fascinating!

Dear Internet! Tell me things to buy!

I have an Amazon gift card for $250. I want to spend it! I kind of want to get practical things, because I’m super-poor, but just buying $250 worth of cat food is…well, I was going to put “sad,” but actually that would be kind of hilarious. But I don’t want to do it! I want treats! I want something fun! So tell me what to buy!

Options:

JUICER! Because of reasons. Only one in stock, you guyzzz!!

New collars for the cats (they’re very fuzzy/worn-looking right now) and a new ID tag for Erwin. He keeps chewing at his tag, so the info on it is all obscured and useless. This kind of tag doesn’t dangle – it slides onto the collar flat – so he won’t be able to chew it off. Clever! (Though then they won’t match as much, anymore, which is kind of a shame…. But I am not insane. I do not need to buy them both new matching tags.) (…Right?)

Turtle food! Responsible! It’s like buying cat food, but easier to ship. Also, this IS techncially a treat: this is the good shrimp food that they like extra-well! So: practical AND fun! (Yes, where I live, shrimp-based turtle food is “fun.”)

Cute new basking platform for my turtles!! The reviews are mixed, though? I dunno. It’s not terribly NECESSARY, I think.

I need new stud earrings. These cost one cent!

Very expensive jeans. Because this is the only time I would ever do that?

Very expensive shoes. But I don’t need more shoes, right? Even nice ones?

Very expensive purse. As long as we’re here!

Or, I guess, also: less-very-expensive versions of any of those things? Like the knockoff McQueen clutch I keep wanting? But the rings on these never fit my giant man hands.

Or oh god CAT FLATS.

OMG. These come in gold, too! I CANNOT DECIDE BETWEEN SILVER AND GOLD.

Jesus. And then this got recommended to me and I AM TEMPTED.

And…then these got recommended to me. Christ, my recomendations are going to be all effed up for a while now, aren’t they? (I am still tempted.)

Spikes for my punkness.

FOE. Always useful. Though maybe I don’t need a zillion yards of plain black? I prefer to buy only a couple yards at a time, in pretty colors? But that’s so much more expensive that way! Grumble grumble.

Actual books? (I was on a Shirley Jackson kick recently. Have you read Hangsaman??? That shit is NICE.)

Or…just let this money ride, since I just noticed that now it’s all in my account and will sit there forever and not lose money or go away or expire or anything, so it’s actually not like I HAAAAAVVE to go buy some wacky expensive jeans or a goddamn juicer or whatever, after all.

(But I want a juicerrrrrrrrrrr!!!!)

(But I am probably literally honestly going to buy either the silver or gold cat flats and probably also the cat dress. I don’t even care, you guys.)

(But and probably the juicer.)

Thoughts? Votes? Other suggestions???

I saw a guy with a cochlear implant on the subway today and was struck by its rampant awesomeness. He was a cyborg. Like, I had to quell an initial impulse to compliment him on it. And even more embarrassingly, I felt some stupid relation with him: “Cool mod, dude. I have a couple implants, too, you know.” Shrug. “No big.”

Anyway, as soon as I decided not to, ahem, say all THAT out loud, my next thought was that I was super-pumped to someday get a Google implant into my brain, where maps and twitter updates would just be zapped directly into my consciousness. And then I realized, you know, that’s a ways off, I probably won’t live to see that. But there already exist those under-the-skin scannable implants that carry medical information. It’s not that far different. But so the first recreational computerized implants might just be something like that: something that carries information. Flash drives, essentially, that you plug your ipod or phone into. Maybe you can even get some kind of a recharge for your device out of it, based on motion, or electrical currents in the human body, or something? But, like, if there’s a port, then there’s also no reason not to have a little readout, right? Like just to tell you how charged your phone is getting or how much space you have left? Something above the skin. And I thought: a tiny little well-designed cool-looking digital watch, permanently implanted into your wrist. AWESOME. But also sort of retro, right, because why not just jump straight to a little one-by-one or two-by-two inch touch-screen? It might not be super-sophisticated, not able to do a ton, but, like, basically just imagine one of those little square ipods implanted into your forearm. And then…an ipad implanted into your forearm. (Though…of course there’s really no reason to do that unless it DOES something there inside your body…recharges automatically from your energy or pumps medicine into you when it senses that you need it or…whatever…because otherwise, like, you might as well just SuperGlue one onto your arm really good, you know? If it’s just sitting there and not really doing anything extra BY just sitting there.)

And THEN I thought: but what happens if you DID start with just a screenless port, and then upgraded to the watch, and then upgraded to the touch-screen, and then upgraded to the better touch-screen? I can’t decide whether the installation of these things would be more like just a minor visit to the piercing parlor or actual surgery, but either way, that’s relatively major healing time, at least, every few years. And this is just for stuff that’s implanted in you, but not actually interacting with you in any major intelligent way. Go back to the cochlear implant (which, admittedly, I have no idea how those things work* – I think they just have a port, but I don’t know where that port goes or what it’s attached to or whatever): what about shit that goes into your brain? What about when you DO get that Google implant? The basic port hardware had better be solid enough at first gen to accommodate lots of upgrades to whatever technology gets plugged into it, or else they’re going to have to give you BRAIN SURGERY every three years when you want to upgrade to the new device.

And THEN I thought! WHO is going to get this stuff? The real hard-core gadget nerds out there right now – the guys who stand in line outside Apple stores for a week to get the newest version of – whatever – are these the same people who are into pretty fucking extreme body modification? Do – or more importantly, I guess, can or will those groups overlap? And even body modification I think only covers the implants, not the actual BRAIN SURGERY PORT things. That’s a whole other group/level. So…eventually this becomes a marketing issue. Do you market the new Google implant to gadget nerds, or to body modification enthusiasts? Who would be more willing to implant a computer into their body or brain? How directly does this device have to improve your quality of life in order to be considered a medical device and for its implantation to be covered by insurance? Will there be surgeons in Apple stores? Will the device come pre-equipped with its own antibiotics to aid healing, or will you have to buy those as a separate app? When do we all start to dress like the kids from Hackers?

And then the guy TOTALLY looked up from his Kindle and caught me squinting at the side of his head and I felt really, really dumb.

THE FUTURE, DUN-DUN-DUNNN. The end.

* Okay, FINE, I looked it up and apparently it basically has nothing to do with your brain at all, despite TOTALLY LOOKING LIKE IT DOES. I feel ripped off.

5/14/12 UPDATE: It has begun.

Helloooo! I’m hungover and bored and chatty and no one is online yet to talk to me! My union is about to vote on whether or not to strike. I’m not supposed to tell anyone, I think. We were going to have a one-hour meeting today about it at 4, but suddenly it got changed to a three-hour long meeting about it over lunch-ish later in the week. I do not want to go to a three-hour-long union meeting. I do not want to belong to a union. I do not want to strike. My benefits are WORSE here than they were at my other non-union job, and belonging to this union costs me like $18 a month or something. That is annoying. And if we end up striking, I am NOT going to march or picket or whatever. I will probably stay home, I guess, but I’ll just work from home. I saw Andrew WK last night! It was fun. And drank too much and ate two different kinds of pizza at two different points in the night. I want to buy little silver earrings and a little silver ring. I also want to buy a million sandwiches, and then eat them. I also want to go home and go back to bed. I also want someone to come over to my house and clean it for me. Yesterday, someone said to me: “Oh! That’s another great watch! You always wear such cool watches!” I only have one watch. I wonder whether she had me confused with someone else who wore a different cool watch, or if it’s just that she complimented this watch once before, and forgot that it was the same watch? I didn’t correct her. You guyz I’m boooooooooooooooooooooooooored. Is this an interesting thing to write about? Are you glad that I decided to hit the “publish” button on this one? Am I winning Acadamy Awards or whatever people win for writing super-good? Oh my god you know what I need so bad? Like seven grilled cheese sandwiches. I work right next to Monk’s! Have I said that before? I feel like I have. I haven’t been in yet, but I bet they have grilled cheese sandwiches. People are always taking photos of it when you walk past. It’s sweet, sort of. I think I’m going to buy one of those metal water bottles. INTERESTING!

Okay maybe I will go work now.

I suffer from this particularly annoying kind of karma where, whenever I try to be just a little bit bitchy, I end up being proved to be a horrible jerk who should feel really really really guilty about it and never show her face at Rite-Aid again. And I don’t mean “just a little bit bitchy” as in, like, “even when I’m just the littlest bit of a jerk,” like I’m downplaying it? I mean, I can be a horrible, wretched bastard of a human being and get away with it, that’s fine. But when I’m really only trying to be a LITTLE bit bitchy, like, you know, sort of shoulder-checking the too-loud teenage girls walking three-across on the sidewalk? THAT’S when I get my comeuppance (because she’ll invariably turn around and apologise profusely, but by this time I’ve already walked away with a “little bit bitchy” look on my face, so it’s too late to turn back around and be all, “Oh, no, it’s fine! My bad!” or whatever, and I’m just some bitchy old 30 year old who ruined their fun teenage day out).

Anyway. I hate people who argue over sale prices at Rite-Aid. (They always somehow are standing in line right in front of ME, how does that even happen?) They’re always old Russian women and you feel guilty for being so annoyed at them, but come on, it’s 40 cents for dish detergent, who CARES. And then when they leave I always saunter up to the cashier and smile pertly and try to be as super-fast as humanly possible to show everybody else how it’s done and breeze out being all extra-polite and tossing off sunshiny little toodle-ooos to everyone I pass.

But not today. Today I decided to be A Little Bit Bitchy.

So. I went to Rite-Aid because I had to drop off a Netflix, and the mailbox is right near Rite-Aid, and JUST dropping off a Netflix is not actually a good enough reason on its own to leave the house. (What?) While I was in Rite-Aid, I decided I needed some Mountain Dew. I crave Mountain Dew probably once per calendar year, and it turns out February 11 was my day this year.

(I ended up getting a 2-liter of it, too! The regular-sized bottle was $1.86, and the 2-liter was $1.66. I STILL might have bought the smaller-sized bottle, anyway, because I will feel too guilty to ever throw half a bottle of Mountain Dew away, so it’ll just sit, flat, in my refridgerator for just years and years, but then I remembered when that one guy who worked at Sterling, Cooper, Draper, Price for like half a season before Peggy fired him like a badass invented a new cocktail made with Mountain Dew and vodka [except then I think Peggy yelled at him and told him that a "cocktail" had to have at least three ingredients], and I mean, I have probably like two shots worth of vodka in my freezer right now; I’ll take that challenge.)

I also noticed that RedBull 4-packs were on sale for $5.99 instead of the usual $7.99, and that’s a darn good deal, so I grabbed one of those, too.

The store is empty, there’s nobody in line, the only cashier working is one that I recognize as someone who is constantly working a sort of disinterested, low-level, post-office-grade rudeness. She never says hi, never says thanks or please or excuse me, she’s always eating something while she’s standing there and sort of takes her time doing so and ignoring you while she’s doing it? So anyway. I put down my Mountain Dew and RedBull (yes, I am a group of 14 year old boys, why do you ask?). She takes another bite, slaps her hands clean, asks me if I have the Rite-Aid card, I say no (I do, but whenever I use it, they give me this ridiculous 3-foot-long receipt; it’s weird), she rings me up, I pay, I leave.

I walk outside the store doors. I notice that they charged me $7.99 for the RedBull.

There was no one in the store, no one in line in front of or behind me. This lady, through just her usual low-grade, laissez-faire jerkishness, had annoyed me, and put me in a slightly foul mood. Out of PURE SPITE, I decided to go back in and get my $2 back. I have almost literally never done this before. I would far rather be overcharged than argue about it. I’m so neurotic and easily-embarrassed and shy and awkward and easily-guilted that this kind of confrontation is pretty much my single least favorite type of human interaction: pointing out an error that someone in a service position has made. (I didn’t have a trash can in my office at my last job for like 4 months because the janitor just sort of took it away one day and I didn’t want to ask him to bring me another one.) (Actually, I ended up stealing one from somewhere else on my own at some point, but it was a different color than the regulation ones, so that’s when the janitor noticed, and he brought me one THEN, finally, and then like weeks later noticed that I had two of them – not one recycling and one garbage, just two garbage – and asked if he should take one away, and I had to cover it up and be all, “Oh, no, I like having two, I use it for…stuff…” and so from then on I had two cans and I had to pretend to actually use both so he would think that I really wanted them both and so I made up this elaborate fake-system of what I put in which can, just in case he was watching them closely to see whether it was true that I really NEEDED two cans, and if there was someone ELSE in my office, like, visiting, and they put the wrong kind of trash in the wrong can and messed up the system I would wait until they left and rearrange my trash; it was SO AWKWARD AND HORRIBLE, ALL THE TIME.)

So I turn around and go back to the lady. Again, I’m the only person in line – no one had been in front of me, no one was approaching from behind. She literally does not recognize me and acts all confused and offended that I don’t have a product in my hands to purchase. I give her my receipt and point out that the RedBull was marked as being on sale for $5.99. She scoffs and looks at me like I’m from Mars and says, “I asked you if you have a card.”

These words make absolutely literally no sense to me for about 6 seconds. Then I figure out that the sale prices are apparently only good if you have the card. I hadn’t known this, and the sign didn’t say it, but whatever, maybe this is a thing people know? So at this point, I can’t get my $2 back unless I admit to her that I had lied to her originally about having a card. But she had SCOFFED at me, sirs! I was madder than ever! So I say, with a Little Bit Bitchy snarl, “So if I have a card, I can get it for the sale price?” She says yes. I whip out my card and say, “Okay, can I do that, then?” She says, “Well, I’ll have to return everything.” And then stands there.

I hate the “and then stands there” move. This is the ultimate, nuclear-level weapon in every bitch’s arsenal. This is not a Little Bit Bitchy. This is full-on, pro-bitch shit. This is barely even still within the “bitchy” category – this is just a hair’s breadth away from full on “cunt” level stuff.

My only defense in the face of such skilled bitchery is manic, wild-eyed, cheerful politeness. “Awesome!” I say. “That would be super-nice of you, thanks!” And grin. And Then Stand There.

She sighs and rolls her eyes and tells me, “I need your card, and give me everything.”

This is an important plot point, so note it: “Give me everything.”

I hand her my Rite-Aid card, the RedBull, and the Mountain Dew. I am holding my credit card in my hand, under the assumption that she’ll be refunding my money straight to it, and might need it again. She does some stuff and calls the manager over to approve the return. (This is another side story, but for corroborating Bitch Evidence: She does not say “hi” to the manager or, in fact, anything else. The manager just walks over, they both stare only at the computer screen, the manager puts in her code or whatever and says, “Is that all?” and the she says, “Yeah,” and then the manager leaves. Nobody says thanks or anything! I had to bite my tongue to keep my Manic Crazy Eyed Polite Bitchiness in check so that I didn’t shout “Thanks!” to her myself! ARG!) She does the return, reimburses me in CASH, and then STANDS THERE AGAIN until I say, “And I’d like to buy it again?” So she sighs and rolls her eyes and rings up the RedBull, but not the Mountain Dew and NOT MY CARD until I point these things out to her. So she sighs and rolls her eyes and scans my card and the Mountain Dew. ( And I am not exaggerating here with the sighing and eye-rolling. WE WERE NOT FUCKING AROUND. We were in a duel to the death and we both knew exactly what was going on. No one was pretending here. We were nearly to the point of calling each other “fat sluts” right out loud.) But then suddenly it dawns on me: these amounts I’m getting reimbursed/re-charged don’t quite make sense.

“Did you refund me for the Mountain Dew, too?”
“No.”
“Just the RedBull?”
“Yes.”
“So I don’t need to re-buy the Mountain Dew then.”
“Not if you’ve already bought it.” [Stands there.]

(BUT! Remember when she said “Give me everything?!” That meant the Mountain Dew, too, right!? Like she had to return everything in order to re-do the sale!? “Everything” isn’t just one item, and a card! “Everything” is at least three items, RIGHT!?)

(AND! Remember when she was all offended that I didn’t have any products in my hands when I had approached her for the return! So SHE MUST HAVE KNOWN THAT I WAS NOT SPONTANEOUSLY BUYING A SECOND 2-LITER OF MOUNTAIN DEW HA HA HA I HAVE CAUGHT YOU IN YOUR NEFARIOUS WEB OF LIES, RIGHT!?)

So I had to RE-RETURN everything, and re-buy everything, and re-scan everything, and by this time, yes, of course, there WERE a whole bunch of people behind me (or it felt like it, anyway, I was too embarrassed to turn around and look), and I had ruined this lady’s day, and I had ruined my own day, and I was a terrible person, and everything’s the worst, and now I can’t ever go back to Rite-Aid again, ever. At least the CVS a block or so farther down has self-check-out machines. Ahhh, the luxury of avoiding all human interaction, forever. I can’t wait until I’m rich enough to never leave my apartment at all.

(Also, just another side-note? It is WEIRDLY HARD to get New Yorkers at stores to NOT give you plastic bags. Just saying, “No bag, thanks, I brought my own,” basically DOES NOT WORK. You have to FIGHT them to grab your stuff first and start shoving it in your bags while also paying at the same time, and usually even then they start packing ALSO, so you’re walking around with at last one plastic bag, anyway. And sometimes they literally just say no. This has happened to me seriously often enough that it’s not just a funny story; it’s a legit trend, and it’s weird. You will hold out your bag, say, “I don’t need a bag! I brought my own!” and they will chuckle at you and shake their head and say, “No, no.” I mean, I think I probably re-use my plastic bags more than most people: I use them to line every single trash can in my house, and I use them to clean my litter box. But even so, I have a massive and growing [possibly sentient and actively reproducing] pile of them underneath my kitchen sink. People love to double-bag here! People love to pack lightly! People will give you your loaf of bread all by itself in a separate double-bagged bag, so that it won’t get smushed by your other loaf of bread!)

Anyway. Where was I? So. It took a really long time to buy some stuff today. I got into a fight with a lady. I am drinking a Mountain Dew and vodka right now. It’s pretty good.

THE END.

Okay, okay, so when I refer to myself as Interesting-Stories Girl, perhaps you detect a note of sarcasm. On the other hand, I just read this comment on a youtube video of a song called “This God Damn House” by The Low Anthem:

loved this song 2 yrs. ago and still love it today March 18, 2011.. Pure Music..this song when I posted it on FB cost me a sister who is 80 yr., old because of the title evidently, we haven’t talked since ’cause she demanded I take it off FB…truthfully other problems existed

Now THAT is how you tell a motherfucking story. I have so many questions! But really…need none of them answered.

Oh, internet message boards. Heart.

All right! I KNOW YOU NEEDED TO KNOW, so here is the incredible follow-up to the saga of What Jessica Should Buy With Her Two Brand-New Nielson Dollars!!!!

Thanks Nielson! Here I am just starting out my two-dollar-spending adventure!!*

On my way to CVS I walked past the dollar book bin. They had 2011 calendars for only $2! What a coincidence! Of course, I do not need a 2011 calendar. Ugh, but they had MOLESKINS and it’s not like I can avoid buying a $2 Moleskin, right? I was very very tempted. I tweeted about it, to try to see if someone else wanted it, so I at least would have the joy of BUYING it, even if then I had to go and send it to someone else? But apparently no one else wants a half-unusable calendar, either.

And the original plan was to get pretty new nailpolish at CVS, anyway. …which plan was dashed upon only finding ugly new nailpolish at CVS. I almost bought this green one? But. Meh.

Then I almost bought a small bag of 60%-off Easter Reece’s Pieces, and then I remembered that if I bought potato chips I could make the kind-of-skeevy tuna casserole I’ve been craving for like a week for dinner, but then I got all neurotic and too shy to buy (BOTH and ONLY) Easter candy and potato chips? So I didn’t buy anything and I just left.

Ah-ha! OTHER bookstore! I could buy two of these!

Except they were all stupid.

But inside they had the I Hate to Cook Book for $5, which, whatever. Would have counted. And I aaaaaalmost bought it – I was pretty sure I was going to buy it when I took this photo – but then I couldn’t remember the name of the one recipe that was the whole reason I wanted to own the book, and none of the recipes I was flipping through really looked funny/weird/good enough to ever actually make, and…I got bored.

(Okay, preemptive edit: I just looked it up. The recipe is “Skid Row Stroganoff,” and the funny line is: “…Add the flour, salt, paprika and mushrooms, stir, and let it cook five minutes while you light a cigarette and stare sullenly at the sink.”)

This one, too, was better as a funny thing to have on the bookshelf than as a thing to actually read, it seemed from the first two pages:

There were some neat magnetic marbley type things at the toy store…but I dropped about 30 of them onto the wooden display table while I was playing with them, and they made a really loud noise, so I got embarrassed and ran away.

Sooooooo…I didn’t get anything. WHAT WILL BECOME OF MY NIELSON RICHES?!? Tune in next time to find out on…THE FASCINATING ADVENTURES OF INTERESTING-STORIES GIRL!

* Heh…okay, I just noticed that you can tell I’m telling this story out of order because I already have that one green fingernail. Damnit, the mailbox is farther away than the CVS!!

Ugh, I am just terrible at conversation. I am bad at saying stuff? The guy next door – I just saw him for the first time in a couple months (I’d kind of suspected the couple there had gotten divorced). He was in a wheelchair! He was with two older, parent-type people. “Oh wow!” I said, “Are you okay?” He was in a car accident, he said. A head-on collision! He showed me his scars and told me he had a pin in his leg and had 7 weeks in the hospital and rehab, and showed me that he could stand. “Oh wow!” I said again. Things I did not say: Are you still going to rehab? How long will you be in the chair? Well, it looks like you have people taking care of you, at least! Was the other person in the crash okay? Will she be getting in trouble? When did you get back? Let me know if I can do anything to help! (I might have said something like “At least you got some gnarly scars out of it!” I…I definitely used the word “gnarly.”) I am either a jerk or a social incompetent, one of the two.

Sooooo, speaking of me not talking so good, here’s a FASCINATING STORY.

We’re a Nielsen TV family! Neat. I remember doing this once when I was a kid. They mailed us two quarters in a hard plastic case. I remember being very impressed by that, and even at the time (I was maybe 6 or 7?) thinking it was pretty cheap (but also dangerous to send money through the mail!). This time, they sent us two one-dollar bills. They’re very smooth and sharp and crisp and new. It’s still a little cheap-seeming, and it still seems weird for them to just mail cash without warning.

(But also, speaking of that? Ian just got a $60 Surprise Bonus Check from our insurance company, in the exact same type of envelope that I routinely just tear in half without opening because I assume it’s just, like…I don’t even know. Statements? [Which, okay, now that I'm typing that, I realize is also still a bad thing: I should probably look at statements.] When did I get so bad at receiving mail? I never, ever open ANYTHING, basically, unless there’s actual handwriting on the envelope. I pay all my bills via automatic deduction, so I figure…why bother? But apparently I’ve been tearing Surprise Bonus Money up all willy-nilly. Who knew.)

Anyway, I just filled out our Nielson form (actually I guess we’re not a Nielson family YET – the form is just a pre-selection eligibility thing I guess? whatever) and I am struck with a WILD IMPULSE to go blow those two dollars on something AMAZING. Like…I don’t know. It’s two dollars. But, like, I want to put it toward a pair of $1,000 shoes or some acid or a really rare breed of dog or something.

Actually, I have to go to CVS anyway. I am TEWTELLING buying new nailpolish. I AM SO CRAZY.

(Ugh…just…have to try really hard to avoid the neighbor in the wheelchair….)