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?

Everybody Needs to Read this Book Now!

What are you doing right now? If you answered anything other than reading Learned Optimism, you should maybe reconsider and decide to read it instead of whatever you were doing.

This book is so good that the Department of Health and Welfare should issue a copy of it to every household in America.

Learned Optimism deals with the impact pessimism has on a person's life, especially the influence pessimism has on depression. Dr. Martin Seligman has spent over 40 years studying the link between pessimism and depression, concluding that pessimism negatively reinforces and prolongs depression and causes people to become helpless and inactive in their lives. So, what your mother always told you about thinking positive has been clinically proven to be true.

This all sounds like, "duh" stuff, especially if you are familiar with Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, but the book has tests you can take to find out how optimistic/pessimistic you are and how prone to depression you are. Seligman also includes tests he gives to kids to find out how optimistic/pessimistic/prone to depression they are. If you have or work with kids, you should seriously check this out, because Dr. Seligman discusses how easily children (and adults) can change the habit of rationalizing/explaining bad experiences from a pessimistic style to an optimistic style, making it easier to bounce back from hardship or failure and keep trying.

I'm only half way through this book, but I already feel like it's helped me immensely. As Dr. Seligman has found, there are certain people (many of whom are women) who ruminate over and over again on things in their life, which I've also heard of as repetitive destructive thinking. Rumination can be a very destructive force for pessimistic thinkers because it causes you to analyze and re-analyze and reinforce negative thoughts, causing you to become depressed and unable to do...well, anything, really.

I am a ruminator. This is why I had so much trouble working at the call center, because there were many MANY negative encounters at that place--at least half of all conversations or interactions involved complaining, yelling, put-downs, etc. I would end up going over and over them again in my mind until I just didn't want to do anything except think about those things constantly, like women who would scream from the beginning of a phone call to the end that they were going to sue our company or get people fired or kill their delivery driver--all because delivery was running late on some nonessential item like eyeshadow. (Even non-customer interactions at that place were negative. Between the bad feelings caused by negative phone encounters and the bad feelings caused by management-union power struggles, that place was a nightmare. I always felt like I was in prison while I worked there. Let me reiterate how glad I am that I don't work there anymore. I am sorry that place is being closed down because I don't want people to lose their jobs, but I hope they can find somewhere happier to work. I'm pretty sure "Call Center" is one of Dante's nine levels of hell).

I think I see some unfortunate souls with headphones in the bottom third here:

That was quite a digression, but I really want to stress how awful and destructive it is to ruminate over negative thoughts. It is stupid. If you find you think constantly about bad things that have happened or worry about bad things that might happen, you should definitely take a look at Learned Optimism. You also may want to look at the website called MoodGym, which has exercises to help rid you of those negative repetitive thoughts.

Part Three of a Very Long Discourse

(Link to Part One of a Very Long Discourse and Part Two of a Very Long Discourse)

About the same time I became disillusioned with Holden Caulfield, I became enamored of Alex James, the bass player from Blur whose hair also resembled my sixth-grade boyfriend's:

I don't know if Alex started it, but every Britpop band had at least one member who had this hairdo. Pulp, Lush, and Suede all had members with the lopsided skater cut, (as did all of Elastica), and I can't say if this hairdo is the reason I became so obsessed with Britpop, but I think it was part of it. Also, Britpop music is good. According to this article from a very reputable source, Alex now makes cheese. He also has an extremely high IQ and is a prolific and creative swearer. Truly a man after my own heart.

Britpop led me to a short-lived but powerful obsession with the band Belle & Sebastian and their lead singer, Stuart Murdoch.

What I learned from this is the fact that the Glasgow dialect of the English language is the most beautiful spoken language my ears have ever heard, and that Glasgow has produced really kick ass bands like B&S, Sons and Daughters, Franz Ferdinand, and many others whom I haven't listened to. If I'd known about the Fulbright Scholarship program years ago, I would have gotten good grades and gotten through school and applied to go to Glasgow (yeah, right).

Let's omit an unproductive and boring number of years whence I was enamored of Orlando Bloom, tool extraordinaire, and fast forward to today. My ideal man is some sort of cross between Clive Owen, Jemaine Clement, and Mikhail Bulgakov. With a Glasgow accent.

(There must be something fantastic just to the left, as they're all looking over there).

On Graduating

Wednesday was my last class of college ever. I don't really feel like I've graduated from anything. I had predicted that I'd feel sad and start to cry as I walked from class, got in my car and drove away, but it wasn't as exciting as all that. I exchanged phone numbers with a girl I'd had several classes with throughout the year and made plans to go to coffee, then got in my car and drove away. I did not feel verklempt in any way.

I did have a bunch of homework to email to my professor by Thursday, so I did one assignment Wednesday night (in which I had to revise an academic article to make it sound cleaner and clearer. It was fun. I got to feel like I was really sticking it to this Cambridge professor whose style of writing includes too much metadiscourse such as "What we have here is" and "Very well, let us have another look at" that just makes me cringe). On Thursday I had to email one more essay to my professor and that was it. It was all pretty anticlimactic.

I did learn some things this year that weren't taught in class:

• Getting straight As at BSU is not difficult. There's really no reason I didn't have a better GPA for my college career than utter laziness.
• Course loads are supposedly easier and more manageable there than at more "difficult" schools. I think this is probably a crock, but seriously, three papers and a presentation is not too much for one class.
• Professors love me. Except for one I had several years ago; but I was very lazy in that class and she is notoriously difficult.
• If you can never hang out because you always have homework, some friends might lose interest in you.
• I saw this happen a few years ago to someone else, and I was one of the scoffers who couldn't understand the idea of having too much homework even to hang out on weekends. But it does happen, especially when you have to read 30 books in one semester. I apologize for any former scoffing I may have done to people about this.
  
• One night of socialness during Spring Break may be all the socialness you can manage in a semester. And at that point, you may just have a few drinks and talk everyone's ears off about the 20 or so books you've read so far in the semester. Especially The Master and Margarita.
  
• I also discovered I can't hang out on weeknights. Not when I have to go to work at 7am. No way. Not even when I have to go to work at 8am. It really sucks when all social events take place on weeknights.
• I don't like be out all weekend, and I can't stay awake past 11 when I do go out. I used to go out every weekend night when I was younger, and the idea of a night home made me ridiculously depressed. Now I only like to go out on Friday or Saturday, but not both, and I don't really like to do much on Sundays other than have breakfast with someone. My condo is pretty and I like to be here.
• I will probably never find another book that I love as much as The Master and Margarita.
• I think reading it was one of the things I had to accomplish before I die. I don't mean that everyone needs to specifically read The Master and Margarita before they die (though they should), but I do think everyone probably has at least one work of art that they need to come into contact with to make their life complete in some way. That's really vague, but I think I will save this for a later blog entry.
• M&M has introduced me to a whole new genre of literature and period of history to be obsessed with (writers oppressed by Stalin/Stalinist Russia).
• Don't publish things to your blog and then think nobody reads it. They do.

To celebrate my graduation, I invited some people to join me at the Modern Thursday night and the plan was to end up at the Neurolux later. I got to the Modern at 6 and met some friends and started drinking gin and sodas in the hot, hot sun. Gin and sodas in very large glasses. Round about 10:30, I felt sick and threw up in the trash can around the corner from the Modern's patio, right next to the ice machine. I had to call a cab and go home. My friends went on to the Neurolux where there were other people whom I wanted to see. I got home and started sending them embarrassing text messages about someone who was there with them and whom I have a crush on. In short, I behaved much more like a 20-year-old than a 30-year-old. Then I was sick all day Friday, which was my body reminding me that I am 30 and not 20.

I learned some things from this as well:

• It is not a good idea to drink a bottle-plus of gin in 4 hours. Especially when you hardly ever drink otherwise.
• Don't eat browned-butter and mizithra pasta before you go out drinking.
• Expensive drinks exist for a reason: to keep you from overdoing it by not allowing you to afford very many of them. In other words, drink expensive drinks.
• 9 pm is a much better time to start drinking than 6 pm.
  
• Foreign guys love me.
• If you celebrate something important to you like graduation and some of your friends are really enthusiastic for you while others can't be bothered to respond to your invitation, then you should probably focus on building friendships with the people who are happy for you.
• Mad Men is really good and makes for good hangover watching.
  

So, maybe I will feel more like I've graduated when I actually get my diploma in the mail. Or if I decide to walk in December. Anyway, woo-hoo graduation!

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.

Part two of a very long discourse

(Link to Part One of a Very Long Discourse and Part Three of a Very Long Discourse)

Occasionally, I become infatuated with fictional characters. Pathetic, I know. The most significant was Holden Caulfield; the result of reading The Catcher in the Rye as an impressionable young seventeen-year-old.

Catcher in the Rye is a novel that should never be read by anyone over the age of 18.

The first time I read it, I embraced Holden Caulfield’s cynicism with relish and tried to convince every living human that it was the greatest book ever written. I wrote research papers about it, I wrote stories in Salinger’s/Holden’s cynical style of narration, and when I got to college I spent time with my friends arguing over which people on campus seemed accurate personifications of Holden (usually based on the presence of a hunting cap with earflaps). I cheered any references to Catcher I read or saw on television or in movies. I wanted to marry Holden Caulfield, to tell the truth, despite the fact that he would probably ultimately find marriage squalid and depressing.

Eventually, I ran out of books I hadn’t read (obviously, this was before I discovered the Russians) and decided to read good old Catcher in the Rye again. Bad idea. The saying goes that you can’t step in the same river twice, and you definitely can’t read the same story twice, especially if it happens to be written by JD Salinger. Upon second reading, I was about 20, past high school and on hiatus from college. I found Salinger’s language still to be poignant and sarcastic and funny: “I don’t much like to see old guys in their pajamas and bathrobes anyway. Their bumpy old chests are always showing,” and “Take the Disciples, for instance. They annoy the hell out of me, if you want to know the truth. They were all right after Jesus was dead and all, but while He was alive, they were about as much use to Him as a hole in the head,” are passages that cracked me up when I first read it and they still crack me up now.

But there was something missing the second time I read it. Holden annoyed the hell out of me, if you want to know the truth. He just complained too damn much! It had been the basis of his charm before, but not now. It had something to do with the fact that you don’t possess the same innocence and wonder at 20 as you do at 17. Or the fact that all you want at 20 is to be 21 and party. Or that once you encounter real people who are as depressed or complain as much as Holden, it's hard to deal with. There’s also the fact that I read all of JD Salinger’s short stories that I could get my hands on, and I simply didn’t like them as well. Then there’s the fact that Salinger seems to feel, as Steven King put it, that his writing is too good for anyone to read. It just seemed…I don’t know, overrated, somehow.

Yeah, not somehow overrated, but totally overrated. I'm convinced that the enduring popularity of this book is owed solely to the fact that it's a banned book. I'm pretty sure old JD sold his soul to the devil to get noticed. Some words of wisdom: ladies, if you meet a guy who has read this book since turning 19 and considers it one of his faves, run for your fucking life, because you can be sure that guy is a great big mopey bore. The sick thing is that now I have a Lit-major-y urge to look up scholarly articles about Catcher to see what the scholars have to say. I suppose it might mean more to give it another read with an eye to Modernism, now that I know more about it, but blehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

If I want some late-Modernist reading I'll just stick with Camus. His characters don't mope.

Part one of a very long discourse

(Link to Part Two of a Very Long Discourse, and Part Three of a Very Long Discourse)

The first thing I noticed was the Expedition's California plate with a heart where the first letter should be, followed by "4 RLS." "Whatever," I thought. I always try to figure out vanity plates, even though I think they're kind of stupid. Centered in the rear window with geometric precision was an Obama bumper sticker with a peace sign in the O and the remaining letters in a hippy-dippy font and color scheme. To the left of this, a John Mayer sticker, placed in the left corner of the rear window so that it called to mind the Fibonacci spiral. The right of the Expedition's rear window was lettered with the words "Rick Springfield," again very thoughtfully placed. I glanced past the peace symbol covering the trailer hitch to the license plate frame, which read, "Jessie's girl made a BIG mistake!" This is not the sort of thing you see every day.

My eyes wandered onto the license plate again: "(heart) 4 RLS." Obviously, Rick Springfield's middle name begins with the letter "L." Also obviously, the middle-aged dude driving the Expedition is obsessed with a pop-culture icon I thought had fallen off the face of the planet, (how wrong I was; according to Wikipedia, Mr. Springfield reprised his early 80's General Hospital role from 2005 to 2007). The question foremost in my mind whilst contemplating all of this was, "So, is a heart a valid character on a California vanity plate?"

Obsession is such a strange thing. I've been obsessed with many things in my lifetime. Not in a creepy stalker sort of way, just in a thinking-about-X-is-more-fun-than-thinking-about-other-things sort of way. When I was little, I was totally obsessed with Atreyu from "The Neverending Story," then Sean Astin in "The Goonies." When I was a little older I moved on to the film "Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves" (I still imagine Alan Rickman's voice when I read an evil character in a novel; he is the perfect Professor Snape), then "Terminator 2," which I watched every single Saturday for a whole year after it came out on video. I was infatuated with Edward Furlong as the young John Connor, I think primarily because he resembled my sixth grade boyfriend:Little did I know EF would turn into some sort of giant loser.

The Debt to Pleasure

(Spoiler alert! The Debt to Pleasure is a wonderfully evil little cookbook. Don't read this essay if you plan on reading the book, because I give away everything here!)

Going back to our class handout on Brillat-Savarin, there is an aphorism reading, “The order of food is from the most solid to the most light” (145). This is a theme I see Tarquin developing in the progression of his narrative in The Debt to Pleasure, both with the foods he talks about and his revelations about himself. He begins by discussing the heavier, heartier foods of winter and finishes by talking about the lighter fare of summer and fall. The discussion of food works as a kind of cloaking device for what is actually going on in the narrative, with Tarquin uncloaking more and more of his true nature as the story moves along and as the recipes get lighter and more loosely defined.

In the beginning the reader doesn’t know what Tarquin Winot is up to, merely that he has undertaken to write this “unconventional cookbook” and that he is ordering it by seasons. He begins by saying that “winter presents the cook with a...combination of threat and chance,” which is a good metaphor for the book as a whole; Tarquin is a threat to society and there is a chance that you might figure out what he’s up to (3). If you’d prefer, you could say that if you are reading this story, there is probably a good chance that Tarquin is going to kill you, thus the “crisis” that he’s implied in the first line. You won’t know, however, until he’s sent you on your way, that you have been murdered, as he reveals in the novel’s last line.

The recipe for Irish Stew especially brings to mind not only hearty eating but also the addle-brained sluggishness one sometimes feels after a heavy meal. The opacity and solidity of this stew is representative of the fact that Tarqin reveals very little of his present situation in this first chapter. Irish stew also works as a metaphor for The Debt to Pleasure as a whole. It’s a densely layered story, with some of the ingredients being more substantial, (plot, characterisation, backstory), and others which dissolve, (recipes, philosophical musings), but which work as “binding agents” to hold the narrative together (18).

The spring recipes are not only lighter, but consist of items such as “peaches in red wine” which give us a better glimpse into Tarquin’s persona. With the peach recipe not only do we get a discourse on the poisonous possibilities of peach pits, we get our first revelation that Tarquin tried to poison Bartholomew. Tarquin also reveals his nature as someone who is perhaps untrustworthy. Tarquin tells us that he “prefers” Sauternes which is, according to Wikipedia, an expensive white—not red—dessert wine that’s tricky to produce because part of the fermentation process relies on chance: the grapes become infected with something called “noble rot” (which could be used to describe Tarquin and much of what he talks about, if one were so inclined). I also find it somewhat grotesque that peaches are Bartholomew’s favorite fruit and dipping blanched, skinned peach slices into red wine resembles dipping flesh into blood. Tarquin follows this up with a menu for “Luncheon on a theme of curry” in which the term “theme” becomes almost literal, with Tarquin pontificating about the role of curry and spices in life and the cuisine of Europe, but neglecting the recipes. He tells the reader to look up all the recipes herself, opting instead to describe breaking in to the honeymooner’s hotel room to install a listening device. He is revealing more of himself and his plans as he goes along.

For summer Tarqin tells us “[t]his section will not consist of rigidly articulated menus as such,” but rather “suggestions for recipes;” he also starts unwrapping his devious deeds more for the reader (130). “An Apéritif” is something Tarquin describes as a libation drunk to “exchange[...] personae,” from the self’s more controlled daytime incarnation to its less-restrained nighttime form (132). This is the turning point wherein Tarquin begins to get comfortable, loosen his tongue, and tell the reader what he is really up to. It is in this chapter that we hear about the untimely death of Mrs. Willoughby, who so unfortunately “misunderstood” Tarquin’s directions on how to avoid getting shot by Pierre and Jean-Luc. We already know that Tarquin has been spying on the honeymoon couple, but it hasn’t been clear to what extent. At the end of the Apéritif chapter he goes to the trouble of exchanging rental cars in order to follow them; the intricacy of his plan is becoming more apparent. In the following chapter he compares the childhood simplicity of hiding his mother’s earrings under Mary-Teresa’s bed to the more complex adult act of testing his GPS tracking device out on his milkman. At the end of the section he is almost spotted by the honeymooners—it seems the change he effected on himself in the apéritif chapter has made him almost careless, but only almost.

The key chapter in the Autumn section of the novel is the first chapter, titled “An Aïoli.” Here Tarquin states that one of his most-beloved rituals involves eating aïoli because, “one of the pleasures of the dish is its inversion of the relationship between bit part (sauce) and star player” (190). This is Tarquin letting the reader know that from here on that recipes are no longer the “star player” in this book, and that the “sauce” or condiments (the actual story of Tarquin’s interaction with the honeymoon couple plus the details he’s been giving us about his murderous nature) is now taking center stage. Tarquin reveals his parents’ untimely demise in a freak explosion, in the chapter which he cheekily refers to as “A Barbecue,” and goes through a list of dangers to avoid for Laura and Hywl to avoid around his property, including the fatal directions he gave Mrs. Willoughby. By the final chapter, Tarquin is so comfortable that he is gloating; he taunts both the reader and Laura and Hwyl to guess that he is poisoning the honeymooners by relating the story of Bartholomew’s death by poisonous mushrooms and his personal views on the art of absence and destruction whilst he feeds them mushrooms. Just in case you haven’t figured it out, he makes all clear in the novel’s last line.

Marinated Potatoes, How I Love Thee

My parents took me to Acapulco when I was 8. They aren’t the adventurous sort, so we didn’t eat outside of our hotel. It had five or six restaurants that served memorable dishes such as huge fresh shrimp, fried sardines, fresh mango and papaya, real Caesar salad with raw egg rubbed in the bowl (this is when I learned the Caesar salad was invented in Mexico), and house-made sugarcane pancake syrup. I remember being disappointed in the flavor of the sugarcane syrup and afraid the tiny lizards scrambling around the walls and ceiling of the patio café would manage to fall into my food. I remember feeling as though the presence of the tiny lizards was somehow responsible for the unusual taste of the syrup.

Our favorite dish was the make-your-own taco extravaganza served in the hotel’s Mexican restaurant, which served a mix of authentic and Tex Mex dishes. The make-your-own taco dish was served in two or three earthenware platters with molded sections to hold all the taco ingredients. These included avocadoes, skirt steak, chicken, pork, onions, cilantro, and tomatoes. My two favorite things were the pool of melted white cheese, (up to this point I hadn’t met a white cheese I liked), and the marinated baby potatoes. I first thought the baby potatoes were cocktail onions and wouldn’t touch them. I soon discovered they were not cocktail onions and realized instead that they were vinegary and herby and that potato skins could actually be good.

I am reminded of my marinated Mexican potatoes when Hemingway takes himself to lunch at Sylvia Beach’s insistence and orders for himself beer, potato salad, and sausage on page 72 of A Moveable Feast. I wonder how a person can remember so much detail from something that happened almost 40 years prior, then I realize I never would have remembered the lizards at the café in Acapulco if I hadn’t taken time to consider that nasty sugarcane syrup. Right now I’m drinking green tea and I know that later when I read this paper again I will remember not only the taste of the green tea, but also how utterly impossible it is to describe the odd sensation in my mouth after a sip of it.

I think taste can be an even stronger link to memory than smell. Since he has prefaced this work with the words, “this book may be regarded as fiction,” Hemingway may be fabricating some details of his meals, but I think it’s possible to remember exactly what one ate on a certain occasion. While in Paris, eating good food allows him to consume Paris, literally making Paris a part of him that stays with him for the rest of his life. I’ve noticed a lot of people talk about food when they reminisce about travel. Is it because eating is one of the most important parts of experiencing a culture? Is it because when you’re somewhere different from home you naturally encounter outstanding food and drink—or are food and drink more easily committed to memory because you’re more attuned to your senses?

Another thing that strikes me about this particular meal is the fact that beer, potato salad, sausage, and bread constitute a meal of comfort food—especially for a man raised in the Midwest. Sylvia Beach’s admonishment to “eat a good hot lunch,” (71), sounds like something a mother might say to her son. I also notice that Hemingway and Beach’s entire conversation surrounding this admonishment is about a German magazine and its German publisher. The meal at Lipp’s manages capture all of these elements in one specifically Parisian-tinged Germanic-Midwestern meal of comfort food on a day when a man is starving and his friend’s motherly advice is to “eat a good hot lunch.” I wonder if it truly happened that neatly in real life or if this is the fictional element Hemingway warned us about at the beginning?

What I do know is that I cannot read the line, “[t]he pommes a l'huile were firm and marinated and the olive oil delicious,” without remembering my own marinated potatoes, and over the weekend I had to make myself some French potato salad and sausage and eat it with bread and beer. It was delicious.

The Reporter from Hollywood

(This was an English assignment. We were required to make up our own character introduction in the manner of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales)

One Pilgrim was a man fresh out of his teens
who possessed extravagant taste in jeans.
No expense was spared acquiring that exquisite cut
which most expressively encased his exceptional butt—
for there wasn’t much that he loved more
than getting his cheeks squoze until they were sore.

To boast a fair derriere was his ace
considering that he had an unmemorable face!
The composition of his features made such an impression
that had Secret Agent been his chosen profession
it would have served him well,
because—hell!—(you’ll pardon my digression);
anybody who met him would be hard-pressed thereafter
to recall whether or not he looked quick to laughter,
or sharp of tooth, or square of jaw—
whether the skin ‘round his nose looked reddish or raw.
Had he eyes green and sly or soulful and black—
limpid pools like the sky or red-rimmed from smack?
Was he powerful or pallid, obese or just right?
Was he sexy and dashing—did he look like a knight?
Was his stride somewhat hinky?
Were his eyes too close-set? His nose a bit dinky?
Alack-a-day! Who are we to know
whether he looked as from Heaven or from down below!
(A rumor went ‘round, three years back—maybe four—
his own mom called him “Masher!” when he surprised her at a store).
I wonder: “Were his eyebrows joined as though musing a riddle,
bisecting his face where they met in the middle?”
Enough!
One could ruin days ruminating on such stuff!

“But wait!” you ask, “What did this dandy do?”
Hush your mouth, little sawcebox, and I shall tell you!
From an esteemed journalism school he’d earned his degree
and now a reporter was he for the network of E!
The name he went by was Greg Orree.
The intricacies of Hollywood he studied carefully
because how can world events or D.C. dullness compare with showbiz—
would you rather have a man at a podium or an eyeful of Paris (Hilton, that is)?

Mr. Greg Orree owned book upon book
dissecting and labeling every possible look
or turn of phrase or nod of head
known to betray whom was sleeping in whom else’s bed.
Among his fellow correspondents he found nary a peer,
(actor wannabes who wouldn’t know a Hamlet from a King Lear),
not one of them could discern a slight from a spurn—
which in this business was a very necessary difference to learn!
(Celebrities are congenitally capricious creatures,
one needs a sixth sense to read their voices and features
and deduce when a curse is implied by a sigh,
or whether “Hello” means “Piss off” or “Hi!”).

The employees of E! thought Greg a real peach.
They took turns imitating his swagger and his speech,
‘cause as notorious as his need to be invitingly knickered
was the quirk at which these colleagues quietly snickered:
“Get the just of it,” had become his well-known catch-phrase
yet they were taxed to remember the most hackneyed clichés.
(Poor Greg was innocent of his pet malapropism,
for “gist” he confused with that crude substance, jism).

Truth be told, they were jealous, and here is the reason:
Orree was the most sought-after man in town come Awards Season!
In the off-season, too, invites to his mailbox flew,
he came to work often in frocks from last evening’s do.
From his lips fell reviews of each night’s best-dressed,
stories of sloshed starlets he’d managed to molest,
fairy tale weddings with fountains of champagne,
and epic gambling bashes with mountains of cocaine.

Last Christmas he’d spent at George Clooney’s house in Italy,
and the Lake Como terrain he’d photographed most prettily.
These photos ensured his workmates’ ill will did not waiver
when he used them for his office computer’s screen saver.
Anecdotes about Christmas with George had he plenty—
he would be Godfather to Brangelina child number twenty!
And Malibu beach parties? Man, he’d seen dozens—
at one his booty was grabbed by three of LiLo’s cousins!
Ah, if only that tush could but speak,
it would have its own talk show each night of the week!

(One of) the grossest things I've ever seen

I've had this orchid for two years that I've nearly killed at least eight times. A couple of months ago I thought I had finally killed it for good by overwatering it, and so bought a new one. Last week, after almost two months without water, I was surprised to see the old one valiantly trying to grow a new, healthy leaf in addition to some new, healthy roots.
I decided to replant it to help it out and set about cutting off the many dead roots my previous rabid overwatering left behind. (Orchids have wild and wayward roots that look like the picture above).

As soon as I snipped one particularly black and flaccid root remnant, the bottom dropped out of the root clump and out fell what has to be the nastiest consequence ever precipitated by over-watering a houseplant.

It was hideous! Unraveling from the bottom of the plant was a clumpy chain of what looked like tiny, slimy, flesh-colored worms. Some parts of the chain were black and covered with spotty white mold or fungus. The whole thing shivered with simulated life thanks to my shaky hand. I gasped, shuddered, dropped the orchid back into its pot, and ran to the closet to get my gardening gloves. It looked a lot like the ball of worms pictured below. I was afraid to cut it with my scissors because I was sure it would coil up and attack me. I had been hungry up to that point but completely lost my appetite in that moment and I still feel sick now just remembering it. I eventually got the plant repotted, but did not eat dinner or plant anything else--as I had been planning to do--after that fiasco. I may never be able to eat ramen noodles or coconut or rice noodles ever again--for serious.

I know what my nightmares will be about tonight. I just thank fuck I didn't accidentally touch the slimy monstrosity.

(BTW, don't ever try to google images of maggots to, say, illustrate how disgusting something is in a blog entry or something. You will be extremely sorry that you did so).

Simon Cowell and Polyanna, go to Hell!

(I reread this post about 3 years after I stopped working with the woman mentioned below. Within a week, I saw her whilst lunching downtown. The universe is messing with me!)

I feel like complaining, but I'm not sure what I want to complain about. There are just so many things. I just finished watching Wonderfalls, which was a really good show. It only lived to see thirteen episodes, but it was so much better than most of the tripe on tv. I hate reality tv! All of it! I wish it would all just disappear. Arrested Development is going off the air, it's just not fair! American Idol is stupider than anything I could have ever dreamed up. So is America's Next Top Model, Survivor, Fear Factor, all of it!

Television ratings seem to be determined by the lowest common denominator. And Fox, though they air weird shows, don't give them much of a chance beyond that. Now I've discovered another show I like, Bones, which is sort of like CSI only better, partly because it stars David Boreanaz, a.k.a. Angel, and Zooey Deschanel's beautiful sister, Emily. But now they've put it up against Lost, which is one of the most popular shows on TV. I had to get a dual tuner DVR just to deal with this.

Are they stupid? I think they are stupid. I think anyone who watches American Idol and then discusses it at work the next day is stupid. I hate Simon Cowell, Paula Abdul, Ryan Seacrest, and that dude who had gastric bypass surgery. I also hate myself for knowing this much about any of them. But I can't escape it! My coworkers talk about it, my friends have forced me to watch it before, it's always on my MSN homepage, and it's all they ever want to talk about on Headline News in the morning! Fuck American Idol! Fuck it right in the ear! I realize I sound like my crazy, embittered grandma, but I don't care. Sometimes the simplest sentiments express things best. And spare me the crap about watching too much TV. All shows aren't crap. Being preachy is crappy, though.

Another thing that really annoys me but is unrelated, is this woman in my office. Her name is, approximately, Julie Anjeweirdo. She's one of those annoying Mormon ladies who thinks she knows better than everyone else, even though she's totally frumpy. Why on earth should anyone listen to a frump? And she seems to do even less work than I do.

Whenever I call her to ask her a question about the ever-changing rules, policies, and procedures of our corporation, she can't ever understand what I say the first time. Every conversation starts out with me telling her that I have a question about x, and whether x be simple or complex, she always, always, always answers me with, "What? What are you talking about? I don't understand what you're saying!" This is because she's not listening. She has the particular position she has because she doesn't really have to do much work.

But the thing that she does that annoys me the most, the thing that just makes me crazy, is that whenever I say something about how this or that policy is unclear or something unfair has been done to a customer, she always says, "Don't say that, be positive!"

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I hate it when people say that! Stating a fact such as, "Mr. Jones doesn't understand why he's been double-charged for every package he's sent in the past month," is not "being negative." Sure, the subject of the sentence is negative--our company is ripping Mr. Jones off, but to be negative would be to say something like, "Our shitty company has been ripping Mr. Jones off for the past month! We suck!" What is the "positive" way to say this? "Mr. Jones wants to congratulate us for so cleverly ripping him off all month?" Idiot.

Or she'll bring out that rusty old adage, "Don't say 'hate.' You don't really 'hate' anything!" Yes, yes, in fact, I do "hate." And what I hate is when people talk to me like I'm five years old! Especially when I'm maybe a million times smarter than they are! Of course, if that's the only way she can ever feel superior to someone, I guess I really shouldn't take that away from her...

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.