Monthly Archives: July 2010

Truly the Heart of It All

Posted by plumpdumpling on July 12, 2010 – 12:00 pm
Filed under no i really do love ohio
Tagged as

Last night, Kamran and I were walking down his hallway after putting the laundry in downstairs, and I said, “It smells like Johnny Marzetti up here!”

And then I was like, “Whoooooooa.” Because I haven’t said the words Johnny Marzetti in probably 16 years, which was the last time I ate an elementary school lunch. And I certainly haven’t thought about it since then, because I didn’t even like it at the time.

Kamran Wikipediaed it for me, and the entry says:

Johnny Marzetti is a baked pasta dish, or casserole, consisting of noodles, tomato sauce, ground beef, and cheese. Other ingredients and seasonings may be added to adjust the taste. The dish originated in Columbus, Ohio, at the Marzetti restaurant, and spread to other parts of the United States as variations of the recipe were published in magazines and cookbooks during the mid-20th century. The dish is still served in Ohio, especially at social gatherings and in school lunchrooms.

How great is that?! It started in Ohio and is still served there! Things like this fill me with such sentimental feelings for Ohio. I know that other states have culture that’s specific to them, but Ohio’s seems so much better to me: Euchre (which is supposedly from Pennsylvania but is only played by Ohioans), Cornhenge, Marilyn Manson, the U.S.’s first traffic light (in my hometown!), the world’s largest horseshoe crab, Bessie the Lake Erie Monster and now, Johnny Marzetti.

Had you heard of it?

What I Talk About When I Talk About Reading at the Gym

Posted by plumpdumpling on July 9, 2010 – 1:30 pm
Filed under readin' and writin'
Tagged as

I only downloaded Haruki Murakami’s What I Talk About When I Talk About Running because of its super-romantic-but-maybe-only-to-me title. I figured it was figurative, because obviously a book about running would never actually be called This is Totally a Book About Running. But it really is a memoir about training your body for marathons and how that relates to training your mind for writing, and I decided to go ahead with it because I like Murakami so well.

It’s fine reading it on the subway and all, but where I’m really getting the most joy out of it is in the gym. I used to seriously dread waking up at 5:45 to go to the basement of Kamran’s building, and I tried hard to make it more tolerable with books and movies, but I always bounced around too much to concentrate on tiny text, and I always got too easily bored with intense indie plotlines. But now that I can pump up the text size on my Kindle, going to the gym seems like a small sacrifice for having quiet time to read (because obviously I would never wake up before 6 just to challenge my intellect), and it makes me feel so much less hateful toward the elliptical machine when the person I’m reading about is working hard, too.

The first book I read in the gym on my Kindle was Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods, and I actually found myself wanting to hike the Appalachian Trail while I read it. And now I actually find myself wanting to run while reading What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. This morning, I went an extra .3 miles just because Murakami told me my muscles will cooperate with me if I push them harder little by little. Before, I would purposely go .3 miles less every day just to spite Kamran and his desire for me to love working out.

So, now that I’m on this activity-themed book kick, anything you’d recommend?

Everyone Can See You with Your Finger Up Your Nose

Posted by plumpdumpling on July 8, 2010 – 12:00 pm
Filed under funner times on the bus, living in new york sucks so hard, why i'm better than everyone else
Tagged as , ,

I had to be at work early this morning for a meeting, and I expected that the public transportation would be less crowded, so I was annoyed when I decided to be lazy and take the bus to Grand Central and found that the usual load of people was still waiting at the stop after mine. There was one woman in particular who I just didn’t like from the moment I saw her. I couldn’t exactly pinpoint what it was that made me want to ensure somehow that she lead an unhappy life–maybe her dour all-brown outfit, maybe her sloppy ponytail, maybe her chubby cheeks–but I was especially upset to look down from my throne at the back of the bus and see that she’d grabbed the last of the much-coveted single-person seats.

And then she started picking her nose.

(I’m sorry, but click here to read the rest. I hate to do this sort of thing to you, but one of my friends told me last night it’s the only way to do it, and I was just looking for an excuse. Looooove yooooou.)

I’m Sorry If I Gave You AIDS

Posted by plumpdumpling on July 6, 2010 – 12:00 pm
Filed under jobby jobby job job, potty mouth
Tagged as ,

I know it’s neither polite nor sanitary, but I got an unexpected nosebleed in my office’s bathroom last week, and a drop of blood hit the blue-tiled floor before I could do anything about it. I lifted my hand to catch the drops that followed, but the blood kept somehow escaping me, and after a few seconds, I stopped trying and just let the floor become littered with my DNA. It felt so good to do something I wasn’t supposed to and to not care.

The Best Thing About “Eclipse” (and the Most Annoying)

Posted by plumpdumpling on July 2, 2010 – 12:00 pm
Filed under good times at everyone else's expense, i used to be so cool, my uber-confrontational personality, readin' and writin', there's a difference between films and movies, why i'm better than everyone else
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I was surprised to learn, upon reading them, that though the writing is as awful as I would’ve imagined, the plot of the Twilight series is actually pretty clever. Unlike, say, “Lost”, all of the loose ends eventually tie up, and the things you never thought would matter suddenly do. There are no red herrings nor MacGuffins in them.

Yet they still totally annoy me simply because their author, Stephenie Meyer, has to thank the band Muse in each of them. In all of the novels’ afterwords, right alongside appreciation of her editor and agent, she’ll say things like, “And thanks also to my favourite band, the very aptly named Muse, for providing a saga’s worth of inspiration.” And then I will claw her eyes out.

It’s not even that I don’t like Muse. I actually really liked them in NINETEEN-NINETY-NINE when I was listening to them. But I just can’t handle some kids’-book-writin’, middle-aged Mormon thinking she’s all cool for liking one pop-alt band. It’s like moviestars thinking anyone cares about their political activism. And you know she’s just doing it in some used-to-be-unpopular girl’s attempt to befriend the band she loves.

I went to see Eclipse last night with my friend Ash, though, and aside from a couple of actually-hilarious moments, what I was surprised by most was the soundtrack. It does not suck. In fact, it includes The Bravery, the amazing Ohio band The Black Keys, and my favourite band right now, Band of Horses. And the music is used really well. The first time you see, Jacob, for instance, the camera moves in on his face as a grinding bluesy song starts, and it’s this total moment. How annoying is that?

I can console myself with the fact that I know it wasn’t Stephenie Meyer choosing the music and how it’s used, but I can still continue to hate her for all of her Muse-suck-upping. Mostly because I know I’d do exactly the same thing if I was in her shoes.

Except with a better band.