Archive for July, 2007

7/27/2007

Published
by
alison
on July 27, 2007
in bluishorange
. Closed

earlier this evening i drove to a nearby convenience store to get some ice cream.  yes, it’s friday night, and my plans consist of eating ice cream at my apartment.  i’m not wasting the last of my twenties AT ALL.  anyway i went inside and picked out my pint while the grey-haired woman behind the counter rang up some guy’s beers.  after he left i walked up to the counter with my pint of chocolate-covered cherry and took out my wallet to pay, but the woman behind the counter was busy looking out the window.

“oh, i hope he doesn’t run over that pigeon!” she said.  i glanced outside but didn’t see any pigeons or people.  “i’ll be right back,” she said.  she grabbed an empty wine box from behind the counter and ran out into the parking lot.  why does she care if some guy runs over a dead pigeon? i thought.  all it would do is make the parking lot gross.  why does she care about that?

and then i saw the pigeon.  it wasn’t dead; it was hopping around fitfully next to one of the gas pumps.  it must have been injured.  i watched as the woman put the box down on the ground, picked up the pigeon with both hands, and stuffed it into the box.  i fully expected the pigeon to jump back out as soon as she put it in, but all it did was make the box jerk around a little as she closed it firmly.

she put the box under her arm and walked back towards the door.  she’s going to leave that pigeon outside next to the door, isn’t she? isn’t she?  oh my god she’s bringing it inside.  she came back inside with the box and set it down next to the counter.

“oh, i’m so glad he didn’t run over it,” she said as she went back behind the counter.

“i guess it was injured?” i said, looking at her hands.  she’s going to touch my ice cream now, isn’t she?

“yeah, something was wrong with it.”  she reached for a big bottle of hand sanitizer next to the cash register.  “i’ll just take it home.”

i guess i must have looked surprised.  “oh, i was a surgical tech for twenty years.  i’ll fix it right up.”

“oh.  well, good luck,” i said.

“i’m just afraid of what my husband’s going to say.  ‘why you have to bring home so many strays?’ he always asks me.  hey, are you parked over there?” she said, gesturing back towards the side of the store.

“no, i’m over here,” i said, pointing out the window.

“good,” she said.  “someone over there was laughing at me.”  what?

i paid for my ice cream, took my change, and left.  when i got home, i thought about how the woman had left me alone in the store while she went outside to pick up the pigeon.  that particular convenience store is close to my house, so i’m there pretty often; i guess she must have recognized me.  but did that mean i wasn’t going to steal anything?  i didn’t steal anything, of course, but when she went outside it was the first thing that occurred to me, just before OH NO SHE IS NOT GOING TO TOUCH THAT BIRD.  when she walked outside with the box i was thinking, i could take all this gum here by the checkout and stuff it into my pockets right now.  or i could just grab my pint and make a run for it to the car.  that second thing would mean i couldn’t ever come back here, but if i took all this gum right now, she’d never know it.

it didn’t occur to me until later that maybe she’d asked me where my car was because she didn’t want me to be alone with some loiterer in the darkest part of the parking lot.

someone get me a time-turner, please

Published
by
alison
on July 21, 2007
in bluishorange
. Closed

harry potter release party!

i had already ordered my copy of the last harry potter from amazon when i found out that a few of my friends would be going to two bookstores on release night.  though i didn’t need to buy a book, i decided to go with them anyway.  this is good, i thought.  this way i could watch everything from afar without waiting in any crazy wristband lines, secure in the knowledge that my book will arrive on my doorstep the next day.

i didn’t feel the first pangs of jealousy until the ride home from the second bookstore, when my friend sharlee handed me her brand-new copy of harry potter and the deathly hallows and said, “here, alison.  want to look at it?”  so i took it from her and looked at it.  my first instinct was to open the car door and roll out into the street, clutching the book to my chest.  it’d be a long and painful walk home, but at least i’d have something to read on the way.  but since it was too dark to read, and reading while walking is usually a good way to faceplant, i decided to stay in the car.  plus sharlee would probably never talk to me again.

so i resigned myself to having to spend most of today waiting for my book.  i was fine until about one p.m. — i cleaned my apartment and did some organizing and stayed off the internet.  but now it’s four-thirty, and i’m not really fine so much as OH MY GOD MY BOOK ISN’T HERE YET WHERE IS IT.  i’m stuck here in my apartment watching barry “total douche” bonds try to hit home runs with a bat that looks like a twig in his massive, meaty hands, staring out the window every time i hear a car engine, and refreshing the UPS tracking page over and over again to see if anything’s changed.

i’d say that i’ve learned my lesson, and next time i’ll be sure to get a copy locally even if it means standing in line.  but this is the last book in the series, so there will be no next time.  maybe i should just stop being a fan of things.  i’m clearly not very good at it.

update: from an email i sent to some friends:

i waited all day for my copy to show up via UPS. when six-thirty rolled around and it hadn’t arrived, i was on IM complaining to a friend. he told me that sometimes UPS contracts their deliveries out to the post office, and that perhaps my copy had come in the mail.

so i looked it up on some forums, and sure enough, a lot of harry potter amazon deliveries were coming via USPS instead of UPS, even though the order confirmation says UPS. so i put on my shoes and ran down to the mailboxes, where i found a slip of paper in mine that said, “You have a package in the Apartment Manager’s Office!!”

but of course the office was closed for the day, and is closed until monday, with my copy of harry potter inside. i immediately went to barnes and noble and bought one there so i don’t have to wait until monday. i’m pretty sure the cashier could feel my shame.

what this means is that, counting the british copy i ordered and couldn’t cancel in time, i’ve purchased no fewer than THREE copies of harry potter. sure, i’m going to return the amazon one and give the b&n one to my sister, but i still think this whole fiasco makes it official that i’m the lamest person on earth. but i’m the lamest person on earth who also has a copy of the book, so i guess that’s something.

please don’t ever tell anyone what i did. it’s TOO EMBARRASSING FOR WORDS.

(though i might tell the internet about it.)

i am now happily on page 329.

so. old.

Published
by
alison
on July 17, 2007
in bluishorange and lists
. Closed

i’ve recently noticed that my early- to mid-twenties is much more vivid in my memory than anything i’ve done in the last four years.  i know it’s a rose-colored glasses thing, but i think i also used to have more fun.  it’s time to step up the fun, people!

since turning 29 i have noticed the following things about myself:

1. my lowering metabolism.

2. my rising annoyance at the thought of having to sit in any chair without lumbar support.  is it just me, or are there more lumbar-less chairs around lately?  and who are all these oddly-shaped people who can sit in them?  are there a lot of invisible quasimodos out there?

3. my lowering tolerance for mid-sized inconveniences.  saturday morning i was at my computer when i heard a crashing noise outside, like the sound of glass breaking.  i didn’t think much of it until i took maude out a few hours later and saw what looked like the pieces of a shattered ceramic owl just a few feet from my doormat.  someone upstairs must have dropped it, i thought as i picked maude up to carry her over the shards.  they’ll be back to clean it up.

they were not back to clean it up.  in fact it’s tuesday and they still haven’t cleaned it up.  i don’t want to do it myself for fear of setting a precedent, and i can’t leave a note asking the culprits to pick it up since i don’t know who they are.  besides, any note i wrote would be very rude and would say things like, “I MAY WEAR SHOES OUTSIDE BUT MY DOG DOESN’T, FUCKERS.”

i’ll probably have to clean it up.

4. a general increase in hangovers.  i’m not drinking more than i have before, i’m just getting more hangovers.  sometimes i feel hung over even when i don’t drink.

5. my lowering tolerance for tiny, tiny inconveniences.  my new computer arrived at work today, and it’s huge and shiny with its own little remote and a screen bigger than my tv at home, but the username on it is “Allison Headley.”  i tried to change it to the proper spelling but i can’t seem to get it to stay changed.  it’s not anyone’s fault, but i still get annoyed every time i see it.  it looks like someone else’s name, and i don’t want my pretty new work computer to have someone else’s name.

6.  a sharp increase in nostalgia.  this is because a) i need to get out more often and b) it’s easier to sit around saying things were so much better back when _______ than it is to get out more often.

7.  i make more lists.

yikes

Published
by
alison
on July 11, 2007
in bluishorange and lists
. Closed

okay, perhaps i should clarify.

1.  no, i do not think the internet as a whole has regressed since 2001.

2.  no, i do not think that there isn’t anything good on the internet anymore.  i wish the good things were still as easy to find as they used to be, but i don’t think they’re nonexistent. (if you read some good websites you think i like and might not have heard of, please tell me.)

3.  i don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with flickr, twitter, rss, or del.icio.us.  twitter was really useful during sxsw, and flickr was invaluable on my roadtrip.  i wouldn’t have been able to upload my photos nearly as quickly, or perhaps not at all until i got back home, if not for flickr.  and i don’t even remember how i lived without rss.

no, my point was that we are using these tools to create content for us, and that content is less in-depth, less meaningful, less interesting than the things we used to write.  it’s fine if we use them (as they are in fact useful), but they’re poor stand-ins at best when we rely on them exclusively.  i have a lot of friends i used to be able to keep up with online.  sure, i can still see their twitters and flickr photos and i can read about interesting links they find, but they almost never say what they think about any of it, and that’s what i miss about the 2001 internet.

for the wiseguys out there: i do not miss frames.  or the blink tag.  or the marquee tag.  or splash pages or flash intros.  that is all.

dear internet from 2001:

Published
by
alison
on July 9, 2007
in bluishorange, letters and lists
. Closed

how’s it going?  i miss you.  here’s what we’re doing with the internet in 2007:

1.  twittering.  every time we wake up, eat something, go to the store, make a phone call, go to the bathroom, get stuck in traffic, or stand in line for an iphone, we can tell everyone about it in 140 characters or less.  this is what we do instead of spending time creating things.

2.  taking blurry cameraphone pictures of the food we just ate and posting them to flickr.

3.  making websites that consist solely of aggregated RSS feeds from flickr, twitter, and del.icio.us.  why write anything substantial when we can just pipe in content from other places?

4.  using wordpress themes and blogger templates instead of designing our own websites.*

these things are technically innovations, but they don’t feel that way to me.  i loved you, 2001 internet, because you enabled people to create and communicate in ways that really meant something.  i liked reading what my friends thought about their lives and about what was going on in the world.  i liked reading what strangers had to say, too, as sometimes those strangers would become friends.

but it doesn’t happen that way anymore.  it’s easier to spend two minutes letting twitter and del.icio.us create our content for us than it is to sit down and think about what we want to say.  these things that were invented to make it easier to communicate are drawing us near while pushing us away from each other.  it’s convenience at the expense of creativity.

i don’t know, maybe everyone’s families and children and internet-based careers keep them too busy to do things the way they used to.  maybe all the meaningful things on the internet are happening somewhere else, somewhere i haven’t looked.  or maybe the internet’s too big now, making the quality next to impossible to find.  what i do know is that the personal web doesn’t seem so personal anymore, and it’s making me sad.

we used to gaze deep into our own navels and find something of substance. now it’s just pictures of food, rss feeds and aggregated links, in 140 characters or less.

love,
alison

(*i don’t mind when people who aren’t web designers or coders use templates.  that’s a pretty old debate, and i’m generally happy with the removal of barriers to entry for the non-web-savvy.  but the rest of you have no excuse.)