I can only hope she catches my more flattering side. As it stands I too am still jobless, and getting more broke by the day. Hopefully something new will come soon. As for my lack of Bloggerness... well, comes from a lack of new on my front.
I continue to serve my designated spot in the house as Tentacle man... which these strange head cases have given a name to. And waste my time doing meaningless stuff.
On the other hand, tomorrow night... er... tonight, should be a blast. I fully intend to get wasted and perhaps do something stupid.
I also swear I will kick the ass of whoever decides to pound on my door for fear I have a woman in my bed.
posted by Mike at 4:10 AM link/comments
Saturday, December 30, 2000
okokokokokokok we bow down to the authority of Miss Kate, and acknowledge her superior blogging discipline.... still no job, but hopeful of things to happen soon... i don't really know WHY i'm hopeful, but hey i don't have any further to fall. In related news it seems that a certain blogger has purchased a digital camera and is happy snapping her ass off.... i've been the lucky recipient of some so far, and i must say that her photographic stylings are as expected, full of style and charm..... i'm constantly astonished by her talents.... many and varied as they are...... *grin*
posted by billyjoe noodle-bob at 7:45 AM link/comments
Thursday, December 28, 2000
All right, all right. We have some serious blog neglect going on here, due mostly to the fact that I've been a big slug for the past week, and due to the fact that Jen and Paul are away from their computer screens. Hey, Melinda, Holly, Steve, Zack, Mike, and SEAN, YOU HO! Get your asses in gear.
Best story from Christmas Eve: We're sitting around the living room, the extended family and I, and my 86-year-old Aunt Mary begins talking about her bout with alcoholism. "My doctor made me an alcoholic," she said matter-of-factly. According to Aunt Mary, she went to the doctor during mid-life and complained of insomnia. "He told me, he said, 'Mary, every night before you go to bed, you have to drink a big, tall glass of brandy.' That worked for awhile, then I started drinking two or three big, tall glasses of brandy a night, and next thing I know, they're telling me I'm an alcoholic. What the hell did they know?"
posted by Kate at 12:38 PM link/comments
Thursday, December 21, 2000
i have absolutely no problem letting go of my computer. it's just that i have something called a master's thesis due in a few short months, and i have a butload of writing to do between now and then, so i need to get to work ASAP. and i work best when im working on my own computer. im not sure why, exactly, but there it is.
kate, you should meditate more often. im not saying i meditate myself, but i hear it helps. of course, i heard this from a crazed philipino with a mohawk. so you have to consider the source. but still, it sounds like a good idea. doesnt it?
posted by Paully at 2:00 AM link/comments
Wednesday, December 20, 2000
This is my last blog entry until 2001, probably. Paul and I have new year's eve plans already. If Paul can disconnect himself from his computer and his mom's motherliness in New Carlisle, we would most likely be "in the area" (secret code for "thirsty for cranberry and vodka") on the 28th or 29th. But we need your number. Send it to paul's address -- cockeram@iastate.edu. Cheers...
posted by Jen at 11:27 PM link/comments
Man. Lesbian geek girls have a really cool site.
posted by Kate at 3:46 PM link/comments
Bleh. Irritated by a particularly non-productive day here in the office. Know I need to spend lots of time researching web stuff, but I can't seem to tear myself away from voyeuristic behavior of looking at other people's blogs and running google searches for my own name to see what other people named Kate Foster are doing with their lives. Apparently, there's a Kate Foster who's got a Ph.D. in robotics. I have no Ph.D. I know nothing about robotics, except I wish I had a robot. It could, like, do my laundry and clean and morph into a John Cusack look-alike. Yeah.
T-minus 24 hours til I'm slated to arrive at parents' Pennsylvania home for five days of holiday fun. I've been mentally preparing myself all day for the interrogations, and for various activities which will make me more actuely aware that I live in an alternate universe. Friday I get to travel with my mom and my soon-to-be aunt to the place where almost-aunt and uncle will marry in September. And then we'll talk about wedding plans. Saturday, I get to go to a luncheon being hosted by family friend Autumn, who's getting married in May. I'm a bridesmaid for both of these events. This fact will inevitably lead to a barrage of familial questions about the status of my love life, at which point I'll smile, make caustic comments about my lack of romantic involvement and the fact that, as a webmaster, I've completely lost all ability to communicate with others unless I'm staring at a screen. Then I'll smile, walk off, and pour myself more rum. If I'm really lucky, relatives will, as a last-ditch effort, launch an interrogation about the marital status of my male chronies from high school and suggest I might contact them whilst in town. "That's not a bad idea," I'll respond while thinking that I'd rather shove a rusted ice pick directly into my inner ear than talk to anyone I went to high school with. Wheeeeeeee.
posted by Kate at 3:31 PM link/comments
Here it is, folks: Top 50 Web Searches . I'm a little skeptical here. Do you think perhaps they've omitted the searches for really dirty stuff?
posted by Kate at 9:04 AM link/comments
Was just checking our page stats here at Six-Layer Kate. Our Top Source of Hits Award goes to Bill's Blog followed by folks who link in from Blogger. All other visits have been the result of search engine hits. The most common phrase used to find this site is "weird shit," with the honorable mention going to whomever found us by typing "clinically insane" on AOLsearch. I love that.
posted by Kate at 8:56 AM link/comments
Holiday food is going to drive me loopy. Back in May, I went to the doctor, who took a lot of blood from me and said, "Hey. Your blood sugar is ridiculously high. You're probably going to have diabetes someday. Let's delay that by you not eating a lot of sugar from now on." So now it's Christmas and everywhere I turn, there's sugar. One of my coworkers just brought me this little Christmas package including cookies, candy, fudge, and baklava. I think I'd better take it home tomorrow for consumption by family members. I swear I'm not going to learn my lesson until I go into hyper-glycemic apoplexy or something. If that's even possible. Must ask Cousin Eric the Medical Student about this one...
posted by Kate at 8:47 AM link/comments
Yes, yes. There will be life in the Shaker Mansion between Christmas and New Year's. Actually, we're having a New Year's Eve soiree, so if anyone is interested in attending, the invitation's open. And we could get Brian really drunk and get him to wear lampshades on his head. That might be fun. I'll email you our phone number in case you don't have it. Then you should call. Then we should go out and drink vodka-and-cranberry until our heads cave in.
So, Paul is not capable of leaving his computer system in Iowa during the break? What the hell, Paul. You're worse than me.
posted by Kate at 8:41 AM link/comments
Tuesday, December 19, 2000
Wow, Kate is going crazy. In comparision, today at work I had to locate my missing trash can and make a sign for "free candy." Also, Kate, I've deleted my blog due to stunning levels of uninterest and the fact that three of the four people in the blog are also in this blog. No hard feelings. I believe in a monoblog culture. So you should delete that link from your homepage.
Paully and I are heading for the great state of Ohio on Thursday. We are stopping at a designated McDonald's in Illinois to rendevous with roommate James, who has been playing son-in-law at his girlfriend Mandy's parents' house for a solid week. Then we are carting James to his doorstep in New Carlisle, Ohio. So in the car for about six hours will be Jen, Paul, and James; Paul's entire computer system, including his 17 inch monitor; two ferrets in a large ferret cage; a rather expensive bottle of Grey Goose Vodka (not to be opened); random bags, gifts, and food. Already, the debate has begun about whether we will listen to talk radio or CDs or James' stories about Adventures With Mandy. Already we are jockeying over who will drive through which state.
So, Paul and I might be in the lovely Cleveland area sometime between xmas and new year's, although nothing is planned yet. Primary mission will be to locate and drink with one Brian Hanna. Will anyone be around in the Shaker Heights Mansion?
posted by Jen at 11:19 PM link/comments
Who knew dildos were becoming a conventional gift idea? Drugstore.com's Top 20 holiday gift list. Scroll down to the end of the page and note the second-to-last item. Read the description; you can purchase optional water-based lubricant. "Dear Santa, This Christmas, I would like some KY Jelly and a blow-up doll...."
The world's going to hell, I tell you.
posted by Kate at 2:30 PM link/comments
*whistles* "It's the most wonderful time of the year......" And we're being surrounded.
posted by Kate at 1:55 PM link/comments
Just ran my Women's Studies homepage through NetMechanic with baited breath, waiting for it to tell me that everything sucked. Instead, it rated my site at five stars across the board. Load time, browser compatibility, html check, links. Everything's optimal. I am soooooo happy right now.
posted by Kate at 12:53 PM link/comments
OK. This is ridiculous. So now we're too cool to be Cleveland, so we're going to call ourselves "C'Town"????? Look at this site: "We're Cleveland and we're loud and have lots of tacky, slutty women!" Bleh.
posted by Kate at 12:13 PM link/comments
Monday, December 18, 2000
3:04 p.m.: Have decided against cult leader thing. After perusing mental list of ideal geographic locations for cult, realized that best place would be Alaska. Alaska is too cold. I should really get a life.
posted by Kate at 3:02 PM link/comments
2:59 p.m.: Am harboring wild fantasies about becoming charismatic cult leader. Meanwhile, have just realized that my eyesight is about 40 times worse than it used to be. Somehow, am thinking staring at this machine all day has something to do with it.
posted by Kate at 2:59 PM link/comments
So today I learned that in order to design and professionally print a two-color letterhead that includes true-type font and two logos, one must have working knowledge of the following: vector versus bitmap design; editable postscript files and their object-oriented nature versus traditional pixel-based layer models; transparency opacity vis a vis Macromedia Freehand 8.0 and how it translates to Adobe PageMaker; spot color versus process color; and how all of this relates to the equipment used by professional printers. As soon as I finish this, I'm going to go learn how to write a SafePerl CGI script that's compatible with the university's server specifications. Which means I essentially have to learn a programming language, then learn it in an entirely new way, then learn how it translates into scripts. Oh, yeah, and then I have to investigate the relative benefits of scrapping the whole server-side thing entirely and just running the bloody thing on SQL. Which would mean I'd have to learn how to program an SQL database. And oh yeah: My boss is hiring a temp worker to take some of the load off me, but (surprise!) the chick she's bringing on has no technical skills. So now I'm effectively in charge of 10 websites and the publication design for 8 university programs. Not to mention all the billing, accounts, general administrative tripe, and student management of the Women's Studies program and the Department of Dance. Is it any wonder I've just started my Christmas shopping?
posted by Kate at 2:53 PM link/comments
Quandry du jour: I'm trying to design mastersheets/letterhead for one of our programs. I'm using the logo I designed for the program on the design (natch). Problem is, I can't seem to get the background to become transparent. I went online and got info; it said "This is very easy. Just recreate the file in an editable .eps format, then ensure all vector-based images have a clipping path." Have spent last 90 minutes attempting to translate this sentence. I know what an .eps is. I know what a vector is. I know what a vector-based image is. Have some idea of what a clipping path is. Do not understand why in the unholy fuck it has to be this complicated to have a transparent background on a fairly simple logo when I have in my possession approximately $2000 worth of graphics software. Here we see the problem with my job: If I don't know how to do something, I either have to fudge it or learn really damned quick. Heh. Know what else? I might have to build and run a server out of my office. University's server won't allow certain aspects of perl programming, which means that I can't finish building this message board they want for the Women's Studies site. So I'm probably going to have to gut some poor unused computer, set up a server, get the university to pay for a domain name, build a firewall, and link the whole bloody system to our existing pages. As I write this, I realize that no one reading has any fucking idea what I'm talking about. Forgive me. Just some crazy geek venting.
posted by Kate at 12:49 PM link/comments
Thursday, December 14, 2000
I liked A Separate Peace, but it's about a boys' boarding school, so it's probably not the best choice for chickies. Make them read Jane Austen, and they will hate you forever, but it'll fit into the whole gender dynamic thing. Or The World According to Garp, which rules, though it's longer than 500 pages, I think.
Have them read the site www.bushneverwonflorida.com. It'll be a nice lesson in civics and conspiracy theories. Then watch them storm out of the room and pout after you put the smackdown on them.
Or am I thinking of someone else?
posted by Paully at 1:13 AM link/comments
Wednesday, December 13, 2000
fuck all that - make em read my blog.... ok maybe not but hey hey hey how about "i can jump puddles" by a guy called Alan Marshall - not only is it a true Australian story - he was my great great uncle and he rocked.....
posted by billyjoe noodle-bob at 9:19 AM link/comments
Tuesday, December 12, 2000
books: Of Mice and Men is a good one, or has a good ending at least. The Hobbit. Narnia stuff is always classic -- The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe. The Sweet Hereafter (excellent) -- it mixes a real-life bus crash with small town sadness and incest and many different points of view. I agree with Kate's suggestions too. Oh, and Frankenstein. Make them read Frankenstein.
posted by Jen at 10:56 PM link/comments
1984, Brave New World, The Bluest Eye ... Make 'em read some Ntozake Shange, 'specially the play "For Colored Girls..." Rockin.
posted by Kate at 4:54 PM link/comments
Okay, my group for female high schoolers hopefully will be funded. I'm making the reading list now. So, Blogger poll: What was your favorite book in Junior High/High School? I know we are all geniuses and all, so if it was by Sarte or was more than 500 pages long, tell me your faves from elementary school.
posted by Holly at 4:33 PM link/comments
The 50 mph winds that attacked Cleveland last night were just lovely. On my way to work this morning I saw a speed limit sign that had been bent at about a 45 degree angle and was kind of leaning into the road. It was above freezing all day yesterday. Winds were so cold and strong last night that they froze Shaker Lakes in the space of about 9 hours. Couldn't get into my car this morning. Ended up managing to open frozen passenger-side door by bracing my back against the side of the house, putting my left foot on the side of the car for leverage, and pulling like hell. Got in the car, climbed over to the driver's side, and shoulder-checked the door until I managed to break the thick seal of ice that was sealing it shut. I love the midwest.
posted by Kate at 9:35 AM link/comments
Monday, December 11, 2000
So, today in school...
Bomb threat. Broke up a fight between two girls (nearly got my ass kicked). Told children that behaving like monkeys on crack was not appropriate in classroom. Computers were down, had to change plans for 2 of 3 classes. Only two weeks to go until Christmas break. Not sure if I can make it that long.
posted by Melinda at 4:14 PM link/comments
The fungus-growth-in-belly story is like this: I was sitting on a cooler, minding my own business at the party, and two people I had never seen before (girl and guy) struck up a conversation that revolved around the guy's fungal growths in his stomach. The girl was obviously concerned, wanting to know if they were cancerous, would he get them removed, did they hurt, etc. I was just sitting there, not really part of it all yet forever involved because, like kate, I was thinking, "wait, that's not possible." Anyway, the girl seemed highly interested in the story and the guy seemed highly interested in her, and I thought only in Iowa, only in Iowa.
I didn't have to go to work today, thanks to a snow storm that's now turned into a blizzard above Chicago. I'm drinking wine and waiting for the Supreme Court decision. Later, I'm going to drink some more wine and consider Paul's proposal that we "go outside and take some pictures." Sounds suspicious.
posted by Jen at 3:59 PM link/comments
Mental note: Thank God roommates don't eat croutons and touch each other in my bed.
All right. Just how does one go about acquiring fungus balls in one's stomach??? Don't gastric juices tend to ward off the growth of such things?
posted by Kate at 1:01 PM link/comments
Sunday, December 10, 2000
On wearing a gorilla suit to work...well, seeing as how my employers stare at me and inquire about my religious practices whenever I braid my hair, the chances of me lasting more than an hour in a gorilla suit are slim. Paul, on the other hand, has worn a "scottish farmer" get-up to entertain his freshman comp classes, so I imagine that he, as a TA, could do the gorilla thing for a few weeks, no problem.
The weekend update from Iowa, if anyone cares: attended a grad student party on Saturday and gloated excessively about having a job and no papers to grade; helped myself to a table of free liquor, but somehow, did not get overly drunk; stood on a balcony for hours in just a t-shirt and jeans, but didn't really get cold; watched a guy puke over the balcony; listened to another guy talk about the fungus balls in his stomach; ended up back at home at 3 am, where Paul put on an impromptu impression of hicks from his hometown and I had to persuade roommate James and his girlfriend Mandy to leave my bed, where they were eating croutons and pretending to touch each other.
posted by Jen at 6:02 PM link/comments
Roommate Jen has just called to inform us that she's driving a six-foot Christmas tree to our house from her parents' home in Rochester, New York. Jen drives a compact mid-80s Toyota. This proves my theory that Jen King has the ability to outwit the laws of physics.
posted by Kate at 3:09 PM link/comments
Weekend Report by Cabal Correspondent Kate Foster:
The last two days have consisted of the following: Staying up real late on Friday acting stupid with Holly and Melinda, the result of which was the formation of the following highly-philosophical question: If you started consistently arriving at your job wearing a gorilla suit, how long would it take before they fired you? Bloggers should respond to this question.
Saturday's events: Holly, Melinda, Zack, and I went to the grocery store, where we purchased $300 of food to be consumed by our household. Included in our purchases were some steaks, which Melinda cooked outside, in the dark, on the snow-covered charcoal grill with aid of a flashlight. After consuming cow, we retired to the living room to watch "Chicken Run," during which I promptly fell asleep on the couch, waking only to schlep to my bedroom, where I remained unconscious for approximately 11 hours. Oh, the whirlwind life of the 20-something.
posted by Kate at 9:33 AM link/comments
Friday, December 08, 2000
Kate's design ability is way better. That's the official Jen Vote tally. No butterfly ballots were used. No animals were harmed. No Supreme Court was appealed to.
posted by Jen at 7:13 PM link/comments
Hee hee hee hee. I am so damn cool. I have once again thwarted the efforts of Fat Bastard Who Used to Do Contract Web Work for This Office to make me look bad. He sends these emails to my boss making "suggestions" that are thinly-veiled efforts to make me look like an idiot. And then my boss comes in and I explain to her all the reasons why he's wrong and she agrees with me and *voila* he instantly looks like a moron and I come out smelling like a rose. Bastard thinks I don't know what I'm doing because I'm young and female. Trust me; this one's not just my usual woman paranoia. He refers to me as "young lady" when I talk to him and has on more that one occasion called me a "girl." Meanwhile, he's fucking incompetent. Click here for an example of his stunning design ability. Then click here for mine. Any contest, really?
posted by Kate at 10:47 AM link/comments
In response to Kate's new-found exercise fanaticism: Two weeks ago, I decided I was going to walk for half an hour each day. I was a walking fanatic for a full week, until I got bored with the fact that we live on a dead end street (yeah, a dead end street in a college town of 50,000 -- that's Iowa for ya) and to reach any non-dead end streets I have to walk the same boring walk down South Franklin. Then the temperature plummeted to all of nine degrees above zero, and my walk manifesto decided to sit on the couch and engage the Chex Cereal in a new exercise paradigm.
Read the Onion -- they've got a good one about a "Black Guy Photoshopped In," in reference to the new Iowa State University brochure. Hilarious, and oh so true.
posted by Jen at 12:53 AM link/comments
Thursday, December 07, 2000
Hmmm. Melinda's right. The picture is a classic. Which is why I hope no copies ever surface again as long as I live.
posted by Kate at 11:59 AM link/comments
So I have to spend my entire afternoon mired in a Diversity Workshop here at this fine bastion of higher education. I've got worked piled up to the bloody ceiling in my office which I'd actually like to work on, but instead I have to waste four hours listening to some middle-class white HR employee tell me how to understand minorities. I've been witness to this little dog-and-pony show before. The term "diversity awareness" is horseshit rhetoric. If someone's a raging racist, does this university really suppose that four hours of white-guilt babble will help? "Whoa! Just hours ago, I was an ignorant white supremecist whose home decor consisted primarily of swastikas and confederate flags, but now I've seen the light. Thank you, perky human resources employee!" Instead of requisite seminars on shit that might make a difference around here, we have to listen to this. Why not offer a seminar on how to protect oneself from rampant crime? No matter that there's no evidence of racism on this campus. Meanwhile, three students and one employee have been either raped or brutally attacked in the last month. One kid was hit in the face with a brick; knocked out all his teeth, a few of which punctured through his face. Another girl was beaten and raped about 300 feet from the entrance to the building where I work. Why should events like these yield any action on the part of the university when it could be spending time and money teaching me how to pussy-foot around minorities?
posted by Kate at 10:20 AM link/comments
Cheapest model is $2200. Thank God. No way I will ever be able to afford one.
posted by Kate at 9:42 AM link/comments
Something horrible's happening to me. Am becoming obsessed with fitness. Spent 60 minutes last night on this machine. 300 stomach crunches. Sad thing is, reason I'm able to put that link in is that I looked up the site this morning to see how much it would cost me to buy one for myself. My body aches. I want to go to the gym again tonight. And tomorrow night. Help!!!!!
posted by Kate at 9:39 AM link/comments
Wednesday, December 06, 2000
All hail terrifying pictures of our nearest and dearest. Where would we be without them? My personal favorite, which is lost somewhere in the cosmos of the Internet, has to be of Katy at the Halloween party of 1999. Yes, some of you have been graced with the life-changing opportunity of seeing this masterpiece. For the forsaken, among us, here's a mental image. Katy, coming up the stairs (the photo is taken from the top of the staircase, giving it just enough distortion to really make an artistic statement) holding a beer in one hand, a cigarette in the other. On her head is a large cardboard and coathanger mushroom head. The glory of it all, though, is her expression. The photographer caught her at the exact moment that one eye was wide open and the other completely closed. Or perhaps she was frozen that way all night. By that hour, I wouldn't have been surprised. I'd like to have this photo in poster size to wall paper my bedroom.
In other news, I stabbed myself in the hip with a pencil today. Had to perform surgery in the women's restroom to remove the graphite tip from my flesh. Lesson for the day: Do not put pencils in one's pocket.
posted by Melinda at 4:16 PM link/comments
At Jen's prompting (natch), we compiled a list of Shit We Have In Our House That We Don't Need. We tried to adapt it into an in-joke version of "The Twelve Days of Christmas," but we've thusfar been unable to find any item that we have 9 of. A sampling:
33 lamps
3 VCRs, two of which function in limited capacity, one of which is full of industrial lubricant
4 computers and 3 printers. Only 1 of the printers is hooked up, and it's a dot-matrix
A pair of tires belonging to none of our vehicles. They were in the basement when we moved in, and are currently being used to hold up a glass-encased collage of naked women
A yellow rubber beetle wearing a red wig
2 fondue pots
10 telephones, 3 of which are in a plastic bag under my bed. As I've never used them, I have no idea whether they work
8 framed pictures of semi-trucks being displayed in the basement
6 pillows shaped like fish
2 stuffed toy pachyderms (an elephant and a hippo)
23 pieces of drug paraphernalia
10.5 pairs of Birkenstocks (Steve has one that's missing its mate)
5 bags of cat poo
In other news, I was out of the office most of the day having lunch with my coworkers and my boss. Barbara (aka Greatest Boss to Ever Grace the Face of this Cold, Dirty World) took us to Ruth's Chris Steakhouse, a really fucking expensive restaurant on Cleveland's east side, where we ate extremely yummy food (I had shrimp gumbo, a giant New York Strip steak, creamed spinach and broccoli, and "chocolate sin cake" and coffee for dessert), laughed a lot, and expressed our hatred of the CWRU Purchasing Department. Then we drove back to campus in Barbara's Volvo, which has heated leather seats.
In yet still other news, it has been determined that Bill is going to eak himself out a new career as a performance artist. He will zoom around the streets of Melbourne naked whilst cursing, offering scathing political commentary, squirting passers-by with aerosol cheese, and smearing himself with coleslaw. Sources of funding for the project are currently being sought. Anyone with an in to the NEA or similar organization should let me know.
posted by Kate at 4:13 PM link/comments
Hmmm. Yes. That is a terrifying picture of Paul. I have more terrifying pictures of Paul. Remind me to post them someday. Somewhere in my possessions is that picture of me, Paul, and Scott Lucas wearing Groucho Marx glasses and carrying machetes. I also have a picture of Paul measuring the World's Largest Basket in pretzel rods. Many of the strangest photos I own somehow involve Paul. Except that one of (blogger) Sean dressed as Hitler in drag being kissed on the cheek in a pub in Cambridge by (blogger) Mike, who's dressed as a drag queen pirate.
posted by Kate at 3:45 PM link/comments
Tuesday, December 05, 2000
Wow Kate, such hostility. In comparison, I sat around today, eating yogurt-covered pretzels and reading The Hobbit. Ok everyone, since I just figured out that if I click on that little globe/link icon I can insert a link to a distant galaxy, here goes my virgin link effort. Check out my homepage, complete with a terrifying picture of Paul. We all need some of that in our lives...
posted by Jen at 11:50 PM link/comments
Katefuscious say: Webmaster who field phone calls from stupid fucks all day never get any work done.
posted by Kate at 2:18 PM link/comments
Ha. Just found the themesong from the Greatest American Hero TV series on Napster. Rockin'.
posted by Kate at 12:07 PM link/comments
I am going to march across campus and slaughter whoever's in charge of the CWRU switchboard. I'm convinced that that they've designated by extension as "today's number where we transfer people when we don't know where the hell else to send them." So far today, I've gotten calls for a philosophy professor, an English professor, a research assistant in the biomedical engineering department (which, incidentally, is located on the other side of Euclid Avenue, like a mile from here), the repair staff, and someone wanting to know if I was a veterinarian.
posted by Kate at 12:00 PM link/comments
Monday, December 04, 2000
Holly, maybe it's just pure bitter jealousy that you got a jump on the lifestyle of the bright and mostly unmotivated before we did.
Quite a story though. I like the real one much better than the fiction.Much more what I expect from my Holly. I mean, you'd never get introuble for killing the math teacher (and how would you recognize him anyway, having never been to class) becuase you'd never get caught in the first place.
I am off to go and see my middle schoolers in their choir concert. Must find cotton for ears before departing.
posted by Melinda at 4:01 PM link/comments
Holly, I've always believed your stories of drugs and low-level truancy. I'm just constantly amazed that you got away with as much as you did. When I was 13, if I had even considered smoking a joint, my mother would have sniffed out the thought like some sort of psychic bloodhound and run me down with the family minivan. Or at least, I always believed that she had that kind of power. My mom's pretty damn good at psychological manipulation.
As for the dress, I'm not even remotely surprised that your mother chose that particular garment for you. If she had it her way, you'd still be running around in pigtails and wearing underoos. Then again, I frequently pine for underoos. Underoos rocked.
No one ever offered me drugs in exchange for a suckjob. Not even in college. Tsk, tsk. The experiences I've missed out on ...
posted by Kate at 2:57 PM link/comments
Okay, I'm killing time until Joann, the finance bitch, deigns to finish her fucking lunch. Here's a real (depressing) jr. high dance story. My eighth grade dance. My mother bought me a black velvet dress, which shuld be cool, right? Except it had puffy sleeves and skirt and a bow in the back and made me look like an eight year old at a funeral. Which was actually a look I went for in high school, but this was NOT sexy. It was horrible. All the othr girls were wearing really short, tight, brightly colored dresses. The principal complemented my mother when she came to pick me up on the dress. She said I wasn'r "dressed like a whore, like some people." Which was so ironic, considering the events. Me and the totally geek friends I hung with (my little proto-punklet friends wouldn't have been caught dead there. I shouldn't have been either.) were sitting in the back, inhaling helium. Anthony Weber, a huge fat fuck came up to me. He was below even my level of geekdom, but he was a good bass player (which, in 8th grade, basically meant he had one) and liked Monty Python, so I associated at times. He said he had a joint and we could smoke it outside. I looked around (insert sad, sad sight here) and went with him.
When we got outside he basically made it known that he was expecting a friendly blow-job in return for the joint. What was odd was that my first two thoughts were: "he probably doesn't even have any," and "jesus christ, he thinks I would do that for a half a joint? This dress is AWFUL!" I punched him in the stomach and ran back inside where I behaved like kid with my friends and the balloons.
Happy Ending.
Of course, I threw up when I got home.
posted by Holly at 1:42 PM link/comments
I love you Billy, hang in there.
Junior High Memory: Well, me and some crips were shooting heroin in the alley behind the dance, and all of a sudden my math teacher came out. We totally freaked, probably because of all the meth we were on too, and killed him. I didn't get in trouble though, because I had won the spelling bee and in my school, that shit counted.
IS THAT WHAT YOU WERE EXPECTING? HUH?
Sorry, that was one of those 'in jokes' we've been seeing so much of. Melinda and Katy are convinced I'm full of bullshit because all of my high school stories involve drugs and low-level crime & truancy. This is true, but only because I don't tell stories about the good 90% of the time I was sitting around eating fruit loops and reading social study textbooks. That's not very interesting. In fact, I lied. We never had fruit loops because my mom would never buy cereal with sugar in it. So. I would eat shredded wheat and read textbooks. Boring.
posted by Holly at 1:29 PM link/comments
Sunday, December 03, 2000
Ha. I have you all beaten. I was never kissed until I was 15. I never really had any junior high dances (My Catholic gradeschool was K-8, so I didn't technically go to Junior High. So I'm gonna bend the rules a bit and tell an early high school memory:
It was the middle of 10th grade and I went to our high school's Halloween dance. If I recall correctly, that was the year I went in a gorilla suit. At this time, I had a dreadful crush on Vince, who many of you know turned out to be my first boyfriend. Vince was at the dance, and as it was the height of alterna-ness at the time to be into The Cure, had come dressed as Robert Smith, complete with teased hair and messy lipstick. My friends spent the whole night asking me why I was "into a fag." But then he and I danced and he asked me out and we dated for almost 3 years and he was a wonderful, wonderful boy. I hear he's married now. Lucky woman.
Bill, for my perspective on your depressing rant, check your in-box.
posted by Kate at 10:52 PM link/comments
Painful junior high memory: Dancing to some god-awful song (i'm rather pleased that I don't remember it anymore, to avoid further emotional scars.), having a cast on my arm from falling while roller skating. The lights are flashing, friends are all around. There is suddenly a tongue in my mouth that definately does not belong to me. It tastes of putrid stale bubblegum. I am mortified. I ditch the guy at the dance and spend the rest of the night trying to avoid my giggling friends and their vicious taunts. I begin to seriously reconsider the whole "boy" issue and remain mostly single for the next 4 years.
Billy, it's not so bad, is it? You still have the blog. We're here for you, darling.
posted by Melinda at 9:50 PM link/comments
my fingernails are dirty - probably the upshot of spending all day collecting various detritus from scattered previous abodes and bringing it all together into my new one, but i prefer to think of my fingernails as an analogy for my life < depressed rant > i can't understand how complacent i'm being about losing my job. it was the best thing that had ever happened to me career wise. it was a real job. through a self fulfilling prophecy i screwed it up - all the time beleiving deep inside that i was somehow a fraud, and that i was only a matter of time before they found me out - turns out i was right.... *weak grin* i don't have the technical aptitude to understand what the developers were talking about - and my attempts to cover it up with sage nods and meaningless note taking only evidenced themselves further when i presented sage, meaningless documents purporting to concern the subject matter at hand. Perhaps it was some of the company's fault, taking on someone who professed his own ignorance in the interview, but somehow i think maybe i could have worked harder - made up for the fact that i just didn't understand what was going on... the bit where they decided i was going to run their marketing campaign came right out of left field.. i was never comfortable with that, and i told them so... making cold calls to vice presidents of multinational software companies is not on my list of "things i most like to do" - in fact it probably makes the bottom three hundred - right before < in joke > inserting an orange into my own anus < /in joke > < /depressed rant > my junior high school dance memory? being the boy who didn't get kissed until he was 14....... (god somebody please put this morbid Aussie out of his misery) seriously gang - don't sweat - just need to reevaluate some shit - i need to start seriously looking for a job tomorrow and i'm quite worried about it - i'm not sure that my skill set is applicable to anything
posted by billyjoe noodle-bob at 7:09 AM link/comments
Saturday, December 02, 2000
Mint chocolate fudge is good. Went gift shopping with Paul today. This is how it went: Everything I looked at that would serve as suitable gifts for family had heart-attack inducing price tags of hundreds of dollars. In the time that it took me to buy some fudge and film for myself, Paul purchased a gift for every member of his extended family, all the gifts fit in one little plastic bag, and he spent less than $100. What the hell. Right now he's downloading Journey songs from Napster, creating a nice 80's love ballad atmosphere. Here's a topic for the blog -- give us a junior high school dance memory. My memory is some girls bringing vodka in hair spray pump bottles. I think that was seventh grade. I think I slow danced to Poison's "Every rose has its thorn." I wore a dress purchased at K-mart. I'm sorry. Someone please forgive me for my youthful indiscretions.
posted by Jen at 7:20 PM link/comments
Friday, December 01, 2000
Cheers, all. I know that there has been much chaos as of late and I send my deepest apologies for the part of that mess that I am responsible for. Ah, the great shifting of paradigms. It's good for us all.
Hale Chatfield. The world's loss. Really. I figured he'd be one of those people who just slapped the laws of health and science in the face with a salami and went on his merry ways until the next era of mankind. I mean, he wouldn't want to miss that, would he?
Had a lovely day at school today. Decided to teach kids about synapses and short-term vs. long term memory today instead of verb tenses. How is it that they understand the weird shit so much better? Perhaps I will just try and disguise all of my lessons from now on. Give me suggestions on how to sneak in positive feelings towards punctuation.
Jen, start making all of your time cards more difficult. When I worked at the whorehouse (read: golf course), all of our time cards were hand-written. They occassionally read 3 as 8 or 2 as 7 and very often paid me for more time than I'd worked. In the beginning, I pointed this out. And my boss would usually say, "Thanks for your honesty. Too much hassle to correct it now." Fine. Lovely. God only knows why they're still in business.
Is it really time to write out Xmas cards already?
posted by Melinda at 4:40 PM link/comments
Ah, hell. Blogger's fucked again.
posted by Kate at 12:14 PM link/comments
This is the reason why I need M. Doughty to be the father of my children. (Lyrics to Soul Coughing's "The Idiot Kings" followed by Doughty's analysis of the song):
Everything is going up. /Everything is going as planned, yeah./ Everything moves along./ Everything is fine, fine, fine./// Oh I could be/ Condemned to Hell for every sin but littering./ I could/ Slip on the East River and crash/ into Queens all skittering./ I've seen the/ Cops and the robbers, and I know they dance the same./ I've seen a
Half a zillion girls and haven't spoken to a single one of them./// Batting in the light,/ My reptile-lidded eyes./ And all this strung end to end,/ Is wider than the mind./// And this cool I've been playing I have been/ Playing too long now my/ Capacities are dwindling 'til they're/ Gone Gone Gone./// Baby can I change my mind?/ I just want to change my mind.
Doughty: "Very old song, actually--something I played acoustically in my apartment for years, changing the lyrics from time to time to suit whatever shitty predicament I was in. Occasionally I'd try and interest my band in it, but it failed to capture their imagination. The initial title was 'Luv Gangsters.' 'The Idiot Kings' was the prospective title for a novel about a band I used to want to write--that would've been the name of the band.
I don't know, we were rehearsing before the last tour before we went in to make I.B. and suddenly everybody liked the song and there it was. And then, while we were on tour and playing it live nightly, fucking Alanis came out with that 'everything is fine, fine, fine' song, I saw the video standing in the lobby of the Phoenix hotel in S.F. and starting saying No, no, dear Lord, no...That's when we started devoting time in the set to explaining how Alanis and the C.I.A. were stealing ideas from my mind."
posted by Kate at 12:11 PM link/comments
Grrrrr. I know that Americans (sometimes rightfully) have a reputation for being hugely stupid, but some Europeans are insulting prigs. Had to fax something to The Netherlands to some broad we had speaking here last month. Fax didn't go through because her fax line is apparently also a voice line and she wasn't at home to push the button to start the fax. Apparently her cousin picked up the phone and was wildly confused by the fax noises on the line. So I get this email from the scholar saying, "As many Americans aren't aware, there is a 6 hour time difference between Cleveland and Amsterdam. Please fax the form in two hours when I will be at home." How enlightening, you self-righteous git. I had no idea that there would be a time difference between two different fucking continents.
posted by Kate at 10:49 AM link/comments
So after last night's catered event, I'm more convinced than ever that the key to having a happy tenure in one's workplace is to get in good with the janitorial staff. Gave Evelyn the cleaning lady and her partner (don't know his name; tall black guy who Evelyn calls "Stretch") all the leftover cookies and brownies. In return, I got unsolicited help and managed to flee an hour before I had anticipated.
Last night=Good. Amanda's birthday. Went to Nat and Amanda's and had beer and dip and fruit. Jen cooked dinner: real Caesar salad (with anchovies that could knock your spine off its ass) and homemade clam chowder. Everyone sat around being crude and laughing asses off. Melinda accidentally catapulted a fork and piece of birthday cake across the room as a result of excessive gesticulation. We determined that, on the whole, men are more likely to recognize the erotic nature of spanking than women. Case in point: I find the whole idea off-putting. The only person who ever spanked me was my mother when I was about 6. If that Pavlovian stimulus suddenly transformed me into a love tiger, I'd run screaming for more therapy.
Holly asked for suggestions last night for a zingy achronym for a new program she's creating at work to encourage young, inner-city girls to avoid getting knocked up. Steve and Nat thought she should call it Teenage Women Attaining Trust. TWAT.
posted by Kate at 9:14 AM link/comments
Oh, Jen. So why the hell don't they just ASK you whether the number is a 3 or an 8??? You really must get out of Iowa.
posted by Kate at 8:49 AM link/comments