I've lived in Arizona for... sixteen years now. That first year it hit 122 degrees and the airport shut down because the tarmac was melting and the landing gear kept getting stuck. The devil was vacationing in Scottsdale at the time but when it got too hot to walk barefoot by the pool he kicked a baby in the face and shipped out to Key West. (
The devil is surprisingly tenderfooted.)
My parents have coped with the searing heat (and the wrenching pain of having been ripped from BeachFront PerfectTown and dropped into the godforsaken desert because of a job that would inevitably have my father gumming baby food at three in the morning for his ulcer, putting company payroll on his AmEx, and generally begging for a sweet merciful stroke) by taking every possible opportunity to announce how warm we are at all times. They have found this to be a particularly hilarious game
this time of year, and have been known to actually
get in the pool in January so that Mom can call the relatives with a hypothermic hand and announce in a weak, shaky (yet victorious and haughty) voice that they're swimming.
Until recently I was of the opinion that these condescending weather jokes weren't funny. That we all have our highs and lows, as it were, and it just wasn't that sporting to rub someone else's "low" nose in our "high".
But I've changed my mind. It was 81 degrees here on Christmas Day. And if it wasn't 81 degrees where you are, I'm sorry, that's fucking funny. Please see the following list of weather jokes for proof that Arizona winters are inherently comical, and that my parents, ulcers and all, were right all along.
1)
Q: "How many Minnesotans does it take to plug in a car to keep the engine from freezing into a giant block of worthless ice?"
A: "What?"
2) "Knock knock."
"Who's there?"
"Tank top."
"That's awesome."
3)
Q: "Is it hot in here to you? Do you mind if I turn on the air?"
A: "Oh my god, please."
4)
Q: "What's long, made out of yarn, and you wear it around your neck to keep warm?"
A: "Flip flops!"
If you don't think these are funny it's only because you're freezing right now and you can't see humor through the pain. Maybe reread in like August when you've thawed out and when the devil is at the Phoenician sucking back a margarita in his Tevas and when I'm lying on my stomach on a bed of ice, praying for death.
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STOP GIVING
ME CHRISTMAS SHIT
I DON'T WANT.
Baby steps. Repetitive ones.
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So when it happened to
Sarah I at least understood
why.
But who wants to steal shit that I wrote about my car keys?
UPDATE: I'm obsessed now. She added and subtracted and tweaked and fucked it all up until she carved out a weird little weblife for herself. As near as I can tell
this has five seperate posts of mine in it.
I'm going back in. I don't think I can stop.
Ooooh... she has a
myspace. Isn't she just adorable? She's unpredictable indie hip! And her music is better than yours!
I sent her a message on myspace (which meant I had to sign up for an account, so I have one of
those now, I guess) and it looks like her plan of evasive action was to password protect her site. There. Problem solved.
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It's A Foolproof Plan If There Aren't Any Cops Around.
I went into this organic co-op yesterday because I had $73 on me and a hankering to buy a bunch of shit I don't need and won't eat, and also because I was wearing a pair of pants that are too long and sort of "spare utility" looking, and I hate to waste that social bling at the Safeway. So I tote my cart full of organic lotion (made with pure bark! seed! oil. extract. um, gland.) and magic homeopathic water up to the cashier, and after the cashier has made up prices for everything and ripped the cash money from my hand, he looks at all my shit at the end of the counter and he looks back at me and asks casually, "Oh, do you need a bag?" And it's made very clear here by the cashier's raised eyebrow hooks that the only people who actually
accept the offer of the bag are weak Escalade drivers who leave all of their bathroom faucets running while they shop and who throw dirty styrofoam and lit cigarettes into National forests on their way home.
"Noooooo," I admonish. A bag? Kill a panda? What? "I'll just..." (and I start to gather up my roots and twigs and shit) "I've got all these pockets, I can just... sort of... wait!" It hit me. Like a genius brick. "I AM ON A BIKE."
"Ohhhh!" Eyebrow hooks nod and wobble in understanding and acceptance. A bike! A bike trumps everything. You could run over a baby on a bike and everything's cool because that baby was probably just going to grow up eating meat and voting against the legalization of marijuana anyway.
"Here you go!" And he tosses me a bag. I emptied fourteen pockets of crap into my bag and walked outside... head held high, car keys smartly hidden, smiling at Begging Dreadlock Kid, nodding at "Hey, We Told You To Keep It Outside" Tarot Music Loud Singing Lady, just enjoying my cool pants and my two dollars and my bag, and then I stole some dude's bike and rode home.
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If everyone’s sitting around telling semi-embarrassing stories (the time you had to run naked through the hotel lobby to get to the bar... the time your mom asked you- in front of company- to please rinse out the tub the next time you decide to razor-bald your privates), and you spontaneously decide to blurt out that your husband once pecked a man on the lips? Maybe think that through. Because if the reason your husband did that was to get you and another girl to make out topless? He’ll probably give that up.
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This holiday season, my office is different from every other office in America in that we've decided to-- get this-- collect food and necessities for the less fortunate. It's an astounding concept, I know. Luckily
I work with philanthropic, creative genius, "think outside the parallel lines" kind of people. So while you and
your office folk are sitting around shredding cash and denting canned goods,
we're making shit happen.
That's a
big box, people. And it's almost one-fifth full. It's only been sitting in the breakroom for three weeks... Imagine the wounds we could salve if we let it sit there for seven or eight years!
Oh yes. That's right. Benadryl. And Zantac. Those are vendor display size, bitch, and they're bigger than any pussy "stomach pumpable overdose" size they sell at Costco. In addition to the do-it-yourself meth lab, please note the marshmallow-flavored microwave popcorn. Does the church still appoint saints? Because goddamn.
I know you can't tell what the thirty million tiny tubes are full of, but I'm happy to report that it's none other than Gold Bond Powder Lotion. And it's
SPF 15, as if you needed
that additional kick in the face. Anyone with a sample-sized body part that's both itchy
AND burn prone? Oh, you can get up off your knees, my friend. (There used to be
five cans of edible food in the bottom of the box, but we had a pot luck hit a bean snag.)
Not
JUST Chapstick... that's the MOISTURIZING FORMULA! My original intention here was to take a picture of the broken multi-pack from which someone had snagged some tubes, but unfortunately by the time I got there that particular pack had just been stolen in its entirety.
Moisturizing, though. It's hard to throw stones.
Happy holidays, everybody! In other news, I won the office Chili Cookoff today. And with the nineteen dollars and seventy-six cents that I won from the "Angel Tree" pool, I treated myself to an okay bottle of wine.
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Oh, "K" as in "Knight"!
I just listened to a voicemail from this woman was trying to spell a name, and she goes, "Last name is 'Korte', 'K' as in... 'Karol'?... no, wait... 'K' as in what? (long pause)... I guess 'K' as in 'Kathy'."
Very helpful. Thank you.
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Fuck You, McCormick. And You Too, Schilling.
I listened to "Waiting for a Star to Fall" by Boy Meets Girl on repeat in the car this morning for my hour-ten commute and now I need a blood transfusion.
I made French Onion soup from scratch last night because I like spending two hours producing something that tastes like it came out of a forty-nine cent dip package. The next time I spend eleven dollars on gruyere cheese and an hour clawing at my onion mascara eyes like a meth addict it better be because I'm making brownies.
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I have to go to a party tonight and I
really don't want to go to a party, I want to go to the bookstore. I went to a stupid party LAST night, and it was full of realtors and mortgage brokers and they didn’t play the White Elephant game (the only redeeming feature to Christmas parties, watching the head of the Realtor Office Men's Lunchtime Bible Club select and unwrap the "Lovin' Lamb" blowup sex toy that I brought) and no one would volunteer their home so they had the party in some guy's apartment complex recreation room so every time I went to the bathroom I had to talk myself out of getting in the sauna. Plus they ran out of wine after like seven minutes.
Luckily I'd hidden three bottles under the table.
Tonight’s party is at some guy's house, and the only thing I know about the guy is that he's hyper-Christian and has a phenomenal new house that makes people feel inferior and he likes it that way. I think that might be the only reason why he's hosting this gig because after he and his wife had four kids in three years she took a long hard swim into the deep end of the bitch pool and has yet to return.
The party started at four. O'clock. So we're now late. What the fuck do you wear to a Christmas party that starts at four and serves dinner at six? OLD PEOPLE CLOTHES, that's what.
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I've been going through resumes at my desk for two hours. This is officially the last one.
"Aloha,
Below is a resume that summarizes my skills that qualify me for the position of Construction Superintendent and Project Engineer, or of any kind of financial, engineering or construction job, or a job to help those less fortunate, or to share the Word of God."
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So ahahaha, this is funny. Someone got to this site by following
this link, the link to my photos page. I forgot I ever
had a photos page, and if you click on it you'll see why. When
I clicked on it five minutes ago, my first instinct was to fix that broken link in the middle (a picture of gigantorm strand of M&M Christmas lights, specifically the sultry, long-lashed green M&M light if I'm not mistaken) and maybe update some shit (that's a lie), but A HA HA HA: I can't figure out how to access the page. So now there's this page just
out there, a page with
Amy Choppa's awesome hat and some shell raptors and Christmas from 2003, and there's not one goddamn thing I can do about it. Or, rather, there's not one goddamn thing I can do about it that doesn't involve any effort of any kind. I can't wait to see what
other half-ass pages I created and abandoned. Let me know if you find one with my thesis on it. I'll copy / paste that shit into a masters.
Stace and Sean and the impending Daymented Squishy-Squishy have thrown me into a yarn frenzy the likes of which the craft world hasn't seen since that time my grandmother was suddenly admitted to the hospital and my mother threatened to cut my arm off if I didn't finish the "Christmas" afghan I started for her when I was nine. Last week I had to be escorted out of Michael's Crafts. Joanne's Fabrics has a restraining order. I make the WORST blankets in the world. Horrifying, really.
"They offend
all the senses," my mom confirmed. This as she was rolling her gift blanket out the front door. These blankets can't be carried. They must be rolled. Or kicked. Preferably rolled. Kicking becomes frantic and then the blankets pile up and use their street advantage.
"You can't judge like that, " I countered, yellow and fuchia and puce frays clawing at my ankle. "You haven't seen
all of them."
My mother straightened. The blanket flinched, its nectarine panels smelling escape.
"I haven't seen ANY of them. I'M BLIND," she said, slapping at a fiesty ecru chenille panel.
"You're milking this whole blind thing," I told her (not true; she pretends she can see to make other people more comfortable). "And my blankets are
gorgeous." (Also not true; my ex-fiance of five years returned his blanket after our breakup. He paid international freight plus a hefty "taste endangerment: excessive and violent fringe" tax to get it the hell out of his townhouse.)
"If there was a color-blind isosceles triangle... " Mom hypothesized, one leg hovering off the ground to
confuse the evil, "and it had fallen into a well in February? Yes." She kicked an instinctual leg and by pure coincidence caught a particularly vibrant stripe of lime on the make. "I would heartily recommend this blanket."
So
Stace? You have to have an isosceles baby. Boy or girl, whatever. These colors go with everything.
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