Tag Archives: Ireland

shitty dress

One time I went to Ireland and saw a lot of amazing things, but I feel absolutely ashamed when I think about the fact that the most amazing thing was the night I stayed in binge watching episodes of the UK’s answer to The Jersey Shore on international Netflix and binge eating a huge sack of tiny gummies in the shape of fried eggs.

Geordie Shore! They’re all dead now.

It was in Connemara in a little b&b that was set up on a hill overlooking the little fishing town of Clifden. I had cramps that felt like Sonic the fucking Hedgehog from Hell was doing his damnedest to collect all the rings from my uterus, while wearing little razor blade boots. I was mad and tired of Looking At Things and also I had this giant bag of gummies and a pile of UK teen magazines and also there was Overseas Netflix and a tub the size of a sarcophagus in our room so BYE GUYS HAVE FUN AT DINNER.

I mean I guess there were other noteworthy things about the trip. Like when I walked around Tollymore Forest Park by myself because everybody else was too hung over to join, and it was like I was the only person in there. Or like the night before when I drank too much and danced around in Belfast’s only gay bar, screaming I LOVE GAYS YOU GUYS ARE ALL SO HOT okay wait maybe actually that was not a good time. Because I threw up an hour later and now realize that gay bar patrons hate it when dumb straight white girls come up in there and turn it into a pandering screech festival, and I bet they hate even more when this is their ONLY gay bar and oh my god, here comes Loudy McStraightgirl to dump a big shit bucket of lame all over everything. So maybe that wasn’t the best time but I remember it really well and at that moment I was having a really good time. There was also a lot of good scenery and shit because that country is green and beautiful and everyone should see it before they die. There’s a photo of me somewhere standing on a cliff while a big wave comes up and I look really shocked because a) it’s cold as shit by the sea and the wind is 500 mph so I had to wear a big puffy down coat that made me look like a charred marshmallow and added enough mass to my body to make it easier for the wind to flatten me instead of just going around me, and b) the wind grabbed my strapless dress from under my coat and yanked it down to my ankles and into a tiny pile of sheep shit. I could not find the photo so I drew it for you guys.

Is that my dress? Tell me that’s not my dress.

But I just want to confess that MOSTLY what I remember is taking a bath in a tub the size of a Range Rover and eating gummies and listening to some of the world’s trashiest people talk about their hair products and underpants. I’m sorry. I should not be allowed to travel. It is wasted on me and I complain a lot anyway.

Mrs. DinoHand

My fifth grade teacher had a birth defect that caused one of her arms to curl up under her massive right tit, and rest there in between her boob and belly. The arm was smaller than the left arm, so not only did it constantly look like she was trying to clandestinely adjust her bra or push up her boob, it looked like she had a little T-Rex arm attached to one side of her body. She couldn’t stretch it out straight in front of herself, or really do anything else with it, as it seemed to have very little range of motion at all. So it sat there, sandwiched between two large portions of flesh. She did have a method for clapping, which is really something that everyone needs to figure out how to do, regardless of physical impairment. You’d think she would take the easy way out and slap her knee when she wanted to show appreciation at a Billy Ray Cyrus concert or bring her class to order, but no, not Mrs. DinoHand.

This is not a Tyrannosaurus Rex arm but it may in fact be a picture of Mrs. DinoHand’s arm.

The arm didn’t budge except for maybe one or two inches toward or away from the body. The hand, however, had been equipped with some kind of mechanical swivel technology that allowed it to turn on an axis, palm up and palm down, like some kind of magical flapping device. She would turn the hand to the Palm Up position, then anchor the arm in place by plopping it down on a hard surface (usually her desk, a hollow metal structure that would go BONGGGG when she’d bang her dead arm down onto it), then slap at the hand on the desk with the hand on the good arm, thereby creating a flat-sounding semblance of a clapping sound.

At our last class party, she was clapping along to “Boot Scootin’ Boogie” while several of the popular girls and one unfortunate boy (who had no idea how this decision would affect the rest of his life) performed the line dance in the middle of the room. We all had to push our desks back so these fools could dance, and dance they did, again and again. We must have listened to that goddamn song 4 or 5 times in a row, so tickled was Mrs. DinoHand, who clapped along into her dead arm the entire time, letting out little Yeahs! and Wooos! every time the dance crew spun around on their heels. I was pissed because I didn’t know the dance and I wanted SOME of the attention that appeared to be up for grabs and I’d brought my R.E.M. Automatic for the People cassette tape with me JUST FOR THIS PARTY. I’d asked for the tape for my birthday because a boy I had a huge crush on randomly came up to me at the Halloween party and recommended it to me. He rolled up to my desk on his Roller Blades and lifted his Richard Nixon mask and said “Have you heard of R.E.M.? My dad listens to them. It’s good.” I think I said AH-BUH BUH BUHHHH and he rolled away but you bet your ass I got my parents to get me that fucking tape.

“Can we listen to my tape nowwww” I kept pleading with Mrs. DinoHand from across the room. “Heyyyy,” I squealed every time Brooks and/or Dunn started to wind down, “Can we listen to a song on this nowww?” I was sure she’d like it, I intended to play “Everybody Hurts” and maybe I’d fucking dance to it, too? Who knows! This is the END OF THE YEAR PARTY, ANYTHING CAN HAPPEN. I waved the tape in the air, trying to get her to notice me, also glancing over at Crush Boy to be sure he saw that I’d taken his advice. For the love of God, somebody pressed rewind and the twangy twats started up again, tellin’ us all about the sun goin’ down and whiskey git down turn around go to town and it was like she just wasn’t hearing me.

I got up and crept over to Mrs. DinoHand’s desk, the tape clutched in my sweaty hand. “Mrs. DinoHand?” I said, “I brought a tape too! It’s real good, it’s kind of country I guess,” and at this, since she still hadn’t turned to acknowledge my presence, I put my hand on the elbow of her dead arm, where it lay anchored against the desk, thinking if I could only get her to turn around and look at the cover of my tape she’d totally want to hear it. The second I touched her elbow, she jerked it away from me, turning her head sharply, all in one quick, terrifying motion. The look on her face said “sit down and shut the fuck up and don’t ever touch me again” so I went back to my desk without a word and put the tape in my pencil case and watched the boots do some more scootin.

This is probably why she thought I was weird and didn’t like me as much as the normal kids. How dare I touch her and demand to be acknowledged?!? Or maybe she had heard stories about me from earlier teachers. Like maybe my third grade teacher told her that I went out at recess and caught a bunch of bees in my empty sandwich baggie and stored the bee bag in my desk and when she finally traced the source of the incessant buzzing back to my desk, where there was A FUCKING SACK OF BEES, I told her I had absolutely no idea how they had gotten there. Maybe my second grade teacher showed her my confiscated copy of the yearbook, in which I’d drawn green marker arrows pointing at everyone’s butts in the picture of everyone hunkered in the hallway for a tornado drill, and green dribbles of snot pouring from the nose of a beloved former administrator in the “In Memoriam” section in the back. Perhaps she’d heard from the science teacher about the day a student had brought in boiled crawfish for us to eat in some kind of weird nod to her New Orleans roots, and I thought it was some kind of exotic water bug, so instead of eating it, I wrapped it in tissue and put it in my backpack because I was sure my dad had never seen one of these and he would probably think it was cool, then he’d think I was cool. He would say “thank you for showing me this strange spicy crab that I have never seen, you are a great kid and also smart.” But the science teacher found it because by the afternoon it had started to stink up the joint and she made me open my backpack and show her what was rotting in there and when I tearily told her “I wanted to show my dad” she rolled her eyes and made me throw it away. Or maybe a certain classmate told her about when we all went to see the StarLab and the lady running the joint turned off the lights and showed us constellations on the ceiling, then asked if anybody knew what this constellation was? And because I wanted someone to acknowledge my star expertise, I practically screamed SCORPIOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!! causing my classmate to look at me in the dark and say “Why’d you do that? Why’d you say it so loud? You are weird.”

Whether it was my reputation or just the plain old fact that I was annoying in that moment, here at the end of the year, she could no longer bother hiding it. Mrs. DinoHand did not like me.

She had two sons named Rhett and Ashley because Gone With the Wind was her favorite movie. She was somehow surprised that neither wanted anything to do with her. I’m sorry, but I don’t feel like this kind of person is really the best judge of who is a weird fifth-grader and who is a fucking awesome person in the shell of a fifth-grader in this shitty little town full of dried grass and country music. She didn’t know shit.

That, of course, didn’t occur to me at the time, so I went home and played “Everybody Hurts” on my purple plastic cassette player and dreamed of the day that Richard Nixon would carry me away from here on his Roller Blades.

Goodbye, Dougie!

One time I posted an ad for a ghost dog on Craigslist:

Date:2014-10-31 08:17:14
PostID:4162927027
Title:(pets) Lab/Shepherd mix FREE to good home!!!

Need to find a new home for 9 year old Lab/German Shepherd mix, Dougie. Well trained, housebroken (never has accidents in the house), and great with kids, maybe a little scary at first. Doesn’t eat much. The only thing is that he is a bit of a night owl and likes to roam the halls all night, and the sound of his toenails on the tile is keeping us awake, so it’s time to get Dougie a new home. He would be great company for an insomnia sufferer. He passed away 2 years ago after finding some chocolate in the garbage and has been very low-maintenance ever since, you won’t even know he’s there.

Pick up ONLY. Unfortunately Dougie is not microchipped so it will not be possible to send him through the television, we can’t be responsible for him getting lost in the netherworld or adopted by a poltergeist. Check out pics of this handsome boy, please email if interested.

Location: Logan Square

it’s NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests

Susan Gardner <8522d022ba1d3a7e930995027273f26b@reply.craigslist.org>
to 7qvxs-41629270.

Hi,

Is he still available? Thanks

Susan

Cupcake Heartbreak <7qvxs-41629270>
to Susan <8522d022ba1d3a7e930995027273f26b@reply.craigslist.org>

He is still with us. Let me know if you can pick him up this week. You don’t need to worry about a leash or collar but you will need to bring a proton pack and ectoplasmic trap to transport him safely to your house.

Pickup shouldn’t take long, usually we put his favorite chew toy on a Ouija board and call him a few times. He comes out within 5 minutes or so.

Let me know when you’re available and if you’re still interested.

Susan Gardner <8522d022ba1d3a7e930995027273f26b@reply.craigslist.org>
to Cupcake Heartbreak <7qvxs-41629270>

DO you have a picture of him?

Cupcake Heartbreak <7qvxs-41629270>
to Susan <8522d022ba1d3a7e930995027273f26b@reply.craigslist.org>

He is in the picture on the ad. Just a little hard to see since he is invisible most of the time. We can try and get another pic tonight if you need it but we will need to borrow my sister’s infrared equipment.

Cupcake Heartbreak <7qvxs-41629270>

to Susan <8522d022ba1d3a7e930995027273f26b@reply.craigslist.org>

Hi there,