Oou gawazik. Oou birfl CLUTCH!"

Tonight when I was taking a cab home from work, the cab driver was listening to a talk radio show on which two men were yelling angrily at each other as though they were talking about something of utmost importance. I was so tired that I tuned out the words at first, and only picked up on their tones. What topic of utmost importance, pray tell, could these two grown men be discussing? What could prompt tones of such passion, such moral outrage, such disgust of each other? Could it be the privatization of water in Bolivia, which involved companies trying to exact exorbitant prices for water and trying to prevent poor people from collecting rainwater? Could it be Dow-maker-of-napalm-Chemical's ridiculous "Human Element" ads? Could it be the rape and torture of women and children at Abu Ghraib and attempts by many in the the military and our government to cover it up?

Alas, they were not discussing any of these things. The topic deemed worthy of a screaming match between two adults, and furthermore worthy of precious airtime, was baseball.

Although I consider myself a native English speaker, there are times when I feel as though I do not quite understand English-language conversations around me. When people discuss certain sports, such as American football and baseball, I feel as though they might as well be speaking a foreign language.

Tonight's baseball conversation sounded like this to me:

"CLUTCH!"
"Manny Ramirez? CLUTCH? Birfl vooli."
"Gawazik, Ramirez floof livoor 'CLUTCH.'"
"Gawazik, Ramirez birfl floof CLUTCH!"
"Jool, Ramirez floof floof CLUTCH! CLUTCH CLUTCH CLUTCH!"
""Oou gawazik. Oou birfl CLUTCH!"

I did not really know what they meant by "CLUTCH." I thought it was a kind of a small, overpriced, and relatively useless purse. I did not see what a small, overpriced, and relatively useless purse had to do with baseball. Perhaps the men were alluding to the fact that tickets to a baseball game are small, overpriced, and relatively useless.

In any case, the above high-decibel conversation continued with no hope of any intelligent gems ever being recovered from either of the two angry men's mouths. I was starting to feel nauseous. I whipped out my iPhone and began to net-surf, hoping to drown out the men's voices with news feed items from Facebook. It made me even more nauseous, so I put it away.

Eventually the talk of CLUTCH subsided, and the conversation topic switched to spam e-mails about penile enhancement. Ah, a much more intelligent topic of conversation. I felt my nausea go away.

the opposite of Schadenfreude?

Finding out that a newer, sexier model of the iPhone is now being offered for a third of the price that I paid for the one I have now is like finding out that an ex-boyfriend who was a fat emotional train wreck when I dated him is now cut like an Abercrombie and Fitch model and in a stable, drama-free relationship with someone else.


(That was a really long sentence that might have worked better in German.)

All I really needed

Yesterday when riding my bike home from a barbecue, I suddenly realized what I needed to be really happy. These past few months, work has been really stressful and I have been sleep- and exercise-deprived, as well as sick. I had three colds so far this year alone, and I was feeling miserable. In search for a cure-all for my blues, I did all sorts of things. I exercised when I was dead tired at 12:30 am, just to make sure I would get some exercise. I slept in occasionally on weekends, even when I couldn't really afford to. I popped vitamins. I engaged in retail-therapy more than my wallet really allows.

But all that I really needed to be happy was much simpler. I just needed to ride my bike home on a hot summer evening. Somehow those few minutes of pedaling on the same bike I've had since I was 17, while wearing my red and white summer skirt and breathing the hot humid air, made me so very happy.

I can't tell the difference between a USB cable and a Firewire cable, but I pretend to in real life

I recently discovered that guys who work at Staples can be just as annoying as guys who work at Radio Shack. I went to Staples this weekend to buy, among other things, a USB cable for my printer. Upon arriving at Staples, I realized that there were several USB plug types that looked similar to the plug on my printer model, but I wasn't sure which one it was. Staples sold cables having, for example, 5-pin plugs or 4-pin plugs, or with an oddly shaped interface that wasn't a "5-pin" or a "4-pin." I took the USB cable that I thought resembled my printer's plug and then found the same model printer as the one I owned in the store.

"Excuse me," I explained to Staples Dude. "I have the same printer as that one at home. Do you mind if I just check the USB plug in the back to make sure I've got the right cable?"

"They're all the same," he bullshitted.
"Excuse me?"
"USB cables are all the same," he said, moving closer to me.
"Um, no. You sell ones with 5-pin plugs and ones with 4-pin plugs. So they are not all the same."

I could tell he was annoyed about my making a simple statement to rebut his bullshit. That was part of why I did it.

"Well," he said, moving closer to me. "You've got all the wrong cables. What you've got there are Firewire cables."

This time I didn't waste any words on him. I waved the packages in front of his face and pointed at the labels that read "USB." I couldn't believe it. Normally when I catch people in the middle of their bullshit, they back off rather than getting deeper into bullshit. Also, it struck me as vastly inane and arrogant all at once for him to assume, just because he couldn't read or tell the different between USB and Firewire cables, that I couldn't either.

"Oh," he said. "Uh... well those are not the right cables for the printer."
"If you would just let me check the back of the printer, then I could..."
"Let me show you the right one."
"Let me just check the back of the printer."

I did, and discovered that the right plug was neither the 5-pin nor the 4-pin, but the third type I'd seen before. I didn't need Staples Dude's help, but he accompanied me back to the cable aisle to tell me something I already knew. He grabbed a package and said, "This is the one you want."

"Are you sure?" I said, which was really "Is that just another bullshit statement of yours?"
He cowered a little and replied "yes" softly, and then said something along the lines of "those cables you were holding looked like Firewire cables from far away."

I glared at him, took the package, and promised myself never to ask for "help" from annoying Staples Dude again.

/googlebation/

(noun)
: the act of Googling oneself.

Example: "She indulged in a fit of googlebation one morning before work and discovered, much to her sadness, that according to the Internet record of herself, she used to be so much cooler."

Men are pigs! Oh, and by the way, I have a Ph.D.

[drafted June 2007]

The Man With a Van, the moving company I hired for my upcoming move, called me when I was at work a few days ago. The purpose of the phone call was unclear at first. The Man didn't get to the point. Since I was in the middle of a busy work day, I didn't want to talk for long on the phone.

Reception on my cell phone was bad, so I asked to call him back using my office phone. By the time I got through to him again, I forgot where we were in the conversation.

"Are we done?" I asked, meaning, "Is there anything else you need to tell me or ask me?"
"Um... did I do something to upset you?" he asked, sounding really hurt.

For all the crap they give us women for being super sensitive or "emotional," it's mostly guys who seem to get upset with me for not wanting to spend hours on the phone with them. The conversation with the Man was even more absurd because he was a complete stranger. It seemed as though he wanted to chit chat, perhaps out of sheer boredom. I didn't agree with his inane idea that it was my job to relieve him of his boredom.

On the other hand, there is a part of me that is slightly worried that I am turning into an asshole. I've been treated like a smart and capable person at my new job, which is a really nice change from my grad school days. But the new job, along with other things going well, has made me feel so good about myself, I may be thinking too highly of myself these days.

"No... sorry... I'm at work and I need get back to it soon. Do you need to know anything else?"

He went on, again in a convoluted way, about the possibility of me changing my moving appointment (a second time) to accommodate his other customers who were booking their moving appointments last minute. I had already answered his question earlier in the conversation. I guess he was using the common male strategy of repeating the same question with the hopes that eventually I would turn "no" into "yes."

"No, the appointment's already been changed one time and I made rearrangements. I don't want to rearrange again."

I was merely stating the facts, but then he got defensive and condescending.

"Well... the moving business is fluid, sweetheart."

Sweetheart? Usually the only guys who use that term with me are trying to establish some sort of power relationship in which they prop themselves up as being smarter than I am. Always the guys who do that are not as bright as they think they are.

I was annoyed at his calling me "sweetheart, " but didn't say anything about it. He was already wasting too much of my time. I hung up and went back to my work. I don't plan on tipping the Man very much. But when moving day comes, I'm tempted to do what the kids in my Taekwondo club wrote into a skit this spring. The skit roasted seniors and other graduating students. The "Suzanne" character in that skit kicked a guy in the nuts, then said "Men are pigs! Oh, and by the way, I have a Ph.D."

It feels like constipation

My coworkers think that I am unhappy if I don't get to kick (attend Taekwondo practice) in a while. This is somewhat true. Generally, I need to get at least a minimal level of exercise to feel alright. But what is truer is that I am unhappy if I don't get to write, and I haven't gotten to write (anything other than patent applications and responses to the Patent Office) in a long long time.

Other writers out there understand what I mean. When I don't get to write, it feels like constipation. It is really uncomfortable. I am agitated and ansy all the time. Sometimes I just have to get it out, and I'll stop whatever I'm doing just to get it out. And once I do, my body feels right again.