Entries from April 2004 ↓

Randomness:

-I’m sick. All different kinds of sick. I woke up this morning with a horrible sore throat, swollen glands in my neck and hurty ears. But I sucked it up and got dressed and drove the half-hour to work. On the way up I felt really, really tired, but figured that your sixth shift in a row can do that to you. But while parking I got really dizzy and felt faint walking the block down the street to work. I had to stop and prop myself up on a tree, thinking I was going to puke right there on 32nd Ave. I managed to make it in, but immediately grabbed a chair once inside. Five minutes later I was barfing in the bathroom, trying my best not to pass out and smash my head on the toilet. I was sent home as soon as I felt I could drive.
Now I feel totally fine, except for the sore throat.

-I could do without that Joss Stone girl. In fact, I kind of want to strangle her with her own vocal cords. That “Fell in Love with a Boy” song. Holy total ass-ness. Every time I hear it (Twice a day, everyday! Thanks satellite radio at work!) I have the urge to sucker punch whoever’s nearest me. I hate it that badly.

-It shouldn’t bother me that my boyfriend can open a bra hook with one hand, but it does. I rather used to enjoy all the fumbling. (Other complaints: None.)

-I suck at crossword puzzles and have never completed one.

-I put a product called Henna ‘n’ Placenta on my hair 4 days ago. My hair still looks and feels awesome, and the idea of squeezing afterbirth onto my head was exhilerating. Highly recommended.

-I think I will start a another weblog that solely features movie reviews. As a way to write (self-publish) more reviews. Let’s hope this goes better than the South Beach Diet blog.

-My roommates are moving out. The VCB is staying here but Skurvy and the Stephanie are moving away. After a brief stop in Memphis, the Stephanie will board a train that will take her to Utah where she will be a barista for the summer and hang out with her best friend Berman. Skurvy will also take a train, but his will go to Portland. From Portland he will get on his bike and ride it across the country in 3 months time. Just because. Skurvy rides his bike everywhere he goes and has been training for this trip for months. On Saturdays when we are all sleeping in he gets up and rides his bike 30-40 miles. Skurvy is skinny. Anyway, today is his birthday and one of their last nights in town so we are all going to Ru San’s for sushi. The Kids (what the VCB and I call Skurvy and the Stephanie) are strict vegetarians, and Ru Sans has lots of veggie options, so that’s the place. I tend to like my sushi more low-key and less circus-y, but this will be a fun change of pace. It is apparently a place to look and be fabulous, or whatever, and while that is totally not my style, I do like to rock a pair of high heels and dangly earring occasionally. I’m looking very forward to tonight.

-My father the fire fighter once told me that putting mustard on fresh burns is one of the best ways to heal them and soothe the pain. I’ve been putting mustard on burns ever since. Last night I almost dropped the baked salmon and grabbed the 400 degree pan with my un-mitted hand. The mustard cooled the burn immediately and today there is barely a mark. Thought you should know that, too, for the next time you accidentally graze a hot iron.

-Brie is my favorite cheese in all the land.

-My sister is getting married.

-When someone asked the VCB the other day when we are getting marrid he said: “As soon as we get a coupon for it.”

-Sometimes the chef and cooks at work sing a song called “Doo Doo on the Walls.” I do not know where this song came from, but I do know that it is an awesome song. They are all great singers except for the Nigerian dishwasher guy just who sort of wails in the background. “Doo Doo on the Walls” is the funniest song I’ve ever heard, and I wish I could share it with you.

-Gmail bartering is the new thing. “I’ll trade you a pack of Smarties, a corn dog and a hand-job for a gmail account if you tell your future invite to invite the guy I didn’t invite, because the other guy I did invite sent me nude pics of this girl he invited.”

My favorite neighbor is this overweight white guy with bright red hair who every day stands painting in his yard. He has an easel set up facing the road (with his back to the street), but he isn’t painting his house or anything within his view. He is painting legless women or knights with drawn swords or disembodied heads floating in big blue boxes. And they all look like they’ve been drawn by a 4th grader.

Sometimes when he is not painting he is riding his stationary bike on the front porch. He huffs and puffs in his cut-off sweatpants and sleeveless t-shirts. He rides is sort of slowly.

Any time he is outside he is blaring his tiny, plastic boom box. It looks to only have a tape player. Today as I jogged past I heard the familiar strains of Schubert. The VCB tells me he’s usually rocking G’n'R.

On his car he’s painted Slimer from the Ghostbusters. And other various phrases and sayings. There is also a mysterious flag on it. Whenever I walk or bike past him he always drops his head in this very gentlemanly, but overly dramatic manner.

I love my favorite neighbor.*

*I don’t, however, love seeing my favorite neighbor’s tremendously hairy ass crack as he bends over to select another brush.

How to tell that the menstrual cycles of all the girls you work with are at the same time every month:

Your manager comes into the dining room to tell you that there is only one piece of chocolate cake left in the house. At which time you notice every single waitress hefting a forkful of chocolate cake into her mouth.

I get headaches all the time because I can’t see for shit. One day the VCB asked me to read a sign to him just across the road and I could not. He was astonished that I couldn’t see 100 yards. It was then I realized my persistent headaches were from poor vision.

I haven’t had my eyes checked since first grade. I read a lot, and sit for many hours at a computer, so it’s highly probable that my eyes have suffered some damage in 20 years. (I had to squint just now to read part of that sentence.) I have been saving up to get some decent frames and will be getting some glasses really, really soon, but I thought you might like to know why I haven’t done so until so many years later.

Back in first grade I was in private school and in a split class. Some of us were 1st graders, the other of us second graders. Janeane was in 2nd grade. She sat all the way across the class from me, always wearing the cutest turned-down socks with ruffles and these brown t-strap mary janes I totally adored. She had brown hair and was allergic to peanut butter and had the best handwriting in the class. You should have seen her capital Js. And Janeane wore glasses.

And so when I found myself at the optomitrist a little while later I cheated a bit on my eye exam. I fudged. I mean, I lied about how well I could see the items in the test. The doctor assured my mother I needed glasses and so we set to choosing frames and getting everything taken care of.

I proudly wore my new glasses into school that next day but found myself sick with nausea and dizzy by lunchtime. Naturally, the prescription was warping my prefectly fine vision and creating for me a humungous headache. Those glasses found their way onto my head, my backpack, my pocket and that is where they stayed. Until I accidentally broke them by sitting on them one afternoon. I’d taken them off and tucked them into my jeans. I heard them crack and started to cry. I hid the perfectly equal pieces, snapped right across the bridge.

It was only a day or two before Mom asked where they were. I fessed up to breaking them. I don’t remember if she was angry, but I do know I never got another pair of glasses. I figured my mother knew I was lying and didn’t bother with getting me new ones. Which was fine by me, I was embarassed by the entire ordeal.

When I was 21 or so I confessed to my mother that I’d faked my way through the eye exam to be like Jelly Only Janeane, and that the glasses hurt my head and that I was glad when they broke. Her face dropped and she looked sort of sad. She told me she’d felt guilty for years becuse she could barely afford the first pair of glasses and that she just couldn’t manage to buy me another pair. I thought she knew, when in fact she never suspected, instead guilt-ridden because she couldn’t buy me another pair.

I think I never considered that my eyes might be fucked up because of that whole ordeal. It is sort of a punishment for myself. I still feel like shit about it. But man, it will be nice to finally be able to see and everything. And not hurt all the time.

And I think I look good in specs.

Pictures, hopefully, forthcoming.

Do you think I look like this girl?

Best paragraph so far of Bob Woodward’s “Plan of Attack”:

The JCS staff had placed a peppermint at each place. Bush unwrapped his and popped it into his mouth. Later he eyed Choen’s mint and flashed a pantomime query, Do you want that? Cohen signaled no, so Bush reached over and took it. Near the end of the hour-and-quarter briefing, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Army General Henry “Hugh” Shelton, noticed Bush eyeing his mint, so he passed it over.

Brushing with traditional 3-color AquaFresh is like brushing your teeth with candy.

It shouldn’t taste that good.

A kindly soul has invited me to beta-test the new Google gmail accounts, so now I can finally be rid of that crappy f2o account. It was out every other week for days at a time, usually when attempting to correspond with my editors.

Getting on with it, I am pleased to announce that I can be reached at the following e-mail address from here on out and ever after (let’s hope): brittneyg@[NOSPAM]gmail.com

Remember to leave out the [NOSPAM] part and you and I are in business for a little back and forth communicating, if you know what I mean.

The Nashville Scene asked me to review three films to be featured in the upcoming Nashville Film Festival. They were published today, and though brief, it would be cool if you’d be kind enough to check them out.

Or, if you are lazy, you can read them here.

I parked my car up the hill and met up with E. for the walk down to work. Halfway down I felt a thump on my right shoulder and new immediately what just happened. A bird took a disgusting, huge dump on my shoulder. “Motherfucker!,” I exclaimed, “Fucking great.”

E., ever the optimist, said, “At least it didn’t crap in you hair. It could be worse.” I took her words to heart and agreed that it would have been worse had it gotten in my hair.

Once inside the building M. surprised me at the door with, “Look! I found a four-leaf clover.” I told her that was awesome, but excuse me I have to go clean the bird shit off me.

Once in the bathroom I began mopping up fowl dung when I noticed white-ish brown flecks in my braided pigtails. The bird shit was in my hair.