Saturday, February 19

Five Things The University Paid Me To Do Today

1) Watch a delightfully awful Chinese comedy entitled "Dummy Mommy, Without a Baby", about a woman who pretends to be pregnant in order to keep her job and the inevitable hilarity which ensues.

2) Stare at a computer screen for a long minute while clicking random buttons, then helpfully shrug and say "Uh, I dunno, man, check the manual or something." It's too bad they don't give Employee of the Month awards here, because I am a Level 300 Computer Wizard Ninja.

3) Fetch snacks for myself and the building security guard at Wendy's. French fries and coffee make strong bones and healthy skin! Yes they do. Shut up. No. Get your own.

4) Lock the door for two minutes and shamelessly make out with my significant other in horny teenage-slattern fashion. Does that sound like it would make a good column in Jane or Sassy? "Horny Slattern's Fashion Finds?" I should write for them, except right now I am wearing a quilted vest which makes me look like one of those giant inflatable red Crayolas, and as such I am afraid they would not hire me for a fashion column, eye-catching headlines or no.

5) Listen to voicemail from my mom while watching Flash cartoons about muffins on the Internet. "Go on! Eat us! We're delicious!"

In case you are my boss reading this (hi boss!), it was only because it was Saturday afternoon and nobody was around. Normally we run a tight ship here in the basement computer lab. Please don't fire me. Thank you.

I will really miss this job when I am in hell with the rest of the hedonists and fast-food eaters. According to my death clock this will occur on Friday, February 13, 2060. Set your watches!

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Thursday, February 17

Oh, I Get That All The Time

An older woman sat down on the bus seat in front of me, and at the next stop a middle-aged woman got on and ended up next to her. They quickly began exchanging stories about their respective days, which led to introductions.

Within ten minutes they had discovered that the older one was the younger one's aunt by marriage, and that this was their first meeting in possibly forty years. Neither of them seemed surprised by the situation; the younger one didn't even mention it to her two small grandchildren.

"I just KNEW when I came in that you looked familiar!" she said.

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Wednesday, February 16

Stories That Don't Deserve Their Own Entry

1) I reached the corner of Broad and South just as the light was turning green today. I took one step into the street and it turned yellow, then red, so I hurried back onto the corner. Then the light turned green again, so I took a step into the street, and the same thing happened.

I felt obligated to make a wildly exaggerated show of shrugging in confusion at the street light, so that the people watching me scurry back and forth in front of their cars would know that I was a Totally Normal Person in the Grip of Some Bizarre Street Light Malfunction, not a mime or a performance artist or someone repeatedly chickening out on a suicide attempt. (Someone might have pushed me into traffic to help, otherwise. This IS the city that booed Santa Claus, after all.)

2) Computers Turn You Into a Pervert, Example #3408-B: A really well-placed shape tween or deftly manipulated mask-layer often leaves me breathless. This Flash animation of Radiohead's song Creep really, really does it for me. Mm. Check it out.

3) We just went through our second container of DCon Mouse Killer Poison Death Snackie Bits in three months. (By "went through" I mean the containers are empty. If my roommate and I have been eating them ourselves, he hasn't told me about it.)

There used to be more mice in the house than people by at least a factor of fifty. Now I haven't seen any of the little bastards since late fall, and I'm wondering where they're hiding. Are they eating the Snackie Bits, or just building up an arsenal so that all ten thousand of them can leap out at me from some forgotten closet and pelt me with poison-missiles? Come on in, Mom, I'll just put our coats in AAAUUGGHHHH

I don't necessarily enjoy poisoning animals; I should probably make that clear. Really, I consider myself a well-meaning, nurturing, generous person with a deep and abiding respect for life. Except mice. Fuck mice. Leave poo in my silverware drawer and the gloves come off. I may use that sentence in my next Craigslist roommate advertisement, actually. You can never be too careful with Craigslist.

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Sunday, February 13

Don't Screw Up. Don't Screw Up. Don't Screw Up...

Beta-blockers: breakfast of champions for would-be performers with a tendency to freeze in the spotlight like frightened deer. Originally designed to treat angina and hypertension, they essentially prevent your body from using adrenalin, which slows down your heartbeat and nerve impulses. This makes you cold and forgetful and lazy, which is why this entry is so long.

They also keep your self-medicating ass more or less copacetic when you have, say, a long unaccompanied bass clarinet solo in Shostakovich's Sixth Symphony and you can't face it on your own because you are a TOTAL WEENIE who once nearly melted down onstage during the Bartok Viola Concerto because okay, here's the solo, get ready for it, remember, F-sharp, C-sharp, wait, that's not C-sharp, where the fuck is the C-sharp key, fuck, C-sharp doesn't feel like that, does it? Maybe, no, couldn't be, don't freak out, DON'T FREAK OUT, FUCK, FUCK, there are SO MANY FUCKING C-SHARPS in this piece and now you will not be able to play ANY OF THEM, FUCK, and also can we please mention at this juncture that YOU ARE A MASTER'S CANDIDATE IN MUSIC PERFORMANCE AND YOU HAVE JUST TOTALLY FORGOTTEN HOW TO PLAY C-SHARP and THAT WAS YOUR BIG SOLO THAT JUST WENT BY WHILE YOU WERE TRYING TO REMEMBER, JACKASS, and YES EVERYONE NOTICED and WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU, PLEASE GIVE IT UP ALREADY AND GO BACK TO THE FUCKING TEMP AGENCY, so really cold and forgetful and lazy sounds just fine to you by comparison. Hopefully there are no undercover narcotics agents planted in the horn section.

The soloist on the Prokofiev Second Violin Concerto was thirteen and more or less schooled all of us. I wanted to hate her for it, but she was too cute and sweet and genuine and all of those non-hate-inducing things. Both of her parents are successful classical musicians, which makes me want to go into a long weepy tirade about what a Sad Underprivileged Wretch of a Child I was because my parents never even really listened to records, much less hooked me up with some of these four-hundred-dollar-per-semester Suzuki lessons I register kids for at work... but really, it's what you make of it. I mean, my friend Maureen taught herself to play flute from a book, and she's killer.

There's also something to be said for family who will support you without asking too many tough questions:

"How'd you like the Elliott Carter piece, Dad? A little out there, I guess?"

"Oh, well, it was real nice to hear you go, you know, all the way up and all the way down. You know, two years ago, you would have missed all the notes on the way up, and all the notes on the way down. So we're proud of you. Want to get some dinner?"

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