contact has been made

I’m not seeing Cut Copy and the Mobius Band right now because I figured it would just be frustrating with hearing in only one ear. Out of desperation, I tried all the methods of removal everyone has suggested (warm olive oil, warm water, hydrogen peroxide) to no avail.

You see… the wax has built up in my middle ear, which is blocked by the eardrum:

So, anything I put in my ear doesn’t actually get to the wax, it just gets my ear canal nice and clean. I think I must have the cleanest right ear canal of anyone on the planet right now– go ahead, check it out! I bet it’s so shiny you can see yourself in the reflection!

Now that I’ve gotten all the whining out of the way, I can go onto other topics, such as how I am currently addicted to the show MI-5. I don’t even know if it’s still on. Apparently in the UK it’s called Spooks, but they can’t call it that here because that’s apparently a racial slur. Spook? Maybe I’m just ign’ant of racism, but I have never heard that one before. Anyway, this show is pretty rad! Just what I need, right? Another TV show on a channel I don’t have to be addicted to!

Athena called me up yesterday just as I woke up to inform me that Freezepop was playing a free show on the Common in slightly less than 2 hours. We managed to mobilize in record time and get to the event, which was a gay youth pride rally, with 10 minutes to spare.

Oy, kids these days! Gay kids these days, especially! I’ve had many moments where I just don’t understand the youth of America, and this drove that home. First of all, let’s discuss fashion. Now I’m the last person on earth who should be called a fashion expert, but what’s with the 90s revival thing? All the kids were wearing a strange melange of 90s grunge, current hip hop fashion, all topped with brightly colored geometrically-patterned 80s wear.

Most of them had various pointy piercings sticking out of their cheeks and chins, and a good 1/4 were carrying around homemade signs advertising “free hugs” or “free kisses.” It’s not just about gay kids; it’s kids in general. Teenagers like this used to always come into the store–it’s just that I don’t think I’ve ever been in a crowd of this many so recently. Kids These Days seem to be begging to be noticed. I got those challenging stares that teenagers are so good at giving from everyone–the ones that say “go ahead, I DARE you to make fun of my weird appearance!” The problem was, everyone kind of looked the same. The only weird-looking kids were the ones without any piercings and with normal-colored hair!

Oy, back in my day… uh… yeah. Something.

On another note, I still can’t hear out of my right ear. People have been giving me advice of what substance to pour into my ear to melt the wax and get my hearing back (thanks, guys!). However, the problem is that the wax is stuck behind my eardrum. i remember having this problem with water years ago. The doctor said that because of my allergies the sinuses do something or other so that water and wax get trapped behind my eardrum, and there’s nothing I can really do about it without messing up my eardrum. So, I don’t want to pour anything into my ear, because it will probably just get stuck behind my eardrum with the rest of the stuff (I took a shower this morning and now have water rattling around in there as well). Argh.

I can’t hear out of my right ear. On the one hand, it’s kind of irritating. On the other hand, I got the movie Juno on Netflix, and at least the lack of stereo hearing made the annoyingly painful soundtrack more tolerable since I couldn’t hear it so well.

I’m not sure what’s up with my ear– when I sleep on my right side, I often wake up with my ear feeling like it’s full of water or something. It usually clears up after a little bit, though. Today, however, it’s not. There’s probably a gigantic glob of earwax or something stuck in there. The last time I went to the doctor, when I had that sore throat, he looked into my ears, but couldn’t see anything in my right ear because it was too blocked with wax. This was a couple of months ago, so the wax build-up is probably larger now…

I think I should see a doctor if I don’t get my hearing back by Monday, because along with not being able to hear, there’s this faint ringing sound happening that’s really getting on my nerves. However, since I quit my last job, I no longer have insurance from there. My health insurance doesn’t kick in at the new job for 60 days. With the new MA health care reform law, people are required to be covered by insurance. If this means I am obligated to go on COBRA, I will be pissed! COBRA means you can continue your health care once you leave a job, but it will no longer be subsidized by the company, so you have to pay the full price. The last time I was offered COBRA, it was going to be something like $350 a month, and there’s NO FREAKING WAY I can afford that. Of course, it’s highly doubtful that I’ll qualify for one of the poor people programs, since the poverty line is defined as a single handicapped mom with 12 asthmatic children working part time at McDonald’s.

This also sucks because I’m running out of happy pills and I don’t want to have to go off anti-depressants cold turkey again because the last time it sucked major donkey balls what with being dizzy and nauseated all the time and barfing up every food item up that came within 20 feet of me for a week.

Maybe I should talk to the people at the ghetto clinic where I’ve been going– they’re used to poor, uninsured people. Of course, they only speak Vietnamese, Haitian Creole, Portuguese, Spanish, and Korean (if you request it in advance) there, so I may have to take a crash-course in one of the above languages in order to have any questions answered. Of course the ghetto clinic is just for loonies, so they won’t help much with my hearing.

At least it’s warmer now… I can’t describe why this is so depressing, but every time I see the shrink, I have to walk past a gang of smokers huddling together for warmth on the corner across from the clinic. There’s some kind of law that says you can’t smoke within like 500 feet or something of a hospital door, so the staff and patients have found a corner exactly 500 feet away to sully their lungs in the freezing cold all the while complaining bitterly in various languages. I don’t know exactly why, but I find it really a major downer to see the Future Emphysema Patients of America all huddled together like that. It should be uplifting to see such camaraderie and teamwork as they share cigarettes and lighters with each other, but it’s just… not. Anyway with the warmer weather, maybe they won’t look so miserable (because you know that all people exist just for my aesthetic pleasure).

First of all, I found a quarter on the sidewalk on the way to work this morning. Yesterday I found a dime, and that was exciting enough, but a whole shiny new quarter? People usually pick those up when they drop them, especially in this neighborhood!

Second of all, I was walking to the T to go to Kendall from work and I found a Chahlie Cahd on the ground. I figured it probably didn’t have any money on it, so I’d give it to one of my co-workers who always buys tickets because she hasn’t bothered to get the actual card.

BUT, when I swiped it at the T turnstile, IT WAS A MONTHLY COMBO PASS!!! Woo-hoo! Those suckers are like $60 a month, and I purposefully didn’t buy one this month because I was going to see if I could make it on just $30 of regular fares. Well, it’s been 3 days and I’ve already used up over $10, so I don’t think I was going to make it. Now I don’t have to try! Of course, I instantly felt guilty that I was using someone else’s card, and what if the person came back for it?… to the Dunkin Donuts parking lot… right where it hits the road? The guilt went away pretty fast.

I should go buy a lotto ticket or something.

Or not.

Why are rabbits’ feet lucky, anyway? Are they luckier if they are in bright colors?

Today went on and on FOREVER. First we had to install a bunch of plants, then we had to go and water all the regular ones… oy, 9.5 hours of hauling and pruning is enough plants for one day! I came home and crashed and am lame.

I wanted to go see the Foals tonight at the Middle East… I’m really seriously digging them. But, I’m lame. Next week is Cut Copy and the Mobius Band at the Paradise, and I will not lame out on that one!!! The following day British Sea Power is at the Paradise, but I’m getting old. I think my days of being a slave to mopey Brit rock are coming to an end. I’m more of just an indentured servant at this point. Oh, except CC are Australian and the MB are from Western Mass… close enough.

My newish job is awesome, but man is it making me tired! Today I went up and down like a million flights of stairs 21st floor to the 25th and back down again and back up again and then down and up some more, sometimes carrying a big tree that we couldn’t figure out what to do with because we had ended up with it by accident. I get home from work and sleep and read a book or play Boggle with the innernets or something… basically, all these entries are totally boring and my life is headed in that direction as well.

Let’s see… something interesting…

I caught a snippet of conversation on the bus today: this woman in maybe her early 20s was talking about some ailment she had. “so I went to the doctor and he said I was 6 months pregnant!” Like… 6 months? How could you not know you were pregnant for that long?

Another snippet I overheard was when I was near this lawn full of pre-school kids. One teacher was talking to a little boy:

Olivia really likes you, doesn’t she? She’s your friend, right? And why does she like you? Is it because you’re Japanese? … or is it because you’re really cool?

I’m sure Olivia was really just using that kid for his Japanese-ness.

So, I typed “something interesting” into Google image search and here are some of the “interesting” pictures I came up with:

OK, I’ll admit that llama butts are pretty interesting.

Wow. Fascinating.

So far, I’m not terribly riveted.

I should be out drinking tequila and eating tacos right now. However, I’m lame and am going to bed. Besides, I already celebrated Tres de Mayo on Saturday at Laura’s & Jack’s house.

here, celebrate with a hedgehog dressed as a taco:

I’ve had this picture on various computers for like 10 years now, I think because it cracks me up every time I look at it! I think it was a picture from someone’s hedgehog Halloween party– there was one hedgehog in a kilt, too. What an odd world we live in!

Maybe it’s the gratuitous use of sitars, perhaps it’s seeing Serge Gainsbourg fondling a fake flower… I can’t stop watching this

I got to make the plant rounds alone today! Avis was sick, so I got to water plants solo, despite the fact that I have not yet completed my training. I’m not fully a Jedi yet, but I still kicked ass all over the plants downtown. Since I wasn’t following anyone around, I could do whatever I wanted, including pruning the fuck out of the pothos if I want (my trainers always say ‘you don’t have to spend all day on that one’ in the interest of time), cleaning all the leaves of the rubber plant that’s really nasty looking in one conference room, and generally taking as much time as I want.

It was A W E S O M E. I felt free! I can’t wait until I’m out on my own– just me, my watering can, and the waiting plants!

My job has also caused me to do research. Somehow, I like doing research for my own personal knowledge at a job. For example, I just looked up the water levels needed for a Norfolk Island Pine (there’s one in an office I take care of). I used to look shit up all the time for customers at the record store. We had a lot of regulars, and I’d research their queries on the innernets at home and then bore them with lengthy explanations about the things they couldn’t find. I know I’m a sick person, but I think doing research is fun (as long as its about something interesting!).

My last stop today was watering the plants at the Loew’s movie theater downtown. I could have easily sneaked into a movie, but since I’m either an Honest Person or a Total Pussy, I bought a ticket to see Forgetting Sarah Marshall anyway. It was pretty funny.

Patty and I went to see Augusten Burroughs give a reading at the Brattle Theater tonight. It was kind of… voyeuristic. Mr. Burroughs talked about his messed up family and read a chapter about how psycho his dad was, and it sort of felt like I was sitting in on someone’s therapy session. I suppose that’s what his books kind of are– therapy sessions– he said as much. Anyway, aside from that, the talk was interesting and he was funny. He doesn’t seem to take himself too seriously, which is cool. His new book sounds pretty cool, actually. Remind me to pick it up if ever it comes out in paperback or my 3-digit library fine miraculously disappears so I can take out books again. Curse you, large-print edition of Me Talk Pretty One Day due in September of 2003! It’s sitting right here on the floor of my room, too– I’m too embarrassed to return it at this point. I’ll have to sneak to the library in the dead of night and quietly slip it into the night-return box. Besides, I still owe 2 more books that I don’t even remember.

I worked in Hingham and points south today. We drove one of the company vans down to the Sowth Shaw and watered the plants in the Whole Foods store down there. It required being on a ladder the whole time, since all the plants are up high. Whilst on the ladder I accidentally dropped my spray bottle. It fell about 15 feet away from a shopping cart with a baby in it. The mother of the baby grabbed it and gave me a dirty look. Then she and some other woman she was with talked loudly about how the spray bottle almost hit the baby. Lady, that kid was so far away I couldn’t have hit it with the bottle if I’d thrown it!

WF shoppers are the same no matter where you are! There is no shortage of wealthy people with senses of entitlement the size of Toronto who want nothing more than to shop for expensive food all day. One middle aged woman went up to me and demanded to know where the “salted caramel sauce” had been moved to. I had no clue so I went and found a Whole Foods employee to locate it for her, and she proceeded to tell him that it *should* be right there (pointing), but it wasn’t. SALTED CARAMEL SAUCE?!!? WTF?!!? All in all, these people amuse me more than anything. It cracks me up to watch people whose biggest worry in life is that Donna, their regular manicurist has the flu so they will have to re-schedule their appointment. It’s like being at the zoo, looking into the monkey house. Ahhhh, so THIS is how the other 3% lives!

(Richard Attenborough voice)
And here we have the over privileged suburbanite in its native shopping habitat. Notice how the female of the species shakes her head in disgust at the sudden lack of pomegranate extract in the wheat grass jelly. She now goes through the daily ritual of demanding to speak with the manager…

Now let me bitch about the pets, and then I can get to bed. Lard Ass and Douchebag each drink a lot of water. However, the only water-holding vessel good enough for them is the toilet. This isn’t a problem except when they have cat litter stuck to their paws and track it onto the toilet seat. However, there’s nothing I can do to make them drink from anything else. I could have a golden fountain eternally spouting chilled tunafish-flavored Perrier, and they would still enjoy sticking their heads in the toilet.

Stella on the other hand, won’t eat her vegetables. Everything I’ve read about turtle care says that you need to feed them plants occasionally; turtle food alone isn’t healthy enough for them. But, Stella won’t touch any plant matter I put in her tank. I wonder if I painted it with meat she’d eat it?

No, I’m not becoming one of those neurotic pet owners who project all of their eating disorders onto the animals. I’m just sick of finding pieces of kitty litter all over the bathroom and swirling chunks of decaying vegetable matter circulating around the turtle tank.

What kind of society produces a whole line of Christian dog clothes? Are Americans really that lame? Answer: yes. Yes we are.

Terrorists apparently hate Our Freedom… but if freedom means spending $19.99 on a shirt for your dog that says “Walking With Christ,” then I don’t think I’m terribly keen on Our Freedom either!