Author Archives: Toph Beifong

goodness, humor, work

Old work goodness

I was looking through a folder called “Me from work,” meaning the stuff I had saved on my old work computer that I removed promptly before leaving.  There’s an image folder.  It’s full of hilarious wierdness.

Old Work Goodness Number 1: The Beavers

looks like someone needs a good ass-kicking

WTF is this?  I mean, aside from clearly being a Japanese ripoff of The Beatles.  This album cover made me laugh out loud.

Time for some research.

The initial search (cleverly done: “beavers”) yielded nothing but pictures of beavers, and an informative Wikipedia article which described beavers as “large, semi-aquatic rodents.”  Not the kindest set of adjectives and nouns to string together to describe an animal that can build its own home in a single night.  Be cool, Wikipedia.  Beavers are pretty great.

Second search: “beaver music”  A Swedish group came up.  I listened to one of their songs all the way through; all three minutes and forty two seconds.  Specifically, I watched the music video, which consisted of stock footage of someone typing on a typewriter, a silhouette of a happy couple in front of a sunset, and shitty home footage of some horses running in slow-motion on a beach, for fuck sake.  I should have stopped fifteen seconds in.  Here’s a sample of their lyrics:

Hesitation in a place pristine / Revelations of a space unseen / Knowing you from the inside out / That’s the only way to let you out / And that’s all that I care about.

Yikes.

Third search: “the beavers japan”  Apparently there’s a clothing store called Beaver in Japan that resembles a very abstract hairy va-jay-jay.  Just squint.  See?  Eew.

the Jimi Hendrix era of album covers

Fourth search: “the beavers music japan”  Jackpot!  Someone wrote a quick bio of one of the band members, Hideki Ishima on a website called Golden Best Japan.  Before The Beavers, this guy was a member of such ridiculously named bands as: Jarows, The Outlaws, and Spiderduction before some genius at the record label told them to change it to something “cuter.”  According to this website, they only released one album with five singles.  Here are a couple of them!

Kiminaki Sekai (The World Without You), the moody, wail-y version of something that sounds like Love Potion #9.

Why Baby Why, a poppy hit in which the band shouts ‘why baby why’ and ‘I love you’ amid much more comfortable Japanese verses, and some screeching that actually sounds pretty cool.

The author of  thought the following sentence made sense: “The Beavers were known as “Japan’s Yardbirds” so it’s not suprising that they covered “I’m a Man” and “Over, Under, Sideways, Down” on this album.”  Uh, right… thanks for the insight.

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goodness, humor, life

El vino

So… I dunno if you’ve ever heard of this stuff.  It’s called wine.  It’s this thing where people take grapes, and do stuff to them, then they squish ’em, then more shit happens to them, then BOOM, fuckin’ wine.  It’s delicious by the way.

Waaaaay back when, I traveled alone to Romania to meet up with a group of random students to do volunteer work and explore the country.  We spent the first two weeks in a city called Arad.  Lots of dirt roads, gypsies, wandering dogs, and other shit to make young Americans feel unsafe.  Plus we were there to spend time with “derelict youth” or something.  Most of us were around 19 or so, so naturally, we got drunk as often as possible.

nectar

Everything was über cheap, so we threw our U.S. dollars around like that shit was weighing us down.  I found this little liquor shop in town.  The owner flirted with me and the other girl I was with (he said something like, “you ladies are so tan, I wonder if your skin is light under your clothes” or some shit with his best broken English and child molester smiley-wink.  What an asshat).  Anyway, he sold really fuckin’ cheap wine that turned out to taste like sugar-infused liquid gold.  I shared my bottle the first night.  The second night, everyone showed up to hang out with their own bottles.  What a bunch of lushes.  It’s a fond memory.  There was a guy there, he was… 17 I think, named Adi.  What a cutie.  He was my first adult white boy crush.  He was so sweet.  I should hit him up.

Right, so it took me forever to figure out what the fuck that stuff was (I was clever enough to NOT bring the label home with me).  But I found it (or something just like it), dammit, and it is delicious.  In fact, time for a refill.  No I’m not fucking kidding.

So anyway, I finally found this stuff.  It’s called an Ausbrüch, which is usually apparently white, but this one is red red red.  The only real drawback is that it’s salty or something, so if I drink a bunch of it, I have to wake up twice in the middle of the night to chug a whole cup of water.  Huh.

UPDATE: February 25th, 9:46pm (my timestamp is screwed up, it’s not the 26th yet)

Holy shit!  I just found Adi on facebook!  Sent a request with a message like, hey you probably don’t remember me, we held hands and drank wine and I told you to stop smoking and stuff.  kthxbai!  For the record, I am not optimistic about this reunion.  He probably remembers me as the boorish American chick who harassed him for two weeks straight.  Ugh.  My first drunken facebook contact might turn out to crush me entirely.

UPDATE: February 26th, 4:09pm

Adi’s my facebook friend!  So random!  No contact, it’s just weird to see his face again.  Craaaaaazy.

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badness, work

The runaround

Innocent bystanders at my office job are unwittingly turning me in circles, and it’s starting to make me dizzy.

I’ve been trying to get in touch with someone who can tell me who is in charge of reserving a plaza for a reception before a theater production.  I’ve been sent in a hilarious series of circles, and I’m close to losing my patience, so I’m letting off steam by posting the process.

it's a crazy machine; your voice goes in, the crazy comes out

-Email scheduling office, no response.

-Call scheduling, leave message, no response.

-Call scheduling back, told to contact athletics, maybe they’ll know what to do.

-Get athletics email contact from Nice Scheduling Lady I’ve worked with before.

-Email recommended athletics contact.  He recommends I contact the scheduling office.  Ugh.

-Search for the plaza on university main page.  Notice it was advertised for a reception for a previous theater production.  How did they do that?

-Email Nice Theater Lady re: previous use of plaza for theater reception.  She recommends I contact the scheduling office, and gives me their general office email.  Thanks, Nice Theater Lady.

It’s taking all my self-control not to walk over to the plaza and yell “WHO THE FUCK IS IN CHARGE OF THIS LOCATION?!”  Just about everyone I’ve interacted with has been nice, but ignorant of anything relating to that damn plaza.  Should we just show up that day and hope no one’s there?  Odds are it’ll be empty, but I wants it for mine ownsssss, the preciousssss.

UPDATE: 10:18am, April 1

Turns out it IS the athletics department that’s in charge of the plaza.  Thanks, random guy from athletics who told me otherwise.  Thanks.

I just called to confirm with them, like a responsible adult would.  The first lady I spoke with said, “We don’t reserve that space.”  I said, “But I already reserved it with you.”  When?  “Over a month ago.”  Who did you talk to?  I give her the name (let’s call her Romilda, and thank god I made note of her name).  I’m put on hold for five mins until a woman answers, “Hello?”  I say, “Hi there.”  Silence.

Her: Hello?
Me: Hi… Did she not tell you why I was calling?
Her: What?  This is Romilda, can I help you with something?
Me: Ok, I’m calling to confirm my reservation at the Plaza.
Her: Ohhhhhh-kaaaaaay… hmmm, that isn’t here… Who did you speak with?
Me: I spoke with you.
Her: OH.  Uh, ok.  Did I get back to you?
Me: We spoke over the phone.
Her: Ohhhhhhh, ok.  I must have not put it in here…  What is the event?

I give her all the information she asked me for the first time, hoping she’s actually writing it down instead of whatever she was doing last time for CHRISSAKE.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m not a heartless, unforgiving bitch.  People make mistakes.  I make mistakes.  It happens.  It just seems to be happening a lot with this one event.  Scheduling thought I was hosting this event in another location, and demanded a ton of paperwork under threat of canceling my event.  I stayed late and filled it all out in a flurry, sending various copies to five different departments before someone from scheduling asked for a form I had already submitted, and randomly said, “Sorry I didn’t see this the first time, it has a different location on it.”  I said, WHAT?  Hence, all the paperwork I filled out was useless.  Awesome.  Thanks, team.  Way to go.

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goodness, life

A month of decadence

Sunday, February 6th
Home made fried chicken with BBQ’d carrots, garlic bread, lemonade, at the Treehouse (my friend’s apartment; the place a group of my friends is most likely to congregate to hang out, meet before an excursion, etc.).

Friday, February 11th
Bday dinner at Animal with Boyfriend.  Bone marrow, flatiron steak, ox tail, foi gras.

Saturday, February 12th (birthday!)
Bluberry pancakes for breakfast at BLD, mac and cheese for dinner at Barney’s Beanery, followed by ice skating.

my stomach is so happy, it's gone anime

Monday, February 14th (Valentine’s day)
Bday lunch with coworkers at MortonFig.  Dinner with Boyfriend: home made penne asparagus with garlic.

Tuesday, February 15th
Buffalo burger with sweet potato fries for work lunch at LA Athletic Club.  Ritzy!

Friday, February 18th (Treehouse Friend’s bday)
Medieval Times!  Soup, chicken, garlic bread, potatoes, apple dessert.

Saturday, February 19th
Bday dinner with family at Tagine.  Hummus, bell pepper salad, bastillab (sweet meat in phyllo), scallops, sea bass, lamb, vanilla ice cream in chocolate soup.

Monday, February 21st
I make ramen dinner at the Treehouse for Boyfriend, Treehouse Friend, and Artist Friend, with green onions, hot oil, and salmon and scallop sashimi.

Out of all this food, I only paid for two meals (Medieval Times and ramen).  So far soooo goooood.  I love food so much.  I need to go to Daikokuya with Boyfriend soon.  It’s my favorite ramen place so far.  I wish it wasn’t downtown, but its Little Tokyo location is part of its charm.

UPDATE February 25th, 9:58pm

Friday, February 25th
That wine I love arrived a few days ago, and I finally had some.  It’s perfect.  See my first drunken post, ‘El vino.’

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goodness, life

Sketchbook

Hey look it’s that otter I drew last week:

in case you didn't know, otters are the cutest

And hey, it’s that octopus I finished tonight:

in case you didn't know, octopi are the coolest

I’ve been spending my free time sketching lately, which is good because I get this weird feeling whenever I’m doing only one thing that I have to do two things.  For example: watching Buffy while sketching is an acceptable combination of activities.  Cooking is also fun because it demands I do many things somewhat simultaneously.  Dishes suck for this reason: they’re only one thing.  Driving doesn’t count because I’m almost always either talking to myself when there’s no music, or thinking up music video ideas to the music when there is (and sometimes talking to myself about said music video ideas).  One thing is not enough.

Why do I have to do more than one thing at a time?  Is it some compulsion–HEY!  I’m blogging!  And doing nothing else!  No, wait, I’m also drinking tea.  False alarm.

So is it some compulsion my generation has developed due to our constant access to any and all things various via the interwebz?  The need to multitask all the time?  I’ve heard that multitaskers aren’t very good at doing many things at a time well, and are even worse at doing just one thing at a time well.  Fuuuuuck!

Reductio ad absurdum: My generation sucks at sex.  No, that can’t be right.  *wink*  HAHAHA!

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badness, humor, life, manfolk

Hate on the pretty

Why do I want to punch every handsome man in his handsome face?
I’m not a huge fan of good-looking people in general, but when a certain kind of handsome man enters the room, I want to throw coffee all over his tailored sweater, and break his perfect nose.  But why?  Do all handsome men look like douche bags by default?  Why do I hate them so fast?  I have a few theories, and they all include broad, sweeping generalities, so be ready to sprinkle asterisks (with “most of the time” attached) all over the following:

1. Good looking people are more likely to be jerks.

christian bale can run his mouth like a pro

Handsome people are treated slightly better during simple interactions with strangers than average-looking or ugly people.  As a result, they become used to this treatment, and come to expect it.  For this reason, their sense of entitlement makes pretty people automatically intolerable (even though they’ve been trained to feel this way by others, and it’s not their fault).  People who expect attention seek it out when they don’t get it.  They’re not content to be wall flowers; they must be heard and watched, and do what they must to achieve the attention they crave.  Their tolerance for not being the center of attention at some point during every interaction is laughably low, and for this, I hate them.

2. Good looking people are better looking than me, and always will be.
I can’t stress enough how annoying it is when I’m feeling unusually pretty, and a beautiful woman walks in and suddenly I feel totally inadequate.  It just sucks out loud.  But what’s even worse than not feeling pretty anymore is that the whole time, I’m fully aware of how dumb it is that I feel this way.  Have I gotten uglier since she came around?  Of course not, but I’m less attractive by comparison, so I might as well have.  It doesn’t make sense, but my brain can’t get around it; this woman’s face has conquered my brain and she doesn’t even know it.  Fuck.  And cosmetic surgery is for morons with issues, so this effect is guaranteed to happen again in the future.  It’s a depressing, shallow thought from which I should be able to logically free myself.  No dice.

3. Good looking people are vapid.

don't encourage her, cow

Clearly this isn’t true for every handsome person on the planet, but I’m making sweeping generalizations, so who cares. Pretty people are like pretty paintings: fun to look at, but lacking in depth and long-term return.  With no need to do anything other than smile and laugh to get a positive reaction, deep interactions are unnecessary for pretty people.  They don’t have to try hard to seem interesting, so they don’t.  Think: If you wanted to have a fascinating conversation with someone, who do you think would be more likely to be able to provide one; a handsome person, or an average-looking person?  Perhaps more importantly: which is less likely to complain about how fat they feel after eating half their meal?

4. Good looking people get credit for being good looking.
This is by far the most ridiculous issue I have with handsome people.  I recognize that no one approaches a pretty face and says, “Wow, you’re so pretty, good job!”  But some small function of my brain recognizes being handsome as a benefit on the same level as other accomplishments (the kind people work at).  So who should get credit for a person’s good looks?  I want to say the parents for passing on their genes, but they’re not responsible for having said genes either.  So we’re left with natural selection, and chance.  The handsome people didn’t have anything to do with it, so when they’re paid to be models or shitty actors, or whatever, it makes me pop my best “are you shitting me?” face.  Stop rewarding people for shit they didn’t do.

So let’s review: Pretty people are jerks, they make me feel like shit, they bore me to tears, and they get rewarded for doing nothing.  This all seems like solid evidence for my previously unnamed, knee-jerk hatred for the handsome.

Now that we’ve established that I’m a shallow person who hates pretty people, I have a confession to make: All my friends are handsome and beautiful.  All of them.  I don’t have a single ugly or average-looking friend.  They’re also intelligent, funny, thoughtful, selfless people who work hard, and are not rewarded for their looks with modeling contracts or acting gigs.

I would like to take this opportunity to apologize to my friends, and especially Boyfriend, the handsomest guy I know.

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humor, life

The quiet death of good penmanship

I have thoughts that make me feel very, very old.  Today, I had a really devastating one:

Good penmanship is rapidly becoming obsolete, and that’s kind of a shame.

I was not taught handsome penmanship.  I was taught how to write, and if it was remotely legible, I got a passing grade.  I barely passed.  I remember one assignment where my words were so scrunched together that I put lines between them for clarity.  My teacher was not impressed by my consideration.

Here’s what I was taught:

adequate at best

Here’s what I wish I had been taught:

fucking brutal

How awesome would it be to be able to create something beautiful while writing something simple like a note to myself, or a quick letter to someone on a memo in the office?  It’s like being a word artist.  I’m working on sketching pictures of animals right now (so far I’ve adequately completed a fox and an otter) because being able to accurately draw whatever you want is an amazing ability that I don’t currently possess.  So I’m working on it.  But I wonder if I should be working on my penmanship too…

NO, of course not.  That would be pointless.  I will never hand-write as much as I type.  But it makes me sad that when I write, it’s bound to be a little scrawly and ugly.  I want to make pretty words look pretty.  I want to make ugly words look ironically pretty.  Haha, that would be hilarious; writing some cuss-filled, horrifyingly detailed medical report in perfect cursive.  New goal!

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humor, life

Fun with numbers

I discovered while walking to the car today that my grasp of the English language is, at times, tenuous at best.

i don't get it

I overheard a snippet of a conversation: “…by a twenty-year-old…” and I thought “huh, that kinda makes the number 20 an adjective.”

INITIATE LOGICAL INSANITY SPIRAL

But wait, 20 is describing how something is, not what something is (as in How old are you? 20).  Describing how is an adverb’s job (how did you do on that test?  I did well).  Describing what is an adjective’s job (What color is that?  Blue, old man!).  So what does that make 20 in this case?

Whenever I’m having trouble distinguishing adjectives from adverbs, I stick the color blue in the sentence to see if it makes sense.

How old are you?  I’m blue years old.

Ok so that doesn’t really work.  How about this:

How old are you?  I’m many years old.

The answer makes sense, even though it doesn’t answer the question.  So that makes many, and therefore any word you could logically stick in that position, an adjective, right?  Right.  Let’s do another example:

I have blue crayons.

I have many crayons.

I have 20 crayons.

They’re all adjectives!  Hurrah!  So why does the question How old lead to an adjective for an answer?

How old is really asking Please describe the number of years this person has been alive.  People are nouns, and adjectives describe nouns.  But wait!  That’s not really what we’re being asked to describe.  Look again:

Please describe the number of years…

How can years be described?  With numbers, yes, but with adjectives too, like difficult (adjective), blurry (adjective), and fucking (adverb) awesome (adjective).

But we’ve specifically been asked to describe the number of years.  The only way to answer that is with a number.  Answer: The number of years is twenty.  Wait a second, this makes twenty look like a noun!  Let’s use math to figure this out:

x = y

The number is twenty.

number = twenty

If number is a noun, twenty must be too.  So even though it sounds like twenty is describing the number, all it’s really doing is acting as an alternative for the concept of the number of years someone has been alive, which is a noun.

Mystery solved!

Note: I think about this kind of thing all the time, especially walking to or from my car, or while driving.  Anything that requires less than 80% of my attention automatically receives only 25% of my attention, while the other 75% works at figuring out whether numbers can be adjectives.  This is my life.

UPDATE: I just looked up twenty in the Oxford English Dictionary online.  Holy shit.  I love dictionaries, but holy shit.

this gentleman from the OED agrees... i win.

It sounds like they reach just about the same conclusion I reach, which is that twenty stands in the place of a noun, thereby allowing it to take on the properties of a noun.  Which of course means…

I WIN!!  TIME TO JUMP IN SOME PUDDLES!!  PET ALL THE CUTE DOGS!!  EVERYBODY JUMP IN THE POOL WITH YOUR CLOTHES ON!!  I WIN!!

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goodness, humor, life

Y’know what’s awesome?

Now and then I think, “Y’know what’s awesome?” followed by whatever just caught my fancy.  I should have started writing these down a long time ago, but I didn’t, so I’m starting a segment called…

Y’know what’s awesome?

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Building Romantic Tension

lopsided and mushy, this heart is completely accurate

I was reading this online comic today where these two friends (boy/girl) hang out.  The girl tells the guy he needs to start dating.  The next day the guy wakes up, looks at a photo of the two of them, and calls up some other girl for a date.  Ok, so not the most romantic setup in the world, but you know something’s gonna happen!  And I want it to!  Everyone loves that feeling.

fluffy!

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Clouds

I fucking hate getting soaked in my work clothes, but I genuinely don’t mind getting rained on in my normal, everyday attire.  Clouds are fucking beautiful, even if the rain they produce is occasionally a pain in my ass.  Whenever there’s any rain in LA, I find myself staring at the clouds (they’re pretty exotic here).  I don’t even realize I’m doing it sometimes.  Clouds always make me smile, even if things suck at the time, and rain is depressing or whatever.  Still, clouds are the best.  Especially those big billowy ones.

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