So the Indie Interweb is shrouded in thrift store finds and plodding down to the indie graveyard in their limited edition Toms cordones and Anthropologie dresses to begin their mourning period. Because Zooey Deschanel, America’s sugar tit, is getting a deevorce! And people who refuse to identify themselves as “indie” or “hipster” are trying to distance themselves from it, like “I don’t really care because I don’t really like her singing? I haven’t really listened to the last Death Cab albummmm? Also I don’t wear black shoes with black tights? But like what does this say about the future of marriage?! That is something I totally care about because I watch TV so I know for a fact that divorce sucks and is horrifying and life-changing and also bad for America.”
Here’s some examples:
In which some poorly paid intern at MTV has pieced together a playlist and analyzed the lyrics as morose warnings of the failed marriage.
In which someone with really awesome Photoshop skills has illustrated what a breakup looks like, inserted a bunch of shots of Glam Zooey, and a couple paragraphs about depression over the divorce of two total strangers.
In which a bunch of losers from the u-bend of the Internet toilet (message boards…yes, people still post to those) basically repeat what everyone in the rest of the world is saying, “She’s so pretty/she’s so annoying/he’s so ugly/it’s so saaaaad.”
I broke down this morning and got all philosophical on some indie chick’s ass and commented on this. I realize it’s totally futile to even bother talking to anyone who thinks their feelings on celebrity marriage and divorce are actually feelings about The Future Of Marriage and not really a reflection of their fears about their own life/relationship direction. I know that. But since I started reading and commenting on Stephanie’s blog and Facebook, I’ve become less of a drive-by “Fuck you, you dumb bitch!” commenter and more of a thoughtful “I respect your opinion, and here’s what I think, you dumb bitch” commenter. That is, I think, a bit of an improvement. Here’s what I said:
I read something once about how it’s a tactic of Scientology to recruit as many famous people as possible because, as a culture, we are so focused on them that our brains immediately make the connection that if SO MANY famous people are scientologists, then, naturally, SO MANY normal people must be, too, since famous people only make up a tiny bit of the population. Right? RIGHT? I think the same line of thinking may be employed here with the “…everyone gets divorced. Especially famous people!” line.
It’s been suggested that loving, tender feelings between partners tend to go downhill after about 4-6 years. Incidentally, that happens to be about the amount of time it takes to raise a child to the point of being able to fend for itself. I found that really interesting in consideration of all of the short relationships and marriages I’ve heard about. It may just be our human nature that causes our feelings to change the way they do. We’re just big mammals, after all. And I’m sure it’s the more human side of our human nature that keeps us trying to find ways to compromise and stay together with our mate if that is what we want.
But why does it have to be sad if that’s not what we want? What makes you sad about Zooey and Ben? Why does the time a couple has spent together have to be considered a failure if they divorce amicably? Assuming that they didn’t take the Kardashian route and set up an elaborate scheme to boost their publicity, which I do not think they did, what I see are two people who probably loved each other very much, then decided that they didn’t want to be bound together for the rest of their lives. I don’t see that as a failure at all. I think it would have been a failure if they gritted their teeth, stayed together though neither wanted to, grew to resent one another, and brought up a couple of celebrity kids in that tense atmosphere. A relationship that doesn’t work out isn’t a failure: if you learned something about yourself and about the other person, and both parties can walk away changed for the better and happy about who they are, I’d say that’s a success.
We tend to project ourselves, our own fears about our own lives, onto celebrities, and the characters they portray. My friend told me about seeing the first Sex and the City movie and hearing a girl say, near the end, “Oh no! It can’t be over, I don’t want Carrie to be ALONE!” There was real fear in her voice. Because, for her, that meant something very real and very scary about the future: “If someone as great as Carrie can’t get a man…”
So we need to stop glamorizing celebrity relationships, especially those that are marketed to us as cute and innocent, like Zooey and Ben’s. We need to look at why we really feel what we do about news like this: what does it mean for us?
But overall I think Zooey Deschanel can suck it.
It took me an hour to make this. Not one lesson!
Speaking of drive-by comments, my blog has been getting over 200 hits per day because of this post. Within this post, I discuss the weirdness of a certain popular set of dolls that are made up to look like, uhh, something that rhymes with “blonsters” and go to a school that is the opposite of low…the one you go to after middle school…I’m trying really hard not to mention it again because apparently droves of tweens Google the name every single day and land on my blog. I don’t want to be held responsible for their disappointment. Oh, hell, I guess I could say it like Snoop Dogg: Mizz-onster Hizz-igh. Yeah. They’re creepy. Anyways, go away, Tweens! Go read these.
And let me be clear: the misdirected tween hits are the ONLY misdirected hits I want to cut down on. Perverts with racing heartbeats who Google something obscene and land here, only to find nothing but WORDS! DAMMIT!, who then leave me another “you must be fat/ugly” comment, typing with one hand because their sweaty dick’s in the other, well, I want you guys to stay. Keep it coming. HEY-OHHHH!!!
dork love
Yesterday on the train, I spotted a couple of major thirtysomething nerds. Like dorky in the way that it was beyond dorky, the dorks who don’t even know how majorly dorky they are, they think everything is fine and they don’t try at all to be anything but what they are. The Superdork of dorkdom. They were standing, facing one another, in the little vestibule just inside the train doors. I only noticed them when I got up and walked to the vestibule because my stop was next. And I’m sorry that I had to get off the train so soon, because their conversation was SO AWESOME.
One dork was wearing a sweatshirt with a wolf on it. A WOLF. AND NOT IN AN IRONIC WAY. Also, it was a sweatshirt. As in, not a hoodie. No zipper. Just a good old-fashioned Hanes pullover sweatshirt that had been washed so many times, the majestic wolf and the pale moon behind him were flaking away. The dork’s stonewashed, off-brand jeans bagged around his waist and might as well have been tucked into his white hi-tops. The other dork, also wearing stonewashed jeans, was covered up top in a fully buttoned green army jacket. Both dorks carried sensible, cheap backpacks, the RIGHT way (a strap over each shoulder, none of this cavalier, tossed-over-one-shoulder-Andrew-McCarthy-in-Pretty-In-Pink crap), with brand names like “Rock Tarp” and “Downs Sport.” Dork #2 had cut himself right above his upper lip somehow, and was sporting a thin flesh-colored Band-Aid there, so close to his lip it looked like a part of his actual lip. The blood from the cut had seeped through the gauze part of the Band-Aid and looked like a giant scab in the middle of it. The Wolf Dork had a skinny black mustache tracing his upper lip, patchy, scraggly hair that seemed to have forgotten to grow in a couple of places.
And here is what was said:
Wolf Dork: “I believe in you.”
Band-Aid Dork: “…” Looks at floor.
Wolf Dork: “I just don’t think that you believe in you. You have to believe in yourself.”
Band-Aid Dork: “…” Scratches at edge of lip Band-Aid.
Wolf Dork: Reaches out and awkwardly pats Band-Aid Dork’s shoulder with his fingertips.
It was pretty much the most awesome thing I saw all day. I couldn’t even bring myself to laugh at them, they were so heartfelt in their dorkery. I will forever wonder what challenge was facing Band-Aid Dork for which he needed a pep talk from Wolf Dork. Perhaps he was going to give shaving another try? Oh, that was mean. But seriously, I wonder.
Nasty Self
The Pants and myself are moving in together in May. Which is cool because he’s a good boy and he gives me a boner and doesn’t kick too much in his sleep. Also our relationship is of the age where we’ve each pretty much acknowledged that we both poop and we share the coffee-making duties and we don’t bug each other too much. So it’s all romantic and shit. Also we’re both pretty into puppies and the idea of raising one together, like as a puppy team, and if that doesn’t make you want to vomit everywhere and then eat it, I don’t know what will.
Part of me isn’t scared because hey, I’m on drugs! And it makes me not scared of anything! I ride my bike real fast without a helmet on! I spend too much money on leggings! I’ve been driving a CAR, regardless of all of the horrifying car accident scenes that flash through my mind when I do it! WHO CARES. But, of course, part of me (Nasty Self) thinks I should be scared, so maybe I’ll sit down and devote 20 minutes to every day to be scared about moving in together. That part of me goes “Ohhhh remember LAST TIME you did this? And it didn’t work out? And he brought home a 12-pack of Bud Light every night and turned his cap around backwards and drank it all on the couch then drunk-emailed all the girls he thought were hot then barfed for an hour then fell asleep on the bathroom floor?? Remember that?! Remember how you couldn’t EVER get your hairbrush out of the bottom drawer in the morning because his head was always in the way!?!?” Well. Yes, Nasty Self, I remember that, but I really don’t think that’s going to happen this time. The Pants is a social drinker and doesn’t wear caps and sleeps in a bed.
“WELL. WELL. What about…okay, what about other stuff you failed at, you failing failure!? Know how you don’t write anything anymore? WHAT ABOUT THAT YOU PIECE OF SHIT??”
You can't hide.
You can't run.
Sometimes Nasty Self is just a tailgating cocksucker.
But. The Pants would like to live with me, me and Nasty Self both! Score! And I would like to live with him but no so much with Nasty Self. But what are you gonna do? I mean, the prescription interference makes Nasty Self shut up and cool the fuck out at least enough to let me stop crying all the time and asking “Why don’t you hug me while I’m sleeping?! You don’t love meeeeeeeeee!” Also it’s kind of nice not to have to budget an hour of my time each day to lie on the bottom of the shower sobbing about nothing and using up all the hot water.
I’ll tell you what I’m gonna do: I’m gonna keep buying vintage Pyrex from Etsy like it’s going out of–well, like it went out of style in the 70s.
Because that shit is the best when it comes to pie crusts and cupcake batters, both of which I come up with like every single day because I’m actually kind of domestic. I’m going to make an honest effort to come up with names for our puppy-child that aren’t appliances (“Microwave”), foods (“Cheddar”), or just weird made-up hybrids that you’d forget how to say before you had a chance to teach the dog to respond to it (“Snofflebugs McGilliwubbles”).
“Yeah, well you’re going to FAIL. I mean, how can you even expect to be able to have a SUCCESSFUL RELATIONSHIP when Zooey Deschanel is getting divorced?! ANSWER ME THAT, KNOWITALL.”
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.
I just got to work and the dickholiest of dickholes is sitting here, waiting for me. He looks at me, then down at his watch as if to say, “You’re an entire minute late and don’t think I didn’t notice because I did, and I’m very important, which you would know if you noticed that I am wearing not one, but two Bluetooth earpieces, but you probably didn’t notice because they are imported from Japan and are therefore very small and efficient, which you would know if you could afford small electronics. So let’s get going because I have a lot of Very Important Research to do.”
Part of his strategy is that he regularly emails everyone he comes into contact with who he thinks might be good for networking. He sends these weird mass emails, these “life updates,” which are just like “Hi, just checking in. Took my son fishing off the coast of Malta last week. It was really wonderful to get to spend time with him as he is quickly becoming a man.” Fucking prick. They’re like Christmas letters from the really rich extended family that you don’t really like. Only they’re once a month.
Just to keep in contact.
Brain Ball
I took a Tylenol PM last night for a splitting storm headache, which I only get when the weather is hot and then suddenly cooler and rainy and dark. It feels like a little ball above my right ear grows spiky tentacles, which snake out to wrap around the back of my brain and over the top, as well as under my right eye, where they anchor and suddenly retract. My right eye feels like it will pop out and the entire right side of my head stings, even my hair hurts. Then lightning flashes and the headache ball tightens its tentacles and the pain shoots through my teeth for about as long as the light is in the sky.
This sounds weird but I’ve decided that it’s all due to electrical energy. My mom suffered from epilepsy as a teenager, which simply faded away as she grew up, but she still gets headaches on her right side when the weather changes. She said that before a seizure, she would see swirling white balls of light through the peripheral vision on the right, light that would get bigger and rounder and she’d be looking for its source and then she’d wake up on the floor, tired and achey. All of the brain is connected by electrical impulses and magnetic fields and shit, right? The brain and the spine. So I see no reason why nearby surges of electricity shouldn’t affect me in a totally fucked up, painful, hereditary way. It’s kind of cool.
Two related/un-related things about this:
1. Joan of Arc is suspected to have had some type of aural epilepsy. This condition can produce, pre-seizure, a feeling of calmness and well-being, sense of a presence, bright light, and disembodied voices. She described having all of these symptoms when put on trial for heresy. As sad as that is, how fucking cool is that?
2. When I was a kid, this little old lady lived in a house up the street. She wore thin cotton flowered housedresses and aprons every day. There was a trunk in her basement where she kept an old pair of galoshes from the 30s, charred down both sides and melted to shit. They were the shoes her sister was wearing when lightning struck and killed her. I used to think of her asking to keep the shoes, putting them in that trunk, moving that trunk around with her everywhere she went. I want to be her when I get old, except with my magical electrical brain-ache. When I feel it, I’ll tell all the children to run on home ‘lest they get struck by lightning.
Hello, Athens!
I don’t think that any amount of medication in the world could save me from being horrified by the monster that is Junk Butt. I always knew she was fucking terrible in that way that the worst dark-hearted people have no idea that they’re sociopaths, because they don’t know what a sociopath IS so it means nothing to them, like everything else. Things that have always annoyed me about her are as follows, in case you haven’t been paying attention:
1. Tells you you’re pretty then tells someone else you’re ugly.
2. Believes it’s her duty to stop and chat with everyone in the office at least once a day, so she can tell them that they’re pretty and tell the next person that they’re ugly, actually.
3. Has acknowledged her shittiness and fakery as a well-calculated and carefully produced front, an acceptable front for the rest of the meaningless world to have to deal with.
4. Has a big junk butt and talks about going to the gym all. the. time., but must be lifting weights with her junk butt because you could set your drink on that thing if you needed to tie your shoe.
5. Is just very basically a horrible, nasty person, and is pleased with her own horrible nastiness.
One time Junk Butt sat down in front of my desk and burst into tears. She cried and cried, her face twisting into this strawberry-streaked cream cheese mess, her wet lips smacking and sticking together like slices of raw fish guts. I sat there staring in shaky awe, somehow I knew that she wasn’t crying because her cat died or she stubbed her toe, she was about to confess something to me, and I heard part of my brain telling me to RUN AWAY, but then she made her confession. The night before, the concierge, a sweet old woman from the U.K., had asked if she could have one of the countless pieces of cake set out on a fancy table for some event Junk Butt had coordinated. “Noooo,” Junk Butt had said, probably in that sickening coo she uses on people she deems ultimately unworthy of the use of her Adult Voice (so….everybody), “That cake is only for guests. Sor-ry!” The concierge said she understood, grabbed her umbrella, walked out the door, and into the street where she was hit by a car and killed.
“If only I had given her that caaaake,” Junk Butt wailed. “If only I had given her that cake and chatted with her for just FIVE MORE SECONDS,” she wheezed. I attempted to console her, but she refused to be consoled, kept insisting that it was her fault. As the days passed, of course the accident was The Thing to Talk About among everyone, and eventually, everyone had been visited by a sobbing Junk Butt who just felt “totally responsible” for the death, and before you know it, people are stopping by to hug her and reassure her and stopping her in the hall to tell her what a great person she is and she should never ever feel bad about anything she can’t control and God and the Bible and strength and peace and basically you are a good person and what were we talking about? Oh yes, the dead woman. And you, dear, of course, you poor thing. You’ve been through so much.
I think she picked up on the fact that I wasn’t buying her shit. Maybe that’s because I would walk away abruptly every time she came to my desk and started to sniffle. And she definitely picked up on it when I said “You need to go somewhere else. I can’ t deal with this.” That next week she made a crack about how I can’t handle emotions, “They make her uncomfortable at work!” I wanted to jump on her like a wildcat and tear open her ribcage, eat her ashen heart while she watched, but I just smiled.
That was well over a year ago. On Day 34 of my Medicated Life, I left work early to visit my friend in the hospital. We’d all gotten an email weeks before that he’d fallen and bruised himself, and wouldn’t be at work for a few days. I missed him those few days, thinking he would be back in front of my desk for our daily chat later that week, not knowing he was actually in the ICU with severe cranial contusions. Finally we all got an email stating that he was stable, and that we would be encouraged to visit him so that his brain would be challenged to remember us. He wasn’t sure what year he was in, who people were, what had happened, where he had come from and where he was going. Apparently, you can expect this to happen to you if your brain suddenly and forcefully hits the front of your skull, then the back, then the front again. When people enter your room in the Rehabilitation Ward, you’ll look at them like a deer in the headlights because it’s scary to not remember them, then you’ll decide you don’t care and go back to watching The Simpsons, which you never liked before. The world outside is a total mystery, and the food inside is bad.
So on Day 34, I felt sufficiently able to handle this, and planned to leave work for a visit. Two other people decided to come, and wouldn’t you know, one of them was Junk Butt.
People always talk about the antiseptic smell of hospitals, but I really hate how they always have some kind of really loud ventilation system, like five jet engines attached to the top of the building, howling all day and night. The hallways are throaty and raw, everything is impersonal. My friend’s ward has a library with a piano and several mismatched chairs and loveseats passed down from refurbished offices, a wide window looking down on a patch of the city that seems to be in perpetual tarp-blanketed construction, and a book on the shelf that says, in bold yellow letters, EVERYBODY DIES. I walked by and saw this message, which was supposed to be comforting, but felt a bit like a command. And of course I thought that this was funny because all of my emotions have been packed away neatly in a fire-proof box with sharp corners that pokes me somewhere around my liver.
Junk Butt goes in nervous, talking about how she’s nervous, letting us know that she’ll just not be able to handle it if it’s worst case scenario stuff, like what if his face is still bruised and what if he doesn’t remember me and ohmygoddddd I’m so nervous if I start crying just clear me a path to the door so I can just go be emotional by myself, NO, don’t follow me out, just let me cry somewhere off by myself in a romantically lonely corner of the yawning white hospital. Really, I’ll be okay, because I’m a strong woman.
In reality, when she’s faced with the blankness, the disinterest in interaction, the half-closed eye of an individual submerged in the ocean of competing thoughts and bewildered by the shimmer of memories like bottle rockets, she is thrown so off-guard she’s unable to muster the strength to perform. All she can do is talk about how nice the room is, in her most phony, high-pitched voice. She glances at the stack of magazines on the bedside table and tells someone who is re-learning how to read how super awesome it is to have plenty of stuff to read. She tells him he’s so lucky to be in a place that has such totally super great food, gesturing at the half-eaten cardboard pizza on his tray, which brings to mind that stuff they gave you in grade school with glorified ketchup for sauce. “They’re takin’ good care of ya!” she chirps. He stares back at her and barely nods.
This is when I realize that Junk Butt is only so awful because she’s bricked up behind this wall of fake asscrappery, so high and well-constructed that there’s never going to be a way out. She might as well be dead in there because I think she’s at the point where she’s so scared of the world that she’s done for. The more excited she appears to be about life, the more she’s actually screaming at you that life terrifies her. I felt really bad for her in that moment, but I remembered that this wasn’t her hospital room. I didn’t much care for her starting to do that puppet show she does where she sticks her own hand up her asshole and makes herself look stoic and unafraid and positive, so I moved in and sat down next to him, close to him, which was scary but which I needed to do. It was scary because he had on sweats and these sad hospital-issued socks, scary because a woman at the table in the community area outside his door was bleating for someone to please come open her milk, scary because he looked lonely and locked inside himself. I thought of Bauby’s therapist and my mother helping an old lady with her groceries once when I was seven and how nothing bad is going to happen to you for doing something loving for someone, even when you’re afraid.
“So,” I said. “Did you hear that Pippa Middleton didn’t win that Best Butt award?”
“No,” he said.
“Yeah. It was some other woman. Some other woman named Carol. You wouldn’t think a Carol could have a hot ass, would you?” He agreed that Carol is not a hot-ass-havin’ name. But I showed him some proof.
His therapist came in and asked him if he knew my name. First, he called me Fag Hag, which I thought was hilarious, and so did he. Then, finally, he said my name, my full name, and smiled at me like he was really just faking a head injury, like a sneaky kid. Of course, when asked Junk Butt’s name, he said it was Esther Williams.
(Of course, Junk Butt took this as a compliment and thought it to mean that she was skinny, but I think it’s because she’s very…theatrical.)
Toward the end of our visit, Junk Butt struck up her happy chord again, tweeting about how great it must be to just get to lie in bed all day and not go to work.
As soon as she shut the fuck up, I said “This sucks.” He nodded. “I would be bored here, too. It’s OK to be depressed here.”
“I am depressed,” he said finally. “I just feel sad and they keep wanting me to do these stupid exercises.”
“But you got this awesome window to look out of!!!” Junk Butt chimed in.
“Do you like the pizza?” I asked, gesturing at the wafer of half eaten crap on his plate. His therapist had told us that he kept asking for pizza.
“No, it’s awful!” he replied. “And the cake is bad, too.”
“You ate it all!!!” Junk Butt squeaked like a Disney animated squirrel. He stared at her. I bet he was thinking, My God, when did Esther Williams put on all this weight and stop making any damn sense?
“Well,” I said. “It will be good to get home. You can order an edible pizza and I’ll make you some cupcakes. I promise it will be less depressing, it will get a lot better than this. Just focus on the day you’re going to get to leave here. You ARE going to get to leave here, I swear.”
“I don’t know!” Junk Butt junk-butted in. “I think it’s awesome here…like a hotel! I love hotels!” Apparently she didn’t realize that in hotels there’s not a package of adult diapers on top of your particle-board bureau for all to see, there’s not a cacophony of beeping and loud nurse voices and people moaning for their meds outside your open door at all hours of the day and night.
He looked back at the TV and said, “Amy Winehouse is on.” Amy stumbled around on stage, hollered “Hello Athens!” to the crowd in Belgrade, and we got our things together and left.
Through the mouth-breathing halls, Junk Butt couldn’t stop talking about how sad everything was, how she was just going to have to take a long, long time to get over this. How he would “never be the SAME” and how everything was just awful awful awful. I just kept thinking how it was kind of nice to not feel like that anymore, to have my feelings chemically enclosed in this place that isn’t exactly unreachable, but is definitely not the first place to look for substantial feelings. I was thinking how much better I felt and how able to spread emotions out and look at all of them, turn them over and think about their edges instead of just running to the bathroom to sit in the bottom of the shower and cry about everything. I wonder how much easier it would be to be around Junk Butt if she found some magic pill that allowed her to process her fears instead of turning them into a billboard, or a crown of thorns for herself, with a bunch of pink sparklers attached at the top.
There was a dog tied up to a bike rack outside of the hospital. It looked bored and hot, and I pointed at it. I asked Junk Butt, “What do you think that dog’s thinking?” She blinked at me, like she couldn’t believe I was talking about a stupid dog at this horrible and terribly sad moment in her existence. “I bet he’s thinking something like,” and here I said in my best old Western movie sheriff voice, “Ah sure wish ah had me a taco right ’bout now.” I’m pretty sure Junk Butt was horrified.
Welcome to Whore Island
The Pants got this weird deal through AT&T which allows us to watch Season 5 of Dexter on Showtime On Demand. That’s good enough for me. But, amazingly enough, the deal also includes access to Showtime After Dark On Demand. This is the channel that they put all the sexy silicone soft core shows on. The first of these which I watched was The Devil Wears Nada. It has taught me a lot about women and life and sex that I didn’t already know, but am glad that I know now so that I may protect myself. Now I will share it with you!
So Candy Cane is this young sexy part-Asian girl (all the sexy parts are Asian, at least) who is looking for her big break into the television industry. In the meantime, she’s kept herself busy designing sexy underwear. She hopes to work her way up from the title of lowly assistant to a powerful and bitchy titty magazine publisher, I forget her name, so we’ll call her Bitchy McTitties. Bitchy McTitties is really hard-core and apparently gets pissed off a lot at her current assistant for having lesbian fuckfests with all of the bikini models out by the pool all the time, and getting pussy juice all over her company-issued Blackberry as a result, or something. So the company’s brand is pretty basically falling apart and Bitchy McTitties wants to be sure that Ms. Cane can turn shit around without expecting to get paid very much. It turns out that McTitties hires Candy Cane on the spot because not only does she wear a leather bustier to the interview, she also is totally cool with letting McTitties mash her tits around to make sure she’s assistant material.
Here's Candy, modeling her new creation! Later she has to wear it to work because that's all that's clean.
(I bet you didn’t know this, but the way lesbians have sex is that they roll around and grab each other’s boobs and play with each other’s hair, then one bends the other one over and humps her doggystyle and they both fucking love it. Just don’t think about the mechanics of it, okay? You’ll ruin it.)
So eventually Candy Cane is running crazy trying to keep up with all of her work and only has time to have booby-bouncing softcore sex with her boyfriend like 4 times in a 30 minute span. Also she’s having to keep a lot of things from her boyfriend, like the fact that when McTitties pages her, it’s usually because she needs her to have sex with some hunk that just showed up and won’t fix the pool skimmer until he’s been paid in poon. And sometimes McTitties herself needs a good pubic-bone-to-butthole banging before she can get inspired to tell people what to do. God, the things an assistant has to do! It takes her forever to put on real clothes, so in order to get out the door and into her Lamborghini really fast, Candy has to wear stuff she puts together in the dark, made of motorcycle parts and the straps from a million complicated bras. She runs into the mansion where Twatty Magazine has its offices and photoshoots, like a sexy little deer on 6 inch platform heels, and wouldn’t ya know it: someone is always waiting right there to grab her by both boobs and swing her around and bang her.
(I bet you also didn’t know this, but if someone grabs a girl’s tits, her clothes fall to the floor and her eyes roll back in her head and she has no choice but to let them bone her. This is what I’m saying: walk around with your arms across your chest unless you want to be totally helpless, y’all. And don’t take a job working under [or on top of] McTitties.)
Candy’s life is falling apart. All day and all night spent getting raw-dogged by random people, virtually no time to see her oily boyfriend or have her period. She keeps re-scheduling for both, but McTitties always calls at the last minute and needs her to bring her vagina over real quick because the bikini models have refused to take their bikini tops off for the midnight pool shoot until someone settles the dispute over which one is the best lay by fucking each one of them and then judging them on their performance. Candy! What are you gonna do, girl? You can’t go on like this!
Thankfully, Candy gets a new job, or something. I don’t know for sure because I had to go pee and I didn’t bother pausing the movie. One of the random dudes who banged her at one point apparently figured she had a lot of talent and made her a success, because later he wears a suit and bosses her around for like four minutes. But she stresses that while she totally hated the grueling schedule of working at Twatty, the constant fucking on camera was a total plus and something she was not averted to doing in her new job as a network executive and part-time underwear designer. So they have a sexy board room encounter with the girl who brings them some coffee and all is right with the world. Actually, that might not be how it ends but that’s when I decided to turn it off.
The photographer for Twatty Magazine deserves a shout-out in this synopsis, and I can’t find a single mention of him in the many recaps for this movie that exist online, except for one, written by Showtime, which describes him as “the comic relief.” See, things get really intense a lot of times in movies. (If it was just 100% dying of heart disease in Beaches, nobody would watch it. Instead it’s like 47% dying of heart disease, 26% heartbreaking love triangle, 10% cheating husband, 10% leaving husband, and 7% of big old goofballin’ Bette Midler. Case in point!) If you were just expected to sit there and jerk off for 77 minutes, The Devil Wears Nada wouldn’t become a family favorite because nobody likes to sit around with sore genitals. So you need to jerk off, laugh, jerk off, laugh, repeat. This film artfully handles this necessity via the character of the nameless flamer who does a variety of weird things for God knows what reasons. For instance, he wears the same outfit every day: a purple beret, a long white flowy shirt, sparkly Hammer pants, a blue jacket he borrowed from his friend in the circus, with long glittery tails, and a gigantic floppy red bow tie from the joke shop. He’s a big man, and he flitters about the mansion with both pinkies in the air because, you know, how else would you know he’s gay?
(You can’t be funny in a lesbian butt-humping movie unless you’re gay. And don’t even try to point out that the lesbians are gay–they’re not. They’re working.)
This photographer doesn’t take pictures of anything, he has a hunky assistant who holds the camera and shoots when he says to shoot. He also has this weird stick with a feathery bird stuck to the end of it. He uses this to wave at the bikini models so they know where to look. He also does this thing he learned about on Leno where you ask people really random easy questions about American history and stuff and decide that they’re stupid when they don’t know the answer. Seriously: if you like quiz shows, you will love this movie. He stops photo shoots like ten times to swing his bird stick around and ask one of the girls, “What’s the capital of the United States of America?” Destini or Sugar or Kitty then bites her lower lip, tilts her head, and says “Ummm like, California?” Homogay cracks up and looks directly into the camera, breaking the fourth wall as if to say, “See? They’re just big stupid titty sticks!!! And I’m just a big old funny fag! HAHAHA! Now for some more sex.”
Two in the mornin’ and the party’s still jumpin’ cause my mama ain’t home
I just found out you can text the police in my city. If you see a crime happening, you whip out your SmartPhone and take a picture or a video and text it to this special cop number. Then the cops show up and bust it up and everything is OK again. I thought about doing it the other night at 2 in the morning when the neighbor teenagers were having a Scream Meeting out on the front stoop of their building, beneath the open windows of everyone on the entire street. SO I TOLD THAT BITCH, I SAID, BITCH, YOU AIN’T SHIT. You know, hardass stuff like that. Instead of each of them smoking their own cigarette, they kept lighting single cigarettes and passing them around, like a joint. I think it was just for how cool the passing action looked, and how often they got to use lighters. Anyway, for a second, I got all these really inappropriate thoughts, which I’m going to be honest about, even though they made me feel like an asshole and a Republican and a racist and stuff. I thought, “I wish they’d shut up so I could get some sleep so I can get up and go to work and pay for their Section 8 apartment with my tax money.” OH MY GOD. THAT’S TERRIBLE ISN’T IT??? But that’s what I thought.
And I didn’t tattle on them with a cop text. I just turned on the air conditioner until it drowned them out. Mostly out of guilt and the fear that when I’m old I’ll be an asshole, like for real and not just for fake.
My big sister and I had an IM conversation this morning about our struggles through our Holy Spirit-infused awkward teen years. We were both weirdos in our own ways to begin with, bumping around our hometown like homesick aliens, not identifying with a single person. We were perhaps most obviously ill-suited for the Southern Illinois upbringing when in the presence of our church crowd (to which our parents constantly subjected us so that my grandma would stop calling and raving about hellfire and damnation).
I think that the following is a clear record of the fact that hellfire can be defined as “church camp” or “church road trip.”
Sister: OH yes!
I want my Breathless Mahoney t-shirt
from the Dick Tracy movie that I never saw. this one!!!
wait no
mine was purple
I should make mommy dig it up. me: No way, she sold all our shit in that yard sale
Remember?
We ate at John’s Cafe at like 1am
then she woke us up at 5am to help her drag shit out into the yard
I almost barfed a sausage biscuit brick
Anyway
Sold
Someone is sitting at McDonald’s right now wearing the hell out of it. Sister: hahahah
I know
I saw a girl in dairy queen wearing my Heather and BlahBlah shirt
from the one Christian concert I went to with Church of Christ. me: hahaha
I was so jealous
“a real concert! Man I wanna grow up right now!”
HAHAHA Sister: Hahahhaha
I know, I know
that trip was so uncomfortable!
Man
[J.H.] was there
and that girl Nicole, the preacher’s daughter
brought a “popular” friend from school
with big, blonde scrunchy hair, and she insisted she had to sleep by the bathroom because she had her period
I remember going in there in the morning and there was a big huge blotch of blood on the floor.
And no one would talk to me, and they made me play mini-golf
and be in a skit about homie the clown, and I didn’t even know who/what that was.
All I knew was [A.W] got to hit me in the head with a sock stuffed with more socks, on a stage, in front of hundreds of people.
and I pretty much stopped believing in god that weekend. me: oh my god
this is terrible/wonderful
I’m sorry.
I had an awful time on that trip I had to take to that hotel in Springfield with [N.U] and [S.T.] and [N.U.]’s dad
I brought a fucking coloring book full of unicorns and a bag of markers
and they brought fucking Clinique bags stuffed with makeup
and they whispered about me and put on makeup all night
while i colored unicorns
and in the morning we had to go sing about Jesus and how awesome everything is. Sister: I remember!!!
I think I was there too!
[N.U.] made us all stop on the way home so she could buy a new curling iron at Walmart. me: YES
We had to pick up trash on the side of the road or something?
then go to a sing a long
then go home.
fucking awful.
My children are NOT going to shit like that
that will just make them uncomfortable about themselves for 48 hours.
Stuff like that is why I have a nervous bowel.
I guarantee I was constipated for a week after that
because I didn’t have any makeup Sister: hahaha
I went to camp with those bitches!
I remember, the next day one of them TOLD ME
“Last night we were talking in Heather’s bunk, and I said we should invite you over, and Heather said “But what if she actually COMES?!”
Hey, that’s OK, girls.
I’m over here with my itty bitty book light junior
reading Tituba.
Then they wanted to have a leg-shaving party.
But I wasn’t allowed to shave my legs. me: ugh
At my church camp they tricked me in to “dry shaving”
“Yeah totally it’s where you just shave your legs like without water, we all do it”
So I did it with a plastic Bic someone gave me
and my legs were so sore and broken out all week
every little hair follicle sliced open
so awful, and hot and painful
then next year I met [B.] and everything was awesome
and we found out we were going to start 6th grade together
We are still friends! Sister: wow
Well, something good came out of it. me: I guess so Sister: I just kissed a guy who told me on the last day of camp that he “couldn’t remember” his address.
hahahah
STORY OF MY LIFE. me: HAHAHA Sister: hahahahaha
You can make the body of Christ into small cakes, you know.
me: I totally just found my church camp crush on Facebook
[R.R.]
He looks like a dick
a dick in Abercrombie
The scariest thing about that camp
I mean
besides the fact that they encouraged us to send each other “around the chapel” holding hands
during meals
was that giant box full of water in the front of the chapel where they’d baptise
Looked like a big damn coffin Sister: no, the scariest thing was the chef.
Pizza!
“Hey, Pizza-Man!”
Then one summer we came back..
and he was gone.
BECAUSE HE MURDERED SOMEONE! me: oh my god
OH [R.R.] is a flamer now!
sounds about right
He posted an online review of something called “Powered Lube” Sister: Well, he’s not going to fall for the dry shaving trick.
Not [R.R.]
Eventually, this becomes quite a bit like revving the engine on a dead 1984 Ford LTD. I should know because that’s what I drove in high school. It died a lot and I had to keep driving it.
The worst part is having to stand withered next to the good version of yourself that everybody remembers and liked.
On the bright side, I’m fairly certain you can crush up Klonopin and put it on a cupcake. YAHTZEE!
It’s 10:37am on a Saturday, I’m lying in bed listening to the neighbors scream. I looked out the window briefly to find them all standing in front of their apartment, man, woman, and little boy. The boy sits there and blinks, bleating “HEYYY” every couple of minutes, as if on a timed interval. The man and woman refuse to look at each other, but holler with this bored look in their eyes like they’re trying to have a normal conversation on the tarmac at the airport, planes roaring overhead.
“YOU GOT A ATTITUDE”
“YOU AIN’T EVEN KNOW WHAT YOU TALKIN ABOUT”
“HEYYYYY!”
I wonder if any of them are thinking about the tons of people who sleep in on Saturdays. Granted, I’m sleeping almost until 11am, that’s pretty late to be expecting other people to be considerate. BUT STILL.
Two weeks ago, I was waiting for the bus and I felt a hard tap on my head. The next sensation was the dribbling of the bird shit sliding down the side of my head and collecting on top of my ear. Well, that’s fucking awesome, I thought. Good thing I have napkins in my purse.
One week ago, I was sitting on the bus, reading a book. The greasy high school boy across from me let out a wet sneeze, and I looked down to find snot chunky with boogers splattered across my jacket sleeves and cuffs. “Are you KIDDING ME?” I yelled at him, as his immediate reaction was to pretend that nothing had happened. He ignored me, as if I wasn’t sitting there covered in his snot, screaming at him. Well, that’s fucking awesome, I thought. Good thing I have a single napkin left in my purse.
Usually, when it gets to the point that people are actually spraying me with their bodily fluids and then pretending that I don’t exist, it means I’ve been in this stupid city, riding the stupid buses, and following my stupid routine for way too long. I thought it was the universe’s way of telling me that I’m fucked, really, it’s the universe’s way of telling me to fuck off.
Shutup, faggot
Stephanie sent me this yesterday and it’s killing me.
Shit Sack Comes to Visit
If you ever find yourself shut in a hotel room with nothing to do, please don’t watch the movie “Hump Day.” I will tell you why, okay? Shut up for a minute and let me find my notes.
So IMDB sums it up this way:
When Andrew unexpectedly shows up on Ben’s doorstep late one night, the two old college friends immediately fall into their old dynamic of heterosexual one-upmanship. To save Ben from domestication, Andrew invites Ben to a party at a sex-positive commune. Everyone there plans on making erotic art films for the local amateur porn festival and Andrew wants in. They run out of booze and ideas, save for one: Andrew should have sex with Ben, on camera. It’s not gay; it’s beyond gay. It’s not porn; it’s an art project. The next day, they find themselves unable to back down from the dare. And there’s nothing standing in their way – except Ben’s wife Anna, heterosexuality, and certain mechanical questions.
This movie should have been called “Two Dudely Dudes Have 36 Conversations.” It was seriously like being forced to be in a room with two people you don’t really like who are discussing performance art. “But dude what if we like, did this? Dude what if we like, did that? DUDE.” They have conversations at tables, in cars, on the porch, on the couch. Sometimes the girl has conversations with them. Sometimes she just has a conversation with one of them. Sometimes one of them leaves the room and the conversation continues because there’s still a dude in the room and he’s having a conversation with his THOUGHTS, man!
The story behind the never ending stream of talking in this movie is pretty stupid. Naturally, this young pair of cute vintage-inspired newlyweds is trying to get knocked up. Then what the fuck do you know? The guy’s annoying best friend blows into town and takes over their couch and is generally poopy toward the whole marriage and children idea. Because he’s a free spirit, man. If you’re not traveling throughout your thirties, you’re lame!
(The one good thing I will say about this movie is that they totally got the annoying best friend right. Every boy you will ever date, have ever dated, or ever thought about dating, has one of these. Loud, obnoxious, chubby, and generally stupid, they circle until about 8 months into the relationship (if that), then they fucking swoop in full speed and decide to claim their friend back. It’s your fault he’s been spending so little time with his best friend! You know he can’t resist pussy, and you keep insisting on giving it to him! Meh meh meh! Oh, plus, these guys always experiment with fedoras. Because they are, in actuality, slightly gay, and a liiiiiiiittle bit in love with your boyfriend–but only in that way that straight men can recognize their love for each other, the closest they ever get to it is thinking that maybe they’re jealous of their friend.)
(The fact that this movie got the annoying best friend so spot on is not a good thing. That’s because you have to spend an hour and a half with this fat sack of shit and nobody wants to do a thing like that. Didn’t think about that, did you, filmmakers?)
The “sex-positive commune” described above was actually like a slutty sorority house full of swinging lesbians who didn’t mind having sex with anyone in front of anyone, you know, those super hot-bodied, abused-as-a-child-but-that’s-not-why-I’m-a-lesbian-I’m-just-really-free lesbians. So there’s this ONE scene where they writhe around on a bed half naked (well, wrapped in hippie print scarves and sarongs) and say the most random, stupid shit about relaaaaaationships, and that’s pretty much all it takes to give people who are actually sex positive a bad name. Everybody smokes a lot of pot out of super-clean, over-complicated bongs and before long, our hero and his BFF have decided to take all of the Sex-Positive Performance Artists on in a little bet where he and his friend fuck each other on film. And these dudes are gonna fuckin do it because they’re DUDES! And plus the fat BFF has “never finished an art project,” and this is the one that he wants to finally follow through with.
So they have about a million conversations about doing it or not doing it, the wife finds out, she cries and wails, then admits that she cheated on her husband after they got married, so maybe he should get a pass to fuck his friend. “Get it out of your system, like I did” she says. Yay for sex positivity!
About the only positive in this movie would be possibly getting to settle your morbid curiosity by seeing two overweight dudely dudes bone each other, which they don’t. They order room service and just hang out like a couple of bachelors.
Fuck this movie. Or don’t. I don’t know. Maybe we should just talk about it a lot and never watch it.
Around the Orifice
There’s this girl in my office who I’ve always known for a fact held the title of Resident Shit-Talker, but boy did she ever go above and beyond last week.
This girl refers to her shit-talking circuit as “making the rounds.” That’s where you see her coming through the office, down the worn track of carpet between all of our desks, leaning over everyone’s cube walls for however long it takes her to expel the newest stream of shit from her mouth to your ear. Oh, and I can’t forget to mention that she’s a cunt, the bad kind. She’ll come to you, whispering, eyes wide and cloudy with concern like she just saw a bloody car accident, and ask you “What…is WRONG…with Kelly’s hair? Oh. My. God.” Mere seconds later, you’ll see her at Kelly’s cube, saying “Your hair looks SO cute today! What are you doing differently?”
Did you ever wonder what would happen to the girls at your high school who acted like this? Did you think maybe they’d get the Tina Fey “Mean Girls” treatment and grow out of it? Maybe some do, but in my opinion, those horrible cunts are just in training in high school. They’re learning how to come off as Super Nice! and just whisper their terrible insults. I’ll tell you what happens to them: they grow up and work in offices and grow great big dimpled asses, the kind that grow up and over their lower backs, and have to wear plus size Ann Taylor pants. Oh, and they continue to be horrible cunts, and they think everyone likes them and nobody sees through them. It’s absolutely exhausting to watch.
Not that I’ve never talked shit, but fucking hell. It must have been a slow news day last Thursday because the big report we just all had to have was that a certain person in our office went to the bathroom and didn’t wash her hands! Gasp! This is horrible! I KNOW! What should we do? I DON’T KNOW! Isn’t there anyone we can report this to? WHAT IF SHE’S IN THE BREAK ROOM RIGHT NOW TOUCHING ALL OF THE SPOONS? She’s disgusting. We hate her. Let’s all look at her like “we know what you did.” Yeah, we should. Let’s make a concerted effort to make her feel unwelcome.
Look How Your Fat Brain Works!
One thing about working with other people that I’ve just come to accept as The Way Things Are and Will Always Be is that, when there is nothing else to talk about (and sometimes when there is), people will always steer the conversation toward food. Especially if there is food around, which there always seems to be in the work environment. Actually, I’m starting to wonder if perhaps people don’t overpopulate the work environment with foodstuffs just so things will be less awkward, so that there will be more to talk about. Oh wasn’t that a great pecan tart? Did you have some of that bacon cake and grease juice Sheila brought in? Gahhh that was gooooooooood wasn’t it?
It’s no surprise that 20/20 found, when they did a sneaky hidden camera test thingy, that people are more comfortable overeating or making poor food choices when others are doing the same. I don’t think this applies to me, as I grew up “overeating” at every meal, as my mother glared at me from across the table, slurping her Slim-Fast and slicing a Grape Nut in half. So I’ve always had to be comfortable making my food choices (i.e., the choice to eat) without any support. However, 20/20 did this little sneakysnake move where they grabbed people out of lines at Disney World, put them in a windowless room, and told them they’d be testing a new chocolate chip cookie or chocolate ice cream. “Now there is a very high fat content!” they’d say, and you were left to wonder if they meant like, in the food, or attached to the test subjects and slopping over the sides of the tiny chairs. The sneaky part was that there were always 2 people “testing” the food, and the second person, in true Maury Povich hidden camera fashion, was a decoy! A sexy food decoy! Paid to sit in the room and overeat on purpose to see if the other person would do the same! And sometimes the decoy ate half of a cookie, just a tiny few bites of the ice cream, just enough to taste it. On those occasions, without fail, the test person would do exactly the same, just a bite here and there. But when the sexy decoy ate half a carton of ice cream, the person in the white lab coat with the clipboard saying “Go on, eat all you want!,” the test person would do exactly the same, wolfing down scoop after scoop of ice cream, stopping only when the sexy decoy stopped. More than one person ate until they felt sick, just because the sexy decoy hadn’t stopped yet.
At the end, they gave all of the test subjects $10 and told them they’d been duped. They showed them the footage and said “Look at you! Look at you go, rippin’ into that chocolate ice cream! You had thirty-seven cookies, just because someone else did! HAHA. Look how your fat brain works!” Then the 20/20 Fatty Study Team addressed Mr. and Mrs. John Uh Merica directly and said, “Now isn’t that interesting?”
I have my own food issues, and one of them is that I do not enjoy eating in front of people. I won’t eat on the train, but restaurants don’t freak me out so much because you’re expected to eat there. I am extremely uncomfortable, however, eating in the office, under fluorescent lighting, gathered standing with paper plates around a giant airbrushed cake with badly done blue icing baby shoes splopped all over it. You’re supposed to stand there, eat the cake, and talk. And if you turn down the cake, you ignite a firestorm of discussion, during which people say all manner of inappropriate things because they feel like fatasses for having decided to eat the cake. How dare you judge me?! Also annoying is when I am unable to take a lunch break and have to eat something at my desk. Inevitably, someone leans over my cube wall and says, “What are you eating? What IS that? Hm. Yogurt? Is it good? Smells weird. Just saying. Do you like it? You like yogurt? Why? Oh. You like it. But are you trying to lose weight? What are you saying about me HAHAHA. No, I’m kidding. You don’t need to lose weight. I should eat yogurt. What is that? Cereal? Is that in an old butter container? Why didn’t you use like some brand name Tupperware? Why did you re-use that I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter thing? Hm.”
But the funny thing is that all of the obsession with what other people are eating stems from everyone’s own food issues. Which is also not funny because that is why it will never, ever stop. I once had a manager at the Footwear Palace where I worked who talked all the time about how she wanted to lose weight, how she’d had to change pants that morning because the others had given her a muffin top, how she’d only had 1100 calories the day before…all unprompted, of course. Nobody asked her for this information. But she was butt fuck obsessed with food. A superfan of frozen Lean Cuisine fare, she would comment, without fail, on anything other people were eating. She even nicknamed someone because once he brought in chicken fingers for lunch. She couldn’t help herself. She also asked him every single time she saw him, even if it was like 10a.m., “What’s for lunch today?! Chicken fingers!? I know you love your chicken fingers! I can’t eat em because I’ll get fat! More power to ya though! HAHAHA!” And so on, and so on, every day. “Whatcha eating?! MMMMMM. What’s in the microwave? Smells GOOOOOOOOOOD.” Then she’d tell everyone what you had for lunch. What it looked like. What it smelled like. She just could not stop herself. She didn’t realize how transparently weird she was being about food.
And that’s how one’s boss lives vicariously through their meals.
Is this possibly because mealtimes are sometimes the only break in the monotony of the day, when one gets to reward oneself with food?
My problem is this: there’s an overabundance of processed sugars and complex carbohydrates in my office every day. Piles of cake and cupcakes and muffins and coffee cake and boxes of chocolatey treats from Dingles & Boomrats (or whatever the fuck that place is called where people order cases of chocolate covered pears with toffee chunks). EVERY SINGLE FUCKING DAY. I hardly ever eat anything just because I’m trying to be polite. If it doesn’t taste good, I’m not going to sit there and choke it down just because you’re going to be offended if I don’t. This ain’t Craplakistan. I don’t suck stranger dick just because some guy on the bus is going to be put out for the rest of the afternoon if I decline. I don’t want bruises on my knees, and I sure as hell don’t want a butt shaped like my desk chair, like everyone else in this damn place seems to have. But if you don’t eat something at a mandatory office party, you get this “Oh. You’re not eating. Uh huh” bullshit.
My other problem is this: I love sugar. And cake. And cupcakes. But only when they taste good. And too much fake saccharin makes my stomach hurt like a bitch. So yesterday at my coworker’s baby shower party, I chose an orange instead of the cupcake platter (including aforementioned airbrushing and really bad giant turdlike icing booties). Holy hell, did I start a fuss. Every single person I tried unsuccessfully to mingle with said “No caaaaaaaaaaaake? You’re not haaaaaaaaaaaaaaving any?!?!?! WHY? Let me get you some!!!”
So when the cupcakes ran out, somebody whipped out this strawberry cake thing. It had white icing and strawberries all over the top, and it (deceivingly) looked yummy. Half of my orange gone, I got a slice of cake and, wishing to avoid that saccharin stomach ache, cut it in half, and put it on my plate. I’m glad I only took half a slice because the cake fucking sucked. It was like eating wedges of yellow kitchen sponges smeared with carpet cleaning foam. And what does my boss say, snidely, as I come stand near her?
“Oh. You’re having an orange AND some cake. Oh.”
Voila. There you have it. The need to look at someone’s plate and point out exactly what’s on it.
Of course, it’s okay to say that to people who aren’t morbidly obese. However, if someone said that to the lady who doesn’t leave her office between the hours of 9 and 5, who sits in a special chair with a specially purchased foot rest because of her weight, well, that would be inappropriate. Of course, we can’t mention what she ate, or how fast. But you can bring up my food habits all you want.
Last month, there was an event in another building, the building that was basically slapped into the middle of campus for all of the school’s entertaining purposes. Outsiders from whom we wish to woo funding are shuttled to the ornate building first, given tours of the miraculous space-age HD flat-screen technology equipped “classrooms” (which are never used), and treated to a cafeteria-style lunch downstairs in the banquet hall. The open room and giant trays you’re given for your multiple plates are a higher-brow way of hanging an “ALL YOU CAN EAT” sign over the door. Employees, who are not invited to enjoy the banquet except for on rare occasions, talk about the Beale Center* all the time, like it’s some kind of magical candy mountain where all of your dreams come true. And when they talk about it, they’re only mentioning the lunch you get to have if you’re employed there for the day. So the week before the event with which my office was supposed to help all day, my entire floor was all abuzz with talk of the amazing Beale Center lunch we were supposed to get. People were practically creaming their panties, salivating, foaming at the fucking mouth, talking about how loooong of a day the event was going to be, “but at least we get Beale Center lunch!!!” People from other departments were stopping by and asking if we needed any help that day, because oh, you know, I’m not that busy that day, I could come by just before lunch and help out…?
By the time the frenzy reached a fever pitch, it was half an hour before the cafeteria door was going to be opened. Mr. Cornell was wandering the halls aimlessly, as he’d left a special session he was supposed to attend early so that he could be among the first in line for the food. He kept passing my post at the front desk, where I was supposed to be warmly greeting a bunch of corporate assholes and handing them name tags so they could call each other something other than Asshole. “It’s almost time for lunch,” he said, “you better go get in line now! Get in line now, if you want, I’m sure it’s fine. You should go.” (Encouraging others to do something first, so that he can follow and then point fingers at the leader if anything goes wrong, is something I’ve come to expect from Mr. Cornell. It appears that it was part of his education to slime his way through life, letting someone else go first. If every dude in his graduating class had started fucking each other’s buttholes, well then, he’d really be living the life he dreams of. But I digress.)
So Mr. Cornell keeps swinging past my station, checking the entrance to the banquet hall (still empty), and encouraging me to “beat that crowd.” I, who had been near the cheese platter all morning, was full and didn’t want any lunch. In an effort to cease his incessant buzzing, I said “I’m not that hungry, I’m not eating lunch.”
At first, I thought he’d had a heart attack. Clutching his chest, he turned pale and sweaty. “YOU’RE NOT EATING BEALE CENTER LUNCH? BUT IT’S THE BEALE CENTER. IT’S FREE! IT’S LUNCH! IT’S REAAAAAAAAAAALLY GOOD. WHAT? ARE YOU SICK? AT LEAST GET SOMETHING TO GO AND EAT IT LATER.” Not only was he flabbergasted that someone would actually choose not to eat sweaty pork steaks that had been lying under a heat lamp for half an hour, a scoop from the vat of mashed potatoes made from the finest mashed potato powder money could buy in bulk at Costco, that someone would turn down free congealed shrimp on a stick, as well as a whole bar of fancy cheeses and fancy crackers on fancy wooden platters, all the soda one could drink and unlimited desserts, NOT ONLY did he have to be personally offended by this, he also had to tell everyone in our office that I didn’t eat that day.
Two weeks later, people are still coming to my desk and asking why I didn’t eat Beale Center lunch that day. “Well why not? Why?” They don’t seem to believe that I just wasn’t hungry. I just wasn’t!!!
I know that part of the draw of the place is that the food is free, and that it’s presented in giant silver tureens heated with little mini Bunsen burners. I mean, let an adult loose in a room filled with vats of processed foods, where everyone else is doin’ it too, is like a playground. And to decline is to start a fucking Lord of the Flies situation.
Ironically, in this analogy, I’d be the one they called Piggy.
And another thing that bugs me about work.
I don’t think it’s quite fair that I should be hunted down and obligated to give money, MY MONEY, my hard-earned cash, to some admin assistant for a present for someone I don’t know or like personally, that I only WORK with, because they got knocked up or engaged or got a new job.
*Made up name, duh.
Michelle Fucking Pfeiffer
Where is your Mother?
I think she’s in Nashville, Tennessee at a Sheraton. I called her on Monday and she was in a really good mood, she said she was in Nashville, Tennessee at a Sheraton. I asked her why, and she said because her friend wanted to go and she didn’t have anything better to do “so I thought, what the hell? I’ll go.” This is the kind of thing you do in your later years, when you have money. This is the kind of thing you’re supposed to do when you’re young, but right now you owe Citibank almost $60,000 in student loans and they own your salary for 2 years.
Where is your Father?
He’s living in Mt. Pleasant, California. The last I heard, he wanted to offer me some money to hang out with him and pretend like I like him so he’ll feel better about himself without really having to do anything. Turns out, the money is my “inheritance” and probably doesn’t exist and when I said no thanks, he made sure to tell me he’d be giving it to his NEW WIFE’S DAUGHTER, then! Nyahh! How does that grab you!! I bet you’re jealous!
This is the kind of thing you do in your later years.
Where were you born?
In a house in a small town on red shag carpet. Aforementioned Mother got on her hands and knees and thankfully, aforementioned Father stuck around at least long enough to catch me on my slippery fall from the womb. Thanks Daddy!
How many days until your birthday?
13. I know because I’m counting and also I’m obnoxious so I mention it every single day. You should buy me this because I don’t have it yet and I can’t figure out why:
GIANT CUPCAKE OMG
What is the closest orange object to you?
All kinds of really bad art on the walls of this coffee shop, I can just see the skinny jeaned artist himself hanging the pieces, which look like trees drawn by a third grader with press-on nails at the end of each branch. “See, when I painted this one, I was listening to a lot of Kanye West? And, you know, really just…thinking about the colors in the music. About the antiquated methods used to produce the sound and how that really influences the way it colors your mind, you know?” Or some other kind of shit that people say about stuff they create when they’re put on the spot.
How many books are in your room?
Over a hundred. It’s annoying. Sometimes I wake up and want to take them all outside and leave them on the curb. I mean, what am I going to do with all of these books? I’m just not the type of person anymore who buys 100 copies of Hemingway or Salinger novels because I want someone to come over and ask me about it so I can talk about why I loooove his work and how it shaped me as a writer. Or some other kind of shit that people say about stuff other people created when they’re put on the spot.
Now that I’m such a heavy user of libraries, I see no point in owning books anymore. I guess they can be aesthetically pleasing, but to me they’re just an annoyance, a waste of shelf space. I mean, the library is just about the only system in the world that you can use for free to give you access to something you want for free. Why buy? Maybe because I feel guilty about reading library books in the bath tub and wrinkling the pages with wet fingers. I guess that’s why.
Who is your favorite teacher of all time?
Michelle Fucking Pfeiffer. Not only because we have the same birthday (in 13 days) but also (and mostly) because she knows how to sit on a chair backwards to make people pay attention to you. When I do that in staff meetings because I’m being constantly talked over by loud, stupid men who basically repeat what I say only LOUDER and get all the credit for it, people look at me like I’m a total weirdo and then continue to talk over me. I must be doing something wrong, Ms. Pfeiffer! Teach me! Maybe I have the wrong kind of chair.
Name one of your goals for this year?
To publish a story. And I did! Unfortunately I published it in this crappy excuse for a lit journal that is actually a blog that is actually this kid’s crappy college fiction art project. So now he’s tagging me in pictures on Facebook and commanding me to write something about the picture he’s chosen, and I’m in the middle of this hideous cluster fuck of creative writing undergrads who like to glue quotes and weird pictures to the walls of their shitty dorm rooms and talk about their inspiration and write about rape and shit eating and bulimia, often in that order. New goal: bring down the blog in a hail of fire.
What is the biggest trouble you have ever been in?
I used to date the guy in my small, small town who just felt weird about driving around without pot in his glove box. Which was sucky for him because the small town cops knew him personally and knew where to look and pulled us over every fucking time we went anywhere and there was always pot in the car. I doubt that I was in any real trouble, but it was pretty annoying to be sitting downtown on a crappy booger-encrusted chair in the waiting room at the police station while he called his mom to bail him out and swore to the cops that the stash wasn’t mine. Of course, at the time, I thought for sure that all the bad stuff they tell you about in grade school was going to happen to me: I’d leave the cop shop, get raped, my mom would disown me, I’d start doing hard drugs and wearing nasty clothes, drop out of high school, etc. etc. etc.
Did you cry because Michael Jackson died?
No. When he died, I was sitting on the floor of my apartment in front of a fan, because it was hot as shit outside. I watched all of the news coverage. I though, Huh, isn’t that something. Then I ate a cold tomato like it was an apple, then I went to bed.
What does your 9th message on your phone say?
Your package is on its way!
Are you scared about the end of the world?
When I was eleven, I was terrified to the point of staying up all night and crying because the world would end some day. As an adult, I’m just scared I’ll be dead of cancer or a flesh eating virus before the world ends. It seems somehow unfair to have to die some TV movie death before everyone dies an awesome Cormac McCarthy death.
Is there a TV in the room you are in?
No, but there is really horrible tribal funk music, so there might as well be a TV going full volume during some kind of National Geographic mass donkey suicide or something.
Do you usually hold your pee for a long time?
The longest time, especially at work, because I’m pee shy and I think I’ve made it clear that a certain person with a fat ass hovers outside of the women’s bathroom and reports on your toilet habits to everyone in the entire office. That’s enough to make my pee retreat all the way up into my brain.
Worst feeling in the world?
Well having pee in your brain isn’t the most comfortable thing in the world, Bucko.
What’s your current favorite commercial?
Comcast recently shut off my ability to watch basic cable. Now the only commercial I can see is the one with the white screen and red letters that says “If you are seeing this message, call Comcast today to discuss your options for cable and On-Demand!” It’s on every channel, 24 hours a day.
I’ll tell you what I’d like to see back in rotation: the Ronco Electric Food Dehydrator infomercial. I also have a fond place in my heart for the Magic Bullet. Good thing the Internet is magic, I can watch both!
Let’s talk about Ron Popeil. He will never die: he doesn’t need to! And who better to invent things and sell them to you until the end of time?! What you’ve got here is a spraypainted zombie with a knack for making your life easier with plastic. And you can’t make an infomercial without a blustering, clueless woman dithering around on the stage, showcasing her endless surprise for anything the product does. No, you tell ME about the product, audience! I’m here to learn!
And on to the Magic Bullet, which apparently exists in Magic Planet, because we’re supposed to believe that an American woman one can only describe as “chipper,” and her slighty homosexual British housemate (with whom she shares a home and an ambiguous relationship) are throwing an early morning party for a group of guests who apparently stayed overnight. Our cast of characters includes: A hung over businessman, a middle aged couple fresh from the cabana, a sassy young couple who are apparently taking a break from spending every Saturday morning at Bed Bath & Beyond, and a crotchety old woman with a permanent cigarette in her mouth. These people enjoy spending lots of time together because they share something very important in common: each of them has a really hard time grasping simple concepts. I’ll give you five dollars if you can count all of the times someone stops the Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner From A Mini Blender show to say “Whoa whoa whoa…so…let me get this straight…you just mixed things, things that can be made by mixing, in a mixing thing??”
Name something you think is pointless?
Those pages and pages of “meal plans!” in SELF magazine. Who in their right mind is following those? Really? It’s this insanely small amount of food you’re supposed to eat every single day, then this ridiculously complicated exercise section you’re supposed to do every day, which usually involves some type of head stand or backwards wall climbing, then you turn the page and the headline says “Are You Always Hungry?” and the article is about how you should try eating a whole wheat pita after your lunch but if you’re still hungry you probably have a disease. That right there covers about twelve glossy pages that could be put to better use printing an article about cat suicide or something, you know, a real problem.
Favorite fast food restaurant?
Man, I don’t eat fast food often, but Taco Bell just keeps bringin it. Nobody does fake Mexican better. Except maybe J.Lo in Selena.
Did you have a weird dream last night?
I keep having this stress dream that the retarded, co-dependent, stupid, emotional, Christian-and-proud-of-it, total bitch senior citizen receptionist at my job is following me around with my mail. This is something she does, you know, instead of filtering all of the mail into the mail boxes, which is the designated place for people to pick up their mail. If I have received something that is of interest to her, she holds it at her desk for a few days before bringing it to me and sort of hovering around to see what it is. Sometimes I’ll realize that I’ve seen her walking around in the halls holding this particular piece of mail for almost an entire day, going into this office and that office, HOLDING MY MAIL IN HER HAND. I once ordered a library supply catalog, which she perused for days, took with her everywhere she went, for no reason. I stopped her and asked her for it and she replied “I’m gonna bring it to you!” and basically shuffled away as fast as a 68-year-old can. I’ve repeatedly asked her to “put this in my mailbox, please” and “This type of thing needs to go in my mailbox, OK?” and “COULD YOU PLEASE PUT MY MAIL IN MY MAILBOX WHEN IT ARRIVES??”
So, my dream. I was running from her, and she was trying to give me one piece of mail after another, shuffling after me everywhere I went. I kept screaming “PUT IT IN MY MAIIIIIIL BOOOX!!!”
Do you wish at 11:11?
No. But I knew a girl who did. She actually introduced me to the practice when I was twelve, and had come to her house for a slumber party. This meant that one of my parents had to drive me “way the hell out” to the middle of nowhere, where her family lived in a doublewide trailer that teetered on the edge of a hill, surrounded by goats and mud puddles and giant dogs with ticks in their eyes. A “slumber party” meant that this girl, myself, and her sisters would sit in our pajamas on the floor of the living room of their trailer, watching “Ernest Scared Stupid” over and over again, while the baby sister snacked on an entire stack of American cheese slices for about half an hour before abandoning the slimy thing on the floor, and while her creepy, silent, trucker-hatted father sat in a recliner staring at us for what seemed like unusually long amounts of time, and while her mother shuffled around in the kitchen (half a foot away) trying to make her Wal-Mart bread machine work with peanut butter in it “even though the d’rections say not to use peanut butter.”
“OH!” my friend cried, “It’s 11:11! Everybody make a wish!” I remember thinking “You have a lot to wish for” and feeling awful about it.
My stomach has been gurgling out of control all day. I’m at the point where you’d be yelling “What do you WAAAANT?!” at it if it was a small child screaming its head off. I really wouldn’t mind my stomach screaming its head off, but the thing is: it sounds deep and heavy, like a wet fart pressed against a leather jacket under a pile of blankets. And it seems to be activated by my surroundings, i.e., people. So everybody I’ve talked to today thinks I’ve been trying to control wet farts, and failing.
We’re friends, in that way that we’re not, at all.
I found this girl on Facebook I used to be friends with in real life, or “face-to-face book.” I said hi to her (on Facebook), told her how good it was to see her, and asked her how she’s doing. That was like 2 months ago and I still haven’t gotten a reply. Either:
1. I am way too invested in Facebook, and so fail to realize that other people are not, and so fail to realize that other people do not consider the total ignorance of a wall post equal to ignoring someone who’s just said hi to you in front of a room full of people,
0r
2. She has reasons not to talk to me that I don’t know about.
The last time I talked to this girl was like 6 years ago. She called me and asked me if I wanted to go out that night. I was 600 miles away, something she would have known if we had talked recently. So I said I couldn’t that night, we’d have to schedule for another night when I got back into town. I told her I was happy to hear from her and that I really couldn’t wait to see her. I left her a message when I got back to town, but she never called back–and it was one of those things where you kind of knew that the person wouldn’t.
Imagine my surprise when I’m getting my hair cut and the guy doing the cutting is like, “Oh yeah, we had to reschedule your other appointment because I was at a baby shower.” Turns out it was for my friend/notfriend.
Five years into the future and we’re officially both on the opposite side of a fast-moving river. She’s over there with those mystifying girls from high school who are already grandmothers, people I worked with in fast food joints who lost their minds and stole cars and disappeared during the Juggalo weekend, people I worked with in retail joints who lost their minds in a more regular sort of way, and family members who are certain you killed your grandma by thinking gay is A-OK. I just hate it when there’s people I LIKE over there.
Actually, one thing I hate more than that is when uninvited creeps come dragging back across to my side, sliming over in their little turd boats, powered by their disappointment in their lives, failed relationships, and fast-sprouting gray hairs they’re sure weren’t there a minute ago. Maybe I’m the uninvited creep for this girl. If so, she should have followed my usual tack and not accepted my offer of friendship.
Countdown to Pitiful
I could set my watch by ex-boyfriends, I swear.
First they run right out and date someone else because they couldn’t give a shit about you, then they do their best to make you notice that they’re dating someone else and they couldn’t give a shit about you, then they want to know what you think about the fact that they couldn’t give a shit about you. Then their girlfriend tries to get a bunch of her friends to let you know that her boyfriend doesn’t give a shit about you. Then, god dammit, you bitch, why won’t you REACT to how HARD we’re not giving a shit about you while we’re busy being in LOVE OVER HERE?
Then they break up because maybe he not only gives a shit about you, he might have sent you a couple of text messages suggesting otherwise, to which you did not respond, but still, you’re a BITCH for getting them! You homewrecker!
Then they get back together because really, when you think about it, stunted emotional growth and complete denial are things that most men in their 30’s struggle with, so what can you do?! Hahaha! That’s life! LOLOLOLOLOL
Then they break up again, and what the fuck do you know?
Hi Ex Girlfriend,
It’s time for me to suggest in a chirpy, upbeat way that you and I work on our friendship because I’m lonely, gray-haired, I hate my job, I just got dumped because I never appreciate what I have when I have it, and I’m basically a big old goopy emotional wreck of a person right now and I think it would be helpful to me, I mean you, haha! if we start to be friends again four years later, and you listen carefully to my complaints and distract me from all of my woes. Other than that, EVERYTHING IS COOL AND I’M REALLY HAPPY HAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA YAY
No? You refuse to do this for me?!
Well then FUCK YOU, bitch! I couldn’t give a shit about you!
I mean, I’ve always said no to this same request. It’s one thing to be friends with an ex, it’s quite another to be friends with an ex who can only seem to put aside his vitriol when he’s not sure he’s going to get his cock sucked sometime soon. But this time around, last weekend, when the most recent request came in at 3:54am on a Saturday morning…I said no in such a way that suggested that a certain person’s testicles might be removed from his groin, baked in a tart, then ridiculed for their post-roasting size if I’m ever approached again.
Why do my ex boyfriends have such awful track records? What does that say about me? I think it means I’m a total idiot. The evidence:
One of them is bankrupt and living with his parents.
One is building up a lovely collection of sobriety tokens. 196 days and counting!
One was nearly bankrupt and should totally be in rehab.
One of them clearly invested in Ed Hardy hats.
One of them buys electronics at Target, or did at least once 2 years ago when I saw him there with his girlfriend, the kind of girl who does her hair and makeup before she goes to Target, which made her match him really well. Which is absolutely 100% right with the world, in my opinion.
One went off the map doing the fucking gaywad young Che Guevara motorcycle tour of the safest places in the world for white men that still kind of look dangerous in pictures. There is very little that is more horrifying than having to read about how spiritual and amazing and life-affirming it is to touch a goddamn near dead elephant they’ve dragged out for the whitey tourists to prod, when that person has touched your vagina and never said a fucking WORD about how great THAT was. Shit.
(And one kind of went off the map when his dad got caught getting blown by an 84-year-old woman in a local nursing home last year, which was first an alleged rape, until they came out to everyone as having been a secret couple for the last 30 years. Which I think is amazing, but the guy’s wife and his son didn’t find it as interesting as they did devastating. So it goes.)
Typographical Errrrs
I mean, I know that there are people who probably think I just did this to be an asshole:
To Whom it May Concern,
I’m writing to let you know that the cover of one of your films includes a serious typographical error. The film is “Chocolate Sundaes presents Live on Sunset Strip” (featuring Katt Williams, Kevin Hart, and Aries Spears). The banner across the bottom of the cover reads “Comedy At It’s Best.” Unfortunately, “it’s” represents the contraction of “it” and “is,” so technically the cover of the film reads “Comedy At It Is Best.”
I noticed this DVD on the shelf at my local Blockbuster, and I thought it wise to point this out since this film could possibly still be in reproduction, and this error could be corrected in the future. If that isn’t possible, at the very least this is notice to the graphic design or copy editing department at Cinevision International: using this word incorrectly appears careless, unintelligent, and uneducated.
Thanks for your time.
COMEDY AT IT IS BEST
I didn’t do it to be a jerk! I just don’t think it’s healthy for anyone to be misusing contractions, especially on the cover of a DVD that people already expect to be stupid. Then they see that and they’re just like, “Oh, yeah, of course they fucked that up. Just check out the look on that guy’s face. It’s saying ‘I ain’t be lissnin in school when we be talkin bout contranizzactions. Bitches! Weed! Gun jokes! HAHAHA!'” And that’s racist.
But don’t worry…John Krashna at Cinevision International has assured me that it’s going to be taken care of:
Thank you for your comment we will forward to the appropriate people.
Best
John Krashna
I mean, pay no attention to the fact that John missed a comma in the above sentence. I’m sure that’s why he’s forwarding a typo notice to another party. He knows he’s not the best to handle these matters.
cancer pants
Let me see if I can get out of the valley and up on the hill again.
What’s new with you? Nothing? Well that’s stupid! I’ve been busy doing some baking:
Rainbow Cupcakes
Steel Magnolias Cupcakes
I made the rainbow cupcake by being awesome and also by mixing food coloring into the batter and pouring it in bit by bit. But mostly by being awesome. It was like biting into a unicorn’s butt meat. Then, a work friend requested what he thought was the impossible in asking for a movie-themed cupcake. He got pumpkin cake with pink icing and Steel Magnolias references on top.
So I baked. And I knitted. And I started writing down every food that I ate. I also started making these really crazy lists with arrows going in every which direction, branching out into sub lists and sub sub lists. And I’m not talking about lists of sandwiches! Hur hur hur!!! I started reading a free subscription of Self Magazine and based on Self’s advice I even whipped up Heidi Klum’s signature salad: which consisted of a whole head of fennel (or ass of fennel, as it’s kind of a root) which has been chopped up “into little choppies” (according to Heidi Klum’s directions). That’s mixed with olive oil, garlic, salt, and pepper, and it’s FUCKING GROSS.
The article was about how much Seal loves it when Heidi’s up in the kitchen chopping choppies of fennel, and I thought, I really need to make that salad.
Me: I need to go to the grocery store for some fennel.
My sister: Why?
Me: I want to make Heidi Klum’s Fennel Salad from Self Magazine.
My sister: Shut up
**my sister has gone offline**
At the end of the day, you can’t rely on Seal’s taste in salad. The man is married to a supermodel and has a jacked up face. Something about that says, “Oh well of COURSE he loves hard crunchy roots that taste like puked-up licorice.”
I read in a book once that there are two types of depression: depression caused by inflation, and depression caused by deflation. Well, that makes sense to me. Sometimes you get too high and then everything seems shitty in comparison. And sometimes you just feel like your insides were scraped out and you can barely move. Of course, this book was read over the shoulder of a person on the bus (which I try to NEVER DO and also try to give the shit-eye to other people if I see them doing it to someone). But that’s why it took me a while to realize that this book wasn’t about emotions at all, it was about finance. It still applies though, so yeah.
At the end of July, I went to the doctor for routine checkup stuff. She left me a voicemail three days later about “abnormalities” and diagnostic procedures, and the whole thing was said in that “Gosh darn it, you hurt your little finger, didn’t youuuu!?” way that your grandma says things. (Unless your grandma is my grandma, who yelled SON OF A BITCH when you got stung by a wasp and broke open one of her cigarettes and licked up the tobacco and stuck the tobacco spit wad to your sting because that’s what they did in 1944.) At any rate, I showed signs of stuff that COULD BE other stuff that HAS BEEN KNOWN TO develop into CANCERRRRRRRR AAAAAGGHHH OH MY GOD but don’t panic, stupid. So I had to freak out for a month and a half, waiting, then I had to go in and basically do backflips for some nurses in Baby Phat scrubs and they had to cut out parts of me and put them in jars and mail them and test them and then tell me
“Meh. Not as bad as we thought. But…IT COULD GET WORSE. Come back in six months and we’ll see if it’s grown its own teeth and hair. That’s pretty fucked up, huh!”
Yeah. Huh.
So a smudged bill of health later and you’d think I’d be having fewer panic attacks. Instead I started baking and knitting and writing down every food I ate.
Anyway, it’s a shit excuse, but when you’re pretty sure you’re going to die every single day (and you have a tendency to be a bit dramatic about these things anyway), it’s REALLY hard to imagine that a blog has any point. Special thank-yous to the kind souls who think that it does, and told me as much.
Lady says all men have a monopoly over gettin’ off on porn. Dan suggests that women instead get off on cupcakes–something erotic that men aren’t that down with.
Cupcocks
Way ahead of you. But it’s nice to have my cupkink validated.
There’s a girl who rides my train at the same time every day. She wears awkwardly placed versions of Target’s idea of hipster clothing, and though she’s no svelte figure, they still seem to fall off of her in the wrong places. Her dark cigarette jeans become almost baggy around her butt and hips, sliding down, giving the effect of giant wayward breasts that have somehow been knocked around to appear tacked to her lower back. They slide down at about the same time that her thin knockoff Led Zeppelin or Rolling Stones re-print distressed concert tee (see below) slides up, aided by the shifting strap of her quilted crazy-print all-the-rage-with-suburban-moms laptop bag.
Nice try, Target. You win the Zany and Thirty Years Late award. Oh, and ten bucks.
One who walks behind her is subjected to a view of her panties (and they are “panties,” a word so icky that I usually reserve it for the type of floral print underwear they sell in groups of 6 in plastic bags at department stores, usually with a picture of an otherwise sexy lady on the front, laughing it up, conveying to all who handle the panty pack that yes, 25-year old women do wear, even enjoy, the Hi-Cut Brief–while I get puke in the back of my throat simply by Googling “hi cut brief”). The Panties serve this girl as a type of spangled butt crack tent, saving her from the scarring she would no doubt endure if someone saw anything more than what she’s cool with showing, that is, the skin between the top of her sagging jeans and the bottom of the leg holes of The Panties. She wears them like the dude on the corner by the bus stop wears his boxers: up higher than where pants would be, pants creeping slowly toward the ankle. However, she, like the bus stop guy, always wears a belt of some type, tightened juuuuuust enough to keep the pants above knee level.
GAH! Nothin' "brief" about em, Mama.
When she alights the train, she begins a furious dance down the street, known to some as walking, but when she does it, it looks as if her legs are tiny catapults fired from behind. One arm secures her quilted bag, while the other flaps crazily out at her side, like she’s swiping her way through a crowd, swatting at giant flies that are already mostly behind her, her arm the only oar rowing her tubby tug boat forward. She reaches up at intervals to straighten her knockoff designer glasses, cheap gold metallic plastic “D&G” glinting in the sun, and in doing so pretty much only manages to disturb them from where they’ve slipped, miraculously, to the top of her nose, where they should be perched. It’s like the glasses, wise beyond their price tag, are saying “This is for your own good, you know!!!”
Her hair is the color of the edges of a scab when it’s too small to be there, brownish yellow, and just as crusty. It looks as if it’s been in an unfortunate ponytail accident: chopped to a quick without a moment’s notice. She bumbles past the door I enter every day, on to some other place, I imagine she’s a literature student writing some disgustingly complicated work that will never be understood on any level by anyone, and will be published for that very reason. Else she’s a student of some type of earthy science, where you spend ten years discovering things other people have discovered a thousand times, in the off-chance that you might find out something different about it, whilst some aging professor on the verge of giving up on the effect of radio waves on the migration patterns of the African gypsy moth, silently cheers you on with his mock indifference and lack of ability to express emotion.
When I see this girl, I can’t look away. All of the above makes me regard her as her professor would regard some rare moth, the common, yet complicated, Dorkus totalus, otherwise known as the Wingless American Nerd. When I see this girl, I get the sense that I’d like to nail her to a tiny board and put her under glass, I’d write a million papers about her that will never be read because they’ve already been written.
Everyone, everyone, I would like to announce that I’m So Difficult.
At least, according to the leasing agent in charge of renting my apartment, I’ve recently been a bit difficult. Which serves to be confusing to her and the legions of potential renters she parades through my apartment, as normally, people enjoy paying for a place to live separately from others, while under the constant threat that total strangers may come in at any moment, without notice. Many of the moments in my apartment are Bra-Less, Pants-Less, Leaning On Pillow Eating Taco & Watching Bridezillas types of moments. I do not enjoy constantly listening for a click in the front door lock.
I also do not enjoy coming home on a Saturday afternoon after a showing to find my back door standing wide open, as if a ghost was taking out the trash for me and would be right back. When this happened, I immediately called Leah, the leasing agent from The Company That Owns My God-Forsaken Party Building, Where People Walk on the Roof Shirtless With PBR’s In Hand Every Night, Where The Fence Might As Well Be Made of Road Bikes Covered with Ironic Stickers. She spluttered at first, feigned ignorance, admitted (because she had to) that she’d shown the apartment that morning, but denied ever taking anyone out the back door. “Look,” I said, jutting words in edgewise, as that was the only way to halt Leah’s blubbering damage control, jiggling around on the phone like a pan of Jello on top of an old rickety clothes dryer, “I don’t like the idea of people walking in and out of here all day long, I don’t know if it was you who did this or another apartment company–”
“YEAHHHHH,” she foghorned, “Because those apartment agencies are SHADY, dude.” (She over-enunciated “dude,” like she was coming to my school to talk about drugs and turned her folding chair backwards and straddled it to show me that she was just like me.
“If they’re shady,” I said, “whyyyy are they being allowed to show my apartment??”
Leah jibberybabbled something about how the Company That Owns My God-Forsaken Party Building has no control over the people who come in. How it could be “anyone!” from any one of the city’s apartment leasing agencies, where all you need to get into real estate is a car that was made post-2006 and a willingness to bullshit people into signing a year of their lives away to a place more expensive than they can comfortably afford so you can collect their first month’s rent. “SO!” Leah blared, “What I can dooooo is I can put a note in your file that you ONLY want our company to show your apartment.”
“Fine,” said I, “Perfect.” Normally I am wary of people who say they will Put Notes in My File. I’m aware that my file doesn’t exist, in that way that electronic files kept by magazine distribution companies do not exist. It’s a place where they type in whether you lost your temper and called them an asshole so that the next person you call about the fact that it’s been 6 months and you haven’t seen your refund check yet will know how to handle you.
Apparently Leah didn’t put said note in said file, as I continued to get calls from leasing agents allllll week last week, asking to show my apartment at random times. I kept saying no, and they, keys to my place in hand, protested. “It’s illegal for you to say no,” one particularly jerk-offy, self-important douche named Ted snipped. Another asshole, high on his title of “Leasing Agent,” the fact that his picture is on a website and that he gets to work in some hip converted loft apartment with a Starbucks machine in the corner, huffed “You’re making things really hard for me, Girl.”
So fuck Leah, I thought. Obviously something was amiss. I didn’t mention any of this to her when she called to set up her own showing, and asked me “Have we found the culprit yet?” like all this time it was me who was supposed to be fucking dusting my apartment for prints, me who was responsible for going over the books to see who had accessed my apartment listing on that day, between the hours of 11am and 12:30pm (mind you, after Leah had left, Leah, who never fucks up and leaves doors standing open). “WE have not found the culprit,” I said. “I don’t know. See you later.”
I hung up and called Leah’s boss, who at first attempted the same cavity-inducing damage control as Leah. I thought about alerting him to the fact that I’d very recently gotten lip service from Leah, and had no need to have my lip re-serviced by him, but as I told him the things Leah told me, that the company had no way of knowing who was coming in or out, that those leasing agencies were “shady,” blah blah blah, his end of the phone went quiet. “Well,” he finally said, “I guess all I can say is that this is all news to me. We personally check out each of the keys to our apartments, and log who goes in and out. It’s very easy to find out who was in there that day, and those agencies won’t be allowed into our properties again.” Of course, he then saved Leah’s ass, which she’s been having a hard time covering lately, by reinforcing that no one in OUR company would EVER leave a DOOR OPEN.
Right, so, that’s why Leah went into a tailspin of pretend ignorance, why she suddenly didn’t know how to use company protocol to find out who was in my apartment, why she treated it as a problem that just downright sucked for me, but was my problem alone.
I think it’s probably my phone call to Leah’s boss that shifted the tectonic plates of Polite Looking The Other Way that she’d hoped I would stand on if she was chirpy and nice to me. Some shit must have hit the fan, because the tone of Leah’s next phone call to schedule a Saturday morning full of momentary visitors to my home was decidedly terse. At that point, I was on a roll of Renter’s Rights, and I denied Leah her earliest request. “I’m not going to be up at 8am on Saturday,” I said. “I’ll be in bed. Sleeping in. They’ll have to come later.”
“Oh, it won’t offend me if you’re sleeping, I don’t mind,” she said, as if it was her feelings I was trying to preserve by not having my sleep interrupted by 3-5 sets of eyes at the foot of my bed, surveying my closet space and measuring the distance from wall to window in increments of Ikea furniture. “All I care about is just like, getting this apartment rented.” Like that had been unclear to me. But still I said no, have them come later. No, no, no, and finally, no. Later, or no deal. She grudgingly said she guessed she’d caaaall them baaaaack (people seem to hate to inconvenience someone until they’ve got a piece of paper that says that someone will legally have to pay them a certain amount every month. Then you can be inconvenienced until the inconvenient cows come home). She left me a voicemail later that she’d set up the first viewing for a whole hour later than previously planned. “Hope that works for you,” she said into the chasm of my voicemail, then clicked her END button with as much fury as she could muster at 6:30pm on a Friday afternoon. I thought about leaving her a voicemail that said, “Sure that works for me, because I’ll be heading over to your apartment at 9am, I’ll be peering into your shower, opening your closet, tracking cigarette butts and street tar into your living room. Me and a whole bunch of people I’ve just met will be standing around in your bedroom at approximately 9:15am, looking at your used Kleenex and a thong freshly peeled off your butt and Post-Its from your boyfriend. And if you don’t smile about it like Frances fucking Farmer on the pony ride at the dime store, I’m going to call you at the end of every long work day and leave you a pissy voicemail. Sure, that time works for me just fine.” END.
Cut to Saturday, when I’m trying to make myself invisible as people wander aimlessly through my apartment, politely pretending not to notice me as I sit there and catch up on paying the bills and filing the evidence that I’ve done so, the most bland and impersonal ritual I could come up with at short notice on a Saturday morning. I’d told Leah after the first showing that I’d be gone before the next, so imagine her surprise when she’s standing on one side of my front door, apologizing to who she hoped would be the Replacement Tenants, for the fact that I’d been “So Difficult.” Imagine her surprise when she walked in and there were her words, above my head, glittering in a spiderweb hanging from the ceiling. SO DIFFICULT, they announced, and the wide-eyed visitors to the fair indulged in the awkwardness of the whole situation. Upon seeing me, frozen in time with my bag on my arm and my sunglasses in my hand, on my way out the very door into which Leah and her big mouth were barging, she stopped talking and immediately seemed very very happy to see me, as people are when they’ve just been talking about you and are horrifyingly certain that you heard it all. She looked at me like I’d been presumed dead for ten years and finally made it down off that mountain and God I love that dress and those are cuuuute shooooes where’d you get your sunglasses? well I guess I better let them look around and get out of your way KTHANKSBYEEEEEEE!
Leah the Uncertain Leasing Agent, whose very name is unsure (“Le-uhhh?”), is now officially dead to me. I’d like to tell her that there’s nothing wrong with being So Difficult when you pay money to have the keys to a space you can control for the period of 1 year, where you can be as difficult or as do0rmat-y as you want. The deal is supposed to be that I give you money and you leave me the fuck alone unless something breaks or I stop giving you money. The deal is not that I pretend you never make mistakes and that I take part in entertaining groups of total strangers for seventeen minutes at a time for free. This ain’t a booth in the freak show, and even the bearded lady got a quarter every now and then. So the next time you wonder, Le-UHHH, why people are being So Difficult, you should probably put a fucking cork in that blowhole you call a mouth and blast it out your asshole instead, an emission which, I assure you, will be far less of an affliction to the delicate senses of those around you than your blaring, broken-oboe blast of a voice.
But enough about Leah.
About this “so difficult” stuff. I would like to point out that even though it’s illegal for assholes to party on my roof, even though the stomping around kept me up, then woke me up repeatedly, last night, as I live on the top floor, I did not call the police. I didn’t even yell “SHUT THE HOLY FUCK UUUUUUUUP” out the window, as I was tempted to do at 1:37am. Because I am not So Difficult, I am just the normal amount of Difficult, just a touch of Bitchy and Tired of This Shit. I don’t like paying for things that other people get to stomp all over and disturb all night long, but what the fuck, I thought. Party tonight means quiet tomorrow night.
On the other hand, I understand where Leah is coming from. Most people are so goddamn POLITE that they lose the ability to COMMUNICATE. I was supposed to buy Leah’s story that fucking Zorro could have gotten the keys to my apartment and left the door open, that there was no way of knowing what actually happened. Because that would be The Polite Thing to Do, that would be Doing Her a Solid. Unfortunately, the more solids you do for people like that, the more laptops and cash and TV’s get stolen out of apartments. Bitch is lucky everything was still there when I got home. Bitch is lucky I’m not actually crazy, or I would have called her boss at home and demanded she be flayed and tanned and made into a chair for me to sit on while I watch them burn her family’s house down. I did something that was somewhere between Playing Along and Losing My Shit when I called her boss and was honest about what happened.
So fuck this Shutup and Be Nice business. I quit. It puts you in very real danger of being people’s stairway to a paycheck. Not that I don’t want you to get your paycheck, Leah and the Army of D-Baggy Leasing Agents, there’s nothing I want more for you. But if you’ve got to inconvenience me to get it, you’re going to have a difficult time. Nobody’s ever described me as “laid back” and “down to earth” and “goes with the flow” or even “totally cool.” I think that’s because I open my mouth quite a lot, and 26% of the time something not entirely stupid and not entirely incorrect comes out. Y’all just happen to be getting the brunt of that 26% right now. Don’t be so difficult and deal with it.
It’s day 3 of trying to be positive, and the internet is not making things any fucking easier.
I checked my ISP free email account today, you know, the one where all the bills and stupid subscriptions and other bullshit is routed, and this is what I find, glaring back at me, at the top of the page:
Why you hate yo grandma, dog?
Usually, it’s a picture of a wedding, the happy couple smiling into a camera. Or it’s a lady in a leafy garden embracing a small child on a swing. The whole campaign is supposed to make you go, “Awww, there’s people I love who are happy and they pose for cameras and hold kids. I wonder what they’re doing?” So now there’s this image added to the mix, and let me tell you, whoever does AT&T Yahoo Mail’s ads really knocked it out of the park when they selected this stock photo of a surly, annoyed young man being accosted with love by his clingy, lonely grandmother whose husband of 47 years probably passed away during gastric bypass surgery last year.
If this kid was pressured into getting status updates from his grandma all day long, he’d probably make the same face he’s making in the photo. That’s because Grandma probably doesn’t know how to use it. She probably doesn’t realize that her updates are blasted all over place to everyone. She probably doesn’t know how to set her updates as Private from Rayjon’s little college buddies. So this dude probably gets constant updates (because Grandma is retired from her teaching job and has time on her hands) that are like
HI RAYJON ITS GRANDMAMA I LOVE YOU BYE LOL
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MY LATE HUSBAND CARL FELTERS JR. DIED 4/6/09 I LOVE YOU SWEETY EVERY DAY MISS U LOVE DORISS
RAYJON WHY IS YOU MAKIN THAT FACE IN YOUR PROFIEL PIC YOU FUNNY LOL
RAYJON TELL YOUR MAMA TO CALL ME TONIGHT OK SWEETY GRANDMAMA LOVES YOU BYE
I’d be pissed off, too, Rayjon. I’d be pissed off, too.
So anyway. I looked through the list of highlighted new correspondence that for some goddamn reason all the places I’ve ever shopped in my life have just HAD to send me at 4:00 this morning, and there’s the stupid shit Urban Outfitters likes to send to get me to spend more money on them, which they will then spend on more horrible ads. Apparently market research has proven that this will make me unable to not shop:
"I'm soooooo wasted, also we're like, having a sale."
What the fuck is wrong with this bitch? And how can that look on her face be considered anything but annoying? If this girl walked up to me in person and tried to communicate something to me with that look on her face, I’d say, “Look, do you need a glass of water? Do you need me to call someone for you?? What? What’s that you’re trying to say? Oh, Urban Outfitters has hundreds of new items, huh? Well maybe you can go buy yourself some pants.”
But then I’d notice that she didn’t bring her wallet.
Cupcake Heartbreak 
