comic relief

maybe if i had a cookie, it'd take me out of my "dark place" lol.

its been a long crazy whirlwind of a week, mostly in a good way. i had a long fun weekend, and the week has zipped by. but underneath it all, theres a sense of anxiety and discontent, and it tells me that i need some down time to myself this weekend to sort out my head.

i think as human beings, we all have a dark side. because ive played the role of the "good girl", ive spent most of my life suppressing anything dark, rebellious, disagreeable, or unvirtuous. sometimes tho, i get a glimpse at the potential for self-destruction that exists in me and it scares me. these are times when i just want to say "FUCK YOU" to the world. fuck you, and fuck your expectations, fuck your pressure, fuck your assumptions, fuck your conclusions, and fuck your demands. fuck you for failing me and hurting me. just fuck you. and fuck me too for trying to live up to those expectations, pressures, assumptions, and demands; for letting you hurt and disappoint me.

people...

are strange! yesterday i spent more time than usual waiting at bus stops (damn the cta!). but i did come across some interesting characters. on my way home from work, there were 2 older women in their 50s-60s who were discussing how Oprah calls her vagina a "va-jay-jay". i thought i must have overheard incorrectly, but then i started actively listening to what they were saying (cuz im nosey, and cuz they were sorta invading my personal bubble space due to the crowdedness of the bus shelter). and yes, they were actually talking about Oprah's vagina. weird.

different bus stop, different time of day -- heading home from anna's place. its around 10pm and ive been waiting all by myself at the bus stop. after 10 min, a very normal looking woman shows up and we have the customary "cta sucks, ive been waiting forever, wheres the bus?" convo. and she tells me that she has to pee and then tells me how one winter the police caught her peeing in the alley cuz she couldnt hold it. and she complained that they didnt wait til she was finished to ticket her, because they just wanted to look at her ass. then she started thinking aloud about how maybe she should go to the nearby parking lot and pee before the bus came. it was a weird conversation, for sure.

if you want a people-watching adventure, just ride the cta all day!

Beware Windextor!

where can i get myself some milk chocolate-y cluster fucks?? lol, love love love dane cook!

creeeepy!

given my obsession with cicadas recently, i bed this would scare the crap out of me (AND its by the director of The Exorcist!):



gotta go see it! :)

watch out...

cuz im a freakin brain ninja mental terrorist! mwuahaha! watch the leg...just watch the leg. and beware the word "fine", its never fine when a woman says the word "fine".

hehe, im thinking i like dane cook.

"im violent y'all"

have i mentioned lately how much i love zach braff??

"look what i found online..."

i'd totally makeout with zach braff, anytime anywhere.

yay!

i love zach braff! i must see this. and also, everyone in maroon 5 needs a haircut except the lead singer.

"And I know that sounds cliche, and I know saying it sounds cliche sounds cliche. Maybe I’m being cliche, I don’t care. Cuz I am what I am... That’s Popeye."

~Pam on "The Office"

this was a good show. i am definitely a daria kind of girl, lol.

i feel good!

this never fails to cheer me up: Feel Good Cat (stupid thing wont embed)

altho, i actually dont need any cheering up -- im feeling pretty good! im just in a much better place than i have been in a long time, in terms of all the school stuff and old relationships and whatnot. and really, it is about time!

i <3 andy (ed helms)

lol! andy from The Office is a zombie!! how wonderfully creepy!

"bullshit, i like a ham sandwhich now and then". hehe.

life is good

had a picnic dinner in the park by the lake with anna today, which was great. today was just a beautiful day! after eating, chatting, and people watching, we walked for an hour or 2. i lost track of the time, but my feet didnt as i have a few blisters, lol. totally worth it. we even hit up an ice cream truck! seriously, a perfect summer day.

i stumbled across this and it suits me right now:

Verde que te quiero verde.
Verde viento. Verdes ramas.
El barco sobre la mar
y el caballo en la montaña.
Con la sombra en la cintura
ella sueña en su baranda...
Romance Sonambulo, Federico García Lorca

Green, how I want you green.
Green wind. Green branches.
The ship out on the sea
and the horse on the mountain.
With the shade around her waist
she dreams on her balcony...

this reminds me of my high school advanced spanish class. the teacher made us memorize part of La Vida Es Sueño. i'd forgotten most of it except the last part "toda la vida es sueno y los suenos suenos son", so i was able to google and find the whole thing:

¿Qué es la vida? Un frenesí.
¿Qué es la vida? Una ilusión,
una sombra, una ficción,
y el mayor bien es pequeño;
que toda la vida es sueño,
y los sueños, sueños son.
La Vida Es Sueño, Pedro Calderón de la Barca

What is life? A frenzy.
What is life? An illusion,
a shadow, a fiction,
and the greatest good is trivial;
for all life is a dream,
and all dreams are dreams.

i actually kind of got a kick out of reading spanish literature in spanish. its definitely a different way of reading for me. in english, i read in a gluttonous, greedy kind of way -- quickly skimming over words to get to more words. but having to read in another language slows me down so that each word registers and makes an impact while i try to translate and make sense of the words, phrases, and sentences. this all reminds me of my goal to become fluent en espanol before i have kids so i can teach them. gotta get on that...

check yo'self BEFORE you wreck yo'self...

anthropomorphism, take 2

so im digging the New York Times and its animal related articles lately.

here's a recent one that's basically about the bumbling sexual escapades of a "bachelor" tortoise: A Lonesome Tortoise, and a Search for a Mate. and of course, i have to highlight and comment on my favorite quotes...

Next year the researchers hope to find a female to take back to George’s pen. This is happy news for humanity, but not necessarily for George. We can shed a little of our collective guilt for nearly wiping out his species. George must deal with an identity crisis and performance anxiety. (do tortoises get sexual performance anxiety? maybe i need to change my career goals here. forget couples counseling...is animal sex therapy where the money's at these days? sign me up!)

A few years later, in 1993, there was briefly a companion known as “Lonesome George’s girlfriend,” but she was not a tortoise. She was a 26-year-old graduate student in zoology from Switzerland named Sveva Grigioni. By coating her hands in the genital secretions of female tortoises and gently stroking him, she managed to demonstrate a couple of times (in the course of several months’ work) that George was capable of an erection. But whereas her touch could induce other male tortoises to reach orgasm within a few minutes, with George she never managed to collect any sperm. Her ministrations — or maybe it was the pheromones in the secretions — did seem to pique George’s interest in the female tortoises... (im not sure i'd be bragging about my sexual escapades with tortoises. i wonder how many turtle notches this woman has in her bedpost? and i thought "carefully coaxing" duck phalluses would be a tough job...)

George needs to be primed. Sending Ms. Grigioni back to work would be a start, and George could also learn by watching other males in action, as some biologists have proposed. Dr. Nicholls even raises the possibility of showing instructive videos to George — and if tortoise porn is what it takes, I say go for it. (lol, im not making this up people! scientists are discussing turtle porn.)

But given George’s antisocial personality — he doesn’t like being around any other tortoises, male or female — we need to be considerate. If ultimately he’s just not that into Eve, then let Lonesome George be lonesome. We can’t expect him to save the species for our sake. It has to be good for him, too. ( poor George. how's he ever gonna get any action now that he has been publicly humiliated in the ny times?)

poor George...

spring

so ok, i guess technically spring has sprung. we've had some gorgeous days scattered throughout the last few weeks. but until the last couple of days, it hadnt hit me. its not real til i see the tulips. every year im surprised how i dont notice the flowers starting to come up until all of a sudden, they're everywhere. and on the one hand, sure i'd like to be one of those people who notices the flower buds pop up and watches the progress as the flowers bloom, yadda yadda yadda. but i have to say, its pretty neat to wake up one day and be blown away by how tons and tons of flowers seem to have popped up overnight.

today i saw a butterfly and it made me think -- why cant we have a swarm of butterflies instead of cicadas. and yes, im sure people are tired of hearing me rant about the stupid cicadas, but its my blog and ill whine if i want to. i mean really. why does it have to be what is surely one of the ugliest, creepiest looking insects that swarms every 17 years? ok ok, itd probably be worse if it were spiders, i guess. but seriously, can i just have a butterfly swarm instead? id even take the ladybug impersonating beetles we had before. they were annoying, but not scary or creepy or ugly. stupid cicadas.

the poor ducks!

so i realize that my reaction to a recent article in the New York Times seems like that of a kid in grade school, but i just cant help it! the article is about duck genitalia....yes, that's what i said. duck genitalia. oh, but it gets better! read on for some choice quotes from "In Ducks, War of the Sexes Plays Out in the Evolution of Genitalia" (with my commentary in italics):

“This guy’s the champion,” said Patricia Brennan, a behavioral ecologist, leaning over the nether regions of a duck — a Meller’s duck from Madagascar, to be specific — and carefully coaxing out his phallus. (yes, they actually said that --- "carefully coaxing out his phallus"....a duck phallus, to be specific. lol, thank god you dont have that job, right? what do you do for a living? oh, i coax duck phalluses. carefully. i carefully coax duck phalluses.)

The champion phallus from this Meller’s duck is a long, spiraling tentacle. Some ducks grow phalluses as long as their entire body. In the fall, the genitalia will disappear, only to reappear next spring. (a long spiraling tentacle? uhm, ew? and what happens to it when it disappears, thats what i want to know!)

Gazing at the enormous organs (which are "corkscrew" shaped?!?!), she asked herself a question that apparently no one had asked before. “So what does the female look like?” she said. “Obviously you can’t have something like that without some place to put it in. You need a garage to park the car.” (wtf? so scientists discovered weird duck penises and didnt bother to study the female duck anatomy? typical. typical, sexist, male dominated science bullshit. leave it to a woman to figure this out. a woman who should never again use the car/garage sex metaphor with any man who has read her use it for duck sex.)

To test her hypothesis, Dr. Brennan plans to team up with a biomechanics expert to build a transparent model of a female duck. She wants to see exactly what a duck phallus does during mating. (so if i understand this correctly, the scientists want to force the boy ducks to have sex with a plastic, see-through girl duck so they can watch. thats just a teeny tiny bit creepy, no?)

seriously. im not making this stuff up. read it for yourself! crazy, weird stuff. but definitely entertaining, especially if you have the maturity level of a kid in grade school. hehe.