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• photos •
• little loves • Eddie Cibrian's Dimples
Because c'mon! Shame on Invasion's slowburn peril for not providing them a more frequent showcase. Wentworth Miller
He's my boyfriend. He is. No, he just is. He's all green-eyed, widow's-peaked, melting-pot hotness and oiled-massage voice. He's it. • past loves • |
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I participate in on-line consumer surveys because I buy stuff and I like to give my opinion. This morning, I did one for Snapple. Technically, I'm not supposed to say who it was for, but the questions were about a Snapple product that already exists, so whatever. There were all the normal questions about value, nutritional content and my purchasing habits, but about a third of the way through the survey, this question appeared: What is your most absolute favorite food in the world? Hunh? Did a 10-year-old girl write this question? What's with the overwrought, pre-pubescent syntax? I snicker and move on. Several questions later, this pops up: What is your most absolute favorite drink in the world? You can imagine how badly I wanted to respond, "Tequila!" I refrained. I thought it was a second strange and unprofessional survey element, but I wasn't suspicious that the surveyors weren't truly interested in my feelings about one of their products. Yet. Then, I read this: We understand this survey is getting long, but it's about over. Wouldn't it be great to go on a vacation about now? If you could vacation anywhere in the world and someone else would pay for it, where would you go? To wubba who?? What the hell does that have to do with Snapple? What does it have to do with anything? And that's when I figured it out. Snapple and the Zoomerang survey people are in cahoots with the federal government, trying to root out would-be terrorists and terrorist sympathizers via on-line survey panels! I don't know why it didn't occur to me immediately. If I had answered "Iraq" to that last question, there'd be a whole cadre of Men in Black at my workplace in a matter of minutes. And speaking of my paranoia, I'm convinced that the tenant in the apartment above me turns on his or her shower every time I turn on my shower. I don't know why he or she would do such a thing -- unless it's to drive me insane, Gaslight-style but without the murder mystery -- but it's done nonetheless. He or she also plays music loudly, with too much Bass Boost, to the point at which the very air around me vibrates and small blood vessels in my brain first weep and then hurl themselves asunder, but that's neither here nor there. jlb | 11:16 I think I wish it could be stormy all the time. The air is charged; your body responds in kind. I swear the heart beats a little faster just at the sight of thunderheads and a roiling gray-on-white-on-black sky. Sometimes there's a little green and you know the storm is going to be positively evil. Inbetween sheets of rain, with just a stiff, cool wind blowing, the world has a heartbreaking freshness, like everything bad has just been sluiced away. You feel clean as a new penny and somehow taller. Of course, there is often the accompanying unpleasant sensation of cold, drenched denim sucking against the skin of your thighs, but it's a small price to pay. jlb | 10:25 I'm fairly certain that, while I sat here in my cube all day, the world ended outside the walls of Rush's Triangle Office Building. Why? Because there hasn't been a single request for web updates all day. Of course, none of you can know just how completely astounding that actually is, but trust me. It's a weird feeling. Earlier today, The One Who Doesn't Talk revealed his theory that Sars is my Tyler Durden. No wonder I'm so fucking sleepy all the time! Finally, before I leave work, heading into the desolation of the apparently dead world outside this building's walls, I have to say that I actively hated Dreamcatcher when I saw it Monday night. (But click on that link to watch the original teaser trailer which is a fantastic piece of work!) Whomever was responsible for the final cut of the film had absolutely no understanding of the story Stephen King originally told. I was disappointed in all but one scene -- the bathroom scene in the cabin managed to be every bit as suspenseful and horrifying as the same scene in the book -- and then heavy-object-throwingly pissed at the tacked on, lame, monster movie ending. Granted, King's ending in the book wasn't so hot, but a blind turnip could have done better than the movie! Weak-ass sauce! There was a silver lining: The Animatrix short film that played before the feature. The story was just whatever -- I assume it will have some significance once the live-action Matrix prequel is released -- but the CG was so fantastic! How come they couldn't hire these animators to do CG humans in Spider-Man or Blade 2? There are still glitches, but overall the human movement and facial expression is incredibly well done. I was duly impressed. jlb | 17:08 Ooh! Lightning! jlb | 23:53 To: Girl-Bart, et al. Re: Human-Bug Interaction in Confined Spaces The early bugs of spring are indeed a fantastic classroom distraction. My favorites were always the gigantor, still-groggy flies that kept bumping into walls and ceilings, ricocheting around the room like pinball steelies. That one wayward honey bee that somehow meandered through the functionally useless open window of a stifling, late-May Hastings High School classroom certainly livened up the day -- complete with girly squealing and abrupt flights from deskchairs -- for five minutes or so until he meandered back out or lost his striped little life. However, you haven't seen panic until you've experienced a wasp on a CTA train car. Never was there a bug so famous as a lone wasp on the el. Not a pair of human eyes will look away from it. Yet, not a human limb will twitch. Not a single soul's head will turn to watch the wasp's somewhat frantic progression along the ceiling. No, my friend, you track it with your eyes. You remain perfectly still, like a prey animal relying on its natural camouflage to save it from the snarly predator not ten yards away. You are ever vigilant. You actually hold your breath when the wasp skitters drunkenly down toward the top of some stranger's head. You grimace and silently scream, "For the love of God, don't move! Don't get up! He's right there above you!" The tension builds as each passenger realizes the truth. Just one person could ruin everything! The wasp only needs to get close enough to one person who can't keep cool, one person who makes the instinctive shooing gesture, one person who pisses the wasp off. No one wants to think about what happens after that, but everyone can imagine. It's really quite an interesting study in human behavior. One small reason to look forward to warm weather in Chicago. jlb | 23:49 All right, so here's something weird: I was convinced I was already 27. I expected to turn 28 today. Then I did the math. I'm 27 today. Truth to say, I don't know how to feel about this. Is it a new lease on life? A whole extra year? Should I feel a renewed sense of purpose and vow to never again be bored or boring? Should I quit my shitty Initech job and run off to the desert to write? Or do I have some severe dementia? Does senility afflict 28 -- I mean! -- 27-year-olds? What's next? I already can barely remember what I did a week ago. I'll be so screwed if I'm ever the suspect in a murder investigation. Detective: "Where were you last Tuesday at 8:14 p.m.?" Me: "Ummm ... What day is today? Maybe I can retrace my steps." Or is it possible that I'm really 28 and that the principles of math have been wrong all along? Or the principles of time and how we refuse to stop counting it despite our knowledge that it's an utterly useless exercise? Or has my increasingly eerie-ass similarity to Sars caused some sort of rift in the universe? Yesterday, when I was sure I was 27, did I exist in another dimension in which that belief was true? Have I somehow for some reason been transported back in time to relive my twenty-seventh year? Do you think I took too much cold medication in an effort to feel all tingly? In the end, I suppose, whether I'm 27 or 28, it is my birthday for another 15-odd minutes. So: To Jayne!! To me!!!!!!! jlb | 23:44 You guys know Sars? The Tomato Nation girl? The one with whom I feel this weird connection? Right down to the two naughty cats? Dudes, it's her birthday today! It's my birthday today! This is spooky. I'm starting to think I have a long lost twin. jlb | 12:19 So instead of a cafeteria in my building, we now have Au Bon Pain, otherwise known as "fucking airport food." Whose brilliant idea was this? Were the higher-ups not listening when employees were bitching about $2-plus for a piece of catfish? Do they honestly think $5-plus for a fucking salad is going to go over well? With the economy the way it is? This is my lunch today: a smallish mediterranean salad with chicken and a bottle of Perrier -- $8.20 total. The hell? The Perrier is warm and they pitted the kalamata olives!! Au Bon Pain is evil. I hope there's a riot in their ugly yellow room downstairs. Who thought yellow was a suitable color for a place where folks eat? Yellow walls make me think of puke. Yellow walls make me think of The Yellow Wallpaper. Not exactly appetizing. More like homicidal. Given my disdain for waking up early enough to pack myself a lunch, cool Tomato Nation lunchbox or no, my laziness should pretty well have me starved half to death come May. jlb | 12:15 For reasons unknown to man and beast, the weather came out all sunny and spring-like. Jenn threw all the windows wide at 7 a.m. and crawled back into bed. Birds chirped. Bells rang. The cats were happy. Jenn was happy. Later, Jenn had errands to run. She saw her Blunnies sitting side-by-side on the carpet. During winter, they were indoor boots and they were sad. A breeze blew through the open windows. Jenn asked the Blunnies if they'd like to go for a stroll. The Blunnies agreed. Jenn and her Blunnies went to the post office, skirting dog poo and broken glass along the way. Jenn and her Blunnies went to the market. More dog poo, broken glass and even a creepy child in Buena Park who engaged them in conversation did not get them down. Their mood was so light, they bought too many deli meats and cheeses. SunDrops, too. Always SunDrops. Jenn and her Blunnies, and their 25 pounds of groceries, walked home. The pigeons had returned from their high winter roosts. Jenn's Blunnies made a path through their many-colored, burbling masses. Together, Jenn and her Blunnies climbed the stairs to their apartment. The cats were happy to see them because of the fried chicken in the grocery bag. Jenn was happy because hockey was on TV. The Blunnies were happy because they didn't step in any dog poo. The End. jlb | 15:34 When I left work today it was still daylight. I'm going to exercise all my The Amazing Race skills and announce: WOO!! I was so jazzed! Leaving work in the dark sucks. It feels like the day is already over; you might as well go home and go to bed. My momentarily happy mood inspired me to write a whole bunch about Daylight Saving Time -- yes, there's no "s" there, unlike how we say it -- but now I don't feel like it. I will toss out this little nugget, however: Arizona does not observe DST. Neither does Hawaii. Those are lucky states. I'm hungry. jlb | 18:57 Is an M&M getting beaned with a soccer ball the best way to advertise the Special Olympics? I'm just saying. jlb | 22:35 Not convinced that this country has gone completely fucking crazy? Read on, my friends.
I think the only appropriate response to this new "patriotic" twist is a shamefaced and appropriately incredulous, "They're gonna make a bear eat hotdogs?!" jlb | 21:56 Notes to Girl-Bart: Crystal meth? Not so much. Hallucinogens, baby, all the way. And, maybe it's just me, but I don't think I'd want the man in my life commemorating my every trip to the gynecologist. Oh, and EPITHELIAL! HYPOTHALAMUS! CHOLINERGIC RECEPTOR! Ha! I knew my college education would be good for something someday! jlb | 15:30 Welcome to the Most Useless Day of My Life! I was honored with an invitation to a four-hour, IT strategic planning meeting today. It started at 9 a.m. It lasted till 2:30 p.m. You do the math. I can't go into the details without crying uncontrollably (*cough* caffeine-free brain, mood swings *cough*), but let's just say it was worse than that other horrible meeting I told you about. Some highlights:
As much fun as all that sounds, it was absolutely useless. Seriously. [monkey] An astute -- and hirsute -- co-worker leaned over to me during one of the most brain-bustingly, frustratingly useless parts and said, "I think it's one of the medical center's biggest problems that there are this many people -- who make how much money? -- sitting in this room all day." And then we had to eat airport restaurant food for lunch. Fuck you, Au Bon Pain. Your grilled chicken on foccacia sucks. And that's when the C.H.U.D.s came at me. jlb | 15:05 I've just taken my first sip of my last can of Coke before Lent starts. I'm not depriving myself of sweet, burn-y carbonated water with corn syrup, caramel color, phosphoric acid, natural colors (whatever, boob shirt) and caffeine for any religious reasons. I'm not even depriving myself because each can is 140 extras calories I don't need that stain my teeth and eat away at their precious, stained enamel. No, I'm giving up Coke for Lent as a test of my resolve. It's my biggest vice. When I'm in a bad mood, stressed or bored, it's the first thing that pops into my head. It's truly an addiction. So I'm going to see if I can go a godawful number of weeks without it. LaCroix mineral water sales will spike sharply. (Note to Fat Guy: Buy stock now.) Yes, in my crazed search for a caffeine substitute, I will undoubtedly consume more chocolate, which I also considered giving up for Lent. That idea was rejected when I realized chocolate comes in many forms. What do you cut out? Chocolate desserts? Candy bars? Anything that tastes remotely chocolatey? My chocolate malt Ovaltine provides me with many essential daily B vitamins! So, chocolate? Still in. Besides, there has to be a caffeine substitute. Caffeine drives away the headaches. The headaches bring the terrible, terrible voices. Nobody wants that. jlb | 12:22 |
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• the glow •
What stars? That's the glow, baby. • distractions •
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