Unapologetically Mundane » super furry animals

Crazy Cat Lady

katie ett — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 20:00:04 +0000

Like I told Cassie today, I took 238 pictures while I was home in Ohio for Thanksgiving last week, and 237 of them were of Tracey‘s cats. (The other one was of myself, naturally.)

I can’t quite tell if cats are like kids in that they’re only cute if you actually know them (or have read extensive blog posts showcasing their darling personalities), so these pictures might make your day or cause your hand to cramp from all of the lord-just-get-me-through-this mouse-scrolling.

Rupert is the loving one. He’ll slink around the kitchen when he knows you’re in the living room and just meow his fool head off, waiting for you to pay attention to him. He’s always the first to play with any toy and the last to cut your thigh open while you’re just trying to trim his nails, though he will politely box your face.

Graham has been the shy one ever since Tracey and her husband, Dan, bought a house and moved him from the apartment they had when they first adopted him. When he was a kitten, he was the frolickiest thing I’d ever seen; one of my fondest/scariest memories of spending the night in Tracey and Dan’s old apartment is sleeping on the couch and waking up to see Graham jumping from the armrest to the back of the couch, claws splayed out as he flew over my head.

But Graham is also the most easily-entertained. Tracey keeps scraps of paper from her scrapbooking and taunts Graham by pushing strips of it in between DVDs on their bookcase so that it hangs out over the shelf, way too high for him to ever reach. He and Rupert will sit staring at these things for minutes at a time, making this little noise that they taught each other to do by clicking their jaws up and down.

WHAT ARE THEY LOOKING AT?

Tracey claimed that Rupert likes it when she does this. And then he immediately bit her.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand I think I can officially be called a crazy cat lady now.

The Practice Thanksgiving

katie ett — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 16:00:55 +0000

One of the things about living in NYC that I’ve found hardest to adjust to is not hanging out at people’s apartments. We all either live in places too small to hold more than two people at a time or places too out of the way for anyone to want to travel to. If it’s not one, it’s the other.

But this year, my friend Ash was determined to have a practice Thanksgiving at her apartment and went all-out with impressive invitations, a massive menu, and promises that she would hunt us down and stuff us if we didn’t make it worth her while to take up her entire refrigerator with a brining turkey for two days. So we took cabs or spent three hours navigating weekend subway construction to make it to her and her husband, Michael’s, Queens apartment last Saturday night for a pre-Thanksgiving feast our families will have a hard time topping tomorrow.

Michael and Ash got rid of about half of the furniture in their place to make room for this new dining table they bought especially for the occasion. Well worth it, I say.

Ash carved a turkey for the first time and looked smokin’ doing it.

The turkey was about the moistest meat I’ve ever had in my life. The stuffing was fruity, the sweet potatoes spicy, the twice-baked potatoes bacony, the cauliflower casserole creamy, the green beans smoky, the apple pie belly-warming, the lemon cheesecake rich.

There was gravy, too, but I never eat gravy. Am I the only one who thinks it’s tooooooootally weird stuff?

Michael was in high spirits,

Ash was being Betty Sue Homemaker,

Jack was his usual pleasant self,

Jeff was complaining that the ice cream was regular vanilla and not vanilla bean,

Gizmo was pretending to innocently play with a ball under the table while secretly waiting for dropped turkey,

and Penny, the cat we found in the Hamptons, was acting like all of us would be about two minutes after dinner:

Success!

Avian Holocaust

plumpdumpling — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 16:00:40 +0000

This morning, my co-worker Anthony sent me this photo and asked, “Is this too gross to put on Facebook?”:

I wrote back and said, “Um, NO. It’s beautiful! And it’s the state bird of Ohio.”

He said, “I knew you would appreciate it, and I agree, but I got some very strange looks while I was shooting it.”

I said, “I’ve taken more than one photo of a dead bird in my time, so I know those looks well.” I didn’t mention that I’m also the girl who takes pictures of stray food and URINE, FOR GOD’S SAKE.

This one was stuck in the revolving doors of my office building. I wanted to get a really down-and-dirty picture of it, but all of my co-workers were waiting for me outside for our monthly dinner club, and the security guards were staring me down like I was some sort of freak for wanting a lasting memory of a crushed bird.

This one was on the stairs leading up to Tudor City from the United Nations headquarters, and I appreciated that someone had . . . I don’t know . . . scooped it onto a pile of cardboard and given it something to eat but still left it there in the middle of the stairs to get stepped on in the dark? Now that I look back, I’m slightly worried that the thing was clinging to its last breath, and there I was, repeatedly flashing a bright light in its eyes for my blogging whims.

Crazy Cat Lady (20)
The Practice Thanksgiving (16)
Dog Debris (9)
Giant Rats Sneer at Construction Scabs (8)
Long-Lost Videos of 2010: Part 3 (8)
Who Will Join Me in “Ave Maria” at the Rat Funeral? (6)
RAT ATTACK! (7)
I’m GLAD You Were Bitten (26)
Are Pets Allowed on the Subway? (3)
Ohio Weekend Photodump! (6)

Dog Debris

plumpdumpling — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 17:15:34 +0000

Even though I would never even consider stealing snotty, germy, needy little kids, I’ll admit that the temptation to untie this little guy from the trashcan and run away with him this morning was pretty intense:

As much as I love that dogs are allowed into so many places here, I almost like it more when they have to wait outside.

I wonder how many of them get stolen every day by girls with allergic boyfriends who just want a couple hours of slobbery fun. I’ll bet the Bramble in Central Park has been colonized by kidnapped puppies released back into the wild.

Giant Rats Sneer at Construction Scabs

plumpdumpling — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 17:00:07 +0000

Ahhhhh, remember when I had just moved here and was working this terrible job as a slave to an investment banking firm with the lady-owner who hated all other women, and I was so innocent, and everything was brand new to me, and I wrote this adorable LiveJournal post?:

On the sidewalk one block north of Macy’s and one block south of my office, a giant inflated black rat sat on its haunches this morning. It was probably 12 feet tall, with red eyes and claws and a sneer. All of the real New Yorkers passed by as if they didn’t notice, while the tourists and I looked at each other with “Seriously?” eyes.

It seems to me that maybe this isn’t the best way to welcome people to the city for the holiday season. Of course, I was only a public relations major for a quarter.

I was reminded of that when the inflatable rats showed up this morning in front of the building next door to taunt the management company’s use of non-union workers. I’m pro-union as it is, but the rats make it all the more fun.

Long-Lost Videos of 2010: Part 3

plumpdumpling — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 17:00:41 +0000

Okay, okay, I know you didn’t watch any of the videos I posted last week. But these are great and seriously deserve to be seen. Well, the second one, at least. The first one is purely fish porn.

Kamran and I spotted these guys in an Asian grocery store while in California last August. Of course I had to set them to Ween’s only good song.

Jack and I test the strength of my new bathroom walls against fart sounds. Because you have to know how much noise you can pollute the bathroom with before everyone in the living room can hear you.

Who Will Join Me in “Ave Maria” at the Rat Funeral?

plumpdumpling — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 17:00:24 +0000

I love the 34th Street subway station at Herald Square. The street above is tourist shopping heaven–every awful American retail chain, plus the Manhattan Mall, and Macy’s, which claims to be the largest store in the world–with all of the annoying crowdedness of Times Square but none of the pretty lights to distract from the family in front of me walking 8-wide across the sidewalk and stopping every five feet to decide which Jonas Brothers photo they want to buy from the street vendors.

But in the station itself, when you’re waiting for the N/Q/R train, you can peer down the platform and see into the tunnel for what must be blocks. All of the different lights, the spot where the express and local tracks come together, the way the train comes around the bend seeming so small and slow but roars past you seconds later–I still get a thrill out of that after seeing it for more than five years.

The only thing that could possibly make it more exciting for me? The dead rat I saw on the tracks yesterday.

It’s getting pretty hard to be seen in public photographing dead animals, half-eaten food, and what is probably urine. But I do it all for you, dear reader.

RAT ATTACK! (7)
In Which a Black Rat Crosses My Path on Friday the 13th (8)
Caught in the Train Doors (10)
Crazy Cat Lady (20)
The Practice Thanksgiving (16)
Aint Wet (4)
Padded Seats and Warmed Hearts (15)
Avian Holocaust (16)
Dog Debris (9)
Giant Rats Sneer at Construction Scabs (8)

RAT ATTACK!

plumpdumpling — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 17:00:20 +0000

Okay, more like RAT RUN AWAY!

One of my very favourite NYC sights either way.

I’m GLAD You Were Bitten

plumpdumpling — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 16:00:40 +0000

I was on my way up to Kamran’s apartment last night after the first meeting of my bowling team. In the elevator was a guy about my age with one earbud and a Chihuahua on a leash.

(I have to mention the leash part, because people in Kamran’s building love to let their dogs loose in the elevators, which I of course find extremely fun but Kamran finds kind of annoying, as he’s allergic to anything cute.)

Across from me was a slightly older woman who reminded me of an even uglier version of the detestable designer Ivy Higa from this season’s “Project Runway”. They were both looking at the floor. The Chihuahua came to sniff my jeans, and I said, “Hello!”, which usually inspires dog owners to chat with me, but this guy continued to stand quietly.

We were still waiting for our elevator doors to close when the elevator across from us opened up, and an elderly lady and her dog stepped out. It seemed like some sort of Beagle mix to me, small and kind of dopey-looking, and it made a beeline for the little Chihuahua. The lady let out her leash a little so the dog could come over to us, and the two pets sniffed each others’ noses adorably for a second until . . .

The icky woman across from me suddenly said, “Okay, I need to fucking GET OUT OF HERE. I can’t handle this,” and began jabbing at the button that closes the doors. The older lady quickly gave her leash a tug, and the two dogs were pulled apart.

I thought maybe she was in a real hurry or something, but even so, I was pretty grossed out by her display. As our doors began to close, I said, “Woooooooooooow. That was really . . . angry.” The woman just stared at the floor.

The guy with the Chihuahua said, “She was bitten by a dog.”

I said, “Oh, you two are together?” in what I’ll admit was a disgusted voice, and he said, “No, but she just told me that.”

I had no idea how to respond. I mean, I can be the queen of irrational fears when it comes to spiders and weird things at the bottoms of swimming pools, but I couldn’t help thinking this woman was dumb. It’s one thing to be afraid of some rabid 80-pounder baring its teeth at you, but this was a CHIHUAHUA politely sniffing things. GET A GRIP and go get yourself another elevator.

We got to the guy’s floor a second later, though, and I cheerfully said, “Goodnight!” as he exited, and he completely ignored me, so maybe it really is me who has no idea how to act in public.

Are Pets Allowed on the Subway?

plumpdumpling — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 22:00:08 +0000

This morning, the bus came to a halt at the 2nd Avenue stop, the back doors opened, and through them, I spotted a girl with the cutest little French Bulldog at her side. Now, French Bulldogs are my very favorite kind of dog, and this one was blonde instead of the usual black, so I had to will myself not to bolt out the door to coo over it. When all of the other passengers had boarded, she picked up the dog, dropped it in a large tote bag, and got on the bus herself.

Now, I’m all about pets on public transportation. The sensitive part of me likes to ogle cuddly things, and the sadistic part of me likes to see them cower in the corners of their designer carriers whenever we hit a bump. But having a boyfriend who sneezes when he so much sees a picture of a cat has made me sensitive to being in close proximity to fur, so I was a little bit mad at her for having the gall to so flagrantly show off her dog. It was made all the worse when she began taking photos of it with her cellphone.

I checked on the MTA’s website, though, and it turns out that pets are allowed on NYC public transportation “when they are carried in kennels or similar containers that can be accommodated by you on your lap without annoyance to other passengers”. (Harnessed service animals are always permitted, of course.) This girl wasn’t following the rules by having her dog sticking out the top of a tote bag, obviously, but it’s interesting to know that pets are allowed on the subways and buses.

(Click here to see the article on Examiner.com and earn me a pretty penny (literally).)

Ohio Weekend Photodump!

plumpdumpling — Tue, 25 May 2010 16:00:26 +0000

My second-cousin Keith got an elbow to the stomach from his new bride, Rachael. Their wedding photographer only seemed to be taking super-serious photos, so I felt self-righteous about this one.

But then Keith made the photographer let the groomsmen pose for this picture, and all was right with the world again.

My cousin, Bethany, and my sister, Joanie, were in attendance and looking as stunning/ridiculous as ever.

I attempted to teach my 85-year-old great-uncle to use the laptop I bought him while my best friend, Tracey explained the Internet to my great-aunt:

Tracey: You can use Google to search for anything!
Crazy Aunt Dorothy: Oh, we don’t want that.
Tracey: It’s just a website you go to if you want to look something up.
Crazy Aunt Dorothy: We don’t really need the Internet. Just take us to that Circleville Pumpkin Show website.
Tracey: Uhh . . .

Tracey took me to a movie at the indie theatre in Columbus, the Drexel, and the ceiling fan vent looked like giant-sized art to us. But maybe that’s because it was midnight and we were running on five hours of sleep.

Tracey’s cat is a wild animal. I go home to visit pets as much as people these days because I like her cats so much. Except when I wake up on her couch in the middle of the night to see one of them flying over my head with his claws outstretched as he jumps from armrest to armrest.

I also went to an 80s dance party, ate the Splenda cheesecake at Cheesecake Factory for the first time, visited my friend Katie and was forced to hold her six-day-old baby (Evelyn) but did not drop her, went to visit my cousin Ethan and his six-day-old baby (Kaydence) and used my newfound not-dropping-baby skills to also hold her, celebrated my sister’s birthday with our parents and her husband, and explained to my parents that the smoke monster in “Lost” makes the same sound that a taxicab’s meter does.

I really, really love going home.

New York City is Supposed to be Devoid of Nature, and That’s Why I Moved Here

plumpdumpling — Fri, 21 May 2010 16:00:42 +0000

I spent my entire morning commute yesterday thinking that something was crawling on me. Now, my morning commute is only five stops on the train, but rush hour trains are always held up at the stations by passengers trying to cram themselves in, so five stops can take a half an hour. So picture me feeling itchy all over for a half an hour, adjusting the tags on my shirt and jacket in case that was the problem, furiously scratching the places I felt it most.

At first I thought it might be my imagination, because I do drop acid before going to work every morning, after all. But at one point, I actually felt like something was crawling on my ear. And I felt like the guy across from me on the train was watching it happen. I tried to distract myself with my Kindle, but I kept having to reach up every two minutes to brush existent or non-existent things off of my face. I wanted to get out a mirror and have a look, but I thought it was better to not know for sure, considering what my reaction might be.

I had it in my mind that it might be a spider, and I am totally scared of spiders. Like, scared in the way that if someone put a fake one in my lunch or on my pillow, I would never talk to that person again. Growing up on a farm, I was running downstairs nightly to wake my dad up and make him kill one I had or had maybe spotted on the wall beside my bed. Even now when I go to Ohio to visit, I’m on a constant look-out for spiders all over the house, and last time I was home and made my sister kill one for me that was dropping from the ceiling, she asked me, “How did you manage to survive twenty-some years in the country?” In that same trip, I made my best friend, Tracey, reach across me while we were in the Taco Bell drive-thru to pluck one of those little hairy spiders off of the armrest attached to my door. I really think I’m more equipped to deal with cockroaches somehow.

Anyway, I finally got to work and ran to the bathroom to check out my face. I didn’t see anything, so I officially chalked it up to my wild imagination and did my business. As I was washing my hands, though, this cute little spider came down on his web right in front of my face FROM MY HAIR. It was then that I remembered walking underneath a tree and noticing a spider hanging from it at the very last moment that morning, but never did I consider that it might have jumped on me. I tried to scream, but only air came out, and even though the last thing I want to do in the world is purposely touch a spider, I reached up and smacked it away.

And then I frantically checked the floor for it, but it was nowhere to be seen. And then I spent the rest of the day itching myself and being completely miserable.

Keep a Little Memory of Your Pet with You All of the Time . . . by Beheading It and Stringing It on a Necklace

plumpdumpling — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 16:45:58 +0000

My best friend, Tracey, sent me a link this morning to a Craftzine blog post showcasing a necklace made from a dead bird’s head. My immediate reaction was along the lines of, “Cool! I’d buy that and love it and wear it every day if it wasn’t $350.”

When I read all of the comments on the post, though, I noticed that 90% of them were along the lines of, “Gross! This is barbaric and despicable, and you should warn us before you post things like this.” And any comments that were positive received replies along the lines of, “Shut up.”

What’s the big deal? The bird died of natural causes and is being celebrated as art. It wasn’t harmed to make the jewelry, and I imagine that if animals could express their preferences for their remains, they’d choose to be displayed proudly on necks rather than be stuffed in shoeboxes and tossed in holes in the ground. Of course, I could be a little biased, because I think the giant stuffed moose head on my neighbor’s wall in Ohio is rad.

When I suggested that I might like to cut off my dead mother’s ring finger and have it taxidermied to display in my home, wedding ring and all, Tracey agreed that it wouldn’t be offensive. My friend Tim tells me that in Papua New Guinea, mourners wear necklaces of their loved ones’ digits to honor their memories. My friend Anthony thinks people have may desecration of the dead issues with that in the U.S., but Tracey came up with the solution of donor cards that allow you to choose whether or not to permit your family to use your parts postmortem. Wouldn’t you love to see stuffed hands and feet on mantles like any other tchotchke right next to your Christmas stocking?

My friend Nik imagines that most of the people who threw hissy fits at the dead bird head are the same ones wearing leather shoes as they type, and I agree. It’s another example of the way people generally have no problem squashing a cockroach but freak out when anyone harms a cuddly bunny. Of course, I totally understand why someone would protest the squirrel feet earrings, but that’s only because they’re ugly.

And Tracey, you’re getting a cat hair handbag for your birthday. The $400 kind, because I care.

Giant Rats Sneer at Construction Scabs (8)
Crazy Cat Lady (20)
The Practice Thanksgiving (16)
Avian Holocaust (16)
Dog Debris (9)
Long-Lost Videos of 2010: Part 3 (8)
Who Will Join Me in “Ave Maria” at the Rat Funeral? (6)
RAT ATTACK! (7)
I Mostly Like People Until Election Season Comes Around (4)
When the President Comes to Town (12)

Nostalgia About the Early Days of the Internet

plumpdumpling — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 18:07:13 +0000

Remember how much more important the Internet seemed in its youth? How we didn’t rely on it for everything and didn’t entirely take it for granted?

I don’t remember how I knew what it was exactly, but I do remember the first time I ever used it. My best friend Tracey and I were going to a Men’s Glee Club concert at THE Ohio State University one day in our early years of high school, and we stopped by her older brother’s campus apartment beforehand to waste time and use his computer, which included what must have been the slowest modem ever made.

As I remember, it turned out that we’d left our tickets to the concert in her parents’ car, so we spent the entire afternoon looking up song lyrics and pictures of our favourite bands of the time: silverchair, Megadeth, Bush, and Nirvana. Recently, we had spent an entire Friday night at her house watching, pausing, watching, and pausing Bush’s performance of “Insect Kin” on “Saturday Night Live” that my mom had taped for us so we could figure out all of the lyrics. Which took hours. So yeah, the Internet and all of its tricks seemed AMAZING to us at the time.

I bring this up because my co-worker Nik was hovering over my desk this morning, swinging the laces on the hood of his hoodie back and forth over my monitor like windshield wipers, and somehow, it reminded me of the eSheep I had back in high school.

This little Sheepy would hang out above the taskbar at the bottom of your screen, walking, running, sleeping, and occasionally getting bug-eyed and dying. You could pick him up with your pointer and drop him, causing him to bounce, but that’s literally all he did. AND I THOUGHT IT WAS AWESOME.

Still do, to be honest. And thankfully, there’s a 4-minute+ video on YouTube to help me relive its glory.

So tell me: what did you love about Web 1.0?

An Extra Chromosome of Cute

plumpdumpling — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 00:24:40 +0000

I was running out to meet Dr. Boyfriend for dinner last night and passed a guy with the cuuuuutest dog ever standing in the park outside of Kamran’s apartment building. He was this muscular blonde gay guy who obviously just bought the dog to pick up other muscular blonde gay guys, but I can respect that. I really wanted to pet the thing, but Kamran’s sadly allergic, so I passed by without a touch, knowing that I’d later Google the thing and ogle pictures of its breed.

The first picture I found?:

Sooooo cute, right? When I showed Kamran, he said, “It looks retarded! It’s like it has an extra chromosome of cute.”

Crazy Cat Lady (20)
The Practice Thanksgiving (16)
Avian Holocaust (16)
Dog Debris (9)
Giant Rats Sneer at Construction Scabs (8)
Long-Lost Videos of 2010: Part 3 (8)
Who Will Join Me in “Ave Maria” at the Rat Funeral? (6)
RAT ATTACK! (7)
I’m GLAD You Were Bitten (26)
Are Pets Allowed on the Subway? (3)

Banksy’s Village Pet Store and Charcoal Grill

plumpdumpling — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 18:10:09 +0000

The night before Halloween, the good doctor and I went to see the second-to-last night of the Banksy exhibit, The Village Petstore and Charcoal Grill. We weren’t exactly sure where we were going and wound up in a as-seedy-as-the-West-Village-gets part of the West Village full of gay bars and fetish shops and thought we were soooooo cool for going to such an underground, out-of-the-way showing. And then we realized it was actually on 7th Ave., right beside a SushiSamba and a Jekyll and Hyde. Lame!

There was a bit of a line, and some British-accented douchebags walked by and yelled, “You’re waiting in line for this?! It’s not worth it!” But a minute later, we saw him perched outside one of the windows, taking photos with everyone else. We were hoping one of them was secretly Banksy.

The sign outside welcomed us in for some mechanically-retrieved meats,

and the walls inside beckoned us to buy treats for our pets:

From the outside, a sleeping cheetah, complete with a swinging tail and belly that inflated and deflated to show breathing:

From the inside, a cheetah-print coat. AMAZING!:

A chimpanzee watching a pair of other chimpanzees on television, pausing during the humping parts:

An ancient-looking Tweety Bird, his feather lying at his feet:

A spider in a gumball machine, inexplicably:

My absolute favourite, a pair of swimming fish sticks:

This is the thing that–when I saw a video of it online–made me say, “I HAVE to see this!” And it was even better in person:

Many types of snakes, made of many different kinds of sausages, including baby snakelets:

Chickens made of nuggets, pecking at their sauce:

And a rather disgusting/awesome nugget just hatched out of its egg:

A pretty bunny:

A video camera bird with its birdlings in a nest:

Love the flashing “liquor” and “wines” sign in the background.

The obligatory penis in the guestbook:

And finally, a netted dolphin that we swear is actually always outside of Jekyll and Hyde and accidentally became a part of the exhibit:

I managed to talk Dr. Boyfriend into riding it while I videotaped, but I forgot to ever hit record. To compensate, he allowed me to take this picture, which is, I’m sure, the only time he’ll be near a farm. Even a faux one:

Funny how mechanical food can somehow seem cute, huh? I didn’t take away any bigimportant message about the ethical treatment of animals or anything, but I did take away feelings of amazement and awesomeness and a whole lotta gladness that I live in the city I do.

The Longest Post Ever Written About Someone’s Trip to Ohio

plumpdumpling — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 18:19:14 +0000

The only thing more embarrassing than buying a black sequined tank top especially to dance to 80s music in is changing into it in front of the lady cleaning the airport bathroom, but I did it, and I’m a better person for it. My best friend Tracey picked me up soon after, and we met our friend-since-forever, Erin, and two of her friends in the back garden of Skully’s, which was crowded with every single hip person in Columbus. Ohhhhh, Columbus, sweet Columbus, where there are exactly eight cool places to hang out.

Erin’s friends should’ve been way more into the evening than we were on account of their being gay, but they quickly abandoned us and left us to take pictures of ourselves in between Madonna and Joy Division:

Our friend Jonathan found us in the crowd and began humping us feverishly, as he’s wont to do, and then Tracey and Erin humped him back, although you’d never know it from the entirely serene look on his face here:

I had a good time dancing while chomping on my gum:

but an even better time trying to drop it down Erin’s shirt (what?):

There was an extra-lot of boob-grabbing and arm-biting and me thinking everything was sooo funny, ’cause yeah, while drinks are $15 here in NYC, they’re $2.50 in Columbus:

But Tracey had to be at THE Ohio State University the next day for some women’s studies orienting (yay smart friends who get free grad school!), so we went home when the place closed down, ate a bunch of junk food, watched a bunch of “Top Model”, and fell asleep in her bed even though her fiancée told her I wasn’t allowed to sleep on the new sheets while he was out of town.

The next night, we met our other-best-friend-since-birth, Katie, and her husband, Nick, for karaoke at Otani, which claims to be the best karaoke in Columbus but might very well be the only karaoke in Columbus, although that doesn’t make it any less awesome. The great thing about it is that they give you a huge stage and shine a bunch of lights on you, so you can’t manage to hide out in the crowd with your microphone like you can in NYC. So we sat in a booth off in the back and shuffled back and forth through the song book, trying to find something they’d have the guts to sing. Because look how innocent and Ohio they are!:

We finally settled for the three of us girls doing “All That She Wants” by Ace of Base and sat making faces at each other and the singers while we waited for our turn:

But it turns out that Katie had just been stalling in choosing a song because she knew she and Nick would have to leave at 11 to pick up their newborn baaaaaby and hoped to escape without having to perform. Foiled!

Tracey saw them off by inappropriately sucking on the decorative cattails-that-looked-like-hot-dogs in the corner behind our table:

and making me pose underneath one of many (yes, many) cats in Japanese costume:

When it was our turn, we had the crowd cheering and clapping like the Swedish pop stars we are, and then we quickly made our exit before anyone could ask for autographs. We wanted to go home and lie about but decided we were young and it was Friday night and we were obligated to be out, so we drove back to Skully’s for what was supposed to be an indie mustache dance party but was actually . . . twenty people standing at the bar next to the empty dance floor while some hip-hop remix played. We promptly turned around and left and walked down the street to our favorite (and Columbus’s only?) gay dance club, Axis.

We couldn’t hear any music playing, so I asked the guy at the door what was going on. He said, “It’s Steam night! If you want to see a bunch of half-naked guys showering, you’ve come to the right place!” Tracey and I were pretty offended that we look like the type of girls who care about naked men in bathtubs, but I asked, “Is there dancing?” He said, “Oh, there’s dancing,” so we paid our $5 and went inside.

A drag queen on the stage called out some skinny teenage girl and asked her why she loves gay men (“Because they don’t want to fuck you!”), and then she introduced Rocco, a ballet-dancer-turned-stripper whose alcoholic shenanigans backstage had left him unable to perform some of his leg lifts. Tracey and I were like, “THIS is the dancing?”, and I felt myself getting ready to bolt, but then the lights went off, the disco balls started turning, and the floor was ours for dancing.

Rocco climbed into one of the two makeshift showers set up in the center and immediately twisted the curtains up onto the bar they were hanging from so we could see him from any angle. He got himself nice and soaked and then whipped his long hair around so the water rained down on us. Over and over again. Tracey and I kept saying, “Oh, Rocco!” in our “boys will be boys” voices as we danced all over the place, getting our socks and pants completely drenched with mansweat and shower leakage. It was quite a shift from Ladies 80s, where the point is to act crazy and have fun, to shirtless men grinding on each other on top of tables.

The next day was my cousin Ethan’s wedding to my high school friend Katherine, because no one gets married in Ohio if it’s not to someone he’s known his whole life. My old college roommate Michelle sat behind me during the ceremony and helped me make fun of everything, including my cousin Bethany, who chomped on gum the entire time in her bridesmaid’s dress. The reception was awesome, because while Ethan is from my mom’s side of the family, he’s also close to my dad’s side of the family, so all of my cousins from both sides were there, and we all got our own table away from the adults.

Oh, crap. I just realised that all of my cousins are high school age, and I’m in my mid-20s, which means I’m an adult to them. Gross.

Anyway, my being an adult didn’t in any way dissuade them from being bad, as proven by these pictures of my cousin Callen sticking her finger in a bread butthole:

and pretending to be drunk on grape juice:

The next day, my family and I went to church (ha!) and then took my great-aunt and -uncle out to lunch for their 56th wedding anniversary. Which was not nearly as painful as it sounds, mostly because they vote Democrat:

Not that this photo has anything to do with political parties.

and have weird old people things that my sister and I can play with:

Later that afternoon, I made Tracey go with me to visit our friend Katie’s baby. I thought I was pretty secretive about my complete lack of desire to know the thing until it ages seven or eight years, but Katie called me and said, “I know you think she’s a whining, screaming non-human, but I’d really like for you to meet her.” So out of guilt, I drove the five minutes to their new house.

When Katie and Nick got married, they moved into Nick’s house (yeah, he owned a house at 25, and I probably never will) in the outskirts of Columbus and threw tons of parties, and I thought they were pretty great. But then Katie somehow talked him into moving back to our old hometown a half an hour away from the city so she could be near her parents and they could raise Baby Maria in grass and trees and crap. Lame!

It turned out to be pretty cute:

but Tracey and I totally aren’t fit to parent it, because while it was crying, Tracey was busy posing sexily,

and later, she was caught trying to eat it:

We strapped the thing in and took it down the street to Dairy Queen, where we were heartily enjoying our frozen hot chocolate until the baby decided it needed to expel the contents of its anus. While sitting in Katie’s lap:

We all cackled a little bit, but it wasn’t so funny when Katie lifted Little Maria up and found that the poo had PROPELLED ITSELF UP AND OUT OF THE DIAPER:

And then we took a trip to the bathroom, Tracey holding the baby like this the whole way there:

Which seemed cute. Changing the baby–not so much:

Tracey will kill me for posting this, but it’s hilarious, so she can suck it.

We went back to Katie’s house and ended up spending five hours there in total, watching her breastfeed and talking about how we’d incorporate her breastpumps into our sex lives. And taking lonely photographs of Katie and the baby that I thought I could Photoshop into awesomeness later but totally can’t, so you should for me:

Then we went to The Cheesecake Factory with Erin and Tracey’s fiancée, Dan, where we gossiped about grandparents, ate fried macaroni and cheese balls, and learned that Erin refuses to lick things off fingers, even her own, but will happily pose as if she doesn’t:

The next night, I tried to go to dinner with my ex-boyfriend-who-I-moved-to-NYC-for-but-who-then-moved-back-home-after-a-year, Todd, at the pizza place that only he and I like on the OSU campus, but all of the freshman were moving in and the roads were crazy, and I was cursing them in my mind, but only because I was jealous. So instead we met at Pizza Hut, which is a local fine dining Italian restaurant you’ve likely never heard of. There, he informed me that the Meryl Streep movie I was in will win nothing, while the other movie she did this year may win her some Oscars.

Afterward, we went to our favourite for-real-local ice cream parlor, Graeter’s, and ate coconut ice cream with giant chocolate hunks mixed in it while we sat in his car and listened to 90s music like Joydrop that probably only we ever liked. Oh, I mean, us and Tommy Lee, if the video’s any indication.

Todd gets really upset that I never post any pictures of him, so here’s the placeholder where a picture would go if I liked him.

Even later that night, I drove back to Tracey’s apartment to pick her up for what was supposed to be My Last Crazy Night in Ohio™, but my poor best friend was a bit nervous about her first real day of grad school and didn’t want to do much. So I gave her a hard time, because I am a jerk. And then I ate some cookie dough and went to bed.

The next morning, we woke up super-early, and I went to spend my last moments with my dad on the FARM, which is actually where I spent almost every afternoon of my stay, doing things like:

Riding in a combine, shelling corn, thinking about how little I care about my cellphone or my e-mail or my blog when I’m in the country.

Staring longingly across the open plains, mentally tracking all the places I could dump a body if I ever need to kill someone.

Thinking how cool my dad is for being able to fix things.

Not hating nature.

The best part of the entire trip, by far, was when I called my dad on Friday morning and asked if I could hang out with him. He said, “Sure, I’m going to go pull a calf out of the feed lot.” I thought, Yay! We’re moving a happy, bouncing, baby cow to a new home! But it turned out that the baby cow was DEAD:

Like, really, really dead:

Literally the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen.

And with that pleasant image, I’ll take my leave.

Benny’s, B-Side, fat cat, and the Sadly Defunct Luca Lounge

plumpdumpling — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 21:37:23 +0000

Last Friday night, a couple of my friends wanted to get together for happy hour, so we scoured drinkdeal.com and came up with Benny’s Burritos, because we pretty much want to drink giant margaritas all the time. And giant margaritas we had.

For $3, they’ll give you a tumbler of margarita. For $6, you get a Collins glass. And for $9? The biggest beer mug you can imagine. My friends Beth and Charles and I arrived early to take advantage of the deal, which is only offered at the bar, and by the time I finished my coconut-flavored margarita mug, I was giddy. Poor Boyfriend Kamran showed up all professional-like in his button-down and slacks to find me howling and slapping the table at everything Beth and Charles said.

Despite the fact that they live together, Adam has a hard time letting on that he actually likes Sonya.

This is Charles and Kamran’s attempt to look like badasses. SUCCESS!

Fake smile!

Everyone else really sucks at taking non-flash pictures on my camera. Why didn’t I become the steady-handed brain surgeon I planned to be?

And that concludes the Requisite Pictures of People Having Fun portion of this entry.

Not to make this a restaurant review or anything, but I have to mention that our food was pretty great. I’m on a corn kick right now and made Kamran share the corn fritters appetizer with me, which was a plate of little fried balls that resembled hush puppies. And the consistency of their filling was pretty hush-puppy-ish, too, only with CORN added. Best thing you can imagine? I thought so. The burritos were mission-style, so they were huge and full of the stuff you usually see as side dishes. I had the Grilled Mango Burrito, which came with enough mango salsa to douse the thing, and Kamran got the Chicken Chipotle Burrito, which was spice-AY.

Adam was in the mood for foosball, so we walked toward B-Side on surprise! Avenue B. Halfway there, Kamran brought up Luca Lounge, the bar he took me to on our first date lo those many months ago, where we admitted to the embarrassing bands we liked and I made a joke about his timing me while I went to the restroom before remembering that old cellphone commercial where the guy who asks the girl if she wants to time him on the toilet was supposedly a douchebag. Kamran described the red velvet Victorian couches, the backyard garden, the whoa-clean restrooms, and our friends were hooked. And then we got there and found THIS:

Sadly, no!

It was CLOSED! Like, for GOOD! Just then, my best friend Tracey called from Ohio, and when I told her about our bad luck, she reminded me that she and her last boyfriend went back to their first date restaurant on their fourth anniversary, found it had closed, and broke up soon after. NOOOOOOOOOOO! But she’s engaged to someone way awesomer now, so it’s cool. Kamran and I agreed that if this means the end of the line for us, it’s been a good run, and we’ll part without tears and bitterness. Plus, their menu was still lit up outside, and that has to mean something.

We returned to the original plan of B-Side, where we opted for the $5 PBR-and-a-shot-of-the-cheapest-most-painful-going-down-whiskey-you-can-imagine deal. We went to the back room, which was twelve to sixteen hundred degrees but made up for it by having a hugely huge wraparound couch with no apparent rat damage and concert posters for rad bands on the wall. We chugged our whiskey as a group (OR SO WE THOUGHT, UNTIL SOMEONE FOUND A FULL SHOT GLASS LOLLYGAGGING ON OUR TABLE LATER) and then played several thousand rounds of foosball, all of which resulted in outrageous wins for Adam, because he has a foosball table in his office and is a bastard. My camera battery had almost completely died at this point, so I kept turning the thing on for a second and snapping a picture as fast as I could, which resulted in a lot of shots like this:

Yes, Charles is indeed wearing an entire suit. And Beth looks like a mannequin.

Sonya and Adam knew I was starting to get a little sleepy and grumpy, so they dragged us to Le Royale for Robot Rock, ’cause I loooove dancing to some electronic indie whatnot. We ended up having to wait in line for 20 minutes or so, during which time the same guy walked by twice with his girlfriend and said mocking things to us like, “Did you get in yet?” and “I heard this place really sucks.” And when we got to the front of the line, they were trying to charge us $10 to get in. And even though Kamran was going to pay my $10 like the gentleman he is, I refused. WE DO NOT PAY TO GET INTO BARS!

Except when the bar is fat cat, which charges a mere $3 for hours and hours of entertainment. Sonya has tried to get me to go there a million times before, but I’ve always denied her because she’s way too excitable about these sorts of things, and I figured it’d turn out to be super-lame. But there’s pool! And ping-pong! And chess! And Scrabble! And live jazz! And a bunch of dorky hipsters everywhere! It’s a massive (at least by NYC standards) basement with a bunch of tables and chairs for drinkin’ and gamin’, individual netted rooms for ping-pong, and the sort of music that makes you feel like wearing a flapper dress and smoking from an obnoxiously long cigarette holder. It helps that I totally killed Kamran at ping-pong manymany times in a row, but that’s neither here nor there. So I started out my fat cat visit feeling miserable and wanting to leave immediately and ended it by being the last one to want to go.

A+!

OMG Twin Bulldogs

plumpdumpling — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 15:02:55 +0000

A couple of weeks ago, I was walking across 40th Street in Midtown East to grab some dinner for Boyfriend Kamran and myself on one of those summery days that was already delightful enough as it was, when I spotted a woman with TWIN BULLDOGS that were grumpily waddling around the kind of little red wagon that you see parents pulling their children in. I asked if it was okay for me to take a picture (because OMG, twin bulldogs!),

and she unclipped their leashes (because of course they’re too slow to take off anywhere)

and tried to push down their butts to make them sit and pose (but of course they weren’t having it).

And then I went to Kamran’s apartment and bragged and bragged about it, because he’s so allergic to pets that he can’t even look at them.

Crazy Cat Lady (20)
The Practice Thanksgiving (16)
Avian Holocaust (16)
Dog Debris (9)
Giant Rats Sneer at Construction Scabs (8)
Long-Lost Videos of 2010: Part 3 (8)
Who Will Join Me in “Ave Maria” at the Rat Funeral? (6)
RAT ATTACK! (7)
I’m GLAD You Were Bitten (26)
Are Pets Allowed on the Subway? (3)

In Which a Black Rat Crosses My Path on Friday the 13th

plumpdumpling — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 22:24:57 +0000

Last summer, I made a bet with myself that every single time I waited for the subway, I’d see a rat running along the tracks. And wouldn’t you know it–every time I had more than a moment’s wait, I’d spot one, and more than a few times, I saw two chasing each other. I guess it got to be too normal an occurrence after a while, because I rarely think to do it anymore. But yesterday morning, I didn’t have to.

I’ve been reading magazines on the subway a lot lately, finding that it relaxes me to the point that I’m not bothered by things like the seated person in front of me kicking my feet repeatedly while I stand crushed between two unshowered men, gripping the slimy metal bar above my head. I like to get on the last car of the downtown 4/5 train in the morning, get off still reading, and keep on reading while I leisurely walk to the staircase that exits the station, mostly because it really seems to piss off all the people who’re in a major hurry.

Yesterday when the doors to the car opened at Bowling Green, I stepped out holding my magazine and then almost dropped it a second later when A RAT up and RAN ACROSS THE PLATFORM right in FRONT OF ME. Some people gasped. Some people broke the no-talking-in-the-morning-on-the-subway rule and murmured to themselves. Everyone turned and watched it bound to the end of the platform. One man–out of place amongst the business suits and briefcases in a t-shirt and a backpack–pointed his finger and lifted his thumb to make a gun shape and pretended to shoot the thing until it jumped onto the tracks and disappeared.

Ahhhhh, Friday the 13th.

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