Quodlibets

Be Skinny! Men LOOOOVE It!

Have ya seen these:

The tag line for these ads:  "Forget about it.  Men's preference will never change.  Fit Light Yogurt."

These ads are possibly some of the most revolting I've ever seen.  Not because of the pictures, which I actually think are quite beautiful, especially the gorgeous, gorgeous (and probably, sadly, airbrushed) girl laying in the roses, but because of the tag line, which makes me want to hurl and scream and throw things at whoever approved this ad.  It's not an American ad, so you're not going to see it here, thank god. 

It's just that old thing rearing its ugly head: fat girls can't be pretty and they can't look good and they only eat decadent full fat yogurt.  (Of course, full fat yogurt is SOOOO bad for you, and will immediately pork you up.  Ha.)  It's just so galling that someone thought these images would be revolting to men....or did they?  Possibly they're just trying to make girls find them revolting, which isn't hard to believe at all, because I think women actually fear and hate fat more than men do.  Sam's never, ever made a peep about me that way, and in fact goes out of his way to adore me and compliment me and it's me who hates my body, not him.  This ad, actually, is extraordinarily effective, because it skews how women think, making them believe that men find these images revolting.  Which come to think of it, I'm not at all sure they would.

It's pretty sad the head job that's being done on women, making them feel fat when they're not, making them feel ugly when they're not, and in general putting an artificial pressure on them to look like an anorectic.  I fight it every single damn day, and I'm fighting against society and myself, but you know, I'm not fighting against Sam, or most men even.  I don't have any reason to believe, astonishingly enough, that men wouldn't find me attractive just as I am now.  Only I think I'm an ugly piggy.  These ads?  Feeding that.  And it makes me sad.

More (and more intelligence) on this at Feministe and Pound.

Blahdy fucking blah

I mean, just, really.  I just went to Yelp to check in, and saw that there was a forum thread about what everyone's reading, and thought, "ooooh, fun."  Yeah, not so much.  A guy started the thread, and he asked for recommendations, for every sort of fiction except for romance, which he could go without reading forever, thank you very much.  I mean, that's fine, but then a little further down in the thread, some other guy says, "yeah, don't you hate it when you accidentally end up in the romance aisle in the bookstore and you have to look around and make sure no one saw you because it's so embarrassing?" 

I'm so tired of defending romance, so I didn't post anything; and anyway, I knew whatever I wrote wouldn't have been coherent because it just makes. me. so. angry.  Not that this is anything new to my regular readership.  But I wanted to say something like this:  Dude, grow up.  Wandering through the aisles of a bookstore and accidentally happening upon romance?  Yeah, that's not embarrassing.  Don't be such a big baby.  I mean, jesus, grow some balls. 

And frankly, I don't even think it's embarrassing for men to be buying romance novels, or enjoying them.  I know they're out there (or at least RWA and anecdotal evidence says they're out there, though I've never met them), so I'm sure it happens that men come up to the register with romance novels, and no one says a thing.  For that matter, Sam has bought them for me before, and has never really complained.  He doesn't read them, but that's par for the course, because he doesn't read anything, ever.  And personally, I'd like all those men who denigrate romance (or women who denigrate romance) to read one or two and then object.  Read one and then tell me you hate them and you think they debase the very concept of novel.  That's all.

Sigh.

Blues

Sometimes it totally sucks that I'm not a crappy person.  I mean, if I were a crappy person, then I could be sucky at my job, and thus spend more time doing the same amount of things I'm doing now.  Hell, if I were a crappy person, I wouldn't even being doing all the jobs I'm doing now (and trust me, I am like the catch-all clerk here at the library--don't know who should do a job?  Hell, give it to me.), because they couldn't be entrusted to me.  I'd already be so swamped from my job that I'd shudder to take on any other tasks.  But since I'm basically a competant person, the kind of person who is actually uber-competant, I get screwed.  I'm being pushed and pulled and heaped on, because it looks like I do nothing all day.  I assure you, I do things.  I do a lot of things, every day.  But I'm so freaking good at them that it seems like I do nothing. 

I know there's no job in the world that will just let me be, and do my work in my own time.  I'm pretty sure that most jobs will want me to look busy when I'm not.  And I'm not sure what kind of job it would take to fill my time.  I've pondered that--how much would I actually have to take over here before I was actually stretched and challenged?  And the answer is, I don't know.  Possibly one of the processing jobs in back, or all of the ILL plus what I do now.  That might do it.  But I can't believe this library would expect me to take over all of the ILL--something the head of department does now--and not pay me more.  Which they wouldn't.  I'm sorry, it's not like they're asking me to take over ILL.  It's just that they keep adding tasks to my workload, trying to fill my days, and it's desperately not working.  And now they want to change things even more, and they want to fuck with my workday, and that means my commute gets worse.  I'm not sure how much I'll change, not really.  I can't become less competant overnight so that I look busier.  And I've tried REALLY hard to stretch tasks out, but it's just not possible for me.  I can't do it.  I'm too damn ethical to read or internet surf while there's work to be done.

It's such a sad state of affairs.  It's actually so sad that it's making me teary.  I don't want things to change from how they are, not if it means more scutwork that other people can't handle and a fucked up work schedule.  That's just going to make me more miserable, and that's going to lead to me leaving this job.  I wish I knew how this gets resolved.

30 min later:  You know what this is?  This is me feeling like I'm being punished for being a good worker.  I'm sorry other people suck at their jobs, but you can't punish me by giving me the work they should be doing.  And that's 100% what it feels like, and no one likes to be punished, esp. people who are doing an exemplary job.  It sucks.  The people who suck should be disciplined, not me.  And they aren't, because they've been here so long they've off limits.  Nice, eh?  I'm not going to stop being upset and pissed about this.  I can already feel it growing into a cancerous tumor, and that's really not good for anyone's health.

Ranty

I'm in this ranty, cranky mood right now.  I just want to spew forth venom on topics ranging from the scandal in the justice department to things about ex-friends that just make me want to scream.  And every possible topic in between, including, but not limited to:  toxic chemicals in popcorn and diet soda, co-workers + job = bad, cicadas being diiiiisgusting, traffic being f-ed up for no good reason, gas prices being jacked because oil barons are greedy assholes (the price of oil is falling, you bastards), buildings being too cold in the summer to work in capris/skirts/short sleeves, the music industry in general, the frustratingly unclean apt. I live in, crappy boring summer nights spent doing nothing because I did all the fun stuff at work during the day, not knowing what to feed myself because I'm trying to avoid chemically stuff, Sam hating his job, etc etc.

I'm sure I could go on forever, but I'm trying to not to be too unbearable and it's probably failing miserably.  I don't know why I'm in such a bad mood, but jeez, it's really bringing me down.  Maybe a walk will help.

(Then again, maybe not.  Those cicadas are really freaking gross, people.  They were all over the sidewalk and pavement near a big tree in the parking lot today, and it felt like I was walking through a minefield of disgusting HUGE bugs.  I almost screamed, and I am not kidding.  Instead, I swore badly under my breath the whole time I was walking through the obstacle course of dead cicadas.  Ewk, ewk, ewk.  I'm ready for them to go away again.)

Dilemma

I really want to go to BlogHer.  In the worst way.  It's in my town, so close to my apt. I could almost (althought, sheesh) walk there.  In fact, if I wanted a nice long walk, I could walk there.  The dilemma is that it costs 104.something to register for one day.  And the one day I want to attend (I'm not so interested in Day Two), I will be attending an evening wedding.  I don't think that paying 104.something for a half day's attendance is worth it.  Furthermore, I don't think I can afford to pay that much for what is just a chance for me to listen to some of the bloggers I love reading.  I just can't afford it.  That's all.

I've written to BlogHer to see if there is any chance of half-day registration, but I'm not holding out any hope.  What should I do?  The wedding is so important to me; it's not one of those, "I barely know you but you invited me" sort of a wedding.  It's a long story, but suffice it to say that I'm jumping at the chance to go, and I won't jeopardize that with a conference, no matter how freaking much I'm DYING to go.  Argh.  I guess I'm just crossing my fingers and hoping that a half day thing is a reality, even though duh, I know it won't be.

Okay, now I'm just repeating myself.  Back to TV.

Update:  Elisa from BlogHer contacted me and offered me a pre-conference volunteering opportunity in exchange for a one-day pass.  I turned her down, because I think the volunteering would be a much larger time (and possibly gas money) committment than I have time for.  I'm busy the next 5 weekends, if you count this one.  I want to stress though that Elisa was incredibly geneous with her offer, and my not going is now on me, not them.  I appreciate the offer immensely.  It's just a really busy summer, I guess.

Things I love that are dubiously moral

Football, for one.  And horse racing, for another.  RealSports packed a punch last night on HBO--a double whammy about the NFL having its head up its ass about concussions and long-term effects and horses being so doped up during races that it's destroying the sport.  Both stories were incredibly hard to watch, though no moment was so hard as when two younger-looking (fifties, maybe) ex-football players literally couldn't answer questions, one because of early-onset Alzheimer's and the other because of short-term memory loss and dementia.  It was very devastating, the kind of devastating that brought tears to my eyes.  I personally have a hard time believing that football didn't contribute to these illnesses, and even though right now much of the evidence is anecdotal, it seems convincing.  I don't think it's just two men, or three; I think possibly the numbers are greater than can even be imagined, especially when taking into account mental illnesses such as short-term memory loss and depression, which ex-football players seem to suffer from in spades.

The NFL, of course, is denying any connection between multiple concussions and later problems, and is even saying that it's not proven dangerous to go back in a game before completely recovered from a concussion.  They deny that any of these men's problems have anything to do with football.  Because if they don't, it looks really bad, doesn't it?  It might even hurt the league in the long run; in fact, it's hard to see how it could NOT hurt the league.  One ex-football player says it's all about money, and he may be right.  Which just makes it all the more despicable.  And in fact, most of the guys who are still competant aren't asking that football stop being football, just that the NFL appraise every NFL player of the risks, so that each man can make his own decisions about whether to play while concussed--whether to play at all.  If that means more men opt out (though with the money the way it is, who knows.  Some of the guys who aren't stars, maybe, will opt out.  But guys making millions?  I'm not sure.), then so be it.  I do think that hand-in-hand with this, though, is the fact that coaches need to be aware of the risks, and allow and accept that concussed players (even if the players happen to be the star quarterback or the RB or whoever) may not be playing for a few days, at the very least.  Either way, it was a really horrific story, and really heart-wrenching to watch.  It's another football story that diminishes respect for the NFL and football, in general.

And as for the horse racing, I'm not surprised that the sport is corrupt.  I'm also not surprised that there has not been a Triple Crown winner in twenty-some years (the report last night coincides perfectly with my current reading of The Horse God Built, which is about who else, Secretariat), because drugs have weakend the sport to such a degree that horses no longer seem built for the kind of racing that the Triple Crown demands.  I don't think this current horse, Street Sense, will win it.  The Belmont at a mile and a half is too much for horses these days, and it's too much because training has broken down.  When three or four of the top trainers (Todd Pletcher being one, though his horses obviously didn't win the Derby, so there you go) have drug offenses on their records, that points to a dearth of integrity in the sport.  Which is too bad, because I'm of the opinion that there is nothing so beautiful as a great racehorse winning a big race.  I love it; I never grew out of that teenage girl love of horses, I guess.  But it means that there are no great racehorses anymore, because every win must be suspect.  It's ugly, and if I were a betting person, I'd never bet on the horses.  Too many problems with drugs.

Not to mention the fact that it's incredibly cruel to horses to race them drugged and injured.  An enormous amount of pressure is exerted on the leg bones of a racing horse, and running through pain--as though there wasn't pain--is insanely cruel.  Horses aren't sentient enough to make the decision to play through pain, like humans can, and furthermore, they can't then take care of themselves forever when they're living crippled from the cruelness perpetrated by humans.  Thousands of Thoroughbreds are sent to slaughterhouses every year because they're no longer winners or they're not breeding champions or they're barren--or they're too injured to do any of those things any longer.  And those injuries aren't always freak accidents.  Sometimes they're caused by negligence and again, cruelty on the part of their trainers.  It's hideous, and we're the only horse racing country in the world that allows such practices near our courses.  Drugs are mostly 100% banned in other horse racing countries, which means the sport is still as it should be.  Ability and training and jockeying wins races in England or Ireland, Australia or France.  There is no such assurance here in the states.  We (really) should be ashamed of ourselves.

Things Take a Turn for the Worse

Day 4
We're in Rome.  We do stuff, including the buying of popeners and the sending of postcards.  Very chill.  I'm pretty sure we ate gelato.  At least twice.

Day 5
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand.  It all goes to shit.  Definitely the very worst day of the entire trip.  My dad had hired a tour guide for two days.  Day one (day 5 of the trip) was a Vatican Museum/St. Peter's tour in the morning, and a Roman greatest hits in the afternoon.  Day two (day 6 of the trip) was an all-day trip out to Tivoli, for Hadrian's Villa and Villa d'Este.  I, before we even left, decided that S and I wouldn't be doing the afternoon tour on day one.  I've done to death a lot of Rome sites, just because I lived there and then visited with S four years ago.  I wanted to spend the afternoon visiting the places that I used to go all the time as a student in Rome.  But yes, I decided a Vatican museum tour could be very interesting, considering that I was so hung-over during the school's visit 9 years ago that I missed almost everything. 

The instructions were to meet our guide (Mayta) at a cafe across from the museum entrance.  We waited, and a woman approached us and asked my dad if he was the man who was eating his way through Italy.  My dad said no, but I had a horrible moment where I just knew that he was wrong.  This....woman....was our tour guide.  First of all, she was, and this is putting it charitably, mobility-challenged.  She was overweight, and her legs were mottled and stumpy and they didn't work.  Her pace?  Challengely slow.  From the beginning, I could NOT understand how she hoped to walk all over Hadrian's Villa, which is a very sprawling kind of a site.  Secondly, she smelled.  Specifically, her breath smelled.  Because her teeth?  They went every which way, were brown (I mean BROWN), and she was clearly missing a few.  She smelled so bad that I had to get away from her.  I mean, I moved so far away from her that at times I missed what she was saying.  Which was okay.  And this is nitpicking, but her clothes were gross.  Faded dress, that looked dirty, and an exceedingly disgusting black sweater chock-a-block with cat hair.  Also, she had shit in her hair.  I mean, not hair gel, but actual environmental items stuck in her hair.  Nightmare.

So we had no choice, and we toddled over to the entrance, walking slowly slowly slowly the whole time.  She was a bruiser, and I think she was being quite rude to the people at the entrance, and honestly, I think that they were laughing at her, and at us, for being with her.  In the grand scheme of tourist hierarchy, we were the big losers, and let me tell you, other people made that very clear.  It was embarrassing.  So we're walking, slowly, and our first stop is the bathroom.  (Ah, Vatican Museum bathrooms, so nice.)  We finally make it to the courtyard with the pinecone, where they've got the Sistine posters set up, and Mayta begins talking about the whole shabang.  Grudgingly, I'll admit that she seemed to know her stuff, at least as far as the Sistine went.  But annoyingly, she'd sometimes lose her train of thought, right in the middle of it.  And then this would happen:  "So Michaelangelo painted these figures in these positions because....Um......Um.....Um..........Um..............Um.............Um.  Yes, Michaelangelo painted these figures."  I.  Am.  Not.  Joking.  I wanted to slap her, because I thought maybe then she'd be able to remember what the hell it was that she wanted to say.

Never mind.  It took forever, and we finally entered the hallway procession that leads to the chapel.  If you've ever been, you are aware that it is a MOB SCENE, and the best thing to do is to duck into other rooms (because there are some AWESOME pieces of art in other rooms) or just keep moving.  But of course, Mayta couldn't keep moving.  Because she was so challenged, she had to stop every so often, and often that meant twice in one hallway.  She did explain some of the artwork on those walls in the hallways, but we didn't duck into any other rooms, because frankly, there's no way she could withstand all that walking.  (I believe it was at this point that I began trying to express my doubts to my dad--that there was NO WAY IN HELL this woman could lead satisfactory tours of the villas in Tivoli.)  It took us a freaking LONG time to get to the Sistine, which frankly, I saw two other times, and it wasn't that impressive then.  I don't know, it's just not breathtaking like the Pantheon or the Colosseum. 

We leave that, and head into St. Peter's.  Mayta doesn't say jack shit about St. Peter's; I learned tons more with my classes and from f-ing guidebooks, and my dad's wife wants (understandably!) to spend some time in the basilica.  It's her first time there, after all, and though St. Peter's doesn't get me like it used to, I can remember the awe that you feel the first time you walk in.  But Mayta wants us to leave.  M stands her ground, and Mayta says, "Fine, you can have 5 minutes, but we need to leave so I can go to the bathroom."  It was horrifying, and it made me feel very sad inside.  She was clearly a nightmare, and I began to be very, very grateful for the decision I had made weeks before.

Outside the Vatican, S and I declined Mayta's invitation for lunch with them (she wasn't happy to learn we weren't going with them for the afternoon, though I am 100% sure my dad told her we weren't), because we had a date with L'Insalata Ricca and Trastevere.  Walking away, I said to S, "Boy, I'm Speed Racer compared to her."  She was SO slow, and folks, I do NOT walk quickly.  So this is where S and my association with Mayta ends, on Day 5.  We went to lunch, walked around Trastevere, and generally had a nice afternoon.  When we got back to the hotel at 5:40 or so, my dad and M weren't back.  Weird, but okay.  I was falling asleep, and S was working on photo stuff when there was a knock on the door.  It had to be around 6:30.

S answered the door.  He said my dad's sunglasses were askew on his head, and that his expression was one of utter defeat.  M and him walked into the room, and began to describe their afternoon.  Everything I am about to relate to you happened to them, and not us, and I hope I don't get any details wrong, because it was bad.  Really.  Really.  Bad.

First, Mayta (or the driver that Mayta hired) drove them all over, willy-nilly, talking about neighborhoods and prices to live there, and if it was a good neighborhood or not.  Then, for lunch, she suggested pizza, but ended up taking them to a Sicilian restaurant (that she loved) heavy on the seafood, and according to my dad and M, not good.  And at one point, Mayta went to the bathroom and came out of it with blood dribbling out of the corners of her mouth.  Ew.  It was a two-hour lunch, and during that two-hour time, the drive (and Mayta) were on the clock.  Finally, they leave lunch, and she's got them driving around.  She takes them up on a hill (the Janiculum, from what I can figure out), and points out landmarks.  Then she asks them if they want to see the Catacombs, and they say yes.  She gets them there, and tells them okay, now you've got hire a tour guide for in there, and I'll wait here.

Probably they were so defeated by this point that they just agreed, and it might have been an actual relief to get away from her.  They do the tour, come out, and she takes them back into Rome.  My dad said that at one point (because she wasn't doing much explaining of the landmarks) he was surprised that he recognized Sta. Maria in Cosmedin, where the Bocca della Verita is.  He said, "Hey look, isn't that the Bocca della Verita?" and she said, yeah yeah, and they kept driving.  Eventually, the ended up in the Colosseum, and they went in, but only on the ground level.  Because, um, yeah, Mayta couldn't walk up all those stairs.  Then, they came back to the hotel.  Within seconds of getting out of the van, my dad shot off an email on his crackberry that her services wouldn't been needed the next day, and whabbam.  Our Day 6 plans were gone.

But.  Considering that Mayta hadn't taken them in the Forum (because how could she walk around inside it), the Spanish Steps, or any other churches, and had been incredibly unsatisfactory in St. Peter's, we decided that although the Tivoli tour was cancelled, we had plenty to see.  I had told S, on our way back to the hotel after our wandering afternoon, that I was dreading the next day, because I simply couldn't imagine that Mayta could do it, take us to the two Villas and manage it.  And I was dreading being around her again.  He asked me if I thought my dad would cancel, and I said no.  I was wrong, and boy was I glad.  My dad and M, to be fair, took a big one for the team.  (Even though S and I didn't, I will point out again, duck out that day.  We were always meant to duck out.)  M said that at one point, she sent my dad a text message (crackberry to crackberry) during the tour that said something to the effect of: this is awful get me out. 

I'll give it to Mayta though.  She kept us talking about her for the remainder of the trip.  And frankly, after that, any little thing that went our way was the greatest luck in the world.  Also, no pictures of her exist, at least not from the front.  S has one of the top half of her head, but it doesn't at all capture the hideousness of it all.  My dad speculated that perhaps taking a pictures wasn't cool--that it would be like taking a picture of a car crash.  People, it was THAT horrible.

Okay, after that, I'm done.  Day 6, 7 and 8 tomorrow.  But nothing'll compare to the Mayta day, I'll tell you right now.

Holy Hair Removal, Batman

Yes, I've come into my Italian womanhood.  At the age of 27, I've begun the mustache waxing.  I knew it was coming, because I could look in the mirror and see the beginnings of those dark pelty hairs on my lip, but I didn't know it would be this soon.  For the last two or three weeks, I'd sort of been wondering if those hairs hadn't gotten longer and darker, but S told me that they weren't so bad, and you could barely see them.  But then I'd be washing my face or brushing my teeth and I'd see them, and I mean, it wasn't like I was face-to-face with the mirror.  It was making me uncomfortable, and so last night I asked my aesthetician what she thought, and she confirmed my suspicions, and told me she might just wax the corners, and not the whole lip.  She did spend some time warning me how painful it was going to be, telling me that she had just waxed her own upper lip fuzz a few weeks ago, and she was unprepared for how awful it was going to be.  And I mean, this is a woman who waxes people for a living.  Anyway, what could I do?  Say no?  No, the hair was unsightly, and I figured it couldn't be that much worse than the eyebrow waxes I've been getting for 5 years.

I was wrong.  She tried to tell me it was worse, and I wouldn't listen.  In fact, it was so painful that as she pulled off the fabric for the second time, I pretty much yelled fuck, and by pretty much I mean that I was conscious that I shouldn't be yelling but was having a hard time not screaming bloody murder.  It's worse.  It's so much worse that today the skin is still sore and now it has some welty-looking bumps on it, and you can now see very clearly that there used to be hair there and now there isn't.  It looks like I had a very painful procedure done, and well, I did.  It's ugly and disgusting, and I hate it.  But I hated my mustache, too, and so here we are in a classic Catch-22.  I was miserable with the hair, and now I'm miserable without it.  I suspect, though, that the redness and welty things will go away at some point (sooner, rather than later, please please please; I do not want red lumps all over me when S is taking 1 million pictures with me in them in Rome), and then I'll be happy as a clam.

You know, until the next time I have to get my 'stache waxed.  Because I am, let's face it, Italian, and so this is going to be a forever thing, unless I decide that I'm okay having a baby mustache, which I don't think is going to happen.  I know that I have to go back and get this stuff taken off again, because if I don't, in a few years, S and I will have matching mustaches.  What a pleasant thought, eh?

Italy Dreaming

Last night I dreamt about Italy.  Only not really, because what I actually dreamed of was the stupid airplane ride over there.  I had two flying dreams, and they were both awful.  Not the kind of awful where you wake up sweating and crying, but just vaguely unsettling.  They both jarred me out of sleep, one at 2 am and the other at 5, and after the awakening at 5, I didn't really go back to bed.  If this happens every night from now until Italy, I'll be a wreck. 

I have a fair amount of flying dreams normally, so it's not that shocking.  I don't enjoy flying (even though I love the travel part that comes after), and I'm a very nervous flyer besides.  I'm scared of crashes and breathing problems and blood clots and that makes me hate every minute I spend in the sky.  The 9 hours to Italy sucks, but I'm willing to do it because, well, I'm in Italy when the plane finally lands.  The joy of that mitigates the suck of the flying. 

I'd be lying, though, if I said I wasn't nervous about going back.  This is exactly how I felt last time I went back, a tinge of fear and worry combined with the overwhelming sensation of excitement to be going back.  And it seems as if the fear and worry get bigger, the closer I get.  Rome is such a loaded city for me; the last time, I cried on the tram from the Trastevere train station all the way into Largo Argentina.  I mean, just tears pouring down my face.  The plan is a bit different this trip; we're flying into Rome but then going to Florence straight-away, no stop in Rome.  Rome comes after Florence.  I can't imagine crying in Florence (actually, I dislike Florence, but feel S should see it), and I don't know if I'll be shocked into the kind of emotion I was last time by coming into Rome after two days in Italy.  I'd like to not cry.

Anyway, I'm afraid because Rome is a loaded city, and I'm afraid that I'll round a corner and something won't be where it's supposed to be.  (Oh, please be there, Enzo's restaurant.)  I'm also worried that I won't connect with it like I once did, and that's even worse.  I've, in some ways, built my life around Rome, and the time I spent there, and to not love it now would be a nightmare.  Rationally, I can't imagine that would happen.  But I'm not always a rational creature, and in the two weeks leading to this trip, I'm sure the irrationality of this all will hold sway.  It's the kind of person I am. 

But I've been waiting for this trip for four and a half years (since the last time I was in Rome) and I am just ready.  I am so ready.  April 19th cannot come fast enough.  (But no more Rome dreams, hopefully.)

March Madness

If Georgetown loses, I'm screwed.  No chance to win for me.

Also, I made that choice because I didn't think that Oden could take Ohio St. all the way, and I don't think Florida can repeat.  Those are not scientific choices, mind you, but gut feelings, which mean fuck all really.  This is the first year every that I've not had to guess for every single pair-up in the thing, which is quite a victory, since last year, I literally picked teams with names that were nice.  This year, the fact that I can name a player from any team is pretty much a miracle.  But it might just be because S and I saw a profile of Oden on some news show (I think?  I can't remember.  But we did see it.), and he's very memorable.  This isn't really dance related, but I really hope Oden stays in school.  I know he could make buckets of money playing in the NBA, but it just sucks to throw away an education.  And I know he could go back and this might be his big chance and all that, and blah blah blah, but I just think it seems like he should stay in school.  And maybe he will if they don't win it all this year.  I don't know.

Anyway, I have just proven that there is some benefit to reading SI and watching SportsCenter for football news, and that benefit seems to be that by osmosis, I seem to have picked up on a very few tidbits about college basketball.  Which unfortunately is more than I can say about S, who has watched SC with me and seems to have picked up nothing.  I hope he doesn't come in last in the pool.