Why is it that I am doing something embarrassing or just weird every single time someone walks by my desk? I guess it speaks to the amount of times during my work day when my brain is just fucking off and obviously not doing what it’s being paid to do. Like yesterday I was rummaging through my purse and found a fork at the bottom. I didn’t recognize the fork, so I sat there kind of staring at it for a minute. OF COURSE somebody walked in with something I needed to fill out or sign or God knows what, and I’m sitting at my desk staring at a fork.
Or last week when I had this handful of almonds I was chomping on (one at a time, for once) and I thought they smelled weird. Still almondy but kind of like maybe one of them was going to be all soft and squishy–almond gone bad! So I’m smelling all of the almonds. Then I find the wonky one and I think I wonder how long I can hold this wonky almond on my nostril by sucking in my breath? and THAT’S what I’m doing when the head of circulation pops in to ask if I watched Project Runway last night. Sitting there sucking an almond to my face.
On Monday I wore a circle skirt with a button down shirt. The button down shirt is kind of weird because it’s large, but fitted because they put this placket of buttons in the back that you button together to make the shirt fitted for a lady. It’s some kind of weird Banana Republic extra fabric experiment that was on clearance so I could afford it. Anyway, because of this extra fabric, the shirt tends to bunch up in the front and the back. And the circle skirt was doing nothing to help it. So from time to time I needed to reach up under the front of the skirt and yank down the bottom of the shirt…so it didn’t look like I had a big poofy pregnant belly from the shirt sticking out in front. That’s what I’m doing when someone peeks in the door. And it looks like I’m digging at my crotch.
Also I get caught a LOT sitting at my desk red-faced, eyes streaming tears, because I’m trying not to laugh at this. Then someone walks in and I click furiously to get a boring spreadsheet or something onto the screen in front of me real quick…and it looks like I’m crying or having some kind of heart condition event because of a SWOT analysis or something equally as devoid of meaning.
There have been other incidents, which have shamed me and made me kick myself, because this is a new job. And I told myself as I packed up my shit at the last job in preparation for this one that things would be different! I will not be a weirdo anymore! Kind of like how when you are a month away from going into 7th grade you tell yourself that this is YOUR year, everyone’s gonna LOVE you! Things are gonna be different! I’ll have an IDENTITY, starting NOW! Then your mom takes you school shopping at the factory outlet on Rte. 110 for cheap irregular Lee jeans and white socks with extra heels. And you realize it’s not gonna be any different.
SIGH.
Oh well. I’m not the only weirdo in this booklearnin’ profession. It’s notorious for its weirdos. But I definitely think that there are weirdos who see right through me and do not like me. Know how I know? A software representative left me a million highlighters with the company’s name all over them. They’re actually pretty great highlighters. Know what else?! They come with those page marking flags in the butt end: you twist the end of the highlighter and you get a whole stack of those little sticky flags that you put on stuff when you want to remember it. So I offered one of these highlighters to a certain weirdo, and she just stared at it, and was like, “Ummm…yeah…I don’t really use those.” So I just sort of skulked away, holding together the tattered shreds of my dignity. It’s a fucking free highlighter, bitch! TAKE IT.
IT’S GOT FLAGS! ARE YOU A FLAG HATER?!
Something Awful
I watched a really bad movie the other night, it’s Netflix’s fault, though. I thought maybe I’d stop putting so much effort into trying to find something good to watch, something that would help my brain cells grow. So I chose a total chick flick, you know, one of those movies that obsesses endlessly over meeting the right guyyy and getting maaaarried and OH MY GOD I’M THIRTY and high heels and poplin shirts and working too much and HIJINKS!
Yeah. That’s about all I had the brain cells for. But this movie was unlike any other movie I’ve ever seen that I’ve known was going to be bad. It was actually worse than bad, like the filmmakers and writers were sitting around a table going “How bad can we make this? Can we make it SO bad that people will miss the worst of the bad and think it’s kind of good?”
First of all, you were supposed to believe that Kate Hudson was 29. I know she’s only in her thirties and her legs are like little sinewy quail drum sticks, but she’s had more facial surgery than any 29-year-old would ever be able to pay for. Also she has no job and a house in the Hamptons. Because that’s how it is in New York, okayyyy?
Next, you have to believe that this girl is “the ugly one”:
Eww what a total dog, huh?
It makes total sense because, as Tina Fey pointed out in her book, the brown haired girl is always the smart one nobody wants to fuck, and the blonde is fun and everyone wants to fuck her. But this movie turns that on its head, dear readers! Because it turns out EVERYBODY wants to fuck Ms. LonelyTitties! Including her best friend’s fiance. And of course, he’s the captain of the U.S. Olympic Douche Team, and his name is Dex. I am so serious about that. His name is Dex, and someone’s Gay Best Friend (TM) made that up, you know he did, he made that name up as a “sexy guy name,” and suggested it to the woman who wrote the book this was based on. Before he suggested Dex he threw out names like “Thad” and “Tre.” Probably also names like “Golden Dick McFuckme” too, but those didn’t make it to the final round.
The proper uniform for any Team Douche hopeful.
So on the night of Ugly Brunette’s birthday (HER THIRTIETH! OMG START THE COUNTDOWN), her dearest friend since birth has kindly removed the tubing from her fake nose that allows her to breathe through the faux-holes the doctors drilled in there, and thrown her a birthday party. It’s really just a good chance for Bestest Friend to flap her golden hair around and talk about herself, and also a good chance for Kate Hudson to showcase the fact that she has never actually been drunk, but instead was always one of those girls who was too scared in high school to actually drink, so she’d have like two sips of a beer and carry the same can around for the rest of the night, pretending really badly to be hammered out of her mind and hoping that nobody would notice. So Bestest Friend says a lot of shit that’s actually pretty mean, poops all over her friend and her birthday party, takes all the credit for everything EVER, then goes home with Team Douche. Team Douche later returns to look for her $2,000 handbag, which she has naturally left under a table while pretending to be wasted. That’s how he runs into Ugly Brunette and they decide to fuck after a really awkward scene in a bar where a girl in stretchy pants and a napkin for a shirt gives her dirty looks because, as Ugly Brunette reasons, “Nobody can believe I’m here with you, Team Douche, you’re too gorgeous for me.” Weep weep weep!
Yeah, so, they fuck. Then it’s all weird because the group all still hangs out every weekend in the Hamptons. And Team Douche is still fucking the shit out of his fiancee in the next bedroom, all loud and annoying. Ugly Brunette just lays there in bed trying to drown it out and pretending she doesn’t want to have a nice little vacation wank. Then he tells Ugly Brunette that he loves her and wants to be with her, but she waffles like “But she’s my best frieeeennd.” In the meantime, he is reluctant to call off the wedding because hey, even though he doesn’t love his fiancee at all, which he makes clear, and is actually totally annoyed by how much of a total self-obsessed asshole she is, he’s still going to go ahead and marry her unless Ugly Brunette asks him not to. WHAT A FUCKING GUY.
In the meantime, Bestest Friend is a complete asshole. She does nothing but demand things from Ugly Brunette and act like an airhead and insult her and basically make her feel like shit through the entire movie. Still the film keeps trying to explain that they’ve been friends foreeeeverrrr, and that means you don’t just tell someone to stop treating you like shit and being abusive to you, okay? It’s all evidenced in the below dance clip:
The fact that they did this together in junior high is mentioned like 1,287,972 times in the movie, until you’re like JUST FUCKING DO THE DANCE ALREADY because you know they want to, you know they do. And the dance scene slows down at the end (if you can make it that far) and they’re both just laughing and having a great time, and this part is supposed to show you that even if someone is a compulsive liar, makes you feel awful about yourself and your appearance and basically fucks up your life every chance they get, giving absolutely nothing positive to the relationship at all, ever, if you can perform a choreographed dance to Salt N’ Pepa with them, all the shit and unhappiness is totally worth it.
Well. Ugly Brunette finally decides to put her foot down and tell Captain von Douchington III that she wants him to end it with her bestest friend. Because, see, she says it’s HER FAULT that the two of them didn’t get together before he hooked up with her friend. “I should have said something back then,” she wails. “I just let her haaaave you.”
(If I were a man, this movie would piss me off more. It is evidence that men have no dicks. They have no say in who they marry: they just go where they’re told. Clearly, von Douchington was only doing his best with what he was given: the girl he loved didn’t TELL him what to do in the beginning. Also she is kinda ugly so clearly he’s going to climb up a big blonde tree first chance he gets. Because nobody told him not to!)
Spoiler alert: the movie is a piece of shit. Also spoiler: von Douchington breaks up with the blonde girl and comes straight to Ugly Brunette’s ridiculously huge and fancy New York apartment. He’s like, “See, I did it. Let’s you and me get married now.” Bestest Friend is close behind because she wants to reveal to Ugly Brunette that she cheated on von Douchington and is having the other guy’s baby. That’s when you’re just like, what the fucking hell is wrong with these people? This is like top shelf Maury Povich: still Maury Povich, but nobody’s wearing clothes they got at Marshall’s. And of course von Douchington is hiding somewhere in the apartment and she finds him and they all fight and it gets really confusing because Bestest Friend has the balls to tell Ugly Brunette she hates her because of the cheating. I got confused there because it seems like it worked out pretty good for all parties involved. Like, couldn’t they sit down and be like “We’re fucking now and you’re knocked up and fucking someone else anyway so who wants a drink?” No. No, that did not happen.
Instead Ugly Brunette is walking down the street 2 months later, smiling her big dumb face off and dressed like Hilary fucking Clinton for some goddamn reason. She has, of course, an armload of men’s clothing fresh from the dry cleaner’s. Because a man without a penis cannot pick up his own clothing, okay? So she runs into Bestest Friend who looks weird and pregnant and sad and Bestest Friend is all “I bought him those shirts, whore” and Ugly is like “I’m sorry, not sorry I fucked him behind your back but sorry I hurt you,” then Bestest Friend is like “Whatever I’m having a baby! I’m happy and I don’t care.” Ugly Brunette nods and smiles in that really ugly patronizing way that nurses smile when you hand them a cup of your pee. Then she meets her man around the corner and they walk off into the sunset together.
The moral of the story is that when someone treats you like crap, hang around and let them do it for as long as it takes for them to get engaged. Then swoop in and fuck whoever they’re going to marry. It’s not morally wrong because THEY’RE the asshole, see? The only thing you’re going to have trouble with is figuring out how to fuck a guy without a dick.
The book this movie was based on became an international bestseller. Wikipedia says that it “addresses the stigma against single women in their thirties and the pressure that society places on them to get married.” One reviewer described the book’s plot as “a realistic situation that women face in today’s society.” Then the movie went and got an overwhelmingly negative review.
Really this book addresses that stigma and does nothing to diminish it, and everything to make it more powerful. Also I’ll give you $50 if you’ve ever been in any of the situations in this book/movie. Wait–no I won’t. Because you’ll probably use it to buy the sequel.
The Donger Need Food
An email thread of which I was a part was featured on the last Dongtini Podcast! If you don’t already listen to this, you should start now. Stephanie and Simone are who I want to be when I grow up and get more funny. Go get them off iTunes and join them on Facebook or just have a good old listen-and-a-comment here.
Cupcake Heartbreak 