the antidote

Just try not to smile.

married to the Eiffel Tower

So I've just finished watching a documentary called Married to the Eiffel Tower.  It's about three women who are objectum sexuals.
"Objectum sexuality" or object sexuality is defined by Wikipedia as

"a pronounced emotional and often romantic desire towards developing significant relationships with particular inanimate objects. Those individuals with this expressed preference may feel strong feelings of attraction, love, and commitment to certain items or structures of their fixation."

One woman married the Eiffel Tower a few years before the production of this documentary.  She is also a world champion archer, and developed a particularly strong relationship with her bow, Lance.  She also has significant relationships with the Golden Gate Bridge, a samurai sword, various wooden gates and the Berlin Wall. Throughout the movie, we get to see several moments of this woman and her fellows caressing buildings, sharing a bed with miniature models, and visiting their significant others (some of which are in different continents).

Mrs. Eiffel Tower visited Berlin to see her lover:
To the Berlin Wall: "I tried to hate you. I tried. ...I curse myself for being human. I wish I were an object like you!"

This movie is just as interesting as I had hoped it would be and is filled with leagues of psycho-data to analyze and think about.  The only part that made me marginally upset was that these women (all objectum sexuals are women, according to the documentary) claimed to love these objects soooo deeply.  With more passion and depth than most human relationships.  But they also loved so many at the same time.
Does Mrs. Eiffel Tower have no respect for the sanctity of marriage? She spends a great deal of her married life fawning over the  Berlin Wall (who is married to another woman in Sweden, the scoundrel) and falling in love with every red fence she sees with just the right angles. 

The documentarian fails to reveal that objectum sexuals believe in polygamy until the last ten minutes of the film. 

Anyway, I learned something today! Someone else watch this so we can have a chat!

always something

Right now, it is rainy outside. Something I have been wishing for all week, possibly all month. I get to sit inside and do homework (because it's a Sunday) and read and watch TV with the room all to myself. I might even stay in my pajamas until mass tonight.

Or so I thought. Until I remembered that as Motivation Girl at the Call Center, I am in charge of themed weeks. This is the first one of the semester: Fiesta Week, which means decorating with Mexican blankets and getting supplies for the quesadilla maker. Only I still don't have a key to the office, so I have to wait for the shift to start today to go in, which kinda makes me look like a slacker.

I thought today would be sooooo relaxing and productive; I'd be free of my general stresses and soothed by the rain.

But there's always something.

That sounds depressing and cynical. What I mean is: I need to remember that the things that stress me out will almost always be around, but I should also recall how dumb I feel when I spent so much energy worrying about something that didn't ever become a problem. Daily reminder: It's not worth it! 

PS- I really want a quesadilla maker for Christmas.

where's the cake?

My stumbleupon thinks I'm about to have a hipster wedding. Or that I eventually want to have a hipster wedding.The first of which is entirely untrue, but the more they show me, the more it grows on me. Damn.

First of all, stumbleupon is a site that allows perpetually lazy college students students people to simply press a button on their tool bar that will instantly hop them to a different interesting site. It's kind of like hitting shuffle on the internet. You can customize your stumble to present you with sites about things you are interested in. For instance, mine is set to direct me to sites about psychology, humor, and for some reason, hipster weddings like this one: Chris and Krystal: the soundtrack!

They're full of witty and interesting ideas like "use Polaroids instead of a photographer" and "use a band comprised entirely of 9 yr olds in sundresses" and "use garden weeds instead of flowers because flowers are so consumerist and passe"

Between this and TLC, I feel like weddings are being thrown at me from every direction. And without even giving me cake.

Magnum, Thomas Magnum

While on vacation, I was able to learn many new things about my family members. For instance, my grandmother, uncle and father all love Magnum P.I., a show I had never seen before the trip. But after watching several episodes, I think I understand where the love comes from.

Several factors:

• It's set in Hawaii! My dad has been to Hawaii a few hundred times with his family. Interestingly, these trips stopped when I was born, or I was neglected to be invited.
• Thomas Magnum has a ridiculously full mustache. Something a family of bears could comfortably live in.
• Short-shorts: they come in many textures and colors, but they're always the same size: tiny.
• Vietnam flashbacks- who doesn't love those?
• There is a grumpy British butler (Higgins). This is what made Batman and The Addams Family work too. OK, so Higgins isn't a butler, he's "curator of the estate," and Lurch isn't (wasn't?) British. But still. Basic principles.
• He drives a red Ferrari. Cool cars are essential for successful characters, such as the Batmobile, the delorean, K.I.T.T., the Gadgetmobile, the Millenium Falcon, the stair car (watch out for hop-ons), the Mystery Machine, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, and that car Ferris Bueller steals from Cameron's dad (which is also a Ferrari).
• He's what my mom calls a "gland." It's hard to explain what that means because I don't exactly know. Basically he flirts with anything that moves. Which may include his 'Nam buddies; TC and Rick (whom I call Ken because his character is exactly like the Ken doll from Toy Story 3).

The show is endlessly entertaining in the way all 70s/80s cheesy private investigator comedies are. I suggest watching it so I have someone to discuss it with who was born after the invention of the VCR.

fallen leaves down a creek

So far, my summer vacation (this past week) has consisted mostly of hours upon hours of television, even more hours of sleep, and a few interludes with a friend or two. I can not believe I have been home for less than ten days. It feels like years. In a good way. Or maybe not...

I know that if this were all I had to look forward to, the remnants of my sanity would begin to drift away from me like fallen leaves down a creek. Or dandelion seeds in the wind. Or helium balloons into the abyss. I know because even now, after living through one thirteenth of my vacation, I can feel it starting.

The GOOD NEWS IS that I start my job tomorrow. Or today, rather. I take on the exciting position of splash park supervisor/ concessions stand cashier. Huzzah.

I know that after a week or so of that, I'm gonna start to lose it again. And that, my friends, is when I pick up my quilt!

"meaningless consumer-driven lives"

As an avid TV watcher and being on break from school (also on break from work of any sort), I find myself most days "vegging out" and watching hour after hour of television. Interestingly enough, vegging has nothing to do with actual vegetables. which I feel is a shame. I love veggies, especially when swimming in ranch dressing or covered in peanut butter. Luckily, I have not come to the stage at which my friend Kala is; that is, watching multiple episodes of Maury per day and memorizing the schedule so she can plan her day accordingly.

In summer watching mode, shows are not prioritized as they are during the school year. For nine months of the year, when all the "good' shows are on, the tivo manages season passes like a TV watcher's personal assistant. Shows may then be watched at leisure and commercials are skipped entirely. During the summer, however, channels are perused again and again, and I find myself watching 48 Hours: Hard Evidence or I become engrossed in an E! THS about the Olsen twins. Again. When I find a show even remotely interesting, which is not very ahrd considering the low summertime standard (past obsessions include, but are not limited to: Dawson's Creek, celebrity poker tournaments, Buffy the vampire slayer and The Price is Right), I normally stay on the same channel and watch through the commercial break. I feel this truly emphasizes the power of boredom, because I would only do this if I were heavily sedated or if the thermostat read over 80 degrees (don't tell my mom, because she'll find a project for me, oh yes she will).

It is during those 30-second segments that I can escape into a tiny, perfect world. If I could live in any commercial, it would be either Garnier Fructis or, of course, Coca Cola. The sheer joy of life depicted in these commercials is almost enough to make me get up off the couch and do something happy. Almost.