Comments and Suggestions

This was taken at the student-run cafe on my campus. Yes, that is a trash can.

Happy Friday, bitches!

 

Ah, the circular file

 

the honeymooners

If I had to capture our trip to Italy in one picture, it would be ... ah, yeah.

One of the best things about going and getting yourself all married is the customary vacation that follows. For ours, we took a long-postponed trip to Italy. We spent most of our time in Florence, with a couple days in Rome and a day trip to Siena thrown in.

Ty had already spent a good amount of time in all three cities, but it was my first time in Italy, so we did a lot of the stuff you do during your maiden visit to a foreign land. We also drank a lot and ate a lot and got to see some of our friends living in Europe.

I will not bore y’all with a day-by-day itinerary like I did my poor mother, but here are some of my observations from the trip:

• Rome was way cooler than I thought it would be. That probably sounds bad, but whatever. I was expecting something more like the “oh, this is New York City but foreign” let-down I felt when I went to Paris last summer, but Rome was stubbornly tied to its historical and cultural roots. There you are, walking through this vibrant contemporary city, when you come upon ruins from an ancient temple sticking up in the middle of a piazza like an antiquated cowlick. Turns out I like antiquated cowlicks.
• Gelato in the U.S. is not gelato.
• Pizza in the U.S. is not pizza.
• Out of all the big Renaissance masters with ninja turtles named after them, Michelangelo is still the only one I’m hot on.
• I’m also pretty hot for old Italian cathedrals, and no pictures could ever, ever do them justice. Out of the ones we visited, the Duomo di Siena was by far my favorite. The photos are neat enough, but they fail to capture the “holy fuck” feeling that comes over you when you walk in there. The black and white marble columns, the mosaic floors, the illuminated manuscript room with the absolutely awe-inspiring, Moorish-influenced ceiling of golds and reds, blacks and the deepest blues… this cathedral isn’t playing around. And I’m not even religious.
• The Chianti Classico region would be a very nice place to retire. Or relocate to tomorrow. Either/or.

Photos, for those of you who can stand more of those.

sending a message!

On our way home from my fabulous birthday dinner, Ty and I found ourselves behind a truck driver with a very important message.

Subtext: I eat puppies.

Note that his anti-animals message is even larger than his CB radio call number. Also note that it includes italics.

You know. For emphasis.

our new neighbor

This little lady has started hanging out outside our doorway.

Am I poisonous?

(Ok, so maybe she’s not so little. She also looks a bit like a brown widow spider, which are kind of venomous and maybe not the coolest things to have hanging around. But I digress.)

For the past several days, I’ve been greeted in the mornings by really, really big spiderwebs in and around our outside landing, and each day they get a little closer to our door. When I got home last night, her web spanned the entire width of our door, like a big people net.

Which, of course, reminded me of this.

(it was a good plan.)

a haiku for you

Drunk iPhone typing–

I didn’t realize I had

such big, clumsy thumbs.

rimtastic

The best part is that these were spotted in Takoma Park, Land of Hippies.

Nothing says you're a player like... well, yeah.

things that make me sad, #71

Today at the pool I got super psyched when it looked like I was going to lap the dude swimming next to me. Then we got to the end of our lanes and I saw he was about 80.

“I’d like a little less romance in my romance novels, please.”

Yesterday, I saw this in a Harlequin romance novel display at Borders:

"Nothing makes me want to do it like a chalk outline."

I’m not sure if it was the juxtaposition of murder and blossoming romance, the intrinsic oddness of the phrase “love-inspired suspense,” or the inexplicable inclusion of an adorable kitty peeking out from behind the legs of one of our headless protagonists, but it kinda caught my attention.

Upon consulting the interwebs, I learned that On a Killer’s Trail is one of a series of Harlequin books dedicated to highlighting Christian romantic ideals through tales of gruesome crime. In this particular installment, an old lady’s murder leads our protagonists to the realization that it’s important to save sex for marriage.

I guess it makes sense, seeing as butchered old ladies are up there with images of festering snakebite wounds on the list of “Things That Really Don’t Make Me Want to Do It.”

making the fatties pay!

Yesterday, United Airlines announced its plan to charge overweight passengers additional fees or bump them from their flights entirely.

It works like this. If two adjoining seats are available on the overweight passenger’s flight, they can fly with no additional fees. If there are extra seats in coach that are not adjoining, they are required to pay for a second ticket (presumably to compensate for the flight attendant’s having to undergo the laborious task of asking someone else to switch their seat to accommodate the overweight passenger) or they can pay to “upgrade” to business class. If the flight is completely full, then the overweight passenger gets bumped from the flight. But don’t worry! They get refunded. (Continental, Southwest, and Delta already have similar policies.)

The airline made the change after receiving nearly 700 complaints last year from passengers who claimed that the overweight person seated next to them on their flight “infringed on their seat.”

Perhaps the only thing shittier than this policy is the fact that, in several polls I’ve seen in the past couple days, the overwhelming majority of people seem to agree with it.

I mean, seriously. Do parents get fined when their babies cry throughout a flight, or when their kids kick the backs of seats? Do people get fined for bringing really smelly sandwiches on board that fill the entire coach section with smells of onions and vinegar, or for being really smelly themselves, or having loud, obnoxious conversations with their traveling companions? Cause I’d say all those things “infringe” on the other passenger’s comfort as much as not having a left armrest.

There has been so, so much research on biological causes for obesity, and on the ways the classic diet-and-exercise prescription does not work for many, many people. But no matter, cause our society really hates fat people, to the point that 75% of us say make the fatties pay, goddamn it, even when there are empty seats on the fucking plane, because the very presence of their oversized bodies is “infringing” on our comfort.

Seems like, as our society gets more and more “enlightened,” all it’s doing is creating new scapegoats for itself.

your pants might not be pants if…

Dear AU Undergraduates,

There are pants and there are leggings. I understand that you might be receiving mixed messages about the interchangeability of these clothing items, and so I wanted to let you all know that they are not the same thing.

‘But how will I know if what I am wearing on my bottom half is a pair of pants or glorified hosiery masquerading as pants?’ you ask. Don’t worry. I’m here to help. Below is a list of things that might indicate that your pants are not really pants.

1. Your “pants” have a crotch gusset.
2. Your “pants” easily stretch to three times their actual size.
3. You can poke a hole through your “pants” with your fingernail.
4. Said hole, once poked, causes a run.
5. In certain unflattering lights, your cellulite is visible through your “pants.”
6. Your underwear is visible through your “pants.”
7. Your lack of underwear is visible through your “pants.”
8. You saw your “pants” being worn as pants by a model in an American Apparel ad.
9. You bought your “pants” at American Apparel.
10. When wearing your “pants,” strangers shout at you phrases such as, “Hey, you, put on some pants!”

This list is by no means exhaustive, but I hope it helps you as you navigate the minefield that is dressing yourself without your mothers and/or older, judgmental siblings casting editorial glances in your direction.

Sincerely,

A Concerned Campus Citizen