Library of the Poison Mind

Today's topic is celebrity look-alikes.

I don't get compared to a lot of celebrities. I just ddn't look like anyone. One time, someone told me I look like Marilyn Manson crosses with Tina Fey. But normal Marilyn Manson, when he's not wearing makeup to look like an alien goth fetus. I've also been told I look like David Bowie on more than one occasion... again, when he's looking like a weirdo, but at least he was pretty cool.

So recently, I was on an elevator at work with one of the cleaning guys. Custodian? Janitor? I never know the proper terms for people, I grew up calling Asian people "Orientals." Anyway, he's friendly and somehow decided I look exactly (exactly, not just a little bit) like Boy George.

Boy. George. You've got to be kidding me.

He backpedalled a little and said "Well, a young Boy George, you look just like a young Boy George."

Now will somebody please tell me because I really want to know just why do people always compare me to men whose identities are firmly grounded in gender-bending and cosmetic experimentation?

Look at this picture. Does something about my person, who I will remind you is today a librarian in a cardigan, that screams "Viva glam?" In college one year around Halloween, I lost count of the number of people who recommended I go as Hedwig because I was already half way there.

So I'm walking into the library after lunch last week, and this particular custodian is talking to another outside, and I distinctly heard him say "Oh, right there, he's the one" to which his companion replied "Hey, you're right!" So apparently my appearance inspires water cooler conversation and now the entire cleaning staff is in on my secret identity. "HEY BOY GEORGE!" he yelled. "Yes, hello, do you like my new sweater. It is from Zara" is not really the way to answer that so instead, I just used "Hey, what's up" and accepted my new reputation.

So I guess that is the way of things. I'm the only person I know who can wear brown hair, a beige sweater, Kenneth Cole shoes and a Michael Cors shirt and be told he looks like a glam rockstar.

No, not a glam rockstar. Every glam rockstar.

If my blog had any actual readers, I'd ask them to comment and name someone I look like who is NOT a glam rocker, but alas, you'd probably just say Marcel Duchamp anyway. You wouldn't be the first.

So I accept it. At least I have something to look forward to:

This entry sucks, we'll say it's because I was sick

This week I was able to cross something off my list of Things Never To Do In New York.

Basically, right, it's a list of things I never will ever do if my life is at all what I want it to be. And if I accidentally do one, it gets knocked off the list because... well it's too late. So, there's now a big ol' blank space between "pee on the third rail" and "make out with a homeless guy". Why? Because on Wednesday, I totally passed out on the subway. Yes.

It wasn't some drunk thing like half of you are probably thinking. I don't have enough of a life to drink during the week. I was just standing there at 8:30 in the morning on my way to work looking, I might add, super biz cas adorable in a zip-up sweater and shirt from J. Crew, which I never wear.... but I look even cuter today, you should see what I got at Mexx last night.

Wait, what?

Ok, so I was standing there and suddenly BAM nausea, light-headedness! Then we kick it up a notch with a little garlic I mean some stars and suddenly the really sweet young couple sitting near me is helping me into their seat and I was hoping they'd have some Vitamin Water to give me, but instead I had to settle for nothing. It was really freaky because I wasn't thinking of Emeril at the time and who just passes out like that? I didn't know what was wrong with me.

Emeril wasn't really there, but there was a Rachel Ray poster on the wall, and I think that's where the symptoms came from.

So I got myself home and slept for 8 hours.... then I ate Jello and watched Charmed like the doctor would have told me to do and then slept for 8 more hours. The next morning I felt fine but didn't go to work anyway because I had the perfect excuse just to play it safe. I sat around and then went shopping.

I think it was some sort of virus. I hope it was. It had better have been because I feel better and am not doing anything about it except maybe telling my doctor who I am meeting next week for a physical. I hope he's cute and young and gay (I already know he's Jewish) but he's probably not.

Right, so now I've passed out on the subway, which isn't scary and horrible anymore because I feel better. Now it's just embarassing. On top of it all, now I'm out of sick days and I had to cancel my haircut appointment.

This weekend it's gonna rain, so I plan to spend the whole time in my apartment making my list of Things Never To Do In New York even longer so I feel better about myself.

Girls! Girls! Girls!

And the George W. Bush Idiotic Idea of the Year Award goes to the Education Department for their fantastic contribution and solution to idiocy in America.

Boys have trouble with math because there are girls in there... what... befouling the information transmitted from the teacher's mouth? Or are you implying the girls hold the boys back because they're only good at shopping and cooking and couldn't possibly grasp the concept of an integral? Exactly what studies were these that suggested a gender fender would help kids do better?

I just watched Mean Girls the other day, y'know, where Lindsay Lohan is a math genius but fails quizzes on purpose to get the attention of that hot boy with the eyes. Basically I'm thinking this plan was based on that movie. But I mean, the movie was based on a book, so it's totally ok.

My favorite part of this plan is that it completely eliminates the threat of blame. Oh, it's not our fault education sucks, it's the mixing of genders, it's passing out condoms in health class, it's the spectre of gay marriage!

How about this? If there's a problem with education, there's a problem with the people in charge of it. So instead of throwing out gimmicky little solutions like gender segregation and the Atkin's diet based on a couple of little studies, why don't we go straight to the source (parents? I dunno, probably the government) and fix idiocy where it originates? But I dunno what that would imply or anything, hell, I don't know anything about politics. I think it's because I sat next to Irina in government class senior year.... y'know, and she was a girl and all.

Or maybe it's the Russians.

Make a wish it's post #111!

Y'know those days when you're totally not feeling the diligence vibe so work and other important things are not only undesirable, they're impossible? This is today.

All morning I cataloged tango music in Portuguese, and it was boring and I don't even speak Portuguese except I know this one song about a bird and an orange and feet from this capoeira class I took. I'm totally not feeling the diligence vibe.

So I'm sitting at my desk looking for a distraction and the nearest thing is this long article called "The Geometry of Musical Chords" filled with math-heavy music theory all about voice-leading and counterpoint. It's actually really interesting, and my copy is a printout of the stuff you can find here if you're interested. I'm supposed to be cataloging it, but cataloging things people randomly print off the internet is a pain. Anyway, I read this article, but seeing as though I haven't studied theory or done an ounce of math in the past 3 years, it was heady work to get through and understand it (which I do, I'm pretty smart y'know) so now I'm all worn out and really not feeling the diligence vibe.

Furthermore, almost everyone's gone except this one coworker that I had a really strange dream about the other night, and I know it's dumb but I feel awkward and dirty around said coworker now and don't want to talk to this particular coworker, so I'm kinda burying my head and pretending to be busy every time the coworker comes by to chat, which is usually a nice distraction when I'm not feeling the diligence vibe. It makes screwing off hard work to have to be so fake about it.

To conclude, I can't wait to go home where wasting time isn't so stressful and draining.

*UPDATE* P.S. It wasn't a sex dream so don't be all "oooooh, he had a sex dream" because I didn't god you're all so immature.

Cravings

I'd give my boyfriend's left nut for a bucket of chicken and a 2-liter of Dr. Pepper right about now.

Any takers?

Like a cooler

I'm wearing this shirt today that I have had for years but have only worn once because I don't know how I feel about it. I got it at Lucky in Chicago.

You're probably wondering why I would pay exorbitant Lucky prices for a shirt on which I am not 100% keen, so I'll take this opportunity to remind you that I'm a spoiled semi-rich kid, and I got the shirt in college when shopping was all done on daddy's credit card.

Whatever, so I've trucked it around through 3 or 4 dorm-switches and apartment moves across 4 states, so I decided I would put it on again today. It's long-sleeved and the weather told me "Wear the cowboy shirt." (It's kind of a cowboy shirt, it has a collar and a sort of rope thing embroidered on it, but it's also a zip-up. It's hard to explain.)

Anyway, I put it on and decided to gauge people's reactions to it to decide whether the Salvation Army needed it more than I do.

So the Russian woman I work with likes it a lot, so that was points in the positive column because she has this odd glamour about her that I think they only make in Moscow. Then, Olga da Polga liked it and told me it was semiotic.

I was like "What the fuck are you talking about, nobody knows what that bullshit word means."

Actually, I just said "huh?" and he explained and I still didn't get it (I mean, I get the word now but it still doesn't make any sense.)

So I'm not sure whether to put a few points in the "Good Shirt" column or a million points in the "Bad Shirt that Only Freako Guinea Pig People Would Wear" column, but you can see why it's so important that I find out.

You're gonna think I'm a total queer, but I'm really sad because the sixth season of Charmed comes out today but I have a friend from out of town staying with me tonight and tomorrow night and he's not gonna wanna sit and watch it with me for 5 hours each day like I was planning on doing, so I'm not even gonna bother picking it up after work and they introduced this new character at the end of the fifth season and he's totally hot and I think he's evil but I dunno because I've never seen the show on TV so all I know is the first five seasons and I've been waiting for so long to find out what happens and two more days seems live forever I can't even handle it.

I have a master's degree.

More awesome than you

I was at this housewarming party Saturday night, and it was super fun, right, and I iced cupcakes and drank lots of things and met all these people and most of them went to Bard, y'know the college, which apparently is awesome because it churns out awesome people.

But I'm all embarassed. Anyone who's seen Napoleon Dynamite knows it's important to have skills, and I actually got into a conversation with a German girl and an Icelandic girl about skills and parties and dating and why and how and it was silly but we knew it was silly so we're not superficial or anything.

Anyway, I'm really embarassed because there was this old 8-bit Nintendo there and I was drunk and people were playing Mario, and I said "Oh you suck" a lot because I like to harass people who are bad at video games even when I'm not any better. It's just fun.

But it so happens that I am better at Mario and I can finish it in about 6 minutes, and so they told me to play and I did and I kicked its ass, so I'm embarassed because then everyone at the party thought I was so good because I spend lots of time memorizing video games and no matter how much I insisted that I have an actual life and no matter how cool they said it was I know they were judging me secretly. Except the German girl, I think she was genuinely impressed and she was pretty so I told her.

So the moral of this blog is that no matter how many skills you have, you're not gonna get dates if they involve video games.

The one where I'm pissed at FedEx

Riddle me this, fatman.

FedEx tried to deliver something to my house, but it requires a signature and, like most of us, I have a job. So they leave a note saying they'll come back the next day at around the same time. You are smart, FedEx. Obviously since I'm not home on Wednesday at 9:30, there will be a good chance I'm home Thursday at 9:30 and if not, I should change my plans to make sure I am. Whatever, so I called the number to tell them "Ok, listen, stop trying I'll come get it myself."

So they took it off the truck and I can pick it up today in Brooklyn. Yes, Brooklyn, because there can't possibly be 1,000 more convenient FedEx locations in the city, 3 of which are within 10 blocks of my home. Fine, that's not how it works, I accept it. (For those of you just joining us, I live and work in Manhattan and have only been to Brooklyn one time in April.)

Today, I wanted to confirm the Brooklyn address because I have no idea how that place works, and so I went to the FedEx site and could find no trace of a location at the address I had been given over the phone. But whatever, I didn't care. All the locations I found said they were open until 8:00 or 9:00 in the evening, so I had plenty of time to figure things out if I got to 100 Morgan St. to find a Starbucks or a hobo or nothing.

But then I got paranoid and called anyway "just to confirm". The guy on the phone was clearly new at the job because he was really into reading his rehearsed lines, which amused me. He was nice. Anyway, 100 Morgan St. does indeed exist and he said my package is there waiting for me and I can pick it up today if I want and they're open until 5:00 and that thank you for calling FedEx and that I should have a great day.

5:00? What in the hell kind of retarded system is this??? (That was the riddle by the way, it took me a while to get to it.)

99% of everyone works during business hours during the week. That means 99% of everyone won't be home to get their stupid packages from maybe 8-6. So FedEx's brilliant solution is to bring them to a place that's only open 8-5. Logic (y'know, that thing you use your brain for) should, in my not-too-outrageous ideal universe, dictate the monumental retardedness of this arrangement especially considering that there are lots of locations open after people get off work that don't require them to go to stinky Brooklyn.

Thanks, FedEx, for going the extra mile to make my shipping experience both efficient and enjoyable. I can't wait to take time out my Saturday to trek to Brooklyn to get a package that as far as you know could be super important top secret government documents that I absolutely need but will not have by 5:00 tonight and now who's gonna save America from the evil that is coming? I hope you're proud.

in the what?'s first current event

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6042306.stm

I'm fine, you can stop calling really.

This happened a few blocks south me, which is alarming, yes, but my apartment is fine, my stuff is fine, my cat is fine if still rather retarded. (I hope the boom scared her real bad, she ripped a shirt I like.) So I appreciate all the voicemails I will be going through when I get off work, but I'm fine. I would have answered, but I got tired of telling people who don't know exactly where I live all about how I'm not affected.

And for future reference, I don't live in a high rise. I'll never be rich enough to live in a high rise. So for the rest of my life, the only airplanes small and agile enough to crash into my building will be paper or remote-controlled.

I'm embarassed to admit that my first thought when my boss told me a plane just hit a building that might be mine was "Again? Plane terrorism is so tired, have an original thought people." My second thought was "Damn, it'll be a bitch to get home today." And it wasn't until my third that "Those poor people, I hope everyone's ok" passed on through. So chastize me for my fabulously selfish priorities, but at least I'm up front about it. It's no worse than people who take disasters as an opportunity to show off how "sensitive" and "compassionate" they can be by writing in their blogs and pasting on their sad face and "Oh, puppy" voices while doing nothing to actually help.

I have someone in mind, and she was driving me nuts a little bit ago, that's why. Cut the crap, you think being nice makes you a good person?

Some schools let out, which I guess makes some amount of sense but not, y'know, a lot. I'm still at work, and my cat's probably breathing in smoke and toxic dust particles through my open bathroom window, so I've even got half a reason to get outta here, but please. What are they gonna do, go clog the streets like silly gawkers at a disaster site? I guess maybe some of the kids may have lived there, so obviously history class is a low priority... But everyone else? I dunno. The world shuts down way too easily these days.

Librarians Crazy For Feeling So Lonely

There's this guy at work who talk to himself or sometimes to his computer a lot while he's cataloging, which is cool, I guess, I mean everyone does that sometimes. It's hard for me, at least, to get through the work day without muttering "Goddammit, I screwed that up" or "I am totally the master" or "Blast you insipid machine, what have you done!?!".

But this guy here has full-on conversations (with the computer?) as he's typing and clicking away, and not quietly either. It's not distracting or anything, maybe because I sit nowhere near him, so I accept it. We all have these conversations in our heads, right? So maybe vocalizing it just passes the time. It's usually just standard human-computer interaction stuff.

Usually.

I was just walking by enjoying a piece of my other coworker's homemade honey cake (it's a Jew thing) when I passed the Talker's desk to hear him exclaim: "I'm a guinea pig!"

Yeah. Right you are.

I slowed my pace, hoping for some sort of context, and I peeked at his computer screen thinking maybe he was playing some sort of Flash game in which his character turned into a guinea pig or perhaps into a rodent that could be mistaken for a guinea pig, maybe like a vole or something, I'm not altogether sure what a guinea pig looks like. But no. No context. Apparently today we are simply a guinea pig.

This isn't the first time he's said something totally off-the-wall. Once I heard something about Santa Claus. Another time it was "But there's a lot of sour cream in that!" I imagine his computer is sitting there thinking "Just smile and nod... damn I wish my cell phone would ring right about now."

Now, he's the super nicest guy ever, so I don't want to have him committed or anything. He's smart, and when he's talking to you, it's pretty normal. Fairly normal. Normal enough.

But it's weird and kinda creepy like crazy-talking to nobody is just a gateway drug to the Great Sukkot Library Massacre of 2006. (Look it up.)

I don't know why, but I've taken to calling him Bo Peep in my head. I think in my metaphor, the sheep represent sanity. But whatever, since that doesn't make sense, so now I'm going to call him Olga da Polga instead.

He'll make your dicky allllll sticky

They're keeping my cafe open for another couple of weeks, probably because the entire place is going to go under at that point, I don't care, at least I get my decent cafe for a little longer. I had the guy make me a peppermint hot chocolate today, and it was the best thing ever. Instead of using the pumps, he took the caps off the huge bottles and just dumped a bunch of syrups into my cup and then added like a teaspoon of steamed milk, I felt like I was in Candyland.

Speaking of Candyland, this is a picture of Mr. Mint, who was pretty much my idol growing up. I always thought we had a lot in common because we were both tall and thin and cute, but now I think it mostly is because he's a total queer.

I'd suggest that I be him for Halloween, but it would be way too hard. It's too bad because this bitch needs to be brought back into popular culture. He is totally underrepresented. Even a Google image search brings up shit on him, one where he looks like some goofy cherub reject and the other, which you see here that I even had to crop some shit out of.

I have even more reverence for Mr. Mint than I do for Grimace, and I have a freaking Facebook group in honor of Grimace. The next paragraph is where I say awesome things about Mr. Mint.

Mr. Mint is awesome. Getting to Mr. Mint is half the fun. What can Mr. Mint do for you? Mr. Mint is the champagne of ginger ales. Mr. Mint thinks outside the bun. Only Mr. Mint can prevent forest fires. The answer is Mr. Mint. Now what was the question? Mr. Mint flies the friendly skies. Mr. Mint is the top banana in the west. Mr. Mint feels the warmth and luxury that he deserves. It's Mr. Mint, stupid. Mr. Mint is the mark of a man. If you don't show up in a Mr. Mint, don't bother showing up at all.

I hope I used his name enough times to be the top of every Google search by now. I'd say more, but I gotta go home. Make sure you go do something Mr. Mint related today or I should be very cross with you.

Super cute!!!

Normally I don't say anything about the silly books I read because most of the people that care about books for young people are young people, and they don't read my blog, and if they do their parents should punish them or better yet send me nasty e-mails about exposing their impressionable niblets to gayness and language because anybody who knows anything knows that parents in America prefers blame over responsibility. Also, parents may be concerned I influence their children to use ridiculous run-on sentences.

Since I never get any of those angry messages, I figure nobody cares what I have to say about the Artemis Fowl series (cute), David Wiesner's illustrations (beautiful), or the oeuvre of Garth Nix (brilliant). But between last night and today at lunch, I read Kiki's Delivery Service by Eiko Kadono, which is just the darlinest little book I ever did read.

It's about this little witch who turns 12 or 13 or so, and she has to go off by herself and start a life in a new town, so she picks this big city. Unfortunately, she's been lazy and bored all her life so the only thing she learned how to do was ride a broom, so she sets up this business where she carries shit around for people. The rest of the book is all about her little adventures helping people out.

Half the things that transpire leave you thinking "What? That would never happen. And nobody talks like that." But then you remember it's Japanese and somehow that makes it alright. Also, Kiki is 13, right, but she really comes off more like a 10 year old. Not in a whiny way, though... just that she's not all learning about sex and death and love like young people in young people novels so often do. She's just kinda traipsing about on her broom la la la la OOPS, I dropped the stuffed cat I was supposed to deliver, I'll just give the kid my real cat instead, try not to breathe, kitty, so he doesn't know you're real. Also, if for some reason you have children, this book is totally episodic and would make a perfect nighttime read-aloud over about a week and a half. (There, I've said something useful.)

Maybe it's because in the book I read before this, a 12 year-old boy was pushed out of a 10th-story window, paralyzing him because he saw a woman fucking her twin brother and plotting the death of his father.... but the innocence of Kiki's Delivery Service was really refreshing. Now I'm at home watching the movie version (Hayao Miyazaki) which looks to be as fabulous as everything he's ever done.

Hee hee, you said dick

There was this score for a piece called Requiem, but it was clear that it wasn't a real requiem, so I had to read the text to find out if it was secular or sacred. But the text was in Icelandic, which appears to be the hardest language ever. The lyricist's name is Íslenskar Þjóðvísur, and I thought "It sounds like his mother was getting brutally stabbed when she named him."

I'm sick and didn't feel like getting up, so I found a free Icelandic-English translator online that didn't know shit. It kept most of the words in Icelandic except "mossy bruise", which... yuck.

Whatever, that's retarded, so I went to the closet and got a dictionary and started looking shit up. No matter how hard I tried, the most coherent translation I could come up with was: "Well-rested [as after a good night's rest], the beautiful dandelion goes out to pasture. [There is a] mouse under the moss, [and] the blurriness gives birth to cows and sheep."

Unless that's some sort of Icelandic idiom that means "Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them", I'm gonna go ahead and say that Icelandic is fucked up. I went with "secular" and decided that Björk's music must be pretty mundane and straightforward in her country.

To conclude, I still have this horrible cold, so I can't think of anything amusing to say except to relate boring stories about being a librarian.

Also, I just realized the post before this was number 100, and I should have had a huge party with cake and Paris Hilton would be there, but I got sick and had to cancel it.

Small Retailer Falters, Barnes and Noble, Starbucks Do Dance of Capitalist Superiority

I have some sort of bullshit cold today. A sniffle, a scratchy throat, and a sneeze an hour, but I'm playing the whole thing up a little, trying to hit that magic level of exaggeration where my boss thinks I'm a dedicated trooper for coming in despite my condition but where my coworkers don't think I'm a drippy pathetic mess who will leak onto their keyboards.

Anyway, they're closing my cafe, and I'm real pissed about it. I walked in yesterday, and there were these numbers taped to the cash register: "5 4 3 2 1 GOODBYE!" I thought it was about the credit card machine because the manager said they weren't gonna take them anymore. Turns out the cafe itself is saying goodbye.

The bookstore attached to it is doing all bad, so they think gutting the cafe part and filling it with more inventory will help sales. That seems pretty dumb to me, especially since the cafe was turning a healthier profit than the bookstore could ever dream of turning.

The bookstore is a "paperback specialist" meaning they mostly carry paperbacks. They get a few new hardbounds of more popular stuff, but not nearly everything. Apparently somebody thought it would be a good idea to open a store in the center of a city filled with Barnes and Nobles with the pitch: "Wait, but get this.... we'll charge the same prices as Barnes and Noble, but we'll only have three-quarters the selection!" Now they're filing for bankruptcy.

I hate that bookstores have to charge the prices on the back of the book. It's so super boring and takes all the fun out of shopping around.

The only reason I ever shopped at this bookstore was because I go in there every day during work for coffee and sometimes I just can't help myself. Without the cafe, screw it, I'm using the 20% off coupon I get in my e-mail box every other week from Barnes and Noble, which is conveniently just 3 blocks away no matter where you are in the city.

I'm all about supporting small and independent retailers over big ones (which is why I'm pissed I have to use Starbucks from now on) but if they're going to make retarded decisions, I have no sympathy, sorry, Barnes and Noble has DVD's.

Maybe I'll buy one to go with my cold. The Little Mermaid special edition comes out today, and B&N sent me a 28% off coupon. I wonder what Borders will offer.

Wow, I'm boring when I'm sick.