Badly Timed Holiday Theme Post

Let's hark back to 3 days ago, when the blue bird was being replaced with the new bird and your diet was comprised solely of butter and sugar. Gentle readers, please tolerate a holiday themed post now; I was too thoroughly sodden with hot toddies and bombarded by family togetherness (mine, other peoples') to make one when it was still pertinent. By now you've reacquainted your body with vegetables, washed the new socks, lost your ipod nano and come up with some creative reuses for gift bags such as giving them back to your mom or throwing them in the garbage. But have you stuffed an orange with cloves yet or combed the youtube vaults for Christmas commercials from your childhood? Do it now before your Christmas tree becomes a fire hazard and you have to toss it into the gutter like an old wino! Here I'll help:

This Fruity Pebbles Christmas commercial is completely burned into my brain, taking up a lot of valuable hard drive space I could use to remember my grandparents, learn another language or understand simple spacial relationships.


In this Folger's commercial, the handsome eldest son sneaks into his parents house after a prolonged absence, delighting everyone by brewing coffee crystals. His alleged break-in is never addressed.


I don't really remember this commercial from childhood. I found it while looking for the Fruity Pebbles one and was captivated/grossed out.


Merry Christmas belated!

Addendum to Season of Giving: Christmas Ants

There was an office cocktail party tonight for which my mother urged me to "dress sexy," meaning in an outfit she provided.
The boys trooped off to San Francisco for a night of punk rock or something and won't be back until tomorrow.
The house is infested with ants.

That's why now I'm laying supine in a velvet skirt suit with shoulderpads, wondering whether or not I should booby trap the entrances with some kind of tried and true saucepan and fishing line combo or just continue to watch youtubes of Sade. I snacked merrily away all night on bacon wrapped almond stuffed dates and kahlua mudslides because I thought overeating in public was "festive." Now I am a little sick. Additionally, ants are crawling all over me. There are no ant free zones, but I wanted to share this brief holiday story about how my boss' girlfriend slipped me an envelope with penguins on it as we were leaving the party, which I chose to open in the car. Encased in that envelope I expected to find nothing more than a card with penguins on it but found also $200. So touched was I by this unexpected generosity that I burst immediately into tears. I then decided that sharing Hallmark-ish yuletide sentiments through broken sobs to an audience of just my mom as the rain beat on the Accura was appropriate. My bad-- sorry for the outburst, Mom! Now I can stop thinking about how I'm going to afford to buy gifts and start thinking about switching to a birth control pill with a lower hormone dosage.

Season of Giving

I assumed that once I got a job I would be able to afford grandiose gestures of generosity. This hasn't been the case, but I still managed to pick up a few "choice" items.

1. a 2010 calendar book that says "Teamwork" and the name of a local periodontist in gold against a background of grey and black hikers.
BONUS: -could be mistaken for a fancy organic chocolate bar
-smells like mothballs

2. secondhand socks, brown
BONUS: -barely smell at all

While the aforementioned presents will be reserved for my dearest loved ones, or, failing that, a white elephant gift exchange, ANYONE who gives me their address will receive a Christmas card picturing a cat sleeping in front of a garishly decorated fireplace. Go ahead, leave it in a comment or email it to yourfriend.rach@gmail.com

$$$$

As coffee steamed in our Garfield mugs, the bf and I mused, "Wouldn't it be nice if we could go to Santa Cruz, get to the ocean for awhile?" Already I could see us zipping through the forest with something inoffensively jangly on the radio, wind whipping tendrils of hair around our smiling faces, and the faintest whiff of saltwater beginning to scent the air. The trunk is filled with Mexican blankets, film cameras, and good intentions. Whose car is that, I wonder, transporting us through this dream? Neither of us have one, nor could we afford to get one even if we pooled our resources, not with the prices of insurance and gas... Amtrak prices, too, are exorbitant. Flying is out of the question. Do all the people who ask me to come visit them have rich parents or real jobs? Does travel to them require no more thought than remembering to put the tickets in their pockets? So many dream canvases are ruined this way, punctured and ripped through by a sharp and intimidating dollar sign. I wish I had some money-- not a ton-- just enough to leave town if I felt like it, and buy some nice Christmas presents for the people whose generosity I've probably exploited while "living on my own."

Someday when I'm rich and famous for blogging, gluing googly eyes onto inanimate objects, and fretting inside my duplex, there will be some kind of grand repayment to all those people that make my life easier, probably in the form of an awards banquet/ comedic roast hosted by Alf where there are ostentatious giveaways under the seats ala Oprah. Until then, I'm hoping for an It's A Wonderful Life inspired rediscovery of all the things and people in my life that are precious after a frightening journey led by an unearthly visitor conjured by my own childish complaints.

A Slow Meltdown

Here is a list of the most recent songs played on Sacramento's Mix 96 radio station. Coincidentally, it is also a list of the Songs I Never Need To Hear Again. Several (all) songs by Journey, Eagles, and Billy Joel who have not yet appeared on the former list deserve special recognition for topping the latter.

Saturday Night Cloister/Total Brain Rot

I made these on the 1994 macintosh emulator. I wonder how many other people are thirsty for human contact but are at home on a saturday night tinkering with outmoded software because they envision many terrors lurking in the autumnal shadows, the most horrific of which include:
1. an unholy combination of rotweillers, knives, junior-high age males and quicksand
2. conversational lulls
3. buying things

If you are one of these people you should call me right away so that we can talk about how awful this is, making no motion to get together. In fact, I probably won't even pick up.

Hanging Out With My Mom: Our Mutual Profession and How Weird It Is

There are very few perks, I'm learning, in the dental profession aside from TOOTHBRUSHES! TOOTHBRUSHES FOR FREE!* But occasionally, there are dental events that the dentist will pay for you to attend with pinot noir, lasagne, and a motivational speaker with a comedic style in a banquet room at the Hilton. These events are good opportunities for dentists and sellers of dental equipment and materials to shmooze and make business arrangements. These events are like mini-versions of Dental Conventions, which rage on for many days in exotic locales like Hawaii and Las Vegas and were, from what I hear, a sort of publicly sanctioned gigantic key party back in the 70s. Of dental conventions, my mother astutely summarizes, "You could get into some trouble at one of those. I think even I could still get into some trouble at one." Dental professionals can log a certain number of hours or "points" after attending such an event that count in some esoteric realm of which I'm only remotely aware and have no desire to explore. Tonight I attended such an event with my mother, Debbie "Knows No Strangers" Scott, an RDA with over 30 years in the 'biz. As we parted the sea of business casual with glasses of pinot gripped sloppily in our fists, she immediately began identifying people she'd worked with before and introduced me to several Dental Professionals of Her Past. I stifled the urge to say "Ain't that the tooth," in response to all statements directed my way, figuring they would nullify all my Possible Career Advancements. "There's that doctor I had a fling with years ago," she murmured. Strangely, I received neither an introduction nor an identifying point in the man's direction. The dinner was decent but it was hurled at us and was snatched away just as quickly. I hadn't time to wonder if what I had eaten was in fact lasagna before the motivational speaker emerged in all his chubby white loud guy telling jokes glory. I was pleasantly laughing along and soaking up the motivational "dental family message," not thinking much of it until he said, "Dental front offices are populated by freaks. Where do they get these people? They had to have a relative that got them the job-- McDonald's rejected them." Was he a psychic? How did he know so much about me? My office contingent was pointing and laughing at me while I indulged in cartoonish, hammy shoulder shrugging. Again, a prime opportunity for that dental pun came and went.

Later, I'll identify this event as catalyzing a deep look at the direction my life is taking. Much cartoonish, hammy shoulder shrugging will follow.








*limited to amounts of unnoticeable-by-boss quantity

On Standby

Hello avid readers! ::audible cricket chirps, microphone hiss:: I'm coming to you live from the internet at work when no one is looking! Sorry for the dearth of stimulating posts lately (or any posts, for that matter). I've moved, and seeing as that the jobs of internet and electric account set-up have been left up to me, I spend a lot of time reading B.Kliban comics and half-heartedly crocheting in the dark instead of getting it together. Topics to be covered when I return:
- Being Blacklisted Socially in Already Socially Atrophied Sacramento!
- Human Petrie Dish: Some of My Rashes This Month!
- Adventures in Domesticity: Looking For Deals, Finding Ample Time to Obsess Over Irrational Fears!
-How local Adult Contemporary Radio Station Mix96 is Building an Evil Empire Against My Sanity with Overplayed Billy Joel and Elton John Songs as Their Arsenal! (working title for that entry might be "You May Be Right: I May Be Crazy..."
-Seasonal Easy Listening songs and their poorly rendered youtube videos!

Stay tuned!