Look, I’m humoring you as far as the bloodlust goes, but cryptozoology I just won’t cotton to

According to this article, a gentleman named Richard Wilkins is running for Mayor of Sanford, Maine. I really need to find a picture of Mr. Wilkins, so I can be certain that he doesn’t look like this guy.

Seriously, I am concerned.

In produce news, check out the lovely apples I purchased at the market today:

Aren’t they lovely on their platter?  Except wait, that’s not a platter, that is a tiny plate and those aren’t just apples, they are the tiniest apples I have ever seen.  Observe:

For size reference, that is my bottle of Flintstones Sour Gummies (delicious, vitamin-y goodness, btw) and that is a tangerine.  Those apples are the size of a tangerine!  An unusually small tangerine!  They are called Lady Apples (not to be confused with Pink Lady Apples, which are always mealy and gross and I hate them) and the variety is, if the internet is to be believed, the oldest known to man, dating back to the 1st century C.E.  Who knew?

I just took a bite out of that one on the left there with the red butt and I must say, it’s delightful.  Very crisp and both sweet (the flesh) and tart (the skin) at the same time.  It does kind of make me feel like a monster, though.  Grr argh.

Can't talk. Dorking.

I am all kinds of hysterical right now and not because I went on that Pike Place Ghost Tour and keep imagining ghosties in old timey clothes everywhere I turn.  Okay, not only because I went on that Pike Place Ghost Tour and keep imagining ghosties in old timey clothes everywhere I turn.  This video is actually killing me right now.

The Night Before The Election, Obama Headquarters

I feel like my Great Les Mis Obsession of 1993 - 1997 has finally paid off.

Hell's Bells, Trudy!!

Found on the temporary barrier around the lot near my place:

You stay classy, Capitol Hill.

I’m like a monster that came out of the ocean to destroy bodegas!

Have you ever realized that you have some sort of habit you never knew you had?  And then someone points it out and all of a sudden you can’t stop thinking about it and are totally self-conscious?  As it happens, I pronounce “aren’t” with annoying precision—two syllables, stress on the first.  ARE-rent.  Why do I do this?  I sound ridiculous!  If you hear me do this, poke me in the arm and tell me to stop sounding like such an asshole.  Not you, Rira, you poke too hard.  Everybody else, though, poke away. 

(If you are thinking of making an innuendo-laden “poke” joke in the comment area, come on now.  That’s beneath you.  If you are now thinking of making an innuendo-laden “beneath you” joke in the comment area, that is also beneath you.  If you have decided to simply say “Innuendo?  In-your-endo!”  Well, that’s always funny.)

Now for some SRS BZNS:  people here at the corporate headquarters are making their emergency exit strategies into reality with alarming frequency.  Personally, I’ve got severance coming my way, the possibility of a retainer, (knock on wood) less competition for new jobs than the 3000 IT and finance people soon to flood the market, and I wrote a hit play, so I’m not sweating it either.  Earlier today, this one guy who just submitted his letter of resignation swung by and gave me a Starbucks card (he knows me so well!) and thanked me for everything I did for him and wished that he could have done more for me while he was here. Naturally, I responded that he did tons of stuff for me, even if I couldn’t really think of anything off the top of my head. He looked thoughtful and replied, “Okay, opening bottles you’re too weak to open yourself doesn’t count.”

So.  Now I guess I have to find someone else to open my Sweet Tea.  Those lids are screwed on really tight, you know.

the oxygen destroyer must not be used!!

I tell you this without shame:  I eat takeaway from the tiny sushi place a block away from my house at least once a week, sometimes twice.  It’s just so close and so delicious and so reasonably priced!  Tonight, I went off book and forewent my usual (2x4 roll  + salmon nigiri) and ordered the Chef’s Special, which promised a combination of salmon, spicy tuna, yellowtail, shrimp tempura, crab, smoked salmon, cucumber, avocado and tobiko.

The resulting monstrosity:

Take a closer look.  Cloverfield here is parked diagonally in a full-size Styrofoam takeaway tray—10 inches long and 4 inches high!  The lid couldn’t even properly contain the beast within. 

It’s like that giant space cow from Torchwood landed in my kitchen.  I couldn’t even eat half of it and had to package the remainder up for lunch tomorrow.  Looks like you live to fight again another day, Space Cow! 

OH, THE HUGE MANATEE.

hey goat, i like your beard

As you may or may not have noticed, I changed my site title.  Through five years and three different blogging platforms, “Waste of Tape,” a title adapted from (oh, how mortifying) Bright Eyes lyrics (everything I have made is trite and cheap / and a waste of space of tape of time), survived.  After the self-congratulatory novelty wore off, I yearned to change it to something less annoying, but nothing ever really struck my fancy that wasn’t a television or movie reference and those have a reserved place in the sub-title slot.  Long story short—I was going through one of many poetry anthologies weighing down my bookshelves and came across Siegfried Sassoon’s Song-Books of the War.  I don’t remember reading it previously, but there are notes scribbled in the margins and I could possibly have it for a paper on anti-war poetry. For whatever reason, I quite heavily underlined lines 7 and 8 and circled “Savage and jaunty.”  There’s no explanation for why I felt strongly enough to single out those words, but it could have been my habit of making note of things I could use in a story or a poem—it’s like the Creative Writing major’s version of “That would be a cool band name.” 

The phrase has been stuck in my head for a week or so now and I think I can put it to good use.  I am not a war song or a proud soldier or a nostalgic idiot, but I am certainly savage and decidedly jaunty.

Speaking of jaunty: Mark Wahlberg Talks To Animals

Of course I peed myself. Man gets hit by a car, you think he has full control over his bladder? Come on!

As a general rule, I hate commercials (and thanks to TiVo, I rarely endure them) but I caught this Clearasil ad during the Emmy telecast and I actually rewound and watched it three times.  And saved it in my TiVo.  And watched it a couple of more times.  And then looked it up on the internet and watched it once or twice.  A day.  It’s that last lick to the ice cream cone that gets me every time.

In other news that can only be expressed through capslock and lack of spaces:

OMFGILEFTMYIPODINMYPOCKETANDSENTITTHROUGHTHE

WASHINGMACHINEANDITSTILLWORKS.

I have no words, only ::glee::

light 'em up, 'cause we're going down

If you know me IRL, I am sure you aware that I work for an unnamed financial institution that has recently been seized by the FDIC and sold to another, larger, less screwed financial institution.  This is not good.  Understatement!  My phone and e-mail inboxes have been inundated with queries as to my job status and future plans.  Please, take a deep breath and do not panic.  I am fine.  I will probably be fine for quite some time as mergers cannot be completed overnight, or indeed, with companies of this magnitude, in several months.  I am not out on the street just yet. Naturally, I am apprehensive about my professional future (especially since I have a non-finance job in a financial institution), but I am being proactive about resumes and cover letters and applications and such. 

Intellectually, I am fascinated with the developing stories of our financial system.  I mean, there is some mad Great Depression shit going on right now.  Think about how we have come full circle—the New Deal creates FNMA and this financial meltdown of Aught-Eight destroys it and anything else that gets in its way.  Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, Lehman, IndyMac, WaMu (and coming soon, Wachovia…spoiler!)— who knew the face of Wall Street could change so drastically and in such a short time?  We are totally living history! 

So if I'm hearing you right, you're calling me a dumb-ass

On this stupid, rainy Sunday, I’d like to introduce a new segment called, “Thanks, CW!”  Sarcasm or Sincerity:  you be the judge. 

I have come away from three weeks of the excruciatingly boring 90210 2.0 with exactly one thing: “Mama Who Bore Me (Reprise)” from the musical Spring Awakening.  Apparently, this is THE ONLY SONG the Drama Club needs to practice!  In all 57 awkwardly dance-filled rehearsal scenes!  And now it’s wedged so far into my head that it would take an earthquake to dislodge it! 

Thanks, CW!

It's like we got a contract on us. Think it's because we're so awesome? I think it's 'cause we're so awesome.

In other news: Hurrah for the Fall Television Season! It’s like everyday is Wednesday! (Wednesday is when the new comic books come out, for all you non-nerdlings.)  I am currently obsessed with:

Supernatural: The fourth season premieres tonight and I am sickeningly excited.  In my pants.  After a writer’s strike-shortened third season, I am chomping at the bit for some new episodes of cock rock-scored internecine brother-fighting with an extra-large helping of ghosts, monsters and gore.  I’m also hoping that Kripke will continue the epic battle of good vs evil mythology he has constructed.  I’d love it if, since Sam is the anti-Christ, we’ll get to meet, you know, the new Jesus.  Bonus points if it’s a newly resurrected Dean!

 

Mad Men:  I adore this show for the same reason I am so horribly in love with Friday Night Lights—most television drama wants to dazzle you with big concepts, long-winded dialogue and huge, dramatic turns of events, whereas for Mad Men the importance is in the details, the silences, in the hundreds of tiny things that make up one brilliant episode.  I am enthralled by the gorgeous (and insanely meticulous) production and costume design.  Sidenote:  Of all the bothersome elements exhibited by the characters:  sexual harassment, alcoholism, dubious business practices, adultery, etc., the one thing that horrified me the most (I gasped out loud) was when Don Draper and his family picnic in the countryside and as they pack up to leave, Don chucks an empty can of beer into the foliage and his wife shakes off all of their trash onto the grass and they LEAVE IT THERE.  Smoke, drink, cheat on your wife—sure, fine, whatever—but LITTER?  How dare you!
 

Gossip Girl:  Guilty pleasure or not, this show is one incredibly addictive treat.  The fleet, sly dialogue and over-the-top situations may not be believable, but way these teenagers act is, at times, unbearably realistic.  One of the great universal constants is that teenagers are stupid and do stupid things, care about stupid things and cry over stupid things like these stupid things are the most important stupid things in all the world.  Sure, they don’t all connive, cavort and canoodle to a popular music soundtrack, but you know if they could, they would.  Bonus:  the almost painfully homoerotic-yet-platonic male friendship between Chuck Bass and Nate Archibald.

 

Officially off my Season Pass list:  The Hills.  Heidi’s battered wife syndrome, Lauren’s vapid inanity, Spencer’s douchebaggery, Audrina’s dead-eyed fish mouth are just not enough to keep me hooked.  I am actually ashamed to watch this program.  That’s a first, you know.  I mean, I still have an episode of Hidden Palms saved in my TiVo.  Beat that!