IN THE TRUNK!!!!!!

Ah yes.  The dangers of getting up at 4 in the morning and not drinking coffee within a suitable timeframe.  Don't let it happen to you, kids.

just a friendly PSA

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I don't know where I've been.  Out trying to have an awesome summer I guess.

Yesterday there was:

what you can't see in this picture is the attractive wood-grain finish

I hope that someday someone buys me: I am so happy someone just bought me:

Utopia

Yesterday I also invented a drinking game, whereby you watch this movie, and take a swig of whatever anytime they say "kill," "killer," "killed," or "killing."  If you do it correctly it should result in severe alcohol poisoning.

Branded to Kill - Koroshi No Rakuin - Criterion Collection

Also, I was sick last week.  Which was no big whoop, just a little sinus congestion, but it had the rather unpleasant side effect of making me actually watch TV.  So I learned about the new style of extreme wrestling in which contestants wear gloves and contort themselves in such a way that their faces are in each other's crotches, and they basically beat the shit out of each other.  I didn't know that existed.  I saw a reality tv show where vapidly shallow 20-something women compete against vapidly shallow but somewhat more mature and sexually experienced 40-something women for the affections of an equally shallow and vapid, but rich and supposedly good-looking dude.  It offended me on so many different levels, but I did exactly what I was supposed to do: I watched, horrified yet transfixed, and then went out and bought whatever they advertised during the commercial breaks.  I saw Tyra and some new judge shows.  I met Dr. Phil's wife and listened to her homespun wisdom, and Rachel Ray showed me some new and exciting uses of sausage meat.

And Thank God, I also got to see this:

fish pen 15 club

My favorite part of the commercial is the guy sitting in front of a computer at work, fantasizing about going fishing with his incredibly tiny implement.  I can relate!  Unfortunately, I am completely landlocked in midtown.  Also, fishing grosses me out a little bit.

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Did you know...

Where I come from, we call any kind of athletic footwear tennis shoes, whether or not we actually play tennis in them?

And that the area between the sidewalk and the curb is actually a portal to hell?

devilstrip

Ok I think I have really run out of things to say.  I don't like any of the questions of the day.  I'm not excited about Harry Potter, and I wish I knew more people who, like me, have never read a book or seen a movie and are still living rich, full lives.  Let me go check to see what the oldest thing in my fridge is.

...

It's a six-way tie between 1/3 bag frozen edamame, frozen unopened bag of Cascadian Farm Organic Veggie Medley, 1/16 jar mango chutney, 1/2 bottle tamari soy sauce, pine nuts, and the bottom tray of ice cubes.

Actually I think the bottom tray of ice cubes wins.  Like the French, I drink my water and Coca-Cola sans glace.

So in conclusion, this vaguely depressing activity was actually worthwhile, because it reminded me it's that time of the year again: I need to do some serious defrostification.

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What is the most interesting class you have ever taken? 
Submitted by Melissa. 

I used to have a lot of complaints about my undergraduate education.  Namely, that pursuing an English degree didn't really prepare me for the working world, as much as I tried to make it happen.  I didn't feel like the department there was very supportive of my endeavors.  (I once attended a graduate school information session, and all they talked about were M.A. programs... when I was thinking more along the lines of something, erm, professional.  No offense.)

But liberal arts education does help to teach you how to think, and how to write down those thoughts once you've thought them out a little more.  I once took an entire class on Friedrich Nietzsche.  It was a small class and there was a lot of discussion.  I frequently felt like I was in over my head, but in a good way.  We read House of Games and The Man In High Castle, in addition to the philosopher's collected works.  My two main papers were on the Nietzsche's treatment of the feminine, and his theory of the eternal return.  I got really high marks on the papers, but more than that, I feel like I learned how to come up with an original idea and turn it into something beautiful on paper.  When I go back and read them I still feel that.  I still feel like in a small way the readings and discussions we did then had an overall effect on my philosophy of life; yeah God is dead and all that.  But also that life is art.  To be is to do.  To do is to be.  Do be do be do.

One of my favorite memories of college actually, is going over to the professor's house to watch the Mamet movie with my classmates.  It was strangely intimate to be in his home, having off-campus conversation with him and his wife, who was also a prof (English too, feminism and the Bible stuff).  We drank wine and ate strawberry rhubarb pie.  It was late spring, and I was six credits away from graduation.  I know I didn't think so at the time, but living the life of the mind was pretty good.

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Mr. Bookman

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Did I mention I went to Book Expo America?  I did!  It was a little intense.  I'm kicking myself a little for missing the Unshelved guys on Saturday.  But I did get some nice advance readers and a little swag.

I'm particularly proud of myself for not caving in on my no-new-totebags policy.  I mean I had to take at least one but I ended up leaving it in the office today.  Maybe a group of archaeologists will find it one day and then try to figure out what we used to carry around in these colorful but primitive canvas sacks.

I hit the postcard mother lode at the fotofolio booth.

This one is going to mom and dad with the ransom-like message: "get a dog."

library dog

This one is going to a friend in Ohio.  Remember when these billboards were popping up all over the midwest?

god says it best

Send Me A Postcard

Shocking Blue

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What was the most embarrassing hobby you've ever had? 
Submitted by Billie Fable.

I got all the requisite nerd-hobbies out of the way at a pretty young age.  There was the butterfly collection, the stamp collection (my grandma worked for the post office at the time so that was cool.)  The rock collection.  And the coin and paper money collection: my prize items included European currency from World War II era (my other grandma had some interesting soldier penpals) and a steel penny from 1943 that I found in a jar that my second grade teacher gave me to look through.

No more embarrassing hobbies for me.  Unless you count bus riding, which I am rather unabashedly fond of.

Knitting does not embarrass me.

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What's your favorite flavor of ice cream?

mmmmghmmm

B&J oatmeal chocolate chunk.  I love oatmeal cookies, and love the fact that in this incarnation thereof the traditional raisins are replaced with CHOCOLATE CHUNKS.  Hell yeah.  Makes me want to pay a visit to the bodega guys.

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Which band or artist which is no longer performing or alive would you have loved to have seen?
Submitted by Rev Stan.

my bloody valentine

The one and only fabulous MBV.  I've heard stories.  But most of the stories are about how people ALMOST went, and didn't, or maybe used to know someone who did.

I remember reading an article in MAGNET a few years ago (it was a big issue devoted to the shoegaze era) where a guy told a story about seeing them live.  During the 30-minute extended-jam of "You Made Me Realise," the sound got so BIG/LOUD/distorted that it actually made him VOMIT.

To me, it just sounds like love.  So yeah.

Hey Kev-- forget about the follow-up.  How about reunion tour??

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