Life of a Hipster

Sign your pants are too tight: a mile in to your walk to work you look at your silhouette in a store front window and notice your calf looks a little bumpy. You think it's just your pants bunched up until you reach down to fix it and realize it's an old pair of underwear.

Modern Amish

It seems I'm behind on a lot of the quintessential 80's, 90's and even early 2000's pop culture that I should have been eating up as a kid. The first time I saw 'The Goonies' was about 5 months ago. It was an enjoyable movie, but I can't help but compare the twinkle in my peers' eyes when they imitate Sloth grumbling 'Hey, you guys!' and the fact that I just had to look that quote up. I also didn't know who New Kids on the Block were until way after they were accused of lip syncing. And I surely didn't know any of the words to 'Ice Ice Baby.' There are many reasons that contribute to me having missed out on some of the childhood memories people my age seem to have enjoyed, but I think the biggest factor was that I grew up Modern Amish.

We didn't have cable. I didn't grow up watching videos kill the radio star on MTV, and I had no idea that over on Nickelodeon Clarissa had all the answers. The programs I watched were whatever came out when the TV was plugged in, and the rabbit ears were adjusted just so. My mom and I actually had a TV that we had to 'warm up' before watching. In the winter, we would sometimes watch TV together cuddled into her bed, and before we moved the operation from the living room to her bedroom, she would give a 10 minute warning on the commercial break of the show before the show we wanted to watch so I could run to her room, switch the TV on, and be back before I missed anything good. It needed time to adjust to being on, otherwise, if a frame had too much white in it, the TV would make a horrible buzzing sound and you would miss DJ lying to Stephanie about how much she ate that day because she wanted to slim down before Kimmy's pool party. On Saturday nights, my mom and I would watch 'Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman' (and to this day, I would still try to touch lips with Sully) and 'Walker, Texas Ranger.' I think 'Dr. Quinn' ended up getting canceled somewhere down the line so we replaced that time slot with a double header of COPS. To this day, I can sing the theme songs to both 'Walker and 'COPS,' and if 'Dr. Quinn' had words in her theme song, I would be able to sing those too (instead, the show opened with dramatic music that set the stage for the trials and tribulations for life on the American frontier in the 1800's).

Most of the music I listened to was whatever came on Colorado's go-to for continuous lite rock, KOSY 101, and I can tell you it wasn't Prince or Madonna coming out of the speakers of my mom's yellow Subaru hatchback. I had a cassette player, but for a long time, my tapes were limited to Raffi and The Safety Kids ('We're The Safety Kids, The Safety Kids, The Safety Kids, Playin' it cool. We're the Safety Kids, The Safety Kids, The Safety Kids, keepin' the rules!) [http://www.familysafemedia.com/safety_kids_-_child_safety_edu.html] When I did finally get my first 'cool kid' tape, I proceeded to warp my favorite song, Michael Jackson's 'Bad,' because I became obsessed with it, figured out exactly how many seconds to hold down the rewind button so when I let go it was exactly at the beginning of the song, and blast it out of my Casio, over and over and over. I didn't ask for a CD player until the Christmas of my fifth grade year because I wanted to know what the other kids were talking about when I heard them saying words like 'skip' and 'disk.'

The first email account I had was the one my college assigned to me when I got there and had The Internet right in my dorm room. I didn't have the internet growing up, so for projects in high school, I was lugging research books back home from the library in my Jansport and looking up facts on our CD-ROM Encyclopedia while my classmates were chatting on AIM and cutting and pasting from other people's work. My mom finally got the internet in her house the year she retired and no longer had access to it via her job. I think the main reasons for her having it installed were so she could receive and reply to my emails, and order supplies related to her quilting hobby.

As I got older, I realized there was a lot of stuff other people had that we didn't. We didn't have Caller ID because my mom said if she didn't want to talk to someone, she would just not pick up the phone when it rang. We didn't have Call Waiting either because my mom said there wasn't anything that couldn't wait for her to be done with the conversation she was already having. My mom likes to keep things simple. She held steadfastly to her cassette player until one day she was out in the yard trimming the bushes and sheared the cord to her headphones in one snip. I was able to convince her to replace the defunct cassette player with an entirely new CD player by explaining that you don't have to rewind a CD. My mom has cable now, but the only reason is because the tube went out on the old box TV and the new TV she got was much thinner and the rabbit ears would tip off it and she'd lose reception. She has a cell phone now too, but she only turns it on to make calls and then promptly turns it right off. AT&T called her the other day to let her know she was eligible for a phone upgrade, but she told them the one she has now still works fine and she doesn't want to have to learn the buttons on another phone. I bought her a DVD player for Christmas a few years ago, but she didn't play one movie until months later when I sat down with her and taught her how to use it while she scribbled precise notes that included phrases like 'the round button with the slash in the top right corner' and 'use arrows on remote to navigate to Play Movie on menu screen.' We had a similar situation this past Christmas when I bought her an iPod. We sat down together so I could teach her how to use it while she took notes, but about the second week in January she called me to let me know the iPod was broken. Something was wrong with the volume, and no matter how high she cranked it up, the music was still too soft. I told her she didn't have the headphones plugged in far enough, but she said if she jammed them in any further the damn thing was likely to shatter. Luckily my uncle was over to visit a few days later and using his technical wizardry, he was able to fix the issue by ... plugging the headphones in farther.

When I was younger, I'd feel embarrassed that we didn't seem to have the same stuff as most of my friends. I didn't understand why my mom would keep the same kitchen table for 15 years even though it had a dent in it from when my dad dropped a piece of firewood the first year they were married. She had enough money to buy all that stuff, so why wouldn't she just buy it? My mom, like many of our parents, was raised by two people who endured the Great Depression, and therefore understood the value of a possession or a dollar. I remember my Grandma Olson washing and reusing plastic baggies until they would literally disintegrate. The summer after my grandparents died, we were at their cabin cleaning out the attic and came across a giant shopping bag filled with bras; bras that my mother and aunt wore while they were growing up. I'm not sure if my Grandma planned on saving them for the grandkids or what, but the point is that the bras were still usable, so why get rid of them? My grandparents passed that mentality on to their kids, and I remember my mom always repeating the adage, 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it.'

That concept is one that so many people have lost touch with today. We're constantly at the mall buying this season's shoes, and exchanging our perfectly fine TVs because that one isn't HD. Our world today is filled with so many conveniences and luxuries, that we're losing sight of the basics; the things that really matter. So it's really no surprise that the average credit card debt per household is $15,788*. We're buying things that we can't afford, and that we therefore don't need.

Now that I'm an adult, I appreciate being raised Modern Amish. I don't take things for granted, I understand the value of what I already have, and only buy when I need, not when I want. So Mom, even though I was pissed about answering the phone and not realizing it was a creeper from school until he started talking, and mad when I dropped the CD-ROM Encyclopedia behind the computer and it got scratched and I couldn't look anything up on it for my Shakespeare report, I want to thank you for teaching me the worth of things. Believe me, I apply your 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it' saying to a lot more in my life than possessions.

Fauxkemia

The other weekend, a pain started in the back of my head, at the base of my skull on the right side. I didn’t think much of it at first, but the pain got worse and worse until at 10:30 pm I decided the best thing to do was drink a ton of water and go to bed. My head was really starting to pound by the time I closed my eyes, but the soft sheets and fluffy pillows dulled the pain enough for me to drift off into Dreamland ... until I woke up at 3 am and something felt horribly wrong. My head hurt so bad it felt like it was swelling with each of my heartbeats and pressing against the inside of my skull, threatening bust through the bone and splat itself all over the walls. I slowly got out of bed, careful not to turn on any lights since I knew that would only exacerbate the pain, and with my eyes half open, started looking for a bottle of generic brand ibuprofen I got as part of a 'going away to college’ goodie package about 7 years ago. It was the only known bottle of headache medicine that could be hiding out in either a mess of bathroom toiletries, in the bottom of a cavernous bag, or behind my dresser. I never found it, and my irresponsibility and dislike of medicines gave the migraine the fuel it needed to fully push me over the edge, and at 3:30 am I was hovered over the toilet reliving the day's meals.

The next day, as soon as I felt it was safe to get out of bed, I bee-lined to the Walgreen’s down the street where I bought 1 bottle of 50 Advil tablets and added it to my ‘medicine cabinet' which currently consists of: an aluminum sheet of big white pills whose box I lost or destroyed a long time ago, 1 bottle of nasal spray, 2 bottles of Skin Shield (this’ll come up later) and 1 box of about 30 ‘adhesive bandages’ (nope, I was not willing to spring for the Band-aids even though my hand was bleeding and I was convinced I could see some bone -- again, more on this later). For as long as I can remember I have avoided taking medicine unless absolutely necessary, and by necessary I mean the doctor handing over a scribbled prescription and trying to convince me this is the only thing that will make me better, and I must take it now and follow the directions completely or things will only get much, much worse.

This actually happened to me. When I was working in news, I got very, very sick and allowed myself to stay that way for several months. I would cough uncontrollably, constantly have sinus blockage and feel tired all the time. I was hoping the symptoms were a result of the news station being packed with asbestos and as soon as I started growing a hump out of my back or some other deformity reared its ugly head, I could cash in on a law suit and buy a big farm and adopt 20 puppies and roll around with them all day when I wasn’t watching ‘Seinfeld’ on DVD or reading books by Augusten Burroughs by my pool. But at about month 3 of being on the verge of violently ill, mum pointed out that maybe the reason I felt tired all the time wasn’t necessarily because my shift had turned me into a vampire that produced a morning show from midnight to 9 am, but because I had been sick for 3 months straight. Mum knows best, so I finally made an appointment with a doctor I randomly chose out of our health care catalog. The doctor told me that I had an upper respiratory infection that had rooted itself so far into my lungs, I now had asthma! Yep, me not taking care of myself and waiting far too long to get checked ended with me GIVING MYSELF ASTHMA. Who does that? I feel like as punishment I should have gotten braces put back on and started talking with the quintessential nerd lisp (hey guysh, i shaw you over here jusht hanging out and shtuff ... I know lotsh of inthereshting fachts i could share ... about like the celeshtial kingdom ... shtars and shtuff) in between taking puffs from my inhaler on my way up the stairs to the physics building.

But even irrevocably damaged lungs weren’t enough of a lesson for me to go see the doctor when I had raging sinus issues a week before I was supposed to go to New Orleans for Mardi Gras. My solution was to get more sleep, and drink more water (because that has worked so well in the past)! So it should have been no surprise as I sat on the plane bound for Louis Armstrong International Airport that the sinus pressure in my head was so bad, I worryingly racked my memory for news stories involving head explosions at high altitudes as a result of untreated sinus issues. Then, I actually heard a pop from somewhere inside my head and started checking under my nose for blood and brain matter. Nothing ever came out, so I'm hoping that pop was the luggage shifting in the overhead compartment and not something that actually happened in my head that will reveal itself at a very inopportune moment like during a makeout sesh with FutureHusband Zack Galifianakis.

I currently live next door to a hospital and about a block and a half from my normal doctor, but visiting them didn't even cross my mind the night I overzealously ‘cheersed’ my friend’s glass with an empty high ball and it exploded in my hand, embedding shards of glass into several of my fingers and making a gash the size of a trout’s gill into the skin between my thumb and pointer finger. My solution was to immediately wrap the wound in about 20 layers of toilet paper, which were promptly soaked through with blood, and escort myself from the bar before I could get kicked out for breaking their glasses and making blood puddles on their floor. 

As soon as I got home, I washed my hand with soap and water but figured the gash could do with some more sanitizing, so I proceeded to pour squeeze after squeeze of Purell directly into the cut, which let me tell you, did not feel like a summer breeze, even after several whiskeys. At that point, I did not have any adhesive bandages yet, so I fell asleep clutching a giant handful of toilet paper. When I woke up in the morning, I thought I had nerve damage in my hand, but it turned out it was just asleep from having a death grip on the toilet paper all night. The fact that my hand was still bleeding wasn’t enough to convince me to walk next door to the hospital. Instead, I walked to Walgreen’s, and bought a 2 for 1 pack of Skin Shield and a box of generic adhesive bandages. Then I went home and applied about 25 layers of Skin Shield and a bandage. I continued to do this 3 times a day for about 2 and a half weeks, and wouldn’t you know it, it healed right up and looks and feels great. So unfortunately, my thought process of ‘Why wait in the ER for several hours and spend money on a co-pay for something an internet search, a 5 block trip to Walgreen’s and my own ingenuity may be able to fix?’ was proven right in this case.

Part of the reason I shun doctors and medicine is because I think we live in a society where all too often we reach for the quick fix without giving our body a chance to work it out on its own. I also have a fear that I could become immune to an important medicine and the Dr will be forced to give me news like, 'There's really nothing else we can do for this headache since you took 4 Advil that one time you had the flu. Looks like we're going to have to amputate.' But the biggest reason I don’t like ‘modern medicine’ stems from the fact that most psychological problems find their roots in something 'traumatic' that happened during childhood. (If you don't believe this, watch about 3 episodes of A&E's riveting and heart-wrenching show 'Intervention' and then come back and try to argue it with me.) Because of that scientific fact, I can confidently conclude this behavior stems from the time I was diagnosed with Leukemia.

When I was 3 years old, my parents went through a divorce. Now, before you start thinking ‘Uh oh, this hilarious and entertaining post just took a sharp turn toward Downersville,’ I should tell you that although having divorced parents is difficult, as a child I felt like it really paid off when I started getting double gifts for holidays: 2 bikes one Christmas, 2 Nintendos another Christmas, hundreds of Pogs for a birthday, etc. So it wasn’t all that bad. Anyway, so my parents are going through a divorce and one day I wake up and there are bruises covering my entire body. And by covering, I mean everywhere from my tongue to my big toe. Social services came to investigate, and if you know my parents at all, this would be like a social services representative checking on the kids at Mother Theresa and Ghandi’s house, you know, if they had kids. So after a few days of observation, social services were able to conclude my parents were not, in fact, beating me, and maybe I should go to the doctor. After an initial examination during which none of the doctors in the office was able to offer any explanation, I was sent to get blood drawn. Apparently, bruises all over your body = something in the blood may be causing it = we have no fricking clue what is going on, but will continue to syringe your blood in large doses and then peer into the test results hoping for answers like gypsies peering at the tea leaves in the bottom of their mugs. Every day for several weeks I went back to the doctor’s office to get blood drawn. Years later, I opened a childhood book about Paddington Bear and one of the Mickey Mouse bandages the nurses gave me slipped out of the pages. The doctors told my parents there were only a handful of other cases in the world that even resembled whatever it was I had. So after weeks of getting my little arms poked with a needle every day, the doctors diagnosed me with Leukemia. My parents, along with the medical staff, started researching the best ways to try to make me better and set plans in motion to get treatment going. But before I could be admitted to an intensive program, the bruises started disappearing just as mysteriously as they appeared. A week later, I was completely back to normal and the hospital plans were canceled. The doctors were still stumped, my parents were relieved, and I just wanted to go watch 'Sesame Street.'

So I think subconsciously my brain tells my body: If we can self-heal Leukemia, there’s no way a migraine or a bloody hand is going to send us running for the medicine and doctors.

Let's Mount SFPD

I’m a little girl and I often walk the streets in San Francisco alone, thus exposing myself to a myriad of delightful characters who insist on trying to engage me in conversation. There’s the group of bums on 9th street who must have a foot fetish since they compliment my shoes daily, the little Mexican men who whisper ‘Ay Mami,’ on my Sunday morning walks home from The Mission and the fellow leaning against a half-stripped Altima who gave me the elevator eyes and said he had a job for me (and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t stuffing envelopes, but it likely had to do with stuffing something somewhere, but I obviously didn’t stick around to find out).

I walk around at night all alone too. I’ve crossed 7th & Folsom at midnight on my way to the 47, I’ve walked Mission from 24th to 16th at 2:30am after a night of heavy drinking -- all very bad decisions, I know. So a few Sundays ago, when I decided to walk home from Fly bar on Divis & Fulton at 7pm, not inebriated (for once), I didn’t have a second thought about safety. I nonchalantly took my iPhone out, left a voicemail for my best friend and merrily continued North on Divis toward my neighborhood. Unfortunately, that one phone call unknowingly made me a target for two men I’ll describe as ‘Western Addition Locals.’ So yeah, I’ll admit I was walking through the Sketchstern Addition, alone, after the sun went down, but since there were so many people on the street, including people headed toward The Independent for a show, I felt fine burning off pizza calories with a quick walk home. When I first moved to San Francisco, I taught myself to be overly aware of what was around me. It took extra time getting places when half my walk was spent looking over my shoulder, so I’ve cooled out a bit since, but I still noticed the two guys wearing somewhat outlandish, designer-looking studded jeans as I passed them (and I remember thinking, ‘Gee, those look awfully expensive. I wonder how such upstanding looking young men afford such luxury items). I also noticed the small girl on her cell phone and the hipster couple strolling hand in hand and the groups of people waiting for the bus. But when the guys still seemed to be behind me, I decided to cross the street ‘just to be safe.’ So just as the light turned, I stuck my hand in the pocket my iPhone was in and had my phone halfway out when a large hand grabbed my arm, completely encircling it, and a man yelled out “Bitch!” as he jerked my arm and the phone went flying into the street. On instinct, I whirled around and grabbed his jacket, which I could tell from the look on his face really freaked him out. As soon as he let go off me, I let go of him and turned to see where my phone was. I then watched his friend dart around us, run into the street to grab it and then watched them take off through the apartment complex the government so graciously provided for folks in that area. My first thought was to run after them. They actually weren’t moving that fast, and if you’ve ever seen someone try to walk around in those ridiculous, sagging pants, well I can assure you they don’t suddenly become track pants designed to help perps get away faster after mugging a tiny little girl. But it was just a phone they’d taken and I didn’t want to find myself suddenly trapped in a crack den with a gun to my head, so I did what I thought would be the next logical thing, and considered calling SFPD. Only I didn’t have a phone. By this time I noticed the enormous, very tough looking man standing in the median looking at me. I walked over to him and said, ‘Sir, my phone just got jacked. Would you mind calling the police for me?’ He already had his phone out of his pocket by this time and was punching in the last ‘1’ when he told me ‘I saw the whole thing go down. I thought they were going to do something.’ I wanted to climb up his gargantuan body, using his huge biceps as stepping stools to his neck where I would get my hands as far around it as I could and shake while screaming ‘THEN WHY THE FUCK DIDN’T YOU DO ANYTHING? EVEN IF YOU DIDN’T WANT TO GET INVOLVED, WHY DIDN’T YOU JUST YELL SOMETHING LIKE ‘COPS’ OR ‘HEY! I SEE YOU!’ OR EVEN ‘FIRE’ FOR CHRIST’S SAKE?’ But I didn’t. I simply thanked him for calling the police. A police car came flying up Divis about a minute later, lights twirling (no sirens though, dammit) and a cop jumped out and asked me if I was ok. After assuring him I wasn’t bleeding internally or missing any teeth, he told me to ‘Jump in the back! We’ll drive around and see if we can spot them running!’ I’ve never been in the back of a cop car, and I can tell you it’s not a comfortable place to be. The seats are made of a thick plastic and you feel each bump the cruiser rolls over through your bones. While recounting the story to my best friend she said,’You rode in the back?! Oh my god. When you got in the car, was it hard to get in? I mean, did he tell you to watch your head? Oh wait, you weren’t handcuffed.’ But I don’t think it really would have made a difference, the back sucks and I hope I’m never in there again. Whether it’s searching the streets for muggers or getting hauled off myself. So after circling the blocks in the area, I told the officer I wasn’t hopeful about finding them, so we pulled over to make the report. By this time, ‘backup’ had arrived in the form of about 5 other cop cars and they were randomly pulling people off the streets and questioning them and then slyly pointing them out to me and asking if they fit the description. It didn’t make me feel inadvertently racist at all, no, huh uh, no way, not at all.

At one point, as I was surrounded by the protective barrier of SFPD cruisers, the lights dancing over everyone’s faces, I looked at the officer who arrived on the scene first and apologized, telling him I felt ridiculous that so many cops were getting involved in this for a phone. Another officer spoke up and told me not to worry about it because they get about 6 reports a day about stolen phones in that area? 6 PER DAY?! That’s such an outrageous number I actually considered maybe it was some sort of conspiracy ring run by Apple to keep iPhone business hot and stock up. How could this be happening 6 times per day just in that area alone? I see tons of cops driving around the streets, arms hanging out of the windows, dispatcher volume on max. Seeing as how San Francisco is a ‘walking city’ and my main mode of transportation is walking, I always felt safe seeing the old black and white quietly zoom by. But that’s just the problem. The cops are in their cruisers zipping by, missing everything that’s going on right in front of them. They need the cars so they can quickly respond to calls after the crime has been committed. I understand the need to get somewhere fast when a knife is being brandished or a homicidal maniac is trying to highjack a car by choking the driver through an open window, but where are the cops when it’s time to serve and protect against street crime? It’s not even street crime, it’s sidewalk crime, and I can’t remember the last time I saw cops on the sidewalk, but I see about 6 per hour drive up and down Fillmore on the weekend, you know, in case someone’s prized poodle gets nipped at by another dog or the cashier at Peet’s gives incorrect change off a $5 bill. The other day on my way to work, I walked through a drug deal at 8:15am right outside an SRO. No one batted an eye or even bothered to wait a second to complete the hand off as I walked through the group. And the next night, stepping out of a friend’s car in front of Weird Fish, the old, feeble looking lady in the wheelchair was slipping a dime bag to a guy with a greasy ponytail. I could have reached down and grabbed the bag before anyone realized what was going on, the transaction was that non-discrete. Like when Newsom went strolling around the Haight with his daughter and gee golly "As God is my witness, there's a guy on the sidewalk smoking crack!" This goes on every day buddy, and the only reason you didn’t see it before is because you didn’t bother to get yourself onto the very streets you’ve been elected mayor of.

So with all that being said, I think it’s time to get back to basics. And by basics I mean put SFPD onto the backs of some of America’s most thoroughbred horses. I saw horse/police tactics work wonderfully on inebriated Mardi Gras crowds in New Orleans, so why couldn’t they be used to control the crack dealer population here? Some people might complain that the horses would make yucky waste on the sidewalk, but compared to some of the shit piles I’ve seen in the middle of sidewalks in SoMa, I’d much rather step through grassy horse shit than whatever it is I’ve seen come out the other end of a crackhead. Instituting mounted police units would put cops right on the sidewalk, but still give them the upper hand. I know if I saw or heard a thoroughbred bearing down on someone, I would get the hell out of the way. But until then, we should all put our iPhones deep into the recesses of our worn Chrome messenger bags and walk the streets with one eye looking over our shoulders.

And now I know how those kids can afford designer jeans. They jack shit from little girls. I hope when the phone slid into the street the screen cracked to shit and the whole thing got fucked.

Image courtesy of Sergeant Austin King.

I Might Be An Abuser

I spend an average of 12 hours per day staring at a computer screen. Lately, I've been concerned that might be too much. What if I end up going blind 7 years down the road from staring at a lit up box for half the day? So I decided to take an internet addiction test to determine if I needed to cut back. After answering "Always" to questions like "How often do you check your e-mail before something else that you need to do?" and "How often do you fear that life without the Internet would be boring, empty, and joyless?" I just knew I was doomed. I apprehensively clicked the "Calculate Score" button and closed my eyes. I was shocked when this came up: "You are an average on-line user. You may surf the Web a bit too long at times, but you have control over your usage." So I guess I don't need to get help. Good thing, too. I'd have no idea where to turn for help. I guess I'd have to Google it.

Yes, I Am An Ecoist. In That I Think People With SUVs Should Be Jailed

I'm an ecoist in the sense that I try to walk/bike/carpool/take mass transit when I can, and I drive a small car that gets excellent gas mileage. But I'm also an ecoist in the sense that I have hateful feelings toward people who seem to want to kill the planet faster than it's already going down the shitter. When I'm in traffic, I will intentionally let eco-friendly cars in front of me, but block off SUVs or any other car I deem to be a extra-pollution emitter. Some people try to argue that a large car is necessary to carry around all their kids and/or stuff. That's actually not an argument, and it's not even a good excuse. If you have so many kids you can't fit them into a normal sized car, that's just another huge strike against you because you are polluting the earth by bringing too many people in the world who will most likely adapt the crappy habits you have, and hog and waste resources. And on the stuff issue, where the hell are you going that you need everything you own?
I also think less of people that don't recycle, and see this as a major flaw in their personalities that I will not forgive or look past.
So if you want to be my friend, have a clue about our current environmentally dire situation, and then I think we'll get along fine. Unless you're a braggart, they're almost as bad as polluters in my book.

Minimalism: Reducing Your Life To 100 Items

By no means is it a new concept, but I just came across Dave Bruno's 100 Thing Challenge, and find it to be an interesting and necessary concept. Dave is challenging himself to whittle his belongings to the absolute necessaries until he has no more than 100 items in his possession. The problem, however, lies in Dave's dedication and his classification of what constitutes one item. He says he is counting his entire train collection as one. I could see a baseball card collection being counted as one item because you could reasonably fit all the cards in one notebook or box, but trains are much larger, and could easily take over a good portion of your house. Dave also lists several other items that he won't be counting, such as communal items like the family car. But Dave, it's just one car. You're really not willing to use just 1 of your 100 allotted items on your car? Granted, Dave says he is starting the challenge by taking things slow, it's just hard for me to understand because I tend to dive headfirst into projects instead of easing myself into it.
Dave's grass roots idea has inspired many other people to sort through their piles of stuff, and he's using his blog to update his followers on his progress in reducing his material possessions down to the essentials.
I may have talked a little trash about Dave's commitment to his challenge, but I commend him for taking on a project that can only yield positive feelings. America is a gluttonous society by nature, and people are continuously complaining about their endless supplies of junk. Having too much stuff is a constant reminder of the unfulfilled promises you've made to yourself: the dusty exercise equipment--because you promised yourself you'd work out 5 times a week and lose 30 pounds; the scrapbooking supplies--because you promised yourself you'd showcase your most precious memories in a creative manner; the dozens of Christmas themed cookie cutters--because you promised yourself you'd give home baked goodies to spread the seasonal cheer. Paring your life down to the essentials will help you figure out what what matters most.
This whole thing has got me wondering how many items I have in my personal inventory. Counting conservatively, I know I have way more than 100 items. I'm planning a big move soon, so maybe I'll take Dave up on his challenge to save myself from having to pack boxes full of stuff that I won't touch after I unpack it. Do you think you could successfully take on the 100 Item Challenge?

The Counter-Top Tip Jar: An Ever-Present Annoyance

I don't like them, and I don't put money in them. I used to; when I allowed societal pressures to make me feel guilty for not automatically dropping in at least a dollar. But let's do some math here using a single coffee purchase at a cafe as our example: average cup of specialty coffee drink: $3.75; average tip society tries to tell me is appropriate for an order like this: $1; average percent of total bill society tells me is proper: 15%-20%. Whoa! A dollar tip on a $3.75 bill? That's way over 15%, that's even way over 20%. So why am I being made to feel I need to plunk down another bill every time I want a little caffeinated pick me up? Why am I being made to feel I need to shell out anything at all? The barista/order taker knew he or she would be making the standard minimum wage when he or she took the job, and agreed to take it regardless. There was an agreement between him or her and the employer that the job (in this case pouring hot or cold liquid into a cup and making change) would be performed for the agreed upon rate. So why do I need to reward that person more for doing what they're supposed to be doing? I've already contributed to your paycheck in the outrageous $3.75 I spent on my order. Some of the weaker people that give in to societal pressures argue, "but what's another dollar to you for someone that might be trying to support a family, or put himself through school?" You're right, it's not the money (I like to think I have enough of it), it's the principle (which a lot of people seem to be misunderstanding the concept of these days). Ok, so if the barista is putting himself through school, isn't just giving a dollar unsympathetic? Maybe I should give $20, or maybe I should offer to pay for next quarter's tuition! I can't be the savior to every barista who might be seeking higher education.

Restaurants are a different story. I understand the concept of tipping in that situation, and normally give over 20%. If you want to hear more rants and suggestions on standing up to society's pressure to throw your money around, go here.

Hybrids: The Silent Killers

I am a very green-minded person. I try to do my part by bringing my reusable grocery bags to the market, limiting the time I spend in the shower, walking instead of driving, so it's no surprise I'm a big fan of hybrid cars. Good for the environment = good for me. However, hybrids pose a problem that has people leaping back on sidewalks and crying out in fear. The problem is the absence of noise a hybrid makes when it is gliding along the street. There's even a bill in Congress that would force the Transportation Department to outline rules for quieter vehicles, including an audible warning to let people know the car is approaching. I don't own a hybrid, so I could be wrong on this, but I thing hybrids already come with an audible warning device. I believe the manufacturer calls it "The Horn." The simplest solution to ensuring your safety is being aware of your surroundings, but some people say not all of us can look both ways before stepping into the street. While there are no official statistics on how many blind people have been rolled on the hood of a Hybrid, The National Federation of the Blind says it is a real problem, and needs to be dealt with accordingly. But how and where are all these at-risk blind people crossing the street? I know I like to cross the street at the crosswalks right after the big red hand turns into the flashing white man.

This whole argument reminds me of the Seinfeld episode where Elaine's new male co-worker keeps sneaking up on her, and she gives me a container of tic tacs to carry so she can hear him coming.

I'm not sure why there's complaining about an invention that will help urban people get more sleep because they won't be woken up by noisy engines in the middle of the night. I say it's your fault if you get nailed by a hybrid. If the hit happens as the driver is making a right, and you're out of his field of vision, he's most likely going 10 mph at the most, and you should be able to brush it off and get his information should you need to send a medical bill his way. I say let the hybrids run wild (and silently), and besides, if I happen to be taken out by a high-speed vehicle, I'd rather go in peace not having a clue what hit me.

Can I Tell You're A Serial Killer By The Way You Write Your Name?

I love my handwriting. It is solid, sharp, strong, independent. It evokes thought, creativity, mystery. I have my mother to thank for part of it. Growing up the daughter of an elementary school teacher, there was *some* pressure to strive for excellence in my school work, so it’s no surprise I’ve often been told my handwriting looks like text printed off a computer. But what does my handwriting say about me? I understand forensic scientists that study handwriting samples to see if the handwriting is from the same person, but can someone really pick up on characteristics by the way you dot your “i,” or how straight you cross your “t?” I think so. I like to use my own handwriting as a control when looking at other people’s handwriting, because I know myself better than any other person. Because I am a strong, independent, creative individual, that is reflected in the way I shape my letters. I find my handwriting even varies a bit depending on my mood, or the time of day. If I’m happy and feel outgoing, by printing might be bigger, with a bit more flourish in the swirl of my “s.” If I’m feeling subdued or angry, my letters will be sharp, and I may press harder on the page with my pen.
However, I don’t believe you can specifically classify a person just by analyzing their handwriting. A friend has scribbly writing and rarely has all the letters slanting the same way, but she’s a highly intelligent, forward thinking, analytical person. And another friend writes her words in run-together, almost indiscernible loops that resemble the fake scribbles of a child who has yet to learn spelling, but she is very successful in her job, and keeps a neat-as-a-pin apartment, the obviously opposite characteristics of an illiterate child.
So what influences someone’s handwriting? Surely the teacher has some influence, but if that was the sole factor, there would be groups of 30 kids or so walking around writing in the exact same way.
Is it the bone structure of the hand? Do people with handspans of 7 inches share one similar handwriting characteristic? Do people with large thumbs tend to make a fatter "m" than people with small thumbs?

The Capitol of Technology Blows A Fuse

I’m not loving this San Jose. Granted, I’ve only given it one short night that included a run to Taco Bell because the only restaurants open were somehow meat havens, and one short morning. But I can’t help but think of a few analogies: New Jersey is to New York as New Zealand is to Australia as San Jose is to San Francisco. If you’ve visited any of those places, I think you’ll catch my drift. This morning, what I found infuriating is that I couldn’t find one goddamn wifi coffee house in about a 7 block radius from where I’m staying. I was stoked when I found one 3 blocks away, but as my luck would have it, the damn thing was under construction. Typical. So, I snapped on the iPhone (thank god for that thing or I’d most likely be dead right now, or just really, really lost), and searched for another wifi coffee shop. Now, as you know I work in marketing and advertising, so this could just be my biased opinion, but if I owned a business, I would sure as hell make sure I had a) a website b) advertising on the website of the products and services I offered. Now, I understand some people might not be so technically savvy, and not want to spend hundreds of dollars paying a designer to make my website, but I would definitely submit and update my profile on sites like chowbaby and yelp. Anyway, long story short, and in attempt to keep the ranting down to a minimum, here I sit at the evil empire typing a blog entry into a word document (actually, the program is “Pages” because me and my friend Mac are hanging out today, but “Word “Document” is likely to be recognized by more of you peeps) because I can’t get a goddamn wifi signal. And that’s another thing I’m amazed about. Isn’t San Jose supposed to be The Mecca for all things technical? Where’s the free public wifi? How am I supposed to be fast and forward when I’m practically stuck in 1984? I should have brought my book. You can always rely on the good old paperback. You don’t need any signals to get pleasure out of that.

Why I Don't Feel Bad Polluting The Environment

I'm headed up to San Jose this weekend, and with gas prices at a gag-inducing $4.30 something per gallon, I decided to "think green" (in this case my motivation was the green I was trying to keep in my wallet), and look into the train or a bus. Amtrak.com listed a one way trip for $30. I had visions of me lounging in the quiet cars, writing or reading and rocking out to Wolf Parade. I clicked the little circles near the departure times and submitted my request, only to be greeted with the following message:

"In certain circumstances, state law requires that trips booked on Amtrak.com include at least one segment where you travel by train (rather than by Thruway bus). If you select a segment marked with the text "Book With Train", you must also select at least one other segment of your trip where you travel by train."

Um, ok, I guess that could make sense since I'm on the Amtrak website, but I don't think the fact you contract most of your business to buses should affect me. But, my only options were a $50 ticket leaving at a time I'm still working, or a $37 ticket leaving San Jose at 10 Sunday morning. Since I am a smart person, I already drive a fuel-efficient car and can make it to San Jose and halfway back for the effing price of the one way ticket, and I can leave whenever I damn well please.

So I said eff it, I'll go straight to the source and book on Greyhound. The bus isn't nearly as glamorous as the train, but I just want to get there, and save some dollars for the bars later. I knew the Central Coast had bubble qualities when it came to trying to get out of here, and as it turns out, the bus doesn't give you any more help than the airlines. The most convenient time listed had me arriving in San Jose at 11:20pm. Ok, I can deal with a not so great time if the price is stellar. But after submitting my ticket request and seeing the price it felt like I had been run over by a bus instead of shuttled to my destination in one. $86.50 for a refundable ticket and $63 for a non-refundable. I drive a car that gets 35 miles per gallon, so these prices were absolutely laughable.

I don't get it. I tried. I tried to find a way up the coast besides driving my personal environment polluting vehicle. But no one is helping me out! Why would I want to pay more money to get there later than if I had driven my own goddamn self? And I know for a fact the bus doesn't stop at In-N-Out when I need a grilled cheese animal style break. So sorry Amtrak, and sorry Greyhound, and sorry environment, and sorry global warming, but I will be driving myself to San Jose this weekend, and I'll be playing whatever I want on the radio and stopping for breaks whenever I please.

The Rules of the Sex Industry

When I started my current corporate job, I had to watch several straight out of the 70's sexual harassment videos and sign a "Sexual Harassment Policy." But I'm wondering what the rules are for people in the sex industry? Do they sign sexual harassment agreements? If they try something the script doesn't call for, could they face a sexual harassment filing, or worse, a lawsuit?

The Spider That Made Me Reassess My Independence

It could have been instinct, or it may have been vibrations on the wall from his thick, hairy legs, but I was woken up the other night to a giant spider lurking in the shadows near my bed. At first, I didn't realize it was death on eight legs because I didn't have my contacts in, and the lights weren't on, but the second I flicked the switch, I knew that night could have been my last. He (and I know it was a "he," because everyone knows the devil is a male) was perched on the wall not three feet from where I slept, my image glinting off his spidey eyes. My blood immediately ran cold, and my breath became short. I would rather free fall on a carnival ride than come in contact with a spider. And this particular one was the largest I have ever seen. There's a statistic that people swallow an average of eight spiders per year, and although this statistic has been called bullshit by many reputable sources, if this thing had made it into my mouth, there's no doubt I would have choked to death.

That being said, this was not a one-shoe job (especially not a women's size 5 which, of course, was the only thing available to me at that time). This thing needed to be taken out with a solid book; perhaps even The Bible. I didn't see this bad boy being taken out easily, and I didn't want to risk it leaping from the wall into my bed, burrowing between the pillows while quickly laying eggs invisible to the eye, and then darting under some other piece of furniture laughing while I lived in fear for the next several months while it kept watch on me and planned a fang-filled attack the second I reached REM. So, while keeping a close eye on his every move, I grabbed some mittens I figured were thick enough to repel a bite, and the largest shoe I could find. I thought if I got close enough to it, I could give it a thwack hard enough to take it out immediately, but every time I got more than three feet from it, my breathing would involuntarily cease, and I would freak out. I tried securing the shoe to a curtain rod in hopes I could swing the contraption like a baseball bat, but I couldn't get over the visual of me missing, and him landing on my soft, clean pillows.

So, in a shaky voice I called for my roommate's help. She came armed with yellow rubber gloves up to her elbows and a large broom. I stood quivering in the corner while she approached him bravely. She smeared him across the wall in one swift swing. Mission accomplished, and with no help from me.

I consider myself a clever, independent lady, but this episode made me realize my limits. After the guts were 409ed off the wall, I couldn't help but wonder if my fear of arachnids could keep me from my dreams of my own little studio in the middle of a huge city. I won't have anyone to yell for to kill scary bugs. It'll just be me and my tiny size 5's. Even a straight shot of Raid wouldn't have killed the sucker that tried to do me in. So what are my options? Never live alone or Bug Bomb my room nightly?

The Power of Punctuation

By far, the ellipses is the all mighty when it comes to punctuation marks. The dictionary says an ellipses is used "to indicate an omission or suppression of letters or words." I prefer to let people make their own interpretations of what I'm trying to tell them, so by leaving the end of my thought open, it gives them several options for what they want me to be telling them. I'm always trying to maintain an air of mystery, and it doesn't get any more mysterious than a trailing sentence.

But I also like having the final word, so I enjoy a good, solid period every once in awhile.