Note to self: The very friendly Asian woman who runs the grimy laundromat down the street and speaks no English should not be trusted to wash those expensive, richly colored dress shirts that you can’t afford to replace right now. There is no ancient Chinese secret being used there. Only cheap bleach.
Month: July 2000
Dorkitude Never Dies
Old habits die hard. No matter how old I get, or how much poise and self-confidence I have, I still have these occasional relapses to my high-school social instincts. Meaning that a lot of the time when I find myself around the cool, popular kids, I become a shy, awkward, babbling, grade-A loser. Why must the simplest things sometimes be so difficult?
Social Niceties
Another public apology to Jonno: I’m sorry I ran out of Fat Cock 29 so soon after you arrived last night. It was great to finally see you again, and I certainly wouldn’t have been so impetuous if I didn’t know we’d be boogeying at P.S. 1 with Dori and the Minx later today. It’s just that I’d gotten there early and ran into my friends Alan and Vincent and then Alan introduced me to some friends of his, including this cute, cute boy I couldn’t stop staring at. You know the one, the one I introduced to you. Well, you can imagine my surprise to discover he was staring at me the whole time, too — that kind of stuff doesn’t happen to me that often, especially in bars full of delicious downtown hotties. So we were chatting, and then pushed together by the crowds, and then flirting, and then kissing and stuff. Since you guys hadn’t shown up yet, I figured you may have decided not to deal with the long line outside. So when this fetching young man suggested we beat a hasty retreat, I was all over the idea. Then there you were. Doh! I didn’t mean to be rude or anything, I swear. I’ll make it up to you.
Taxicab Confessions
OK, now for a great New York moment: Riding a in a cab over the Manhattan Bridge, watching the skyline twinkle while making out, and hoping the occasional pothole doesn’t lead to a very unfortunate Garp moment.
Re: Dear John
It’s a very modern, very Internet-enabled thing to have someone break up with you via e-mail and AOL IMs, but it doesn’t feel very savvy. It still sucks.
I was waiting for this one to happen, but I’m still sad. And yes, I feel dopey for being sad, since I was expecting it, and since nothing had even gotten serious yet, but still…
Boys Suck
Either he’s been kidnapped or he doesn’t have the nerve to start that Final Conversation, because there hasn’t been any response to my messages. I have a pretty good idea which of the two it is. I’m sad, because I thought we may have been on to something. He was scared for the same reason. Or maybe it was the both-of-us-having-the-same-name thing. Who knows? Yeesh! Kids these days!
Interior Decorating Triumphs
In happier news, I finally have pictures to show what the Rumpus Room looks like furnished. Loyal readers have probably seen the unfurnished version, but you can now see what I’ve done with the place during the last year. (Just so you know, I only made a very half-assed attempt to color-correct these photos. You’ll have to come visit to get the full effect.)
Cubealicious
I wanna have sex with the new Apple G4 cube. It’s THAT unbelievably droolworthy. Not a single analog part in the whole damn thing. No fan. Only 8 inches high and wide. Did Wallpaper* finance the design of this or something?
The Ugly Truth
Despite what you may think, things are not very glamorous here in the Rumpus Room. After reading Tim’s theory that we designers work in incredibly pristine areas, and then going to look at the impossibly sexy Apple G4 Cube, I took a look at myself and my desk. This is the sad truth about why I don’t want a webcam recording me (not for the squeamish):
- I sit here in boxer shorts, black socks, and a Hanes t-shirt, because I never bothered to put other clothes back on after stripping off my office wear today. My eyes were hurting, so I’m wearing my glasses which are held together with a dab of hot glue in one of the hinges. sexy!
- I am slaving away at my old and dusty PowerMac 6500, which rises out of a heap of junk on my desk. I have just enough room to place a glass of Coke and a plate of cheese and crackers to have for dinner while I work. The pile of junk includes a stack of bills I am ignoring, marked-up proofs of a few jobs I’m doing, bunches of Polaroids, all the mail I’ve gotten in the last two months, and nail clippers to use during long downloads. sleek!
- I have a stool made from a bicycle seat next to my desk chair. The stool prevents me from walking over the weak spot in the floor that is about to collapse, because I don’t want to step in the dirt floor below the rotting plywood. Glamorous!
- I look over the top of the laptop I use for all of my porno…er, journal-writing, and I see a pile of previously worn pants and shorts growing on top of my dresser. This is next to the pile of dirty laundry on the floor, which sits there because I haven’t removed last week’s clean laundry from the laundry bag yet. That is sitting in the middle of the TV-watching area, by the Chinese take-out menus. sophisticated!
- I can hear the whispers of the dust bunnies as they grow in size, strength, and number. Send help if you I ever disappear altogether. Swanky!
- And I don’t even want to get started on the biological disaster area that is my kitchen.
This, That, Other Things
Oh god, it’s happening again. I’ll warn you all right now — you won’t be hearing much from me for a while. This is not a vacation from dealing with the website, this is just a hunch that I’m going to be sitting in my uncomfortable deskchair sweating bullets for a few days while I try to crank out a few projects before deadline. Here’s a few topics for you to mull over and e-mail me about in the meanwhile:
- I suspected that X-Men wasn’t really that good a movie, but I was so pleased that didn’t fuck it up as much as they could that I wound up really enjoying it. Plus, they got Wolverine right, which was the most important thing in the movie. How much, though, did you have to choke back YOUR nerdy instincts because of the ways they played fast and loose with the continuity of the comic book? (For example, why were Iceman and Jubilee students at the same time in the movie? Why, the very idea…!)
- New York may not be the best city in the world in everyone’s eyes, but it has its perks. I was riding the Metro in Washington, D.C., yesterday morning, and everyone just looked so boring. Hardly anyone cute or funky or insane in sight. What fun is that?
- Is it the jinx effect that’s making my life so aggravating right now?
- I caught about ten minutes of Sex in the City this weekend, a sequence in which Miranda and her impossibly sexy (because of the dork factor that I love so much) boyfriend and she were talking about the number of sexual partners they had. that’s always a thorny issue to bring up with people you date, isn’t it? I always worry that if I tell I may come across as a total trashcan, or some prude who’s passed up even more opportunities than I took. Not that I worry so much about what people think on this issue, but I have my own conflicted notions about whether or not I’ve been too free-wheeling over the last few years. Sometimes I think I have, but more often than that I just regret all the chances I’ve passed up over the years because I was feeling too prudish or too unattractive or too shy.