I guess I’ll go to work now and move some furniture and maybe buy some office furniture.

I think rubber sheets are probably a dud unless you put something else over them. I really don’t want to have to be squeegied out of bed.

I guess you’re not into watersports?

Not as such, no. But even floating in a WHOLE SWIMMING POOL of water, one occasionally sticks to the inner tube and then OW.

rubber sheets + baby oil = non-stick fun for all. and probably torn ligaments.

Remember full-motion waterbeds? Where the whole mattress was just this big rubber bubble?

Baby oil is just one of the many, many substances of this world that I don’t EVER need to get in my hair.

xpost Anyway, my mom had one of those, and me and my HS girlfriend would strip all the sheets off of it and do dirty things to each other. It was a lesson in rhythm as much as anything.

I know, I know... tmi.

I wish I had had sex in HS. Or rather I wish I had had a BF in HS. The couple of random experiences I had were much-appreciated, but too few and far-between. And not very comfortable (standing).

Baby oil is bad for condoms.

Vaseline is death to condoms.

I didn’t have a BF in HS either, Jesse. OR in college. Late start, what with the whole CHRISTIAN INSANITY thing.

Also, the “being a really unpleasant adolescent”.

Baby oil is just one of the many, many substances of this world that I don’t EVER need to get in my hair.

i know someone who’s getting a shower cap for christmas...

I sort of had a girlfriend. Kind of like being hungry and being served a photograph of food.

xpost And a golden shower.

i had way more girls who were friends than girlfriends. it was kind of like being hungry and given a 7 course meal sealed in a lucite box.

Yeah, I did the whole “friends who are girls” thing, too. Now I know I was just doing that classic thing where you think they’ll appreciate your sensitivity and fall madly in love with you if you pretend you are beyond lust. Or something. Really all it boils down to is being a huge pussy.

Most of my friends in high school were girls, too. I had small crushes on a couple of them, but mostly I just enjoyed their company. Although the other night at the reunion, I revealed to like four separate people that my best friend from back then (female) was really a friend with benefits.

Actually, “what’s Stacie up to?” was like the question I was asked most often. I had to be like, “I dunno! I called her mom last year to see if I could re-establish contact and she said she’d pass along the message, but girl clearly doesn’t want to be friends with me anymore, cuz I never heard from her.”

I was just doing that classic thing where you think they’ll appreciate your sensitivity and fall madly in love with you if you pretend you are beyond lust.

uhm, no, not what i was doing. i was upfront about wanting to give them the rail but they totally did not take me seriously. and now that i think about it, between the mohawk and the stick figurishness and the general pain in the assiness i can’t blame them.

(xpost) I mean, I’m not COMPLETELY surprised, because things ended on sort of a weird note — basically, we continued to be “involved” with each other long after it made sense to be, and so maybe she suspects that I haven’t moved beyond those impulses — but it’s been over 5 years since I last talked to her, and I know I’m a lot more mature than I was back then, so I wish she’d give me the benefit of the doubt.

When I was in HS I had a COLLEGE GIRLFRIEND.

Really all it boils down to is being a huge pussy.

So horribly OTM.

I am totally leaving early today. No boss, general blah vibe in the office, sleepy, grey, meh. And I have shit to do.

Haha, all of us PWNED by Jordan!

I am totally leaving early today. No boss, general blah vibe in the office, sleepy, grey, meh. And I have shit to do.

I wish I could do this sometimes.

I can’t do it too often, but I think this is a special occasion. I’m going apartment hunting. No one will deny me that.

Katherine Harris and I have something in common.

Part of what I mean is that I’m not a salaried employee and so I’m at the mercy of an electronic timesheet system. If I ever leave early, I just have to make up the time before the end of the week.

you have impressive tits? xp

I had girlfriends in highschool, somehow. But I probably could’ve had more if I wasn’t a BIG PUSSY.

I don’t know what she saw in doofy high school me, but after my senior year of HS we both went to college at Madison for a year and then she broke up with me to date Mexican dudes.

xpost

John, I am a salaried employee, and I am also at the mercy of an electronic timesheet system.

i had one boyfriend in hs, and otherwise just pined over guys who didn’t notice me. it might have helped if i hadn’t spent most of the time in hs hiding behind my long hair.

Scrolling to the end to say two things:

1. Nov. 22 is my birthday. Come here then.

2. I want to have Thanksgiving at our house. I want you all to come over, and your mothers, too. But, there is not enough room at our house for everyone to come over—there is barely room for six or seven. SO... I will be happy to help plan/come cook at someone else’s house where there is more room. Otherwise, I think we’d be better off going to Simon’s all day like we did two years ago.

i’ll go if we can go to simon’s. is it open all day?

(xp) I forgot you’re a JFK-assassination baby.

Our first T-day in Chicago, Jesse, Jeff, Sayjal and I went to the parade and wandered into Simon’s at about 11 AM where we proceeded to get utterly BLOTTO until we made our way to Andee’s for dinner at around 7 or 8, with some stranger from the bar that I invited to come along with us who was apparantly a real asshole but I barely remember anything after 3 pm or so and thus hold myself blameless.

Yes. I was born the day they shot JFK. The way you look at me sucks me right down the sidewalk. Somebody please tell this machine I’m not a machine.

My presence might be required in Jersey for the actual holiday but I could come to Chicago the week after...tho if I can get out of the NJ family thing I totally, totally will.

Speaking of high school, I’m halfway though Freaks and Geeks now, and I have to say, as the series continues, it makes me more and more uncomfortable. This is one of the reasons I love it.

I “was” Nick Andropolous from that show, sans stupidity (I’d like to think) and shit home life.

i was upfront about wanting to give them the rail

Perhaps it was your phrasing.

Oh and I was into punk, not prog.

Perhaps it was your phrasing.

i didn’t speak colloquially when pitching woo.

There’s an essay I love that is, at least in part, about the word “woo”.

You weren’t really Nick at all, were you?

TS: pitching woo v. spitting game

Laurel, I hope it’s better than Nicholson Baker’s 50-page meditation on the word “lumber.”

Ah, but the drumming, and the recreational drug use, and the tallness, and the general awkwardness with women (don’t want to give too many spoilers but there is an episode that hit sort of close to home...)

I was into prog. :( I haven’t see F&G yet, though.

I think I may have just seen that episode. Unless there’s another one.

Maybe I will watch it after I see all of Battlestar Galactica and then perhaps the Wire (girl that I am hanging with just had to watch a whole season of the Wire for class!!).

Oh, it’s better than just about anything. It was in Best American Essays of 2003, ed by Anne Fadiman who as far as I’m concerned is a manifestation of the divine on this earth. I have not, however, found a listing online yet.

Who’s the author of the essay?

I think of all the F&G characters, I relate the most to Lindsay.

Mostly because of my striking resemblance to Linda Cardellini.

Yeah I was going to say, because you’re always wearing that fatigue jacket.

Oh, the essay is by Brian Doyle, and it’s called “Yes”.

Speaking of Battlestar Galactica...

Jeff and I have watched the first four episodes of season two and sent back another movie unwatched so we could get more MORE MORE BSG discs. I loved the pilot, was ready to give up on the show by the time the Tom Zarek episode rolled around, and then got all caught up in it again by the time we got to the season one finale.

There’s some pretty lofty shit happening. I hope they can carry it through.

Really? I was never even close to giving up, somehow it got past all my critical faculties and I watched it as if there were no other options than the way things were done...like it was fact! I R SUCKER.

I had my first BSG experience the other night.

QUICK JESSE MAKE THAT INTO A GAY THING!

I refuse to watch BATTLENERD GEEKLACTICA

I thought I’d had my fill of space operas, but I think I’m hooked.

I never saw the original BSG, but I want to now that I see Dirk Benedict was in it! I love that dude. Tarantino should hipster him up in his next movie.

Tom Zarek’s character needed a little refining, I thought. And I got sick of the pro-military rah rah totally uncritical of your superior officers crap. I’m still a little sick of that, actually, but...

I can’t say anymore!

Oh, those handful of episodes that were dripping with dad issues were a little sickening, too. Basically, as soon as they started focusing on the CYLONS and all their attendant evil I was back into.

I thought I’d had my fill of space operas

hahahahahahaha

You are in no position to mock someone for their chosen brand of nerdery, mister.

What’s so funny? I mean, I ain’t gonna lie, I’ve seen a lot of sci-fi tv shows.

He’s laughing because there’s no such thing as “too many” space operas. It’s an infinite genre and I say THANK GOODNESS.

See, here’s the thing: a lot of my friends who were considered nerds in junior high school have openly embraced their nerdhood as adults. But whenever one of them says something like, “Isn’t it funny how so many of us who graduated from K were total dorks growing up, and we still kind of are?” — then I’m resistant. Because yeah, I was probably considered a nerd at one point — but why? Because I got good grades and I wasn’t good at sports? So what? I mean, sure, that gets you mocked when you’re in 7th grade, but I don’t know why that should define me as a nerd now. Or they say something like, “Well, you know, we read The New Yorker and listen to NPR” — and I’m like, okay, well you have a pretty broad definition of “nerd.” I plead guilty for wanting, at various points in my life, to be an intellectual/elitist/cultural snob, but I never read a fucking Piers Anthony paperback.

xpost I’m laughing at the concept of there being so many space operas that one could conceivably have his fill of them.

Or they say, “We’re soooooo not cool enough to be in a rock band” and I’m like, “Well, that attitude is exactly why our band isn’t cool.”

Because yeah, I was probably considered a nerd at one point — but why? Because I got good grades and I wasn’t good at sports

something tells me that wasn’t it. I’m not sure what it is, I’m having trouble putting my finger on it...

*cough*

skipped driver’s ed on the day of a quiz not to go out and smoke pot behind the school or anything like that but to go to another section of my favorite English teacher’s class instead.

*cough*

Ohh nooo, I was considered a nerd because I never took my nose out of the book, and the book was usually sci-fi. Also, apart from some rather more “cerebral” authors like Iain Banks and the PKD renaissance, run-of-the-genre science fiction & fantasy STILL comes in for mostly ridicule, as evidenced by John’s last sentence above. I read a lot of Piers Anthony.

Haha, oh John. I mean, it’s not the part of my life that I’m most proud of, but there was Star Trek and TNG as a kid, a little DS9, Farscape and Babylon 5 with Maddie, etc. etc., and I enjoyed them all.

(xpost) See, Otto, but that was about wanting to hang out with EJ Bronkema. When I used to stay after school and talk with her in the English office, it was about, I dunno, Woody Allen and Nabokov — not Tolkien and Deep Space Nine.

Yeah...still not cool.

Anyway, I’m happy that you guys can enjoy that stuff, I just don’t want any of it pinned on me. And my distaste for it means that I have total license to make fun of you for it.

WOODY ALLEN ISN’T COOL???

Good thing, because Woody Allen is TOTALLY less pathetic than Tolkien.

not Tolkien and Deep Space Nine

Dude give us a LITTLE credit here. Everynerd knows that’s the worst Star Trek evolution ever.

xpost: Yeah, remember how you used to talk about Lost...

or wait, was that Nick? Fuck.

Nerdy, intellectual, Jewish pedophile = really not that cool, yo

Everynerd knows that’s the worst Star Trek evolution ever.

But better than Voyager and Enterprise

Wait, what about Lost? Lost is awesome. There are no spaceships or evil wizards in Lost.

Yeah, Lost is totally geeky sci-fi that it’s okay to like.

Jewish intellectuals are very cool, in my book. Maybe not the neo-cons, but most of the others.

Jordan, you forgot “massively neurotic”.

Re Woody Allen, not re “Lost”!!

Oh yeah. Anyway, obviously I’ve playing devil’s advocate to some degree, but there’s cool and then there’s cool.

wait wait wait... WOODY ALLEN?!?!?? prophetic.

And compared to sex and drugs and rock n’ roll, Woody Allen is not very cool. Neither are the Jews, really.

(j/k about the Jews, uh, kinda)

What about Gene Simmons?

Eh, the Hasidim are usually cool. Their stories are K-CLASSIC, although the gender division in modern life leaves something to be desired.

No way. I was specifically thinking that there are obv. cool Jews out there, but that the Hasidim are WAY LAME.

But but but WHY?

I mean, my own personal & fam issues to thread, but I basically hate interacting with them and “cool” is absolutely the last word that comes to mind.

Ooohh, I vaguely recall some mention of that but I don’t know yr story. Oh well. The book Tales of the Hasidim is cool, anyway.

Anyway, I think we’ve been over this before, but what I like about Lost is that it a) takes place in the present-day, with recognizable human characters, and b) the sci-fi element has so far been a vague sense of creepiness and mystery. It’s almost more like a suspense/horror movie in that we’re identifying with people like us who have been thrown into an unusual situation, and we want to get to the bottom of it all. We’re not starting out on an alien planet and just accepting that a race of green humanoids with yo-yos for eyes exist in this world.

Maybe they’re cooler to a non-Jew, but I get a really patronizing vibe off them. And they cut themselves off physically and culturally from the rest of the world...how can someone be cool if they don’t understand/don’t care about/are afraid of modern culture? Stick to your Torah and clapping on the downbeats and lack of birth control dudes, I’ll be in the real world.

/over the top rant