Wednesday Giggles

Oh those nutty Japanese people and their performance artists that come on their insane game shows.

Thanks for making me laugh like a loon. Like. A. Loon.

Net Neutrality, an Endangered Concept

So every issue is an important issue right?

Social issues -
Political issues -
Emotional issues -

They're all important but I think there are few that need our attention more right now than Net Neutrality.

I try not to get too political on here but this has been on my mind a lot lately and I feel like I should do what I can to spread awareness and to try to help.

I think this video is a very good jumping off point about the issues



and just to let you know - there is legislation being voted on really soon about it and you can go to https://secure.freepress.net/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=327 to let your congressman know you support it.

Mom Moments

So I was cleaning out the fridge today and it was an archeologist's jaunt through mom's culinary pleasures over the last couple of months.

The strangest thing I found was an El Pollo Loco bag containing a bottle of soy sauce that has spilled and had covered 3 completely full spice jars of cumin, curry powder, and onion powder. In the fridge. The expiration date on the soy sauce was Feb.

This is my life.

I'm Still Contemplating Reporting Them

Craigslist is officially the job searching equivalent of MySpace.
Ridiculous, narcissistic, entirely false and full of questionable characters that probably smell weird.

I responded to an ad for an "Account Manager" position asking for some more information. The ad was pretty vague.

This is what I got in response:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Good Afternoon

We have received your e-mail and want to offer you the vacancy of "Account Manager".

An account manager makes 7% from the amount of each transaction. You will be granted 24/7 support and back up from our company in case of emergency throughout the business hours. A secure online environment makes the work of an account manager agent easier. Normally the amounts that we process vary from $3,000 to $10,000, but can go higher on special occasions.

Working Tasks?

1) To receive money to your bank account .

2) Withdraw funds.

3) Send money via Western Union or Money Gram

Also we sent our contract, for the further cooperation. Please fill it and send to us a copy, to prove your identity. Also it is necessary to send acknowledgement, that you are ready to work by e-mail. After receiving your email we process and answer as soon as possible.

To get job more details go to this website : solutiononline.co.cr

Best Regards

Denis Iovov

Finance Corporation International

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

They haven't met met, I don't know a thing about the job even after this amazingly thorough job offer and I'm so eager to take a job with someone who can't punctuate or spell or use proper grammar in emails OR offers...

*sob-sigh*

It's a horrible scam and it makes me angry. What kind of cruel son of a bitch would take advantage of people legitimately looking for work? I starred at the screen for a good 30 seconds when I read it in disbelief. How did such ridiculousness find its way to my inbox?

This is why I'm kind of sucking at life right now and why I'm in dire need of a punching bag. Looking for work is a soul draining endeavor.

I'm moving to Alaska and changing my name to Genevieve. I can't take it anymore.

One of These Things Is Not Like the Other

So I'm friends with The Getty on Facebook.

Go ahead - judge me. I use Facebook for more than silly quizzes and stalking boys that will never give me the time of day. So hate me.

But I got wind that this past Tuesday they were having a free lecture that I was interested in. Former NEA chairman Bill Ivey and prolific cultural critic and Harvard professor Lewis Hyde were going to have a conversation about the "roll of the Artist in Society" and "Our Cultural Bill of Rights". As a supporter of the Arts and an amateur musician and writer I felt a bit vested in the issue and it was free so why not?

Plus it had been awhile since I'd taken in the Getty Center and its not like I'm doing anything useful right? I might as well join in The Conversation - even for a bit.

Well, I brought along a few comrades. One is my Artist friend Eowyn. Yes, that's her name and she is as Elvy, magical and wistful as it sounds. Shes one of the few real artists I know. Like a painting, attending art center, dresses like a genius, always thinking about something profound, passionate, soft spoken, shy of people, loves animals, brilliantly well spoken individual. I adore her. She's all but my little sister, we've grown up together. Her sister is a few years older than me and has a PhD from Notre Dame in Medieval Studies and is a professor at BYU. Yeah - if you ever want to feel like a slacker, stand close to this insanely gifted family.

I try to spend as much time around her as I can because she is so remarkable and she teaches me things about things I thought I knew, like a real artist should. So she, and the super adventurer/rock star Lauren came too. I was the least accomplished of the group and the least likely to get hit on as well (they're both gorgeous) so I figured it was a day fit for sitting back and just being enriched.

We took in the gardens and impressionism and the photography exhibits they had there and finally got kicked out of the Decorative Arts building when it closed in a bundle of giggles at the sarcastic carvings on some of the French pieces. Giggling in the museum is the best.

We soaked up as much sun as we could in the garden and moseyed our way over to the lecture hall and I couldn't help but notice how pointedly we were by everyone lounging outside the lecture hall. Everyone was huddled over their obligatory cup of coffee and attired in the abounding scarfs and chunky glasses. One of the things I love about events like this is the kind of draw there is and observing the mix of people. I was just taking in the scene and glancing casually around but as I did I noticed that, like I said before, the looks I got back were not casual at all. I found this strange, and like I always do, attributed them to my girth and how fat people in LA are a rarely seen breed. I always get looks like I'm an alien. I'm used to it.

It wasn't till after the lecture, which was not what I was expecting but nevertheless poignant, and during the question and answer session, that I realized why. Everyone that was asking questions were reporters or people from the California Arts Council or former members of the NEA (National Endowment for the Arts) or all of these heavyweights that turned up. Even the head of the Getty and PBS were there. I had NO idea, none whatsoever, that this was going to be a networking bureaucrats haven.

Lauren, Eowyn and I were probably the youngest people there. I would have desperately hoped that in a city like LA, BRIMMING with musicians and thespians and artists that the lecture hall would have been packed. I'm not nearly talented enough to be the indie kind of musician that I listen to, but if I was a working performer I would keep my ear to the ground about stuff like this. These kind of conversations change thinking and any time in a room with minds like that of those two gentleman is always worth taking.

On the shuttle ride home I sat next to two older ladies in artsy ponchos and lots of big jewelry talking about the lecture and name dropping and saying where they used to work etc and they, making conversation asked me where I was from and how I heard about the event and I said "......." and I quote "I'm just a student and I got a message on Facebook....."

No grace, no decorum, not even enough of a sense of humor to make fun of them by bluffing something and making up a French name and random university I was doing sociological research for. They didn't even know who the guys were that were speaking sadly, I was more informed as to the nature of the discussion. That's how I initially entered the conversation, I was being a know-it-all, like usual. I found it kind of funny that they went to this lecture and didn't even know who the guys were or why they were important. They were there for the elbow greasing. That's so foreign to me.

So yeah - walking back to the car I was feeling a bit strange. Sheepish more like and I heard piano music and saw a white feather drift by. Had I known so many decision makers were going to be around I would have been shamelessly handing out my resume.

But alas, like most of the big things that have ever happened in my life, I don't realize the gravity of the matter till I'm past it.

Oh well - it was a very interesting lecture, when I wasn't battling the exhaustion of walking around the Getty all day and I got reminded again how it really feels to be in a world but not of it.

If you see me sporting obtuse scarfs, name dropping sideways over some overpriced beverage, and being somewhere to be seen instead of being involved, you have full clearance to slap me.

I felt so enriched by the end of the day my head hurt so I grabbed some $1 cookies at McDonalds and settled down with my blanket and Netflix for some kung fu cartoons and, while keeping everything I learned,shook off the pretension of the day.

Wednesday Giggles

retroactively speaking

This is what has made me laugh the hardest this week so I'm posting it as last week's installment.

Buster is my favorite and always will be. The first time I saw this tiny little quip I laughed so hard I had to pause it and it never ceases to kill me.

The Grumps

I've got a pretty bad case of them right now and I don't know why.

I've been trying to figure it out as well as the people around me I regularly have to deal with. Mom did her best by so artfully and discreetly asked me full voice in Target the other day "Are you going to menstruate soon?" The answer was no. These are legitimate grumps.

I don't like being grouchy so I've been trying to shake it off and nothing is working. My first move is almost always hanging out with friends but they've just ended up annoying me more. Next move was Disneyland. That almost always does the trick but the day ended up being a barely contained bitch-fit on my part. Movies typically trigger some endorphins but all I've been getting are bad dreams.

I had one the other night where I was in my old house in Pasadena and my brother tried to kill me so I had to flee but we were living in this apocalyptic warfare state and I couldn't get to Kansas to safely be with my best friend. We got mugged along the way and my computer got stolen and I was convulsively crying and rocking over my empty laptop case in my dream when I popped awake thinking note to self - do not watch Matrix movies AND Terminator movies in the same week. Too may post apocalyptic scenes in the noggin.

I think that the stress of looking for a job, interviewing for a job and just being unemployed is weighting on me so much that its exhausting all of my other energy that is typically put towards stuff like Patience. So as a result things that typically don't bug me are really getting to me.

Like the broken water temperature lever in the shower, typically I just deal but I almost put my hand through the shower doors the other day. Getting violent? Over the temperature of water? Who am I?

Maybe the NBA Finals has upped my aggression towards the world in general. This is why I backed off of water polo. I'm not a naturally competitive person so the only way I could rise to the water polo occasion was to get aggressive in the angry kind of way and it started to leak into every aspect of my life and I didn't like it.

I can be a very severe, critical, impatient and over baring person if left to my own means. You know how when a yard goes unchecked and tended that it gets all overgrown and brown and snarly? I become a raging demanding diva if I go unchecked. I don't like being like that at all. No one likes dealing with someone like that so I decided to change. However, dealing with this latest trial has left a lot of things go unchecked and I'm not quite sure to get a handle on them.

Like, I almost fired a friend the other day because we were on the phone and he was venting about this class hes taking with this scattered teacher that I had had before. He said he was venting to another person as well who had taken the class that I might know and then he started to attempt to describe her to me. She apparently was tall and bigger built much like myself and he didn't know how to describe girls to girls because unless they're anorexic they get super sensitive about anything you might say but I'm not too hard on the eyes because hes still talking to me right?

.........

I literally pulled the phone away from my ear and looked at it like "what on earth...."

I had no response but an overwhelming desire to bring the conversation to a close and possibly erase his number when I was done.

Maybe I need a day at the Huntington. Sadly, a few hours with a punching bag sounds much more relaxing at this moment. Who am I?

I kind of want to go find a dude ranch in the middle of Montana and take a job as a cook and leave all of the stupidity of YSA life and urban living and post-grad pressures to the birds. The older I get the less I care about all of it. All I want is a dog and a garden and a nearby mountain to hike. The rat race is NOT WORTH IT! Its pointless insatiable agony for agony's sake. I can deal with hardship if I know *why*. War time is agony but you're defending your family and country. Childbirth is agony but its for your kids. This totally doesn't count for anything.

My birthday is coming up too and that's never a relaxing time for me.

I'm broke and I have all these places I want to go and people I need to see, like my very pregnant sister in law that is moving this weekend and needs help putting a nursery together and guess who can't come to Salt Lake to help? That's right. Me.

I haven't seen my best friend in a year. That is difficult.

Everything is just difficult

And feeling sorry for myself doesn't help or change a bloody thing. I know.

Things aren't all bad. I have a lot to be grateful for.

- despite the fact that I annoy them or they annoy me, I have an amazing family and group of people who love me and who I desperately love
- I'm healthy (relatively) and disease free. Getting cancer or something could put a damper on things I realize
- The Lakers are in the NBA finals
- my nails are growing in nicely
- my laptop didn't get stolen, it was just a dream
- I've got a safe and warm place to sleep
- There are no machines after me trying to kill me. Not yet at least
- I have an education
- I have a car

I have a lot to be grateful for. I'm just doing my best to shake grumps. Wish me luck.