Suburban Panic! » 2009

July 2009
S	M	T	W	T	F	S
« Jun		Aug »
	1	2	3	4
5	6	7	8	9	10	11
12	13	14	15	16	17	18
19	20	21	22	23	24	25
26	27	28	29	30	31

Live in Philly? Missing TAM 7?

July 8th, 2009 by Foo-Foo McKinley

Me too! [Insert big, fat frowny face.] But there’s good news! We are not alone, and I hope to prove that on Saturday, July 11.

love_park_philadelphia

TAM 7 will be reaching its climax Saturday evening, with parties galore… So why don’t those of us who are stuck in the TriState area get together for drinks and banter? There are so many skeptics in the area that I have yet to meet, so this is as good a time as any!

I was thinking Sugar Mom’s in Old City. Drinking Skeptically with Skeptic Philly meets at Tattooed Mom’s on South Street, so I don’t want to step on anyone’s toes. To avoid confusion, we’re planning on Sugar Mom’s. Now I know some of you will be in atTAMdence, so I’d like for as many of us as possible to get out for an evening. Just think of all the fun they’ll be having in Las Vegas without us! We can have fun, too!!

You don’t have to be a drinker. I’ll be sitting there with a Shirley Temple [They're good - don't hate.]. Just come and hang out for a while with really cool people. They’ve got arcade games, a pool table and lots of really cool stuff to look at, and if you really need extra motivation, I’ll see if I can save the bumper 1875626-Yeah-we-know--if-you-drink--drive-your-a-bloody-idiot-0 car seat for you. I said it – bumper. car. seat.

Once I get an idea of how many of us there will be, I’ll figure out the rest of the deets (time, etc) and update. We’ll probably want to get there not-too-late, as it’s Old City and it gets crazy on the weekend.

Who’s in?!

spread the panic!

More »

└ Tags: alternative, drinking, Philly, TAM

Collected Observations

July 10th, 2009 by Oskar Kennedy

A small selection of thoughts that I’ve been accumulating as I study for the bar exam and move house in the same month. My brains are constantly on the verge of a complete work stoppage.

The toilet paper in our office manages to be simultaneously as abrasive as sandpaper and as diaphanous as tissue. If I were a materials scientist, there’d be a research paper in there somewhere. (It’d probably be more comfortable to wipe with, too.)
As I get older, I am slowly drifting to the west. At the current rate (assuming an average life expectancy), I am going to die somewhere just east of Pittsburgh.
I have an irrational dislike of URLs that contain more than two words. Syllables don’t seem to matter, but a three-word website address will make me (mentally) throw up in my mouth a little bit.
Bananas are tasty and nutritious. However, you have to eat them in the 45 minute window between green and overripe. Although if you miss it, it’s a good excuse to make banana bread, which is also yummy.
Incidentally, I sometimes start typing the word “banana,” and I forget to stop.
Bananananana. (EDIT: It turns out I unconsciously ripped off this bit from Demetri Martin. Whoops.)
My favorite legal term that sounds dirty but isn’t: “attenuation of the taint.”
An old friend recently suggested that I should be friends with his wife on Facebook. Except she doesn’t like me. The three of us shared an apartment back in the early 2000’s; we had some personality conflicts, and she’s treated me with polite but unmistakable disdain ever since. Which is fine, really. I’m sure that living with me wears the shine off of whatever minimal charm I possess pretty fast. I try to be friendly and respectful on the rare occasion when I see them, so as not to exacerbate the situation needlessly. But I’m not laying awake nights bemoaning her distaste for me. The whole thing is passing curious. Has my friend not noticed that his wife is unimpressed by my shenanigans? Or have I misread the situation, mistaking some sort of general prickliness for individual dislike?
I have a minor fascination with the variability in the ways that people gain weight. Some people just expand all over, while others seem to concentrate it all in one region. There was a woman on the bus yesterday morning who had a fairly normal torso perched atop a vast expanse of buttocks and thighs. She looked like an apple with an action figure sticking out of it.
My weight gain is all happening in my midsection, while my limbs are as skinny as ever. They’re like four bendy straws jammed into a potato. Luckily, there is a comfortable sheath of fat growing around my heart, so I feel like I’m being snuggled from the inside.

spread the panic!

More »

└ Tags: banana, curious, Facebook, fat, geography, hygiene, observation, taint

More Collected Observations

July 16th, 2009 by Oskar Kennedy

The bar exam looms ever larger, like a long zoom from orbit to the surface of a planet. To help me maintain my increasingly fragile sanity, here is another mishmash of thoughts and musings that have been sloshing around in my brainmeats between attempts at re-reading my Contracts outline.

There is a charter high school between the bus stop and work. There are two flags hanging in its front window, reminiscent of the championship banners professional sports teams hang in their stadiums. They tout the fact (and I wish I were making this up) that the school achieved “Adequate Yearly Progress” in 2007 and 2008. Huzzah for mediocrity! Seriously, if that’s the standard for big ass banners these days, then I need to get to the big ass banner store ASAP.
I once had the idea to start a line of “Big Ass” merchandise, selling oversized versions of everyday objects. It started during that period in the 90s when people were wearing those jeans with legs so wide you could smuggle farm animals in them. I was going to sell “Big Ass” jeans, and move on to t-shirts, powertools, truck tires, and anything else that was amenable to gross oversizing. Once again, the lack of start-up capital proved to be my undoing.
At work, I just added a title to our inventory called The Facesitter From Ipanema. Aside from being an awkward jape on the title of the bossa nova classic “The Girl From Ipanema, ” it raises an obvious question. If a woman is straddling your face, coercing you to perform cunnilingus by the threat of asphyxiating you with her buttocks and thighs, does it really matter what town she’s from?
Speaking of adequate progress, I spelled “asphyxiating” right on the first try. Hello, big ass banner store? Yes, I need to add something to my order.
How much dust has to accrete on a mug left in an office kitchen before it is considered abandoned and available for common use? I use visible discoloration as a guideline. If the dust alters or obscures the color of the mug, then, if I clean it, I feel entitled to use it.
Sadly, I forgot the second “c” in “accrete.” Cancel my big ass banner order.
Getting used to where the light switches are may be the most prickly, annoying thing about getting adjusted to a new apartment. If I turn on the light in the hall closet instead of turning out the light in the living room one more frickin’ time, I’m going to puke on someone.
I am putting together a project for after the bar exam is over. It is, by virtue of its size, a necessarily collaborative venture. I will have to lock my inner control freak in the closet for awhile.
I always have the best ideas when I’m far too busy to possibly develop them adequately.

spread the panic!

More »

└ Tags: busy, moving, porn, spelling, standards

In Which Things Do Not Work Out As I’d Hoped

July 17th, 2009 by Oskar Kennedy

So I just heard that I did not get the awesome part time writing job that I was convinced I had landed. According to the guy who interviewed me, I was a close runner-up for both of the open positions. Economic conditions being what they are, however, unusually qualified applicants applied for both slots, and wound up nudging me out.

It’s hard not to feel bitter. Three years of law school, and I’m back working part time at the place I left to go to law school. But I don’t have time for self-pity. The bar exam is in 10 days, so I’ve got to cram every law ever into my head in the next week or so.

So I thought I’d let you all pity me, instead. Leave your condolences, or your “stop your whining” remonstrations in the comments.

spread the panic!

More »

└ Tags: disappointment, job, suck

(Even More) Collected Observations

July 21st, 2009 by Oskar Kennedy

Bar exam, bar exam, blah blah blah bar exam. Blah blah bar exam, blah bar, blah exam. Bar exam, blah blah BAR EXAM! B-b-b-baaaaaaaaar eeeexxxxaaaaaaaaammmm. Bar exam.

I listen to my iPod on the bus to work, and then whatever shitty lite rock song is playing at the corner store where I buy my bagel invariably gets jammed in my brain like a barbed fishing hook all day. Today’s ear-syphilis was that Natasha Bedingfield song that appears to be about a lazy author standing outside in the rain. It actually isn’t a bad tune, but it was utterly ruined by 18 months as the backing track for every commercial that was even vaguely woman-themed. It feels as though my brain is trying to sell me hygiene products with ribbons of pink lotion in them.
My post-bar exam project is gathering steam. The biggest problem now is that I find myself making notes and brainstorming about it when I should be studying. As though I needed to make concentrating more difficult.
If you start a group that has regular meetings, don’t assume that everyone will just know when you meet. If you start a local chapter of Ball-fondling Enthusiasts, and you don’t make at least a cursory attempt to get the word out, you waive the right to get pissed off if someone organizes a meeting of Testicle Ticklers that conflicts with your meeting time.
You know you’re a new parent when the sexiest thing your spouse can say to you is “the baby is asleep.”
Also, if you’ve recently gotten to work before noticing that you have spit-up on your shirt.
Scotch exists on a continuum of quality that varies, from terrible to transcendent, more wildly than perhaps any other drink.
If you simultaneously release your crappy homemade movie on YouTube for free, and a video-on-demand site where people have to pay to watch it, nobody is going to watch the paid version. Entertainment consumers do not exist for the sole purpose of sending you beer money. If you put a trailer on YouTube, you might convince a few people to pay for the full movie. But only if it’s, you know, good. (Chances are that it’s not.)
If we’re all created in the image of god, god must have a remarkably fluid morphology.
In fact, god must be like the end of Michael Jackson’s “Black Or White” video. Only not dominated by thin, attractive people.
Now that we’ve moved, the people on the new bus I take to work are, on average, far more attractive than the people on my old bus. Then again, I’m spending most of the ride with my nose buried in an outline, so my gaze may just be coincidentally lighting on better looking people when I happen to glance up.
After you move a clock radio, you should always check its settings before you go to bed. Otherwise, you’re liable to wake up 45 minutes late because the radio station is no longer tuned in, the volume is turned almost all the way down, and you’ve been sleeping with a gentle whisper of static.

spread the panic!

More »

└ Tags: conflict, drink, movie, music, parenting, quality

Categorize Meh

Archived Meh

sponsor meh

feed meh

join meh

copy meh

staff only