Tag Archives: the crazies

November 4, 2014 · 12:07 pm

HELLO, SHOE LOVER

Pork Intolerance

There’s a barbecue restaurant around the corner from work. They push all this “WOOD FIRED OVEN” and “SMOKED PULLED PORK” stuff, but really when you go in there it’s like a Sbarro: everything is sitting in a little chute under heat lamps, and there’s a giant microwave in the back. But it’s also like Chipotle in that they slide you past the chute, grabbing handfuls of things from metal containers, and slap everything into a styrofoam clamshell,. No matter what you order as far as meat, sides, or drink, every worker in the assembly line says the same thing: “Great choice!” They smack their lips and slap a little cup of greasy, crusty mac and cheese onto your styrofoam platter. “Great choice!”

I get that this is positive reinforcement, it’s meant to signify that even these workers, these people who WORK here, are totally down with the food. They eat it all the time! And they LOVE it. It’s the same as when you work in a clothing store and you’re expected to wear the clothes they’re selling. I know what it is. But I can’t help but think that proclaiming something a “Great choice!” means that somewhere out there, there is some configuration of the food that is not the great choice: there’s some combination of something you could order there that they’d just look at with dead eyes and then say “$7.59, please.”

Also, you don’t know me. I might have some kind of mac and cheese disease or pork intolerance and this food will straight up kill me. Maybe I’m here for a piece of brisket to eat on the toilet so I can just keel over onto the tarp I’ve spread out on the bathroom floor. The point is, you don’t KNOW. You could be sending me to my suicide with a big old pat on the back. GREAT CHOICE!

GREAT JOB ON THAT ORDER, CHAMP!

It’s like at DSW when you stand in line at the register, the person says “Next shoe lover, please!” when it’s your turn. Then when you walk up there they go “HELLO SHOE LOVER!”

Anyway. The other day I went to the new Chipotle-style pizza place next to the Chipotle-style barbecue place across from the Chipotle. I’m in this place in my life where pizza sounds like a good option for every single meal. Also I’ve got a lot of anxiety right now. So I was nervous as fuck to go to this pizza place because I knew they were going to try and make the experience like AN EXPERIENCE and over complicate things and ask me all kinds of pizza questions. I mean, I didn’t want to build my own. I wanted something directly off the menu. My hands were sweating. I just wanted to get out of there (with a pizza). So the lady at the beginning of the Pizza Maker line asks the guy half a foot in front of me “Have you been here before?!” and he says no so she launches into this high-speed overview of how to select fucking ingredients off a list that you would like them to put on a circle of dough for you. Her lips were moving so fast I thought I was going to pass out, she was like the Micro Machines man of pizza mechanics.

So she explains the intricacies of a Basic Restaurant Menu With Under 20 Items On It and ol’ boy moves on. She then turns to me and offers me the exact same motormouth “Hihowareyouhaveyoubeenherebefore” to which I say, “Uhhhh YES” hoping she will just leave me alone, also because I was less than a foot away while she explained the whole damn thing to the other guy, so I felt like maybe I should get a pass. So she says “YAY WELCOME BACK” with this genuine smile on her face like I’m her best friend but I left town for a couple of months and she super totes missed me. Well, she missed me so much she decides explain the entire goddamn premise of the restaurant to me anyway! “Oh, so you already know that–” and then there it is again, the Guide to Getting Pizza Here. In my opinion, it should not be any more difficult than this:

1. I say the words meaning the kind of pizza I want,

2. You go get that pizza or tell someone who can get that pizza,

3. You take my money, then

4. I leave with pizza.

But no. They just had to dook it up unnecessarily. So after she’s done acknowledging what I already know and then repeating it to me, she allows me to order just a basic old no-frills pizza straight off the menu, and I move on down the line. The thing is? I’m cursed when it comes to ordering things. No matter what it is, if it’s something I really want, they will either be out of it or just screw up my order so that what I want isn’t what I want anymore. It’s a CURSE. It happens to me ALL the TIME. Ask anyone. So I’m standing there trying not to be excited about the ricotta cheese that, according to the menu, they’re going to add to my pizza. I’m shaking in my DSW boots because I can’t help myself! I’m repeating don’t think about the ricotta, don’t think about the ricotta over and over in my head, but all I can see flashing behind my eyes are giant dollops of ricotta sizzling and bubbling on my pizza’s crust. Oh, heaven! What joy! RICOTTA! So, of course, my pizza slides right past the cheese station with nothing but mozzarella on it. I follow it down the line and realize that at the part where the salt and pepper are offered as toppings for your toppings is the END. No ricotta for you, fucko. So I verrry delicately say, “Uhhm. Is…is that supposed to have…ricotta cheese?” The lady who was juuust about to toss my pizza in the Ready to Bake queue looks down at my nekkid pizza and says, “Oh, yeah, I guess it is.” So they add the ricotta. PHEW. This ricotta disaster has been averted, until next time.

So they pop my pizza into the flame den at the back and ring me up, and tell me to stand over to the side until my name is called. I stand in this huge crowd of people, some of whom have been standing there since I showed up at the end of the ordering line. I quickly realized why: cooked, boxed pizzas were piling up on the counter, unclaimed and cooling rapidly. Two guys were running the pick-up station: one of them arranging the hot pizzas on the little papers with people’s names and orders on them, then sliding them down to the guy who either boxes them or puts them on a tray, then hollers out the name on the order. However, the latter was a deaf guy. So not only was the attempt to pronounce a lot of different Sharpie-scribbled names very loud and in a fast-paced environment already awkward and difficult, he also could not hear what he was saying. Which maybe, MAYBE, pizza place? Mayyyybe that’s not the best job for this guy? Because it went like this:

Pizza Caller: “HAAAAHHHBUWWWWHHH? HAAAAHBUWWWHH?”

Pizza Line: ???????

Pizza Caller: Throws pizza onto stack of waiting pizzas, grabs another. “WUHHHBAWWIEEE?”

Pizza Line: Everyone stares at each other, waiting for someone to make a move. “Did he say–I mean…I can’t…”

Pizza Caller: “JUHBOHHWEEE?”

And on and on.

So all of the customers stand there in this crowd of awkward turmoil, and people just start grabbing random pizzas, reading names on boxes, swapping between each other, and getting the fuck out of there because nobody wants to point out that because of his disability the guy can’t be understood in such a loud and frantic environment. I mean, I can see how someone would read this like OHMAGAH, HOW CAN YOU HATE ON THIS GUY FOR BEING DEAF but that’s really not what it is, pally. They had at least fifteen employees behind that register making pizza crust, refilling ingredients, putting pizzas in ovens, and even the guy right next to the deaf guy who was just organizing orders for him. From what I could tell, none of these jobs involved needing to speak clearly or hear anything anyone asked you from across the counter. It was just such a weird choice to put him in that position. I was frozen because I didn’t know which pizza was mine and I was scared to make it more awkward for him by asking him which was mine and possibly still not understanding. So I just sorted through all of the boxes and looked for my name and hightailed it out.

Limp Dick Pizza is a real disorder.

The pizza comes out fast at that joint because they have this whole “Fast fired! Cooked in 180 minutes!” thing they’re always on about, it’s on every sign and menu and they even tell you that at the beginning of the line, whether you want them to or not. So when I lifted a slice out of the box by the end crust and tried to take a bite, it did what things do when you hurry and just went straight limp dick, sagging down onto my wrist, its toppings flopping out onto the bottom of the box. All of my beautiful ricotta just splattered all over the place. Ricotta disaster accepted.

Panic at the Crisco

Some days, especially these gray, cold, drizzly days of early fall and in this, the latest and deepest wave of clinical depression, the choice is clear:

A. Google ex-boyfriends, or

B. Watch ISIS beheading videos.

Since I’m still too scared and horrified to do B (thankfully), I just look up ex-boyfriends to be on the safe side. And OHMYGOD is that ever a bad idea! One is just as bad an idea as the other. They make you feel the same, anyway. It’s all tragedy porn in the end.

We had a dinner party on Saturday for four friends to christen our new dining room table, which we bought because we’re grown ups and we’re engaged and we thought that maybe we should stop eating every meal on the couch in front of The Daily Show. (The great thing about the TV though is that it’s a grown up TV which turns on an axis so we can still watch The Daily Show from our grown up dining room table so yeahhhh!) In an attempt to fuck-start my brain, I planned an elaborate menu including lots of difficult things I’d never made before that seemed a bit tricky. I timed everything with detailed reminders on my phone. I was going to be that person who can chat with guests while ensuring that her parmesan-thyme popovers rise perfectly and don’t burn and are also not eggy in the middle which is apparently a thing that can happen. And for the most part, I WAS that person, up until The Pants had the audacity to sit in the wrong seat as everyone came to the table.

NO. I DON’T MIND. I REEEEALLY DON’T.

“YOU HAVE TO SIT ACROSS FROM ME AT THE HEAD OF THE TABLE!!!!!!!!!!!!” I barked, somewhat louder and more shrill than I’d meant to, but in a way that was definitely indicative of what was going on in my head. My next thought was OH GOD WHAT IF THE POLENTA GETS COLD? Dinner was kind of tense because not only had I just yelped all crazy-eyed at my boyfriend like Carolyn Burnham, but there was a baby guest doing baby things (like crying and needing to be fed and stuff) and something about it freaked me the fuck out. It was so SMALL and BREAKABLE and NEEDED THINGS for which all adult conversation had to cease in order to appropriately deliver. It was a sort of culture shock, I guess. We’ve talked about babies, and the very real idea of having some of them, but when there’s one at your table and you’re freaking out about the texture/temperature of the polenta and the height of the popovers and the doneness of the fish and why can’t he just fucking sit where I envisioned him sitting?!, the whole idea of babies as an IDEA kind of goes out the window. Yikes, there’s an actual baby here! What do we do with it??? Don’t put it down, what if it gets mad?!

The thing about having babies around is that you have to be a chill person. They can smell fear, like hyenas or your mom, or mom hyenas. They know you’re anxious and worried about the polenta and they react by shitting their pants and crying, because what else can they do? I really don’t know how my friends do it. Babies seem really great and cute and snuggly until they start to cry and barf everywhere, then they’re just upsetting. What about me? Who’s going to stop me from crying?? It doesn’t matter anymore!

eggghhhhhh. This is all far too heavy for a Tuesday morning.

Burn It In A Trashcan Bad

Troll 2

If you have some kind of vitamin deficiency, your thumbnail will grow a little bump. That bump will annoy you to death because you’ll constantly be rubbing your index fingernail up and down it. So you’ll Google to find out why you have a bumpy nail and what you’re supposed to do about it. “Oh!” Google says, “Just file it down!” Google, you are fucking full of good ass ideas.

So you file your nail bump down, and about five minutes into the filing operation, you think “This is making my thumb kinda sore.” You look down, wipe away the nail file powder, and to your horror, REALIZE THAT YOU HAVE FUCKING FILED A HOLE THROUGH YOUR NAIL AND EXPOSED YOUR NAIL BED. Fucking shit. Then you realize that you’re me and you’re amazingly bad at doing your nails and fixing your hair and accessorizing and wearing the right shoes with the right belts because you’re just really bad at all the stuff girls know how to do when they’re born. (But I’ve seen Bourne Ultimatum about five thousand times so I’m fairly certain I could kill a guy with a book, a towel, and a candlestick if I had to.)

Yeah. So. The nail with the hole in it FUCKING FELL OFF and now I have a tiny sliver of half-nail at the bottom of my thumb and exposed nail bed all across the top. It hurts like hell and it’s ugly and it eeks everyone out, you probably skipped over most of the story up there ^^ or maybe winced to yourself and started rubbing your thumbnail. I bet you did. The Pants calls it “the troll nail” and can’t stand to hold that hand right now and looks away while I try to cover it with one of those horrible Sally Hansen stick-on nails, which is an adventure in fake ladyness in itself.

Lord almighty. I am ready to just have my arms cut off and replaced with robot arms now.

Unnecessary.

: Check out this motherfucker of all ATMs.

Wanna see this sombitch in action? There’s a fucking VIDEO in which some Beverly Hills assholes talk about why–or something that…you know what? Sorry. I am just getting used to living in a world where cupcakes come out of a machine if the cupcake store is not open and you forgot to buy confectioner’s sugar for frosting. I couldn’t actually pay attention to the words being said in the video.

Holy big bad diabetes! We’re all gonna die and it’s gonna taste unreal.

Now eat your potatoes.

Therapy is weird. It’s just WEIRD. To quote Stephanie, “It’s such a weird thing to confess all these things to a stranger and cry in front of them and then there’s a cash transaction!” And really, there’s no other way to put it. We sat down and made all these agreements about money and health insurance and missed appointment charges and overhead, and then I had to sign a thing saying I understood that if she thought I was going to kill someone she had the right to tell the cops or whatever, and then I had to agree that I’d pay her and shit. Then we got down to biznass. Then time was up, and it was like, Well, bye. No hug or anything!

Yesterday was my second visit to Our Lady of Psychotherapy’s tiny alcove office, and during this visit she pretty much only wanted to know about my relationship with The Pants. She wants to establish my current environment and what’s working/not working, but I sat there thinking I hope she knows I’ve got a whoooole bag of shit with her name on it rolling around in here. Anyway. She wanted to talk about all of our relationship problems that have ever possibly existed, and it was hard for me not to start cracking up and tell her about the fact that things are just DIFFERENT once you’ve both just started blasting each other with farts. Different good, but also different like something’s gone missing after you’ve marinated your boyfriend in your gas. I find myself sometimes nostalgic about the days when we would pretend we never farted. But there is also something really comforting about it. Aaaaand there’s also something really disgusting about it. Like the other night when I farted at the dinner table. I couldn’t believe I had let myself go that far. I’m sitting there eating potatoes and I lean over and just rip a loud one. And the response was kind of like, Wow, that was really horrifyingly disgusting. Now eat your potatoes.

Anyway. I did NOT talk to my therapist about farting.

She asked me why I don’t write anymore and I didn’t know what to say, but really it comes down to this: If I write something, and it sucks, I might die. Really! I might! Because I would never be happy living a life without writing, without writing that was good and made some kind of a difference, no matter how small, in a single solitary person. But there is a very large chance that I could write something and it could just suck balls all the way to the sewers in the racist part of Hell and back, suck worse than anything I’ve ever read that sucks, and that realization would probably kill me. Because:

No one can advise or help you — no one. There is only one thing you should do. Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart; confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write.

–Rainer Maria Rilke, 17 February 1903

I would have to die if I were forbidden to write, and the forbidder would be myself, so bad work would be, for me, suicide.

The other possibility would be that I wrote some kind of really horrible popcorn drivel, and a whole lot of stupid people loved it. Then I’d be in the same boat on a river of poop because I hate stupid people and I know popcorn drivel when I see it and I’d really rather not add any to the canon. Everybody would be like “oohhhhh it’s goooood…” but they’d look off to the left when they said it and wouldn’t make eye contact and MTV Books would print copies of it that came with a CD soundtrack taped in the back and the characters would just be Polaroid representations of random people I’ve seen on the street, the main character would be a spiced up representation of myself, including addictions to all the drugs I’m too scared to take and a better set of tits and nicer teeth. God, that would be awful. I’d be invited to writing studios to give people my insights on writing and characters and place and mood, I’d be invited to bookstores to read sections of my book to a small gathering of family and friends and whatever other weirdos read about it in the local paper and thought it might be a good way for a random weirdo to spend an evening in the middle of January. Photos of the event would make it look like there were a lot more people there than there actually were. Dipshits on Amazon who can barely be bothered to spell their own name or their state correctly will rave about how it’s the best book they’ve ever bought on clearance at an Urban Outfitters before.

Then there’s this: what if the answer is No, you would not die if you were forbidden to write. Well, then I’d just want to die out of sheer boredom with myself. There’s got to be more to my existence than this.

The fears about my capacity to produce a horrible novel are completely valid and feasible and so are my fears about what would happen with that horrible novel. Know how I know? Well, I’ll tell you.

There’s this person, who went to my undergrad and wrote two completely popcorny and Polaroidy novels, and has ever since been lauded as a literary success in certain circles (ahem, Amazon, ahem, undergrad university fiction department) because she’s been, to a degree, a financial success due to her literary efforts. Now she spends her days blogging about writing and about how haaard it is and about how people just love her ideas and her agent is all about publishing more…and bunches of tips on “how to be a writer” that they used to stuff our heads with in undergrad and at that horrible writing studio where I worked, how to stay focused! Software for staying organized! Drink coffee! Fun writing exercises and prompts! WRITER STEREOTYPES! Hahah you know how us writers love our coffee and Tazo teas and chocolate and wine! Oh I just never could have written this shitty book I’ve worked on for a million years without my Godiva samplers? Amirite, other writers?!?!

#2 on the list of things that bug the hell out of me has got to be writers talking about writing. SHUDDER. Nothing else makes me want to beat my head against the desk as much as this does. And that’s exactly what I did after I went home the night I had to make a name card to put on a table where this particular writer would sit the next morning in the middle of the studio where I worked to talk to other writers about writing. I banged my head against the table until I felt better.

On this blog, we’ve got that self-designated musical-definition label thing I HATE, “I’m a punk rock girl from the Midwest.” So, check. Who the fuck told you you were “punk rock”? Who told you that you were “indie rock”? Who goes around saying these kinds of things? Or did you just decide for yourself that, based on your hair color and style of dress, you’re This Type of Person? Sweet Jesus, on the list of things that bug the hell out of me, this has got to be #4 or 5.

Here’s what the Amazon crowd has to say:

This was one cool book. I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone is probably on of the most down-to-earth books I have ever read. It isn’t full of fairytales and other. Stephanie did a great job of making the book very realistic. The plot was also great, sometimes something would happen that I never suspected but then there were times when something would happen that I knew was going to happen. Which in some books I don’t’ like figuring out what is going to happen but I didn’t mind it at all in this book. The characters in this book were stupendous; they all had their flaws, which is great because in life everyone has flaws. I also enjoyed how big of a part music plays in the story. Which is probably because I am a big fan of rock but I think every one who reads this book will be able to envision Emily rocking out on the stage, like I did. I also introduced to some great rock bands while reading the wonderful story. I recommend this book to every teen out there, especially if you like listening to rock bands. Also some adults might enjoy the story too.

I don’t even know where to begin. Nothing I could say would do this book justice. It’s one of the most raw, heartbreaking, and touching novels I’ve read. Ever. Yikes. The thing I admire the most is that I think the author really wrote from her heart. You can tell just by the way the story is told that she cared deeply about what she was writing about which is the key to any good book; an author who is connected to her story. What’s amazing is that this is Stephanie Kuehnert’s first novel. How someone can write something this fantastic on her first attempt in the published world is…can I use the word amazing again? The characters are deep, detailed, and flawed.

For Emily Black, music is everything. It’s what made her parents fall in love way back when. It’s what her mother Louisa was following when she left baby Emily. It’s what Emily has to stay in control of her life. Music draws her from her dreary life in Carlisle, Wisconsin to River’s Edge, an abandoned warehouse where rock bands play. River’s Edge is where Emily got her fill of sex, drinking, and rock `n’ roll, and where her dreams of being a punk rock goddess began. So she and her best friend Regan form a punk band named She Laughs, and Emily can’t help but hope that by playing music, she’ll bring her mother home.
Soon, her band is swept up in the dangerous world of rock music. Her band has a lot of talent, but so many ups and downs in Emily’s life lead her away from the music. There are the bad boyfriends, the death of her grandparents, the involvement with drugs and self-medication, and a year wasted searching for her mother. But eventually Emily finds her way back on track, and her friends are still waiting for her to come back and pick up her guitar. And so she does, because music is all she has.

And just to cleanse your palate and offer some perspective, here’s what the Goodreads crowd has on their minds:

“Not since high school dating have I felt so tricked and empty. The main character combines the collective whining powers of Twilight’s Bella and My So-Called Life’s Angela…..and then proceeds to try and trick the reader into believing it’s “punk”, when really, it’s a V.C. Andrews novel minus the incest (and the plot suffers because of that glaring omission, by the way.) I was suckered in by the Joey Ramone name drop, the Sleater-Kinney lyrical reference, the Doc Martens on the book cover. I admit it. I chose the glittery vampire, and I’m ashamed of it. Since I couldn’t find a hair shirt and kneeling on lentils is just a waste of good legumes, I read it all the way to the end, periodically stopping to shove a spork into my ear in hopes of creating the brain damage necessary to enjoy the “plot twists” and reminding myself to never ever stop submitting my own writing because, hey, if she can get a book deal, anyone can. So in that sense, it did serve a purpose, as motivation, but it also was penitential, because I was, in fact, paying for the sin of choosing the book based on its alleged “hipness” (which, like long haired boys in high school…….I never learned my lesson from.)
Oh plot, you ask? Only that a girl who’s been abandoned by her mom in the middle of bumfuck, Midwest becomes the biggest punk band since Nirvana, gets on the cover of Rolling Stone, survives domestic abuse and drug addiction, discovers a ZOMG FUCKING DARK RAPE SECRET that means her mom didn’t abandon her, she left to protect her! ……a cross-country motel search ensues. Oh, and she reunites with the long-lost mom who’s been gone her whole life in the middle of Penn Station. Of course she does. Did I mention her “punk band” is called “She Laughs”? Oh. Yeah. There was probably a reason I forgot to mention that.
“Favorite” bit of dialogue: (I would like to remind you that the author would like us to believe this is a street punk talking, by the way)
“His brilliant aquamarine mohawk….” I will spare you the rest. Anyone who has ever in their life met a punk knows that those words can’t, don’t and shouldn’t ever happen together.

I actually relate to Joey Ramone more after reading this book… he suffered through cancer, I suffered through this book.

So. So bad. Like, I want to burn it in trashcan bad.

terrible. rang completely untrue and cliche. i wanted to like it – i grew up in a shitty little wisconsin town close to the illinois border and went to punk shows in rural vfw halls and crap run-down buildings, just like the main character, but i really didn’t see anything authentic, realistic or even very likable about this book. really bad writing. so thinly-veiled (i love the diatribe about why the main character is living in the burbs, all defensive and “but the train is so close!” – and then you read in the author’s extensive bio that she lives in the chicago suburbs, too! you don’t say). the thank-you chapter is so barfily self-congratulatory. makes me angry that i didn’t go get an MFA, because apparently you can get published through connections alone.

OK. Props for use of the not-word “barfily.” Why does it make me feel so much better to read these negative reviews? Well, partially because they’re so well written and witty when compared to positive reviews. Though it’s not hard to outdo a review that’s more like a quick recap of all of the events and then a statement about how it “totally resonates with me!” because I totally went to high school and shit.

I guess it makes me feel better because I know there will always be people there who aren’t afraid to call me on my shit. I can see how someone who attended the same fiction writing program I did would have a hard time believing any negative reviews. The way it worked there was you basically pay them money and they fill your butthole with smoke and encourage you do to your MFA there so they can have more money and fill your butthole with more smoke. Then you write some smoked-out manuscript and they have the writer-in-residence (ahem, Irvine Welsh, who also lent his brief blurb to this stunning piece of steaming turd written by the son of the professor emerita of the program) and it gets picked up by MTV Books and people tell you it’s crap and you’re like–wait, I think you’re mistaken. Everyone else likes it.

I won’t do that. I find it extremely easy to believe every negative thing people say about me and let it stop me from doing things. Ha!

Oh, anyway. I fear sometimes when I write a sentence that I’ll end up like the above described wang princess: lost in shit and in love with myself, thanking every writer who ever visited my school as a personal savior in my acknowledgements, and basically being the figurehead of a pile of crap that I will represent for the rest of my life. And then I stop writing.

If you want to get down to it, there’s also this character, who, if you’ll remember, I ~~got into a discussion with~~ attempted to get into a discussion with on a blog post she wrote. You probably remember the idiotic shit that ensued to cover up the fact that her “writing” is really just verbal diarrhea meant to make her look like a Certain Type of Chick and entertain that part of one’s brain that responds well to stereotypes (if you don’t remember, it’s here and here). This person came back into my attention today when she was suggested as a friend I might want to get to know on Facebook, because of our mutual friendships. I clicked on her page and lo and behold, it appears that my criticism was one of the most important events in her entire life. She’s referred to it on her Timeline!!! Behold:

I write profanity laced articles about funny things. Once, this resulted in someone writing a number of “hate blogs” about me.

I wrote “a number” (two, if you’re counting, now 3?) of blogs discussing the poor quality of writing that hides behind a stereotype and reports the attitudes and opinions that the stereotype is supposed to represent. I wrote about how it’s a fucking sham, and part of what bothers me about it is that there are people who toooooootally buy into that sham, and just eat that bullshit up. There are people out there who think this self-obsessed dummy is a good writer. Because all she does is sit there and type cutesy bullshit all day about indie rock and current events and thinks it’s edgy for a girl to cuss (hence her specifically calling your attention to the “profanity laced” side of her writing repertoire). And in the end, she’s a total fucking pussy when it comes to having a conversation about her work, or standing up for what she writes, and can only engage in a dialogue if she’s represented as the victim (as evidenced by the above Life Event, and her frantic Twitter feed on the day of my comments, the fact that my comments are worthy enough to define her experience in this particular blogging job speaks volumes to me). “Hate blogs.” Honey, you ain’t nothin til you’re hate blogged. And I’m afraid what you got was just the tip of an Annoyed Blog. (Yeah, just the tip.) Wait a tick….all of this kind of begs the question: are my words really that powerful?

It’s people like Suburban Punk Queen and Indienet Pussy Blogger that make me just never want to pick up a pen or type anything ever again. Someone asked me why the worst writers are always the most prolific, and I said it’s because they have no idea of the darkness of self-doubt, they’re too stupid to imagine that what they’ve produced is the worst thing anyone could imagine, is actually detrimental to the craft, to the reader, to the world at large. They think themselves a great contribution to the planet, instead of what they really are: white noise in stereo reverberating off the metal walls of the fucking flaming trashcan. What more people need is mental illness, crippling self-doubt, a tsunami of fear each time they even think about expressing any stupid little thought that farts through their brain. That would do it.

And what I need is way more bravery, way less worry about being as completely ass crappy as my contemporaries. So does that come in a pill or what?

Anyway, now that that’s out of the way, let’s talk about some different kinds of shit, shall we?

The women who use this bathroom are terrible.

I should know, because I’m forced to use it after they leave. Based on the aftermath I have seen in the bathroom on this floor, the following is what women are doing in there:

1. Removing tampons and swinging them around by the string, splattering threads of menstrual mucus all over the walls of the stalls.

2. Taking giant shits, standing up, walking away (no flush attempt).

3. Using the toilet, flushing, then turning around and shaking their heads vigorously over the toilet seat, covering it with long, loose hairs.

4. Squatting to piss and practicing hula hooping techniques in the process.

5. Inserting tampon, dropping wrapper and applicator on the floor, walking away.

6. Removing completely soiled and soaked pad and leaving it on the top of the toilet paper dispenser, at exact nose-level with the next unfortunate person to use that toilet (That next unfortunate person happened to be me.).

7. Removing sandals and washing each foot, one at a time, in the sink (Witnessed this.).

8. Leaning over the sink to hoark a giant wad of phlegm, walking away without so much as an attempt to rinse it away (Witnessed this, too.).

9. Playing mischievous cat games with the toilet paper, i.e., unrolling stacks of it onto the floor and leaving it there.

10. Sleeping. We got an email the other day that there would be regular hourly “bathroom checks” on this floor because it’s become socially acceptable between these twats to go into the stall, lock the door, sit on the toilet without dropping pants and SLEEPING.

11. The kicker: somehow they are sharting all over the wall. Sharting. All over. The. Wall.

How do they do it? I don’t know. I DON’T KNOW. But I have some photographic evidence for you. BEHOLD:

Really brings new meaning to the word "overflow," huh?

This monstrosity of menstruation occurred within a few hours. Only a few hours–I KNOW! It seems impossible that a few women could bleed that much! I guess you could attribute part of it to the fact that there seems to be a “favorite stall” in the bathroom, the first one on the far right. I don’t know why it’s a favorite stall, but in an otherwise empty bathroom, it’s the only one that’s always occupied. So this is where all the period garbage ends up. This is where it overflows in a matter of hours. (Someone should really do some kind of scientific study on why everyone wants to bleed in that particular stall. Someone who is not me.)

Sure, just wipe your hands there. No one will ever know.

Aaaaand here we have an example of period blood smear that’s been on the lower wall of the first stall on the right for about as long as I can remember. I bet that dirty bitch goes back in there from time to time to visit with it. Maybe it tells fortunes? Maybe it’s just fucking gross. Probably it’s just fucking gross.

Well, here’s an example of a wall shart:

This is to the right of the toilet. How did it get there?!?!

And THIS is the horror that awaited me as I was writing this very post and attaching these very pictures, when I had to stop for a moment and go pee. THIS is what was staring back at me when I went into the stalls of which I write:

Hon, you missed.

So uhh, this is what I do when I get bored at work. I become a bathroom ethnographer. And I have concluded in this field report that WOMEN ARE FUCKING FILTHY.

I was going to talk about a chocolaty caramel-y cupcake I made last weekend, but upon further consideration, I think I’ll find another time to post pictures of that.

4 Comments

Filed under Uncategorized

Tagged as cunts, cupcakes, the crazies, The Pants, work

November 3, 2011 · 1:08 pm

Indie Graveyard

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.”

Wait, what??? Zooey D. is getting D’d?

Shit. I quit, then. I quit at life.

6 Comments

Filed under Uncategorized

Tagged as celebrities, medication, the crazies, The Pants, writing

April 24, 2011 · 4:45 pm

Unicorn Butt Meat

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,

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.

1 Comment

Filed under Uncategorized

Tagged as big scissor, boys, cupcakes, the crazies

August 22, 2009 · 8:05 pm

God, butt sex, weight lifting, cooking.

My apartment is such a shit hole right now…half of it is in boxes and the other half is a bunch of crap I MAY or MAY NOT want that is on top of boxes. I was packing stuff I might need in the next week, thinking ohh I’ll remember which box that is in, but now everything is in boxes and there are not windows in the boxes and I don’t know where my underpants are!

That said, I am sitting here at 6pm with the biggest cup of coffee in the universe, waiting for it and the three extra-strength Excedrin to kick in and demolish the headache that is blinding me, and has been blinding me since I woke up this morning. I had been doing this thing where I really really tried very hard to stop drinking so much coffee, swapping it again for strong green tea. But it doesn’t work. I get a stabbing headache that is followed by a horrible, morose mood. I go out in public and hate everyone. I went to Target today to pick up the aforementioned Excedrin, and I thought it would be a good idea to stop in at the Target Starbucks and get a gigantic espresso thing. Well, guess what? Those motherfuckers broke their espresso machine and couldn’t make any coffee drinks. I almost threw myself to the floor and rolled around kicking and screaming. So I ran over to the painkiller aisle and wouldn’t you know it, there were so many people blocking it with their carts that I actually, seriously, honestly considered yelling at the top of my lungs IF YOU FUCKING PEOPLE DON’T MOVE YOUR ASSES OUT OF MY WAY I AM GOING TO KILL ONE OF YOU. LIKE SERIOUSLY. Instead, I just stood there and waited, my face all red, breathing really hard and pulling at the neck of my hoodie. It felt really tight.

Quitting coffee does not work. It does not. And the moral of this story is that Agent Ventura really wants a blog to read when she wakes up in the morning and even though I feel like someone is filling my skull with broken glass, I would hate to disappoint her. Even so, this mood is nasty and evil and the Excedrin is not going fast enough so I HATE YOU. Not really, but come on. I got a text message blow off last weekend, spent the week in Southern Illinois, tried to quit drinking coffee, tried to pack for a move, and you wanna know why I haven’t written a blog? BECAUSE I AM IN A STATE OF DESPAIR.

Not really. I mean, packing is gay, but it’s almost done. I have coffee now. My sister reminded me that I didn’t like the guy that much and was only pissed off that he didn’t like me either. Oh, and I got the best picture ever in Harrisburg, Illinois:

Fried bologna!!!

My mom makes her coffee with a French press. I don’t know if you know about this but it’s very exotic. You boil the water in a fancy teapot, then you grind the coffee beans in a fancy grinder. You dump them into this glass pitcher, pour in the water, and stir. Exactly (EXACTLY, YOU STUPID) four minutes later, you put the lid on the pitcher and push the middle down, which makes a strainer thingy squish through the coffee bean/water mixture. In all, it takes about four hours.

There is no measuring system to speak of. There is also no milk or sugar in my mom’s house, as she suffers from healthfoodrexia. I could only find plain organic soymilk, which I mixed into my fancy unmeasured ratio of coffee and water. Holy fucking shitballs it was terrible. And it made me so crazy I thought I was going to die for about twenty minutes after I drank it. Unfortunately, Mommy was at work and could not help her adult daughter make coffee. I thought about calling her to have her direct me around the kitchen, but I figured she might get mad at me if she was busy explaining to a student that yes, you CAN take a library book home with you, that is what a library is for. It’s totally weird when you realize that you don’t know where the spoons are in the house where you grew up.

I’m going to go ahead and admit that while I was at home, I ate McDonald’s, Hardees, Taco Bell, Sonic, Kentucky Fried Chicken, and Denny’s. I’m also going to go ahead and admit that three of them were in the same day. Whatever, shutup! I don’t care what you think!

Actually, I feel kind of disgusting. I had three giant bottles of water today and I still feel like there are cheeseburger-shaped amoebas in my veins.

what is this?

Does anyone know what the hell kind of frosting this is? I want to know. It goes on cupcakes and it’s flat. It’s so you can make cute designs on the cupcake. I guess, anyway.

This is so shitfucking cute.

Also, who the fuck spends their time making cupcake batter, pouring it into cupcake pans, finding tiny stuffed animals, and arranging them with the batter so that it looks like it’s the stuffed animal that’s happily making the cupcakes? I want to know because I would like to meet them, and maybe talk to them, and fine, okay, yeah, I want to fuck them. You happy?

WHO is responsible for this??

Okay, a boy in Australia took this next picture for me. Not to mention the fact that there is an entire week dedicated to cupcakes somewhere in the world, I was unbelievably touched that aforementioned boy saw this sign and thought of me. In one half of my brain, I am packing all of my stuff because I am moving to Australia to be his lover forever and ever because he is the most awesome guy I have ever NOT met and fallen in love with anyway.

Let's kiss. NOW.

match dot bomb

Okay, so fine, yeah, I am now back in the online dating scene. And not for any other reason but that I WANT TO GO ON A GODDAMN DATE. Especially if it’s with someone I don’t know, who doesn’t know me, whose friends do not know me and think I’m a big ole bitch. But you know, this means that I am now receiving emails from guys whose interests are “God, butt sex, weight lifting, cooking.” In that order.

Today is my first day back on the online date pony, and already I’ve gotten an email about how I must be “a pretty sexy librarian” and been approached by a guy who just wanted to let me know that he is “an adventurous lover, wink wink.” Do you fucking have something in your eye? And what do you mean, “adventurous lover?” You wanna do it in the Everglades or something? Because nothing’s shocking anymore, boyo. Not after the last six months of my dating life.

Anyway, I totally expect to meet a whole lot of the same pigfaced pussytwats I met the first time around, this time last year, but this time I’ve decided to be nicer to the boys who laugh at my jokes and buy me Sharpies and bring me candy on our first date.

And I will say that at least this website has a gigantic crop of those rugged, corn-fed, Midwestern boys I like to look at. Woowee!

planes, trains, fuck you

So last night I began my journey back to the city from the Southern part of the state. This meant that I had to catch an Amtrak train in Carbondale, Illinois. Due to a car mix-up, I ended up finally securing a ride to the train station a mere eleven minutes before the train was supposed to leave the station. So naturally, faced with the idea of being forced to spend another night in Southern Illinois and another $50 on another ticket, I freaked out and basically stopped breathing. Luckily, they held the train for me when they saw me tearing across the parking lot, waving my reservation information in the air like a battle standard, almost crying (ALMOST) because I was sure they were just going to high tail it out of the station without me. But they held the train, and everyone on it gave me shitty looks when I finally collapsed into a seat so I could put my head between my knees and breathe.

All eyes ceased to be on me when we hit Centralia, Illinois, and the train was immediately filled with the prisoners who had just been released from the Centralia Correctional Facility. So everyone was paying a little more attention to their personal belongings than they had been before. Look, if that’s offensive, I don’t care. Because when a bunch of loud-ass motherfuckers in correctional facility uniforms, with tooth brushes and underwear in plastic bags, yelling about all the week they’re going to smoke when they get home get on your train, we’ll talk about it some more. They wouldn’t leave anyone alone, as they weren’t allowed to purchase alcohol on the train, so they were hitting up anyone and everyone to buy it for them. They were also very interested in using people’s cell phones, and I turned down four of them who had to make “real important phone calls.” The guy who sat in front of me had those retardedly long and pointy and gross fingernails and set about befriending the two kids sitting across from us, who were traveling alone. The kids went to the dining car, and the next thing you know, the little boy couldn’t find his cell phone. “Oh, lemme help y’all look,” the ex-prisoner said, and proceeded to go through all of their things with them. “At least my Nintendo DS is still here!” the little boy said.

“You know what you should always do,” says Ex-Prisoner, “is lock your phone so people can’t use it.”

“Oh, I do!” said the boy. “I lock it all the time!”

“Oh, really?” says Ex-Prisoner. “You got like, a code on it?”

“Yep!” says the boy, pleased as punch that he’s taken the necessary precautions.

“Oh, that’s good. What is it?” asks Ex-Prisoner.

The boy smiles hugely, proudly, and says, “It’s the last four digits of my phone number.”

“Oh, that’s good, that’s real good,” says Ex-Prisoner. “You should probably give me your phone number so I could call you if I find your phone.”

So they look through their stuff again and again. They tear the train apart looking for the phone. Finally, they decide to check the bathrooms. Ex-Prisoner offers to watch their stuff for them while they look. At that point, I was just like hey, kids, seriously…come on. But they walked away, and when they came back, I heard the boy say, “Wait…wait! Where’s my Nintendo?!”

And the whole process started over again.

We finally landed in the White City, over half an hour late. I finally caught a Blue Line, which sat in the station for ten minutes before chugging forward one stop, where it sat for another ten, after which an announcement was made that this particular train would not be going any further, and that a shuttle bus would be provided…a shuttle bus which was, of course, outside in the rain, and connected only to the Blue Line a few stops away. After which I would have to walk home. In the rain.

So I transferred to the Red Line and immediately found myself in the midst of six sorority girls on an outing, who were arguing over, and I shit you not, the fucking lyrics to Single Ladies. You can imagine how I felt about that. And, of course, the one who was their fucking tour guide was telling them all the great bars, and proceeded to list all the douchebaggiest places imaginable.

Look, there’s nothing wrong with having stupid conversations. I’m sure that some of the things I talk about when I’m a little drunk and a bit too loud and stupid are annoying to those around me. But I was wet and tired and rattled and sick of fucking train delays and I wanted to go home really really bad. So I pretty much wanted to kill all of those girls.

Also, I was not prepared for it to be sixty degrees and pouring rain in the city. So I was wearing a tank top and shorts. And I ended up standing on a corner at midnight, weighed down by all of my shit, freezing my ass off, and THAT is why I kind of maybe possibly snapped at the guy in the swirly velour-covered gigantic Dr. Seussian top hat and sunglasses who leaned into my face and said, “Well at this time ‘o night ya can’t tell if people are starting their night or ending it! Hyuk hyuk hyuk!”

I was nice about it. I mean, I don’t understand why the freaks come crawling out of the fucking sewers in their Halloween costumes at 10:30 every night in the city. I’ll never understand it. And it’s a bit of culture shock every time I come back from a visit at home, in rural nowhere, where the only sound is the neighbor’s dog and a million jazillion crickets, to be greeted by some weird lonely motherfucker in an outfit purchased at a Six Flags gift shop.

I think I said “SHUT. UP.” and left it at that. Because that’s when I decided to splurge and got into a cab, because the other freak at the bus stop was whining about how it was Obama’s fault that the bus was late.

bye bye, stinky!

Well, you may or may not know this, but last Friday was my last day in retail EVER. I am so excited to start my librarian job on Monday that I am peeing a little bit. I am peeing in my non-uniform pants.

I won’t miss any of the shit that came with that job. What I will miss are the co-workers, the partners in crime, and, sometimes, inebriation. One of my favorites, Agent It Won’t Suck Itself, put together a video that was pretty much the most awesome thing ever. It’s unexplainable. It’s amazing. If you want to see it, you should add me on Facebook. Because, of course, it’s got my name in it, which I’d rather not disclose on this here bloggy blog, because that’s what got me into trouble with the last bloggy blog.

Anyway, the video was very touching, and it made me happy and sad. Plus it had Hitler in it (of course).

So, Miss Agent Ventura, I hope this blog has filled your blog hole for the time being. I hope you know that I start school AND my new job on Monday, that I move a week from Monday, and that I will probably go for a couple of days in there without internet access, so this blog may have to hold you over for a bit.

But I’m sure I’ll come up eventually with some sort of schedule for my complaints and bitchery, which I will be sure to puke all over this blog whenever I get a chance.

Also, please punch me in the face if I ever mention cutting back on coffee ever again. This stuff is great! YEAH!

4 Comments

Filed under Uncategorized

Tagged as Agent IWSI, Agent Ventura, boys, complaining, cupcakes, dating, obama, the crazies, white trash, work

July 9, 2009 · 3:55 am

Psychotic Level Orange

Me: Do you ever have an extended period of time when you just feel like you’re on the edge of a total psychological meltdown? Like you’re just teetering, like any second you’re going to be completely certifiably insane?

C: Hahahahah! Of COURSE! How can you not?! Hahahahah! I feel like that all the time.

Tag Archives: the crazies

HELLO, SHOE LOVER

Burn It In A Trashcan Bad

Indie Graveyard

see also Mood Disorders see also Emotions see also Totes Cray Cray

Unicorn Butt Meat

God, butt sex, weight lifting, cooking.

Psychotic Level Orange

Archives

Sprinkles!