Jenny Is Dead

So maybe I'm a terrible person, but this totally makes my day, if not my year. They rewrite Jenny to have a different, more obnoxious personality every season, and this time it's finally "corpse."



(I'm also taking bets on which of the women will sleep with the detective, who will so, so obviously turn out to be a lesbian.)

It's About an Education, Not a Degree

I meant to transcribe four books tonight. Instead, I've been screwing around on IMDB. Did you know that back in 1984, Fergie (as Stacy Ferguson) used to be the voice of Sally on the Charlie Brown and Snoopy Show? Or that she was in a single episode of Mr. Belvedere? And now she's playing the irrepressible prostitute in my most-anticipated movie of 2009.

I seriously need to do work, or I'll never be asked to be on Mr. Belvedere.

Narcolepsy

I accidentally slept until 1:15. Boo, time zones. I had all these grandiose plans to do all the work I meant to do over the past month this afternoon - which was clearly impossible, but pretending it could happen made me feel less guilty - except now I've reduced the list to "gym" and "buy groceries" and that means any critical thought about transnational sexuality has to happen on the elliptical or in the produce aisle. (I think I'm unconsciously preparing for Plan B, which involves failing my thesis and becoming a go-go dancer instead of an anthropologist.)

Homeward Bound

I was just going to be like, "I'm on the bus back to Oxford!" but then I was like, yikes, this blog is turning into Twitter lite. So here are some fun details:
- The pilot was like, 'it's insanely cold today' and I stepped out of Terminal 5 and laughed. I was like, the inside of my nose hasn't frozen yet, this is child's play. And this is why it's good to check in with North Dakota every winter.
- I'm eating a sugarless cookie from a bakery in Brooklyn that does not taste remotely like a cookie, but is still strangely good.
- Like every time I return from the US, I've scrapped my five year plan and I'm at a level of emotional volatility that is usually associated with the third trimester of pregnancy.
- I'm totally going to curl up in bed and hibernate with indie movies as soon as I get back to Oxford, hopefully thwarting time zones and falling asleep before 5 or 6 in the morning. I just bought a bootleg copy of Snow Angels and British Airways promised that I could see the Savages before only letting me watch some terrible movie where Shia LeBoeuf was being harassed by robots, sort of like Transformers except a) it had more paranoia and totalitarian undertones and b) it had fewer fire trucks who suddenly turned into gigantic monsters. So basically, less awesome.

We're Number Six! We're Number Six!

I just went to a bar in Southie with another Harvard grad and two businesswomen, and we were like, what, trivia night, we'll totally clean this up. Um, we definitely just took 6th place out of 7 teams. My major contributions were "Rosie O'Donnell," "Russia and Georgia," and "they were all arrested."

We might not have even deserved 6th place.

Adventures In the Best of Intentions

Ryan's Awesome Novice Vegetarian Sandwich
(Serves 1)

2 pieces of wheat bread
lettuce
a tomato
half a yellow pepper
blackberries
Tostidos

Toast the wheat bread. Top with lettuce, tomatoes (cut into cross-sections), pepper (cut into strips), blackberries, and Tostidos. Squash with open palm until crunching is audible. Eat.

New Year's Resolutions

Because I love impulsive decisions that profoundly affect my life so, so much, here are the New Year's Resolutions I arbitrarily made on the 7 train under duress:

1. I'm giving up meat. I've been thinking about doing this for a while, mostly because of the environmental impacts of eating meat, but also because it's grossed me out more after taking that class on the politics of food in college. (This does not include the duck I had on New Year's Day at Cafetasia. Lo, the perils of making resolutions on January 2nd.)
2. I'm going to be communicative and emotionally transparent. I think I make this resolution every year, but I think I'm getting incrementally better at it because nobody has angrily accused me of not having emotions since mid-2007.
3. I'm adopting a new religion. I've always been way into the social justice tradition in Catholicism and thought about taking up liberation theology, but I'm having a harder and harder time reconciling that with any association with the Vatican and the hierarchy of the Church whatsoever. So yesterday, think I narrowed it down to (from more to less hierarchical):
- Episcopalian
- Quaker
- Agnostic
(Bahai and Unitarian were my runners-up, but Buddhism also had a strong showing.)
4. I'm going to do something physical that cannot possibly be competitive. I was going to do ballroom dance this year, but I could envision that quickly getting away from me. I'm thinking something like yoga, again. Or gymnastics for grown-ups.
5. I'm going to figure out a five-year plan. This is sort of inevitable because my degree ends this year, but it'll feel awesomer if I can pretend like I made it deliberately and can proudly check it off my list. I'm all about the gimme resolutions.