the slack daily

OPERATION RESOLUTION!

It's the most wonderful time of the year to discover how we irrevocably screwed up the past three hundred and sixty-some days. Wasted hours, ruined relationships, missed opportunities litter the halls with a bloated fat man in a diaper who was way cuter when he was Baby New Year 2010.

Usually the only thing I resolve to do is floss, because it's the sort of resolution I can handle: cheap, easy, and it only takes a couple of minutes.*

But I'm trying something new for this year. This year, we're gonna crowdsource that shit.

What should my resolutions be? Professional, personal, vegetable or mineral, it's up to you. Leave 'em in the comments - or - if you prefer to be anonymous, you can drop me a line here on my Tumblr (anonymous question enabled.)

I'll post the best ones (or all of them, or the ones I'm going to attempt, or whatever the hell I want) on January 1, 2011. 

 

 

 

*Insert sex joke here.**
**Insert sex joke about inserting here.***
***Insert sex joke about inserting here.****
****Prepare for sex joke event horizon.

Why I'll Die in the Zombie Apocalypse But That's Okay Because Chances Are You'll Already Be a Zombie By Then, Too.

So last night was the premiere of the much-anticipated Walking Dead, which began with a law enforcement official shooting a little zombie girl holding a stuffed bunny*.

Will: They don't waste any time, do they?

Me: She was a zombie, it's what you do.

I will have to turn in my Nerd Card when I admit that I haven't read the graphic novel. Not by choice, it's just that usually when I remember things I want to buy/read/see I am nowhere near a place to buy/read/see them. When I heard that Walking Dead was going to be made into a series I decided I wouldn't read the source material, but go back afterwards and see if there was anything I missed. I'm a completist that way. (You can give me my Nerd Card back now.)

Watching disaster movies (which while they skew horror, you could argue that they're easily disaster movies as well) always make me wonder how I'd react in the same scenario. I realized that while Will and I had discussed our wishes for what happens to us after we die or have to go on life support (Will has said he wants the plug pulled as soon as his pants go out of fashion), but we hadn't discussed what happens after we become undead.

I told Will that I would be upset if he didn't shoot me when I became a zombie. Unless I was a hot zombie, because then I'd want him to first take photo to show everyone what a hot zombie I made. Then he could shoot me. Never turn down a decent photo op.

But if we didn't end up zombies, what then?

But it's moments like these that I am reminded of a not-so-long-ago project of mine called the Post-Apocalyptic Workout, in which I was documenting my prep work for the Zombie Apocalypse.

Everyone always imagines themselves the hero but let's face it, most of us aren't. Most of us are just the hangers-on looking for someone to tell us what to do and then arguing when they tell us what we don't want to hear.  Like how I shouldn't go back for me dog.

This is why I'm going to die during the Zombie Apocalypse: I'm going back for my dog.

Will and I have a joke that's not really a joke but we say it in that ha-ha way which means this is serious but we're going to pretend it's not that we can both walk, so saving Daisy is our number one priority in any situation. Daisy is not Lassie. She will not pull you out of the well and call you an ambulance and mix you a drink at the end of a long day.

No, Daisy is the con artist of dogs, making you feel like you are the most important thing in her world at any given time. Daisy hates cats and dogs and squirrels, but Daisy does one thing better than any other animal on the planet, and that is that she LOVES YOU AND ONLY YOU.

In our ragtag group of survivors, when people would be going on about their parents and their kids and their wounded (listen, if zombies movies have taught me anything, it's that you gotta shoot the  wounded), I will wave that all off and say dasvidaniya, suckers I'm not leaving my dog who won't protect us from the zombies and in fact probably draw the zombies to us because her penchant for butt chewing sounds like Darth Vader attached to a Hoover vaccum so you'd better go on without us.

In summation: The Walking Dead is awesome and when my inevitable zombiefying happens in the apocalypse**, please do me a favor and take me down in one shot.

 

*The only moment of cringe-worthiness for me was when Mr. Law Enforcement Official co-opted a horse to ride into the city. I knew it wasn't going to end well. And it didn't. (Although you could argue that it ended well for the zombies.)

You asshole! I screamed at the TV while Will reminded me that it wasn't a real horse.

**This means IF I AM ACTUALLY A ZOMBIE. Not if I tell you I feel like a zombie or if I'm just sleepy. I have to be eating actual human*** brains.

***Clarified because I have been know to eat non-human brains.

The Bastard Known as Not Me.

I was locked out of my Gmail account today. I thought it odd, but managed to unlock it within minutes. I had a slew of undeliverable messages sent back as spam, which means that either:

1) Someone forged my headers (annoying) or;
2) Someone hacked into my email (beyond annoying.)

Thankfully I can tell who's accessed my account by checking my access logs.

How do you do this? Just log into Gmail, then scroll down to the bottom.

Click on "details," which will bring up a list of IP addresses that have been used to access your Gmail account.

I would have definitely remembered if I was in Croatia this morning.

I did everything here and downloaded MacScan and changed all of my passwords to a) different passwords that are b) less hackable. Of course, now I've made them so intricate that I won't be able to log into anything else, ever. But neither will anyone else!

In the meantime, please be on the lookout for Not Me.

Artist's rendering of the crime.

Now go be a smartypants and change all of your passwords. And if you received an email from me inviting you to chat on a Russian Mail Order Bride site, I JUST WANT YOU TO BE LOVED IS THAT SO WRONG?

I Am Nothing If Not Graceful.

After writing yesterday's post and sending out a few emails, I was ready to take a break. I always feel incredibly guilty when I am home during working hours and not doing anything productive, so I decided to attack the mold/mildew that was growing at the top of our shower. Our bathroom is set up with a separate tub (thankfully, as you'll see why here) and shower. The shower itself is built for supermodels, as it's super-tall and super-narrow (of which I am neither.)

The ceiling of the shower is a good ten feet high: out of arm's length. I McGuyvered a Swiffer mop with some bleach-soaked paper towels, opened the bathroom window to get the air circulating, donned a pair of old glasses (safety first, kids!) and scrubbed the mold away.

It worked brilliantly.

I set aside the mop, and in a moment of hubris, leaned back in the narrow stall to admire my handiwork. Whereupon I slipped, knocked my head against the showerhead which promptly cracked, and fell ass-first onto the shower's tiled floor. The cracked showerhead promptly dislodged and slammed against my skull.

Bright side: our shower is mold and mildew-free. Oh, and I'm not dead.

Why I Should Never Be Allowed to Use the Phone.

Tuesday Night, 7:29pm

I call Jessica's house to see if she's definitely going to the Girls in Tech Mixer. Her 10-year-old daughter Jane answers the phone.

Jane: Hello, who's this?

Slackmistress: It's a friend of your mom's. Is she there?

Jane: WHO IS THIS?

Slackmistress: [realizing that is not 1978 any more and kids don't say things I'm six years old and totally alone and I don't know where my mom is.]  Oh, Jane, it's Nina. Remember me? You came to my house on Christmas and I put you in my book and I have the dog with all of the nipples.

Jane: ...

Slackmistress: [realizing she will never be allowed to call the Gottlieb house again.]

Thursday, 11:16am

I can't call anyone, because I have no voice. I also have a head full of snot. But please imagine that I currently look like this.

Best/Worst.

Best $20 Ever Spent:

On matzo ball soup from Jerry's Deli for my poor sick husband, who returned from Long Island with a head cold.  I picked it up after I got off work last night and returned home to discover that he had forgotten that I'm parking behind our building since my car got scratched.  Instead of calling him to come move his car so he could make room for mine, I ran the soup inside, kissed him hello, and grabbed his car keys so he could relax.

Worst $20 Ever Spent:

On a cab ride - not for me, but for my husband's keys - as I neglected to take them out of my purse after I moved his car and before I left for work at 5:15am.  My poor sick husband not only had to go to work, but was late for work this morning due to my boneheaded move.  He didn't scream at me, which means he's a better man than most, or that TheraFlu is truly amazing stuff.  (I'm banking on the first.)

I'm not a smart woman.  Sorry again, love.

Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow, Revisited.

I told the stylist at Floyd's that I wanted a slightly-longer than chin-length bob.

Louise Brooks style? she asked.

You mean angled?

Yup.

Sure.

She showed me exactly how much she planned on cutting off and I nodded.  Then I took off my glasses, she turned the chair around so I couldn't see my reflection and started cutting.

Not chin length.

Oddly - or not oddly - enough this is where Will got his buzz cut a few months back. Perhaps there's some supernatural force about the place, a sort of short-hair vortex?

I know it'll look fine in a few weeks.  And technically, it's a great haircut.  Just not on me.  I look like a chubby  pinheaded girl.  My thought is always that "it's just hair" but I really, really hate this.  And I get to meet Will's entire family tomorrow as well as a bunch of Internet friends on Monday feeling this way.

Maybe makeup and a cocktail would help?

And a shout-out to Giu, who noted the following resemblance:

New Rules for Haircuts:

 

1. Wear glasses
2. Measure twice, cut once.
3. Louise, I love you but I will never invoke your name around a pair of scissors again.

(dis)articulate

¹ar·tic·u·late
Pronunciation: är-'ti-ky&-l&t
Function: adjective
Etymology: Latin articulatus jointed, past participle of articulare, from articulus
1 a : divided into syllables or words meaningfully arranged  : INTELLIGIBLE b : able to speak c : expressing oneself readily, clearly, or effectively   <an articulate teacher>; also : expressed in this manner   <an articulate argument>

I've always thought of myself as articulate.  I spoke in full sentences at an early age, and reading and writing followed soon after.  I've never had a problem getting up in front of a crowd and saying my piece.  While the idea of meeting and talking to new people is inherently terrifying to me, randomly addressing my friends or total strangers is a piece of cake.  (Or wedding cake, in the case of the previous clip.)

While being articulate is something that I constantly aspire to, lately I'm achieving the opposite. 

dis·ar·tic·u·late

Pronunciation:ˌdis-är-'ti-ky&-l&t

Function: verb

intransitive verb : to become disjointed

Disarticulating: it's what murders do when trying to hide the evidence, tearing things apart piece by piece. It's what I've been doing lately, taking each individual part of my life and putting it under a microscope.  The latest victim has been my reflection.  I like to think of beauty as more of a feeling rather than a set of physical characteristics, but lately I feel like I have neither.

It's summer and I'm looking on flickr at the women in bikinis, not models, but real life women, ones that are thinner than me and ones that are heavier than me and I'm jealous.  The most useless emotion there is but I'm envious of their smooth, unmarked bellies. It doesn't matter if they're flat or if they're round, the fact is there's not a piece of stretched skin or stretchmark to be seen.  I curse my weight loss of however many years ago leaving me with a stomach that still looked like I had given birth to triplets even when I was incredibly lean, and I open another tab to investigate reverse tummy tucks, poring over before and after pictures when I know that the problem isn't my stomach it's me. 

Why do we do this to ourselves?  Why do I do this to myself? Suddenly I'm angry and upset because I know this is stupid, I'm stupid, I'm wasting time on something that doesn't matter, something I know I can prevent myself from doing.  I can stop myself from going down this road but I don't and I didn't and I'm sitting here feeling sorry for me and my stretched-out stomach.  Why worry about that when there's my broken-out face or my big thighs or my arms or a billion other things I can pick at.  That I can pick on.  I want to be beautiful,and to admit that seems shallow and vain and ultimately embarrassing.  I want to be beautiful and I'm doing the one thing that makes me the most unattractive.

Nothing ever looks as it is magnified times a thousand, and yet I can't stop.  I'm murdering myself, but I'm not hiding the evidence.  I am disarticulated. And I want to get caught. 

Autopilot.

I haven't been focused enough to write a clear, concise, or at least a well-reasoned blog post in ages.  Stories and moments and snippets of dialogue stutter through my synapses, but every morning I pretty much look upon the Big White Box of Dread.  I don't know whether to apologize to the Studio Audience for not taking a break, but I'm not.  I think that I cut myself slack in so many (read: every) area of my life that I have to sit down and force myself to do this on a somewhat daily basis.  Today on the SlackMenu:

• Happy Birthday to Leah!  You should check out her blog because not only is it charmingly well-written, but she posts actual photos and not the MySpace arms' length monstrosities you see here.

• Every day Mr. Boy and I discuss the various blogs that we read (BTW, have you checked out my new fancy blogroll there on the right?) and predict what the blogger will say on any given day.  Like the snipers of teh Internets, it's terrifying how deadly accurate we can be.  But maybe it's not all that surprising - the stew of posts here contain mostly Mr. Boy, Daisy, pictures of food and a videoblog thrown in for a wee bit of spice. 

It got me to thinking - we should have Blog Bingo.  Between Will and I, I bet we can come up with 25 things we commonly talk about.  On his side alone we have midgets, retards, cripples, the Mets and his crazy neighbors.  My side is a little less spectacular, with Fat Girl Musings and Wonderdogs and Egads, I Need to Get a Job.

• Speaking of Jobs: Oh, my god, I need to get a job.  Will and I discussed whether I should start temping before the wedding, but my tax return was plentiful enough that we both agreed that I should sit down with my Manager and Older SlackBrother J. to talk about the realities of our career, and also think about What the Hell I am Going to do with the Rest of My Life. Today I was paying some bills and I saw the number in my checking account and tried not to cry.  I just feel like I shouldn't be struggling this hard when I'm 34.  I worked so hard and paid off all of my debt by the time I was 28, and then started socking money away like crazy.  Years of spotty work (please people, stop watching Network Reality TV!) and a particularly rough financial year last year just completely decimated me.

The fact is that I was just dumb about a lot of things, I should have done pretty much everything differently.  I don't mind taking chances - I took a big chance when I moved out here - but I just feel like even though I was hustling for work, there was still a ton of stuff that I let just fly on by.  Or I should have been working to get a real job a long time ago. Those are the type of regrets that I have.   Things that are my fault. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

(I sort of feel like this.)

There are possibly wonderful things in the works, but to be honest, there always almost are so I rarely mention them.  This time I am in the hopes that someone stop jamming pins got the Slackmistress Career Voodoo Doll. I'll do the Temp Agency Tango post-wedding, which makes me more nauseous than you can imagine.  Okay, I'm done with the money thing.  Moving on...

• Holy crap, I'm getting married in NINE DAYS.

• Okay, I lied, I'm not done with the money thing.  We're still trying to keep things low-key, but I have started the oh-my-god freakout with how insanely expensive it is to be a bride.  There's makeup ($255 for the materials, although to be fair, this I'll actually use on a daily basis) and hair ($140 for cut and color, styling is free as a gift!) and dresses ($225) and wedding rings ($500) and part of me says that I should just treat it like any other day - I do my own hair and paint my own nails and put on my own makeup on a daily basis, after all - I feel like I want to look as good as humanly possible for the pictures.  Which makes me feel petty and small, because it's not about the pictures or the day, it's about the days and moments that follow.

• (the slackmistress tackily whines about career and being broke: BINGO!)

• My guess is that the above post is brought to you by the Letter P, as in 'period.'

• Wait!  Not done yet!  There is a chance that Mr Boy and I will checking out Cloud Cult at the Knitting Factory on Friday night, as they are highly recommended (and Mr.Boy has been personally invited) by the Sneeze.  However, I may stay at home to save money and figure out a way to shoot Botox into my fallopian tubes to make my eggs appear younger so that I may sell them on Craiglist for cash.  Stay tuned...

Things That Are Dumb, Tuesday Edition.

I am sick.  This could be folded into the Monday night edition of this game, as last night I was sitting in front of the computer playing in an 18-person poker tournament (I won) (no, it's not for real money) (SlackDad didn't understand how people could play online poker for real money because 'where does the money go?') (SlackDad is not a moron, he just doesn't totally understand technology) when I felt a lump in my throat, and not the good kind.  Mind you, I had my tonsils out back in '99, and a sore throat is rare.  Two hours later I was achy and sniffly and chilly and fevery.  I am taking to my bed until I beat this thing, because I cannot be sick now (15 days until we leave for Vegas.)

However, I had to leave my bed to walk Daisy and move my car, as it's street cleaning day. I leashed up the WonderDog and stumbled outside to discover plenty of parking on the designated side.  Score!  However, as Daisy squatted for her first pee of the morning (an enlightening experience for man and beast) I happened to catch the sign.  I was parked on the correct side of the street this morning.  Yesterday morning I got back from the gym, read the sign, and parked on the WRONG side of the street, earning a $50 ticket for my stupidity (and lack of reading comprehension.)

I'm working on Daisy's Reactionary Dog Craziness (squealing, barking, twisting around like a maniac when she sees another dog) by feeding her only on walks and in the presence of other dogs, a feat that's easy to do as our neighborhood is like the Canine Jungle, with a Vizsla lurking behind every corner.  This morning we were surprised when an English Bulldog darted out of a house, but I managed to calm Daisy down and get her attention with a bit of pork chop from Sunday night's dinner.  I mentally patted myself on the back with my Dog Behavior Prowess.  As we strolled down the street (shuffled is more like it, being sick and all) I rubbed an itchy eye. 

By 9:30am I was sick with a $50 parking ticket and a left eyeball that was Not Kosher.

I'm going back to bed.