I did something right.

There are about three hundred good movies playing at Doc Films this quarter, and I'd originally intended to buy a $24 unlimited viewing pass so that I could fritter away my Friday and Saturday nights in fantasyland, where I can forget that I'm not out on a date. But I spied a small announcement on the spring quarter Doc poster that a meeting for prospective volunteers would take place today at five. Volunteers get a free pass for the quarter. I decided to save my $24 for other shit that I don't need and go to the meeting.

I thought there would just be a signup sheet for some bullshit volunteer shift, but it turned out to be, like, competitive. There were about twenty-five people there already, all filling out an application that consisted of four short-answer questions. We were competing for four or five spots: a projectionist, a ticket-taker or two, and a couple of people to put up posters around campus.

I almost got up and walked out, but I decided to go with my default mode: semi-humorous stream-of-consciousness babblewriting. "Why do you want to work at Doc?" they asked. I answered that I loved movies even though I'm not one of those people who goes around quoting them all the time ("Not that there's anything wrong with that. That's great."), and I wanted to spend my quarter watching free movies all the time. My other answers were similar.

Then there was this question: "What is your favorite movie? (I'm very pretentious, so this'll be the deciding factor)." This is what I said:
"Then I'm fucked. Seriously. My favorite movie is Sleepless in Seattle. But I can explain. [explanation] Oh my god, I love Sleepless in Seattle so much. But if it's intellectuality you're looking for, I just watched Y Tu Mama Tambien and I thought it was absolutely amazing."

Apparently, they like semi-humorous stream-of-consciousness babblewriting because I just got an email saying I'm now a poster-person for Doc Films! Half an hour a week of work for free movies all quarter! Hell yes! The guy even complimented me on my Sleepless in Seattle-loving justifications. "There's nothing wrong with liking it," he said. Insert condescending pat here, I suppose.

In a perfect world, we'd all be completely honest about our emotions and fears and our reactions to things that happen to us, and we wouldn't be forced to hint at them with movies and books and jokes and weblog entries. None of us are as flippant about things as we'd like to portray ourselves to be. We are all vulnerable, and easily affected--and we all lie about it. Even to ourselves. Because with the way things are now, it's usually better to seal off the dam than let it gush out and swirl around our ankles, than have everyone know that we were the ones whose emotions destroyed everything, whose fault it is that everything is sopping wet and waterlogged and the flood can no longer be ignored. We ALL feel this way.

On Thursday night, Loreal, Andrew, and I decided to play humiliation poker. We used old painkillers as chips (ibuprofen was worth one dollar, and advil was worth five.), and whoever ran out of ibuprofen first had to do something stupid. As you can probably tell, it wasn't very well thought out, and we only ended up playing long enough for me to lose all my pills. Loreal stole an idea from a children's improv group she'd tried out for, and made me stand up and talk for two minutes about the time I swang so high I flew over the swingset and landed in a magical kingdom.

I tried. I really did. But my story sucked. It was along the lines of, "Suddenly, everything went dark. When I woke up, I was being tended to by my mother. But she had three eyes!
'Mom,' I said, 'You have three eyes!'
She looked at me quizzically. 'Yes, I do,' she said."
Also, everything in my magical kingdom was just a little bit different. Tweaked, if you will. For example (the only one I could think of), you flicked the lightswitch down to turn the lights on, and up to turn them off. Gasp!

I would never make that stupid improv group. Especially since I thought about my magical kingdom all the next day, and on the plane ride home, and I'm thinking about it now, and I still can't come up with anything. Fucking improv.

In other news, I just watched Y Tu Mama Tambien. It was AMAZING, and totally different from how I thought it would be. It reminded me of Chasing Amy, both in plot (loosely) and message, and also in how its advertisements totally misrepresented its actual content. Highly Recommended!

ALIVE

I am typing this from my best friend Loreal's dorm room at Tufts University in Boston. I've been here since Monday, and I'll be here until tomorrow. We've successfully crammed Boston into four days of sightseeing, and have spent four wild nights playing cards and watching Lilo & Stitch. It's been a good trip. Illustrated anecdotes of our shenanigans to follow. Perhaps a Boston cyber-scrapbook is in order.

Oxnard: A Bag of Surprises

So, when I was in high school, I was a member of the Spartan Marching Band. As a member, I participated in marching band competitions called field shows. Dozens of marching bands would congregate on a high school campus on a Saturday afternoon and take turns strutting their stuff on the football field. Hundreds, thousands of band members spent the entire day just wandering around, band t-shirts sweaty from their stuffy uniforms, with pent-up energy and pent-up excitement. Havoc sometimes ensued. You can use your imagination.

Well, now that I've got you good and scared, here's my actual point. Certain industrious high schools would set up little tents and sell little trinkets, refreshments, and other assorted bullshit. Much of it was band-related: pins that said, "Brass Kicks Ass!" and "[heart] Your Flute," little clarinet stickers, and so forth. But some of it was just random. For instance, they always sold those tiara things with long pink ribbons flowing down the back.(And I ALWAYS bought one. What was I supposed to do with the ten bucks my mom insisted I take with me?? Save it?!)

The best thing I ever found, though, was an oval-shaped bumper sticker with "OXNARD" printed along the top. And on the bottom--this is so great--it stated, "MORE THAN JUST A PRETTY NAME." Oxnard is my hometown. Hilarious!! Hilarious!! Oxnardians always bag on the town's ugly name, but someone actually thought up a clever quip about it and printed it on a bumper sticker!

And then, of course, I DIDN'T BUY IT! I've always regretted leaving it behind, and probably spending my stupid money on another cheap-ass tiara. The last time I was home, I decided to drive around and look for a touristy-type shop in Oxnard and see if they carried the sticker. The search was futile. There are no tourists in Oxnard.

So anyway, a couple of days ago, I decided to look up the phrase on the internet. I googled it. And it turns out..."more than just a pretty name" used to be Oxnard's motto. I kid you not. My town used to have a sense of humor. Who knew? End of story.

ARGH, or, Why I Hate Naps

Time: 4:17 AM
Current activity: Obsessive Snood.
Due at work: 8:30 AM
About to: chew off my hand.

Or Maybe I'm Just Fooling Myself

One good thing about making fun of your roommate for listening to Celine Dion every so often is that you can play "If You Ask Me To" over and over again and people will assume you're being ironic.

I'm reading an anthology of literary journalism called....Literary Journalism. My favorite piece so far is called "The American Man at Age Ten," by Susan Orlean, in which she describes the world of a kid named Colin from New Jersey. The following passage is classic, and will ring familiar to anyone who has ever had to deal with ten-year-old boys. Hell, boys of any age.

The girls in Colin's class at school are named Cortnerd, Terror, Spacey, Lizard, Maggot, and Diarrhea. "They do have other names, but that's what we call them," Colin told me. "The girls aren't very popular."
"They are about as popular as a piece of dirt," [Colin's best friend] Japeth said. "Or, you know that couch in the classroom? The couch is more popular than any girl. A thousand times more." They talked for a minute about one of the girls in their class, a tall blonde with cheerleader genetic material, who they allowed was not quite as gross as some of the other girls. Japeth said that a chubby, awkward boy in their class was boasting that this girl liked him.
"No way," Colin said. "She would never like him. I mean, not that he's so...I don't know. I don't hate him because he's fat, anyway. I hate him because he's nasty."
"Well, she doesn't like him," Japeth said. "She's been really mean to me lately, so I'm pretty sure she likes me."
"Girls are different," Colin said. He hopped up and down on the balls of his feet, wrinkling his nose. "Girls are stupid and weird."
"I have a lot of girlfriends, about six or so," Japeth said, turning contemplative. "I don't exactly remember their names, though."

Winner: Be Cheered Up by Reading about Danielle's Sad Life Competition

It figures that on the nicest day so far this year, I'm stuck in my bed whimpering and clutching a heating pad against my aching uterus. The good news, however, is that I made up a song about my cat, Apollo. It's a work in progress.

To the tune of "Tomorrow:"

I have a cat
named Apollo
and he likes to be chased down the hallway;
yes, he does.

Just thinking about
Apollo
makes-me-mad-because-he-always-knocks-my-roommates'-stuff-over
and I have to pay!

Apollo!
Apollo!
I love ya!
Apollo!
That's all that I have to say!

Honorable Mentions:

• Danielle Spends Saturday Afternoon Cleaning Out Fridge and Rearranging Bedroom
  
• Danielle Spends Saturday Evening Reinstalling Hard Drive
  
• Danielle Freaks Out Because She Cannot Find DSL Setup Disk for Reinstalled Hard Drive
  
• Danielle Spends Saturday Night Frantically Combing the House for Setup Disk and Cooking Elaborate Borscht Recipe for No One But Herself
  
• Danielle Remembers That She Should Email Potential Spring Professors, but Is Too Embarrassed To Do So Because She Does Not Want Them To Know That She Is Spending Saturday Night Alone Emailing Potential Spring Professors
  and the closest runner-up:
  
• Danielle Is Actually Somewhat Proud of Pathetic Saturday as Indicated by Present Thinly-Disguised Bragging.

Stephen King, Just Enough Quarters, One Medium-Sized Beet, and The Mattress Parade: Danielle's Exciting Friday.

• This morning, I finished On Writing by Stephen King. It was adorable. The writing advice section is pretty much your run-of-the-mill Strunk and White lovefest, but the autobiographical section (or, okay, his "Curriculum Vitae," as he insists on calling it) is CLASSIC. It's so funny. I wish I could be as cool as Stephen King for just two seconds each day. I could skate through life on the memory of those two daily seconds. Gosh, he's cool. And he loves his wife SO much. Highly Recommended!
  
  
• The weather was so nice today! So nice that I decided the only thing I could really do to celebrate was my laundry. So I cradle-lugged my hugeass bag across the street and into Hyde Park Coin Laundry. I only had $3.50 in quarters and fifty more cents in miscellaneous change, so I thought I'd have to embarrass myelf by asking someone to trade me so I'd have enough for the $2.00 machines. But then I remembered that the machines in the back only cost $1.50! Now my whole wardrobe smells like All, Bounce, and smoke from the cigar of the laundromat owner, who puffs away while sitting right under the "NO SMOKING" sign. Ah, Hyde Park!
  
  
• While waiting for my clothes to swirl their way to clean, I strolled over to Hyde Park Produce so that I could finish buying ingredients for the huge pot of borscht I'm making tomorrow. The blasted Co-Op (the regular grocery store) does not sell beets, plus I'd forgotten that I needed butter and heavy cream. The produce mart, however, had everything I needed. It's like one big borscht shop. Last year, my Calculus professor proclaimed that in her opinion, Calculus was "all about 'e'." Well, in my opinion, Hyde Park Produce is all about borscht.
  
  
• My day culminated with my wonderful roommates helping me to carry my huge new mattress home from Mattress World. We hoisted it onto our shoulders so that it stood upright, like a...horizontal rectangle (sorry, description skills are failing me). Only one gentleman offered to help us as our little procession continued down the sidewalk, but because we're all hardcore and shit, we politely declined. My right shoulder was in too much pain to remember to be observant, but I wonder if people stopped and stared at the huge mattress with six legs trotting along 53rd street. In retrospect, I realize that it was quite a forum we had there. Maybe I should have painted "NO WAR IN IRAQ" on each side of the plastic coating or something.
  
  I ACTUALLY HAVE A BED IN MY BEDROOM NOW! No more sleeping on the fucking couch! WOO! I was so happy upon setting it up that I ran down the hall yelling, "THE WORLD IS......A BIG SUNSHINE BALL!!" Now that's happiness!
  
  Postscript: Yeah, I know it's pretty apparent that I haven't gotten any farther than the lists chapter in HTML for Dummies. But just you wait, sonny!

Further Self-Examination Necessary

I always get really pissed off when people call me lazy. But then I do things like wait for fifteen minutes at the cold-as-ass #171 bus stop just so it will drop me off three blocks closer to my apartment. Hmm.

HATE

I hate:

• lukewarm water
  
• naps
  
• alarm clocks
  
• when it's clearly my fault
  
• the smell of rain
  
• flash pages on the internet
  
• being hungry
  
• mean people
  
• people who say, "That's SOOO FUNNY!" instead of laughing
  
• awkward small talk
  
• crying in front of people
  
• tripping in front of people
  
• not getting an explanation
  
• not getting to explain myself
  
• tapered jeans
  
• female emo haircuts
  
• unidentifiable stickiness
  
• stepping on bugs
  
• when my life is a scribble
  

          -brought to you by midnight and a bad mood.
 

Danielle = Bad Person?

When you have absolutely nothing to do except chase your cat up and down the hallway, recently updated weblogs are your holy grail. Fortunately for me, I can count the Tard Blog among these blessed treasures, because it has like five new stories up. While I was skimming the page, my curiosity was piqued by a cryptic reference to progeria. I followed the link and discovered that progeria is an extremely rare disorder which causes children to age about eight times the natural rate.

Okay. Incredibly fascinating. So I spent a good portion of the afternoon following the links on the progeria page to personal sites about progeria, specifically looking for pictures of these strange-looking kids. There are only about forty of them in the entire world, and every year they get together for a reunion of sorts. I must have looked at five different collections of pictures from these reunions, and if you gave me another ten I'd probably look through them all as well.

I guess I've always had sort of a morbid fascination with weird disorders, possibly because it seems that almost anything you can imagine malfunctioning in the human body has done so in at least a couple of people. So anyway, there was a link on the progeria site to the National Organization for Rare Diseases, and I literally went to the A-Z index of the 1,100 disorders they have listed and just started clicking on links. Specifically, I was looking for diseases that cause the person to look really fucked up. Like Apert syndrome or Nager syndrome or Miller syndrome, or the jackpot, a link to The National Craniofacial Association, which features all three plus more. And again, I went to personal sites looking for pictures, and if they didn't have pictures I got annoyed and left quickly.

I don't even really know why I'm blogging about this, especially because I can't really justify my actions in any way other than something crass, like just wanting to ogle the freakshow. And I can't even say this is just a private thing that doesn't leave my room (except to be megaphoned all over cyberspace by blogger, apparently); if I passed a kid with a messed-up face in Walgreens, I'd probably hotfoot it awkwardly to the next aisle and stare furtively through the shampoo bottles. At my high school, there was a really, really strange-looking dude who had burn scars all over his face, and whenever I saw him I'd lose my appetite. Why?

There's no real conclusion to this post. I'm just perplexed and somewhat angry at myself because apparently I can laugh at disordered kids, and stare at pictures of them, but I'd have problems actually interacting with them. This does not represent a good aspect of my character. I'll really have to think about this.

Oh my God, it's...its...it's working! It's really working! I rule! I RULE! I AM THE QUEEN WEBLOGGER!

Or not.

Archives are...hopefully up.

This place needs a little refurbishing. I've checked out HTML for Dummies and Dynamic HTML for Dummies from the Chicago Public Library. I'm fucking ready. My life as an interior (domain) designer commences today. Soon this place will be featured in Architectural (Domain) Digest. If no such periodical exists, they'll create it just for me.

GRAND OPENING!

Oh my! I feel like I've moved from the dorms to my own apartment all over again. I expect domain-warming gifts.

Danielle in Chicago!

Here I am! I'm typing from my old desk, in my old crappy stolen-from-the-kitchen-table chair, in my room, in the dark, in Chicago. It's good to be back, although my sleep schedule apparently got completely out of whack from the 6:45 AM flight I took yesterday, causing me to wake up at 6 AM CST this morning (4 AM PST. Can't...stop...ugh-ing...)

When I was a senior in high school, I took a community-college class on Eastern Religious Philosophy. My professor was really, really hot. Plus, he was somewhat profound at times. For example, he told us a little parable about how once he was in this really bad mood while driving home, and noticed that whenever he saw a pedestrian or another driver a thought would zip into his head like, "He is a little punk who should be in school right now. She is a loser whose boyfriend just dumped her ass." (I'm making this up, but bear with me). He caught this realization in his head, turned it over a bit, and the next time he passed someone he'd halt the ensuing judgment at, "He is...." and "She is...." He said it was quite meditative, and cathartic, and that we should all try it.

I thought about this while I was wandering about campus yesterday, running errands in a really bad mood, randomly kicking snowdrifts and glaring at drivers who wouldn't stop long enough to let me cross the street. I was pissed because in California we don't have to leap over huge slush-puddles to get onto the curb. Plus, my stupid job had lost my last two paychecks, and I was exhausted. I caught myself looking at passersby and thinking mean thoughts, like, "Fucking runner. Who the hell do you think you are? You probably think you're all hot, running in the winter, but I hope you trip and fall on your ass in a slush-puddle," and, "Who the hell are you, hussy? I've never even seen you before and you're all trotting around campus in your big-ole purple coat like you're hot shit." But instead of deciding to halt the thoughts as they entered my head, I thought they were pretty funny and I kept doing it. Like, "Fucking girl, don't you know that tapered jeans just make your legs look like elephant stumps?" and "Fucking nerd, you walk just like a bobbleheaded pigeon." It actually cheered me up a bit.

In other news, the quote of the day, attributable to my roommate Burcu:
"Danielle, don't take this the wrong way, but sometimes you can be completely repulsive and completely adorable at the same time."
I sense a new tagline, folks!!

Danielle Tries to Get Deep, Doesn't Succeed

Yesterday, I drove up to UCLA to visit my friend Nikki. Nikki's kind of a backwards friend. When we're apart, I always assume an impassible chasm has separated us for good; but when we see each other, it's like no time has passed at all. There's just something about us that has always mysteriously clicked, despite the fact that we are so incredibly, unbelievably different. I think I've learned more about the nature of friendship from my relationship with her from anything else, the most important lesson being that differences in morals, beliefs, and even actions do not doom a friendship if you're on the same wavelength, if you have the "invisible tie". It sounds cheesy and trite, but I've found it's difficult to put that knowledge into action. There are so few people I feel tied to, though, that I've realized I have to truly cherish those to which I am.

Okay, moving along....
I Am So Immature

So, on Saturday, my dad enlisted my help to go to Green Thumb and buy him some sprinkler stuff. The employees there are very friendly and helpful, and I desperately wanted to accept their offers for assistance because anytime I'm in any place like that (places "like that" include Home Depot and most office supply stores) my eyes just glaze over and I wander around aimlessly. But I knew I couldn't get them to help me, because there was no way I could ask them for eight-inch plastic nipples without cracking myself up.