measure the trunk before buying the table
12/11/2006 08:44 p.m.


((NOV|09|2006))


i'm the rhetorical genius. ask anyone.

this is a blog about things related and unrelated.

things, like seeing a movie, just aren't what they used to be. just about a week ago bayley and i went to see babel at the arclight. we were waiting outside the theatre, for a late showing, the hallway was next to empty, we were trying to gage the uncertainty that we were about to endure; what this film would produce in us, how this film would alter us. the hallway stayed quiet and empty until three girls arrived.

we'll call them yapper, chatty, and kate. there's always a kate. or a catherine. or a caitlyn. there is always a kate. for amusement we can assume that kate's friends call her lips. so we had yapper, chatty, and lips. these three darling daughters, future prom queens, future sorority sisters, future housewives, these three beautiful american icons, raised from birth to be self-absorbed and self-centered, used their mouths to infatuate the air with absolutely nothing useful.

at one point they referenced a male friend whose name i'm about to butcher. and although i am about to butcher it, i am in no way exaggerating it. they reference a boy named tyrenious. (tie-reen-ee-us) now, remember, i know i'm butchering this poor kid's name, but i am not lying when i tell you that his name had four syllables or more. and you'd think that at some point his friends would call him ty, but no, not these darling examples. they call him by his full name, in a conversation for which he isn't even present.

like oh my god tyrenious was so hitting on me again.

enough. call him ty. end of discussion. but one can't help but wonder what that poor kid's life is like, living day-to-day with a name that sounds more like a fungus or an ancient plant species or an unknown poet from the late fourteen hundreds.

and then it was either chatty or lips, based on the fact that they were one and the same, i can't recall, but it was one of them that struck up a conversation about llamas. this may have been the only redeeming characteristic present in the sisters three, that unlike the rest of their carbon-copy generation they didn't mention the o.c. or kevin federline or anything ornately close to pop culture, instead they discussed llamas.

yapper mentioned that she was in massachusetts once for this state fair and how they like totally had all these animals there and all the people were like so dressed like hickish and they, get this, actually had a llama contest where all the llamas had bows and were like totally pranced around just like dogs at one of those dog shows and the llamas were like judged by judges and it was like so crazy and so sad.

lips doesn't know what it is, she just likes llamas. she likes their big smiles. i'm not making that up, she totally said it. i so totally heard it. she loves their big smiles. and all i can think is if it weren't for my horse...

if it weren't for my llama...

so this is me judging other people's intelligence.

i'm the rhetorical genius that asks the question when i have already figured the answer. can i park here? should i take a right? is this trash? will this fit in my trunk? it seems as if the question and the answer are processed at the same time and they manage to pass by each other somewhere in the brain. thus the question gets delivered no matter what. the only problem is that the answer i have figured is not always completely accurate.

for instance. bayley and i are in burbank, standing in a target looking at a rectangular, wooden, kitchen slash dining table. yes but will this fit in my trunk? i know it's perfect but will it fit in my truck? it doesn't seem to be too wide, i think it will fit in my trunk.

unless i'm willing to measure, i could have this debate forever. in this instance i'm sure you can tell what the outcome is going to be. i'm sure that it is obvious to everyone else; the inevitable conclusion to this story. what happens after we roll the table wrapped in cardboard box out to the car. when we roll it right up to the trunk of my ninety-three saturn. it's obvious isn't it?

we lift the table from its box and to our surprise it slides right in.

until it hits the wheel wells.

yes, folks, by mere centimeters it appears, with table in hands, that the trunk is actually wider on the outside than it is on the inside. holding a quarter of the table in the trunk and balancing the rest outside the trunk, we recognize the need for a plan b.

plan b is dolly. surely her volkswagen has a wider trunk than my sat-urn. let us call her and see if she's game and wait forty-five minutes for her to get here. surely the table will slide into her trunk easier than a dead body in a mobster movie. wrong again. and come up with better analogies.

plan c is matt. forty-five more minutes later. target has been closed for over an hour. and despite the fact that his subaru station-wagon extreme was choking on an over-heated engine, he still made it to burbank like a trooper and the table slid into his car without any problem at all.

let this be a lesson. big mouths do not equate big brains. nor do big mouths equate big bellies. and vice versa. be smart and measure the trunk before buying the table.


I am currently Cute
I am listening to a perfect circle.