I hardly slept last night because Pye insisted on being outside of my room, fighting and running around. And then she insisted on being inside my room. And then back out again. Also she was experimenting with the percussive qualities of litter and box.

But I did manage to have a dream where I worked at a radio station and the boss insisted on decorating the radio station excessively in Christmas decorations. Like our desks were buried in fake snow mountains that had trains running through them. She was big, blonde, and was having a noisy, giggly affair with a much smaller man from the station. She gave me tickets to a dance performance called "The Entrap Dancements."

Float like a butterfly, Sting like Pye

My roommate has a cat named Tye. And I have a cat named Pye. Seriously. (These were their names before we even met each other.) Tye is very large and the whole apartment is his. Pye is tiny and has only my room to herself.

So my roommate just told me what she saw last night. She was watching the two cats pawing at each other from under the door. Then she saw Pye's paw come all the way under the door. Tye backed up, took a running start, and threw all his weight against the door, causing it to open! And without a second's hesitation, Pye came out swinging and clawing, and just walloped Tye right on the side of the face. He was completely shocked by it, and backed off. Then Kelly closed the door.

Now don't get me wrong. I still believe in non-violence when it comes to humans. But i'm so proud of her! Pye is scrappy! She came out swinging. She's like the Ali of catboxing!

Blogging about cats.

I may not have a science degree, but I know water doesn't expand

Ice expands.

So explain my cubicle neighbor's "theory" to me:

"He said he needs it by 11:15, so I told him that means its 10:00 now, we've got an hour and 15 minutes. ITS THE WATER THEORY! You see, water expands, so its like that time is filled with water and water's got give. Its got room, see. Room to grow."

Seriously, this neighbor of mine has said some crazy things, but usually they have a trace of sanity. A trace.

Where's Sooz?

Soozercising? No. Pressing the Sooz button on her alarm clock? I wish.

Have you all been wondering where Sooz is? All billion of you? Well, as a 50-year-old famewhore would say, I'm still here damnit. I've just been busy and when faced with the prospect of blogging about things, the things seemed either:

1. Boring
2. Stupid
3. Too revealing

I could talk about yoga! There are several teachers at my studio. One is the gentle one who focuses on alignment. She's my favorite. Then there's the athletic one who shouts the positions like a flight attendant: "aaaand downward facing dog!"
My least favorite one is the one who I'm pretty sure is a con-artist. This is the girl who probably went to one yoga class, realized she could teach it, and faked a resume. All so that her boyfriend could rifle through our stuff while we innocently stretched. Or at least thats what I was imagining the whole time; not very relaxing. Its just that I've never had an instructor tell us to jump straight from tabletop to downward facing dog. Also she kept forgetting what the poses were called! Ridiculous.
The other thing about this girl was that she was too needy. She greeted us each individually and made us sit closer to her b/c she "won't bite." Either she needed to gain our trust whilst her boyfriend rifled, or she was severely insecure. I just don't want to be worrying about my instructor's self esteem during Vinyasa.
And yesterday there was one who sang. She just broke into song. I guess this is common practice, but at the time I had to hold my breath to keep from laughing.

So thats yoga. Another thing I'd like to address is rice and sauce dishes. Why are they so good? I don't care which country's people are cooking it, when rice and sauce are combined, it tastes good.

I saw the second half of War of the Worlds last night. I was like a mother the whole time: "Oh my god, that poor little girl! She is going to be so traumatized after this- can you imagine? Oh this is very scary. Cover her eyes! Somebody get the girl, GET THE LITTLE GIRL!" Now I have this strange desire to find Dakota Phanning and wrap her in blankets and rock her and stroke her face. I mean really. Seeing robots suck humans in through their sphincters and coat the earth with bloody veins? That is so not good for a girl.

Merry Christmas Everybody!

more about judo

Since I've recently figured out the basics of judo, i've decided to apply them to many unlikely places. For the untrained, the basics of judo, as I understand them, are:

Turn the opponent's weapon on them.
Take advantage of the opponent's weakness.

Examples
-If a bear sits on you, sit on him!
-If several zombies try to trap you in a room, simply escape from the room and trap the zombies in the room.
-If a karate chop comes at your head, move to the side and karate chop the chopper.

So those are the standard examples. Here are some judo results i'd like to see:

1. If you know a millionaire, become the millionaire!
2. When the train is going slow, slow the rest of the world down so that the "crawler" is in fact an "express" as it was supposed to be.
3. When you buy a new jacket, have the store give you some money too.

Sweet Valley

Today's show that I would like to reminisce on is "Sweet Valley High." This show, along with "Breaker High" which featured the young Noah Calhoun, satisfied some sort of hunger inside of me. Its a desire that a lot of ladies experience; the desire to indulge in something totally shallow and lame and as far away from "high art" as possible.
But my favorite thing? The opening song of the show:

"Look right down in a crowded hallway. You see there's a beauty standing. Is there really two of them or...a reflection? Sweeeet Valley, sweet valley, hiiiiiiiiiiigh!"

We used to practice walking through our high school hallways and doing this "turn and smile and wave" thing, that we felt was the essence of high schoool tv shows. Even with short brown hair, you can pretend to flip your long blonde locks in a devil-may-care attitude.



Don't go thinking you got away with reading this post without a little gosling claim. So yeah Gosling was on breaker high, so....I saw him first. Dibs.

3 randoms

1. You know those commercials for careerbuilder that show the guy who works in an office with only monkeys? The thrust of their message is "this guy wants a new job." But guess what? That message doesn't work on me. Because I would LOVE to work in an office with only monkeys. Are you kidding me? Jumping on bubble wrap? Playing with our food? The possibilities fill me with a deep and powerful joy.

2. This morning on the subway, I was so rude as to unabashedly invade the private reading space of pure Royalty. You see, on the crowded L train, the center aisle is designated specifically for men to hold their books in. Once having found his seat, or "perch," it is a noble man's prerogative to lean forward and rest his cavalier arms upon his knees. And then to not move. No matter what. When the doors opened and masses of passengers pressed me unwillingly towards the gentlemen's giant bubble, I was unable to hold the levee. And, without my knowledge, the tip of my bag passed in front of (without touching) the top two sentences of his precious text. Without looking up, he took my bag in his hand and pressed it firmly away from his personal study lounge. I blushed at my own audacity. Oh yeah, and the precious text? I was able to glance at the chapter title and it was about witches. Witches. If you're going to be a crazy asshole, at least try not to be such a dorky one. Dorkface.

3. My friend is one of those spellers who uses the age old trick "when in doubt, add a letter." I love it.

Express Yourself

Sometimes on the internet you come across something so subtle in its beautiful hope and freedom. And yet totally awkward and adolescent. Hence:

Senior Portraits

This reminds me of that dear time when you actually believed that a picture could express your true nature so that everybody at school would see the real you.

Whether its feeling so naturally in touch with water that you'll crawl into it in your clothes, or so in love with track that you'll sprawl across it like a Broadway star, these pictures capture the essence of insecurity in its subtlest fashion. I love them.

Remember when you were not embarrassed to pose in arabesque in a grassy knoll just to express how joyfully you will take on the world, at the same time as you remind people that you've had 8 years of dance at Maria Escalante Studios?

Remember when you were proud of medals? Medals.

Remember when you saw yourself as a wandering spirit, having just read On the Road, so you chose the traintracks as a setting for your story? The start of a journey.

Remember your violin? Or your horse? Sigh.

Amish people don't like having their pictures taken

Maybe one of the best things we could do for the Nickel Mines Amish people would be to stop taking pictures of them.

A story from my past regarding Bette Midler

When I was in fifth grade we had to do a biographical project about our hero. Other people picked Malcolm X. I picked Bette Midler. Also, instead of the standard posterboard, I wrote a video interview between Barbara Walters and Bette Midler, casting myself as Bette. My costume was:

A gray wig
Neon green biker shorts
A purple sweater
High heels
A red purse

In the interview Barbara asked me about the death of my parents and I acted out "getting choked up" which involved no real tears. Which reads a little bit like "making fun of Bette Midler's parents' deaths."

At one point I wanted "The Wind Beneath My Wings" to fade in as we pretended to small talk after the interview. My solution? Place a tape player behind the couch and sneak my hand behind it and press play. Sneaky! In the video, you see me do this, and then I look at the camera with panic in my eyes. Its not plugged in! So I get up and plug it in and then just go sit on the couch and say "technical difficulties."

We didn't edit any of this out for the presentation to the class.

I just ate a crumb from between my keyboard keys.

iGallop

The horsequin's cousin

I know what this is really for. And its not practicing my equestrian skills.

fashion and politics

I spend a lot of time in my day thinking about those two topics. Like today I had this thought: "Is fashion always an escape from politics, or do the two ever entertwain?" And then I realized I had made up a brilliant new word that I was very happy with.

Today I saw this:



Its really great for a lot of reasons, but the main one is that horsequin. I am picturing three things:
1. Clothes designed for that horsequin
2. Real models trying to ride that horsequin down the runway, perhaps on wheels?
3. Fashionistas buying bridles and saddles even if they don't own a horse or horsequin.

Well put

New Mission

I know it has been a really long time since I posted. I've been trying to figure out what funny is, and its sometimes fun but other times it sucks. Here are some things that have happened to me recently that I thought were funny...

1. Lily Dale. Lily Dale is a real town in upstate New York. In order to buy realty there you have to be a medium, psychic, or spiritual healer of some kind. We decided to take a road trip up there and found out that connecting with the spirit world is actually just like any other job. They were closed on Labor Day. The whole town except for two psychics who were booked all day. So we wandered around through their little village. The roads are so tiny there they have golf carts. And they all buy into that "Glinda the good witch" school of design. Angel dolls, crystals, etc. I was hoping we'd find the bad witch amongst all of them but apparently their main belief is that the world is good and the spirits wish to do us no harm. Then we found their BBQ. The whole town was having a picnic and we weren't invited. I started to really get mad at those psychics. I wanted some sweet grandmother to waddle over to me just because she could see so clearly that I needed some answers. But it didn't happen. It made me not want to believe. But I did buy a book about Lily Dale in the Crystal Cove shop and after reading about it, I think I want to go back. P.S. I'm also a fan of all the tricks the fake psychics used to do, like "spirit cabinets" where they just hid a person in the cabinet and the person made sounds and somehow that convinced a visitor that there were spirits in there.

2. I watched a Richard Pryor DVD. I think we're supposed to be inspired by people who were so awesome at what they did. But I'm just scared shitless. He was so good its insane.

3. Pye (the cat) likes sleeping under my bedcovers. Its cute when she does that because then its like having a little baby in my arms. It doesn't last long, however, and I finally figured out why she does it. Because she doesn't like the fan. And last night she decided "if you can't hide from it, play with it," which in this case meant "go over the bed, go under the bed, go over the bed, go under the bed" because that way she was tricking the moving air. I don't know. Since I have an imagination, and I happen to have just finished reading a book about spirits, I decided she was playing tag with a ghost, not the fan. Even though I knew it was the fan, I decided there was a chance it was a ghost. And if that was the case, it was only a matter of time before the ghost made itself known to me. And I really couldn't handle that, so I put Pye out of the room.

4. There are some things I hate about my neighborhood. Number one is the eurotrash fashion of the middle aged Polish women. Number two is the truck brigade. Number three is the barking dog, who I'm pretty sure has stopped barking now because his owner is abusing him, so now I sort of want him to start barking again just so I know he's alive. Number four is the hipsters. Number five is the bus that never runs.

5. My dad is a talker. So am I. Last night I told him we both can really talk. He said "I'm not as bad as my brother Dave!" I said thats true but Dave isn't as bad as grandpa was, and I'm not as bad as you are. The pattern is it gets worse with age.

6. My friend and I were at a show a few weeks ago. She turned her cell phone off. Like you do. In the middle of the play everybody heard somebody in the audience making a phone call on speakerphone. Not a phone RINGING, but a phone CALLING someone. Then an answering service picked up and it was her boyfriend's outgoing message. She jumped and turned it off. This means that her phone was sound asleep, woke up, grew arms, turned itself on, pressed speaker phone, dialed a number, and pressed send.

Old dead wives tales

A few nights ago, my friend fixed my necklace, because the clasp was in front. She said "did you ever believe that thing that if the clasp is in front, it means someone is thinking about you?"
"Well," I said, "I always thought if your nose itched, it meant someone was thinking about you..."
We stopped and stared at each other, the sad truth dawning on us. In that look it became very clear how deeply we had been duped. Old wives tales are nothing but old, dead wives tales, totally invented for no reason except to make girls think boys somewhere have crushes on them. Because growing up, we always assumed "someone is thinking about me" meant they liked you, not that they hated you.
You could say anything meant anything. "Oh, I just threw up! I guess somebody, somewhere has a huge crush on me!"

A movie I'd like to see is

"Leaky Jars of Acid on a Plane"

Dear Tommy Tutone

Thanks a lot for giving the whole world my phone number.

Sincerely,
Jenny
(867-5309)

"tools"

You know how new computer applications are sometimes called tools? hmmm.

Remember when cavemen invented tools? No? Neither do I. But it probably went exactly like this:

The caveman grunts at the carcass which he can't skin. He wants to make a pelt! Its going to get cold soon! He beats the carcass with his fists, he pulls on the carcass. He tears at the carcass with his teeth and it budges. His teeth can't cut through the skin, but they can make a dent! He tries to sharpen his tooth. OUCH! He finds a piece of wood and tries to sharpen that. He can now poke a hole in the hide! This is a start! Now we're talkin'!

That was the guy who INVENTED the tool. The other cavemen, the ones who came after him, were supposed to just be thankful that they had the tool, and feel that the tool MADE THEIR JOB EASIER.

So how do we explain this:

The Sooz grunts at the pile of receipts. She opens the new application and the online training session in unison. She starts pausing the training session b/c it moves too fast. She finds that she has to print out a barcode from the expense report, fax it to an imaging center with the receipts, and notify the app that the receipts have been sent, noting the barcode. After that she has to wait a day and log back on so she can view her receipts and attach them. then she gets an alert. There are unattached amex expenses somewhere. She doesn't have access to the amex tool, so after 15 emails to the security team, she gets access. but even though amex, and the company, have records of the amex expenses, she still needs to get the hardcopy receipts from her boss. He doesn't have them. time ticks. The tool times out and erases all the work. Thats ok because there were several fields she hadn't filled out yet, like this one: "Select Types of Expense: ENT: non-Americas or SEC: client meal."

NOT A TOOL.