And I know I was wrong, when I said it was true
I spoke with my brother last night, who is also known as "Brad" amongst my family members because of his long, silky, locks. On Christmas day my family was watching "Legends of the Fall" when my mom said, "You're brother's hair looks just like Brad Pitt's!" We haven't referred to him by his real name since.
So last night I call my family's house and when my mom picks up the phone it sounds like a tavern in the background. I hear loud music and somebody singing "Margaritaville." When Brad and I moved out of their house a few years ago, my parents had nobody else to take out their aggression on except for the dog (Little Evil aka Sausage Dog aka Sha-NING aka Shauna.) When that got old, they took up two new hobbies: drinking and karaoke. They've got the ultra super duper delux karaoke system: the microphone makes all these weird sound effects (my parents are especially fond of the echo sound) and it rates the singer's accuracy via percentage. To top it all off they have it hooked up to some Bose speakers so everyone throughout the house and across the street can be privy to their vocal stylings. Yup. My mom and dad host their own DIY bar in my childhood home. *Sigh*
Immediately my dad gets on the phone:
Dad: Hey, can you sing that song Let's Groove Tonight?
Me:Why? Do you need me to teach you for your performance on Saturday Night Live?
Dad: You got your facts mixed up - I'm performing on Letterman.
Me: Please, for the love of god, stop singing! And put Brad on!
Brad, being the beam of happiness that he is, gets on the phone and says "Fuck You" in response to everything I say to him.
Me: Brad?
Brad: Fuck you.
Me: Oh Brad, cheer up, my little ray of sunshine.
Brad: Fuck you.
Me: Brad, you know if you smile, the whole world smiles with you.
Brad: Fuck you.
Me: I know your angry because you can't bring all yer "Ladies" to mom and dad's house. Don't worry, you'll have your pimp game on soon enough!
Brad: Fuck you.
Brad's bummed; he had to move back into my parent's house because there was lots of shady meth activity happening at his old apartment, and he didn't want to deal with it. I'm actually proud of him for making a responsible decision. He's happy that my parents let him crash but I know he's not exactly happy to be back there again. I love my mom and dad but they aren't the easiest people to live with I guess that's why he told me last night that he was thinking about dying his locks bright red, and leaving just his bangs black. He's taking out his misery through his hair. I guess it'll match his whole tattooed, pierced, rocker/punk/DJ look, but I cannot help to see the irony in it all. If "alternative" people want to look "alternative" by dying their hair weird colors, getting tattoos and getting piercings, they aren't truly alternative because they ALL have weird hair color, tattoos, and piercings. If a person really wanted to be "alternative" amongst the "alternative" crowd, they should show up wearing a white Polo shirt, flat front kahkis, top sider shoes and a sweater around their shoulders. Brad fails to see this logic, and shakes his tattooed fore arm at me when I bring it up. It just all makes me laugh, like the guys in high school who would wear black eyeliner and pasty white makeup a la Robert Smith from The Cure and say that they do it because "they want to be unique."
Speaking of the Cure, I've been listening to them non-stop! Bless that Robert Smith and his bouts of depression. Robert, all I have to say is try St. John's Wort. That shit WORKS!
Hot sex on a platter
It's not even 9:00 and I've already received a negative comment on my outfit. A designer label junkie I am not, but I do like to mix it up every once on a while and wear something a little different. Too bad it usually results in "what ARE you wearing?" comments mixed in with strange looks more often than not. C'est la vie. We cannot all be Gap clones, all gappified in our tan khakis and blue shirts. The BF (boyfriend) has a theory that men like to wear khakis because they most resemble animal skins. Rock on with your primitive cave man selves, boys.
I bought a bunch of bananas at Safeway three days ago and they are already brown and spotted. YUK! I can only eat bananas if they are completely spot free and slightly green. For such a phallic shaped fruit, bananas are surprisingly sexless. Ever wonder how bananas grow when they don't have seeds in them? Seedless bananas can't grow by themselves because they are sterile. For the past 10,000 years, they've continued to propagate because of human intervention; growers take the shoots from the base of one banana plant and grow additional plants from that shoot. The result is a bunch of banana plants that, while tasty, are genetically identical. This situation is not so good in the natural world, because the lack of sexual reproduction results in the lack of genetic diversity. Having a bunch of plants that are all genetically identical increases the chances of the entire crop getting wiped out when a plant disease strikes.
(Side note: I just saw The Black Assassin and he made fun of my outfit too. He said, "You're so Disney. You look like once the clock strikes 12:00 you'll leave in your pumpkin." I, like Carrie Bradshaw, am grossly misunderstood and get no love for my fashion risks.)
The kind of banana you are likely to see in stores today is most likely the Cavendish variety. Forty years ago, the Gros Michel was the most popular variety in the world, but the entire crop got wiped out when a fungus emerged that attacks the roots. Growers switched to the Cavendish variety, which was the second string, backup version banana at the time that was resistant to the root fungus. Now the Cavendish is getting attacked by a leaf fungus called black Sigatoka. Besides sounding like a horrible disease of the flesh, black Sigatoka wipes out crop yields by 50 percent. Not to worry banana split lovers. Scientists are looking for genes in wild Asian bananas that can resist disease such as black Sigatoka and Panama disease.
Last night I got another query rejection letter. This time it was from Vogue. I'm still not bummed about it, I'm still stoked that I'm at least getting rejected, which is better than no response at all. The rejection was a form letter; hopefully I'll work my way up the rejection totem by eventually getting rejection letters with hand written editorial notes.
Just take it slow, we've got so far to go
This morning's New York Times magazine and coffee setlist:
1. Rock with you/Michael Jackson
2. Wanna be starting something/Michael Jackson
3. Man in the mirror/Michael Jackson
4. Don't stop till ya get enough/Michael Jackson
5. Working day and night/Michael Jackson
6. Off the wall/Michael Jackson
7. Human nature/Michael Jackson
8. Billie Jean/Michael Jackson
9. Smooth criminal/Michael Jackson
I hope for the sake of the children that Michael isn't a smooth criminal, and just a nutcase.
I'm starting with the (wo)man in the mirror
I watched a movie about tigers called "
Two Brothers" this afternoon, not realizing that I was in for nearly two hours of emotional exhaustion. Why did movie executives deal this movie appropriate for children? If I was a kid I'd probably blubber even more that I did this afternoon. I'm pretty much pretty cool with being a human being but after watching this movie I have to say that people are a miserable species. If/when the aliens come down we'll finally realize how we had a good thing and how we ruined our planet.
So now I'm sitting here, contemplating on whether I'm going to donate $50 or $100 to WWF. No, not the World Wrestling Federation - the
World Wild Life fund. There's only an estimated 5,100 to 7,500 tigers in the entire world left. I'm not going to rant on about how three subspecies of tiger have been extinct in the past 70 years, and I don't want to give a lecture on the evils of hunting to extinction or the whittling down of genetic diversity in the remaining five subspecies or how humans are encroaching upon their habitat because I'll just get more pissed off in print. So instead, here are some fun facts:
Fun fact one: Tigers love the water, and will swim in it.
Fun fact two: When a male lion mates with a female tiger, a
liger is produced. Ligers will take on traits of both cats, often having tiger stripes on their bodies and lion manes on their heads. They are substantially larger than both lions and tigers, sterile, and can weigh over a 1,000 pounds. Ligers are only produced in captivity, because the mating habits of lions and tigers differ in the wild. Lions are pack animals, while tigers are solitary. In the wild the chances of a lone tiger sneaking into a pride of lions for some good, good loving, are slim. But, in conservation habitats or in preserves the cats have a greater chance of gettin' it on. (Cue Barry White)
Fun fact three: If a male tiger mates with a female lion, a
tigon (scroll down to the bottom of this page to see Noelle, a tigon) is produced. Tigons will also take on traits of both cats. Instead of being larger than either a lion or a tiger, Tigons are very small. Like the liger, tigons are sterile, although at the Shambala preserve a beatiful tigon named Noelle mated with a male tiger to produce a ti-tigon.
Fun fact four: Tigers have individual stripe patterns that are as unique as fingerprints.
Fun fact five: Tigers can be different colors besides orange with black stripes. There are tigers that are black with tan stripes, all white (albino), or white and tan. The white tigers found in some zoos aren't true albinos - more often they are the "white and tan" variety with blue eyes. True albino tigers have pink eyes.
Fun fact six: The largest of the five remaining tiger subspecies is the Siberian tiger (Panthera tigris altaica). The males can be as long as a Subaru outback.
Please go and see this movie. =)
