Home for the Holidays

Best thing about being home for the holidays: attending functions with my younger sister and having all new people guess that i’m the younger one. Worst thing: having everyone ask me what my favorite movie is. Sometimes I want to just tell people I’m a secretary. I did that once to a guy trying to pick me up on the subway, though, and the response was just as annoying: “Where do you work?” “Harvard.” “Wow, what do you do?” “I’m just a secretary.” “Don’t say that, you’re not JUST a secretary, office work is very important.”

ugh.

Belated Apes

It’s just occurred to me that I have neglected House of the Apes for two weeks in a row! The holidays, you know…I’ll have a new scene ready this Friday, not to worry–the material is endless.

New Addiction

Martin Freeman is my new crush…I have now watched the 6-episode DVD of the BBC series The Office three times in a row. And will probably watch it a few more times before I send it back to Netflix. I can’t get enough–it is a fascinating symphony of tone and nuance and gesture and, in short, masterfully hilarious acting. Every one of the actors is brilliant.

Harvard Mag

Looks like I’ve been quoted in Harvard Magazine.

Happy Holidays, Signing Off

I’m off to Maryland for a few days and won’t be blogging…happy holidays, everybody, and until then I leave you with…ME!!!!!

Creepy

Should I be concerned that someone is doing Google searches for “Rockwell logon password”? Let’s hope it’s another Rockwell…

Wonder Woman

The Prof. I work for gave me a pack of Wonder Woman notecards for an xmas gift. I opened it expecting your usual generic coworker gift, but this gave me a chuckle, and I’m flattered. Working for a woman is very different than working for a man. She appreciates that I have a life outside this job. It’s like she’d rather work with a fully-formed woman who may not be the perfect “secretary” than with the “perfect secretary” with a subservient personality and a rigid respect for the boundaries between boss and employee. This isn’t to say that working for ALL women would be this way, nor that working for ALL men would be the opposite. But I think her interest in my life outside this job is a little more rare.

Now I Get It

A punch in the stomach from Thomas Benton:

“I hardly know anyone who was a grad student in the last decade who is not deeply embittered. Because of my columns on this site, a few people have told me how their graduate-school years coincided with long periods of suicidal ideation. More commonly, grad students suffer from untreated chronic ailments such as weight fluctuation, fatigue, headache, stomach pain, nervousness, and alcoholism.”

So that explains it.

Link stolen from Jay McCarthy.

Morning Mecca

There are two types of bundles crawling about the streets in the early morning in Davis Square (or in Coolidge Corner, or in Inman Square, or in any Square or Corner in Boston or any city): those staggering unkempt and semiconscious toward the various caffeine meccas in the neighborhood, and those with cup in hand and a tiny, barely perceptible bounce in their step, more alive already, more secure on their feet, more aware of their destination. Their cups read Dunkin Donuts, Au Bon Pain, Store24, McDonald’s or the generic Diesel or Someday Cafe cups, but they are all of the same club. The members of the two clubs pass each other in the streets silently, new members converted with every swing of the revolving door. 

Blogs Are:

From The Guardian.

Link stolen from AccordionGuy, via Redhead.

Hail the Jimmy

I like Jimmys. I do not like sprinkles. Everyone knows I like Jimmys. Too much. I was obsessed with Jimmys for awhile there, but the Jimmys were cruel to me and threatened me with a restraining order. I try not to think about Jimmys any more, but they still haunt me. More than anything I’d like an apology, but I’ll always like Jimmys, no matter how mean they get, no matter how little they deserve my devotion.

I’ll Do Better Next Time

I sent the picture below to my folks, who gifted me with the digital camera. Thought they should see my first efforts. They said “It looks good, for a first effort.” I think they thought the oversaturation and overexposure and cropped face were an accident, that I was intending it to be your typical snapshot but I accidentally got too close to the flash and cut off half my face and blinded myself. Parents can be so fucking adorable.

Live Fat or Die

I’m fatter than you are.

Photo Doctor

I’ve had the camera exactly 37 minutes and already I’m fetishizing myself.

Peeping Jerk

I know he reads this blog. He is an information-gatherer, hoarder, scene-player, and I know he cannot contain his curiosity, wants to keep tabs on his ‘enemy,’ the ‘enemy’ he created. And that’s fine by me, we can continue the passive-aggressive dance. I would of course prefer to hear from him directly, but I’ve exhausted that road and he knows it–that’s how he’s engineered it, that’s what happens when you bully someone into silence. A fat bully on the playground picking on girls, that’s what he is. With a plastic light-saber.

Geek Haiku

I (heart) MIT. Here’s the message you get if you request a URL they don’t recognize:

I ate your Web page.
Forgive me. It was juicy
And tart on my tongue.

See for yourself.

Mornings are Punk Rock

Every morning on my walk to the subway I pass a man, a tall and well-groomed 50-ish man, walking back to his house with his dog, a coffee, and a paper. Every morning he smiles and says ‘good morning’. I like to imagine he is a writer, a writer who works in the morning and the dog/coffee/paper is his morning pre-writing ritual. I want that life, so that’s what I like to imagine he is. Mornings are the best. I posted that here before–that I used to be a night person but am no more, I cherish bright sunny mornings, especially if they’re cold and crisp…to borrow from Hemingway. Night is fine too, but there’s something wonderful about being up early, being active, engaging with the world as it awakes and greets you happily. Night is good, but night does not greet you. It may envelop you, it may let you slip in unnoticed, but mostly it doesn’t know (or care) that you’re there. Which is its whole appeal, I think. But it doesn’t appeal so much to me any more. To quote myself: “Night is so obvious. Mornings are punk rock.”

Just for One Week, Lay Off the Geekery

i’m at mit grading final papers. i logged on to a computer and got a flashing notice from the university, sent out to all, to please refrain from using computer games on the network during finals week because network usage shoots up during this period and the games take up too much bandwidth when people really need it for other things…i had to laugh at what this says about the demographic makeup of the student body…an official plea to stop playing video games.

I Don’t Ski

I defiled my Adidas winter coat. On purpose. Someone told me (thinking they were complimenting me) that I looked like a skiier in that jacket. It is the only really warm one I have, but a skiier is NOT the impression I want to be giving people. So last night I ripped the white stripes off the arms and now it’s just a nondescript warm black coat. And I don’t look like a skiier.

So We Got Him–So What?

Yeah yeah great about Sadaam, but the jubilation seems a bit displaced and empty…what about Osama? Seems to me he’s always been a much larger threat, and remains so. A hated man hiding alone in a hole versus a revered man hiding with an army in caves.