the beta version of me

So last night I got swept up reading the entirety of my old livejournal for some reason. I mean I guess it's part of the reason we keep journals, right? To read them retrospectively? In any case, it was an interesting version of me from 2001 through the move to California. I never blogged about anything with much gravity, not 9/11, not how disheartened I was by all the rejection I got at the end of my senior year, not how truly bizarre a time I had teaching in NY. Mostly I just wrote about silly stuff, and I still find a lot of it quite funny. So I'm going to do a highlight reel, so this is going to be a long post, but it's condensed goodness!

***

b) conversation of the day, yesterday. was with jonathan and t, crossing the street in chinatown.
jon: malia, the light's red.
malia: but there are other people walking.
jon: but we don't want you to die. there'd be an awful lot of paperwork for theresa and me.
theresa: i don't feel the same way. i'd do any amount of paperwork for you, malia.

***

6:00 pm - haha...

So when I was walking into my building just now, there was a Baldwin loitering out front. I looked him dead in the eye. Which Baldwin? No clue.

current mood: baldwinesque
current music: is one of them in a band?

***

Funniest thing I heard a kids say today. One of my students was doing the making out with himself bit, that turning around and wrapping your arms around yourself routine. He was telling the other kids that he does it on the subway sometimes and that the other people start to stare and wonder. And then one of the kids was all, "Wonder about what? Your girlfriend with no legs?"

***

5:11 pm - funniest thing ever

So I have my one student with severe, severe "on the mind, out the mouth syndrome" as my pops calls it. He comes in today, fanatical, screaming about there being a dead person on his train this morning. Evidently someone realized the stank in the car was not redolent of homeless person; that was the stank of death. So the train stopped and the paramedics came and took the dead guy away. The point of all this was that he was late to class on account of the dead person on the train. Best excuse, ever.

***

Best thing I saw yesterday: They have all these signs in subways from the Pork Coalition or somebody, whoever it was that came up with the "Pork, the other white meat" campaign. So the pork poster in the subway station yesterday said:

"Stop and smell the pork roast."

Somebody had written underneath it in that graffiti-style handwriting

"or just run and let the pork catch up with you"

***

So after figure skating today, I moseyed on over to the Space Sciences building to eat lunch, stow away my skates in my personal locker room (my lab), and do a little work. Lo and behold, the computers Nico and Vero deny my attempt to log in. My first thought was dang, I've been fired and they didn't bother telling me... Then I realized they can't fire me because I am a student and don't even get paid. Phew! So after a quick peek into the adjoining lab to see if Dave or Dae-Sik (grad students) have any ideas on how to remedy my situation, I mosey on down to Don's office (Don is the stoner astronomer/ Linux guru/ socialist from the angst part II entry). I tell him that I can't log into the computers, he starts typing frantically, then starts cursing frantically as he realized there has been some sort of computer catastrophe. He tries to fix one of the computers by doing something involving computer jargon I don't understand. He tells me to go back to the lab and wait for him while he gets coffee. I mosey back to my lab. Dae-sik comes over with a deadly serious look on his face.
"He killed my processes," he said in a hushed and controlled voice. This may be the most Dae-sik has ever said to me; our previous interactions have mostly involved me taking his post-it notes or me telling him that his wife is on the phone.
"Oh," I reply.
Short pause.
"One day, I will kill his processes....I will get revenge."

I got the idea he didn't mean so much "processes" as he did "family".

From now on, I'm going to be extra polite when I'm taking his post-it notes.

***

9:58 am - instant karma

Just a few minutes ago, Ryan was sitting on the couch making generally gross snotty noises associated with his consumption.
"Ew," I said.
"Nothing comes out when I do that," he replied.
"Ew," I say again. "It all goes back into the recesses of your giant head?"
Ryan makes an I'm-going-to-cry face.
"Don't worry baby. Your head's so big because it's full of dreams," I replied.
I then tossed my head back as I was laughing and smacked it really hard against the top of the couch.
"Ha!" he said. "The couch smote you!"

***

He said, "Fry up the potatoes."
I reply, "Are you sure you want me to do this?"
He says, "Sure, go ahead."
So I drop a bit of butter on the frying pan which instantly turns to brown sludge. Smoke starts to billow out of the pan, and as calmly as I can, I say to Ryan, "I think the butter is burning." He sees the plumes of smoke emanating from the kitchen and reacts promptly, turning on the stove's fan, opening the outside door, and putting a box fan in on of the living room windows in an attempt to blow all of the smoke outside the apartment. In his haste he lost the bagel he was eating. He took over potato frying duties when the smoke cleared and we could see/breathe again.
Forlornly, I comment, "I think I'm hopeless."
Ryan replies, "Baby, maybe you are."

Ryan later found his lost bagel behind the television.