But Call Me Betsy

Very soon, Shawn and I will be leaving the country to visit the largest cuidad in the world, Mexico City. We're staying there for 3 days and then traveling on to a smaller city that begins with the letter "T" (I think) and then Acapulco and one other place and back to el Cuidad de Mexico. I am afraid I will see too many starving dogs to enjoy it, not to mention the poor people. My friend Kali said to think of the dogs in Mexico differently since their culture doesn't view dogs in the same way we do. She said, Think of the dogs as squirrels. This idea helps for some reason, at least in an abstract way. I'm not sure how I'll feel when faced with their bony bodies. (By the way, in preparation for our trip, we rented Amores los Perros ["Love is a Bitch"] last week which is [in part] about dog-fighting. Last night, Shawn had rented Frida which should be called Diego because it's mostly about Diego Rivera and his work and success or about their relatio...

The party went fine, though no one hooked up or got into a fight or anything else. The most interesting thing that happened was that I gave a Columbian guy a peek at my right nipple. It was in front of a bunch of people within the context of the conversation about how my dress was lowcut and dangerous. I went and told Shawn right away. He was unfazed, probably because he ran around in a banana hammock last year asking girls to help him find his keys (which were stuffed in his crotch). I don't really like hosting parties unless everyone promises to have the best time of their lives, to go home before 2 AM, to not spill or break anyting or throw up on the floor or on anyone else, to bring and leave behind tons of good alcohol, and to love me, my apartment, and the tiny carrots I threw on a tray for snacks. Even Jimmy was fairly well behaved. He did talk to Shawn's boss about poop, but he always talks about poop. He also spun around on the dance floor with beer flying in all direc...

Every year around Halloween, I obsess about costumes. I have 3 C's for my Halloween costumes: (1). Cute. My friend Jodie once went as Gus the Rotarian. She had a bald wig, moustache, and a pillow stuffed underneath a business suit. She was very funny and unrecognizable. I am not this brave. I still want to be moderately attractive. I don't mind being covered in blood (I prefer it), but I want to be a pretty corpse at least. (2). Comfortable. I will never go as anything requiring me to wear a box or a ten pound headdress. I need to be able to sit down and walk with ease. (3). Clever. I don't want to go as a cat or a cheerleader or a fairy or a football player. (*Halloween costume tip #1: If you do find yourself having to go in one of these costumes, just add blood and/or the implication of violence and it's much more interesting. Like, be a cat that's been run over, or a serial killer cheerleader or a fairy with an arrow through its head or a football player in a bod...

I once had use of my legs. I once walked twenty minutes to and from work five days a week plus I would stand up for a few hours a day while teaching, plus I'd walk around town. Not in Philly. Here, I have two modes of being: driving in a car or sitting in a chair. These two modes are broken by periodic short walks to either get food or to pee. In State College, I actually had to walk outside and around the back of the apartment building to get to my car. Here, I park on the street so close to my building that I could reach out the apartment window to fish change out of the glove compartment of my car. I drive to work and park fourteen steps from the front door and walk another 20 steps to my swivel chair where I sit for 8 1/2 hours a day, expelling energy only from blinking and typing. Every once in awhile, I stand up and walk over to the candy dish near Karen's desk. At least once or twice a week, we must celebrate someone's something and are given sheet cake or chocolate ...

Karen and I have temporarily to permanently decided not to attend drawing class. Last week, we stayed in because she was helping me organize the closet and ended up knocking down the clothing pole (and then fixing it with my Black and Decker power drill; my mom was very excited about buying one for me), and she was also sneezing and we hadn't had our delicious frozen dinners yet and so fuck it, we decided to watch the second episode of My So-Called Life instead of learning how to draw another grid over another famous painting we could never hope to replicate. Tonight, we will be searching for cowboy boots and other assorted Halloween items, so you can see, we just can't really be bothered with art. My other exciting news is that Gretel caught a mouse Sunday. It was all fun and games until I heard the mouse squeak in terror. A little gray thing. Shawn kept saying, Oh, it's a baby! I was pleased with Gretel, but sad for the mouse. I went downstairs to open up the front of ou...

Is it okay to wear a pin on my sweater or does it automatically categorize me as one of those women who wear pins? Aren't pins coming back in along with the leg warmers and the gauchos (which I refuse to even consider)? It's not a wreath or a kitty cat or an angel. It's this head of a flapper girl in profile. I'm counteracting the pin with tiny-squared nude-colored mesh stockings and high brown boots plus an obnoxious sparkly ring so I'm hoping the pin looks somewhat ironic or whatever. And world hunger, massive devastation by our military, and the AIDS crisis in Africa continue, but does this pin look dumb? We had two fashion casualties at work this week. One was this woman who wears clothes that are two sizes too small; she has a massive chest and it's always barely restrained by an off-white shell. Last year, her skirt was so short that when she sat down, you could see the control top of her panty hose. It's not that she's trying to look provocative. ...

I confess that I watch Law and Order SVU and Law and Order SUV and Law and Order Criminal Intent and Law and Order Murder She Wrote and I never critiqued myself about it until Shawn came along and started groaning whenever the possibility of watching a L&O episode arose. Sunday night, I convinced him to watch Criminal Intent with me through sheer bribery that required me to rub his back for the whole hour and endure his comments about how dumb the show is and of course, it was an extremely bad example, i.e. Corbin Bernson was the guest star and you could see from a mile away that he was also the secret bad guy. L&O always has a secret bad guy; a character introduced early on as an aside who surfaces again later as the one who murdered all the co-eds because his mother forced him to wear cheerleading outfits as a boy. So by virtue of the fact that there's always a secret bad guy, you can pretty much guess who's responsible. But then the other thing that happens all the t...

With the exception of the PBS version of the local radio stations in Philadelphia (XPN), we really don't have an eclectic selection of music to choose from on dial. Since I'm generally in the car for an average of 11 minutes a day (to and from work), this doesn't matter too much, but one of the challenges I face every day is trying to skip over the Jesus stations as quickly as possible. This has always been a problem. Your scanner stops on a song that could be good...Could be some new Emo band or another that you're just not cool enough to recognize within the first three measures. So you keep it on the station and sort of don't pay attention until you start to hear one of the following key words/phrases that tip you off to the fact that you're awash in the love of Jesus: Hallelujah, My Savior, Lord God (and various permutations of this: God Our Lord, Lord of all Gods, God, You're Lord), He is King, Jesus has Risen, On the Cross, Crown of Thorns, Redemption,...

As part of my job, I hear stories on a weekly and sometimes daily basis about the many, many gruesome and mundane ways that you can die. Because of confidentiality rules, I can't be too specific but here are the top ten ways to become brain dead: 1. You are an electrician/roofer/window washer and frequently climb ladders as part of your job. One day, you slip/lose your balance/are stung by a bee and fall in slow motion to the concrete driveway in front of your five year old daughter (who probably later grows up and becomes a drug addict. See #4). 2. You wake up one day with the worst headache of your life. You complain about it. You take 3 Advil and lie down in the bedroom. Later, a loved one finds you unresponsive with foam on your lips. You are rushed to the emergency room where a CAT scan reveals that you have a blood clot/tumor/hemorrhage in your brain. You should've gone to the hospital right away. They might have been able to save you then. 3. You're a teenage boy and...

David Cross has this great part of his comedy routine where he points out how the Administration raises the terror alert every time Bush or his minions do something horrible (Cross also has a bit about Bush wondering what it will take to get the public outrage and how he decides to eat a Jewish baby just because he can). It's like Wizard of Oz; Look at the scary thing! Look! Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain! Like, what should NYC do about the subway terrorists are coming alert? Not ride the train? Ride the train but pee a little whenever a dark-skinned man steps on your car? Answer "I support" to public opinon polls about Bush? And don't forget to be afraid of hurricanes. They can kill! Even though N. Orleans flooded not because of the hurricane itself but b/c of the levees. Still! Watch out for hurricanes. You too might find yourself on your rooftop with your dog and an empty Evian water bottle. Our government and our media work like terrorists too (in ...

If he were, in fact, a real person. It is a cliche, I'm sure, to have a crush on Mr. Darcy from the A&E version of Pride and Prejudice, not to mention the degree of nerdiness it reveals. Firth's Darcy is not handsome in a conventional way; no rippling muscles, eyes are plain brown, same with his curly hair (which has a tendency to frizz) , and his features are more fleshy than chiseled. HOWEVER! I would still fall to my knees in front of him and here are the top 10 reasons why: 1. When Mr. Darcy looks at Elizabeth, he wears an expression that's a combination of intense, heartsick love, bodice-ripping lust, and respectful worship. Also, he does that thing that I love where he steals glances at her when she her attention is elsewhere but holds her gaze for a second when she catches him staring before his pride (see title) causes him to break the glance (reminds me of a line from the first episode of My So-Called Life my friend Karen and I watched before draw-ling class la...

The day we moved into our new apartment, I met the old lady next door, Virginia. She came outside in her mumu/house dress with the knee high nylons rolled down over her ankles, bedroom slippers and the most unbelievable wig/dead animal planted on top of her head. She called me over and asked my name. I told her. She said, "What? What? I can't hear you!" This went on about five more times. "Annie? Janie? Susan?" I experienced a phenomenon I haven't encountered since about 7th grade--this great desire to burst out laughing at an inappropriate moment (like when you're being yelled at by your chemistry teacher whose fly is undone or when your friend farts during the Lord's Prayer at Church). She didn't seem to notice. She said, "I'm 84, can you believe it? I live with my son. He's 60. He's never been married. Don't tell him I told you that. I'm 86! Fooled you." Soon after, I noticed that the sidewalk in front of our apar...

It has come to my ever shrinking attention that I have the patience of a gnat. I blame everyone else for this inability to wait longer than four seconds for any single thing that I want. This quality has recently been highlighted by trying to log onto this site from my home computer which has recently become infected with pop-up boxes due in part to Shawn's downloading "hot live xxx teen Asian girl-on-girl lovefest cum action" videos and gaming tips for Grand Theft auto. And also because I should have some Adaware protection on here which I didn't. It used to be that I'd be happy to have any Internet connection at all and now if I find myself waiting for the screen to download I want to get up and wash my face or do something else rather than wait the 15 seconds it'll take to appear. Same goes for other areas in my life. The coffee person doesn't jump up to take my order and I'm irritated. The car ahead of me on 3rd street has decided to parallel...