CONCISE LANGUAGE.....pass it on!

Ladies and gentleman,

I am a travel expert. I have not travelled extensively myself, but I happen to know alot of bullshit information about geography and business names. So maybe I find it more annoying than others when dealing with people who take COMMON KNOWLEDGE for granted.

I honest to goodness just got off the phone with a guy who said the following, (he was not the first person who has spewed a toiletbowl fulla redundancies and he wont be the last):

"We, my wife Shirley and myself, Larry Jones. That's J-O-N-E-S, social security number 111-11-1111 would like to go to Dallas, Texas tomorrow, Tuesday, the 23rd of December, two thousand and eight. In Dallas Texas we already have a hotel. The Hotel Dallas, in Dallas Texas, on 110 Cowboy Boulevard, Dallas Texas, 33433. The day we check out, Friday, the 26th of December, two thousand and eight, we have a flight, number 123, at seven am on Continental airlines, departing from the Dallas International Airport. Anyways, I'll get to the point. We will be awfully tired on our way back to Charlotte, North Carolina and we were hoping that there was a Starbucks, the coffee company, near the The Hotel Dallas...."


Folks, I shit thee not....

The more time I spend with scientists....

The more I'm letting my dork flag fly these days.

From: http://www.eatliver.com/i.php?n=3723

Nisi Drew and the puffy throat

Last spring, when I was having my "holy shit, i've been unemployed for a month and rent is due" garage sale, I parted with my little space heater for $4. It was a powerful little mofo, and very safe. I think it was meant to heat garages and warehouses. In the drafty polar shelf that is my edwardian apartment in the wintertime, that little space heater got me through tough times.

Well, the times they are a tough. My ass is freezing. I honestly considered the pros and cons of adding a pot to piss in to my room so I can avoid the arctic blast of our hallway at night.

I woke up today and suddenly the act of swallowing was difficult. My voice is doing that sexy delta blues thing. I do believe that I have caught something.

The moral of the story is that I could have caught this throat thingie from SO MANY SOURCES and I wish I could pinpoint what it was so I don't feel like such a party hearty hooligan.

Could it have been the four different people I've made out with over the past week?

Or perhaps bacteria/germs/nastiness from the table and cups that held vast amounts of beer and debris from our flippy cup game.

Or could it be something as innocent and simple as an office bug?

While we're at it, is this my body's way of telling me that I work too much?

Is implimenting the five second rule on muni a bad call? What about eating on muni? Or, for that matter, going on muni without latex gloves?

Should I not talk so incessantly?

Or is it some kind of combo of going home only to shower and thus running all over the goddamn freezing bay area with wet hair and flip flops?

Picture o' the day:

Economics, Nisi style

Hmmm, the $12 I forked over on a cab to haul my hungover ass to work could have bought another $12 bottle of Jim Beam.

protein power plate!

IM with my coworker-

Me: i'm making a *$ run, want anything? i'll buy you some coffee or a pastry like substance
dude at office: pastry like substance, wow, you would make a great waitress
dude at office: I'll have a slack-roissant!
Me: chocolate or apathy flavored?
dude at office: emo please? can I have a buttered rickroll?

The day I've always waited for....

Since I was a child, I was never fixated on my wedding day, or the day I'd get my first period, or lose my virginity, or the day of my death. While I suspected that all of those things were inevitible, I knew something else was- the odds of being crapped on by a bird.

I am oddly giddy to announce that today, Tuesday, November 18th, I noticed a dollop of hunter green bird shit on the shoulder of my black shirt. I was walking to work, a mere two blocks from my door, when I noticed it. Luckily I had tissues in my bag, so I was able to get rid of most of it. Alas, reminants are there, and I can't stop staring at my shoulder.

Mazeltov!

schmoozing...

I think I've perfected my method of making things happen for my clients-

1. call the restaurant/hotel/spa, etc

2. act as if i've already been confirmed/told something

3. mention that my client is a major VIP for a huge company

4. get panicky because I am sooooo about to lose my job.

5. wait for hostess to take sympathy on me and transfer me to a manager.

6. Flirt with reckless abandon with a male manager, upping the damsel in distress routine to epic proportions. "Oh my god, you are such a sweetheart! You just saved me my job!" is quite effective. Kiss the ass of a female manager, thanking her profusely for taking time out of her busy day.

7. call my client, unleash my magic on their asses. Attribute it to my powers of persuasion when it comes to such an important client.

8. go home, take an extra long shower to clean off the deceit.

Get thee to the suburbs...or the nunnery

So word on the street is that the back patio at Lucky 13 is closing at 11pm nowadays because the neighbors are having a shitfit about the noise. Mind you, Lucky 13 is located right off of Church and Market, a buzzing area sandwiched between the castro and mission. My favorite bar, the Gold Cane, is getting more and more adament about shutting down their famous, smoker-friendly back patio around 11pm on weekends because a lawyer neighbor is threatening legal action.

Where are we, Palo Alto?

Uptight people.....you've always been on my shit list. I have no problem with those of you who reside in your compulsively clean gated communities, going weeks without seeing a lick of graffiti, or a bum, or anything that may slightly inconvenience your robotic life. But what the fuck was going through your head when you decided on your apartment in a notoriously hectic San Francisco neighborhood?

There is a certain checklist that even the most irresponsible and oblivious of potential tenant would go through- they scan their neighborhood. Are you trying to say that you didn't do recon work and notice- hmmmm, I love those granite countertops but that bar next door may disrupt my beauty sleep.

If you're old enough to live on your own, you should be self aware enough to know what does and doesn't work for you and your precious need for quiet. I personally would LOVE to live next to a bar in an area like Duboce Triangle or Haight....but I have a very high threshold for noise. My close friends live immediately above (like floor vibrating above) a bar on Haight Street and they simply adapted because they knew what they were getting themselves into. It also doesn't hurt that they think the idea is kind of fun- the view from their window provides hours of entertainment.

Once upon a time people came to this city because of its reputation, not for 5am yoga and haute brunches. SF was and should still be a place that caters to the alkies, the insomniacs, the social butterflies, the adventurers. That San Francisco has the catalyst for such perfect bouts of euphoria experienced by yours truly, don't ruin this for us.

NaNoWriMo and the death of coincidences

It seems like National Novel Writing Month rears its ugly peer-pressurey head into my orbit with increasing force every year. I recieved three emails from friends to the tune of "dude, you have got to get on this shit!"

I did it about three years ago. It is a consuming, horrid, addictive affair. I ended up with 70,000 words but I did so via willing alienation from my friends and complete rejection of my school work. And the novel? A piece of shit whose only value would be to expedite the workings of a compost bin. Don't really remember what it was about- I lost the thing in the great Chicken Soup Computer Takedown of 2005 (never forget!).

Alot of people say that the time constraints help with writers block and get the ideas flowing- after all, they are not being held to any kind of standard for a good story because they only had a month to write it.

Cracker, please.

You're writing a novel, not raising funds for a goodamn cancer research 10k. Time is not money. To me, rushing a novel is like aiming for a quickie on the first date with your soulmate. There is nothing more exciting than letting plot points just come to you- while commuting, as you get your groove on, in the shower, in the frozen foods section of trader joes- on their terms, when they're damn well ready.

There's a dualism to all of this- every writer is influenced by the shit around them. This is a fact. Some writers are better at tweaking/ignoring this than others, but I cannot tell you how much badassery I have come up with because of what I have witnessed on the streets of San Francisco. And then somewhow the imaginary voice/world in my head decides on how this can be used to continue the plot. Sometimes its the actual occurence (ie- a tap dancing nun) and other times its the mystery of this occurence (perhaps this nun had an offer at juilliard....I wonder why she didn't take it. Hmmm, maybe she's masochistic. Hmmm, maybe my villian is as well.....) And what is the plot but a series of happy accidents? That's life, isn't it? Nobody can plan their futures and therefore, how are we to fully plan our novels?

If I'm right about this.....what is your atmosphere going to be like in this hurried novel? A sea of black turtlenecks chugging espressos in a cafe-meetup scenario. Sounds self indulgent to me. You may as well write a book about writing a book. Unless you're Charlie Kaufman, I think you should take your time and take the party outside.