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++++++++++++

Stalking
Lone Star Thomas
Goodies

phone home

4/29/03
It’s always weirded me out how people seem to know about the same stuff at the same time. I guess it’s not that surprising, lots of people watch the same TV shows, read the same magazines and visit the same websites (it used to fascinate me how people in the same age group, but who had grown up in totally different parts of the country knew the same kids’ rhymes and playground chants, even ones I thought we’d come up with on our own. Is this what is meant by collective unconscious?). To be more specific, this whole Friendster thing. I just heard about it last week because I was emailed an invite and now everyone I know, like at work and stuff, is on it too. Was it written up somewhere last week? Anyway, it’s just this thing where you put up info about yourself and your friends (people who you invite who also sign up) are linked to you, then they invite friends and then you are linked to those people, etc. I’m pathetic because I only have four friends listed (and I didn’t invite them, it was the other way around) and zero testimonials (where people say wonderful things about you to make you sound more interesting than you really are) but most of my non-NYC friends don’t even have computers or view such internet games as time-wasters. So now I have 10,153 in my personal network and I think I might actually know like 30 of them--that gives me the creeps. I think some people see it as a dating site (the guy at work who was on it was totally looking for sexy men) but I’ve been viewing it as a weird connection to peripheral semi-strangers site. Last night I had this dream that I received an email from a guy on the site who was looking for tooth fairy pillows for cats who’d lost their teeth. Like this was a legitimate genre to collect and he’d already amassed a large number of them. In the dream, my gut reaction was annoyance and jealousy, like this was the most brilliant thing to be collecting and why hadn’t I thought of it. Very competitive. In reality, I’m rarely fascinated by another’s ideas, it’s usually a case of damn, why didn’t I think of that. Not healthy, I suppose. Of course, when I woke up, it struck me that there isn’t such a thing as tooth fairy pillows for cats, but for a second there I was totally convinced and all geared up to get searching on ebay. Last week, James’ cat Lil’ Caesar knocked his head on the coffee table and one of his front fangs fell out. It was bizarre. Like he was shaking his head and looked like he was gagging on the couch next to me, then this thing came out and I thought it was a claw, but it turned out to be one of his long, fangy, front teeth. I don’t know what you’re supposed to do, he didn’t seem traumatized. But I must’ve been thinking about it while I was sleeping last night. Maybe I should’ve sewed Caesar a pillow? Oh, tonight's the free Baskin-Robbin's ice cream night. I missed Ben and Jerry's yesterday because I had to work and they didn't do the free thing until closing, but I live only five blocks from a Baskin-Robbin's and theirs goes till 10pm. Every year I forget. Speaking of sweet treats, Sat. I discovered white chocolate (and dark chocolate) Reese's Peanut Butter Cups at Rite Aid. Sweet Jesus. I spent the summer trying to track down the elusive white chocolate Kit Kat to no avail. This must be an omen of wonderful things to come...don't you think?

4/24/03
I was walking to my dr. appt. this afternoon and I got behind this girl who was wearing this style of jeans I don’t really care for (really, there are countless styles of jeans I don’t care for, but who has time for all that?). Yes, they’re low-rise, but that’s not the issue, it’s how there aren’t any back pockets and there’s this V stitching that really emphasized the butt, like if you’re even the slightest bit curvy it looks grotesque. And then I started thinking about how Jennifer Lopez’s butt isn’t that big and I don’t understand why it’s always being talked about (but then, I don’t think Anna Nicole Smith is as hideously gargantuan as people think either. Don’t get me wrong, she’s a hefty gal [and impossibly brain damaged] but I don’t think she looks half as beastly as a lot of celebrities. At least she’s proportionately big, you know, like she’s tall and huge all over not just in weird flabby pockets, I didn’t even see cellulite when she was in a swimsuit on one episode and I see skinny people naked at the gym all the time and they’ve got plenty of cellulite that you’d never suspect) but that it would look all bubbly in this girl’s jeans (yes, I know some find bubbly to be a pro, not a con). I don’t know why I was so fixated on this girl’s ass but all I could think was she must be very young or Asian because they’re the only types who can pull off wearing those sort of ugly form-fitting pants. And as I passed her I could’ve sworn I heard her say on her cell phone, “I’m sounproportionate.” Normally, I would’ve become stuck on the fact that she’d used some weird, ungrammatical word, but I couldn’t get beyond someone with a “good” made-for-clothing body like that could possibly say such a thing. It was so outrageous that I tried to eavesdrop some more (I don’t think it’s even considered eavesdropping anymore. I mean, anyone who’s willing to have loud phone conversations while walking down the street, or on the subway or in the store, has pretty much given up their right to privacy) because I thought I must’ve heard her wrong and that I’d interpreted her phrase incorrectly because I had happened to be thinking about body types when I heard it. But no, she was complaining about how bad she looked in clothes and then went on to say she’d eaten “six bags of corn chips last night.” I hope she meant the brown bag, snack-size or at least that she threw up afterwards, because that’s insane. You should not be allowed to walk around in your little, straight-hipped pants, jabbering on your phone about eating six bags of chips. I guess inane conversation is what you get for living next to NYU dorms (not me, James) but it’s hard to avoid, as just about every apartment below 14th St. is next to an NYU dorm these days.

4/23/03
I’d really rather do anything than what I’m supposed to be doing, and that’s homework. I have final projects/papers due in all three classes, and school ends the first week of May, which is pretty darn soon. I even spent my Easter Sunday cleaning up my junkyard backyard, digging up weeds, dodging earthworms, sifting through piles of dirt and garbage, and ultimately sprinkling one of those cheap boxes of wildflower seeds over half the lot (I ran out, even though it said it’d cover 2,000 sq. ft.). As soon as I turned my back, hundreds of tiny brown birds swooped into my space and started devouring my tasty, new seeds. Bastards. If nothing blooms, I’m not going to blame my lack of a green thumb, I’m going to hold those pushy, selfish Brooklyn birds responsible. I didn’t even get a goddamn Cadbury Egg. I’m not supposed to be eating junk food, but as this is a once a year thing, I thought it’d be OK, so Sunday night after James’s parents left (they’d spent the whole weekend up here) I dragged him to drug stores looking for marked down Easter candy and there were no Cadbury eggs to be found. All that was left was crappy Russell Stover maple eggs and out of desperation, I bought one, only ate half and was hit was raging nausea a couple hours later. I really blame it on the crap chocolate egg. Previous to that I’d eaten duck leg confit at Blue Ribbon Brooklyn, which was so tasty that I refuse to believe it was the sick-making culprit. Anyway, when visiting my sister last, I noticed she lived right near a Cadbury factory. I saw it on the train ride between Bristol and Bath. They must have some extra cream eggs lying around. I know it’s just a factory, probably not even open to the public, but Cadbury World, now that’s a different story.

4/19/03
Alright, I’m back in business. The phone’s been fixed (though I seriously doubt for good, given Verizon’s rocky past) and I’m now the proud owner of a cable modem. Speedy, multi-media me. I’m so old and out-of-date that I got sidetracked last night fooling around with passé goodies like Yahoo Messenger. I had no idea you could do interactive stuff like draw on your screen and have the other person see it, or use microphones to talk in real time (unfortunately, James has a microphone and I don’t, so it’s really obnoxious to have this person talking at you and you only have hands to reply—maybe that’s how deaf people feel—ok, that’s doubtful, but it’d be how I’d feel if I were deaf). I totally don’t go in for chat or IM-ing or whatever, but it was captivating changing the other person’s “IMVironment” to schemes like Precious Moments or “Bringing Down the House.” Jeez, the level of co-branding on all these doo dads left me totally shocked and awed. You modern computer folks probably know about all this early ‘00s technology already, but now I have this Windows Media Player thing and you can change its “skins” (which is creepy terminology) and if you go to the see more skins page the featured one (at least today) is this hideous Dreamcatcher thing. I don’t care if it’s based on the movie, Dreamcatchers are hippy Portland yuck. Don’t miss the Israel skin, complete with the wailing wall and housed in a radio the shape of the Star of David. What a wonderful world we live in, no? Good stuff, this Windows XP. Oh, but one little glitch, because it just wouldn’t be right if everything were a smooth ride. I now no longer have TV. Well, I get a couple fuzzy broadcast channels. You know, I’d been getting random cable stations since I moved here, the only I really watched being IFC and Food Network, but still. I feared that the cable guy would snip the cable to attach to the modem and that’s exactly what he did. Is it too much to ask for a decent computer and TV viewing experience? Just pay for cable, you say? Uh uh, the beauty was that it was free.

4/11/03
Wednesday I get home and phone seems to be working again, so that's one trauma down (how many to go?). Then I'm sitting in the living room using my laptop when I start to smell smoke. I'm not paranoid about fires, really, it's my friend Jessica who's all OCD and convinced that this alcoholic guy in her building will fall asleep smoking and burn her apt. down. I'm just appalled by all the fires in Brooklyn, not scared for my own self. But I did get nervous this time because the previous night there were all those problems with the boiler room, which is directly behind the wall my couch in on, that I was sitting on, and if something was on fire and about to explode it would probably shoot right into my back. I thought maybe I'd left a burner on or something, but everything was off and my apt. totally smelled like a campfire. A nice smell, reminiscent of s'mores and all that, but not a scent that should be inside a dwelling in an urban setting. By this point I hear sirens, and lots of them so I go outside and it smells extremely smoky and there are clouds of smoke wafting my way from maybe a block or two north. I couldn't be bothered to put on shoes and take a look, but the sirens came and went for maybe 30 minutes, there was definitely a fire up the street. Crap like this only reinforces all my stereotypes about what a shit hole NYC is. Ha, and then yesterday, my day off I kept getting hang ups on my answering machine, which isn't that unusual, but then I called James around 6pm and he said the number registering on his caller ID wasn't my usual one, but some random number and that he'd been calling me earlier and my phone just rang. I had been home all day so this made no sense. I had him hang up and try my number again. My phone never rang. Then I had him try the number that appeared on his caller ID and my phone rang. I guess I have a new phone number. That Verizon is priceless. First my phone line is dead, now I have a new, well, somebody else's number. That's the funny part. We reverse looked up the number I now had and it belongs to a Jamal Alkawsi who lives on the next block. I don't know why that cracks me up so much. What I'm not sure of is it it's a direct swap, like if Jamal is me or not. When I call my old, possibly Jamal's new number it just rings, but maybe he doesn't have an answering machine. But then it's doubtful Verizon could be capable of something so neat and straightforward as a simple number swap. Who knows where my number is, and if it's been reassigned there's going to be hell to pay. I was told it'd be resolved by 6pm today, we'll see about that. It's not like anyone ever calls me (though Time Warner was supposed to have phoned by today to set up my new cable modem -- I currently don't have internet access -- I'm at school computers right now) or that I'm even attached to my old phone number, but still. If this were a movie, Jamal and I would meet and laugh over getting our wires crossed (literally and figuratively) and even though we were from two different worlds, we'd fall in love. The only trouble would arise from whose apt. to move into since we live on the same block anyway. Maybe we'd keep separate apartments and that could be the basis of a spin-off sit com, "My Place or Yours?" Jamal could be played by D.L. Hughley and I by Kathy Bates (not that I want to be, I'm totally convinced that I'm going to turn into her, my hair's going all gray, I'm getting progressively stockier every year) or that chunky-ish girl from "Less Than Perfect" because those are the only two actresses I can think of who are larger than a size 12 and I don't want to be played by Camren Manheim. With the success of "Bringing Down the (or is it da?) House" it'd be a no-brainer for the networks.

4/9/03
So, I get home from work around 10pm last night and hear this buzzing sound as I approach my front door. It's hard to tell if it's coming from inside or not and once I step inside it is louder, but it appears to be coming from the boiler room which is next to my living room. It's this really irritating buzz, but I try to ignore it at first because I'm more interested in making my mango salsa and fish tacos and I don't want to deal with calling the landlord or bugging the upstairs neighbors, but then I decide to peek inside the boiler room. And once I open the door, it's this really, loud frantic, unhealthy sounding metallic buzzing, impossible to ignore. So, I do end up bugging the upstairs neighbors who seem to already be in bed, or at least tired and in pajamas, which strikes me as odd because when I go to bed around 1am I can always hear them walking around and stuff, I didn't think they went to bed that early. And it turned into this big thing and he called the landlord. It had something to do with a circuit breaker, and how a manhole cover had exploded earlier or something and they power on the block had gone out, which I couldn't figure out because my clock radio was on and not blinking. I don't know, all I know is that there are hot water heaters and things with pilot lights and I did poke around, but I'm not about to start flipping switches, and with what seems like stupid fires in Brooklyn apartments at least once a week (seriously, I can't figure out if people are just even more careless and dumb than the rest of the nation, more than I already even thought, or if buildings are highly flammable. Just last week some apartment in Brooklyn burned and a woman was wailing about the loss of her nephew, and then went on to say how her niece, the newly dead person's sister was killed in a Brooklyn apt. fire in 2001 like that's just a normal thing, upsetting, but a part of life. When I first moved here, that was one of the things that struck me, how on the news there was always a tragic fire [or a baby falling out a window] like it was 1898 instead of 1998 and people had never heard of things like safety and standards of living. So Dickensian one almost expected folks in fingerless gloves and top hats, covered in soot complaining of consumption) all I need is to have some explosion, and I'd be the one who would get blown up, too. The landlord was fussing around with the water heaters and having me and the guy upstairs flick our thermostats extremely hot and then cold, and then I guess he left. Fine. I made my dinner, watched a little TV, then decided to make phone call and wouldn't you know it my phone line was dead again. Absolutely ridiculous, and not at all related to a water heater or circuit breaker or manhole cover exploding. If you read this webpage then you know I am not exaggerating when I say this fucking phone thing happens at least every other month. I'm at my wit's end. There's no dial tone at all (which is illegal, you're supposed to be able to dial 911 even if you have your service switched off-and what if my apt. caught on fire, huh?). If you call my number it just rings, I can't hear it and the answering machine doesn't pick up. Fine. Then this morning I wake up freezing, apparently with all that fiddling around last night, my heat got turned off, I was in too much of a hurry to deal with it, but it had just better be a pilot light that needs to be turned back on and not some bigger issue. And then, while getting dressed I wanted to listen to music and my stereo was dead, which made no sense at all. The stereo and clock radio are plugged into the same exact extension cord and I my alarm went off this morning just fine. So irritating I could punch somebody right now and this happened three hours ago. Anyway, I called Verizon and they insist there's nothing wrong with my phone line and that I need to unplug my cordless phone (I DO NOT have a cordless phone, and every single time I call them with this problem they tell me it's my cordless phone?!). Then they called my number with me on the line to prove it's working and duh, the phone rang and rang. It was working my answering machine would pick up. And since I'm not there they won't send anyone over today (like they're incredulous that someone wouldn't just be sitting at home, I mean I know the economy is bad and all, but still. And I normally don't even work Wednesdays, but I'm taking off Saturday to go to this library job fair [oh, the excitement] so I had to come in today to make it up) and I don't think they believe me, that anything's wrong with it, and I'm like if I get home tonight at 10pm again and that phone line is still not working (which I know it won't be), there's going to be hell to pay. I'm so anti-cell phone, but I'm seriously considering getting rid of my phone all together. Verizon is crazy expensive in NYC and it never works. I'm supposed to be getting a cable modem this week (which is to be arranged by Time Warner who are supposed to call me this week to set up the appt. and let me guess, they already tried yesterday and today and the phone just rings and they'll cancel my order) so that eliminates the need for a dial-up connection. No phone needed. And I don't ever talk on my phone anyway. I'm going to look into cell phone rates right this second.

4/8/03
Ok, enough with the snow. Feeling shamed by the ambitious yard working next-door neighbor, I thought I’d actually clean my crappy weed pile up this week and attempt to sow some wild flower seeds. At this rate, it’ll be June before I can do anything. This weekend I had the rare opportunity to eat at Olive Garden for Jessica’s birthday, the newish one in Chelsea. The experience rekindled my ’99 plan of eating at a chain for every holiday…Easter is coming up, you know…and I hear there’s also a new Outback Steakhouse in the same area. In the past couple weeks I saw two dead, squished, but not flat mice on the sidewalk in South Slope and it really creeped me out. Like do you think someone saw the mouse and stepped on it to kill it or did it die some other way and it’s been trampled inadvertently. Blood and guts were all seeping out, it would really bother me if someone had stomped on it on purpose, but I’m getting weak stomached and squeamish in my old age. With all this wet weather worms have been taking over the sidewalk on the subway block next to the cemetery (which I understand because that section is grassy, what I can’t figure out is the worms I saw on James’ block last week where it’s pure street, apartments and sidewalk—where were they coming from?!). So many worms that I can even spot them at night, as the glare from the streetlights is reflects on the wet cement and every little mushy raised line stands out. My thing is that I don’t want to step on them because a half-smashed worm almost makes me feel like retching more than a half-smashed mouse. Like you’ll see them on the subway stairs and one end will be flat and the other will be writhing around. Blech, I feel like puking just talking about it. So I try to duck and jump around them, which is near impossible, I must look like a freak to passer-bys (I’m also shrieking under my breath). Later it struck me that these weren’t even ordinary creepy crawly earthworms, but cemetery worms—who knows what they get up to in that graveyard. I mean, there’s that children’s rhyme about the worms crawling in and out and playing pinochle on your snout. Jesus, I don’t want any card shark, corpse-dwelling worms crossing my path.