zinzinish
so this is the new year
1 Comment
i like the fresh feel of a new year. i cleaned my apartment today; i’m getting a roommate, which is exciting, but only for a couple of weeks, which is kind of heartbreaking. i hear she’s british, i like that. and since i am no longer seduced by their accents, things should go smoothly.
i’m in love with paris. i know there are a lot of people competing for his heart, but i think i stand a chance for a slice. at first i thought paris should be a girl, you know, fresh flower shops on every corner, jazzy cafes, couples snuggled, his nose hidden in the nook of her neck, the eiffel tower glittering blue through the night. but the more i think about it, the more it feels like paris is the smooth, fitted-trousers-wearing, well-coiffed parisian boy seducing us all.
i love my friends here. LOVE them. i love who i am here. i love the mental pictures i get to take everywhere i go, like on the street a few weeks ago, when i passed a baby in a stroller, who made the loudest gurgling/laughing noise, and made me wish i could go back in time to record it. or the other night when this boy in sweats got on and off the same three trains i rode, then exited at my station. maybe he thought i was following him because i thought he was cute. maybe i thought the same, a little bit. either way, paris is creeptastic, but lets you daydream like a child.
it’s also been insane here, and i have a BUNCH of stories to tell you. i’ll get on it asap. be back tomorrow.
love,
POP!
1 Comment
My departure date is in less than two weeks and I’m surprisingly un-panicked. I’ve still got a nice long list of things I need to do before takeoff and the plan is to knock them out of the park by this Friday so I can spend next week in lalaland with my friends, daydreaming about how nice it will be.
It does worry me that Parisian women seem to live in Navies and Blacks, whereas my color palate ranges from Baby Blue to Neon. This is okay, I’ve told myself. I will be a flamingo in a land of swans! I will POP!
I will probably let evolution take its course.
I also need a camera for next year. I wonder if I could get away with bulk-buying disposables; I like the grainy look of the pictures better anyway.
PS why do I insist on making bird analogies when I can’t stand them? And then give myself the ickies when I google image search flamingos? Silly.
PPS apparently Men Love Bitches
Do you really want to be a doctor?
Leave a Comment
I went to my physician to get my tetanus shot yesterday because I’m a little bit of a hypochondriac and a couple months ago I stepped on a nail, barefoot, in my basement, and was pretty convinced I would die. I, obviously, don’t want to put myself through that kind of emotional turmoil again (I parceled out most of my plastic jewelry collection in a 60% joking email). And because vaccines are BRILLIANT.
Anyhow, so, you know how there are days when you just feel freer than usual? And you don’t feel the need to be constrained by the rigid, misogynistic statutes of society? And you’re also feeling a little bit lazy? And you just don’t happen to wear any underwear? Usually this is fine. I think feminism is pretty cool, and that undergarments are 50% of the time unnecessary. It’s unfortunate, though, when you don’t have the foresight to see that your annual physical that day would involve various maneuvers of the knee that make it almost impossible to not overexpose yourself in the day dress you so brilliantly chose to wear. Score. Anyway, it was awkward, and my stern, mustachio’d doctor was all disapproving glances for the rest of my appointment. Obviously, I made an impression.
So when I came in for my shot a mere 3 weeks later, I was expecting to get the icy, frigid bi(u?)tch treatment. There was no sign of recognition, ZILCH. He was a notch above politely conversational. He chuckled at my jokes. He thinks it’s cool that I am nannying while going to school next year. He wishes me luck. WTF???
What I’m saying is the medical profession is getting way impersonal. Remember in the olden days, when the village doctor made house calls, and knew exactly where on your body that gross poodle shaped mole is cause he just so happened to have helped birth you, and would bleed you by hand when you damn well needed it, without that latex glove bullshit? I blame this on the computers.
Cute Boys Make Mama Nervous
1 Comment
I have no desire to post lately as a result of the fact that I will never ever aspire to be even a fraction as cool as she is:
http://cuteboysmakemenervous.blogspot.com/
cute boy
All I really want to do is sit and hit refresh for hours into the night, gazing furiously into my computer screen, while my vision plummets to hell. The fact that I’ve temporarily lost my brain and cannot spot the “insert link” button within a 12 inch screen doesn’t much help my blogging confidence either.
I’ve been having nightmares lately, and I tend to blame everything that’s wrong with my life either on lack of food or lack of sleep, so there’s another excuse for the lack of posts. These nightmares consist of ex-boyfriends, which is unfortunate enough. But instead of lasting the standard minute, these drag for hours, with twisting plots involving disco balls and coming out stories. Good thing I good riddance all of my ex’s so I have no way to, how did she put it, “resolve the deep seated, disturbing issues causing these dreams.” Yes, I have an aunt who’s a Buddhist psychic. I won’t write ‘thinks she’s a psychic’ because I like her too much, and I’d personally like to believe she does have some sort of ESP, and maybe if I stare at the Buddha statue living in our guest room long enough and learn to love the smell of incense, this could become a career path in my non-committal, directionless life. I think she might be right about the issues thing, although God knows I don’t have the cojones to email/phone ambush some guy whose face is still pasted onto a popsicle stick voodoo doll smeared with blood/red marker. Puh.
Worse than the ex attack are the bunnies (more like one particular giant, yellow, furry bunny head attached to the body of a business-suited man). It was a few nights ago, talking on the phone with Paul, and I’d closed my eyes to doze off when the image of this ungodly creature came creeping around the walls of a cubicle. Aunty didn’t tell me this, but I’m pretty sure bunnyman is a product of my loathing for my corporate-bullshit-overly-air-conditioned internship and those 13 times I watched Donnie Darko when I was a sophomore in high school because I thought it was sooo sooooooo deep. The sad part is that the only reason I keep thinking about bunnyman is because I keep reminding myself not to think about it. And the more I think about it, the more I’m afraid I might legitimately go crazy. Okay, I mean, I like the crazies. They generally seem to be a lot more passionate about life than your average soccer mom working her way through 20 years of polite PTA meetings and a sexless marriage. But if I’m crossing over, that is so NOT the imaginary friend I’m bringing. Can’t I at least delude myself into thinking I’m Elizabeth Taylor, circa 1964, so I can drape myself in crystal droplets I’ve torn from the chandelier in the vestibule, and go around cooing alluringly and burning men with my impossibly long cigarettes? I would SO get my ass kicked if I brought bunnyman to the crazies playground! Boy has got to go.
Oh and I can’t go to Paris. My laptop is broken and I haven’t packed at all and even if I did I wouldn’t be able to bring half the clothes I needed and I can’t afford to buy new ones and I REALLY REALLY like my friends and I heard that sometimes French men make orgasm noises when you walk by them on the street(this one really isn’t much of a problem considering my voodoo skills). So I’m officially freaking out.
EVERYBODY DIES ALONE waaaaaaaaah *cue the Who
PinkyWhore
Leave a Comment
I have no idea who I’m linking pinkies with in this picture. I found it on my camera, and I remember taking it, thinking it would be cute. It is cute, but it’s also been torturing me for some time now. Different factors rule out different people, like, the hand+the ring mean it totally could be Lauren, but she doesn’t own shoes like that, nor would she wear her pants that way. Totally looks like something Andrew would wear, but the time period logically rules him out. Not Kathleen, Melissa or Jessica, also because of the fashion choices, although they were my main victims during spring break, when I was especially keen on pinky-ing.
So, if you see this pinky, will you let me know? I’d like to meet them.
Bacon
Leave a Comment
Something that fascinates me about the place I work: there seems to always be someone pooping in the women’s bathroom.
What’s up with that? And half the time they’re these really explosive episodes that go on forever. Sometimes I want to giggle and others I just try to get outta there to avoid their embarrassment at having to meet their audience. What really gets me is that, today, I walked in and all three stalls were taken. I waited for five minutes and it occurred to me that THEY WERE ALL POOPING! That’s just so against everything experience in my bathroom history. Even in those hole in the ground, fly-infested things by the beach in Dalian, this never happened! The atrocities.
It was odd, and I wish we had urinals.
Girl Code
Leave a Comment
The system at work is down, so I’ve updating!
This weekend I had a little run in with Girl Code. You know what I mean, that little nebulous black book of rules that every girl by the age of 19 knows and lives by. There are certain situations in which it is acceptable to break Girl Code. One, severe inebriation, two, post-trauma rambling, and three, hormones (note that this only applies about half of the time, depending on who you’re dealing with, and just how annoying you are, cus, come on, we all have hormones.) Girl Code is comprised of knowledge that you begin gathering when you’re young, probably when you first start noticing the differences between you and Jimmy over there ramming his head into a tree and all of his friends laughing hysterically, and till high school when everyone’s testing the Code and at their cattiest, until mid college, when almost everyone has it down pat. Cardinal rules of Girl Code include:
- When your girlfriend says she thinks she’s gained a few pounds, you must tell her she is crazy. It’s best if you act shocked that she brings up the topic at all.
- “Why hasn’t he called?!” should always be answered with “He’s so busy! Let’s go get ice cream.”
- If she asks “Do I love myself so much that I’m going to end up an old maid?” you should probably say no.
So the people who do not know girl code are mocked and shunned because the rest of us are so darn proud of ourselves for learning a little social etiquette. And we gossip about them, about their tactlessness and their insensitivity. We don’t mention this set of unspoken rules, because we never mention Girl Code aloud, especially not in the heat of battle. If you think about it, almost all female conflicts are results of a breach of Girl Code. The Others, as the unknowing ones are called, are usually stoned to death at the sorority formal.
The event that brought on this rant happened this past weekend when Nicki disobeyed rule # 3 listed above. After she, Lauren and I finished watching the Sex and the City movie(if Girl Code were the Bible, this movie would be the Holy Grail), we stepped out, all cried out and laughed out. Nicki, presumably still a little high from the movie, half giggles and half says to Lauren, “You are just like Samantha, you love yourself so much!” At which point, Lauren stomps off to her little red convertible. Now, mind you, I would normally have attributed this comment to the endorphins released by the deliciousness that is the NY foursome, but Nicki has been known to break the Code. She doesn’t intend to, she always means well, she’s just very blunt. She’s both admired and disdained for this trait. Disdained mostly by sorority girls, and admired by boys and manlier girls, like myself(at least mentally).
It’s kind of sad that, in this context, rationality and openness mean masculinity, whereas slyness is the girl equivalent. This got me thinking about one of the last This American Life broadcasts I heard about testosterone – how it’s linked to ambition, decisiveness, (and maybe physics (in parentheses cuz feminists are scary)). That the more testosterone you have, the more prevalent these traits are in your personality. It’s also linked to a lack of stage fright, so actors and lawyers tend to have a lot of T. The interesting thing is, if these statements are true, both Nicki and Lauren have high levels of testosterone. Nicki is decisive, knows what she wants, and is rarely afraid. Lauren is very ambitious, wants to be a lawyer and will be an amazing, cutthroat lawyer. (did you catch all that asskissing for extra girl code points?) Where as I, as the battle raged, mostly stood in the background, trying not to take sides and, later, tried to philosophize Nicki into a solution. I don’t have much testosterone(sometimes), and I am jealous. So the fact that my gal pals clash maybe isn’t because of their femininity, but rather because of the traits within them that resemble those of men.
So I guess the conclusion is that masculinity is the root of all evil
But seriously, to continue… on the other hand, Lauren doesn’t follow Girl Code, or at least no more than it takes to survive in girl world. She’s beautiful, brazen and probably will try to argue with me that she doesn’t even know what Girl Code is, but she’s bluffing. Let’s take a fundamental rule, like you shouldn’t steal a boy who’s been claimed. (Note: Lauren hasn’t actually broken this rule, or at least not that I know of.) A girl could never get away with stealing a friend’s boyfriend, as every other girl (and boy) in her friend circle will think she’s a cunt. On the other hand, if you were to steal an unknown girl’s boyfriend, allthewhile talking a lot of shit about her, telling stories about her bitchiness and about that time she cheated on said boyfriend in vivid detail, leaving him crushed. Talk about how you want, no, need, to pick up the pieces. Your friends will accept the transaction, heck, maybe even root for ya. It’s how you play the game, isn’t it? A lot of the times, Nicki doesn’t know how to play the game, and I love her more for it.
In happier news, I’m more and more excited about Paris everyday. WHOOOOPIE! Oh, and just so all of you countrytons know, Hannah the current au pair and voyeur extraordinaire has informed me that no Parisians go out on Saturdays cuz it’s when all the suburbanites come into town and rowdy up the place. Travel tip #1! Don’t expect any more.
P.S. Helena, please don’t strike me down today. I wanna go jogging later when I go home, and shower, and eat tofu.
UPDATE: Nicki has sent me an email recommending a book called He’s Just Not That Into You. HMMM. With subject line “YOU MUST READ THIS BOOK!!!!”. And has offered to deliver it to my house. Do you think she’s trying to send some sort of a message? Anyway, this might be a breach of Girl Code; I can’t quite tell, seeing as the book itself claims to be a subset of codes for the madre Code.
