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The Internet is SUCH a Crazy Place

28 Aug

So, a couple of things have happened since I last posted.  So, last week I wrote a post about the whole incident that happened in Ireland at an Eminem concert at Slane Castle.  I didn’t really expect too much of a response since a lot of people were writing about the same thing but I was wrong.  Somehow my blog got linked on a Flemish-language newspaper and my blog EXPLODED in Belgium.  (Keep in mind the word exploded is entirely relative.)  So I had my two best days ever in the history of my blog one right after the other.  I even got some hits off of Twitter which basically never happens for the following two reasons.  One, I am confused by Twitter as a general rule and two, I have like 51 followers.  I had 52 but then someone unfollowed me.  When you have basically no followers you notice the ebb and flow.   Then this sad thing happened.  I noticed that, after the HIT EXPLOSION my daily hits were slightly higher than normal and came from search terms instead of my blog followers clicking on their emails or my Facebook friends finding the link there.  I then noticed that I was getting all sorts of hits from people looking for the image of the girl giving head at the concert.  (If you don’t know what I am talking about, just read the aforementioned blog, it will fill you in.)  So, okay, I have a few things to say about this.

First of all, seriously people, I don’t understand what is so damn exciting about a photograph of a girl sucking a guy’s dick.  If you really want to see what sucking a dick looks like, go suck a dick.  Set up a camera on the other side of the room and have it take a photo of you in the middle.  Put a stupid lime green hat on the person on the receiving end of the oral gratification, have that person throw his hands up into the air and basically you have the photo.  Not that exciting, really.

Secondly, if you really insist on seeing the photo, which makes me think less of your value as a human being because neither the girl nor the guy featured in the photo gave their consent, why don’t you try searching Google images?  You know what Google images is?  A way to find images.  You know what a photograph is?  An image.

Thirdly, porn.  It exists and it is everywhere.  The beauty of porn is that if you are turned on by people that look as though they are not consenting of the photograph being taken or the film being filmed, you can find that only the people actually have consented.  Acting, you know?  So you get the best of both worlds.  You get to view people engaged in sexual acts that maybe look like they are not participating willingly or as though they don’t know they are being photographed/filmed, but you are not being a horrible creatch and reinforcing all the fucked up gender stereotypes that run so rampant throughout our culture.

Fourth, think about what your desire to look at this photograph means and start asking yourself tough questions.  Do you think she deserved all the negative attention she is getting?  Why?  Would you feel the same way if the roles were reversed, if it was a man pleasuring a woman?  Would she still be the slut?

Fifth, I hope you read my blog when you accidentally got there.  I hope you read it and starting thinking about your role in the world.  And I hope you know that I think you are a complete asshole.

So another thing that happened is that I received an email from my friend Debbie complete with a screen shot that demonstrated the fact that my blog has been banned by the company for which she works.  We think it is because I wrote a post about going to a male strip club and that, throughout that post, I used the word “penis,” both in the singular and the plural, very liberally.  On the one hand, I sort of feel as though you haven’t really made it until you’ve blown up via  Flemish newspaper and been banned in a couple of offices.  On the other hand, I use the word “vagina” ALL THE TIME.  The word vagina is even in the title of one of my categories.  And yet it wasn’t until I used the word penis that my blog got banned.  So, that’s fucked up.

And finally, today I received a comment on my blog that said the following thing:

“Read on twitter you do a bit of bartending, would you be interested in us customizing your own bottle openers? We have a free promotion going on right now, send an email!”

My very own FranklyRebekah bottle openers.  I never thought I would live to see the day.

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At Least There Were No Penises

19 Aug

Or, in the spirit of Rocky and Bullwinkle episode titling, The Day I Went to Hunkomania.

Before this past Friday, I only had one known experience with a male stripper.  A couple of my friends in college decided it would be hilarious to hire a stripper to come to their dorm room for our friend Janice’s birthday.  So we all gathered, under the pretense of pre-gaming with watermelon flavored vodka (shudder) before a birthday night out, when the buzzer rang.  Janice assumed it was just another guest.  Then, an aggressive knock on the door with an accompanying voice declaring we had elicited noise complaints.  Janice, wide-eyed, opened the door to find a decent looking man decked out in a police uniform that looked as though it had been purchased at Ricky’s.  It was a little too spandex-y, the wrong color blue, and had a very fake-looking badge that read “sheriff” affixed on the right side.  I’m pretty sure there are no sheriffs in Hartford, Connecticut.  Janice was still busy apologizing for our volume when the dancer plopped down the boombox he had been carrying and started slowly unbuttoning his shirt.  Janice’s face morphed from one form of horror to another.  I bee-lined, red-faced, to the corner, being sure to be out of harm’s way, and, while the dancer gyrated in a royal blue thong, I made a quiet promise to myself that I would never again be in attendance at such an event.

Fast-forward about 8 years to last Friday.  As one of the bridesmaids in an upcoming September wedding, me and a fellow bridal party member took it upon ourselves to organize a bachelorette party for the bride-to-be.  It had come to our attention through various routes in the grapevine that this particular bride would very much enjoy an audience with strippers.  Through various internet searches I decided that if we were going to do the stripper thing, we would go to the most hilariously-named strip club in the city:  Hunkomania.  I promptly put ten tickets to Hunkomania, plus a hot seat for the bride-to-be, on my American Express card.  I mean, if I was going to charge tickets to a strip club, I might as well get some extra Jet Blue miles, am I right?

As the night approached I became more and more nervous about the whole thing.  I spoke with a few people and was told, in equal measure, both that there would be no penises and that there would be penises everywhere.  I kept my fingers crossed for no penises.  I had all these ill-fantasies of me, sitting in a neon-lit room, bass blasting, penises in all directions.  I am not going to say that I like penises as much as the next person because, honestly, that would be a lie.  Penises serve their purpose and when they are not serving their purpose, I would like them to be tucked away in their underwear house.  And that is the case for a penis I know.  Stranger penises are a whole other story.  I never want to see a stranger penis.  So, you can imagine my dismay when I imagined dozens of stranger penises in every direction.  That would not a happy Rebekah make.

Upon arriving at the club I was happy to find that there were no exposed penises.  Instead, there were topless men with very nice abs and a lot of shrieking women.  I tried to get into it.  I ordered my drink and put a few singles in the waist band of a school teacher (for real, he told us).  I looked around at the carefully toned bodies.  I giggled with my fellow Hunkomania attendees.  It was all going well until some dude stuck his head in my chest!  No hello, no how are you, no check for consent, straight to the motor boat.  Okay, so, not only do I not like stranger penis, I also do not like stranger touching especially when that touching comes from a dude and involves anything other than a light tap on my shoulder. I told him to stop, he told me, while being muffled by my breasts, that it was okay.  I told him it was most certainly not okay and got my fingers prepared to poke him in the eyes.  He noticed my fingers and backed away slowly, careful not to make any sudden movements.  I figured word would spread that the girl in the pink and white striped dress was an observer and not a participant.  I was safe for a bit of time until this guy who I nicknamed in my head “The Humper” because every time I saw him he was literally writhing on someone decided that I looked lonely.  He sat next to me, leg draped over my leg, and said

The Humper: Do you know what’s about to happen?
Me: You are going to stop touching me?
The Humper:  No, do you know what’s about to happen?
Me, in a menacing voice: Do you know what’s about to happen?

The Humper then decided it was wise to move on to other people.  He honed in on the bachelorette which, I think, was the perfect decision. Also, I think my lightly veiled threat made its way through the rest of the hunks and I was able to enjoy the rest of the show with minimal physical contact and absolutely zero penis sightings.

All-in-all I think it was a success.  Zero penises.  Personal space established.  Bachelorette in the hot seat.  Some of the finest abs I have seen in real life.  Once the initial shock of it all wore off I was able to enjoy myself.  I was also able to ignore some of the more, um, questionable aspects of the show like when it opened up to news coverage of the Kennedy assassination and the fact that music from The Lion King and costume including headdress accompanied the first black dancer to take the stage.  Sometimes you just have to check your political sensibilities at the door.

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What Did I Ever do to You, Ears?

13 Jul

My ears and I have never had the best of relationships.  This isn’t a superficial thing.  I have no problem, visually, with the way my ears look.  They are neither particularly big nor particularly small.  They neither stick out too much nor hug my head too closely.  I do sometimes think that they are a little bit high because wearing a hat can be somewhat problematic at times.  I either have to tuck my ears into the hat, thereby looking foolish, or let them stick out, thereby looking foolish.  My solution?  I don’t often wear hats and I’m okay with that.  The poor relationship that I have with my ears, and particularly my left one, is predicated on the fact that for my entire life they have caused me quite a bit of pain.

For the first 5 or so years of my life I had near-constant ear infections, or at least that’s how I remember it.  I think it was more a seasonal thing in reality but I have always been one for exaggerating so let’s go with it.  I think it had something to do with the development of my ear canals and so my ears didn’t drain themselves properly, or something.  Regardless of the reason they occurred there was no denying the fact that I was a walking ear infection.  It was so constant that my pediatrician, most awesome lady ever, considered draining my ears out to stop all the build-up of whatever it was that was building-up.  She told my mom that if the following ear-infection season (read: all the fucking seasons) I got another infection, then she would drain them but she was reluctant to do so because she said there was a risk of me losing my hearing.  My ears, upon hearing this news of having tubes painfully stuck into them, decided to stop infecting themselves.  For then…dun dun DUUUUUN!

Fast-forward to the winter of 2004, west coast of India.

There I was with some of my friends from my study abroad program on the beach at night.  We decided to go swimming despite the relatively large waves crashing down on the shore.  I was doing that thing that I love doing where I turn my back until a big wave comes and then I jump and ride the wave all the way onto the beach, only sometimes bloodying my knees.  For some reason right when a monster wave was approaching I looked over my left shoulder and CRASH!  The wave hit me right in the side of the head, absolutely pummeling my left ear.  My ear became clogged with water and remained that way for the following 2 months.  The annoying aspect of that was completely offset by the fact that I got to say to people, in my best Jewish Grandma voice, “Eh? Talk into my good ear, sweetie, I got some schmutz in the left.”

Ever since that incident over 9 years ago, my ears, and particularly my left one, have consistently acted up.  It’s sort of like, when my doctor threatened to stick tubes in them they ran scared but they were really just biding their time.  Maybe they even forgot.  But then one day my mom told me my old pediatrician had retired and seeing as how they get the information before the rest of my body a spark of an idea was born and they were all “we’ll show you, thinking you can control us.  You got nothing on us, bitch.”  So now every time I swim and every time I wash my hair they suck water into themselves and hold onto it for dear life.  For days everyone else’s voices are muffled while mine is in stereo.  Then comes the headaches on the sides of my forehead just up and out from my eye sockets.  The occasional searing pain and the embarrassing realization that I am probably the only adult in the entire world who still gets ear infections.  But that’s not the worst of it.  The worst thing ever is flying.

I have never loved flying, per se.  I enjoy the idea of going somewhere new, of boarding a plane somewhere I know and ending up somewhere completely different.  But the flying itself, boring.  I can’t sleep on planes because I can’t sleep sitting up.  Also, my butt falls asleep and it is always so damn cold on those planes and I, without fail, forget to bring a blanket.  I always end up sitting dangerously close to the bathroom, children, or both.  Or someone who smells.  But the worst of it is the excruciating pain that shoots through my head.  It literally feels like my ear drums are about to explode or my head is just going to split in half.  I sit there, doubled over with my head on my knees, stupid ass earplugs sticking out of my ears that are supposed to help relieve the pain but really just make me look like an asshole, chewing like 12 pieces of gum in order to try to salivate enough so that I can continuously swallow thereby popping my ears (which, by the way, hurts like a motherfucker) and crying.  Crying.  Almost every god damn time.  I routinely bring scarves or just take off my sweatshirt so when the moment comes when tears are pouring down my face I can at least cover up.  Sometimes I take Sudafed but then I often lose it between journeys and have to buy another box, again landing myself on the national “is this person a meth head” registry.  And it only helps like half of the time.  And you know what else?  The flight attendants never stop to see if I am okay.  I am doubled over in pain and only one time did someone stop and she told me to chew gum.  Bitch!  I have like a whole pack in my mouth right now!  The only people that ever seem mildly concerned are my seat neighbors and mostly they just look at me like I’m nuts and/or click sympathetically. This last flight my neighbor goes to his wife,

“Oh her ears must be clogged.  Quite a production.”

It’s like, I can hear you!  It sounds like you’re about 10 miles away but I can ever so slightly hear you and if my eardrums explode I hope you get eardrum gore all over your stupid golf shirt.

So yea, my ears like totally suck.  Especially the left one.  I went swimming on Tuesday afternoon and you know what? Still clogged!  Still can’t hear shit except my own stupid self!  So, yea, that’s what’s up with my ears and why if you see me any time in the next few weeks I might ask you to repeat yourself 12 times.  I think I am going to make a doctors appointment but don’t tell my ears, especially the left one, because who knows what torture they’ll have in store for me next.

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And Then I Saw Turtles

24 Jun

I think this is going to be one of the more pointless blog posts to date.  It’s contending for the ultimate prize of Most Needless Blog Post Ever against the one about the time I sneezed really loudly and it was embarrassing.

So today I decided to go for a run.  It is, I would say, probably one of the first days this year when it really feels like summer so the smart thing for me to have done would have been to get up earlier and get out for a run before it got too, too hot.  Like, maybe get out the door by 8:30 am.  Well, I woke up at 8:30am so that was pretty much out of the question.  Also, I had a stomachache.  Waking up with a stomachache is really pretty normal for me.  I have always had a pretty bad belly (thanks, Dad!). I specifically remember it really getting bad when I was in high school and one day after track practice I decided to make myself some Kraft Macaroni & Cheese.  This, mind you, was well before the time when I decided that the Kraft company is evil and I would no longer purchase their food but if someone else happened to buy some, say, Ritz crackers I would make no bones about eating them.*  As an aside I would also like to note that ever since Kraft bought Nabisco they have had a serious corner on the cracker market.  Have I talked about this before?  It can be exceedingly difficult to find “good” crackers without Kraft konnections.  Anyway, back to the belly.  So I made myself Kraft Macaroni & Cheese and holy stomachache.  The rest of the afternoon was pretty much a blur of me running in and out of the bathroom… sorry for the over share.  That was the beginning of the end of carefree living for me.  After years of near-constant stomachaches, searing pains running all through my lower abdomen, and trips to the doctor where they did ultrasounds and concluded there was nothing wrong with me at all, I went to this magical chiropractor who did these crazy things with magnets and I discovered that I have an intolerance to basically everything.  I have sensitivities to dairy, wheat, sugar, everything fermented, over ripe fruit, and caffeine.  Not to mention I don’t eat meat.  So I tried to eliminate all of those things from my diet. As a result I felt a lot better but I was fucking hungry all of the time.  So, recently, I have basically just cut out processed things and also dairy, for the most part.  Also, I try and steer clear of fried foods because a lot of times restaurants don’t clean their grease traps and the results are not at all pretty.  So now rather than waking up with a stomachache 100% of the mornings, I wake up with a stomachache like 50% of the mornings.  So I feel pretty good about that.  This morning, unfortunately, was one of the bad 50%.  Hence I didn’t get out the door to run until like 11am when it was already something like 90 degrees.

I decided, in an effort to keep myself cooler, that I would go running in a sports bra and shorts.  It has been quite a long process for me to feel comfortable doing this because I never do any ab work (I know that as a runner this is incredibly stupid) so things move around a little.  This year I decided that I don’t give a fuck about that and if people don’t like it then they can just stop looking at me.  So off I went up to the park, feeling equal parts confident and awkward, running far too fast for the heat because I figured if I felt hardcore enough to run in just a sports bra and shorts I better go pretty fast so I at least look the part.  By the time I got up there I sort of wanted to vomit.  No matter, I went running along anyway.  When I arrived near the exit at Ocean Parkway I decided I needed to give myself a second and, lo and behold, there was a little pathway leading to the lake!  Perfect!  So I walked down the pathway and there, on the benches, was a group of old ladies.  I felt really weird being near the old ladies without my shirt on and I guess they felt weird too because about a minute after I got there they, ever so slowly, left.  I felt bad for disrupting their stay on the benches but happy to have a little outside space all to myself.  So rare!  I started gazing at the water and noticed this strange commotion.  I figured maybe it was fish.  And then I looked a little further and there, about 100 feet or so into the lake, was a floating log that was literally covered in sunbathing turtles all doing that super cute thing that turtles do when they sunbathe where they turn their cute little wrinkly faces up towards the sun and bask.  I. Love. Turtles.  Like, so much.  Anyway, soon thereafter I realized that the commotion in the water that I initially had concluded was fish was actually a bunch of turtles swimming around looking for snacks!!!!  They were everywhere!  It was so great!  I wanted to stand there forever but I was like, drowning in my own sweat and also felt a little bit like a wuss standing in the shade looking like a hardcore runner but not running at all and instead staring at turtles with a cheese-eating grin on my face so I went back out and finished my run which was totally awful.

When I was finally done with the loop of the park I sat in the shade and had the sad realization that I am officially too old to run during the hottest part of the day.  Also, now I have a really bad sports bra tan.  But turtles!  So really, everything is good.

*Note to friends, Ritz crackers are a surefire way to my heart.  And not the whole wheat ones, those are some bullshit.  I want the white flour, super buttery, extra deliciously processed kind only, thankyouverymuch.

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There is a Monster in my Computer

23 May

Okay so you guys.  Today I handed in my thesis.  I printed it on (the required) fancy paper, I ran all around getting signatures, and then I deposited the $40 worth of paper* (sorry, world) on the desk of the person who was tasked with receiving theses.  So, this means three things.  One, I have finally completed my graduate program thus bringing an end to our (AKA my) long national nightmare.  Two, I have more time to read things that are not school related.  And three, I can then write about them here.  So, hooray for you if you like reading my blog!  Anyway, not the point.  The point is that I am fairly certain there is a monster in my computer.

So, here’s what happened.  Today while I was riding the train into the city to get my thesis printed and signed (did I mention that I handed in my thesis today?!) I was reading this article in The New Yorker by John Seabrook called “Network Insecurity:  Are we losing the battle against cyber crime?”  The article is all about these groups of hackers all over the world, that are sometimes associated with a government, that are hacking into computers and stealing all the information!  I know, I know, you are wondering whether I have been living under a rock for the past like, 15 years.  Well, the answer is yes and no.  I remember those scams where that guy in Africa would say he was a prince or something and if you sent him money now you would get all the money later but actually there was no later and you were just a fool.  I also know about Aaron Swartz.  I also know that there have been some articles about how maybe the Chinese government was cyber-spying (which totally makes me think  of creepy chat rooms).  What I did not know is that there might be people hacking into my computer right now!  Like, as I am typing this!  And they might be seeing me type from the “other side!”  And when I think about the “other side” I think that they are reading everything backwards, but then of course if they are tech-y enough to get into my computer in the first place then they can probably read things forwards.  Also, they probably don’t really care about reading my blog while I am writing it because it isn’t that good and they might as well just wait until I officially publish it. (I understand that none of these thoughts are even close to reasonable, but technology totally blows my mind.  3-D printing? What?!)

Sorry, I got off track.  So, anyway, I was reading this article during which Seabrook interviewed all these different FBI guys, and private security firm guys, and NSA guys (they were all guys) about the cyber threat and it seems as though it is actually really big.  Not only is it really big, but it could affect any of us!  Even me!  So this is what really made me nervous.  These hacking people send out these spear-phishing emails that they tailor specifically for you using information they glean from social networking.  Then, when you open the email they attach malicious code, or “malware” (not mall-ware, I learned after I embarrassed myself by mispronouncing it to my adviser) onto your computer.  “Downloading the attachment,” Seabrook says, “silently installs the malware, without your noticing.”  And then this is the really scary part: “later, you may wonder why your computer’s fan is always on (it’s because the hacker is using your machine’s extra computing power).” (!!!!!)  When I got home today my fan was on!

Okay, so this might be due to a few things.  I have been using my computer a lot the last few weeks.  I just finished watching two episodes of Awkward (so funny!).  I am running an outdated version of Firefox because my computer is geriatric and I was afraid to get it updated while I was working on my thesis because what if it crashed and also my backup unit caught on fire or something and then I lost everything.  But this also could mean that there is a hacker inside my computer.  So when I imagine a hacker inside my computer what I imagine is that scene from Space Balls where that guy is eating some food and all of a sudden an alien pops out of his stomach and starts singing “Hello! Ma Baby.” It’s like I would be working on something “very serious” and then some weird mutant would pop out of the screen and it would be horrifying and then maybe my cats would kill it.  But that’s not what the hackers do!  They don’t pop out of things with tiny canes and hats!   They can steal your passcodes and take your money.  Or they can see you through your own computer camera and hear you through your own computer microphone!  That’s scary!

So, in summation, in order to protect myself from the hacker that I am convinced is living inside my computer, I have covered my camera with a small sliver of blue post-it.  Now I can sleep easy.

(I am actually really nervous about this.  Don’t mock me.)

*Shouldn’t the price of that paper just be included in my astronomically high tuition that I will be paying off for the rest of my life because 6.8%!

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It Takes All Kinds

7 May

So here I sit, my fourth full day in a row under florescent lights, staring into my computer, occasionally glancing over at my neatly stacked piles of books and papers.  I have completed one task, my thesis draft, and have moved on to another, strangely more daunting one: the completion of a two-year overdue paper from a class that had a rather unfortunate impact on my opinion of my own intellect.  Perhaps taking the time away from it was a blessing because now, sitting here with my Foucault, my Friedman, my Harvey and my Hayek I am feeling far more capable of writing this beast.  I am feeling far more able to put a Rebekah spin on a topic that I despise: neoliberalism.

Over the past few years I have thought, on and off, about what I might want to write this paper about.  My professor wanted me to write it on housing vouchers which I, personally, think are just a matter of semantics.

*A pause in the room and an exchange of glances to acknowledge what we all hear: a woman walking through the study center with bells tied around her ankles. Odd.*

Anyway, semantics. When I initially set out to write the paper I visited the New York City housing website to bone up on this idea of housing vouchers.  From what I could gather, it was a sort of alternative to the projects-style low-income housing solution that had previously dominated New York City and elsewhere.  Interestingly, on the website the administration boasted about how housing vouchers allowed people to choose the neighborhoods in which they wanted to live, allowed them to perhaps one day buy their own apartment — the neighborhood they used as an example was the Upper East Side.  Now I am no expert, but I found myself very doubtful of the fact that many people using housing vouchers would be able to find affordable housing on the Upper East Side.  It seemed to me that this idea of ‘choice’ that we are all so obsessed with is just a bunch of baloney.  Instead, it seemed like a repackaging of the same old policies. Sort of like, we aren’t going to tell you where you have to live, we are going to allow you to have a choice, but your choices are basically going to be limited to the same old places, the same old neighborhoods, that we have been forcing you to live in for years.  But now it’s your choice so, freedom.  I couldn’t bring myself to write that paper.

But now I am, again, thinking about semantics.  Trying to figure out a way to argue that the word ‘neoliberalism’ has been so overused, defined in so many different ways, as to be rendered absolutely meaningless.  I want to do this without seeming like I am taking the easy way out.  Hence, Foucault.  Everything sounds a lot smarter when you quote Foucault.  Also, I am fairly certain that if one could marry a corpse, this particular professor would have no problem exhuming Foucault and heading straight to the Justice of the Peace.

Anyway, none of this is the point. The point of this post was to share with you, fair readers, the strange thing that I just witnessed.  The guy sitting across from me at the study center; the guy who crammed himself onto the corner of a table already occupied by four other people; the guy who always walks through the study center with his clip-in bicycle shoes; the guy who has one of those hard-plastic backpacks; the guy who I have been silently laughing at all semester has just done something incredibly amusing.  Right there across from me he extracted, from his hard-plastic covered backpack, a full box of cereal. He then pulled out one of those tiffin lunch containers, filled it with cereal,* pulled out a smaller tiffin container filled with yogurt that appeared to be homemade, took out a full-size wooden kitchen spoon, put yogurt on his cereal and began to eat. With the spoon.  The spoon that was bigger than his mouth.  And he acted like nothing was strange at all.

So, yea. That made my day.

*I wish I could tell you it was something awesomely hilarious like Fruity Pebbles or Lucky Charms but it was some Kashi variety. I really wanted to tell the homemade yogurt maker that, with his wooden spoon, he was eating cereal masquerading as organic and healthy that actually is now owned by Kellogg’s and, it has been said, contains GMOs.  But I didn’t. I let him have his moment because I am an adult.

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What do I know from Yoops?

11 Apr

So today when I was walking east on 33rd Street towards my long, long, LONG overdue* waxing appointment I heard something weird.  I was walking by a hotel (or maybe a fancy apartment building?  But probably a hotel because who in their right mind would want to spend a lot of money to live like 2 blocks from Penn Station) and outside there were two door guys talking.  They were both definitely born and raised in New York City somewhere.  Anyway, they were in the midst of a very heated conversation when one of them says to the other,

“Well, I wanted to get yoops to pick up the package but then I called the guy and the guy said that it was probably FedEx that was doing it and not yoops.  I don’t know.  I told the guy I think yoops is better.”

Okay.  So as I walked away I started thinking about why it might be that this guy calls the company yoops rather than U.P.S. like the rest of us.  I came up with the following few possibilities:

1.  It’s like his cute little thing that he does.  Kind of like the way that I say “water” which, admittedly, is a little less choice and a little more accent (and not terribly cute) but still.  It’s like when someone says something about Carl and then you’re like “who’s Carl?” and they’re like “Oh, you know Carl.  He’s the one that says yoops” and at that moment you know exactly who Carl is.

2.  He doesn’t like acronyms and so therefore just doesn’t use them.  He’d be all “well, there was this debate up at the ‘un’-security council the other day” or “I wonder whether ‘who’ is going to approve that new drug for malaria” or “ohmgah! Did you see the new Carie Diaries?!”**

3.  Maybe he doesn’t realize that it is actually called UPS and at first all his friends and family thought that he was just making a joke and they kept letting him do it and then they realized that he was serious but they had been letting him make a fool of himself for this many years and they sort of feel like assholes pointing it out now.

4.  Maybe ‘yoops’ is actually a thing that people say but nobody ever told me about it.

So, yea, that’s it for today.  Other than the fact that I have Funkadelic’s “Freak of the Week” stuck in my head which, all things considered, isn’t so bad.

*You know it is overdue when your waxing lady, who you have been seeing regularly for the past 6 years, takes a look at you and goes, “Oh, Rebekah…”

**Apparently in my mind ‘Carl’ is simultaneously an international affairs student and a 15 year-old girl.

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Yes, Skeevy Cycler, That was Me who Called you an Asshole in the Park Today

25 Mar

So there I was blissfully* running during the late March weather event when, after topping the Prospect Park Hill (which I maintain is much harder than Cat Hill that all the Central Park runners are always griping about), I heard two men behind me, rapidly approaching.  I figured they must be on bikes.  I figured correctly.  Given that it was windy, and they were on the move, some of what they were saying was a little garbled but what I heard was something along the lines of

…blah, blah, blah…I would love that ass for Christmas…blah, blah, blah…so hot.

Obviously, I was annoyed.  Also, my ass happened to be the only ass in their line of vision and it was, at that moment, safely nestled inside a pair of CW-X compression pants.**   Anyway, it was only for a split second that I thought they might have been addressing their comments my way.  More than likely, they were just talking bullshit (albeit offensive bullshit) and my presence was completely coincidental.  Either way, I wasn’t planning on saying  anything at all and instead had resigned myself to just rolling my eyes aggressively and angrily mumbling to myself when I saw who one of the cyclers was.  It was the Skeezy Cycler.  I have intended to write about this guy forever because he has been pissing me off for years, literally.  I bet other women who make a habit of running in Prospect Park know who I am talking about.  He rides around with big groups of other cyclers, wears a red and black tri-suit, has longish brown-grey hair and looks to me like he might be Argentinian, of the Italian variety.  Skeezy Cycler checks out nearly every female runner he sees looping the park, multiple times if you are out there long enough and he happens to lap you.  He has been doing this to me for-fucking-ever and I have been holding a grudge.  Well, when I noticed that one of the dudes was none other than Skeezy Cycler (which I knew because he obviously checked me out for the millionth time), I literally could not help myself.  My mouth went off before I knew what was happening and I said, somewhat loudly,

You guys are assholes.

They then slowed down their bikes, looked over at me and exchanged a perplexed

What did she just say? Did you hear that?

and then, thankfully, rode on.  I was not really up for an altercation right then seeing as how it was snowing and I was cold, but I would have finished what I started had it been necessary.  Anyway, once it became clear they weren’t coming back I came to the realization that the man who had secretly been my nemesis for like half a decade, was now actually my real life nemesis, like, out in the open.  And he would know it was me in the future because I, like him, am hard to miss.  I am not distinguished by my leering but, instead, by the hair that goes down to my ass. Not common.  So I thought to myself why not go stealth and get a hair cut?  But then I was like, why let the Skeezy Cycler win?  Don’t cut your hair to hide from the likes of him.  But then I thought, yeah but what if he calls me a bitch next time he sees me.  Or, worse yet, what if he spits on my when he passes me by!  This might seem an outlandish fear except that it has happened to me before.  Not by him but still. Once you’ve been spit on (twice, in my case, and by the same guy) you are never really the same.  Anyway, ultimately I decided, no, maybe he would be an adult about it and ride up alongside me and say, kindly,

Was that you who called me an asshole the other day?

And then I would say the following:

Yes, it was me who called you an asshole the other day and here’s why.  I have been seeing you for years around the park and I have noticed that you skeezily check out most female runners as you ride by and you know what?  That is not flattering.  That is rude.  We are not out here to impress you.  We are out here clearing our minds, getting in shape, training for a race.  We are working hard on our bodies to feel good and to look good, mostly for ourselves but also for our partners.  Maybe you think it is harmless what you are doing, over and over again, but let me tell you it isn’t.  Some women might not notice, but for others of us, it pisses is off and insults us and makes us feel slightly less human.  We deal with it out on the streets all day, every day, so let us have the park as a zone of safety.  So yes, that was me that called you an asshole and I meant it, I just feel a little bad I caught your buddy in the crossfire.  So, next time you see me, you can wave, or say “hey Rebekah” or “nice pace” or whatever encouraging comment you come up with and I will wave back and return the favor, but for crying out loud stop making me refer to you in my non-running life as the Skeezy Cycler.  Stop making me dread seeing you.  In short, stop being such a dick.  For crying out loud, stop staring.  Staring is rude.

*Actually, it was hailing so not-so-blissfully

**That picture is provided so you can understand why I might have felt slightly uncomfortable about their comments. Furthermore, at this time I would like to point out that I bought my pair of these pants on sale and they were worth every penny.  I would even pay full price for them!  To be honest, I used look sideways at people who wore them but they are oh so awesome for cold weather running.

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There is a Cat Stuck in this Box

18 Mar

A few years ago I was on the phone with my mom when we started discussing cats.  Or, more specifically, we started trying to figure out at which point one might go from being a lady with cats to a cat lady.  After a good amount of discussion we came to the conclusion that when you go from having 3 cats to 4 you have invariably crossed the line.  In hindsight, this was a rather convenient solution seeing as how at that moment my mother was the owner of exactly three felines and she certainly didn’t want to have to think of herself as a cat lady.  To be fair, though, I had found and lured the two younger cats, both of whom were adorable stray kittens, from different potentially dangerous situations and then dumped them at my parent’s house.  One of them, Chicory, had taken up residence in our front yard and driveway which sits just off of a relatively busy road with limited visibility and the other one, Chamomile, I had wrested from the arms of a drunken co-ed who was sitting weeping on the steps of a fraternity during my Sophomore year in college, squeezing the diminutive kitten to within inches of its life.  And then there was Sassafras, by far my favorite, a bitch of a cat who we adopted from the kennel when I was in Kindergarten who only lasted two years after I brought Cammy home and those two years, to be honest, were not her best.  She was very sick with liver failure and passed away on the very same day I went to a dress fitting for the bridesmaids dress I was to wear that coming summer to my brother and sister-in-law to be’s wedding.  At the end of the conversation I said to my mom, in as stern a voice as I could muster,

Mom, cut me off at three.

I am squarely in the safe zone, being a lady with only 2 cats, one full feline below the edge.  I go through my days proudly telling people about my cats, Clark and Grete, and not worrying about the judgement I would receive if I were to then rattle off an additional three names. It was with this calm attitude that I headed out for a run last Thursday afternoon before work.  As I was running past a train yard I heard a loud, shrill, kitten-sounding call for help coming from somewhere within the gated yards.  I stopped and looked around, following the sound, until I located the kitten stuck inside of a kelly green electrical box.  I looked around for help, but it was after 5 and everyone had gone home.  I retraced my steps and ended up at the entrance to some other MTA-owned property with a security guard who seemed relatively unconcerned about the fate of the cat, although he did assure me that he would “send some fellas to check it out.”  I looked around and didn’t see anyone.  What fellas, I wondered to myself, was he talking about?  I figured he must be a dog person.

I headed back in the direction of the cat, saying to myself over and over again that I had to be at work soon, that there was nothing I could do about the cat in the box, that I simply had to trust in the existence of these invisible fellas and that everything would be okay.  As I approached the box I heard the desperate cries of the trapped kitten.  I simply could not pass it by.  So I crouched there and I started talking to the kitten in the box.  Now, mind you, I was on a busy road and cars and people were passing by and the kitten was invisible to everyone but me and, wouldn’t you know it, as long as I was cooing at it the poor little thing stayed calm.  What this meant for me was that it appeared to those passing me by that I was a crazy person in full running get-up talking to a green metal box and frantically looking at every passer-by with panic in my eyes.  Finally, after 1/2 hour of crouching alone by the box in 25 degree weather, a lady, who had just walked past and not given me a second glance, heard the meow and stopped.  I looked at her and to her stationary back said

There is a cat stuck in this box.

She quickly approached and we started trying to come up with plans.  I had noticed a few minutes earlier that the gate to the yard was open but my law-abiding self was afraid to enter and get yelled at by an approaching fella that I had neglected to notice.  She seconded my concerns (minus the fella) and added that she was pretty sure the gate had an automatic lock mechanism and if someone closed it while I was in there I could get stuck and she didn’t care how official my running clothes looked, there was no way I would be able to scale that fence AND the razor wire at the top without (1) getting arrested, (2) falling or (3) ruining my clothes that she was sure were pretty expensive.*  Just then I realized that a car that had glided to a stop was still idling about 20 feet away and I hadn’t noticed anyone get out.  When I looked up at the car, it approached, and the tinted window of the passenger’s side slowly rolled down.  A man in a baseball cap looked out at me and I said to him

There is a cat stuck in this box.

The man looked shocked and quickly came out of the car.  So there we all were, standing on the sidewalk shoulder to shoulder to shoulder, staring at a stationary electrical box and gesticulating wildly.  The man shrugged off our warnings about the possibility of an automatic lock mechanism and entered the yard, with me closely behind him and the lady standing in the entrance to the yard so just in case the doors started closing she could stop them with her body.  He started moving the lid of the box around, I kept an eye out for fellas, and then, just like that, the whole top and side disconnected from the rest of the box.  We peered in and there it was, the cutest, smallest, scaredest little beige kitty.  It wouldn’t come out of the box but, wouldn’t you know it, the man happened to have cat food in his car so he opened a little can and left it propping the box open so the kitty could eat and escape.  Each of us, we discovered, would love to take the kitty home but both the lady and the man already had 4 kittys and I, as I mentioned before, had 2.  So, we left the kitty to its own devices and went off in our different directions, all of us feeling good about having released the kitty and me, with my comparatively small number of cats at home, feeling even more secure in my status as a lady with cats.

*In actuality I bought them on sale, but I still would have been sad if I ripped them.

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Post-Race Recap

25 Feb

So I figured that since I wrote a blog about my Pre-Race Jitters, I might as well recap the run (I will spare you the boring details), following a similar format to the original post just for accuracy.  For those of you who didn’t read the initial blog, that’s okay, you can read it here, or where I already linked it above!  Or not at all.  Whatever, it’s your life.

1.  The training, yea, I didn’t really do a good job of it.  I ran the 13.1 miles in roughly the same time I ran it last year, plus a few minutes.  My 2013 time was 1:48:23 and my 2012 time was 1:45:15.  Not too shabby.  But my hips hurt because I stopped doing hip strengthening exercises about halfway through my training cycle.  And today my quads are sore because I don’t like to do squats at the gym because of this stupid trainer there who butted into my workout and gave me bad advice.  I wrote about that here, if you care to refresh.  But all in all, it was what I thought it would be.  Cardiovascularly* I was good to go, muscularly not so much.  But it was fun after I relaxed into it so that’s something.

2.  I decided, with the advice of my good friend C., to wear the old shoes that I had already run too many miles in instead of the new shoes that hurt my ankle bump.  I think this was the right choice although I felt like I ran the entire race with cement feet.  Also, for the second time this week my pinky toenail cut the inside of my fourth toe during the run.  Gross.  Also, ouch.

3.  My period started the day before the race which was exactly the wrong time for it to start but also exactly what I expected because my period is an asshole that wants to ruin my life.  I will spare you the gorey details on that one but suffice it to say that it was necessary for me to wait in the obscenely long port-o-potty line before the race, making me almost late for the race start, and then rush to the port-o-potty again right after the race.  For those of you who might never have used a port-o-potty either before or after a race, there is basically nothing grosser.  In short, runners are disgusting.  Also, there may not be any Purell left by the time you get there.  Not that I had that problem personally…right…okay…moving on.

4.  I know that my initial blog only had 3 worry things, but now that I am recaping I want to add something to this list that I never would have thought to worry about before the race but that then occurred during the race and made me feel really sad.  So, in my experience as a person who has run a lot of races of all different distances, I always find that runners are a good and supportive bunch.  I have seen people encourage others, help them up if they trip, support people over the finish line when they are completely out of energy, run a fallen comrade’s shoe over the final time mat so she could receive her medal.  Never have I encountered someone who was intentionally rude and disrespectful to their fellow runners.  That is until yesterday.  Yesterday I got stuck next to these two bros from miles 2-4, give or take.  One of them didn’t say much but the other…oh man was he a piece of shit.   So, there was this girl who got overheated and pulled over to the side of the course to take her long sleeved shirt off.  This is a normal thing.  And what did the asshole do?  He screamed,

“Oh yea! Take it off!”

I literally almost lost my shit.  I thought about saying something but then I was afraid I would be stuck next to them for the entire race and it would ruin my own experience so instead I sped up to get ahead of them and snarled in the dude’s ear as I passed,

“You’re a real fucking gem.”

He didn’t hear me because he was wearing headphones which he technically shouldn’t have been doing anyway but whatever.  I thought I was safe but then they caught up with me again and there was this guy wearing a tight pink running top and some capri running tights — not at all a weird outfit to see — and the fucking dude hit his friend in the arm, pointed at the guy and started quietly laughing at him.  I had half a mind to say,

“How dare you laugh at people who worked hard to get here. Who do you think you are?  Grow up.”

But I bit my tongue partially for the reason I mentioned before but also because I didn’t want the pink dude to overhear me scolding them and realize they were making fun of him and then feel self-conscious and therefore have a bad race.  I really wish I had written down his bib number so I could have written a letter to the race organizers.  Which I would have done and then shared with you all.  Oh well.  Hindsight.

And now for the good things!

1. I didn’t actually end up running with C. because she is fast and just cannot help herself from running fast.  She kicked butt in the race despite not being super well-trained for it.  What a talented jerk.

2.  There was music!  And some of it was really awesome and fun.  I loved the people who put huge stereos outside of their super cool Southern-looking houses.  What I didn’t love was the band stationed at the mile 3/7 mark who played the most unmotivating music ever.  Purple Rain?  Patience?  Really?  You need a runner friend to lend you their motivating playlist, band.

3.  C. and I did not become friends with either Kara or Shalane.  But I ran with my hands in my armpits anyway.  I am totally kidding.  Or am I?!

4.  I had a Bloody Mary (or two..).  Melvin shared this one with me:

IMG_04685.  In the afternoon, I went to a bar with my friend Carie and we had a vodka soda and then this ridiculous thing happened which made us mad.  There we were, minding our own business, sipping our insanely-strong vodka sodas with straws when some dude reaches between us where a candle was perched and goes

“I’m just gonna borrow a little light for our candle”

and proceeds to reach into my drink, grab one of my straws, and try to light it using our candle.  He took a straw with his filthy ass hands that he may or may not have washed right out of my drink!  Who the fuck does that?  When I objected by grabbing the straw out of his hand and telling him exactly how not okay it was that he did that he says, like a fucking dickwad would,

“Calm down, killer.”

Ugh!  Needless to say this sent Carie and I into “put a douche in his place” mode.  I will let you imagine how that went.

6.  I am still planning on watching the AT&T American Cup on Sunday (when will USA Gymnastics announce the competitor who is replacing Elizabeth Price for crying out loud?!) and I am still planning on writing a letter to NBC about their need to fire one or all of their commentators and replace them with Alicia Sacramone.

So, yea, that is pretty much that.  Oh, and to the person who came across my blog by searching the term “what melts dog poo” I hope that it answered your question which is nothing.  Nothing melts dog poo you stupid idiot.  Just pick it up.

*I would like to acknowledge the fact that while WordPress does recognize the word “ginormous” as being acceptable in the English language and therefore not in need of a red squiggly line underneath it, it does not feel the same way about the word “cardiovascularly” or its own company name.  Seems fishy to me.

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