Tuesday, August 31, 2004 eff them, anyway
Didn't get my dang ol' better job. They said it was because I wore the wrong shirt to the interview.*
Maybe I'll start selling human hair to art students and weirdos as a sideline to my phone answering, as supplementary income and comedy gold.
I guess I can only hope for one accidental hiring per Mercury Retrograde**, but dang! I would have been so much better at the job that I didn't get than I am at the job I have. Ay yi yi. I never had this problem when I was a hobo.
*They didn't say it flat out, but it was written between every line of the e-mail. (Yes, the e-mail.)
**I don't believe in astrology, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
posted by Frenzy Lohan | 8/31/2004 08:52:00 PM
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Do you feel like this person would be attractive and accessible?
Ding dang ol' institution with the ding dang employment opportunity said they were going to call yesterday, and then didn't. Probably gave the ding dang job to somebody coherent and with social skills. Or, they are slow and lazy.
Yesterday a market research company whose database I'm in as a potential focus group candidate called me up and said I might be eligible for a group on carbonated beverages, but that I had to answer some questions first. They asked about my weekly carbonated beverage consumption, and that was fine. Then they asked me to imagine that Diet Coke was a person, with hopes, dreams, an appearance, and a personality. Then they asked me questions about whether Diet Coke, the person, loved me and understood what I was going through. I said yes, naturally.
After all that, I didn't qualify. I guess they wanted people who felt alienated and distant from Diet Coke, the imaginary person.
posted by Frenzy Lohan | 8/31/2004 01:32:00 PM
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Monday, August 30, 2004 thickify
My hair is full of products, because it's just so easy. I am waiting to hear from a certain institution about an opportunity. I hope that this opportunity is offered to me.
The dark cloud surrounding the opportunity: lack of deeply discounted hair products in my future. It's like having to pick your favorite child. (N/A)
posted by Frenzy Lohan | 8/30/2004 04:00:00 PM
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Sunday, August 29, 2004 OMG OMG OMG!!!
Oh, wow! Oh, shucks! David and Rob ran off and got married! I can't stand it. It's so great. They are fantastic people. posted by Frenzy Lohan | 8/29/2004 11:24:00 AM
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Saturday, August 28, 2004 You should see the hats we wear at home
Today was MICA move-in day, and those little swallows returned in fine form. The neighborhood was crawling with them. I thought I'd seen all the haircuts there were to see, but I hadn't, and now, humbled, I guess I'll go ahead and admit that I haven't yet, either.
I found an old typewriter beside a trashcan on the way home from the bus stop. I looked around for a big cardboard box propped up with a forked stick that would fall and trap me if I touched this discarded typewriter, because clearly, it was bait for art kids. They eat that kind of thing with a spoon. I took it home anyway, and so far there have been no ill affects. Maybe it is a time-release box.
The typewriter doesn't necessarily "work." I'm betting that's why some non-visionary with no appreciation for the indier things of life threw it away. God.
The ribbon is dried up and some of the keys stick. Still, it is possible to produce a paper document with this machine, so that's one up it has on the machine I'm typing on right now.
posted by Frenzy Lohan | 8/28/2004 11:48:00 PM
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Friday, August 27, 2004 wait 'til he hears my "who's on first?" bit
A gentleman at the beauty parlor today laughed and laughed at one of my witticisms today. I said, "Out of twenty?" because he had handed me a twenty-dollar bill. He was LOL. I was puzzled.
Later, I realized that that dude was totally weird. The stylist who had cut his hair confirmed this. Sadly, he maintains a short cut, and comes in all the time.
posted by Frenzy Lohan | 8/27/2004 10:11:00 PM
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Thursday, August 26, 2004 an international army of Beas
It don't get no better than this, internet.
Bea Arthur rampages at Logan
If this is a hoax I don't want to be right. Bea Arthur is 81 years old, and I would call her "feisty," but in this case, since my intent is not to behave patronizingly, I will call her "awesome."
I would be in jail-times-infinity if I pulled this kind of crap. Bea Arthur is using her superstar status. I approve. posted by Frenzy Lohan | 8/26/2004 09:50:00 PM
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merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily
On the train back to Baltimore this morning, I thought of all these great things to write about, but I was half asleep, and I didn't write them down. Aloha, great topics.
Instead, following the lead of the good people at Vomitola, I'll tell you the dream I had this morning.
Ready?
OK!
I dreamed I was at work, and someone called looking for a haircut appointment. Then I dreamed that I scheduled that appointment.
There you go. The dream in its entirety. This always happens. After a week or two on any job, I begin to dream about it, and usually just like that. It's never that I'm at work and my boss is eaten by aliens, or that I'm at work, naked. I dream of completing my assigned tasks.
There are days when I wonder if maybe I just don't have a soul.
posted by Frenzy Lohan | 8/26/2004 04:13:00 PM
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Wednesday, August 25, 2004 and GO!
This is a race against time. My library computer session expires in three minutes. I'm in New Jersey, for some reason. Sometimes winding up here is a feature of my life. Essex County, you work on me like a magnet on iron filings who have trouble making life decisions.
See you later, internet! posted by Frenzy Lohan | 8/25/2004 02:46:00 PM
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Tuesday, August 24, 2004 leave showbiz
When I was walking to the bus stop today, I saw a regular cicada on the sidewalk. It was just one of the every year kind, so there was no camera crew. Of all the dumb luck. You are born a cicada in a year that contained a good six weeks of non-shutting-up about you and your kind, and here you are, one of the big green ones with black eyes, instead of one of the little orange ones with red eyes. Loser.
Oh, little cicada, I kid, I kid. You are just as talented as the others, and one day, you, too may be discovered.
And:
On the way home, I smiled at a dog as we passed on the sidewalk, because it was a nice-looking dog, and it took offense. It showed it by growling and lunging at me, but it was on a leash, so I remain un-mauled. Joke's on you, dog!
posted by Frenzy Lohan | 8/24/2004 02:38:00 AM
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Sunday, August 22, 2004 the many faces of
This what it looks like when I am pretending to think about something.
This is what it looks like when I am not making a face.
Laura Ingalls Wilder never had access to a web camera.
Licketysplit thought I should call this "photographic evidence that I am a non-obese female." posted by Frenzy Lohan | 8/22/2004 10:13:00 PM
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Saturday, August 21, 2004 Laura Ingalls Wilder cut her own bangs
Ma and Pa made fun of her, and called bangs "the lunatic fringe." Years later, it occurred to me that this was supposed to be a joke, and I was appalled. According to the book series, Ma always wore her hair in "soft wings, down over her ears." I'm not done being appalled.
Since I've started this new job, I rarely meet people who cut their own bangs, although on the subject of soft wings, a couple was given special permission to park their car in the lot near the salon. They had to keep the airconditioner going, they said, and to keep an eye on the car, because they had found an injured bird.
posted by Frenzy Lohan | 8/21/2004 08:00:00 PM
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Thursday, August 19, 2004 *#@$!&!!!
The security guard at the bank where my place of employment goes to make change offended the hell out of one of the stylists the other day, because as she was on her way out, he said, "Congratulations!"
She was puzzled, because, really, they'll give any old body change. It's not like you have to brave the pommel horse first or anything. Slowly, as she walked back, she said it dawned on her. She was wearing a slinky skirt that did not try to dissuade the world from noticing that she had a belly, and he thought she was pregnant! By the time she got back to the beauty parlor, she was cussin' up a storm!
The stylists are so good at profanity. I think it's probably an elective at cosmetology school. I wish to continue my education in the field. When I cuss, it just doesn't sound right. It doesn't even come out as cussin', but as swearing. I'm sure I don't need to tell you, internet, that there's a huge difference. posted by Frenzy Lohan | 8/19/2004 09:05:00 PM
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fashion royalty
The power was out at the store when I went to go clothes shopping today, so I had to wait and wait before I had access to summer fashions. When I finally got inside, I saw that they'd put out all the coats and sweaters. Rub it in, Village Thrift. I'm not in favor of summer ending.
I'm also not in favor of ponchos, and it doesn't like there's much I can do about that, either.
The ex-mate is living it up in Beverly Hills these days, impersonating various famous people and their hangers-on. I am in Baltimore, and I can't get nobody to believe I'm Alexander McQueen's nephew nohow. posted by Frenzy Lohan | 8/19/2004 12:00:00 AM
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Monday, August 16, 2004 it's why I'm always spaying stuff
When I was a kid, I didn't have TV until I was about six, and I didn't have regular network TV until my parents' resolve to raise me as a non-swearing culturebot finally wore down. 'Most every show I saw before that time is burned into my brain.
I remember once I was at my aunt's house, and I watched "The Price is Right". I was probably five. Bob Barker kept saying "You are automatically in the showcase! and it was so exciting. I had no idea what he was talking about. I remember hearing most of the things people said as gibberish at that time. I was encouraged not to ask questions to adults, because that was annoying (it's true, it was), so certain words and phrases stuck in my head as feelings rather than meanings.
The other day, I came home from work, and I went to Save A Lot. I paid for my items, and when the clerk said, "Would you like a bag?" instead of saying "No," and saving the ten cents they are militant about charging for every single grocery bag one might use, I said, "Yes!"
I handed over my ten extra cents, and then I walked home carying my groceries in a plastic bag, like a Rockefeller.
I was automatically in the showcase! posted by Frenzy Lohan | 8/16/2004 11:50:00 PM
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an embarrassment of riches
One reason I enjoy this city as much as I do is that I really like both broken glass and ailanthus trees. That's why people like me are not in charge of public landscaping or art. How very different office parks would be! posted by Frenzy Lohan | 8/16/2004 05:49:00 PM
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Saturday, August 14, 2004 nasty weather
Today a man thought the haircut he got was going to cost one dollar less than it actually did, and he didn't have enough. He wrote his personal information on a card, and left it as an "IOU". If he doesn't come back with that dollar, I'm going to call him and hassle him, because I can.
Also:
It turns out that having a job means that you have to leave the house even when it's raining! posted by Frenzy Lohan | 8/14/2004 09:46:00 PM
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Thursday, August 12, 2004 It's like a barrista, only meaner
My sudden-onset job is different from previous customer service and telephone jobs I've had. Here they seem to expect one to sit in an upright position and to wear clothes without holes or other imperfections. There is far less mouth breathing, and one doesn't look at one's co-workers and think, "There is a reason you will forever be out of public view."
I spoke to the absent housemates, who are somewhere in the Pacific Northwest. One reccomended I purchase a bunch of one-shouldered tops for the position, and then said, "Oh, God. But don't."
No problem! In order to fit the job more perfectly, though, I am trying to develop an "attitude." I will let you know how it goes. posted by Frenzy Lohan | 8/12/2004 09:38:00 PM
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Wednesday, August 11, 2004 I was born in a beauty salon*
When I went and got my hair cut the other day, I applied for a job at the salon, because the lady told me to. Today they called and I had my first training shift. My duties include answering the phone and sweeping up human hair.
In many ways I cannot think of a job to which I am less suited: perhaps "wacky morning zoo DJ." For years, my mother cut my hair, and then I cut my hair. I would let friends cut it, and sometimes they were drunk.
Maybe they liked my "can-do" attitude, or they figured I was probably pretty good at sweeping.
I hope this job won't interfere with my more creative non-paying jobs, but I don't see how it would.
I am going to lord this over everyone next time I got to Save A Lot.
*I think I have already used this subject line, but is totally a classic, so I figured you wouldn't mind reading it again, internet. posted by Frenzy Lohan | 8/11/2004 10:18:00 PM
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Tuesday, August 10, 2004 Girl
Trixie Belden, the crimesolving girl detective who was never, ever as famous as Nancy Drew lived somewhere in New England. She was really plucky, as I recall. She had a brother who was often referred to as her "Irish twin," because in the olden days, children's authors were always looking for cute ways to work ethnic stereotypes into stories. They wanted to weave them in subtly, though. No one likes a book that's all message.
Trixie's family was poor, probably because they behaved Irishly. They lived next door to some big old mansion, and one day a rich girl moved in. Did she ask to have the Beldens' shack removed from her sight, like a normal person would? No, she did not! This was because she had a heart of gold.
Pretty soon she and Trixie and some other poor people they hung around with were in the thick of some dumb-ass mystery. This happened constantly, but they were too poor to move to a less mysterious town. Well, the rich girl wasn't, but she enjoyed slumming.
My neighbor once brought over boxes and boxes of these stories, and their ghosts haunt me still. I feel like I need to have a more proactive relationship with crime. People keep urging me to call the police and tell them all I know regarding the Brown Center shooting. Unfortunately, I do not have any clues.
Trixie Belden would have stayed on the scene and noticed something like a ragged, earth-toned scrap of fabric that had somehow become lodged on one of the bullets, so that when she called the police, like the Irishing little narc she she was, they would have believed her story. As for me, all I have is the knowledge that shots were fired and a theory that this was the work of vandals. Sometimes I am so Irish I could throw up. posted by Frenzy Lohan | 8/10/2004 09:56:00 AM
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Monday, August 09, 2004 technology
The best inventions in all of the Little House series were the rubber curtains one could secure to keep the rain out of the buggy. The horses still got wet, though. posted by Frenzy Lohan | 8/09/2004 12:44:00 AM
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Saturday, August 07, 2004 mylifeisalie.com
Guest starring Laura Ingalls Wilder
As many of you may know, I don't leave the apartment very often. Pretty much everything I need is here, and I am not good at leaving. Sometimes, though, it's a nice day, or I will have run out of food, and it cannot be avoided.
I took a trip to Save a Lot this afternoon, because we were out of roach spray. I would rather have that than food. (I remember once commenting on David's site about how one should deter bugs non-toxicly. I am such a total asshole.) I have thought about not buying any food for a couple weeks, and not allowing anyone to bring anything edible in the house, hoping to starve the roaches.
Save a Lot is so close by that I shop as the Europeans do, making several quick trips a week. However, as I understand it, Europeans are shopping for produce and loaves of fresh bread, which they place in string bags and carry jauntily. At Save a Lot I am shopping for food in boxes, because I've admitted to myself once again that I am a lump.
Some of the store personnel know me. There's the lady who sneers at me, the lady who only sometimes sneers at me, and the man who yells "Do you need a cart?" every time he sees me. Today, for example, I thought the coast was clear, but he popped out of the back of the store when I was looking at crap in the dollar aisle.
"Do you need a cart?" he yelled.
"No," I said, because it was true. I didn't need a cart at all.
"Are you sure? Because I can go all the way up to the front and get you a cart--"
"Oh, please, no. I couldn't ask you to do that. I don't have many things."
"Oh, right, because you don't cook, right?"
And here I began to become embarassed.
"I cook!" I said. "I cook practically all the time."
"Right, right" he said, looking at the roach spray and processed bread I was carrying. "Do you work?"
"Of course I work," I said.
"Yeah? Where do you work?" he asked. I realized, mostly that he was only being stalky-friendly, and was not condemning me for being a lump, but instead of saying, "Aw, naw. Hell naw! Who the hell do you think I am?" I told him the lie I reserve for nosy strangers and my parents.
"I work! I work out of the home. I am a writer."
"A writer!" he yelled. It was the funniest thing he had heard all day. We laughed together, he and I.
"You write songs?" he asked.
"No!" I said. "You have a good day, now."
Then I went and stood in one of the two available lines for half an hour. I chose wrong, kind of. Neither of the lines really moved, per se, but I picked the one behind the chatty couple with the cart full of crap. They were talking about how there were never any carts, and how one had to wait for an employee to go and unlock the ones stalled at the yellow line painted on the pavement, beyond which point the robot wheel covers engage and lock the wheels right up, to prevent people from taking Save a Lot carts for personal use. And I thought, "Ha! I could get a cart anytime I wanted it."
When they were still midway through getting their one million tiny items scanned, a woman opened the next register over and called for the next in line. It was me!
So I walked over there, but not before another lady darted in front of me and threw two items on the conveyor belt. Then she darted away, presumably to do the rest of her shopping. "Oh, you can go in front of me,if that's all you've got," she said when she had returned. "Ok," I said, and I went in front of her.
"Some of us have just been working all day," she said. I smiled, because it was true. Others have to work!
"I said, 'Some of us have just been at work all day,'" she repeated. "Some of us are tired, and just want to get home to our kids." I smiled at her again, because I don't even have kids! Sucker!
By that time the lady who only sometimes sneers at me was done ringing me up. As I walked away, I heard the lady behind me telling her about how I don't understand what it's like to work for a living, and that I've had everything handed to me.
She must read my blog.
P.S.: That woman was Laura Ingalls Wilder.
P.P.S.: My upstairs neighbor just brought me cookies! She handed them to me!
posted by Frenzy Lohan | 8/07/2004 08:09:00 PM
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gangsta
People on the neighborhood message board have been telling me to go to the police with my information on the hit on the Brown Center. Unfortunately, I saw nothing. I heard gunshots and did not hang around to play Trixie Belden. "The Mystery of Why I Am Bleeding to Death on the Sidewalk." No-ho.
The accomplice I was walking with can confirm that the bullets came from a gun, and that the gun was being fired from inside a car.
Beyond that, I'm not about to get popped by the Preservationists as an informant. They are worse than that Northern VA machete gang. You don't get jumped in: you get volunteered in. It's unspeakable.
Poor ol' Brown Center. I guess it is a giant, tempting target, if you like shooting defenseless walls of glass. posted by Frenzy Lohan | 8/07/2004 01:08:00 AM
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Thursday, August 05, 2004 I haven't forgotten the prairie
You know, I was just thinking: is it maybe just a little bit possible that having the early life of Laura Ingalls Wilder ingrained into my conscious and and unconscious minds gave me the idea that during the course of a relationship one must experience hardships and cross a lot of state lines?
One day I'll get it together and write a complete list of Books That Have Ruined My Life. posted by Frenzy Lohan | 8/05/2004 11:56:00 PM
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Wednesday, August 04, 2004 Maybe this weblobg will be entirely prairie-themed from now on
When Laura Ingalls married Almanzo Wilder, I became a lot less interested in her life. She continued doing hearty and hilarious pioneer things, like inadvertently baking a pie for the threshers that contained no sugar and giving birth to her first child while unconscious, but it was harder for a ten-year-old to relate.
For example, in a scene where old family friends, a couple the Ingalls had known for years, offered to trade her their best horse for her newborn baby, I couldn't really tell what her problem was. Their argument, "You can have another baby and we can't. We never can," made a lot of sense. Getting a horse absolutely made sense.
It is perhaps well that I didn't have a spare younger sibling around during my childhood. I liked babies just fine, but if a family friends had offered to trade me any kind of equine creature for one I could access easily, my parents would have come home to find me trying to edge a soft-eyed, dapple gray, Shetland pony into a crib.
Children are foolish that way. We do not understand the consequences of our actions. In truth, Shetland ponies are vile-tempered. What this alternate universe past self of mine should actually do is hold out for a Nintendo, so that me-now would have eye-hand coordination and something to talk about other than Laura Ingalls Wilder. posted by Frenzy Lohan | 8/04/2004 12:01:00 PM
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Tuesday, August 03, 2004 Zesty
Last year in Ricmond, I was in the gun store with my boyfriend at the time, and I ended up buying a small cannister of pepper spray, because I feel rude leaving a store empty-handed. I could have bought a shotgun, I guess, or, provided a month had elapsed since I'd previously treated myself to a little "me time" or "retail therapy" in the form of a handgun purchase, I could have had a quick, refreshing background check and walked off a little later with any gun in the store.
I got the pepper spray instead, because I'm no fun, and because it came in a purple container. "Ladies love purple," the clerk said. I couldn't argue. It would have been a lie.
The gun store wasn't as unpleasant as I had always assumed it would be. I've had less pleasant experiences in high end clothing stores. On days when I'm touched in the head, I've had less pleasant experiences in the grocery store.
I felt good about the pepper spray, but I never carried it accessibly, therefore defeating the entire point. Its presence made reaching into my giant handbag more exciting, as though there were a small alligator in there. You reach in aiming for lipstick, and you come up with the pepper spray instead! Yeeeow! Looking So Good, or chemical burns: astute acquaintances may have noticed that I do not often wear many cosmetics.
The ex-mate is always pepper-spraying people. Opportunities for casual violence arise more frequently for him than they ever have for me, because he tends to respond vehemently to insults, and four out of five hair-trigger lunatics who insult him are also looking for fights. These are just impressions I've gathered from a mountain of anecdotal evidence.
I don't get a lot of insults. Instead, my dedicated team of freelance, pro-bono focus groupers appear on the street and in passing cars to let me know what they think of my body and my fashion choices for the day. It is a service they provide for me and most other females in the city, so that we may know which parts of our anatomy are particularly eye-catching.
I've started carrying the old pepper spray anyway, nestled in my palm when I walk to the store or to my vacation home. It's last year's model, and I'm sure it's a real fashion "Don't". Purple probably isn't even a hot color for chemical irritant packaging anymore. I don't even know that it makes me feel safer, but it's so interesting to me to know what it is that I'm carrying in my hand that it makes those evening walks just fly by. posted by Frenzy Lohan | 8/03/2004 12:08:00 AM
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Sunday, August 01, 2004 Delinquent
For several days, I've been taking foolish risks with the library system. I have two books overdue, and I've been feeling like a fugitive. I could just return them, but it's raining, and I do not intentionally walk in the rain to savor the vibrant and sensuous possibilities that the world has to offer. That kind of behavior is a symptom of vivacity. posted by Frenzy Lohan | 8/01/2004 11:49:00 AM
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