Chats with Dad

I read "Let's Pretend this Never Happened" by Jenny Lawson this last weekend, then started mainlining her blog (I'm on page 61 of the "previous posts").

So basically, I'm regurgitating her writing style as well as feeling pseudo-guilty that I never write blog posts frequently enough and at that point where it's like "no one's gonna read this anyway," so I thought I'd post random snippets of conversation with my dad.

From this morning:

Fishing: you're doing it wrong

From not this morning: 
me: Quick, give me a biscuit pun

 Daddy!: you are half baked

  i never have enough dough

don't get in a jam

  you'er toast

  you're

  moms

 me: your mom's face is toast

  thanks
This is how I found out my big brother was engaged: 

Daddy!: Oh yea

  U see ace is engaged

 me: I found out after patrick

8:10 PM Daddy!: Of sourse he's a douchbag

 me: I found out because patrick posted Congrats to your brother, and good luck being the only sibling not married.

  douche

  but i'm not really sure where my phone is

8:11 PM so if you call me a couple times i'll pretend i was tried to be informed before all of facebook

 Daddy!: Oh tay

 me: maybe a text too

  that's not from twitter

  and if you really want to be extravagant, a snail mail letter

 Daddy!: Want me z2 call ur phone?

 me: maybe some sky writing

8:12 PM nah

  i don't have it with me i'm pretty sure

  and i'm listening to live music

  it'd be a bit rude if it went off

 Daddy!: Calling 7 now

 me: 7?

  I'm 7?

  what??

  that's it, i'm changin your nmber to 3

  mom's now 2

8:13 PM I seriously have no idea where it is

  maybe it's in my bedroom

  ...

 Daddy!: I just called u
Conclusion: I love my dad, and I can't figure out the formatting tab to save my life. (why you no left-align, post? v.v)

Be Prepared!

The other day, I was wearing a button-up shirt under a brown halter top dress from J. Crew (what I think of as my "Maria Von Trapp" outfit), when I had the sudden realization that I would be completely unprepared if I were to suddenly fall into a mystical or dimensional vortex and end up in another plane of existence.

Brown dress + white button-up = not just for picnics anymore

This was strange to me.

Not the thought itself, but the fact that I was unprepared. I was the kind of girl who, growing up, only began to use a purse so I could put handy things in it in case I was ever abruptly abducted from reality. Common items included a length of string, yarn, or rope (depending on what I could find), scissors, shiny things (in case currency was different), and a butt-ton of writing utensils (because I was a firm believer in "the pen is mightier than the sword").

I had a queen-sized bed (that my brothers could unfortunately fit under), but a twin-sized body (pun completely intended). Because of this, I tended to store (or just lose) items in the areas of the bed I didn't take up with... me. Usually, this would just be a bunch of books, 'cause I'd read 4 or 5 at a time, and would frequently fall asleep in the middle of a page. But there were always some "just-in-case-of-dimensional-travel" things too.

Socks, for one. For some reason, I was sure I'd need an extra pair of socks in a different world. Also my nunchucks/college toy flippy things.

And after watching Labyrinth, I'd always have some cheap shiny jewelry for bribes (see previous note on currency).

These days, my bed is small enough for just me, and close enough to the ground so that no brother can grab my ankles without first digging a trench for his body underneath (it doesn't even matter that they both live in different states, they'd find a way). However, I'm still on the lookout for opportunities to become the main character in a sci-fi/fantasy novel. My car has become my new stockpile of "just-in-case-of-dimensional-travel" things.

It comes in handy more often than you think. Just last weekend, I was the heroine of the hour, because I had a roll of toilet paper, Halloween costume makeup, superglue, old earphones, packing tape, and scissors in my car.

What's funny about it is I really don't have anything in case of actual emergency. My jumper cables are crap, and I have absolutely no idea where my spare tire is, much less what I'd do if I blew a tire (other than calling my dad, obviously).

Since I have no plan on how to end this post gracefully, I'm just going to let it awkwardly peter out with this:

Next time you can't sleep, start thinking of what would happen if you were to be sucked into an alternate world carrying only what is in your bed, car, or purse.

I bet it changes a couple of your packing habits.

The Book - daddy edition

I promised my dad the other day (in this case, a couple years ago), that I'd write a book for him for Christmas.

Luckily, I didn't say which Christmas. 

For a while, every time we did anything together (or rather, any time he did something completely hilarious or outrageous) I'd tell him, or he'd tell me "this is going in the book."

So that's what the tag "The Book" is about.

The Roach Mafia

The other day, in my old apartment...

Wait, lets back up in a horrible show of writing flow and continuity so I can explain something. I say "the other day" when I mean an indeterminate time in the past. It substitutes for phrases such as "last year," "two days ago," and "earlier today," even though earlier today definitely shouldn't qualify as "other" unless something truly bizarre went down like an alien invasion or a nomination for president. You know, something world changing (for me, obviously - I'm narcissistic like that). In this particular case, "the other day" means early July or late June, after BFFC moved in, during the middle of the summer.

So, the other day, in my old apartment, a roach flew in while BFFC and I were about to make the trek to take out the garbage (I like to take it to the dumpster even though i get charged for the convenience of a "valet" can every month). This is in the middle of summer in the South, so roaches are freakin' everywhere - to the point that someone with a real debilitating fear of them would be in a hermetically sealed room in the fetal position, waiting for the good drugs to take the crawly things away. There are tree roaches (the big mofos that are like, 2 inches long),  those little end-of-your-thumb-sized red roaches that pile up in little suicidal piles around light sources that for some reason I always associate with the bathrooms at state park campgrounds, what optimistic people call "June bugs" which are actually roaches in a clever, shiny disguise, and your standard "Oh my sweet Lord kill it with a hammer*" roaches that are found in gross apartments year-round. I do not have a gross apartment most of the time, but this particular apartment is at ground level and set back into a hill, so while air conditioning tended to be cheaper due to earth insulation, bugs tended to be a serious issue because I was invading on their buggy kingdoms.

Fat Lady Much?

So, it's all over. HUGE FRICKEN SIGH!!!

I graduated (magna cum laude, and departmental honors mofos!) last Saturday, and am now drifting aimlessly in the world.

I figure i'd try and get a job in my chosen career, and eventually (like in 10 years or so) come back to grad school and get a masters in library science, and eventually a doctorate in something or other. My largest problem about gradual school (as Robin Williams said in Life According to Garp, it's where students go to gradually realize they don't want to be in college anymore) is that i have no idea what i'd be focused on. I like English, but i don't want to get a doctorate in teaching or any specific area. Not to mention the idea of a dissertation makes me want to run away screaming.

My honors thesis ended up at a solid 35 pages, 40 with work cited. I still need to put in a source (yeah, imagine my horror during the defense when I was asked about a source that was not in the freaking works cited page) and restructure the introduction a bit to show how it ended up changing, but it's purty good.

I'm done at Big City Magazine, and managed to end up with a byline in the latest issue (suweet!).

And oh yeah, i'm done with school!!!!!...!!!. (that punctuation sums up my feelings pretty accurately). I got my grades back and it turns out i managed to break my annual spring slump, rounding out BOTH semesters at my university with 4.0 scores. yeah, i'm badass.

Coffee House is working out ok, but I really need to get a career type job soon if i'm going to continue to afford my apartment. Yeah, i have an apartment, and not with Crazy Lady, Friends to Horses, or Once and Future Roommate. It's with someone I found on Craigslist, Law Student. She seems nice so far, but we'll see, I guess.

Well, that's my life in a nutshell. What's up with you?

written while writing the thesis of doom

As i get further into my thesis (i'm in section 1 of 3 right now, excluding intro and conclusion) i realize that the reason i'm having so many issues with just writing is that i'm fighting the discourses taught to me throughout my academic career. Using I without retribution in an academic paper is blowing my mind, but it's a component part of explaining my purpose and use. since i'm not writing literary analysis, most of my argument comes from other people (esp in sections 1 and 2, section 3 is my contribution) and that's difficult to stick with. i was taught to avoid saying "in this paper, I will show" but that is EXACTLY what i'm supposed to be doing.

i understand why we are taught this way (especially after reading and editing some of my peers' papers who aren't inclined to writing) but it's kind of like going to calculus after pre-cal. You've learned the hard, difficult way, and now it's time for the short cuts; only problem is it feels like some kind of cheating or cheapness.

very frustrating. (my general writing kinda sucks today anyways - cheapness? really?)

Of Poets and Parts of Speech

As an aspiring editor and an avid lover of the phenomenon of Language, not to mention a person immersed in the literary world of an English major, I occasionally have a geek out in which i start to think of Stuff I'd Like to Write a Paper On - or rather, Things I'd Like to See Other People Write Because I'm a Lazy Sonnuvagun. One such geeking occurred yesterday, so i thought i'd blog rather than actually do research and junk :D (oh emoticons... how i love thee).

In my 200 level Linguistic class (the introductory class to linguistics rather than a grammar or history of the language course) we used the first two lines of Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky to emphasize the way we can classify parts of speech by using an innate sense of sentence placement, so we can recognize words that we have never heard before as a noun or verb as long as it is in a context using function words. The example was :

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves 


Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;


All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

Lewis Carroll, "Jabberwocky" lines 1-4

Snow my god!

It's snowing. In our state. in our portion of our state. this is not a frequent event. Actually, it's sticking as i watch, which leads me to believe in global warming (apparently, it's not just for heat anymore!). So, seeing as how i don't particularly want to read over my linguistics stuff (even though i love it), and hell has apparently frozen over (see beginning statement), i thought i'd take the opportunity to update my rather lame blog.

Bitch Bitch Moan Moan

i'm a horrible student.

well, not really. i'm a fabulous student... when i go to class. i'm one of those people who cannot STAND the awkward silence when a professor is desperately trying to avoid flat out giving all the answers and the students are desperately trying to avoid flat out thinking. This occasionally makes me "that guy" - you know, that one person who always has to say something and you can tell he just hasn't prepped or loves hearing his own voice (usually given nicknames by the rest of the class without their knowledge like "that girl with the teeth" or "stupid guy" or "y'know, the one that keeps bringing up sexual preferences?")- and i have to admit one of my biggest fears in the social scene is being labeled "that guy." At the same time, I still just can't let the silence build. It may be a linguistic thing (did you know that Americans cannot let silence be? after an average of 4 seconds of silence, an American will blurt out whatever they can to just... end... the... silence) but whatever the reason, i'm big on class participation. I love to learn, I don't really mind the reading (except when i do), and i'm of a quirky mindset that routinely leads to odd metaphors that helps others grasp concepts... like Robert Brown's Schroedinger's cat of morality (one of my favorite papers ever, even if it was for a 200 level class).

On the other hand...

No Such Thing

So, I love reading blogs that are "anonymous"-- cool nicknames for people and places, vague references to things, it's kinda like getting all of the human condition without having to deal with reality. Obviously others feel the same, or that "i don't know who you are and its attractive to me" thing in chat and im messages and movies wouldn't have taken off. In practice, however, this is freaking impossible.

seriously. i fix one thing so it's all cool and super-spy, and i just freaking expose myself to someone else... and that sounds way more sexually deviant than i intended.

So, if you do recognize me, help me with my denial and don't let on, k?