obligatory cranky finals post

so at the starbucks on wilshire & union there's only one bathroom, which is bisexual, and in order to use it, there is a bathroom key attached to some large carrying item (usually a ruler or stick or spatula, recently a big scooper spoon thingy).

admittedly, the concept isn't the most hygienic - you are, after all, trekking this item into a public bathroom, where it's placed who knows where before being brought back out into an area of dining establishment - but you know what, i don't fault starbucks for doing it that way, b/c if i were working behind the counter, it sure as hell would beat making me walk over to open the damn door for customers all day. i usually make do by putting the key-plus-spoon on the paper towel dispenser, which is aaaallll the way across the room from the toilet (it's a pretty big space), and then only touching it with my sleeve or something. also, i try not to think about it.

it's the way it is. so there is really no excuse to be a bitch.

today i walked out of the bathroom and there was a girl in her young twenties, same as me, waiting to use it next. i hold open the door for her, and hand her the key to take with her into the bathroom.

this girl shoots me a look of disdain and superiority. do i expect her to touch that?, the look says. look, lady, i reply by giving a little reminder shake of the key in mid-air, we all gotta suck it up, so take the damn key.

then - i kid you not - a grin flashes across her face for a split second before she sneers, "uhh, you can put that back for me." and then closes the door behind her. clearly she believes this to be a moment of mild genius: she doesn't have to handle the bathroom key! leave it to the proletariats!

now, i'm exhausted, and stressed, and frankly don't particularly like bitches, so i'm a bit put off by this exchange. moreover, wtf kind of way is that to talk to somebody? oh, i can put it back for you? you'll f-ing LET me? gee, thanks.

anyway, seeing that she closed the door behind her as a way of ending our interaction, it's not like i had much of a choice anyway, so i put the key back on the counter.

and i totally didn't stop the dude who grabbed the key next and opened the door on her.

*karma dance*

everybody gets one

everybody gets one obsession.
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the side of a downtown LA building:

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days left til may 4: 5
finals btwn now and may 4: 2
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family guy spidey 1:

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female character i hate: mj
female character i love: gwen
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family guy spidey 2:

the chinese are awesome - article

the reaction by my male friends has been surprisingly enthusiastic:

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"Women's town" to put men in their place


BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese tourism authorities are seeking investment to build a novel concept attraction -- the world's first "women's town," where men get punished for disobedience, an official said Thursday.

The 2.3-square-km Longshuihu village in the Shuangqiao district of Chongqing municipality, also known as "women's town," was based on the local traditional concept of "women rule and men obey," a tourism official told Reuters.

"Traditional women dominate and men have to be obedient in the areas of Sichuan province and Chongqing, and now we are using it as an idea to attract tourists and boost tourism," the official, surname Li, said by telephone.

The tourism bureau planned to invest between 200 million yuan ($26 million) and 300 million yuan in infrastructure, roads and buildings, Li said.

"We welcome investors from overseas and nationwide to invest in our project," he added.

The motto of the new town would be "women never make mistakes, and men can never refuse women's requests," Chinese media have reported.

When tour groups enter the town, female tourists would play the dominant role when shopping or choosing a place to stay, and a disobedient man would be punished by "kneeling on an uneven board" or washing dishes in restaurant, media reports said.

The project, begun in the end of 2005, was expected to take three to five years to finish.

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find the article here. and if you're not grateful i shared this with you, i WILL make you kneel on an uneven board.

one more day

one more day!

so, i've been trying to keep my expectations in check since there's plenty of skepticism about grindhouse . . . but f**k if it doesn't just look so f-ing cool.

3D rooms

there are, i think, very few things in life as cool as this.



rooms that are painted a certain way such that when you stand in one position, a 3D image appears. badass. SEE THE REST HERE.




and check out the outdoor version of this trick here!

i judge you when you use poor grammar.

dear sharers of the internets,

look. i'm sorry if this appears condescending, i really am. but it's time you knew. every time you mix up "their" and "they're" a little part of me dies. it's not about the typos - we all make mistakes - but after so many times i'm starting to think you honestly don't know the difference. and if that's the case, well...this isn't going to work.

another chance? well. i suppose we could try again. as long as you get yourself into rehab. get a sponsor. and really study those 12 steps, or, at the very least, this quick & dirty primary. i know it can be embarrassing, but i just want what's best for you, after all. i'm doing this FOR you.

call me?
jadis
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-'s - indicates possessive (ownership).
-s - plural. use when you mean "more than one".

its vs. it's - aaah, thank you, strongbad.

similarly:
whose - possessive.
who's - "who is".

your - possessive!
you're - short for "you are".

their - possessive! possessive!!
they're - "THEY. ARE." JUST SAY IT IN YOUR HEAD WITHOUT THE APOSTROPHE, PEOPLE.



and for the love of god:

discrete - separate; distinct.
discreet - not obvious; innocuous. YOU MEAN THIS ONE WHEN YOU ARE TELLING ME ABOUT YOUR NINJA SKILLS.

principle - a rule or standard. "it's the principle of the matter."
principal - 1. the first or leading ("the principal concern..."). 2. Mr. Belding! Mr. Feeney! Principal Scudworth!

grammar - the correct spelling. note: that's TWO A's.
grammer - fraiser (kelsey grammer)'s last name.

peak - highest point.
peek - to glance quickly or furtively. like, peek-a-boo.
pique - to arouse an emotion. ANYTIME YOU USE THE PHRASE "PIQUE MY INTEREST" YOU NEED TO SPELL IT THIS WAY. I KNOW IT LOOKS WEIRD. GO WITH IT. Q's ARE RARE. GIVE THEM A CHANCE.

per se - by itself, or inherently/intrinsically true.
NOT per say - "for every say"? no!

sheek - THIS IS NOT A WORD.
sheik - islamic leader or patriarch. DOES NOT MEAN HIP OR STYLISH.
chic - hip, stylish. THIS IS THE WORD YOU MEAN. I KNOW IT LOOKS FUNNY. IT'S FRENCH. BUT TRUST ME. IT'S THIS ONE.

read this! look smart!

there were a flurry of articles last month about how to fake it...no, not like that, ladies. i'm talking about how to appear more well-read and literate than, let's face it, you really are. (pop on over to loni's blog for links to all those articles).

this one was the most unique though - a fun post by bookslut about five specific works that lit snobs might expect you know. the author's suggestion for the best way to fake that you've actually read them? cruise by on one specific scene.

all right. go on, get to it, and don't say i never did anything for you.


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How To Talk Like You've Read Something You Haven't

There are certain books that tend to come up in conversation over and over again. Some of the time I have read it and can hold my own. Other times, however, I’ll either say I’ve read it and then just nod and remain quiet when they try to pry a conversation out of me, or I’ll just admit I have no idea what they’re talking about.

I figured there were two remedies to the end of the conversation that comes with having not read the book. I could either read the books or I could find a way to convincingly bluff my way through the conversation.

I decided to bluff. I do have a reputation as a bookslut to uphold.

All that’s needed for a successful bluff is mentioning a scene from the book. If the book was made into a movie, don’t try to reference a scene that made it to film. Everyone does that. To make it more believable, be vague. If you don’t mention characters’ names, you can then say, “Oh, it was such a long time ago, I’m a bit hazy on the details…” when you are asked your opinion on another specific scene.

Here are some examples of books that tend to come into my conversations and scenes you can use to bluff your way through a conversation. No one will be any wiser.


Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace

There is a wealth of material to reference in this book. The scene I tend to mention is early in the book: a character’s apartment is full of cockroaches, but he too afraid to kill them. Instead, he traps them in glasses until his apartment is an obstacle course of upside down glasses with a cockroach in each, lethargically refusing to die.

However, that scene is pretty early on in the book. If you want people to think you read at least a bit more, there’s always the rehab. A man escapes from rehab every night to put cats in bags and set them on fire. That might be harder to work into polite conversation, however.


Ulysses by James Joyce

Masturbation should always be a great cocktail party topic. And if there’s such a thing as a great masturbation scene from literature, I think James Joyce has a fine contender with his Gerty / Leopold Bloom scene.

The scene itself doesn’t consist of much. Gerty sees Bloom on a hill, and being a romantic schoolgirl, she envisions him as a heroic character. Joyce satirizes a great deal of romance novels with Gerty’s inner monologue. The kicker of the scene is that while Gerty is imagining them running away together into the sunset, Bloom is jerking off to her hemline. When she stands to walk away, he notices she walks with a limp. His reaction? “Glad I didn’t know it when she was on show.”


Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk

The movie is very faithful to the book until the end, so the ending is what you’ll want to use. It’s best to just get indignant to how they changed the ending, because that’s the complaint I hear the most.

The buildings didn’t explode in the book because Tyler favored a more faulty type of bomb. The narrator shot himself surrounded by Marla and an assortment of the support group members.

Or you could mention that the soap in the book was made from the liposuctioned fat of Marla’s mother.


House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski

The scene that creeped me out the most was always hearing the S.O.S. tapping through the strange doorway.

However, if you mention the letters from Truant’s (the narrator of the story) mother in the hospital, you can pretend like you’ve read two books, House of Leaves and The Whalestoe Letters. Truant’s mother was institutionalized and died in the hospital. One theory I’ve seen mentioned a few times is that the entire book is her delusion. Doesn’t hold up well, but can inspire passionate conversations about the book. All you have to do is bring it up, then stand back and nod.


The Invisibles by Grant Morrison

There is some controversy over whether The Matrix ripped off The Invisibles. Even Morrison seems to think it’s true. If this ever comes up, this is what Kenan thinks you should say:

“What a load of bullshit. If Morrison wants to be angry at someone for ripping him off, he should be mad at Osama bin Laden for stealing his idea for decentralized cells of terrorists. Jesus.”

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find the article here if you'd like. how about that liposuctioned fat, eh?

comics 3 - the wonder of it all

so captain america is dead! this is one that the new boy, who's not into comics at all, actually heard about before i did. maybe because it made headline news on cnn last week?? hell, even the uber-legitimate wall street journal ran a cool opinion piece on it.



to be honest, i can't tell if this is big news or not. as the article itself even notes,

There is an old joke about death in the comic-book world: No one stays dead except Bucky, Jason Todd and Uncle Ben.

and right the author is - bad guys in comic book movies are notorious for saying things like, "don't you ever die?!", simply because, well, if the heroes do, there's no story.

i had never read anything involving captain america until a friend of mine lent me the new ultimates, which features the cap as a character, but his death and this wsj article make a nice segue into my ongoing series on what i love about graphic novels (parts one and two here). i know there's a political point to this stunt, of course there is. blah blah, george bush, rape of the meaning of the term "democracy," blah. i'm not in the mood for those political implications tonight. here's what i see from it.

the wonder of it all

[I]t's worth pausing to appreciate that even at this late date, Captain America's death still meant something. Partially, this was due to the simple fact that Marvel was able to keep his murder a surprise--something of a wonder in an age when every other happening comes prehyped and presold. (Mr. Quesada reveals that the editors went to great lengths to keep the secret, engaging in a quiet campaign of disinformation and even going so far as to leak fake covers to throw fans off the scent.)

Ultimately, it is wonder that we need most from comic books. The wonder that a man can fly or that a skinny American kid with a stout heart can pick up a shield and deck the Führer. With his death last week, Captain America gave us that sense of wonder once more.

so much of growing up involves being too in the know - the old "now that i know how movies are made, i don't enjoy them anymore" attitude. i feel like we need to sit back and be awed every once in a while! not just 'isn't it cool that marvel kept it a secret' but - isn't it cool that they killed off captain america?! it's freaking awesome. isn't it cool that there are news articles and scholarly debate about what a comic book's message and purpose is? :] i think it is.