State Roundup!!1 July 29, 2008
Posted by Sonia in Hong Kong, Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.add a comment
It’s that time again, folks. We live in a state — but did you know other people live in states as well? Even if you did know that, WHICH I BET YOU DIDN’T, you still need this handy little primer to the other states of the Union.
1. Montana
INITIAL THOUGHTS: Big Sky State. Sounds kind of cool, right?
WRONG!: There is nothing there but cows. Cows and dead cows and 14-year-old drivers.
ALSO: Wheat. I have some wheat from Montana. But that’s all they have there, really, it’s boring.
AND: Glaciers. They also have glaciers in a park and a huge amount of space and an enormous border over to Canada and hypothermia.
2. California
INITIAL THOUGHTS: Oh man I’m so way too cool for California. I will now generically hate on Southern California for being generic. I exude waves of mediocre dislike.
WRONG!: California is too cool for you. Do you know why Southern California is superficial? Because California is so WONDERFUL that NO ONE THINKS everyone just ENJOYS LIFE ALL THE TIME.
AND HOW: Enjoying life usually occurs by injecting your face with botox and your boobs with silicone, didn’t you know?
SERIOUSLY: It’s like California is the only place that remembers that appearances matter
SAN FRANCISCO: Did you ever wonder why Lindsay Lohan isn’t vomiting on the floor of Chez Panisse?
3. New Mexico
WHAT THE HELL: Is in New Mexico? All I know about it is something I read in an in-flight magazine that was about red sauce and green sauce on tacos.
RED SAUCE: sucks
GREEN SAUCE: is the man
LET’S ALL: move to New Mexico and eat tacos
4. Massachoosetts
INITIAL THOUGHTS: Oh what a quaint little state full of quaint clam chowder and picturesque revolutionaries jolly good
WRONG!: Boston is full of sorrow and overachievement.
CRAP I FORGOT THAT: Leah and Ben are both from Massachusetts never mind
5. Iowa
INITIAL THOUGHTS: Hmm, I guess there’s corn in Iowa, and probably some more cows, and hey, my grandfather went to school there. (frealz.)
WRONG!: No, actually, there’s no swift reversal. It’s true. My grandfather went to school there.
IS IT BETTER THAN RHODE ISLAND: No.
THIS IS STATE IS SO BORING THAT: I can’t think of anything else to say
6. West Virginia
FULL OF: Food Lions and Wal Marts.
ONCE I: went to West Virginia and went to a Food Lion and bought juice and the lady at the cash register told me that someone had bought groceries with a counterfeited $50 bill.
ERGO: West Virginia is full of meth addicts with nothing to do except forge $50 bills and take them TO A FOOD LION FOR CHRIST’S SAKE WHAT ABOUT THE GAP?!
Now you know all about the states! Stay tuned for next week’s installment: PLANET ROUNDUP.
Cheese or Oral Sex? July 25, 2008
Posted by Ben Brown in Kitchen Confidential, Parliamentarian's Report, Question and Answer.3 comments
Like a zen koan, the question shines a light on the deepest recesses of our personas, prodding us to enlightenment: “Which would you rather give up for the rest of your life: cheese or oral sex?” However, there are so many nuances to the question that I believe it Right and Proper that we should establish a set of Standard Rules governing the asking of this question. I propose the following criteria:
- The question only refers to giving up the receipt of cheese or oral sex, not its production. We hold this truth to be self-evident because if the provision of oral sex were denied by partner A to partner B resultant to A’s choice to give up oral sex, a negative externality would be created, reducing the impact of B’s choice on the same question, since B will no longer be receiving oral sex from A in any case. Likewise with homemade cheese.
- Vegans are right out. I don’t know what the vegan equivalent of cheese is, but until someone offers a satisfactory food product which is ubiquitous among the vegans and which many of them would be hard-pressed to forgo, it is patently unfair to offer the choice between giving up something they’ve already given up and giving up something deemed Good and Virtuous.
- Okay, well I can only think of two important nuances, but lists look better with three or more points.
- Wait…I thought of a fourth one: substantially cheese-like products such as quajada and that nacho sauce are included in the category of cheese and therefore verboten to those who choose to give up cheese.
Therefore, BE IT RESOLVED, that these four Statutes constitute the Standard Rules of the question of Cheese or Oral Sex, adopted by the Assembly this, the 25th day of July in the Year of our Lord Two Thousand and Eight.
I move the previous question.
living in the window July 22, 2008
Posted by Amandeep in Uncategorized.add a comment
So, for those of you who have already been to the Friends House, this will not be news. But for everyone else, I live in the giant window seat that stretches across the Friends House common room and faces the street. Bum that I am, I still haven’t really unpacked my room, despite having moved in June 1st. As a result, I, along with my laptop…and my sewing machine (sorry everyone!), live in the common room.
Living in the giant window, I get to see everything that passes by. I can occasionally wave at people I know and just now was called to by a passing friend on a bike who knew to expect me in this window. I always know when it is going to rain. When it is hot, I am baked in front of the glass, and when it cools down in the evening, my window cools down first.
But one of my favorite things about living in the Friends House window seat is hearing the snatches of music blaring from the cars that pass and sometimes stop at the intersection nearby. Much of it makes me want to laugh at the drivers listening to it, and some of it is just plain bad. But occasionally, a car drives by playing a song that I once knew and haven’t heard in years that stirs old feelings and memories, and lifts me to a happy different place. And I love that. It is always unexpected and wonderful.
pepper July 17, 2008
Posted by Sonia in Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.add a comment
I tried to post this in my own blog, seulalia, but wordpress has inexplicably misplaced it for the time being. I hope to get it back soon. In the meantime, I am posting this here.
Update: Now that my blog is back, I posted it there. but if you still want to read it, you can find it here.
Ironman 70.3 mile triathlon – outside of the Friends House July 14, 2008
Posted by Amandeep in Kitchen Confidential, Parliamentarian's Report.Tags: 70.3, College Hill, ironman, triathlon
1 comment so far
Yes, you read that title correctly. Yesterday morning, the Friends House awoke to find what appeared to be some kind of race going on outside.
Upon further inspection, it was revealed to not only be a footrace, but the final leg of a triathlon. And it wasn’t just any triathlon, but one of the 70.3 mile (not kilometer, mile) Ironman triathlons.
Below is the last runner to come over College Hill, a little past 3pm, with a golf cart beside her and a police car behind her, holding back the cars eager to move down the road as it opened with her passage. She was a mile away from the end of a 70.3 mile journey. That’s f-ing amazing.
Incidentally, here’s the account of a fellow WordPress blogger that competed in the triathlon. Congratulations to him! He gives a full 2 paragraph description of our beloved Hill (in his words, ‘the MONSTER hill at mile 2 and 8′) and it’s trials. (from his post, ‘This was the hill that the X Games used for street luge when they came to town. Yeah. Seriously.’)
We have sympathy as frequent trekkers up and down its slopes.
Off of College Hill July 5, 2008
Posted by Amandeep in Hopes and Fears, Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.Tags: Brown, College Hill, nostalgia
1 comment so far
The intersection outside the Friends House
So just outside of one of my bedroom windows in the Friends House, there is an intersection, pictured to the left.
Every morning, I wake up and look out my window and see a big orange sign that says “College Hill, that way” as though to constantly remind me that I am not on it. I haven’t moved very far, close enough that there’s a decent chance someone driving down this road is on their way to College Hill. However, every morning, this sign reminds me that College Hill is a separate place, off thattaway. It is a place that I have crossed over and nearly left, with only a toe still on it, reluctant as I am to leave the place where I have had so much happiness.
I first came up the hill from the other side almost 4 years ago in a van containing the minimal needs for a new beginning and a heart filled with expectation and excitement to mount the hill’s slope and see what lay at the top. Now, literally over the hill, I am burdened with much more stuff, the accumulation of 4 years of life, and my heart is a wearier, less excitable thing. But though the view downhill is much clearer, and it seems all the bends are, for a ways, laid plain to sight, I still hold a hope, as I did 4 years ago, that mysteries and new experiences lurk in the twists of these roads and that they will lead me to still magical lands with new kinds of sunshine.
