the sloppy copy

A few nights ago my gentleman friend and I were watching Top Gear (UK – none of this remake nonsense), which, if you’ve never heard of it, is the most awesome television program ever conceived by man an entertaining and informative television program (mostly) about cars. If you’ve not seen it, there is a hole in your life you didn’t know existed yet you should check it out sometime. I highly recommend it. During the course of the show, Schmoop asked me a question about something they were demonstrating, “because you know about cars.” I was intensely flattered, but disappointed with myself because I didn’t know the answer (I’ve since asked my Dad the same question and he didn’t know the answer, which leads me to conclude the question is actually pointless and therefore should never be spoken of again).

Anyway, when he asked the question my first impulse was to formulate a brief, bullshitty answer – vague, yet peppered with arbitrary jargon so as to appear to have given a response. I didn’t, though, because I care enough about him to not care enough to falsely impress him.

It did, however, get me thinking about The Rush Incident.

                                             *                                             *                                             *

The bar was a dark, dingy sort of establishment that would more accurately be described as a “pub” if I could get by with accurately describing establishments using those kinds of words. You’ve probably been to such a place, but if you haven’t, I’m not entirely sure what the two of us have in common; you’re probably better off reading a blog about French cooking or Peter Frampton or SmartCars instead.

In these places, a sort of crumb-y, sticky film covers most surfaces, everything is made of wood worn shiny with the glaze of countless spilt beers, and the air is essentially a stagnant cloud of a million smoked cigarettes. The jukebox stands in one greasy corner, casting a limp pool of light on a floor so tacky it seems to have been recently mopped with a bucket of pancake syrup.

Time has a funny way of speeding up in here. Outside, in the bright, fresh, sunshine-y air it is 3:30 in the afternoon. Traffic buzzes by, birds chirp in the trees and children shriek as they are released from school buses stopped at each corner. Inside, the air darkens and thickens and stills and yup: it is already 7:00 and the number of empty pints and bottles at your group’s table far exceeds the number of persons gathered ’round it. And that thick, still air – I swear it’s the air – plays funny tricks on your mind.

Like when your group is joined by some latecomers – friends of friends of friends you may or may not have met previously. I think that one’s called Dan? Or Ron? I couldn’t quite make it out. And the other guy – he’s got a lady name. Blair, or something. Man, that’s unfortunate.

Dan-Ron is knocking back Old Styles with the pace and efficiency of some PBR-sponsored robot. And when he empties his pockets in search of a lighter, you notice among the tangle of filthy metal on his key-ring the glint of a keychain and the letters U S H. Emboldened by a river of pale, tepid, lager, you poke at it to reveal that it is a keychain proclaiming Dan-Ron’s love of – of all the bands in all the world – Rush.

“Rush!” you cry, not out of any mutual affection for the band but because you’ve reached a point in your alcohol consumption where reading words correctly has become a triumph over mental sludge.

Dan-Ron, however, hears your victory cry as some sort of (not-so) Secret Password and his eyes widen. “Geddy Lee is the shit!” he  almost-squeals, and before you know it, you’ve clipped yourself to his elation and are zip-lining straight down through Bullshit Canyon.

The air – it’s the air, damnit – is weaving unpredictable patterns through your brain. Bits and pieces of incongruent information poke their way through the surface and sort of fall out of your mouth. Neil Peart. Canada. Tom Sawyer – Wait, Mark Twain? No. Tom Sawyer – it all sort of jumbles together into a conversation that could not have possibly been remotely coherent. And Dan-Ron, fueled by some sort of kindred-spirit excitement, quickly catches up to your state of inebriation and almost before you know what’s happening, the two of you are standing – unsteadily – before the jukebox.

Which, of course, includes the entire 8343-album Rush catalog.

You are instructed to “pick your all-time favorite song” which proves to be difficult, because a) you’re incredibly blasted and b) you’re not so sure you’ve ever even heard a Rush song. How the hell did you even know that Neil Peart was the drummer, anyway? So, metaphorical balls to the wall, you take a deep breath, close your eyes, and dive even deeper into your drunken malarkey.

You sputter at first – Oh, how can I pick just one? and They all fucking rock! and Do you mean like my favorite-favorite? Or just one I like?.  But you luck out. Dan-Ron is explosively eager to show you his favorite song, so you follow his lead and end up Oh my God I love this one!-ing when you catch his eyes damn-near catch fire at the sight of album 938, song 12.

You leave Dan-Ron to manically force-feed quarters to the jukebox and you return to your friends, some of whom are responsible, upstanding citizens who will be driving the rest of the drunk asses home. The sober ones raise their eyebrows in question of your newfound musical tastes while the rest order a round of shots. You ignore the judgmental brows and down an ounce of the world’s worst tasting tequila and a tiny glimmer of as-yet-dry gray matters hopes to holy hell you never have to see Dan-Ron again.

Not sober, at least.

Like, seriously? Who the hell are these people?

When I was a freshman in high school, we had to make these ridiculous “All About Me” posters that hung in the hallways of the school.

To answer your questions:

No: seriously.

Yes: I did something similar as a first grader.

Part of my poster included some sort of outline of a hypothetical “perfect day.” I don’t know if this was a specific requirement of the assignment or something I stupidly dreamed up on my own.

Even though I don’t remember the specifics of that hypothetical 24 hours of perfection, I’m fairly sure it did not involve about an hour of watching DVR’d episodes of Jeopardy! with my boyfriend while we played a game that we invented that never really had a name before but I’m just-now-deciding should be called Cork Bucket*.

And yet, this happened today.

And it was a goddamn great day.

*If you watch Cougar Town, Cork Bucket is basically Penny Can, except, well – figure it out.

This cardstock insert fell out of my newspaper a few weeks ago:

Oh! I thought. That is kinda cool!
I mean, it’s not something I’d actually ever purchase for myself, but I can see how other people might like it.

Until I looked closer:

Right.

It’s the first day of school/ work/ prison therapy group and EVERY TIME the teacher / HR rep / psychologist does the SAME DAMN THING. “Let’s go around the room and have everyone introduce themselves,” they say.

I have always hated these kinds of introductions.

“Oh, and tell us something about yourself,” they add.

“Go sit on a zucchini filled with razor blades,” I reply.

I don’t actually reply that, for the record. But I do actually hate that whole open-ended “explain how fascinating you are” junk. For some reason, these free-form questions do absolutely nothing for my creativity. I find them weirdly stifling. Tell you something interesting about myself? That’s impossible, sir. I have nothing to say. I am the most boring girl in the world.

Put on the spot like that, I freeze. I’ve resorted to a few stock answers in the past: I once bit my tongue so hard part of it needed to be sewn back together (a lovely visual, I know). My great-uncle played for the Yankees (a pretty cool fact, but it has nothing to do with me). Or….

See? I can’t even think of another one, even a lame one.

The same freezing-up often occurs when I am asked the innocuous “how was your day?” or “How have you been?” I literally could have just returned from a month of backpacking through Tibet and answer that question “Oh, ya know. Good.” or “Same ol’, same ol’!”

And then, three hours later, I remember wait I did save that baby from a fire this morning but by that time the question’s been asked and answered and the statute of limitations of response-embellishment has long since expired.

I’ve never saved a baby from a fire, for the record. But I have often unintentionally glossed over some VERY IMPORTANT details that would better answer those types of questions. “How was work?” I was once asked, on the day that some nutso called and threatened to blow up our place of work and we called the police on him, et cetera, et cetera.

“Oh, kinda slow,” was my response.

Or “How was your summer?” after I’d had several agonizing oral surgeries to remove, like, a million teeth over the course of a few months.

“Pretty standard,” I replied.

The thing that really gets me here is that sometimes, while this super-interesting thing is happening to me, I am actually thinking OH MY GOSH I CAN’T WAIT TO TELL SOMEONE ABOUT THIS.

Yesterday, I did something I was super-proud of. “Oh, man, I can wait to tell Schmoop*!” I thought at the time. And later, when he asked me how my day was, I had nothin’. “What did I do all day?” I LITERALLY ASKED THIS QUESTION OUT LOUD TO MYSELF.

Sigh.

*I don’t know where this came from, but I started calling Boyfriend “Schmoopie” as sort of the ultimate sappy-cheesy-stupid-over-the-top nickname, because we have the least sappy-cheesy-stupid-over-the-top relationship ever. Schmoopie has too many syllables, apparently, so it’s since been shortened.

At any given point, I have several half-started posts at my disposal. This means I have no excuse for posting regularly.

Ha! What a jokester I am!

Anyway, I was going through those posts and I found a particularly curious one. I have copy-and-pasted this half-finished thought below:

Twww

Mm-hmmm. That’s it.

I am baffled; I’ve no clue how I was planning to finish this word (sound?), much less the entire entry. I can only assume it was going to be absolutely brilliant. Like – if they gave Pulitzers for blogging, this shit was it.

Or not. It could go either way.

In other, completely unrelated news:

34 plates? Does that seem like a random number to anyone else, or is it just me?

Hey, you guys?

You guys?

YOU GUYS.

HEY.

Remind me next time I see something and say “Wow, that would make a nice gift for so-and-so” to WRITE THAT SHIT DOWN. Or, hell, just buy it / make it / steal it right then and there. Because do you know what will happen otherwise?

It’ll be the day before my boyfriend’s birthday and I won’t have anything for him.

Heh, heh. Hypothetically speaking, of course.

OR (also hypothetically speaking) – in the case of “hey I could totally make that for so-and-so” you guys NEED to be like “Okay, Julie. START MAKING IT RIGHT THIS SECOND.” Because otherwise I’ll get to two days out and my brain goes into Magical Thinking mode and I’m all like “no sweat, I can crochet a bedspread in a few hours” or “Those 4 dozen intricately-decorate cupcakes? That’s a one-hour project, tops.”

And then I will get to work on the blanket or the baked goods and I will realize the shit creek I’m up and I will weep.

Oh, the weeping.

In the grand scheme of things does it really matter that the gift comes a day…or two…or three…late? I guess not. But what if the recipient is hit by a bus or mauled to death by armadillos while he’s waiting for his birthday gift? What a way to go – terrified and in pain and without knowing what the hell present was so good I made him wait so fucking long for it.

Sigh.

EDIT: I am now realizing the irony of wasting time typing up a blog post in which I complain that I have no time to finish up a present by tomorrow. I truly did not put that together until just now, I swear.

Juanita is militantly, wonderfully, super-Catholically, stereotypically-Saint Louis-ly Irish.  If you cut her,* she probably bleeds green. Anyway, I saw a picture in the local paper today of a woman with the same surname as some of Juanita’s 90-bajillion cousins.

Me: Are you related to ——  —— ? There’s enough of them I figured it might be a cousin’s kid?

Juanita: Maybe… I’d have to ask [one of Juanita’s sisters]. Why?

Me: Just saw someone in the paper named that.

Juanita: Bank robber?

Juanita: Hooker?

*This is not an invitation. You best stay the hell away from my Momma. If you cut her, I cut you. Across the throat.

While doing some online browsing for the most awesome catalog ever, I came across this:

A bear.
Shitting.
In the woods…
…On a shower curtain.

(Also, a moose apparently having his way with himself?).

Wait – it gets better.

Because there are matching bath accessories:

and!

On closer inspection, maybe he’s also just making a twosie?

That’s all I got.

First this, for your pleasure (also, I hope you’re old enough to remember these. If not, get the hell off my lawn, ya whippersnappers):

I just read an article that said if you want more people to visit your blog site* you should include pictures.

Pictures, pictures, pictures get you noticed. Which makes sense in appropriate and inappropriate ways.

But before you get all hot and bothered disgusted and vomit-y, let me assure you this site will continue to be safe for work. Mostly.

I like the idea of including more pictures. I imagine that the illiterate are an underserved demographic when it comes to this sort of thing.

In high school, I had a friend (ok, I still have her – there was no friend un-making) who always always ALWAYS had a camera with her (or it sure seemed like it). We totally teased her about it at the time, but damn! Do I wish I had the foresight to be “that person” because OF COURSE she has all kinds of great pics now. I never remember to use my camera, even if I’m lugging it around in my purse ALL DAMN DAY. And then I get home, and regret that I only took two lame-o pictures. I think part of me is irrationally afraid I’ll look like some kind of intrusive dolt if I’m constantly snapping photos, and the rational side of my brain (the side that says who really fucking cares? You’ll thank yourself later when you have pictures documenting the time that one guy at that one party took his cowboy boots off his feet and tried to walk with them on his hands**).

My BFFF is like that too (not drunkenly hand-walking, just so we’re clear) – she always has her camera at the ready when a good photo op presents itself. And, of course, she had gazillions of great photos to show for it.

These two are my heroes (HS friend and BFFF…not cowboy boot guy, just so we’re still clear), so it stands to reason that I would try to be like them. So here I am, officially putting it ON THE RECORD that I want to remember to take more pictures, social awkwardness be damned. I’m not saying this is going to be blue ribbon-winning photography or anything, of course. But I do hope to document some of the oddness that seems to surround me daily. Or at least, shit I find funny. Like this, from the lunch menu at my workplace’s cafeteria:

Just the one, please. Don’t want to go overboard.

The photo quality is poor, but damn did this make me laugh last night. Hope this makes your day, too, even if it’s not quite as weird as a guy with cowboy boots on his hands.

Did I mention he was wearing fishnets?

*I hate the word blog. Like a lot. Like so much it makes my teeth hurt thinking about it.
**Nah, I did take pictures of that. There’s also video. Heh heh.

Okay, sometimes when I get caught up in something awesome I start using phrases that don’t normally come out of my mouth. “My heart is filled with joy” is a good example – it just popped into my head last night as I tried to describe (to myself, who also happens to be my best audience) how I was feeling. It sounds so freaking cheesy, or like I’m preforming a church hymn spoken-word, William Shatner-style. It just don’t sound right.

But, sometimes, even if it sounds all weird coming out of my mouth, it’s true.

My BFFF n’ her Husbando are picking themselves out a gaggle of children. Okay, maybe not like that, but they’re in the process of adopting some kiddos. Today is their first (or only?) home visit, which sounds super-intimidating and like something that I would miserably fail if I were in their shoes. To say that I am excited for them would win gold at the Understatement Olympics. This is where the “my heart is filled with joy” business comes in.

So, in an effort to be all supportive n’ whatnot, I decided to dive into my Catholic roots and see if there was a patron saint of adopted children, and if there was some kind of Special Prayer I could shoot his way. If you know anything about Catholicism, you know that DUH. Of course there is. There is a patron saint of (almost) everything.

One quick question to Uncle Google later and BAM: St. William of Perth, also sometimes called St. William of Rochester, for reasons that I didn’t feel like reading about because this was approximately 1:00 am this morning.

Anyway, I didn’t find any specific prayers I could send up to Big Willie, so I just came up with something on the fly. And then I decided to find some sort of pictorial evidence of this guy. I felt BFFF’s Facebook wall needed some decoration.

Enter good ol’ Uncle Google, again.

Pretty standard Saint portrait, though I’m a little weirded out by the snakes. I thought that was a St. Patrick thing? But hey – St. Patrick’s pretty awesome, so I guess this makes Big Wiliie awesome by association. Right?

But surely I can find something snake-less.

Oh, now, that’s much better. THIS St. William juggles all kinds of animals, apparently. Even baby sea lions, or whatever that cute thing is at the bottom. This guy’s alright!  Surely there is some good juju flowing to BFFF and co!

But, as is often the case with Uncle Googs, things get weird quickly.

Not 100% sure who this chap is, but he looks like he knows how to party– fancy party. Is that a sprig of fresh herbs in pitcher number 2? Bravo, sir! I’d accept the engraved invitation to your garden party anytime. I’m sure you and your other pearl-snap-shirted compadres make a mean hummus.

I wonder if he invited these guys?

They kinda look like they could use a freshly-muddled drink. Well, Righty looks less-than-happy. Lefty seems to be enjoying himself. Maybe he just finished grinding some chickpeas for the shindig tonight.

Wait. Where was I? Oh yes. St. Willie of Perth-sometimes-Rochester and the weird world of Google Images.

I’m pretty sure these are children at a St. William of Perth school, but I’d prefer to think it’s representative of the big ol’ happy fam in store for my friends.

A heart filled with joy, indeed.