Monday, June 30, 2003 What to do today?
It looks like we may get an appartment today. After a certain amount of fol-de-rol with Big Chicken Lady from the rental office, I was able to talk to her supervisor, who was indeed familiar with the concept of subletting. Big Chicken Lady went off to sulk and to try and elevate her bangs by huffing a gust of air up through them. Oooh, I hate her.
So, if the woman who has the keys and necessary paperwork shows up today, yesterday was our last night in Le Car. How jazzed am I about that? Very. Why? Because bugs have been biting my butt, and if we leave all the windows up to keep them out, we roast.
Other than that, the car nest is quite comfortable. I feel really lucky to have it, even if it is cursed. I don't want to give the impression that I think i'm homeless or anything. My situation came about because I made certain choices that I still stand behind, and not because it was absolutely unavoidable. I recognize my privelege, ya know?
Highlight of today: I'm getting a library card! posted by Frenzy Lohan | 6/30/2003 12:42:00 PM
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Sunday, June 29, 2003 Our swift conversion
The mate and I have been staying in our palatial and money eating automobile, and even though it's more comfortable than many of the appartments we've been looking at, it does not come with bathing facilities. I slept in the other day, and the mate was bored, so he walked to the YMCA. When they caught him attempting to use their showers, they said some un-Christian things, so today we went to the Jewish community center. They kicked us out, too, but we got our showers first.
Guess we're crossing somebody off our Christmas list.
posted by Frenzy Lohan | 6/29/2003 06:55:00 PM
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Friday, June 27, 2003 This being a BLOG and all...
For dinner yesterday I had warm Sprite, which was the only comestible in my car. For parking, you can't beat I-95, especially around the Ft. McHenry Tunnel in Baltimore. And the Wilson Bridge in DC. Inexplicable delays right around the stankin'est part of the New Jersey Turnpike also allow ample parking oppourtunities with easy walking access to sinister silos full of stink-gas.
My car had its tire for dinner. We were driving along (finally), when right around the last of teh scary government towns in Northern Virginia, the car starts to shake and make a distinctive "whomp, whomp, whomp" sound. We checked, and none of the tires were flat. So we drove to a gas station and put air in them anyway. That was my plan. I came up with it all by myself and was adamant about sticking to it, because I couldn't figure out what else to do. My firm stance and creative thinking prompted the mate to refer to me as "the Rommel of the car." I don't think that wasvery fair, especially since my plan totally didn't work, and I needed positive encouragement, rather than comparisons with Nazis.
We kept going slow (Truckers love that, by the way), until the whomping got worse and the back tire started smoking.
Then my car got to go on a tow truck ride. Now it is parked conveniently at the mechanics.
This being a BLOG and all, I will tell you what my car will have for dinner: more of my goddamn money. posted by Frenzy Lohan | 6/27/2003 09:30:00 AM
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Monday, June 23, 2003 Thin thighs in thirty days
Today I scratched up my poor foot on some big jagged vines of rusty wire. I was trying to cross a little bridge that's under construction in the mate's neighborhood, and it didn't work out. I'm assuming that dropping a dress size or two would be one of the happier consequences of lockjaw. I dislike speaking outloud, too, so right now I can't really think of a downside, except I think it eventually kills you. Tetanus is like, my personal theme these days. I should wear heavier shoes.
posted by Frenzy Lohan | 6/23/2003 05:48:00 PM
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Sunday, June 22, 2003 Look away
I'm tucking my tail between my legs and crawling back to Richmond. The mate needs a chance to tag the Statue of General Lee (some dude on a horse, not the kick-ass car from Dukes of Hazzard), and I need to stop being a Barrista and start getting real.
Also, tetanus house was too much of an emotional roller coaster, even if we had been permitted to stay after Flaky the Wingnut Housemate got back from Europe. Like, there was a creepy abandoned house next door...that was home to adorable kittens!...which all had ringworm. Ringworm in general was rampant in the area. Myles, a friend of my hosts caught a case of ringworm from his own personal cat, and there was fear that he would spread it around. We all made a point not to touch him, and in a way it was cute and added to the Little Calcutta ambience of the situation, but ew!
I'm going back to where there's affordable appartments, conspicuous rear-windshield Nascar shrines, and the term "water ice" means nothing to people.
I'll get to see which of my fellow post collegiate losers came crawling back. We can't all be Mr. Kotter.
posted by Frenzy Lohan | 6/22/2003 04:09:00 PM
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Monday, June 16, 2003 I don't like your fashion business, mister
The weekly had a really funny feature on the guy who started Urban Outfitters. Apparently he has right-wing secrets. Oh, Urban. One more reason to hate you, you dill holes. See, a few weeks ago I filled out an application there, which had questions about the lst books, magazines, and CDs I bought. I lied and lied. It also asked me to describe my first visit to Urban Outfitters. I still dream of hunting down whoever designed that application and giving her or him a stalwart wet willy.
I am ashamed to admit I did not storm out. Instead I made up a heartwarming story about a beloved widget or something I bouth in 1997 and still pine for to this day.
They totally never called, and I feel like I got rejected from the cool table. Well, I didn't want to sit there anyway!
Another place that never called me back: the TLA warehouse. It was a cavernous building full of pornography and social inept elderly punk rockers/ dorkwads. I name checked Dario Argento on the "whose your favorite director" part of the application, and those fucks still haven't called me back either.
I'm jumping through all the right hoops, and I still haven't gotten my reward kibble. There ain't no stinkin' justice. posted by Frenzy Lohan | 6/16/2003 10:38:00 PM
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Saturday, June 14, 2003 yowch
This morning the mate and I were sitting on the porch, and we started having a stale donut fight. One clipped me above the eyebrow and left a red mark. The icing shattered into chocolatey shrapnel. Then, my gracious hosts pulled up in their station wagon. They had just picked up 18" subwoofers that they had won off of e-bay. I begged them not to plug them into anything, due to very real concern that the house might fall down.
We may be moving anyway, to sublet a room from a friend of our hosts. The downside: what neighborhood could possibly have as much character as Mantua? No neighborhood. posted by Frenzy Lohan | 6/14/2003 04:10:00 PM
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Wednesday, June 11, 2003 Didn't you dorks get the memo?
My fellow dorkwads: I am pleased and happy that you have chosen to join me here on this specially designed balsa wood structure floating snug in the bosom of the Schuykill river. I was floored at the
collective years of balsa-craft experience among our number, but I guess I shouldn't have been. Personally, I'd assumed that the myriad alumni of summer programs for dorks would have, like our nerd brethren, have gone on to lucrative careers in any of the mind-numbing arts by now, but I'm thrilled to see that this is not the case. Sucess of any kind threatens to tug at the roots of our carefully crafted dork identities.
I would like to take this oppourtunity to thank all of you who have brought spelling and grammatical errors in our recruitment posters to me attention. Those are very important things to care about. I'm also pleased by the scrappy underground papers and zines which have already formed.
There are many serious issues here that need addressing. Our sweatpant manufacturing collective is coming along nicely, but there is still a chronic job shortage on the island. I realize we can't all work in the video store, but some visionaries amongst us are asking, "why not?" We are seeking grants to build more independant video stores, so that we may tell the world our staff picks.
For further information on DorkWad Island happenings, please stop by crafts night. posted by Frenzy Lohan | 6/11/2003 12:59:00 PM
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Tuesday, June 10, 2003 Lets all go to the suburbs
...and put things in the juicer! Tomorrow: "Scone juice: a physical impossibilty, or the reward of geniuses?" Yow! I'm on fire. Seriously, if only my play-job gave me more hours, I'd totally move in there. There are bathrooms and semi-comfy chairs. Besides, being able to get up and make a kale smoothie at three in the morning has always been my dream. Always.
. posted by Frenzy Lohan | 6/10/2003 06:25:00 PM
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Saturday, June 07, 2003 "We like to party"
Today, for Jane's birthday, we planned the surprise party event of the season. Right now, four of us are sitting around eating cake and watching The Lifestyle, a documentary about middle-aged and elderly people in the suburbs who have lots of group sex parties. The whole movie is as hilarious and creepy as the last scene in Rosemary's Baby. These people have swings. They have hot tubs. Pine panelling, shag carpets.
If I didn't know better, I would suspect my own parents of being swingers on the basis of decor alone. It turns out, though, that, as a family, we're just tacky.
The room where I'm staying this month may have knotty pine paneling underneath the layers of paint. Picking at it seems to reveal a certain tawny grain. I wish I was staying longer, if only so that I could decorate that room with pictures of dogs playing poker.
I probably will be hanging around this town for another few months, so I'm looking for a place to stay for the mate and myself. I should be getting a second job this week. It will be shelving porn in a video warehouse. A friend of a friend works there. He tells me it's an OK job, but it will make sex ridiculous and distasteful from now on. Also, the co-workers there tend to give people stupid nicknames. They're also really excited that a female will be coming to work with them.
One of them routinely attends Star Trek conventions and dresses up as He-Man at home. posted by Frenzy Lohan | 6/07/2003 10:59:00 PM
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Friday, June 06, 2003 I'll crouch behind him. You push him over.
The Prick show was last week, and boy oh boy did we get hosed. Despite our total-saturation campaign of flyering, radio ads, and e-mail list spots, only about 60 people came to the club. The guy who was supposed to take money at the door never showed up, so that was my job.
The best part of that was when a kid I didn't know showed up and wanted to get in free. "I don't know, man. You aren't on the list," I said. Just then, one of my firneds came out and gave him a hug. I got to say, "Oh, is he cool, man? He wasn't on the list." The list itself was a napkin that the big band's lackey handed me. Also: the guy on their list never showed up.
The downside of working door was telling myfriends how little we'd made at the end of the night. We'd raised the ticket price, which lead to lots of people bitching at me, but, surprisingly, no one leaving, but we still ended up about 550 bucks in the hole. On the way out, we asked for donations. Or, I asked for donations. I would've laughed in my face, but some people actually gave up the loot. We got about $60 in donations. I was absolutely shocked.
My frineds who booked the show got a hat and a t-shirt from the band. They plan to sell these, along with the sad, sad story of how they were gotten, on E-bay. I said they should say the items were also haunted.
In other news, the cafe job is still easy and fun. It gets better by the day. I called Wong the other day. "It's a great job," I told her. "It turns out, though, that most of my cutomers are retarded." Wong, who has paid her own food service dues as a diner waitress, clucked sympathetically. "Yeah, people suck sometimes," she said. "No, they're actually mentally retarded," I said. It was the most vaudevillian exchange I'd had all week.
The cafe is indeed a magnet for that suburbs special people. Best exchange of the week:"Can I help you, sir?" I say to the man standing anxiously in front of teh counter. "The train's not here yet," he answers plaintively.
He and his special wife were very sweet. Most of the slow or crazy customers are. It's the goddamn business men I dislike. Also, yuppies steal. Seriously. When i count papers at the end of teh shift, we're always light on the Wall Street Journal. Also, they will try to pay me from the tip jar. Har har har, asshole. You will burn for this. posted by Frenzy Lohan | 6/06/2003 09:36:00 PM
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Sunday, June 01, 2003 Giddy-up
Sorry for the blog drought. I haven't been around a working computer since my last entry. It's been an eventful couple of weeks. I'm living in West Philadelphia in a house that should be called Tetanus House, but is actually quite comfortable despite it's general state of disrepair. I'm living with a friendly little black cat and two friends who are a band. We have a hostory of moving temporarily into one another's dwelling-spaces. I have to be out in a few weeks, but the plan was to go west all along, so that's alright.
In the meantime I'm working as a Barrista in a little independant coffee shop and juice bar. The good news: there's not much business, and there's no pressure to look busy.
The bad news: I don't get many hours, and the wages are low, so I'm still looking for something else to supplement my income a little bit before I move on.
I'm so pathetically happy to be back on line. Over the course of college, I had really grown dependant on the computer. Now I have to like, go out and do stuff and interact with people for entertainment and social contact.
And oh, god, have I been interacting. See, one of my friends agreed to book a show for a band called Prick, who are best known for opening for Bowie/Nails on the Outside tour in 96 or whatever year it was that I was 14.
The whole booking process has been a major comedy of errors, and it's come down to the fact that there needs to be a lot of people at this thing for my friends to pay everyone and cover their costs. We've been endlessly fliering, and due to the nature of the crowd we figure the show will attract, we've been fliering goth nights. Yes, endless fucking goth nights. The first one was an amusing novelty. I had a great time. "Say, that is a great chainmail shirt? Did you make it yourself? Please come to the show. We desperately need your money."
After several of those, though, I got thoroughly bored. It was still kind of interesting and funny, especially when other people came to flier with me and we could criticize particularly distasteful outfits and people, but zheesh. The joke loses a little zip after the thousandth repetition.
posted by Frenzy Lohan | 6/01/2003 01:21:00 PM
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