Thursday is Thor’s Day

Notes on this Thursday morning:

1. Office coffee is gross.

2. If you look at yourself in a reflective surface while you’re chewing on a plastic coffee stirrer thing, you realize that you look like a hillbilly chewing on a piece of straw.

3. Phil Collins rocks. I don’t even care if people catch me singing along. I wonder if he has a Christmas album.

4. He does not.

5. Hootie and the Blowfish are grossly underrated in the 2000’s.

5. My work has this one sculpture that is the shape and size of an award and I think is of two men kissing…? Either way, I’ve already held it and pretended I was accepting an award for something.

Sister Christian, oh the time has come

So my car didn’t start this morning. I feel like that is one of those adult problems that I would have had to deal with sooner or later, but I was hoping to put it off until I had a husband or something. A rich husband who will lend me his Mercedes to drive to work. And by work I mean the manicurist. I don’t work. Not when hubs is rich. I mean, we’re so rich that I call him “hubs,” which is a disgusting word. And yes, WE’RE so rich because there was no prenup because he made it big AFTER we got married. Also, he believes in the power of love because he’s an idiot. There’s no such thing as love.

Point is: Sister Christian (my car) was being a real playa hata this morning. Drinking the Haterade. Flavor? Blue Ice-Cold Bitch.

I think it’s important to add this detail now: it’s Halloween, and my subdued-for-work costume is wearing all black, a black leather jacket, and a Dread Pirate Roberts mask. I’m pretty sure there’s nothing more pathetic than someone wearing a Dread Pirate Roberts/catburgler getup staring confusedly at her car and whimpering “Sister Christian, why?” Someone walking a dog passed me as my car sputtered and gave me a slightly amused/sympathetic look. Listen, bitch, you take your doodlepoppypoo and get out of my eye-line. Ya heeeaaard?

Anyway, I took the only course of action I could think of: I popped the hood (a miracle I even knew how to do that) and I pulled up what was probably the dipstick, but who knows. It had schmutz on it, but I’m pretty sure that’s good. I’m not sure if the level of schmutz was good, but I looked at it knowingly anyway. Everything else under the hood looked like car, so I closed it. I tried calling my parents, but they didn’t answer. WHY DO I EVEN BOTHER HAVING PARENTS IF THEY WON’T PICK UP THE PHONE? Useless. Finally, I did the only thing I could do: I turned the key in the ignition and held it there until it started. This was after about 30 seconds of sad sputtering. Awesome.

If you’ve ever been in this position, when your car finally does start, you realize that you went through a whole gamut of emotions: Panic that you’ll be late for work. Calm that there’s an actual excuse for being late to work. Anxiety that you may need to spend a lot of money on your car. Delight in thinking that you can probably take the day off (or lat least a half day). Determination in not letting a machine beat you. Relief when the car finally starts. Confusion when you wonder, “What does this meeeaaan?” And finally depression when you realize that you can go to work and still be on time, but not have enough time to stop at 7-11 for coffee. You win, Sister Christian. You hateful bitch.

I’m making up for my morning’s slow start with pure badassery, though. It’s hard to feel more badass than you do in this moment: wearing black leather and a mask and blaring Jay-Z’s “99 Problems” as you power-stomp past all your coworkers on your way to the bathroom. BLAMMO.

What Am I? WHAT ARE YOU?

In the spirit of Halloween, here are some easy costumes for lazy people:

1. Wear your normal clothes and when people ask you what you are, say, “Your worst nightmare.”
2. Buy cheap fangs, throw some glitter on yourself and go as a Twilight-style vampire (or forget the glitter and go as a True Blood-style vampire).
3. Wear two different color polo shirts and pop the collars. Then take a plastic bag with the word “douche” written on it and put it over your head. Voila! Douche bag!
4. Take a blouse and black pants/skirt and put white-out hand prints on the ass/crotch/boobs. Carry around a clipboard or manila folder. Hello there, Sexual Harassment!
5. If you are a person of any ethnicity that isn’t white, just put on normal clothes and see what crazy things people guess you are. YOU’VE JUST BEEN PROVEN RACIST BY THE RACIST PROVER!
6. Feeling a little risque? Buy a cheap Bible and cover yourself in the pages from Genesis. Boom! Creationism!
7. On a white shirt, do one of those iron-on transfers of a picture of your face. You’re Inception-You. (This is sooo last years, but whatever).
8. Wear shorts that are a little too short/long (depending on gender), a colorful tee shirt, socks with sandals, and a visor. Carry a map and go around asking people for directions, you tourist.
9. Cut out a big cardboard frame from a box or something. Fasten it to yourself, making sure there’s enough room to one side of you to get another person in “frame.” Stand next to people and argue/make out with them. You’re on reality TV. (Bonus if you shout “I’m not here to make friends!” a lot).
10. Make a schnazzy mask out of a paper plate, sharpies, and a box cutter. It’s best if you make this one at work when you’re bored.

Look at that fine, fine craftsmanship.

I’m pregnant with a food baby and it might be Korean

I have now gone to all-you-can-eat Korean barbecue twice, and I have realized that there is definitely a learning curve when it comes to tackling such a feast. Allow this novice to share with you things that I’ve learned:

1. It’s not a spur-of-the-moment event. You’re going to need to know if you’re going to Korean Barbecue before lunchtime of the day you’re going to go, because you need to plan accordingly. Assuming that you’ll be eating dinner, you better eat a light lunch and breakfast. I’m talking a lettuce leaf and a grape. You’re going to want to be STARVING by the time you arrive (though not by, like, African baby standards). My second time, I thought I would have a light snack right before I went, so I would fill up faster and thus save myself some self-loathing. But no. It did nothing.

2. The sides are awesome, but just do little taste-tests of those. Eat some of the salad, because you’ll feel better about yourself knowing you got a vegetable in you. The only thing you should feel free to go to town on is that latke-like thing.

3. Don’t waste time on the unmarinated meats. Sure, they’re tasty, but they’re nowhere near as good as the juicy stuff. My first time, I gorged myself on the unmarinated stuff until I was comfortably full. And then my eating comrades declared that the marinated stuff was coming out and…oh my God. It’s just…so good. So you eat a lot of that until you’re well past the point of comfortably full. And then someone always seems to order ANOTHER course of awesome stuff. And the process repeats. So I guess my point is: know how many courses people are planning to order.

4. Don’t order octopus. It’s only really good when it’s perfectly cooked, and the “perfectly cooked” window is really small. And no one knows when that window is open. Just…don’t.

5. You’re going to hate yourself. Don’t get me wrong; it’s a good time. You have fun with friends and you’re cooking on your table. It’s awesome. But you’re going to stuff yourself stupid. When you stand up, the contents of your stomach will disrupt your normal center of gravity. You’re going to smell like meat. The scent will haunt you. Your skin will be slick with meat grease. You’re going to be sluggish. And this feeling will last at least 24 hours.

6. There’s still room for dessert. Fact: there always is.

So no one told you life was going to be this way (clap clap clap clap)

Four underrated ‘firsts’ between new friends:

1. The first time you catch each other’s eyes during someone else’s stupid moment. Okay, stay with me on this one, because that first sentence seems convoluted. But picture this: you and your new friend are hanging out with some third-party person, and this third person (whom I will name Jimbob) says something stupid like, “I think chocolate is dumb,” and then you and Newfriend just casually glance up into each others eyes and look away. Now I’m not talking a full-on glance, but like a MICROSCOPIC eyelid lift. Yeah, to anyone else, it seems like you just simultaneously twitched, but you know. You said it all right there. Through just a furtive eye-glance, you communicated, “Jimbob’s obviously an idiot. Also, hi! How’s it going? We should talk later.” It’s a beautiful thing. And Jimbob had no idea.

2. The first “you would!” Example: “Oh my God, I still own Backstreet Boy’s Millennium album and it’s in my car RIGHT NOW!” and then your friend laughs and says, “You would!” This not only means that you can joke about each other’s stupid interests, but you know each other well enough to not be surprised by them. Heartwarming. (Full disclosure: I don’t still own this cd, but I really wish I did.)

3. The first time you allow yourself to snort-laugh. Okay, I’m going to start this with a little background. My sister laughs like an idiot. No, not an idiot; she laughs like a donkey is raping a monkey. And those two distinct animal sounds combine into this cacophony of horror. You can pick her out of a crowd by her laugh, and she is well-known (you know, among family and friends) for her crazy guffaw. But I slowly started noticing the rest of my family’s laughter too: my mom’s whinnying, my dad’s high-pitch cackle, and my other sister’s deep-voiced “HUHhahHUHhUHUh.” So, one day I said to donkey-rape-laugh sister, “Jesus, we are a family of crazy-weird laughers.” Donkey-rape-laugh sister looked at me sagely and said, “Fuck, Lisa–all laughs are weird.” This is true. We get bogged down by hearing so many polite laughs that we forget sometimes what a fucking guffaw sounds like. It’s ugly, people. But I guess beautiful at the same time. So this moment is not commemorating the first time your new friend (or you) said something truly funny, but the first time you just let it go and slapped them in the face with your gut-busting laugh. Me personally? I sound like a snorting, wheezing Frenchman.

4. The first time one of you picks up the other’s catchphrase. Yeah, shut it. We all have catchphrases or, you know, catchwords–weird shit that we say that is more-or-less unique to our vocabulary. Now, we’re not like Homer Simpson where we have to say “d’oh” every day for twenty-something years, so our catchphrases can change very frequently (I went through a phase where I said “baller” a lot. Oh wait, I still do. But less). And one day–maybe because you’re hanging around this person a lot or maybe because they think that you’re particularly endearing, you’ll start hearing them says stupid things like “baller” a lot, and you’ll think, “Oh my God, did they get that from ME?” and then you’ll get all verklempt.

Harder than the Oregon Trail

I think it is a truth universally acknowledged that moving is the worst thing ever. Yes, that includes genocide, famine and just general…jackassery.First you have to put all your shit into boxes. How does one accumulate so many hair products and towels? And why do I have “Thank You” cards? I’ve never thanked anybody a day in my life. I also discovered that I own, like, four Allen wrenches. Which is weird, since I don’t own that much stuff from Ikea and when else do you get an Allen wrench? Unimportant.

But you never throw away any of this. Oh no, you bought it, so you must really need it. And I do. I’m sure I do.

Eventually there is the actual hauling of the shit to another place. I’m a cheap bastard whose furniture has the cumulative worth of about 300 dollars, so I wasn’t about to spend 50 dollars renting a van. That’s insanity. So instead I haul whatever you can haphazardly fit into my hatchback back and forth like 40 times, praying to God or the Great Atheismo that my futon frame doesn’t fall out of the back window while I’m driving down the highway.

Then there’s the daunting task of unpacking your shit. I just put it all into boxes a few days ago, and now I have to take it all again. Take it all out while keeping a general floor/organizational plan in mind. The motivation at this stage is generally lacking. It’s been over a week and I still haven’t managed to put sheets on my futon mattress. My futon mattress that is lying on the floor. Lying on the floor with a lamp and blu-ray player sitting on the corner, for whatever reason. I am essentially a hobo. A hobo with a blu-ray player, which is a very special kind of hobo. A hobo with a lack of priorities.

Case in point: I was watching Hoarders with the new roommate and she said, “I noticed that with these people the bed is always the first thing to go. They don’t put on sheets and it gets all nasty,” and my first thought was a panicked, “She knows.”Which brings me to the most awkward part about living with a new roommate: the slow process of marking your territory. In all my roommate endeavours, it’s been me moving into an empty room of an already-furnished apartment. So, like, there’s the first night where I don’t do anything. The second night I’ll leave my toothbrush out. The third night, I’ll put food in the cupboards. The fourth night, I’ll use the stove. And so on, until eventually the place screams, “Lisa lives here too, bitches! AND SHE COOKS WITH A LOT OF GARLIC AND CINNAMON!”

Words are fun

Very real feelings that don’t have a name, but should:

– That crushing disappointment you feel when someone you thought was cool turns out to be a racist.
Suggested word: crackerjacked

-The mix of desperation and optimism that accompanies staring at your facebook chat list (or gchat or whatever) hoping that a specific person will talk to you.
Suggested word: pitiope

-The rush of power that directly follows the sending of an important email.
Suggested word: megalemailical

-The feeling of pathetic uncertainty after sending something through snail mail (as in, “Did I actually put the thing in the envelope?” or “Did I somehow manage to rip a page out of my 8th grade diary and shove it in there too?”).
Suggest word: poubt

-The wave of self-doubt and self-hatred you feel when you realize that you put too much stock in social media things (e.g. obsessing over status updates/tweets, “Oh my god, why didn’t he friend me?” etc.). N.B. The younger generation does not feel this feeling; it will die out with the Gen Yers.
Suggested word:  shamloss

-The shudder of happiness you feel when someone you don’t know very well, but whom you think is cool, says your first name for the first time.
Suggested word: namgasmic

-The fear that accompanies walking past a group of teenagers.

Suggested word: agifiated

A morning in haikus

Hit the snooze button
Nine minute respite from noise
Then "Mariamba"

Hair dichotomy
Roots like North Sea--drenched in oil
Ends as dry as straw

Chug Emergen-C
Now I feel stronger, better
Placebo effect

Email: spam spam spam
Spam word of the day spam spam
Spam groupon spam spam

Forgoing coffee
Drinking Diet Coke instead
Giving me mad burps

Sun burned lips last week
Chap Stick really does nothing
Salad dressing stings

Here's a "did you know:"
iPhones play old RPGs
Never work again

The L Word

So I don’t know how many of my fellow bro-tastic straight ladies ever get mistaken for lesbians. It’s a pretty classic scenario–you swear like a sailor and make raunchy jokes that would make your sex-crazed grandma blush if she wasn’t dying from dementia. You lack some basic flirtation skills. You can chug a beer like a badass. Perhaps you like-a da ladies?

Now, don’t get me wrong. The only scenario that I care where people think I’m a lesbian is if I’m trying to get my mack on (and the lack of flirtation skills makes this difficult anyway). I mostly find it humorous how people try to wheedle this information out of me.

Not that I don’t always contribute to the illusion. Sometimes it’s just fun to be a bro.

So I present to you three scenes of mistaken identity and/or clumsy interrogation:

Scene: Driving with my dude-friend down an eerily deserted Los Angeles street.

Dude: You know, I think all the guys thought you were a lesbian after the way you were talking about the naked ladies on those playing cards last night.

SMASH CUT

Scene: A group of dudes and I were all playing poker with a Playboy deck of cards. These cards had pictures of naked ladies. Lots of them were making “duck face.”

Dude 1: Oh man, I love the tits on the two of hearts.

Dude 2: The queen of diamonds is so hot!

Me: Really, guys? I mean, she has total bitchface. Look at her face. Ugh. I wouldn’t tap that.

Dude 2: Not really looking at her face.

Me: Even so. Tits McGee is NOT working with natural materials. The four of clubs is much hotter.

Dude 1: What do you think of the ace of spades?

Me: Meh. I fold.

———————-

Scene: I’m in my old house that I shared with a lesbian couple. They were having a dinner party with some of their friends and I was invited to kind of mooch on their food and conversation. Instead of really mingling, I’m standing in the corner, gnawing on mini quiche.

Roommate’s brother: So how are you liking L.A.?

Me: I like it a lot, actually. I mean, I don’t know if I’ll settle here permanently, but I like it.

Roommate’s brother: Well, you never know what the future will bring. Any day you could meet Mr. Right…or Mrs…..

[Roommates stop talking and eye me expectantly]

Me: Um. Mister. Mr. Right.

———————-

Scene: Bar, last week. I’m talking with a girl-friend. The bar itself is covered with coasters that feature the movie poster for “Friends with Benefits.”

Me: Ugh. You know, this movie actually has pretty good reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, but I just have NO interest in seeing it.

Girl: Me neither.

Dude: (after semi-overhearing us discussing the movie) You want to see this?

Me: No—

Dude: Would you want to see it for her (covers up Justin Timberlake’s face) or him (covers up Mila Kunis’ face)?

Me: (sighs) Really? (covers up Mila Kunis’ face).

[Though, to be honest, JT’s not really my “type” and I would probably just as soon hit Mila Kunis. That said, is JT walked up to me on the street and was like, “Hey, wanna bang?” I wouldn’t even think about it…]

Fin.

And word to the wise: if you ever really want to know, I’m pretty sure it’s okay to ask.

LET THE GREAT EXPERIMENT BEGIN!

I’m bored. So I thought it would be fun to write a “time capsule” post, schedule it to be published at some point in the future, and forget about it.

HEY FUTURE ME!

So what else is going on in the future? Are there flying cars? Did “Ice Cream of the Future” ever really take off outside of amusement parks? Probably not, since we’re talking months into the future, not years. But technology moves so fast nowadays that it’s really hard to tell.

Is Bruno Mars still big? I think his songs are catchy, but I’m not sure they have staying power.

I might be a little drunk right now. But it’s a classy drunk. Business drunk. Either way, it’s still safe to drive.

God, I thought this idea of writing to myself would have more…more oomph, I guess. But there’s no momentum here.

Well, future Lisa, I guess all I have to say is: Wear sunscreen more. You’re starting to wrinkle.