|
7.30.2003
- link
dear checkout person at joann's fabrics,
i promise that you are 100% safe in not checking my ID when i buy things from your fine establishment using my credit card. not only do i swear to you that i am absolutely the owner of this particular card, but i can assure you that every person who enters the hallowed halls of your store is also the rightful owner of every credit card in their purse. why? because you are a craft store, for crying out loud. who the hell steals a credit card and runs directly to the nearest michael's or joann's to stock up on yarn, gluesticks and pipecleaners? no criminal i know. the only crime happening here that i can see is how you charge as much as you do for that iron-on printer paper stuff. seriously, $6 for 3 sheets of paper should be illegal!
anyway, i hope this letter finds you well and in good spirits.
yours in the church of craft,
dana j. robinson
- - -
7.28.2003
- link
problems? what problems?
ampersandpaper: the only reason i'm not having a major panic attack is that i'm in complete denial.
skampgirl: haha. denial is good because it allows us to breathe and function normally.
skampgirl: when otherwise normal bodily functions just wouldn't be possible.
ampersandpaper: yeah, but it can get in the way, too.
skampgirl: nah...
skampgirl: when it gets in the way, just deny that you're in denial.
- - -
7.22.2003
- link
cozy
i was thinking about the article i read in gq the other day about liz phair. the writer so totally nailed it. he was an indie boy who lusted after her. she was an indie girl who wrote intelligent lyrics. together, the sex could know no bounds. unfortunately, he was too shy to ask her out and she was too busy hiking up her skirt, getting a tan and trying to fuck marines, one-night-stand style. what a shame for them both.
so after reading this article and mourning the loss of a great musician for what was probably more than could be considered a healthy amount of time, i realized just how hard it is to keep up. good stuff, no matter how good it is, always always always fizzles out. it always gets less cool and less cool still and finally it's so uncool it might as well just stop existing. that's a little bit how i feel about liz phair right now. just stop existing, already.
this leads us to the really sad part. the part where we notice that people can fade out just as quickly (if not more so) as music/clothing/cars/hairstyles. no matter how spark-y and brilliant and awesome someone seems at first, they always always always seem less so after not very long. i mean, come on...these fur leg warmers i'm sporting stayed hot way longer than my last friendster friendship.
i think the problem is that people get lazy. they stop working hard. they stop trying to knock your socks off. they get comfortable. cozy. lethargic. but i have an idea. it seems like a pretty good idea, too. what i think is this: people need to start sleeping on beds of nails. really, really sharp and pointy nails. something to serve as a constant reminder that getting too comfortable is a bad idea. a little poke to suggest, "hey you...stop that! the more you settle in, the more you're going to bleed and blood just isn't sexy this year."
i realize it's a risky idea. if it's successful, and i think it just might be, everyone is going to be in love with everyone else forever & ever. i'm not exactly sure that the current earth could handle the inevitable population explosion that would result. having said all that, i'm still totally down with this idea. in fact, i'm off to build my bed right now. who's with me?
- - -
7.21.2003
- link
who's your daddy?
today i was theorizing on the whereabouts of my dad. some people say, "do you know who your real dad is?" and that's weird because it's not like i ever even had a fake dad. there was just no dad. the absence of dad. dad minus dad equals nothing. dad-free since 1975. (i wish that rhymed.) there was this one guy who married my mom when i was like a year old or something who i originally thought was my dad, but mostly he just slept with other women and was a truck driver so he wasn't around much anyway. he did manage to knock my mom up, though, so i ended up getting a half-sister out of the deal. a half-sister and one hell of a good christmas tale. did i tell you that story? the story of the most fucked up christmas ever? no?
so i guess it was christmas day in 1985 because i was around 10 years old when this happened. my mom dropped us off at the robinson house and went home to do whatever a single mother of two does when her beloved children are at the ex-husband's family's house for the holidays. we all ate our dinner and sang happy birthday to the little baby jesus and then got situated to open the presents. afterall the presents are the most important part of christmas. to hell with joseph and mary and all that business.
the way that it worked was each of the sons (mike, gary, rick, teresa [yeah, she's a daughter but she looked and acted like a son, so work with me.]) handed out all of their presents before moving onto the next son. so mike, my alleged father, handed his gifts out first. historically, my (half-)sister and i got a few joint gifts. big things, like stereos or televisions or something we could put in our room to share. this time around, however, the person handing out the gifts was stacking a shit load of gifts in front of my (half-)sister and absolutely nothing in front of me. i was all, "whatever...that's cool. i bet i'll just get some jewelry or something really expensive but small." sure enough, what i got was a tiny little package. and then i looked over and noticed that my cousins all had a tiny little package from mike as well. how cute. matching tiny presents.
lyndi (that's my half-sister) started opening her presents. she was totally cleaning house, man. she got a new tent and a new sleeping bag and a new lantern and all this cool camping gear. we used to love to go camping back in the day. awesome. i was so psyched to see what i got. something like maybe he put a certificate into a little box that said "valid for one free camping trip to canada!" yeah! "that is going to rule so hard," i thought. so when she finally finished opening her trillion gifts, i opened my box. it was one of those lifesavers books...you know, the holiday sampler-packs they sell on display at the check-out stands at the supermarket? i quickly opened the box up just knowing that inside was going to be that totally rad certificate promising me a camping trip i would never forget. that's when i saw it. a $5 bill. wrinkled. alone. just sitting inside of the sampler-pack of lifesavers. did you know i only liked butterscotch? yeah, i don't even fucking like fruity lifesavers. what the fuck? being a grateful and polite child, i held the sugary bullshit in my hands and looked up all sad-like and said "thank you, dad."
now, at this point, you know my supposed aunts and so-called uncles were like, "woah dude...what the fuck is up with that?" i looked around to see if maybe this was some kind of joke, but all i saw were looks of shock and amazement. i found no sign of something else to come. finally one of mike's brothers said, "ok, my turn!" and people eventually stopped staring at me waiting for me to cry and we moved on.
when the festivities were over, my mom came to pick my (half-)sister and i up. we were loading all of her presents into the car and my mom said, "ok, so whose is whose? what did you guys get?" so i made a big huge production of pointing out which presents belonged to each of us. i held up my prized sampler-pack and said "this one is mine....and this one, this one, this one, this one, this one and this one are lyndi's." my mom laughed. i guess i must've seemed like i was joking. even if i wasn't, surely it was some sort of joke, right? so i clarified. i pulled the $5 bill out of my pocket, held it up in the air and said "oh, and this is part of mine, too."
ooooh lordy. i thought i knew what my mom looked like when she was pissed off. but suddenly across my mother's lovely visage passed a cloud of doom. was i in trouble? did i say something wrong? maybe lyndi was in trouble? "get in the car right now!" she said with conviction. so we did. we got in the car faster than we'd ever gotten into a car and before we knew it we were home and in bed. that's when we heard the shouting.
"WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU FUCKING THINKING YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE OF A FATHER?"
(silence)
"THAT IS NO WAY TO TREAT A 10 YEAR OLD GIRL! ARE YOU FUCKING OUT OF YOUR FUCKING MIND?"
(silence)
*PHONE SLAMS DOWN* "dana, could you come out to the kitchen for a minute? mommy wants to talk to you."
"oh fuck, man." i thought while i walked begrudgingly into the kitchen.
"dana, listen. i'm sorry you didn't get any presents tonight. that jerk isn't your dad anyway, so don't be sad."
"wait, what? not my dad? what?"
"tomorrow we're going shopping and you can get anything you want. how does that sound?"
"HOORAY!!"
i mean, seriously, who needs a dad when you get a full day of toy shopping? certainly not me. i forgot all about the whole no-dad business and started planning my strategies for getting every single thing i wanted. and i did. get everything i wanted. including being excused from ever having to go to another humiliating robinson family christmas ever again.
so of course some years later i started wondering about the story of my dad. who was this guy? how did my mom end up pregnant thanks to this guy? where was this guy now? but considering how hard my mom worked to support me and my (half-)sister, i didn't really pursue the answers to these questions. i mean, why bother? i would only harbor some deep-seeded resentment for whomever this man is who refused to participate in the glory that is me. furthermore, he doesn't deserve to claim a genetic half of my greatness. so, i dropped the issue after asking about it one time when i was probably 14 and not getting very far with it.
then one day about a year ago i was IMing with my mom. (she's so in-the-now, what with her PC computer and her IMing.) she said hi. i said hi. then i could see that my buddy was typing. and typing. and typing. and typing. and i'm like, "oh shit. here comes some crazy story regarding my mom's crazy life." finally the message arrived and it said, "dana...i'm watching lifetime [editor's note: television for victims!] and there's a movie on right now about a white woman who was raped by a black man and she gets pregnant and she's not sure what to do...should she keep the baby? not keep the baby? anyway, it got me to thinking and i just wanted to tell you that i'm really glad i kept you."
um. hello? my mom had already learned the art of dropping potentially complicated conversation bombs in instant message form. i decided i was so not going to address this issue in this medium, so i crafted a response.
"so...are you saying i'm half black?"
that pretty much put an end to that conversation. i guess i have a way of putting out fires...thankfully. it's not that i don't want to know who my dad is. but it's not that i want her to feel like she has to tell me, either. it's just that i refuse to receive a potentially huge piece news that's 27 years in the making via some AOL technology. sorry mom.
however, today i decided that in august when i'm home for my birthday that i'm going to bring the whole issue up and get to the bottom of it. up until now, "ignorance is bliss" has worked just fine as my M.O., but i think it's time to cash in on all those back-christmas gifts i'm owed. besides, i've always wanted to have a legitimate answer to the age old question, "who's your daddy?"
- - -
7.20.2003
- link
note to self and everyone else: don't take advice from amateurs who think they're pros. they're still trying to figure it all out, too...whether or not they'll admit it.
- - -
7.18.2003
- link
mmm, leather pants
i should be ashamed of myself, but i'm not. i'm proud. i am proud that i want to sleep with at least one of the hanson brothers. not just like sleep with in the wham/bam/thankyouma'am sort of sense, either. i mean, i want to get down and get dirty. filthy dirty. damn kinky dana-on-boy(s) action. they're legal, right? and even if they're not exactly legal yet, you know, my last name is robinson (koo koo ka choo!) and plus i'm sure there was a clause in the women's liberation movement somewhere that addressed the right to sleep with someone extremely young and super hot in the midst of a pre-midlife-crisis. afterall...what's fair is fair, boys. the time has come for the hanson trio to be the harold to my maude. hottttt.
- - -
7.14.2003
- link
there is no "team" in "i"
important is:
paying your dues (and your credit card bills)
staying positive (and making jokes about the negative)
supporting yourself (and your boobs)
sticking with it (and to it, if you're sweaty)
taking care (and caring enough to take it)
important isn't:
stressing the small stuff (size *does* matter)
making mountains (from molehills, anthills, any hills)
doing it all (or all that doing it)
being the fantasy (faux reals, yo)
saying everything (or nothing at all, too)
- - -
7.11.2003
- link
becca, gina, dana, jennifer, megan
girls who eat soma like it's the gummi worms that've been in their front pocket for the better part of the day are the kind of girls i can get into, dig? they're the kind of girls who understand what they like, they know how to get it, and they know it's ok to admit it. they are the kind of girls who know the difference between good slutty and bad slutty. they are the kind of girls who get that being too drunk is no reason to apologize. in fact, these are the girls who know that life is too short to spend it saying sorry all the time in the first place. these girls drive it like it's stolen. these girls ask for one but take two anyway. these are the girls who make old ladies "tsk tsk" while the old guys nod in approval from the sidelines. these are the girls dreams are made of.
- - -
7.10.2003
- link
i'm the kind of girl who drinks her iced tea with cream, not lemon. f-you, sourface. what do you think about that?
- - -
7.9.2003
- link
if my inner situation could more accurately be summed up with something other the title of the book, i want to spend the rest of my life everywhere, with everyone, one to one, always, forever, now, well, i certainly haven't heard about it.
side bar item #1: do you or anyone you know live in kansas city? i'll be there next week and might like to talk to you or anyone you know about it.
- - -
7.8.2003
- link
narcolepsy is the new insomnia
it used to be that i could fall asleep on the dc metro before we hit the next stop after the one where i boarded the train. i would sit down, ipod on, head nodded slightly forward and pow...out like a light until the stop right before my stop. like clockwork. like a little slice of magic helping to make my commute less hellish.
now it seems that this handy public transpotation trick is following me unwantedly into other avenues in my life. i sit down to watch a movie, get settled and 7 minutes later pow...out like a light. i get situated in the passenger seat of the car on any longer-than-20-minute drive and not long afterwards pow...out like a light. i'm in a meeting with the entire staff and someone is talking at great length about fundraising and...well, actually, there are still some areas where, while i'd like to be able to induce slumber, i still somehow manage to keep the ol' eyelids a-flutter.
almost everyone i know who's creative and interesting has some form of insomnia. why can't these people create beautiful things at 2pm? why always 2am? i want to be a part of the creative revolution, but how can i if it takes place while i'm in the middle of some serious rem action? i could very well miss the bus because i'm dreaming about getting on it.
i guess i'll just take solace in knowing that at least i'll be rested enough to walk to my destination if someday i ever decide to wake the fuck up.
- - -
7.5.2003
- link
it's not like he had any sort of profound influence on my life. hell, it's not like he even really had a any sort of rudimentary influence on my life. so why will i always remember where i was and what i was doing on the exact moment i learned that barry white kicked the bucket?
to celebrate his life and mourn his death, i recommend lighting some candles, sliding a record onto the stereo hi-fi system, pouring yourself a tall glass of something inebriating, finding your romantic partner, going into the bedroom and doing it in the butt.
- - -
7.3.2003
- link
every morning, in my own personal effort to endorse and offer continued support of capitalism and the success of overgrown monopolies, i stop at the starbucks nearest my office to order a large iced coffee. and every morning the barista, who is sometimes hot but usually not hot but always eerily happy, says to me, "ok great...so that's one venti iced coffee?" and i respond eagerly and with conviction, "yes, one large iced coffee, please!" and i usually get just a little more than i want...a large cup of iced coffee with a side of eye rolling and condescention from the aforementioned probably not-hot and now formerly eerily happy barista. i'm sorry, mister or miss barista, but i am just not gay enough to actually say the 'v' word out loud.
today, however, i was behind an older (and by older i mean at least 35 if not 40) woman who has clearly never left the sanctuary and safety of her mother's home. she had two scraps of paper in her hand with gigantic, loopy scribblings. the medium-hot and eerily happy barista says, "can i start you a drink?" and the woman is visibly flustered because she is still in front of the pastry section and not yet to the counter. this barista is one who cares about efficiency and is just trying to keep the line moving, but this lady is having none of it. she stammers and shifts uneasily for awhile before she looks at one scrap of paper and says to the medium-hot no-longer-eerily-happy-but-now-noticeably-annoyed barista "does 'vent-eye double non-fat lat-tee with easy whip' mean anything to you?"
i guess eye-rolling is something they train you to do at starbucks because she got a pretty healthy dose of it with that particular order. he corrected her order with the sort of arrogance one might only expect from the over-educated/over-paid and asked if there was anything else. of course there's something else, this lady's got *two* scraps of paper with nearly illegible scrawl indicating yet another order. this time, the lady just held the piece of paper up to the medium-hot no-longer-eerily-happy-but-now-way-more-annoyed-than-before barista's face and says "i don't understand most of these words...can you make any sense of it?"
mind you, i am behind this darwinian travesty attempting patience and waiting to simply say, "one large iced coffee, please." it's so easy. it rolls off the tongue. it's almost as if i was born to utter this phrase once (or sometimes twice, oh my!) daily. i'm getting looks of compassion from the other some-hot, some-not-hot baristas who are stuck behind the espresso machines and cannot possibly come to my rescue.
the medium-hot no-longer-eerily-happy-but-now-actually-eerily-angry/homocidal barista says, "it's a grande decaf breakfast blend. that's just your typical decaf cup of coffee, ma'am. it's not.that.hard.to.figure.out." realizing he'd just broken some sort of sacred barista code...he had actually verbalized his condescention and annoyance...he backed slowly away from the pastry counter to retrieve the grande decaf breakfast blend in shame. he probably just went ahead and left her a little room for cream, just in case. he understood he'd already said too much, and to ask any more would be the beginning of the end.
finally, when it was my turn, i was tempted to go easy on this crew of beaten down baristas and go ahead and order the venti iced coffee. i wanted to rescue these battered and bruised baristas from a ruined morning. so when asked, "can i start a drink for you?" i paused, thought for a moment, came to my senses and said "one large iced coffee please." and that's exactly what i got.
- - -
7.2.2003
- link
sexy-ugly people amaze and confuse me, not unlike drunk children at a backyard bbq.
- - -
|
