sharing the wealth

i bought a lottery ticket today for the first time in my life. this is because if i win, i will win $325,000,000, which is - technically speaking - a crapload of money. when i was discussing with the boyfriend whether this was a wise investment of a dollar, he said with decisive certainty that the odds of me winning are one in one hundred thousand, and because he invests things as his profession and therefore is much more aware of financial matters than i am, i believed him.

i would like to take this opportunity to officially say: booyah. he was wrong. the odds are totally not one in a hundred thousand. they are one in one hundred and seventy-five thousand. but i appreciate his optimism.

in fact, i am so swayed by this optimism that i make this promise: if i am the recipient of these extraordinary millions of dollars, i will fulfill the unfulfilled-childhood-wish of your choice (such as being bought a pony or going to disneyland) for each person who specifies his or her wish in the comments before tomorrow night's drawing.

this has the potential to be incredibly awesome, folks. let's get on board.

punch lines

a pig like that, you don't eat all at once.

welcome to jamaica - have a nice day!

you think i asked for a twelve-inch pianist?

i'm afraid not.

nacho cheese!

for you? no charge.

aaah! talking muffin!

you got me out of the shower to tell me this?

now aren't you sorry you had me neutered?

it's okay, we're not welcome at the grocery store, either.

vignette: preening

Chad: what's the grammatical deal with "found out" vs. "found"?
me: [long explanation of the notion of a particle]
Chad: Your brain... it's so incredibly sexy. Quite possibly the sexiest brain I've met. It's so sexy that when your boyfriend goes and then you pass as a widow from grief I'm totally going to dig up your body remove your eyes and make love to your brain directly.

helen and the awesome factory

on the way home from work today i had nothing to read. this usually leads to buying a chickadelic magazine like glamour or cosmo so that i can learn 150 Tricks That Will Drive Him Wild! and also feel Accepting Of My Flaws etc.

but i passed a streetside bookseller before i passed a newsstand, and since he was packing up at the end of the night he said "any book, two dollars," and there was a hardcover copy of Charlie And The Chocolate Factory on the table so i figured hells yeah, and bought it.

the cover is pretty cool. it looks like the cover on this edition, which if you clicked just then you would have noticed that it is worth many thousands of dollars, so the moral of this story is holy fucking crap, i just bought a first-edition book on the street for two dollars. i win.

secret naked people

note: apparently if you don't read this post all the way through i sound like i am utterly insane. um. i'm not? keep reading. end of note

so there is this new thing in my life, and it is called Married People. not that i haven't spent my entire existence surrounded by folks who are married, but folks like your parents or your teachers or those at your office who are more senior than you do not really count as Married People, because according to your perception they have always been in a state of married, and so you are not having to witness the personal, social, and anthropological accompaniments of the transition from Two Seriously Dating Normal UnMarried People into Married People, and as a result be totally thrown by said personal, social, and anthropological accompaniments.

apparently the Attack Of The Married People is actually hitting me with tremendous punctuality, because i am 25 and therefore my peers have had a couple of years to sit around in a post-college world and arrive at the decision that they would really like to have other people buy them silverware. So I am starting to get used to the idea of people who I used to refer to as "Amanda's boyfriend" suddenly being "Amanda's fiance," and I consider my ability to not have a total quarter-life-crisis meltdown at that transition to be approximately five hundred gold stars in my favor. But the problem with getting used to someone being your friend's fiance is that within a finite amount of time he will transition to being her husband, and that is incredibly difficult for me because husbands are, like, my dad and Tim Allen and other dudes with mustaches who like to go to stores where they sell wood.

but far worse than Married People is this new thing I have learned goes with them, which is: Secret Naked People. because my boyfriend is currently in another state, which he went to in order to attend last night's bachelor party preceding tomorrow's wedding at which we will both be in attendance. And when he called me today, hungover and barely verbal, and i said "how was it?" he said "I can't tell you."

apparently this is common practice around bachelor parties. it is like each bachelor party is its own micro-Las Vegas and what happens within the group of attendees is never spoken of again to outsiders ever.

here is the problem with this: I've never met the bride, and am unlikely to immediately confide in her any sort of secretive things that might have happened at the party that her husband-to-be would not want her to know. So this means that my boyfriend is deciding that there are things that i can't know. And so now, because i am extremely rational and in no way neurotic, I am pretty sure my boyfriend participated in some sort of sexual act of which i would be disapproving, such as a foursome with strippers, and i am not allowed to know about it because it is the rule about stupid bachelor parties.

anyway now my new plan is to incorporate Secret Naked People into my life, and not be able to tell my boyfriend about it, because it is the rule because i declared that it is the rule. Like:
"Hey Helen, what did you have for lunch today?"
"Actually I'm not allowed to tell you.*"
(*translation: "My coworkers and I ordered in Thai, but it might or might not have come with some of that nation's famous prostitutes.")

or
"Morning, darling. Did you sleep well? Should we go out for brunch?"
"Actually I'm not allowed to tell you what I am doing this morning.*"
(*translation: "I will be doing laundry as soon as you leave. If you catch my drift.")

anyway, this is my new plan. Secret Naked People. but I can't tell you about it.

vignette: real-life jokes

leila: god, i'm totally deaf.
me: have you thought about getting a hearing aid?
leila: yeah, i already did that.
me: did what?
leila: got a check-up.

vignette: on marriage

coworker of doom: weekend plans?
me: boyfriend and i are going to rhode island for a wedding.
coworker of doom: is this your first one as a couple?
me: yep.
coworker of doom: better not accidentally look at each other during the vows. that means you're legally married, in some states.
coworker of doom: also according to the laws of physics you would become spontaneously pregnant.

lazy sunday

here is pretty much what happened to me yesterday. it should be evident to you that it was possibly the greatest day ever in the history of the universe.

morning: some stuff happened.
lunch: chicken fingers in manhattan.
afternoon/evening: some other stuff happened, including a movie.
dinner: chicken fingers in brooklyn.
night: fell asleep.

mm. happysigh.

a fable

chapter 1
many years ago i decided i wanted to be a lawyer, and then i realized that was a very very bad idea, and i like working with books better, so never mind.

chapter 2
this morning i received a phone call from the law school i once thought i wanted to attend, saying "so we'll see you in two weeks!"

epilogue
it all worked out in the end.

moral of the story
even fancy law schools make clerical errors.

vignette: from the department of Not The Right Thing To Say

me: i just can't get over that someone thought i was pregnant.
boyfriend: well i bet you looked like a hot pregnant lady. pregnant ladies are all wholesome and healthy looking and stuff. it's sort of a compliment.

today's thought experiment

let's say you're a mid-20s female who rides the subway to work in the mornings. most mornings the train is insanely crowded, but occasionally you manage to snag a seat.

let's say you leave the house this morning wearing a very cute, tres of-the-moment black empire-waisted dress, so you feel kind of hot. and your hair looks good, and you have taken a few minutes to put on makeup. the train pulls into the station and you get on. you scan for seats: no luck. you settle in with your arm wrapped around a pole and get out your book.

let's say a seated hipster boy, cute in that if-i-didn't-have-a-boyfriend-i'd-maybe-say-hi way, makes eye contact. he smiles. you smile back. he gestures that, if you want, he will give you his seat. you shake your head a polite no, and turn back to your book.

let's say he says, smiling: "do you want my seat?"
and you say, smiling: "no, thanks, i'm fine"
and he says: "really, please take it"
and you say: "no, really, i'm okay"
and he says: "i'm going to stand up. you're going to take it."
he stands up. he says: "i totally understand. my wife is seven months pregnant."
he smiles beatifically.

YOU HAVE TWO CHOICES
besides the obvious, which is to never wear empire-waist dresses ever ever ever again, because your stupidly well-endowed chest creates horrible topographic illusions, because you are in fact not pregnant, do you:

CHOICE A
correct him. inform him that you are not in fact an incubator of new life, at least not at the moment. feel like a fat cow. allow him to wallow in his asshattishness.
Pro: You are honest.
Con: You are stuck in the same car with the guy who thought you were pregnant for seven more minutes, which is the time it takes to get to the next stop.

CHOICE B
do not correct him. take the seat. feel like a fat cow, but silently, and allow him to feel good that he has done something kind. probably he will tell his wife what a gallant thing he did.
Pro: you get a seat on the subway.
Con: you had to pretend to be pregnant in order to get it.

I think this might be the fundamental ethical query of our times. This has nothing to do with whether this might or might not have happened to me this morning. Nope.

helen armstrong?

After work yesterday the boyfriend and I rented bikes and rode up and down the Hudson River bike path until i developed soreness in areas that are not going to be mentioned in public.

This is an illustration of my new favorite fact: riding bikes is awesome.

things are better in canada

and here's why: i learned how to ride a bike this weekend!

i know, i know. shut up. more to come.