Because we watched this video in one of my classes and it was so happy/sad that I had to try really hard to not cry too noticeably:

One Christmas Eve, my mom was boarding an airplane, and the guy taking tickets hugged every single person as they got on the plane. Strangely, not a single person resisted or seemed to think it was weird, and everyone was a little happier after that. Sometimes, I just really love people, don’t you?

[Posted by Mallory]

Don't bother sending compliments. I already know I'm a phenomenal artist.

• A good way to pace yourself when eating is to eat something that’s both absurdly spicy and absurdly (temperature) hot. It’s also a good way to make your mouth hurt like shit.
• So remember the overpriced umbrella I bought from Anthropologie because I didn’t have a functioning one and I was having a bad day and dammit I needed a cute umbrella? Well, yeah, I lost that one in a bar the day after I bought it. I bought ANOTHER cute, overpriced umbrella from The Gap the other day and after three days of use, I left it in a cab. And today I discovered that I lost my water bottle somewhere between all of the millions of places I went on Tuesday. Now, these are all small things in the grand scheme of things, but REALLY? Is it REALLY necessary for me to lose 140 things in a row? No one likes to lose things, but when I lose something it stresses me out to the point that I can’t think about anything else until 1) I cain’t think about it no mo’ or 2) I replace the thing I bought. But see, I can’t buy another umbrella, because then I will just lose it. (And no, the DC Cab Commission has not found my umbrella, nor has anyone on Craigslist. What are these services FOR, if not helping me find my umbrella?!!)
• Today as I was leaving swim practice and feeling all tired and parched because I didn’t have any water to drink because I lost my water bottle, I was talking on the phone with ex-roomie Miss Potter. Then a gust of wind blew by and flipped my umbrella (the cheap plain-colored one that I have to use in emergencies) inside out. I was carrying a large bag and attempting to hold my cell phone to my ear and the wind was still blowing, so flipping the umbrella back to its natural state was proving, er, difficult. And then — AND THEN — a kind stranger (probably a drunk college boy) flipped it back for me! How nice was that? I mean, okay, maybe he’s not Mother Teresa, but that made me rull happy. There are good people in the world. I just wish one of those good people would find my umbrella. And my water bottle. Sigh.
• Officemate E.Lee sent me this video this morning and (if you can believe it), it made me cry.
• Officemate E.Lee’s boyfriend is officiating his best friend’s wedding this weekend, and he is going to read his favorite poem at the wedding. This is the poem, and I lurve it:

Poem to Old Friends Who Have Never Met

When I’m not wishing I could find a unicorn
I wish all our old friends knew each other
The very least they deserve
is the pleasure of each other’s company

We’d go down by the river
and the rocks would hum
with this rich collection of men & women
They would look around and see themselves
no longer isolated

no longer points in the darkness pointing nowhere

but as links in a magnificent chain of
impossible flowers
girdling the world and their talk
(they are all talkers)
would burst like spray in the sunlight

and I would smile
saying nothing
with a bottle of beer in my hand
and a small white bird banging in my heart

By Peter Meinke
From The Contracted World (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2006)

That’s enough random thoughts for now. I know I missed the Veterans Day Google Holiday yesterday (and all of the Sesame Street ones after the Big Bird one), but yay for all of those!

[Posted by Mallory] ]]> http://sixwordstochangetheworld.com/2009/11/13/poetry-lost-umbrellas-and-nice-strangers/feed/ 2 Mallory umbrella http://sixwordstochangetheworld.com/2009/11/12/boston-train-almost-hits-drunken-woman/ http://sixwordstochangetheworld.com/2009/11/12/boston-train-almost-hits-drunken-woman/#comments Fri, 13 Nov 2009 03:34:04 +0000 swtctwshan http://sixwordstochangetheworld.com/?p=3824 ]]>

This video is just plain terrifying.  The completely plastered woman in the video stumbles off a Boston train platform and falls onto the tracks.  Being too drunk to process that she is in extreme danger, she just lies there.  Passerbys on the platform wave frantically to the incoming train, because the conductor can’t see that the woman has fallen.  The conductor can tell something is seriously wrong and puts the brakes on early.  The train stops literally on top of the woman, but miraculously doesn’t hit her.

When interviewed, the train conductor said she didn’t do anything heroic – just that she followed emergency procedure.  While she couldn’t tell exactly what was wrong, she sensed it was something serious by the way the people on the platform were attempting to signal her and how they were standing so far beyond the yellow line.  I wonder if this brush with death will inspire drunk lady to lay off the sauce.

[Posted by Shannon]

I’m the kind of person who doesn’t like to watch a movie more than once (in my lifetime), unless I really like it. Movies that I’ve actually watched and enjoyed multiple times include Good Will Hunting, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, The Lizzie McGuire Movie…you know, the classics. Then this one time, back over a winter break in college when all I had to do was lie on my couch at home and get yelled at for eating too many pretzels (as opposed to now, when I go home for winter break and get yelled at for eating too many pretzels AND using too much profanity on my blog), I rented a movie called Once. I probably intended to watch it with my mom, and she probably fell asleep reading a magazine four minutes into the credits. The next day, when everyone was “at work,” and I was, you know, “figuring out what I wanted to do with my life,” I watched Once. And then I watched it again. And then I watched it a third time, this time with actor commentary.

As someone who doesn’t like to watch movies more than once, this was HUGE. I mean I watched the thing three times in a row! And it’s sort of kind of a musical, which is even huger because I almost always hate musicals! I promptly emailed all of my friends and insisted that they see this movie immediately.

Long story short, I really love Once, and the movie made me love Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova. Tonight, I finally got to see them in concert, and they were spectacular, which is to say that both the performance and Glen’s beard were top notch. I mean, who doesn’t love a great ginger beard?

Exactly.

Anyway, tonight was lovely and I got to dress like a faux hipster (though SOME of my friends claim that maybe I looked like a full hipster, if one were to assume that my flowery J.Crew headband was ironic) and you guys should listen to this, because they played it well tonight:

To quote the Clancy Brothers, goodnight and joy be with you all.

[Posted by Mallory]

I’ll be honest – I hate art.  Most of it makes zero sense to me and I believe that it makes zero sense to everyone…they just want to be pseudo-intellectual by saying how “deep” and “meaningful” the art is.   Really, the artist responsible is laughing at how gullible regular people are.  Yes, laughing at you, pseudo-intellectual.  Kind of like Scientology.

I can barely think back on all the art I saw in Europe without wanting to hyperventilate.  Not because it was memorable, but because I was in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence crying because there was NO way to get out of the endless hallways.  Literally no exit for 1,930,239,048,392,080,438,920,849,302 of the SAME painting.  The painting of the SAME ugly woman with the SAME ugly, naked baby.   Gross.

Ew.

This artist (Kevin Van Aelst) makes art that is interesting from real life things.  And I like that.

Here’s his website.

*Sidenote:  This commentary is a knock on art, not religion.

[Posted by Shannon]

Today’s Google Holiday: 40th Anniversary of Sesame Street. What a fun one, right?! My two tipsters were both all “AHHH such a cute Google Holiday today!” And it is a cute Google Holiday! Big Bird, people! Who was your favorite Sesame Street character? Mine was Snuffaluffagus:

Though my mom claims my favorite was Grover:

But come on, what do moms know?

Also, speaking of Sesame Street, several of my friends — including Worthless Guest Blogger Shannon — worked as the characters at Sesame Street in high school. As in they wore things like full Elmo costumes and danced around. True story.

What I was Googling: IPPE

I have lots of other things to write about, but Top Chef is on soon. Let’s just say I had a bizarro day, which has culminated in my drinking red wine and (you guessed it!) wearing my flannel nightgown.

[Posted by Mallory]

Read this. Just do it. It’s about Kevin Gillespie/David the Gnome/Beardo (obviously).

If you don’t have a Halloween costume yet, dressing up as Kevin could be fun. Although finding fake beards online is a LOT harder than you’d think. I’m being Bob Ross, so I know these things.

Thanks for the tip about Kevin, Lanster, and hey, everyone? Have a haaappy little Halloween, a happy little day.

[Posted by Mallory]

Happy Halloween, fuckfaces:

By Colin Nissan

I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait to get my hands on some fucking gourds and arrange them in a horn-shaped basket on my dining room table. That shit is going to look so seasonal. I’m about to head up to the attic right now to find that wicker fucker, dust it off, and jam it with an insanely ornate assortment of shellacked vegetables. When my guests come over it’s gonna be like, BLAMMO! Check out my shellacked decorative vegetables, assholes. Guess what season it is—fucking fall. There’s a nip in the air and my house is full of mutant fucking squash.

I may even throw some multi-colored leaves into the mix, all haphazard like a crisp October breeze just blew through and fucked that shit up. Then I’m going to get to work on making a beautiful fucking gourd necklace for myself. People are going to be like, “Aren’t those gourds straining your neck?” And I’m just going to thread another gourd onto my necklace without breaking their gaze and quietly reply, “It’s fall, fuckfaces. You’re either ready to reap this freaky-assed harvest or you’re not.”

Carving orange pumpkins sounds like a pretty fitting way to ring in the season. You know what else does? Performing an all-gourd reenactment of an episode of Diff’rent Strokes—specifically the one when Arnold and Dudley experience a disturbing brush with sexual molestation. Well, this shit just got real, didn’t it? Felonies and gourds have one very important commonality: they’re both extremely fucking real. Sorry if that’s upsetting, but I’m not doing you any favors by shielding you from this anymore.

The next thing I’m going to do is carve one of the longer gourds into a perfect replica of the Mayflower as a shout-out to our Pilgrim forefathers. Then I’m going to do lines of blow off its hull with a hooker. Why? Because it’s not summer, it’s not winter, and it’s not spring. Grab a calendar and pull your fucking heads out of your asses; it’s fall, fuckers.

Have you ever been in an Italian deli with salamis hanging from their ceiling? Well then you’re going to fucking love my house. Just look where you’re walking or you’ll get KO’d by the gauntlet of misshapen, zucchini-descendant bastards swinging from above. And when you do, you’re going to hear a very loud, very stereotypical Italian laugh coming from me. Consider yourself warned.

For now, all I plan to do is to throw on a flannel shirt, some tattered overalls, and a floppy fucking hat and stand in the middle of a cornfield for a few days. The first crow that tries to land on me is going to get his avian ass bitch-slapped all the way back to summer.

Welcome to autumn, fuckheads!

[Posted by Mallory]

If you are fed up with federal politics and just need some new faith in government (or want to see something clever and aesthetically pleasing), read this:

E Pluribus Unum

Out of many, one.

[Posted by Kathleen]

Our dear friend — let’s call her Corporate Barbie — had the most ridonk, legit Anne-Hathaway-in-The-Devil-Wears-Prada job ever. She survived a year and got promoted, and luckily her sense of humor emerged unscathed. Because this here blog is the quickest way to fame — of any kind, really — she penned this little number and asked that we share it with the masses. And I DO mean masses (hi masses! thanks for reading!). As Corporate Barbie explained, “I thought you might enjoy a piece I wrote earlier today.  It is inspired by my life”:

Earlier today I mentioned to some friends that we should go to the movies tonight. I was under the influence of a “Mid-Friday Crisis” (MFC). Allow me to elaborate.

The MFC typically occurs between 11am and 1pm on Fridays after a Thursday night out, although it can happen at anytime. You know you are having an MFC when you look at your clock and think to your self, “Crap, I have to start being more responsible. It’s only 10:59 and I can’t order lunch yet because I just ate an egg sandwich. The day is not even close to over and I have so much to do that I inevitably will not accomplish.”

Once this thought enters your head, ideas such as “staying in on Thursdays” and “going to the movies on Fridays” immediately follow. And you are actually able to think they are good ideas.

Then you order a grilled cheese/chicken parm sandwich, someone mentions a cover band and the clock turns 2:45. The end of the day is in sight. The Black Eyed Peas “I Gotta Feeling” becomes the theme song to the soundtrack of your life and you can already taste the bad decisions and terrible dance moves you will be pairing with Yuengling and whiskey tonight.

It is safe to say that our resilience when faced with an MFC is the direct cause to why we are such messes.

I wish you all fun Fridays. I’ll be at the Whiskey Bar in Hoboken if any of you care to join!

[Posted by Mallory, but written by Corporate Barbie. (Maybe you think Corporate Barbie is meant to be offensive. It's not, don't worry. Corporate Barbie just has a tendency to look exactly like a Barbie in photos.)]