Notes from the Slush Pile

Remember that part when Brad does the Jamaican accent?

While I cannot type out for you here the submissions to the publishing co. I'm interning at due to legal and moral issues, I can describe plots! I was given a pile of submissions to sift through. Most are mediocre. Some are lovely. But only one reached the great height of hilarious horrible-ness. This nameless person, god bless 'em, mailed us a poem that was so exquisitely bad that I immediately wanted to share it with the world, i.e. you guys. Here's the gist:

It's the middle of the night in the 1950s. A mysterious man dressed all in black, save for a white shirt, comes knocking at the young narrator's door. He asks if he can take a tour of the house, as it was listed for sale. The narrator's pajama-wearing parents deny it's availability [and here the poet has some brilliant dialog work that I wish with all my little heart I could re-produce for you. Let's just say there are a lot of exclamation points, dashes and ellipses (although the ellipses are like, 8 periods instead of the standard ...), and at one point the mother says, "my lord no" in italics. ITALICS]. The mysterious visitor shows them a copy of the ad in the real estate pages to prove his claim. Then the young narrator spies the date on the newspaper: it's from 15 years in the future! AHHHH! There are several line breaks, marked by asterisks, and then the narrator tells the reader that several years passed and eventually the house DID go for sale--the same year that the future-paper predicted! line break, asterisks, followed by ellipses--Why did the house go for sale? Because mamma died exclamation point exclamation point exclamation point.

A perfect blend of Hitchcock, Goosebumps, and the under-rated 1990s masterpiece Meet Joe Black, no????????.......*******----.....!!!!!!!!!

Wedding Skanks and Mullets

Yesterday Kelsey, Emily, Emily's roommate Mandy, and I spent the day at Laurelhurst park, where we engaged in some heavy people watching. Laurelhurst has a wonderful mix of normal families, young people like myself, and freak-a-leeks. Obvi the weird people are the best for people watching, but it's fun to watch families parade around in their smugness, too. One particular family had a ginger baby. It was terrifying. Which led us to wonder WTF gingers look like when they start to go grey. Do they just look like albinos? Do they retain their red eyebrows? Mind-boggling.

Other great observations from yesterday:

1. A skanky wedding!!!! A D-Bag was marrying a Trout Pout skabimbo (skank + bimbo, if you were wondering). He had frosted tips, she had orange skin. It was obviously a match made in heaven. The wedding colors were teal (like pool-blue teal) and brown. Did not work so well with the groom's platinum highlights. The wedding party were all shot-gunning Red Bulls while the groom and bride were getting pics taken. I can only aspire to this state of perfection.
2. A super hot step-dad/partner/boyfriend there with his lady-love and her daughter. His name was Asa. Kelsey thought he was Jewish, Emily thought he was Brazilian, and I just thought he was really good looking. We spent the better part of an hour trying to figure out their family situation and staring at him. Oh, Asa.
3. Lots of dogs in ridiculous outfits. WHY?
4. A lot of mullets. For whatever reason, mullets are still popular in pockets of Portland.
5. Have you ever noticed that sometimes it's hard to tell the height of an adult when s/he is next to a child? It's really hard to tell if they're super tall or just with a kid. Which is why we were contemplating the idea of a blog called "Tall or With Child?".
6. Weird old guy practicing tai chi across from us. He also had a mullet.
7. An Andrew Dean look-alike. I hope all of you SU readers can appreciate how amazing spotting this creature was for K, E, and I.

That was pretty much it for people watching in the park, although we did get in some more top-notch observations while drinking in the McMenamin's outdoor seating of their Hawthorne Blvd. branch, The Bagdad. We practically had to cut a beez for our prim-o seats, but it was so worth it, because Hawthorne was full of crazies last night, like a woman wearing tie-dye and acid washed jeans, and rocking a mullet. Oh, Oregon.

BUpdate

BUpdate = butt update, in case you were confused.

My butt surgery went well, post-op healing kinda blows, but Vicodin is keeping me company, as are some nice goodies that family and friends have given me. Here's a list of all the sweet swag I've received because of my status as a weakling.

1. The entire stock of Costco. Seriously, Mama Jones went to town on Costco and bought more food that a Midwestern family of 6 could eat in a month. Bagels and Sun Chips for life!
2. Flowers from 1-800-Flowers. MDawg was a total champ and got a bouquet to my house like, 5 minutes after I texted her that my butt was going to go under the knife. My favorite part of her note is the sentence "Sorry about your butt". What a pal!
3. "Cruel Intentions" DVD from my cousin. Best sick-day movie EVER.
4. A purple sparkly nail file from The Body Shop. My mom actually said this: "You can still be a diva even if your butt is broken!". God. Sometimes my mom rocks pretty hard.
5. The most adorable chocolates ever, from my padre (and Moonstruck):

Thanks, friends and family! Most of all, thanks for all your well-wishes and concern!