contact has been made

The above is basically the message that Facebook has been sending me ever since I joined up. This is based on the ads that rotate at the left of the screen; the ones that you can’t get rid of no matter how far you scroll down.

It’s kind of amazing, because normally ads letting you know what a fat slob you are focus on the Beautiful People and what you should look like if you obsessed over your weight constantly, ate nothing but 1/2 container of nonfat yogurt for every meal and did a lot of heroin. However, most of these ads focus on “fat” people. That is, they show pictures of what you’re NOT supposed to look like in hopes that you suddenly say, “holy shit, my stomach is not concave!” and go out and buy their diet pills or green tea diet plan or whatever. It’s pretty awful.

The one in the lower left comes with the caption “avoid muffin top”– they gave it a label! Now whenever I see someone with a little gut spilling over her buttcrack-jeans, the phrase “muffin top” involuntarily comes into my head. Ack! Thanks a lot! How many high school girls are going to sit in the locker room and derisively scorn Uncool Katie Jones’ now-actualized Muffin Top?

Here are the “ideal” bodies; what we’re all supposed to strive for. The captions for each of these revolve around looking good in a bikini, because after all, that’s the whole point of existence.

I personally like “the Pink Patch.” There’s supposedly this patch that you can wear that will make you skinny. Everything is in patch form these days: cigarette-quitting, birth control… does anybody else find it slightly unnerving that something you stick to your skin is somehow silently leeching chemicals into your bloodstream? Even if it *is* pink?

Lastly, there are the before-and-after pictures. These ones really crack me up:

The first one’s caption talks about losing 20 lbs in 6 weeks. The difference between the “before” picture and the “after” picture is way more than 20 lbs. Losing 20 lbs in 6 weeks? Is that even healthy? The second picture is awesome because we learn that not only will you be skinny after going on the Whatever Diet, but you’ll get a tan, too!

The ads read my profile and deliver ads specifically to my demographic, such as diets for “35-year-old Women” — I really wonder what the ads are like for 35-year-old men. I bet you anything that there are not nearly as many “DAYUMMM, YOU’RE A FAT-ASS!” ads targeted at them. I really really hope that my 13-year-old niece isn’t getting as many fatso ads as I am; that would really suck. Like girls need to get screwed up at that tender young age if they aren’t already.

Facebook has added a little feature to the ads, 2 buttons– one with a thumbs-up and the other with a thumbs-down. The thumbs-down one changes the ad if you click on it. Unfortunately, it seems that pretty much all the ads for my demographic are ones decrying fatness, because if I elect to change the picture, it just gives me another one from a different company letting me know how fat I am in a slightly different angle, and how I can fix it with a different preposterous-sounding diet.

Now, with the increase in cheap, available, fat-laden convenience foods coupled with the increase in jobs that require you to sit at a desk all day, Americans are getting fatter. Nobody disputes that. However, you’d think that with the Average American being a little chunkier than the ones in bygone years where people toiled in fields and factories and at other waist-slimming jobs, the attitude towards fatness would be relaxed a bit. However, this is not the case. Fat people have always had a bias against them (except perhaps in the middle ages when fatness was considered a sign of wealth), but I think that people are not only more intolerant of extra pounds now, but also the criteria for what constitutes a fat person has narrowed quite a bit.

For example, check out Marilyn Monroe:

What a freaking fat-ass! Jeez, have another jelly donut there, Tubby.

I know it’s an obvious statement, but in a world where Kate Winslet

and Drew Barrymore

are considered the chubby chicks of Hollywood, then what chance does anyone have? If your dress size is a positive integer, then you might as well be mainlining cheesecake, because face it, YOU ARE DOOMED TO FAILURE! WE all know that if you are fat, you will never live a happy fulfilling life and you might as well just lay down and die right now because people are laughing at you behind you back, you’ll never get a raise, and if you somehow manage to trick some unwitting illegal alien into marrying you, he’ll be screwing a chick in a size -000 dress within minutes. I hope you’re proud of yourself, you lazy slob!

Because, we know that all fat people are fat because they’re lazy and have no self control. Of course that’s it! It’s just like poor people aren’t rich because they’re too lazy to work hard. Is it any co-incidence that there are so many fat poor people? I think not! In fact, how many skinny terrorists do you know? Saddam Hussein certainly was no Twiggy. Fat people are actually terrorists!

Jesus says nuke em all! Fucking Communists.

On another note, my cat, whom I affectionately nicknamed “Lard-Ass” has been on a barfing spree again. I’ve thought that maybe calling him Lard-Ass gave him a complex about his weight and caused him to become bulimic. Then I realized something else recently. In the movie Stand By Me, the character called Lard Ass exacts revenge on the town who bullys him for being fat by barfing on everyone. He enters a pie eating contest, drinks a bunch of castor oil before hand, and hurls blueberry pie all over the audience. This causes the audience members to each get sick and ralph up all over their friends and neighbors.

i don’t know why this piece of cinematic trivia escaped me for so long. I mean, I’ve only seen Stand By Me like 800 times– it came out when I was about 12; the perfect target for a coming-of-age movie, even if it was a fairly trite Baby Boomer Nostalgia flick.

So, I will strive to no longer call Morrissey by his nickname, and go back to calling him Moz. Godspeed, me.

Lately, with the presidential election coming up and stuff, I’ve been thinking about what people believe in. I realize that most people act on what they’re *against* rather than what they’re *for.*

I mean, you can be AGAINST abortion, but is anybody really *FOR* abortion? Pro-choice people are *for* having the right to choose, but only because the idea of choice is threatened by people who are *against* abortion.

People are *against* terrorism, but if you are anti-terrorist, what are you for? Pro-leave-us-alone? Pro-peace? (naaah)

People seem to spend a lot of time thinking about what they *don’t* support; people define themselves by what they *don’t* do. For example: vegetarians. Vegetarians will say “I don’t eat meat.” It’s not “I eat vegetables” or “I eat vegetables only” but what they don’t do: eat meat. Not in broad political/social terms, but in small daily activities– people seem to define themselves more and more by what they don’t or can’t do. It struck home at work when I listen to the constant whining of my co-workers and the long lists of ailments. This is the simple example: Shirley doesn’t do heavy lifting because of her bad back. She doesn’t smoke because of her asthma. She doesn’t eat any number of things because of various digestive issues/allergies/whatever. At the end of the day, what DOES she do? I don’t think she knows. She spends so much time concentrating on what she’s NOT, she doesn’t know what she IS.

This is just on the micro-personal level. There’s a lot of bad stuff in the world to be against, but I’ve found that being anti- everything doesn’t necessarily make you feel any better. I mean, I’m anti-war in Iraq, but what am I pro? Pro No-War-In-Iraq? What can I believe IN, rather than just NOT believing in? The absence of war doesn’t imply that there’s peace. It just means that people are not actively engaging in warfare. They might be uneasily eying the enemy, they might be stockpiling weapons for the next time. They might be all holding hands and eating tofu and singing Beatles songs.

Pro-Peace? Even though it’s a trite, vague position, being pro-peace at least causes a goal to do something, rather than the goal to stop or eliminate something. Being pro- things is more tangible in my opinion–it gives you a positive goal to work towards, rather than simply the goal to make something stop or go away. By stopping something, you’re leaving a void, you’re not necessarily proposing a solution.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that it’s easy to see what you’re against, but it’s a whole other thing entirely to know what you’re *for.* In this day and age, the media, the culture, everything focuses on what’s bad and how to eliminate it. It doesn’t focus on what we can improve or what’s good or how we can make stuff better.

So people, go home and write a list of 15 things that you are for, even if they are seemingly small and inconsequential (i.e,. instead of being anti-eating-seafood, be pro-eating ice cream!) and from now on define yourself by what you DO believe in, rather than what you DON’T believe in.

That’s the end of my cheese-ass rant. Normally I am anti-corny, hackneyed sentiments and pro-meaningful, original, eloquent ideas, but I’m not finding the inspiration to explain myself fully, clearly or even interestingly today!

I’ m on hold with the IRS because I was supposed to get my “stimulus payment” a month ago, and it never got here. I personally think the whole stimulus payment thing is an elaborate hoax. I’ve been given a whole slew of toll-free numbers, all of which seem to be either endless recordings with no hope of speaking to a customer representative (there isn’t even an option), or else the call cuts out, or when you call it’s just loud static.

I’ve finally gotten to a place where I’m on hold supposedly waiting to talk to someone. They’re playing the Waltz of the Flowers from The Nutcracker Suite, which is a classy touch. I suppose getting free money in the mail is kind of like Christmas…

According to the IRS website, which every calm woman’s voice instructs you to visit, my refund, if I requested Direct Deposit (which I did), should have gone through on May 1st. According to another automated voice, my check was mailed on May 16. Either way, it’s June 17; I should have gotten SOMETHING, right?

Of course in the midst of all of this, I feel like a total douche, since this is a free present from the gubmin’– it’s not like I’m *entitled* to it or anything, yet here I am demanding to know where it is and stuff. Oh well, it’s all an elaborate plot to get people to stop hating Dubya so much anyway. I don’t know anyone who actually got any kizzash from Uncle Sam; I guess it’s a nice symbolic move.

But then, I realized that I’m an administrative sink-hole. Anything that can possibly go wrong with any account of mine administratively will. Take for example graduating from college… they lost my transcripts (all 3 of them), had me drop out because I didn’t have enough credits (thanks to the lost transcripts), thus making it take 3 years from the time I stopped attending school until I actually graduated. That’s a big one– there are plenty of little day-to-day examples of things.

Here’s a rundown of money I owe because someone screwed up and I can’t prove it:

1. The Unemployment office thinks I owe them $1300 because they sent me checks when I didn’t deserve them because I later lost at my hearing (this is when I got fired from Harvard 4 years ago). However, I only received one check for $300 which I NEVER CASHED. In order to track checks, you have to go through a whole other office and fill out like 100 forms (which I’ve done to no avail), which doesn’t make any difference, since the two departments don’t ever share information anyway.
2. The City of Brookline thinks I owe them $110 for parking tickets– they towed my car when I was seeing a !!! show at the Paradise. I went to the Police office and paid them the ticket fee as well as the bail to spring my car out of bondage, and then paid the $100 towing fee to the towing company (which was conveniently located 10 miles away in Watertown in the middle of a public transportation-free zone). I even remember the officer that took care of all of this: her name was Kaylee, I only remember this because I remember thinking that being booked by Officer Kaylee must be really embarrassing if you are trying to maintain an badass image. I think the only way her name could be less-threatening is if it were Meghan or Katie or Jen.
3. The Cambridge Health Alliance thinks I owe them $20 for a co-pay that I know I paid. I always paid when I went there because you really don’t have a choice. In fact, there’s a sign that says, “ALL CO-PAYS MUST BE MADE AT TIME OF VISIT” in English, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Vietnamese, Korean and what I presume is Khmer or Thai or something.
4. Discover Card is billing me for $15 worth of credit card protection for a credit card I never even activated. In fact, I think I actually canceled the card several months ago. I remember talking to some Indian dude on a really staticky line, anyway. I thought the outcome of that conversation was that the card got canceled, but apparently not?

I realize how many numbers I am known by– I have a Social Security number, 2 bank account numbers, a student loan ID, IDs for car insurance and health insurance (well, supposing I ever actually get it) and a Drivers’ License #. We exist today only as much as computers tell us we can.

I also realized that I not only live in the city of Cambridge in the state of Massachusetts in the United States of America, but I am in a county, township, school district, a sewer district, 5 different voting districts (2 federal, 2 state, local), a water district, you name it. I think back to Laura Ingalls Wilder, and how she had one name, and lived in a city, state, and country. Sometimes, where she lived wasn’t technically even a state yet. Things have become a zillion times more complicated in that 150 years since she was born; it’s kind of mind-boggling. However, how much better off are we? For every technological advance someone comes up with to make life easier, there are 100 people screwing it up so that it’s causing more complications, which then you have to find solutions for. It’s never-ending, and I am one of millions who every day fall through the cracks. I’m an official Crack-Faller. Maybe I should start a support group or something.

Oh look, my call cannot be taken today due to high call volume! I should call back on the next business day between 8:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. What a surprise.

I don’t know what I did– I installed some update for something, and it installed the Yahoo toolbar in my browser. It’s so annoying! I hate having crap-loads of space taken up by useless things on my screen! I can’t figure out how to get rid of it, either. Ah, computers. My computer has been being super slow lately, too. I need more RAM. I need another hard drive. Oy vey, my life is such a technological backwater.

While we’re at it, I also need a haircut. Any volunteers? I’m sick of cutting my own hair– it always comes out the same.

What else can I talk about? Nothing much; I guess that’s why I haven’t reported anything. My pink eye is clearing up–it’s just vaguely red-eye now, although it’s still threatening to spread to the other eye. This is good because I just got the next DVD of MI-5 in the mail, and watching it is pretty much the most exciting thing in my life. Now I can see the television without having to wear a dorky orange terrycloth headband over my eye to keep it shut! What a bonus!

Saki doesn’t want to dump me now–he just wants to have a year-long intercontinental relationship. Hmm. Jury’s still out on that one. I mean, it’s not like I have dudes heaving battering rams through my door in order to request my hand, but still. Israel is 8 time zones away! Oh well, it’s not like I ever see him while he’s on this continent anyway with all his work and stuff. I guess we’ll see how it goes… All bets are off when Jamie Lidell discovers that I’m the only person on earth for him, though!

I spent the last few days working on my website. Here are a couple of poorly-Photoshopped pictures I made for my Unisex Names page:

Next up: Taylor Dane vs. Taylor Hanson?

I went to see You Don’t Mess With the Zohan today because I wanted to get somewhere air-conditioned. I was originally going to see Prince Caspian, but when I went to buy the ticket, the dude behind the counter informed me that the A/C was broken in that theater. No, I didn’t want to see Prince Caspian that badly! Thus, I saw Zohan, and it was pretty hilarious. Adam Sandler movies are kind of hit or miss– I wasn’t a huge fan of Happy Gilmore or Billy Madison, although The Wedding Singer was pretty funny.

Anyway, This was definitely much better than sweating it out in the hot humid weather. The weather sucks. It’s like stepping into the bathroom after someone has taken a long, hot shower. I want to cut a chunk out of the air to breathe through, it’s so heavy.

More ancestry news: there is a Peter Parker, an Alice Walker, and a Harry Potter in my family tree. Other cool names: Green Potter, Has Descendants Cowing, Seven Children Cowing (there actually ended up being 12. I don’t know if Seven Children was the seventh), and Hundred Years Lane. So, Seven is an OK name, and Hundred Years could get called Hun or Hunny for short, but what did Has Descendants get called for short? Has? H.D.?

Other than those, there was a Freelove (not that unusual in the 1700s), a bunch of Mercys, Marie Antoinette Seaman, Electra Bonner, Decetta, Mertie, Surviah, Elender, Experience (again, not that unusual for the time), Azubah, Adonijah, and Coonrod. Persis, Asenath and Damaris are names that keep popping up– those are nice names (all female), why aren’t they used more nowadays?

Aside from those, everyone else I’ve found has had a normal name. How boring! Plus, people keep recycling names: every generation has a Thomas, George, William etc. The only time people got creative is if they had so many kids they’d used up all the names in the family. Dudes whose wives died young usually married again… and had another set of kids named the same things as the first set (maybe with some of the wife’s family names mixed in). One ancestor Thomas Something (like that narrows it down!) married 4 times, had 4 sets of kids all of which had a Thomas. How confusing is that? I hope they didn’t all live together.

This occurred at work today. Everyone was talking about how Miyuki (not her real name) the Japanese woman who works with us is so awesome. Her English is actually pretty good– she can understand as well as speak it really well– she just has a super thick accent which causes everyone to talk to and about her like she’s about 8 years old sometimes. Marge (also not her real name) is a middle-aged Southie native.

MARGE: Miyuki is awesome. Miyuki, you are the shit. Oops, you can’t swear at work… I mean Miyuki, you are the bomb.
ME: Miyuki is the shizznit.
MARGE: yeah, Miyuki, you’re the shizznit. I don’t even know what that means. What’s shizznit? … Is that Jewish?

I can picture it now…

Oy Herschel, I’m noshing on this bagel… and it is the shizznit! The most shizznit-like bagels in the world Ruth makes; I’ve never had a better one before, not even at Max’s Deli, I’m telling you!

I’m pretty sure that Miyuki is familiar enough with American slang to know that “the shit” and “the bomb” are good things, at least I hope so. I’m sure if I wasn’t fluent in a language and I went to another country and someone called me “shit” or “bombed” I’d probably be confused at the very least.

I love slang. “shit” and “the shit” are pretty much exact opposites.

Being “the Bomb” is good, but “bombing” is bad, although “being totally bombed” is another thing altogether.

On another front, ancestry.com is cool because you can search for people in other peoples’ family trees and then link them to your own. For example, my great-great grandmother Blanche Petrie had 5 siblings all of whose descendants seem to be genealogy buffs, so they did all the leg-work for me on that branch of the tree!

Irish Catholics seem to recycle names from a very small naming pool, so I’ve found records of dozens of Daniel McSweeneys who have daughters named Frances and Margaret. I don’t think I’ll get very far on that count!

However, Anya’s people (I think this is one of Uncle Kenneth’s children) have managed to track down her ancestors back to the 1500s in England. These guys have some awesome names. Among the cooler ones are: Crippen Hurd who was married Thankful Wilcox, but had kids with someone else who were named (among others, there were also James, Sarah and other bland names) Elnathan, Jabez, Huldah, & Sabra. Other cool names in my tree: Coonrod Lafler, Court Coule, Elihu Church, Abiah, Assenath, just to name a few…

I forked over the $248.99 for 1 month of drugs… it hit me as I was standing in line… do you realize how many illegal drugs I could buy with that kizzash? I could keep myself tripping for the entire 3 weeks it takes for my insurance to kick in, and probably have enough cash left over for a hit of Ketamine or two. It’s a sad world we live in when prescription drugs are way more expensive than the ones you get on the street. My vacation this year is to the land of Correct Brain Chemistry, I guess.

My latest obsession: making a family tree. Why? I don’t know. I mean, I’m not even genetically related to any of these people. It’s still kind of fun hunting through records and stuff, though. It’s kind of like a scavenger hunt, or collecting baseball cards. Let’s see if we can find the illusive record that shows where Jacob Schoenwald’s mother was born! (haven’t found it) I did find his draft card for WWI though. He and Grandfather, Aunt Julia, and Grandfather’s mom (her name was apparently Mrs. Jacob Schoenwald) all lived at 222 W 15th St. in Manhattan in 1915. Hunting up Moth’s people isn’t too difficult– there aren’t too many Sidney Schoenwalds in the world. However, on Pad’s side of the family it’s another story. Come on, ancestors, did you really have to recycle names left and right? Besides, HOW MANY Daniel McSweeneys were there in county Cork in the 1870s? A little originality, please?

This is taking over my former mini-obsession with Lee Harvey Oswald. I don’t know why I find LHO so fascinating, I just do. Dude had a totally messed up childhood, decided he was a Communist, moved to the Soviet Union and tried to kill himself there when he was denied Soviet Citizenship, married a Russian woman and had two small daughters when he shot JFK… or DID HE? (shoot JFK that is, we know he had 2 daughters). Was he framed? Was he coerced/brainwashed/blackmailed? The whole Jack Ruby thing was a little too convenient, too…

The new Futureheads CD is out, and I really want to hear it, but thanks to my new vacation I won’t be able to buy so much as a carton of milk until June 18. At least I won’t cry about it!

I learned a valuable lesson today… Ok, I learn this lesson a lot, but I always forget it until I stumble upon it again. The lesson is:

If You Act Like You Know What You’re Talking About, People Will Believe You.

I used to occasionally bust out the Voice Of Authority when I worked at the record store– people would insist that something existed, or that they could get some CD that had been out of print for 15 years from us. If provoked, the Voice of Authority will come out of nowhere. It’s like a spirit that takes over my vocal cords and spews bullshit in an amazingly matter-of-fact way. And, with the right voice, people will believe anything. OK, let me re-phrase that. I’ve never actually lied to a customer or client; I’ve simply re-stated something that had been previously told to their unbelieving selves with the correct tone of voice.

Today I had to go do damage control– these clients keep calling the office complaining that fungus gnats are flying all over their desks. We have previously done everything we could to control them, but in taking the usual pest control measures, we’ve manged to cause these gnats to evolve into new Super Race of Irritating Insects that just won’t be vanquished. So, I was sent back to them. I did everything we normally do for bugs, only twice as hard (put down double the number of traps, sprayed an extra amount of soil-drying agent on the soil etc.) and then the Voice of Authority came from within. It gave the office manager a timeframe when the gnats should all be dead by, gave a quick speech about the life cycles of gnats and promised to replace the plant if the bugs weren’t gone by Monday. The office manager chick seemed totally OK with that. When I called my office to report on the situation, they seemed surprised that the gnat-infested office chick was Ok with my plan.

All it takes is the Voice of Authority, alternated with an apologetic tone. The Apologetic Tone (not to be used in the same speech as the Voice of Authority) assures the customer/client that you’re on their side, and you’re sorry they’re being inconvenienced. The Voice of Authority tells them that you’re totally on top of the situation and they shouldn’t worry. Used together in a correct balance should theoretically get you anything in the world you want, at least within the customer-service provider world.

Shit, I should make a self-help tape set and get Mark Goodman and/or Martha Quinn to sell it on an infomercial! Then I can put subliminal messages in it and I WILL RULE THE UNIVERSE!!! I mean, then I will uh, pay off my student loans or something.

In other news, I saw Iron Man today, and it was pretty awesome. I know how I’m always saying that I’m not really a huge fan of superhero movies, but there have been a few lately that I’ve enjoyed. Anyway, this one was pretty sweet because Robert Downey Jr. is awesome in pretty much anything he’s in (even that movie about the ghosts of the town flooded to build a dam that sang the Andrews Sisters rendition of “Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree”— yeah, you don’t know what I mean because I’m the only person on earth that actually saw it. I think Annette Bening was in it?). It was good. There was lots of stuff blowing up, and Jeff Bridges makes a sweet bad guy.

In Dreams! that’s what the damn dam movie was called! Holy crap, Neil Jordan directed that!!!

Last night Saki and I watched Electric Apricot, which was this fake documentary about a jam band called Electric Apricot. It was freaking hilarious– every genre of music has its own Spinal Tap now it seems (i.e., Fear of a Black hat and CB5 for rap, A Mighty Wind for folk, … ), Ok, so I was wrong there are only 2. Anyway, EA was the brainchild of Les Claypool, who also stars in it. If you don’t really like jam bands, you’ll like this movie. If you are into jam bands, you’re probably too stoned to realize it’s not real anyway, so it’s all gooood maaan.

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 remember going into jo-Ann Fabrics or some such place, and they had a pattern to make a cross-stitch pillow thingie that said “World’s Greatest Sewer.” It took me a moment to realize that a “sewer” is also one who sews, and not just the place where all the poop goes.

Last year, Moth bought Squidney a cute little sewing machine. It’s the median step between a toy and the real thing– it really works, but doesn’t do any fancy stuff. It was so awesome she bought me one as well. However, as I tried to use it this week, the thread tension was all messed up and I couldn’t figure out how to make it work.

So… I bought a Real sewing machine. I know I could have gotten an old one from someone, or a cheap one from the Salivation Army, but sewing machine technology has come a long way. Gone are the days of yore when sewing machines like my grandmother’s weighed like 80 lbs and came attached to a table. I bought a nice little Singer for about $60– it’s really light. In fact, it even has a handle on top for carrying. It’s not even a “portable” one– sewing machine technology is JUST THAT ADVANCED now. It even has little numbers on all the different places where you thread it to show what order you put the thread through the various loops and things!

I’ve realized that my life is filled with ancient pieces of technology that don’t work completely, they are just big and clunky and kind of limp along. Take my tv– in 1982 it was awesome, with its brushed aluminum buttons housed in faux-wooden trim. It was “cable Ready!” The buzzword of the early-80s! In 2008, though, it’s just kind of sad. The tube isn’t connected to the casing anymore, so it slides down under the frame making it nearly impossible to read anything that’s subtitled. Plus, it weighs like 90,000,000 pounds. Likewise, my stereo was awesome when I got it for my 11th birthday. Now it’s just irritating, with the turntable that won’t shut off, the receiver with the sticky volume slide etc…

No more do I want old crappy electronics that weigh a ton! I want modern, sleek, lightweight, easy to store equipment! Since my last paycheck from the record store included all of the vacation pay I hadn’t used (around 10 days), I decided to be stupid and blow some of it on a sewing machine. So there. I don’t know why I feel the need to justify it to you people every time I spend money on something not completely necessary. So there. I blew the rest of my paycheck on ho’s and blow.

Anyway, with my sewing machine, I can finally make the vinyl Jackie-O dress that I’ve been planning for years now. I even have the material for it and everything! I can finish girl-izing all the dude t-shirts that I have as well. Dude t-shirts don’t fit me very well– for one thing, they’re too long, and the bottom is too narrow to fit over my butt. The top is too tent-like usually as well, and the neck is too tight for my liking. The overall effect is like a big puffy balloon cinched at the neck and waist. Thus I’ve figured out ways to me-ize dude shirts so they fit better. With a little help from Elias Howe’s groundbreaking invention, I will be able to do it that much faster! Rock on!

I think I’m going to go sew some shit now.