"For what do we live but to make sport of our neighbors and laugh at them in our turn?"*

   Well, it’s official: I’m an asshole.

   Remember how I told you about my neighbors Jay/Jaye/J and his/her mystery roommate/boyfriend/girlfriend/buddy? Well, the mystery is officially solved and I solved it in a terrible, asinine fashion of which I am ashamed and can’t stop thinking about and obsessing over. (Yeah, I ended another goddamn sentence with a/two preposition/s. It’s a stylistic choice. IT’S A CHOICE.)
 

   So, I was heading out to pick up Chad and meet some friends for bowling the other night when I ran into Jay’s roomie (lover? Best buddy?) outside their door. Roomie was wrangling a pair of the most adorable twin boys I’d ever seen.

   I immediately dropped to my knees to chat with the kiddos (I hate children as a rule because they’re inherently evil, but these two were quite fantastic looking) and since I was already in good humor (what with having social plans and all), I used it as an excuse to chat up Jay’s companion.

“Hi, I’m Lacey! And who are these boys?”

“Oh, they’re my sister’s kids.”

“So you’re their aunt?” Fucking rookie mistake.

“No, I’m their uncle.”

   I decided to just keep talking as though I hadn’t made one of the worst possible of faux pas in the world.

“Oh, their uncle! Of course. What’s your name?”

“C.J.”

“It’s so nice to meet you finally!”

   C.J. was holding one of the twins and had a stethoscope around his neck that the toddler was trying desperately to get hold of.

“Where did you find a stethoscope for them to play with? Are you a doctor or something?”

   (At this point I was kissing his ass in the hopes that he’d forget that I called him their aunt. I should’ve corrected things immediately and said something like, “Oh, crap. I misspoke. Of course I meant uncle, but my friend from Oklahoma just became an aunt and she talks about it so often it just flew out of my mouth and how about those Dodgers (see—I remembered he liked baseball).” But I was so thrown that I felt compelled to just keep on talking like the moron I am. Why a DOCTOR would live in this shitty apartment building is beyond the scope of reality anyway, so there's no remote chance that he bought any of my brown-nosing bullshit.)

“No, I have asthma, so I keep a stethoscope around.”

“Ohhhhhhhh.” I tried not to let him know that this was a huge revelation and was answering so many questions. EUREKA! Finally I understand why the tuberculosis-style coughing happens in the bathroom every night.

If I were a doctor (which I'm not), I would totally have one of these...

“Well, your nephews are completely precious. Are they living with you?”

“Thank you! Yes, but just for a little while. My sister’s moving to L.A. so she’s staying with us while she's in transition.”

   While he held one twin, the other kept coming to the door with random objects and saying what they were.

“Shoe.”

“Phone.”

“Stethoscope.”

   I gave the little genius as many compliments as I could. Mostly so C.J. could stay standing with the one while my face tried to cool down from my intense mortification. Whenever I’m embarrassed I flame red and immediately run a mild fever. It makes embarrassment a million times worse when everyone knows how embarrassed you are, so I thought I’d crouch low to the ground and interact with the toddler. The way I acted, you would have thought the kid was reciting Tennyson.

   C.J. could not have been nicer. Which made/makes me feel EVEN WORSE. He was so sweet and friendly and warm. Everything Jay/Jaye/J had not been on our one and only encounter.

   It breaks my heart to think of C.J. sitting in his apartment with those two noisy twins and thinking about how his dumb bitch neighbor thought he was a woman. AND I DID. If you’ll recall, I definitely thought he was (maybe) a lady.

   But I feel like as many questions as were answered, a million popped up in their places. I mean, IS that a one-bedroom apartment? In which case, he and Jay are clearly the gay lovers I initially thought they were. UNLESS Jay is a woman, which is clearly possible. BUT, if C.J.’s sister and the twins are staying for what has clearly been well over a month, how can that possibly be a one-bedroom apartment? 

   And why does C.J. have better breasts than I do? And a higher voice? I've heard of hormones in people's foods doing such things. Maybe he has a dietary deficiency?

   Okay, so sometimes when I start diagnosing people and their issues, Em will say to me, “Is Dr. Rouse making a house call?” It's obvious that I think I know a lot more about everything than I ever actually do. If I were a doctor (which I’m not, for the record) I’d say, “Physician heal thyself!” Which, in this case seems to mean: I gotta do something to make it up to my neighbors.

   Stay tuned for what is sure to be a foray into some ill-conceived baking.

*This quote is from the divine Ms. Jane Austen. I certainly hope my neighbors are "making sport" of me, because I fucking deserve it. Sigh out loud.

"I can't stand whining. I can't stand the kind of paralysis that some people fall into because they're not happy with the choices they've made. You live in a time when there are endless choices...Money certainly helps and having that kind of financial privilege goes a long way, but you don't even have to have money for it. But you have to work on yourself...Do something!"*

   I’m afraid (though not literally like when I watched Hocus Pocus by myself on Halloween night) that this is going to be another one of those posts where I just update you on the random musings of my life without any direction or point. My brains aren’t cooperating these days, so I’m just going to sum up the state of things. Without further ado:

1. I don’t want to sound like a bitch (though, to be fair, I am a bit of a bitch) but Lindsay Lohan’s downward professional trajectory has somehow made me very smug and happy. I’m sure jealousy is somehow involved. Whenever I see posters for her made-for-TV movie Liz and Dick I am simultaneously excited to watch the shit out of it and really elated that she’s sunk to the level of movie-of-the-week status. I mean, here was a girl who had a great career going and she just completely blew it. What a dope. However if I’d had the career she threw away, I’d be so amazed by myself and convinced of my invincibility I probably would have done EXACTLY what she did. And maybe that’s why I feel so damn joyous when I see the promos for Liz and Dick. I’m just really glad it’s not my face up there. Failing for all the world to see. (And to be ultra realistic, she’s still doing better than 98% of the actors in this city.)

2. These graduate school applications are totally kicking my ass. I think I’ve over thought the essay portion to the point where after 4 drafts and 7 people reviewing it, my essay looks like hieroglyphic swirls with occasional sketches of monkeys with light bulbs over their heads thrown in for good measure. Also, check out the length of that run-on sentence. I can’t write for shit anymore. My fingers work but my brain don’t.

3. I went to Chicago last weekend and realized that I miss autumn. Real autumn with the leaves changing color and the smell of smoke in the air (not smog, smoke) and warm, fuzzy coats and scarves and gloves and hats and biting winds and gray mornings and raking and all that. I don’t really like being cold but I miss having seasons. It’s “Fall” in Los Angeles and all we’ve got to show for it are a bunch of morons in parkas complaining about the 60° temperatures and the fact that the wind occasionally blows a palm frond or two into the street and the damn city won’t send someone to pick them up so we have to do it our damn selves. (Which does kind of suck because those things will shred your hands into a million pieces.)

Fall. For real.

4. I went to see Skyfall with Chad the other night and it made me even more anxious/eager/determined to travel somewhere. Why don’t I have any money???? Why??? I DESERVE to have lots of money so I can promptly go to Istanbul or Shanghai or both. And if the James Bond franchise is to be believed, you can find amazing parking spots anywhere you go in either of those cities. Maybe I will move there because free parking is hard to come by in LA.

5. Check out how American I am: The other morning I was eating a slice of American cheese in the bathroom while I got ready (as you do) and I set it down on top of my New Yorker (which, I’ll admit, is also a bathroom activity) and it stuck to the page in a really bad way. The cheese still tasted fine, but the article’s all fucked up. 

Bathroom activities.

Here's a close-up. Gross.

   Anyway, talk about first-world problems. My life is a dream and I would like to make this seem less like a blog post about complaining incessantly and more a blog post about my astute observations about life. As long as you readers take it that way, we'll be fine and I won't have to alter my world-view at all.

*The quote is from Hillary Rodham Clinton. And she's right...the money part does certainly help. 

"Your name is Gilly, but since we are good friends, I get to call you Jesus."*

   I got an iPhone 4S last week and my life is now complete. I’m so in love with iPhone that I take him everywhere and dress him in different, cute little outfits. He’s adorable and the closest thing to a child I can ever imagine owning (you do own children, right? If you have them yourself out of your vagina or adopt them legally?).

   Anyway, iPhone is great and I’ve never been happier with an electronic device (thanks, Momma and Steve Jobs!).

   But you know who’s a huge bitch? Siri.

   I wasn’t sure if I wanted to get Siri because I’d talked to her on Chad’s phone in the past and found that she didn’t particularly understand anything I had to say. It was like talking to the automated voice system on the phone with the bank or fucking stupid AT&T: it hardly ever knows what you’re talking about and keeps saying, “It sounded like you said, ‘Go fuck yourself.’ Did I get that right?”

   Anyway, I was convinced by Ouisa to go ahead and get Siri anyway (Ouisa’s like a cartoon drawing of a devil on your shoulder whenever you’re wondering whether or not to buy something), because she can do so many amazing things! You can text without typing! You can look for directions! You can have her play a song from your phone!

   While I was working this weekend, I let the kiddos I watch play with Siri for a while (a truly annoying thing to listen to) and I started to feel kind of bad for her. One of them was telling her she was stupid and the other was saying "I hate you, Siri!" (what have I done to these children, btw?) and Siri’s responses were sort of calm but hurt. She kept explaining that she hadn’t done anything wrong or that she didn’t understand why they would say that kind of stuff to her. The whole thing made me feel kind of weird, like how when I was a kid I use anthropomorphize my dolls and toys and worry myself to death making sure they were all in comfortable positions at bed time (I'm talking even toy tractors or Lincoln Logs...I was a weird kid). I started irrationally defending Siri to the kids, saying stuff like, “Hey, that’s mean! Don’t say that!” I was aware as I was speaking that I sounded insane, but I genuinely thought maybe Siri would get fed up and turn into a murderous monster like HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Maybe she’d smother me in my sleep or—far worse—trap me in an elevator. How was she to know it wasn't me talking to her but those devious children?

This is Siri all bent out of shape because people were being mean to her.

   I put Siri into a random Google search just to see what kind of technology I was actually dealing with and found something shocking:

Something Shocking

   This article talks about how when you ask Siri for an abortion clinic or a pharmacy with the morning after pill or a RAPE CRISIS CENTER for gods sake, she gives you none but instead directs you to pro-life pregnancy counseling centers. What’s even more disturbing perhaps, it seems that she willingly gives out info on Viagra or “penis mightier” drug sources. So…she’s apparently only opinionated about women’s sexual health issues.

   This made me feel a lot less sorry for Siri. And a lot of other things started falling into place, too.

   For instance, if you ask Siri where to dump a body, she’s full of suggestions from metal foundries to crematoriums. And that seemed funny as hell to me at first. But since she doesn’t have any advice about where I can get a rape kit, it seems fucked up that she’s so eager to help me dispose of a corpse.

   Also, when I asked her who was the fairest of them all (yes, I’m a dork, move on), she asked if she was talking to Snow White. But when one of the kids asked her, she basically said, “You are.” Huh? She’s MY Siri, so how come she’s nicer to other people?

   And she keeps popping up when I don’t want her services (also eerily reminiscent of HAL) and asking what she can help me with. She can help me with minding her own goddamn business!

   She has her uses, don’t get me wrong. I’m learning how to talk to her so that she understands and actually helps me rather than frustrating the shit out of me. It’s a lot like a dating-type relationship. I repeat myself ad nauseum, she doesn’t understand. I get mad and she gets confused. I apologize and try again, she’s turned herself off. Yep, we’re dating alright.

   I will continue to be nice to Siri, despite our fundamental philosophical differences, because she scares the hell out of me. But iPhone I will love forever. Beautiful iPhone. IPhone, iPhone, iPhone. 

Siri is the Devil.

*This is a quote from Siri on my iPhone. Hmmm...
More news on Siri...

"You ever have moments where your self-satisfaction runs so deep that you don't know what to do with yourself? I just had one."*

    Okay, so I’ve been AWOL for a while, but I have some really good excuses. For one, I got sick last Thursday. Today is the next Thursday and I’m still sick. I didn’t take enough Zicam and I haven’t gotten enough sleep, so it’s not so much my body’s fault as mine (is it weird that I consider my body a separate entity from my brain/personality?); nonetheless I’m still kind of upset at my body and not myself. But I’m hardly ever upset with myself, because I like myself so much (does saying it a lot make it true?).

    Secondly, I got back from Omaha on Monday to find a stranger living in my apartment. This is a true statement, though the stranger wasn’t a surprise. My friend Dara’s been in Poland studying for the last year or so and her new Polish friend Marta got a Fulbright Scholarship to do research at Cal State LA. She needed a place to stay for a few days until she scored an apartment, but a few days has become a week and god love her, she’s overwhelmed as shit and hasn’t found a way to get to CSULA on mass transit, let alone found an apartment. But…I don’t really play well with others. That’s kind of why I have to live alone. And Marta’s been sitting in my spot in the living room, so I don’t know where to go. And I can’t really write while she’s there, because I can’t settle into the proper headspace. So I’m hiding out at Chad’s apartment while he plays shuffleboard up the street with some friends. And no, Chad isn’t an 87-year-old retiree. 

Chad's fish tank. The best part of my new writing environment.

[It would probably be in my best interest to simply tell Marta she’s in my spot and offer her a new spot, but my cold is making me stupid and tired and so I just keep going to my room and since my room is pretty much wired in my brain as a resting space, every time I go in there I immediately fall asleep. That could also be the cold’s fault.]

    Thirdly, Chad is running for Neighborhood Council and I’m his campaign manager. Just kidding. But he is running. And his upstairs neighbor has a crush on me and keeps trying to give me CDs he finds in the trash or old VHS tapes of “classics” such as the little-known Judy Garland animated flick, “Gay Purree” in which she voices a Parisian cat.

Hmmm....

    Allow me to describe him: long hair, British teeth, pot belly and he's about 45-years-old. Every day he wears the same outfit: long shorts, wife beater (today no shirt, however), backwards baseball cap, white socks pulled up and black sneakers. He works as the apartment manager here and seems to think he and I would have a lot in common. He took Chad and I up to his apartment one time and it looks like Buffalo Bill is living there, except for the poster of Audrey Hepburn he has taped up over his bed. I will tell you more after we start officially dating. I’m not really sure why I get all the sexy men. It’s a blessing. And a curse.

This Buffalo Bill, not the famous American showman. (Silence of the Lambs: Jonathan Demme, 1991.)

    And d. I have some raucous mosquito bites, courtesy of the Midwest, which are making me feel gross in general. Plus I scratched the shit out of ‘em so they look disgusting too. AND, since I’ve turned thirty, I’ve found that it’s much harder to keep up with shaving my legs. I think my leg hair has started growing faster. What’s next? Ear hair? 

I am intentionally not zooming, as then my leg hair would be all up in your face. I also have a couch print going on.

    Anyway, as you can probably tell (since I’ve told you), my life has been a little crazy of late and that is why I haven’t been posting. I wish I’d been spending this time productively, but that, sadly, is not the case.

    Poor me.

*Quote is courtesy of my dear friend, Erin, who left this very phrase in my voice mail. Sometimes the quotes just fall in my lap.