do you believe in planets?

DO WANT!

drinkses, aaron's boot
Originally uploaded by thelizabeth.

Groooaaaaaan. Must consider reducing my intake of these little babies. I almost long for the days when I thought martinis tasted like salty gasoline. But lawd I was wrong--so wrong! Them's so yummy!

Aaaaaand the sun hurts my eyes.

[Edit: Yikes! Okay I completely forgot about/did not notice my DRANK rant below. How could I forget performing a Google image search for a freaking breast cancer cell? LOL! Okay, I know, nothing to LOL about when it comes to the C-word, but lots to laugh about when it comes to the asshattery I commit when DRANK.]

espn2's craptacular french open coverage: wtf? this, and other questions I yearn for answers to.

Today I present you with a "question salad": a crisp combo of tennis commentary and random other stuff. Maybe you (who don't appreciate my sporty-talk passion the way Arron does) won't even notice that I'm sports-blogging.

1. Do your fingernails grow faster when you take vitamins? Just curious. I've been pretty dedicated to my vitamin regimen for the past couple of months, and it feels like I have to clip my nails every other day. I trim them to pathetic little nubs during the summer months, because I'm always in the dirt and my hands look like a grubby little kid's.

2. Does anyone, anywhere, actually care about softball? ESPN2 seems convinced that women's fast-pitch trumps one of the four biggest tennis events of the entire year. Of course, ESPN2 also considers regular-season nonessential baseball details--some big dug-out slugfest, a pitcher who hit a guy, and a dude famous for getting hit by pitches--ALL so important that they need to report them eighteen times an hour during two consecutive 24-hour periods. WTF? Oh, and drag-racing? WTF?

3. If a guy in a bar grabs your ass and you turn around and flatten him, can you call it self-defense? Or can he technically press charges? Just...curious.

4. If a guy in a wheelchair grabs your ass and you don't turn around and flatten him, can he call it discrimination? Just...kidding. Just...poor taste.

5. Why is my landlord such a douchebag? During the last two weeks, the following events have taken place in, near, or from our back parking lot:

1) Some drunk dude wandering around back there peed on everyone's cars, then stumbled to the front of our building and up on my downstairs neighbor's porch, dragged my neighbor into the street, and beat the crap out of him.
2) A "prowler" (seriously!) broke into my nextdoor neighbor's apartment from the lot, through their back door.
3) The most effed thing I've ever seen: some dude attempted to sexually assault a girl at knifepoint. IN MY BACK PARKING LOT.

All female tenants from the five units who share that lot have requested a floodlight back there. His response: "I'll look into a battery-operated motion light. Oh, and by the way,I'm going to raise your rent." DOUCHE. BAG.

6. Why can't Maria Sharapova just be consistent? And I don't mean her streaky play against Patty Schnyder that almost cost her a spot in the quarterfinals. She played a tough-as-nails match, the most exciting one I've ever watched her win. Besides, I was pleased that Maria made it to R16 at all. What I mean is: why can't she consistently dress like a grown-up? Let's review, shall we?

Austrailian Open 2007:

So cute. So much cuter and more reflective of good taste (and more closely resembling actual athletic-wear) than her 2006 Aussie Open disaster:

I--I can't even look. Moving on, at the 2006 US Open, Maria's nightwear, though adorable, involved a whole host of rhinestones, sequins, and sparklies, thus flagrantly violating my rules of sports attire. We've been over that one--adorable as she looked, I had to disapprove. Her US Open daywear, though, was among my all-time favorites (Wimbledon garb aside--me likes the whites):

So! Cute! Simple, angular, nicely-fitted, pale lavender--perfect.

Aaaaand the current situation: I do understand how the location of the French Open might inspire players to experiment with high fashion, and some do; some even do it well. For instance, last year many bawked at Maria's pale pink tutu-esque dress:

The bawkers were, of course, wrong. I found it flattering, cute, summery--the top half sporty enough to balance out the froo froo skirt--and I couldn't even shake my head at the mis-matched yellow bottoms. (Hell if you've got a tennis player's bottom, might as well draw attention to it, right?)

This year, though... yikes. I'll let the picture tell the story:

Good. Lord. Let's ennumerate the problems here:

1) If the Australian Open has taught us anything, it's that much goes awry when Sharpova opts for turquoise.

2) Yes, that IS a drop-waist. Flapper-style dress? Tennis? Meh. Maybe. Meehhhh... probably not. But a sack-shaped, ruffly, froo-froo, turquoise flapper-style NIGHTIE? Most certainly, certainly not, no way, no how.

3) Yes, that IS a layer of--gulp--black tulle over the entire dress. Maria, Maria, Maria. Things that sparkle earn you a violation in the form of a warning. Tulle? I'll straight up fault you a fashion point for that shit.

4) Dressing well for televised sporting events differs clearly from dressing for the red carpet. Color and shape are key, while details and texture get lost, subtlety goes out the window...and Maria clearly ignored these differences, seeing as this dress in particular looks even worse in motion and on television than it does in that catalogue shot up yonder.

Thank ye lord, I have Wimbledon to look forward to. Everyone looks just peachy in white on green.

7. Will Roger Federer finally win the French? Just give up the goods. Watching and waiting is stressing me out.

8. What's wrong with my bike? Grr.

9. Golf. WTF?

10. And, lastly, one question answered. "Why can't Americans win on clay?" Drrrrrrrrrrr. EVERY freaking tennis commentator or story/article about the French Open marvels at how early all the American men in the draw went out of the tournament, and how Serena is the only woman left standing. How can this beeeeeee? they lament. Why, Why, WHY? Maybe, just maybe, it has something to do with the sheer and utter lack of clay courts in the US? Hmmmmmmmm? For fuck's* sake, there are like two whole clay courts in the entire United States, total--AND they're green clay, different from the red clay at Roland Garros. So... there's your answer. Europe, North America--different continents. You can cease shaking your tiny fists at the sky now. Besides, Americans have won there. They just aren't right now.

For a general expert, I sure have more questions than answers. **

i was LITERALLY over the moon.

Yeah, I know.

This poetry course constantly reminds me how concepts that come easily to some people can give other people vast difficulties and makes me appreciate my students' "ohhhhhhh I get it" moments when they seem to, oh I don't know, learn something. Well, not just learn something like "Wait--Walt Whitman was a HOMO?!?" I guess I'm referring more to when they suddenly understand or accept a concept that they had previously been unable to understand or had resisted for whatever reason.

THus I've been bemused lately at how literally I interpret things sometimes, or how I just jump straight to the super-stupid interpretation. My friend Andrew from college was even worse, hilariously so because he was a pretty smart guy in general. There's a Liz Phair song (that one that describes how her mother always reacts when she tells her she's seeing someone new) that goes, "I'm sending you his photograph / I swear this one is gonna last / And all those other bastards were ony practice...." As we sat on his roof one night, the stereo still audible from his apartment, that song came on and Andrew suddenly burst into giggles. I asked him to explain, and he refused, then after a little prodding, still giggling, said, "I always understood that line to mean 'Mom, I'm sorry all those other photographs of him got all faded' or shredded or whatever, 'Here's a better one that should last longer.'" Didn't connect it with the "other bastards" line at all, until that very moment. Ha!

Okay, this shit is probably only funny to a huge nerd (me), but I do the same goddamn thing, worse, and embarrassingly consistently. Especially considering that I spend four hours a week bullying my students into reading beyond the literal, it's ridiculous that E-dumb-abeth, for example, JUST got the "Gay Perry" nickname in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. And I have always misunderstood the part from "God Only Knows" by the Beach Boys that goes: "I may not always love you / But long as there are stars above you / You never need to doubt it...". Guess what I have always thought that meant? Guess. Just guess. I thought it meant "I ONLY LOVE YOU AT NIGHT". (!!!!!) Geeeeezuz.

This summer as I paddled that first long crossing out to Sucia Island in the kayak, I was all scared and trembly and shit, and that fucking Coldplay song with the lines "You belong with me / Not swallowed in the sea" kept running through my head, which at first did not assist in calming me down. But I had to laugh when it dawned on me how borderline retarded it was to think of that song unironically when I was, quite literally, in danger of being swallowed in the sea (well, "in danger" meaning not safe on land, cocooned in a fluffy down comforter), completely ignorant of any "meaning" you're probably supposed to get out of those lines, the meaning that every asshole on the block probably thinks of when they first hear that song rather than thinking of THE ACTUAL SEA.

In short: I'm a moron! Let's revel in it. I want like stories of stupidity.

Tagged!

According to this game, we are all quite odd. The purpose is to list six odd things about yourself, then tag six people to do the same. My wordy-ass list of oddities:

1. Sigh. The old reliable: I have three kidneys. And… in case you didn’t know… most people only have two.

2. I don’t “doodle.” Instead, I obsessively try to draw perfect circles and perfectly symmetrical hearts freehand. I have done this since elementary school.

3. As a kid, starting around six or so, I would think about people’s minds and why my thoughts were trapped in my body, and others' thoughts were trapped in their bodies, and wonder why I was I, they were they, and why, for example, my thoughts couldn’t leap over to someone else’s brain or body. I would look at other people and try to force my thoughts into their brains so I could escape my little sphere of isolation, have some mental company. It never worked. But the more I would think about it, the more upset I would get about how arbitrary it seemed that “I” was thinking “my” thoughts. Eventually I would get the feeling that “I” wasn’t anything at all, and then this dizzy sensation coupled with nausea would come over me. It was horrifying, but kind of sublime. As an adult, I can think about the same things in more “sophisticated” terms, but I can’t make that dizzy, nauseated feeling come.

I once told Jared all of this, and he patted me on the head and said, “Awww! Ebeff! You were a little existentialist!” I would venture that I was and am something of a materialist.

4. I grind my teeth to the rhythm of whatever song is in my head. I think I do it to keep myself from actually bursting into song, but also because my neck and jaw tend to carry all my tension. With a little help from my shoulders and back, of course.

5. I rarely find men my own age or younger than me strikingly attractive anymore. As I’ve gotten closer to thirty, it’s rare that a man under forty (whom I don’t already know) truly catches my eye. Is that dirty?

6. When I was in junior high, my aunt Laurie was decapitated in a car wreck (gruesome, I know), killed along with her infant son. The whole family was shaken up, but one of my cousins was freaking the eff out. She told me that on the day Laurie died, she’d had a vision of my grandfather (dead then) at the top of some stairs, gesturing for her to come up, but she felt as is someone had brushed by her on the stairs and headed up toward him. She got home from school that day and learned Laurie had died. I blew off my cousin’s story about her vision because it sounded like bullshit.

Less than a year later, I was sitting in school when heavy dread filled my gut, then suddenly a crystal-clear image of my aunt Laurie laughing flashed into my head. Then I flashed to what I saw upon walking into my parents’ house the day she had died--the mail thrown on the floor in the hallway, the box of tissues on the arm of the sofa, all alerting me that something was really, really wrong. I forgot about these “flashes” until I got home that night and learned my cousin (who had had the vision of Laurie and our grandfather) had drowned to death that day. I also discovered that it was my cousin’s birthday—not the one who had drowned, but the baby cousin who was killed with Laurie.

I never told any of my family any of the above nonsense, partly because it’s creepy and sharing would be in poor taste, and partly because, in reality, it’s all just eerie coincidence. Regardless, ever since I’ve felt that Laurie and my cousin can see everything I do, and even though I don’t actually believe that’s true, I talk to them both sometimes. I kind of take them around with me.

It’s creepy, I know.

I don’t know whom to tag! Everyone I know who internerds already done been tagged-ed. I guess I’ll tag some regular readers AND some occasional lurkers, all equally unlikely to play the game. I hereby tag: Mary, Jane, Emily, KF, Joseph, Ann B.

GO! Emily and Mary, I at least expect you to acknowledge that you’ve been tagged…