whiskey in a teacup . com

Last night I had just managed to drift off to sleep when I was jolted from the land of Nod by a sound from the kitchen.  I could hear someone’s clothes rustling as they slowly and stealthily made their way towards the bedroom where the mister and I were reposed.  Still in a hazy twilight phase of consciousness, my body produced a cascading reaction of pure animal terror even as my mind perceived that the cat had jumped onto the bed and was creeping towards me, the sound of her paws on the comforter erroneously mapping as the sound of an intruder in the next room.  Though the whole thing lasted no more than a few seconds, my heart was pounding so furiously that it hurt and seemed to echo throughout the quiet room.

In the morning I reviewed scary experiences from my past–roller coasters, car accidents, bomb scares–and nothing even came close.

So on the downside, a client* hit me at work the other day, and another client was engaging in some self-injurious behavior that was horrifying to watch and was barely subdued by myself and two co-workers.  On the upside, one of my co-workers just called me at home to tell me not to bring lunch tomorrow.  She’s got three growing boys and is from a culture that emphasizes eating well and eating often; woman can cook.

*A reminder that we call them clients because they’re disabled, not sick, so they’re not “patients”.  I know it sounds weird.  It’s just how we do.

It seems like blogs (and the internet in general) have been sucking lately, and the pleasure I used to get from participating in the associated culture has waned.  In fact, I have little to no desire to blog anymore except in list form, or in the context of linking to youtube videos.  Then at least the blog serves as a personal archive that I can enjoy.  So fuck it.  And now, in list form, reasons I intensely prefer solitude and/or small, intimate gatherings to large group dinners, based on the last large group dinner I attended!

-Someone at the table had a popular actor’s phone number so of course someone else tried to call him.  That was cute and all, but the conversation subsequently devolved into a banal roster of met celebrities, specifically celebrities that had been met by this one chick.  Jared rebuked my attempts to covertly mock her for his benefit, so I was left to suffer silently.  Like, a semi-famous singer once invited me into her bedroom to view a book of German erotica, but you don’t hear me blathering on about it, you big dumb dummy.

-Then, due to a communications error, I thought I was being asked if I would perform a certain lewd act, and I gave a cheeky if not entirely factual answer, with embarrassing results.

-I was seated next to a guy I had never met.  After I shook his hand and subsequently used my own hand to eat finger foods, he revealed a) that he had a cold and b) that he didn’t “believe” in soap.  (I almost always wash my hands thoroughly after touching other humans as well as before touching food, but sometimes a gentlewoman must put social mores before her germphobia and, aye, I am only human.)

(It was actually a lot of fun, and I don’t seem to have caught that guy’s cold.)

“I’m retarded–a little–but I’m smart.”

“I love you!  You’re a nice lady.”

“Oh, I’m a binge drinker.”

“I just don’t like the idea of my vagina ripping.”

[wheeling past the office in which I was working and peeking in at me] “TROUBLE.”

This is why I love my job.

I just put a different pair of plugs (i.e. earrings) in my ears to look pretty for a dinner party.  Jared says that they make me look like a) a battery and b) Frankenstein.  I’m ready!

Hot:

The emergence of tidbits from the infamous Christian Bale on-set freakout into the vernacular.  At about 1:00 in the recording, the guy he’s yelling at tries to defend himself and Christian responds, “Oh, good for you” in the most terrifically condescending way.  The hosts of a radio show I listen to have started using this as a catch-all retort, and I for one think it’s great.  Try it at home:  next time anyone says anything (and I do mean anything) to you, respond “Oh, good for you” in your best Welsh brogue.

Not:

Stress-induced bouts of gastritis that hit while you’re lying in bed

People who can’t take a fucking compliment (myself included)

Tragic mismatch between undergarment and lycra gym shorts

Judgmental whores at the gym who look at you like you’re some kind of jerk just because you have to make adjustments to your undergarment/shorts situation while you’re working out  (oh, good for you!)

Screw “Yes We Can”–this quote, from Obama’s audio recording of one of his books, would have been a much livelier campaign slogan.

Hot:

The new smoked salmon sandwich with caper cream cheese at the coffeeshop

Steven Pinker’s The Stuff of Thought

The guy in a truck who saluted me with his Dunkies cup when I yielded to him in traffic

My friend (who, it must be noted, is black) innocently stating the following during a conversation about sweets: “If you want to make me happy, just fill me up with white chocolate”

Baking my own perfectly acceptable sandwich bread and eating it to the exclusion of store-bought sandwich bread

Not:

The TMJ specialist who made me bite down on his big, meaty fingers and manipulated my jaw to the point of wincing pain, who looked at x-rays of my skull while whispering words like “extremely” to the other doctors with his back to me

Driving along Storrow and through the Theater District during rush hour

Me and a random couple missing an elevator that had taken 5+ minutes to get to our floor because we all refused to go through the doors first in polite deference to each other

Frizz

Forgetting to bring a feminine hygiene product to work and having to borrow (”borrow”) a much less desirable type of feminine hygiene product from a co-worker

Cutting through part of my thumb and thumbnail while slicing homemade bread in the dark

*Music video links added for your pleasure!*

Something that has irked me for years is when people singing covers of love songs change pronouns and other words in the lyrics so they won’t sound gay.  For instance, in Karen Carpenter’s version of “Ticket to Ride“, he had a ticket to ride and he didn’t care.  Changing “she”s to “he”s might not be so bad, because at least you’re not throwing off the cadence of the lyrics or ruining the rhymes, but when you start changing “her” to “him” and “girl” to “boy” it starts to get ridiculous.

First off, singing a love song that was written about someone of your own gender isn’t gay.  Second off, if you’re so worried about appearing gay then you probably shouldn’t be singing karaoke or appearing on a televised singing competition, which are the two venues where I notice the majority of these infractions.  I get that it’s not always necessarily about seeming gay; some straight people might feel they can give a more authentic performance if singing to the opposite gender.  But I would be equally annoyed if a gay guy covering “Young Lust” tried to sing about needing a dirty man instead of a dirty woman.  Sing the goddamned song the way it was written, no matter what kind of bits you’ve got and no matter where you like to put them.

Like, I’m strictly dickly, but if I’m ever called upon to sing “Fat Bottomed Girls” you’d better believe I’m going to tell you about how that big woman made a bad boy out of me.  The simple fact is that most good love (and/or boning) songs are written by men about women.  (Even gay male musicians tend to write about women…Freddie Mercury had more gentleman callers in a week than I’ve had in my life, and he still wrote the aforementioned about big fat Fanny, not big fat Frank, and sang it genuinely.  On a different note is “The Art Teacher” by Rufus Wainwright, written by a gay man about a man, but from a woman’s perspective.  There’s a bit of a dearth of truly gay love songs, unfortunately.)

So to return to my initial point, I don’t ever in my life want to hear anyone sing such nonsense as “I’m a woman, can’t you see what I am, I live and I breathe for you” or “I’m didn’t mean to I hurt you, I’m sorry that I made you cry, I didn’t want to hurt you, I’m just a jealous chick.”  I am not the karaoke type, but if coerced I would probably sing Gary Puckett’s “Young Girl” because there’s something delightful about a young woman singing a pervy song to an underage girl.  I believe I would do it proudly, and with unsettling conviction.