the sloppy copy

Dear Whoever Reads The Comment Cards,

Hello! You probably did not expect to receive a comment card from me, but I understand (and appreciate) your surprise and delight.

If, in the off-chance you do not know who I am (if so, I imagine you have recently repatriated yourself after having lived overseas for a number of years), please allow me the pleasure of introducing myself. My name is Julie, and I am one of this country’s leading experts in turkey burgers.

For the past four-plus years, I have travelled the contiguous United States in search of the perfect turkey burger (or TB, for those who are able to overlook the fact that this abbreviation also stands for “Tuberculosis”). Of course, when I say “travelled the contiguous United States in search of the perfect turkey burger” I mean “whenever I am at a restaurant that serves burgers I usually choose the turkey option, but not always, because turkey is not always a menu choice or sometimes I decide that I’d rather try the chicken quesadillas”).

As you might imagine, I have eaten my fair share of TBs (again, this refers to turkey burgers, not a highly-communicable respiratory disease), and after taking just one bite of my lunch this afternoon I just knew that I would end up composing this essay on the stack of your comment cards I surreptitiously swiped from the hostess stand as I was escorted from the building (sorry about that, by the way. I hope you have more in the back).

The TB in question was nearly perfect. Not too juicy, not too weird-tasting; this is to say nothing of the satisfied feeling with which I left your establishment. Just ask the patrons sitting in the booth adjacent to mine: I could scarcely (nay, hardly) contain my satisfied moans and deep sighs of contentment. In fact, it was difficult for me to remain fully clothed (as the police report will corroborate), as the pure pleasure I experienced while feeding myself this delicious creation stirred a deeper, more primal, urge from within myself. As I finished the last – perfect– bite of my meal, I actually exploded in a shower of fulfillment and ecstasy.

Haha, no, that is an exaggeration. Had I literally exploded, I would not be able to complete this comment card, now would I?

But if it were, in fact, possible for one to explode in a shower of fulfillment and ecstasy, the management of this restaurant can rest assured that I, along with each and every guest who orders the TB basket with bottomless fries, would immediately do so.

On second thought, this phenomenon might cause your establishment’s corporate headquarters to remove the TB from the menu, as the media is not always kind, and might paint such human-explosions in a negative light.

So while I do not actually desire for your menu items to cause spontaneous combustion, I can think of no more fitting metaphor for my newfound love affair with your turkey burgers and I hope you find this explanation for my behavior this afternoon suitable and that you will promptly remove my name from your nationwide “Do Not Serve” list.

Yours ever-so-truly,
Julie

Oooooooh, how ’bout this background, eh? Had I more knowledge of CSS it’d be a little different but it’ll do for now.

Like how I made myself sound like I knew what I was talking about? Guess what! I don’t! I don’t even know if what I just said made sense. I don’t know what CSS is, other than the fact that I clicked on a link labelled as such. Then there was a whole lotta shit I didn’t think was wise to alter. So this current theme will remain as-is.

Ain’t technology fan-fucking-tastic?

* * * *

The smell of smoke woke me this morning, immediately followed by the bleat of a Smoke Detector. And yet, I remained tucked snugly into my bed, enveloped in a cozy quilt cocoon. See, today was the first day – ever! – that we’ve used the furnace, and the collected layers of filth lining our home’s air ducts doth protested when met with the blast of gas-powered heat being forced through. The result was not unlike what I imagine happens when a thrombolytic is forced through a stroke victim. Except that it reeked, and no one’s life was saved.

I love autumn. I love so many things about the season. I even love the name we’ve given this time of year: Autumn. The perfect balance of consonants and vowels. The more-dramatic sounding Fall is okay, yes. But Autumn so richly connotes much more: the changing leaves, the carved pumpkins, the fuzzy sweaters and the woolen socks. Mmmmmmm. Autumn.

My brother has made a permanent neural association between Counting Crows and Autumn. And really, I can’t blame him. “A Long December” is Autumn to me. I don’t know why. It just is, despite having the winter-iest month in its title.

Some of my friends have been posting our favorite October things on a message board, and here’s what we’ve got so far:
Fall!
Playoff season!
Hockey season!
Halloween!
Hot apple cider!
Sweaters and hoodies!
leaves changing color!
that smoky smell in the air in the evenings!
Football!
Gourds!
Indian corn!
Pumpkin pie!
Leather boots!
Knee socks and tights!
Soups and Stews and Chili!
Sleeping snugly at night with the window open and a cozy comforter on the bed!
Baking cookies!

See? How is this not the greatest season ever?

Until Winter officially gets here and I fall in love all over again.

Hi, my name is Julie and I’m addicted to Craigslist

Just when I thought that I had my addiction under control, a friend directed me to this site.

Read, and laugh your stinkin’ guts out.

Don’t you love how several discrete dream sequences can run together in your brain at night, producing one crazy montage of subconscious what-the-fuckness that doesn’t even make sense during the actual dreaming process?

Case in point: last night.

I won’t even try to create a timeline, because it will make no more sense to specificy a sequence than to just spit it all out, stream-of-consciousness style.

I am in the kitchen of a house. It is a weirdly modern house and in this particular room, the range is a shade of lime-green and very angular. In fact, this applicance seems to have no right angles at all. It’s a galley-style kitchen, quite small for the rest of the house in which it is located. In the back of my mind, I know that this is my friend (in real life) Gennie’s house.

The living room, which adjoins the tiny kitchen is sunken and dimly-lit. It is furnished in the same muted-neon shades as the kitchen applicances, and I think there is shag carpet. Instead of this being a truly modern house, it is modern in the Tomorrowland sense: when I recreate the room in my mind now, all that’s missing is the happy housewife serving cocktails on a silver tray to her suit-wearing husband and his poker buddies.

As I stand in the living room, I am given a baby. A cute little baby of Asian descent. Somehow, I know that this little girl’s mom is gone. Dead, kidnapped, I don’t know – but Mom is in trouble. I am to take care of the baby.

But the baby is sick. She keeps having seizures. I am somehow not alarmed by this. She gets sick after I feed her lemon wedges. (Why am I feeding a 6-month old lemon wedges?) And yes, I know that she is 6-months old. Except I think she is starting to talk and can walk. A highly advanced 6-month old I guess.

I learn that my father has had a heart attack and has died. I wait two days to tell my friends, and then, I do so in a Twitter message. (What the fuck is wrong with me?). I do not cry, and am confused as to why I don’t cry.

I am in a restaraunt, with the baby. It’s a diner; Steak n’ Shake-esque. I’m at a large table with many other people. I don’t remember who the people are, but I knew them all in my dream. We are all important people, for some reason. I think we might be after the people who took and/or killed the baby’s Mom. We sit at the table, and I think we’re having a good time. The restaraunt is very crowded.

A group of men enters the restaraunt. The front door is very near our table. I see that they are armed with very large, automatic weapons. I know that they are after the baby, so I hold her closer to me and hide under the table. No one else at the table with me notices the 5 dudes with machine guns not three feet away. They also do not seem alarmed that I suddenly hid under the table with the baby.

As I sit under the table, I realize that the baby is not sick, she is just allergic to acidic fruits. Hence, having seizures after I feed her lemon wedges. I demand, from underneath the table, that someone hand me my water glass. But there is a lemon wedge in it, and I cannot give it to the baby (do 6-month olds drink water? They certainly don’t from glasses) because of the acidic fruit (yes, that was exactly how it was phrased in the dream).

It’s unclear if the Armed Bad Guys have attracted attention from my friends at the table, and I un-hide myself, just as I feel the barrel of a gun to the back of my head. I don’t know if they want me or the baby. But I am heroic, and I cover the baby as best as I can so she is not hurt. I’m pretty sure my friends at the table are just sort of staring as this is going down (some friends). For some reason, the Armed Bad Guy With A Gun Pointed To My Head leaves. I am relieved, and it occurs to me that I should cry, because I was just quite close to having a bullet shred my brains.

I get up, still holding the baby, and walk through the restaraunt. Armed Bad Guys seem to be gone. I see a man who I instinctively know is the baby’s father. I hand her over to him, making sure to explain that his daughter is allergic to acidic fruits: “No lemons, or oranges.” I walk away, then remember something else, and turn around: “And no grapefruit, either.”

Then I woke up.

(On a side note, when I write my dreams out like this, I can pretty accurately pick out where each of these odd details came from during my previous day. It’s incredibly fascinating, and you should try it sometime).

– one –
I could really go for a massage right about…. now. Just the back and shoulders, please. None of this kneading-your-knuckles-into-my-glutes crap, thanks. It feels as if someone buried his large, beefy fist into the space between my shoulder blades. I woke up this morning curled up into a small ball. Perhaps that’s why the act of exhaling feels like I’m stretching something that wasn’t there yesterday. I’m tempted to sleep strapped to a piece of plywood tonight.

That entire paragraph was vaguely…dirty.

– two –
I always figured that I wasn’t really a nut for science fiction, but I’ve realized over the years that my tolerance for the fantastical is quite high. In an effort to continue to make the best use of my Netflix subscription, I’ve been working through the first season of James Cameron’s Dark Angel* for the past few weeks-or-so, and I dig it. I only vaguely remember it existing when it premiered nine-ish years ago but, knowing me, I probably watched bits and pieces of it along the way back then. For any number of reasons, it didn’t stick (I was a freshman in college back then. Our television was permanently tuned to VH1), but it’s accurate to say that I’m hooked now.

For the record, my rate of cultural absorption is about 10-15 years, so my discovery of this long-cancelled series is right on target for me. Hey, have you guys heard of this band called No Doubt? They’re awesome!

– three –
I’m think that I’m going to try to post something every day, even if I can only manage to think in short, controlled bursts like these.

*I’m not sure if this series is considered “science fiction,” but it’s the first example up with which I could come.

Must…stop…thinking…everything…I … say… is…dirty…

I noticed that everything on my Facebook page was in Spanish at the same time a Spanish-language McDonald’s commercial came on the TV.

Talk about a mind fuck.

Ole!

Some miscellaneous thoughts, updates, and observations – neatly packaged for your browsing pleasure:

1. Yeah, yeah, yeah… I have mixed feelings about this latest release of Rockband, and my reticence stems from my deeply-rooted music snobbery. There, I said it: I cringe to think about people butchering the music I’ve revered since birth. Talk about a snob: I don’t boycott karaoke bars, and the concept is almost the exact frickin’ same. The flip side of this, though, is genuine excitement: though I love to karaoke, I’ve never in my life played Guitar Hero or Rockband (except for about 2 minutes on Carynn’s DS at Christmas last year). Perhaps this latest version of Rockband will be what it takes to finally get me to play. In a way, I hope it does so I can finally get over myself. Ah, well. Who knows?

2. Giddy for Glee. Watched Glee last night. Well, technically, I was flipping through the channels in my new Media Room (more on that later), and found it by accident. And – !!! – trying to contain my giddiness here, for fear of making a fool of myself – !!! – what a happy accident it was! (Deep breaths, Julie…). I had zero expectations for this show going in. I’ve been doing a lot of reading up on the upcoming series and season premieres, but sort of glossed over the critics’ reviews of Glee because I had it pegged as some TV version of High School Musical. Matthew Morrison’s face was plastered across the latest issue of the Charter magazine this month, and I instantly gave him a mustache, yellow highlights, and perhaps some neck ink, I can’t remember. Aaaaaaaanyway… I only saw about half of the premiere, and my one sentence review is something like this: aaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! Love it.

3. Contradictions and Revelations. I now realize that the juxtaposition of my haughty disdain for The Beatles’ Rockband and my omgomgomg schoolgirl excitement over Glee is, well, odd.

4. The Job Front. I’m still looking for a job, and have lost track of the number of online applications I’ve completed, cover letters I’ve composed, and HR e-mails I’ve sent. I’m now signed up for alerts through Snag A Job, a site that very badly wants me to work at Long John Silver’s (Silvers? Silvers’?). And while I find myself occasionally craving Chicken Planks with the rest of ’em, I’ve not yet submitted my application for Shift Manager. Honestly, though, part of me wonders when it’s time to quit being stubborn and see if I can’t just go back to Sonic. (I do have new skates, after all).

5. The Media Room. Since he left for college a few weeks ago, I’ve taken to watching prime time television in my brother’s room, on the TV he so graciously left behind (or, more accurately, could not fit in his car). I’ve since rearranged the room for optimal TV viewing and antenna placement (while the stop-and-stutter when a digital antenna loses its signal is sort of funny at first, it gets old after about the sixteenth time). I don’t remember where I was going with this bullet point, so I guess I’ll just drop this thought and pick it up later.

Well, folks, that’s it.

‘Til next time…