This Month

2007

SNAP COUNTRY USA
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DING

January 29

Lately I have noticed that the terminology of global warming and climate change are not the same and I have wondered if they have become signifying elements of outdated earth science.

The way that I found out the answer is that Monday morning is our trash pickup, which is important to remember because if we don't take out the trash then we just accumulate way too much. Something that is kind of weird is that my apartment has never had recycling bins. I think this is disappointing, because it kind of indicates that no one that has ever occupied this apartment has ever recycled. Here is a piece of information: If you live in the City of Cambridge (which does not seem to have an official motto like Portland, which is The City That Works), you can find out all about recycling at this page. Moreover, if you ever are in need of recycling bins, just send an email to bluebins@cambridgema.gov and tell them your name, address, zip code, how many bins you want and why you want them, and they will freaking just BRING THEM TO YOUR HOUSE. I did that today, and when I came home, there were two huge bins sitting in front of my house. Isn't that akin to... MAGIC?

Anyway, I was going around this page and I got really mad because it made me realize that no one looks at it, because it is so full of helpful information that obviously no one looks at, especially myself. But today I looked. And that must be worth something. I am proud of Cambridge for putting up a little graphic about composting. I would like to start a compost in my house. If I read their page about it maybe I will get so excited about composting that I will make a little bucket for one.

So: I went on this link to the EPA about how global warming and climate change are different things because I was like Yeah what is the deal with that anyway. I have a really big problem with people who mix up things that are not actually interchangeable. Like the greenhouse effect and the ozone layer are not the same issue, at all, whatsoever. But people seem to think that they are related, and really: I promise you that they aren't. UV rays giving you cancer is not the same thing as carbon dioxide heating up the planet to make the glaciers melt two feet per year (three times the rate of the 1980s!).

And evolution and adaptation: Not the same thing. Unlike the ozone layer and the greenhouse effect, the two things are related, but they are definitely not the same thing. Many people say evolution when they really mean adaptation. To say that rabbits evolved to have long ears is not actually a correct thing to say; really, rabbits that had longer ears were selected in their population because they could hear predators better and run away, let's just say, so they reproduced, and their adaptation of longer ears helped them succeed as an organism and a species.

These frequent misuses are So Lame. It is like the misuse of the conjunction it's as the possessive its, which is flagrant and obvious, but worse because they are about information, and not just stylistic integrity. SO. I want to make sure that when we're talking about global warming and climate change, we are saying the right words that mean the right things. THE ANSWER IS HERE.

It turns out that global warming is "an average increase in the temperature of the atmosphere near the Earth's surface and in the troposphere, which can contribute to changes in global climate patterns," whereas climate change "refers to any significant change in measures of climate (such as temperature, precipitation, or wind) lasting for an extended period (decades or longer)." To elaborate: Say climate change when you are talking about carbon emissions and the totally frightening weather patterns. Like, people in the northeast will buy "global warming" for a minute because of the 70 degree week we just had in January, but people in California will be like "I'm cold, and it's not warm at all. GLOBAL WARMING IS SUCH A LIE."

It is not that global warming is a lie, it's just that you should have said "climate change," because it's scarier, and makes people think of the end of the world, instead of vacation in ever expanding tropical lagoons. It's too bad, because you're going on a vacation to hell, and we're all going to die. Climate change.

January 29

So I have never actually owned a piece of Achewood merchandise, despite my intentions over the years. Anyway, today I got the I'M THE GUY WHO SUCKS shirt, so I will wear that really soon.


January 28

So: Hillary and Barack - who will get my vote???: A superficial evalution.

Here is a thing about Hillary: She is the alumna that my college is most into talking about. It's like, they are really into putting Hillary on their brochures and stuff, maybe because they think girls want to be like her. I think she's ok, but I also find her to be a politician 100% of the time, even when she is like, chatting and stuff as a guest at the college, as if she is aware that people might vote for her in a certain way if she says certain things all of the time, even when she is sleeping, when really I just want to hear her tell a silly joke or anecdote about a time that she got drunk at a TZE party and accidentally locked herself out of Stone Davis in a towel.

Also: Hillary's web video is frankly bizarre. If you watch it, it slowly pans side to side in her living room, and it drives me completely insane. WHY do they do that. It's like there is this focus group that said that if a woman is talking she has to have sweeping alternating views of her couch upholstery and family photos before you can take her seriously. And copious hand gestures. Otherwise it is pretty weird to do because all it ends up doing is slowly make you shake your head no while you watch her talk.

Barack: I cannot get over how swoony I am about Barack. He is just so good at talking, and the video on his website stays still. He is not necessarily the most experienced I guess, but he's so dreamy. Also I remember the time that he talked at the Democratic National Convention and I wanted to cry because he is so much more exciting than any other person in the Democratic Party. So I guess I am worried that my basis for liking him is that he is just exciting and attractive, which I guess is not the worst thing in the world to be worried about.

Other things that I obviously should not exclusively base my vote on, but seriously: Hillary's website is, honestly, not attractive. The awkward light blue faded background? The red, white, and blue flag icon that is a flagrant low-grade compression jpg? Yes, it will be accessible to people with dial up modems, but why do you want to make that image accessible to ANYONE? I don't understand who she is hiring to make this website, but it seems like they went to design school with the same people who make the Verizon Wireless website. (Read: It's pretty... Pretty ugly.)

Barack's website doesn't really offend me - It is totally simple and decent to look at. And there's even a complete lack of American flag iconography: WHAT??? Wow, thank you Barack. It's decided. If you run for president and you do not use any stars or stripes in your graphic identity: YOU HAVE GOT MY VOTE.

January 27

Last night I went to the Somerville Theater when it was 5 degrees out and went into the one theater that has a malfuntioning heating system. I asked the manager what the deal was with all the cold wind blowing over me during the movie, and she was like "oh... yeah. Here's a free ticket to a movie." I think it was pretty nice that she gave me a ticket, that is why I like that place even though it is cold. I have to take a bunch of pictures for my class, maybe I can take them of my FROZEN HEART.

I am going to have a feast next weekend, I will need to have a totally insane list of things that I will make for the meal. I was thinking of making sauerbraten because I saw it on TV. I want to make a whole pig, and I want to roast it over a spit in my living room. And then I want to stick an apple in its mouth. Unfortunately, because I am having this feast in the name of the Jewish Arbor Day, I think that would be "poor form." I will not serve the pig. It is not classy. However, I will try hard to have goblets, and perhaps some fire. Can you get yule log videos still?

A new video by Barr that I like:

You just hear so much and you see so much and you hear so much and you see so much, it's a lot, but you hold it. Add piano.

January 25

PUMP IT PUMP IT PUMP PUMP IT UP!

There is this guy who is constantly a part of the Wellesley radio station, in that he cannot be a part of it, because he makes people uncomfortable. His name is Jamie K and ever since I was like, 19, he would apply to be a DJ at the station every other semester or so, and every other semester the station would be like "Actually no one has forgotten that you make us feel uncomfortable." Anyway, I recall that his primary fixation as to the reason he couldn't be on the station was that it was assumed that he wouldn't play the heavy rotation requirements. And that's because when he HAD a show, he didn't. However, his phrasing of this issue was that he was now open to "playing the technotronics." I was unclear at first if he was referring to the musician Technotronic, or if it was the name of a genre of music for him. I believe it is the latter.

However, the musician Technotronic made this song and I heard it on the radio when I was nine or something and I was like THIS IS MY FAVORITE SONG. And my mom even liked this song. And I was at that age where I was changing the radio station in the car and stuff, like she would have it on KINK FM (Portland's soft rock station - TRUE TO THE MUSIC), and I would be all "I want to listen to Z100 (Portland's NUMBER ONE HIT MUSIC STATION) because that way I will be cooler than these stirruped stretch pants permit me to be" and the Technotronic song would come on and my mom would like it, and there would be no fighting about changing it back to Rikki Don't Lose That Number.

Anyway: So I just rediscovered this video today, in a string of 90's music video watching, in which I laughed so hard that I cried. Others: Monica: Don't Take It Personal (SHHHH it's about menses!), Green Day: Basket Case (wasn't it your favorite song in 7th grade ALSO), Genuwine: Pony (1996 SEXYTIME = OPEN SHIRT DANCING AND SAGGING), Boyz II Men: I'll Make Love To You (THROW YOUR MATCHING WHITE SHORTS! ON THE FLOOR!), Silk: Freak Me (this is the DEFINING slow-jam/vertical striped turtleneck/highly explicit seduction song), Salt N Pepa AND En Vogue (!!!): Whatta Man (quite the Carousel of musical eclecticism - plus Tupac! You so crazy. I think I wanna have your baby.)

This is my actual favorite though: What About Your Friends by TLC YOU GUYS. How gay is this video. We have women who are wearing giant t-shirts, work boots with no laces, EXTREMELY baggy shorts with huge belts and bandana do-rags??? That is not gay, that's like, GAY-HAY-HAY. Anyway: that doesn't even matter, because of the Funkiness that is T-Boz's massive pin that says BOSS on it, the INTENSIFIED running man moves that Left-Eye busts in her large hat, and the neon graffiti that informs us that this is an "Atlanta thang."

OK, and speaking of gay: C.H.O.P.S. I need this to be verified - I cannot figure out if this is real or fake. Is it a parody, or is it real? If it's a parody, it is like, really elaborate, like to an artful extent. If it's real, I need to IM Donnie Davies to thank him for compiling the list of Gay Bands so I will know what music to stay away from: I am especially thankful that he clarified the Elton John issue for me, apparently he is "really gay."

January 25

Angela Strassheim is coming out with a book called Left Behind in March and I am excited about it. I think that if I could also make a book, then I would really like that. I went to her show on accident in November during the print fair and I really liked her pictures even though they are of people, because they are totally beautiful, but also a little scary. There is this one picture that was up in that show, it should be on the gallery website - OK: the show is a series of large scale C-print portraits that depict women and girls in various definitive scenes in their roles of being daughters - and at first you are looking at them and they are images of little girls in their pink and purple bedrooms playing make believe or something and you think is it pretty sweet and adorable, but then you realize that it comes in sequence with all these other images of older girls that are kind of disturbing in this non-explicit way - like there is this girl who is riding a bike and there's a boy who is holding her handlebars to stop her from going forward - and the entire scene is really weird because he's not wearing a shirt but he is wearing rubber boots, and she's wearing flip flops but also holding a sheep on a leash, but it's also set in this banal suburban backyard in front of beige vinyl siding and a satellite dish. And THEN there are other pictures that are more explicitly disturbing, like there is a man who has an adolescent girl over his knee with her pants down and he is spanking her, and you can see how red her skin is where he has already been hitting her.

Anyway: so the print that I was saying before that I like is this huge picture and it's from inside of a car, and you can see the rearview mirror, and in it a man's eyes looking out of the car and into a house, and you can see a woman inside the house through a window and it is in perfect focus. It is awesome, and scary.

January 24

I am going to talk about slugs- last night I talked with Kelly on the phone and she was telling me about the next issue of her zine called BIOPHILE, and we talked about slugs and eels being very awesome animals. I will let Kelly do the writing about the eels, but you should totally look them up because they are fascinating.

Anyway, I love slugs a lot. I think it's irritating that some people do not love slugs because they are really harmless, and what's more, they are the basis of forest ecology in that they are excellent decomposers. You might think it is gross that they eat horse poop, but no one else you know is going to do it, ARE THEY.

There was this time months ago when Christina and I were walking on the bike path that is near my house and it was the middle of the night, and she saw this huge (by NE standards) slug that I thought was a banana slug on the side of the path. I was so happy because I miss the pacific northwest all the time, that I was like, pretty much crying with joy. This is a story called You Know Your Life is for Nerds When: You Cry About Slugs.

Anyway, I picked up the slug and I talked to it and put it in a nice place over by a tree where it would find some dead leaves. However, later I went home and I was thinking about slugs and I was like "Oh I wonder what wikipedia has to say about slugs" and then I looked and I swear to god there is a picture of the slug that I saw on the bike path that very evening. LOOK AT IT.

It's not really a banana slug, but a leopard slug! That is the explanation for its spottiness. But honestly: IT'S AMAZING. And you do NOT see slugs like that just around town. And it was found in Somerville, which is where the bike path is, AND it was taken like, I think the same day that we were walking. So it has to be.

ALSO you are required to know about this shark, because it will haunt your dreams. It is a frilled shark and it is so rare to catch it on film! It is a primitive animal. It lives at the very bottom of the sea. But this one they just found in Japan yesterday was swimming near the surface.

LOOK AT ITS MOUTH! It is full of crazy teeth.

January 23

Probably the most fun thing I did yesterday was eat a croissant and then have a cup of coffee. There is a place here called the Quebrada bakery and I really like it a lot, as far as bakeries go. One time I worked in this bakery in Manhattan Beach in LA and it was really difficult to find parking there. The girls that I worked with were Utterly Horrible People. One of them was named Jessica and the other one was named Casey. Casey actually got fired, but it wasn't even because she was appallingly rude to customers and talked in front of little kids like a sailor. And not just ANY sailor. Like, a sailor who was a junkie and would threaten to murder you with broken glass on the beach and then go to juvie and THEN be a really huge bitch after she got out. Also she talked disrespectfully to her mother. NO: the reason she got fired was because she was late. Late.

However, at that job I did learn the finer points of bakery items. Like a sugar cookie is very cheap. Cake decoration is a big deal, and for the love of god, do not get those printed out pictures on your cakes. It's pretty gross, it's just food coloring from a printer. The best cake you can get is an 8" round, chocolate, with chocolate mousse and raspberry filling. That's the truth. Also: just because a place has an A rating does not mean that there are not cockroaches inside of it. And if a place says they have buttercream frosting, you should actually ask what it is made out of. Because the buttercream at this bakery was in fact made of nothing having to do with butter or cream. It was just made out of crisco and food coloring. It's nice to tell people who have lactose intolerance, but that's about it.

January 21

THIS IS MY FAVORITE THING TO WATCH


It is something that makes me want to own that TV just because it is something that I do not get tired of watching. I am pretty mad that they made that commercial only for Europe. I mean, wouldn't the entire US be a better place if you could watch it in between your programs? I bet it is because they spelled "color" with a u. Anyway Christina showed that to me in like November and I liked it a lot, but I still like it. Which is something that is not usual about things on the internet.

January 19

Tomorrow my darling comes back from the Österreich! I will pick her up at the airport. I will even park in the parking garage and pay the excessive fees for its service of holding my car. I think that means I need to go to the ATM. See, this is lame, this is who I am. I am the girl who spends all her cash the night before she knows she has to pay the $3 toll at the airport highway onramp.

Today I ate a bunch of pizza, and then I had a burrito. Also today Kelly and I talked about the difference between Sweet Tomatoes here and Sweet Tomatoes in Oregon. Here it is this delicious gourmet pizza restaurant, and there are only two of them, and they are both in the city of Newton, but in different villages of Newton. In Oregon is it is this chain eatery that I think is a lot like Izzy's, which is also totally only in the northwest. It's like: Old Country Buffet, but like, with pizza and salad bar stuff instead of tubs of tepid mashed potatoes and ham. PS: what ever happened to Izzy? I hope she didn't die. She seemed kind of old, and that was when I was a kid.

Anyway in Oregon the only reason I know what Sweet Tomatoes is is because there was this guy who had a local commerical on TV for his company, Empire Glass. If you got a windshield repaired at Empire Glass, you could get a certificate for like, 20 dinners at Sweet Tomatoes or something, which seems outrageous. Like, what kind of thing is going on with these companies that they can afford to just give away 20 free dinners to Empire Glass customers? It seemed disreputable on TV - what with the nonprofessional production, the awkwardly inserted graphics, and the sound that was bad. Anyway: I never needed any windshield repair done, so I never solicited their place.

AND THEN THE GUY IN THE COMMERCIAL WAS MURDERED. And I was like WHATTTTTTTTT THE GUY WITH THE SWEET TOMATOES DINNERS? Why would anyone kill him? For the record his name was Rick Chance and he was a self-made millionaire.

January 18

So, I guess the thing I have been thinking the most about lately is mortality, which is pretty sad I guess, considering that I am But Twenty Four. My Gma is 87 and she told me on the phone that she and my Gdad signed their wills today, and my mom and dad were there watching. It is nice that my grandma is so into her will. I do not think that I can handle my will right now, or ever. Like, "Mmmmm I never want to die, can you please just make my will say that I will grant my entire estate to the person who makes it so I don't die?"

I am particularly flipped out by violence and death in media right now. Like totally more than a crabby PTA mom in the suburbs. We saw a movie over the weekend that depicted all of this cruelty, and it scared the HELL out of me, and then I read that New York Times article about that guy who is my age who was a child soldier in Sierra Leone, and he like, watched his friends get completely shot and exploded to death when he was twelve. When I say "exploded to death" YOU HAVE TO KNOW IT IS THAT A GRENADE WENT OFF AND THEIR BODY PARTS LANDED EVERYWHERE. It makes me wonder what these people on 24 and the Libyans in Back to the Future are really thinking. I guess that they are not really thinking because they are fictional portrayals of people with fake guns.

Anyway. So sometimes I have been waking up in the night afraid that the end is nigh, and it has also been compounded by the fact that carbon emissions are ruining the world. It's also making my day to day life not enjoyable. Like I find paper in the trash that could easily be reused or recycled, and I feel like my brain is going to die. Or like, I come home and the lights have been on all day long with nobody home and I start talking to myself about god damn itttt what are you doing to the polar bears???

Greenland, you guys. What will you tell your childrennnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn. THAT IT SUCKS BUT LOOK YOU JUST REALLY HAD TO LEAVE THE LIGHTS ON OK? I MEAN, IF WE CAN'T DO THAT, THEN ARE WE REALLY FREE? IN THE FINAL AMERICAN SHOWDOWN, WHO WILL WIN: FREEDOM OR GLACIAL MELTOFF. OH IT'S TOO BAD, I THINK THAT AN EAGLE MIGHT DROWN IN THE OCEAN.

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