Just some odds and ends

A lot of possible blog topics have been flitting around my brain, but I can't come up with any one thing that's long enough for an entry so I'm just going to mash them all up together. Enjoy.

First, I would like to propose legislation banning skinny mirrors. From the gym to the dressing room at the Gap, skinny mirrors have become a plague on society. Why is that, you may ask? Though logically you might think I would be in favor of skinny mirrors, I believe they are actually a blight on humanity. For one thing, they tempt you to buy clothes you really shouldn't. I have to admit, I have been hornswoggled more than once into purchasing clothing that I have been conned into thinking make me look svelte and lithe, but which in reality announce to the world, "Fat girl coming through! Make way! Make way!" And then, none the wiser because both of my mirrors at home are skinny mirrors, as are the mirrors at the gym, I go into society perky and confident, thinking I am the shit, when I accentally happen to catch a glance of myself in a realistic mirror. I am then devasted by what I see and utterly confused--which is the real me? The mostly fit and only slighlty overweight image I see in the dressing room, or the chunky and sadly delusioned woman staring back at me in the reality mirror, swathed in clothing much too tight for her protruding fat rolls? People, we deserve to see ourselves as we really are, not as clothing manufacturers and health club corporations would like to trick us into believing we are so they can sell more product. Please, talk to your local representatives about this urgent issue.

The next item on my list--telephones. How I loathe them. I was just reading a letter in Dan Savage's column from a woman who wants to know if all straight men hate talking on the phone as much as straight women love it. It gave me yet another example of how BF and I completely shatter stereotypical gender roles when it comes to relationships. Now, BF doesn't talk on the phone all that much but he does speak to his family on the phone pretty frequently, like more than once a week. I, on the other hand, only use the telephone in order to glean important information from someone who lives more than five miles away, or to make doctor appointments. I do not use the telephone recreationally. I don't know what it is about telephone conversations that I loathe, but I have a few theories. One of the most important is that telephone conversations are generally spontaneous, and no one hates spontaneity more than I. I plan everything, even my trips to the grocery store (this week it will be Monday evening), and I have no place in my life for unaccounted-for events, telephone calls being one of them. To me, recreational telephone calls are the equivalent of an unexpected visit, in the middle of the afternoon, of a relative who lives clear across the country, but who just dropped in to say hello and expects you to quit whatever it is you were doing to chit-chat with them for fifteen minutes. At the end of the conversation they leave as abruptly as they arrived, and you are expected to go on with your life without thinking anything of it. I'm sorry, I just don't operate that way.

The second reason I loathe telephone calls is that someone always calls you when you are in the middle of something else that you'd really rather be doing. So then you have to talk to this person who interrupted you for no good reason, all the while thinking about that other thing you want to be doing. And then invariably the conversation is filled with awkward pauses, which you both rush in to fill, tripping over each other's words, and then the next five minutes after that are filled with even more awkward moments of you both taking turns saying, "No, you go first." I just think I have better things to do with my time. One of them is writing emails. I much prefer emailing over telephoning, because then you can carefully craft your message, perfecting the tone and nuance till you get it just right, and then the recipient has a record of your dazzling words which he or she can then share with others, if appropriate. *Sigh* I'm such a dork.

No doubt you all pity me greatly now, but let me just tell you one thing: I don't need your stinking pity.