Believe it or not, I'm riding on air, never thought it would be so free-ee-ee!

A few days ago, two free tickets to an "Electric Bike Tour" of Austin arrived at our office. Naturally, the tickets fell to the newcomers: me and Z, and we made reservations immediately. The tickets promised "Pedaling optional!" which sounded like just my kind of exercise. We couldn't see a downside to the deal--free stuff, more familiarty with Austin, and a fun ride. What never occured to me is why anyone would want to give away free electric bike tours of Austin. Being a VISTA has caused me to put too much faith in the kindness and sincerity of others, so I happily showed up at the address on the tickets this morning at 9.

The smarter among you have probably guessed by now that the tour was little more than an attempt to get people interested in buying electric bikes. After I walked into the store and saw rows and rows of bikes, scooters, and batteries, I realized that I was becoming too naive. Of course there was no business that actually sold tours of Austin on electric bikes; they wouldn't make any money. When I told Z about my fears that we would be cornered after the tour and forced to buy $500 bikes, she just said, "You think we should run?" They already had our names, addresses, and phone numbers on little cards, and we had been introduced to everyone on staff. I decided we should stick it out and bolt after they began the sales pitch, but I was pretty frightened. When Z asked the manager where the tour was going, I thought but didn't say, "Probably to a time-share in Florida."

Perhaps my fear was partly related to a hideous beast that the owners called "Holly" but that I named USD: Unblinking Skeleton Dog. USD was a retired greyhound whose bones were poking through its mottled fur and whose eyes never seemed to close. She laid beside us on the couch, staring at me with empty eyes--no, not hungry eyes, exactly, but rather the dead stare of one who has long ago given up hope that she will ever be fed. If it weren't for the occasional rise and fall of Unblinking Skeleton Dog's back, she would have looked exactly like a dead dog on the side of the road. Z and I kept half-laughing, half-crying, as we asked each other questions such as, "Do you think I should give her my sandwich?" and "How many ribs does she have?" I don't know if all greyhounds are just naturally that thin, but as it was we had little time to worry about USD since we had to get fitted for helmets and taught how to ride the electric bikes.

Believe it or not, this adventure does not end in disaster. I'm sorry to disappoint you folks, but we actually enjoyed the 3 1/2 hour tour very much. Of course, it was obvious that the tour was not about Austin and was only an attempt to get us to buy a bike (Tour Guide: "And this is the historical house where one of the Alamo survivors lived...I forget her name..."). Nonetheless, we enjoyed the beautiful scenery and weather, and we were on electric bikes which rocked my little world. I just wanted to have potato chips in my bike zip-pouch so I could really get into the feeling that I wasn't doing any actual exercise. On electric bikes, you can pedal, and you do a lot of the time, but only when you're on a flat surface or going downhill. Anytime a tiny bit of real effort was needed, we just used the electric motor to speed past it. In that way, pedaling ceased to be exercise and became just another insignificant motion you make every day between the times when machines do everything for you, like pushing an elevator button or opening a car door. Needless to say, our tour guides loooked more like the "before" pictures of gym advertisements than they looked like Lance Armstrong. Although one of them was wearing a yellow shirt.

When we got back to the store, we pretended we had an urgent appointment and dashed out of the store. They graciously let us go, and we celebrated our freebie tour with some comida mexicana. All in all, a very nice day.

Before I forget: this is one of the funniest things I've seen in a long time. Please read all the stories; I promise you won't regret it: http://www.mcsweeneys.net/links/ghost/index.html

Another one of the funniest things I've seen in a long time is Z. You never see her sick sense of humor coming, what with her aristocratic beauty and New England anal-retentiveness. But twice this little redhead has managed to get the better of me, one when we first met and another one today. They both involved her boyfriend, A. The first time she duped me was when she asked how much I fought with Elliot. I told the truth, which is that we've never really had a fight, and she countered that she and A sometimes fought like cats and dogs, screaming, yelling, and "hitting each other." Now, I had known the girl only for a day, so I wasn't sure how to respond to this last detail. I kept sputtering and asking questions such as, "Um, like, really hitting each other?" until she finally told me she was kidding. Did I learn from this episode? Apparently not, because today she successfully convinced me that A weighs her every week to make sure that she's not getting fat. While I was busy trying to figure out the best way to tell her she was involved with Satan himself, she was busy trying not to laugh and give away the joke. When did I get so gullible? I must be slipping in my old age. Time to go take my pills...

The Hall of Mirrors

I actually managed to convince my Republican boss to accompany me and my co-worker (L) to see Fahrenheit 9/11. L and I both have suspicions that our boss, F, has secret liberal yearnings deep inside her that she can't acknowledge. During the day she votes for Bush and says things like, "Give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, feed him for a lifetime." She looks and sounds just like all the other conservative girls. But at night, L and I think she goes home and masturbates to liberal porn. She probably tells herself it's just for relaxation, that it doesn't mean she's a liberal, and there's no need for her conservative husband to find out. And I can see a bit of a thrill in her eye when I respond to her arguments with statements like, "Give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Take away the fish from ethnic minorities and give it to white people, feed the white people for a lifetime." If she's not a secret liberal, why has she consistently hired only liberal VISTAs to surround her in the office? Why else would she be trying to help poor, ethnically diverse children get into college? More importantly, why would she ever pay $8 to see a Michael Moore movie?

Of course, I had already seen the movie, but L wanted to see it and I wanted F to see it, so we wolfed down some great Vietnamese food and zipped over the theater just in time for the previews. I also had enough time to buy some Skittles (they didn't sell Sour Patch Kids) from a teenager with hair like Art Garfunkel. He tried to be funny, asking me if I wanted my free cup of water "on the rocks." Neither of us laughed. After he told me the price for the Skittles, he asked in a monotone voice, "Are you sure you don't want to try the summer special?" I saw a look of utter disgust flash into his eyes; it was a moment of rebellion against The Theater. "Um, was that an eye-roll I just saw? Are you sick of offering the summer special?" I asked. He looked around him for The Management before whispering, "I have three days left, then I'm out of here." It was a nice prelude to the movie.

For those of you who haven't seen Fahrenheit 9/11, you should be warned that it is utter propaganda from beginning to end. This fascinating and controversial film is many things, but a documentary it is not. It's thought-provoking, touching, and often very funny, but it's not objective enough to change the mind of any true Republican. When we left the theater, F said that she felt like she was in a fun house in the hall of mirrors, because of "all the distortion." She claimed that if you only tell the facts that support your side and hide everything else, you can make a situation look like anything you want it to. This is true, of course, but she doesn't want to believe that conservatives do the very same thing. And she flat-out denied that she had witnessed John Ashcroft singing in the film--nor would she believe he wrote the song he was singing. "He has more sense than that," she said, shaking her head woefully. I, on the other hand, accepted reality: I spent all day today at the office walking around belting, "Let the eeeeeeeeeeagle sooooooooar, like it's never sooooooooooared before..."

Elliot called me tonight with three pieces of wonderful news. 1) He'll be here in a week, 2) he's bringing me presents from California, and 3) his beard will be gone by the time he gets here. Although I will no longer be able to close my eyes and pretend I'm kissing Michael Moore, number 3 still makes me happy. There's nothing quite like a clean-shaven man, especially one bearing gifts. I should temper this by saying that my dear friend Edward Giles IV has shaved his beard, which was disappointing. Since I don't have to kiss him, I enjoyed his beard and will eagerly wait for its return. In other hair news, I haven't shaved my legs in weeks. I'm ready to join a hip central-Austin hippie Vegan co-op; you may never hear from me again.

Nothing's Gonna Change My World

             I have a set of books on the New Testament, almost a volume to every corresponding book. I found them in the attic one day. They sit on my shelf now, hopelessly and purposely out of order. You can see this immediately, even if you weren’t familiar with the Bible, because they have numbers across the top: 11, 8, 10, 6, 4, 5…every one but number 2, which was missing from the box in the attic. One day Courtney came in and, seeing them on my bookshelf, was obviously bothered.
           “That’s how anal I am,” she said confidently. “If these were on my shelf it would drive me crazy to have them out of order.” 
           “But there’s one missing,” I said after a long pause. She just looked at me. “If they were all in order, I would be able to see that one is missing. The way they are, I can’t tell.”
            And so it was with my life. I realize this now, that I always kept things disorganized, hectic, and confusing because if I pulled it all together I would know what was missing. That was two years ago, but not much has changed. Perhaps it will never change, because there's always something new to be missing. These days it's my best friend Kyle. Oh, and the recent spat with Cathy the Communist. What will it be tomorrow? Maybe if I bury myself under enough papers I won't ever find out.

Sorry for the morose message, folks. I'm sure by tomorrow I'll be regretting even letting one serious entry into this blog. In the meantime, leave a cheerful message. :)

The End of an Era

An update is in order. Since the scavenger hunt ended, my life has improved dramatically. Unfortunately, misery is what usually gives me the incentive to write. Thus, more evidence now exists for the theory that artists and writers must be tortured and depressed in order to produce their craft.

Instead of trying to increase my own misery so that I can blog more, I've actually been trying to keep up the momentum of happiness. This involves destroying those things which only bring me unhappiness. That's right; today I killed something that has been a vital part of my life for almost eight years. Today I uninstalled and deleted AOL Instant Messenger. Yes, I realize that this instrument of torture is the only means of communication I have with some people. I also do not have the money to afford long distance calls to the members of my buddy list. And yet, I think this is for the best. Here are my reasons--I hope they encourage you to break the cycle, too:

1. People who are actually very nice in person are assholes on Instant Messenger. I've never quite understoood the phenomenon. People say the internet provides anonymity, which makes people more reckless and free, but I'm talking to people that I know. These aren't strangers in a chatroom, with screen names like "HotGrrl776," who are actually fifty-year-old attorneys sitting in front of their computers, naked, with potato chip crumbs sprinkled in their chest hair. These are my friends and acquaintances, but on IM they become vicious cyborgs with no souls.

2. You never know if someone is ignoring you or has just forgotten to put up an away message. I know this is a legitimate concern, because I do it all the time to people I don't like. I get paranoid that someone is mad at me or thinks I'm uninteresting to talk to, and so I get hurt and resentful. Not a good thing at all.

3. Everyone is a comedian on Instant Messenger. You can't talk about anything serious for even five seconds before the person you're talking to makes some wisecrack. Once again, I do the same thing myself. I think it's that we're given too much time to think about our responses, so we stop answering sincerely and spend the extra seconds being clever. By the time you wade through all the bullshit, you only come up with two or three lines of actual worthwhile conversation. What a waste of time.

4. No one can hear your tone. This is bearable until you start discussing a sensitive subject, when all of a sudden the person on the other computer begins to italicize certain words in his or her mind, blowing things out of proportion and hearing insults where they don't exist. This usually leads to one person haughtily signing off, which leads to my next point...

5. Behavior that normally would be considered extremely rude is the status quo online. Someone can stop talking to you in mid-conversation, return 30 minutes later, and say, "Sorry, I started watching TV and forgot I was online." People sign off in a huff online when in person they probably wouldn't just turn and run away into the woods or something. People sign on and then don't leave an away message, so you message them for a few minutes until you get annoyed and give up. If this doesn't sound so bad to you, think about how you would feel if you drove up to a place of business that had an "Open" sign, but when you walked in you waited at the counter for 15 minutes and no one appeared. Wouldn't you be annoyed?

The conclusion is, AIM does not increase communication. It increases miscommunication. I've had so many ridiculous fights online that have actually ended friendships, and I finally started thinking, what if I just didn't sign on anymore? How many times has that monthly catch-up phone call to a friend ended in bitter emnity? Very few in my case. Where I seem to get into the most trouble is on AIM, so I'm closing the little door for good. Slam! I may miss some things, but not as much as I'll enjoy not seeing those people who keep up an away message 24/7. What, I ask you, is the point of signing on in the first place? Are you so narcissistic that you have to tell everyone you know that you're too busy to talk to them?

As for me, I'm not too busy to talk. In fact, I'll even talk with my actual voice, if you're ever interested in hearing it.

The Road to Helldorado is Paved with Good Intentions

The next item on the scavenger hunt was to attend a show at Esther's Follies, a variety show downtown with music, magic, comedy, and plenty of political satire. We had a blast, although Z was absolutely petrified every time the actors would weave their way through the crowd, looking for some poor sap to pull up on stage. There must be a word for the fear of audience participation--participhobia? When choosing our seats, she made sure to bury us safely behind enough people that no one would take the trouble to climb over everyone and torment her. I found it endearing.

Since we were already downtown, we figured we'd knock off another item on the list: get an autograph from a live band on 6th Street. This proved to be much more difficult than we had anticipated. Our obstacles to obtaining these autographs were as follows:

1. I was a stickler for the rules. Z was dying to cheat and get it over with, by having some homeless guy playing a guitar on the street sign a piece of paper. Or someone playing solo on stage in a low-key club where no one would see us. "But it has to be more than one person or it's not a band!" I cried. She also pointed out a guy who was carrying an amp and said we could just have him sign it, since he was probably in a band. "He looks like a roadie, and he's not even playing anything right now. That doesn't count." Z was not impressed with my devotion to the spirit of the scavenger hunt.

2. None of the bands playing that night were particularly famous. You can ask someone famous for his autograph, but some local band who squeaks by on tips and free beer at seedy bars? It would feel so stupid. We might as well be asking bank tellers for their autographs. "Wow, you're the best bank teller in town. The way you counted out my change was awesome, man. Can I get your autograph here on my money order?"

3. Z did not like loud music. And if there's one thing that you can almost always say about live bands, it's that they're loud.

So, we kept wandering up and down 6th Street, looking for a quiet, semi-famous, more-than-one-person band. Some might criticize me for insisting that a band have at least two people, given my past musical career. My former band, Bad Foot Down, left me in a two person band alone, but at least Claire would sit next to me while I played and sang the songs, so I think we could still be called a band.

As we were walking around looking for a bar, some drunken dude stumbled out in front of us and started raving to us about a drink called the Helldorado in the bar in front of us. He said his friend Amy the bartender made it, and that we should mention his name to her and get one of the drinks. When I asked what was in it, he reeled for a moment, thought very hard, and answered, "Vodka." "That's it?" I said. "It’s just straight vodka?" "No," he replied, "There's other stuff, but definitely vodka. Yeah." I figured if it could get this guy so soused, it must be good, so went in and ordered one (Z thought I was crazy for taking recommendations from local sots). It turns out the Helldorado is a nine-dollar drink that comes in a martini glass the size of a bathtub. Amy gave us two straws longer than my arms to share the drink and left us to turn red as the entire bar looked at our ridiculously huge drink and laughed at us. We tried to escape into the shadows with our enormous drink, but we found a wobbly table that threatened to send the glass toppling over, thereby flooding the entire bar and most of 6th Street. We sat there for a long time, drinking the tasty bright red liquid through the straws a good three feet away from the table. So cool!

Did we ever find a quiet band? No. At some point, we gave up and just started playing word games as we walked around. Nerd alert! Nerd alert! We gave up and drove home around midnight, but I'm going to try and find a band tomorrow night when Z isn't around. I will still feel like a complete loser, but at least I can brave the high decibels for the both of us.

I wanted to share this with you folks. Last fall, I applied to be one of the OU Daily's opinion columnists, and this was my sample column. I wanted to do a fake advice column, but the opinion editor didn't like the idea. Instead, he picked fundamentalist homophobe Wes Provine to dazzle us each week with such comments as, "Whatever happened to 'God said it, so I believe it?'" Since my beautiful sample column will never be published, I will immortalize it here. Hope you enjoy.

Dear Muskrat,

I just came to OU this semester and already I feel pretty overwhelmed! I came from a small high school and I’m afraid I can’t write well enough for college professors. Can you tell me how to get A’s on papers? Thanks!

Kevin, Freshman, University College

Dear Kevin,

Don’t fret. If there’s one thing I’ve learned during my time at OU, it’s how to get an A on any paper in any class. Here are some things to consider when writing to impress your professors:

1. Is the length of your paper too short, but you have nothing left to say? A lot of people try to bring in the margins, but I promise you professors always notice that. What you should do is go to your spacing options in your word processing program and put the space on “2.2”—it’s a little more than double spacing, but small enough that your professor will never notice, and it will give you at least ½ a page more.

2. Are you actually trying to express your own opinion? You’ve already lost the battle. Your job in any class it to figure out what your professor thinks and then write a paper as close to that opinion is possible. Sure, maybe you can support your theory that the works of Plato, Aristotle, and Dean Koontz are actually written by the same person, but unless Dr. Tweed already agrees with you, your A is out of reach.

3. Always remember that everyone’s favorite “paper” is the green kind with dead presidents on the back. A $20 bill paper-clipped to the back of any paper is always appreciated.

4. Most people don’t realize that professors only read one-fourth to one-third of a student’s paper before assigning it a grade. Professors are extremely busy! Spend a lot of time making sure the first few pages of your paper are well-written, and for the rest of the pages, just type “doo wah diddy diddy dum diddy doo” over and over again. They’ll never even get to it.

5. I always like to write “A” at the end of my paper, along with a few scrawling comments in red ink. When your professor reads it, she’ll think she already read it and simply set it in the “finished” pile.

6. Are you an illiterate OU football player? Someone should be taking care of your A’s for you. Tell the person who’s reading you this article to look up the number of the athletic office for you if you’re having problems.

7. Whatever you do, don’t ever, ever, ever plagiarize in your paper unless you really have to.

8. When all else fails, you can still get an A by killing an intelligent classmate and assuming his/her identity. Just make sure the person isn’t me, because then I won’t be able to give you any more advice.

Happy Birthday to Me

It's my birthday! Yay!

This will be brief (unusual for me, I know), but I have some shocking news for you folks. Z and I completed two items on the scavenger hunt earlier this evening, and we actually enjoyed both of them. I know this is hard to believe, and it may be that I've had a few beers at a local microbrewery with Gerg and Tibbets, but I actually had a lot of fun tonight. We went to Barton Springs pool, where the water from the natural spring is always a crisp, cool 68 degrees. I was pleased to notice that both Z and I are both inch-by-inchers when it comes to cold water. Maybe we don't walk at the same pace, but we had a lot of sympathy for each other as we eeked and squeeked our way into the chilly pool. After we finished swimming, we had to find a "shirtless, good-looking jogger on Pfluger bridge." As you can imagine, this second task was more difficult. First of all, who wants to stop a jogger? The jogger does not want to stop; if he was the kind of guy who stopped all the time to rest, he wouldn't be a jogger. He'd be...me. Joggers are trying to keep up their heart rate; if you stop one and ask him to take some stupid scavenger hunt picture with you, he'll probably throw your camera into the river. But Z and I figured out the solution: we took a picture with someone's labrador retriever. The lab was shirtless, and a good-looking dog indeed, and he was happily jogging along next to his master (who wasn't bad-looking himself, but was fully clothed). We got the point on an iffy technicality, but I don't think my boss should complain, seeing as how she only gave us this assignment because she wanted to get a picture of a sweaty runner hunk to put up on her wall. Serves her right. 

Maybe the scavenger hunt will be better from here on out. I can only hope. We've negotiated a possible extension, but I weakened our position by breaking one of the AmeriCorps rules today: I wore a Howard Dean t-shirt. I'm not allowed to promote any sort of political affiliation as a VISTA, seeing as how I might alienate the very people I'm trying to help by wearing a controversial t-shirt. I wouldn't want to scare away the poor by promoting a man that doesn't want their children to die in a meaningless war. That would be a tragedy. (This, Tim, is sarcasm.)

If you ever leave a comment, let it be today. I am 23 now, and I need your love and support during this crucial transition period.

The Scavenger Hunt from Hell 2: The “Fun” that Wouldn’t Die

Just when I thought things were looking up for our scavenger hunt, I discovered, much like Dante, that the circles of hell go deeper than I could have ever imagined. At this point, I think I should mention that I’ve neglected to tell you a surprising and fascinating detail about my job down here: my new co-worker, whom I've been referring to here as "Z" to protect her anonymity,  is a world-famous celebrity. I know what you’re thinking—why would anyone famous join AmeriCorps and go on a hellish scavenger hunt with me, a simple, freckle-faced Tulsa girl? But I’m very serious—for the past few days I have been in the constant presence of none other than…The World’s Slowest Walker.
 
That’s right, folks. Z can walk slower than any other human being on the planet. While it’s an honor to actually spend time with this Guinness World Record holder, the extra three hours it takes to walk each block is starting to have an adverse effect on me. For one, the extra time I spend in the sun is burning off the top layer of my skin. A few more days and I’ll be in the burn victims’ wing of the local hospital, where they’ll have to graft skin from my ass onto my face. Then people will call me Ass-Face, and I’ll cry. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Another problem is that there are voices in my head talking to me while we’re walking. They tell me to grab Z and throw her over my shoulder as I run down the street, or they tell me just to run away from her screaming “He’s got a gun!” to see if she can actually move any faster.
 
This is becoming a problem for our scavenger hunt, which requires us to do a lot of walking. We left the office today at noon to work on the hunt, and I arrived home at 8pm. Guess how many tasks on the list we accomplished. Go on, guess. 10? 7? 5? No! TWO. TWO THINGS. So let’s keep up with Saturday’s post and list the TWO items I accomplished today.
 
1. Find the grave of the man who was in the car when JFK was shot. We found the grave, but we had to walk miles in the midday sun across downtown and across a highway. Then we had to hop the fence to the cemetery because we couldn’t find any open gates. Lady Luck smiled upon us as soon as we leapt over the fence, however, for there the dead bastard was, right in front of us. Do I know who he is? Can I tell you his name? Do I even know how he died? No, because heat exhaustion isn’t good for your memory. I remember taking a picture by the grave, and then walking the skin-searing, soul-crushing miles back to our second location:
 
2. Find St. David’s hospital. We went to the address I found on the internet, but it wasn’t there. A passing pedestrian told us that we were ridiculously far away from anything that might be called a hospital. He was a friendly Austinite, so he offered us a ride over the hospital, which was on his way home from work. We gladly accepted, but I felt terrible when the odor from our sweat-covered bodies filled his SUV with deadly fumes. He graciously dropped us off at the hospital, where we took a picture, and then realized we had no idea how to get anywhere else. The UT campus was nearby, so we crawled over there to find another bus to downtown. I looked at Z and told her I couldn’t take anymore of this, that I had to get home and get in the shower. But when I looked for the bus that would take me back to my car (I’m trying not to drive it unless absolutely necessary), we realized the last bus had already departed. So Z left me on the TU campus with a bus schedule to fend for myself, and it took me almost two hours on the buses to get less than ten miles.   
 

This scavenger hunt has brought me to the end of my already short rope. Yes, I am suicidal. Yes, this is a cry for help. Yes, two days from now is my birthday and I’m utterly alone. As I turn 23 on Wednesday, will I be laughing and drinking with my closest friends? Will I be basking in the warm glow of my family’s love? Or will I be waiting at the statue of Stephen F. Austin for three hours because I can’t leave until I get a picture of Stephen and a humpbacked French albino jogger with three nipples? Here’s my prediction: pull up your shirt, Jacques.
 
The only thing that made this day worthwhile is that Todd Murray left a comment on Saturday’s entry that a) makes fun of Ethan Boos, and b) makes fun of someone’s spelling errors. It reminded me that there are still people out there who understand me.

The Scavenger Hunt from Hell

As part of our on-site training, we are required to complete a 32 item scavenger hunt, which is meant to familiarize us with Austin and all of its attractions. The idea sounded fun at first; they gave me and Z (co-worker) $60 each and set us loose with a list of interesting places to go and take pictures. The problem is, there are only two options for seeing most downtown Austin attractions: one, you can park somewhere and walk around in a heat that drains the very life out of you (Z: “My boobs are sweating.”), or two, you can try to drive to places, but there’s never anywhere to park. There are further complications, of course. Neither Z nor I knows where we’re going, we both burn easily in the sun, my car is nearing death, we couldn’t figure out how to work the camera our boss gave us, and we never know whether or not something is going to be open. I’ll keep you updated on the things we check off, starting with today’s disasters. Let me list them:

1. The statue of Stevie Ray Vaughn. That’s right, Austin has erected a memorial to Stevie, complete with cape, hat, and guitar, standing proudly in front of Town Lake. There’s a catch, though—we had to get a picture with us, Stevie, and an “elderly walker.” So we had to a) walk forever to find this stupid statue along a walking trail, b) wait in the blistering heat for an old person to walk by, c) also make sure that there was someone else with the old person to take the picture of all of us together, and d) think of a way to make it seem like we weren’t waiting for an old person (we thought it might hurt someone’s feelings). We finally found an old woman in a pink shirt following her family down the trail, and so we told her we needed to get a picture with someone who was wearing a pink shirt. She looked down at her shirt, and back at us, and said, “You’re pullin’ me leg.” Apparently we had some visitors from Ireland in Texas, and they all thought we were nuts. Her family finally convinced her to pose with Stevie, but she was very bewildered and couldn’t understand what her shirt had to do with anything. As soon as we finished the picture, her son said, “Do you get any extra points for getting an elderly person, too?”

2. The University of Texas Tower. Back in the 60s, this was the place where Charles Whitman camped out and started shooting people down all over campus. Our instructions were to take a picture from the top, but we found out we had to pay five dollars each to get the “tour.” What the “tour” consisted of was a dorky student named Jesus telling us a few uninteresting facts about the tower, a chaperoned elevator ride to the top, and about thirty minutes on top of the tower looking at the view. Now, I like views as much as the next person, but I don’t want to look at one for thirty minutes, and I certainly don’t want to pay five dollars for it. They also had a handy rule where you couldn’t take any bags up in the tower. When I asked if I could leave my bags at the desk, they smiled politely and told me they had lockers available for a dollar each. Pure evil. That guy on top of the tower isn’t looking so crazy now, is he?

3. Bring back a fortune from a Chinese restaurant. There are no Chinese food restaurants anywhere near the downtown area; there is Vietnamese, Taiwanese, Japanese, Korean, and simple pan-Asian cuisine, but no Chinese. We finally settled for pan-Asian with a fortune cookie, but at that point I knew my fortune: Your car will die soon. Lights were coming on all over the dashboard and the rattling kept growing worse. I put some water in the engine to cool it down, but I think it has a leak. What a nightmare.

4. Get a picture with the giant Texas star. I have no problem with Texas, but I felt pretty silly as an Oklahoma girl asking a complete stranger to take my picture standing next to a 50 foot star of Texas. I think this is their way of trying to inculcate me into the Texas Cult, but I won’t be taken in!

5. Visit Austin Community College. In reality, the instructions should have been, “Visit the most run-down, depressing building you’ve ever seen with unhappy, destitute people sitting out front, and then have the creepy janitors stare at you and refuse to let you in the doors to look around.” My job down here is to help high school students get into college, so perhaps my boss was trying to show me what happens to people who don’t apply to four-year universities. If so, the lesson worked.

6. Buy a postcard from an overpriced store named Cadeau’s. This one was especially ironic. They bring me to Austin to work and live at the poverty level of the people I’m helping, and then they send me to look in a store where one plate costs $75. I saw a cute dress, then checked out the price tag: $290. The lesson here might have been: “During your time as a VISTA, you will often feel pain as you walk around and see everything that you can’t afford.” I learned this one well.
 
I won’t go on about the other horrors we encountered today, the numerous times we got lost, the hours of walking around downtown in the hot sun, the countless complications that kept us from completing even a third of our tasks. Suffice it to say, the scavenger hunt was a disaster from start to finish. Whoever leaves the best comment can receive the postcard in the mail.

AmeriCorps PSO: I’m Not Shipping a Horse to Zimbabwe.

(I know I haven’t finished “Moving to Austin” yet, but I want to tell you about this week while it’s fresh in my mind.)

The title for today’s entry comes from a role-playing exercise we did as part of our Pre-Service Orientation. We were supposed to pretend that we were meeting with a large corporation and begging them for money to fund our VISTA projects. A couple of other participants came to me and my partner to ask us for donations, but were having trouble because we were posing as a shipping company. They asked for in-kind donations such as a discounted shipping rate coupon for a basket at a fundraiser, or possibly some bubble wrap. If you went to a fundraising auction and saw a person bidding high on a large supply of bubble wrap, wouldn’t you think he was probably taking it home to his kinky wife and delivering a *package* to her? Of course you would; therefore, no one would bid on it. However, my partner didn’t mention that, he just refused to offer a discounted shipping rate (we were supposed to play it tough) because he wasn’t going to “ship a horse to Zimbabwe for ten dollars when it would have cost ten thousand.” I completely fell out of character because I couldn’t hold back my hysterical laughter. Don’t get the wrong idea about the PSO, though—this was one of the high points. Most of it was miserable.

We began on a Monday afternoon and didn’t leave until Thursday at 2 p.m., when we were officially sworn in as VISTAs (Volunteers In Service To America). When I think over the week and the endless time I spent in classes, conferences, sessions, group activities, and character-building exercises, I marvel that I made it through without running down the Holiday Inn Tavern and drinking myself into a stupor. There were some participants, however, who did indeed take that route, sometimes with disastrous effects (more on that later). I’m sure at this point, my memories of what went on are exactly like those of any other person in any profession who goes to a conference or a workshop. All you can remember from the experience are words and phrases whose elusive meanings exist only in the world of business and organizations: networking, resource mobilization, sustainability, strategic thinking, action planning, capacity building. Even if my original fear had come true that I would be trapped in the hotel and forced to learn how to sell knives door to door, the PowerPoint presentations they used probably wouldn’t have been much different.

Our facilitator had a special gift for using clichés to explain her point, while slightly screwing up the phrases so they fell strangely on the ear. One example: “Rome wasn’t built by one person.” True enough, I suppose, but I always thought the important part was that it wasn’t built in a day. She also encouraged us to “emerge ourselves in the community.” My guess was she meant “immerse” or some other transitive verb, but I was completely lost when part of her instructions were to “implement the utilization.” Say what? She also had us participate in dozens of inane activities which made little or no sense. My favorite was when we were discussing cultural literacy, and she told us to write down words that we may encounter in our communities and programs that we may not understand. If you missed the point here, let me put it simply: we were being asked to write down words that we didn’t know. We did some networking at our table, collaborating and mobilizing our shared resources, and we concluded that we had no fucking clue what was going on. It was a team effort, though, and I think we can draw on that collaboration for future trips to the Twilight Zone.

As for the people at the PSO, many were just what you’d expect: kind, generous, well-humored, salt-of-the-earth type folks. Some, however, were the kind of people that go into volunteer service because it’s the only type of job where they that can’t easily refuse or fire you. Of these people, my favorite was a 47 year old Vietnamese man named Dat. Dat had an excellent command of the English language, but terrible pronunciation. So not only did he talk constantly in an extremely loud voice about anything and everything that popped into his head to anyone he encountered, but no one could understand him. After only a few hours into the orientation, he developed a reputation for making unwelcome sexual advances to any woman who crossed his path. One night he caught me and a friend leaving the hot tub, and somewhere in his incoherent verbal diarrhea, he tried to bribe us to stay in the hot tub with him by offering us five beers for every half hour we stayed. When that didn’t entice us, he offered me a Turkish back massage if only I would get back in and sit with him for a while. Run away, run away. The next night he came into the hot tub before we could pretend we were leaving, so a few of us just moved right outside to talk on the outdoor patio. Soon Dat joined us wearing nothing but his tighty-whiteys and a towel covering him. For some reason, he felt the need to put his swimsuit in the dryer and walk around the hotel in his underwear. After I went to bed, he (reportedly) got ridiculously drunk at the hotel bar, was cut off by the bartender, and went around the hotel terrorizing people by banging on their doors, trying to grope them, and screaming that he needed more beer. In Conference Land, we call this Stress Management and Alleviation Seeking Hedonism and Environmental Destabilization (S.M.A.S.H.E.D.). At one point during dinner on the second night, I made the mistake of asking Dat to teach me some Vietnamese. He quickly wrote the word “Ma” six times on a napkin with different English translations under each of them. They were all the same word, but the pronunciation was slightly different, and I could not make my voice pick up the subtleties he wanted. I was a terrible student, but perhaps I can teach you. Ma: ghost. Ma (growling): young rice. MAAaaa (high to low): but. MaAAaaAA: tomb. MaAAA: sheet. The nice thing was, no matter how I said Ma, the chances were good that I was saying something a Vietnamese person would understand, even if they heard “ghost” instead of my intended “tomb.”

My roommate for the duration of the orientation was named Saudia (we had another guy named Peru—I kept trying to get the two together). From the moment I stepped into our room until the moment I left, she never stopped talking (perhaps the verbal diarrhea was contagious). I didn’t even really have to be there; she just needed a recording of a human being that randomly says, “Uh-huh. Oh, yeah? Really? Hm. Uh-huh.” She was a hardcore Christian who abbreviated all of her curse words to the first letter, which confused me before I figured out what she was doing. After a few minutes, I even asked her if “bee” was a new slang insult, but she explained that she was just avoiding saying “bitch.” She was also a homophobe, telling me that at her job with Cingular Wireless her office was gay enough to be just like “Sodom and Gomorrah.” I didn’t see her reaction to the part of our session on discrimination that dealt with sexual orientation, but I imagine it wasn’t good. We had a good portion of people just like her—I guess you could call them compassionate conservatives. They found a way to bring the Lord into any discussion, despite the VISTA code that says you can’t proselytize during your official duties. Let’s all thank Bush for including faith-based initiatives in federal funding. Way to go, Dubya.

There were some good times at the PSO, I admit, but I was very ready to come back home to my own bed. I start a week-long training period tomorrow for my specific project, when I’ll find out all about what it means to be a “Marketing Coordinator.” I’m going to stay up late tonight practicing networking so I’ll impress my boss tomorrow.

PSO in the Hizouse

Until Thursday afternoon, I will be trapped inside a Holiday Inn for my pre-service orientation to AmeriCorps. Chances are they're just going to teach me how to sell knives, but I think that will be a valuable skill. Do any of YOU know how to sell knives? I didn't think so. Anyway, the moving to Austin story will have to continue Thursday, and if you need me before then, you'll have to call my cell. If you don't have my cell number, you probably don't know me that well. Wish me luck!

Moving to Austin Part II: A Sno-Cone Welcome to Texas

The rattling in my engine was fairly quiet at first. Elliot and I couldn't even be sure that we were hearing something, or if it was just the normal sounds a car makes. We pulled over to check the tires (one had already gone flat the first day here), but everything seemed okay. By Saturday (July 3rd), however, the rattling had gotten so loud that driving anywhere made us incredibly nervous. We kept talking about taking the car to a mechanic, but the next day was the fourth and no one would be open. We decided to take our chances with the car and drive down to Zilker park to watch the fireworks.

The show was very impressive; the Austin orchestra was seated in front of the crowd to play patriotic music during the fireworks. In Tulsa, they just tell you to turn on your radios at a certain time and they play patriotic music on one of the stations while the fireworks are going. It's not quite the same as having the real thing right in front of you. Elliot and I laid back on our blanket in the park, watching as the fireworks became increasingly large and impressive and the orchestra swelled, until the entire sky was filled with the fireworks of the finale. A funny thing happened after the finale, however--they kept sending up random, modest bursts into the air every ten seconds or so. We were confused and stopped packing up our stuff; perhaps there was another finale coming? The orchestra was still playing and everything. Soon, however, I figured out what was going on--these were deterrence fireworks, cleverly planned by the city of Austin to keep morons like us from leaving the park. You see, if people aren't positive whether or not the fireworks have ended, they won't all go to their cars at one time, thus cutting down on the traffic. Brilliant. After we figured it out, though, we left with the smart folks, only to find out that the traffic jam had not been alleviated in the slightest.

We seemed to move about a foot every minute, discussing the karma of letting people cut in to the line, and all the time the car rattle grew worse. I turned to Elliot and said, "My car is going to die, right here in the middle of this awful traffic jam, and we won't be able to move it or even get a tow truck in here." It was the kind of thing you say because you think saying it will keep it from happening. But that didn't work; the car died so completely that it wouldn't turn over again, and even the emergency flashers grew dimmer every second. We managed to push the car to the side of the road next to a sno-cone stand while I called a tow truck. In the meantime, the old retired couple that owned the sno-cone stand came over and tried to fix the car. The old man did little more than check my oil 100 times and play around with a loose battery cable, but he was very sweet. Elliot took the risk of telling them we were from OU, but it turned out the guy was a graduate of Texas Tech and hated UT, anyway, so he was all the more willing to help what he saw as his fellow UT-haters. Before they closed up for the night and left, they gave us too free cherry sno-cones, which made the $300 mechanic bill I paid the next day seem a lot better. Sure, the bill drained away my rent money, but at least I didn't have to pay for the sno-cones. As the couple waved goodbye, the woman smiled at me and said, "Welcome to Texas!"

We waited so long that the traffic disappeared and the neighborhood was almost completely deserted. Elliot was sitting outside my window on the driver's side, eating his sno-cone and commenting on how friendly Austinites were, when all of a sudden a drunken homeless man stumbled up to the car and started mumbling incoherently. He pointed at the engine and asked if we needed any help, but we politely told him no, that we were waiting for the tow truck. Under my breath, I told Elliot, "Holy shit, close the hood, close the hood." I just knew this homeless jackass was going to reach into the engine and screw up my car even more, so we kept calmly refusing his help as he pointed to a certain spot in the engine. "I can SEE what the problem is from right here where I'm standin'! I could have it fixed in about FIVE SECONDS!! But if you just want to sit here..." He kept ranting and raving about how easily he could fix the car, and we continued to thank him for his help and assure him that the tow truck would be here any second (read: there will be another human being around soon to witness if you try to kill us). He finally started to walk away, but continued to rain down curses up on us for our choice to have a broken car instead of one that was fixed in five seconds. After he left, Elliot closed the hood, got in the car, rolled up the windows, and locked the doors, right before we burst into hysterical laughter.

The tow truck guy finally showed up well after midnight, and we breathed a sigh of relief. Little did we know that we were about to meet a future guest on the Jerry Springer show...

Stay tuned for Moving to Austin Part III: Sweet Life Towing Company

Moving to Austin Part I: The Street Where I Live

They have a wonderful tool on the internet for people moving to Austin. In front of you on the computer screen is a map of Austin, and you are given a small tool that allows you to highlight any area on the map. As soon as you finish selecting your neighborhood, another window pops up with a chart to show you what the crime is like around you. I decided to use this after I had already moved in, which may have been poor judgment. Let's take a gander at a few of the crime counts for my apartment complex--JUST my apartment complex, not even the surrounding neighborhood. In the past year and a half, there have been: 61 cases of auto vandalism, 12 counts of assault with injury, 10 auto thefts, and 15 "family disturbances."

Other than that, the apartment is fabulous. I'm up on the third floor, which keeps me away from burglars who are lazy or in wheelchairs. Dad and Elliot had a great time carrying my monster of a couch up the stairs. I decided to be a third-wave feminist and let the men do it; third wave feminism is great--just like not being a feminist, except when it might come in handy. Besides, I was too busy looking at my fabulous view of the sparkling blue pool. I soon came to regret my location, however, because here at the community pool there is strictly scheduled "Screaming Time" from noon to about 7pm. All the local kids get in the pool, but instead of just playing, they scream. Now, most kids make a lot of noise when they're playing, but this is just pure and simple screaming--no words, no games, no injuries to cause it--just screaming. I don't know why they're screaming, but it's probably because they're poor and they're pissed about it.

Across from me is a young woman currently attending the University of Texas. She's young, very friendly, and to the relief of my no-I'm-not-really-a-racist mother, white. When we first met her, she was carrying an empty plastic container and walking down to her car. We asked what she was up to, and she said she was going to the store to buy 100 crickets (cost: $7) to feed her bearded dragon (a type of lizard, I think). I smiled, nodded, and ran away before she could ask me to play DND. The scary thing is, this dragon eats about 12 crickets a day, and it's only a baby. When it gets older, it can eat a lot more than that, plus a few small mice. This is going to be an expensive pet for her, not to mention one that can escape and chew through the mouse-resembling toes of her neighbors. Plan: be wary and don't join her online gaming community.

As for the surrounding area, the tow truck driver that brought my car back home (more on that later) told Elliot and me that it's the ghetto. He pointed out a small motel and told us it was a whorehouse, and then showed us a girl walking on the side of the road whom he was sure would get in his tow truck with him if he pulled over. We weren't sure if he knew her already (in the Biblical sense) or if he was just guessing, but we didn't feel like asking. There is also a downstairs neighbor who told me that my car would probably get broken into before my year was up here. I made sure to remove the crack rocks from my car that I usually keep on my dashboard, so I think I'll be okay.

I always thought that I would die in a car accident, since I'm such a bad driver. This thought always made me very sad. But I think that's better than getting shivved in the parking lot for the 5 bucks I have in my pocket. I'm kidding, of course, but if I don't post on this for a few days, I really am probably dead. Stay tuned for more of "Moving to Austin."