Extra heavy

This post is dedicated to Nell.

Q: What's more yucky than a gallon of mayonnaise?

A: A gallon of mayonnaise that bills itself as "Extra Heavy."

I saw this in the wee hours of this morning in a fast food restaurant that also sells some Middle Eastern teas and canned goods, along with industrial-sized condiments.

Retail therapy

How awesome is this bag?

I've begun to worry that maybe I'm developing a purse fetish. Which is ironic since I didn't buy my first purse until my 23rd birthday, when I decided it was time to quit schlepping my stuff around in a canvas bag. And now look at me: so many bags they barely fit on the back of my closet door anymore. I go into TJ Maxx to buy clothes, and I end up with a bag that costs as much as three tops.

So, I'm kind of a materialist. But at least I'm a materialist with a really exciting sapphire bag.

Bus

Yesterday morning I woke up at 8:00 (as my body still seems to feel that six hours at a time is more than sufficient), and decided to go to the 10:00 tae kwon do class. My bus was early and I had to run to catch it at a light. Once on board I felt around in my bag for my wallet... and felt... and rumaged... and it wasn't there. I had no Smartrip card and no money. I briefly contemplated trying to talk the driver into giving me a free ride, but then how would I get back? The tkd studio is miles from my apartment. So, without giving any explanation, I got off at the next stop, walked back home, and headed down to the basement to workout on the elliptical machine.

Circadian rhythms

For about two weeks now I've had trouble sleeping. It takes me forever to get to sleep, and then sometimes I wake up in the wee hours and have to start all over again. I don't know why this is--I certainly don't have jet lag. It's as though my body has suddenly decided that it only wants to sleep in the afternoon. And no, insomnia detectives, my problem is not an excess of naps: I think I've taken a grand total of two naps during this sleepless phase.

The strange thing is that while I've been tired, I haven't really been more tired than usual during the day. Which leads me to wonder if I've suddenly started needing less sleep. I remember thinking around the time I started watching Heroes on DVD that if I could pick a superpower, I'd want to be able to go without sleep. Think about it--you could pack two lifetimes' worth of activities into one! But I also distinctly remember thinking that this would only be a good power if I could sleep when I wanted to, because I like sleeping. Hear me, careful-what-you-wish-for gods?

Signs

CityPaper
Originally uploaded by ChezShawna

You know you live in Washington when... this is the cover story on your weekly paper.

If you're curious what the reasons are, the full article can be found here. I haven't actually read it yet, but something tells me it's intended for mature audiences.

Ithaca is far

I rented a car and went to Ithaca over Labor Day weekend. I hadn't been since January, and decided I'd better make it up for the last weekend of summer. I saw NCSV and Deano and Nell and Jepetto, who'd just gotten his Ph.D. that week. Also some people who don't have names on my blog (yet). And I visited some of the places I've missed, like the Chapter House and the Carriage House and the Commons and (to be a stereotypical girl for a second) the shoe section at Bon-Ton.

Interestingly, almost as soon as I reached the Ithaca city limits I noticed I'd grown bossier. I don't think I'm very bossy in DC, but I'm rarely shy about telling my Ithaca friends what to do. Maybe the move has been good for me...

In which my tastes are called into question, and defended

Last night I was reading the Atlantic, congratulating myself on actually getting through a whole issue rather than just letting it contribute to the Leaning Tower of Pisa on my desk/nightstand like so many other publications, when I came on this article by Michael Hirschorn right at the end. As take-downs of pop culture phenomena go it's rather gentle. I think its fighting-est words are:

Quirk, loosed from its moorings, quickly becomes exhausting... Like the proliferation of meta-humor that followed David Letterman and Jerry Seinfeld in the ’90s, quirk is everywhere because quirkiness is so easy to achieve: Just be odd … but endearing. It becomes a kind of psychographic marker, like wearing laceless Chuck Taylors or ironic facial hair—a self-satisfied pose that stands for nothing and doesn’t require you to take creative responsibility.

Hirschorn's article classified many things I hold dear as "quirk," namely:

• This American Life
• Arrested Development
• Napolean Dynamite
• Little Miss Sunshine
• Rushmore*
• The Royal Tennenbaums
  

Ok, so I agree with him about Garden State and The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou, but proof positive that Hirschorn was talking about me came here (in reference to This American Life):

It’s the sound of Austin, Boulder, Berkeley, Red Hook, Madison, Cambridge, Adams Morgan**—of people who tend to think of themselves as engaged, aware.

Oh the humanity! Oh the italics!

Hirschorn, by contrast, is a man of the people. You can tell because he enjoys Knocked Up and reality TV.

Upon reflection I realized I'm probably guilty not only of patronizing this unmoored quirk, but of propagating it: see my blog entries on signs for dogs, recording examples of risible punctuation, and roller-blading in a parade while dressed as a car.

Upon further reflection I remembered that This American Life does do devastatingly "important" shows, including some great recent ones on the Iraq war and habeas corpus. And I thought about the some of the pretentious schlock I've seen that came out of someone's earnest attempt to make something that mattered (see Crash, Babel), and concluded I'd rather have spent those couple of hours on some meaningless piece of engaged, aware quirky escapism. Because what's wrong with that, really?

*cited as an example of good quirk
**this is where I live

Buffy

Yesterday I watched the final two episodes in the Buffy the Vampire series. It doesn't sound like a great way to spend a gorgeous Saturday afternoon (hey--I went outside, too), but it seemed momentous, given that I'd been slowly making my way through the series on DVD since January 2005.

So what am I going to do tomorrow? Maybe I'll set the world on fire. Or maybe I'll start on the other 213 DVDs in my Netflix queue. The possibilities are endless.

Pimp my cat

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think this is Icanhascheezburger material. I just need the right caption. Ideas?

Thai Hot

This is the receipt from M.M.'s birthday dinner on Tuesday. Even with six exclamation marks, it wasn't hot enough for him, so he asked for some hot sauce and piled it on. Afterward he claimed he couldn't concentrate because his mouth was on fire. What a wuss.

A Rock in a Park

Remember how I wrote that hanging out with Joey and E97 was sort of like being in a Kevin Smith movie? Yeah, I didn't think so. Anyway, for E97's sister, editor of this surreal, er, short, it was apparently like a completely different kind of movie:

(Don't feel like you need to watch the whole thing. It's very much an inside joke. I think.)

(Also, I don't make an appearance in this video.)

In which the Virgin performs a miracle

On Friday night those of us who had never been to A Day in Rock City before were awarded Virgin candles from the Mexican store.

On Tuesday I was late to the airport. I'm somewhat notorious for being late to the airport; when leaving from DC I arrived 50 minutes before takeoff. But I had the impression that it took 45 minutes to get from Niffer-bur's to O'Hare on the El; in fact, it took an hour. A very long hour, involving many stops and much inching along. I hadn't had anything to eat that day, and given my love of breakfast, by the time I got to O'Hare I was quite irritable and worried. More than missing my flight, I was worried about not having time to grab a bite to eat before boarding.

I arrived about 40 minutes before takeoff and speed-walked through the airport to security, which I found wondrously line-free. Relievedly, I took off my shoes, put my bag on the conveyor belt, and heard those dreaded words: "bag check!"

I searched my conscience and, hoping for quick redemption, confessed my sins to the middle-aged TSA employee assigned to my bag: "I know, I forgot to take my liquids out."

"Which pocket are they in?"

I pointed to the front pocket, where he found my carefully-packed quart-sized zip-top bag of quasi-contrabands.

"It looked like you had a spray can or a bottle..." he said, replacing the baggie.

I thought, and realized what it must be. If he searched the packed main compartment of my bag, it would take forever. But I felt calm, resigned to my fate of missing my flight. "I have a candle," I said.

"You have a candle?" he said, handing my bag over. "Ok, thank you."

I took my bag slowly, unable to believe this stroke of luck. As I hoisted it onto my back and headed through the terminal, I glanced at the clock: still enough time to hit the bathroom and a fast-food joint. I was saved.

Komodo

When Niffer-bur and I got to the Chicago aquarium on Monday we found a line that went out the door, down the front steps, and halfway across the courtyard. A clue to the reason for the madness was the giant blow-up lizard whose mouth the line disappeared into: There was a temporary lizard exhibit going on, including a Komodo Dragon.

While I was impressed with the aquarium, I thought the Komodo was nothing to wait in line for 40 minutes for. It's kind of goofy-looking. Maybe I'd feel differently if I'd seen it flick its tongue or lumber around its enclosure or something.

A Day in Rock City: Swiss Canoe Races

Much as I didn't come to Illinois expecting to rollerblade bewigged and half-naked in the Rock City Day parade, I didn't go to the Swiss canoe races with the intention of competing: I was just going to sit on the bleachers and take pictures. But Niffer-bur's team that needed a fourth, and apparently I can't say no to potentially humiliating physical feats--at least not when I'm in the Midwest. So I joined 0ne of the two all-female teams (there were about seven teams overall).

When my team's name was called, I attempted to climb off the bleachers and fell... and fell... and fell. My feet were perhaps four feet off the ground when I started falling, but I managed to hit every possible bleacher component on the way down. When I finally stopped falling I sensed that all conversation in that section of the bleachers had stopped, and that all eyes were on me.

"I'm ok," I said to no one in particular. In fact the bruises on my right leg stretch from mid-calf to groin, and there's a bruise on my left thigh that's about five square inches. (This was particularly ironic, given that I hadn't fallen once during my roller blading escapades.) But I got up and got into my fireman's boots behind Niffer-bur.

Swiss canoing, I learned that day, doesn't actually involve any water. Rather, four pairs of fireman's boots are nailed to two parallel boards, and four team members attempt to move in a synchronized way to move forward, around a cone, and back to the finish line.

It's truly a cold day in hell when I triumph in any sporting event, so it was shocking when our team beat the only other all-female team to the finish line. Particularly since our team was composed of 75 percent Rock City Day virgins. When we crossed the finish line we stopped, cheered, and promptly fell over.

A Day in Rock City: Parade

There are certain moments in my life that have caused me to reevaluate some part of my concept of who I am. I start to wonder who this person is who made the decisions that put me in this situation. I had such a moment when I tried to sneak out of my Turkish dorm room and found myself hanging from a windowsill over a 12-foot drop onto concrete; another just before jumping out of a plane with a parachute strapped to my back.

Both of those incidents of minor physical peril pale in comparison to what I was doing at a little before 11:00 on Saturday morning, though: namely, rollerblading alone past small-town Midwesterners who'd gathered outside to see a parade. In addition to the rollerblades, I was wearing white fishnets, a short, yellow, sequined skirt and skimpy top to match, long black gloves, huge sunglasses, a wig, and a cardboard car.

The first decision that led me down the road to this moment of public weirdness was coming to A Day in Rock City, a festival put on each year to celebrate the founding of this village of 300 near the Illinois/Wisconsin border. Each year friends of Nell, a friend from my Ithaca days who's from Rock City, converge for the occasion, and this year I thought I'd see what the fuss was about.

Nell and another Rock City Day veteran picked me up in Rockford on Thursday in the midst of a shopping trip. As we drove between craft and thrift stores hunting for costumes and float decorations, Nell explained that the theme of this year's float would be Gas Guzzlers for Global Warming, and she ran down the available roles: the Arab oil sheik, George Bush, gas station workers, the oil company worker, the Texas oil tycoon and his wife, ghoulish dying people. The role of a polar bear drowning in a wading pool was already taken. "And if you have any interest in rollerskating, you can be a car," she said. The cars would skate in front of the float in a traffic jam; each would have a designated color and a costume purchased by Nell in Thailand.

This didn't seem like the best option, given that I hadn't roller skated in years, and had no roller skates. But when I found a box full of $2 roller blades to choose from at Goodwill, I became more receptive to the idea. I bought a pair and practiced skating around the bank parking lot that night, but I grew worried when I saw the costumes, which I thought would look fine on a six-year-old at a dance recital, but not so great on me.

As far as I could tell, nothing got done on the float on Friday, including my own goal of finding someone else to be the yellow car. Work seemed to begin in the middle of the night; when I woke up in the morning, Nell was already hard at work on the seemingly impossible job of getting the float ready for the parade's 10:30 commencement. I went to work on my car with the over-worked hot glue gun, quickly resigning myself to driving the most pathetic car of the group. That was the point of no return: having built the car, I had to drive it.

We were late to the parade, and being accomplished skaters, the other cars reached the starting point blocks ahead of me. Which was how I came to be all alone on my $2 blades, behind the other cars but ahead of the float (ably pulled by G.R. as the Arab sheik on a three-wheeler), on a later stretch of the parade route where the spectators were already gathered.

We had a great time, though. If you don't believe me, believe G.R.'s Picasa album.

Ha! Ha! Ha!

Behold: My feelings about called laughter have been brilliantly captured by The Onion.

Randomness and the nature of The Ninth Floor

This morning I went with N.Lu to see Al Gore speak outside the Museum of the American Indian, part of the Live Earth concert series today. Turned out we didn't actually see the man -- ok, I didn't, but N.Lu claims to have seen his back as he took the stage. Then we heard Garth Brooks an Trisha Yearwood sing "We Shall be Free." Then we met TOWWAS at the Folklife Festival.

I'd been the week before, but it was fun to go again. We saw some great performances from southern China, and N.Lu interrogated a Belfast scientist about his renewable energy plan involving sewage, willow trees, and sustainable heating. There was some time devoted to shopping, but I managed not to spend a thing all day except for metro fare.

To me, though, none of this seems to make for a very interesting blog entry. I've come to realize that, whether true or not, I tend to believe that pictures of surprising and random stuff are the gold standard of blog-able subjects. So here goes:

This was stuck into the ground next to a tree I saw on the way to N.Lu's place. I don't know why, or whether, the tree needed saving. The sign was still there when I came back this afternoon.

And the "most random item in a Smitsonian gift shop" award goes to:

It was published in 2002 -- when, perhaps, it seemed marginally more tasteful. In addition to quotes, it contains such jokes as, "Q: What do Michael Dukakis and Saddam Hussein have in common? A: Neither can believe they lost to Bush."

100%

I heard a McDonald's commercial a few nights ago that ended, "With 100% beef, nothing beats a Big Mac." I'm no expert on burgers, but isn't being 100% beef really the least you'd expect? Do the other fast food restaurants cut their beef with, say, horse? Soylent green? A "secret ingredient"?



As a side note, this is my eighth post to carry the "food" tag. I guess this is marginally better than blogging about my cat all the time, which is what I feared when I started this adventure. Still, perhaps I should try harder to develop my other interests... like drinking.

Tourists III

These are the kinds of food we ate this past weekend:
Afghani
French
sandwich (Potbelly, such a hit we went back the next day)
Ethiopian
Turkish (ok, only so E97 had the Turkish breakfast, but I'm counting it)
sushi

I also introduced Joey to the wonder that is the mojito.

On Sunday afternoon Joey and E97 walked up the Exorcist stairs in Georgetown. Then Joey pretended to fall down them. Then they raced back up them. I had to stay at the bottom because, well, that was just the sacrifice I had to make in order to record the whole ordeal.

Tourists II

I've had out-of-town visitors for the last two weekends, and much fun has been had. In the case of Joey (from Colorado) and his high school friend E97 (who lives in Baltimore now, but whom I had not seen for nine long years), I felt kind of like I was in a Kevin Smith movie. Except that the dialogue was nerdier (in a good way), and, on E97's part, much less crude.

I'm a long way from getting tired of doing touristy things here--there are always new things to discover. Take this comment card at the National Archives, which I found quite entertaining.

A few blocks away, I spotted this work of art in the women's room at Potbelly: