I ran into Grey tonight. She’s 20 and making a living as an artist and about to travel to Italy and Brazil to do art and is unrealistically beautiful and really nice. Good lord, some people.

realitylost gave me half her calzone tonight. It was good. Thanks!

On the freeway today there was a VW bus in front of me with the following stickers: peace symbol, confederate flag, skull & crossbones, AAA Plus Service. I pulled up next to it and it was a middle aged black guy, bald, glasses. He grinned at me and I grinned back. Let’s hear it for weirdos!

At work there was another one of those “just so we’re all together on this” stupid ideas where we have to be in the office on weekends to “respond to issues” even though the people in my department who are on pager duty always respond in less than 5 minutes when needed. I think that this is because other people don’t respond to the pager when they don’t want to, and therefore it’s Pointless Collective Punishment. I fucking hate being punished for my own responsibility and helpfulness by being forced to do useless painful things. All those weekends I could have slacked and not been a nice guy, had I but known it was a waste anyway.

People tell you when you’re fifteen or so that you’re going through a lot of changes, that your body and mind will be unstable and painful, and that things will seem more important than they are and emotionally hurtful, and that you’ll be too focused on sex and social problems. What they don’t tell you is that this lasts for life.

O.C. Restaurant Closures This Month (genital/genital if you’re not registered with the Times.)

I wonder what happens to you in Islam when you 1) Name your restaurant “Meccah and Al-Madinah” and 2) fill it with cockroaches?

Also, there’s a restaurant called CAPTAIN’S BLOOD?

I am now a passhole again. Let’s party!

hugs,

ignatz

I’m gonna go to NY in December for 3 days for a friend’s weeding! And the hotel is all paid for! A lucky mouse is I.

What’s worse than knowing your life is broken and won’t be fixed? I’ll tell you.

Today I was at D’s and ran into a friend who just got out of an involuntary 72-hour hold at a mental hospital due to a suicide attempt, and who needs to restart her entire life over under appalling conditions.

And then I ran into a friend I have a useless crush on. And for the rest of the day all I could think about was how unfortunate I was in my desperately impossible desires for unreachable partners, and how pathetic a creature I was, and how I would never be happy. Etc., etc., poor little me.

God knows my life problems aren’t small, and I have a right to some self pity, especially considering the near-perfect failure right of any attempt I’ve had to find a woman who likes me.

BUT FOR CHRISSAKES how could I be so self-absorbed to make that so important in the face of someone else’s disastrous miserable mess?

If there was a “What Shakespeare character are you?” quiz I think I would be Bottom. Certainly not worthy of Hamlet status.

We came up with a number of good bad ideas tonight. I missed something about “Liquid Vinyl” before I showed up, but I thought that we could sell:

1) Attack hippos. Hippos are naturally aggressive, big, and like pools of water. Perfect for guarding the homes of anxious southern California wealthy idiots. Sort of the Hummer of guard animals. Whether or not to import small hippos or the full-sized models would be a market segmentation decision, but I think we could justify the cost basis of hippos if we marked them up enough.

2) Penis gourds. The whole New Primitive thing is mainstreaming now. I think people are already tattooed and pierced, and when even the local hausfrau has a rose on her ankle it’s time to go to the next level. The New Guinean penis gourd is a way for men to accessorize, too, which is big these days. There are a lot of good potential “move ups” with the gourd string, painting jobs, etc.

Based on the whole THREE POUNDS OF SOUR CREAM debacle I’m also thinking that squeeze tubes of dip for putting it directly in your damn mouth without chips or anything could sell pretty well. Sort of like gogurt but for onion dip, guacamole etc. Or just plain sour cream, for which the slogan would be “CREAM UP!”

I think we broke the_silent_one three times tonight. She’s funny when she turns red and tries to hide under the table and all you can see is the middle finger.

A postcard in the mail from my employer’s benefits people that says “2004 is not business as usual. There will be important changes to your health benefits. Watch your mail for a brochure explaining the changes in detail.”

No doubt someone said “we have to do this in stages to prepare them”.

1) IBM is taking 4 days to accomplish their “same day service” on my company laptop

2) I fled to the coffeehouse today and was visited by the Joan, who as usual walked right up, disrupted a perfectly good conversation I was having with someone else, drove that someone else away, and then talked at me. She’s the kind of person who will tell you some mind-meltingly boring story about her life, and as you’re responding with something about your own life, will then tell the same story again worded slightly differently. Example:

Her: My boss really annoyed me today. I sent her detailed information in an email and then she was very patronizing and told me I hadn’t given her the info because she hadn’t read the whole email. I was very upset. I hate that.

Me: Bosses do that because they have power. I’ve had a boss before who would…

Her: And what really gets me, is that it was in the email the whole time. But she was so patronizing. I hate that.

Me: [annoyed] Like I said. Bosses do that. It’s part of work.

Her: It was in an appendix to the email, and she could just have read it.

Me: Yeah. I find that many bosses can’t use email properly. Sometimes they..

Her: I wish I could do something about it now, but I just need to tell her that the email…

[..continue for 30 minutes..]

She also gratuitously insulted the person I had been talking to before. I wish there was some way to transmit I DO NOT ENJOY TALKING TO YOU MOST OF THE TIME REALLY without being an ass about it.

3) I had a bad dinner (burger).

4) People are being mean to all my friends. It makes me mad as hell.

RAAR.

The Oregon Health Sciences University reports that a Starbucks “Grande Caramel Mocha” (12 ounces) contains 45 TEASPOONS OF SUGAR.

What the hey do they do, compress it? Supersaturate the solution in a freakin’ centrifuge?

MOMMY THEY’RE TRYING TO KILL US

Yes, it’s that time of the year again.

Laying bets now how long before Sept. 11 is celebrated on a Monday so we can all go water skiing.

genericus is going to make his famous “Let’s-Rolls” for the dinner, too! 🙂