Saturday, February 12*

Moment of Zen

Just now I went and picked up some tofu and vegetables from the Chinese takeout place across the street for dinner, and sat reading some inane Philadelphia tourist magazine while I ate. Not Until it Was Much Too Late did I realize that

1) My fortune-cookie fortune had read, "You are gifted in many ways" and

2) I had just then accidentally eaten that fortune along with the rest of the cookie.

Either the Philadelphia Board of Tourism has learned long-distance mind control (another great marketing campaign which I must explore sometime. "Philadelphia: JOIN US... JOIN US... " ), or Fortune Cookies Lie. Which would be too bad, because the one I once got reading "Your smile makes everyone realize that the world is a lovely and beautiful place" really made my day.

Or maybe "gifted" is the new "special?" Har har, fortune cookies. You win this round, but our battle is not yet finished.

*edit: In a related event, I managed to write the wrong date on this post while sitting at a computer which displays the date right there on the screen for you. The same screen also features yesterday's date in large brown letters on the post I wrote yesterday. Ace detective work! Gold star!

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Friday, February 11

Help Jaime Move to San Francisco

Currently accepting checks, cash, money orders, and credit card numbers as well as advice on how to get to, and succeed in, Magical Hippie Land with only "pluck" and "an entirely useless master's degree in clarinet performance." Ideally, gentle readers, one of you will know some feisty young dot-com mogul/displaced Eastern European royal who needs a resident activist musician house-wench to manage his/her extensive philanthropic work, perform 20th-century clarinet chamber music for him/her at all hours, and wash his/her bay windows wearing only a pink sparkly thong and a smile. Kindly direct this person to my website. Thank you.

I think I just made up a new euphemism. Girl, my bay windows got TOTALLY washed last night. Oh yeah. I mean, sparklin'.

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Thursday, February 10

Scrambled Signals

7:49 pm:

Yesterday as I walked home from my lesson, a man stopped his car, leaned out his window, and asked with great concern in his voice if I was all right. Surprised (and feeling fine), I just nodded, and he drove on.

Ten seconds later, on the same road, I passed a girl who was walking with her friend and crying her eyes out, only because she was wearing big pink sunglasses, you wouldn't have been able to tell from the road.

It was sort of like walking through a book someone had ripped in half and then put back together in the wrong order. Now I know how the Missed Connections feel when you post them on Craigslist.

Those of you in our home audience who are now eagerly awaiting the Essay House's first contribution to the Pretentious Musings on The Fragile Beauty of Life's Fleeting Moments category of blog-posts will have to fill in your own here, because I have to go practice the clarinet. Here, I'll get you started:

"What adjective plural noun these adjective moments are! Too late do we adjective plural noun fully verb the adjective beauty intrinsic to these most ordinary plural noun; the adjective adjective adjective irony contained adverb within these adjective adjective adjective adjective exchanges are adverb and truly what make this our adjective adjective adjective adjective adjective adjective stay on this adjective adjective swirling blue planet meaningful. If only more plural noun could adverb verb these experiences, maybe our adjective adjective adjective adjective adjective adjective adjective adjective adjective lives would adverb adverb verb in greater noun and harmony, yo."

Post your entries in the comments section and we'll go from there.

9:30 pm:

My roommate has the heat turned down to 58. I think he is possibly made of snow. Please, God, kill me now and send me to hell where I belong, because it is warm there. Thank you.

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Wednesday, February 9

The Week in Retrospect

"Jaime - Bob. I just wanted you to know that you left your little scarf-thing in orchestra again, so it's in my office. Talk to you later."

"Hi.. Barb? It’s Jaime. Uh, yeah.. I was just calling to.. tell you I’m gonna be a little late? See, I can’t.. I can’t find my wallet, actually, and.. um, I don’t know how to explain this, but there’s this gate on my house, so the key? Is on my wallet. So. Um. I’m sort of locked into my house.. Yeah. No no, I’ll be in as soon as I find it. Sorry about this. Okay, talk to you soon.”

"JAIME. It's JAMES. CALL ME BACK ALREADY. Turn it ON, FIND it, or CHARGE it, whatever you have to do. UGH. Okay. Bye bye."

"Hello. This is the Registrar's Office calling for Jaime? Just a reminder call to let you know that we'll be cancelling your registration if we don't receive your tuition remission letter by tomorrow evening. If you have any questions about your account, you can reach us between the hours of eight and five..."

“CINDY! Um, do you have any extra clarinet reeds? I think I just broke my last one.. no, it’s fine if it’s.. used, I just.. okay, sweet, thanks.”

"Jaime. This is your mother. Remember me? I don't know if you remember, but I called about a week ago to tell you that your aunt Theresa sent you a coffee pot, but she just called to say it was returned to sender - I guess you didn't get to the post office in time to pick it up? Give me a call back and tell me your office address, they're usually good about getting things to you. Okay, love you much."

" Listen, did you want me to bring some Neosporin to school the next time I see you? Your fingers look sort of fucked up from that stove. I mean, you don’t want scars. Watch out for those Rice Krispie treats."

“Nuh-huh. No you didn’t. Lose that letter. Hold on a second, I have to regulate here. You did WHAT? Wait, HOW MANY TIMES have I copied that thing for you? Okay, do you want to be an artist for the rest of your life? Really? Then hire a SECRETARY, hire a BOOK-KEEPER, hire a STAFF. Do NOT do the work yourself. When’s your birthday? I’m gonna buy you a fire-safe.”

”Jaime.. this is your sister. You should call Mom back. She misses you.”

“Mary! Hi! Listen, can you just.. where are you, are you at the station? Okay, okay, um, can you just.. okay, I just spent forty-five minutes looking for my wallet, so I still haven’t...no.. um, so can you just hang tight, and I’ll be there as soon as I..? Okay, great, thanks, it shouldn’t be too long. Right. Okay. Talk to you soon.”

“Wait, wait, stop stop stop. Bass clarinet! What are you doing, you can’t read off that part, where’s your real music? What do you mean, you can’t read bass clef? YOU?”

"Hey, it's Jason. Listen, hopefully you just lost your phone, but just in case, give me a call when you get this? You just weren't answering the door when I came over, and I wanted to make sure you weren't knocked upside the head or something. Okay, later."

"No, no no no, don't.. wait, don't move the couch, I.. oh, god, oh god.."

“The key? No, it was actually under the refrigerator… um, I have no idea.”

“Okay, Jaime, I’ll give you a box of reeds if you let me borrow your bass clarinet for the concert. Sweet! Hey, do you still have my parts for the Gounod and the Mozart? Yeah, I kind of need those back.”

“No, no no no, I’ve still got all the copies of that letter you just made me.. Really! I was actually wondering if you could, um, if you had a key to the second-floor practice room that I just. Um. Accidentally locked all my stuff inside of. Don’t look at me like that.”

“Jaime! Look! I found your phone! Oh, looks like you have a lot of messages, too. What happened to your hand?”


(edit: "retrospect", not "retrospective." Normally I would just leave the bad grammar but it was in the title and it haunted me.)

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Monday, February 7

Does This Mean We Get To Talk About T.O.'s Ankle Next Year, Too?

1:18 am:

Everyone at our Super Bowl party bet on the Patriots. McNabb threw something like 48,650 interceptions. I think they gave Deion Branch a car or something for being MVP, but we were watching with the sound off so I'm a little unclear.

Drunk Guys Across The Complex: "WHOOOOOO!"
Jason and Ryan: "uh, RAAAHHH!"
Drunk Guys Across the Complex: "YEAHHHHH!"
Jason and Ryan: "ARRRRRR! GRRRR!"
Drunk Guys Across the Complex: "E!"
Jason and Ryan: "...A?"
Drunk Guys Across the Complex: "HEY! WHAT THE FUCK! ARE YOU GUYS SOME KIND OF FUCKING PATRIOTS FANS??"
Jason: "uhh. GO LIONS!"
Ryan: "Be careful, they might have guns."
Jason: "Did you see the way he was staring at us?"
Me: "Tell them you're just watching a movie."

Afterward the TV news insisted on replaying all of Philadelphia's good moments from early in the game, over and over, cut with live footage of the entire Philadelphia police force in full riot gear "protecting" the sad drunk college boys in Eagles jerseys as they shuffled out of the sports bars. They even had a graphic ready-made of a silver football with the words "DREAM DENIED" on it. I think Philadelphians enjoy needless suffering - check out, for example, this guy who might lose his fingers for a team that didn't even win the big game. Maybe they'll change the town slogan from "Philadelphia: One city, one team, one dream" to "Philadelphia: almost." Har har har.

In a semi-related story: alcohol is the BEST ALLERGY MEDICINE EVER. After five beers I could have probably skinned one of Jason and Ryan's cats and eaten it and not felt a thing. I'm thinking of writing the Saranac brewery and proposing a marketing campaign along those lines. They only have three cats so it will have to be a short campaign, but I'm confident that word-of-mouth advertising will take over from there.

12:09 pm:

A four-year-old kid drove his mother's car to the video store and back at 1:30 in the morning on Friday. She didn't even know he was up.

He can't even reach the accelerator, and he can still operate a vehicle better than I can. Oh, the shame.

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Sunday, February 6

Another Sunday Placeholder Entry

Blah blah blah, Super Bowl, Blah, Eagles, blah. This may end up being my last entry, since Philadelphia will probably burn to the ground in all the riots no matter the outcome. Alas.

Here, have some links!

1) Guess the Dictator and/or Television Sitcom Character. You answer yes or no questions and the computer figures out who you're thinking of. Eerily accurate, at least to me - I don't know much obscure trivia on either subject, and the computer figured out both Sam the American Eagle and Bubble from AbFab in no time.

Smalltime.com has some other random little gems, like the Message Board where you send out a message and then receive the one sent by the previous visitor. (I got "I HATE YOU SO MUCH... I WISH YOU WOULD DIE. PREFERABLY TONIGHT." Thanks, Internet!) Then there's the UnChat site, which screws around with your messages:

"Lord, make me AN instrument of your peace. wHERE THERE is hatred, let me SOW love; WHERE there is injury,pardon; where there is doubt, faith; WHERE there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; and where THERE is sadness, joy. I just had my entire INTESTINAL TRACT coated with TEFLON! BORK BORK BORK!"

2)ArtPad by art.com. Make pictures. Send them. Pretty.

3) Some of the aforementioned teenage goth girls wrote about wanting to start "waist training." Apparently a lot of people really like lacing themselves into corsets day and night for weeks on end until their ribs and organs reshape themselves into tiny wasp-waists. If that sounds like you, these people will build you a custom corset and provide individual coaching as you work toward your new life as a person without abdominal muscles. Wheee!

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