I always secretly, shamefully do memes on Facebook or here or wherever, but then I don't post them because even though I might think they're funny, there is still the awful, awful shame. Anyway, though, I did one of those "put your mp3 player on shuffle" ones, and got this result:

WHAT WILL YOU DANCE TO AT YOUR WEDDING?
Ballad of the Sin Eater-Ted Leo

And now I guess I have to get married so I can make that happen.

Also: Dear my livejournal:

Welcome to 2009! In February!

xoxo,

kim

I've found that when I'm using the public library, I like to be as incompetent as possible. The other day I went up to the desk and said, "There is a book I returned that is still showing up as being checked out and now it says it is overdue and I can't return it because I already returned it and I don't know what to do." And the circulation desk person said, "I'll mark it as 'claims returned' and then someone will look for it." And I answered, "Can I check things out now? Should I pay the fine now? I can pay the fine now!" I know what a claims returned means! The next day I was at a non-Chicago Public Library library and I was all, "I don't have a card at this library but I was wondering if I could use a computer here. But I don't have a card here because I live somewhere else." And the librarian told me I could and I asked if I had to just write my name on the list next to the letter of a computer terminal, when it was obvious that's what everyone else who had used a computer that day had done. It is becoming more and more obvious why no one will hire me to be a librarian.

This icon reminded me that season two of Dexter has been making me feel all, "OH NO, Dexter is totally going to get caught now!" when I know that obviously he doesn't get caught because otherwise there would be no season three. This bothers me. I mean, it bothers me that I can't stop myself from worrying about it, not that Dexter not getting caught is the inevitable conclusion if the show is to continue.

I have been all obsessed with Hefner (the band, not the Hugh) lately. For some reason, it is good early morning bus music.

There is a good chance that tomorrow I am going to spend over 20 pounds sterling (I know I could convert this or figure out how to make the pounds sterling symbol, but the fact is that I really like to say pounds sterling) on Hefner cds (I have almost all of them, but the ones I don't have seem to not be easily gettable in this country) so that I can get a free Hefner canvas bag. There is actually a good chance that I would have already spent over 20 pounds sterling if I (1) had brought my credit card to the library and (2) had figured out where to to get a package delivered to, because a package delivered to me would probably just sit around outside the building for a while and then get stolen. And actually, if I give it 24 hours there is a good chance that I will realize that it is kind of stupid and short-sighted to spend that much money on a couple of cds and an awesome bag. This is actually a pretty good argument for not having internet access in your own home: more time to consider purchase and less "mylifewillnotbecompleteunlessihavethatNOW."

Otherwise, here are some words that I like a lot but hardly ever get to use:

-claptrap
-aw man, I know I had at least one more of these. Oh, well.

So, I guess my car was stolen. I mean, I drove it to work the other day and then when I got out of work at 11pm, I kept walking up and down the street thinking I had just overlooked it. I am still sort of hoping that maybe it was just towed, but I've called the impound lot several times and I am inclined to believe that they really do not have it (a note: the people at the impound lot are always alarmingly friendly, unlike the policeman who made me cry because I didn't know my license plate number.).

( the way we were )

Anyway. Yesterday was my first day going to work without my car, and although I hardly ever drove to work when I had a car, it still seemed like a giant hardship to ride the bus. The bus flew past the stop right before I got there, then I waited for a long time, long enough that I started to worry I was going to be late, and I probably would've been except that the driver of the bus that finally showed up appeared to be kind of a maniac, and kept swerving around cars and running red lights. I think that the worst case scenario of my life is that I get killed on public transportation while going to my retail job. Or, it possibly could be the best case scenario. I need to give it a little more thought.

Today, in direct opposition to my whole world view, someone held an umbrella over me while I was waiting to cross the street. And, in the best possible situation of all, she was talking on her phone so I didn't even have to make awkward small talk.

In other news about people who have entered my comfort bubble today, here at the library a guy put all of his stuff down on the chair next to mine, and I thought, "OF COURSE, he would have to sit right next to me," but apparently he is just leaving his stuff here while he uses a computer on the other side of the room. I kind of want to rob him, just on principle.

Yesterday at work a little girl almost kicked me (she was practicing her kung fu moves by the travel books or something, i don't know), and she said, "Sorry!" and I said "No problem!" or something like that to relate that any ill will I bore her was just due to my general dislike of children and not tied to any one particular event. As I was walking away, I heard her mom say, "Don't apologize! It was an accident!" And that made me really mad and a little confused, because I was not aware that you only had to apologize for things you do on purpose. So the other day when I apologized for falling into a woman on the bus, she must've thought that I meant to do that, or that throwing myself into random strangers on public transportation is just how I get my kicks. But actually it was just an accident, caused by the lurchiness of the bus and the earliness of the hour (man, it is hard to remain upright at 6:20 in the morning). Anyway, please consider this a retraction of that unnecessary apology.

I went to Clarksville for the weekend because I didn't have to work. It was mostly not exciting (mom and I saw Wall-E and I got the muffler on my car fixed for $50 instead of the $350 I was quoted here), but there is a new tunnel under the highway and we went to look at it and maybe drive through it while honking the horn. When we got there, though, the tunnel was blocked with vertical metal poles buried in the ground in front of the entrance, restricting access to cars but allowing woodchucks to waddle through with ease. One of the poles had been sawed off near the bottom, and it looked like a car would just barely fit between the remaining poles in order to reach the grassy path on the other side. My dad said, "Let's drive through it!" but I was like, "Dad, I have seen enough slasher movies to be able to tell you that that is a bad idea."

So, is there a term for the phenomenon that, when you vocalize the fact that something is going well, whatever thing you just commented on suddenly just stops being good? Like, a while back ilikeseamus and I were on the bus, and I said, "This bus ride is going remarkably well!" and then the bus immediately died. The bus driver said, "I'm gonna be honest with you, folks: this bus is dead in the water," and we all filed out and got on the train (the bus conveniently died right next to an el stop, so there was that, at least).

This is not a veiled message that my life is going well and I'm just afraid to say anything about it for fear of jinxing the situation, because things are basically, well, not bad exactly but just really, really neutral. Except now I am a little sad because the first sentence of this entry sort of suggests that I have forgotten how to write. SEND EDITORIAL HELP!!!

I kind of wish my parents kept a blog, because, when I am on the phone with them, they always have exciting stories about finding kittens or going to yard sales at the funeral home, whereas all I have to talk about is sweating a lot and the 'use the air conditioner or be able to pay the electric bill' dilemma.

Anyway, there are all these big summer music festivals that I don't have any real interest in (heat! crowds! not being able to see a single thing after paying lots of money to go!), but on Saturday Jarvis Cocker will be at Pitchfork, and I'm just kind of excited to think that he and I will be in the same city for the first time ever! (I mean, as far as I know. I guess he might have stopped by Clarksville a lot in my pre-Jarvisloving days, to visit our excellent bar, gas station or bank. Way back then we even had a grocery store!) (Also, Dear Google, "Joe Cocker" is not a related search for "Jarvis Cocker." no no no.)

So the problem with not writing an entry for a while is that when I try to write one I think, "well, after two weeks I can't possible just write something about how crowded the bus was last night, can I?" And then I just don't write anything instead, and then I feel bad because I kind of liked how there was a heavily edited and very incomplete record of my life out there that I could someday look at and say, "Wow, I sure have liked burritos for a long time."

Anyway, the bus sure was crowded a couple of times last week.

I honestly just cannot say enough good things about Frightened Rabbit. Even small children dancing does not dampen my love for this song, and small children usually can make me hate anything.



A free Frightened Rabbit show was the first concert I went to after moving to Chicago. Um, back in September. It would have been worth money, although, if it had actually cost money, I probably wouldn't have gone, because I am all about frugality and denying myself joy. I had to skip the Destroyer show the other night and that makes me sad all over.

Today I saw some people take a dog into Target, and it really bothered me. I guess I don't really know if Target has a a no dogs allowed rule, but I kind of think they must. And I don't really have any personal issues with the dog being inside Target because it seemed to be pretty well-behaved (I walked near it and it didn't bark at me, and dogs usually take every opportunity they can get to bark at me). It was just the entitled way the people put the dog in the cart and rolled it into the store, without even appearing to consider that the dog might not be allowed.

Later I saw a Saint Bernard with a mohawk and that erased any sour, dog-related feelings that I had (although, again, it wasn't the dog I had a problem with. It wasn't the dog at all.). I was unfortunately on the bus and could not take a picture of him, because I feel like that mohawked dog would have been one of those things that would make me happy every time I saw a picture of it. I am tempted to go home and give Pete a mohawk, but I'm pretty sure that Pete would hate me, intensely and forever.

Most branches of the Chicago Public Library are not open on Sundays, so I had to journey to a far-away one today in order to use the internet, but I felt like I should because I've been too busy/uninterested to look at the internet much lately, and really needed to look for more jobs to apply for. I found a bunch, but it honestly seems like it might be a smarter life decision to save the postage money involved in mailing out resumes. I kind of have just given up, because, as ilikeseamus and I were talking about the other day, on the rare occasions we actually get interviews, people are like, "Oh, we think you're ok, and your resume is impressive and all that, but we just feel you lack confidence." And it's like, "Oh yeah, I do lack confidence because I keep being rejected by everyone in everything I try to do."

I am going to go look for some books to read in the park. I predict that I will have a lot of time to read books in the park this spring (and this summer, fall and winter, too).

I got a new phone today because I was due for my two year upgrade and my old one didn't seem able to hold onto a battery charge anymore. I told the salesman that I only use my phone for making phone calls, finding out what time it is and occasionally as an alarm clock, but he said they didn't have anything like that, and now I have a phone with a camcorder. It is ridiculously pretty and shiny, though. I could probably find a picture of it on the internet, but I am avoiding looking for information about in case it is the worst phone ever (although, really, even the worst phone ever would probably be adequate for my purposes).

Sunday night there was a new episode of King of the Hill sandwiched between old episodes of the Simpsons and Family Guy, which was kind of irritating. KOTH has been mostly bad this season (that hipster episode notwithstanding), but Sunday night Peggy said, "And who are the most attractive people in Arlen? Well, librarians, after they take off their glasses. . . " and it was one of those special moments when King of the Hill seems like it is being made just for me. (The other moments include when Hank sang the Green Acres theme song and when Dale talked about "the bald guy from Lost.")

The other night my Meijer shopping bag got a lot of comments all over downtown Chicago, and by "a lot," I mean "two", and by "all over downtown Chicago," I mean "at Argo Tea* and Trader Joe's." It is a nice bag in that it is of better quality (although not as pretty) as my Target bag and of similar sturdiness (but way more attractive) than my Trader Joe's bag. The Trader Joe's clerk was like, "Ooh, the Meijer bag has pockets" (they aren't pockets, but just sort of loops of fabric that hold bottles (or cans of coffee) in place), but she said it sort of sarcastically, like, "Ooh la la, don't Meijer think it's all fancy, with its shopping bags with pockets in em!" The Argo Tea clerk just happened to have my Target bag (which I was also carrying) AND my Meijer bag AND was also from Grand Rapids (where I told her I was from, because being from Clarksville just gets blank stares), and although I am skeptical that all of those things are actually true, I can't think of any reasons why she would lie to me. Did she think all of those shared details would raise her tip? Was she just desperate to be friends with someone who looked as cool as me**?

Speaking of Clarksville, that is where I am right now, which is why I am able to use the internet at 11:30 at night while wearing sweatpants. I find it odd that I did not appreciate things like this before, when I was able to lay in bed while using the internet or check the imdb in the middle of the night when I would wake up and wonder about things like where Clark Duke was born. I am basically pretty neutral about not having cable tv (I have resigned myself to the fact that the last season of Battlestar Galactica will be completely spoiled for me by the time I get to see it) and about how we had to wrap up in blankets for much of the winter instead of using the heat, but sometimes I feel like life is just too difficult to face without a reliable and convenient internet connection.

*I had a mate latte (with soy milk), and it is just about my favorite thing ever. My love for it may lead to my financial ruin, but basically any small expense could send me into financial ruin at this point, so I might as well choose the path of most deliciousness.

**I finally got my hair cut a couple of weeks back, and I'm pretty happy with it (I decided to not go with the Anita Loos cut:


That is not a very good picture of it because (1) I took it with Murray's iSight camera; (2) the background and my hair are brown; (3) I hadn't washed my hair in about 48 hours, but it is the best picture I have right now.

I am at the library and it has all of the necessary aspects of a classic trip to the Logan Square branch of the Chicago Public Library: Chicago Curtis is shushing noisy teenagers, algebra tutoring is occurring at the table next to mine, a hipster with a shiny macbook pro is sitting at my table, the person behind me has a strong odor emanating from his body and the wifi is refusing to let me pay my electric bill. Life is, as always, awesome.

I haven't written here in forever, so I will jump that hurdle by saying tomorrow is Pete's and Max's birthday! They will no longer be little baby kittens and instead will become man-cats.

Also, in the past two days at work, two people have asked my name and, when I told them, have shaken my hand and said that it was nice to meet me. Which is weird, because I was just leading them to books. Which is just my normal job and is not that impressive and once it was on the escalator, which was a little bit awkward.

1. The other day I had some downtime at work, because apparently Saturday night is the traditional time to visit book stores to scatter magazines haphazardly on the floor without actually buying anything. In between reshelving OK! and Star, my thoughts naturally roamed to where, exactly, my life went wrong, and I finally decided that it was high school. Or, rather, finishing high school in just four years. A better choice would have been to drop out halfway through, become a meth addict and have a few kids with various, unknown fathers. Eventually, probably after my kids were taken into protective custody, I would decide that it was time to take control of my life. I would get my GED and attend a two year vocational school, becoming a medical transcriptionist. I'd get custody of my kids back and people would say, "Look at the way you've turned your life around! You are a hero and an inspiration!" Instead, I finished high school in four years with minimal difficulty, immediately went to college and then (as the final nail in the coffin) attended grad school a couple of years later. Now I make what must be close to minimum wage working retail, where I am never lauded as a hero and where customers occasionally address me as though I might be retarded.

2. The other day ilikeseamus was at an internet cafe, and some people at the next table were talking about how they went to Harvard and Yale and were all, "Oh look at us, we are just a bunch of Ivy Leaguers, we are!" Then they got to talking about their kids, and how they also aspired to Ivy Leaguehood, and that kids today have to work so hard and be so competitive to get into college that they don't have time to be normal teenagers and enjoy trips to the sody fountain and rousing games of kick the can. It seems to me, though, that the problem is that kids today believe that there is a future out there in which they are successful marine biologists and comedy writers. I say: let's take away that future. Let's stop recycling and throw everything away. Let's not even bother taking it to a landfill; let's just toss all of our garbage out the nearest window. Let's drive everywhere and cut down trees just because it's fun to destroy things. Let's stop using science to try to cure diseases, and start using it for the way cooler purpose of cloning prehistoric monsters. If all kids have to look forward to is an apocalyptic horrorfest, then maybe they can enjoy their childhoods and live in the moment.

In other, less bitter news, I strongly recommend Rhymefest's Man in the Mirror mixtape, even though he does use the word "chillax" at one point. It is free, and yet it is better than many things that are not free.

I had to get a deferment on one of my student loans, since I am a total failure, so I called someone the other day and she said she'd email me a form to fill out and send back. What she did not tell me was that the form would be copied and pasted in the body of the email and typed in comic sans. I feel like I should not even be required to pay back a loan to an organization that cannot create and attach a pdf file.

( debt made hilarious! with comic sans! )

Also, it says to complete the entire three page document, but it actually prints out at 9 pages (with not a single logical page break anywhere) and most of the check boxes or lines I need to fill in do not correspond with the text describing them.

I have to go eat a cupcake and then get on the bus and go to work. I am not sure if I actually have time for the cupcake, but I'm not going to not eat a cupcake, because that is just dumb.

Today I was shelving self-help books at work, and I got to one that was the book equivalent of a magic 8 ball; you asked a question while flipping through the pages, stopping "when the time feels right." I stopped shelving to ask it if I would ever have a job as a librarian and the answer was, "It would be better for you to concentrate on your work."

So! I have been asked to stay at the bookstore even though seasonal times are over (the only season that matters in retail is the holiday season), and at first I was relieved, but this week I was only scheduled for nine (9) hours, so for a while I was just back to being stressed out. Then I found out that by never leaving my apartment and keeping the heat set at a brisk 61 degrees, I can save a lot of money. I mean, probably not enough to pay my rent or utilities or credit card bill, but maybe enough for, like, a warm bowl of soup to thaw out my insides after spending a month in a 61 degree apartment.

Anyway, I have been reading a lot, and right now I am reading Anita Loos' autobiography, which has caused me to wonder if an Anita Loos haircut is right for me. I am always afraid that very short haircuts will increase the mannishness of my appearance, thereby forcing me to wear more makeup (ie, makeup besides just foundation and powder), and I can only imagine that I would end up looking like I used Homer Simpson's makeup gun (for the woman who only has 4/5 of a second to get ready!), because I never really learned how to put on makeup properly. I am not even really sure I am doing the foundation/powder thing right, but once I am done I usually look less splotchy and that is all I am going for.

anita loos	me!

I don't know where I'd go to get my hair cut or how I'd pay for it, so I guess this is not worth thinking about too much at this point.

This entry was mostly brought to you by the fact that I have not posted anything in 2008. I still do not actually have anything to post, but now I am taking up a tiny bit more space on the internet than I was before. Also, there is that notposting hurdle you need to get over, and it is easier to do that by just going "blah blah blah blah blah blah blah."

I worked until midnight last night and then at 7 this morning, but I got a coffee maker with a timer on it for Christmas, and when my alarm went off at 5:30 (or, more accurately, when I finally dragged myself out of bed at 5:55, there was coffee waiting for me. It was a magical experience. It was almost as great as the time I made soup and put it in the crock pot and it was all hot and ready for me to eat when I got home from work, and I didn't just microwave whatever was handy.

Man, I am so impressed by kitchen appliances. I can't even tell you.