mary pooter joins the internet

and while i'm quoting funny things...

2010-03-06T10:21:00.000-08:00

one of my favorite parts of twitter is that i'm constantly tweeting funny things people say (okay sometimes they're from tv or movies) so that i can do exactly what i'm doing right now, which is to re-read them and crack myself up. shall we?

kid: "you need perfume! i got perfume on and i ain't even a girl!" teacher: "you mean cologne." kid: "i mean perfume! i smell like a lady."
11:35 AM Mar 3rd via web

"i think lex luthor said it best when he said, 'dad, you have no idea what i'm capable of'." "that's from superman?" "smallville."
8:53 PM Feb 25th via web

"gay sex just seems so unsexy. the only beautiful thing a pair of guys can do with each other is the two man luge."
9:50 PM Feb 7th via Echofon

"they're both consenting adults and there's no law against crazy."
11:37 PM Jan 31st via web

"what is a vagina if not a cut-out... no i'm really asking, i've never seen one, what is a vagina?"
11:26 PM Dec 21st, 2009 via Echofon

"passover is like, a beautiful thing. JESUS went to passover." "it's like... easter?" "jesus was dead on easter."
8:34 PM Dec 2nd, 2009 via Echofon

"i only want to make friends with people throwing meat into cornholes."
12:43 PM Nov 29th, 2009 via Echofon

"she got proposed to at 20. I can't imagine getting married that young, but it was 10 yrs ago... Things were different back then."
5:02 PM Nov 22nd, 2009 via Echofon

"i wanna lay you down on a bed of chart paper. i made you a picnic of juice box and raisins."
6:09 PM Oct 23rd, 2009 via Echofon

"you should only eat a muffin and salad every time you go out drinking."
10:23 PM Oct 18th, 2009 via web

"and why is that woman chasing that penguin?" "you mean pigeon?"
5:41 PM Oct 11th, 2009 via Echofon

"kids shouldn't be allowed in this city. you shouldn't raise young... young... Youngkins in this city."
5:40 PM Oct 11th, 2009 via Echofon

"we're gonna talk about dogs and babies... licking each other."
11:01 PM Sep 4th, 2009 via web

"dustin and rusty are like... the worst names. what if you named your kid dirtstin? or filthany. or... corrosiana."
9:23 PM Aug 16th, 2009 via Echofon

"bad decisions are just good decisions mixed with booze, drugs, and low self-esteem."
6:54 PM Jul 12th, 2009 via txt

"you can be nuts but not be retarded, it's like a square is a circle sort of thing..."
8:04 PM May 25th, 2009 via txt

"omg, puggles eat pickles?"
5:52 PM May 25th, 2009 via txt

grown-ass people say the darndest things.

2010-03-05T16:55:00.000-08:00

almost every single person who reads, has ever read, or will ever read this blog has heard me complain about how the very prestigious graduate program i attend is full of idiots and nosepickers, so i won't go through it again. but today really took the cake for dumb shit my classmates have said.

a few times a semester, we're required to take a professional development day at work and attend full-day classes at school. today, instead of sitting in a room for the whole day listening to people talk and secretly shopping for clothes on the internet, we went to the american museum of natural history, which is a really amazing museum full of awesome exhibits. we got to visit three exhibits, two of which were full-class programs and one of which we got to choose. the three i saw were the hall of planet earth, traveling the silk road, and journey to the stars. these are actual real things my classmates said (some funny and great, some just stupid):

after watching the "big bang" show...

tour guide: what kinds of things might you bring up with your students after seeing this?
religious classmate: god.
tour guide: i wouldn't, but i guess you could.

-

after a discussion of pluto's downgrade from planet to dwarf planet...

funny classmate: gonna pour one out for my homie pluto.

-

after the "journey to the stars" show...

dumb classmate: why can't you see stars in new york city?

-

during a "traveling the silk road" workshop (designed for sixth graders), while we were looking at samples of different materials traded on the silk road...

curator: this is camel hair.
dumb classmate: wow it's so thick!
curator: it's braided.

[note: the braid was VISIBLY made up of three strands of about thirty threads each.]

-

during the same workshop, while we were "packing our camels" for a simulation of trading on the silk road...

dumb classmate: do we need any special supplies? like... boots for the camels?
other dumb classmate*: well we need to pack water, unless we kill the camels and take it from their humps.

-

and again, during the same workshop...

random classmate: i packed peaches to trade, but now i don't know because they're heavy and will go bad.
curator: but you can dry them!
dumb classmate*: then you have prunes.
curator: no, then you have dried peaches.

-

yet again...

dumb classmate*: did they have money a thousand years ago? no right? this is a barter system. no credit cards, ha ha.
me: yes they had money.
dumb classmate: no way, a thousand years ago? i think you're messing with me now.
me: dude there have been coins for thousands of years.
dumb classmate: that's impossible!

(* = THESE STATEMENTS WERE ALL MADE BY THE SAME PERSON)

so next time i say my program is full of total morons, maybe y'all will believe me.

what a difference a... um, a day makes... i guess.

2010-02-20T06:40:00.000-08:00

let's just all acknowledge that i abandoned this blog for a year and that i'm back without warning. yeah? yeah, totally. and just to show that it actually has been a real calendar year (in case you, like my kids, have trouble reading dates or something), check out that baby from my last post:

that's her on her freakin' first birthday, just in case you were confused. whoa.

before i go and blow my own mind talking about how insanely different my life has become from this time last year, here's a quick recap of february 2009:

- trying to get over a dude
- really hating my job
- thinking, "maybe i'll try seeing a therapist"
- getting into yoga, thanks to sue
- chillaxin' in park slope
- halfheartedly wishing that anna was still around
- spending valentine's day at brunch and karaoke

and now!

- that dude: i'm finally willing to publicly admit that the one serious new year's resolution i made for 2009 was "get him out of my life, once and for all, even if it takes until december 31st." DONE. not even going to go into how it all went down, because A) it was very, very ugly and B) it's in the past, and who wants to relive the ugly past in a blog? ugh! but rest assured, it was bad, just like you all probably predicted it would be, and yes, you were all right, he sucks and is a loser and blah blah blah. many thanks to the other dudes who basically got sacrificed to the gods in the process of me getting the fuck over this. sorry guys.

- the job: got a new one. i now have an awesome job where i'm not teaching any kids (okay, i have an advisory, but that's really fun--which is weird enough in itself, since i hated advisory at my old job). i get to spend all day YELLING at kids and also working with teachers and folks in industry, workforce development, government, etc. on figuring out how the kids i yell at can get green jobs once they graduate. pretty sweet deal, especially since my time is severely limited by the fact that i also went back to school this year. come next december, i'm going to be qualified to run a school. i mean, "qualified." terrifying.

- therapist: how the fuck do you think i did all that shit i just talked about, come on now.

- yoga: THANK YOU SUE. i made a lot of good decisions in 2009, but yoga was one of the best, if not the hands-down best. sue was (and is!) an amazing teacher, and i am unbelievably grateful to her for helping me find this outlet for a lot of pent up stress and frustration. ain't nothing in life that five minutes standing on your head won't cure.

- park slop(e): done. along with the new job--not to mention the fact that i knew my landlord was going to boot us eventually so that he could turn our apartment into condos--came the need for a move. old job was basically walking distance from my place in brooklyn, new job was an hour train ride over several crappy lines. so i moved into manhattan, to the first neighborhood i really knew in new york (thanks zoe!), right smack in the middle of the east village. hellooooo overdosing on la palapa and karaoke.

- anna p-otter: she's back! and under much, much improved circumstances. that's basically all there is to say about that. except this: wooooooo.

- brunch and karaoke: yeah, still totally doing that shit. although this year was filled with some drama and trauma that's probably not fit for blogging about! (note to self: you wanna find it in a year, just search your gmail chats for "nigerian" and "hysterical" and "talk about opening pandora's box, jesus christ, can't stuff that back in if you try! hahahah what! i know, this is insane. ugh."

alright people so... see you in a year. good talk.

vacation is awesome.

2009-02-17T16:47:00.001-08:00

as much as i complain about my job, there is one thing that i will always hold near and dear to my heart: we get a lot of vacations. it seems like just two weeks ago (because it was) that the younger kids were taking midterms and i wasn't teaching for a week, and like barely two months ago (because... you know, it was) that i was drinking eggnog and unwrapping christmas presents with my family in north carolina.

since i left work on friday, i've eaten mexican food and drank sangria with my coworkers; caught up on "the office," "big love," "lost," and "intervention" (it's amazing how much television you can watch without actually owning a television); gone to trader joe's and the middle eastern grocery store; gotten a manicure and pedicure; gone to brunch and karaoke with friends on valentine's day; flirted with dudes of multiple nationalities; had a free private yoga class; bought two new dresses, three tops, and a pair of pants (for under two hundred bucks!); watched conversations with other women and ratatouille; made ratatouille with couscous and crabmeat-stuffed trout; and had the last intake appointment at the therapist's office.

AND I STILL HAVE FIVE DAYS OF VACATION LEFT!

...but if i'm being honest, there are two other reasons why i'm in such a good mood these days. one is work-related, and i'll save that for another day. the other is this little lady, who made her planet earth debut on friday the 13th and who is already one of my favorite people in the world, despite not having laid eyes on her yet:

hope you're loving being five days old, annie--it only gets better from here!

+/-

2009-01-29T16:25:00.000-08:00

a recap of the first month of the year, two days before it ends:

+ i've been trying to cook at home more and eat out less. so far i'm about 50-50 for successful meals (lots of salads and an awesome veggie soup, but the frozen shrimp i bought and planned to use a billion times tastes way too fishy). i'm not sure i'm going out less at night, but i'm definitely buying fewer lunches at work.

+ i'm trying to be more serious about taking control of some of the shitty patterns i've fallen into over the past few years (and uh, in my life i guess), so i'm finally taking the plunge and have made an appointment with a therapist. we'll see about that.

+ my friend sue is trying to become a yoga teacher and is going to give me some private classes as part of her training. if this works out, i'm hoping we can keep doing it once she's finished and knows all her stuff.

+ i have a new project at work that i'm really excited about (first time i've been excited about work all year), and a few consulting jobs lined up for the spring--two writing curriculum for our school network, one serving on the planning team for a new school and one helping a charter school design its twelfth grade. no promises that i'll stay at my current job for another year, but i'm feeling like it's possible these days.

+ sandi's baby is two weeks away from arriving (cannot wait to meet the little bugger!) and i'm going home this weekend to help throw her a baby shower. this also means that i will get to thank mason for...

+ last week, when i was feeling bummed about the way things had settled out with the guy i dated for a significant part of next year, mason emailed me saying he had a friend from france who was visiting new york and was hoping i could provide some local hospitality. turns out, it was three friends from france, and they were all hot:

- am still, unfortunately, sort of bummed about the dude. i'm not sure what it is that's really stuck in my craw--partially, i think, that i was more emotionally invested than i should've been and i'm mad at myself, and partially because i get the sense that he's still not being completely honest with either one of us.

- perhaps more of a bummer: i've forgotten almost all of my french. it took me ten minutes to remember how to say the word "nut."

- have been working my ass off gearing up for the new semester and feel busier than i do on weeks when i don't actually teach students. how is this possible? i've worked long days all week; last night i had to cancel plans and didn't get home until almost 8:30 because of frantically trying to finish grades.

- winter blahs have officially arrived. how long until summer?

overall, things are on the upswing. here's hoping they continue.

highlights.

2009-01-01T20:27:00.000-08:00

i've been pretty down on 2008 for the past month or so, even going so far last night as to call it "one of the top three worst years of my life." i've seen two romantic relationships end, one that i expected and one that i didn't. i've gone from loving my job but hating the stress to totally disconnecting from it emotionally. i've had some health issues that still remain mostly unresolved.

in 2008, for the first time, i didn't keep my new year's resolution, and relapsed on two that i was trying to continue from previous years. i drank too much and didn't sleep or eat enough. i lost touch with some of my friends, and both my sister and best friend moved out of new york under really unfortunate circumstances. i didn't take my vitamins, didn't pay off my credit card, didn't find a new awesome apartment where i could live by myself.

most of all, i've started to really understand the emotional, physical, and mental toll that living in a big, fast-paced city takes on people.

on the other hand, though, when i look back at this year, i realize that i learned a lot--about myself, about other people, about what i need to do to make myself happier. i did some awesome stuff, spent time with some awesome people, and generally didn't have too miserable of a time in the big scheme of things. instead of writing about it, though, here are some pictures of people and things that made me happy (and sometimes sad, but mostly happy) in 2009:

here's to '09. i'm ready for a good year.

things i did this weekend while trying to pretend that my personal and professional lives are not both imploding.

2008-12-14T15:12:00.001-08:00

1. moved into the front room (my roommate moved out, and her room is way bigger).
2. did all the kenken puzzles on the new york times website.
3. punched a wall (twice).
4. drank a bottle of wine on my couch with john.
5. cleaned everything in sight.
6. bought a christmas tree, ornaments, and candy canes.
7. went to urban outfitters and only got things for myself.
8. watched lust, caution. (great movie. i recommend.)
9. reminded myself that this, too, shall pass.

days in new york that i want to remember

2008-11-23T06:56:00.000-08:00

the two of you had an art show, and everybody came. after we'd stuffed ourselves on grape leaves, mujadara, and hummus, we watched the short (which was funny, and weird like you are) and the documentary, which wasn't supposed to be funny but was. we drank your wine, and the more we drank, the more we all wanted to dance. when the show ended, we walked to your car, and then suddenly there was a soccer ball, and you guys ran through the streets. because you were drunk, somebody fell in a hole, and we laughed until our sides hurt and then went home. nobody wanted to go to sleep. we bought ice cream, even though it was cold outside, and took it on the roof with a pile of thick blankets, lying there huddled together until morning. after the sun had come up, we curled up on any available surface in the house and slept off the night.

*

we were feeling a little antisocial, a little sad, and a lot nostalgic. we bought all of our favorite foods, and traipsed all over the city to find them. in your tiny kitchen (where i never could figure out any rhyme or reason to your organization system), we cooked all day: stuffing, mashed potatoes, green beans. everything we would've done at home, except we weren't home so we could do it exactly how we wanted. organic, farmer's market green beans with canned fried onions. blue potatoes mashed with bleu cheese. we ate and drank and listened to christmas music, not because it was christmas but because it almost was, and because that, too, reminded us of home.

*

this could be any day, but it was just one: we were bored and hungry, so we went to brunch. and afterwards, with nothing to do, we went to your parents' house (this was before your mother got sick), and we ate cream puffs from the japanese bakery, watched a documentary about a baby camel, and sang songs whose words we didn't know to the television set. it was more fun than it sounds, wasn't it? your friends called, and even though we hadn't done anything all day we were sort of tired, but it was only eight and we were both wearing dresses so we had no reason not to go. when we told them at the bar about our day, they laughed at us, but they wanted to sing too, so we came home and did it all again.

*

you were going to leave the next day. i felt worried and sad, but so relieved that you would be getting what you needed and, i'll admit it now: a little relieved for me, too. we ate something, i don't remember what, and got our nails done (because it was stupid, but that day was supposed to be stupid). you helped me find my halloween costume and i realized that you would be gone before i wore it. when it got dark, we bought food for your party and took it to your house, where we cooked and ate and listened to bad music together. we tried on our costumes just so we'd get to see each other's, and you--in typical fashion--decided to put on scary music and greet your guests dressed up, lights off. by the time that we left, i missed you already.

*

it started in the park, but you weren't there for that part. or: it started a week before, when you watched me so intently while i talked that my face burned and i wanted to never run out of things to say to you. or: it started a month before, when everything was going wrong and you made me laugh. but i went to the park because it was one of the first warm days of the year, and when people decided to get food i wanted you to come. you did, commenting on the size of the group (it had tripled, i promise), and squeezed into the booth next to me. i don't remember much of the conversation, but i remember you jerked your head toward me when you walked outside, and i followed you and you kissed me on the sidewalk. you said, "can we do this sometime without all of these other people around?" and i said yes, of course. back inside you touched my leg under the table; you asked, "wednesday?" and when you wondered later if i remembered i said i don't remember much but i remember that and yes, of course.

*

we had driven all day, slept the sleep that only exhausted people can, and then done the whole thing again. i was excited, anxious, terrified, exhilarated; your motives were almost unbelievably altruistic. that night, as we lay in my bed with frozen washcloths on our faces, you said to me in complete seriousness: "if you don't get an air conditioner tomorrow, i'm going home." i wasn't ready to be by myself, and truly it was one of the hottest days i'd ever felt, so we did it and basked in the cool and in our success. when you left, i thought, this is really it, and my new life began.

if you don't laugh...

2008-11-18T16:08:00.000-08:00

today was an insane day at work: two fistfights--both between girls, which seems to be standard operating procedure at our school--and one of my classes was so awful that i sat down behind my desk and refused to teach them. (don't worry; i wrote the assignment for them on the board.) because one of the fights had been between two of my senior girls, i made sure to check our deans' office daily memo. it was pretty standard:

but then, as i continued reading, i noticed this:

then this:

and finally this:

it's probably inappropriate, but really, can you blame us?

nostalgia.

2008-11-16T15:49:00.001-08:00

because i moved out of state just a few months after my breakup with matt, i never really suffered from the "breakup" with our mutual friends. matt didn't feel this very much either, but that was mostly because his friends became my friends, and not vice versa. (insert joke about old dog, new tricks, etc.) but there were a lot of people that i lost in that breakup: matt's family, his roommates and their significant others, his bandmates, tour mates, and fans with whom we had become friends...

the list of people i lost at the end of that relationship, i've just finally come to realize, was pretty extensive. mostly i've noticed this lately because a bunch of those people have recently gotten married, leading to the requisite facebook photo posts. every album i see features someone i used to hang out with, someone with whom i share memories of shows or parties or barbecues. and even though i've stayed in touch with some of them, i haven't seen a single one--other than matt, whom i've seen once or twice since moving--in over two years.

last night i hung out with steve and sherry, whose connection to matt is sort of convoluted: steve went to college with alex, who played in matt's band and lived with him. sherry was a friend of warren's (who also played in matt's band) from their hometown in virginia. this year, after a long period of speculation about what the hell was going on between them, sherry and alex got married, and for some reason that nobody has figured out quite yet, have had steve by their sides nonstop since then.

most of the night we (understandably) spent talking about the old days. it's hard to believe that i met them eight years ago, when i was barely nineteen. it's harder to believe that sherry, alex, warren, matt, gray, dwayne, and quite a few others are married now, with a few more on their way down the aisle soon.

but maybe what's hardest to believe, when i look back on the fall of 2000, is how different i am. obviously people change a lot between nineteen and twenty-seven, but if anyone had told me then that this was the life i'd be living now, i don't think i could've believed it. regardless of my nostalgia, though, i'm glad that this is my life. it's a pretty good one, and i feel lucky most days to be living it.

(that doesn't mean that as soon as i finish this post, i'm not going to go drag out a bunch of old photos... because i totally am.)

a nerdy thought.

2008-11-15T09:58:00.001-08:00

i'm well aware of the context of these lines from julius caesar, but taken by themselves, i've found them particularly relevant this week:

And since you know you cannot see yourself
So well as by reflection, I, your glass,
Will modestly discover to yourself
That of yourself which you yet know not of.

Yes we... wait, really?

2008-11-08T06:13:00.000-08:00

i, like at least ninety-nine percent of the people with whom i'm not embarrassed to associate, was ecstatic to see barack obama named president-elect on tuesday night. it was a far cry from the election night of 2000, when excitement gave way to disappointment, and of 2004, when i felt the most discouraged i ever had at the ability of americans to tell right from wrong, just from unjust. tuesday night, i felt like we--as a country, and as individuals--had done something. "yes, we did!" people shouted.

it was a refrain that i heard throughout the night, and then into the next day, when we held a celebration rally at school. despite the dotting of conservative christians in our building, by and large, our staff and student population is very progressive. and while the conservative staff may have sat quietly licking their wounds, my lone republican student said to me, "i'm a republican, but miss--A BLACK MAN IS PRESIDENT!" the hallways between classes rang out with cheers of "OBAMA!" and "a black man in the white house!" and i thought, wow, how amazing, we really did it.

but we didn't.

certainly there is a great symbolic significance in the election of america's first black president, not even two centuries past slavery. certainly it is incredible that a man the same age as martin luther king, jr.'s children--the ones for whom he had his dream--has made it to the highest office in the most powerful country on our planet. and certainly it is a testament to the american dream, which many of us believed had died, that a man from such modest beginnings, a first-generation american, a "mutt" (as he called himself during his first press conference as president-elect), has shattered the highest glass ceiling imaginable.

what barack obama has spoken for throughout his campaign, what has resonated with all of us, is change. and although election night proved that we can bring about change, it has not yet proven that we have changed america to become the beacon of justice, freedom, hope, and equality that we believe it can be. we did not, on november 5th, have the right to say "yes we did" -- only "yes we will." because now we know we can. now there's no doubt that grassroots politics, that going door-to-door to talk to people about issues can succeed. now there's no excuse for not getting involved, for saying "what can i do? i'm just one person." you are not just one; you are now one of 65,340,608.

we have shown that political change is possible if we want it. we have elected a man whom we believe--and whom we dearly hope--helps represent a safer, cleaner, more peaceful future for america and for the world. but he can't do it alone. as president-elect obama himself said about climate change (and which you can read more about in the awesome post-election edition of newsweek): "We can’t solve global warming because I fucking changed light bulbs in my house. It’s because of something collective‘.”

true change--solving our nation's problems--is because of something collective. yesterday, in a seemingly serendipitous moment, i had to cover a coworker's class where students were taking a practice test for the state english language arts graduation exam. part of the test requires students to listen to a passage that's read aloud; and as i read to them president john f. kennedy's 1961 inaugural address, i couldn't help but get a little emotional at hints of that same hopefulness that we're feeling now, of that same potential for change:

So let us begin anew—remembering on both sides that civility is not a sign of weakness, and sincerity is always subject to proof. Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.

Let both sides explore what problems unite us instead of belaboring those problems which divide us.

Let both sides, for the first time, formulate serious and precise proposals for the inspection and control of arms—and bring the absolute power to destroy other nations under the absolute control of all nations.

Let both sides seek to invoke the wonders of science instead of its terrors. Together let us explore the stars, conquer the deserts, eradicate disease, tap the ocean depths, and encourage the arts and commerce.

Let both sides unite to heed in all corners of the earth the command of Isaiah—to "undo the heavy burdens ... and to let the oppressed go free."

And if a beachhead of cooperation may push back the jungle of suspicion, let both sides join in creating a new endeavor, not a new balance of power, but a new world of law, where the strong are just and the weak secure and the peace preserved.

All this will not be finished in the first 100 days. Nor will it be finished in the first 1,000 days, nor in the life of this Administration, nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin.

yes we will.
yes we will.
yes we will.

2008-11-04T04:15:00.001-08:00

things i learned this week.

2008-10-13T19:54:00.000-07:00

1. my family and friends are really amazing and will take care of me when i need it.
2. it's time for me to start taking better care of myself.
3. sometimes, if you give people the chance to step up, they will.
4. red velvet cake with cream cheese icing really is the best kind of cake.
5. the promise of a weekend at home makes everything better.
6. i should've bought some stock this weekend.
7. carolina has a pretty decent football team this year.
8. saying what you feel is extremely underrated.
9. i should never have straight red hair or bangs.
10. everything is gonna be okay.

all in all, it's been a very educational week.

things i need: a fashion week retrospective.

2008-10-01T07:10:00.000-07:00

from looking at innumerable shows at new york, milan, and paris fashion weeks, these are the items i have concluded i absolutely cannot live without under any circumstances:

1. a good pair of short cutoff jean shorts
2. black ankle boots
3. a corset belt
4. one (just one, because i hate myself for even thinking one) pair of leggings
4a. could be replaced by a pair of jodhpurs whose crotch does not go down to my knees
5. boots that can be over-the-knee or fold down
6. more men's shirts
7. some motherfucking combat boots (maybe. oh my god, it's all just too angela chase for me.)

secret message to anna: gahhhhhhhhhhhhhh so amazing, the whole line!

click your heels three times.

2008-09-30T17:43:00.000-07:00

i love new york, and damnit i'm a big girl and can take care of myself in this insane city, but i admit that my second year here came with a fair amount of homesickness that's carrying over into year three. it started with anna moving home in january and was compounded by the fact that, after christmas, i didn't go back to north carolina until the end of june. it also didn't help that those months were incredibly stressful for me, with a crappy relationship/breakup and a massive number of work responsibilities.

this year has brought additional reasons to miss north carolina: a recurrence of my grandfather's cancer and some resulting depression on his part; some very serious health problems that my cousins' loved ones are facing; and one of my best friends' pregnancy (the first among my close friends), coupled with her brother's unexpected death last night.

it's hard being away from the people you love when they're having a hard time, especially when those hard times remind you that neither you nor anybody else is going to be around forever and that every time you're together could be the last one.

so gandan, lewis family (audrey, i'm lookin' at you), and sandi: i'm coming home in a few weeks and i want to see as many of your wonderful faces as possible. i love all of you and am sending you the very best of vibes from afar.

(in brighter news, i am thrilled for the vp debate on thursday and finally got my obama button from moveon.org today!)

the waiting.

2008-09-07T07:45:00.000-07:00

remember when i posted the trailer for the new season of the office, in which jim suggests to dwight a new olympic sport? looks like dwight managed to come up with some ideas of his own:

leave bristol alone.

2008-09-02T16:59:00.000-07:00

i've been thinking a lot about the revelation of sarah palin's daughter bristol's pregnancy and the fact that it has been used as a weapon by the so-called "rabid liberals" in the campaign to discredit palin and her support of abstinence-only education. while i think that sarah palin is basically a huge joke and think that the paltry--at best--vetting process that she underwent at the hands of the mccain campaign makes the republicans look like even bigger jokes than they did, say, a week or a month ago, i absolutely do not believe that political candidates' underage children may be used to smear their parents. to paraphrase chris crocker: leave bristol alone.

bristol palin is seventeen years old. seventeen, and the entire rest of her life is going to be dictated by her decision--made, no doubt, with the help of her parents--to raise a child and to marry that child's father. everything might work out fine for her, but statistics say it will not. (don't worry, fellow bleeding-hearts, i know that our dear senator obama was born to a teen mother, and one of my favorite ladies ever, loretta lynn, was a teenage mother herself.) but to drag this young woman--this child--through the muck as evidence of her mother's hypocritical policies is by no means fair.

first of all, as i said before (and this is more than obvious), we're talking about a child here. there are innumerable laws in this country that govern how we treat and protect children, from limiting the number of hours they can work after school to sealing their legal records when they become of age. if these are standards that we believe in and find fair, how does this pregnancy--not that of someone who has chosen to be a celebrity, like jamie lynn spears, but someone who was thrust into it only by her family connection--become national news? why don't CNN and fox news feel guilty for plastering her photos across our screens; more importantly, why don't we feel guilty for watching? we americans, arguably the world citizens with the most faith in our own moral superiority, feel outrage when a marine throws a puppy off a cliff and yet have no shame about discussing this girl around our company water coolers, cackling at how foolish and naive the whole situation makes her mother look.

second, against my compatriots' tendency to cling to this as evidence that sarah palin's beloved abstinence-only education is ineffective, i absolutely disagree that her daughter's pregnancy is, will be, or should be a nail in her political coffin. the entire philosophy of abstinence-only education is that parents, not public schools, have the right to teach their children about healthy sexual behaviors. by that very logic, this pregnancy was a failure of the parents, not the system. if palin is smart, and i think she is, she'll own up to this when questioned--that she maintains her beliefs but acknowledges that she didn't hold up her personal end of the bargain. (don't get me wrong--i find abstinence-only education totally abominable, but i think we should use statistical, not anecdotal, evidence to dismantle it.)

friends, lest you take this as an endorsement of sarah palin or merely as my making excuses for her, consider this: here we have a woman (and her husband) who, despite a pregnant teenage daughter and an infant son with special needs, have made the greedy, selfish, power-hungry decision to thrust their family into the public light and sacrifice their ability to parent their progeny in the name of pursuing their four-year spot on air force two. instead of protecting their daughter's privacy, instead of staying home to raise their son, they are opting for a place in the history books. if you want to hate the palins, don't hate them for being hypocrites that they might be; hate them for being the shitty parents that they are.

and now, a brief interlude.

2008-09-01T16:06:00.000-07:00

tomorrow is the first day of classes. as usual, i have about six billion hours of unfinished work to do before i'm ready. so of course i'm writing in my blog and watching episodes of one of the best shows on tv, 30 rock. check out this hilarious clip:

trying to be the tortoise.

2008-08-24T13:21:00.000-07:00

i am learning, slowly but surely, that if i just relax more and worry less, everything* will work out fine.

* except for my phone, which almost got washed away into the ocean today and now is non-functioning. beanie, i promise i'll call you as soon as it's fixed.

la plus ça change...

2008-08-13T17:34:00.001-07:00

when i was younger, i got in trouble constantly for saying shit i shouldn't have--talking back, gossiping, being overly critical--and as a result developed a somewhat serious complex about it. even as an adult, i'm always worried that something i say will be misinterpreted or taken out of context (or, worse, that i'll actually say something awful) and get busted for it.

today i made the huge mistake of accidentally, in the middle of a joke, repeating something i had been told in confidence. not only did i repeat the information, though, i did it in front of the person about whom the information was in the first place. both parties are now understandably furious at me, which will probably result in the loss of one friend and, at the very least, the trust of the other.

this wouldn't be so bad, i think, if it weren't for the fact that this is the second time in under a week that i've said some things i shouldn't say. to top things off, the real bitch of it is that both situations involved the same person (the teller, not the subject, of the previous story). this is a person whom i respect and like a lot, but around whom i feel like i'm always on pins and needles. i worry constantly that i'm going to say the wrong thing, do the wrong thing, convey some feeling i don't mean to convey, and it's going to throw the very delicate balance of our friendship spinning into a catastrophic tailspin.

the most frustrating part of all of this is feeling like i'm an eleven year-old kid again, getting confronted in the school cafeteria for talking behind someone's back. in a week i'll be twenty-seven years old; shouldn't i be able to leave my adolescent bad habits behind me? and if i can't, what does that say about me? why am i still relying on the same defense mechanisms to cover up for the same insecurities?

my hair: now, more than ever, a part of me.

2008-08-12T14:19:00.000-07:00

growing up, my hair wasn't curly; in fact, until i hit puberty my sisters and i were so desperate for curly hair that we developed unholy addictions to both a crimping iron and our waving iron. (my hairdresser said, "did it get curly when you were twelve or so?" i laughed and said, "try ten... but i get your point.")

it wasn't until college, around the same time i read in a magazine that people with curly hair shouldn't brush it, that i stopped my daily battle with the blow dryer, round brush, and straightener. a few years ago i got a terrible haircut that only looked halfway decent when my hair was straightened and pulled back (anna can vouch for this--i cried while she helped me fix it the first time), and i felt like i was missing a limb or something. my curly hair had finally become part of my identity, part of how i identified myself. when my students asked me repeatedly last year to straighten my hair for them just once, i continually refused, only breaking down once prom came around and i figured i had no excuse not to. (i spent about an hour straightening it, and that's also about how long it took before the curls started to come back.)

today, good morning america ran a segment in which a woman went into three different situations--one with children, one with straight men, and one with potential employers--to see how they reacted to her with curly hair versus straight hair. although i found such an "unscientific experiment," as they called it on the show, completely ridiculous and sort of offensive, of course i couldn't resist watching to find out the results. it wasn't that surprising that the men liked straight hair better (to be fair, this chick had a HUGE MOP), nor was i totally shocked that the interviewers liked her better with curly hair, but what totally killed me was a comment one of the men made when asked to say his first impression of the woman with curly hair: "teacher."

really? curly hair immediately makes men think of teachers? i guess maybe that's why a guy in a bar once guessed my profession correctly three seconds after meeting me, and why ninety percent of the guys i meet say within the first hour something along the lines of, "i never had a teacher like you in high school." maybe... i guess.

so ladies, if you're going for the "hot for teacher" look, allow me to recommend a trip to your stylist, or maybe just picking up a good crimping iron. it worked for this lady, it can work for you.

the only olympics-related thing i care about

2008-08-09T12:14:00.001-07:00

if you, like me, are hopelessly obsessed with the office (the american version--GO USA!), then you'll appreciate this season five promo that aired yesterday:

secret message to beanie

2008-08-09T10:58:00.001-07:00

i finished that book--what day did we talk? tuesday? wednesday? i couldn't put it down.

life in the fast lane.

2008-08-05T21:24:00.000-07:00

i just wrote an entire entry about someone who's somewhat recently become part of my life, and about whom i'm having like fifty different kinds of conflicting feelings, and then i realized, "oh shit, i linked this blog from my facebook profile. what if [person] sees it?"

so i erased it, and now i'm still sitting here wondering whether i should even mention "fifty different kinds of conflicting feelings" or if that's still too much of a giveaway should this person actually read what i've written. also, though, if i'm going to write about it on the internet, i should just be able to say it face-to-face, right?

but obviously that's not the way it works. and so, person, so-and-so, if you stumble across this tomorrow or some other day: i hope you keep giving me chances to put this puzzle together, because i really want them. and if you think i'm talking about you, don't you dare ask me, because you know i'll laugh embarrassedly and lie, despite how i know you feel about liars.

yes, this is about you, yes it is.
no, this is not about you, you must be crazy, you egomaniac.

don't argue with me.

2008-08-03T17:29:00.000-07:00

last night at a birthday party in the city, i got into a discussion (read: argument) with about ten men, each about ten years older than me, on the topic of the best songs ever in movies. the result of the conversation was that i decided they were stupid and also that i needed to share my personal choices with the internets. unfortunately i couldn't decide on just ten, so here are my best fifteen:

15. from the royal tenenbaums: nico, "these days"
wes anderson's movies always have such great soundtracks, and the royal tenenbaums totally takes the cake. (it was hard to pick just one song from this movie, especially with such other choices like elliott smith's "needle in the hay," van morrison's "everyone," and paul simon's "me and julio down by the schoolyard".) supposedly he thought up this particular scene, where margot and richie first see each other as she gets off the bus, just based on the song. and lucky for you, youtube has a video of it:

14. from home alone: the drifters, "white christmas"
maybe i'm just a sentimental goober for loving this, but as a kid who grew up in the eighties and, from time to time, wished she could make her family disappear (sorry ma), this has always been one of my favorite movie scenes, and i can't hear the drifters' version of "white christmas" without thinking of it. honorable mention: peggy lee's rockin' around the christmas tree as the background for a kevin mcallister christmas party, complete with puppetry that would impress a professional.

13. harold and maude: cat stevens, "trouble"
don't get me wrong--cat stevens' entire soundtrack to this movie is absolutely perfect, but there's something a little bit heavenly about "trouble," which closes the offbeat love story of twentysomething harold and octogenarian maude. what makes it so, so utterly great though is how well it captures the final scene, where harold once again fakes his own death but then comes out of it, for once, happy.

12. from the silence of the lambs: q. lazzarus, "goodbye horses"
i had never really thought too much about this song, which accompanies the fantastically creepy moment in which buffalo bill asks himself in the mirror, "would you fuck me?" as he applies lipstick, and in fact couldn't have named it or the artist until i started making this list. but a few weeks ago, in a bar, it came on and immediately my friend and i were taken back to this part of the film. after a few minutes, we realized we weren't the only ones--everybody at the bar (a whopping ten people) had shifted their conversation to how bizarre and haunting the scene was. in case you don't remember (but how could you not?):

11. from reservoir dogs: stealers wheel, "stuck in the middle with you"
unlike the last pick, which was gross and creepy but just made sense, the choice of poppy "stuck in the middle with you" as mr. blonde cuts of the ear of some poor police officer is gross, creepy, and downright ironic. bonus points for the fact that he dances around with the straight razor and mumbles the song's words beforehand while the tied up, bloodied officer anxiously watches. i won't bother you with a video (although youtube has one), but trust me, this scene and the song it features won't leave you quickly after you watch it.

10. from donnie darko: gary jules, "mad world"
despite only coming in at number ten (and despite the fact that i usually hate movie montages), this is my pick for the best song on my list that closes the film in which it's featured. the tone, the lyrics (and i find it kinda funny/ i find it kinda sad/ that the dreams in which i'm dying/ are the best i've ever had)--everything perfectly complements the scene during which the people who knew donnie react to his death, most with a noticeable lack of any sort of facial expression.

9. from the breakfast club: simple minds, "don't you (forget about me)"
this one is sort of obvious, don't you think? a total feel-good song, at the end of one of the most awesome teen-angst-cum-feel-good movies ever. it even comes with a perfect little voiceover about how high school students are so misunderstood by adults but how they're really so smart and deep and whatever else. and anybody who says they don't think of judd nelson and molly ringwald every time they hear this song is a liar. you can quote me on that.

8. from peewee's big adventure: the champs, "tequila"
anybody who has known me for more than half a second knows about my abiding love for all things related to peewee herman (and chances are you've seen me do an impression of this very scene), so of course it had to make the list. there's just something so ridiculously hilarious, so peewee-ish and tim-burton-y, about a dude wearing a bowtie and white platform shoes dancing on a bar at a hell's angels hangout.

7. from the virgin suicides: air, "playground love"
even though this song only appears during the opening credits for the film, and even though it's not even the regular version--instead, it's a weird vibraphone-driven instrumental (and interestingly enough, it doesn't appear on the band's soundtrack), it's still perfect, especially if you know the words that you're not hearing:

i'm a high school lover
and you're my favorite flavor
love is all, all my soul
you're my playground love

yet my hands are shaking
i feel my body reeling
time's no matter, i'm on fire
with my playground love

you're the piece of gold
that flashes on my soul
extra time, on the ground
you're my playground love

anytime, anywhere
you're my playground love

i don't know about you, but i certainly can't think of a better song to narrate the story of barely pubescent middle-american boys obsessively in lust with five beautiful, strange, suicidal sisters.

6. from magnolia: aimee mann, "wise up"
i almost feel like this one is cheating, since paul thomas anderson wrote the script for magnolia based in part on this song (along with the other aimee mann songs featured in the movie; entire lines of dialogue are lifted straight from some of the songs' lyrics). still, there's something especially powerful and haunting about this song and the scene that features it, in which the characters actually sing along as their lives seem to dissolve around them. (a video, you say? why yes, i can do that.)

5. from almost famous: elton john, "tiny dancer"
if you can't tell based on this choice and the last one, i love movies where people sing. even more, though, i love movies where people sing along to songs (as opposed to, you know, musicals.) i loved michael cera and ellen paige's duet at the end of juno; i swooned over patrick swayze and jennifer grey mouthing "love is strange" to each other in dirty dancing. but the movie singalong that stands above all others for me is this one. it's a great moment in the movie and for the movie--the one where you know that, despite the rifts between the characters and their myriad problems (sex, drugs, rock & roll) they consider themselves a family. also great is the fact that until they start bobbing their heads to the beat, you don't even realize that the song is actually playing for them, too. plus, how often do you get to hear mark kozelek randomly belt out elton john?

4. from the graduate: simon & garfunkel, "mrs. robinson"
i would be a bad movie fan and an even worse paul simon fan if i didn't include this song, which i heard long before i was old enough to watch anne bancroft slide her pantyhose over her leg as she tried to seduce a young (and oddly attractive) dustin hoffman. the best part about this song is the fact that, in addition to appearing in scene seemingly unrelated to the anvil-subtle lyrics, the version of the song itself features an increasingly frenetic guitar strum that perfectly matches benjamin's mood as he races to break up elaine's wedding.

3. from wayne's world: queen, "bohemian rhapsody"
as a wee little youngster of eleven, i'd never really heard of queen or this song before wayne's world. in fact, i don't think i'd even seen saturday night live enough to know what "wayne's world was," but damnit, i loved this movie. and i immediately, upon seeing it, loved "bohemian rhapsody" and set about to learning all of the words, one of my most formidable lyric-learning challenges to date (see also: blues traveler's "the hook," don maclean's "american pie," and of course sir mix-a-lot's "baby got back"). more importantly, i already told y'all that i'm a sucker for singalongs:

2. from the departed: the rolling stones, "gimme shelter"
this was, i must admit, the song that spurred the night's entire argument; and by argument, i mean that i kept drunkenly demanding that these guys tell me what the best intro bars to any rock song ever were and then getting mad when they were like, "oh i dunno." because hands-down, "gimme shelter" is the rock song with the best intro ever, and martin scorsese really nailed it when he put this song in the background of the opening scene of the departed, one of the most engrossing films i've ever seen.

1. from apocalypse now: the doors, "the end"
and finally, my favorite scene from any movie ever, with the absolute most perfect, creepiest, most well-matched song to accompany it. after i saw apocalypse now for the first time, i became totally obsessed with learning about its filming and production. here's what i learned about this scene: it was the last one they filmed, on the last day of a sixteen-month shoot that was supposed to take under a year. martin sheen, who was only thirty-five years old at the time, had suffered a heart attack on-set from the stress, and he improvised this unscripted scene while actually drunk. supposedly, the tears and the blood are real, and he scared the film crew so much when he punched the mirror that they wanted to stop shooting; francis ford coppola refused, and this opening scene (how ironic that the song is "the end") was the result:

nypd: doing an awesome job.

2008-07-30T09:26:00.000-07:00

it's summer in the city, and errbody going crazy. as if the two shootings and the machete stabbing that have happened on my friends' block (the same block!) over the past couple of weeks weren't enough, it seems the members of the nypd are starting to feel the heat too. check out these two videos of cops being dicks:

vacation.

2008-07-29T09:30:00.000-07:00

my mom is a really awesome photographer; i am not. coincidentally, she's also a really awesome mom, and when i went home to visit a few weeks ago and was complaining about not having a good camera to take to mexico, she surprised me with one. so for my ma, here are some of the pictures i've taken with it, even though they aren't as pretty as hers:

okay, so i didn't take this one, but it's notable anyway. this is the first ever (seriously) picture taken of mason and me, even though we've been friends for three years. i was so excited to finally have a camera that i took it out with us when we went to the rockford one night and forced somebody to take a picture of us. this is what happened, which is really no surprise if you know either mason or me.

our first full day in mexico, we wound down by going to the restaurant (i say restaurant, but really it was a little shack with a stove) of jorge's friends benjamin and adriana. adriana is mexican, and benjamin is american, a former air force detective who gave up a fancy job at boeing to move to puerto vallarta and be a beach bum. the way adriana ignores all of benjamin's stories, it's hard to tell if she's heard them too many times or if she knows they're all too crazy to be true. we sat on the beach drinking beer and watching the sunset in front of a cedar fire, and this is my favorite of the pictures i got.

on our second full day we went to a town called yelapa, which just got electricity a few years ago and isn't really accessible any way other than by boat. (i think there's one road into the town, but it's not big enough to be passable any way other than by horse or ATV.) instead of getting dropped off at the beach with everyone else, we asked the water taxi driver to take us to the pier, in the center of the pueblo. from there, we hiked up--i wish i'd taken more pictures, because it really was beautiful--to a small restaurant overlooking a waterfall. in addition to the few tourists who, like us, had braved the trek in their flip flops, there were a ton of little local boys who were jumping off a rock at least forty feet high into about three feet of water. i took this picture of "the grumpy one," a kid who at first sat in the water below the rock refusing to let anybody else jump, then would move away and try to drown the other kids as soon as they hit the water. after a few minutes of buttering him up (with some pie and a hackey sack), he became our guide back to the beach.

and of course, no liza vacation would be complete without at least one day of being totally useless and lazy (although in my defense, i was feeling pretty under the weather that day after having eaten this the night before). that's me, jorge on the ground in the back, and one of the beach dogs who adopted us in the middle. every single day we had another beach dog, and the two days we spent in sayulita were the worst. not only were they everywhere, but since sayulita's beach is filled with guys who run surf camps, all the dogs get tons of attention from the surfers and feel entitled to be friendly with everybody.

so that's been my summer so far, pretty much. who knows what adventures i will get into with or without my camera over the next few weeks. i will keep everybody posted.

politics, who needs 'em?

2008-07-28T17:01:00.000-07:00

i'm really lazy when it comes to reading the news during the summer. during the school year, i have a routine: check the BBC headline feed first thing in the morning and read any articles that look interesting, important, or like they might be able to help me at trivia. (my semi-regular bar trivia team once won by two points because i knew that the living artist whose work had sold for the highest price at auction was lucian freud, and that it had fetched $33.6 million.) then at work, when i have more than a few free seconds, i read the front page of the new york times online and skim the world, US, and NY/regional sections.

in the summer, it's all i can do to go to the "most emailed articles" and read the top three, even though they're almost always human interest stories (how much radon is in your marble countertop? rich parents are really annoying when their kids are away at summer camp!). the only exception to this rule is that i always, always read my favorite political columns, occasionally to actually learn something, but usually just to reinforce what i already believe about the world of politics.

my favorites--the ones i always read, every week, no matter what, are frank rich and maureen dowd. lest you question my devotion to these folks, maureen dowd was one of the most persuasive pro-obama voices when i was a hillary-supporter during the early primaries and contributed significantly to the eventual shift in my loyalty. frank rich, not quite the uber-obama-ite (obamite?) that dowd is, tends to be more critical of him when he messes up but still regularly portrays him as a hands-down better candidate than john mccain.

the second tier of my favorite columnists is made up of thomas l. friedman, who wrote the world is flat and comments on environmental and foreign policy issues (sometimes together--check out his 9/11 and 4/11 column for a primer), and paul krugman, a progressive economist who recently claimed that "other politicians besides george w. bush share the blame for the economic mess we’re in but most of them are republicans."

and finally, there are the sometimes-reads: bob herbert, nicholas d. kristof, and william kristol. the first two, i think, are obvious choices: herbert is one of the most outspoken left-wing columnists out there these days, unafraid to criticize anyone or anything offending him, and kristof is currently in the middle of a fascinating series on slavery in the 21st century. but william kristol? really? i admit it, the guy leaves me fuming every single week. he's a dumbass, and i sometimes feel like i'm not going to be able to even get past his smarmy smile and stupid hair to even read his column. but in the end, every time, it reminds me that conservatives are, as a group, insane. they say insane things; they believe insane things. and best of all, right now they are desperately scrambling for any attacks they can make on the democrats. so even though he makes me mad, i also read his column for the chuckles.

so those are my favorite new york times columnists, the ones whose pieces i read religiously or semi-religiously on my way to the "crosswords" link. they're only about half of the total op-ed columns, but i can't muster up the emotional investment for any other ones. if you get through them all and find that they're not enough, though, allow me to recommend a really great piece of investigative journalism on the new trend of having your bridal shower at a plastic surgeon's office.

i like to pretend i know things.

2008-07-27T20:39:00.000-07:00

this afternoon, someone said to me that "plants feel pain." without giving it a second's thought, i immediately launched into a response about adverse stimuli, nervous systems, and protective mechanisms in living organisms blah blah blah. after i finished, i was like, "ha!" but then i realized that i actually had no idea what i was talking about. i'm not a scientist; in fact, since high school, i've taken exactly one science class, and that was astronomy.

i find myself doing this a lot: responding to a comment that i know is wrong--either because it's stupid or just because damnit, it's wrong--knowing full well that i have no idea why it's wrong or how to explain the correct position. but i do it anyway and, despite confessing it here like i'm in church or something, i am unashamed.

so uh... thanks, dad.