The Chronicles Of Jessica

Sorry, ladies, he's taken! Or maybe he's not. I don't really know this guy, honestly.

Over the weekend Paul and I got to talking about the term "wifebeater", a term which refers to the white ribbed tank top type of garment this anonymous gentleman from the internet is sporting. It is my contention that a guy I went to college with invented this term. Paul says no way, but his opinion has no basis in fact; he just thinks it's really unlikely that someone I went to college with could have invented a widely-used bit of slang. I don't think it's that unlikely! These terms have to come from somewhere! Does he think there are groups of people sitting around making this stuff up, like some kind of a cross between Brookings and SNL? I absolutely think that term was invented by a dude I know and was thusly ushered into the vernacular of the 90's. So there. I actually haven't heard anyone use the term in a while, because I think people started to catch on to the fact that it's a little bit horrid and sexist. Even though it's funny. Kind of like Sam Kinnison, or All in the Family.

Completely apart from how odd that guy looks in the wifebeater is the pitiable fact of the solo stache. The solo stache is rare in modern America, and there's a reason for it: singularly few men can pull it off. I can think of like 3 that aren't my father or fathers-in-law - Tom Selleck and...maybe the Mario Brothers. It's gotta either be full beard or nothing, fellas. You heard it here.

Speaking of the Brothers Mario, a video game has recently been introduced into my household, with less than benificent effects on my self-esteem. Paul got a Nintendo Wii as a birthday/graduation/Christmas gift from my family while we were up in Maine. He hooked it up to my little cousin's television before we even left to come back home and the addiction has continued to exert a mighty hold upon him ever since. He boxes. He plays something called "Smashbrothers". He plays tennis. He bowls. Now that sports are virtual, they are interesting to him. Amazing how that works. I, however, am pathetic, both at pixelated sports and at sports of the non-pixelated variety. I don't have your fancy hand-eye coordination, or that whole ability-to-keep-my-eyes-open-when-the-ball-is-coming-at-me thing.

I worry for my future children, with respect to these matters. Paul and I are going to be getting a baby at some point (if we can find a good one - do any of my readers belong to Costco? Reply in the comments pls) and I can't help but wonder who is going to teach them the gym-class/playground oriented skills that remains so crucial to one's happiness in those formative years. Neither Paul nor I were given to excel in the jockly arts. Are there consultants we can hire? If so is there a family rate available? These are the questions we will struggle with as parents but it might not be all bad. Maybe we could produce an instructional dvd with like Tiger Woods or Jack LaLanne, teaching dumpy asthmatic kids how to do calisthenics and spike a volleyball. Or at least how best to protect their headgear when the volleyball is coming at them! (Potential backers pls respond in the comments.)

Let's see, let's see....what else? Well I put a $1500 dent in the car on New Year's day which was unpleasant; at press time we still don't have the car back. It will probably be returned to us in once again pristine condition only to have some troglodytic half-wit senate page soused out of his mind vomit on it during the Inauguration next week. This place is about to become lawless and frightening which I guess is only fitting given that those two adjectives are ones I used repeatedly to describe the guy who's no longer going to be my neighbor come next Tuesday. Oh yeah! George W. Bush.

Bush. BUSH! You old so and so! Ha! What can I say, buddy!??! We had some times. The abuse of the constitution, the cronyism, the rape of the land - the memories. I won't forget you, man. I never could. To me, you'll always be the worst president that I have ever, ever had, or even pretty much heard of, unless we're counting despots and dudes named Mugabe and Amin. You keep it real, G Dub. Peace out.

Okay, my week could be worse.

Ugh - January. Is there any other month that saps the joy from living the way January seems to? My face is flaky, I'm depressed, my mucous membranes are dried up worse than Peter Scolari's career prospects. January just blows. Nothing to look forward to, no holidays coming up, unless you count Martin Luther King day and I don't think you really can. Martin Luther King was an amazing and inspirational man and we paid him back by giving him, like, the crappiest holiday. We don't even celebrate his birthday on the actual day, we do it in a Monday so that we can have a long weekend because that's more convenient for us. Pffft. We don't give gifts, we don't cook special meats, we don't even get drunk and dye the rivers a different color. Have you ever heard somebody say, "Man I had the best time at that MLK party last Monday!!!!" No. No you have not. The best we could do for Martin Luther King was to shut down the post office and the dmv. Feh.

But the worst part are all the stupid weight-loss resolution things you see this time of year. New you in 2009! Twelve New Habits For Success! New Years Discount at Jenny/Nutri/Craig/Watchers/LA/Weight/System!!!! Blah blah blah. What about those of us who have accepted our bodies and don't feel like we need to be told to lose weight, or to feel like we're supposed to feel like we should lose weight, or whatever. (That didn't make much sense I realize but I'm in a bad mood so I'm plowing ahead.) Then you get all these people who are new at the gym and are gumming up the works because they're new, and it's a new them and new year, and by God they are going to get their monies worth (which is hard to do at my gym because it is frankly hella-expensive. They should give out truffles and serve smoothies in Faberge eggs for what I'm paying.)

So then you have all these people who have never been to the gym, or haven't been in forever, and they don't know the protocols and they bother me. Like today after Spinning (hate), there was this woman in the locker room who had like three towels which she was using to shield every possible part of her body as she changed her clothes. She put one around her waist to change her pants and then she put one around her torso to change her top, jealously guarding every inch of her flesh from the prying eyes of the rest of us. Does she think we're all a bunch of sex-crazed maniacs who'll start french-kissing her the second she shows her underwear? It's weird! Stop being weird. Everyone changes in the locker room; it's a LOCKER ROOM. No one is looking at you! Except I was in this instance because I thought all this secrecy and modesty meant maybe she had like something freakily wrong with her like a vestigial tail or a twin growing out of her thigh. Then the bottom half towel fell while she had her shirt over her head, and she tried to grip it with her knees but I still saw pretty much everything and it all looked pretty normal, so. There went that theory. If I see her again I'm going to ask her if she has to use clamps to get her nipples to stay that perky and see if can get her to pass out.

I'm not sure, but I think I heard something recently about how the economy is in pretty bad shape. Does anyone know anything about this?

Every time I turn around someone is crowing about the economy and how crappy it is. How many jobs lost, how many points the DOW fell, how unstable the housing market is. The news is filled with horror stories of little old couples who were getting ready to retire in four days only to have their life savings disintegrate in a badly diversified IRA and now they have to work as greeters at Walmart and they both have the hantavirus and the medicine is $126 a pill. Then they love to go out and shoot footage of long lines of people standing in the unemployment line looking somber and jobless. I get it - things are very very bad. There's no liquidity, or there's too much liquid or something's not flowing; anyway, we're screwed. But I still think this is the media's new way of putting the scare onto us, now that everyone's grown weary of the terrorist threat color-wheel thing we've been subjected to for the last 7 years. They like those kinds of stories because they like to stir up drama, that's what they do. If the economy weren't in the toilet they'd go back to freaking us out about killer bees and salmonella Skippy spread and alligators in the sewers. It's always going to be something.

I don't want to seem insensitive, but I don't get the economy. I think most people don't get the economy, and I think this is at the root of our recent problems. We had a bunch of dudes sitting on banking committees and oversight committees and boards and commissions and things, and they didn't exactly know what they were doing. They didn't really understand what a credit default swap was or what a mortgage securitization was, or if they did know what it was they didn't really understand how it all went together. They were kind of just pretending they had the full picture and going along with what they were told like it all made sense, kind of like I do when Paul is explaining the electoral college.

The economic crisis hasn't really affected me, because I have no money and I've never had any money. But I can see how it would be really upsetting and disturbing to people who had a lot of money and now have a lot less. I'm no Adam Smith, but I put together a handy analogy to help me: I imagine I have a lot of candy, and then all of a sudden I have much less candy, like less than half, and then I'd be saying, "Hey where's my frickin' candy? When am I getting it back?" and the system would be all, "We're not sure, it kind of went away, it might be back or it might not, just hang tight" and I'd be all, "But that's my candy, it's always been mine! You never told me this could happen! What the hell's going on!?!?!" but by then no one's listening because like half of America has lost all their candy too.

But if I had lost a bunch of money in a recent economic downturn, you can bet I would not be pleased by all these ads on television acknowledging how shitty the economy is. Travelocity, Chevron, Hyundai, etc. "We know times are tough. We're here for you. If you get canned you can bring the Hyundai back just please for the love of God buy a car!!!" Stop feeling my pain, corporations. It's extremely disingenuous. You don't care about me, you care about selling hotel rooms and gasoline and overpriced Korean sedans (although I must say that I rode all over West Africa in a Hyundai minivan and the worst that ever happened to the thing was a flat tire and those roads were ridiculously treacherous. They could really not even accurately be described as roads, they were more like well-worn pathways with a little bit of asphalt sprinkled around. Anyway - that was some quality Korean engineering at work there.)

Maybe I'm just crabby because I'm sick. I caught a very bad cold from a baby a week and a half ago and it shows no sign of going away. The baby recovered in like 48 hours; meanwhile I've got Bozo hair and a nose you could guide sea vessels by. Not to mention I sound like the lady villain in The Goonies. If the corporations really want to help me, maybe they could start with lowering the frickin' price of Tylenol Cold Multi-Symptom Daytime Rapid Release Gels (SEVERE). In the last 10 days I've spent enough on that stuff to rejuvenate the entire economy all by my damn self.