curling!

on saturday, krista and sandy and i learned how to curl! we contacted the fine people at the pittsburgh curling club and signed up for a lesson. folks, please allow me to enthusiastically endorse the sport of curling! i mean, yeah, it's like shuffleboard on ice, and you slide a 40-some lb rock with the help of two sweepers who run alongside the rock and scrub the ice like madpeople, and all of this sounds silly, but it's truly fantastic! even the olympics thinks so!

and as if the sport itself weren't enough, one of the people who taught us and played with us was CANADIAN!!!

thumbs up for curling! you should try it! you'll like it!

not even kurt russell...

...could make "death proof", quentin tarantino's segment of _grindhouse_, worth watching.

wow. i mean, wow. what a craptastic movie! so, the story is that there are these hot women in tight t-shirts and tiny short shorts who drive around in texas and get high and tease boys and drop the f-bomb in every sentence and talk like guys in the proverbial locker room and eventually kurt russell kills some of them and tries to kill the others but then they kill him in the end. OMG BORING!!! soooooo boring!

carson and i had nothing to do last night, and we both think kurt russell is pretty fantastic (come on -- "overboard"??? "big trouble in little china"?!? yes!), so we decided to watch "death proof." but then we got exceptionally bored by way too much stupid boring dialogue. to the point where we were making exasperated sighs and in general acting like impatient little kids because we were totally annoyed with the movie. i'm sorry, but who told tarantino that people want to watch 20 minute scenes during which four boring characters talk about boring stuff that is not only painfully boring, but isn't even remotely funny or educational? (if tarantino were my friend, i'd say to him, "quentin, you've truly outdone yourself this time, you arrogant, pointy-chinned prick.")

and then, when things finally get unboring and kurt russell is trying to kill the girls for being so freaking uninteresting, and then the girls fight back and go after kurt russell, it gets totally lame AGAIN because after being a murderous crazy asshole for the whole movie, suddenly kurt russell is all "i'm so sorry! i'm so sorry! i didn't mean anything!" um, what?!?

here's what really gets me, though: people have referred to this movie as "feminist." maybe i've been reading all the wrong stuff, but i didn't realize that "feminism" was nothing more than women talking about their sex conquests and giving lap dances as a means of empowerment and driving fast musclecars and violently beating the crap out of the bad guy at the end. uh, what? sorry, folks. you don't make something "feminist" by casting sexy, leggy women in roles typically reserved for men.

long story short, "death proof" is a colossal waste.

but "planet terror", the robert rodriquez part of _grindhouse_, is pretty damn entertaining and a good time. and federico from "six feet under" is in it, too!

"please advise..."

my boss at my temp job sends lots of e-mails to me that contain the phrase "please advise." it's been several years since i worked in a large office environment and i had blissfully forgotten how often certain phrases are used. "please advise" is probably in my top three (along with "best practices" and "proactive") most hated business-speak terms. (coming in a very close fourth place is "incentivize", which i'm not sure is even an actual word.)

"please advise as to the attached e-mail." "please advise the status of..." "please advise if you plan to work extra hours thanksgiving week." et cetera et cetera...

so, i know this is very antonin scalia of me, but i'm gonna cite to the definition of "advise" from the merriam webster dictionary website:

transitive verb 1 a: to give advice to : counsel b: caution, warn c: recommend 2: to give information or notice to : inform intransitive verb 1: to give advice 2: to take counsel : consult

truth be told, i like the word "advise." i think it has lots of fun and relevant uses. but it's like how radio stations overplay certain songs and even if you liked that song at first, you reach a point where hearing even a fraction of a measure of that song will cause you to commit hara kiri. i now physically cringe when i read "please advise" on an e-mail or a post-it note. sigh...

anyway, i just got an e-mail about how i've yet to put anything in the log of crap that we temps have to keep for all of our input, so the bosses can track the input-to-output ratio. "please advise why there is nothing in your spreadsheet for november." what she's really asking is why the hell i haven't entered this information yet. and i think i'd rather receive an e-mail that says "why the hell haven't you entered this information yet?" the truth is that i've been out of the office for three and a half of the six business days in november and those other two and a half days i just didn't think about it. because instead i've been sitting here staring at this weird paperclip sculpture i made that looks like an alien butterfly and feeling totally humiliated to be a licensed attorney with a decent resume who can't find a real job.

i probably won't say that, though.

why is it...

...that every time i tell someone about how i'm gonna learn to snowboard this winter, that person responds by telling me they can't stop laughing at the mental image of me strapped to a board, screaming my head off, and careening down a mountainside with limbs flailing?

i won't be THAT bad, will i? i'll wear a helmet!