nobody

wants to read about how bad at blogging i am. so i will write about something that's been on my mind instead.

but i won't write about improv or comedy, because whatever, i should have other interests.

erm.

fuck.

it's been cold. i dropped my hat on the floor of the E train on monday night and it's been absolutely grossing me out to touch it since. however, i haven't had that lovely combination of willpower, available quarters and extra time necessary to execute a successfull clothes-washing session. also the laundromat on 116th street raised their prices by a dollar a load for the medium machines, which is AWFUL, trust me. it has me considering having them wash it because i think it might be slightly cheaper. boo. i am also considering trying a place on 115th, but that what walk would be about twice as long and fuck that right in the face. i don't have a rolly-thing to transport my laundry, only a duffle bag. and it's fucking cold out, have i mentioned that? anyway, the hat conundrum brings into sharp relief my particularly odd brand of almost-OCD. i started developing obsessive behaviors late in middle school. it was never terrible, but it was pretty bad for awhile. i got some control over it when i started interacting socially a little more through student council and later the student leadership training program, but the behaviors were pretty ingrained by that point. i am fully convinced that most thinking people have some variant of neurotic thinking or behavior. some people funnel that energy into a specific obsessive hobby, some count steps or words or letters, some people get high off not eating and some people binge eat and vomit. or binge drink and vomit. each, in my skewed perspective, represent an individual's need to excert some amount of control over their lives (which is why many develop in adolesence, when shit is MAD crazy yo). as someone with a variant of obsession that doesn't require medication or treatment per se (delusion? maybe), i tend to think that unless the 'disorder' is a detriment to the individual's life (i.e. starving yourself, alcohol poisoning, vomitting generally = detriment), more power to them and their example of the tiny victory of willpower over this whirling maelstrom of existence. i mean, catholiscm seems to fucking love that theory. the rosary? post-confessional repentance prayers, anyone? maybe that is pure self-delusion, but it works for me and i've been fine with it for at least a decade. i'm pretty well adjusted in the aspects of my life i find important.

for fun, and for an honesty excercise, i will now list the 'rules' of my obsessive life. they structure my life to a surprising degree.

1)feet can never touch the floor. must always been in shoes or sandals. this includes the shower, although a clean shower is an acceptable alternate foot-surface.
2)body must be clean before getting into bed. that means hair and face washed, teeth brushed and totally clean pajamas. pajamas cannot have touched the floor or any surface except the bed or the drawer they were in.
3)bed must be clean. only clean body and clean pajamas can go in the bed. nothing ON the bed, including clothes or whatever else you might put on a bed. nothing. also, feet (even clean ones) cannot touch the 'face' part of the bed (aka pillow area).
3A)corrolary: bed linens, underwear, socks and PJs must remain clean at all times. they go directly from the dryer to a clean laundry bag to their (clean) drawer destination. cannot touch any other surface.
4)hands must be washed WITH SOAP thoroughly after all trips to the bathroom, or after touching the floor or feet.
5)bare skin cannot touch surfaces that are not 1) the bed 2) clothes 3)my couch. this is not as strict as the above rules, but i will definitely avoid touching my skin to any foreign chair or couch.
5A) corrolary: this includes toilet seats. toilet paper must be placed on every toilet seat before sitting down. NO EXCEPTIONS.

that's pretty much it. there used to be more, but i've grown out of them or they've mutated into something else. crazy? a little crazy? a LOT crazy? totally normal? i don't care. i came to terms with my oddity long before realizing how odd i was. what are yours? DUN DUN DUN!

WEATHER!

CUT IT OUT. SERIOUSLY. WHAT THE HELL. it was 62 degrees on monday. sixty two. i didn't need a coat (although i wore one anyways because i was being cautious). it was LOVELY.

yesterday, TUESDAY, a mere 14ish hours after it was SIXTY TWO degrees and mostly sunny out, it was about 35 out. okay, fine, be a capricious ass, fine... but by the time i scurried to class, and then from class to the UCB theatre to catch the 2nd half of harold night after getting thoroughly cheesed (good phrase) in class, weather, you had taken a turn for the MISERABLE. it was like 22 degrees and extremely windy out. to the extent that the seam of my jeans was actually chaffing my legs in a distinctly painful manner and i was shivering uncontrollably, even though i was appropriately attired and moving quickly.

and i lost my damn hat last week, weather! i'm trying to be frugal! i got that POS hat from h&m in new hartford, NY my junior year of college! i don't want to have to buy another shitty hat to cover my pathetically oversized ears! what the freak?!?

boo weather. way to be a huge fucking dick about it. you can go funk yourself, i refuse to address you until it's 58 degrees and sunny out, or may.

a story

i have tried several times to post some simple, good stories of mine on this blog. mostly because most of my friends 1) have awesome stories and 2) are hilarious and a joy to read about on the internet. i, however, suck at both telling stories and remembering that i actually have a good story to tell under pressure. improv monologues and/or conversations are different, i can fucking yammer about any subject at any time. those are not the same as constructing a GOOD, funny and possibly endearing story. also, i tend to be just a little too timid to make the 'punchline' action of any story take place. one time, i almost got into a bar fight. it's a decent story, but a GREAT story would be me ACTUALLY getting into a bar fight. or actually going through with some half-thought out plan i subsquently need to lie about to a co-worker/parent/significant other to escape the wacky consequences: but unbeknownst to our noble heroine, her actions are only excacerbating her predicament!

this is not going to be one of those stories, but it did happen to me last night and i want to tell it to (more of) the internet.

walking to the 6 train from my office is pretty long walk, even for manhattan. depending on the traffic (both foot and catching the walk lights right), it takes between 12 and 15 minutes. doesn't sound that long, but when it's shitty out, it sucks. i was bundled up, wearing my knee-high winter boots for only the second time this winter, as well as my longer, belted black wool coat. it had been raining quite hard that morning, and i had been caught in an awful 'ice-rain plus extant snow equals three foot slush moat on every street corner' navigation the night before on my journey from UCBT to the bar. it was miserable, and thusly i had geared up well in anticipation for horrors of my walk to work. it ended up being fine that morning, just rainy, and it wasn't even sprinkling by the time i left. however, i was digging being dressed like i was a rogue superhero or dark tower-seeking gunslinger, and i will admit that there was a fair amount of skipping to the elevator and whipping around like i was a vigilante with a sawn-off shotgun on her way to dispense some righteous justice.

i was walking at a good clip along 57th street, weaving around the standard gaping tourist groups. i caught the cross-town walk signal at 5th avenue and was making my way along between 5th and madison on those slippery stone-slab sidewalks in front of the sony atrium. i made to circumvent yet another group of slow-walkers when i bumped into this guy who had been bent over and in the process of both standing up and taking a few steps backwards--on a crowded fucking street corner in the middle of manhattan. i kind of caught him in the back, and he was off balance already, so he pitched forward a half step. IMMEDIATELY, he stands up and WHIPS around to face me. having identified his 'attacker', a small young white woman (the horror!), he instantly raised both arms and SHOVED me into the crosswalk. hard, too. i was baffled. to my personal credit, i immediately inquired as to what was fucking wrong with him. and then i asked if was fucking kidding me. to which he responded with the elegant move of THROWING HIS HALF EATEN HOT DOG AT ME. WHAT. he was totally fucking whacked out. did not look homeless, just looked like an awful fucking human being, with a tacky sports team-patched jacket. the kind of guy who gets bumped into by a little girl on the sidewalk and decides to SHOVE into the street. had the walk signal not been on, i could EASILY have been hit by a car or even creamed by a bus. anyone else who's walked along 57th can attest that the express busses go through those lights at upwards of 40 mph and have little regard for pedestrians.

anyway, after replying 'fuck off' in my most affronted tone once more (i gave him the shocked, condescending face as well), i continued walking north. i wasn't going to miss the damn light for that asshole. plus, even though about a 1/3 of me wanted to march right back to him and punch him right in his uneven eyes, the other 2/3s frantically signalled that the kind of reaction this guy had to a standard manhattan sidewalk experience screamed 'ABSOLUTE WHACKJOB DO NOT FUCK AROUND' so i kept striding north east towards the 6 train, all the while making 'gah! tsk! fucking SERIOUSLY' noises under my breath. finally i called my sister and left a voicemail about it; partly just to tell someone as soon as possible to make the experience a little more real to me, and partly so i could recount the story loudly for other passers-by and maybe they would think twice about pushing tiny females in the future, for fear of being made fun of to that girl's friends later. and also to leave a clue for the law and order crew for when the psycho-sidewalk-pusher inevitably caught up with me and killed me before i got to the train.

i recounted this story first thing this morning to my boss. she's even smaller than me. for those i don't know in person, i'm about 5'4", and thin. people always comment in surprise that i have a reasonably strong handshake; i think they are surprised that any strength at all can be contained in my delicate, blue veined frailty. i get a lot of surprised looks when i demonstrate any physical strength whatsoever. my boss is about 5' even and weighs about the same as me, and she flipped upon hearing the story. apparently guys threaten to kick her ass or beat her up on a frighteningly regular basis. and she's not like getting herself into these situations; like rich assholes chasing her down the street with their canes raised and threatening to kill her for stealing THEIR cab. what? who the fuck are these guys that think it's totally cool to fucking physically assault smaller women in public. i tend to think of spouse and partner abusers and nazis in similar terms: they seem like totally normal and even well-adjusted individuals until they go off and do awful, sub-human actions with their own personal justification for it, . they don't tend to walk around in public, doing it in front of other people. isn't that what society is for? to STOP people acting like fucking evil little jerks because they don't want other people to think they are evil little jerks? we need people to tell us how to be human, or we stop being human, and all that? what kind of culture is it that produces these fucking morons? 'oh look, a little girl, let's fucking shove her cause she probably can't kick my ass physically!' fucking pisses me off.

the only thing i regret about this whole incident, and the one thing that would make it a great story and not just a long-winded rant is if i had picked up the half eaten hot dog he'd thrown at me and taken a BIG bite out of while looking right in his stupid, lazy-eyed face. however, i was too shocked to snatch it out of the air and i am not sure that making a point like that would be worth eating something that's touched the ground in mid-town. or getting whatever communicable disease (rabies? syphilis? bein a huge dick?) that asshole clearly suffered from.

ruby sneakers? more like... zomby sneakers!

truth. i had to get new sneakers again, and there were NONE of my preferred cordovan rose sauconys anywhere in the whole of manhattan. at least, there were none at shoemania, where certain saucony styles were on sale for 30 dollars. you can still find my favorite sneakers available for sale there for 49 dollars, but i am trying to be thrifty so i bought a different, new and scary color.

my new 'kicks' are black, grey and a sort of aquamarine, greeny-blue. like my eyes, or my first car that wasn't the shitty 1990 surburban that i am not counting because it sucked so hard. they are cool, actually. they do look like zombie sneakers though. definitely the color of reanimated rotting flesh, if rotting flesh were to be stylized and made into a pair of modest, yet comfortable fashion sneakers.

i miss my ruby sneakers though. here is a partial list why:

1) they were pretty, in and of themselves.
2) they made me feel more dressed up and fun.
3) they were reminiscent of both the wizard of oz, which i was obessed with when i was very young, and the dark tower, which is bad ass.
4) every once in a while, people would see them and ask me if i was from the internet. while a little weird, it's a good way to meet people, especially when one is struck with the oxymoronic personality traits of hyper sociability and extreme social avoidance... that i am... struck with? BAD SENTENCE.
5) they had red soles so i could look bad ass when walking away from someone.
6) they matched my purse.


501... was awesome last night. really fucking intense, but so good. i had to do one scene like 3 or 4 times, and by the end i wasn't flipping out or hating it or all up in my head--I WANTED TO TRY IT AGAIN. what? that's crazy talk, you're saying. but it's true. really phenomenal class, we have so much work to do as a class, i am actually pumped for it. i caught the last 3 harolds of harold night, but i was not as focused on it as i would have liked (hungry, mostly), but i refreshed for cinnabonanza, which was a lot of fun. then i made myself go to the bar and push flyers for bad data's big show/party that is this weekend. and i had a blast, fun and exhausting night.

VOTE! FIGHT! WIN!

i voted this morning! i seriously love voting. i feel immensely satisfied afterwards. maybe it doesn't really count, but i refuse to tarnish my positivity with excessive analyis in this one realm of my life.

i got up early-ish (after a terrible stress dream about missing my first 501 class because i stayed at work late... WORKING, yikes on so many levels.), scrambled desperately to find my passport, failed and decided to show them my tax forms if they didn't believe i lived on east 117th street. fortunately, that was unnecessary, i just had to sign a card stating i was, in fact, myself. it was nice. all the older volunteers were very sweet. i again puzzled over the weird machine they have here in the city, and after about 2 minutes figured it out well enough to pull the level and record my vote for barack obama. i guess hillary is SOL if she was relying on me to be in her creepy white woman army:

"Hillary has a reserve army of poor, single, white women whose support is intense and unwavering."

-dick morris

yikes. i did not volunteer for that duty. can i return my draft card some where? or burn it with my shitty paystub and leave the ranks of poor white single girls forever?
i am actually getting excited about Barack Obama and this democratic race. i tend to avoid getting involved too early because i hate having my hopes dashed at the last moment (like many of my generation, i think), but i really really like obama. i love that he's choosing to help define our country's very fractured immediate future. i am trying to be eloquent here, in a region where nearly every better writer than myself has tried and failed. yes, my generation tends to be one of immediate gratification and shortened attention spans... but i see such geniune passion and excitement from my peers regarding Obama, and i think that passion is a shared reflection of the man... it just genuinely makes me excited for this race. yay new york, yay super tuesday, yay united states of america!

i've been mentioning voting to all my co-workers, so hopefully a few will head to the polls after work. and hopefully no polls will be destroyed by frothing, rampaging giant-idiots fresh from parading like a bunch of ninnies down broadway. ed koch was right, go parade in new jersey. boo, hiss.

to be fair, i probably would make fun of the pats fans' inevitable, self-righteous rioting in boston as well. probably. but it would have been different because it would have been MY drunken assholes rioting.

sidenote: how fucking great would a bloomberg/barack presidential race be? the answer is TOTALLY GREAT.

also: does it bug anyone else to have the US political system be referred to as a democracy? i seriously can't hear that without replying (either to myself, or to the television screen, or, horror, to my unfortunate conversation partner) 'it's not a democracy, it's a democratic republic, we elect officials. this isn't ancient athens. WE'RE not developing and voting on policies, NOW ARE WE!?' although usually i leave off the part after 'officials', unless i want to get my ass kicked. but i feel the need to be specific on this point, because while i may tend to avoid political thinking in my day-to-day life, i feel it is never beneficial to smooth over specificities for ease of description, ESPECIALLY in the political realm. a semi-socractic, definitely-biased dialogue to demonstrate my point:

'well i think this way, and that's okay, because we live in a democracy!!!11! goo america!!!1'

'no, we don't live in a democracy, and if you do want to think that way, that is great, but you will need to research and find a candidate that represents your ideas well enough for you to support with your vote. because at the end of the day, our American system, while certainly flawed, is about compromise and dialogue of opinion.'

'omg i luf the giants luz moar beer plz!!1'

okay, i have wasted plenty of time with this today, i have work to do before my first 501 class at 6 (which i will NOT be late for, and which will not be inexplicably held in a sunny victorian house without an elevator, which halfway through turns into the newer constructed area of my old middle school), and then dashing to harold night afterwards. improv and voting, what a day!

food is expensive! boo!

i made some pretty fucking bad-ass curry chicken last night. it was a little two dollar curry paste packet from the grocery store that i added (with some butter) to some frozen, pre-cooked chicken i already had. combined with the basil rice i whipped up with a minimum of fuss, it was fucking DELICIOUS. like, so good. i even had some naan in from trader joe's in the freezer, which would have been a fantastic addition had i not burned it. anyway, it was awesome and, hoisted by my own petard, i thought there were PLENTY of leftovers for today's lunch--and maybe even tomorrow's! exciting!

yeah, negatory, good buddy. for one thing, my concoction seemed MUCH smaller by the time i put it in one container for my lunch. i would have blamed my dog if i had one. also, i brought one tiny cookie for breakfast so i ended up devouring all my curry at 11:20 am as a pathetic attempt to fill my cavernous insides. and it didn't even work cause i am still effing starving. LAME. WHY IS IT SO EXPENSIVE TO EAT, YO!? i will go get a bowl appetit for less than 2 dollars for lunch, but i was trying to spend NO DOLLARS at lunch.

OH SHIT I HAVE HALF A GRANOLA BAR IN MY PURSE SWEEEEEET!