Some Links to Freak You Out

...because my mind is too fried to think up anything myself.

Go and be unnerved.
Disturbing Rating: 7

Baby-Sitters Club Femmeslash. Don't know what femmeslash is? Time you found out.
Disturbing Rating: 8.5

K-Mart Costumes: "Sure to make you the comic hit at your next Halloween party!"
Inflatable Bar Maid! (HA HA I think it's a guy in the picture)
Inflatable Clown! (Terrifying.)
Inflatable Ballerina! (...)
Disturbing Rating: 6

And just because I think it's freakin' hilarious:
Idaville Detective 'Encyclopedia' Brown Found Dead in Library Dumpster

Today Burcu and I went down to Belmont in Chicago, which is a cross between poor-student paradise and hipster hell. We were going to watch 28 Days Later at Brew & View, where everyone supposedly gets drunk and yells at the screen, but you need an ID to get in and Burcu didn't have hers. So we went to the arcade instead and played about a thousand games of Ms. Pac-Man. We also played Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat. My technique was basically swirling the joystick thingy around and around, smacking the various buttons over and over, and shrieking, so my guy would just hurtle through space, punch the air a couple of times, and then be caught by his opponent who would break him in half and grind his head into the pavement. Nice!

We had dinner at Clarke's, and Burcu ate a HUGE amount of food: potato skins with cheese and onions, a huge hamburger, steak fries, and two pancakes with syrup. On the bus ride home, she started to feel vomitous. We had a discussion about who she should puke on. The nerdy-nerd-nerd nerds sitting across from us who were in a deep discussion that involved the phrases "significant digits" and "nanotechnology?" The arm-in-arm couple walking in front of us along 55th Street, the female half of which was carrying a fuzzy cow purse? A bum? Her secret crush? Anyway, she wanted to wait to throw up until she got home, and she said that I could think up gross things to say to make her do so. I was sooo excited. All the way home I was filling a mental arsenal with the most disgusting shit imaginable. But then she decided she didn't want to throw up after all. Disappointed, I ascended the stairs to my apartment, sat down at the computer, and began typing in my blog.

God, my life is sad.

So, I returned to my old job at the biopsychology lab, which consists of sodomizing rats with pipettes and forcing them to mate on camera while wearing little blue jackets. It's pretty boring, but I don't really mind, because I just max the volume on my discman and dance around the lab while the rats scuttle around their cages in confusion.

I was hoping to start working as a teacher's aide for the kids at Harvard School again. But yesterday, I ran into one of the students who I'd tutored there, and he told me the school had been shut down. I was crushed. I can't believe it was shut down. I didn't ever get to say goodbye to the kids when I left in January, or to Ms. Harris, the teacher I worked with. I thought I was going to come back in the spring, but I was so busy during spring quarter that it was easier to have an on-campus job for the time being. I'm only taking three classes this quarter, and I left Mondays completely free just so I could start working there again, and all the while...

I wonder if I'll ever see those kids again. My heart hurts just thinking about it.

Burcu came back today, wearing a very Burcu-esque outfit: orange and yellow Nikes, a long flowered wraparound skirt, a white tank top, an off-the-shoulder ripped-up grey sweatshirt, and a backwards baseball cap that said, "New York." I missed that girl.

Moving on...

Stuff I Have a Problem With

You know really, really annoys me? That the "Life" section at Salon.com is alternately titled "Mothers Who Think." It's just so...patronizing. Why are "life" articles in general supposed to only be interesting to mothers? It offends me so much that I purposely avoid reading any of those articles. The title just sounds too, too Ladies Home Journal to me, even with the "who think" part, which just makes it sound like the ladies doth protest too much. OK, it's not like I don't think there's a market for mothers "who think," but why does it have to be called the "Life" section? Because the fathers are too busy chopping wood and slaughtering cattle to care about life, or because they've got the real news sections reserved for them, which are altogether unrelated to life?

Granted, my underlying misogyny may be slightly at work here, because although I'd like to have kids someday, I never, never want my life to be defined by the word "mother" as if bearing children is the end-all beat-all of my self-identity. Okay, that's not the misogynistic part. It's also because girls and women for the most part bug the shit out of me, especially those who would place themselves in a category titled "mothers who think." "Who think?" "WHO THINK?!" As if to separate themselves from foolish Joe Mother, who doesn't think? What does that even mean exactly? That you still want to read dating articles and heartwarming stories of adoption, except with bigger words? OMG, and while we're on the subject, I fucking HATE HATE HATE how they take only certain headlines from the newswire section and put them in the Mothers Who Think section, as if patting you on the head and saying, "It's okay, we know all that other stuff is just too advanced for you, so here are some Training Headlines on bunnies and babies so you can read them and think and be just like daddy!" ARRRRRRRRRRRRRGH.

Oh, I also have a problem with the fact that there is nothing to do in Chicago if you're under 21. I have eleven months to go until I can get a life.

I've been thinking a lot about what a fucked-up child I was. For example:

• I had a kidnapping fetish that lasted from about age four until age ten. I have no idea why. Maybe it was that My Little Ponies episode that my mom taped for us and that we used to watch over and over, in which three Ponies get kidnapped and have to help the evil queen turn the rest of Ponyland into glass. Or something. I wrote so many stories based on that theme. I also used to fantasize about my crushes kidnapping me. When I was eight, I read half of a fiction story in an old Woman's Day about some woman getting kidnapped at her high school reunion by a psycho who was in love with her. I turned the garage upside down looking for the next issue, to no avail. Finally, I found the actual book at the library, and as I was checking it out, the librarian looked at me over her glasses and asked, "Did your mom give you permission to get this?" "Yes," I lied. And, of course, there was Sweet Valley High #13, in which Elizabeth gets kidnapped, also by a psycho who's in love with her. The very idea totally thrilled me. Now I just think it's bizarre. I know that some well-adjusted adults have kidnapping fetishes, but A FIVE-YEAR-OLD? Why was I such a freak?!
  
• I really, really wanted to catch a life-threatening disease. This can't be that unusual, or those fucking Lurlene McDaniel teen-cancer books wouldn't have been so popular. I can't blame it on being attention-starved, because I really wasn't. I think I was just in need of an endorphin rush. My childhood was kinda boring.
  
• I used to have nightmares about giant blueberries.
  
  

Um, that's all I can think of for now.

Ahhh

Happiness is eating homemade tacos while wearing a grease-stained tshirt and pajama pants, reclining in bed, and reading Truman Capote.

Now, where were we? Ah, yes....ABJECT HUMILIATION!

I just got back from hanging out with my friend Dan. We watched Aladdin, and then I tried to play a video game that was like the mutant lovechild of Japanese anime and all the Disney movies of the past. My character was an anime child, and Goofy and Donald Duck were my henchmen. They followed me around and we killed a bunch of faceless wizard people. It sucked. I quit after two levels.

Okay, lest you think I'm this ultra-weird Disney-freak-orama, I shall point you to this article, about REAL Ultra-Weird Disney-Freakoramas (Or "Freaks-orama, as William Safire would say). My contentions:

• I don't really like Disneyland. The lines are long, the food is expensive, and the sidewalks are embedded with gray wads of old gum. The last time I was there was grad night 2001, which was cold, dirty, and full of drunk hoochies. Plus, pricewise, we all got totally bent over. It was like twice the cost of regular admission, and we didn't even get to *see* half of the attractions because it was, you know, nighttime. In fifth grade, I was hanging out around the monkey bars with my girl-clique, and we were all talking about losing our virginity. Most of us swore we would be chaste until marriage. But one girl, Megan, said, "But...but...I really want to have sex with my boyfriend on prom night."
  
  Us: *GASP!* No, Megan! Don't do it! You could get pregnant/AIDS/herpes/dumped the next day!
  Megan: (reluctantly) Yeah...I guess. But I'm doing it on grad night. I'm definitely doing it on grad night.
  Us: (pensively) Wow...GRAD NIGHT. That may be acceptable.
  
  Megan, we lost touch after fifth grade, but I hope to God you did not lose your virginity on grad night. For some reason, the phrase "Sexually Transmitted Disease" hovers over my memory of grad night like a fine gray mist. I'm lucky I got out of there without catching anything, and I definitely didn't have sex on grad night.
  
• I feel pretty comfortable making the sweeping generalization that Disney attire looks stupid on anyone who has graduated from elementary school. It's like Looney Toons attire. Unless it's worn ironically, it just screams, "Wal-Mart Sale Rack." And wearing it ironically is very, very difficult. I'm not even sure it can be done. Even big burly guys on motorcycles sometimes wear Looney Toons shit, even get Looney Toons tattoos, and I suppose under some Law of Ironic Contrasts it has the potential to make them look even more threatening, but no. It just makes them look ridiculous. There were about five minutes in the mid-nineties when high school girls could carry Disney-themed backpacks and lunchboxes and look like cute pedophile-bait. Those minutes have long since passed.
  
• Benji:I go to Angels games, because they [used to be] owned by Disney. I never liked baseball before. I watch ABC because it’s owned by Disney.
  It sounds like Benji has a crush on Disney.
  

Although I have dissed them, I think the guys in the article are interesting and harmless, though I can't help being a bit saddened when I read about them (how's that for patronizing?). But then, who the hell am I to judge? I also think that they have obsessive personalities in general. If Disney didn't exist, it would be something else. It's like having a phobia, but in the other direction. I also think it's related to addiction to other sorts of things, although you could in no sense use the term "addicted to Disney" and hope to be taken seriously or literally. Why do we get fixated with things? People, alcohol, gambling, internet, corporations? I am fixated with this question itself. Hell, I'm majoring in it.

THE AMAZON CRY OF TRIUMPH!!!

It's 11:35 PM, and we just finished the nearly-100-page O-issue of the Chicago Maroon, which I have been spending approximately eight daily hours on for the past week. I copy-edited every single article at least once, sometimes twice. I am a comma-adding, syntax-tweaking, m-dash-substituting fiend. At night I dream of semicolons. But really, this must be some sort of record. Finishing a college newspaper's 100-page Orientation issue at 11:35 PM? I give props to the dictatorial editors (I kid because I love) who must be the most on-top-of-their-shit journalists in existence. Me, I mostly reclined on a couch with a magazine and waited for them to hand me pages, which I leisurely read while sipping cool water and listening to...interesting music selections. One caveat: the Maroon office is infested with the largest cockroaches I have ever seen. Easily three inches long. Shudder. Shudder. Okaylet'smoveontothenexttopic....

SO! Here's a picture of George Dubya demonstrating the "condescending pat." Or doing his best Hitler.

I Love My Sister

I just had a really nice telephone conversation with my twin sister, Kirsten. Fraternal twin sister, not freaky twin sister. I'd talked to my dad earlier this afternoon, and he mentioned she was coming up from San Diego by train to visit him and my mom in Oxnard. The second he said that, I thought, "she's gonna call me on her cell phone when she's about halfway there." DAMN I'm good.

We're so far apart. I haven't seen her since early February, and I won't see her again until mid-December. I forget that I have a twin sometimes, that it means something other than the novelty value of seeing the stunned expression on people's faces when I announce it out of nowhere, and the glazed expression in their eyes when I show them her amazing website.

This is difficult to explain without sounding hackneyed. There's someone out there I've been joined with since time began, but our lives are so fucking different now that if you knew both of us in entirely different contexts, you'd never guess we were even related if we didn't tell you. I feel like I'm changing so much all the time that I can't get a handle on who she is by viewing her through my current mental filter, because I haven't been around her enough since I've changed to do so...if that makes any sense whatsoever. It's like when I tell people, "I have a twin," and they go, "Whoa, really?" I'm like, "Whoa! Yeah...I do! I have a fucking twin! That's sooo weird!"

But it's more like I don't know who she is in relation to me anymore. I can't make her fit neatly into my current self-perspective. There's someone two thousand miles away who knows my history because much of it is her history too, going back to since time began for her, and it drives me nuts, because it's like my past is walking around thinking that I still am who I was two years ago because she's blocked from seeing me in the present. And the reverse is true; I'm for her what she is for me.

We don't talk very often. I wonder why that is. In all honesty, sometimes I feel a bit uncomfortable when I'm on the phone with her. I think it's the battle between not knowing and knowing and assuming I should still know. I want to spend one year with her, live with her again for one year, and be with her all the time, and see how she acts among her friends, and I want her to see how I act among my friends and how I act in my classes and I want to make new inside jokes with her and I want it to be so how I am now and how she is now isn't an unpleasant surprise by virtue of it being a surprise at all.

But tonight was wonderful, because we both want to live in a city most of the time, but live in southern Wyoming some of the time, in a big country house with wood floors and a thick cushy rug and a fireplace and two or three dogs. We're going to share it. Also, we both can't kill bugs, and we don't understand those who do when there's no reason to, which is most of the time. We both like guys who can fix things, because we're not good at fixing things, and we're both totally perplexed as to how anyone can eat shrimp because it's like eating an entire curled-up insect corpse. For that matter, we think eating anything with the head still on it is totally gross. Like lobster. And both of us are cat people AND dog people, and we love children's books and YA books (mostly the same ones, too), and we're both really messy, and we both like guacamole. Kirsten, are you ever coming to Chicago?

I'm just posting to post. Today, I watched Spirited Away (fantastic movie), tacked up a few posters, made chicken fried rice, tried to clean. Yesterday, I spent nine straight hours in the basement office copyediting nearly every article for the Orientation Issue of the Chicago Maroon. Tomorrow, I'm...sleeping. I am officially a vampire.

LOL

Some newspapers pull `Doonesbury' installment that mentions masturbation

In a letter to newspaper editors, Lee Salem, editor and executive vice president of Universal Press, referred to masturbation as the "m-word."

"For some papers, the use of the m-word per se, no matter how deftly it is referenced, may cross the line," Salem wrote.

The "m-word"???

In a Quest to Alienate My Entire Readership...

You know, looking over my current Kazaa Lite playlist, I realized something. I have really, really crappy taste in music. At least by the indie-rock standard that is plague-rampant on the average college campus. Those who know me generally also know that my affinity for early-90's Top 40 is a source of endless material for my ongoing comedy routine (its real purpose being, of course, a transparent defense mechanism for staving off the eternal guilt/embarrassment of such). But man. Sometimes, like when "Superfreak" comes on and I cannot help but start groovin' madly, I think, sheesh, I deserve to be embarrassed.

Not much else to report. Yesterday, I trekked out to the new Trader Joe's on the North Side, fighting my way through the swarm of DePaul WASPs who were congregated at the Fullerton Red Line stop, using up my transfer by getting on the wrong bus, and then deciding to walk fifteen blocks rather than spend an extra $1.50. It was worth it. If I were a chain store, I think I'd like to be Trader Joe's. Casual and healthy, yet maverick, with a sense of humor and a Hawaiian shirt. I bought some $6 pink roses for my room and put them in a vase by my windowsill. The cat promptly knocked it over. "Shoop" by Salt n Pepa just came on. I know all the words.

I have a headache, but I'm pretty sure it's the stress kind, not the inflamed-brain kind. Even in the midst of summer, supposedly free of cares and responsibilities, it's amazing how effectively I can whirl my life up into a tension tornado.

I posted on a message board at Fametracker.com, my first time posting on any internet forum since...age 16? It was about how some model, Devon Aoki, looks like a Down's syndrome child. Some may argue that this is not the most consequential topic with which to return to the grand world of internet message boards. I would counter with this picture. And then I would rest my case.

Okay, I think "I Want To Come Over" by Melissa Etheridge is the sexiest song ever, and I'm pretty sure I'm not even gay. But then again, who knows? I'll leave you with that thought. OMG, I'm so liberated.

Since Burcu has abandoned me to visit her family (bah!), I've decided to spend my last free month becoming well-versed in two areas in which I have a serious deficit of knowledge: foreign films and sci-fi books. Any suggestions? Christine, as I have been stalking your blog, I know you can help me out here.