So I was biking home in tailwind yesterday, pedaling like I had Attention Deficit Hamster Disorder and generally behaving like a human spinnaker.
At a red light, the beSpandexed guy next to me, in a good-natured way, said something along the lines of ‘You're very aggressive’ or ‘You take this very serious'. It’s hard to understand Danish through panting.
Without thinking, I replied, ‘you sound like my ex-wife.’
We shared an athletic little laugh with each other as the light turned green, then continued berating the bike lane and dinging pedestrians out of the way.
As soon as I got home, all I could think was "‘You sound like my ex-wife’?! Where the hell did that come from?"
Last week at a party, I was talking to some dude about fatherhood (this happens a lot here), and he asked if I had kids. I heard myself say ‘Not that I know of!’ before squinting at my own douchebaggery and apologizing.
What am I, on the links at the country club? Why does all my snappy banter come from ‘80s movies and my dad’s Garrison Keillor tapes we used to listen to on road trips?
I know I’ve only been out of official student-dom for three days now, but I thought it would take me at least slightly longer to become Bill Murray from ‘Rushmore’. I feel like I have to develop a taste for things like whisky and tweed now.
]]>You know that scene in ‘Traffic’, where Benicio del Toro is selling out to the Americans, and they tell him ‘You should be proud of what you’re doing for your country’ and he says ‘I feel like a traitor’? That’s exactly how I feel every time I have to wear a suit.
My work rocks, and I usually just wear whatever I can yank, kicking and stinking, from the ass-end of my clothes-mountain. Activities such as showering, shaving and grooming are strictly optional, a privilege that fits rather perfectly into my ‘No Hygiene Til 30’ policy.
Until
last week. On Friday we had some important meeting with some important
executive dude, and a collar, belt and slacks were mandatory textiles. I spent an
afternoon erranding in central Copenhagen, and this is the best I could come up
with.
I spent most of the meeting feeling like I was part of some kind of live, boardroom Dungeons & Dragons, and the minute we were done, I bounced home, changed into some Essex-caliber track pants and resumed my spilling, drooling, K-Marting existence for the rest of the weekend.
How do people dress up like this every day?
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I had the following interaction in Danish at a cafe today:
Sketchy dude: Hey man, I'm sorry to bother you, but I'm an artist, and I thought you might want to look at my paintings [thrusts stack of paintings toward me].
Me: No thanks.
Sketchy dude: Look, I just need some help, man, I made these paintings, and --
Me: No.
Sketchy dude: You can just look at them, you don't even have to --
Me: I'm studying right now. Thanks, but no.
Sketchy dude: [leaves]
That's right, I'm an asshole. Maybe it's something to do with the English language, but I usually make excuses with random-walker-uppers, like "I would, I don't have any money", "I'm in a hurry", etc. For some reason, though, in Danish I just act like the fucking Terminator. No courtesy, no excuses, no mercy.
Thank God I managed to become 1.5-lingual in a deeply introverted language. If I spoke Italian or something, that interaction probably would have gone on for hours, and would have ended with me inviting the Hobohemian to live with my parents.
]]>Today's productivity-assassin has been this bullshit.
Yes, I have an essay due Monday. No, I don't have anything to do today other than type, flip pages, and hit CTRL-S. What does this mean? Why, that I've been futzing around on the Internet all morning. How the hell can I get work done when I'm sitting in front of an invention that only exists to distract me? It's like trying to handwrite an essay on a stripper.
Anyway, here's some samples from the most geeky-awful-tremendous-appalling Website I've ever seen. It's like a roller coaster of emotion in here.
Ugh. I have to go destroy something beautiful now.
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