How do they always know?

So I had totally written off ever hearing from Bishop again. It's been about a month since I met him, and we only managed to have one very strained phone conversation. The last time I spoke to him was a week ago and he was supposed to call and didn't so I was like done, over, looking ahead.

So last night marks a full week since I had heard from him, which for me is the official death knell. I'm sleeping with my phone by me ( in case of emergency ie my gay friend JP Walt needs a place to crash in the city) and it rings at 2 am. I was expecting John Yule or maybe the Beast, but no it's Bishop. It seems that men always know right when I have absolutely given up on them and then they slide under the wire ( think Kevin Bacon in Footloose. DIGRESSION Incidentally one of my students was writing about the Salem witch trial and the opening sentence of her paper was "It was a dark time, when even dancing was consider a sin." All I could think of was, "Uh, is this a paper about Footloose?" I jokingly told her this in a private paper conference, and she laughed. She actually got the reference. DIGRESSION ENDS)

So as it turns out Bishop's mother is dying at Mt Sinai, which would explain his kind of erratic pattern. ( He's still crazy on top of it.) So we talked for a bit. He told me that I was the only person who he has keep in his phone for the last 3 months. To which I responded "Uh, we only met a month ago." He says "Well, I'm trying to tell you that basically things are very erratic now, and you're the only person I've really been in regular contact with." (Uh one call last friday at 12:30 is regular contact?) Then he goes on and on about how he's thought of me like every day. (File Under: I'll Let You Know When I'm Convinced) But really he does say every nice things which I WOULD LIKE TO BELIEVE ( You're beautiful, you're gorgeous, what man wouldn't want you? thankfully I resisted the urge to say to him "Would you like the list? Because I happen to have it right here."). I would like to, but I just can't. As my friend Mr. Bojangles said of me "You just live too much on this planet."

So par usuale he promises to call and we are going to get together...soon. ( Have your service call my service, we'll do lunch.) Which only prolongs the suffering. If he had just not called I could move on, but now in the back of my mind I'm going to be waiting for that damn phone call. I guess it's my fault. I could have let the phone ring. I could have told him I was asleep. But I didn't. Mainly because I didn't want to, I admit it, I wanted male attention. So now I've had my male attention quota for the week, I can go and grade mid terms for the rest of the weekend.

In other news, according to AOL scary movies can prolong your life. I am going to live forever!

Unification

In this time of war ( is it really a war? it doesn't really feel like a war to me) and instability it's nice to know that there are some things we can still gather together and agree on, like hating the film gigli. Courtesy of rotten tomatoes, a smattering of some of the worst of the worst the critics had to say. It really did remind me that there is still some great artistry in crafting a film review. And by the way, my condolences to anyone whose job involves viewing a J. Lo/Ben Affleck film. That ranks right up there with manually masturbating laboratory experimentation animals. ( Thank you Clerks for that classic line.)

Because nothing brings people closer together than hating a bad movie. Hell, let's re-release Ishtar and go for a global snuggling.
The best compliment

Melvin: You make me want to be a better man.

Carol: That maybe the best compliment of my life.

Melvin: I may have over shot it, I was aiming at just enough to keep you at the table.
As Good As It Gets

I was having an im conversation with the student who was very depressed about her situation ( "I don't know what I want to do with my life and everyone else does") and I received the following compliment after chatting with her about her problem:

studentmalaise: but thank you
MalLapin: for what? doing my job?
studentmalaise: for being not just a cool english professor
studentmalaise: but a really good cheap psychologist

That had me laughing hard for a good five minutes.

I've been reading Texas T-Bone's blog and I like how he always is posing questions and ideas for his readers. So now I would like to know what's the best compliment you've ever gotten? Or maybe not the best, but the most creative?
And now for a rant

In the last post I made a joke about men breaking into my apartment when I am asleep because arguably that is the only time I'm not looking for a man. But I would like to have a brief rant against people who offer the "it'll happen when you aren't looking for it" cliche for advice. I know what you really mean, that anyone that desperate, man or woman, is going to be avoided. I get scared off by desperate men myself. But when you say "it'll come only when you aren't looking for it?", when are you not looking for it when you're single? I mean really? As long as I am single, I am looking when I'm on the bus, in the supermarket, at the park, ( maybe not at the beauty salon) walking down the street ( Hey Jin-Can I catch it?) and if I the men who come after me are any evidence, there are thousands of men STILL looking even though they already have "it".

Ok I feel better now.
It's too expensive to stay single

I'm not going to print the whole profile, but again this one bears repeating:

Even a sex machine such as myself can only keep going for 8-10 hours at a time;

Ah, it's nice to finally meet a man who knows his limitations.

On the other hand, in the context of the profile the very loooooooooooong profile he wrote, it was just a joke. And it made me laugh, which made me consider responding because god knows I haven't had any kind of positive response to a profile in a long time. But then I saw he hadn't included his email and I would have to go the trouble of inventing another whole profile so I could send a free email and it was just way too much trouble. I mean this guy sent me this big long letter he couldn't have included his email address?

And beyond that, who knew being single was so expensive? All these single events way over charge. Date bait at the Y is thirty bucks to sit in a room for an hour and half with just coffee and cookies and desperation. For five bucks I can get a good drink at a nice Irish pub or for two bucks I can hang indefinately at DT UT with a cup of lukewarm tea.

Membership for snatch is almost 25 bucks a month making it, and this is hard to believe, more expensive than AOL. Mate is a more reasonable 9 bucks a month, and true I spend more than that on tea so I should just spring for it. But when I think about how much effort and money I already put into dating and I need conserve funds so that my cat isn't out on the street when I am old and gray I am loathe to put up money to meet these people. Especially when the few times I have, they have been outstanding failures (2 snatch memberships, Date bait, and the singles cruise).

So I think I am just going to stay in and have tea tonight and hope that what my friends say is true, I'll find the right man when I'm not looking for him, which means he'll be breaking in tonight sometime after I fall asleep.

The Kung Fu Jew

BB: Don't mess with me, I am the original Kung Fu Jew.

Jin: What are you going to do? Throw stars of david at me?
To Beast or Not To Beast

So it's friday and no response from the Beast regarding that last email, which I admit may have been a tad more bitchy than I intended, but he hasn't called once in eight months so he had to expect some. But I digress. Now with the Beast a sudden lack of contact doesn't mean anything, it happens all the time- a flurry of attention, and then nothing. But certainly the utter lack of anything, even one liner emails, makes me think that the way to deal with him is to block his email and just forget he exists. He is clearly never going to call no matter what kind of billboards I put up instructing him to do so. And even if he did, I would get maybe one visit and then he would vanish into the great beyond. So I think it is time that we all waved good bye to Beast. In the words of my good friend MR from college "Hasta La Bye-Bye."

Insomniac Blogger Theater

I decided on a response to the Beast, not Jin's very apropos "demands:chocolate and dick, not in that order" email, but rather the following:

Ok here's how it works. Generally I only do that for people who actually call me more than twice a year. Now you want to throw in an evening of conversation, some wine, and maybe a snack and you've got me. If it's just more sitting alone reading, no thanks. I gave at the office.

God I wish I could sleep. Or maybe get some sort of high late night posting achievement award.
The Inspirational Quote of the Day Courtesy of Kevin Truelove

You know, telling that whole story reminded me of something. When I broke up with him on the phone ( well I had to, we never saw each other in person, I was going to fly to Texas just to say "I can't see you anymore, not that we ever did until this moment, but well never again anyway."), I told him I was going back to my ex. I thought somehow going back to my ex would make it less personal rejection and more victim of circumstance. In his argument against said reunion, Kevin said to me the following, which I think should be the quote of the day:

"You know you can love and care for someone, and be perfectly happy with someone else."

You know Kevin I laughed at you then, but I've been trying to convince a whole lot of people that it's true ever since.
From the "At least it's not me" dept.

courtesy of metafilter.

Yes, one of those quality British newspapers, The Guardian, has published the harshest fifteen break-ups in history and, no, I didn't make the list.

Personally, I've always thought that there is a new level of hell not detailed in the Inferno reserved for individuals who break up via email, IM, or answering machine. Although even that is preferrable to the old vanishing act. I would rather have a postcard saying "It's over. PS It wasn't your fault." than sit in my room and listening to a non ringing phone.

But the folks at metafilter do have some spectacular stories.

The guys I've been with, well, they haven't been that creative in the break up methods, but Vampire Hunter D did have a bad one. The girl he was dating for three years (he had broken up with her when we met and then went back to her) and lived with for two, who had actually tried to kill him and herself on various occassions decides to stay home for Thanksgiving. Vampire Hunter goes to his familial abode for the holiday and returns to their place only to find all her stuff, half his stuff, AND HIS CAT gone with no note and no idea where she had gone. He still doesn't know.

And he is still pissed about the cat.

Guilty as Charged

On further contemplation I am guilty of one awful break up myself. When I was in college I knew a girl from Texas. She was always talking to her best friend, a guy, on the phone ( to hang with her for twenty minutes, he would call). To voice my displeasure I started making snarky remarks within earshot of the phone. Finally one night she handed the phone over to me and said "He wants to talk to you." He and I actually hit it off, similar senses of humor and all. Just one thing, HE IS IN TEXAS. Anyway he asks my friend for my phone number and begins calling me directly. I liked the attention until it started getting scary for me. (Remember this is a young barely non virginal Bunni who had only had one boyfriend.) He started trying to push towards phone sex ( he wanted to give me a "phone massage"-and also tried explaining to me that "making love" isn't just sex, it's "anything that physically enhances the romance" OK first of all you're in Texas, you want to physically enhance the relationship-buy a plane ticket- and B when you are wacking off to the sound of someone's voice, it's just about sex-sorry to be blunt but it's true ). But more scary was how seemingly in love with me he was. The moment I decided to "break up" with a guy I'd never seen or even really agreed to date was when he asked me how tall I was. I told me later he got out a yard stick and figured out where on his body I would come to so he could imagine our dancing together. ( Uh, right.) Anyway I started complaining about the situation to my roommate, but kept putting off the inevitable., Finally, sick of my bitching, she made me promise to break up with him the next time he called

Which was Valentine's Day

Which also happened to be his birthday.

What was his name? Kevin Truelove. No joke.

And now I know where all my bad romance karma is from.


The Silent Type

As much as I am in favor of the short to the point profiles, this one borders on simply hovering over my shoulder:

i'm a nice man and i would like to have friends and we will see after what's going on

If I can feel your breath on my neck, it's time to back off.


Play by Play

Cause I know the non-stop action here at Bunniblog keeps you people going despite the complete and utter lack of comments I receive-ahem- I got the following email from the Beast

Alright action Jackson.

I ain't talking about you editting my thesis. I was thinking of my more personal scienctific writing. It might be interesting for you to read. At least it will be a contrast to the drivel in those those blue blues I reviewed over drinks with you at F's.

How is your writing coming along? Any new material?

Uh more personal scientific writing? Have you been fraternizing with the protein trays again?

And is the "ain't" suppose to so rile and inflame the teacher deep in my soul (or sole as one of my students recently spelled it) that I am helpless but to correct this writing, this writing that might be interesting. That it would be a contrast no doubt-that I have the time to reading anything that is most confirmedly interesting, nevermind the stuff that there are vague allegations about.

And notice only now does he ask about my writing

I already sent him the link to bunniblog once, but should I send it again? Wouldn't it be fun for him to come here and find his emails and his nickname? Especially since it seems I'm not going to get anything else out of him. And the wit and pointed comments don't seem to be eliciting the response I want, so is blogger Jin's "I want Godiva chocolates and prime dick" suggestion so off the mark?

I'd ask you people, but you never respond. Well, at least I'm too busy to email him back until tomorrow anyway.


As if I'll know the answer then.
Last Dance

So my smooth ballroom teacher, Oleg, the same teacher I have had for over a year is leaving. Today I had my last lesson to him. I'm exhausted. My feet were killing me. I was limping. It was probably some of the worst dancing I've ever done, but with Oleg I won first place in two divisions at my first ballroom comp. In fact, in the highly competitive scholarship division we came in second place and won over a hundred dollars. And so, although Oleg will never read this I want to say thanks. I wish I had a video montage I could put here of all the good moments we had together, but since I don't let me say

Thanks for the oragami flowers, thanks for the stories about Russia, thanks for everytime you threw in an extra spin( or 4), just to screw with me, thanks for every time you made me smile against my will, thanks for every time you didn't mention how bad I fucked up, which was often, and thanks for ever time you noticed I did something well, thanks for every time you ran me into the wall, the mirror, the other students, the other teachers, or the coffee machine, thanks for noticing when I was a bad mood and trying to do something about it, thanks for teaching me words in Russian, thanks for sharing drinks with me at the competition, thanks for never mentioning my height, thanks for explaining the same things over and over again and not getting annoyed, and finally thanks for every time you took me in your arms

a teacher's job is never done and underpaid and not appreciated-but honestly as much as I miss you-you crazy Ruske-I hope that your move to Russia brings you everything you hope it will. Don't forget me, you schmuck.
You've got to be kidding

Jin and I were discussing the Beast situation today. I tell Jin that I would consider reading the thesis as long as I get something out of it like say sex or dinner or a nice bottle of chianti.

Jin: So you got to tell him that. You gotta set your terms. You gotta tell him "I want Godiva chocolates and prime dick. I don't want no regular dick." ( mimes chopping on a board) "I want that dick right there. See that, that's just by-product." That's what you gotta say.

B: But it's so much more effective when you do it.

So in response to my email to the Beast( here it is to refresh your memory: You really know how to sweet talk a girl-not even dinner and movie first?) I get this back:

Awh come on!

You know how personal writing is. You are afraid to show your stuff to anyone you know.

Uh, ok first of all I post my writing ( and by the way yours too) on the web for all to see - and yes he knows I have a blog and the address, but I reckon he has never bothered to actually come here in the same way he is asking me to do this huge favor without actually picking up THE DAMN PHONE.

And I'm hoping that if his thesis fails, he is going to have a better comeback than "Aw c'mon."

My response was "OK when I am done correcting the 8- freshmen papers a week and my eyes stop bleeding profusely the best way to spend the twenty minutes of leisure time I have is not reading a doctoral thesis-but if you make it worth my while, I might reconsider-quid pro quo baby-you got to give action to get action"

I personally like fusing the Hannibal Lecter ( "Quid Pro Quo") with Buddy Ackerman ( Kevin Spacey's character in Swimming with Sharks-"You gotta give action to get action"). It makes my little cineophile heart beat.


At Least Buy Me Dinner First

So the Beast resurfaces in cyber form with this scintillating bit of email

How is your cat?

What? No kiss?

Yep, out of nowhere after all those evenings of silence after calling me at two in the morning in florida, he resurfaces to ask me about my cat. Because that, and I think speak for all of us in the greater NY area, is women really want: an invisible man who cares more about our pets than ourselves.

So I send back some snarky remark about not believing he is a real person, but just a computer virus sending out snarky emails and in a matter of hours I get this back:

Witty emails are quite a reprieve from the everyday oxidation and tarnishes our minds, no?

A man of few, but at least correctly spelled AND multi syllabic words. So in keeping with his uni-sentence theme I send back:

Oh I love it when you use multi-syllabic words!

Well needless to say I thought he wanted to use me for something, but I thought that something was body until I get this email tonight:

dress to impress baby dress to impress.

Wanna read some of the thesis and thesis diversion stuff?

Yeah cause when I'm done correcting the 80- freakin' freshmen papers I have in my bag AND the forty freshmen mid terms that are in my desk and my eyes stop bleeding, I'm really going to want to read a thesis about electrocrystalography in my spare time.

Now I know I complain about being used for my body all the time, but I also am not fond of being used for my mind. It's a package deal, people, PACKAGE. And if you are going to use me for anything, I think I should get dinner out of it. Or at the very least a couple of apple martinis. So I sent back the following reply:

You sure do know how to charm a girl. What? No dinner and a movie first?
You mean he wasn't dead before?

OK Bob Hope is dead, and this is indeed a sad day, except for idiots like myself who didn't realize he was still alive. I am reminded of something that happened to me in college. I read this article in the New York Times about J.D. Salinger and I kept thinking "Funny, they write about him as if he is still alive." And then I realized he WAS still alive ( still is actually). It wouldn't have been so bad if my mother hadn't thought it too.

Here is the reverse problem - much the same problem that Ed Wood came across when he tried to get work for Bela Lagosi. For those who are unfamiliar, the Tim Burton film about Ed Wood, called interestingly enough Ed Wood, has a montage of Wood calling a variety of people trying to get Bela work and he keeps having to say "No he's not dead." (Of course, he soon would be. Wood would try and make a film out of the spare footage he shot with Lugosi and that film would become Plan 9 from Outerspace voted the worst film of all time. Suddenly I am beginning to feel like Joe Bob Briggs of monstervision) Burton's film has one of the greatest lines in film "You don't work for two years and no one gives two fucks for Bela" pronounced by the Academy Award winning Martin Landau.

What's really sad is that most people know me as a movie person. I can quote Tony Curtis, Cary Grant, Katherine Hepburn (sniff, okay I should have written something about her I am duly chastised for not writing about the woman who appeared in two of my favorite films Bringing Up Baby and Holiday), but Hope a little out of my range and so for my inspirational quote I will leave the one Bob Hope line I know, from Spies Like Us.

BH: Doctor, Doctor (looks at audience) Glad I'm not sick.
Oh Miggs, not again!

"How can such as I, that live
among such troubles, not find profit in death?" Antigone by Socrates or in other words "Happy Monday"

Yes another meeting, another hour dedicated to me restraining myself from swallowing my tongue. It was one of those meetings that makes you understand why people choose to fall on their swords rather than live.

The highlight of today was that my presentation was augmented by another teacher an alledged "Man of Theater" about the classics of anitquity we are teaching. He spent the whole time discussing the Scottish play ( or Mac B--- as those of us in the theater call it, as we can not speak its name out loud) and Hamlet which had nothing to do with anything and certainly not antiquity( as they a are seperated by the MIDDLE AGES), except it did spur another teacher ( a new one, but NOT the young'un) to ask the assembly "What is the greatest love story in all of Shakespeare?" Which again, has nothing to to do with anything we are teaching ( he isn't teaching the course the presentation was for) except to involve us all in long and pointless discussions that I could care less about. I kept sitting there and thinking "What the hell does Troillius and Cressada's virtue as a love story have to do with Antigone? Why must I continue to live through these meetings which continue to be an education only on how one can evolve a modicum of learning into a half an hour's worth of irrelevant pontification?" ( I love that word.)

I have absolutely no free time. I rarely get more than three hours of sleep and I'm totally behind in terms of grading and and lesson plans. So my time is very valuable. In the words of my mother, "If I don't absolutely have to hear this, then I absolutely don't have to hear this."

I used to know this ER doc and he always came up with the best awful things to say about his staff. One time I picked him to go out for an evening margaritas and snarkiness and I said "So what's going on?" And his response was "Some days I want to come down here dressed all in black like Max von Sydow in the Exorcist and say 'Do you renounce Satan?'" At the time I laughed.

Today I totally understand. Sometimes hating the idiocy I deal with feels like a holy crusade. Like I should come out with a flaming sword, and just start slashing whenever anyone makes a totally gratiutious unneccesary lecture on something totally irrelevant and also cliched. I mean who could really care about the greatest of Bill's love stories? I mean even debating the best of S. villians is hackneyed and been done.

I mean at least if we talked about the obscure imagery of hats in Irish poetry of the fifteenth century, it would be original. Still irrelevant, but different.
I know you've been missing it

Yes you're inspirational quote of the day. I've been feeling the movie lines have been overdone and I was feeling lowly like my quotations weren't as fun or as good as some other quotations ( like at the black saint's or miss anthropy's). But today I'm going with an old line from a stand up that probably only I remember:

"How come all these women who know all of the beauty secrets of Europe look like Walter Matthau?"-Monica Piper

I'm going to be going into a meeting later, I'm already aggravated ( pre-emptive aggravation?). So I would like to reserve this quote from Rowan Atkinson ( his album "Live from Belfast") "I wouldn't trust any of you to sit the right way on a toilet seat.'
I'll let you know when I'm convinced

I just got this profile at mate.com from a guy claiming to have a master's:

Everybody like to talk to me and am sure u will too. Am a cool, handsome and intelligent guy. i like movies, outing, playing, dancing and many more. Am not that regular at the jim (twice a week).. Work for a financial company in downtown, NYC. rest all later...

You'd think if he was really going to the gym twice a week, he'd at least be able to spell it.
More Trouble Than You're Worth

OK so commenting is back, I had to take down the shout out ( the klink family's site is GONE-vanished like one of those mayan villages that just suddenly got wiped out by no known cause). Being a twit I put in this new commenting program, courtesy of halo scan, but it ended up screwing up my blog template and only through the help of superblogger Ari was I able to get the blog back to normal form. A big thanks to Ari, and people you better make the effort worth it by giving me quality commenting. These days I could use a little support from the cyber world.




Blogathon 2003strong>

Metafilter's won Frykitty came up with an idea three years ago to blog once every fifteen minutes for twenty four hours. This little stunt turned into blogathon, where bloggers blog every half an hour for 24 hours and for every post sponsors give to charity. This year over 400 bloggers participated and generated over 95 thousand dollars for charity.

Of course I found out about it after the fact, dag nab it, therefore robbing me of making this self indulgent tripe into socially beneficial self indulgent tripe. Well I guess I can put it down to training for next year. Yet when I hear about some of the amazing entries ( the different body parts of bloggers, pictures of toilets) I worry that I don't have an interesting enough concept. Well I've got a year to come up with one. Send me ideas.


Blog Change Bot

Courtesy of metafilter, this little gimmick will send you an IM when your favorite blogs change. Again we here at Bunniblog don't want you to have to waste your time checking in every ten minutes to see if I've added new content. We know that your goofing off time at work is very valuable and not to be squandered, after all you have that serious game of online gin rummy going on at yahoo games. And so I have added the change bot here. Feel the love.

Bad Bunni posted at 7/27/2003 10:44:00 PM   |  

Because you can't dial a phone with broken fingers

Still recovering from J's wedding reception-the next time I go to an Irish wedding reception remind me to bring a wheelbarrow so someone can just wheel me home

An actual nice guy called me today ( considering that I was totally smashed when I saw him yesterday). I've actually known him for a while-he was really impressed with me when we first met, but there was a problem-he was married. Well, he's seperated, but apparently there is this thing where you have to live seperately for a certain period of time before you can get an actualy divorce-who knew? Anyway, we flirted, he kissed me, he called the next day to hang out and I had to beg off ( it was the blizzard and I wasn't going anyway). And then after that he decided it wouldn't be a "good idea" for us to hang until "he got his life together." So we see each other on occassion in the neighborhood-like last night-and I guess he finally got his act together.

Interesting.

In other news, John Yule did not call. I know, you're shocked. Nor did he show up in the middle of the night, or if he did I was in too deep of a coma to wake up.

Bishop called friday night just to say hi and to say he was going to be in the neighborhood the following day. He said he would call. He didn't.

I tell you it is one of those weekend that reminds you what evolution really is-just a theory

Bad Bunni posted at 7/27/2003 06:26:00 PM   |