Blog | Alison Rosen

Poor Tobey

By Alison Rosen on April 29, 2008 in dogs

Today is a momentous day for poor Tobey, as he’s growing up and become less of a man. I kind of hate this, and I know my parents who are taking him to the vet today feel conflicted about it too, however pet people across the board say neutering is the humane thing to do. Easy for them to say, they’re human. Still, since Tobey isn’t going to sire little Tobeys (puppies, not the other thing. He’ll keep doing that) it probably makes sense. Plus, he’s been making sweet love to the computer chair.

Have I told you the story about when I took my rabbit, Eliot, to get neutered? Eliot was the rabbit I had in college and for a few years after college. Eliot’s death was traumatic in a Daniel kind of way, except that I called a friend and through tears said “my rabbit died” on his answering machine which then cracked me up since if this were the forties, that would mean I was pregnant. Fifties? Sixties? When were they using rabbits in pregnancy tests, if that isn’t apocryphal? Anyway, and I think I’ve already told this story here, my mom and I dropped Eliot off to get neutered and I burst into tears and my mom asked if I was sure I could go through with it and I said yes, it’s more humane, etc., and then we got home and the vet had called and Eliot was a she! Who knew? Not I! Unfortunately they discovered this after they anesthetized her which still pisses me off. So I drove back and picked up a very drowsy but non-operated on rabbit (I didn’t get her spayed). Then years later she died. This was a horrible post, I’m sorry. Also, I went to this horrible HORRIBLE summer camp when I was 10 and they had this class in a farmhouse where they taught us the names of all the castrated animals. I swear to you. Not that it hasn’t come in handy as a neat parlor trick. Ask me anything! Geldings? Steer? Capon? They also taught us how to hypnotize chickens. I am not making this up.

Back to Tobey though… poor Tobey!

Duuuuude

By Alison Rosen on April 28, 2008 in the gym

I’m at the gym working on my rutabagas, bugles and fire irons and I’m feeling less jaunty than usual because when I got here all the recumbent bikes, which are my bikes of choice because they’re the closest to lying prone in a bed other than I guess the bench press and let’s get serious, I’m a girl and a weak smushy nearly translucent skinned one at that so I’m likely not going to be pumping iron (considered and promptly vetoed a curling iron joke. Too schticky). Anyway, I had to pedal on the upright stationary bike which apparently uses a whole set of muscles I don’t regularly use and so I had to hang on for dear life while time slowed to a torturous trickle and the commercial breaks in jeopardy which I was watching were an eternity. It reminded me of the feeling one gets about three minutes which feel like hours after smoking pot when the novelty has gone away and you are just bored. But, like, so bored you don’t know how you will ever get through it. So bored you consider doing something risky like returning some phone calls because the element of danger might make you feel alive and you feel so bored you feel like a little kid who’s awake long after everyone has gone to sleep. So bored you think, fuckit, I’ll stare at myself in the mirror so you do that for awhile which is alternately disorienting and horrifying and then you look at the clock and realize it’s only four minutes later. So bored that you begin to wonder if maybe life is this boring and the pot is just opening you up to the myriad ways reality drags on in a crushing pageant of banality, so bored it’s as if you are in the fourth hour of a flight from nyc to ca which is usually when I’m pretty sure I’m going to freak the fuck out if I have to stay on this plane anymore. Not that I’ve ever smoked pot. So bored that, and I can’t really explain this one other than the onset of light level psychosis, but you begin to wonder if you’re even stoned. How would you know? Then you laugh for two hours or thirty seconds. But that’s how that bike felt, so after twenty seven minutes that felt like years, I switched to the recumbent bike and now I’m recumbing quite beautifully. Wait I had something else to say. Hmm. Oh yeah, has anyone read the book Singularity by william sleater? It’s a kids science fiction book that I loved though it chilled me when I was young. When I woke up this morning wanting a bird I was also thinking about kids books, first The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles and then Singularity. Time is all out of whack in Singularity, which is why I bring it up. And I should say that if I’d ever smoked pot it hasn’t been in years, years I say, so if you’re my parents, please don’t worry. I realized I prefer heroin.

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Have I said too much? Let me say too much

By Alison Rosen on April 28, 2008 in Uncategorized

I woke up this morning thinking that I should get a pet bird. This was after this really long horrible epic of a nightmare that culminated in my crying over a pet rat I’d fallen in love with named Daniel. Poor Daniel went tits up and got rigor mortis, along with two other sickly hamsters that flipped over and kind of instantly calcified into frogs, which is interesting in a reverse fairy tale kind of way. There was also an infant, danger and a fleet of EMTs. And a bank of people on telephones, telethon style. I mean, frankly it was hard to move around in an apartment stuffed with all these people which is why my beloved Daniel nibbled at the poison which I only discovered after I retrieved him from under the refrigerator.

And they say dreams are only interesting to the people who have them!

Off to the gym my lovelies.

But one more thing about this dream: if I think about it even now, about how I felt when I realized Daniel was gone because I hadn’t acted fast enough, tears still spring to my eyes.

Truly

By Alison Rosen on April 27, 2008 in Uncategorized

Sometimes I like to check my own blog… to see if I’ve posted anything new.

An important note about dictionaries

By Alison Rosen on April 27, 2008 in nerd sex

On Friday’s Red Eye I may have besmirched The American Heritage dictionary. In fact, I know I did. We were talking about a study that said that brainy girls have more difficulty in the bedroom than their dumber counterparts because they are always thinking. I said this was true, and that I was known to read a dictionary while with a suitor but that since switching from Merriam Webster to The American Heritage dictionary, which I said was the dumber dictionary, magic has happened.

Now see, I feel I unfairly maligned American Heritage. It’s the dictionary I grew up on and it’s the dictionary I actually own—though in this day and age it’s rare that I actually open a dictionary because all that stuff is online. Also, my dictionary is packed in a box somewhere along with my lady parts, incidentally, but I think I covered that sufficiently in another post. But Merriam Webster is the dictionary most magazines use as the authority, hence my thinking it’s probably got an edge. In fact, one of my first edit notes at TONY said “check Web10” and I tried to go to that website but there was nothing there. How foolish was I! Web10 was sitting on my desk. Webster’s 10th edition. Now they’re on Web11 I think. Anyway, fuck those dictionaries, both of which are child’s play compared to the OED, you know?

Behind on sleep

By Alison Rosen on April 27, 2008 in the gym

I kind of lost track of time on the bike. If my behind were any more asleep I'd have to rename it Rip Van Winklebutt and read it a newspaper.

Butt Van Winkle? Ass Van Winkle? There is humor in there somewhere, I'm sure of it!
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

At the gym, Buddhism

By Alison Rosen on April 27, 2008 in fitness, the gym

So I’m at the gym working on my gamma deltas and my dingbats and I have a confession to make: I read embarrassing self-help books. It’s why I’m so wildly successful at all my endeavors, especially my endeavoring to procrastinate and be reclusive. I bring this up because last time I was at the gym with my embarrassing book, ipod, blackberry, pack of smokes, cooler of bacardi breezers, small bbq and outboard motor in case I came across a boat and body of water, I had to tear out of there to do red eye at the last minute (may I applaud myself for getting home, dressed, reading the stories and getting out the door in about forty two minutes? Okay then) So today I was getting ready to go back to the gym and suddenly a panic shot through me when I thought I may have left When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times by Pema Chodron at the gym. Thank god I didn’t really. Or thank Buddha, because this book is buddhist although I am not. Now pema looks like a man with a very round skull, but she’s really a woman with a bad haircut. I didn’t realize this until she talked about how she felt when she discovered her husband was cheating on her with a box of hair extensions named jenny. I know what I’ll do, she thought. I’ll get a bad haircut! And so she did, and now she’s a famous author. What was I saying? I forget, but I’m not going to try to hang on to that thought, or even my mind, I’m just going to touch and release it, as I would a small child’s hand in traffic, because that is the buddhist way.

Now you may have found that joke in poor taste but I can’t control that and I have the wisdom to know the difference as well as the serenity to take a nap. Naps, actually. Not now though, right now I’m pedaling as fast as I can divided by about thirteen. I’m pedaling at a thirteenth of my ability because it’s not a race it’s a journey. It’s not a sprint it’s a marathon? Keep it simple stupid? Day at a time? Uh oh, I’m trapped in a downward slogan spiral! Shall I talk about kids again?

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

A couple shots from The Activity Pit (courtesy of Malone's caps)

By Alison Rosen on April 26, 2008 in ME, photos from TV, Red Eye

me me me me me me me me me me me me me (sometimes I just like to say what I’m thinking and feeling)

Things I am not currently getting

By Alison Rosen on April 26, 2008 in lists

anything accomplished
shit done
my groove on
into trouble
into the pool
metaphorically or literally, that is
a barrel of pickles delivered to my apartment anytime soon
a barrel of monkeys delivered to my apartment anytime soon
the hang of it where it equals bull-fighting
an appreciation for sponge-painting
blood circulating in the tip of my left index finger (Raynaud’s syndrome)

The morning after

By Alison Rosen on April 26, 2008 in imperfections, ME, OC Weekly, photos from TV, Red Eye, TV

Pitcher of appletinis (above)

Another pitcher, above, in case you didn’t get the joke and need me to beat it into the ground

appletinis being poured into the bottom of what appears to be a giant tennis shoe

appletinis for your car

So how do I feel about last night’s appletini, you are likely wondering? I deeply regret it. Not for physical reasons—I feel fine, if a little chagrined/horrified—but for matters of self-respect. Do I think I’m better than people who drink appletinis? Pretty much, yes. Appletinis are the drink equivalent of “okay dokey smokey” or “okeley dokely” or “easy peasy japanesey” (no offense to the Pacific Rim) or “right on” or maybe “sweeeeeet” in that you say them making fun of them and then one day you wake up and they’ve actually wormed their way into your vocabulary in earnest and also, you’re that asshole drinking an appletini—which started as a joke because it sounds funny—but man if it doesn’t go down easy peasy. [Note: no one actually adds “japanesey,” that was just for effect.]

Okay, I have to be honest: I never said “okay dokey smokey,” but I did have a problem with “okay dokey.” I think my sister the plant-name stealer did too. I’m reminded of one of my favorite stories, courtesy of one Steve Lowery, who had taken to saying “nighty night” to his kids and heard himself end an interview with a sports legend that way. I forget who the sports legend was of course, because I don’t know sports. Um, Mr. Pigskin? Sherman Bleachers? Doug Dugout? You see what’s happening don’t you? I’ve lost my sense of humor. This is kind of tragic actually, because I was counting on it for the weekend.

Also, I miss the big hair. It had kind of grown on me, literally! And without it I looked so smushed headed and dare I say fat-faced, because (shall I let you behind the curtain? okay then!) whilst in California I got my hair straightened (just the roots or the “regrowth” as it’s called in straightening circles), which is a little thing I do like having my personal assistants shot, for those of you reading all the posts, which results in flat hair (the straightening, not the assistant shooting). It’s why, I think, it poofed up so much the time before last (like poofed up in between when it was styled and when I went on air) and why, since they didn’t want it as big last night, it was kind of stuck to my head. That didn’t make much sense to you did it? My sense of humor along with ability to explain myself have been replaced with a swirling appletini. Let me try again: In its now unnatural natural state, my hair is quite flat. Because the texture is especially fine, it responded extremely well to the poofing last time, so much so that the walk to the newsroom kind of inflated it. Last night though, I think there was less poofing than usual, thus it was stuck to my head. Oh my God, who cares! I’m not even reading this anymore! I mean, seriously. Shall we take a look?