Cell phones are winning the war for republicans.

Cell phones are so ubiquitous that a) public pay phones are disappearing, and b) fewer people wear watches, using their phones as timepieces instead.

Yesterday I was on the bus and I heard a ticking sound. I thought bomb before I thought watch. I stayed on until my stop.

I like you the way you are (when we're driving in your car)

I am very amused by the phrase "she's hot though." These three words can be used by any heterosexual male to excuse just about any female behavior or trait (or, for that matter, any related irrational male behavior). It is remarkable. A search for this phrase in google gives results like: "her music sucks ... she's hot, though"; "she always looks kinda cheap ... she's hot, though"; "she's underaged ... she's hot, though"; "she's dumb as bricks ... she's hot, though"; etc. Hot girls get away with everything. On the one hand, it isn't fair; on the other hand, they're hot.

Are we there yet?

My wonderful roommates came to cheer me on at the finish and took this photo of me.


I burned 3000 calories on Sunday in four hours and twenty-two minutes. I will spare my thoughts on running a marathon because I already wrote something about it five years ago, but I'll say that it is still really hard despite having actually trained this time. (And by training, what I mean is I ran a total of 25 miles this month leading up to it.) Still, it was fun.

I want to ask for a raise in this way: "I think I deserve a raise. For all you know, I work really hard."

(I am, incidentally, writing this while at work. Also, is putting incidentally inside parentheses redundant?)

How Not To Ask Out A Girl

Back in college (when I still did quality thinking), I decided that the best girls to ask out were ones I did not know; random ones on the street or wherever. My reasoning was that this: a) made for a better story, b) made rejection less painful because there was less personal and emotional investment in it. Last week, ten years later, I attempted this.

There's this cute barista that works at the coffee shop on my block that I frequent. I used to see her more often but I'd seen her only twice or so the past couple months. She is cheerful which counts for a lot. I'd never spoken to her before. When I went in, I ordered a "a short latte" ... "umm. with caramel" ... "and soy", replace ellipses with half-second hesitancy because cute girls make me nervous. I mentioned how I hadn't seen her much lately and she said she only worked a few days because of school. Above the static of steaming soy, I found out she was in her last year ("finally"). I would have said more but there were customers behind me so I took a seat and pretended to read and write for an hour.

Then, I had an idea, because I have a habit of working towards ideas more than I do towards success (probably because I expect to fail and wrongly think this makes it better somehow), and asked her if she'd mind if I used a computer for a few minutes as it is an internet cafe. I went over to a computer and opened Word and typed "Dear Miss Barista, Perhaps I can interest you in a drink after your shift, Customer #5, Andy" and I printed it out, and you should know that everything gets sent to a printer behind the counter because you have to pay for printouts, and I went to the counter and told her I had printed something. She, nosy barista, reads the note as she walks over and says she has a boyfriend and thanks me for being nice, and I leave.

I do not know if she really has a boyfriend but I've decided that I'm simply not good looking enough to pull this sort of thing off. And rejection still stinks.

Sweet Bear Vets for Tooth

I went to the post office to try to mail something only to discover that no one was working because it was Veterans Day. I think we've got it all backwards. Surveys show that a third of the homeless population in the United States are veterans. Instead of a day off, we should make everyone, including the veterans, work on Veterans Day. Then we can simultaneously fix the two large concerns of our country: homelessness and the package that sits on my desk waiting to be sent.

Success!

So I have a minor fixation with pizza. Other things I (pretend to) have fixations with: ponytails, pocky, diet coke, the little mermaid, flan. Anyway, New York is the best town for pizza. It's also the best town for a lot of other things, like friends, but let's stick with pizza. Seattle is a crappy town for pizza. Seattle is generally underwhelming when it comes to food, but the pizza is spectacularly bad. People will say something like "the pizza at this place is so good" and then I go there and realize people here have no idea what good pizza is. Thin, with a nice crust that is chewy and not a cracker, not too much sauce, not too much cheese. The only place I've had a really good pie in Seattle is at Serious Pie, which isn't really NY style, but is thin and puffy and delicious.

I have spent a lot of time making pizzas from scratch. They are never really that good. Always too crackery and not chewy. Probably better than the average slice here in seattle, but not necessarily worth the effort, and certainly not better than what you can get for $2 in new york. (Strangely, a slice of shitty pizza in seattle is $3. Bastards.)

This flusters me because pizza can't be that hard to make. This is logically true. At least one person on every block in new york city knows how to make a decent pie.

Finally, this past week, I have made good pizza. Not corner pizzeria, but fancy old-style NY pizza like at Grimaldi's or Lombardi's or John's, etc. I do not know if I'll ever be able to recreate it again because I just eyeballed everything, but hopefully I can; I remember most of what I did, and remember how everything felt. Tonight I made a classic margherita with some ricotta:






My roommate calls it the best pizza she's had in Seattle. I should open a restaurant. I can sell pizza and General Andy's Chicken, the best-selling foods of New York.

Moral truths

Dishonesty, it turns out, is an even better policy.

Baking sorrow to a burnt crisp.

When I am sad, I start to bake and cook. I just got my second Kitchenaid, because it would've been silly to ship my other bigger one all the way here from NY.

Two days ago I made ciabatta. Yesterday, I made General Andy's Chicken. Today I made some bagels, based on inspiration from Heather having made some recently, though I didn't bother with that bitch Martha and went with my trusty King Arthur Flour Baking Companian. I don't know if mine are any better than Heather's, but they look pretty nice.

but if i'm not drunk, how will i speak?

I ought to check myself into an expensive rehab clinic in Utah.
It's my best chance to hook up with Lindsay Lohan.

self-pity rant

I am running out of friends in seattle.

happiness = n^2 + 35.

I've been told before that I don't want to be happy, or that I enjoy being miserable, or something like that. That is absurd. Sometimes I like to make things difficult for myself but there is nothing I want more than to be happy. I just want to clear that up.

I am so smart. smrt.

People are more confident about their intelligence than they are about their looks. I think just about anyone would trade in some of their intelligence for better looks. Any smart person would, anyway.

They both have two first names.

Ron Paul is the current-day Republican equivalent of yesteryear's Howard Dean.

Social Awkwardness

I am far more socially awkward than most people realize. There are a number of reasons for this but I happened to think of one just now while flipping around in bed not falling asleep.

I was fairly shy as a child. Not very shy, but I never raised my hand and didn't usually speak unless spoken to. At some point, I think around the beginning of high school, I began to view my shyness as a weakness of character and a lack of control rather than accept it as the natural and probably genetically influenced personality trait that it was. So I decided to do something about it. This produced a less shy Andy but with a couple peculiarities. Rather than being naturally effusive and gregarious, I tend to speak out in spurts, like my mind suddenly notices I'm being shy and turns something on and my mouth goes off. The second thing is that for some reason I felt compelled to compensate for the shyness by being louder.

I wonder if there is any way I can fix this or if I should even bother trying.

Difference between Seattle and NY, No. 12231

Relative to the size of the populace, there seems to be a much larger number of people with tattoos in Seattle than in New York, especially striking considering that Seattle is full of white people and white people were the second least likely group to have tattoos in NY other than Asians. The difference, however, is that I'm a bit scared of the people with tattoos in New York and the tattoos here somehow makes everyone seem punier. Suddenly, I'm tempted to go and get that Little Mermaid tattoo after all. On second thought, I'd better not.

it's fun time all the time!

Somehow, my internal clock has adjusted right over to Pacific Time with no hiccups. I'm going to sleep, as I always do, around 3am and waking up around 11am. I ought to test the limits of this by going to China and seeing how I fare.

swift movement.

Packing light is always a revelation. You realize just how mobile you really are. Other than my books, I doubt there's much I'm gonna think about or miss (until it gets cold and I'm lacking my winter clothing, anyway.) The things I'll really miss, of course, are the intangible things - friends, places, etc. It occurs to me that we gather excessive physical belongings at least partly because it anchors us down to where we are so we can't just pick up and leave, a somewhat subconscious desire to settle down somewhere.

I do not plan on buying too many things in Seattle perhaps because it's hard for me to fathom staying there an especially long time. It also helps that I can't really afford to buy many things.

At any rate: Watch out, Seattle. Here I come.

Musical chairs.

Where to sit on the subway in new york can be tricky. The ideal seat is usually the one that is at an end, so that you only have to share one side of yourself with another person. (God forbid you are touching someone!) In the wintertime, especially on a train that spends a lot of time overground like the J or the 7, you might be better off sitting in the middle because end seats are near the door and when the door opens, you get a blast of chill air. On older-style trains that have only benches against the sides, there is the long row in the middle, and the smaller two-seaters at both ends. These "love benches" are great for lovers, and slightly odd for strangers, and a little too small for two people. I think they should be reserved for fat people. (Incidentally, these are the best seats to sit in if you want to eat food. But I don't recommend eating because you'll feel guilty when a homeless man wanders past.) On newer trains that have actual seats and are arranged with right angles in them, the seat against the window is the best one to sit in if you want to take a nap because you can rest your head on the window but is hardest to extricate yourself from so it's best for long rides. It is also not ideal for tall people because it has the least amount of legroom. For them I recommend the seat next to it, which has the easiest access in and out of, and is also best for OCD types because you can "sit" on this seat while using the smallest amount of your ass.

Leaning against the door on the side that opens less frequently for stops is the best place to stand if you prefer to, but it is also the hardest from which to get a seat if you are hoping for one.

If you see an old lady eyeing a seat, let her through because she's going to beat you there anyway; they are somehow the most aggressive demographic on trains.

The Most Pleasant People

Here is my latest sweeping generality based on absolutely no fact or experimentation or study: The most pleasant people to be around are the above-average looking. I am going to broadly divide the population into four aesthetic groups: the ugly, the below-average, the above-average, and the beautiful. Interestingly, there are no average people. This is because no one is actually average. The beautiful are snotty and stuckup. The uglies are bitter. The below-average and above-average are mostly interchangeable, but I'll take the above-average because they're easier on the eyes.

Fun With Etymology

Due to my nerdy nature, I find much amusement in certain words. One of my favorites is moxie because it sounds good, has good meaning, and especially because it is named after the supposed oldest continuously produced soda. Last summer, I attempted to acquire a taste for it just so I could drink it whenever I felt low on moxie, like a superhero drinking superjuice, but even after dozens of cans, it was still foul-tastingly medicinal. In fact, it was marketed as a panacea of sorts back when carbonated beverages were still called "elixirs."

Another kind of word I really like is one that seems vague but is actually very exactly defined. A dash, for example, as in a dash of salt, is an eighth of a teaspoon. A jiffy is a hundredth of a second. I don't know any more but I would guess that these precise amounts were given after the fact. I bet a foot wasn't always 12 inches, a cup wasn't always 8 ounces, and a penis wasn't always 6.1 inches.

In the interest of my current boredom, I have decided to start giving arbitrary but exact measurements for vague terms. I therefore declare a trot to be 6 miles per hour, tone-deaf to be someone whose pitch is at least a half-tone off, an inkling to be a quarter of an ink, a glance to be a half-second look, and a mouthful to be a cylindrical form of 4.8 inches in circumference and 6.1 inches in length.