The ones you already know:
Canine - dog.
Bovine - cow.
Avian - bird.
Equine - horse.
Feline - cat.
Serpentine - snake.
Simian - ape.
Ursine - bear.
But there are others! Fun!
My favorite new-to-me latinate animal adjectives:
Aquiline - eagle. (Makes so much sense!)
Asinine - ass/donkey. (Makes so much sense!)
Herpestine - mongoose. (Bummer!)
Hirudinal - leech. (Good insult)
Oscine - songbird. (Good compliment)
Strutious - ostrich/emu/rhea. (The ostriches, they do strut)
Friday, August 31
Tuesday, August 28
Manifesto
We work for corporations whose idea of customer service is to build a karmic dam where the customer who throws a tantrum like a three-year-old is rewarded for it. Where the customer has paid for the right to treat the company's employees like shit.
What does that do to the employees? They must be either false, or they must be perfectly spiritually evolved in order to turn the other cheek and reward the demanding demeaning behavior with a free upgrade at a hotel, fines waived at a library, empty products returned for cash at a health food store.
On the other hand, the people who yell and throw a fit and act like not having their every whim catered to is a gross injustice - they are raging against the corporate machine and may genuinely feel that they must debase themselves and the employees they speak to in order to get their due. The bottom line of a company - make x amount of money at a profit - that's a tricky thing to find. The easiest way to make a profit is to gyp people. People are sick of getting gypped, sick of working themselves to the bone to go home and deal with, for instance, Verizon, a mega-company that cares not a whit about the absurd bureaucratic hoops people sometimes have to jump through in order to give Verzion the money they earned at a job they despise.
Oh, the whole system's screwed. I am not one to get free upgrades, generally, and I wonder if it is because I empathize too strongly with the employee who's telling me no, these are the rules, no, this is what you paid for, no. I try to pay attention to the people who manage to get more for their money, more than they've paid for, without screaming and yelling and splashing in the karmic dam of the corporation, but so far I haven't been able to deduce their method. Maybe a calm still feeling of deserving it.
Sometimes I feel like my friends who work in customer service, bowing to the will of tantrumey customers, have had their personalities deformed just as truly as a factory worker gets his hand mangled in a machine. To grit your teeth and smile, and give, to someone who rightfully deserves to be told to stop behaving like a spoiled brat. It wears on you after ten, twenty years. Especially if you're trying to care about your job, invest some meaning in it even though it's menial. If you choose the false front over spiritual evolution the false front can meld itself to your real self without you realizing it.
I leave you with an anecdote. Once my friend who worked the graveyard shift at a diner told me that her friend spit in a terrible tyrant's side of ranch, and my friend helped by stirring in the spit bubbles with her finger. Think about that if you're ever tempted to snap your fingers at a server like they're scullery maids on the Titanic. If what I've said about the spiritual disfigurement of not standing up for what's right is not enough to dissuade you from throwing a tantrum in a business establishment: consider some 20-year-old tweaker's spit in your side of ranch. Mmmm.
What does that do to the employees? They must be either false, or they must be perfectly spiritually evolved in order to turn the other cheek and reward the demanding demeaning behavior with a free upgrade at a hotel, fines waived at a library, empty products returned for cash at a health food store.
On the other hand, the people who yell and throw a fit and act like not having their every whim catered to is a gross injustice - they are raging against the corporate machine and may genuinely feel that they must debase themselves and the employees they speak to in order to get their due. The bottom line of a company - make x amount of money at a profit - that's a tricky thing to find. The easiest way to make a profit is to gyp people. People are sick of getting gypped, sick of working themselves to the bone to go home and deal with, for instance, Verizon, a mega-company that cares not a whit about the absurd bureaucratic hoops people sometimes have to jump through in order to give Verzion the money they earned at a job they despise.
Oh, the whole system's screwed. I am not one to get free upgrades, generally, and I wonder if it is because I empathize too strongly with the employee who's telling me no, these are the rules, no, this is what you paid for, no. I try to pay attention to the people who manage to get more for their money, more than they've paid for, without screaming and yelling and splashing in the karmic dam of the corporation, but so far I haven't been able to deduce their method. Maybe a calm still feeling of deserving it.
Sometimes I feel like my friends who work in customer service, bowing to the will of tantrumey customers, have had their personalities deformed just as truly as a factory worker gets his hand mangled in a machine. To grit your teeth and smile, and give, to someone who rightfully deserves to be told to stop behaving like a spoiled brat. It wears on you after ten, twenty years. Especially if you're trying to care about your job, invest some meaning in it even though it's menial. If you choose the false front over spiritual evolution the false front can meld itself to your real self without you realizing it.
I leave you with an anecdote. Once my friend who worked the graveyard shift at a diner told me that her friend spit in a terrible tyrant's side of ranch, and my friend helped by stirring in the spit bubbles with her finger. Think about that if you're ever tempted to snap your fingers at a server like they're scullery maids on the Titanic. If what I've said about the spiritual disfigurement of not standing up for what's right is not enough to dissuade you from throwing a tantrum in a business establishment: consider some 20-year-old tweaker's spit in your side of ranch. Mmmm.
Animorph app
I know what the four people who read this blog are wondering. And that is this:
"Now that you have a Droid Razr Maxx 3000 phone, what apps have you downloaded?"
1. Color Flash. It's a flashlight. You can use the flashbulb on the back of the phone that's made for the camera as the flashlight, or you can choose to have the screen light up instead, which is less intense. I mostly use this when I read in bed at night. I just set my phone on my pillow and read without moving my head.
What makes this flashlight app different from others? It has a police siren feature, where the screen alternates red and blue light. In case you are in high school and have a video group project where someone needs to pretend to get arrested.
Maybe all flashlight apps have that feature. I am not going to download them all and then tell you which ones do and don't, because this is not a real blog. This is a blog that four people read.
2. Hour Glass. This app is useless and hypnotic. It is an hourglass that responds to the phone being tipped one way or another, or all the way over. The hourglass is full of little balls, instead of sand. You can decide what colors you want everything to be, along with the size and amount and elasticity and density of the balls. The app does not tell you how long it takes for all the balls to fall, which makes it truly useless. I, however, zone out on it a couple times a week.
3. Moon 3D. This app tells you what phase the moon is in. I guess you can look at the dark side of the moon with it, or something... like, a picture of the dark side of the moon... but I don't do that because it's bad luck. Have you ever seen the Wizard of Oz? Chyeah.
4. WomanLog. This app tells you when you are going to start shedding your uterine lining, and what days are optimal for getting pregnant or avoiding getting pregnant. Ideally, there would be an app that combines Moon 3D and WomanLog, so that I can make some sort of goddessey connection between the moon's cycle and my body's, but I haven't seen one that does that yet.
5. GT Lite. This app is "The Goddess Tarot." I do the one-card oracle reading where I ask it a question and then it gives me a card and its interpretation. I think tarot cards are fun, especially quality ones that have interesting illustrations and weave in actual mythology or folklore connected with whatever goddess/plant/animal the picture's of. I just asked the oracle if I am nauseous because I ate Skittles earlier, and it responded with the Fortune card featuring Lakshmi, the Hindu goddess of prosperity.
6. BeFunky photo editor. This is probably not the best photo editor but I am okay with it. I like Instagram but I don't like how you have to crop all your pictures into a square to use it. BeFunky is pro-rectangle. It has a lot of filters. I want to say like 10-15. You can also change the exposure etc manually. It lets you save the pictures you edit to your phone, which I didn't used to think Instagram lets you do. (It does, you just have to be sneaky about it.) Anyway. I would download various other photo editing apps to play with them if I wasn't seriously concerned that I spend too much time on my phone as it is.
7. WebMD. This is a terrible app that will convince you you are dying. Do not install it. I have it on my phone just in case I feel like freaking the hell out.
8. Obviously I also have the Amazon app, the Yelp app, and the Google Maps app.
In summation, I feel like there are other apps out there I would enjoy, but I don't know about them. I am not into games. I refuse to download anything that's a game.
There's probably like an herb and plant identifier app that's cool. There might be temperature/weather forecast apps that are better than just looking that info up online.
There might be an app that has you log everything you eat and how much you sleep and whether you've pooped lately and how much you exercise and how much you hang out with people TO SEE HOW your mood/outlook/severity of depression are affected by those factors. That would be pretty cool. I would also want it to track how many hangnails I have, how clean my room is, how many days it's been since I washed my hair. How many pages of my journal I've filled with writing. How many unanswered emails, texts, and unlistened-to voicemails I have. I could track all of those things manually and make like a Microsoft Office pie chart... box and whisker plot?... to interpret all the data, but you know. That wouldn't give me a reason to stare at my phone.
WHAT APPS DO YOU HAVE? What apps do you wish existed? What apps do you think are crappy? (Crapps!) Let me know.
"Now that you have a Droid Razr Maxx 3000 phone, what apps have you downloaded?"
1. Color Flash. It's a flashlight. You can use the flashbulb on the back of the phone that's made for the camera as the flashlight, or you can choose to have the screen light up instead, which is less intense. I mostly use this when I read in bed at night. I just set my phone on my pillow and read without moving my head.
What makes this flashlight app different from others? It has a police siren feature, where the screen alternates red and blue light. In case you are in high school and have a video group project where someone needs to pretend to get arrested.
Maybe all flashlight apps have that feature. I am not going to download them all and then tell you which ones do and don't, because this is not a real blog. This is a blog that four people read.
2. Hour Glass. This app is useless and hypnotic. It is an hourglass that responds to the phone being tipped one way or another, or all the way over. The hourglass is full of little balls, instead of sand. You can decide what colors you want everything to be, along with the size and amount and elasticity and density of the balls. The app does not tell you how long it takes for all the balls to fall, which makes it truly useless. I, however, zone out on it a couple times a week.
3. Moon 3D. This app tells you what phase the moon is in. I guess you can look at the dark side of the moon with it, or something... like, a picture of the dark side of the moon... but I don't do that because it's bad luck. Have you ever seen the Wizard of Oz? Chyeah.
4. WomanLog. This app tells you when you are going to start shedding your uterine lining, and what days are optimal for getting pregnant or avoiding getting pregnant. Ideally, there would be an app that combines Moon 3D and WomanLog, so that I can make some sort of goddessey connection between the moon's cycle and my body's, but I haven't seen one that does that yet.
5. GT Lite. This app is "The Goddess Tarot." I do the one-card oracle reading where I ask it a question and then it gives me a card and its interpretation. I think tarot cards are fun, especially quality ones that have interesting illustrations and weave in actual mythology or folklore connected with whatever goddess/plant/animal the picture's of. I just asked the oracle if I am nauseous because I ate Skittles earlier, and it responded with the Fortune card featuring Lakshmi, the Hindu goddess of prosperity.
6. BeFunky photo editor. This is probably not the best photo editor but I am okay with it. I like Instagram but I don't like how you have to crop all your pictures into a square to use it. BeFunky is pro-rectangle. It has a lot of filters. I want to say like 10-15. You can also change the exposure etc manually. It lets you save the pictures you edit to your phone, which I didn't used to think Instagram lets you do. (It does, you just have to be sneaky about it.) Anyway. I would download various other photo editing apps to play with them if I wasn't seriously concerned that I spend too much time on my phone as it is.
7. WebMD. This is a terrible app that will convince you you are dying. Do not install it. I have it on my phone just in case I feel like freaking the hell out.
8. Obviously I also have the Amazon app, the Yelp app, and the Google Maps app.
In summation, I feel like there are other apps out there I would enjoy, but I don't know about them. I am not into games. I refuse to download anything that's a game.
There's probably like an herb and plant identifier app that's cool. There might be temperature/weather forecast apps that are better than just looking that info up online.
There might be an app that has you log everything you eat and how much you sleep and whether you've pooped lately and how much you exercise and how much you hang out with people TO SEE HOW your mood/outlook/severity of depression are affected by those factors. That would be pretty cool. I would also want it to track how many hangnails I have, how clean my room is, how many days it's been since I washed my hair. How many pages of my journal I've filled with writing. How many unanswered emails, texts, and unlistened-to voicemails I have. I could track all of those things manually and make like a Microsoft Office pie chart... box and whisker plot?... to interpret all the data, but you know. That wouldn't give me a reason to stare at my phone.
WHAT APPS DO YOU HAVE? What apps do you wish existed? What apps do you think are crappy? (Crapps!) Let me know.
Monday, August 27
Tuesday, August 21
Monday, August 20
Who came up with the name Walkie Talkie? Should I start calling my laptop Sittie Typie?
A fun thing to do is look at the security guard across the lobby, and then use the walkie talkie to tell him something, and when he just raises his voice slightly to answer me I pretend like I can't hear him unless he uses the walkie talkie too.
I woke up feeling like a million bad-breathed bucks.
I decided to eat three cloves of raw garlic before taking a nap today.
I read this as "Shoes who are boring wear sneakers"
and then I looked closely at the picture, expecting to see the person wearing another pair of shoes under their Converse.
In Which I Lie
Guy Who Is Nothing Like the Fonz: People in high school* always told me I reminded them of the Fonz.
Me: Oh yeah...?
Guy Who Is Nothing Like the Fonz: Yeah, but I don't even know who that is.
Me: Yeah, me neither. [winces inwardly at the terrible lie]
Guy Who Is Nothing Like the Fonz: I think he was on like Three's Company or something.
Me: Hmm. [dies inside]
*High school was like two years ago for him.
Me: Oh yeah...?
Guy Who Is Nothing Like the Fonz: Yeah, but I don't even know who that is.
Me: Yeah, me neither. [winces inwardly at the terrible lie]
Guy Who Is Nothing Like the Fonz: I think he was on like Three's Company or something.
Me: Hmm. [dies inside]
*High school was like two years ago for him.
Secret Room Sects
There's a secret room in the hotel. If you push on a wooden panel in the wall in one of the lobbies, it opens into a small room, maybe more of a closet, that's for some reason very hot. Actually the reason it's very hot in there is that it's a portal to hell.
Who loves secret rooms? I love secret rooms. My best friend in elementary school lived in a house with a secret room for awhile. You'd open the hall closet and push past all the jackets to an alcove beneath the stairs. When her brothers ran up and down them it sounded like thunder.
---
Someone left a book titled The (New, Illustrated) Great Controversy in the lobby. It's written by Ellen G. White and is the basis of the 7th Day Adventist sect of Christianity. It's kind of interesting that this book and the book that is the basis of Christian Science, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, were both written by women. Should I write fanfiction of Ellen G. White and Mary Baker Eddy as friends? lovers? enemies? Spies who frequent secret rooms in hotel lobbies and coat closets?
Let's see: Mary Baker Eddy was born in New Hampshire in 1821. Ellen G. White was born in 1827, in Maine. That would totally work. Stay tuned!*
---
*I will never actually write this.
Who loves secret rooms? I love secret rooms. My best friend in elementary school lived in a house with a secret room for awhile. You'd open the hall closet and push past all the jackets to an alcove beneath the stairs. When her brothers ran up and down them it sounded like thunder.
---
Someone left a book titled The (New, Illustrated) Great Controversy in the lobby. It's written by Ellen G. White and is the basis of the 7th Day Adventist sect of Christianity. It's kind of interesting that this book and the book that is the basis of Christian Science, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, were both written by women. Should I write fanfiction of Ellen G. White and Mary Baker Eddy as friends? lovers? enemies? Spies who frequent secret rooms in hotel lobbies and coat closets?
Let's see: Mary Baker Eddy was born in New Hampshire in 1821. Ellen G. White was born in 1827, in Maine. That would totally work. Stay tuned!*
---
*I will never actually write this.
Tuesday, August 14
Guvnuuuuuh
Sometimes, unbidden, Lindsay Lohan's British accent from The Parent Trap will come into my head. Particularly her saying the words "A lot a lot".
Other times it's Renee Zellweiger saying the words "Mini gherkins" in a British accent, as Bridget Jones.
Other times it's Renee Zellweiger saying the words "Mini gherkins" in a British accent, as Bridget Jones.
"She is NOT a Sagittarius" --from a different conversation at a different job I was eavesdropping on and laughing at
It's my birthday on Friday, I said, and rambled a little. Then I said, "When is your birthday?"
"November 23," he answered. This co-worker I only see once a week at 5:30am.
"So then what's your sign?" I asked.
"Uh... Sagittarius."
"Do you feel like a Sagittarius?"
"Ah... no, not really. I don't know. No. I don't let other people tell me who I am."
-----
Two thoughts:
1. Do people realize my (impertinent) sudden interest in them is not out of nowhere, but out of a self-conscious feeling that I have been talking too much about myself and I would like to immediately balance the conversation back out? If so, does it make my interest seem insincere? If so, do they care?
2. That's a good answer. I DON'T LET OTHER PEOPLE TELL ME WHO I AM. That's like something Coco Chanel would say.
"November 23," he answered. This co-worker I only see once a week at 5:30am.
"So then what's your sign?" I asked.
"Uh... Sagittarius."
"Do you feel like a Sagittarius?"
"Ah... no, not really. I don't know. No. I don't let other people tell me who I am."
-----
Two thoughts:
1. Do people realize my (impertinent) sudden interest in them is not out of nowhere, but out of a self-conscious feeling that I have been talking too much about myself and I would like to immediately balance the conversation back out? If so, does it make my interest seem insincere? If so, do they care?
2. That's a good answer. I DON'T LET OTHER PEOPLE TELL ME WHO I AM. That's like something Coco Chanel would say.
This Sentence
It has been said that erotic love, like certain religions, seems to contain the meaning of life without actually disclosing it, and
--from this review written by Lorrie Moore of an Alice Munro book
--from this review written by Lorrie Moore of an Alice Munro book
Tuesday, August 7
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