I was wrong once

One time, Kelly and I got into an argument about what you call that foam-rubber thing rednecks use to keep their beer cold. She called it a "coozy," while I insisted it was called a "cozy." I mean what kind of stupid word is "coozy?" It sounds very much like a derogatory term for vagina, which Heather calls Veronica in the film Heathers.

This was back in the day before UrbanDictionary.com. We went to a party or a bar or someplace and asked everyone "What do you call that foam-rubber thing you use to keep beer cold?" Turns out, the fucker is called a coozy. You learn something every day.

The lovely pink coozy (seen above cradling a Raison D'Etre) was purchased by me from a band called Dent May and His Magnificent Ukulele. They are very cool and sing a hilarious song called "I'm An Alcoholic." I think this is the best thing I've ever picked up at a band's merch booth, and Dent May even gave me a deal on it.

Little Jenny Goddammit

In case anyone was wondering, the infamous toothpick incident occurred sometime between the taking of these two photos. It makes it funnier (to me at least) to see how little I was when I first started spewing profanities.

A Profane Memory

My mom just told me the story that is my grandma's favorite story about me.

When I was two, my mom and grandma took me to lunch at a restaurant, an activity I've always enjoyed. As we were leaving, I spotted a toothpick dispenser like the one pictured below:

I always thought toothpick dispensers were toys designed to amuse children, and I've always been fascinated by low-tech mechanical devices.

In my zeal to get toothpicks for my mom, my grandma, and myself, I knocked over the toothpick dispenser and toothpicks went all over the floor.

I jumped up and down, screaming "Goddammit! Goddammit!" at the top of my lungs. This continued for a minute or so, which absolutely mortified my mother. My grandma thought it was hilarious. She said it's still the funniest thing she's ever witnessed.

Of course my mother's response was, "she learned this from her dad!"

Correction: My mom said that rather than jumping up and down I was hopping from one foot to the other and pumping my little fists--much like this sculpture, only not a naked boy:

Lessons on the River of Life

I have bad luck on the river. Last year, I ruined my brand-new cell phone and my (to date) most favorite purse that I’ve ever owned. The cell phone got ruined becaue I was dumb enough to believe it would survive in our raft in a zippered sandwich baggie. Not true! Your raft will get completely inundated with water, and nothing inside the raft will remain dry. Especially if you happen to be using a cheap, knock-off brand of zippered baggie.

Though I was dumb enough to take my phone in the raft, I was not dumb enough to take my purse. My purse was locked safely in the trunk of my car. However, inside my purse there was a container of Band-Aid Blister Blocker, which is a fantastic product. A fantastic product made of corn oil which has been made waxy through some chemical process. What this means is that, though it’s a solid, it is just barely a solid and has a VERY low melting point. A melting point much lower than the 110° it was in my trunk. Needless to say, it melted all over my purse and soaked through the leather from the inside, leaving a big wet-looking stain on the outside that will never come out. The woman at Baird’s was a huge bitch to me when I took it in to see if it could be cleaned. She told me I should have brought it in immediately when the stain happened. I did, but she was on a two-week vacation.

I learned not to take anything valuable on the river and to make sure there’s no Blister Blocker in my purse if it is to be left in my car. But you know, any time is a good time for another lesson. I floated the river again a few days ago. I stupidly brought my keychain and attached it to the tote bag I brought in the raft. Except for the moment we got stuck in an eddy near a beach occupied by beer-swilling, shirtless gentlemen of low moral fiber, and getting attacked by a huge horsefly and some overhanging tree branches we couldn’t steer away from, the trip was pretty uneventful. That is, it was uneventful up to the point when the wind blew my $18 Target hat off my head and into the swiftest part of the river. It was starting to sink, and my friend said, “Do you want to get your hat?” I did want my hat, so I careened out of the boat and grabbed it. Then I heard, “OHMYGOOOOOOD!”

Turns out, I tipped the raft over by jumping out of it head first rather than legs or butt first. We watched our tote bags sail down the river and out of sight with our key chains, our snacks and my friend’s $90 hat. She climbed up the bank and ran down the greenbelt to see if she could catch up with them, but it was pointless. The best part was when all of our empty beer cans washed ashore at the exact beach where people normally get off the river. A little boy picked them all up and threw them away just before a cop drove by in a golf cart.

Moral: parents, if you don’t do any outdoors activities with your children, they will grow up to become $90 hat murderers by not knowing the proper way to get out of a Coleman raft.

I knew an Effi when I was a child, and though she was as different from Effi Briest as anyone could possibly be, she too suffered from lonliness and boredom. She was a solid, ruddy Austrian divorcee with a deep voice and a deeper tan. If her son Hans Eric wasn’t home by dinnertime, she’d set the neighborhood dogs barking by standing on her driveway and bellowing, "Haaaannnnn Zzzzaaaaahhhhhhrrrrrrrick!" with that special Bavarian r-roll. For a long time I thought his name was spelled Han Zehrick, or something. Her perpetual summer wardrobe consisted of a faded lavender tube top or faded blue bikini top, white terrycloth short-shorts three sizes too small, and some rather menacing-looking gardening gloves. I remember this disco hit man uniform well.

Effi’s house lay at the corner of a major neighborhood intersection, and the yard contained a mound with a rock garden of sorts, strategically placed to be visible to as many motorists as possible. Effi spent Saturdays and Sundays weeding and planting in this garden, her butt rising ostentatiously into the air whenever she sensed the presence of a male, like a cat in heat. I’m pretty sure it operated of its own accord, like it was equipped with testosterone-sensing radar. You could be in the middle of a conversation with her, and she’d suddenly bend down, forcing you to crouch to continue your tete a tete. Thirty seconds later, the guy across the street would come out of his house to get his mail. It was amazing. The ass never went up if it was a woman or a kid heading for the mailbox. It was the same with cars; the butt could sense a male driving a vehicle from several blocks away. The intersection she lived on was so busy, however, that on Saturdays, Sundays, and holiday Mondays she basically had to spend the whole day bent over. I don’t know if this ploy ever lured any men or not.

I remember one winter day Hans Eric and I decided to sled down the little hill in the front yard. I toppled off the sled and onto a snow-covered clutch of cactus, and the needles went through my mittens and stuck in my palms and in between my fingers. Effi had little sympathy and mostly scolded me for potentially damaging her cactus garden.

Hans Eric was a weird kid. Molly used to tell me that she'd had his baby when she went to Florida for summer vacation. The fact that we were all nine years old and didn't actually know how babies were made didn't deter her at all. He was a baby boy named Jareth Luke, or Master Puke, or Dastard Mook, or something. Whatever the name was, it was suspiciously similar to Molly's Cabbage Patch Kid's name. She was obsessed with Hans Eric and especially obsessed with the thought of having his baby. I think it was a by-product of their mothers' friendship, itself a little weird, possibly because their mothers were two of the strangest people I've ever met.
Hans Eric's mom's name was Effi, and she was a solid, ruddy Austrian with a deep voice and an even deeper tan. She used to call him home for dinner by standing at the end of her driveway and bellowing, "Haaaans Ehhhhhhrrrrrrric!" in her guttural Bavarian growl. Her perpetual summer outfit consisted of a tube top or bikini top and terrycloth hot pants. I remember this uniform well. Effi spent Saturdays and Sundays weeding and planting her garden, her butt rising ostentatiously into the air whenever she sensed the presence of a male, like a cat in heat. I’m pretty sure it operated of its own accord, like it was equipped with testosterone-sensing radar. You could be in the middle of a conversation with her, and she’d suddenly bend down, forcing you to crouch to continue speaking to her. 30 seconds later, the guy across the street would come out of his house to get his mail. It was amazing. The ass never went up if it was a woman or a kid heading for the mailbox. It was the same with cars. She lived on the corner of a major neighborhood intersection, and the butt could sense a male driving a vehicle from at least a block away. The intersection she lived on was so busy, however, that on Saturdays, Sundays, and holiday Mondays she basically had to spend the whole day bent over. I don’t know how it didn’t kill her back.

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.

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.

Meggers just posted an interesiting spot about what the internet does to us and how it affects us socially. It does seem kinda silly, because when you think about it, blogging is not only about reading other people's thoughts and experiences, but reading them because they are, quite possibly, better than your own. I have recently become obsessed with this Australian dude's blog because it not only is well written, but is also funny and human. I find it comforting to read that other people in different parts of the world experience the same stupid randomness that characterises life.
Basically I just love to know that if I'm having a shitty day, someone somewhere else might be having a similar shitty day. And I've had lots of shitty days lately, mostly due to my own stupidity, and not really relatable in a tangible way to others' shitty days, but, you know, it's all about being able to say, "I had a shitty day--you too?"
I'm not always like this, just a lot lately.