That's NOT What She Said

I have this fantasy where i'm one of those smoky, sultry babes that has a witty double entendre to reply to every remark, no matter how mundane or inconsequential. In my fantasy, a routine remark on the weather can turn into a steamy make-out session in seconds, because my words are so saucy and seductive that i create an atmosphere of constant eroticism and irresistible sensuality.

In reality, the responses that usually occur to me are less "sexy and witty" and more "awkward and slightly horrifying". Fortunately for me, i manage to keep the vast majority of these remarks in my head. Fortunately for you, i have compiled them here. 

Don't you wish your girlfriend was hot like me?

John: "I'm updating my webpages."
Me: "I'm updating my vagina."
What? No. That's not sexy. That's not even a thing.

John: "I just like to manhandle you sometimes."
Me: "I like to handle your man. Your little man. Your penis."
Stop. Just stop talking. If you have to explain it this much even to yourself, it's not sexy.

Searching for God Knows What, 11-end

There is a passage on pages 187-189 that is almost worth the whole price of the book, all on its own. Miller was a guest speaker on a radio program, and the host asked him about "the homosexuals who were trying to take over the country." Miller asked the host for the name of this ambitious homosexual group. The host couldn't name any actual groups, but remained convinced that such an uprising was imminent. Miller's response is absolutely lovely:
". . . As a Christian, I believe Jesus wants to reach out to people who are lost, and, yes, immoral -- immoral just like you and I are immoral; and declaring war against them and stirring up your listeners to the point of anger and giving them the feeling that their country, their families, and their lifestyles are being threatened is only hurting what Jesus is trying to do. This isn't rocket science. If you declare war on somebody, you have to either handcuff them or kill them. That's the only way to win. But if you want them to be forgiven by Christ, if you want them to live eternally in heaven with Jesus, then you have to love them." (emphasis mine) Miller later reflects that, while we are in a spiritual battle, the battle is not sinners vs. saved. After all, we are all sinners. The battle is Good vs. Evil, and people lost in sin are hostages. "This battle we are in is a battle against the principalities of darkness, not against people who are different from us. In war you shoot the enemy, not the hostage." (pg. 190)

Obviously, Miller is implying that homosexuality is sinful, but he is at least advocating that we treat homosexual people as people, that we reach out to them in love, that we talk to them about love, and that we stop trying to start a war. Personally, i'm not convinced that it is a sin to be gay, but i understand why a person reading the Bible would come away with that interpretation, and if they have honestly wrestled with the issue (including lots of prayer and talking to people who actually are gay, bonus points if they are gay Christians) and still feel that it's a sin, fine. Just treat them as human beings who need love, rather than The Enemy who must be exterminated and repressed.

Overall, i like this book. It certainly has its issues, both of content and style, but for the most part it neither outrages nor inspires me. There are some books that you read once and they change you forever, but because they have moved you, you can never really love them again. You need to read them when you are at a certain place in your life, and once you have moved past that place, they can offer you nothing. Some books (the Bible, much of C. S. Lewis, Harry Potter, etc.) change and grow with you, and you can keep falling in love with them from new angles as you re-read them. For some people, "Searching for God Knows What" is one of the second type, one that they can read again and again every few years. For me, having read it twice now, i know i will never read it again. It was important to me once, and will therefore always be important in some way, but i think we've outgrown each other.

Searching for God Knows What, chapters 6-10

Miller spends much of chapter 5 talking about the Fall and lifeboat theory. Basically, he proposes that a relationship with God is necessary to give human beings a sense of worth, and that ever since the Fall, we've all been scrambling like crazy to prove our value. Because we no longer have that perfect connection, that innate sense of self-worth and of being loved, we feel the need to somehow demonstrate that we are worth loving, worth the air we breathe and the space we occupy. And one of the easiest ways to do this is to prove that we are worth more than someone else.

This is where nearly all human culture comes from. We explore new technologies so we can be smarter than someone else. We buy cosmetics so we can be prettier than someone else. Every year, teams of athletes compete fiercely to find out who is the best, and whole cities stand or fall on the outcome of the (Superbowl, world cup, semifinals, take your pick). And then the next year, everyone gets traded and shuffled around to new teams, and they do it all over again. What's the point?

"Here is how it feels: From the first day of school the conversation is the same as it would be if hundreds of students were told to stand in line ranging from best to worst, coolest to most uncool, each presenting their case for value, each presenting an offense to the cases of others, alliances being formed as caricatures of reality television (or vice versa)." (pg. 97)

He talks about the old "lifeboat" thought exercise, where there are a bunch of people in a lifeboat but they don't have enough supplies for everyone to survive until they reach shore/are rescued. There's an 87 year old man who was a Boy Scout and Marine, there's a nursing mother and her baby, there's a Black female lawyer, there's a rabbi, there's a kid in a wheelchair, etc. And then you debate about who should die for everyone else. No one ever hesitates in ranking people, no one ever says that all are equal and no one should sacrifice him or herself involuntarily. We assume that our value can be quantified.

"If there are ten people in the lifeboat, and three of them are Jews, adhering to the philosophy that Jews are inferior is enticing. If Jews or Americans or Democrats or whoever are inferior, then I am automatically ahead of 30 percent of the population in the lifeboat. Racism and socioeconomic prejudice would be the very first thing [sic] to start happening in a culture absent God. Not simply because people are "bad" but because a certain system of internal mechanisms would immediately ensue." (pg. 117)

There's an interesting anecdote on pages 157-159. I won't repeat it here because it's long, but read it.

A Year of Biblical Womanhood: January-July

"Now, I've got nothing against aluminum poles, sex outdoors, "sacred stripping", and that sort of thing, but you should be able to tell your spouse that you'd like to try it in the backyard without insisting your instructions come directly from God. Poems were never meant to be forced into commands." (pg. 112) (emphasis mine)

Oh, Christian sexuality. We like to do this thing where we confuse descriptive with prescriptive. We also like to do this thing where we don't really understand what's being described, so it gets kinda messy. And not in the good way.

"Both Jesus and Paul spoke highly of celibacy and singleness, and for centuries the Church honored the contributions of virgins and widows to the extent that their stories occupied the majority of Christian literature." (pg. 179)

We have this narrative in the Church that behind every great man there's a great woman, that it is the role of men to be great and to do great things, and it is the role of women to support them in their accomplishments. Men are to go forth and do great things, and women are to have a clean house and warm meal waiting for them when they return.

But the Bible has a LOT to say about how great it is to never get married. So if men can do great things either married or single, but women have to be someone's wife in order to achieve something great, we are left with two options: men have multiple wives, or women marry each other.

For the first, while it is Biblical, it's mostly been rejected. But if we're talking about Biblical roles for men and women, i guess i can't really stop you. You just have to move to Utah.

For the second, it's a little dicey. I mean, here you have two women, married to each other, making their home an absolutely perfect haven of domestic bliss: clean, orderly, well-managed, with three hot meals a day and never any quarreling or bitterness or discontent or jealousy or anything. Just two happy, domestic, virtuous women being perfect wives to one another. They may not be preaching sermons or writing books or running businesses or ministering to the heathens in foreign lands, but they can certainly feed and clothe the the poor, and they can make their home open to those who need a place to stay, and those are all important Biblical things, too. In fact, hospitality is one of the things the Bible talks about the most. Definitely way more than homosexuality. Really, if you think about it, being a married lesbian is pretty much the highest calling there could be for a Christian woman.

Or, you know, maybe women can be allowed to accomplish things outside of the house and can even be praised for and encouraged in those accomplishments. "As a Christian, my highest calling is not motherhood; my highest calling is to follow Christ." (pg. 180)

"Traditionally, readers of the text have assumed that Jesus called the (Samaritan woman at the well) out on her loose morals, confronting the aberrant nature of her sexual history in order to convict her of her sin. But such a confident interpretation reveals a certain level of bias, for John never actually revealed the reason why the Samaritan woman had five husbands. It is just as plausible, therefore, to assume that her marital history was a tragic one -- women were not permitted to initiate divorce at that time, after all -- and that Jesus sought to acknowledge the difficult set of circumstances facing a woman in first-century Palestine. She may have been a concubine or a slave, which would explain why the man she was with was not her husband." (pg. 199)

The story of the Samaritan woman was an important one for me in coming to terms with my own sexuality, so i was very pleased to see an interpretation of her story that gives her a little more grace.

"In the biblical narrative, hierarchy enters human relationship as part of the curse, and begins with man's oppression of women -- "your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you" (Genesis 3:16). But with Christ, hierarchical relationships are exposed for the sham that they are, as the last are made first, the first are made last, the poor are blessed, the meek inherit the earth, and the God of the universe takes the form of a slave.

"Women should not have to pry equality from the grip of Christian men. It should be surrendered willingly, with the humility and love of Jesus, or else we miss the once radical teaching that slaves and masters, parents and children, husbands and wives, rich and poor, healthy and sick, should "submit to one another" (Ephesians 5:21)."

*slow clap*

A Year of Biblical Womanhood, introduction-December

"'The only people who enjoy potlucks are men,' she used to say. 'The women do all the work.'" (p. xvii, introduction) This reminded me of my old church, where we had a long-standing tradition for mother's and father's day celebrations. For mother's day, a small sum of money was set aside from the church budget, and a small gift was purchased. I remember one year, it was a pretty refrigerator magnet. Another year, i think it was a book. Little pretty gifts for each mother in the congregation. For father's day, all of the women in the church baked pies for the men to eat.

October is Rachel's month to learn gentleness. Gentleness has an unfortunate association with spinelessness. For Christian women in particular, gentleness is often contrasted with assertiveness, confidence, and an unwillingness to back down when opposed. But as Rachel learns to meditate, she learns something new. "I don't know for sure, but I think maybe God was trying to tell me that gentleness begins with strength, quietness with security. A great tree is both moved and unmoved, for it changes with the seasons, but its roots keep it anchored in the ground. Mastering a gentle and quiet spirit didn't mean changing my personality, just regaining control of it, growing strong enough to hold back and secure enough to soften." (p. 16)

Bad Bible translation does so much harm. The passage in Genesis describing the creation of Eve usually calls her a "helper" or "helpmeet" or something similar, all of which carry sidekick connotations. But a Jewish woman wrote to Sarah and gave her some helpful translation notes: "For the record, in Bereshit (Genesis by you) where it talks about the "helpmeet", the Hebrew is not just Ezer, but Ezer k'gnedo, which means "the help that opposes." The Rabbis explain this term like two posts of equal weight leaned against each other. They stand because of equal force." (p. 68)

From the same source: "Christians seem to think that because the Bible is inspired, all of it should be taken literally. Jews don't do this. Even though we take the Torah literally (all 613 commandments!), the rest is seen differently, as a way of understanding our Creator, rather than direct commands." (p. 87) In college, i took a course about science and religion (technically, i took two, but that's a story for another day). One of our major points of discussion was the great Evolution/Creation debate. As we discovered the science and theorized about how to reconcile it with the Bible (and as one student prayed for the souls of me and the professor), we looked at some pages in the Bible. The Creation story takes up approximately two pages. Fewer, in some Bibles, and if you have some kind of pocket-sized, large-print edition, i suppose it could take up as many as five. I have a pocket-sized Bible on my desk that is 1140 pages long. In this Bible, the Creation story takes up two pages and a few lines on a third page. The whole rest of the Bible is about the purpose of creation, about God's relationship with His creation, about "a way of understanding our Creator". Let's not get distracted by the little stuff, okay?

"The Proverbs 31 woman is a star not because of what she does but how she does it -- with valor. So do your thing. If it's refurbishing old furniture -- do it with valor. If it's keeping up with your two-year-old -- do it with valor. If it's fighting against human trafficking . . . leading a company . . . or getting other people to do  your work for you -- do it with valor."

Proverbs 19-31, Ecclesiastes 1-12, Song of Solomon 1-8, Isaiah 1-4

Proverbs 20:5
Counsel in the heart of man is like deep water,
But a man of understanding will draw it out.

This is such a beautiful image. I think even if i weren't a Christian, i'd love the Bible for its brilliant metaphors.

Proverbs 25:17
Seldom set foot in your neighbor's house,
Lest he become weary of you and hate you.

As an introvert, i may have just found my life verse.

Ecclesiastes 11:3-8
If the clouds are full of rain,
They empty themselves upon the earth;
And if a tree falls to the south or the north,
In the place where the tree falls, there it shall lie.
He who observes the wind will not sow,
And he who regards the clouds will not reap.

As you do not know what is the way of the wind,
Or how the bones grow in the womb of her who is with child,
So you do not know the works of God who makes all things.
In the morning sow your seed,
And in the evening do not withhold your hand;
For you do not know which will prosper,
Either this or that,
Or whether both alike will be good.

Truly the light is sweet,
And it is pleasant for the eyes to behold the sun;
But if a man lives many years
And rejoices in them all,
Yet let him remember the days of darkness,
For they will be many.
All that is coming is vanity.

The word in Ecclesiastes, translated here as "vanity", has been translated into a different word or phrase in pretty much every version of the Bible that exists. Some get closer than others, but none really hit the target. But i think this whole passage here does a pretty good job of explaining the concept: Things happen as they happen. The world keeps turning. There are cycles and patterns to life. Do your best with what you have and know that nothing lasts.

I'd also love to forcibly tattoo this passage on the chest of anyone who comments on tragedies, especially natural disasters, by suggesting that they were "God's wrath" for the sins of those affected. If the clouds are full of rain,/They empty themselves upon the earth. That's just how it works. We don't know the way of the wind or the works of God, so we sow our seeds. Life goes on.

A day late and a dollar short. Actually, lots of dollars short. I am short pretty much all of the dollars.

Once again, Rachel Held Evans' blog is featured, but this time it's this guest post about re-configuring our arguments about homosexuality in the church. I happen to really enjoy reading and hearing arguments that are simply presented, not supported or condemned. I like it when someone has the intellectual integrity to say, "Here is a way of thinking," without feeling the need to let you know how they feel about it. It gives me more room to make up my own mind. Anyway, if that's not your thing, you can skip this one, but i enjoyed it.

I'm a sucker for the romance and mystery of abandoned places, and these photos are so particularly dream-like and artistic that i could easily spend all day looking at them and imagining their stories. Also, there are very few of these places that i would be unwilling to visit, or even live in.

Okay, so i have never seen an episode of Dr. Who. I know, i know, the authorities are coming by later today to revoke my Nerd Card. Anyway, the point is that this post still made sense to and resonated with me. Our personal beliefs and convictions are very important, and it is possible for two people who believe different things to both be right, but the fact that you believe a thing does not make you correct. Your convictions can be based on prejudice, misunderstanding, or even habit. Be willing to be wrong.

I've also not read any of the Game of Thrones books or seen any of the show. I'm the worst nerd ever. The only way i can redeem myself at this point is to attend some kind of comics convention, and i'm just not willing to go that far. But for missing out on George R. R. Martin i can redeem myself a little, because of this post. One tiny excerpt of awesomeness:
"Cersei is evil, eeeeeevil. How do we know she's evil? She's consensually fucking more than one dude, OBVS. Also, she's saying things like "that time you betrothed me to a guy when I was a kid, and then I had to sleep with him even though I didn't want to? That was basically rape" and "nobody has any problems if a DUDE sleeps around, but when I do it's somehow the most damning evidence against my character" and "given the patriarchal slant of our society, sometimes I wish I was a guy!" So, just to be clear: The only female character who consistently levies an institutional critique of sexism in these books? Evil. Eeeeeevilllllllll! You surprised?"

Oh hey, another Rachel Held Evans post! I, also, do not witness on airplanes! I do not witness on Amtrak trains! I do not witness in the park! I do not witness in the dark! I do not like green eggs and ham! Because unsolicited talking about your personal beliefs honestly makes me feel creepy and overbearing and terrible, and i know that i personally would never be won over by such tactics, so i'll have to find some other way of sharing the Gospel! Like maybe by taking care of the least of these and loving my neighbors and all the other stuff that Jesus told us to do!

Last week, someone asked me what Mansplaining was. This post is a really beautiful example of Mansplaining; in fact, it is an example of a man Mansplaining feminism to a woman who writes about feminism professionally. This excerpt is pure gold:
". . . Professor Feminism . . . frames it as a discussion of whether I believe 'men can discuss sexism.' . . . I pointed out that these commenters were men, and hinted as politely as possible at the sexist, Mansplaining dynamic, by asking them if they could 'see a theme.' Apparently, Professor Feminism is not Professor Good At Picking Up Hints, however, because now he thinks I am saying that men should NEVER be allowed to discuss feminism AT ALL, and of course if men can't criticize feminists, what's the point of reading feminists, or attempting to understand feminists?

"Ha ha, yeah. WHAT COULD THE POINT POSSIBLY BE.

"Actually, at this point, I'm pretty confident that Professor Feminism is not Professor Understands Sarcasm, either, so I'll spell it out: The point of listening to women and feminists is to listen to women and feminists. Because if you listen to them, you might start to understand certain basic points, such as: women do not automatically have to accept you as an expert, particularly not when the subject under discussion (sexism!) is something you've never experienced first-hand. Women do not have to make you 'comfortable' and 'welcome' in every single conversation. Women do not have to permit you to enter their political movements, their self-created spaces, their personal space, their bodies, or anything else that belongs to them; you, as a man, are not entitled to women's attention, praise, affection, respect, or company, just because you want it. And when a woman says 'no', you respect that this particular woman said 'no', and you stop. You don't make excuses, you don't explain why you should be able to get what you want, you don't throw a tantrum, you don't call that woman names: You just stop what you are doing. Because she said 'no'."

So, i have super mixed feelings about Mad Men. On the one hand, the writing is superb, and i can enjoy just about anything if it is well written. On the other hand, there's lots of sexism and racism and homophobia and classism and all kinds of other terrible -isms. On the other hand, that stuff is meant to be illustrative of Things That Are Wrong In Society, and how we think we're so enlightened and progressive, but really the only thing that's changed in fifty years is the outfits. On the other hand, just because the show is meant as a subtle critique of Bad Things doesn't mean that everyone who watches it and loves it gets that, and many viewers watch the show and long for the days when you could smoke inside, drink at work before noon, and rape as many secretaries as you wanted to. On the other hand, just because some people misinterpret a work doesn't mean that the work is bad. On the other hand, if lots of people misinterpret a work, maybe it's not very well done. On the other hand, Christina Hendricks is mad sexy. So, yeah. I have mixed feelings.
And funny story: my boyfriend and i recently had a fight about Mad Men and how art can be destructive if misunderstood, and if lots of people are misunderstanding your art, maybe it's not very good art? If the story isn't clear to everyone, maybe it's not a story worth telling? And i tend to think that, while all of these things are good points, Mad Men is subtle enough to work its way under your skin and slowly build itself into a healthier worldview for you, just the way that everything else in culture slowly indoctrinates you to be a shitty person.
Example: lots of movies, TV shows, books, poems, paintings, etc., depict rape. Overwhelmingly, rape scenes are portrayed from the male point of view, and are often highly eroticized. So we get this idea that rape is hot, and that girls don't really mind that much when you do it to them. In Mad Men, on the other hand, one of the most famous rape scenes (often referred to as a "rape" scene, because people don't understand rape very well) is from the victim's point of view. Joan's fiance pins her down, holds her hands, and drags up her dress. She fights at first, but then gives up. The camera travels to her face, her eyes carefully blank: this is happening to her, and there is now no turning back. Then the camera actually captures her literal point of view: the scene ends with a shot of the floor, couch, and coffee table that Joan is looking at as she is being raped. "Normal" rape scenes make rape seem sexy, and sometimes even funny and not really rape. This rape scene shows the victim actually being violated. It's sad that i have to spell it out that clearly, but again: people don't understand rape very well.
Anyway. This post is a good example of my mixed feelings. And it starts with a photo of Christina Hendricks, so, two reasons to read it.

This post is what made me start reading Tiger Beatdown. It beautifully articulates a lot of things that make me uncomfortable about Occupy, hipsters, and a lot of other things that Kids These Days are up to.

This is my new favorite fairy tale.

And speaking of Mansplaining, here's another great example.

Overheard in the Office 20

"Jesus's last name wasn't Sandberg. It was Christ."
"Yeah, but he was Jewish."
"Jesus Sandberg? Jesus Feinstein? 'Hi, Jesus Feinstein. Nice to meet you.'"

excerpt

Their dwarf companions were a funny mixture of gloom and cheer. A lifetime of living and working among rocks had made them rather solid and slow in their thoughts and speech, yet they made a number of jokes. These jokes were very funny, apparently, but it was a little hard to tell. They relied so heavily on an intimate understanding of stone and involved so many bits of mining slang that they were largely incomprehensible to the two humans. Yet after every joke, the dwarves would all burst into gales of hysterical laughter; without, however, changing their glum expressions.

Overheard in the Office 20

"I sent you an email. But it's not urgent. You can read it when you get back. It's like, a work thing. So it's not, like, a non-work thing."

Ezekiel 24-48, Daniel 1-10

This week, there was nothing specific that really jumped out at me. But in reading Daniel, i noticed something interesting: While Daniel has earned some honor and respect for himself in Babylon, the Babylonians have not converted to Judaism. They realize that his God is pretty powerful (witness the interpretation of dreams, the fiery furnace, the lion's den, etc), but they continue to worship their own. It is this, in fact, that gets Daniel thrown to the lions in the first place.

But every time there is some kind of confusion or emergency, and the king's advisers call on Daniel, they refer to the Hebrew God in glowing terms (Daniel 4:34-37, 6:24-28, etc). It's unlikely that "heathens" who worshiped a different god would be so complimentary of this one. They might recognize His power and authority in some areas, but they would not speak of him worshipfully. They would either convert or be a little less effusive.

History is written by the victors. I'm not saying that the "history" parts of the Bible are a pack of lies, but it is important to remember that the Hebrews themselves wrote it. It is possible to write an account that is 100% factual, and yet present the information in such a way that even other eyewitnesses wouldn't recognize the story. And i have to wonder how often the Hebrew scholars and historians painted up the facts a little. Did the king's advisers trust and respect Daniel? Yes, the ones who didn't want him dead. Did they have some respect for the God that was able to protect him from harm and interpret dreams? Yes, the ones who weren't so jealous of his success and his closeness to the King that they created religiously oppressive laws for the sole purpose of having him killed.

Those of you who remember Veggie Tales might recall one of my favorite songs, the one where the king's advisers are scheming against Daniel:
Oh no, what we gonna do?
The King likes Daniel more than me and you!
Oh no, what we gonna do?
We gotta get him out of here!


It's important, when reading the Bible, to keep in mind who wrote it and what motivations they may have had for presenting the truth in a certain light. A people enslaved by another nation need a reason to feel superior to their captors. Like the certainty that all the Babylonians were in awe of the Hebrew God.

Just something to think about.

Overheard in the Office 18

"It's like a happy explosion in your mouth!"

playlist ruminations

Some girls, they glow in darkness

But by our standards, that's not much

Some girls, they'd like to win

But instead they'll serve you lunch

I love to travel. I like the inbetweenness of it, the freedom of not really being anywhere. You're departing and arriving all at once. It's so ethereal and poetic. It's also romantic and magical, especially when you're on a train. I watched a lot of old movies/read a lot of British novels when i was a kid. And still do. And always will.

But i can't sleep when i travel. With all the flying i have done, including international flights across oceans late at night, i think i've slept on a plane twice. Once i slept in an airport in Spain, because i was on a layover and was better able to sleep in the tiny airport chair with the janitors walking by than in the airplane. I don't sleep in cars, i don't sleep in trains, i don't sleep on buses.

I don't think i've ever seen the train this full before. Conversely, i've never had so much legroom. I think i accidentally took a handicapped seat.

It's coming up on midnight now, and i'm sleepy and writing and listening to music and doing homework. And staying awake, munching dried mango and sunflower seeds. God, i'm such a hippie sometimes.

That's what takes up time in this life

Add up the sum of the slights

And sooner or later

Love comes inside you

Gets behind you 

Takes you under its wing

It's partly that i'm afraid of someone stealing my things while i sleep. It's partly that transportation seating is generally not as sleep-inducing as my memory foam mattress pad and my warm, cozy boyfriend. It's partly just that i'm enjoying the ride so much.

Of course, i also have massive amounts of homework to do. And i am happily ignoring it all to blog. I am so self-sabotaging sometimes.


We long for journeys and the roadside

We long for starlight and the low tide

Yeah, we long for fairy tales and firesides

But it's also really healthy for me, mentally, to be taking this time. I don't spend much time alone these days. I mean, sometimes John isn't around and i eat and/or sleep alone, and sometimes i'm driving alone or in the grocery store alone, etc. But i don't often take time to intentionally be by myself. When i'm alone, it's usually a fluke: waiting for someone, someone is waiting for me, staying up in the kitchen doing homework while John sleeps.

We long for sunlight on the hillsides
Yeah, we long for yesterdays and hindsight
Oh, we long for fairy tales and firesides

This trip is just me.

Yeah, we long for carnivals and fairground rides
Oh, we long for journeys and the roadsides
Oh, we long for fairy tales and firesides

Overheard in the Office 17

me: "Blah Blah Blah College Admissions, this is Diana. How can I help you?"
her: "Oh, hi. I was trying to talk to (unintelligible murmur). Are they there?"
me: "I'm sorry; who were you trying to get in touch with?"
her: "Admeezhons?"
me: "Admissions?"
her: "Yes, Admeezschons. Is anyone there?"
me: ". . . This is Admissions."
her: "Oh. Are you sure?"

Reason #11 Why I Should Live With My Boyfriend

After our lunchtime quickie, he was talking about how excited he was to go again later in the day when we would have more time. "Yeah, that's right," he concluded, "we use sex as foreplay!"

Don't Call Us; We'll Call You

A girl came in today to fill out an employment application for summer work in our office. She was reading through the "Special Skills and Training" checklist and got confused by some of the skills listed.
Girl: "Filling? What's that?"
Me: "Um . . . Do you mean 'filing'?"
G: "Yeah. What is that?"
M: "It's putting paper away. In files."
G: "Oh. How do I know if I have that skill?"
M: "Have you ever had a job where you had to file things?"
G: "No."

*pause*

G: "What's 'attention to detail'? What's that mean?"
M: It means that you notice when things are wrong. If something has been moved in the office, or if something is wrong in a document. Do you notice when something is wrong?"
G: "Yeah, I guess I could do that."

*pause*

G: "What other skills should I put?"
M (in my head): Not interview skills. (aloud): "Anything that you know how to do."
G: "Oh. All right."

*pause*

G: "What's 'organizational'?"

Overheard in the Office 14

Dude: "Hey, uh . . . (to his girlfriend, in a whisper) I don't know what to say."
His Girlfriend: "Just tell 'em what you want."
D: "Uh, I want to sign up."
Me: "Um, you mean you want to apply to be a student here?"
D: (with a pleased smile) "Yeah."

Overheard in the Office 13

"To be honest, the extent of your phobia is kind of funny."

Overheard in the Office 12

One of my coworkers just asked me to "tell the internet that I watched Die Hard last night."

Overheard in the Office 11

"I want a baby!"
"Really?"
"Yes! I can't wait to have babies!"
"Get a dog."