We Love You, Miss Hannigan

PDQ: Acronym for "pretty damn quick." Faster than "ASAP."
I need the money PDQ.

You may remember from way back when I was considering various get-rich-quick schemes. Ideas included selling plasma (not necessarily my own), gambling and working as an unregistered cabbie. Well, I pursued none of them and instead worked and babysat like a normal, boring person.

When I'm not at my internship, I feel like I'm usually entertaining someone a fifth of my age. I have lost count of the number of times I've heard a high-pitched "Scuse me, I tooted!" followed by incessant laughter.

I totally get her now.

But I must admit I've really grown to enjoy kids' company. They are an endless supply of absurdity and optimism, both of which are good for me.

Sometimes I play around in Photo Booth with them.

I also document the way they make their dolls bald-headed.

However, my biggest challenge as a caregiver has yet to come:

Beginning tomorrow, I am house sitting for a couple visiting their son in Chile for 10 days. Oh yeah, and they're also leaving their three teens and two dogs under my supervision. Jebus, help me. My head is still spinning from going over everything with their mom today—meals, alarm system, soccer practice, orthodontist appointment. Make it stop.

The daily schedule:

• 6-8 am: Walk dogs, shower, get dressed, wake up the youth, make them lunch, drive the youngest to school
• 8:30 am-5:00 pm: Try to uncross my eyes in front of the computer screen
  
• 5:30 pm-10:00: Make them dinner, help with homework, ensure no one is sniffing glue in the bathroom, escape to Twitter
• 10:30-6:00: ZZzzzzZZZZzzzz or something like it

I lead a rich life.

But you do what you got do to make things happen. And in four short weeks, that thing will happen, and I will leave for Thailand. Yes, I'm excited/apprehensive, but my emotions are still very hazy because it hasn't really hit me yet. I'm far more preoccupied with the preparations than the actual journey at this point. I don't expect my "Holy shit, what am I doing??" moment to occur for another 23 days.

Until then, you can find me driving someone else's minivan.


J.

Young & Wild

No Homo: Phrase used after one inadvertently says something that sounds gay.
His ass is mine. No homo.

OK, I consider myself relatively in the know with lingo—which is ironic because by saying that, I just made myself sound like my jeans go up to my armpits—but I must have missed the boat on this one. Do people (and by people, I mean dudes) actually say this? I've never heard it firsthand, but the idea makes me laugh and cry in unison. If it's a harmless joke, that's one thing (though still not funny), but if it's actual attempt to disclose masculinity and self-confidence, you, my friend, are one sad bastard.

This, however, is humorous:



In other news, Where The Wild Things Are is opening this weekend, and my jazz hands are out in full throttle. What I mean is that I'm really excited.

Can we just talk about Karen O for a second? As you may know, she's responsible for the film's dreamy soundtrack. But even more awesome, I discovered she's half ASIAN. Half Korean to be exact. After recent virtual creepage, I came across photos of her without her usual David Bowie-esque makeup and immediately recognized it.

Us halfsies just know.

Besides the soundtrack, I'm also really looking forward to watching Max Records on screen. Talk about casting. He just has that look, you know? That perfect young-yet-wise, angelic-but-mischievous face. I have no clue if he can actually act, but he's definitely special. Lots of kids are cute and all, but something about him evokes this strange notion of childhood that's both romantic and sad when I look at him. I don't know, I'm a weirdo.


But don't you just want to squeeze him so he can never grow up and will be embalmed in beautiful, dewy youthfulness forever? Well, too bad the movie was shot about two and a half years ago so the kid's about to be teenager. Damn puberty ruins everything.

Moving on, I was thinking about how cool it would be to start a zine or more realistically a website for people my age. About what? I don't know. To be honest, I mostly just wanted to come up with a cool title for it.

It's like what Dave Eggers wrote in "A Heartbreaking Work of A Staggering Genius" when he's auditioning for The Real World and explains the magazine he and his friends just started up:

Now what's it called again?
Might.

M-i-t-e?
No, M-i-g-h-t. Everyone spells it M-i-t-e. It's ridiculous. Why would it be named after a bug? Mite is such an obscure word, compared to Might, right?

Well, what is it named after?
Well, it's a double entendre, see—you'll love this, this is great, it can mean two things at once, can sit right on the fence between two meanings—with, in this case, "Might" meaning both power and possibility.

Ooooh.
Yeah. I know. It's good.

So I came up with reFRESH, thinking Awesome, this is original and works on multiple levels—slightly geeky Web browser reference and will also have the reFRESHing (subtle, right?) voice of my generation. Until I discovered it already existed. The gays beat me to everything.

Oh well, I guess I'll just have to think of another name for my theoretical magazine/website that will most likely never be produced.

Until then, my blog shall do.


J.