Your Phone Is Dumb

LISTEN:

When I say you're being rude because you're constantly on your phone, it's because it's true.

When you tell me, "whatevs n00bs, you would do the same thing if you had a smart phone" I agree with your statement.

But here's the difference between you and me: I DO NOT HAVE A SMART PHONE, THUS I AM NOT ALWAYS ON MY PHONE.  Your argument is invalid. 

Is cocaine fun?  I'm sure it is.  It's probably awesome.  But I have no desire, ever, to do cocaine.  People on coke piss me off.  Because they're idiots.  Plus I would get dangerously addicted. 

(in the biz that's what we call a metaphor)

Thankfully, no one is sitting around trying to pressure me into snorting coke (we are in our thirties and have much better things to do, like high five strangers on the street and take pictures of ourselves with other peoples dogs, or go to the supermarket and purchase one grape).  But a minimum of three times a day someone tells me how annoying it is that I don't have a smart phone, which doesn't make any sense.

My phone always has a signal, always has battery power.  It can call and text.  My apartment is a dead zone, but that's my apartment, not my phone. 

Go on, get defensive.  Talk about how it's annoying that I...I don't know.  Cannot take or receive pictures.  You can talk about how it's annoying that I find constant phoning fucking annoying. I don't give a shit.

It's obnoxious.  Sure, I will joke around and ask people to look stuff up on their Galaxy.  Plus it's funny to fuck with people sometimes.  One time CrazyLiz and I texted Scooter just so he would tag us at a bar on Facebook.  Scooter was, obviously, at home in a completely different city.  But Liz and I refuse to get smart phones and people are constantly bitching about it.  If you care where we are so much, then do the work for us. Of course, Scooter is probably the one person that doesn't give a shit where we are or what we're doing, which made the whole thing greater. To us.

Can you people think of one legit reason as to why I would want a smart phone?  

1. GPS: I'm old school, I will straight up ask strangers for directions before I ask you to check your phone. Personal favorite people to ask: delivery drivers.
• Friends always argue, "No, you never ask directions."  That's a lie.  I never ask you to look up directions on your phone because I like to wander.
• To ask someone for directions, there is a requirement: we have to find a fucking person.  So until we find a person I cannot ask for directions.
• Caveat: I will ask for your help if you are being annoying and you keep on saying, "I can just look it up on my phone.  Why can't I just look it up on my phone?  This would be so much easier if I just looked it up on my phone."  THIS IS BECAUSE YOU ARE RUINING PERFECTLY GOOD WANDERING TIME.
• Honestly, your phone is fucking wrong half the time anyway. 
2. Knowing things:  I value people who have knowledge, not people who are good googlers. Your ability to google does not fucking impress me.  The worst is when people google things for the sole purpose of proving me wrong - I wouldn't say it if I didn't know it, dick. If that were the case I would preface the statement with, "I don't know if this is right, but..."  If you've never heard me say that, then you are not paying attention. Probably because you're on your fucking phone. Also, why are you being a lameball funsuck?  We could spend this time having a discussion with actual thought processes.  We could be yelling at each other for fun right now.
3. Photos:  I can bring a camera. 
• Argument:  "you get mad when you're not in pictures"
• No, I'm sad when I don't feel photogenic. There is a difference.
• Besides, saying, "OMG, take a picture of me doing this!  Wait, now take a picture of me doing this!" makes me feel stupid.
4. Videos:  I don't really care for them.  I don't want to be on Youtube.  I don't want to be famous.  Don't you think that if I wanted to be famous I would put my real name on this blog and try to monetize it somehow?  Yes.  I would.
5. Tagging:  I don't give a shit if I get "tagged" on Facebook.  Do you know why?  Because I don't give a fuck when anyone is tagged. 
   
   • The common defense that people use for this is: "Well, then I won't tag you."  Cool.  I'm not going to notice anyway, seeing as I -
     (a) don't have a smart phone
     (b) will not scour your page to make sure I was included in your tags when I get around to Facebook
   • Sometimes people point out whenever they do not tag me out of spite and mockery, which I get - like I said, it's funny to fuck with people sometimes.  I usually fake whine and laugh it off, but it's really starting to get old.
   • Is it sociopathic if I do not give a shit what people are doing at every moment of the day?  

So on the other side of the spectrum (obviously there are are exceptions):

1. I had an Oscar party on Sunday, and at one point I looked up and EVERY SINGLE PERSON IN THE ROOM EXCEPT FOR ME WAS LOOKING AT THEIR PHONE.  Granted, I was glued to the TV, and I totally ran over to my laptop every half hour to put something funny on Facebook. The purpose of our gathering was to be in a room and look at a screen together.  Adding more screens to the mix just made things hilarious. 
2. I'm guilty of asking people to watch a certain video or play a song, but that's putting in requests to someone who is already watching videos or listening to music. Perspective, people - if we're engaged in an activity together, the phone is secondary.  If you didn't have your smart phone we would just be doing something else.

But when you whip out your phone while we are having a conversation for the sole purpose of communicating with an outside party, you are sending a clear signal that you would rather be talking to the person on your phone than the people you are with.  I've written about this before:

"Shit. Hold on guys, I need to take this," I'm shaking as I leave the patio table in front of the bar and answer my phone, partly because it's cold outside, partly out of fear, and partly because I'm a little hungover. Or a lot hungover. Whatever.

This is a big fucking deal, because I don't do that. I also don't use call waiting, and I won't talk on the phone while I'm hanging out with someone else. It's fucking rude. Seriously, if I'm constantly texting someone when I'm around you it means I don't want to be around you.

Exceptions to these rules include but are not limited to (1) giving directions to a member of our party who has yet to arrive, (2) receiving directions for a destination to which we have yet to travel, and (3) my mother, because she only calls when something is wrong. 

Is this for your job?  Remember that part in Hook when Robin Williams answers his phone in front of his kids and then acts like a total dick?  That's you. You're the guy who forgot how to play. Go suck on a dead dog's nose.

There is a difference between "sorry, this might be an emergency" and "omg, Cute Guy just said something hilare on FB!  LIKE!"

Is it ironic that I write blogs on the internet but do not like smart phones? I'm not sure.  I write a blog to let out frustration, tell stories, share ideas.  And by "share ideas" I don't mean post pictures of things I like.  When I started doing this I did it to develop a dialogue for my thoughts, as a way for me to understand things about myself and why I behaved a certain way.  Meeting fellow bloggers was a plus - people who felt the same way I did about the concept of ideas but had completely different ideas themselves. I didn't really start sharing this blog with friends (other than a very select few) until all those bloggers all but disappeared and moved on...

I feel like the very nature of a smart phone - immediate gratification without thought or purpose - is discordant with the reason I like the internet in the first place. I like the thinking part. This is, perhaps, part of the reason why I don't like Yelp - it's letting random ass people do your thinking for you. It doesn't feel like sharing ideas, it feels like a fucking circle jerk.

Personally, I'm far more interested in why you like using a smart phone.  All of the positives I can think of for smart phone technology feel like negatives to me, so there must be a reason, and my inability to look at it from another perspective is worrisome.  So if anyone would like to explain it...please help.

They make me feel disconnected from people, disconnected from the world which is odd, since they're supposed to make you feel more connected.  They scare me. They make me feel boastful and superficial, and I do not like feeling that way.  People may see me as boastful or superficial, and that's fine.  I can't help that.  I just don't want to feel that way.  

Otherwise, from now on if I notice someone check their phone in the middle of a conversation without reason, I'm just going to walk away.

...

Reasons for Things

Let's get one thing straight:

Zombies are annoying.

Fucking annoying.  And if you think this is some "trying to be hip" shit, fuck off.  In the dawn of the craze I just laughed along with everyone when they were all zommed out.  I loved Shawn of the Dead.  I read The Zombie Survival Guide.  I watched the George Romero movies because it's what I do, I watch all the movies. It's pointless to have an opinion on something I know nothing about.

I used to allow music to fall into that trap - I would assume I didn't like a band without ever listening to them, due to some some convoluted and irrelevant connection I made.

But that stems from the insecurity I had when I was a freshman in college and I pretended to like things so people would like me (Dave Matthews Band, Pink Floyd, Jimmy Buffet).  Remember that episode of Full House where DJ pretends to like cars? It was like that.  Obviously I learned nothing from FH.  I also vehemently denied my love for Buffy the Vampire Slayer (before a rooster crows YOU WILL DENY ME THREE TIMES) and cheap fantasy.  I wanted to be cool very, very badly.

I didn't want to be that girl I was in high school, harassed in the hallways, never dated anyone, ate lunch alone in a bathroom stall (Mean Girls really hit home for me).  My closest friends didn't invite me to parties because I was so caustic and dorky.  Then I found out some of my male friends called me "the dyke" behind my back because I "talk like a dude" and "play softball" they treated me like a novelty instead of a real person with feelings (of course I had a crush on two of them even thought they treated me terribly, why? Because teenagers are dumb. Like zombies.).

It took me a long time to get over stuff like that.  I was shocked when someone wanted to spend time with me, terrified it was just to tease me.  When someone actually seemed to enjoy my company I grew distressed and confused, because I was a worthless loser and I didn't deserve it. 

I still have to re-convince myself every single day that my friends and co-workers aren't ashamed of me. So I repeat this: I am fucking awesome. If I say it enough, it will be true. Right?

How the fuck did I get here?  Shit. Scroll up.  What's the point?  Right.  Zombies.

So I tried really hard to squeeze myself into what I thought other people thought was cool, and then I realized: um, fuck those people.  I came out of the closet as a Pink Floyd hater first, which I knew would get me the most vitriol.  But I was educated.  "Roger Waters has the worst voice ever.  The only good songs are sung by David Gilmour, who is a dreamboat."   And so on.

I was so fucking proud of myself.  Became an authority.  Did research, deduced my technical and emotional reactions and told everyone my conclusions.  Absorbed myself in musical history and just basically ignored every song that came out from 2004-2010 unless someone literally shoved it down my throat.  Got really into John Cale and Harry Nilsson. Hipster, right?

Goddammit.  Zombies.

Zombies are annoying.

That whole digression illustrates three very important things:

1. This anti-zombie thing is not a conclusion I arrived at willy-nilly.  I watched a lot of shitty movies and one shitty TV show to make sure I was right. HOWEVER: I did it all under the assumption that I wouldn't like it.  Which, of course, affects the outcome considerably.
2. I really wanted to be a part of the zombie thing, because I love being a part of things, but...I couldn't feign interest. I've never been able to get into it.  
3. I now have a huge personal aversion to doing things just because other people do them, which is, of course, the nature of zombies.

So I like my apocalypses either (a) zombie-free or (b) clever to the point of insanity.

I like them slightly cheesy, gritty, and full of hopeful camaraderie.

I like rag-tag misfits, but the good kind, not the bitchy, whiny Glee kind (the thing about Glee is that NO ONE LIKES THOSE KIDS BECAUSE THEY'RE DICKS, not because they're singing homosexuals. This isn't 1997.)

I like my writing hyper self-aware or blissfully dismissive.

I like my heroes with defining characteristics other than "alive" and "outnumbered."  I mean, the thought of a world of undead going about their day looking for flesh to eat is not a pleasant one and is surely mighty creepifiying, and I get the damn metaphor, guys.

But the real reason...okay. Breathe.

I don't talk about this because even thinking about it is giving me skin flares and that thing, you know, that thing where it feels like someone is squeezing your heart but so they can make juice out of it?  That thing? What's it called? Fear. 

That's how I feel about this.  I can do this. This is me being vulnerable. Is admitting your fears showing vulnerability?  Fuck yeah it is. 

Cannibalism scares the piss out of me. The fucking piss.  Have you ever seen Ravenous? God, I'm grossed out just thinking about it. Or Cannibal Holocaust? I watched that alone - oh, god, when...four years ago? But I read it was the most controversial movie ever so I had to watch it, I had to, and I literally threw up.  Actual throw-upping.  It happened.  Kkkkaaahhhkkk.  Nguah. Ngaaaaaah.  Vom sounds.  Breathe.

So it's not the zombies that scare me.  It's what comes after them from a genre standpoint.

Zombies are just like, cannibal-lite.  They're just a step below.   Zombies + Human Centipede = SCARY HORROR CANNIBALISM HORROR GATEWAY OF FUCKING HORROR.  I want the zombie shit to stop so the cannibal shit never starts, because once we mainstream cannibal horror movies I AM GOING TO HAVE STEADY, CONSTANT NIGHTMARES FOREVER AND I LIVE ALONE.

Now you know.


...

things that will do what my stuffy nose refuses to goddamn do

the sunrise, old t-shirts, hearts and thoughts, hi-top haircuts, recipe cards and photographs, rites and rituals and songs and scars, blue jeans, trends, memories, flower petals, shadows, stars and shame and thunderstorms, time, evil, intentions, words, phrases, the spine of a book, pain and experience, the smell of a new car (and eventually the brakes), the name of that one guy you met that one time, autumn leaves, hangovers, the light, ambition, vignettes, political approval ratings, moderate dislike, values, magic, celebrity, fear, internet memes, the number of people who have heard of Paul McCartney, sacrilege, cares and worries, reason, beauty and allure, inspiration, tattoos, legends, tradition, mosquito bites, landlines, a blush, a smile, flashing images that live in the corner of your eye and, oh! the swirly shit you see when you slam your eyes closed, hard...to black, bitches, BUT NOT MY TERRIBLE COLD.

Inhale

This is Part 5 of the Wir Gehen Nach Deutschland series, which is, apparently, a series now, because I just called it a series, just now, and there are eleven of them, which is bonkers.

Part 1: Fashion Scarves in Fucking Charge

Part 2: Predictable

Part 3: Noishenvantengutencastlestein v. Hitler's Casino

Part 4: Beating Hitler at His Own Game

Part 5: Inhale

Part 6: After the Fox

Part 7: Like Mountain

Part 8: But You Know. Sweden.

Part 9: It's Fine

Part 10: Kiss Off

 Part 11: Red Man Says Nein

Obviously after Salzburg (soooo obv btw) we did more things, but I can't think of a way to turn them into something more interesting than a generic list of things.

But after Salzburg there was currywurst, and the next day Dachau.  To this very second I have no idea why I willingly went back to that godforsaken place--in 2003 it sent me into such a fucking emotional funk--

Oh, I just got it.

In fourth grade I read Number the Stars for Battle of the Books and after that I guzzled every age-appropriate World War II reading I could find.  I remember Snow Treasure and The Devil's Arithmetic and The Upstairs Room and Escape from Warsaw.  I needed to know that there were heroes that stood against real-life monsters.

My dad purchased the hardcover second volume of Maus while all this was going on and one night I glanced at the cover of the book in his hand and begged him to let me read it.  Dad was thrilled, and he immediately shot into a detailed description of the plot while my mom listened silently.  When he left to go find the first volume for me, Mom protested with stoic vehemence.  I was too young, it was too graphic.  So I had to steal it.  I just inhaled the whole damn thing.

In fifth grade we actually studied the war in class which was pretty much the most exciting thing that ever happened to me, and I knew all of the books and I was so fucking proud of myself. Fifth grade also marked the year I was allowed to ride my bike across the ultra-trafficky 75th Street, which meant, of course, the library.  And the library sans parents meant the second floor, and the second floor meant the adult section, and the adult section meant everything in the world ever.

I would plop down on the floor in an aisle with a stack from the bookshelf in front of me in a robotic-apology-loop where a fellow patron would step over me in a huff and I would give a mechanical "sorry," affixed on whatever book.  Sometimes I'd apologize to no one, which could only mean one of two things: ONE! I have supersonic hearing. TWO! Ghosts. 

(As an aside, I just learned that one of my ears is higher than the other and it's like, destroying me)

(Not because I have an aversion to asymmetry but because when you learn about your own ill-proportioned ears at the ripe age of 31 [oh my fucking god I am 31] it is a wee bit dscomforting)

(also my glasses are crooked)

But I was sitting in the library when I saw this:

It took me about two seconds to fall in love with a murdered Russian POW.  He was the saddest, most beautiful thing I'd ever seen.  All of my previous loves - Fritz from Swiss Family Robinson, Wesley from Princess Bride, Matt who lived down the street but went to a private school so I only saw him in the summer - they all meant nothing.  None of them endured the savagery that he faced bravely.  Because in my head he was defiant and brave, and he refused to let the bastards get him down, even when they dangled him in a low-pressure chamber to see how much the healthy human body could stand.

I created fantasy backstories where he survived, where he gained immortality, where he became a god, where he volunteered for the experiment to save the life of his little brother or his father or his girlfriend (who was, of course, me).  He was a Dachau hero slaughtered for raising a rebellion against Sigmund Rascher's sadistic medical regime.  He was the greatest pilot in the world, he had successfully escaped from 32 other POW camps and was executed as an example of the price of revolution.  I imagined he's survived by a grandson who I will meet ten years after seeing this picture and we recognize each other from across a crowded room, and I am the only person who conceivably understands the image that haunts his family history and together we embark on adventures seeking retribution and then we move to Ireland and make so many babies.

Fifth-grade era me sat in the library and ran through all of these scenarios and cried.

Then going back to Dachau and seeing this picture all terrible and huge - I nearly lost it in 2003, and I nearly lost it again back in April. But we all know the Holocaust was horrific.  I don't need to prove that to you. 

Fifth-grade-era me knew so much.  Fifth-grade-era me knew about Nazi experimentation and the various historical Inquisitions of the church and sex and suicide and rape and apartheid and AIDS, but fifth-grade-era me still, deep-down, totally believed in Santa Claus.  No one could take that away from me no matter how hard they tried.  Kids teased me about it, my parents would say, "Now, don't tell your little sister that Santa doesn't exist" and I would be like, "of course" and then I would fantasize being a reindeer trainer in the North Pole.

And I still do shit like that.

...

Advice, I think, is the root of all evil.

I am one of those people who is always late. Always. Without exception.

Rarely do I blame anyone other than myself for this. I know I am late. I know it’s bad. For the sake of perspective, chronic lateness is a bigger problem than chronic, say, ugliness.

Being ugly doesn't hurt, it doesn't ruin lunches or get you fired (technically). People do not assume ugliness is a sign of disrespect. Ugly surgeons still save lives. They still meet deadlines, they are Eagle-Scout prepared for shit, they don't get charged ugly fees on their cell phone bills.

As first-world Americans we don't really like ugly people, so we have all these ways to repair physical appearance. And when an ugly person refuses to see their looks as a burden, we freak out. "No!" we say. "You cannot be ugly! Give us this money and hide behind these products because we do not want to look at you. Also, do not use the word 'ugly.' It will give you low self-esteem.  Here, conceal your natural face behind this.  Now you can feel good about yourself! Your face isn't offensive anymore!"

We keep inventing ways to fix a problem that really is not a fucking problem at all, and in doing so we are perpetuating the problem. 'Beautiful' is feeling good and comfortable about your appearance, even if your face looks like goblin feet.

But lateness...holy shit. Lateness is a legitimate problem with legitimate consequences. It's an unforgivable offense, it is a conscious action. It is the theft of time.

We do not coddle the late-comers, because they don't deserve shit.  In our society that functions almost solely on time and immediacy, fucking latecomers are assholes.  We demand an explanation.  How can you be late?  There is a schedule!

But everything is scheduled down to detailed insanity. Our lives are so unnaturally over-scheduled that we have to set arbitrary time aside to eat, sleep, and exercise, and those should be the three most important things we do to survive and be healthy.

Why is it that when someone's life is scatterfucked in such away that those three things become an encumbrance instead of a necessity we assume it's because they are lazy or disrespectful or trying to exert control over others?  Instead of helping people learn how to overcome lateness, we say, "You are bad at schedules.  Schedule more things! More bad schedules will make you punctual."

Who fucking does this? What kind of problem-solving logic are you using? 

Why do we try to solve ugly and berate late, when late is actually a problem that requires a solution in this day and age? 

Now, one of the reasons this is frustrating to me is because I cannot solve my lateness. This is partly because the passage of time never feels linear and so it doesn't make sense and it fuddles my brain. I can accurately gauge distance and direction, always, but time? Shit.

I don't know what to do. I have been googling for a week, and it's all, "Decide you will be on time.  Leave earlier.  Recognize the fact that you are disrespectful and everyone hates you.  Take their feelings into account.  You cannot please everyone.  Stop trying to control everyone else's life.  You are rude and people don't like being around you.  You choose to be late to everything all the time always.  Why do you hate yourself?  Calm the fuck down.  Stop being self-centered."

Advice, I think, is the root of all evil.

So...do you have any?

...

My Hands are a Little Dirty.

The other night my brain did that thing where I have waking nightmares and sleep paralysis, and I hate that shit.

Right after I graduated from college, during my brief stint in grad school before I realized it was a waste of time and money, three very important things happened:  (1) I got really into The X-Files, (2) I saw The Notebook and realized Ryan Gosling was a crazy, crazy creepo, and (3) I taught myself how to control the action in my dreams. Lucid dreaming is almost automatic for me, but then again that's just the awareness of being in a dream, and not controlling the action.

But sometimes the dream fights back and won't let me take charge, and then it makes fun of me.  It's like my psyche is lashing back over having too much control and starts to fuck with me.  So I will dream about Ryan Gosling, for example, and then my dream will make him speak, and speaking completely defeats the purpose of people like Ryan Gosling, who is not a real person at all.  If he had a voice like, say, LA Confidential-era Russell Crowe or Fabulous Baker Boys-era Jeff Bridges or always-era Paul Newman, things would be different.  But he doesn't.  He speaks like Ryan Gosling, or an audible abusive relationship, which means he always sounds a little bit drunk and kinda pervy and sensitive to the point of serious violence. He's best in photographs with feminist thought bubbles and Drive. 

So Ryan Gosling and dream-Rassles are in an elevator boudoir, and I am like, "Oh, this dream is about to get ab-tastic" and then Ryan Gosling speaks, and dream-Rassles is all, "No good.  Talk like Bruce Willis" and he totally ignores me and smirks and then dream-me is all, "shut UP Ryan Gosling" and Ryan Gosling is all, "u wan me ta shoo urp n hid mer emoshins? Za wah u wan?" and I'm all "YES" and he takes off his shirt and starts to fucking cry, wiping his nose on the bedsheets, and I'm like "How about this - shut your mouth or I'll kick your teeth down your throat and I'll shut it for you" and he smashes a window and starts carving my name into his arm with a giant shard of glass and then he just looks at me.  Like a horny Labrador.  And I'm all "stop eyefucking me, Gosling" and then he gets stigmata and a bunch of Golden Globe nominations.

But that wasn't my nightmare.

For those who aren't familiar with it--during that stretch of time between wakefulness and legit sleep, if you can slide yourself in there...that's how you start actively influencing your dreams.  At least, that's how it works with me.  Usually I have to make the conscious decision before I sleep.

The problem is this: sometimes I don't make the decision and my brain gets switched around, so instead of me consciously controlling the dream, I have no idea I am dreaming and everything is fucking terrifying and more realistic than life.

So the other night I was laying in bed, waiting to fall asleep, when a severed head started throwing up on my stomach, and I was like, "WHAT THE FUCK" but I couldn't move or speak. But then I heard my dog and I strained to move my eyes and just out of the corner I saw a giant fucking Overlord gargoyle beating my dog, alternating between my Louisville Slugger and his rocky fists, and I could hear my dog screaming and I tried to cry and snarl, and then someone started smashing rocks through my bedroom window and the gargoyle like apparated over to me and raised the bat above my head, beating his wings and laughing like a small child, and I was struggling and trying to move because my dog was still alive and I knew I needed to kill him and put him out of his misery, he whimpered and sputtered to breathe, and I couldn't fight and fucking kill everything around me, I couldn't do that, and I couldn't cry and I was so, so, so scared, and the vomit was coagulating all around me and slipping down my sides and it smelled like roadkill and old milk and the severed head rolled between my legs.

And I woke up screaming and sweating and yelling, "WHAT THE FU--" and I felt the shadowed gargoyle whisp away, and I felt the bat land on my neck and bounce off my jugular and heard it thwack into my dog and clatter on the ground, and I heard my dog die, I felt my crushed windpipe and the warm vomit and at the "--UCK!" and I woke up, and all was well.  But I was sure it was there.  I was so sure.

I smashed my head into the wall behind me, and I started crying. 

I walked over to the corner and picked up my bat, which was resting nicely where it lives. And I carried it around my apartment and I looked in every single corner, because I was sure.  It was there.  I knew it.  But I was clean, and my dog lives with my parents.  I turned on all of the lights.  No one was there.  I took a shower.  I got dressed and walked around the block with the bat.  When I got home I watched Drive.  Twice.

Now, I know it's sleep paralysis.  I'm familiar with it.  But can't my brain come up with something less sinister? Some people just imagine a monkey sitting there at the foot of the bed, but no, with me it's all baffing severed heads and dog-murdering gargoyles. I wrote this letter:

Dear My Brain,
Please stop being so scary. You are not helping.
Regards, Me

I've been grinding my teeth for days.  It hurts my jaw and my head.  And it's like, why can't my paralyzing dreams be of Ryan Gosling?  I don't mind his voice that much.  I swear.

...

Debates for the Universe

Is there a God? Why is it that when you slice a seashell in half, you find math inside? Why can't I start working at noon as I am not a farmer? Does a man really want a woman with a sense of humor, or does he just want a woman who laughs at his jokes? Who is the sadist that keeps on airing those ASPCA commercials?

When did irony stop functioning as a rhetorical device and become a cultural slogan for sloppy contrast? Who steals my pens when I'm not at my desk? Are dragons real? Chickens and eggs, which came first? Who is the most important musical figure since the inception of Rock and Roll: Elvis, Les Paul, or the Beatles as a cheeky whole? Why does everyone buy Puffs and still call it Kleenex?

Who coined the phrase "throw you under the bus"?  Where do they live?  Is it near a bus stop?  Why do people repeat that phrase when it makes no sense and sounds fucking idiotic?  Why are potato stems useless? How many apple seeds can you eat before you feel the effects of the cyanide? How is it statistically possible that I am undefeated in air hockey (Holla)?

Does anyone ever enjoy a Hollywood reboot? When did rope become irrelevant? How did Mrs. Grass chicken noodle soup become a proven placebo cure-all for everything bad ever ever?  How did I get so close to one set of grandparents and retain such antipathy for the other? Fucking magnets, how do they work?  Which is better: quality or nostalgia; sub-question: So which is the best Weezer album?

My grandpa died last night.  This one.   I am sad.  My grandmother, from the other side of the family, passed away about a month and a half ago.  I was not nearly as sad.  Oh, I really want to get drunk. 

...

Don't expect him to thank or forgive you

The fourth of July left me lonely and covered in bug bites, like I sprouted fifty-seven fat, red nipples in the most inconvenient areas of my body, including my forehead and six of my toes. I looked amazing.  Every time I stepped onto my rug I would fist up my toes and scratch them along the shag and breathe.  Simple pleasures, really.  Itch fulfillment and drippy air-conditioning window units propped up on rocks.  And a new ceiling fan, one that doesn't spin like a renegade hula hoop.  You know, for kids. Now the itching is all gone, but those fucking red bumps are still there, and I wish they itched with the same ferocity of the Tuesday-era bug bites.

Remember the good old days, like last Tuesday?  When you paid the price for fun with uncomfortable tingling, but you could vanquish the fuck out of it with a scrape?  Because you're a fighter, and you don't take no crap out of nobody. Mosquitoes are fucking loitering hooligans, but they can't scare me.  I wear my weekend festivities on my forehead, and everyone knew I spent a warm night outside and my only regret was a lack of bug spray.

Sure, everyone probably spent a warm night outside that weekend.  Let me have my pride.

I tried scratching my toes on the carpet this morning just for shits, but without satisfying an itch, just barely quieting feeble memories of last Tuesday when I could still feel them.  I miss it, oddly.  As annoying and uncomfortable as those bug bites were, I preferred having the itch to not. 



day 25 - a song that makes you laugh




...

Catch the Spit

Day 2: your least favorite song

I have a very low tolerance for shrillness, for nasal voices, for...unpleasant sounds. I react violently, shaking in irritation and angry at whatever fuckhead is assaulting my ears.



Rush sucks. Geddy Lee makes me wish I carried a team of knives to stab my ear canal in case I hear this song and cant turn it off. I don't even know why I posted the video. I suppose it's because those are the "rules."

You know what? Fuck you, rules.

Lee can play the shit out of a bass (not in this song, though, because in this song he's basically all synth and when he switches to bass I just get angry and shout "MAKE UP YOUR MIND, GEDDY, YOU HONKY HOSER"), I'll give you that, but they couldn't find anyone else to sing lead vocals?

I hate the contrivance of the John Teshy synthesizer (yeah, I know, Rush is pre-John Tesh, but not in Rassles years because I knew about John Tesh before I knew about Rush), I hate how Lee's voice compliments absolutely no tangible instruments ever played by man except for maybe a theremin, which is just wagging your hand in radio waves anyway. I hate how their version of a modern-day rebel sounds like an annoying asshole that I don't want to be around. I hate how their idea of a rebel is Tom Sawyer, who I've never seen as a rebel and more of a mischievous kid trying to start some shit because he's a dick.

Now, I understand that some people believe the song is a critique on the modern day rebel, and to those people I say: Shut the hell up. Let me go on hatin.

Plus, I was always more of a Huck Finn girl, myself. Huck Finn owns.

...

It's February. People Are Bound to Get Hurt.

So apparently growling, "I see yer a geologist now, ye bastard!" is not the appropriate way to congratulate a co-worker on her recent engagement, and even the further explanatory phrases of "geologist? rocks? precious stones? are you fucking engaged, or do I need to take my metaphors elsewhere?" aren't warranted.

There are two of them right now in the office. Engaged people. With fee-on-says. One question popped right after the fucking other with giggling and rings and sweet fucking Christ you should see the blood diamonds these guys dug up for my co-workers,.

I've been waiting for this day, when all my co-workers are married baby-makers, and not one of them asks when it's my turn to settle down.

So here's my question: is that because my co-workers are fairly progressive (because they are, and that's one of the reasons I like it here) and they know that people don't need to be married to be happy (not that I'm very happy - we all know I am an angry, confused, smashed little car crash)? Is it because they don't think I have a chance in hell of ever getting married in the first place? Is it because they don't give a shit about me or my relationship status?

I am far too insecure to be dealing with this right now.

What did you guys get for Valentines Day? I got bronchitis, a flat tire, a new mole, and a papercut on that skin between my thumb and my forefinger. Bullshit. Stupid February.

...

Impound

I left the auto pound on Saturday afternoon all dirty and sour and broke, but with my beautiful, battle-scarred car who loves me unconditionally, even when I leave him out in the cold. Poor thing was on a snow route between 3AM and 7AM on Friday night. Who has the patience to read the goddamn novels posted on street signs? Obviously not a single person in Chicago, because they were all at the fucking auto pound on Saturday picking up their cars.

There were about sixty people heeled into the double-wide that houses the Chicago Auto Pound's maze of a queue and it smelled like fucking bitter exhaustion. The guy behind me was wearing a fur-collared coat like it was a Hawaiian shirt, zipped open over his bare, red gut and a cartoonish, seven-inch silver cross hung perfectly between a pair of ruddy pecs. He hacked into grimy hands and kept on growling to his buddy about getting a "wrecker" in one of those voices that sounds like rock quarry. I wanted to tell him to wash his hands and put on a fucking shirt. It's ten degrees outside. This isn't fucking Kokomo.

The guy with him might not have been his buddy at all, I mean he could have just been a random dude standing in line that had to awkwardly half-chuckle at some boulder stranger's undecipherable jokes while trying to avoid eye contact with his gaping naval. I couldn't stop staring at it. Every time I turned, there it was being all belly-buttony and gross, like someone jammed a tulip bulb into a blowhole.

This one middle-aged woman in Juicy pants and Uggs took a good fucking half hour. She kept on sending her sixteen-year old son out to the car while she lovingly manhandled her adolescent daughter and argued with the worker in the window. And he would trudge outside and come back with some scrap of paper and hand it to her with loathing, and she would snap, "Whadaya doin? This expired in, like, foor yeers ago and it was fer the Acura. Go bayack and just bring mahmmy everything yoo find."

And he would stare at her with undead eyes fueled by sixteen years of scorn and belittlement, resigning back into the cold while his mom ran her manicure through her daughter's golden hair. "He doon't knoow where the glove compartment is at," she scoffed conversationally to the woman in the window, who snorted. "His dayad never teached him anything." I wanted to punch her. On behalf of grammar and justice.

Plus, the couple in front of me kept on making out and telling secrets in giggly, hushed Spanish and I was totally freaked out.

Nearly two hours later and I'm riding in a van with a wheezy old man around the pound trying to find my car in a lot the size of Siberia, and just as dirty, barren and cold. I hate it there.  But I've always wanted to go to Siberia...

...

I Am Stronger Than Professionalism

This is just a little gripe, a horrible bullshit whiny nancy move and I probably shouldn't even post it but I'm in desperate need of validations right now: lately I've been pissed as shit at all the liars out there that put fantasies into my head. Confidence in my abilities does not look good on me. It's so much easier to drag through life knowing I suck at everything than it is to keep putting effort into dreams and getting shot down.

I mean, I'm going to keep on trying to get paid to write. I won't stop. But you know those people out there that say 'you have to believe you can do it or you never will' and all those fucking false, uppity, horsefeathery ideas that they drip into the ears of failures so they'll blame their mindset instead of their ability? I love what they're trying to do here, but sometimes a little honesty would be nice. "You don't have the skill or likability to do this professionally, Ross. Don't give up. Just face reality: most people are better at this than you are."

But I can't have any illusions here, as if I was some sort of scribbling savant shouldering a muse. If I could pick a muse, it would probably be Calliope and that's not just because I was Calliope in the eighth grade school play which I totally co-wrote, by the way. We sang I love I love my Mount Olympian girls to Calendar Girl and my line was, "Calliope: her good guys always win" and then I narrated the stories of Theseus slaying the evil Medusa where Theseus was an aspiring hairdresser, and of Perseus and the Minotaur where Perseus was a pizza delivery guy, and therefore an expert on topography and the psychology of space. It was so much easier to get your shit into the world in eighth grade. In eighth grade I was an epic, comedic genius.

But now, apparently, I am too "edgy." I lack "professional" knowledge of a topic (how much more professional can you get to write about cult classics than working at a fucking video store and rating like 4,000 movies on Netflix? Really? You want some pap smear with a film degree? Fucking bogus). That's the big thing, really. I lack the professionalism, experience, background,

Why don't they just say they don't like my writing? Dicks. I understand that my business writing skills are bullshit. I know. I'm too self-referential and when I eliminate first-person it sounds stiff and elitist and fuck.

There are people out there who believed in me and asked me write things for them, and I've fucked up every single one of those. I would lose sleep over it. Friends need band bios, or website copywriting, they give me ideas for short stories and they're so inspirational and wonderful for trusting me and my ability to promote and portray something so important to them. And I'll agree and get excited and sit down to write, because I know that this time I fucking got this. I'm hopeful, confident that I'll pull something sparkly and whimsical and excellent. I know I will, because someone I care about trusted me to do it.

I'll start typing and by word three it's just a fucking document wasteland, and eventually becomes some variation of, "You goddamn useless piece of shit, why can't you just write like all of the normal people in the world? Get it done. You can do this. If Stephanie Meyer can write a series of books, you can write a band bio. People love your writing. You had a fan club. Why are you such a fucking cumbucket of spider legs and suck, you fat, worthless, disgusting thing?" Then I cry, smack myself around. Sit in the bathroom and pull my hair like a bratty child without candy, do a red-faced mirror pep talk to snap out of it and notice how horrible the lighting is in that bathroom, and then I cry again because who could ever love someone so self-loathing?

Shit, this is depressing. I should not post this, but I have to. Otherwise I'm going to just stare at the draft every day and I'll never resolve anything. I need to just let the internet deal with my incompetence because I am not emotionally capable of handling it on my own. And this blog was always about stories and honesty. Breathe.

This post began as a pledge letter for work. I was drafting a letter and it mutated into a blog post about how I have writers block unless I'm writing about me. Do you see what I mean?

Shit. Shitshitshit.

...

Boy, It Sure Is Fun Painting This Here Fence

By the way, you people are fucking useless. Everyone exctept for Mae, who totally gave me a sweet picture to use that inspired me to create similar ones and I've gotten incredibly lazy about the whole thing, because I am very good at starting things and not very good at finishing them. Grinding ideas into irrelevant jokes is one of my superpowers (along with being the boss and blockin' cock (lame)), but a deprecating, esoteric superpower that really only exists in my mind.

Katsisch, the middle sister, is moving into an apartment from the depths of my parents' basement, and I helped paint her new place on Sunday because I love painting walls and changing things that I find boring. I've never been a visibly flashy person, and I never will be (it would make me insufferable) but boring is boring is boring is boring, you know?

Of course, Katsisch is a horrible painter but a master project evader, and after a few hours she'd unevenly smeared lavender paint all over the walls and I told her to go back to my parents' so I could stay and clean up her bullshit job.

So as I was wiping up the purple paint water I sprayed all over her new kitchen during "clean up," the oven started beeping. Stupid oven. I beat it and kicked it a few times, pressed every button with force and malice, and ripped the oven door right off the damn thing.

It wasn't even hard. I lifted the door and sighed at it as the oven blared away. There weren't even any fucking lights on, the clock wasn't set, I don't even think it was fucking plugged in.

Oven doors really aren't as heavy as you'd expect. Out of shock, I carried it around the apartment with me while I looked for more paper towels and cleaning products, getting chips of oven soot and grease all over Katsisch's three-day-old apartment carpet, waving my arms in frustration. I went out on her balcony and considered throwing it into traffic just to be a bitch, because fuck you, oven door.

Back inside the oven was still going off like a fucking smoke alarm (maybe it's the smoke alarm?) so I called my sister and told her I fucked up. She was all, "Talk to mom" and then I panicked, rambling on about beeping oven alarms and flapping around the oven door like a fucking lunatic Icarus, and my mom was all, "why don't you just turn the oven off?" and bam, beeping stopped. I did nothing.

"Okay, so it just stopped."

"See?"

"I didn't do anything."

"Don't worry about it, everything's fine."

"What do I do about the door?"

"Put it back on or leave it there. Get some sleep." Just like that. Like it's no big deal. She did the same thing when I set the basement on fire, like, "I thought I smelled something. Get some sleep." But when I wore a t-shirt to school or pierced my nose it was all, "WHAT ARE YOU WEARING? TAKE IT OFF. NOW. Go put something else on. Something appropriate. When you're supporting yourself you can wear whatever you want, but right now blah blah bliggity blonk you'll thank me." To her it was all about accident versus intent. I get that.

I do not thank her for those clothes, by the way. I'm still angry that I had to wear button up shirts and sweaters throughout high school. No sweatshirts unless I wore a collar underneath them, nothing with a hood, no ripped jeans, and all this because I got a scholarship to Bennett Academy and I didn't want to go because private schoolers were jerks, so what did she do? Turned me into a fucking jerk.

Whatever.

Not that you care, but I can't find an appropriate fall jacket anywhere. I wore the same jacket for eight years, and some asshole stole it off the back of my chair at a bar. Probably because the whole faux military/motorcycle jacket thing is all trendy right now. Whatever. I bought it at Old Navy, it's not like it's anything special to anyone but me. Now they're walking around wearing my well-worn coat, with my grandmother's buttons and the lining I added, and I never realized how attached I was to it, and everything's upside down because I miss my bike and my jacket and it's cold outside, and I feel incomplete.

If this were a movie, I would get everything back. Fuckers stealing my shit.

...

Solitaire

"No, don't eat anything," I say. "You don't need to. Anything. You are just refilling your water and that is it." I plunge myself towards the kitchen, swimming. "And getting ice. Be glad you don't live in a fucking swamp." Fill up my glass and open the freezer, quickly grabbing the top ice cube tray and spilling slushy, half frozen water all over myself. I sigh and look down.

"FUCK. That feels glorious. Leave the water on the floor. You don't give a fuck, no you don't. You know who gives a fuck? Doesn't matter. Not you. Get ice cubs," I crack a second, frozen tray, "and get the fuck out of here." I open the freezer again to put them back and my hand tickles a heavy sealed bag. "Unless you am eatin' them fucking ice cream diblets," I snatch the bag and slam the freezer door. "Them're acceptable. Spiritually and physically. In fact, might as well finish 'em. Ain't wrong with that. Your stomache's all grumblypantsy and you're a stupid bitch either way. Ice cream heals everything but heartache."

The bag won't open. "Fuckin sticky frozen horseshit," I say, and angrily gut it open with a carving knife and pop three of those little things in my mouth. "Okay. Don't do that shit again. And then tomorrow, you will ride your new bike. Clandestine bikes are no good, they must be ridden, you farthead. Even if it's hot. Yes, even if it's hot, because velocity craps wind. Seriously. If you don't there will be shmonsequences. Speaking of hot: do not dutch oven yourself tomorrow morning. That's for the winter." There aren't a lot of the ice cream dibs left in the bag. They're gone quickly. I stare at inside the empty bag and consider licking the chocolate lingering on the palm of my hand, and look around to make sure there are no hidden cameras in my kitchen. I stare at my hand and jam it under the sink faucet, convinced that someone in the world can see me. "Okay. Go back to the lazy boy. Don't forget your water. You will pass the Mystic Cave Zone on the first try, why? Because you are not a sally. You are...well, you're not sally."

I walk down my dark hallway, pausing at the closed door to the empty second bedroom. I have to work in seven hours. But first I have to beat Sonic 2, and before that I have important doorknobs to ponder.

I stare at the doorknob. "You are not a sally. You are stronger than Dr. Robotnik, you will free woodland creatures and collect the chaos emeralds, and you are not as lonely as you think you are."

I look away from the door and start walking back over to my lazyboy. "Also, while you're at it? Talk to yourself more. It's extremely sexy and all the rage in France."

...

Maybe I incepted Inception into Christopher Nolan whilst HE slept.

You guys, I'm sure, have seen trailers for Inception.

Well, fuck. There goes my book. I have to change it. Again. Dreaming is going to be the new It Overused Plot Device. Like time-travelling zombie vampires with only short-term memories with a multiple-personality twist at the end (oh, Jesus, I hope not. I hope people take this movie and let it stand alone and DON'T FUCKING WITH THE DREAMING.) because I mean, seriously? You know how long it takes to try to write a book, and create and imagine new devices from goddamn scratch?

(I am not going to talk about it, by the way. The book. Any questions you ask will be graciously ignored. I didn't tell anyone I was even working on one because I don't want to be fucking pestered all the time. "How's your book? What's it about? Am I in it? How much have you written? Can I read some of it? When do you think you'll finish it? How does it start?" All that shit does is stress me out.)

You know how long it takes? A long time. That's how long. I am such a fucking idiot. I am way too insecure. No way am I going to be accused of copying anything, whether I did it or not. Must start over again. Luckily I can keep the same characters, but gee willikers. I have issues.

Obviously, I know, there have been stories about dreams for years. Centuries even. It's nothing new. But you know how lately pop culture takes one successful plot device and just goes fucking bonkers with it, hammering out like forty movies in two years with the exact same plot until it becomes spoofed in a Wayans brothers movie? And then you're like, "Seriously? Another movie about dreams? Fuck you, Hollywood."

I am stronger than my issues. Right? I am stronger than dreams. Keep on telling yourself that, me.

...

I leave for Ireland tomorrow. Everyone have a brilliant week. Go Hawks.

...

I Would Punch Burglars Were They In Range

Saturday afternoon.

There is a girl - attractive, brilliant, ripe, fucking hilarious. Mind-blowingly amazing. Picture the perfect woman.

Wait, real quick - what are the two greatest numbers in existence? Pi and 47. Right.

Okay, once again, picture the perfect woman. Assign her a number. Cube it. Multiply by pi. We just bumped her up to the next dimension, you geometrical geniuses. Add 47. Okay, now take that number and convert it back into a lady. See how she's like part unicorn, part dragon, and she can fry bacon with her eyes? She smells like butter and honey and spices that totally go with butter and honey. She can definitely fly just by the sheer force of her will.

Now imagine some asshole snatching her bike from inside her highly fortified (bricks and baseball bats) apartment building. Aren't you sad for her? Don't you want to just help her, comfort her?

No? You wanna tell her shit she "should" do, all the shit she did wrong to lead up to that moment, as if she isn't fully aware that leaving her bike unlocked in the hallway where it's been stored all winter is still risky? Bitch is part dragon, she knows what's up. She knows it's her fault. Stop reminding her. Fucking jerks. Tell her a joke, and then tell her she's pretty, and when she glares at you say something like, "pretty funny lookin!" and then if you're lucky, she'll give you a high five.

She's lounging lazily in ill-fitting cut-off sweatpants and a junior high 1994 Science Olympiad t-shirt, and on her it looks Awesome. Yeah, she was totally on the trivia team. She worked it back in 1994. In fact, she worked it on Thursday. It could be more realistic to suggest that she was drunk enough to think she was working it (but we all know she wasn't). Also, why do guys have girlfriends? Stupid. They should all just be sitting around waiting for her to show up and rip their world asunder, because she totally would. Seriously.

Fucking whatever, so she's easing herself back into the real world following a long night and an afternoon of rash decisions and Black Dynamite, when her mind slips over to that thing, that thing that happened earlier this week that she suppressed to keep herself from punching people that don't deserve to be punched (with the power of a unicorn/dragon/bacon-cookin' lady).

A friend was in from out of town. A good friend. And he brought good-looking friends that served as an adequate distraction for several days. They were in town for this, because they are brewers, and the beer was always savory and lush. So she didn't get her shit done because of beer.

But now she has to find her missing Schwinn. Do not put it off just because it's depressing, she says to herself. Le sigh.

She tackles the interwebs, powering through every single Craiglist post regarding bikes in Chicago and the surrounding area. She is determined to fight some fucking crime.

Twenty minutes later, she finds it. Well, she thinks she does. Someone is selling her bike (or something eerily similar) and a matching men's Schwinn Suburban as a vintage duo from their "grandparents' garage." But the bikes differ enough that she smells something dark and sinister in the corners of Craigslist.

The men's bike has a new seat, a headlight, and a storage rack above the rear tire. It's clean. The ladies' bike has the original mattress seat, rusted wire stays, loose brake cables. She wonders if the rear fender is dented. She zooms in on the picture: impossible to tell from the angle. She believes it's intentional.

Fuck these fucking fucks, she thinks, trying to SELL MY FUCKING BIKE with their douchebag Craigslist ad. "I really love these bikes and they ride great, but they just won't fit into the Prius!" Gag.

And they live in the Gold Coast, which means they pay about nine million dollars a month just to exist and brag about living in the fucking Gold Coast, which they totally pay for it by stealing bikes with heavy emotional mojo threaded into them and sell them for way more than they're worth, why? Because hipsters will pay asinine dollah dollah bills for anything "vintage."

She views the ad about fourteen times in thirty seconds, clicking back and forth on her browser before growling "fuck it" and sends the seller an email that asks too many questions. It's from the same email address that she posted around her apartment complex.

Rookie mistake. She regrets it almost immediately. Yes, she should have created a fake email address. She knows. You don't need to tell her. She was just so excited about stickin' it to 'em.

That's the only ad for a Schwinn Suburban in the past ten days, and Atticus has been missing for less time than that, so prior ads are useless. She obsesses over the picture posted by the Alleged Gold Coast Bike Burglars, willing it to reveal something, anything that proves this bike belongs to her.

She goes back to lounging and dreaming of punching those honky bastards with their bike-thieving treachery, hoping to get an email response.

Hours later, they alter their ad on Craigslist and say the ladies' bike was sold. They never respond to her email.

...

Things I Fear Are Less Scary When Confronted With Subpar Poetry (Slam!)

I.
In some malls there rests a store
with front adorned by smiling bears.
Do not be fooled! For at its core
amidst tufts of fluffy, cuddly gore
Build-A-Bear spawns plush nightmares.

Armies of limb and eye and knee
the heads of cubs impaled on sticks
shout, "Choose me! Hear me! Stuff me! Fluff me!
Take this shit and shove it up me."
What sadistic fuck approved of this?

Were you to ask, and ask you should
What paves the road to hell -
I'd say demonic whispers, intentions good,
fires that burn unfueled by wood,
and bits of bears that couldn't sell.


II.
The idea of dark?
just nothingness? life devoid?
Is the fucking worst.


III.
You might be familiar with my irrational fear
of Indiana, its people and places.
Well, most of you don't live so near
to see the state's hidden faces.

In regards to legitimate reason, there's none
excepting eyes of ice and faux humility,
those voices chill and monotone,
long roads that stretch into sterility.

It depresses, you know, it just fucking does,
it's all barren, industrial horseshit, or both.
You wish it better than it last was
But keep driving through there, swearing oath:

Just passing through, not stopping by
you motherfuckers won't take me alive.


IV.
Sometimes when people speak Spanish
the spaces between their words vanish
rapid verbal succession
when foreign's a weapon
and I nervously shirk and feel mawkish.


V.
People get eye surgery
because they are crazy
and they think it'll help them see better.
But they seem to forget
(this is the part I don't get)
the evilness of this procedure:
I'm talking death rays and plasma rifles and electro-artillery
used by villains in movies like Moonraker,
because you think you're correcting
while consciously neglecting
the fact that YOUR EYES ARE BEING SLICED WITH A LASER.

...

Why Can't I Just Play Along?

Because I've been obnoxiously defensive lately (I have to make fun of myself before anyone else does, when no one ever really cares, and they find this paranoia all too rotten and unsettling. It's also shockingly good for my complexion), today I went to a baby shower and hiked up my business to a new level of offense, and talked the entire time and hardly paid any attention to Mrs. Smith.

I wonder where this streak of insanity comes from? We're supposed to be celebrating creation and life, and all I do is sit and whine about being forced to play baby games, when in reality I should just suck it up and play along because we'll all be happier if we just make it fun instead of talking about how lame everything is.

It's outright rude of me to behave that way, brewing in discontent, blatantly wishing I was somewhere else. A good friend who is a good person asks me to take several hours out of one day of the year to celebrate the next stage of her life, and I act like a jackass.

It's not that I threw a fit, but I was just so critical, laughing and ridiculing everything. Why can't I just play along?

Baby showers and wedding showers and all that business are hard, because it means people have that next stage of progression. All it does is reinforce my own incompetence by not doing my biological duty to humanity. But it's not about me, I know. It's about Mrs. Smith and that basketball she swallowed, which I hear will eventually be a child.

It's not about me.

I have a selfish loathing when friends start families, because it means they aren't mine anymore. They never belonged to me, I know...but they just don't need me anymore. They don't need me nearly as much as I need them, and I don't think they understand how much I need them to survive.

They balance me. I'm a dry, slightly funny, slightly observant, plain girl who rambles on about unimportant things that no one ever really cares about or completely understands, but with them I have a part to play. I'm not a one-woman show. I can't do it on my own. I'm just not likable enough.

They have significant others, and they're starting families, and I will be the forty year old single woman at the bar getting drunk by myself, with no family, no career, a blog and a large DVD collection, rambling about how cool I was in college.

I've said that before, I think. That same line. It's a fear.

It means I have to make new friends which is FUCKING SCARY, because I irrationally crave acceptance and new people try to change me which just pisses me off. That or I should get my hands on a pony and dog and wander the countryside for the rest of my days. Which wouldn't be so bad, I think, because if there was enough countryside I could just wander forever. If I have no one around I can never feel brazenly inferior to everyone. Dissect that.

Be happy for people (saying something and embodying something are two different things). I am happy for Mrs. Smith, she is round and shiny and living her dream.

That's what it is. That's where the selfish jealousy comes from. It's because that they have something that they want.

It's because they have a dream in the first place.

My dreams are all fucky. Example: I'm living in a halfway house with a pet polar bear and a bionic bird, wearing a patchwork coat and goggles, hunting a blue gingham demon, and throughout the chase there is a goddamn leaky faucet that I turn off, over and over and over again - those are the dreams I have.

Of course there I things I want. I want to watch the next episode of Venture Bros. I want to make it to work on time.

But as of right now I have no dream to reach for. No matter what it is I will fuck it up, just like I fuck up everything else that I try to fix or accomplish. So right now...I guess my dream is to change my mind.

I've talked about all this before. I keep on writing the same blog entry, over and over again, saying it different ways, saying I need change, trying to change, and then snapping back into bullshit.

Dammit.

...

Everyone Is Ridiculous About Something, But Some of Us Are Ridiculous About Everything.

You know, I'm jealous of people that can just wear like, make-up. All the time, every day, they wake up and they brush their teeth and they put on make-up.

I'm just in awe that someone feels comfortable enough to wear that shit in the first place.

Can't they feel it on their face? Don't they want to scrub it away, ashamed that they care about their appearance so much, because appearances shouldn't matter all that matters is that you are comfortable in your skin your clothes don't make a difference win people over with your wit and shining personality (this is very, very hard, because I have a sneaking suspicion that I am somewhat abrasive) and no one cares what you look like, and if they do they aren't worth thinking about...don't people repeat that mantra in their head every morning when they look in the mirror, and feel ashamed, that yes, those things matter...FUCK YOU, MIRROR. And then, like with so many other things, I have to remind myself that I'm no illusion, and I am stronger than reflective glass.

But seriously, sometimes people look so pretty. How did they learn how to be comfortable and pretty at the same time? I wish I could do that.

What happens when they take it off? Do people get angry, and think it's a dirty, nasty trick? I hope not. This metamorphosis, it's a gift, changing at will, even with the aid of powder and brushes.

I can wear costumes to a party, sure, or face paint on Halloween. Sometimes I wear mascara. And chapstick, I fucking love chapstick. Chapstick is pretty much the greatest thing I have in my purse. I could eat it like candy. But I do not, because that would be gross and uncouth. Besides, then what am I going to put on my lips?

But I can't do make up. It feels like a lie. Why do I have such fear of trying to be pretty? What will people think of me? I will look like a freak, I know, and then everyone will talk about that one time that Rassles wore make-up and how she looked like Pennywise (or worse: Tammy Faye), and what, did she think she could actually be pretty? Haha, silly Rassles, and her silly ideas. She thinks she knows everything, she thinks she's so funny.

I know, I know. Shut up. I know. Who cares. Whatever. All that matters is what I think. Do what makes me comfortable. I am doing that. But that doesn't mean I'm still not crazy jealous of all of those people who can just be pretty, every day, because we are supposed to be pretty, and they're just like, "okay" and then they are, how do they do that?

It blows my effing mind. I wish I was trained that way, I wish I raised myself on magazines that weren't about horses or mountains or movies because I'm so far away from everyone, and how did I get all the way over here, and where did this fucking wall of rocks come from?

...

Jinx. Sans Hi.

Once upon a time, there was a girl who was me. Once upon a time there was me, and I existed, and I wrote this blog entry about the inevitable epic summer that I was sure to experience, and then I wrote about how much summer sucks.

It is August 26th. Ish. And I want to take it back. I want to pretend I kept those words in my pocket where they fucking belong instead of waving around for the world to see, because I should know better. Jinx. I am a fucking jinxy Jinxer who jinxes her jinxes.

All summer has been autumn. Spring sprang right the fuck into fall, and normally the thought of such things would pump up the goodness as well as the jams, but I'm accustomed to my seasons. I need the sweaty discomfort of summer and having fun in spite of it, because it makes me enjoy the other seasons so much more. I need the sunshine. I want to ride my bike, I want to sit outside of bars for hours and watch people trip over themselves while they try so hard to impress strangers. I want to go on vacation. I always knew the weather was emotionally affective, but I never felt it so harshly before.

I wonder if this angry, bitter kick I've been on is related to Poppy? I'm sure it is. I've been out of my element ever since, and I'm preachy and mad which I do not like.

For the past two weeks, I've been leaving work at 8:30. Twelve hour days, skipping lunch, constant working and bullshit. I used to make sure I went for a walk outside during lunchtime, but lately I don't have time and the sun has decided to shun Chicago completely (due to my excessive jinxing). Yesterday my boss came back at the office after a dinner business meeting and jumped when he ran into me at my desk and demanded I leave. It's exhaustive.

Look at this, I'm even slacking on my blog.

Normally, I would write out the dialogue between my boss and I, outlining his erratic sentence fragments and dervish bustling while he drops his keys and makes me give him a solid fist bump, but instead I'm all, "Yesterday I worked late and my boss had to tell me to go home."

I'm just not feeling it at all. So, a note to all who care and probably saw it coming: I'm going on a blog break for a short while. Blog has become obligation. Very lame. Living isn't happening, and once I've geared up again I'll be back in force. Turn the jinx into hijinx. Promise.

...