Bathroom thoughts

In the bathroom, you realize things.

You're trying desperately not to concentrate on the task at hand, unless you're having a great deal of difficulty. Because the task at hand, for most intents and purposes, is fairly boring. Just cleaning out the system.

So you sit around thinking. Pondering. If you're at work or in a store, you listen to the music.

The music at my new internship is weird. It sounds like a rotation of 2 CDs, which seem to be titled something like The Very Worst of the Jackson Five and Bad Shawn Mullins Immitators Sing Hideous Lyrics.

Since I'm an audio specialist, bad background music drives me absolutely batshit. I asked the guys I work with how they could stand the music, but apparently they have TV theme songs in the men's room, which even if annoying, are at the very least short.

The other thing you do, if the office bathroom has much harsher lighting than your home bathroom, is stare at the formerly unknown mountainous blemishes on your face when you make it out of the stall.

Because the light in your home bathroom is far more flattering, when you look in the mirror you see a reasonably attractive human being. When you look in the mirror at work under extremely strong fluorescent lights, you see a walking pizza.

The thing I noticed today was that there are six blemishes on my face that form odd patterns. There's three sets of two, each set with its pair the same distance apart. There's one on my nose, one under my right eye, and one on the bottom of the right side of my face.

The sets are spaced in a manner that makes it look like I've been bitten three times by a vampire. Or perhaps by three different vampires.

I've had these blemishes for some time, but I only noticed the spacing today when I was trying to rid myself of the ones on my nose and just happened to look at the right angle, and went, "Oh shit."

Maybe I should call my landlord and have my apartment sprayed for vampire bats. You know, just in case.

I'm so stealing this phrase

Checking my email after a weekend of neglect, I found the following phrase in one of my Patty Griffin mailing list (sign on to the Mad Mission!) emails. Darcie Miner, a woman who is hugely active on the list, is also a musician and got picked to open for Patty in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

This is a big fucking deal, because Patty is fucking phenomenal live, and has been drawing really big crowds on her tour. For an up and coming musician, landing an opening slot like this is amazing. One of the reactions from a fellow mailing list member was:

"JESUS BREAK DANCING CHRIST!!!!"

I have got to find a way to work that phrase into my life somehow.

The odd things you find

...when cleaning your inbox: a really fucked up version of Romeo and Juliet. Be forewarned, it's a little long, but it's funny.

Goooooooooooooooooooooooooooool!

Top 5 Signs An American Has World Cup Fever:

5. Claims Cup as excuse for staying up until 3am when she has to be at work at 8:30am, instead of traditional stupidity.

4. Actually begins to wonder what the fuck "stoppage time" and "golden goals" are.

3. Decides to watch the game on Telemundo because their satellite feed is 10 seconds faster.

2. And because the announcers are so much more amusing.

1. Starts calling it football instead of soccer.

Never underestimate

The gullibility of the American Consumer.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

So while I was in Atlanta, one roommate moved out, one left for the summer, and a subletter came. This all within a period of about 3 days.

Cleo moved in with her boyfriend Eddy (who also is going into my golden god list for helping me pick up and disassemble a futon the other day), Katy went home to San Fransisco for the summer, and Subletter No. 1, Karim, arrived.

Karim seems cool. He's some sort of math professor from Trinidad, though he looks like he must have gotten his PhD in fluid mechanics at age 20 or so, since he could easily pass for about 25. I think he's actually about 33 or so.

It's odd living with people I don't know again. I've done this before, and the results were...uh...mixed.

Karim seems cool though, and he seems to be a workoholic, so I guess that decreases the chance that the apartment will simply smell like weed and chili powder for most of the summer. But it'll certainly be interesting.

Surprise!

Surpises are so fun when they work. And boy, was my dad suprised when I walked in the door on friday afternoon.

I had spent the last month or so insisting that I was too busy to come visit him in Atlanta, since my stepmom got me into this insane plan to surprise him. It was worth it for the look on his face.

The essence of it was, "Wait, you're in Chicago! How the fuck can you possibly be here?!"

Good times. The rest of the weekend was bizzare yet moderately uneventful (well, my stepnephew Jacob clinging to my leg like a barnicle was entertaining, and his mom [my stepsister-in-law] is pregnant again, but that was it in terms of news of note).

The oddest part of the whole weekend was that when I came back, it actually took less time to fly from Atlanta to Chicago than it did to get from Midway back to my apartment.

Yay for the El...