Yesterday, I did the following, as a result of watching too much HGTV.
1. Spray painted the patio furniture.
2. Scrubbed the cushions on the patio furniture.
3. Pressure cleaned the patio.
On spray painting the furniture:
Everything looks easier on HGTV. I didn't use the complex mathematical calculation they do when determining from which direction to spray paint, and therefore ate several clouds of Krylon white spray paint.
On scrubbing the cushions:
My brother and his pot smoking friends use this furntiture. Our little bitch of a dog Madison routinely leaps the fence of her doggy enclosure and after priming her paws with dog shit makes a beeline for whatever looks most recently cleaned. I give it three days before the smell of dog turd competes with the lingering cloud of pot smoke that resides on the patio.
On pressure cleaning the patio:
A good way to feel very manly and capable is to pressure clean something. Also a good way to choke on mixed clouds of gasoline vapors and little water droplets is to pressue clean something.
My brother was working up in the attic yesterday. He interuppted my pressure cleaning to ask if I wanted Subway. When he got back we sat at the table eating and exchanging gruff, manly banter while basking in home-improvement comraderie. I am not a man.
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Friday, September 19, 2008
Here's the problem.
I've collected these books over years and years.
Some of them date back to my childhood, like all the Little House of the Prairie books. And some, like Louisa May Alcott's A Long Fatal Love Chase, are reminiscent of those years when I was discovering love and madness.
I have every Kurt Vonnegut book ever written and have read most of them at least several times. That walk with Major Casebeer when he asked me what I loved about Vonnegut.
And what about One Hundred Years of Solitude? And the way that it reminds me of Love in the Time of Cholera and the way that Marquez brings me back to high school but also back to that cold morning bus ride across Zambia reading about the girl with African necklaces and red hair to her feet?
Anatomy of the Sacred? The fateful day that my philosophy of religion professor told me that being spiritual is like being musical, one must pick an instrument. Fateful words.
Or Africa: A Biography of the Continent, or Dark Star Safari. Both bought in the months before I left for the Peace Corps- my first naive attempts to understand what I was getting myself into.
Prozac Nation. All I have to do is randomly open that book and read a few paragraphs to be reminded of the black depression that gripped me in college and how that book kept me company and defined and described for me what was happening. Justified me.
Pablo Neruda's poetry, Tonight I Can Write. I can recite that poem from memory and still feel the emptiness but the possibility, too, of those years when I first discovered Neruda and didn't think that monotony could ever define life. When I thought love, passion, definitely pain and heartbreak, but not this drugery.
And then Keeping Still. The radical shift from a self-centered existence to the realization of the suffering of others. I cannot let them go.
I have a hardcover book on stargazing. How many nights did I spend out under the stars with that book and my telescope? Back to the days when I knew my dreams of spending my life in the mystery of nighttime were feasible, back when I had my whole life ahead to be happy.
Oh my god they are innumerable. They mean so much. They are the journal I never kept.
From the Center of the Earth: Stories Out of the Peace Corps is listed on Ebay now. Despite that I have about $100 to my name, I don't think I have the heart to sell these books.
I've collected these books over years and years.
Some of them date back to my childhood, like all the Little House of the Prairie books. And some, like Louisa May Alcott's A Long Fatal Love Chase, are reminiscent of those years when I was discovering love and madness.
I have every Kurt Vonnegut book ever written and have read most of them at least several times. That walk with Major Casebeer when he asked me what I loved about Vonnegut.
And what about One Hundred Years of Solitude? And the way that it reminds me of Love in the Time of Cholera and the way that Marquez brings me back to high school but also back to that cold morning bus ride across Zambia reading about the girl with African necklaces and red hair to her feet?
Anatomy of the Sacred? The fateful day that my philosophy of religion professor told me that being spiritual is like being musical, one must pick an instrument. Fateful words.
Or Africa: A Biography of the Continent, or Dark Star Safari. Both bought in the months before I left for the Peace Corps- my first naive attempts to understand what I was getting myself into.
Prozac Nation. All I have to do is randomly open that book and read a few paragraphs to be reminded of the black depression that gripped me in college and how that book kept me company and defined and described for me what was happening. Justified me.
Pablo Neruda's poetry, Tonight I Can Write. I can recite that poem from memory and still feel the emptiness but the possibility, too, of those years when I first discovered Neruda and didn't think that monotony could ever define life. When I thought love, passion, definitely pain and heartbreak, but not this drugery.
And then Keeping Still. The radical shift from a self-centered existence to the realization of the suffering of others. I cannot let them go.
I have a hardcover book on stargazing. How many nights did I spend out under the stars with that book and my telescope? Back to the days when I knew my dreams of spending my life in the mystery of nighttime were feasible, back when I had my whole life ahead to be happy.
Oh my god they are innumerable. They mean so much. They are the journal I never kept.
From the Center of the Earth: Stories Out of the Peace Corps is listed on Ebay now. Despite that I have about $100 to my name, I don't think I have the heart to sell these books.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Doctors are Liars
Today I went to see a pain management doctor to get cortisone shots. Cortisone shots are basically like epidurals given to women in labor to dull the pain, which my mom described to me as "needles this long" using her full wingspan to illustrate.
"Do they hurt?" I asked sqeaming in the passenger seat from the pain radiating from my three herniated disks.
Reassuringly: "Well you are in such intense pain by the time that you get the epidural that the epidural is nothing compared to being 8 cm dialted."
Less painful than childbirth. Thanks, mom.
More honest than my doctor, who described it as a ten second burning sensation followed by a feeling of pressure. I guess if pressure means attaching a landmine to the nerve that is already being sufficiently tortured by your misbehaving disks, then pulling the pin; yea, sure, I felt pressure.
"You did well" said Dr. Cameron after raping my intravertebral spaces with a needle the size of a hotdog. "I once had a marine that passed out during the procedure. Whats your schedule like next week for the second injection?"
"Do they hurt?" I asked sqeaming in the passenger seat from the pain radiating from my three herniated disks.
Reassuringly: "Well you are in such intense pain by the time that you get the epidural that the epidural is nothing compared to being 8 cm dialted."
Less painful than childbirth. Thanks, mom.
More honest than my doctor, who described it as a ten second burning sensation followed by a feeling of pressure. I guess if pressure means attaching a landmine to the nerve that is already being sufficiently tortured by your misbehaving disks, then pulling the pin; yea, sure, I felt pressure.
"You did well" said Dr. Cameron after raping my intravertebral spaces with a needle the size of a hotdog. "I once had a marine that passed out during the procedure. Whats your schedule like next week for the second injection?"
Selling Things on Ebay
So far, I've made $126.00 selling things on Ebay. I spent $80.00 buying things to sell on Ebay, about 30 hours and $20.00 in gas driving to/from or shopping in thrift stores for these items, and 30 hours taking pictures of, listing, and obsessively checking their auction status at least four times an hour for the past week.
So, if you do the math, my profit is $26.00, averaging out to about 40 cents an hour since my Ebay career launched last week.
So yes, I am qualified to teach the lesson that follows:
TIPS FOR A FINANCIALLY SECURE FUTURE: SELLING THINGS ON EBAY
1. Before you start, make sure your mother already has a very successful Ebay business so as to avoid doing any real work yourself.
2. Once she has taught you to list your items, assess her inventory and secretely list her items in your store, selling them.
3. Enjoy the fruits of your inaction and buy unnecessary shit with the $126.00 you now have in your bank account, $26.00 of which you did not have last week.
So, if you do the math, my profit is $26.00, averaging out to about 40 cents an hour since my Ebay career launched last week.
So yes, I am qualified to teach the lesson that follows:
TIPS FOR A FINANCIALLY SECURE FUTURE: SELLING THINGS ON EBAY
1. Before you start, make sure your mother already has a very successful Ebay business so as to avoid doing any real work yourself.
2. Once she has taught you to list your items, assess her inventory and secretely list her items in your store, selling them.
3. Enjoy the fruits of your inaction and buy unnecessary shit with the $126.00 you now have in your bank account, $26.00 of which you did not have last week.
A Stupendous Work of Incomprehensible Brilliance
Welcome to my new blog. On it, I am going to discuss the Areas of My Expertise, which are many and diverse, and which include thrift store shopping.
Rules For Thrift Store Shopping
1. Don't be afraid to rush the racks of new stuff as they are being rolled out of the store room in back. Thats where the good shit is, and I'll be damned if someone else gets to it first.
2. When shopping, if the tiny length of rack that you have to push your items apart from each other is taken by the woman next to you trying to create her own tiny space, dont be afraid to push back, or to use elbows and fists if necessary. If this makes you uncomfortable, rummage through used clothes heaps in Zambia and take a couple hits to toughen up.
3. Even if you are a real bitch, be real nice and chatty with the person ringing you up because they can - and if they perceive your sickening charm as genuine, will - cut the price of your clothes in half.
4. Never wear pants that you bought at a thrift store without washing, especially if you dont wear underwear. You could end up with a nasty and undiagnosable case of crotch itch, which responds not to antifungals, antibiotics, or blowtorches.
5. Definitely give thrift store purchases as gifts.
6. Assume a poker face when shopping so as not to give it away when you've found a particularly promising rack. Frown harder when you do.
7. A well directed toot (if you know what I mean) will discourage your competiton from coming too close.
8. While driving home, individually reflect on each of your purchases, thoroughly searching for flaws, never slowing from 60 miles per hour as you hold the clothes between your face and the windshield, effectively blocking your view of the road.
9. Sell your shit on EBay. Advertise it as "Practically new! I bought this for my boyfriend who died before he had a chance to wear it." Guess where I got this beauty: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=160284326074&ssPageName=STRK:MESE:IT&ih=006
10. Dude, just get a real job so you dont have to shop at thrift stores.
Rules For Thrift Store Shopping
1. Don't be afraid to rush the racks of new stuff as they are being rolled out of the store room in back. Thats where the good shit is, and I'll be damned if someone else gets to it first.
2. When shopping, if the tiny length of rack that you have to push your items apart from each other is taken by the woman next to you trying to create her own tiny space, dont be afraid to push back, or to use elbows and fists if necessary. If this makes you uncomfortable, rummage through used clothes heaps in Zambia and take a couple hits to toughen up.
3. Even if you are a real bitch, be real nice and chatty with the person ringing you up because they can - and if they perceive your sickening charm as genuine, will - cut the price of your clothes in half.
4. Never wear pants that you bought at a thrift store without washing, especially if you dont wear underwear. You could end up with a nasty and undiagnosable case of crotch itch, which responds not to antifungals, antibiotics, or blowtorches.
5. Definitely give thrift store purchases as gifts.
6. Assume a poker face when shopping so as not to give it away when you've found a particularly promising rack. Frown harder when you do.
7. A well directed toot (if you know what I mean) will discourage your competiton from coming too close.
8. While driving home, individually reflect on each of your purchases, thoroughly searching for flaws, never slowing from 60 miles per hour as you hold the clothes between your face and the windshield, effectively blocking your view of the road.
9. Sell your shit on EBay. Advertise it as "Practically new! I bought this for my boyfriend who died before he had a chance to wear it." Guess where I got this beauty: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=160284326074&ssPageName=STRK:MESE:IT&ih=006
10. Dude, just get a real job so you dont have to shop at thrift stores.
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