gramma, bananas, and WHERE THE HELL IS MY ANGER MANAGEMNT BOOK?!

let's try something new today, kids! i'm going all old-school gramma. (note the hip droppage of -'er', as in popular words such as 'balla' and 'holla.' i'll rap you some mothereffing GRAMMA, ho!") ..k where was i? Ah yes. Capitalizing the first word in a sentece, i.e. not being fucking lazy as all hell. But i still can't bring myself to capitalize my 'i's. (how do you type that? spell it out? "eyes"? Remove the seemingly unneessary mini-quotes? "is"? GAAH!) In high school, i had a social studies/history teacher (they're always the best) who, when someone raised their hand to ask to go to the bathroom(as is strictly required in 99% of high school settings) she blew up at him. She told him he was a fucking adult and could go to the bathroom whenever he goddamn well pleased. She told us that she had once QUIT A JOB because her boss wanted her to ask to go to the bathroom.
That woman is my hero.

In other news, the usually-rather-neato site of "I'll tell you what, Mr. Tubby FatPants, you can have my banana"* linked to a guy who went an entire weekend without television. *gasp!* an ENTIRE weekend??! But that MUSTN'T have included the Friday night What Not To Wear Marathon and the Sunday night Fucking Whatever! ....And she, someone so opinionated, picky, and bitchy, who generally fits the bill of "Where the HELL is my anger management book!??!" (Witty Catchphrase Alert!) respects that. You know what I respect? Someone who's not so disgustingly addicted to something that they brag about and write an entire blog post on the revelations of an ENTIRE (ENTIRE!) weekend with no TV. To me, that's like a methhead writing a five paragraph essay about an ENTIRE WEEKEND without meth. And the rest of us are like, "hey, that's really special and nice. it's a little sad that you're so fucking proud of it, because the second you shut your eyes, flail your arms and start screaming "I CAN STOP ANYTIME I WANT" is the second i shut you out of my life for being a failure at yours."
You know who i fucking respect? ME, for not having a TV, and not running around screaming about how Unique and Free and Productive i am.
So again, it makes me re-lose my faith (i've lost count at this point, after how many fucking seasons of american idol?*)*in our society and culture when an "entire weekend" without TV is now to be lauded as if it were, oh i don't now, some sort of accomplishment? As if were DIFFICULT? Something to be even MENTIONED, let alone APPLAUDED? That's. Just. Sad.

*yeah i linked to it a mere...yesterday? ago but it's FUCKING HILARIOUS, SO READ IT)

**that shit doesn't deserve to be capitalized. unless you're using "capitalized" as a new witty way to say "put to death for crimes against humanity via capital punishment"

mmmm, hot dog.

spank you, helpy helperton

some people just shouldn't have kids.
/exist.

case in point: there is one kid at the preschool who is pretty fucked up. like, he's sweet and all, but when you close him from the sandbox because you saw him throw blatantly and randomly sand in a TWO-YEAR OLD'S face, he'll look all SHOCKED and SAD and ANGRY--like "WHAT?! WHY would you CLOSE me from the SANDBOX?!" he never lets other kids play with him, but gets angry/tattle-y, and cryingly upset when they say no to him when he asks. He blatantly destroys other kids' toys and games and calls everyone names, and makes these really fucked-up little angry faces. honestly, i've never seen such an angry little kid. it's like, YOU'RE THREE. what do you POSSIBLY have to be that angry about?? anyway his parents recently asked us (angrily) to stop letting him eat afternoon snack because he wasn't eating dinner (and by dinner, I mean McDonald's/Pizza Hut). it's like, your kid is too full from organic fruits and vegetables to eat his greasy trans-fat cancer burger, and...apparently that's a BAD thing.
wow.

i was pretty scared to start seriously looking for a car after the ol' corolla* died but it's kinda sweet to watch car dealers tripping over themselves to sell me a car. like, i'm a lil' old twenty-year old girl with a thousand dollars in the bank (WOO) and they're calling me at home making offers and bringing cars in from Denver to show me because i mentioned i wanted an automatic, not a manual.

*we were talking about whether or not I care how a car looks, and steve said "well, you liked the corolla, and it looked like a meatball!"

also on the car note, one thing i am loving*** about buying a new car is the research. i am a total Nurd and i effing love researching. i make a haircut appointment? hours prior are spent finding a medley of potential haircuts online. my hairstylist has gotten used to my control freak-ism and the fact that i insist on bringing in 1-3 color photos and having a ten-minute long discussion on how i exactly i would want them to mesh into one amazing 'cut, which doesn't exist in Internet Picture Land, and which also must look perfect with no effort or styling beyond shampoo and a quick brush.
anyway, i love researching. i had a friend once who, when we were debating What Would Happen If Something Else Happened or something, he said "you should look it up. you're good at stuff like that." well...it's not so much that i'm "good" at it per se as much as the fact that i DO look it up, and no one else bothers. seriously. if you casually mention in conversation with me that you've been wondering such and such, next time i see you, be it tomorrow or three years from now, i will have researched, explored possibilites, made citations, and will have a discussion with you on the merits of the various theories and the validity of the experiments. and you will stare back at me blankly because you have no effing idea what i am freaking talking about.

*yeah just WATCH me use a stative verb in the present progressive!!!

okay, this post was the funniest shit i've read in a long time. free, indeed.

good, random, awesomely out-of-context quote from my roommate: "I don't care about the vagina!"
not that it really made sense in the context anyway.

besides teaching spanish at preschool, my other job is "tagging" verbs. meaning i look at sets of verbs ("action words!") in context of newspapers, usually, and tell the computer what the verb means in that situation (e.g. "run a business" vs. "run a race" vs. "run the numbers" etc.)
anyway sometimes it gets pretty philosophical--yesterday i found myself realizing i was being paid $11 an hour to think about whether or not you "have" or "experience" life.


YOU WOULD NOT BELEIVE ME IF I TOLD YOU
but the Star Wars theme is playing in the background while the three guys just finished LANing hours of video games are now playing Magic and drinking tea.
and i am reaaaaaaaaally happy it's not beer pong.


SPEAKING OF NERDS

um, go eat your own face. like like.

what is it about McGuckin's that makes me want to BUY SHIT? humidifier? NEED IT. nine colors of duct tape? REQUIRED. tiny glass vials? MUST HAVE THEM.

a girl in my Spanish phonetics class asked me today if I was Russian. it was probably the coolest compliment i have gotten recently. Kinda weird though, because how many Russians have blond hair and blue eyes? and i don't exactly have a Russian accent, let alone speak more than, oh, six words of the language? But it was cool because we started talking about how Russian is all craaaazy. P=R? WTF. H=N? LIIIIES!!!!

isn't it weird when you walk into class one day halfway through the semester, or even at the FINAL, and you see someone you swear you have NEVER SEEN BEFORE IN THAT CLASS. always freaks me out. where am i???! and who the fuck are YOU?? how are you so nondescript that i stared at the back of your head for three months and still did not realize you exist?

i'm gonna buy some arm socks. oh my god--so here is this story. i bought some black knit leg warmers back in the day in high school and wore them on my arms because i only owned tank tops, no long-sleeved shirts or anything, and would always get all frickin' cold in the winter. my then-boyfriend (and most people) would make fun of me, and lance called them my "arm socks". I wanted to get some recently, and so googled them, and apparently it's a huge thing now. it's all quirky-trendy. which kinda pisses me off. but if i ever see lance again ima be like "arm socks are IN! so HA!"

oh and happiness: when i was in Otavalo, Ecuador, i bought a beautiful beautiful ring made from the type of shell that used to be used as money in South America. I lost it, however, just weeks after I got back to Boulder, and it always made me sad. but THEN, a few weeks ago when steve and i were going through and cleaning out my car (which sadly got totaled when a 16-year old kid with a 1-week old driver's license ran a red light and smashed into my poor corola), we FOUND it. i guess steve did, in this random little box in the car where i must've put it before martial arts one day and simply forgot. he handed it to me and i almost screamed in happiness. he told me later that five seconds after he gave it to me he thought of keeping it and proposing to me with it, which pretty much would have been fucking adorable.

god i totally broke down the other day. the impetus: i was walking to the bus stop from Espresso Roma on the Hill, and my friend Jenette was telling me some story about her roommates, and as we pass the Boulder Bookstore (where they removed the benches because of all the homeless guys that would sit there and stare creepily at the college chicks who walked past all day), this homeless dude sitting on the ground yells out "UM! LIKE! UM LIKE LIKE!" i was fucking pissed. i wish i had thought then of one of the many witty things i came up with later, but i really don't have quick reaction times to stuff like that. he wasn't even attacking ME, but i was offended by the fact that this guy whose life can be summed up with "spare any change?" is judging me. um, really? maybe you're right. maybe i should drop out of college, not get two degrees, not do linguistics research, quit my jobs, not pay my rent, not get a car, and sit on the corner begging for change and hassling college kids. but at least i wouldn't say 'like'! that would be worth it, don't you think? yes. you sir, are a role model.
then when i got home and told my boyfriend, his response was: "well you can see his point."
....
and "he's from a different generation."

hey, guess what! I'M from a different fucking generation. fun fact: language changes. additionally, i am actually fucking engaged in research with a PhD student and a linguistics professor about the quotative uses of 'like.' in short: "dear sir. eat shit and die."
another thing is that i have thought for HOURS about my speech and eloquence (or lack thereof, depending on who you are). I have never before in my LIFE received feedback that I sound unintelligent or uneducated when i speak or write. i have contintously made conscious, deliberate decisions to talk the way i do because i don't fucking put on a nice pretty little mask for the rest of the world. i write the way i talk and i talk the way i fucking feel like talking. i feel it's fake to talk differently in a class presentation than i do with my friends. and ALL the responses i've gotten have said "i like the way you talk/write. it's real. it's interesting." it allows me to engage my audience and connect with them because i don't sound as euriditic and snoooty as i would if i used prescriptivist grammar (which, as a linguist, i can tell you is WRONG) and sesquidipipilian words. (holy shit, i spelled that right first try.) also, i AM a fucking LINGUIST. i study language use, language change, uses of filler words, dialects and everything you can think of having to fucking do with the english language. but no, you're right, the homeless guy on the street could probably fill me in about that stuff. he is obviously superior to me and my ums. he could probably identify Turkish morphemes and Spanish allophones. he could probably speak Spanish, Chinese and Russian and get 2 degrees and work 2 jobs. but me? me and my ums, man.



that will be all.

peanut buttah jelly tiiiiime!

Made my day:
Yesterday, Halloween night, on Pearl Street after a delicious dinner at Pasta Jay's, we were driving home with six people in the car (ah, flashbacks to high school) and saw someone dressed as a giant banana. My sister, being amazing, rolled down the window as we passed and sang out "PEANUT BUTTER JELLY TIIIME!" and the banana-person, apparently thrilled someone finally understood their costume, started shaking their maracas and dancing. i laughed so goddamn hard. and i loved seeing the ecstatic look on their face.

Speaking of Halloween and my previously-declared Burning Firey Passionate Hatred of sarah palin, i dressed as her. My favorite parts were the devil horns and my beauty pagant sash, on which were palin's two qualifications for the vice presidency:
"Miss Alaska 1984"
and on the back:
"I can see Russia from my house!"























living in boulder, i got a lot of compliments. although i was horribly depressed at the fact that no one dresses up for school anymore. remember when you weren't Too Cool? those were the days. for this reason, i was FUCKING PSYCHED to head to work and see all my favorite little 4-year olds dressed up in their adorable costumes. my hopes and dreams were crushed when i walked in the door and saw everyone in effing normal clothes. seriously, i was fucking sad not to see my favorite little dude, Wyatt, dressed as a firefighter (he practically worships people with jobs)*. i saw maybe half a dozen other people out of the 30,000 at CU in costume. however, my faith in humanity was revived when we were walking down pearl and saw the person in the afore-mentioned banana-maraca costume, an old dude as Indiana Jones, a Hermione, and a couple other fun ones.


*after working full-time at the preschool for most of the summer, everyone was confused when i showed up at 2 PM one day because the fall semester started. when they asked me where i was all day and i told them i had been at school, i ended up staring at like nine very very confused faces. Lauren finally piped up: "THIS is your school."