Fluffernutters and Grilled Cheese Sandwiches

The other day at work, Anna comes into the back room to tell me the story behind two people who were sitting at the counter.  It was a man and a woman, fairly young, and clearly on a date.  Anna tells me that not too long ago, the guy used to come in here with a different woman, and they had a cute habit of getting a fluffernutter sandwich and a grilled cheese, and splitting them.  Afterwards they'd play a game of Blink, one of the games we had on the game shelf that's a bit like Uno.

This, however, was a new girl.  Anna wonders why he was here with someone else, and figures that they must have broken up, and he is out with this new woman.  It's a sad situation to begin with, but things only went down from there.  The man tries in vain to recreate his cute habit with the new girl, but things don't seem to work out.  To begin with, the girl has a peanut allergy.  She wouldn't be able to split a sandwich with him - at least not a fluffernutter.  When he tries to order one anyway, she gives him a look - you're getting something with peanut?  Heartbreaking.

As she looks over the menu, she announces another unfortunate fact - she also happens to be lactose intolerant.  Pretty big deal when we mostly serve ice cream and grilled cheese sandwiches.  As she special-orders her sandwich, he resigns himself to a meal completely unlike the one he anticipated.  

But Blink! Blink might save the date.  He breaks out the deck and they begin to play.  After a few attempts to teach her and let her get the hang of the game, they begin to play, and she (of course) ends up being no good.  He comments that it's amazing that she has five unplayable cards left over after the round - he'd never seen it before.

I don't know why I insisted on writing this down.  I think it's just because Anna seemed sad that the guy wasn't still with the first girl.  Even though I'd never seen the guy before in my life and didn't talk to him or his new date, the fact that he was trying to recreate his date with the first girl struck me.  It makes me think that he probably didn't want things to end - maybe she had to move, or she got tired of the relationship and ended it; I don't know.  When every aspect of the date went opposite the way it was supposed to, I felt defeated, even though I had nothing to do with any of it.

I think everyone tries to hold on to some memory of past relationships.  We romanticize and soften the edges of each image so we can look back on them with fondness.  These memories can become a part of us, ingrained to the point where we might not even remember where they came from or why we retain such fond associations with random things like fluffernutter sandwiches.  I wonder if this man tried to recreate his memories with his girl because he's not over her, or because he just doesn't know what else to do; maybe those two are the same thing.

I don't really know if that man was happy on his date, or with his old girlfriend, or this new one.  Maybe he just really likes fluffernutters.  But I know there are things in my life that I like, that I look fondly upon because of the people I've dated.  You take a piece of those people with you wherever you go, worn proudly on your chest like badges.  And like a badge, you wear it because it means (or meant) something special to you.  When others see it, though, they learn something about you.  That's the moment when your experiences and memories with others, those parts of them, become a part of you.

Upgrade/Downgrade

Hey peeps - 

Upgrade:

• Scanned pictures of my parents' wedding today.
• Watched a Netflix movie, breaking my expensive streak of leaving them on my nightstand.
• Mapped out my entire day tomorrow so I'll be all upgrades and no downgrades.

Downgrade:

• Totally ignored the pushup challenge until just now, even though I'm reminded at work every day.
• Ate like four slices of pizza after work after I decided I was done eating for the day.
• Ignored this blog until just now.
• Stole a packet of sour patch kids from my brother.  Delicious, but wrong.
• Already broke my plan for tomorrow by staying up past midnight.

I think we can chalk this one up to failure.

Upgrade/Downgrade

If there is one thing I learned in college, it's that I can improve.  No matter where I am in my life, I'll never be one to say that I am done.
That's not to say I'm dissatisfied with who I am.  It's just that I think I can always do better.


If there is another thing I learned in college, it's that I am a lazy-ass who will get out of anything if I can get away with it.  So if I'm going to set myself on the road to self-improvement, I need to foolproof it.  So I've decided to publicize my successes and shortcomings in short periodic posts called Upgrade/Downgrade, in honor of VH1's Best Week Ever (obviously).

Here goes:

Upgrade

• I cleaned out my car today - vacuumed, too.
• Found my ipod shuffle
• Started the 100-pushup challenge that my friends at work decided we should all do.
• Actually started content on this blog.

Downgrade

• I ate fast food twice today.
• Wasted time on the internet until 1:00pm
• Didn't go out today.
• I played a mean trick on Ayesha.

It'll take a while to figure out what's Upgrade/Downgrade worthy.  We'll see how this plays out.

Pop, Rock, Prescriptivism

As a "linguist" (I have the degree to prove it, dammit), I know that it is my duty to describe the uses of language and not prescribe a "correct" usage.  There is no one English language, but rather each one of us holds an idea of English in our heads, and hopefully they correspond for the most part.

On the other hand, Mrs. Hill was a damn good English teacher in 10 grade and I'll forever be a stickler for grammar and usage.

Over the past few weeks I've noticed some pretty glaring errors in the lyrics to some pretty popular songs on the radio.  Instead of ranting to everyone who'll listen (read: no one), I'll just post my complaints here.

1.  Miley Cyrus's new song "Seven Things" details seven things that she hates about her old boyfriend.  I'm going against my better judgment when I say I think about Nick Jonas whenever I hear this song (did you know they used to DATE?).  That was not the point.  The point is, her seven things are listed in a grammatical series. That is, she concatenates the reasons, omitting conjunctions and replacing them with commas.
Let me cut to the chase - when you make a series like this, the items must be parallel. they should all be nouns, or verbs, or even sentences.  There are lions, tigers, and bears (oh my!).  I like to run, jump, and play games.  She's stupid, she has no sense of humor, and she's got a snaggletooth.
Miley ALMOST does this, but fails in a way that makes me cringe every time I hear this song.  Here are the first three things things she hates about Nick Jonas:

The seven things I hate about you! - You're vain, your games, you're insecure.

While she repeats the "jυr" sound three times, these homophones differ greatly in meaning and part of speech.  I didn't even understand what she was saying because I was expecting "You're vain, you're ____, you're insecure."  I thought she called Nick Jonas gay, to be quite honest.  This is why parallelism is important in a series.

2.  "Touch My Body" by Mariah Carey might possibly be deserving of some slack because it's such a terrible song, but there's one part that gets to me every time and I have to share it.

I want you to caress me
Like a tropical breeze
And float away with you
In the Caribbean Sea

Clearly Mariah Carey wants him (Nick Cannon? Wow. They're both about guys named Nick. Even more deserving of a wow [or perhaps a groan], I read way too much Perez Hilton.) to do one thing, and she wants to do another. It doesn't make grammatical sense for her to simply add her activity to the sentence. The verb "want" serves many grammatical and syntactic uses, but it can't serve more than one at a time. It would make more sense for her to ask him to do both activities. All she'd have to do is change the phrasing to "float away with me." It essentially means the same thing, and the grammar police would allow it, too.

3. This last one does not fit with the other two, as it is not a question of grammar, but I don't want to write a completely new post, and I'm on a roll. Jordin Sparks's newest song "One Step At a Time" is all right although I can't for the life of me figure out what needs to be done one step at a time. Anyway, she describes the situation as being similar to other things that take time, including falling in love and... learning to fly. Now, I'm no pilot, so when I think of things learning to fly, I think of birds. Now, not only does flying take no literal steps, it also doesn't seem to take many steps of an abstract nature. Once that fledgling jumps out of the nest, it'd better damn well fly in one step or it's done. Maybe I'm wrong. I don't know.


I guess I'm done griping. The worst thing about this is that now you all know what shitty music I listen to.

Phoooootoshop.

If I wait for a sign - some significant day to mark the beginning of my journal, I'll never start.

So I made my own sign.