Suitcase Publishing

Wedding Update

noreply@blogger.com (Tangent) — Sun, 25 May 2008 16:14:00 +0000

Less than a month now. Woohoo! I am extremely sick of the question, "How's the wedding going?" I understand that people (women) are supposed to ask that, and I guess some of them might even be interested in some kind of answer, but I can never think of anything to say except, "Still getting married." Other than the fact that half of my desk at home is covered with wedding-related crap (went on a massive shopping trip yesterday for flower girl baskets, ring pillow, and similar things which will be landfilled shortly after the ceremony...maybe I can give them to someone else to use?) there really aren't any wedding things "going." It's basically all set.

One of those web sites that I waste my time with at work says that in the month leading up to the ceremony you're supposed to schedule a massage or spa day for yourself once a week, to help relieve stress. That means either a) that's just a scam-ish way for women to get more massages or b) other brides have a seriously worse time of this than I'm having. Other than the shopping trip, all I've done this week is put together the playlist for the reception (listening to it now...I'm impressed with myself.) I would like to be the only bride this year to play Scotland Yard Gospel Choir, Beirut, Andrew Bird, and Gogol Bordello. Yes, I am being pretentious. But it's a really great list, and perhaps the only thing about the wedding (except of course the fantasic groom and the actual date) that I actually like. Oh, and the cake. I best get a piece of that cake.

Things that Are/Are Not Fun

noreply@blogger.com (Tangent) — Sun, 11 May 2008 22:53:00 +0000

Things that are fun:
Making chili
Listening to Czech Tag Radio on last.fm
Plotting girls' night out

Things that are not fun:
Spending 3 hours last night at a mediocre Italian restaurant in Lincolnwood that Todd correctly likened to a nursing home, feeling self-conscious about my shoes
Watching "fantasy wedding" shows
Thinking about having to meet the CEO of our company tomorrow

Sorry for the delay...

noreply@blogger.com (Tangent) — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 01:39:00 +0000

I know, I haven't posted anything in weeks. Between work, wedding, 826, freelancing, and attempting to have a social life, things have been a bit busy. I've become utterly obsessed with podcasts, primarily Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, This American Life, The Moth, and Grammar Girl. Got any favorites? Comment and let me know.

Advice Update

noreply@blogger.com (Tangent) — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 15:39:00 +0000

So, lots of people noticed the similarities between the Ask Amy and Dear Prudence columns that I posted about before. Some people thought it meant they were both fakes, and some people thought it was the same guy asking two different people to try and get two different answers. No one seemed to think that there was anything more nefarious going on, including Prudie herself:

"It is weird -- we've had duplicates before, but never the same question from the other party."

That was her answer to my email asking about the similarities. So apparently it's a non-issue. Damn. And I wanted to be in on some kind of scandal. Ah well. Maybe next time!

Compare and Contrast

noreply@blogger.com (Tangent) — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 14:23:00 +0000

Compare this Dear Prudence column from about a month ago with today's Ask Amy column. My question is, are these really two halves of the same couple asking difference advice columnists for their take? Is it one person doing a sociological experiment? ("What if a man asks this? What if a woman asks?") Or is this another incidence of advice-columnist question-poaching?

I'll e-mail Prudie and Amy and see what they have to say.

Ben Lee Mocks My Morning Commute

noreply@blogger.com (Tangent) — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 14:31:00 +0000

This morning, while pulling around the curve before Addison, Ben Lee sings to me, "The winter is long in the city, and that's the way I like it."

Shut up Ben Lee. And you too, stupid iPod, for shuffling me that song and making me notice that line when it just snowed for about the 2349187th time this year. I want to rail against the gods. But I will content myself with railing against Ben Lee. More manageable target.

Clarity

noreply@blogger.com (Tangent) — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 00:44:00 +0000

It's a really worthwhile thing, if you've never done it, to spend some time looking back, given the benefit of time and space, at where you came from and what you've been through. I spend a lot of time thinking in general, but I spend almost all of it thinking of the future. But I'm finding, while preparing for a massive future full of changes and responsibilities coming on pretty fast now, that it's helping me to think about the past. To figure out how and why it all happened. What parts of it I made happen. What parts of it happened to me. How I can make the good things happen again. How I can make sure the bad shit never happens again.

Eww

noreply@blogger.com (Tangent) — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 15:33:00 +0000

First of all, this is disgusting. (That is to say, don't read it if the idea of a mist of hog brains seeping in through your eyes disturbs you.)

Second, it contains one of the greatest quotes I've ever read in a newspaper with a decent reputation: "Let's stop harvesting brains."

Don't Ask How I Found This

noreply@blogger.com (Tangent) — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 14:05:00 +0000

But it's fantastic that this exists.

Cursed

noreply@blogger.com (Tangent) — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 01:19:00 +0000

The first wedding venue we were going to use is under construction, which was supposed to be done in December 2007 but got delayed until maybe August 2008.

The second venue just closed down.

Two people who were on the original guest list have died.

Wedding-related details have caused the only fight I've ever had with my in-laws and the only adult fight I've had with my mother.

I am trying really hard to have a good sense of humor about all this. But seriously, all we want to do is get married. Why does it have to be so difficult?

Blast from the Past

noreply@blogger.com (Tangent) — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 19:15:00 +0000

I grew up not far from lovely Downers Grove (although Omega is actually a small chain, and there are other locations in the Chicagoland area where you can obtain skillets, patty melts, and other grease-bomb atrocities served by people who some might describe as the illiterate cousins of Greek gangsters), and my friends and I were definitely some of the troublemaking youngsters that, at 1 in the morning, would in fact order the Surprise Zombie (fifth one down as of right now). I'm impressed that the damn thing is still around, given that it's absolutely awful and no one in their right mind would ever want to encounter it more than once in a lifetime.

Race Relations

noreply@blogger.com (Tangent) — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 00:46:00 +0000

At Metropolis this morning, I listened in on the conversation of three women: an older African American woman, a middle-aged white woman, and a young girl, maybe 12, who was of mixed ethnicity. At a guess, I would have said black, white, and Asian, but who knows? Anyway, here's what was going down.

The middle-aged white woman was, I believe, the girl's mom. The older lady was an acquaintance of theirs. The girl, for a school report (coinciding with MLK Jr. Day), was to compare and constrast the pre- and post-civil rights era. She was supposed to be interviewing the older lady (who had been a Chicago Public Schools teacher during that time) about how housing and education had been affected by the civil rights struggle.

What really happened was this: the lady started talking about something, for example, school segregation. The girl started writing what the lady said. The mom interrupted the lady to ask a more in-depth question (always phrasing it as if the girl was asking it, for example, "Why don't you ask her about busing?"). The lady started to answer that. The mom and the lady would start arguing (well, differing in opinions, but seeing as the lady was a black lady who's lived through the civil rights movement, and the mom was a white lady who had probably been born toward the tail end of said movement, I think we can agree on whose opinion we should probably be listening to here). The girl would stop writing. Then they'd get back on track. Rinse, repeat.

What the lady had to say was pretty interesting (for example, when she was in school, the bus would come to the white kids' houses to pick them up, then drop them off at school, and then the bus would come back and make one stop in the black kids' neighborhood, and they'd all have to go down to the corner and wait). But the mom seemed to think that because she had a mixed-race daughter (and thus, presumably, a husband or partner of a different race, although could be the kid was adopted) that she had some very important points to make about the history of civil rights in this country. The point of the whole exercise, of course, was to talk to someone who had been there and lived through it. But when the lady would say something that contradicted the notions that the mom had (for example, the lady said that the gangs didn't have a lot of sway in her South Side neighborhood back then), the mom said, no, the gangs were very powerful, they helped keep the riots under control in your neighborhood, which is why it didn't get as bad as on the West Side. The lady allowed, for sake of politeness, that maybe the gangs were all working behind the scenes. But really, wouldn't you just take the word of the person who was, I dunno, actually there? And didn't just see it in a documentary on WTTW?

Seriously, I wonder how many of the problems in our country, specifically surrounding race, would be solved if both sides would put aside what they think they already know and learn to actually listen to what the other was saying.

Oww...

noreply@blogger.com (Tangent) — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 17:45:00 +0000

This made my brain hurt. Have fun trying to untangle what they're talking about and what it means for reality as you know it.

The Announcer

noreply@blogger.com (Tangent) — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 13:39:00 +0000

No matter when I leave for work, I always get stuck on the Announcer's morning Red Line run. This is the train operator who feels it necessary to inform his passengers, at length and sometimes in utterly nonsensical terms, about everything they may need to know about the train's function, the stop, the connections, the weather, safety tips, what-have-you. The Announcer is probably a cousin to the Blessed Train operator.

Some general Announcer announcements include telling us exactly how long we will be standing at a station due to some other delay ("one and a half minutes") to problems with a particular car ("The door closest to the cab in Car 2467 will not open. Please do not stand in front of that door.") to connection times ("Brown Line elevated Loop train will be arriving on the outside track in 10 seconds."). During a run, he will at least once remind you to check for all of your belongings before exiting the train. He occasionally will veer off into Burroughs-like cut-ups, saying things like, "This train will run express to Sheridan. Passengers. Good morning. This is a delayed Red Line train. Thank you. We had door troubles at Thorndale. Your attention." Ending speeches with "Your attention" seems to be a particular verbal tic of his.

But his moment of glory occurs as we pull into Lake each morning.

As soon as we leave Grand, he begins his patter. It takes that long to get it all out. He informs us first that "Lake is next." Perfectly reasonable, although the automated guy tells us the same. Then he elaborates: "Transfer here for city, state, and county government buildings. Also connect to regional transit, Metra Electric and South Shore rail lines. Blue Line passengers, passengers connecting to the Forest Park/O'Hare Blue Line, we want you to transfer at Jackson. Washington is closed. We will not stop at Washington. Forest Park/O'Hare Blue Line riders, please transfer at Jackson."

He can talk about Washington being closed for a good 4, 5 hours, I bet. Every morning. Although it's a commuter train, full of people who ride the same route every day. And Washington's been closed for a good year, year and a half now. Same deal with the government buildings. If you're going to a government building at 7:30 in the morning, it's a safe bet you work there. You probably know where it's at. But just in case, the Announcer is there to let you know.

Thing is, he's got a very rich, lovely voice. Probably could have been in radio. And I suppose I prefer an overinformative CTA employee to the usual garbled, "Thank you for your patience." (Or, as I heard once, "Thank you for your inconvenience.") I just wish he'd come up with some new lines.

A sign?

noreply@blogger.com (Tangent) — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 15:21:00 +0000

Lately (by which I mean: all my life, and especially since I graduated college and entered the world of cubicles, and also just since Tuesday, when a friend of mine made a random comment about someone else over lunch that I took to heart, and also since Wednesday evening, when Todd made an offhanded comment meant as a compliment that I took in a totally different light) I have been trying to figure out what I can do to make my life feel a little bit more meaningful, specifically in the creative realm. I haven't actually written in a really long time. The idea of trying to do that again is terrifying.

But this morning, while reading a blog that I enjoy, comes this line from an interview:

You know better than anyone what stories you have to tell, Claire.

The girl doing the interview is being spoken to here, and her name happens to be Claire, so I realize that this is not the interviewee (who I've never heard of before) speaking directly to me. But sometimes, you should just accept signs as you see them.

Although later, there is this:

I think you're fucked, Claire.

Nice.

Happy Fuckin New Year

noreply@blogger.com (Tangent) — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 15:23:00 +0000

Quite a Year

noreply@blogger.com (Tangent) — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 21:22:00 +0000

It's been quite a year.

To recap:
Mom got better.
Got engaged.
Bought condo.
Got promoted.

I'm sure a few other things happened too, but seriously, isn't that enough?

Many Happy Returns

noreply@blogger.com (Tangent) — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 15:22:00 +0000

The first two people to wish me happy birthday today were the receptionist at the doctor's office and my insurance agent (via automatic e-card). Well, at least it's a step up from the year when only my mom and my ex-boyfriend remembered my birthday at all.

Anagrams

noreply@blogger.com (Tangent) — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 19:41:00 +0000

For my current name: Area Pluck Idol

For my married name: Maniac Rents Roil

Oh my. The things I do while I'm bored at work.

Humans Do Strange Things

noreply@blogger.com (Tangent) — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 18:37:00 +0000

This seems more like somewhat-controlled falling than flying to me, but hey, whatever does it for you.

A Typical Conversation

noreply@blogger.com (Tangent) — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 22:51:00 +0000

Here's a typical conversation from my workday Friday, with the annoying technical details of the publishing process replaced by easy-to-understand letters.

Senior Editor: I want you to do A.
Me: A will seriously hurt the schedules and budgets of three different departments.
SE: But I want A.
Me: Well, what about B?
SE: No, I want A.
Me: C? D? E?
SE: I want A. Make A happen. Give me A now!
Me: (bangs head on table)

This is now my life. I take back what I said earlier about the new job. It's just as frustrating, it just irritates a different part of my brain.

Sweet

noreply@blogger.com (Tangent) — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 21:20:00 +0000

My new job involves nicer people, more money, less stress, and more time to do crap like post in my blog. I win!

Pour les Jambes

noreply@blogger.com (Tangent) — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 01:42:00 +0000

Re-reading David Sedaris's Me Talk Pretty One Day, which contains many stories about his difficulties communicating in French, reminded me of this story.

As a much younger woman, I went traveling for six weeks, all alone, that is to say, not in the company of a boy. My boy was at home, and it was my last full day in Paris before I got home to see him. Having been in Europe for six weeks without any boy that I cared about, I had not bothered to shave my legs. Ever. At all. Didn't even take a razor with me. So I had six weeks of stubble on my legs. After six weeks, stubble is not stubble. Stubble is hair. A simple razor was not going to do for this. I needed Nair.

I headed down to the pharmacy near my hotel and looked around but didn't see anything that looked like what I wanted. I asked the woman behind the counter, but apparently Nair is an American brand only. She had no clue what I was talking about. She didn't speak much English. I didn't speak much French. But I needed to get the fur off my legs.

I tried to explain around it the best I could. "C'est... pour les jambes," I said. I pointed to the hair on my arms. "Comme ca." I made rubbing motions, shaving motions, everything I could think of, but how do you act that out short of pulling up your pant leg and showing her the problem? Nothing I did made any sense to her at all. Finally, groping around, I thought of the English term and put it into faux French. "Depilatoire?"

"Ah, oui!" Apparently, my faux French was actual French. It was on bottom shelf next to us. I went home to chemically peel the hair off my legs and she probably went home to gossip to her girlfriends about the crazy American girl who needed une depilatoire pour les jambes.

Courting as a Business Deal

noreply@blogger.com (Tangent) — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 01:34:00 +0000

Behind me on the train home tonight was a couple in the earliest stages of romance. In fact, from their conversation, the woman was still living with her current boyfriend, and this new guy was trying to woo her away from him. Some highlights:

"You're one fine lookin' motherfucker." Guaranteed to make any woman swoon.

"My hair's not as short as it looks." I didn't get a good look at her, so I wasn't able to verify the truth of this statement, but she seemed to say this in an apologetic way, although he'd already made the comment above.

"You're gonna be my woman. I'm claimin' that ass!"

As they waited to exit, he seemed to swallow her, very aggressive body language, complete with pelvic thrusting and possessive hand placement (on either side of her so if she wanted to escape, she would have had to jump off the moving train. He'd made all sorts of promises on the ride up, a nice place to live ("neighborhood's quiet as a motherfucker, nobody standing on the corner"), a better school for her kids, taking her to movies, and good sex. They left the train holding hands. I can only assume that the deal was sealed.

I Rode the Santa Express

noreply@blogger.com (Tangent) — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 19:12:00 +0000

Twice.

In one weekend.

Without even trying.

I must be cursed or something.

For those of you lucky folks out there who have never been subjected to the CTA's Santa Express, let me explain. You know in A Christmas Story, when Ralphie goes to see Santa, and Santa and the elves are fiercely, cruelly jolly, and make all the kids scream and cry? Now imagine that creepy Santa is a train that you have to ride inside from Lake to Morse after a long day in the suburbs. Pop Christmas carols (many of which are definitely not of the secular Frosty variety) screech through the tinny El speakers. The green and red fluorescents that replace the regular lights give everything an eerie, sickly tint. The CTA employees dressed as elves (really, pointy shoes and all) act like CTA employees always act: they totally ignore you unless they decide to aggressively shove candy canes in your face. It's a holiday nightmare. Coming soon to an El line near you.