"Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About"

I have just discovered the most hilarious website of all time. A British journalist has a website called Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About. It is brilliant, witty, and long. I have been reading it for about 3 hours--it's been an ongoing project for this guy for many years, and he is representative of how British writers are just born funnier than Americans. Americans, (and apparently Germans like this guy's girlfriend), just so often can't seem to handle irony or satire or sarcasm or sardonic wit. They just get offended by it, per my usual experience. Look at the sentence I just read 45 times because it is simply RAD: "I'm surely not going to be able to pick out anything - my searching fingers are now too callused, from running them along Margret's reasoning in an attempt to identify the scar where it's been imperfectly welded to reality."
Oh my God! If I had the knack for metaphor/hyperbole/whatever that this guy does, I'd, I'd....I don't know what I'd do, but every time a thought passed through my brain I'd laugh and clap my hands with glee, no matter where I was or how insane people thought I was. I'd eventually end up in an asylum, drugged and muttering to myself, but, hey, isn't that where old age leads most people anyway?

My biggest pet peeve

I hate it when someone either sees or smells your food at work and says, "Eew, what is that?" I think it's really rude. Like, I don't look at someone and say, "Eew, what are you wearing?" even though that would be a valid question to many people at work, as would be, "What did you do to your hair?" or "What look were you going for when you put your makeup on, pill-popping middle-aged mom? Oh, whoops!"

There was really one lady in particular who used to do this, but she's dead now. Well, not really, but dead to my office, since she quit and everyone hated her. She was a crazy bitch and used to sit in the break room and harass everyone about their food, because everything looked wierd to her. Then I sat by this other girl who, I swear, complained about being able to smell other people's food before they had even taken it out of their cars and brought it inside the building. I read something in Miss Manners or something similar where someone complained about their cubicle mate's stinky food, and Miss Manners or whomever told them to get over it. If I were of some other ethnicity and someone said that about my ethnic food, I'd tell them they were racist.

Maybe I should coin a new phrase and call these people "foodist." And not like the gourmet type of foodist, or foodie. But someone who fears or is offended by strange food that someone else is eating whilst minding her own business and not trying to force others to like!

I say this because I made soup last night, and while it is very yummy, it will probably look wierd and smell strongly, since it has corn, green chilies, and cheese in a creamy base. Oh, yeah, and it has cumin in it, which is very smelly. And I've become apprehensive of bringing anything to work that isn't a frozen dinner because it causes people to freak out so much, which causes me to get pissed off!

The Story of Mr. Black

Stop awhile, and let me relate to you the story of Aubrey Black.

It was a cold Saturday night, and Noel was in town on a rare appearance from Moscow. We had stuffed ourselves with sushi at Zutto and dessert at Le Café, where we ogled and disagreed on the sexiness of our waiter, Guillaume. I thought he had sexy arms, but the unibrow was a turnoff. My old landlord, Terra, had admitted to me, during many forced conversations, that she wanted Guillaume to paint the interior of her house naked.
After the Café, we ventured to the Neurolux, where Noel, Haley, and I encountered a really shitty band of 15-year-olds playing what sounded like pots and pans. At the end of the evening, we and our other friends decided to walk to Taylor’s house for his birthday party.
Taylor’s house was about 25 blocks away, and a stranger asked to join us, as he’d been invited to the party by a friend of his who was already at the party house. He told us he was from Coeur d’Alene and hoped that he would hook up with his friend, Nick Bock, so that he wouldn’t have to sleep under a bridge that night. My friends, who didn’t understand that outsiders could tell jokes convincingly, decided that this stranger was too random for them. One of them decided, in fact, to call him “Random Dude.”
Random Dude, as they called him, told me his name was Aubrey Black. He and I had an interesting conversation as we made our way to Taylor’s house. He told me about how he couldn’t get any healthcare through his job, but that he was glad his little daughter qualified for Medicare, or else he’d be fucked. He told me about how having a child brings all kinds of guilt you’d never know otherwise.
On the way to the party, Haley decided she’d had enough of the walk and ran up to a house at the corner she thought the party was at and pounded on the door. Two teenagers came out, but informed her they didn’t know who the hell Taylor was or where the fuck he lived. Aubrey and I just rolled our eyes as Noel pulled Haley away from the teenagers’ house. As we were leaving that wrong house, Mr. Black tried to say something to Haley, but she just said, “Whatever, Random Dude!”
Once we finally got the party, we split up, Tyler and Stephanie disappearing while Noel, Drew, and I played the short version of Trivial Pursuit with Brian. Taylor was tripping on mushrooms in the corner, incapacitated. The other players forfeited the game when they saw that I was winning, with 4 pieces of pie to the next-runner-up, who had 1. Aubrey Black was leaving, and came over to say goodbye to me, “Look me up if you’re ever in Coeur d’Alene!”
“Whoa, is Random Dude leaving?” Haley asked. “Hey, Random Dude, hope there's a bridge available!” she yelled as he closed the door.
“His name is Aubrey!” I corrected her.
“Aubrey?! Isn’t that a girl’s name?” she laughed.
“He’s really nice!” I countered, but was drowned out by snotty comments by Noel, Tyler, and Stephanie: “Whatever, he was just trying to pick you up!”
“Yeah, he’s a dork!”
(sigh) “I’m getting bored. Let’s. Go.”
I would love to be able to tell you that Mr. Black exacted some kind of fitting revenge on these detractors, but of course that didn’t happen. Noel, Haley, Drew, and I shared a cab to Haley’s house, where I fended off doggy and kitty attacks on the living room futon before Noel joined me, tiring of Drew’s attempts to get into her jeans.
The next day, after Tyler, Noel, Haley, Stephanie, and I drank pitchers of Stella for seven hours, we saw Tayor at The Flicks, where he told us that some party guest had gotten into a screaming match with his next-door neighbor late the night before. We told him about Haley’s mistaken identity teenager encounter, but he didn’t have any knowledge of that. No, he said, his next-door neighbor came outside at about 4:30 to ask people in the front yard to be quiet, but someone had taken offense and threatened to beat him up.
“My next-door neighbor is pissed,” Taylor told us, “He left a nasty letter on my front door!”
“I bet it was Random Dude!” Haley laughed, as did Tyler, Noel, and Stephanie.

I have baby puke all over my neck, but I don't mind. Reed is just so gosh darn cute! What I do mind, though, is the fact that I can't get the stink from whatever Hank rolled in off of me. I keep waffling between wanting to get a dog and not wanting to get a dog, but lately I've just been thinking I might be too lazy for it. But then again, all I ever do is watch tv anyway. But then again, I'm not sure I could afford it. Not to mention the fact that if any future doggie chewed up my furniture or shoes or pissed on my carpet or scratched up my doors or walls, I would go bonkers. But I do have 4 plants, and plants aren't fuzzy and they don't have wet noses. And you can't put silly trenchcoats on plants.

Photos of my condo

This used to be a hotel in the tiny hamlet of Clayton, Idaho. My friend Jami's grandma stayed here when she was little, and says it was haunted. The ghost rocked a rocking chair and similar. It looks too small to have been a hotel. Could it have been bigger?

Salmon Trip, Day 4: Funniest Thing EVER

(This is a travelog of my adventures at Kelly and Caleb's wedding.
Link to Salmon Trip, Day 1; Salmon Trip, Day 2; and Salmon Trip, Day 3.).

Sunday dawned bright and pukey--at least for Tyler, that is. Although the word he used was “upchuck.” We were so fucked up we forgot our vitamin C and B-12 before bed, and it hurt. Noel was, of course, fine. Bitch. We finally checked out and made our way to The Coffee Shop, where we waited longer for our food than anywhere I’ve ever been. Some sort of spring was broken on the door to something in the kitchen, and there was a sign on it saying, “Spring broken! Close tightley. Move fingers and nuckles!” Tyler thought “tightley” sounded like a British last name, as in Mr. Tightley, Sir Tightley, Lord and Lady Tightley, Baron Tightley, etc., and this amused us all for quite a while.

Our food, when it finally arrived, was made all the yummier by the fact that we had to wait forever for it. We hit the road after we ate, watching out on the way for rocks in the road, so that we wouldn’t suffer the same fate as Kelly and her mom the previous Wednesday of “hitting a rock.” I’m still not sure what exactly the rock they hit did to their car, but I know it must’ve been bad, because when I asked, they just said, “We hit a rock!” Whether that rock punctured the tire, forced them off the road, got wedged under the car or is some sort of colloquialism for alien abduction, I will never know. I just know they could not continue driving afterwards.

We all pulled off the road just past Stanley to take some pictures of the Sawtooths. I had some fun with my camera trying to take pictures out of the moving car windows. We saw a billboard advising campers to drown campfires in which a bucket appeared to be barfing on a campfire.

What happened next has gone down in history as the funniest few moments of my life. I was absentmindedly staring out the window when one of those “Deer Crossing” signs went by. My eyes were unfocused as though looking at one of those 3-D computer generated posters. The deer sign filled my vision and the instant I realized what I was staring at, we passed by the sign and it was gone forever.

The deer had a cock!

And not just any crappy crude drawing; someone took the time to fashion the deer dick out of some black electrical tape or something so that it looked like an intentional part of the sign. Lack of sleep, hangover, the can of sugar and caffeine laden “adrenaline drink” I’d just drank and my immature sense of humor all conspired to kill me at that moment. It’s a good thing Tyler was driving. As soon as my mind registered “Deer Cock!” my breath left me and I got all choked up. Tears of joy came to my eyes. I was laughing so hard I was crying, and you know if this has ever happened to you that it is really, really good. Orgasmic, even.

Tyler tried to ask me what was going on, but all I could do was shake my head. I tried to speak when I caught my breath for the first time, but all I could manage was a high-pitched, “It was…It was…I cn’t….I ca-a-a-nnn’t!” before the feeling swept over me again. It was like the time I tried to relate a Saturday Night Live fake commercial making fun of Aerosmith in which all of their songs had names like “Crazy Cryin’ Amazacrazy,” and “Crazin,’” and couldn’t because I started laughing all over again. I couldn’t open my eyes. I couldn’t see even when they were open. The CD player dimmed out and I couldn’t hear it or anything else. I was alone in a yellow and black world of hilarity.

I recovered some five to ten minutes later, and, sadly, Tyler had not seen the sign. Although, that was probably a good thing, because we probably would have driven if not directly into the sign, then into the side of the mountain, as Tyler tends to drive at things he looks at. We stopped at the rest stop just above Danskin Station, where we all tried to photograph a dead hummingbird to no avail, as it was so small that it just showed as a close range blur. Noel had not seen the sign either. I happily thought back on the funniest item I’ve ever seen as I waited for Noel and Tyler to pee in the creepy outhouse.

Salmon Trip, Day 3: The Wedding

(This is a travelog of my adventures at Kelly and Caleb's wedding.
Link to Salmon Trip, Day 1; Salmon Trip, Day 2; and Salmon Trip, Day 4.).

Much of Saturday passed by in a drunken blur. The actual ceremony was held in Salmon's cute little Episcopal Church, which I was excited to see the inside of. Unfortunately, the whole thing overwhelmed me at first and I lost it and started crying as soon as I signed the guest book. Noel thought I was sweet, but couldn't help asking if I was going to cry for the whole 30 minutes leading up to the actual ceremony. Of course I couldn't do that, since I didn't have any tissues and crying makes me get all snotty. And blotchy. Anyway, the ceremony had a lot of stuff about God and a confusing analogy about matter and intention. I don't know if I just took stupid pills that morning or what, but as she was saying it, it was like she was speaking another language. Each individual word seemed to make sense on its own, but more than one of them just melded together into a conglomeration of "what? what?!" Oh, well. After that, we all went to the Syringa Lodge and did our best to put a dent in the 2 kegs, 3 cases of wine, and tons of yummy food supplied for the reception.

I took a lot of pictures and didn't dance much because I have a hard time dancing to non hip-hop. Also, as Caleb's grandma Marge pointed out, the floor felt like it was going to cave in. That reminds me, I also spent lots of time telling Caleb's various family members that I loved them. They are all super nice. Caleb's aunt Christy told me she thougt it was really cool that he'd found a woman who liked the fact that he lives in a cabin with no electricity. And I was like, no, it's cool that Kelly found a man who likes living in a cabin with no electricity, because that's just the kind of man she's into. Boy was I drunk. Sadly, there was nobody to make out with. I took a video of Kelly and Caleb leaving the Lodge and all the bridesmaids mooning them, which nobody will ever see because you can hear drunk Jenny going on and on about how awesome it all is. We got a ride with Glen and I went to Kelly's house and played with Hank and Gus and demanded to see Pudgie Wudgie, the world's cutest cat.

Later we went to the Salmon River Inn, where Sadie tried to teach me to dance "like you're kicking the shit off." It's really hard to do! I guess Kelly M. got up on the stage and sang with the band, because I have dark, blurry pictures of it, (I'm against using the flash because it's totally obnoxious). Later, we all went to Whiskey Willie's, or as I've heard it called, The Sweaty Butt club. Tyler and Noel left, but Kelly M. and I stayed and were quite popular with the 50-year-old men in the club. Afterwards we wandered home and Tyler and Noel and I enjoyed the second frozen pizza of the night. We tried for a repeat of the powwow, but Tyler and I were too tired and went to bed. Noel stayed and a deer came out and frolicked around the campsite until it noticed her.

Salmon Trip, Day 2: Missoula, MT

(This is a travelog of my adventures at Kelly and Caleb's wedding.
Link to Salmon Trip, Day 1; Salmon Trip, Day 3; and Salmon Trip, Day 4).

The next day, Tyler, Noel, and I went to Missoula because Tyler and I had never set foot in Montana. Dirty minded people that we are, one of the first things we noticed about Montana besides the high number of casinos and personalized license plates was the number of things with suggestive names. There’s the Kum and Go convenience store and the Town Pump convenience store, which has signs warning that you’ll lose your license if you’re caught in a “pump and run,” (gas ‘n go to us Idahoans), and several others, including a daycare called Wiggles and Giggles. The trend of naming daycares with yucky-sounding names is nothing novel, though, as there is currently an ad for a daycare called “Tugs-n-Hugs” in the breakroom at my job.

Also, there’s a town and a mountain range called Lolo, which sounds disgusting to me for several reasons which I’ll not enumerate here. One good thing, I guess, is that the casinos advertise themselves as “Montana’s most liberal casino” rather than saying they have the “loosest slots” like the ones in Reno. We wandered around a bit in downtown Missoula, and went to Butterfly Herbs despite Noel’s protests that the name is stupid. After that we went to across the street to a store specializing in old and rare books where there lives the sweetest old doggie ever and we all petted her. I was surprised to find a collection that I swear was stolen directly from my preteen self. They had Sweet Valley Twins, The Babysitters Club, The Fabulous Five, and The Sleepover Friends collections, all in the original editions with the same artwork as when I read them in fifth and sixth grade before discovering Stephen King and Dean Koontz. After passing the annoyingly named Junga Juice, (which will later be opening a store in Bodo), we stopped in a secondhand store called the Loose Moose. Noel and I went to rescue her car from potential parking tickets while Tyler flirted with the cute shop boy. Later, we went to a place called the Raven Café, which serves up something called The Raven Burger (not made of raven meat, they promise), and listened to the jukebox whilst drinking beer and watching a near hurricane outside.

We met Noel’s brother for dinner at the OPP, or Old Post Pub, where I had a really good portabella mushroom, roasted red pepper, and gouda sandwich and my new favorite food, beer cheese soup. After that we left Missoula and headed back to Salmon to have a powwow at Tee-Pee Island.

However, just before we headed out the door with our booze, Noel discovered the A&E Biography of Johnny Depp, which we stayed and watched. We spent the remainder of the evening hanging out in the tipi, and retired at 3:30 am.

Salmon Trip, Day 1: Road Trippin'

(This is a travelog of my adventures at Kelly and Caleb's wedding.
Link to Salmon Trip, Day 2; Salmon Trip, Day 3; and Salmon Trip, Day 4).

We started out Thursday morning by having breakfast at Goldy's, where there works a very hot South American waiter (happily married, of course). After breakfast and some farting about in town, Tyler and I were off, hoping that the beautiful weather would hold for the rest of our drive to Salmon. It became apparent, however, about 12 minutes outside of Boise that we were driving into a big system of rain clouds. We stopped at the Wal-Mart in Mountain Home to get some batteries and film for our cameras. Walmart is home to some hilarious displays, such as a stack of toy horses that looks like a great big toy horse orgy. Ther was also a wall of Darth Vader noise makers, and we had fun making as many of them breathe loudly at the same time as possible. I purchased a toy red and white Minicooper for $1.97, only to find that the manufacturer attached a platform to the bottom of it so I couldn't roll it around. I didn't have a screwdriver, so the platform stayed on it the whole trip, much to my annoyance.

After Wal-Mart, we hit the road to Hailey and Ketchum and, ultimately, Stanley. Have you ever noticed how many wierd little cafes there are along the rural highways of Idaho? And how many of them look like they've been closed since the '80's? When were these places ever open? Did they get much business when they were? What inspired people to build them in the first place? Who ever thinks, "Wow, a run-down cafe in the middle of nowhere! I bet the food's outta sight!" These were the questions Tyler and I tossed around on the way towards the Hailey-Ketchum metro area.

The airport in Hailey is bigger than I could have imagined, and there was a humongous private jet parked there. I couldn't help speculating on whose it was. Arnold Schwarzenegger? Teresa Heinz Kerry? Bruce Willis? Anyway, I really wanted to eat in Hailey or Ketchum because there were tons of yummy looking restaurants serving Thai and Vietnamese food, but Tyler wasn't hungry and said they were probably overpriced anyway. We waved at the restaurants and said goodbye to exotic food for the weekend.

There are a lot of buildings crammed into a small space in Ketchum, especially, and the whole area looks like Aspen, Colorado--except the ski lifts and vacation homes and condos and yoga studios and spas and golf courses and art museums and overpriced bars, restaurants, and stores don't feel so much like they are right on top of you in Aspen. This is what I'm used to and expect when I go to the mountains. Touristy and wealthy. It doesn't bother me; I love ski towns.

After wondering whether we could see any Janet Jarvis neighborhoods from the highway, we stopped at the SNRA headquarters to use the bathroom. I wish I'd taken a picture, because they were the creepiest bathrooms I've ever seen. There were like 5 tiny goldenrod-colored stalls crammed into a dark, low-ceilinged space the size of my closet, and I was compelled to push open the door of each, lest a zombie be lurking in one of them,(there wasn't). The phone outside had a sign on it saying, “You are calling from NRA Headquarters,” which Tyler and I thought was pretty funny. When we finally figured out how the hell to get out of the confusing parking lot, we were back on Highway 95 heading towards Stanley. We passed much fresh snow on Galena Summit and thanked our lucky stars that no deer jumped in front of our car.

We cursed the Bridge Street Grill in Stanley for being closed at 3:30 on a Thursday afternoon, (awesome burgers, y’all), and had an unremarkable lunch at the Stanley Lodge instead. It snowed briefly and lightly while we were inside. After that we drove into some serious rain, and Tyler drove faster an more maniacally every time I cringed--and I cringe a lot since I get really nervous when I’m not at the wheel. We came to Challis, aka the asshole of Idaho. We didn’t even see a rainbow, which happens a lot in Challis.

We got a good laugh at the expense of the Sidlo family, who has adopted a section of Highway Litter Control near Challis, (“That sign just said this area was sponsored by the Sildo family! Could you imagine if your last name was Sildo? It rhymes with dildo!” “You’re a dildo! And anyway, it said Sidlo, not Sildo,”). We finally got to Salmon, where we had a happy reunion with Noellie at our sweet wood-paneled motel, the Wagons West.

After Kelly’s wedding shower, Noel, Tyler and I headed to the Owl Club for some good old drinking fun.

I was glad to see they had installed a curtain in the ladies room, because the way it used to be you risked being seen on the pot whenever someone opened the door. There's a machine in the bathroom that dispenses Freedom Ticklers, and Kelly M. thought this was so funny she had to have one. Caleb's friend hauled a guitar into the bar and a singalong broke out. I learned a new song over the weekend. I'd never heard "West Virginia" by John Denver before, but after about 300 repetitions, I'll not soon forget it.

There were some seriously drunk people in the Owl Club, including one guy who knocked his barstool over on me and later tried unintelligibly to talk to me when I went to order a drink. There was also a woman who was falling out of her clothes and taking some liberties with her barstool. She told me about how she'd stopped traffic on the highway between Idaho Falls and Salmon earlier that day to rescue a calf that was wondering around in the road. I thought that was pretty cool. Some old white-haired guys stumbled in a little later and couldn't communicate with the bartender to order more drinks, so plastered were they.

The Owl Club, Salmon's Fun Spot

Rainbow over Challis

T-shirt back

T-shirt front

You Don't Have to Be a Dunce

I chose a very simple concept for my t-shirt. On the front of the shirt I have placed a crying face wearing a dunce cap and under it the caption, “Stupid?” The back of the shirt contains a smiling face holding a book and a solution to the problem posed in the first picture, “Try reading.”
Part of the reason I chose such a simple concept is because I can’t draw—even stick figures stretch the limits of my drawing ability. More importantly, though, is the message conveyed by the words I have chosen, and I didn’t want any complex picture drawing attention away from the message I’m trying to convey. The message is a simple one which I wanted to be accessible to as many people as possible, and since it is a sort of immature statement, I thought it perfect to be accompanied by drawings that look like they were rendered by a child. I’m not trying to make fun of illiterate people, but rather, people like my ex-boyfriend. He likes to sit around and talk about how smart he is and how much he knows about every subject under the sun, but if a person ever mentions a book, he’ll say, “I don’t read, hon.” No, because he’d rather be playing video games. I think not reading is the stupidest thing to be proud of, and I know many people who share this sentiment toward books. Frankly, I don’t get it. It’s a childish way to be, in my opinion, and doesn’t make a person sound very intelligent. So I guess I am responding to this juvenile attitude with my own juvenile sentiment.
I wanted a very simple picture that would be easily identifiable as a symbol for stupidity, so I chose a person wearing a dunce cap. The dunce cap also recalls elementary school, which fits in with my whole theme of childishness. For the back picture I could have just as easily shown the smiling figure reading a newspaper, but a newspaper is harder to draw, and would have complicated my elementary theme, as I think children would probably be more likely to read books than newspapers.
I used HP Iron-on Transfer Paper for colored fabrics and a green t-shirt simply because I like the color. The shirt cost $5 at Wal-Mart and the iron-on paper is $10 for a pack of 6. The reason I chose to use the front and back of the shirt was because I couldn’t make both pictures and all the words fit in a pleasing way onto the front of the shirt. Showing only half of the message on the front makes an observer think more and wonder what point the shirt is trying to make. Also, I find it amusing to see only the word “Stupid?” and the dunce-cap picture on the front of the shirt. I will definitely wear this shirt in the future.

Bookmaking Jenny

I had the most sensitive moment today. Belle & Sebastian's "Judy and the Dream of Horses" played through my entire walk from the Hemingway center to my car, which happened at twilight after I spent an hour cutting interesting words and pictures out of cardboard boxes for class. The only way it could have been more sensitive is if I'd been heading across campus on a vintage cruiser with a basket on the front, heading to my home/job at the local church. Now I'm farting around on Myspace and "867-5309 Jenny" just came on.
Today in class we visisted the Reserved books, and got to see the oldest books in the library's collection. One of them has given me an idea for a classroom edition project, (this is the thing where I have to make a copy of the book for everyone in class, in case you couldn't tell.) It's called The Anatomy of Melancholy and it offers, satirically,
"THE ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY, WHAT IT IS, WITH ALL THE KINDS, CAUSES, SYMPTOMS, PROGNOSTICS, AND SEVERAL CURES OF IT."
So what I need to do is come up with a more modern "condition" which can be humorously represented, like angst, existential dread, road rage, or similar and its causes and effects. Any suggestions would be welcome. This will be hilarious!
OMG I just had to add that I just saw a funny sketch on Chappelle's Show where they showed what the internet would be like if it were a place. It was gross and dirty and funny!

Ethiopian Protective Scroll

Questions Are the Bane of My Existence, or, Anyone Who Tells You That “There Are No Stupid Questions” is Either A Liar, An Idiot, or Selling Something

This scroll was created protect me from stupid, rude, prying, inappropriate and otherwise annoying questions. Perhaps I am a bit immature, but it’s not just silly, pointless, or redundant questions that get on my nerves; it drives me bonkers to be asked any question at all. It would not, however, be practical to have a scroll that protects me from all questions, so I made it to guard against unnecessary and annoying ones.
The reason I hate being asked questions probably has to do with the fact that I work at a call center for a shipping company and my job is to answer questions all day long—usually the same idiotic questions over and over again such as: “This sticker says ‘peel backing from other side’—how do I do that?” and, “Do you need to know that I’m sending a urine specimen?” and my personal favorite, “What phone number did I just call?” It could also be the result of a lifetime of in-your-face parenting I’ve received as an only child. For some reason, being an only child means that about 90% of your conversations with your parents consist of them asking you annoying questions—often the same ones over and over again, like, “Since when don’t you drink cream and sugar in your coffee?” and, “What do you mean, you don’t like cauliflower?” and, “Have I told you how much weight I’ve lost since Christmas?”
The tedium of being forced to endure these pointless and endless questions is enough to make a person scratch their eyes out—or worse. This feeling is represented by the image at the top of my scroll, that of a child in a pose much like the figure in Edvard Munch’s “The Scream.” The boy is pulling the skin of his own face in an expression of pure exasperation while multitudes of question marks dance around his head and eventually make their way into his ear. The long, thin scroll was the perfect format for elongating and stretching this image to get even more of a resemblance to “The Scream,” I also stretched the bottom image to mirror this effect.
The question marks all around the boy’s head appear to have him hemmed in, trapped; he will never get away from questions unless he becomes a recluse or dies. His face is pulled and distorted in anguish because he knows he must endure so many tedious inquiries while traipsing the halls of life. The symbol in the scroll’s center is very simple: a question mark with the international sign for “no” over it. I chose this symbol because it is easily recognizable and sums up the concept of this scroll without using any words. Stretched as it is, the question mark almost begins to resemble a face with its mouth open, like the boy in the top photo.
The lower picture shows two men in the poses of Hear No Evil and Speak No Evil, pulled long to accommodate both the format of the scroll and to mimic the image at the top. The concept of hear no evil and speak no evil completes this scroll. Speak no evil to me in the form of idiotic questions so that I will hear no evil and you will see no evil perpetrated by me upon your person. Just above it is a list giving examples of the type of queries banned by the scroll, ending in the most ironic of all stupid questions, “Can I ask a stupid question?” which answers itself because yes, obviously you can ask a stupid question. You just did.
I chose the back of a jersey fabric flocked with black velvet designs for the verso side of my scroll. This was done purely for aesthetic reasons so that the design side would be scroll’s recto side and would be interesting to look at as well. The photo and text areas were printed using Microsoft Word and were placed on the scroll using iron-on transfer printer paper.

Several G&Ts, a shot of Tuaca, and a Spicy Tendercrisp later...

Published almost simultaneously on Myspace.

I woke up from the weirdest dream this morning. I was on vacation with some friends in California or somewhere. One friend was trying to set me up with her ex-husband, who was also on the trip, but they kept running off and having sex in mausoleums. My other friend and I went for a walk and ended up hanging out with this big bunch of locals sitting around outside of a mobile home and smoking. I realized one of my left molars, (which I really do have problems with), was loose, so I panicked and my friend and I headed back to the hotel, seeking the hotel's in-house dentist.
This is where it gets really weird. As my friend and I were nearing the hotel pool, Ricardo Montalban approached us and started sweet-talking us, trying to sell us on his master plan. He wanted to turn us into cyborgs. We jumped into the pool, knowing he couldn't go in the water, since he himself was a cyborg. We swam out into the middle of the pool, and Ricardo just stood on the edge proselytizing to us about his cyborg dreams. He was dressed like the millionaire from Gilligan's Island, in a navy blazer, white pants (ugh, the horror!), and a red ascot. The hotel and pool were really elaborate, the pool extending under the entire hotel, which had a mall and many restaurants and coffee shops. My friend and I first tried to swim in circles around each other in order to make Ricardo get sick and give up, but this didn't work because cyborgs don't get sick. So we went under the bridge he was standing on, and swam on, under waterfalls, past palm tree islands, past all the shops and ladies having coffee, to the far side of the hotel. Here, the pool just sort of got shallower and shallower until it became dry ground, imitating a natural body of water. Of course, Ricardo was there. My friend ran away from the pool and disappeared, while I tried to run back into the water. I woke up just as I was struggling to get back to the deeper part of the pool.
I have always found Ricardo Montalban vaguely menacing after being exposed to The Wrath of Khan at the tender age of eight. Near the end half of his face gets melted off, and it really freaked me out. I had always thought Mr. Roarke was creepy for more reasons than just being omniscient and keeping a little person for a pet, but after that movie, Fantasy Island moved several steps up the sinister scale for me.

Bad Jenny!

Sometimes my job is just intolerable. And sometimes, I let it get to me. Like today. I got this call from this frigging asshole who was really rude and told me and my company to shove it because he got a bill for something he imported into this country. People simply can't comprehend the fact that when they import things into this or any other country, the government charges taxes on the items and they are not immune from it just because they don't like it. He told me that in the future, my company shouldn't deliver anything to him if the person sending it has asked for him to pay for it because he doesn't like our company. Like my company has anything to do with Customs charging him for imports. So I did him one better and contacted his local delivery office and let them know that he hates our company and that he wants to refuse any and all packages we have for him in the future.

I had to ask him for his address so I could pass along his message, and when he told me his street name, he spat it out really fast, which was impossible to understand given that he had a very thick accent. He was annoyed that I had to ask for his address in the first place and didn't just magically know it, but, you know, I had to know where we weren't to deliver the cursed packages in the future. So he said it again very fast. The name he said sounded like "Chris Lake Road," and I thought that might not be right because that's a fucking stupid name for a lake or a street (as would be Mike Lake, or Jen Lake, or Dave Lake--you get the point). So he replies with, "We are speaking English here, aren't we?" And I wanted to reply, "Well, I am. You aren't, sexist bastard." But all I said was, "Please spell your street name for me." It was Chris Lake fucking Road.

After I got his unpleasant ass off my phone, I thought, "You fucking asshole. I could call Homeland Security on your ass and totally make something up and make your life hell." It was horrible! But I think people make things hard for themselves when they refuse to be polite at all.

So fuck him.

I don't usually have a problem with people who have accents, unlike most of the people I work with. They are just plain racist and I am not like that. But rude people are rude people, regardless. I would never really call anyone on his ass. I'm sure it's not that easy, anyway. I'll just live with the satisfaction that the rude people I talk to every day make their own lives a frustrating hell by being assholes. But I hope his local delivery office keeps packages from getting to him. And I hope our billing office keeps sending him bills for things he's not getting.

Living by myself rules!

This post was inspired by an episode of "Arrested Development" in which the mom discovers the joys of living alone.

For instance, when I feel like calling in sick to work, there is nobody to tell me that I should really go to work because I'm not really sick.

I can listen to really cheesy music or watch dumb movies and nobody will give me shit about it.

I can watch tv as late as I want. And if I talk back to it nobody has to know.

I can make messes and never clean them up.

I don't have to wash the dishes if I don't want to.

I don't have to dust if I don't want to, (this backfires, as it just aggravates my allergies).

I don't have to answer the phone.

I can sing along with stuff really loudly.

Nobody will see me if I cry because I realize that I broke my digital camera on New Years because I was really drunk. And I don't remember doing it.

Nobody else eats my food.

If I lose something, I only have myself to blame.

Also, I don't have to wear clothes if I don't want to.