In New York, white nose syndrome means something else.
Author Archive | Alison Rosen
baby asses, the Hills, miso soup mix
I just want to clarify something in the below post. When I say my fingertips are like baby asses, I mean the unchafed butts of babies, not young donkeys, although if they were like baby donkeys, that would be so cute!
Also, is The Hills Lauren Conrad on drugs? This is the second season where, when she makes flirty eyes at some guy, I want to throw a shoe at the television and then take a shower. If I were the guy on the receiving end of that uncomfortable unblinking stare plus shoulder shrug plus strange palsy/shimmy, I would make my way to the exit, and yet they don’t. Maybe the camera adds ten… times the embarrassment by proxy?
And finally, I figured out the way to enjoy the low-sodium miso soup mix from a few blog posts ago: Eat it plain, resulting in a very salty, powdery 25 calorie snack. Like a soy sauce flavored pixie stick with crunchy crap in it.
calluses
I played guitar three weeks ago, which was surprisingly painful, though fun, since the calluses that I once had were long gone and instead my fingers were like ten little baby asses, and my wrist like some kind of weak little unborn bird—like the consistency of the beak of an unhatched chicken—anyway, have I made you barf yet? I can keep going.
So what’s weird is that my fingertips are just now—three weeks later–starting to peel, which is phase one of the calluses. Well actually, it’s phase two. Phase one is pain. It’s like I applied Rogaine to my fingertips, which I didn’t, and the tissue is sloughing slowly.
If anyone would like a piece of fingertip skin, please write an essay detailing why and put it in a bottle and throw it in the ocean. I’m curious to see whether that form of communication works.
Vote for my friend Leah's dog
His name is Charles Chips. http://www.biss
Gather round, readers
Blogfans, because I got called out for it today, I just wanted to take this special moment to tell you, my special and extremely attractive readers, that when I post stories I wrote a long time ago it isn’t because I’m lazy and sitting there thinking “I don’t have anything to post, I know! I’ll post something old!”
It’s that I’ve been going back and reading stuff I wrote from the OC Weekly because, if you must know, I’m trying to see if there’s a book in that old stuff, and anyway, unless you happened to be reading the OC Weekly 8 or 9 years ago, I assume this is new to you, and if you are a fan of mine which you so certainly should be if you’re still reading this piffle, then I assume you would want to read the stuff that I personally think is probably better than a lot of what followed, or if not better than at least on par with. I mean, when you love someone, as you do me (right? RIGHT?!?!?!?!?!) then you love everything about them unconditionally. The way I burp in my sleep, the way I’m covered with pustules, the way I use my uterus as a weapon (I throw it at people) and my penchant for posting old stories. These things make me human. Hence, when I serve up a story from 9 years ago you should just be happy that I have a tenuous grasp on math because it’s occurring to me that I really mean 8 years ago. What? I don’t know. I don’t really sleep-burp. I do like Facts of Life though.
Do I amuse you?
Do I make you laugh? Is this funny to you? Do you find me humorous or perhaps humourous, if you’re ‘across the pond’? Because I assure you that is not my intention. I’m trying to communicate my deep psychic wounds, people. I am serious as a heart attack. Okay, maybe not that serious, but certainly on the level of acid reflux, which many people mistake for a heart attack. It’s tough to tell the difference, you know. So what I’m saying is that I’m serious as GERD, which is no laughing matter, so if you find yourself laughing at my blog it’s probably because you have no empathy and you yourself have never experienced the kind of heartburn you get after a night of drinking 151 and hanging out with cheap whores and smoking cigars and wearing clown suits. No, I have never done such things and I thank you to keep your assumptions to yourself. When you make an assumption you make an ass out of you and mption.
Anyway, I guess I just wanted to set the record straight. The echoes of jackhammers are still in my head. The faint insanity-producing drone. Oh: here’s a list! A list of things I’m not in!
Things I’m not currently “in”:
quicksand
a quagmire
“style,” more or less
a good mood
a pickle
a tar pit
a sports arena
the desert
a good place vis a vis myself and the universe
a time machine
a phase of my life where I care to eat Borscht
an airplane
the running to become America’s Next Top Model
“the money”
“the pink”
“the red”
my blue period
Ideal working environments
You might think the jackhammering wouldn’t be conducive to creative thought—or any kind of thought at all really—but see that’s where you’re wrong my small-thinking pals. Because see it’s not relentless jackhammering. It’s jackhammering interspersed with long interludes rip-tearing fart noises. Then more jackhammering.
Isn't it funny?
How you can think you really know yourself and then one day you’re sitting there and you realize that when it comes to sugar-free Jell-o you really prefer raspberry to cherry? I think it’s a laugh riot!
And that brings me to the following Blash-up. For the uninitiated, a blash-up is a blog mash-up, basically two lists in one. I used to do them all the time, then I stopped for some reason.
BLASH-UP: Things which are jiggly/Reasons for breaking up
Because you’ve fallen out of love
Jello-o
Because he doesn’t like women (and you are a woman)
Silicon implants
Because he’s sleeping with your best friend
Beef Consomme
Because he’s sleeping with Beef Consomme
hair gel
Because you need to “find yourself,” whatever that means
cellulite
Bad news: he’s your long lost brother! (oh come on, I defy you to stay in that relationship)
pudding
The nostalgia vault runneth over
Need to read another story I wrote a long time ago? I thought so. This was from my dating column “Come Here Often,” a title which my parents hated with the hate of a million hate-filled parents. The truth is that when I thought it up, I really was envisioning someone saying it at a bar—the double entendre didn’t occur to me, I swear!—but upon reflection I suppose they had a point. Anyway, the column itself wasn’t racy. And those aren’t my lips.
Flawed Beauty
By Alison M. Rosen
Thursday, December 21, 2000 – 12:00 am
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Have you ever gone out with someone who has horrible taste in the opposite sex and yet finds you attractive? It really does a number on the self-esteem.
One night, I jokingly asked my date —we’ll call him Horton—if the bruises on my legs (which I got from being clumsy, not from what you’re thinking, Mr. Pervypants) made me look sexy. “Well, see,” Horton began, “I like flawed beauty.”
I’m familiar with this notion of flawed beauty. Cindy Crawford’s mole. Jewel’s crooked Alaskan teeth. Kate Hudson’s overly wide-set eyes. Christie Brinkley’s marriage to Billy Joel. This is what men usually mean when they say they like “flawed beauty.”
“Yeah, flaws that aren’t really flaws,” said a co-worker matter-of-factly.
But Horton meant something different.
“I like girls in digital watches,” he offered one night on the phone, as I eyed with dismay my shiny, silver, clunky, bracelet-link, girly, analog watch. “I like lazy eyes. I like prosthetic limbs,” he continued. My stomach flipped in many-limbed non-digital-watch-wearing horror.
Digital watches? Lazy eyes? Prosthetic limbs? And he likes me? I’m supposed to feel good about this?
Perv Boy has been trying to backpedal ever since. “No, but I didn’t mean,” he’ll begin; or “Yeah, but you don’t understand,” he’ll try; or “But wait, what I meant was . . .” But it’s of no use. His words begin to blend together into an indecipherable buzzing drone, and all I can think about is that I feel inadequate because I have too many limbs. What I hear is this: “But wait, I’D LIKE YOU BETTER IF YOU HAD FEWER ARMS” and “No, but I didn’t mean I’D LIKE YOU BETTER IF YOU HAD A CLEVELAND EYE, YOU KNOW, ONE EYE LOOKING AT ME AND ONE EYE LOOKING AT CLEVELAND.” And “But wait, what I meant was YOU HAVE TOO MANY LIMBS.”
Not too many limbs like more than is normal, which would probably turn him on, but too many like the regular amount. Would it have been too much to ask for my mom to have had German measles?
It’s inescapable. No matter which way I look, there they are: both my arms, both my legs, all 10 fingers and 10 toes. It’s all there. My symmetry mocks me.
“Come, love, let’s frolic atop this combine,” I fully expect him to say someday, as I try in vain to stuff my arm into my shirtsleeve. “Come, dear, another bottle of cough syrup for the road?” I curse thee, right leg, keeper of balance, impediment to true love!
“But that’s not how I meant it. You don’t understand. It’s that I . . .” he begins to say—again—and again I tune out because it’s going in one normal ear and out the other normal ear. Damn these normal ears!
“That’s not flawed beauty! That’s mangled beauty!” shouted an incredulous friend when I told him the situation.
“Oh, fiddlesticks! You’re just jealous,” I told him dreamily, as I absent-mindedly scribbled, “Alison + Horton 4-ever and ever” all over my spiral notebook and then cut off my thumb.
Now that some time has passed, I’ve learned to have fun with dear Horton’s unbelievably horrible taste. It’s like a game.
“Okay, do you like it better when a girl has long or short nails?” I ask, already sure of the answer.
“Short,” he says.
“Painted or not?”
“I like short, painted nails,” he says. “But you know what I like better than short, painted nails?”
“Let me guess,” I say. “Short, painted nails that are chipped?”
“Um . . . yeah,” he says, dumbfounded. “How did you—oh, wait, because that’s what you have?”
“No,” I say as I run my fingernails along a cheese grater. “It’s just obvious.”
The other night, my roommate told me I looked like shit. “Oh, thank you, thank you!” I squealed, hugging her and quickly racing over to Horton’s house before I started looking good again.
It was all for naught, though.
“You look nice,” Horton said as I walked through the door.
“What?” I demanded.
“You look . . . um . . . nice?” he said again, beginning to twitch.
“Nice?” I thundered. “Nice! That bitch—she told me I looked like shit!”
Horton stared at me like I was crazy. Of course, for him, that was a turn-on.
I think I’m going to have to call it off, though. I just don’t have the time. You think it’s easy to look this bad?
My side of the fashion debate
I’m quite certain there’s a way to make this look better, but I’m not sure what it is. Anyway, if you click on the wee little column of text, it’ll get bigger and then you can luxuriate in my prose which is totally what you’re wanting to do.
