For the Halloween event at work tomorrow:
1. Boil 2lb. of fettucine (Brains for haunted laboratory)
2. Peel 25 grapes (eyeballs for haunted laboratory)
3. Rinse 2 cans of whole peeled tomatoes (hearts for haunted laboratory)
4. Slice banana skins into arches (tongues for haunted laboratory)
5. Spoon applesauce into surgical gloves (dead hands for haunted laboratory)
6. Throw together a kid friendly costume that does not include a baggie of flour for my nose… (funny!)
You are no longer 21. Now, after this weekend, you know that with certainty.
Nice try, though.
Love,
Your Liver
(Pictures tomorrow. Now? Going to bed at 9:45.)
Part of my job is traveling to different schools and observing the arts programs that we book. Today, while watching a new program that , frankly, could use some work I saw something. A little red haired boy who was picking his nose and rubbing it between his thumb and first finger (these are third graders, btw.) He was rubbing and rubbing and I knew what was going to come next. Either the wipe or the lick. Sure enough, he licked. It was in that moment I realized I wasn’t suprised. To me, from first glance he looked like a kid who was just bad. I asked myself why.
That’s when I realized my predjudice.
My horrible predjudice against little boys with buzz cut hair.
If your kid/nephew/friend’s kid/self has a buzz cut, I am sorry in advance, and it would be best for you to quit reading now.
Are they gone? Good.
Back to the buzz cut. To me, this haircut means one of three things:
1. millitary family
2. head lice survivor
3. troublemaker.
I’m not going to deal with the first two scenarios. Today I’m gonna deal strictly with number three. Kids like this little turd:
You know the type. The food spitting, cat torturing, swirly-giving, skid-mark making future arsonist. Look familiar? Think about movies and television. The kids who beat up other kids always have buzz cuts. Hell, my dad had a buzz cut as a kid, and he was a little badass. This is the haircut that says, “Look Ma! I’m ready for prison!”
Whenever I see a kid with this haircut, I automatically keep an eye on him. Sure enough, within five minutes he’s scanning the room to see what/who he can fuck with. What he can break. What ignorant question he can ask. He is not to be trusted. My theory is, there’s not enough hair to facilitate good decision making.
What kind of kids automatically piss you off?
At work I listen to Pandora almost every day. It’s free and all you have to do is put in a song title or artist and it creates a radio station for you based on your input. Friday I was listening to my James Taylor station, and it played Elton John’s “Your Song.” My first thought was “oh, I love this song.” Then I paid attention to the lyrics. Really paid attention. Maybe for the first time. That’s when I became confused. Here are the lyrics:
Your Song
It’s a little bit funny this feeling inside
I’m not one of those who can easily hide
I don’t have much money but boy if I did
I’d buy a big house where we both could live
If I was a sculptor, but then again, no
Or a man who makes potions in a travelling show
I know it’s not much but it’s the best I can do
My gift is my song and this one’s for you
And you can tell everybody this is your song
It may be quite simple but now that it’s done
I hope you don’t mind
I hope you don’t mind that I put down in words
How wonderful life is while you’re in the world
I sat on the roof and kicked off the moss
Well a few of the verses well they’ve got me quite cross
But the sun’s been quite kind while I wrote this song
It’s for people like you that keep it turned on
So excuse me forgetting but these things I do
You see I’ve forgotten if they’re green or they’re blue
Anyway the thing is what I really mean
Yours are the sweetest eyes I’ve ever seen
It’s basically a song about writing a song disguised as a love song. I can see why a few of the verses had him cross…they suck. I mean, really, the lyrics are “Anyway, the thing is what I really mean”? Did Elton and Bernie just give up at the end? I mean, the big sentiment and the only thing he says to describe this person he loves is that: “yours are the sweetest eyes I’ve ever seen”? Huh? Is he talking about a cocker spaniel or the person he loves? I heard better lines at the junior prom!
This got me thinking about other songs that are classic love songs…do they suck too? Or (like this one) are the melodies good enough that you forget about the lame lyrics and love them anyway?
I just received an email that a friend’s mother passed away yesterday. This friend already lost her father a few years ago.
Granted, her parents were a bit older than most, but this friend is my age. It’s hard to imagine that we are at the point that our parents could start passing away, but really, no one at any age is guaranteed any time, I guess.
Several years ago this friend and her husband moved back to her hometown (from a city that they both loved) to be closer to her parents. I’m sure that now, she is very glad she did.
My love and prayers go out their family.
“Get curious about what you’re afraid of.”
Tonight I had the great idea that I would make cookies. I had bought the ingredients last week, and I had plenty of time to make them this evening. Several things went wrong:
1. If you’ve never seen my kitchen, then you may not be aware that I only have a counter about two feet by two feet to use as a prep space when I cook. This space also contains our paper towel holder and coffee maker. It sucks, but notmally it’s not a huge problem. Normally. As I finish scooping flour into the bowl, I started to close the top of the flour bag (this is one of those fancy new-fangled plastic zip-top flour bags, so I was trying to make the little treads line up). There was just one little spot where the treads aren’t together, so I decide to squeeze some of the air out of the bag (keep in mind all my ingredients are sitting about 5 inches away from the flour). As I start to squeeze, some magical reaction happens inside the bag and the treads burst open and flour poofs all. over. everything. There was flour on the stove, on my face, in the sink on the cabinets. Fuck!
2. I begin to bake the cookies. The first batch finished up, and I let them cool on the pan for two minutes (as directed in the recipe). When I grab the spatula to move the cookies from the pan to the rack, the first cookie is stuck. Really stuck. No problem, I scrape it off the pan and go to the next one. Stuck. I try the next one and the next one and the next one. Stuck. Stuck. Stuck. All the cookies are brutally stuck to the pan. I thought maybe it was the pan itself, so I tried the next one (I baked on two pans). Stuck. Every one. I spend the next hour and a half scraping five dozen cookies off these “nonstick” pans. Fuck!
3. As I FINALLY scrape the last cookie off the pan and turn to walk away from the dining room table where they are cooling, I suddenly feel a tug on my sweater-it’s stuck to the cooling rack and I have just dragged 12 cookies onto the floor along with the cooling rack, some junk mail, and my dignity. Wait for it………..Fuck!
4. Finally, after spending two hours making cookies and almost an hour cleaning up the flour mess and washing dishes, I wipe off my hands and head into the living room to sit down. As I walk through the kitchen, swinging my arms like a cro-magnon woman, I hit my knuckle on the doorway, resulting in a throbbing purple and red broken blood vessel on my middle finger and the magic word falling out of my mouth a final time for the evening…
FUCK!
This is what happens when I cook.
It’s official…
Joe, Ryan and I are headed to North Carolina to see Joe’s parents for Thanksgiving. We’re leaving Tuesday and spending about four days in the amazing mountains. We were there last in March of 06 and I am excited to see the trails in a different season.
Something to look forward to…I can’t wait!
Friday:
Ate at our (pretty much) Friday staple-El Maguey. After that, we went down to Westport to check out the opening of a new piano bar. It kind of sucked. But we drank about six rounds of free beer thanks to Ryan’s Howl at the Moon friend/boss Joe G. who was in town scoping out the competition this weekend. Needless to say, after six beers pretty much anything would be fun.
Saturday:
Ryan and Matt got up at 7:00 am to go watch the Jayhawks play in the torrential rain. I slept until 11 am and then could only muster the energy to lay on the couch and drink water and eat chocolate until…
We went to see Wilco! Holy crap, it was amazing. Maybe the best concert I’ve ever seen. They played at this outdoor venue downtown called Crossroads that is basically a stage facing a big pile of woodchips. Everybody stands (my feet and legs were killing me by the time midnight rolled around) and there really wasn’t a bad view in the whole place. Wilco just rocked…they played a near-perfect set of new stuff mixed with old and did two pretty long encores. Since it was the last concert of the season at Crossroads they even had fireworks at the end. It’s hard to describe how good it was…if they come to your town, they are not to be missed.
Sunday:
Slept in, went to Target, cleaned, watched Cops, had Winsteads. Life is good.
Tomorrow Ryan leaves for a week: two days in Chicago then down to Florida until next Sunday. It’s just me, my new lunchbox and many different combinations of fruit, sandwiches and yogurt…
