The Unicorn of the Sea

(Setting: front desk of our office, me and three seccretaries)

Me: I wonder how you get to be a commentator on one of those nature shows. You know, the ones that are like (begin vague brit/aussie accent) 'and here we see the Narwhal, recognized by the golden horn attached to its nose. Known as the 'unicorn of the sea', the Narwahl uses his magnificent horn to spear his food.'

Secretaries: Hahahahahahhaa!

(pause)

Someone else: Do they really spear their food?

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Tee hee hee!

Friday Night

This is what really happens on a Friday night in the life of an AVERAGE person:

Get home from work

Sit around

Best friend comes over

Talk about boys

Play some Mario on the wii

Swear at Mario/Luigi and fire throwing plants

Take a break to go out to eat

Swear at idiot drivers

Eat Mexican food

Eavesdrop on conversations at tables around you

Drive back, swearing at idiot drivers

Play more Mario and swear some more at things that come back to life and crazy purple fire

High five each other when you beat Bowser

Move on to next world

Put friends on speaker phone so you can keep playing Mario and swearing at game

Friends appalled at language and when they hear you say "F*** ME!" inform you it sounds like you are having a lesbian night in, even though words were clearly said in anger at dying 5 times in a row

Friends then ask why you two don't drive home and go out with them, say they will pay you to be their DD. You decide payment wouldn't cover cost of driving/joy of crushing Bowser and decline then hang up on them.

Play more Mario and try to come up with more creative swear words, then change strategy by going back to world 1 and playing easiest level in attempt to raise number of lives to 100.

Decide to watch tv.

Watch a movie on TeenNick and decide it's all a sham, how they portray people's lives and relationships. In real life, people are WAY more complicated.

Begin talking about boys again

Watch more of movie

Eat ice cream

Swear at tv for showing same commercials ten zillion times between movie

Go to bed

The End.

Come On. . .

I'm watching 'World's Strictest Parents' on MTV. And so far, the family the two teenagers have been transplanted to seems like they have completely normal expectations.

Their rules are:
-No swearing - easy enough of a rule to follow. I still don't swear in my parents' house because I feel like its disrespectful, even though they have never said to me that it's not allowed. And they swear in front of me all the time. Ha.

-No smoking - this is a disgusting habit, anyway, so I don't think it's unreasonable. The parents explained that when the kids smoke, EVERYONE has to smell it and this is totally true.

-Make your bed every morning - again, NOT unreasonable. I never had to do this, but I don't think it's too hard of a task.

-Put your dirty clothes in the hamper - DUH.

So far, these parents are NOT strict, they are average.

The kids have already walked out to the street so they can smoke and talk about how much they already hate the parents. Give me a break.

The mom is telling the girl she likes long hair to be pulled back at the table because she doesn't like food and hair to get entangled, she thinks its gross. Also, no elbows on the table. The hair thing is nitpicky.

ooooooooo, they have HORSES!! I LOVE horses! They smell so nice.

Man, these kids are a couple of smart ass punks. And everyone is totally hamming it up for the cameras. This just reinforces why reality shows are irritating. Time to change the channel.

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Last night I saw the new Disney movie 'The Princess and the Frog'. I enjoyed it a lot more than i thought I would. There was a lot of singing, it seemed like they overdid that part a bit, but I liked the characters. Ray the firefly was my favorite, with his 5 teeth and cajun accent. The bad guy was a pretty good one, too, the evil Shadow-Man, with his creepy shadow that was always doing malicious things to other people and his ties to his 'friends on the other side' (read: evil voodoo spirits). The trumpet playing gator, named Lou, reminded me of King Louie from Jungle Book. Both Lou and Louie sing songs about wanting to be human, although Lou just wants to play Jazz, not be King over everything.

It was even slightly scary, like when Shadow-Man's evil spirits went searching through New Orleans for the prince and there was much shrieking and scary sounds. There was quite a bit more frogginess than I had anticipated, though. And the prince's accent was weird. It was like a strange mix of Arabic/Italian/French/Island accents. All in all, though, I enjoyed the movie.

I Love Words

Which is why I read a lot. I love experiencing the trail of words penned by someone leading you through a story.

I just finished The Tommyknockers by Stephen King. It was allright. Every time I read something by him, I think that he must be a very strange person in real life.

I also read The Disreputable History or Franki Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart. This book was wonderful. It's in the YA section, but some of my favorite books are in that category.

I like when books have sentences, paragraphs and chapters that make you feel like you are connected to the story, to the author, to the ideas. It's like someone saying to you , 'hey there, you're not alone in your thought about X, someone else has had this same conclusion.'

I'm not surprised I love learning languages given my adoration for words in general. So many ways to say things, and so many connotations to be learned. Language is beautiful. If only I was a master of it and able to make use of it so elegantly.

Face Tattoos. . .

. . .are weird, yet if someone has one, I HAVE to stare at it. I wonder where you can work at if you have that kind of tattoo? Call centers? Radio stations? Goodwill? Record stores? Tattoo parlors? Stockrooms? Someone came into our office today with a face tattoo. I wanted to ask about it, but I didn't get the chance, unfortunately. I doubt there are many warrior cultures left in this country, so I don't have any idea what this person's story was.

I also saw someone with a teardrop tat on their left eye, but they didn't really look like a tough guy, more like a d-bag. Also, I heard they went to prison for something like not paying money owed. Pretty sure that just makes you a jerk and not a badass. Sorry, dude.

On a sidenote, I absolutely hate when people who smoke come into the office because after they leave, the room they were in usually smells like cigarettes. And we have to Lysol it to clear it out. Gross. Just this knowledge will ensure that I NEVER EVER pick up a cigarette. Also, I will always practice personal hygiene because smelly people also leave a trail.

Stop Changing the Covers of Books

I don't understand why, whenever a new movie comes out, the book it was based on is re-released with a new cover depicting characters/scenes from the movie. It irritates me because I just want to read the book, and not have a bunch of books of my shelf with annoying new jackets instead of the original ones.

Now my bookshelf will look like I don't actually LIKE reading, I just like owning the books because I saw the movie, which is not necessarily true. Can't they just keep selling the books with the original jackets alongside the newer ones? Pleeeeeaaase?

So I've Been Watching A Lot of TV Lately. . .

And I've suddenly remembered why I previously chose not to.

A.) Taco Bell's "Drive Thru Diet" - HA! I say again, HA! I know the fine print says something about this not being a real diet and people should be watching calorie intake and exercising regularly, but HOW MANY PEOPLE are going to see this fine print/care to read it. Now, I'm sure a lot of people are going to laugh when they see this commercial and think, "YEAH, RIGHT!", but the fact that they are even trying to rope consumers into linking "diet" and "Taco Bell" irks me a tad.

B.) The Real World. So I watched an episode or two and I just sat there dumbfounded. One memorable quote kind of sums the caliber of characters on there - "All the roommates are boy, girl, boy, girl. I don't think it was planned that way, I think it was random." UH-HUH. OF COURSE it's completely random that four boys just HAPPENED to be roomed with four girls. And the two "rocker/artsy" people were paired together. Yes, there is absolutely NO scheming involved whatsoever. Also, within about ten minutes of being together, characters are already all over each other, literally. Say, "bye-bye", faithful boy/girl friends who might be waiting at home.

C.)Football. I know a lot of people love this sport, but I just don't care. And this time of year, it's ALWAYS on. At least I can cross off the days until the superbowl and finally get a break from this madness.

D.) News. This is just depressing in general. When the Obamas aren't doing some movie star - like appearances (I think I remember seeing a commercial for Michelle Obama appearing on Iron Chef), I'm forced to hear about how the recession is "over", how the war is moving into Afghanistan, or how the 2ft of snow we got a week ago is a winter disaster. The local news channels have since changed their advertisements to portray them as being on top of it when it came to the blizzard of '09 or whatever it was. Maybe if this state didn't suck at clearing roads and responding to massive amounts of snow, it wouldn't have been made into such a big deal. I mean, COME ON!!!!

E.) Marathons of CSI, Law & Order, and NCIS are ALWAYS ON. I don't even flip to USA or TBS anymore because I already know it's always one of those three on there.

F.) Any reality show, really. I do like Top Model, but I tend to not watch until they do the photo shoots because I actually love the pictures, even though I hate the drama that goes on in these types of shows . On BBCAmerica, I caught an episode or three of 'Britain's Missing Top Model' and they were doing a season where all the contestants were handicapped in some capacity. There was actually conversation between the models claiming that some of the girls weren't handicapped enough. I guess being deaf doesn't make you as handicapped as missing half an arm.

G.) TV Guide channel. I'm sure this happened a while ago, but I'm going to comment on it now - the amount of space allotted to the actual GUIDE section of the channel is entirely too small. I didn't change the channel to watch "Sexiest Women of Sci-Fi", I changed it to FIND OUT WHAT IS ON THE OTHER CHANNELS. Thank Baby Jesus for the mute button.

H.) Speaking of which, I often use this button because the commercials are LOUDER than the programs. I read recently that there was some legislation passed to prohibit commercials' volume from exceeding that of the tv show, and I say that is the best thing they have passed in a long time.

Of course, there are a few shows that I actually enjoy watching:
Big Bang Theory
America's Best Dance Crew (coming back Jan. 28th!)
Glee
Fringe
Sing Off

And Syfy (WHY did you change your name, sci-fi channel? WHYYYYYY?) original movies. So suck-tastic, yet so awesome. If you have not seen Flu Bird Horror, Beyond Sherwood Forest, Ice Spiders, or anything else with terrible CGI stuff, you are missing out.

There is Nothing New About The New Year

I still live in the same house.

Still have the same job.

Still like ice cream and dinosaurs.

We're still in a war.

Still in a recession.

I still haven't read anything by Emily Dickinson.

I still don't believe in New Year's Resolutions.

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In other news, I just read the book "Bitter is the New Black" by Jen Lancaster. It inspired me to renew my "I-Am-SOOOOO-Worth-More-Than-This" job hunt. In the book's plot, the main character goes from being the VP of a marketing (?) firm to unemployed and rapidly has to reevaluate how much material things are worth to her, since you can't pay rent with Prada. Summaries and reviews about the book label the author as bitchy, but I think she's really great. She is assertive and confident, and yes, a little mean at times, but I agreed that some of the meanness was necessary.

In real life, bitchy people always get talked about and torn apart by other people who think they are NOT being bitchy by talking about someone else being that way. The world needs these people. They get things done. They call you out for messing up, instead of smiling and letting you get away with a half-assed job. Go them!! Perhaps they can be TOO bitchy, but for the most part, a little bit of assertiveness and penchant for The Right Thing is admirable. If I were to make a New Year's Resolution, which I won't because I think they are ridiculous, I would resolve to be more of a bitch. Maybe I would start getting what I want if I was.

But not the mean, nasty, only talks about people and has no ambition type of bitch. More like the THIS IS WHAT I WANT NOW I WILL MAKE IT HAPPEN type. Because in the end, all you have to rely on is yourself. And maybe your dog.