Teeney presents: Deep thoughts on Motherhood (a true story)

I know this is late; I apologize. I decided to be ambitious and do a comic with a program I never use. I started this around 10:45.

If anyone has tips on how to convert from .svf to jpeg or some other format that the internet lovingly accepts, please let me know.

I also drew this all with my little touch pad, so don't be too mean.

Photo.

Chicago.

The first time I went to Chicago, I'd never been high enough off the ground to realize how ugly the roofs of urban commercial and retail buildings are. Our hotel was across from the largest Gap I'd ever seen, and the pebble-covered, air conditioner-dotted drab of its roof seemed to blight the entire world. I was old enough to know the meaning of men smiling at me, but too young to enjoy art museums.

I remember my sister, the pinnacle of cool: Tommy Hilfiger tank top, brown leather belt, bootcut jeans, and an inch of belly slinking its way along where they all came together. Me in trifold crew socks, wondering why I was nothing like her. Just walking next to her I was older, but so aware of everything I lacked.

I remember posing for pictures outside Wrigley Field, scowling, because it was uncool to pose for the camera. I didn't even like baseball. I wanted to go shopping--not that I had any idea where I was supposed to go, or what I was supposed to buy. No idea who I was supposed to be.

I finally got off my fat ass and saw The Dark Knight.

I can make your pencil disappear.


Just take off your pants.

This is late. Good word(s) 1.1.

I'm sorry. It's late. Here is a good word for you.

Abscond v. - to depart clandestinely; to steal off and hide


Admonish v. - to reprove; to express warning or disapproval

Amalgamate v. to combine several elements into a whole

Jeb admonished Kyle when he discovered that Kyle was the one who had absconded with his original culinary amaglation of pound cake and omelettes.





EW.

This is the movie they had playing at the Jackalope last night

Pretty awesome.

American Teen

I don't have time to do this as well as I should do it--I have to drive home, pick up some clothes I forgot there, air up my bike tires, and get to Darlene's to ride bikes to go drinking in the next 100 minutes. So this will be fast.

I went to a free screening of American Teen on Tuesday, a documentary about four high school seniors dealing with their final year of high school. The film was a sort-of surprise success at a number of film festivals before getting snapped up by Paramount Vantage and getting its soundtrack released on (I think) Sony.

Paramount is advertising the film as a "modern day Breakfast Club" and as being about five students. Really, it's neither of these things. The fact that the film is a documentary and that it covers about ten months of the kids' lives--not a comedy that takes place in one afternoon--proves it has, for the most part, little in common with the Breakfast Club. The documentary focuses on four students: Hannah, the artsy girl who doesn't fit in; Colin, the basketball star who is under pressure to get a scholarship so that he can afford to go to college; Geoff, the band-nerd/loner/dork who play computer games all the time; and Megan, the blonde super-bitch of the high school who thinks her life will end if she doesn't get into Notre Dame. Paramount said there were five stars--They counted Mitch, the "heart throb", as the fifth, I think in a lame effort to get more "traditional" audiences to go to the film (why watch a film with no romance, huh?). In reality, he has very little screen time, and doesn't really have ANY screen time until about halfway in.

But the film itself does a fabulous job of showing exactly what it's like (or, what it feels like it's like) for an American kid finishing their senior year of high school. There's drugs, drinking, sex, "heart break", insecurity, acne, sports, popularity, super-bitch moments...

I don't have time to go into it at all in depth now, but the documentary was superb. It captured all the issues of high school that seemed, at the time, like they would be the end of the world, but ended up all being completely survivable. And it did it well.

And it had a fabulous soundtrack.

ps. I now have a free pass to Tropic Thunder next week too. Woooooo!

Work.

We have a rather old cash register at work. It's not one of those fancy shmancy computer dealies that everywhere else in the world has these days. Today, as I was ringing a woman up, it just suddenly stopped working. The display read "PP 0.00." I hit every button on the keypad. Nothing. I turned it off, then back on. Nothing. I tried all the different modes it has. Nothing. I called my manager, and she did the exact same thing, to no effect. I'm freaking out a little bit, like, "Holy shit, I broke the cash register. How the fuck are we going to be open if the register doesn't work? I guess we could just take credit cards. Man. I wonder what I did. God, I can't beleive I broke the register and ruined the store's day."

In the meantime, a girl had tried to bring a dress back. "I wore it twice and it has these holes in it... they had to have been there when I bought it because they're in such an odd place..." And I had to tell her no, and she begged. This was before the manager showed up (before the register had even broken), so I called her. "Well, offer her 20% off on her next purchase," she finally said. "But we can't take the dress back." The girl was upset, and I was sorry, but told her I didn't have any power to bend store policies.

So, at this point, I'm totally stressing out and feeling horrible because I told this girl she had to keep the dress and she was upset and then I'm thinking I broke the entire register.

When I'd come in, I hadn't noticed a little note taped to the wall with my name on it. I opened it, and it was a note from a guy I've met out a few times, first at the art party and then at the moonlight bike cruise. The guy with the incredible, bright yellow socks. Just a little "Hello," really, but something cute and sweet and--most importantly at that moment--cheerful.

It was just a really, really good morning for someone to have come in and left me a hello.

And no, the register wasn't broken. Apparently it just had a minor paper jam, and it was freaking out and frozen.

So everything was okay. :)

The danger of bookstores

Yesterday, in an attempt to either thwart or unmask our mysterious flasher, I visited a number of small boutiques and clothing stores, telling them about the problems we've had, and asking if they've had any similar problems. People were glad to know about the situation, and very thankful that I was going around doing this.

At one of the stores, I got to talking with the guy about weird people in general, and he started telling me a whole series of stories from when he worked in a local bookstore. There was one guy who would shit in the sci-fi section, and a few other similar things. The icing on the cake (haha) however was the following: There was one guy who would come in and masturbate in his pants. When a woman leaned over to get a book off of one of the bottom shelves, he'd whip it out and shoot in her hair. The guy I was talking to said they'd know when it happened, because they'd hear a woman scream, and then see a guy sprint out of the store.

They never caught him. Be careful in bookstores, ladies.