Let this be considered my living will…

Posted on by Jennifer Heller

I’ve decided to start a collection. Of what, you ask? I’m going to collect those little paper holes that–fortunately for me–are a necessary consequence of beaurocratic life.

Now, it’s going to be quite a collection. Inspiring in size, and–if I’m lucky–an awesome mosaic of color. I’m going to keep them in secret places–only my sister will know where–throughout the world, all left with instructions on how she is to attain them should my time come. (And come, it must.)

The nature of this collection should not be surprising in the least. As a child, I quickly bored of stickers and decided instead to collect little shiny pieces of confetti. Oh, I had bears for birthdays, chicks and bunnies for Easter. There were little red X’s and magenta O’s in case I should ever love somebody – hearts and stars in every color. A lovely collection, it was at one time lovingly displayed in rectangular boxes and baby food jars.

Only days ago, G. forced me to acknowledge the uselessness of this collection. Goodwill is now in possession of an astonishing array of confettios.

Regardless, the time is now and we’re moving forward. Paper dots now will fill this void. Many, many paper dots stored in safety deposits all over the world. I wonder the cost of a safety deposit box? No matter, I shall soon find out.

So, in the unfortunate event of my death, I would like whatever parts of my body for which the world has no use to be cremated (my eyes are to be sent to a particularly peculiar ex-boyfriend in accordance with his wishes). I would like my sister to take my collection of paper dots and to fold in my ashes. No mixing here. Folding is a delicate craft only pastry chefs truly appreciate. Perhaps, if she can find one willing, a particularly notable pastry chef will teach her the trade. Pastries might make good refreshments for the funeral, too.

Once my ashes have been sufficiently folded into my beloved paper dot collection (Alex will know when that time comes), you all will gather at a convenient dump. Now, it doesn’t matter which dump – a dump is a dump is a dump. All that matter is that you have a have a good view of this dump – each and every one of you. Play some music, sing along, and watch as a helicopter sets my ashes free in a delicate snow of colored paper dots. But for goodness sakes, you people, bring an umbrella. And then eat some pastries and have some whiskey. I would have wanted it that way.

Now, to tie up a few loose ends. I did at one time collect soda can tabs – to no useful end. If I end up in some vegetative state, please only cut me off when I cease to be amusing. Having obviously already lost any capacity to be clever, I leave it to you all to determine any manner by which I could possibly amuse. Stick carrots in my vacant eye sockets, celery in my ears. Don’t be crude, though, please.

In other news, I’m learning to staple with the precision of a copy machine.

My date with the millionaire

Posted on by Jennifer Heller

Background: the forecast, the initial proposal

From: Jennifer Sue
Reply-To: Jennifer Sue
Bcc: Dad Sue , zach Sue , Julia Sue , G. Sue , Will Sue
Date: Apr 15, 2005 10:08 AM
Subject: My Date with the Millionaire
Reply Reply to all Forward Print Add sender to Contacts list Trash this message Report phishing Show original

So, this is how the date with the millionaire went. (Feel free to spread this around the office, Dad.)

I was nervous. I remember hearing that he was shy and REALLY wanted a girlfriend. Not a good start.

He did NOT come to the door. Rather, I called him while he was on his way over, and he asked if he should call when he got here. Seeing an easy way out of introducing him to my mother (I mean, really, we are adults here), I readily agreed. He arrived and called (didn’t park – at least not on the right side of the street), but he did get out of the car.* I had Mom follow me out and take a picture of him from behind the gate. I’m pretty sure he noticed, but didn’t bat an eyelash (+2 Patrick points (P.p.).

* Denise – I really do not feel that it’s rude in this day and age to wait outside. Cell phones are the new doorbell!

He looked like a millionaire, dressed well in nice blue jeans, a black shirt and a white striped button down overshirt (actually, quite tasteful). And he’s much cuter than I remembered (+5 P.p.). We got into his Mercedes-Benz convertable roadster, but it was too cold to put the top down (-1 P.p.).

Thankfully, Mom had printed out the night’s movie schedule and written on it whether the critics liked them or not. Nothing was playing at a convenient time, and so we decided to eat first (though he’d had a sausage earlier in the day). Turns out he likes organic food. (+5 P.p.).

Anyway, we walk around Hacienda Crossings, but I refuse to go to Macaroni Grill, and there’s not much else. So then I suggest Main Street, and we go there and have a wonderfully delicious meal at Pastas? It’s right next to that coffee place (Coffee Beans & Things? – the one near Tully’s). We dined on bruschetta, and I had the crab stuffed prawns. He chose the special, a crab stuffed filet of halibut. I had a glass of the Mondavi Cab. Turns out he doesn’t drink much wine (-4 P.p.). Dinner conversation consisted of a rather dismal discussion of the future oil crisis (I brought it up – minus 10 Jennifer points (J.p.), but we’re not really keeping track of those). Then we moved on to corporate abuse of disposable products to encourage American consumerism, followed by a lovely chat about his family and Sweden. He goes there two months of the year!! Anyway, dinner conversation was lovely and he paid for everything. Plus 15 P.p..

Back to the movie theatre. We finally decided to see Million Dollar Baby. A good choice, because a good movie, but other than that a real downer and really REALLY long. We have some little Snickers bites. They weren’t very impressive (-10 Snickers points). The movie was long. I was tired. I finally got home at 12:20, and he was very polite. Quite a gentleman, opening doors and the such. My conclusion: both Southern men and foreign men have manners (for the most part).

So, in conclusion, it was a good date. On the scale of 0 to 10 where 0 is what results from my signing up to be on that terrible Blind Date show, and 10 is oh my god, it turns out my blind date is Orlando Bloom and Heidegger has just made a huge impression on him, I rate it a 7.3.

Yes, we’re going to go out again sometime. Yes, I curled my hair. No, he didn’t invite me to Sweden. No, I never found out his last name. He’s a gemini.

ReplyForward

————————————————————————————
>
> Dad Sue to me
> More options Apr 15 (4 days ago)
>
>Whoa, this is more detail than I anticipated? I have forwarded it to
>the proper authorities. What is the highest scoring date you have
>had?
>
>Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2005 10:23:24 -0700
>To: Dad Sue
>From: Dad Sue’s coworker 1
>Subject: Re: Fwd: My Date with the Millionaire
>
>>>How does she expect us to do some real investigating without a
>>>last name? Geez!! She should kiss him on the next date for a basic
>>>chemistry test.
>
>”A day without chocolate is a day wasted.”
>
>————————————————————————————

Dad Sue to me
More options Apr 15 (4 days ago)

>To: Dad Sue
>From: Dad Sue’s coworker 2
>Subject: Re: Fwd: My Date with the Millionaire
>
>They change their minds a lot. So in May, a Gemini might think he
>can’t possible live another day without an iPod, but then two days
>before his birthday, he’ll say Apple sucks … he doesn’t want to
>support that awful company, he would never be seen with an iPod …
>iPods are destroying the moral foundation of America and only Steve
>Jobs is getting rich. For his birthday, he just wants to have a
>quiet picnic at the beach with his closest friends, especially
>Sandi, his friend from New York who now lives in Portugal. Maybe she
>would fly out for the weekend.
>
>Oh, dear. Sorry to go on and on. I was just channeling a friend.
>
>>>Why?
>>
>>
>>>Oh, no … not a Gemini. It’s so hard to buy presents for them.
>>>cm
>————————————————————————————

Jennifer Sue to Dad Sue
More options Apr 15 (4 days ago)

you know, on second thought, i give it a 6.9. My highest is probably a 7.3. But I don’t go on too many dates. If 10 is a date with Orlando Bloom, though, last night certainly can’t be a 7.3. Please let everyone know how I’ve reconsidered.
– Show quoted text –

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Mom Sue to me
More options Apr 15 (4 days ago)

You didn’t send me your report but I did get a copy of it from Daddy. Why do you think he knew I was hiding behind the gate?

– Show quoted text –
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Jennifer Sue to Mom Sue
More options Apr 15 (4 days ago)

i just put that in for comic effect. You aren’t mad are you?

ReplyForward

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Mom Sue to me
More options Apr 15 (4 days ago)

No. I was just worried it was true.
– Show quoted text –
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Jennifer Sue to Mom Sue
More options Apr 15 (4 days ago)

so, did you get a good picture of Patrick?!!
ReplyForward
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Mom Sue to me
More options Apr 15 (4 days ago)

No I was too freaked. I did get a picture of the car with a tree going up the middle of it.

– Show quoted text –
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Julia Sue to me
More options Apr 15 (4 days ago)

Fish stuffed with more fish: -15 date points. Ew!

At least you found out the important shit, i.e. his sign and how much
time he spends in Sweden.

La la!

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Jennifer Sue to Julia Sue
More options Apr 15 (4 days ago)

it’s actually fish stuffed with shell fish. not quite the same thing!

– Show quoted text –

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Julia Sue to me
More options Apr 15 (4 days ago)

whatEVER, yours was shellfish stuffed with shellfish.

– Show quoted text –

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Jennifer Sue to Julia Sue
More options Apr 15 (4 days ago)

good point. it was damn good though.
– Show quoted text –

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Julia Sue to me
More options Apr 15 (4 days ago)

i’m suuuuuuuuuure.

i wanna go on a date. sniff sniff.

– Show quoted text –

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Jennifer Sue to Julia Sue
More options Apr 15 (4 days ago)

hee hee!! and i have another to go on sometime.
– Show quoted text –

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G. Sue to me
More options Apr 15 (4 days ago)

million dollar baby? how apropos!

– Show quoted text –

Tonight, a forecast:

Posted on by Jennifer Heller

This is how the date with the millionaire is going to go:

He’s going to have his limo driver pick me up at my parents’ house. He won’t know which house is mine (even though they are numbered) and he’ll have to call. Then he’ll come to the door and meet my mom. My mom will smile widely and accept him into our family. He’ll get a little flustered, but he brought me a corsage. A corsage!! Suddenly I like him a little more.

We’ll get into the limo–at which point we’ll have our first conversation ever (in person, anyway)–and drive to the movie theatre. We’ll have a glass of champagne in the limo to celebrate our going out after postponing the date twice. We’ll pick a movie, but the one we decide on won’t start for forty-five minutes. So I’ll spend forty-five minutes wishing I was on a date with someone who smoked. But at least he enjoys a good bottle of champagne!! We’ll leave the limo and walk around Hacienda Crossings, chatting about life and philosophy, and drinking champagne out of paper cups. Or maybe we’ll sit in the theatre and discuss politics and the human genome, and drink it from a flask. Either way, it is good champagne.

Finally the movie will start. He will, or he won’t, try to hold my hand (this prediction is guaranteed 100% accurate).

Then we’ll have dinner. I’ll order a couple glasses of wine. We’ll probably go to the only restaurant I’ve ever worked at. That won’t be ackward at all. At least they bring a jug of wine to the table and don’t keep track. And then I’ll try to pay for myself. But only as a gesture. He’ll see through me, and realize that I don’t actually want to pay for myself. I’ll tell him about my goal to have a million dollars by August. He’ll suggest that he funds one of my crazy entrepreneual schemes. Yes, the date is going well.

He’ll take me home as I’m tired and drunk. But not before we buy plane tickets to Sweden for May Day, and make arrangements for the bar/laundromat to open in June. I say! I’m sooooo lucky. Oakland is too, cause it is severely lacking a bar/laundromat.

So, a millionaire asked me out to lunch the other day

Posted on by Jennifer Heller

He’s not really my type. I normally go for brunettes. And he’s older, and very shy. I don’t know what we’re going to say to each other. (No matter, really, since he has yet to call to arrange it.)

I hear he wants a girlfriend. To be a millionaire’s girlfriend!!

Showered with expensive gifts. Taken to the best restaurants a city has to offer. Flown to Sweden on a whim.

Sigh.

And never to have to work again, come marriage, should marriage come.

And never to have to work again, come divorce, should divorce come. And come it must! Especially if we have nothing really to say to each other. (I don’t think I’d marry him if he made me sign a prenup. Then what would be the point of the whole thing at all?)

So here’s the thing. If he wasn’t a millionaire, I wouldn’t go out to lunch with him. (I think) I know he hopes it will be romantic, and (I think) I know I’m not interested.

But he is a millionaire, and I am broke. And I would like millions. Marrying him is probably as likely as winning the lotto, but at least I won’t have to spend any money on the way.

Oh, Aristotle! Please advise!

Now, I never thought that Aristotle would talk to me, given that I’m a woman and all. But here he is, reminding me of my goal to be eudaimon, and how I must be both disposed to be virtuous, and act virtuously, in order to accomplish that goal.

Here’s where I pull out my copy of Nicomachean Ethics (in lecture note form, of course), and cite the section on the virtue of openhandedness. My conclusion: I need these millions in order to truly be openhanded. Aristotle laughs at that. Since he’s dead, he sees right through me, he knows that I know I’m skirting the issue.

Ethics always comes down to friendship, I think, and Aristotle agrees with qualifications. On this particular occasion, he’s just launched into his lecture about how one must model their relationships with others after their relationships with themselves. About how you must love and respect the other for their own sake. And how you owe it to them, just as you owe it to yourself, to consider what’s best for them and always act in accordance with those goals.

I’m looking at Aristotle like, what are you talking about? And what does this have to do with my millionaire? Aristotle realizes that I only heard half the lecture. Since he’s dead he knows I was thinking about how much I want a cigarette. This launches him into a lecture on moderation. Ugh.

But then he brings it back. He says that I can have lunch with the millionaire, but that I should in no circumstances mislead him in any way. He recognizes that although the virtue of charity was not around in his time, it may be applicable here. He suggests that if I am to be both a charitable person, and a friend, I should have lunch with him. But as a friend, no sex.

No sex! Oh, Aristotle. Fine. But what about marriage?

No marriage! says Aristotle. Marrying for money is definitely not in the virtuous section of the Venn diagram he has etched in the clouds. Of course, Aristotle reminds me, if it turns out that I love him, then I can marry him. And, yes, that definitely would facilitate openhandedness. But he doesn’t seem to think I have much of a problem with that particular virtue, given what he’s seen. This brings him back to moderation. Jesus!

Argh. Jesus is back now too and he and Aristotle are arguing over Aristotle’s interpretation of charity. And sex, and procreation. Jesus seems to think I can have sex with him if I have his child, cause that would be charitable. Or maybe I heard him wrong. I leave them to argue, confident in my decision to have lunch with the millionaire, and if we don’t fall in love, hopefully I can set him up with one of my less ethical friends.

daunted on a Thursday

Posted on by Jennifer Heller

i have what i’ve decided to call “the worst temp job ever”, though that is possibly untrue. Possibly, or probably, i will discover in my life a “worse temp job than the worst temp job ever” and I find that possibility only minimally satisfying.

the planet ruling my life right now is characterized by a constant desire for a more satisfying satisfaction. i used to have a shower head that advertised it was “even wetter feeling” and if water has degrees of wet feeling, and higher degrees cause a more satisfying shower – it really was a damn good shower head – how many degrees of satisfaction do I in fact need?

direction = satisfaction, perhaps a true statement. love = satisfaction, perhaps true as well. no definitive identity relations hold in these equations…at least from my point of view. without any, then, the I is an i, is a me, and I am daunted by dissatisfaction. so daunted i did not go to the auto repair shop to file files and move files and unmove filed files and then move the files i moved yesterday.

but i am not daunted. tonight…a night for satisfaction. my horoscope said so. in the fine print that no one else can read without the lense of one experienced in such things. a night for a new bar – an experience always satisfying. i like going into a bar that i have previously only experienced intermediate to maximally wasted. it always looks so different with fresh, undrunken eyes, as the Elbo Room looked to me last Tuesday. and it was that in an effort not to be daunted i utilized those four gin and tonics during happy hour and wound up at work in the h.o.. and that i have utilized nameless other drinks and bars on these days of existing thus unsatisfied. Southern bars filled with southern men wanting to take me home or for a ride in their helicopter…or not southern men, but still, the same damn itinerary.

Satisfying would be a fresh itinerary. today i got a fresh itinerary, and I shall and am utilizing it. tomorrow i will make a fresh itinerary. everyday is a fresh itinerary, but how can that not on its own be fairly daunting?especially with the decreasing chances of visiting novel bars. what i need to find are the correct conditions for satisfaction = everyday. or satisfaction = breathing, cause then, i couldn’t avoid being satisfied. or, perhaps…

satisfaction = blogging.