Unfortunate & Moronic

"Lee Weisbrod, 19, of River Vale, N.J., and Steven Fagan, 18, of Woodcliff Lake, N.J., were playing soccer with friends at Memorial Field in Montvale, cops said. Pal Jordan Zubalsky, 19, told cops he heard an ear-splitting clap and saw a spear of electricity knock the pair to the ground....

In a chilling twist, Weisbrod, a business major at the University of Miami, wrote on his MySpace.com profile that he hated thunderstorms."

A chilling twist? Really? Because I'm thinking that's about as chilling as me saying how much I hate bugs and then dying from lyme disease.

Yeah, I'm not buying it, but I love how much press MySpace gets.

She Might Speak the Truth

I'm trying to arrange a concert trip, and sadly, the concert is back home, which I guess is a good thing because it means no hotel bill. I'm on the phone with my girlfriend:

"So are we going?"
"I'm not sure yet. I think so. There are four bands that I want to see, one that I kind of know, and three that I've never listened to."
"Have you heard back from--"
"No, not yet."
"We have to pay $9.00 per ticket for a "convenience charge." That sucks so bad. I hate Ticketmaster."
"Well, you probably need to hurry up and get the seats."
"It's G.A."
"Ohhh, crap. Really?"
"Yeah, why. G.A. is a good thing. I can be FRONT ROW!"
"Yeah, you're not much fun a G.A. concert."
"What are you talking about?!"
"You get all obsessed with being front row and taking pictures and your eyes start darting through the crowd so that you can get in the gaps and move up and you make me strong arm people!"
Laughing, "I so do not...do most of that. I've never made you strong arm anyone!"

I've only done that here, here, here, here, and maybe (read: most definitely) here too but only because from here pictures don't come out like here. I maybe did it a lot here too, but I wasn't armed with a camera, damn it.

Clearly, I have proven my point.

I Guess You Could Call It Irony

Because the day that I changed my tagline to, "Do you believe in love, like I believe in pain," my commitment was challenged just a wee bit. A co-worker of mine turned fifty (freaking) years old on the fourth of July, but since she was on vacation, we've been celebrating her birthday this week. I decided that I would make her chocolate cupcakes, and I don't often use my oven at the apartment because I am a HUGE fan of the toaster oven. It's rare that I need the cubic space of the family-size oven. So, as I continued to check on the progress of my culinary talents and lift the treats from the oven, I also lifted my forearm to the top of the three-hundred-fifty-degree oven. Smart move on my part as I ended up with a second-degree burn.

The odd thing was, it didn't really hurt. It stung just a bit. I ended up talking to my mother within a few minutes of the injury, and of course she told me to apply ice. I argued that the damage was done and that there wasn't much that ice could offer. She responded that the ice would lessen the damage. I obliged her request for about eleven seconds, and then said, "Ok, it was applied. It feels no different." Though I noticed my skin was beginning to turn a grayish color.

The next morning my skin had blistered in the nice shape of a leech and turned a bit blacker. I gently pressed the blister and noticed it just felt airy. I decided not to touch it and take my shower. But in the drying-off process, I accidentally forgot about the injury and slid the towel right over it. I then noticed a portion of the black skin had folded back and another section of it lying on the floor of my tub. I "eeeweeed" at myself.

When I got to work and showed my co-worker her breakfast treat, I quickly pointed out what I had done to myself for her birthday. She sneered and said that I should have covered it up. "I thought you were supposed to air burns out or something," I responded. She assured me that in the environment we work in, I should most definitely cover it up as she offered me some Neosporin® cream and a bandage. I removed the bandage a few times during the day to check on the progress of my wound. Later that night, I removed it once more and noticed what I thought was an excess of Neosporin® cream, but as I investigated further, I realized I was looking at a mass of goo that my body created. I quickly shoved my forearm under cold, running water. I pulled it back and realized it was still lumpy, gooey, and a wee bit greenish in color. It kind of turned my stomach to look at it. Still kind of turns my stomach to say it, really. (How are you holding up?) I ended up having to wash the burn with soap, where I had to turn my head to keep from grossing myself out from myself. I let the burn breathe during the night, and it looked much, much better, expect for the small fold of black skin that I have yet to remove. I tried to lift it, and it looked gooey underneath, and when I see goo, I think "ewe," and my tummy threatens to turn against me.

I have had a bad habit of burning myself. In high school, many of my school mates taunted me with the name, "Pyro." I would tend to play with fire in chemistry class. I'd light matches for no reason but to watch them burn. Once, as a child, I turned off my bedroom lamp and then decided with NO THOUGHT OF CONSEQUENCE, to just palm the hot bulb. A few days later, my hand started peeling and it took me quite some time to backtrack as to why that was happening. I can also recall a time where my mother left me in the car while running some errand. I started to play with the cigarette lighter. When it popped back out, I looked the orange, glowing light with awe, and again, I decided to stick it to the inside of my hand. I clutched my mother's water bottle for the remainder of that day. When I was old enough to know better, but still too stubborn to ever follow directions, I tried to steam my skirt while wearing it. I ended up with a burn of four dots across my thigh. For some years, I had scars across my left wrist where it looked like I had attempted suicide because I would reach across the iron and burn myself.

The thing is, burnt skin grosses me out. It's the one thing I would question when taking marriage vows. In sickness and in health, but if you burn your body, I get to use my get-out-of-jail-free card because I cannot handle melted skin. Yet, it seems I am determined to melt my own.

I'm Pretty Sure He Wasn't Kidding

I just had my "ass" threatened by a lawyer--a lawyer that works with me. I started laughing because it was just so unexpected, and he talked as though he had just dropped speed and chased it with some sort of Jolt energy drink. I thought lawyers were paid by the hour, and thus, would tend to speak a little more slowly.

I tried to explain what I needed from him, and he finally gave me the super secret password for a project. He then threatened my arse and said that if I screwed anything up, he would tell everyone that it was me. I couldn't help but laugh as though the severity of the situation was green lighting the purchase of bombs for North Korea.

Go Forth & Read*

I found this website yesterday. I've been reading the archives as quickly as I can, but I just must encourage others to love this blog as much as I already do.

Two quick excerpts from Tom Bartlett's blog, Minor Tweaks:

March 28, 2006
The list of demands my advance team sends to hotels before I arrive

-- The curtains in Tom's room should not close completely. He likes to be awakened by a harsh shaft of sunlight across his face.

-- Remove the batteries from the remote control (or insert dead ones). Tom prefers to change channels the old-fashioned way.

-- If you put an alarm clock in the room, find one that's nearly impossible to set. Tom enjoys a challenge.

-- The temperature in the room should be either sweltering or arctic. Nothing in-between will do.

-- The bedding should smell vaguely of other people's sweat. Tom finds this comforting.

-- Tom likes little bottles of shampoo and very small pieces of soap. The tinier, the better.


January 10, 2006
What I Plan To Embellish For Obvious Dramatic Reasons In My Own Forthcoming Memoir

From The Smoking Gun website, on evidence that James Frey, author of "A Million Little Pieces," invented much of his life story:

But during these interviews, Frey did, for the first time, admit that he had embellished central details of his criminal career and purported incarceration for "obvious dramatic reasons" in the nonfiction work.

-- An argument with my roommate over dish duty will become a heroin-fueled knife fight in some dimly lit, garbage-strewn back alley.

-- That parking ticket will now be two years in "the hole."

-- Instead of mostly ignoring me, the girl I liked in high school will be eaten by a shark while I look on in dumbstruck horror.

-- My fondness for hot tea will turn into a nasty coke habit.

-- Rather than breaking my finger while trying to squash a cricket with my shoe, I will have my arm blown off by, say, a missile.

-- Instead of following the normal rules of capitalization, I will randomly capitalize common Nouns in order to seem Artsy and Profound even though it's actually just an annoying Tic.

*Just remember where you came from.

And another thing, if there is stuff out there that is THIS GOOD, you should totally email me the blog. I definitely need to know things like that.

Cheating Never Gets You Anywhere

Let me be proof of that. I'm sitting next to a woman who is clearly conversating in French. I took two years in high school, where I was busted for cheating my freshman year. I also vaguely remember that we spent weeks translating a book about some monster on a train, probably something a first grade kid was reading. The second year, I cheated off of this really cute, friendly Asian guy named John. So, needless to say, I think I learned my numbers and that's about it.

I didn't take French again until my junior year in college. Wherein, I had a four year lapse since I had been around the language. I ended up taking four semesters, and finally, by the fourth semester, I thought I had become a little proficient in it. I had a professor that would not speak a single word in English. In fact, for extra credit, I had attended some thing wherein he came up to me and started speaking English. My mouth dropped open. English sounded foreign coming from his mouth. I thought to myself, "Just speak French. I don't know you as English."

So, here I am with a real, live example of a true French woman, and I can't make out a word, except a pronoun and preposition here and there. That smarts really bad. Of course, my ear was always worse than my writing or reading skills. But still, I expected to pick up the general idea of what someone was saying. Boy, was I wrong there.