Sunday, May 31, 2009

Fun Fact

I prove every learning theory wrong when going to bed. See, I turn off the light, climb under the covers, and then grope blindly in the dark trying to find out where my sheet went. Eventually I turn on my lamp only to find that I crawled in on top of it. I grimace, because God, not again, and vow not to do that again, How stupid can I get?
Once a week, at least. It happens more when I haven't been drinking.

Saturday, May 23, 2009

Welcome to the 22nd year!

Skipped town in a haze of anger and stress, and drove single-minded to parents' house.
Within 30 minutes of arriving, drank an entire bottle of wine on the porch. (Brother tried to take some from me and I got angry at him.)
Proceeded to bitch, cry, and slur my way through an hour of monologue at my mother.
Abruptly decided I was tired and passed out in parents' bed.

Well, Happy Birthday to me: I can't get any lower from here!

Thursday, May 21, 2009

hahahaha... Oh angry drunk blogging, I love you. Post deleted, of course, but I'm keeping a copy on file for the memories.

Sunday, May 17, 2009

Janey

My brother used to have a St. Bernard puppy. Her name was Janey.
She was the ill-conceived idea of his good-for-nothing roommate. As a $400 purebred, licensed pup, she spent her first weeks in his home being alternately loved and ignored. She wasn't fed the right foods, she wasn't trained, and she wasn't shown the sort of attention and discipline that a puppy needs.
So he did the roommate a favor, paid his overdue cable bill, and in return took the puppy. He changed her name from Mary Jane to Janey, and from there, her life started looking up.
I was in Mexico when he got her, so I only saw her pudgy puppy days through Skype. But as soon as I came home I jumped on the bandwagon and fell in love. Our parents asked Brent to come for weekends, and bring the dog, too. Our crotchety grandmother would ask about her every time we had dinner. His neighbors took her on walks, his friends taught her tricks, his ex-girlfriend would request puppy-visiting times, the ex-girlfriend's roommates bought her rawhide bones and other toys, and everyone wanted to babysit.

Everyone who knew Brent knew his Janey, and for the whole 5 months that he had her, she controlled every aspect of his life.
That's where things take a downturn. She was a puppy, after all, and getting bigger and more destructive every week. Then he lost his job. The bills kept coming and the dog kept growing. Janey's days were numbered.
Luckily, everyone who knew Janey talked about her (if every you ran out of things to say to a person, you could at least talk about the puppy!) My mom's hairstylist's daughter and son-in-law loved St. Bernards. Theirs had been run over by a car a few years ago, and they had another dog, but they still missed the old one. Within a week the couple were begging to meet Janey.
So now Miss Calamity Jane is living in a household of two little girls, an overweight labrador, and two smitten adults. She runs and plays and never had any lack of entertainment or affection. The dog has had a world of luck. Every time life seems to be setting her up for abandonment, she ends up in a better place than ever before.
It's everyone else, the ones who had to say good-bye and watch her go, that ended up heartbroken.


* I realize all these photos make her look sad and somber. 1) She's a St. Bernard. That's what they do. 2) When she was moving around, it's not like she held still enough for my crummy cell phone to get a clear shot.

Well said

"Thinking Robots

No, I'm not worried about the robot apocalypse, à la The Matrix. I'm rather more worried about the WALL-E scenario, in which robots do all the work -- happily -- and people become pudgy balls of flesh lolling about all day without the slightest idea of what to do other than eat pureed food because it's just too much trouble to chew. This is totally realistic. Hell, I spend more than eight hours a day in front of a computer screen as it is, sucking down Coke Zero and being glad there's only one flight of stairs between me and my fridge. If I had C3PO to get me my Cokes, I might have already fused into my desk chair by now.

This is the dirty untold secret of The Matrix: Not that we'll be enslaved by machines who hook us up to a virtual reality to keep us pacified, but that we'll plug ourselves in voluntarily. If you don't think this will ever happen, you've obviously never played World of Warcraft (or known someone who has). The minute we can turn our body maintenance over to thinking robots while we frolic, sexy and beweaponed, in a fantasy world, we're going to lose about half the people on the planet to it."

Blatantly stolen from a column written by John Scalzi for AMC, and pretty much exactly where I think we're heading. My business prof's love to talk about RFID chips and how they'll eventually do our grocery shopping for us - it scares me to the core.

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

I've been doing a lot of impulse shopping lately. This is bad! I don't have the money to be impulse shopping, not at all, not in any stretch of the imagination. But that hasn't been stopping me. I look at the cute Target top and think "Well, if I don't have enough money three weeks from now, I can always ask my parents..." BAD CHELSEA. That is not at all the way parental trust and independence and responsibility work.
On the plus side, I have this top that is so incredibly cute and perfect in every way! It matches several sweaters that I'd previously been scratching my head about what to pair them with. And couple with some new pants, voila! An entirely new outfit! I broke it out today and spent the whole day thinking about how awesome I looked. If every day worked like this, I'd be conquering the Western Hemispheres and heading toward Europe any day now.
So here's the problem: this outfit, for all its cuteness, makes my feet cold. There's just no possible way I can fit socks and tennis shoes into the plan. It's cold and raining outside now, and I've had my feet stuck to my space heater for the last 20 minutes. I'm supposed to be leaving for the bars any minute now, and just the thought of going out there... I don't want to do it. I want to put on my wool socks and dream about Mexican beaches.
There's no hope, though. I think I'll just have to tough it out tonight. Maybe one of the bars will be serendipitously converted to a sauna, just for kicks.