metaphors and non-metaphors.

"it just seems like people want big government when it benefits them and small government when it benefits them." - guy having an intense conversation with the used bookstore worker. [i mean, the worker in the used bookstore. just to clarify my modifiers.]

i mean, you think? i wanted to alert him to this piece of great satire -  "no values voters" looking to support most evil candidate.  the video's just okay, but YEAH for the idea. it's almost like we're all trying to do what's best. not that i'm a complete relativist, but i'm just saying - people have good intentions. a lot.

this week's episode of this american life made me cry. okay, this post has been sitting here unwritten for so long that now it's last week's episode - "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing." i always really love dan savage [whose sex advice column, it turns out, is a little less feel-good than his usual TAL contributions], and this piece contains some of my favorite things - religion, love, gay marriage, little kids, and sappiness. starts about 18 minutes into the episode, and i'm warning you, it turned me into that crying girl on the CTA bus. in a good way, though.

from the movie definitely, maybe [which i recommend], on the question of what we want to do with our lives - "i don't know. i don't know HOW to know, you know?"

has everyone read this article, about oversharing online? i feel like i remember when it was new...

Like most people, I tend to use the language of addiction casually, as in, “I can’t wait for the new season of ‘America’s Next Top Model’ to start — I’m totally going through withdrawal.” And when talking about how immersed I became in my online life, I’m tempted to use this language because it provides such handy metaphors. It’s easy to compare the initial thrill of evoking an immediate response to a blog post to the rush of getting high, and the diminishing thrills to the process of becoming inured to a drug’s effects. The metaphor is so exact, in fact, that maybe it isn’t a metaphor at all.

anyway, i really love that paragraph. save it in the "i'd like to write like this" file.

oh, and try to get your friends to click on www.thingsididlastnight.com. then giggle.

"you were ordering a sandwich..."

ELLEN IS TALKING ABOUT CRAIGSLIST MISSED CONNECTIONS!!

okay, i got really excited, but apparently she's not going to make fun of them so much as... oh, she's having a couple on the show who got together via missed connections. dang. but i was already all excited to blog about it.

seriously, though, i love reading missed connections. there's something about what people say anonymously, but also hoping to be discovered. sometimes they're cute, or creepy, or misspelled, or really weirdly desperate - but there's totally something about them.

christina aguilera and her husband had a party for their baby's bris and had penis balloons as decorations. these are the kind of things i learn from watching ellen.

wow, this IS evil.

from gawker, via jezebel - random house would like us to understand just how much skinnier the sweet valley high girls would be today. i was more of a babysitters' club [scholastic can't seem to decide about that apostrophe, so i'm making a statement] fan at the time, so i'm not getting why the twins have to be "a perfect size" anything. you'd think they'd just take that part out. and not, you know, PROMOTE it.

also, how to respond to the obama new yorker cartoon. in 5 easy steps. in case you were confused.

"glory, like a sunset..."

you know how sometimes you put your itunes 25 most played on shuffle and hear "glory" from rent and start rocking out? oh, just me? right.

i'm having trouble believing that maureen dowd posted whom not to marry without irony, but here it is. when i was in high school, they used to warn us against thinking we'd marry the guys we were dating by saying, "someday you'll have kids... and they'll end up JUST LIKE HIM." lots of shudders at that, i remember.

also, i'm going to have to agree with the aclu on this one - pants? really? especially when, as the article notes, there are so many "inappropriate" ways that women dress and somehow remain, you know, unpunished. could it be that many of the lawmakers and law enforcers are men? [please watch the youtube clip if you'd like to hear "apple bottom jeans" again. and i know you would.]

[knock, knock, knock] ... the door.

breeziness, ice cream.

so i was watching friends the other night, the episode ["the one where monica and richard are friends"] in which rachel reads the shining and joey reads little women. and i noticed that, throughout the episode, ross is reading race by studs terkel [which, google tells me, david schwimmer later made into a play].

monica: but it's okay. it's okay, it's okay, because, you know, it was like a casual, breezy message. it was breezy! oh God, what if it wasn't breezy?

phoebe: how could it not be breezy? no, because you're in such a breezy place.

...

[on message] "... so, let me know. or don't, whatever. i'm breezy!"

joey: hey, you can't say you're breezy! that totally negates the breezy!

those weren't actually from that episode. they're from the episode i'm watching now. anyway, in honor of david schwimmer, studs terkel, and coincidence, here are two things that just happened related to race.

1. these girls were looking at an ice cream truck, and they had these big character heads made out of ice cream - you all may remember snoopy, from when we were kids. anyway, now they have dora the explorer, and this girl goes, "oooh! those look so good - i bet dora's chocolate!" i was like, umm. i don't think you can say that...

2. this twentysomething black guy got on the bus. wearing a white t-shirt, white shoes, dark jeans, and a sideways sox hat. i don't know what kind of look the people in front of me gave him, but he walked onto the bus going, "it's just a hat, it's just a hat..." i liked it. it reminded me of this brent staples article i read in high school. for some reason, i always remembered the part where he whistles vivaldi when he knows people are nervous around him. [goodsearched "white priviledge whistling vivaldi" to find it.]

watched a few good men the other night. [i often have this conversation with a certain friend who owns this movie but doesn't appreciate good-looking men - "why do YOU like this movie?" "i like the lawyer stuff!"] for the first time in my life, i actually understood what's happening in that movie. i also realized that tom cruise, in the movie, is supposed to be just out of law school. not only was he not yet crazy, but he was also 24 years old when that movie was filmed. we're old, guys. and did everyone else know that tom cruise wanted to be a priest? like, was in the seminary? daaaang.

speaking of which [??], i forgot to post this last week, but was reminded by the homily this weekend - three years ago last sunday [the fourteenth sunday in ordinary time, year a] i was reading at the basilica and had, well, an awkward reading. maybe you remember hearing it a week ago. "see, your king shall come to you; a just savior is he, meek, and riding on an ass, on a colt, the foal of an ass." i remember spending all day freaking out that i had to say "ass" in the basilica. i mean, i had to say "ass" TWICE in the basilica. then, as i was reading, i had one of my first experiences of the downside of being as high-drama as i usually am. maybe if i hadn't freaked out all day, i wouldn't be freaking out now, and i'd be able to ignore the group of my friends smirking at me from a pew directly in front of me...

anyway, thanks, three year cycle of readings, for that little memory.

and lastly, the economics of love. it's a good one. oooh, and before i post, this interesting article on forming habits and advertising.

"that's a PHONE FAKEOUT."

Today Now!: How To Pretend You Give A Shit About The Election

is it just me, or has the onion really upped the technological ante since i felt like a badass reading it in high school?

whenever i read the onion, i think about the this american life story about how they choose their headlines. it's actually a great all-around episode. go ahead and listen to it, why don't you?

also, regarding this onion video, i haven't heard anyone use the term "cray-pa" since 1992. are those still around? and can we get a pack of them that haven't been all smudged until they all kind of look like the same color?

can you feel the love tonight?

g: if you don't think sam adams is great, you're an idiot.

m: okay, jafar...

best comeback ever? yes. and of course it led straight to a discussion of which disney princess is the hottest, with lots of competition between belle [good news for me, i think] and nala, when she rolls over and has those "come-hither" eyes... i mean, not the first time i've heard nala described as hot by guys who are usually normal.

read on a stranger's whiteboard - "dogs are the opposite of starfish." i've been thinking about this a lot. anyone want to tell me what this means? dogs' limbs don't regenerate? starfish can't catch a stick? but they can both SWIM...

some articles i've liked in the past few days:

little omaba on how her dad can be embarrassing, with some obama parenting techniques thrown in.

this piece on young men who discern the priesthood, which is funny if it sounds familiar at all to you. not sure if i'm a fan of this blog, but this particular piece is too on-the-mark not to post.

on the disadvantages of an elite education, oh shit - although, i do think that if you want to learn to talk to people who aren't like you, you should just ride the CTA. the most interesting part for me was the part about fake deadlines and second chances and grade inflation. i really had too few professors who could tell me that the work i'd turned in wasn't my best. think it's true?