I Can't Think of a Good Headline

i had thought of doing another one of those "these are the things i'm thankful for this thanksgiving" entries, but thought better of it after realizing i had done that last year as well as the year before. not much has changed in my list of blessings, and i don't anticipate much will change in years to come. i have great people around me, a loving family, a stunning dog, etc., etc. i've also realized that i have a propensity for serial monogamy, as evidenced by the fact that i had a different boyfriend to be thankful for each year. i like to think that this is because i keep going back into the dating (cess)pool for an upgrade. which means by this time next year i should be dating god himself.

my thanksgiving itself was a bit odd this year. my parents and i headed to my sister's place, where we sat down for dinner with her husband and two kids. as the whole of my family has a strong distaste for turkey, we had duck and ham. the duck looked gorgeous, having come out of the oven perfectly browned. it was placed over the potatoes and then carved at the table, where it spewed blood all over its surroundings.

whoops -- back into the oven it went. the potatoes were tossed, stray blood stains spotted up and we sat around the table staring at each other for another half hour while it finished cooking. at the table, my nephew was annoying my niece with the antics of a 4-year-old; my niece was annoying me with her reprimands of my nephew in that 11-year-old shrieking voice of hers; and i, apparently, was annoying my father who was quick to tell me that my life "has been full of mistakes." whaaa?

finally, my niece turns to me and says, "do you want to go upstairs and play Dance Dance Revolution." hells yeah, i did! and wow, did that game wear me out. in fact, the whole night was rather taxing. and i didn't have that friday after thanksgiving off, which i thought only happened if you worked in a mall. but apparently my company stays open when the market stays open, and i guess stockbrokers don't want to spend time with their families when there's money to make.

i know, the lady doth protest too much. things aren't terrible, not at all. holidays rock! gift-buying is fun! and if you want to send me gifts, i'd like a set of professional cookwear cus my pots and pans suck. and if you're my mom, i'd love it if you gave me that immaculate green Volvo you drive -- or if you want to help me pay off my $20K in student loans, that would also be cool. but if not, that's ok, too, because i have my many other blessings to keep me warm, right?

The Situation Has Worsened

Life's Little Cruelties

that will be the title of my unwritten masterpiece -- the great american novel that is just aching to escape my guts through the manicured hands that spend countless hours pounding away on this here keyboard. they say there is a novel in each of us. but they say a lot of things. i say a lot of things, too. who should you believe?

Me. (duh.) and i have something to say about the cruel way life has been educating me these past few weeks. i like happy surprises as much as the next gal, but the unhappy ones, not so much. so it's with great sadness that i report on the infiniteness of my own stupidity, which still manages to impress me after all these years. it was Einstein who said, "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."

it's good to keep raising the bar, they say. it's good to be good at something, they say. and i say that i can do dumb pretty damn well, as the following examples illustrate.

****

Situation: the only phone jack in your entire house is, inexplicably, located behind your refrigerator. you are having problems with your DSL connection because the phone company hates you. you need to move your fridge away from the wall and check the connection because having a phone technician visit will cost you $60 for 15 minutes if the tech deems the problem to be your fault (thanks, SBC!). with a few strong jerks, you pull the fridge away from the wall, forgetting that you placed a bottle of red wine atop the fridge, which is where, you know, you've always placed your bottles of red wine. said bottle then falls and shatters into a zillion pieces behind your refrigerator.

Aftermath: at first, you will want to cry, because the thought of cleaning up broken glass, red wine, two years' worth of dog hair and all the other frightful things that reside behind refrigerators is absolutely dreadful. but you do it because you have to. in the process, you try not to vomit from the smell and sight of the mess you're standing in or think about the fact that you ruined a perfectly good towel for something preventable. you also try not to think about what these incredibly dirrrrty, indefinable objects and organisms you're cleaning up really are.

Lesson: when moving a heavy object, make sure to first clear off all surrounding glass bottles that contain alcoholic liquid. otherwise, you will have nothing to drink after your cleanup is complete. and you will need a drink very very badly.

*****

Situation: you are stoked about your weekend jaunt to san francisco, which you have been planning for months. it's just you and your iPod making the journey up the 5 this time and you're excited for the opportunity to listen to your new music at full blast. to prepare, you visit Fry's and buy (what you think) is the adapter that allows you to play the iPod through the car stereo. when you hop into the car and plug your iPod into the adapter and the adapter into the area for the cigarette lighter, you wonder why your iPod doesn't play. after a few minutes of head scratching and technical finessing, you consult the packaging that accompanied your $40 purchase and discover that, in fact, you bought the iPod charger, not adapter.

Aftermath: you slam on the brakes and return home immediately, where you load up a paper bag full of CDs you've heard a million times before, because you cannot stomach a radio appetite of christian rock and country music for 12 hours, which is how long you will spend in the car.

Lesson: pay attention, dipshit. this was almost as bad as the time you went to amoeba and bought the wrong CD two times in a row. or how about that time you accidentally bought decaffeinated coffee and kept drinking it for a week, wondering why the hell it wouldn't keep you awake, before you looked at the label and discovered your error? god, you're lame.

*****

Situation: you think you are a rock star at work. everyone loves you and wants you to come to their parties. you strut around the office like a peacock, thinking you can do no wrong and that you have your job mastered after 8 months. one day, you notice something funny about the financial stats on this webpage your company maintains. they look outdated and this concerns you because you are a good employee who wants a big raise next March. so without hesitation, you sound the alarms and notify the proper people of these seemingly outdated stats, which are, like, so a violation of federal law or something. people around you take you very seriously because of your good reputation and jump on the case immediately, while you secretly begin to imagine all the steak and lobster dinners you'll be having once you get your raise. a day later, someone returns to you with an update on the situation. you quickly switch from your lost-in-reverie face to a concerned-employee one and say, "yes, how is that going?" only to hear "those stats are updated every three months, not monthly like you said."

Aftermath: you suddenly feel very small and dumb. as a reflex, you flash your brilliant smile that's gotten you out of so many jams before but soon realize that will do nothing for you now as you got this bad news over the phone. stumped, you just mumble, "oh, sorry 'bout that. my bad."

Lesson: do your research.

*****

Situation: you're not having a very good day. earlier, you moved your fridge with a jerk and caused a bottle of wine to fall and shatter. it's later that night and you need some wine to calm your frayed nerves. you're at the liquor store with your boyfriend, Momo, who just walked in with coffee from starbucks in a venti cup filled to the brim because he doesn't take it with cream. you are at the counter ready to pay for your bottle when you find yourself fascinated by a music video on the TV that hangs overhead. it's paula abdul's video for "straight up" and you haven't seen it in ages. you find yourself hypnotized by her tap dancing and can't peel your eyes away. but the clerk wants your money, so you extend your debit card and in the process knock over Mo's hot coffee so that it spills all over the clerk, the counter and the conveyer belt that holds other people's groceries.

Aftermath: the clerk hands you a roll of paper towels and you get to work right away mopping up the mess. the clerk is pissed because the coffee landed on his pants, making him look like he peed himself. the other customers are pissed because their groceries are wet. and you're pissed because you made an ass out of yourself in public. and all the while, friggin "straight up" is playing in the background.

Lesson: paula abdul can be fascinating.

****

i will take my bow now.

The Love Note I Awoke To

thanks, Momo!

To Edit

a few weeks ago i went to a copy editor conference near the airport. i don't know why it's worth mentioning that it was near the airport, but it was near the airport even though no one flew in for it. all the attendees were local copy editors like me, with a handful from orange county (which may as well be China if you live in LA).

the point is that it was a copy editor conference which is curious for a number of reasons. first off, copy editors don't really need a conference -- a fact that made my attendance mandatory. you see, we are a static industry. a semicolon by any other name will still serve the same purpose. the few yearly updates on usage and terminology can be found in the latest edition of whichever style bible we subscribe to. in my case, that would the very cutting-edge AP Stylebook. secondly, we are rarely allowed away from our desks/out of our cages for fear that a wayward comma might sneak into otherwise clean copy. our bosses usually love us dearly and know that no one could do our jobs or, for that matter, would want to do our jobs in our absence. and that's always my most favorite thing to hear from people -- "eww. at work all day you sit around looking for errors in the things you read? i could never do that. it would drive me crazy."

yes indeed, it sometimes drives me crazy. on certain days, it makes my eyes bleed. but on most days, i friggin love it. i really do. i can get a serious hard-on from taking a white page with 12-point, times new roman font and marking it up silly with my red pen. it's a satisfaction that rivals orgasm, like "who's your momma, bitch?" we all want to be the authority on something, and copy editing gives me the ultimate power of the pen, which provides a great veto power. (unless you have to work with pain-in-the-ass writers who think you're worthless because you're correcting their copy, which they think is so damn flawless even though it's crap. but if you got a writer who's open, it's cool.)

it's a glamorous profession, i tell ya. but i should also tell ya that while i'm a fabulous editor, i am a horrible grammarian. i couldn't tell ya why or how a modifier dangles, only that it does dangle like that fleshy, dangling thing in the back of your mouth (also known as an 'uvula.') i also couldn't make a strong case for splitting infinitives or explain the difference between comparatives and superlatives, because i don't know what those things are. all i know is what sounds right to me and that intuition has helped me fake a career in copy editing for the past ten years. but it's always nice to match labels with instincts so i looked forward to this conference as an opportunity to deepen my understanding of my own skill set, which at times feels foreign to me.

unfortunately, that didn't happen at this conference, as i found the instructor pompous and the material remedial. plus, i left early and had my usual bad attitude going on. i did, however, learn a handful of interesting things worth sharing and here they are:

-- writing is full of awful redundencies, so think again before you use the terms: 'lone gunman,' 'safe haven,' and 'whether or not.'
-- 'cement' is wet; 'concrete' is dry.
-- a 'dove' is a beautiful, white bird; use 'dived' as the past tense of 'dive.'
-- 'between' compares two things, while 'among' generally refers to more than two.
-- 'oral' concerns the mouth; 'verbal' deals with words.
-- an 'initialism' is a term like TLC and FBI, where each of the letters is spoken as a letter; an 'acronym' is pronounceable as a word, like NAFTA or NASA.
-- 'begging the question' is actually a term for philosophers that assumes that the premise of an argument assumes the very thing the argument is trying to prove. for example, the question "Have you stopped taking bribes?" begs the questions because the speaker assumes the person was taking bribes. most people use this term when they really mean 'raise the question.'
-- the difference between farther and further can be remembered with this handy mnemonic: the 'a' in 'farther' refers to 'actual' distance; further refers to figurative distance.
-- you 'convince' people of your viewpoint before 'persuading' them into action.
-- the road is 'winding'; the wind is 'windy.'
-- don't ever use 'ironic' when you mean 'coincidental' even though every one else does.

i'll confess that i never even heard the term 'initialism' before attending the conference, so that knowledge alone might have been worth the $12 all-day parking fee at the airport Marriott. i still cannot explain the difference between nonrestrictive and restrictive clauses -- the key to the exciting 'that' vs. 'which' debate -- but maybe next year i'll sit through the whole thing.

i did, however, adore my fellow attendees. all these bookish hair-splitters sitting around celebrating their anal retentiveness. and me, the rebel librarian, with her nose piercing and funky purple shirt. but never did i feel out of place. the whole scene reminded me of that Blind Melon video from several years back, with the girl dancing around in a bee outfit. at first, everyone looks at her askew, but she knows the secret -- she's not crazy, just misunderstood. and that's what copy editors feel like sometimes: dancing bees with bent antennae. writers may hate to hear our buzz, but we turn their crappy copy into golden honey. we make it digestible and sweet.

so it was a blessing to find this conference. it was like entering that park in the video, the one with the tall green grass where other dancers dressed like bees buzz freely and dance without shame. it was awesome to be able to turn to the person beside you and say, "don't you hate it when people say 'the man that' instead of 'the man who'?" only the hear the person say, "oh, i know! that drives me crazy, too. but what's worse is when people confuse 'your' and 'you're.'"

the shame, the shame, people -- and you know who you are.

Party Photos, Part II

party people: still partying.


notice his double fisting: Alex and Abel went into the stable to fetch a pail of vodka. a minute later, i created this fable and, and, and -- ah, fuck it, i'm out of rhyme.


dave and his finger: i'm guessing he used it to tease that pompadour he was sporting the whole night. i believe someone at the party referred to it as "John Larroquette hair."


avi and his two fingers: peace is best achieved at 2 in the morning after a few screwdrivers.


another cute couple: Jason and Katie make cutesy poopsey for the camera.


if you haven't figured it out (you might be retarded): Momo and i reconciled soon after i posted the big, dramatic breakup entry. and nowadays, things are terrific.


bitches brawl: i put my money on juice.


yet another cute couple: zee and nick sitting in a hammick, with a love so sweet it might make you sick.


that finger again: oh where will it land and why was it up so high?


no one likes a quitter: which is precisely why i'm still smoking (socially). Ann, Raidis and Damien join me in my debauchery on the couch.


two beauts: Juice and Zee share a calm moment after the roughhousing.


two breasts brains are better than one: Momo and I did some collaborating on how to fix our communication misfires, and we figured that i should wear low-cut tops to keep him distracted and he should create new commentator characters for this blog to keep me entertained. with that in place, i've resumed the bowl-of-jello state i was in when we first got together. in short: i'm in love; i can't help it; he is a star.


stare at this picture: there's just something about it -- polly the anachronism in her bright dress, chad with his raised eyebrow as if he knows some special secret, and corey's beautiful face as the apex. just kinda weird, but i dig it.


still going: dave's finger seems to have lost much of its momentum as it races up his nose and into his brain.


honey, not right now: but definitely later.


i'll have what he's having: like a cherub, that face.


make it a double: or even a triple.


think she likes him? Raidis and Damien actually went to prom together when all of us were in high school. class of '94, represent!


ice cracks your teeth: but in this photo it's harmless.


pet the pompadour: Dave and his finger finally came to rest on the porch, where they remained at rest for a good hour while his gorgeous wife Corey was inside getting hit on by a twentysomething. when i asked Dave if i could bring him anything while he sat on the porch, his reply was, "it's all your fault."


limeye: you can hear the ocean if you put it up to your ear.


this could be his album cover: Jason kicks it in the hammock.


game over (with spooky juice eyes in the background): thanks for playing, Dave (and love you much, please don't kill me for this).


the money shot: speaks for itself.

Still Partying Like I Used To

i had a party over the weekend. just because i could. i won't allow one stinkin hangover to bury me and my youth, so i threw something together very last moment and the people came. and they consumed alcohol and socialized and stayed very late. one of them even threw up on my porch. with that, it felt like a proper party and i had a terrific time playing hostess. here are some visual souvenirs. this part I of II.


bow to your hostess: i said bow, bitches!


this is my good friend (and hairstylist), Stevie: here you see him demonstrating the effectiveness of the nicotine patch.


The Milla Times salutes one of its newest commentators, Wade: visit him and his blog at juniorbird.com.


the bitches i bow to: Ann and Raidis being their radiant selves. i am the missing filipino triplet in this shot.


mr. laca: Chad is rad, dood, with a killer musik collection.


friendly beaver trailer park: Tim and his 40 have the kind of fun that only a man and his 40 can have at a Saturday night sausage fest hosted by a girl he went to high school with.


ditto the above: but apply it to Damien and his 40.


the triumvirate: ditto, now with Deo and his 40 (at left). by night's end we had the following stats: one 40 finished; one almost finished and the last one (a quarter remaining) kicked over accidentally by the partygoer who upchucked on the porch.


blue cups: other alkie was a-flowin as well, mostly of the vodka variety.


make my funk the p-funk: Polly won the best-dressed award in her cute retro thing.


the best smile award: went to my old college buddy Abel, who now runs the ultracool Livity Outernational clothing line.


avatar: me and the Avi-ster, my old grad school buddy whom I TAed a class with. (leave a comment someday, whiggah.)


three-headed monster: high-school mainstays Ann, Raidis and Damien doing their collective impression of The Blob on my couch.


pour out a little liquor for your homies: high school hunks Momo, with his whiskey, Deo and Damien make a toast to the host(ess) -- me!


why are they wearing the same shirt? Momo satisfies his munchies with Cherry Garcia while Damien visits the happy place in his head.


the night's lone tragedy: Dave was trashed fratboy-style -- and it was totally endearing. really.

more photos forthcoming.

I Can't Party Like I Used To

years ago, i received one of those "You Know You're Old When..." e-mails, and one of the criteria that ages you was when the words "i can't party like i used to" replace "man, i think i drank too much last night." another criterion was when you realize you prefer VH1 over MTV. check and check.

my body hated me on sunday, especially my head, which was gripped by a killer headache. i didn't mean to drown it in so much red wine the prior night. i want to say that i never poured myself a single drink and that my glass miraculously refreshed itself the whole night through, but i doubt that's true. i also want to say that i never bummed the cigarettes that compounded my hangover the next day, that they magically flew into my mouth and lit themselves and the only way i could wrestle free was by smoking them down to their butts, but that's probably not true either. the truth is: it was my evil twin sister. yeah, it was that bitch. i can't take her anywhere. man, i should be able to do better than that.

ah, fuck it. i got smashed saturday night -- me. i did some party hopping. ended up at juan's fabulous fete downtown. he had a pinata. he also had a bunch of beautiful people there, most of whom i didn't know. i did get to know his stash of red wine very well, however. we got to know each other so well that it spilled itself all over my crisp white shirt, which i promptly removed -- very clever ploy, that sneaky bottle. then i began dancing around like an idiot in the black tank top i had on underneath. i think i started quite the flirtation with a sexy asian girl on the dance floor who was dressed like a pirate in black capris and a striped shirt. i asked her if i messed up my party dates and it was really halloween (i'm smooth, ain't i?). she said no, that she had come from a theme party and that no one else was in costume so why would it be halloween? i countered with the brilliant: "i like your tattoo."

the straight women in the world can be thankful i wasn't born a straight man. i would be the 40-year-old virgin with absolutely no game. the one who would assault them with trite lines. and with my luck i'd probably also be born with sweaty palms. talking to women is as complicated as performing brain surgery -- one misstep causes paralysis. talking to men, however, is as simple as window shopping, where there's always that option to buy.

i had made my purchase earlier, so i shuffled across the living room dance floor toward my mystery date and away from the sultry pirate. i figure by then she had grown sick of my insistence that i should be the one wearing her rhinestone-encrusted eye patch. yep, i'm nothing if not smooth. mystery date shakes his head at me and sips his whiskey on the rocks. through my blurry vision he looks a lot like Momo. he drives me home, throws some covers over me and lets himself out. i think it was close to 4am. i awaken the next day with killer headache and raccoon eyes.

sunday held a day of suffering. no amount of water or B vitamins or juice suspended the grossness entirely. and the litany of other quick fixes i found when i googled "hangover cure" were too much for my bloodshot eyes to focus on. so i spent the day mostly bed bound, in my baby blue jammies, eating spinach soup and watching the second season of Ali G on DVD. i can't party like i used to.

respek.

Where I'd Rather Be

this is actually where i would be -- hawaii -- had i not been my glorious retarded self. i was offered a last-minute opportunity to fly out to hawaii by my flight-attendant friend kiana, who flew in last week and was awaiting my arrival. she's got buddy passes for flying standy, which means get to the airport early and stand the fuck by for an available flight. my best chance, she said, was the friday 8:30am flight out of LAX, the flight plenty of bozos miss because they oversleep, leaving many empty seats to be snatched up by standbyers like me.

"get there early," kiana advised. so what do i do? i get there late, and miss my check-in cutoff time by about four minutes. i became the bozo i was trying to beat. i also became quite flustered and nearly belligerent with the clerk who couldn't seem to comprehend why i should get special treatment.

"you missed your check-in. go see about getting on the next flight out," the clerk says and points at a long-ass line with her acrylic nails. "no way am i standing in that line. i need to get on the 8:30 flight or else i won't make it out at all today, so i need to talk to someone who can help me go through security and get to the gate," i tell her with great confidence. "you missed your check-in," she replies, unimpressed.

not one to be deterred, i bypass this clerk because, of course, i know more about flight policies than she does and i will allow no woman with a bad attitude and acrylic nails to ruin my one shot at a weekend in hawaii. i find another clerk and explain that i didn't really miss my check-in because it was only by four minutes, so it's too negligible to consider "missed." and i go on and on about how i don't have time to go on and on because i really need to be at that gate, so just let me through to the gate and help me get to the head of the security line because it's far too long a line for me to stand in right now because i'm running late and need to just get on the plane already, because i am a non-paying customer flying standy on a buddy pass, and don't you know who i am? i am a legend in my own mind, so you should really give me a break.

next thing i know, i'm standing in the long-ass line clerk one pointed me toward with those acrylic nails. an hour later i'm at the front with a new clerk who seems to have painted on her eyebrows with a sharpie pen. (why are these airport clerks so ghetto?) "the next flight is at 12:30pm. it's oversold and there's already a wait list for standby. you will be 31st on the standby list." i turn around to leave.

the weekend didn't end up too bad. i spent some of it at resfest, had dinner with my girlfriends and went to the gym, where i sat in the steam room. it's been humid in hawaii so it was similar. well, not really.

:-(

Mundane in the Membrane

nothing like indulging in a little housecleaning on a saturday night to remind you that you're young and alive. i'd like to claim that this was all intentional, that i had refused an invitation to have dinner with the queen of england to instead stay in and scrub my tub, but that's not the case. nothing was happening for me tonight. i guess i could have found something if i really wanted to but my tub needed the scrub. and i got on my knees, clorox residue across my dark shirt, sweat on my brow, kanye blasting in the background. i got to work. i also took a broom to all the spiderwebs in the corners, of which there were too many. i often wake with new spider bites on my body and even see those damn daddy long-legged bastards cruising the bathroom walls when i'm in the shower, taunting me. then there was the dust, the dog hair, the dishes -- all spict and spanned. i was quite the domestic goddess.

it's been all sorts of mundane lately. still, i'm not as well rested as i'd like to be, as i could be. i've been freelance editing up a storm, which (in my mind) justifies all the superfluous clothes shopping i've been indulging in. there have also been plenty of visits with my trusty old boyfriend gym, which justifies all the superfluous eating i've been indulging in. there have also been social indulgences, including a pretentious publishing party in hollywood, a trip to the greek theatre to see Tori Amos (awesome), and a trip to the egyptian theatre to see Sidestepper (also awesome). plus the season premiere of my favorite show, "america's next top model." for not being a lesbian, i will say that tyra is smokin' hot. she's got a great weave. but the show really becomes its finest after the girls winnow down and become catty bitches to each other. i know, it takes very little to amuse me.

otherwise, work is work. life is life. and i'm not minding the mundane too much. sure, i could use a vacation and i'd like to find that bag of money, but i'll make do with my clean house and lackluster saturday night. the colder weather is nice. LA had its first big rain of the season last week, which meant that my car finally took a bath and i had a nice, clear view from the 49th floor the day after. soup season is finally here -- way better than summer salad season.

i reckon that fall will hold lots more mundanity for me, but that's just fine. all the entropy did not go to waste. it's made me appreciate the calm. my mental/emotional states are just fine as well. i feel so earthbound lately. and as boring as it all may sound, it's ok. (for now.)