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Road to Elko

It was a pretty uneventful drive to Elko—at least, compared to what Leigh Ann said could happen.

“The first time I drove through here with Sean, we saw the bumper of a semi wrapped around a cow on the side of the road. The semi was gone, just the bumper and the cow were left. There were two other cows standing right next to the dead one. Just standing there, like ‘Duh…hit us, too.’”

Highway 51 between Bruneau and Elko is nothing but open range land and prairie. "I'm going to need you to help me look for animals in the road," she said, which did not make me happy. It only took one graphic story for my Drivers' Ed. teacher to convince me that hitting a large animal with a car is not good, because said large animal will fly right over your bumper and come through your windshield.

I became especially vigilant, whipping my head counter-clockwise and clockwise, scanning the roadside for cows, horses, deer, elk, bears, water buffalo, hippopatomi, anything. We didn't see any big animals that day. Not even a single cow.

Not that we didn't see any wildlife. At almost the exact limit of Mountain City, Nevada, we came upon a phenomenon I'd heard about but never seen: a Mormon cricket migration. It was as disgusting as I'd heard. The katydids' fat red bodies clotted the road; some living, some dead, most at least partly crushed and baking on the hot asphalt. The wave of insects jumping out from under passing cars reminded me of the wake thrown up behind a racing speedboat. Leigh Ann said she couldn't stand the sound of them being hurled about in the wheel wells.

Cricket corpses paved the road blood red for a few miles, then disappeared, then reappeared for another few miles, then disappeared again.

To be continued...

Good hair day

I really like my hair today:



-- Mobile Post

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.

Where Boobs Go

I am contemplating deleting my Myspace profile, since most of the people I used it to keep up with are now on Facebook. I do want to save some of my old blog posts, however. Here is one of my favorites, originally published April 28, 2007.

An open letter to clothing designers:

Hi. You may not know me, but I am a sometime fan of your work. I am writing to you today to make you aware of a serious problem in, I don't know, maybe your judgement or your bizarre misanthropic/cubist view of the human form. Or rather, the female form. I've noticed in my many years as a clothing consumer that scores of you seem confused as to a certain aspect of the female body--specifically, the placement of womens' breasts.

For many years after the '80's, clothes that I may have wanted to wear had a certain two-dimensional quality that I like to call the No Boob look, which I have illustrated here:


For quite a time clothes seemed to have a not just flat-chested interpretation of females, but an almost inverted-chest interpretation, if that's possible. I haven't seen this nature-defying look for some time, and I'm glad for it.

Apparently someone told you motherfuckers that chicks have tits. Yay for us chicks! Problem is, they stopped just short of telling you where said tits are placed on a torso. I've tried on shitloads of clothes with troubling boob placement and have made a handy little guide here to show you just exactly where boobs don't belong on a body.

The most popular boob-configuration I've noticed when trying on clothes is something I like to call the Victoria's Secret Effect. In essence, it's the result of men who are either gay or extremely young who have only seen breasts in Victoria's Secret ads for extreme push-up bras and think that boobs occur right in the middle of the breastbone, just below the neck--aka Neck Boobs--like this:


Another bafflingly trendy shape that I have seen a lot, especially on dresses at Target, is a pleated, ruched bust that flattens the boobs and makes them look square, thus the Square Boob look:


Still other items I tried on wanted to shove the girls high into my armpits, like so,


or, even more puzzling, above my armpits and far apart, heading for my shoulders, like this (notice how confused and unhappy they look):


It may be hard to believe given that there are so many above-the-ribcage looks such as Neck Boobs, Armpit Boobs, and Shoulder Boobs out there, but I have also found that the opposite exists--yes! Waist Boobs!


I can't draw a picture that shows you exactly where the ladies are placed on every lady, because we all vary, (hint: it's somewhere between Neck Boobs and Waist Boobs, and they ain't square, motherfucker). I can say, though, that you have no clue what you're doing and you maybe need to look at real, live women instead of Victoria's Secret or Anime or wherever it is that you're getting your ideas for breast shape and placement. Because we women, as consumers, are getting tired of tossing aside potential outfits whilst exclaiming, "Why don't these assholes know where boobs go?!?"

Good Day.

Nerd Pick-up Lines

Sometimes you happen to stumble into a cultural phenomenon. Thursday was just such an occasion. For the entire day of February 5, 2009, Twitter was abuzz with the throat-clearing and post-nasal-drip hacking of nerd pick-up lines. I don't know how it got started, exactly, but some genius inspired everyone to post their favorite nerdy pick-up lines. Here are some of my favorites. Test your nerdiness and see how many of these you get--and feel free to add your own! For fun, I like to imagine Comic Book Guy from the Simpsons saying all of them. (Different font types are for readability).

There is no emoticon for how I'm feeling right now. (This actually was stolen from Comic Book Guy.)

I'd like to put my mechanical pencil in your pocket protector.

What's your sine? It must be pi/2 because you're the 1.

Let me implement your base members, you are my supertype.

You are my density. (My number one most favorite, I think. I would die if someone said this to me.)

Roses are #FF0000, violets are #0000FF, all my base are belong to you.

I was hoping you wouldn't block my pop-up.

I wish i was your derivative so I could lie tangent to your curves.

I must have accidentally hit the keystroke for god-mode, how else could I be staring at an angel?

According to the second law of thermodynamics, you're supposed to share your hotness with me.

If you keep shifting bits like that, you're gonna cause a buffer overflow in my pants.

I'd like to tunnel through your firewall, open your ports and start seeding.

You're so hot you oughtta be in webcomics!

You're the variable that makes this equation work.

Baby, you're so hot you denature my proteins.

If I were a enzyme, I'd be DNA-helicase so I could unzip your genes.

I can haz u?

How can I know so many hundreds of digits of pi but not the digits of your phone number?

I have a condom and it's still in it's original packaging!

You make me want to calibrate my joystick without the latest drivers.

Baby, I'll treat you like my homework--I'll slam you on the table and do you all night long!

I've been sent from the future to get you pregnant so our son can save the world.

Wanna be my constant?

Before you came along my heart was a variant. Now it's a constant.

Wanna super-poke?

My phone number? Easy, it's the first 10 digits of pi. I moved to St. Louis just to be in the 314 area code.

I wish I were an integral so I could be the space under your curves.

I'd like to be the photon to your electron and take you to an excited state.

If I ever got stuck time-traveling you would always be my constant.

There's no way to disable this pop-up!

How about I be sine squared and you be cosine squared and together we can be one?

One Book Meme

One book you’re currently reading: I'm not reading anything right now. :(

One book that changed your life: The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

One book you’d want on a deserted island: A one-volume collection of Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials

One book you’ve read more than once: Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

One book you’ve never been able to finish: anything by Dostoyevsky

One book that made you laugh: Triggerfish Twist by Tim Dorsey

One book that made you cry: the David Sedaris book where he remembers his mother's death

One book you keep rereading: The Little Prince by Antoine de St. Exupery

One book you’ve been meaning to read: Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

One book you believe everyone should read: Learned Optimism, by Martin Seligman, PhD.

Grab the nearest book. Open it to page 56. Find the fifth sentence: "The woman stayed with us for a week, and while I hated for her to leave, I sort of loved watching her go." When You Are Engulfed in Flames, David Sedaris.

Obsessions y Compulsions

As I've said before, I am a ruminator. I think about the same things over and over and over again. In some instances this is really unhealthy and causes me to freak out and defeat myself with repetitive negative thought patterns. In less serious instances, my single-mindedness just leads me to become obsessed with things that entertain me. If I don't have at least one thing--the same thing--to think about constantly...I'm just not myself, and it's better for me if it's the entertaining kind of obsessive thinking rather than the self-defeating kind. I've written about past obsessions here, here, and here, and I thought it would be fun to write about some of my current obsessions and compulsions.

1. Nachos: For the past several weeks, I've been on what I refer to as Nacho Rampage 2009: I've eaten nachos at restaurants 7 times in 14 days. I've already posted some restaurant reviews at #15 here. I've always been pretty indifferent to nachos before, and I have no idea what's caused me to lust after them so (probably has something to do with cheese; also I think nacho is a funny word). I don't know if Nacho Rampage '09 is over or not, all I know is that some days when lunch rolls around I develop a fever, and the only cure is nachos. I suspect the nacho fever will rear it's greasy, gooey head again in the near future. That said, I realize the nacho thing is more of a compulsion than an obsession, because I don't really think about nachos much, I just feel compelled to cram them into my face on a regular basis. Though to be honest I spend a lot of time thinking about my next meal.

2. Twitter: You know how sometimes you get into a conversation via text messaging that is totally inane and hilarious? There's a website that pretty much gives you the chance to have inane conversations with people all day long and witness other inane conversations. I complained about Twitter before, but now I can't live without it. It's like a whole website of just Facebook status updates. Alot of people use it as a business networking tool, and I think it's really good for those who want to get their blogs read by more people. Here is an article that explains better than I can what Twitter is and why people like it.

I've had a Twitter account since last summer, but I'd never really payed much attention to the site until Inauguration Day (two whole weeks ago). I couldn't watch any of the live inauguration footage in my office because our internet filter blocks streaming media, so I watched Twitter instead for photos and updates of the proceedings. I've been hooked ever since. So hooked that I check it compulsively all day at work, after work, on weekends, etc. It keeps me from going to bed on time. I'm going to have to get a Blackberry just so I can be on the internet all the time.

I can't really explain what's so addictive about Twitter; you talk to people all day long and you may not even know them, but it's fun and everyone is very positive.

3. Firefly: Sometimes my obsessions begin with a dream. Like last Sunday morning, I woke from a dream where I was a character in Firefly. I watched that series about a month ago and fell completely under its spell. The show was so well-made and brilliant that it still has a huge following, even six years after it was on the air. To find proof of this, all one has to do is look up Firefly's Wikipedia pages (there are many more websites devoted to Firefly, but Wikipedia is about as geeky as I like to get). They're some of the most articulate and thoughtful Wikipedia entries I've ever seen. In a strange coincidence, after reading all about Firefly on Wikipedia the other day, I went to the breakroom and found my coworker reading a book full of scholarly-type articles about the show. Glad to know I'm not the nerdiest nerd in nerdville. And he told me that Joss Whedon has a new show called Dollhouse (I think this link contains spoilers) debuting Feb 13 on Fox. I hardly ever watch TV and I don't ever watch Fox, so I'm glad I found out about this, yay synchronicity!

And, typical to my obsessive nature, part of my fascination with Firefly comes in the form of a crush. Surprisingly, I haven't fixated on any of the more intellectual or sensitive characters. Nope, I like the big meathead guy with all the guns, Jayne Cobb.

He's tall. He's funny. He's a total badass. He also wears a hilarious hat with earflaps in one episode. I love earflap hats, partly because one of my other pet obsessions, the writer Mikhail Bulgakov, has written about "ridiculous hat[s] with earflaps" in several of his stories. (Boy is that hat popular. A Google image search for "Jayne Cobb" yields 10 times as many photos of the hat than of Adam Baldwin, the actor who played Jayne Cobb. You can buy hats like it or patterns to knit your own. There are songs about it. I love how crazy people are!).

Ok, now back to my quest to determine whether Joss Whedon has a Twitter account.

Ugh. I just went to lunch and saw a guy I totally hate wearing an earflap hat. He is definitely not worthy. >:[

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.