What's in a Resume?

Bullshit by any other name smells just as rank. 

The key to writing a successful Cover letter:

work all night. 

come home. shower. do some excersises to get the blood pumping.

write a staunchy letter, accompanied by a silly email

smoke a cigarette. Take it easy with a Jasperilla

Start all over!

Streats, Treassing. Potato Chips

Streats (n) - Treats you eat when you are stressed out. I really hit the streats hard today.
eassing (v) (the 'e' is silent) - the act of eating to calm down. Did you eass much today?
Potato Chips (n) - really delicious

Slow Motion

Slow Motion dreams are arguably the most irritating and upsetting dreams. I just woke up from an extremely vivid one.
I walked down the street next to Safeway, late at night, on my way home. Of course this guy -- grungy, bearded, mid fourties -- decided to approach me. I could tell he approached just because he knew I didn't want to be approached (like they do in Seattle), but I couldn't move any faster. He reached out to my shoulders. When I turned around to push him, and he began to laugh because I was moving so slow. It scared me that maybe I wouldn't be able to push him. The most annoying part was that I knew I was in a dream. I must have been half awake or something. I knew that if I could just wake up it would all go away. But, I have this codeine cough syrup (cough cough) and I think it made waking up slightly more difficult than usual.

Once I realized I wouldn't be able to wake up, I conjured up a vampire and it ripped the guy in half. I'm not even kidding.

I still wish I could have pushed him, but I rarely get to change stuff in my dreams so I'm pretty proud of that.

This weekend is very slow motion.

EDIT: So, remember the condescending guy from the Cha Cha in my last post? He totally had a beard, and put his hand on my shoulder! I wonder...

Breaking News! Sex Sells!

Article

Brief Summary: A scientist decides that we buy things in order to impress other people and hopefully, hopefully impress them enough to have sex with them, because we are animals with two basic goals: survival and reproduction. Advertisers, having caught on to these goals, oh, a million years ago, use this information to market their products accordingly.

Haven't we known for a long time of the futility of actually believing that drinking beer will make you more attractive (it totally does, btw)? But I suppose that doesn't stop us from buying cool shit and hoping someone takes notice. Maybe he makes some other groundbreaking revelation in the book, and this is just the opening line. I don't know. I haven't read the book, because I don't see how purchasing it will help me live longer or lure anyone into my loft bed. Besides, I seem to get it all wrong anyway. The Loft bed... why did I buy that? I think maybe I must be designed differently than these other "humans" that buy everything for sex and survival. Its like, I sort of got the idea -- bed -- but then somehow, the idea got twisted (have you ever tried climbing down from a loft bed? It can be hazardous) when I put it into practice. Maybe I just know that my other qualities are so impressive, the things I own don't matter:

"We take wondrously adaptive capacities for human self-display — language, intelligence, kindness, creativity, and beauty — and then forget how to use them in making friends, attracting mates and gaining prestige. Instead, we rely on goods and services acquired through education, work and consumption to advertise our personal traits to others. These costly signals are mostly redundant or misleading, so others usually ignore them. They prefer to judge us through natural face-to-face interaction."

I hope he is right, because I am really poor, and don't have much money to invest in the way of impressing friends and boys that I like. I guess the pointlessness of consumerism is a good topic, so I should support this guy for writing about this, but there are a couple reasons why I think he might win a place on the D-nozzle spectrum.

"We've known since Darwin that animals are basically machines for survival and reproduction; now we also know that animals achieve much of their survival and reproductive success through self-advertisement, self-marketing and self-promotion."

Well, that is depressing. OR, we live in a capitalist consumerist society, and so it makes the most sense to look at our basic instinctive traits through common terms of a cap-con framework -- advertisement, marketing, and promotion. Are we, as animals, inherently programmed to be capitalists? Or is it really just evolutionary randomness. Make up your mind! Make up my mind! Make up your FACE.

And last but not least:
"Unlike many malcontents," Miller writes, "I consider the three best inventions of all time to be money, markets and media."

Douche Baaaag! I'm not sure how the above has anything to do with his book. It's like he is making a disclaimer: Oh, well, I don't think there is anything wrong with these tools! I just want to analyze them! I'm still one of you! Hey guys! Wait up! I love you capitalism! I buy stuff to impress you! I know all your secrets! Thats the point of my book! Waaaaait for meeeeee!

Speaking of D-nozzles, I went to the Cha Cha last night. Here are my thoughts.
Dude in the mustache: You know, some people actually used to watch He-Man, before it became something ironic to talk about in a bar.
Dude who talked about music: I knew what indie meant before you were even BORN, so I don't need your permission for anything thankyouverymuch. And get your condescending hand off my shoulder before I exsanguinate you.

Please feel free to read the article and let me know if I got it all wrong. I usually do (loft bed, remember?).

Robert Pattinson, Merci

There are a lot of real life things going on right now that are hard to blog about. So I won't. 

My first of many steps to becoming a genius is learning new languages. I want to learn French. Here goes...

Monsieur handjob, c'est la magnifique, mon petite fromage! Fascination totale! barbe de papa! baguette!

I wish I were in France right now. You lucky bastard. But thanks for distracting me anyway. 

Waxing Ashes

There is no way around it this time. This post is due completely to my obsession with one Robert Pattinson. In an effort to feed the obsession, Jean and I made it a point to see Little Ashes on opening night. Basically this movie made me really smart.

Here are a few things I learned:

Salvadore: arrogant genius: good with his hands 

Frederico: sentimental poet: worthy of obsession

Luis Bunuel: makes a movie with boobs in it: homophobic? redeemably political

And for being a movie about love between two men, the female to male naked front was totally skewed! At least they left out the high speed car chases.

RP may have shed his vampire skin for this role, but I was unable to shed my Twilight obsession, and couldn't help thinking, as Jean pointed out, that there are similarities in the two characters. Dali is totally Edward a la dark side, if Edward drank Bella's blood and then went crazy from it. Or, Edward is Dali, recovering from past insanities, and when he finds love for the 3rd time in his existence, decides to latch on for good, so to speak. 

Back to the movie: The actors were able to procure appropriate emotional reactions from me: laughing and hyperventilating. However, when thrown all together, the narrative seemed rough --  it felt like they ran out of time (or money) to really tell the story, and there seemed to be some serious cut and paste action. If anything, the movie encouraged me to do some serious internet research (read: wikipedia) on Dali and Lorca, because I was a little confused by the end. Also important to this summary -- I was completely drunk. If I ever see it sober, I'll probably have to make another post.  

Anyway, I have gained some new obsessions.

Obsession Part A: Frederico Lorca (is dead and gone!).

Did you know Lorca wrote a play about an impossible love between a cockroach and a butterfly? Not only did the Clash mention him in Spanish Bombs, but The Pogues wrote a song about him getting shot. This doesn't surprise me, as almost every song by The Pogues is really depressing. When I first started listening to them, I thought them to be a happy, good time band... until I started reading lyrics. Ok. So I only read lyrics for a few songs, but after that I didn't have the heart to ruin the feel-good tunes by matching them with sad things like being spat on and shat on and losing your limbs. 

Obsession Part B:  Being a genius.

Though I may never grow a mustache and put flowers on it, I feel like I am off to a good start. 

I  am:

1. In love with Fredrico Lorca and others with whom it is physicially impossible for me to love. 

2.  socially inept. 

At work, Megan and I have decided to turn the bakery into a genius school. I'll let you know what I learn. 

Oh yeah, and last but not least, my work of genius:

Urgent Care to Biscuits! Can you hear me?

Sucks!

 The United States of America's new and improved!:#: Nationalized Health Care plan:

Just make sure to only get sick once a year, because you can probably only afford to go to the doctor once. Don't worry, that entire paycheck that you spent while sitting next to our high class fish tank in the waiting room, it went to a good cause. Guppy Gupster (the guppy in the fish tank... no not that one, the other one) needed a vasectomy. You may have noticed the overpopulation in the tank. And, well, we thought about buying a second tank, or just making some delicious snacks. But that might save money, so we decided to do things the old fashioned way -- removing money dollars from your ass!

It was the most expensive bottle of cough syrup I've ever purchased. That codeine better work damn strait. 

On a more positive note, I finally caught a glimpse into the true art of biscuitry tonight. My boss, Toby, is a wonderful person who trusts me way too much with her recipes. She assumes I know a lot about baking because of my last name. The truth is, I know a lot about how to get sugar into my pie hole in a tasty fashion. 

Anyway. Toby trusts me, so she leaves a recipe that looks like this:

So. Biscuits. Even with a slightly more detailed recipe, I found myself in the dark. Of course I've made biscuits before, but I have a completely different style. The biscuits I made turned out beautifully... but they looked absolutely nothing like Toby's. I walked home in shame -- all these years culminated to this one night where I couldn't make a proper biscuit. I mean, it doesn't get much simpler than that!

Toby says "Oh, just add more liquid." 

OK Toby!

This time, I baked off 4 tester biscuits, and they turned out perfect, by any standard. 

30 minutes later...

WHAT THE #@!!!$#%. Four perfect biscuits followed by fourty shameful, seppuku worthy biscuits. 

I admitted my shame to Ashley, probably the most awesomest person to ever set foot in a kitchen. She immediately replied back with an extremely helpful, well laid out guide to biscuit making that she had come across. Hints like, "Do it this way dumbass!"

I chilled and sifted flour. I poked the biscuits. I didn't twist the biscuit cutter. 

They worked!
I think that chilling the flour is the most important step, because the cooler dough isn't as stretchy, and so when you cut those little circles, they stay one size, and don't shrink up like balls in ice water (run on sentence)!

Not that I've ever seen that in action. 

So I had two delicious biscuits for breakfast (see, I have to test things!) with strawberry jam! You jealous?

Nothing in Particular

Its really weird, writing a post that doesn't include mention of Edward, or Robert Pattinson. 

oops.

Now there's a shameful obsession! No no, not my obsession with Robert Pattinson, or Twilight. I'm talking about sunglasses. Hence the picture! Duh. Why else would I post that picture? 

It all started with Kurt Cobain... no, actually I'll have to go further back. There is a picture of me circa 1990 wearing my mom's purple sunglasses, they are stylistically the same as the raybans featured above (or at least that is what I assume the cursive says on the side of those glasses). But purple. And more recently I became obsessed with finding sunglasses that looked similar to the many pairs that Kurt (yeah, he'll get his own blog here, eventually) wore. And then it just morphed into an all out, full on obsession. And now, when amazon suggests that I buy a $250 pair of rayban sunglasses I wish that I could. 

Well, now that I have that out of the way... 

So, I'm trying to write this book. hhhhhh. Its really hard! I realized that I have one idea of how the characters should be, and then these conversations that happen between them, that really have nothing to do with the characters at all. They are just scenarios that are interesting to me. So, do I rewrite it so it matches up with the characters? Or do I change the characters so they match up with the conversations? Should I reject, or embrace the para-masturbatory?

I've never been very good at writing drafts. This is a problem. I like to write a sentence, and have it perfected. And then move on. I'm trying to break the habit. Writing in notebooks seems to be better. I am less likely to care what I write, and more inclined to spin out notes rather than sit and ponder how exactly I should word something, which is what happens in front of the computer. 

I also don't edit much when I write here. Can you tell? hahaha

One of my English professors talked about a hypothetical situation where her memoirs might be read at some future date, after her death. I thought "Who would want to read that? Who feels so self important that they think other people want to read about them?" 

Oh god! Why am I blogging! I'll never know. 

But, as I have found with other obsessions of mine, I want to share them with other people. It makes me happy, so maybe it will make someone else happy too. Hey, thats a great reason! 

For the past few days, my temperature has been at or below 97 degrees. Now its at 98.4 and I feel overheated. Does this mean I have a fever, or that my body was just incredibly weak for a few days, and has finally warmed up? 

Waxing dietic

When I created this blog, the jumble of letters provided for varification purposes spelled "humplavi"

Who is lavi?

Its 1:14 and ummm, I should be sleeping because I am sick. But I haven't taken my sleeping pill yet because I suddenly needed to write something. And watch Harry Potter and the Prizoner of Azkaban. One that isn't quite an adventure, or an obsessive rant on vampires and their sparkly bits. I'm not even sure if I'll keep the address at blogger. I want to try out word press (just in case TDH ever thinks of moving cyber-locales). 

I don't want to be a skinny bitch, but lately I've been thinking about actually trying to lose weight. I haven't seriously considered this since the age of 16, when I started hanging out with punk rock boys and girls who loved the cookies my mom would bake for them. Yeah. They act hardcore until a mom shows up. A small (good) glitch in their rebellious lifestyles.  Anyway, punk rockers gave me a healthy dislike for mainstream anything, and I was quick to throw dieting right in the waste basket. 

I am obsessive. I've had obsessions with weight lifting before, which resulted in some pretty awesome calf muscles (not as good as mom's though). I'm also obsessed with calf muscles in general, so... anyway. I thought maybe I could become obessive about eating right and excersising. Its probably the least fulfilling obsession I've had (Harry Potter is hiding under the sheets, trying to learn the spell, lumos maximus, to make his wand glow to the brightest of its ability... magic, so shameful, yet so satisfying!) I am a baker! By birth and occupation. So, here I go, putting a tray of cupcakes in the oven, all the while thinking "Spinach salad... with curry chickpea... no, the curry dressing is probably not healthy. No I don't care, I want the protein. How many calories did that thought burn?" And then I cry because I feel like somehow, choosing to lose weight means the advertisers won. Also, most of the time I am too tired to eat right or excersise, so I end up obsessing about how I'm doing everything wrong. Healthy... Right. 

For years I've said things like "I am going to eat healthier" or "I am going to excersise a lot!" Hinting that I want to do something good for my body, and if losing weight is a side effect, fine. This is my way of trying to convince myself (or at least convince others) that I am anti dieting just for the sake of looking better.  I desperately wanted, for the ghosts of middle school past, to never support dieting. I desperately want my overall well being to not be tied to my physical appearance. I put on my ideological face (Daniel Radcliffe is so cute in the 3rd harry potter. Angry teenage boy. awwww) and refuse to admit to anyone that I want to be a skinny bitch. I don't. I just want to go shopping and be able to buy jeans without having to hem a foot off the end, and oh yeah, bring in the thighs, because I'm only fat sort of. Not all the way. And its pretty impossible to not have some vested interest in physical appearances.  

I think I just want to pretend that I'm not trying (if I'm trying, that means I've already failed at least one of my lifetime goals -- to never diet -- so if I also fail at dieting... Thats a lot of guilt). But I'm now obsessed with it, and want to obessively write about it (pillow fight in the Gryffindor boys dormitory? really?) whether I fail or not. I don't like support groups, but I like to whine, yes yes I do. But I guess, even if I am now admitting that my goals are of the shallow variety, rather than caring about my over all well being, I can at least be shallow in the healthiest way possible. We'll see what happens. 

There are other obsessive things I wouldn't mind writing about. You think one blog about one book might be enough, but its not.  Hey, look at that, my sleeping pills say "take with food". Oh DARN.

(Professor Lupin says "I'm sorry to hear about your broomstick Harry. Is there no way to repair it?")

Welcome.