Tricks of the mind.

Sometimes you hear about people for whom it was love at first sight, or that they knew right away he/she was "the one." I wonder if anyone has ever said this about someone ugly. This love at first sight thing, I think for me, really just means I saw a pretty girl. It's all a trick. But if I one day think this about an ugly person, then I would be sure it were really true.

My inner hunger.

I have an inner hunger. It speaks to me in a hushed but stern tone: French Fries.

I am mute.

Here is my phone bill from last month:


I averaged six minutes of phone usage a day!

Four Star Hotness!

Ordering (substandard) food here in Seattle entails a new system that I was hitherto unfamiliar with: Waittress: "How spicy you want? One to five stars." Sometimes the scale only goes up to four stars, but it always seems to be in stars, even though stars have absolutely nothing to do with spiciness (why not just one to five?), and if it does, it would have more to do with the quality of the spiciness than the quantity. Anyway. I am used to the east coast method of answering "How spicy?" with "A little."

The whole system is messed up because there is no frame of reference. Even when you get accustomed to the scale of one restaurant, it's all lost at another place. One place's five stars is another's three. And maybe they adjust for the customer. If a white person walks into a Mexican place and asks for five stars, the chef might snicker and make it pretty spicy, but not too spicy. But if a Mexican walks into a Mexican place and asks for five stars, he might get the whole enchilada. (Sorry.) And if a woman walks in, the rating might automatically be halved.

Anyway. If I really wanted to be an asshole, I should answer in Scoville Heat Units. I think I prefer about a thousand. In the mean time, I'm sticking with non-spicy foods.

Awkward thing no. 242112392 I dream of saying

Random salesgirl at store: Can I help you?
Andy: I'm lonely.

I'm just a boy with a new haircut and that's a pretty nice haircut

When I get a haircut, I always say, "Do whatever you want," and I always get a similar haircut.

And what is it with hipster girls and mullets?

Appreciation Inflation

Every morning, when I get off the bus, I say thank you to the bus driver. I do this because everyone else does it and I don't want to seem rude, but I am not going to do it anymore; not because I want to be rude, but because it is inaccurate and a degradation of language.
We've become overly polite and thank people for doing things they're supposed to do. Like thanking the postman when he brings you mail. It's his job to bring you mail and he gets paid to do it! And these are good jobs. It's not like they're doing us a favor, or performing a job that is difficult/underpaid/or doing something no one else wants to do. From now on, I might say Good Morning or Good Afternoon, but I'm not thanking them anymore. I'm not apologizing to the homeless anymore, either. When they ask me if I can spare any change, I am going to say no.

Do Not Pass Go.

New five dollar bills with more color were introduced recently:



Apparently, the US Dollar has become so worthless that the Treasury decided to just go ahead and make it interchangeable with Monopoly money.

Put your clothes back on young lady!

A friend once said to me, with some disgust, that many of the girls I pointed out as being attractive while we were walking around were slutty looking. I denied this at first (vehemently), but then realized it is absolutely true. Slutty girls ARE attractive. That's the whole point. If slutty girls weren't trying to attract men (if not specifically me) with their provocative clothes and pouty looks, then they wouldn't dress that way at all. Who am I to deny them success after all the trouble they went to?

My most awesome dream.

In the hour between after being briefly woken up by my roommates being loud getting up and when I actually got up, I had the most narratively cohesive dream I have ever had. It is like a mish-mash of various folk and fairy tales and flowers for algernon, and someone should tell me if it is lifted entirely out of something. But anyway:

By some scientific process, which involved cells or sperm or something, I invented a half animal that could speak. This part of the dream I forget a little, but I am sure it is scientifically sound. I paraded my new pet to my friends and we drove around, and it was pretty cool. She started growing and looking more and more like a girl, though I knew she was still part animal, and we hung out a lot because she had no one else. She had shoulder length dark hair, cut at a severe angle rising towards the back, and was easy to take around because she was unfamiliar with everything. I didn't quite trust her though, and by the time she was my height, she was growing at such a fantastically fast rate, I began to get scared that she'd become much larger and then eat me.

Because of my fear, and my innate greed, I resolved to take her to the zoo and sell her for a lot of money. So I told her we'd go for a walk, and she trusted me of course, and somehow this was a really really long walk to the zoo. She continued to age, but without getting taller or bigger, and halfway to the zoo her hair had gone gray and she had become tired from the walking, and I had become guilt-ridden about my awful plan to sell her to the zoo, so I brought her back home.

I realized I loved her, and we had a brief moment as she was lying in bed, and then she died of old age.

And then I woke up and I was sad because it seems inevitable that I am going to lose anything good that might ever happen to me.

Giving Bush the finger

I should really take my economic stimulus tax rebate and donate it to the Democratic presidential nominee.

Speaking of Lint

Am I the only person who finds it immensely satisfying to clean the lint filter in the dryer?

bulletin to self

HOLY SHIT I'M 28 YEARS OLD WHAT THE FUCK AM I DOING WITH MYSELF

Some speech some guy made a hundred and fifty years ago

I decided to rewrite the Gettysburg Address to see if it was any good without the fancy language:

87 years ago, a bunch of guys made a new country on this land. They thought that independence was a good idea and that people were all basically the same.

Now there’s a bunch of people fighting because not everyone agrees with that. Some of them died here so let’s just bury them here.

We can’t make this land sacred, though, because the fighters already did it. Even if everyone forgets what we say here, they’ll see all the tombs and remember the big fight. So let’s remember why they fought: a) independence is a good idea worth revisiting, and b) our government that we all contribute to should continue to exist.

A misreading of personal ad cliches.

Why are single girls single? They do not know. They think they are "awesome." I am going to examine this issue by attempting to find a common thread among personal ads. After all, girls who post personal ads are single, and if we can find traits that unite them, then we will have found our answer. My research yields:

Hypothesis no. 1: Girls who are single are not very bright and/or are boring.
Evidence: Girls who are single often claim, in personal ads, to like "the simple things in life." The simple things in life are boring and lack entirely in sophistication. There is little respect for simplicity
Solution: Doing nothing is the simplest thing in life. Doing everything would be the opposite. At the very least, express interest in the complex, show some passion for the complicated and extraordinary.

Hypothesis no. 2: Girls who are single are criminals.
Evidence: Single girls are constantly looking for a partner in crime.
Solution: Give up the life of crime and find interesting, legal things to do. Legal doesn't have to mean boring or simple. In fact, there are many wonderful legal things to do: like dancing or sports or spelunking.

Hypothesis no. 3: Girls who are single are not fun.
Evidence: "Not into games" the ad proudly declares.
Solution: Not into board games? Fun games? Olympic games? Any games? Games are fun. Learn to have some fun; guys like fun girls.

Hypothesis no. 4: Girls who are single are unable to write well.
Evidence: Single girls write ads that claim to like the simple things in life, are looking for a partner in crime, and are not into games. (Also they like long walks on the beach.)
Solution: No clue.

Hey Andy Lint. You're a piece of lint.

Hillary will never escape Clinton. Her biggest political mistake was taking her husband's last name. Take that, feminism!

Sadly, Barack Saddam Hussein Osama Bin Laden's going to lose the general election because of his name, too.

The incorrect mix cd to give a girl you like

1. Morrissey - You’re the one for me, fatty.
2. Radiohead – Creep
3. Mr. T Experience – Even Hitler had a girlfriend
4. Moldy Peaches – Downloading porn with dave-o
5. Faith No More – Naked in front of the computer
6. Cherry Poppin’ Daddies – Here comes the snake
7. Sufjan Stevens – Size too small
8. Selecter – Three minute hero
9. Magnetic Fields – I don’t really love you anymore
10. Squeeze – goodbye girl
11. Mariah Carey – Hero
12. Abba – gimme gimme gimme (a man after midnight)

(there's a narrative here, honestly)

The deflationary pressures of idiotic peers

I caucused yesterday for the first time in my life (New York and Boston, the two places I've voted before, both hold primaries and not caucuses) and it was an interesting experience; you and all the people in your district meet in this big room and it's like this big party, with (mostly) similar political viewpoints, and no punch or pie. I got a good look at my neighbors, and realized I not only knew none of them, I never even paid enough attention while walking around to recognize anyone.

Anyway, I signed in and wrote down Obama. I was pulled by opposing peer pressures: as a young person, I was supposed to vote for Obama, as an Asian person, I was supposed to vote for Clinton. I actually don't have a strong preference either way; I think they'd both be good nominees and I was there to observe the process more than anything else. In the end, I guess I thought the country was broken in a fundamentally cultural way that couldn't be fixed by policy but might be fixed by Obama's secular preaching. Or maybe I just felt a bit more misogynist than I did racist.

But then I went to the big party room, and there's a debate that goes on where the supporters of any candidate could speak for a minute and explain why they thought their candidate was better and try to convince people to change their vote. My god, the Clinton supporters were much more intelligent and articulate. The Obama supporters were idiots. One guy actually said, "In my gut, I just know Obama's the right guy," and people applauded???? I almost spoke up and said, "No one gives a shit about your gut." I had a real sense of anti-peer pressure. Were these my peers? If so, I wanted to reject them. They made me feel stupid. I thought, maybe I am looking at it all wrong because how could the two of us have come to the same conclusion? Is your gut really some oracle?

So I got upset and left without changing my vote. I had some Kentucky Fried Chicken and felt sick the rest of the day.

Times New Romanoff

California was so much fun! I went to a strange wedding, and I ate lots of great food, and I hung out with my friends and family. It reminded me again how things have not gone quite as I'd expected or hoped in Seattle, but that's probably my fault for being Seattle-resistant. So I am shifting strategies. I am going to embrace Seattle more, and I will do so by walking right out there in the rain, unumbrellad and unhooded, and take everything it's got.

Then I will catch a cold, and be bedridden for a week.

California here I come.

Yes sir!