You Are Encouraged to Quote Me On That

For the last two Christmases, one of my best girlfriends has given me little quote-of-the-day calendars featuring quotes from famous/brilliant/funny/otherwise notable women. A lot of them are truly inspirational and/or entertaining, but every once in a while, there's one that's just kinda patronizing. Or too specific - having never had a single husband, it's hard for me to relate to the "none of my four husbands have had enough money to make me happy" genre. It's dangerous to let the quality of something like that slip, because this will inevitably lead to me thinking I could do it. And that's how I ended up wondering which great Kimberly Welsh truisms will someday be on just such a calendar. Here are the first ten; print 'em out before you have to pay $6.99 to buy them on tiny sheets of rippable paper!

Awesome/Helpful Sayings By Me, As Made Up Right This Very Second, With No Context Whatsoever

1. "Being a female writer is just like being a male writer, except you have to make a big show out of pretending to feel guilty if you eat a whole pizza."
2. "Purse dogs have it so easy. They don't even know."
3. "I just ate a TON of watermelon, and am not in any intestinal distress whatsoever. So I'm declaring that an urban myth and ordering everyone to keep their real or imagined intestinal distress to themselves in the future!"
4. "A person's laugh says a lot about them. For example, if you laugh like Snidely Whiplash, that says, 'I should stop laughing because it's disconcerting to those around me!'"
5. "There is no problem so great that it cannot be solved by a footlong mayo and provolone sandwich on french bread, washed down with a pint of NyQuil."
6. "Do you work in an inhumane cubicle environment? Why not try stabbing your eardrums with thumbtacks?"
7. "In the battle for the Most Adorable Version of the Twitter bird, Twitterrific has pecked out the eyeballs of its competition*!"
8. "I resent the implication that just because I am staggeringly gorgeous, I cannot also be funny."
9. "Sometimes people say things and I'm like, 'HUH?!?!?'"
10. "Soap is the worst breakup consolation gift. And yet two different people have presented me with soap on the occasion of two different breakups. What is that about? I mean, yeah, I was depressed, but I hadn't stopped bathing, for God's sake!"


*But Tweetcaster is a far superior application, just so we're clear.

Sketch Challenge, 2nd Set, Final Report: Who's That Girl?

I don't know why I always feel compelled to use song titles for these. Anyway.

It is noon on Saturday, 7/2/2011, and the second 60-page set of sketches is more-or-less finished (pending a printout, lunch, and a walk before coming back to it for final notes. You have to breathe sometime). I was obliged to wrap it up a little earlier than usual today, as I am expected at a family cookout this afternoon, followed immediately by a crew shift at the theatre that will keep me out until 1ish. So how do we feel about this set, as compared to the last one?

Overall, I think this set is much stronger. It flows a little more smoothly and features an improved joke-to-exposition ratio. I'm pretty pleased about that. The biggest area for improvement is consistency in work habits. I got a little busy with other things these past two weeks and didn't maintain the focus I had before. I think this set would've been even better if it had gotten the benefit of my attention more often. Lucky for me, I get to do this [at least] three more times, so I can take that lesson into the next few sets! Like I said at the end of the first set: the whole point of this exercise was to learn and (hopefully) improve, and I can honestly say that I've definitely learned a few things and I like to think I'm seeing improvement. Though I'm not sure I'm the best judge of that.

In a weird and unexpected twist, the Incredibly Mundane Sketch Challenge and Psychological Torture Chamber, Now With Less Coffee and More Xenophobia has also resulted in some surprising changes in my appearance (hence the title of this post). I've lost 6 pounds so far, and I'm far more tan than anyone who hasn't been on vacation has a right to be. And it's all traceable to 3 important aspects of the Psychosketchual Challenge for People Who Feel Compelled to Mentally Flog Themselves:
1. Anxiety-induced lack of appetite: Anxiety as in "HOLY CRAP WHAT IF I'M NOT FUNNY AT ALL AND EVERYTHING I'VE EVER WRITTEN SUCKS?!?!?"
2. Busy-ness-induced lack of time to eat: Have you ever tried to have a full-time job, apprentice at an improv theatre, publish at least 3 blog posts per week, submit items to Funny not Slutty, write an hourlong sketch show every fortnight AND bathe regularly? It's time-consuming.
3. Head-clearing walks: Remember when I said I felt like my brain was in a blender and/or beaten with a meat tenderizer? I wasn't kidding. I find it increasingly necessary to go walk continuously for at least an hour and half while thinking about nothing (THAT PART IS IMPERATIVE). And since I'm privileged to live in the bright, sunny South...I look like I've been sunning! And it's burning all the calories I didn't have time to eat. On Wednesday, someone actually asked me "if I'd been working on my guns". No, I have not been working on my guns. I've just been trying to walk off the crazy.

So however this whole thing ends, I'll at least be healthier for it. Well, if you don't count the skin cancer I'm probably giving myself. But speaking of "how this whole thing ends", I'm starting to think that if I was really being honest with myself, this is not the pure writing exercise I told myself it was. I'm not getting up at 6:30 on Saturday mornings "as an exercise". And if I am, that's ridiculous. My high school English teacher was always pointing out that plays are meant to be performed, not read, and Mrs. Lacy knew her stuff, so I'm starting to think the same is probably true of sketches. And when it's all over, I might make a sincere effort to do something with these. I just need to find someone who can handle *all* of the technical side for me. Because I will not be doing that part.

Anyway, that's the distant future. In the meantime, I need to focus on the 3rd Set. But I have a very busy day ahead of me (see first paragraph) and a day trip tomorrow, so I'll be taking some time off before getting back to work on America's birthday. And I'll also be out of town next Thursday-Sunday, which means I have to do A LOT more work in the first half of the two-week writing period. Wish me luck.

And now for the weekly expression of gratitude to someone who said something nice which helped keep me out of the state institution in Milledgeville:
John Emily of the Week! (not like that)
This week's John of the week is... Emily! Emily was a friend of mine when we were both knee-high to a grasshopper in elementary school. We also went to the same high school but didn't hang out that much since I was a band geek, and she...well, I guess she was probably having a life instead. Anyway! This week, she discovered my blog and said she was going to pour herself a drink and spend Thursday night reading it! Because it was "fun"! And thus did I live to tell you about another week. Thanks, Emily!

Bad Showers/Flood Warning

Today, my friend Tom started a new occasional series called "Design Whine" on his blog. Apparently, he'll be using it to complain [even more than he already does] about poorly designed products or websites. With a name like "Design Whine", it definitely does what it says on the tin. The inaugural post was about the shower door at his CTO's house, which (SPOILER ALERT) he finds to be tremendously inconvenient. (NOTE: You probably have no knowledge of/opinions about your coworkers' showers, but Tom's one of those crazy entrepreneurial types that are always sleeping at each other's homes between marathon 100-hour coding sessions and making widgets. Or "using the list". Or whatever it is that they do. I'd better get paid for this ringing endorsement.)

Anyway!

Tom makes some solid points about his knob-less shower door woes. And I have some experience with infuriating bathing-related ingress/egress situations myself, though I didn't have the presence of mind to document the after-effects of their horribleness. Meet the shower in my dad's (former) flat in London:

Dun-dun-DUNNNNNNNNN!

There are 4 compelling reasons why this is the worst shower ever. I'll break it down for you:

#1: The door, or lack thereof. 

You're welcome for the helpful turquoise outlining.

The area outlined in this picture is the door. It's not the front half of the door, or one pane of the door, it is the ENTIRE door. Note how it helpfully ends about halfway across the tub. Handy! 

#2: The hinges on the door. 

For the life of me, I don't know why there are hinges on the half-door at all. You'd have to be 4 feet wide to need to open the half-door. Nonetheless, the hinges are there. Not only are they there, but they are conveniently designed such that the dripping wet door swings right out over the bath mat, tile, and toilet! Not that this would be noticeable, with so much water pooled on the floor anyway, what with half the shower being completely open and everything. Still. 

#3: The mirror.

Because what's more fun than getting to see all of your hideous imperfections displayed like you were Figure 2-A in a high school anatomy textbook while you bathe? NOTHING THAT'S WHAT! I've never seen a mirror *in* a shower before. There is a very good reason for that, let me tell you. Then again, I guess the mirror was really good if you happened to be on a diet. It's a guaranteed appetite-killer for all but the most dedicated narcissists.  

#4: The Great Wall of China Tub.

For the purposes of illustration, I'm going to use the *other* perspective here...

Listed measurements are a rough estimate

As you can see, the edge of the tub was roughly the same height as the bottom of the sink basin. I think we can all agree that that is unnecessarily high, especially given the fact that the base of the tub (not pictured) is only one or two inches higher than the bathroom floor. All this is bad enough, but when you factor in the huge puddle of water that forms at that end of the room (since there's basically no door), the whole experience of exiting the shower becomes a topsy turvy Slip 'n Slide from hell.

In conclusion, Tom, I sympathize with your horrific "trapped in the shower" ordeal, and I hope you get it resolved soon. And though this is a contest no one would want to win, I'm pretty sure I just did. In the immortal words of Teen Witch's Polly, Top That. (Look how funky I am!)