huh, i forgot about this.
i just found this on my laptop.
it’s the only documented proof of jason cooking something that wasn’t beautiful.
but it was still fucking delicious.
Why do i bother?
I’m writing this down so i’ll remember it the next time i’m stressing out about not locking myself in a room to do work.
So, my one of my Superteams partners, Ben, and i stayed up all night working on strategies for our product, Garmin GPS.
We agonized. We approached it from every strategical angle, tried emphasizing different benefits, using different tones.
We ended up with some ok-pretty good ideas, but GPS is hard to sell in an exciting way. I mean, it’s pretty damn logical: get from point a to b. When we tried talking about exploring, getting lost and using your gps in an exciting way, people’s BS meters kept going off and my bloodpressure kept rising. The little vein in my face started throbbing, and i knew i was done.
So this morning, i oversleep and bolt out the door to meet Ben at the coffee shop. I arrive cranky and with messy hair, the day already off to a crap start. I figured we go in, present, and hope something stuck.
Ben gets in the car and starts giving me directions on the back roads from the Highlands to Piedmont. Ben, as much as i think he is awesome, is not a direction-giver. He uses phrases like, “take the other straight.” I end up almost making two wrong turns, which would have made us incredibly late to our most important class.
“whew, it’s funny how one wrong turn can ruin everything!”, i laugh. and then, it hits us: that’s the strategy. we come up with the idea to personify what a “wrong turn” in life looks like: a goofy looking burned out hippie, a corporate monkey, hell, for that matter, Britney Spears : )
And of course, that last minute, goofball strategy is the one our teacher Dan loves.
Just proving that you can put in millions of hours, you can work non-stop, and sometimes the best ideas come from just getting out in the world and living your life.
This always happens when i clean
So today, I’m cleaning.
This happens like once a quarter, when things reach critical mass.
I was going through some old papers, and i found this writing exercise from way back when, in Tania’s class at PC. I think the exercise was to describe one activity as if it was another, to teach us to use metaphor.
So apparently i was describing “all you can eat” buffets as worship.
It made me laugh:
It looks like an alter, gleaming in the middle of the room.
The line wends around the buffet slowly, as the patrons, eyes glazed over, plod from spot to spot to get more food. As they approach, they are greeted by endless stacks of plain white plates. There are plates for salads, plates for your entree, plates for a dessert, plates for more food that didn’t fit on your first plate. The sheer abundance of platters demands that you come back, at least once, to make this worthwhile. Plates in hand, the people bow beneath the sneezeguard.
The buffet is shiny, stainless steel, glistening with grease. Every kind of flesh imaginable is presented. Saucy barbecued chicken sloshes beside beef swimming in thick gravy. Pork chops likde decks of cards marinate beside steaks the size of baseball mitts. The fried foods alone take up one whole side. All the vegetables have been transformed to purveyors of fat. The carrots drown in butter, the green beans mingle with ham hocks, and the okra and squash are buried in doughy fried shells.
Later, their eyes wide from the glory they have seen, the devoted will dazedly wonder to their tables, eyes barely noticing the greenery of the salad bar. With their minds pondering whether they should get a slice of cake with or without a sundae, the worshippers will take their places at their tables, ready to commune. With plates heaped with food, they will stop eating and angrily look around for the waitress, who has been so remiss as to forget their hot, buttered rolls, ruining their zen mood.
On hold.
Jason: I’ve been on hold with the bank forever. This sucks. They keep playing the same Charlie Brown music on a loop.
Me: Wouldn’t it be great if while you were on hold, you had the option to swtich from lame music to phone sex, to kill time?
Jason: YEEES.
My idea first people, as soon as i start this i’ll be a millionaire.
Why i love Orvis
As much as i hated this company when i first started working on them, now i’m so grateful because thanks to them i have two of my favorite pieces for critique.
The Orvis “Comfort in the Rough” series ads maybe meant having to learn a little bit more about hunting than i ever wanted, but it got some great feedback last night.
And i have to admit, I’m loving writing my Orvis radio spot. The moose and the deer have changed from country bumpkin then to sounding kinda brokeback mountain, and now we’ve pretty much settled on Canadian (ay? what’s that aboot?).
As i told our teacher Bob, “I should get bonus points for working on a hunting company as my project when living with four vegetarians!”
Thank Buddha
If it was not for 24 hour chinese, what would we eat during the late late nights of Studio Week, here at PC?
The one man who always loves me
God, this is why eric is my plutonic “boyfriend”.
I just facebooked him longingly to say, “Do you still love your poppet?”
To which he replies, “My dear sweet love, i long for your vocal embrace.”
Here’s to you, Mr. Darcy.
I’m convinced this song is about me.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVIHXXVYgdA
Apparently Weezer loves me as much as i’ve always loved them.
and if you clicked on this link the other day and it was deleted, yeah, that annoyed me too. which is why i found this video of them doing it live on YOUTUBE.
Everyone’s home!
The Penthouse returned to full force this weekend, with all six roomies back under one roof.
I’m almost embarrassed at how lonely i got with only the three of us this weekend, it’s odd how used you get to living in a pack.
Julian had a study group over Sunday to witness the whole event. There was seven of them to our six. As jason put it as we sized up the situation, “we could take them.”
It was funny to see our happy little commune through their eyes. At one point, everyone was in the pantry helping julian climb through the window to his room (locked out), and i was in the kitchen listening to the mutters:
“They keep coming from all directions!’
There’s so many of them!’
“Dude, this is weird.”
Meanwhile, jason and i took ali on her first “through atl traffic” bike ride, which was fun. Both of us girls were sporting our ghetto fabulous fur hood jackets, which give you ZERO visibility when your hood is up, i mean total tunnel vision. Not good.
Meanwhile, Critical Mass is this friday. I really want to ride it, but i’m worried about being too slow or lame.
We’ll see.
Second Thanksgiving Away From Home
It gets easier every year.
So last year, Thanksgiving was a little traumatic.
Here, an excerpt from my myspace blog:
“First, i have to work so late the day before and so early the day after, that my original turkey day plans of visiting James in Virginia and getting to eat turkey with that guy from Guiding Light got 86′d. Plan b, going to see some of my nearest and dearest in Nashville also wasn’t feasible. Hell, even trekking the four hours to the wilds of south georgia was just not a possibility. So after parting ways with the bf that morning, i proceeded to have the worst day ever. I’d lost my cell phone in a movie theater the night before, so the better part of my day was eaten up negotiating with those at the theater who were holding it hostage. Do you have it, when can i come look for it, are you being nice to it, can you send me a picture with it holding up today’s newspaper? After asking them to look in the lost and found, I had to keep calling to see when there would be a break between movie times so i could go in and actually look in the theater. But the kicker is that they don’t even give you a flashlight to look. So then, after i’d crawled around on my hands and knees in the dirty theater for thirty minutes, i begged them to go and look in the lost and found for the second time that morning. Nothing. I started to exit the theater, crying and distraught, with the heavy knowledge that i could not afford a new cell phone and that i could not call anyone to complain about this problem as i did not have a cell phone. For pete’s sake, i couldn’t even call my family to talk to them on Thanksgiving. As i started to stumble out, i bumped into one of the security guys. He looked at my pathetic, Dickens waif-esque state, disappeared into the back office, and came back with my cell phone. I hugged him and ran into the parking lot, where i promptly called my mom as i sobbed in the parking lot (aren’t holidays FUN?!??!?!). By now it was four o’clock, and the only food i had consumed all day was a singular piece of pumpkin pie (stolen from the roommate). Every place was closed, and every grocery store i went to was out of thanksgiving food. For most people this would suck, but thanksgiving is serious business for me. i live for stuffing. i lust for the taste of turkey. I yearn for the creaminess of mashed potatoes. We don’t do these foods on christmas in my family (ham, why does it have to be HAM?), so thanksgiving is my only shot. i was sorely disappointed. And insulted. Did i mention i was sexually harassed at walmart? I was dressed modestly (yes, all who have seen my myspace pics prolly aren’t buying this, but it does happen occaisonally). I had on a knee length denim skirt, a sweater, and brown boots. Yet for some reason, in broad daylight and on thanksgiving ,no less, these guys started yelling at me in the parking lot: hey baby, work it, yeah girl. uhhh. I lose it. In front of God and everyone including, i’m sure, some small children, i yell back, “Fuck you!!!” and then they start laughing. this was not the desired reaction. So i yell back, insistently, “No, seriously, fuck you!!” More laughter. I went home, even more depressed, now that i realized i was so ineffectual that not only could i not make thanksgiving happen but i couldn’t even properly insult sexist jerks. ..
The story does have a happy ending. In the end, i was surprised with thai food that was yummy enought to make me not miss turkey, and stuffing, and oh, mashed potatoes…”
This year wasn’t so bad. I started off the day with the three other left-behinds in the Penthouse, making Thanksgiving breakfast (we used every egg in the house, a vat of oatmeal, and sausage). As i cringed at how much food we were eating pre-main event, julian scolds, “it’s thanksgiving! We’re gonna be full now, we’re gonna be full all day! Because we’re americans, and we don’t even celebrate thanksgiving, we just EAT!”
So we did.
Also, a breif excerpt concerning the impending penthouse pets:
jaime: we can’t have a dog and a boa constrictor!
eldon: why???
jaime: because one would eat the other!
eldon: “It’s the ciiiiiiiiiircle, the circle of liiiiiiiiiiiiiife!”
julian: what if it was a contest?? like which one survives?!
jaime: sigh.
Then that night, i met up with two other of my thanksgiving orphan friends to go to The Local and then get dinner. At The Local, the bar was completely empty, so we drank festive ale and harassed the artsy bartender into hanging out with us.
After, we rushed through Falcons traffic to make our reservation at McCormick’s and Schmick (cheesy touristy seafood restaurant beside CNN, a block from my house), the only restaurant in Atlanta open with reservations available. By the time we got there, they were already out of a lot of the Thanksgiving side dishes (no STUFFING!!!), so we ordered some seafood stuff to round out the meal. If the Pilgrims could have had them, they would’ve ordered crab tator tots too.
And i wake up to a phone call from my mother, warning me that if thanksgiving turns out anything like Christmas, she’s leaving everyone at home and coming to stay with me.
i think i made the right choice.
