But Call Me Betsy

Last night, I went to this lecture about urban sustainability and landscape with Carrie and this other dude at some random warehouse in Fishtown. I had no expectations, except that I thought it might be interesting to learn a little more about saving the planet somehow. Unfortunately, the building we met in, though cool in an Andy Warhol aesthetic, didn't have any heat. And then secondly, the first person who lecture was very nervous and not at all a public speaker. He kept pausing....These really long....painful...pauses. The longest pause was 21 seconds. I counted. Carrie said later that she had to turn around to look back toward the projector at him because she thought he had narcolepsy and was possibly asleep on his biodegradable laptop. The only real sustainable thing I learned was that if I contorted my body, I could manage to keep from suffering from hypothermia, but just barely. It also occurred to me that I don't fit in with hippie hipsters (a particular brand of hipst...

Stumbled on this funny video called Hipster Olympics on You Tube. Worth a watch, especially if you've just been to a party in Fishtown the night before swarming with hipsters in all shapes and sizes. Well, no, really only in hipster sizes--thin men in tight girl jeans, thin girls with zig-zag bangs and see-through blouses with beads. Several headbands in sight, including one guy who wore a yellow athletic headband as though he had just stepped off the tennis court circa Wimbledon 1978. Talked for awhile to a tiny girl from India who looked as though she were channeling a Native American--black hair in two thick braids, a shiny shirt/dress, and yes, another headband, though this one was made out of scarves and feathers and things. Met another tall, skinny guy wearing a wristband from a show the night before. He was cute and fey and of indiscriminate sexual preference. I think I offended him by saying I thought this particular artist was exploitive (me parroting Lisa Marie). Actuall...

I took the train downtown with Shawn today and am now sitting in a very orange coffee shop/bank. They have a flat screen TV playing CNN and music that's too loud. The screens of the computers are positioned in such a way that you will have a terrible neck ache if you go past the thirty minute time limit. I'm already starting to experience vertigo. Today reminded me that I wish I still took the train to work. The people watching is great--we saw no fewer than 5 Ali G. look alikes in our car alone (I also saw two different men today blowing snot out of their noses onto the sidewalk. WHY is this okay? Does this behavior have to do with testosterone? I have never seen a woman do this unless she was on the last two miles of a marathon). Another thing about the train is the intimacy of it; public transportation is really the only time you're that close to people you don't know. You can read the titles of the books they're reading, hear the music on their Walkmans, o...

Not as many hipsters in here today as there usually are. The fashion item for today is men in black knit caps. I spy four of them right now (there are only about a dozen people present). Also a couple of ironically ugly sweaters (I'm hoping they're ironic). My least favorite barrista is here. She never, ever, never smiles, wears a blank, expressionless face, moves with absolutely no sense of urgency so that you wait for a minimum of ten minutes to get a cup of coffee even when there's just one person ahead of you, and uses the least amount of words possible to complete the transaction no matter how nice you are to her: Example: B: Yes? Customer: Could I please have a cup of coffee for her? B: $1.25. I'm sure if she could manage it, she would just stand looking at you until you pointed at what you wanted, thus requiring no real interaction at all. Here's another exchange Liz and I once witnessed with her. (Confused man standing at counter). B: Yes? Man: Uh...how ...

As uttered by some white t-shirted kid on the corner down the street from me last night while I was attempting to watch ER and knitting a sweet little baby blanket (not for me). At first, I thought the noise was coming from the TV (when you knit and watch TV, it's more like listening to a radio program b/c your attention focuses on the task at hand. Most TV shows now don't require a visual component anyway, particularly not ER or Law & Order where the dialogue usually just supplements the action for those viewers who may be really, really dumb or toddlers. Example from last night's Grey's Anatomy : "So you're saying you don't want to have the double mascetomy because you feel guilty about being mad that if you hadn't been breast-feeding, you wouldn't noticed the lump in your breast?" Mom: "Yes! Yes!" (a nod would've been fine, but a nod might be too subtle. Example from any episode of Law & Order: "I get it. You ...