An Exercise in Compulsion

worst songs of the 90s

2009-11-12T06:01:31Z

For no particular reason, in no particular order, and following a very narrow but undefined set of parameters:

4 non blondes: what's up
the cranberries: ode to my family and zombie and linger
hootie and the blowfish: only want to be with you (but also everything they've ever done)
everlast: that one song that was really lame
chumbawumba: tubthumping
rednex: cotton eyed joe
limp bizkit: categorically everything
snow: informer and two princes
smash mouth: rockstar
barenaked ladies: one week (and also everything they've ever done, jesus christ)

I can't stop laughing, and not just because I'm drunk

2009-10-23T08:59:18Z

http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=1578

*ps. I can NEVER get over the random log cabin and car the dinosaur is always about to step on in the third panel.

LOL.

2009-03-19T23:22:50Z

Τὸν γὰρ τοιοῦτον ἄνθρωπον οὐδεὶς τῶν περιοικούντων οὐπώποτ’ εἶδεν ... ὄνομα δ’ ἦν αὐτῷ Ἄλβος Διμπλόδωρος.

http://www.amazon.com/Harry-Potter-Philosophers-Stone-Ancient/dp/158234826X

Overheard on the bus

2008-10-31T02:03:58Z

undergrad 1: what are you going to be for halloween?
undergrad 2: che guevara.
undergrad 1: huh?
undergrad 2: che guevara.
undergrad 1: what's that?
undergrad 2: a revolutionary. in cuba. and also the ENTIRE WORLD.
undergrad 1: oh wow!!!! that sure beats dressing up as a pizza!

I don't even know where to start.

Very Important Announcement, and Deathly Excitement

2008-01-21T05:32:37Z

PBS's Masterpiece Classics is showing the complete Jane Austen every Sunday at 9 for the forseeable future. Tonight is Northanger Abbey, which I've never seen rendered onto TV or film. It's the crudest, most overtly farcical, and lightest out of the entire featherlight bunch, but I am equipped with a bottle of French white and a fire in our woodburning stovey thingie, so I am superpleased.

oh ow.

2007-12-09T20:59:10Z

today is not pretty. there is a lot of lying very still in the dark in my immediate future.

the pain.

What To Do When You're an Idiot Who Drinks Too Much on a Schoolnight

2007-09-12T19:39:27Z

4:00 am: stumble to the bathroom and swallow 800 mg of ibuprofen
5:30 am: stumble to the bathroom and swallow 600 mg of ibuprofen
6:45 am: contemplate "calling in sick," but your students tend to show up every day and therefore so should you. stumble to the bathroom and swallow 600 mg of ibuprofen. in a moment of epiphany, bring the bottle back with you and snuggle it in bed
7:15: despite enough ibuprofen to kill a pony, headache is not lifting, so take more drastic measures. give yourself an injection of potent migraine medicine.
7:16: bleed all over the bed
7:17: lie very still and feel the meds coursing through your veins.
7:18-8:00 am: tell yourself that YOU NEED TO GET UP RIGHT NOW RIGHT NOW RIGHTNOW.
8:05 am: dress like a hobo in both a dress AND pants, shoes and no socks. inspect your appearance in the mirror and decide that you look kinda hot when you're hungover because your lips are so swollen and red. double fist instant coffee and diet dr. pepper
8:25-8:57 am: freak the fuck out because the bus is taking forever and you're usually on campus by 8:10 and aarrgh
9:05: enter your class and try to control the dizziness and nausea that take over whenever you look down to your book.
9:10-9:30: stall by going over homework. students seem to respond well.
9:30: in a moment of glorious pedagogical brilliance, decide to split them up into groups so that they can TEACH EACH OTHER THE MATERIAL. sit in a chair and stare into space. maybe drool a little. fear that someone will see through your ruse.
9:57: ask the class in faux-concerned tone if they "found this interactive pedagogical experiment" useful, and almost die of shock when they respond with enthusiasm and joy.

rest of your life: u r brilliant and awesome and can now drink ALL THE WINE in the world.

We're Moving

2007-04-21T00:17:00Z

A few days ago we received a letter from our landlord explaining that they were forced under law to inform us of the following:

"This is to notify you that your building is on the City of Berkeley's Inventory of Soft Story Potentially Hazardous Buildings and may constitute a severe threat to life and safety in the event of an earthquake of moderate to high magnitude."

So it looks like I will be saying goodbye to my hideous wood-panelled and apparently extraordinarily fragile home. Just when I had found a clever way to circumvent the wood-panelling by the use of gracefully draped sheer curtains!

I will experience no sadness, however, in saying goodbye to my neighbours. It's really quite amazing how fate managed to lump in one small residential building craziness of such massiveness and heartbreaking fragmentation. We are sandwiched on either side by bona-fide Mental Institution Grade Crazy Ladies: Crazy Lady on our living room side is the marginally more functional of the two; she does appear to have a job and more than one outfit, and takes pains to take care of herself. When we moved in she earnestly requested that we try to park away from the wall, to leave room for her "exercises," which consist of strapping multiple weight-vests onto her 75-pound frame and dragging herself in a stilted trot round and round our dank underground parking lot. I can only assume that this exertion is followed up by a nourishing bowl of sawdust. She claims not to feel safe running around in the open in Berkeley--Berkeley, where sunshine and flowers fill your life and kittens frolic on every corner. Her suspicion and animosity towards the universe are extended to her opinion of our neighbours--she noted with narrowed eyes that the (very nice, to my knowledge) young couple who live below her "receive many catalogs. It's as if they do ALL their shopping by catalog!!" as a sinister, festering secret. She was mildly nonchalant, however, in warning us about the Other Crazy Lady, saying simply "watch out for her: she will go through your trash, and she will break out in random bursts of obscenity. But although she is verbally abusive, don't worry, she's not generally physically abusive."

Crazy Lady on our bedroom side fills me with dread at every waking moment. Her idea of a fruitful, productive day is to pace up and down our shared balcony streaming her long matted gray hair behind her, muttering various four-letter words and keeping a vigilant eye on the trash and recycling. The very first week of our stay in our lovely home we found at our doorstep an assortment of things we had thrown away days before--things she clearly thought were not meant to be thrown away, such as a used razor and a sock with holes in it. The following week when we were unpacking various furnitures from their styrofoam wrappings, we found day after day the discarded styrofoam bits meticulously removed from the trash and heaped up on the windshield of our car. Take that, styrofoam-users! And of course there was the Case of the Mysterious Panties: we had found to our horror that a single pair of red leopard print panties (size: bigger than red leopard print underwear should come in, ever) had been left in the dryer. Chris proceeded to remove and leave them in the general laundry area (and then vomit copiously), where the Mysterious Panties remained for weeks, until they reappeared at dawn on our doorstep wrapped around one of our magazines.

Aside from these passive-agressive moves, though, this Crazy Lady generally stayed out of our way, but I get the sense that recently her hatred for us has grown. On Wednesday I was up until the wee hours reading Tacitus and right around midnight I heard her skulking around my front door, all sneaky-like. The delicacy of her step was then completely negated by the agitated clanking of the wine bottles in our recycling, after which she scampered away and slammed her front door. And! she has become particularly offended by the sound of my voice: for the last few nights if I have spoken to Chris in bed (no later than 11:30, because we're neeerds) she throws herself into a manic frenzy of pounding the wall between us right at the height of my head, over and over again, arrhythmic and mad. Perhaps her perverted love affair with the sounds of our intimacy has turned sour--some months ago Chris stepped out for a post-intimacy cigarette and claims to have seen her standing at her doorway, staring straight at him, WITHOUT ANY PANTS. Or could it be that she has fallen for my man and now seeks to eliminate me through wall-pounding-induced headaches? A clever strategy, but I am armed with ibuprofen and, you know, sanity!

Beneath us, finally, we have an exemplar of heartbreaking sadness. The tenant is an elderly woman, a retired concert pianist. As I have already indicated, our apartments are flimsy and small, so I suspect that her piano occupies the majority of her living space, but because it functions as her primary companion I am sure she doesn't mind. Every day at 10 am sharp she settles in with scales and practice fugues, and then plays a marvelous classical repertoire for hours on end. Her playing is interrupted only by hallucinated phone calls which force her to stop the music and shout feebly into the phone "hellooo? heLLOOOO? HELLOOOOO?" Even though her music makes my floor vibrate and my walls threaten collapse, and I'm starting to go crazy myself because of the unending repetition, I have nothing but affection for this little old lady, and I hope she manages to find some happiness in her solitude.

But in any case: come July, we're out of there.

in which a london broil is battled

2006-10-19T07:20:12Z

today I simultaneously battled a London Broil and a Hangover. or rather. today I delighted in the aromas of an experimental london broil while wishing I were dead a little because of my hangover. both were successfully conquered--I'd say the london broil was vanquished a little more emphatically than the other, which indicates that my culinary abilities are stronger than my liver. apples and oranges, whatever.