the new me

Things have been hectic around here, what with the finding of apartments and the search for new jobs and the preparations for moving, so it's been hard to think of things to write about. But I learned something yesterday that I thought I would share. In Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything, he writes about the human body's ability to constantly renew bits and pieces of itself. Skin dies, gets sloughed off, and is regrown. Hair falls out, and is--with the unlucky exception of those afflicted with male pattern baldness (hi, Dad), replaced. Organs repair damages, some more slowly than others, and what it all adds up to is that if you look at all of your bits and pieces and cells and tissues individually, they have all been renewing themselves at different rates to the extent that technically speaking, you are not made of altogether the same material that you were nine years ago. So during the past nine years, my body has quietly worked away at itself, and now there is nothing left of what there was of me when I was fifteen. Come to think of it, that's probably all right--fifteen was sort of a wretched age anyway--but when I was fifteen, there was nothing left of what there had been when I was six! And nine years before that, my cells didn't even exist yet! The several billion gazillion atoms that now just happen to exist in a me-shaped package had yet to coalesce. That's a really fun thing to think about. Mortality is scary, the prospect of a decline into old age is scary, and none of that is something that I want to think about, because it makes my stomach go into panic knots. But it is nice to know that you can sort of shed your material self like that, over a long period of time, and nine years later still have the same little ball of consciousness wrapped up in a (relatively) new package.

Anyway, that's enough heavy thinking. I'll end on another philosophical note from A Short History of Nearly Everything:


"Incidentally, disturbance from cosmic background radiation is something we have all experienced. Tune your television to any channel it doesn't receive, and about 1 percent of the dancing static you see is accounted for by this ancient remnant of the Big Bang. The next time you complain that there is nothing on, remember that you can always watch the birth of the universe."

make it up to me

I really really hate that song by Alanis Morissette that's about things being ironic. It gets stuck in my head, I don't like the tune or the way her voice goes all yodely throughout, and I know this has been said a kabillion times before but nothing in the lyrics is ironic. All of those things are just interestingly juxtaposed and mostly unfortunate circumstances. BUT THEN I was thinking what if it was all on purpose and the irony lies in the fact that a song about irony only talks about events that are not at all ironic?? If only I smoked weed. I feel like that thought would occupy me for hoouuurrrs. 


Alanis Morissette did redeem herself slightly (ever so slightly) in my eyes, though, by doing a cover of "My Humps" by the Black Eyed Peas. If you have not looked it up on YouTube, you need to.


I like to read the Philly Citypaper that we get delivered to my building every Thursday, but I never learn to not read it at the desk. And I should learn that, because every single time I read it at the desk, I always forget that there are explicit escort ads in the back. Every. Single. Time. So I'll be flipping through, mindlessly skimming editorial rants and movie reviews, and then BAM. Naked ladies and Skanky McHoebags aplenty. Practially leaping off the page, legs spread and nipples juuuust barely covered with clipart stars. And, inevitably, every single time I get to this page, it's right when someone comes up to the desk to be scanned into the building. So it makes me feel super sketched out, and then I hastily flip the paper over, so then it looks even MORE like I was ogling the fine offerings available at Adam's Apple (BEAUTIFUL YOUNG ASIAN STAFF! BEST SAUNA IN THE CITY!) Sigh.


Citypaper made nice this week by issuing their quarterly "Dish" feature, which is all about food in Philly. Now I have some new places to try out, so I'm excited.

...i win?

I would just like to point out that the Evangelical Fight Club that I wrote a post about way back in February was the subject of a brief feature today on the Daily Show. I feel pretty good about that. I mean, sure they did a better job with the mockery, what with the interviews and letting the stupidity speak for itself...but they're professionals.

I'm just saying...Daily Show...I CALL TWINSIES!!!

baby baby baby noooooo

I have been meaning to relay this story for the past few weeks, but for some reason it kept slipping my mind when I went to blog--which makes no sense at all because it's one of the funnier things that has happened to me in recent memory. Anyway, this time I remembered.

One of the things I do as part of my job is to sort the mail that arrives at my building. We get a lot of junk mail and a lot of wrongly-addressed mail, but one day a few weeks ago, we started to get these letters addressed to Justin Bieber. As in, prepubescent Canadian teenybopper Justin Bieber. This guy:




Philadelphia is not Hollywood. Nor is it Canada. I don't know if Justin Bieber has ever been to Philadelphia, but he sure as shootin' has never been to 3320 Powelton Avenue, much less lived there. So you can imagine my surprise and amusement when these letters kept coming in. They were all written in grade-school handwriting ("to Justin Bieber form [sic] your fan"...aw). While I was never so underhanded as to open any of them, I did hold them up to the light to try to read what was inside. The best snippet: "I love that song Baby that you do with Ludacris, say hi to him if you can."

Yo hey, Ludacris, what's happening, man?


Aw hey, Justin, what's shakin'? Your balls dropped yet?


No, still waitin', but Janine from W.D. Sugg Elementary School says hi.


Oh, word.


And I'm not kidding about the name of the school, either. All of the letters came in pre-printed envelopes with the return address of the school. W.D. Sugg Elementary School, in Town-I've-Never-Heard-Of, Florida. Once we got more than three of these letters, I realized that this must have been some kind of class project--you know, hey kids! Let's all write to our favorite celebrities and develop our communication skills at the same time! So I felt really bad that these letters were ALL going to the wrong place--whoever had been in charge of finding out Justin Bieber's address must have somehow gotten misinformed by the internet (I know, right?? That never happens!) I did a quick search on Google for "Justin Bieber 3320 Powelton," and sure enough, a query came up under the "Cha-Cha" search engine for "what is Justin Bieber's real address?"

Can you imagine? In the whole vast internet, this one tiny section of Justin Bieber's fan base tried to find his address by typing in that specific phrase, and we got the letters instead. It turns out that there was once a Justin Bieber who lived in my building (I bet he loves having that name now); he was on the Drexel soccer team, and graduated in 2000 or 2001--in fact, on the address search, his age comes up as "30-32 years of age," but I guess the folks over at W.D. Sugg ignored that part. 


Anyway, I did call the school and spoke to a very nice lady in the front office, and hopefully she was able to find out which class had written the letters and set them straight. We haven't gotten any Bieber fan mail since, so I'd like to think that my detective work paid off. Justin Bieber, you're welcome.

way hey and away we go

Monday night was the Great Big Sea concert that I've been looking forward to for weeks and weeks. I love them. A lot. The concert itself was in Sellersville, PA, which...I had never heard of. But Google maps is a handy dandy thing, and Amanda has GPS, so we did ok. Turns out that Sellersville is a fairly rural town about an hour outside of Philadelphia. It reminded me of the town I grew up in....sort of. Not really.

My town was way more farm-y, and didn't have quite so many Mennonites. Sellersville is, apparently, chock full of Mennonites. Anyway, so we drove through looming metropolitan Sellersville and found the theater where the concert was to be held. Since we're Grown Up People, we partook of some adult refreshments (a merlot for the lady friend and a delightful Yuengling draft for me, both in classy plastic cups) and then found our seats. Here's the great thing about our seats: The theater itself was only big enough to seat a couple hundred people, so we had a pretty good view of the stage, even though we were back in row S. Here's the not-good thing about our seats: We were seated directly in front of a whole group of Talkers. I totally understand that people want to cut loose and have fun at concerts. I completely get it that you might want to exchange a few words with the friends around you from time to time. But this was a group of several fiftysomethings with loud, grating voices, who cracked stupid jokes and made inane comments during the entire opening act (which was a group called Corb Lund and the Hurtin' Albertans. Ohhhh Canadians.)

The Talkers were perfectly friendly and not belligerent or anything, just completely obnoxious. We sat through their yakking until we couldn't stand it anymore. Amanda spoke to an usher, and the usher and the manager of the theater spoke to the Talkers at least three times. No results. But the awesome upshot of that was that for our patience, the manager upgraded us to the front of the theater halfway through Great Big Sea's set! We spent the rest of the show just a few rows back from the stage! It was fantastic. I loved it. So thanks, Talkers! You were great!

...is it so much to ask?

This is a diagram of my dream apartment. I have forgotten to label the bathroom, but it's there in the middle-right. I would like to find this apartment before September 1st. I would like for it to be priced at a reasonable rent that won't shut down my savings account. Furthermore, I would like for this apartment to be situated in a nice neighborhood, preferably with a few trees about. This apartment has plenty of sunshiney windows and enough room to have friends over for dinner. It has enough square footage in the bedroom for two people and all of their stuff to comfortably coexist without cramping each other's style. If there happened to be another small, quiet room off the front hallway that I could use as a study, that would be even better. I also need this dream apartment to be within easy commuting distance of Boston proper and close to a supermarket and some sort of town center.

Ok? Ok. GO.

Thanks.