See that part of the "About me" where it says I'm not planning on working in the entertainment industry in any way?
Uh...
...
...
you just can't escape it in this city, can you?
Showing posts with label annoying things. Show all posts
Showing posts with label annoying things. Show all posts
Thursday, December 9, 2010
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Hair.
I'm generally not a girly kind of girl, but I do a lot of things with my hair. And when I say "a lot", I'm really not kidding: it has, at some point or another, literally been every color of the rainbow (or at least parts of it have been) except white and every length between almost 3 feet and just over 3 inches.
So, when I moved to LA, I had what was then a pretty normal, somewhere-between-chin-and-shoulders, some-color-between-red-and-blonde style going on. Then on one bright, sunny, probably near-100-degree day, I decided to go hiking in Griffith Park. If you've been reading this blog, you know that the phrase "Griffith Park" should be prefaced by the word "misadventure", and if you know me very well, you probably also know that I'm not the most coordinated person in the world. I ended up hitting my head on a tree, and of course it was a pine tree with a big bit of sticky sap on it.
I turned to Google: since pine sap apparently cannot be easily removed with shampoo, and since I'm the type of person to choose the quickest, easiest, and most importantly, simplest (see: Murphy's Law) option available to me, I decided that the best course of action would be to cut it out. The only problem was that I didn't have money for a professional hairdresser, but I had scissors, right?
I ended up cutting the sap glob out of my hair, which left an awkward chunk on the side, so I chopped the rest of it off to match. This resulted in my hair being very short, and for a few days after I cut it, looking very much like it had been blindly attacked with scissors. But, as my hair does, it managed to look cute after a couple weeks - in fact, the girl working at the $4000-sparkly-purse-store (right around the corner from the $284,000-handcrafted-from-unicorn-horn-watch-store) was the one who used the word "cute".
Since I can't leave my hair alone for more than a month, I decided to dye it red again. I went down to the drugstore to pick out a shade of red that hopefully wouldn't fade out in two weeks' time. As fate would have it, the L'Oreal Feria "Power reds" was on sale and I had a coupon! I bought it, figuring that it looked like the best candidate for "not fading out".
So I mixed up the dye and put it on. Now, I've never actually tried to dye my hair with blood before, but if I was to ever become a serial killer and decide that would be a fun idea, putting this dye on was exactly what I imagine dying my hair with blood would be like. Not only was it the right shade of dark, opaque red, but there was some sort of exothermic reaction going on that made it warm, and I was wearing some of those blue nitrile gloves that I had swiped from a lab. The only thing that was off was that of all the colors that bloodstains can be, bright pink isn't quite one of them, although salmon, grey, brown, and even a kind of greenish shade are possibilities.
If you've dyed hair before, you probably have read the part where it says to put the dye on unwashed hair. In the excitement, I had entirely forgotten that the reason my hair was unwashed was because when I tried to turn the shower on earlier, there hadn't been any hot water. So, when it was time to wash the dye out and I turned on the shower again, I suddenly realized that what I had just done was probably not a smart idea. As it turned out, there had been a maintenance person desperately trying to fix the problem all day, and with no success, but I figured if he'd been at it all day, he'd have to be close to fixing it, right? An hour later, still no hot water, and it's been in for WAY too long, so I decide to suck it up and rinse it out in the freezing cold shower. Cold water, aside from being painfully unpleasant to shower in, also happens to cause dyes and stains to set into things, whereas hot water usually makes them fade.
So, after leaving the dye in for 3x as long as I should have and rinsing it out in a way that made it brighter, what the box described as "auburn" turned out to be something on the border of "blood red" and "magenta".
(imagine this in the sunlight, so it's more intense and more magenta-ish)
Despite this incident, there was one awesome thing that happened: I was riding a bus, and sitting across me was an adorable, rather flamboyant teenager with blue hair. When the person sitting next to me got off the bus, he got up and sat down next to me. We didn't need to say anything like "nice hair" - we just looked at each other, and smiled, and went back to listening to our respective mp3 players and happily being different than everyone else on the bus.
So guess what I'm going to do over winter break, since I'll have weeks for it to fade back to a work-acceptable color?
I'M GOING TO DO IT AGAIN! Only, with warm water this time...
So, when I moved to LA, I had what was then a pretty normal, somewhere-between-chin-and-shoulders, some-color-between-red-and-blonde style going on. Then on one bright, sunny, probably near-100-degree day, I decided to go hiking in Griffith Park. If you've been reading this blog, you know that the phrase "Griffith Park" should be prefaced by the word "misadventure", and if you know me very well, you probably also know that I'm not the most coordinated person in the world. I ended up hitting my head on a tree, and of course it was a pine tree with a big bit of sticky sap on it.
I turned to Google: since pine sap apparently cannot be easily removed with shampoo, and since I'm the type of person to choose the quickest, easiest, and most importantly, simplest (see: Murphy's Law) option available to me, I decided that the best course of action would be to cut it out. The only problem was that I didn't have money for a professional hairdresser, but I had scissors, right?
I ended up cutting the sap glob out of my hair, which left an awkward chunk on the side, so I chopped the rest of it off to match. This resulted in my hair being very short, and for a few days after I cut it, looking very much like it had been blindly attacked with scissors. But, as my hair does, it managed to look cute after a couple weeks - in fact, the girl working at the $4000-sparkly-purse-store (right around the corner from the $284,000-handcrafted-from-unicorn-horn-watch-store) was the one who used the word "cute".
Since I can't leave my hair alone for more than a month, I decided to dye it red again. I went down to the drugstore to pick out a shade of red that hopefully wouldn't fade out in two weeks' time. As fate would have it, the L'Oreal Feria "Power reds" was on sale and I had a coupon! I bought it, figuring that it looked like the best candidate for "not fading out".
So I mixed up the dye and put it on. Now, I've never actually tried to dye my hair with blood before, but if I was to ever become a serial killer and decide that would be a fun idea, putting this dye on was exactly what I imagine dying my hair with blood would be like. Not only was it the right shade of dark, opaque red, but there was some sort of exothermic reaction going on that made it warm, and I was wearing some of those blue nitrile gloves that I had swiped from a lab. The only thing that was off was that of all the colors that bloodstains can be, bright pink isn't quite one of them, although salmon, grey, brown, and even a kind of greenish shade are possibilities.
If you've dyed hair before, you probably have read the part where it says to put the dye on unwashed hair. In the excitement, I had entirely forgotten that the reason my hair was unwashed was because when I tried to turn the shower on earlier, there hadn't been any hot water. So, when it was time to wash the dye out and I turned on the shower again, I suddenly realized that what I had just done was probably not a smart idea. As it turned out, there had been a maintenance person desperately trying to fix the problem all day, and with no success, but I figured if he'd been at it all day, he'd have to be close to fixing it, right? An hour later, still no hot water, and it's been in for WAY too long, so I decide to suck it up and rinse it out in the freezing cold shower. Cold water, aside from being painfully unpleasant to shower in, also happens to cause dyes and stains to set into things, whereas hot water usually makes them fade.
So, after leaving the dye in for 3x as long as I should have and rinsing it out in a way that made it brighter, what the box described as "auburn" turned out to be something on the border of "blood red" and "magenta".
(imagine this in the sunlight, so it's more intense and more magenta-ish)
Despite this incident, there was one awesome thing that happened: I was riding a bus, and sitting across me was an adorable, rather flamboyant teenager with blue hair. When the person sitting next to me got off the bus, he got up and sat down next to me. We didn't need to say anything like "nice hair" - we just looked at each other, and smiled, and went back to listening to our respective mp3 players and happily being different than everyone else on the bus.
So guess what I'm going to do over winter break, since I'll have weeks for it to fade back to a work-acceptable color?
I'M GOING TO DO IT AGAIN! Only, with warm water this time...
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
The Library is Disappointing.
So, it's been a little more than two weeks in Los Angeles, and ever since I got cable TV and internet, I've settled into a routine of eating, sleeping, showering, and killing time online and watching TV. It was at some point during this that I decided that it is good to read books, and as such I decided I would go to the library.
So, I looked up where the nearest library was, and headed out. I finally got there (after experiencing my ever-present difficulty with maps and things being further than they looked) and walked inside. Although the building was at least as big as the public library near my college apartment, and bigger than the one in my hometown of 1000 people and 34890 cows, it seemed to have very few books. Thinking this was odd, I wandered around until I found the sci-fi section. This consisted of four or five shelves of books, about 3 feet wide. The sci-fi section (large closet) in the used bookstore (back room of the historical society) in my aforementioned hometown was larger than this! In fact, if you were to eliminate all the Star Wars expanded universe novels in the library, I have more sci-fi in my BEDROOM!
I wandered around, in vague hope that wasn't all of it. I was somewhat right, because they had shelved authors such as Tolkien, Bradbury, and more in with the regular fiction. However, even that wasn't encouraging, as half the "fiction" was young adult vampire novels (I counted no fewer than five copies of each of the first three books in the Twilight saga), and much of the rest was Nicholas Sparks romance novels or 4 copies of recent easy-to-read bestsellers.
So, if the books are any reflection of supply and demand at this branch, I can assume that the demographics of my neighborhood consist primarily of dumb people who want to keep up with trends and 12-year-old girls with distorted perceptions of relationships.
To make matters worse, when I did finally find something worth checking out, specifically a copy of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, I went to get a library card only to discover that I don't have any identification with my current address on it. Now, I've got to obtain a copy of my lease or utility bill or something, and I'm going to go to the main library downtown to see if it's better.
Also, the libraries are closed on mondays because of budget cuts. REALLY? In a city with 9.75% sales tax, and in a state that's essentially legalized marijuana, HOW are they still so broke?
So, I looked up where the nearest library was, and headed out. I finally got there (after experiencing my ever-present difficulty with maps and things being further than they looked) and walked inside. Although the building was at least as big as the public library near my college apartment, and bigger than the one in my hometown of 1000 people and 34890 cows, it seemed to have very few books. Thinking this was odd, I wandered around until I found the sci-fi section. This consisted of four or five shelves of books, about 3 feet wide. The sci-fi section (large closet) in the used bookstore (back room of the historical society) in my aforementioned hometown was larger than this! In fact, if you were to eliminate all the Star Wars expanded universe novels in the library, I have more sci-fi in my BEDROOM!
I wandered around, in vague hope that wasn't all of it. I was somewhat right, because they had shelved authors such as Tolkien, Bradbury, and more in with the regular fiction. However, even that wasn't encouraging, as half the "fiction" was young adult vampire novels (I counted no fewer than five copies of each of the first three books in the Twilight saga), and much of the rest was Nicholas Sparks romance novels or 4 copies of recent easy-to-read bestsellers.
So, if the books are any reflection of supply and demand at this branch, I can assume that the demographics of my neighborhood consist primarily of dumb people who want to keep up with trends and 12-year-old girls with distorted perceptions of relationships.
To make matters worse, when I did finally find something worth checking out, specifically a copy of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, I went to get a library card only to discover that I don't have any identification with my current address on it. Now, I've got to obtain a copy of my lease or utility bill or something, and I'm going to go to the main library downtown to see if it's better.
Also, the libraries are closed on mondays because of budget cuts. REALLY? In a city with 9.75% sales tax, and in a state that's essentially legalized marijuana, HOW are they still so broke?
Friday, August 27, 2010
Another Crazy Day...
Today when I woke up, I thought I'd go get my student reduced-fare card, hunt for some kind of volunteer work, and maybe go to a library or something. This is one of the things that I saw on my walk to the bus stop:
(In case you can't read it, the truck advertises forensic autopsies, private autopsies, medical photography, paternity testing, and TV and film consulting)
Well, I had to go on this epic quest back and forth across LA to gather all the documentation required for my reduced fare card - a quest that took me the better part of the day. While I was in Metro centers and whatnot, I started picking up brochures for various interesting science-y looking places where I might want to volunteer, or possibly just visit.
By the time I got everything turned in, I had no desire to go to a library or volunteer-work-hunting any more. However, I did notice one brochure that mentioned an observatory in Griffith Park. Since I had been thinking of going to see a show at the Greek Theater, which is also in said park, I decided to go up there and check it out. During this expedition, I discovered three things: 1) there are no buses going into, or even up to the entrance of, Griffith Park, 2) maps don't show hills, so what looks like an easy walk can be quite a hike, and 3) even on flat surfaces, distances appear MUCH smaller on Google maps than they do when you're walking them. Naturally, I ended up really tired, so I just took the first bus I found, which conveniently went straight to a subway station.
Now, I don't listen to country music, so at first I thought the two people with kind of Southern accents on the bus next to me were tourists. However, as I heard their conversation, I realized that they were musicians (or a musician and a writer, or two band-mates?). I have no idea how famous they were, but I heard one of them telling the other about how some people had asked to take his picture, and how he was now rich enough to warrant having a place to live in Nashville AND a place to live in LA, and so on. It was weird, then the bus stopped not at the intersection where it said it stopped, but a bit down the street where there were paprazzi on one block and a TV or film crew setting up on another block around the corner.
Last but not least, annoyances since I've moved in less than a week ago:
Film crews: 1
Paparazzi groups: 2
Lost tourists who think I'm a local: At least 8
(In case you can't read it, the truck advertises forensic autopsies, private autopsies, medical photography, paternity testing, and TV and film consulting)
Well, I had to go on this epic quest back and forth across LA to gather all the documentation required for my reduced fare card - a quest that took me the better part of the day. While I was in Metro centers and whatnot, I started picking up brochures for various interesting science-y looking places where I might want to volunteer, or possibly just visit.
By the time I got everything turned in, I had no desire to go to a library or volunteer-work-hunting any more. However, I did notice one brochure that mentioned an observatory in Griffith Park. Since I had been thinking of going to see a show at the Greek Theater, which is also in said park, I decided to go up there and check it out. During this expedition, I discovered three things: 1) there are no buses going into, or even up to the entrance of, Griffith Park, 2) maps don't show hills, so what looks like an easy walk can be quite a hike, and 3) even on flat surfaces, distances appear MUCH smaller on Google maps than they do when you're walking them. Naturally, I ended up really tired, so I just took the first bus I found, which conveniently went straight to a subway station.
Now, I don't listen to country music, so at first I thought the two people with kind of Southern accents on the bus next to me were tourists. However, as I heard their conversation, I realized that they were musicians (or a musician and a writer, or two band-mates?). I have no idea how famous they were, but I heard one of them telling the other about how some people had asked to take his picture, and how he was now rich enough to warrant having a place to live in Nashville AND a place to live in LA, and so on. It was weird, then the bus stopped not at the intersection where it said it stopped, but a bit down the street where there were paprazzi on one block and a TV or film crew setting up on another block around the corner.
Last but not least, annoyances since I've moved in less than a week ago:
Film crews: 1
Paparazzi groups: 2
Lost tourists who think I'm a local: At least 8
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