Sometimes I think it would be easier to live in a state of complete and utter lack of control, where the State did everything for me.

Seriouuuuuuuusly. I'm not joking (okay yes I am, sort of), but honestly, as a person whose decision making skills are down there with ... ummm ... a really low level animal's like an ameba or something that doesn't really have a brain, sometimes I DO honestly think that life would be much easier if other people made all my decisions for me.

I've often said that my skill as a decision maker are somewhere on the George Costanza level, and have one several occasions contemplated trying his idea of doing everything backward, completely in antithesis of my natural instincts. Because, honestly, maybe then my life would make a little bit more sense, and people wouldn't look at me and my actions and say "Liz. YOU ARE INSANE." (And I wouldn't have to agree with them even if they did still say that.)

If the State (or another person: my puppet master) would just tell me what to do, then I wouldn't have to make all the small stupid decisions that fill up daily life. Or the big ones, like where to attend college (I transferred), where to live after college (um...5 places and counting so far), and what to do with my life professionally (that would be a serious relief, esp. if I lived in a society in which all the hard work was done FOR me and I just got to be the faux boss of everyone, the head of my own little puppet state, where I was fed and cared for, and basically really really stupid ... oh wait! I just described a non-pedophilic version of Michael Jackson)!

Okay neat, I have a role model now. That makes me feel much better about...well...nothing in particular, but I can pretend. Right?

Karma is a bitch...or something

Now that I've grown (fairly) accustom to getting up before 11 a.m. every morning (although I miss it miss it MISS IT), I've decided that I no longer should just go home after work and hole up in my apartment every evening. I'm not one for routine, and that's putting it mildly....so getting out of both work and the apartment for a while every day seems like the other thing that [might] save my sanity (although of course it's debatable about whether I ever actually, um, had my sanity to begin with. But I digress, as usual.).

Anyway so last night was my first attempt at Being A Good Person (okay not my first attempt at that ever, but the first in DC so far), and Getting Out of the House. I had scheduled a meeting with this woman to talk about opportunities tutoring refugess through her organization after work, and the address of her organization was the same as my work, so I figured oh great, I'll just walk there! (I hate driving in DC - I've done it a grand total of once so far, and ended up driving around Dupont Circle about 52 times. It was like something out of National Lampoon's European Vacation or something. I mean, honestly, who thought it would be a good idea to build a freaking city with a bunch of wagon wheels in it? How are you supposed to have ANY idea what road to turn off of from the circles? I have no idea. I strongly believe that the people who planned Philly were much less evil than those who planned DC. Strongly believe it.)

Right. So. I realize during the day that the weather is looking vaguely threatening outside the building, although the rain had managed to hold off all day. Of course, I dont have an umbrella (ella ella), so I email the girl in the middle of the afternoon and tell her that I might not make it in, on account of rain. By the time I leave work, it's not raining, and being me, I guilt trip myself into going, even though honestly all I really want to do at that point is get back to the city before the rain begins.

I make it there and the clouds are still closed. That is not to say that it didn't take me nearly 40 minutes to walk there, since my assumption that two buildings that happen to be on the same road as each other are therefore close to each other was obviously blatently WRONG (you know what they say about assumptions. Yeah). So there I am, deep into the ghetto of Arlington (honestly, it exists!! I swear). I finally find the building, meet with the girl, realize that it's a Catholic organization, am told that they strongly encourage people to refrain from trying to convert the refugees (they have an entire pamphlet dedicated to "Evangilism and Refugees" no joke) and hear her call some other person a Sister (uhh). I'm a little creeped out, but still interested because she's not the person that I'm going to be tutoring (thank her G-O-double D).
I walk out of the building, and it's POURING RAIN. Now, I may have forgotton to mention this above, but I am wearing a White Dress. Yes. White. Entirely white. White as a...white bunny rabbit. White as a baby's butt. White as a cloud in a non-stormy sky. White.

And I don't have an umbrella.

Ever heard of wet t-shirt contests?

Yeah.

In the gheeeeetto.

In the twilight.

So I decide, why not hold this nice blue folder over my head that I was given during my meeting? Bright ideas are always coming to me like that. Uh huh.
5 minutes later, it's dripping its runny ink down my (once) white dress. And, no, it didn't look like some cool tie-dye because 1. it didn't and 2. "cool" tie-dye is an oxymoron anyway.

There are no cabs in sight.

I walk back 2 miles, and finally get to the metro, but not before I am creeped up on by several people walking by, am nearly run over in the median of a really busy road that apparently doesn't believe in cab service, am distracted and walk all the way back to the office which is a good 5 blocks PAST the metro, and get into a fight with a jerk who had the audacity to honk at me when I was crossing the street in front of him (dude you're in a caaaaaaaaaaar, I'm walking in the pouring rain, who do you think gets the right of way in that scenario? Yeah. ME.)

I'm alive, but wondering why Karma seems to be an evil old hag so much of the time...

The adventures of Metrogirl and other stories.

Sometimes when I'm walking around, or sitting, or standing, or...I guess being awake...my brain will start to wander. (Yes, being awake would be most accurate, since my brain wanders pretty much continuously...)

Anyway, my brain wanders. Yeah. As if that wasn't obvious just from that first mini-paragraph. So I'll be sitting on the metro, or walking down the street, or walking back to the apartment, and I like to play a little game with my wandering brain called "What if I did something right now totally against the expectations of society, and what would the repercussions of that action be." I like this game, because it keeps me entertained, and keeps other people entertained to, because they are able to go home at night and say to their loved ones "Hey blankityblank, I saw a totally crazy person today, who was laughing to herself walking down the street! She looked like she belonged in a mental institute. Isn't that neat?!" (I like to provide entertainment for strangers. I feel it's giving back to society, like a constant form of community service.)

The only problem with this game is, recently I've been really contemplating doing the things that I imagine. Not that I actually would (um, I swear), but they're becoming more and more tempting as the weeks pass. For example: yesterday I was walking home from the Metro and I passed by this truck emptying its contents onto the street. I thought, I wonder what the worker guys would do if I just walked up, nonchalantly grabbed a box, and wandered away. I mean, REALLY nonchalantly, like I was supposed to be there or something. And when they grabbed me, which they would in like .5 seconds, I would look at them like they were the crazy ones and start yelling for the cops. OR...what if on the way to work one day, I just decided not to get off the Metro. Ever. I just refused, and rode it all night and all day, and when it stopped for the night, I would just stay on it. I'd live there. Of course, I'd have to bring a bunch of food with me, or bribe passengers to bring some food down, but I'd totally be famous. I'd be known as Metrogirl, and people would think that I had superpowers, except that they wouldn't be able to get close, because my greatest superpower would be my smell.

Or what if I jumped onto the back truck of a car that was stopped at a stop light, right as it turns green, and the person didn't notice, and I just rode away on it, while holding on for dear life.
Life would be so much more interesting if people did totally unpredictable things. Of course, we'd all be living in a loony bin, but it would be entertaining at least.

Excuse me, I believe you have my stapler

Have you ever noticed how office supplies look vaguely threatening? Seriously, I just spent 5 minutes with the staple remover thingiemagigger, and it started reminding me of a mean alien insect or something. What if one night all the office supplies somehow came to life and started traipsing through the office corridors, and the next day when the first employee arrived, they surrounded him/her like sharks and started to nibble? And then the next person came in and the same thing happened. How long do you think it would take for office supplies to take over the world? Not long my friend, not long at all.

Of course, that's not to say that I think that they would ALL be evil, that's just silly. I think that rubber bands would probably be kind of daft, not smart enough to plan ahead, just to follow, and post-it notes would probably take on the personality that they were given when written on. The ones that have crazy notes on them or stuff like "I'm sorry, I can't, don't hate me" (haha except that wasn't in an office of course) would become super evil masterminds, and the others would be totally nice and mild-mannered, until of course they were caught unaware by the pens and written on and scribbled on and THEN...then (much like Gremlins) they would be evvvvvillllll!!!!!!!!

Except the one named Gizmo.

ennui.

Apparently there is a band named Ennui that hails from Pittsburgh, Pennsyltucky. Does this strike anyone but me as odd? Why in god's name would you want to call your band (in essence) boredom. I understand that they were probably going more for "ooooh we're sooooo cool and above society etc etc etc whine whine whiiiiny whine whine" (and no that doesn't sound like me at all, ehhem), but a) that is lame of them and b) ... never mind I'm bored of them already.

Anyway, the point is, that I think that I'm suffering from ennui. Do you think that it can be treated medically? I can pop some pills and POOF puff the magic draaagon will appear and start singing me some Peter Paul and Mary songs? (Well technically speaking, I suppose that this would actually happen if I self-medicated with the right combination of stuff. Hmmm. That's something to keep in mind.)

Seriously though, I can totally understand sometimes why people become drunks and drug addicts and why Lindsey Lohan can't stay sober for more than .3 milleseconds before having to do that next lil' line of ...

Yeah.

It's because they don't look up enough. That's my theory and I'm sticking to it. My sister's boyfriend's BFF AEAE apparently sees me walking to from the Metro to work about once a wekk, and I'm allegedly standing on corners listening to my iPod and sort of looking around at the sky (and I guess appearing like a well-dressed homeless crazy person, but that's neither here nor there). While that may or may not be true (it is), it's true that I do believe that looking up now and again is reaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaally important for sanity's sake.

It's amazing all the things we miss (esp. if you live in a city with tall buildings) while we walk around to work to home to bars to restaurants to sporting activites to shows to etc....our heads down our eyes not really looking at much. Last night I got the idea in my head that I'd like to move to New Mexico. Or Arizona. Or Colorado. Where the sky is enormous and at any moment in time, if you keep on going in your car fast enough and long enough, it looks like you might just be able drive right into the clouds.

Politics, religion and other things you shouldn't discuss at the dinner table

I'm not a religious person; I would term myself spiritual, but certainly not a God/Jesus-lover, although I do love the church signs in the South that make bold, declaratory statements about the evolution of man, and vague, somewhat sinister threats of what God's gonna do to you if he's disturbed from heaven ("DON'T MAKE ME COME DOWN THERE!!" being one of my faves) - because as we all know it's SO much easier to be Good if we're being constantly threatened by a omnipresent source of power who we're afraid is going to beat us up at any moment. Sometimes I wonder if this bizarre image of God might cause some battered-woman syndrome in some people...I mean honestly.

That being said, I do believe in something. My way of thinking is that there HAS to be something holding it all together (albeit with pretty thin string).

Sometime I get the feeling that I'm the only one (perhaps because of my egomaniacle way of thinking) that gets totally confused and astounded by the way the world works. Or doesn't work, at times. I mean, honestly, how WEIRD is it that, for example, people waiting for the Metro can stand there, at the edge of the train track, waiting for the train, and NOT be afraid that some random stranger might come up behind them and give them a little nudge, a little shove, and BOOM they sail over the side and into a million little pieces, if you want to quote James Frey, which nobody really does now-a-days, thanks to Oprah and her insanity. Seriously. So trusting! We all stand there in our own little worlds, and I do have to wonder (in amazement) about our civility. At times it drives me mad - the civilized drones that work hard and play easy, our Ikea loving materialistic comforts that have turned us from animals into, what? Yes, I'm verging on some Fight Club territory here, and Chuck Palahniuk annoys the crap out of me normally, so I don't particularly want to continue with this line of thought, but honestly. IT'S WEIRD!!

(Disclaimer: I'm not by any means saying that I would actually want people to start going around shoving each other in front of trains, or driving into oncoming traffic for fun, because anarchy in theory is sort of cool, but in actual practice is pretty damn scary, but merely stating how freaking insane it is that it is considered normal that it doesn't happen.)

With so much drama in da L-B-C, it's kinda hard bein' Snoop D-O-double G

Woot woot! My brain is tiiiiired.

That's all, for now.