Tuesday, December 22, 2009

I'm a Watered-Down Grinch


I feel obliged to write something on Christmas, 'cause that's sorta the thing to do, innit?

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say there are a lot of Christmas traditions I find aggravating -- like Christmas trees. Really, Germany? Was this necessary to bring with you? I get the symbolism and how it's all happy happy fun time to decorate it with your family and whatever, but I find it a waste of time, space, and energy. When I move into my own place, I'm going to replace a tree with a bowl of red and green jelly beans.

Not to mention, haven't any environment people come out against this?

. . .

Apparently, they have not, but when I searched "christmas tree cruel" I did find the darkly entertaining "Monkey 'kills cruel owner with coconut thrown from tree'" article, so I guess it wasn't a total waste of time.

I'm not one to get outraged over the commercialization of holidays, because I figure if you can trick millions of people into spending hundreds on your merchandise for no viable reason then props to you. I like giving and receiving as much as the next guy, but let's not pretend there's something magical about the season itself that is conducive to charity and good will. Well, people do drink more around Christmas, so I guess there's that. Alcohol does make some people much nicer. Point being, if we cared that much, we wouldn't wait until Christmas to express how much love we have bottled up inside of us as a society -- but I guess that's just the Valentine's Day argument all over again.

My parents told me that (*SPOILER ALERT!*) Santa wasn't real at a pretty young age (i.e. the first time I asked if he was real), so that was never a big aspect of the holiday for me. That's why I have no great love for Santa. Not that I dislike him, but as I grow older I begin to realize how patronizing it is to present this idea to children as reality. I don't buy into the whole "Santa encourages overeating/makes an easier time of it for pedophiles/will give your child Swine Flu/ad nauseum/etc.," but I do believe it sets kids of more delicate mental dispositions up for more than a few debilitating complexes later in life. Like, "Mommy and Daddy lied to me and so they don't love me" stuff on the lucky end and maniacal rages of incredulity and sadness that morph into felonious actions on the hardcore end. Also, may we stop putting grown men in tights at the mall photo places? I have glam rock galleries bookmarked on Internet Explorer; I don't need to get my fill of inappropriate male exposure through Rick the pre-med dropout elf, thanks.

And because I'm sure I haven't taken enough potshots at Christmas' Most Loved, I'm gonna throw in that I find decorating the outside of your house with lights and any other sort of seasonal paraphernalia is a tacky eyesore 95% of the time. I can't remember the last time we did anything of consequence to our house, and that sliver of amnesia couldn't make me happier. It's so hard to do right, I'm annually impressed and aggravated at my neighbor's continued attempts to project Christmas cheer through sprucing up their garage door.

When it comes down to it, though, I do enjoy Christmas. I like family and hot chocolate and staying up ridiculously late for mass and the opening of the first present. I like pulling up YouTube videos of snow, throwing on a scarf, and remarking to my bemused brother that it doesn't look deep enough to warrant shoveling the driveway yet. I like watching those campy claymation videos with their jerky movements and old-fashioned, all-too-naive songs. (Santa, here's lookin' at you and your little "a kiss a toy is the price you'll pay" ditty.) I like the food, the fires (fireplaces, not forests), and the all-around joy and contentment it seems to bring.

So whatever you're doing, or however you celebrate this time of year, have a Merry Kwanzmaskkah, drive safe, and drink at least eight cups of water per day.

Saturday, November 28, 2009

Diary of a City Slicker*


Sometimes I can't help but wonder, "Why am I here?"

Not in a I-am-not-worthy-of-life-I-was-probably-a-mistake-or-maybe-Fate's-cruel-joke-Oh-God!-*sob* way (haven't reached that level of paranoid depression in a while), but quite literally why am I here as opposed to there.

Like Journey, I haven't stopped believin', and I've held on to that feelin' that there must be other people in the world like me. Don't get me wrong, I have friends ("A lie keeps growing and growing until it's as plain as the nose on your face."), one of whom I have such a soul power! connection to we all but finish each other's sentences. I guess what I'm trying to say is, please tell me I'm not going to have to go through the rest of my life with a desperately limited circle of friends spending my days avoiding contact with my peers so I don't get looked at like I have a wart in the shape of Florida on my forehead and reading British news publications from small country towns or I SWEAR I WILL SHANK YOU -- I WILL MURDER YOU AND THEY WILL FIND YOUR BODY IN A DITCH FIFTY MILES FROM THE NEAREST CITY, SO GIVE ME THE MONEY! I NEED MY FIX, I NEED THE MONEY, JOEY!

Whoa, sorry, that went to a weird place.

I think my problem -- summed up as succinctly as possible -- is that I'm a city girl living in the suburbs. I have this lunatic hummingbird of an idea slamming around in my mind that if I could just burst free of this vapid, careless, overly-tanned bubble of society and into a place that thrums with lust for life and success I'd suddenly be gifted with the drive and initiative to jump headfirst into the world and have one of those "this is the first day of the rest of your life" moments where everything falls into place and I can finally make something of myself and shape myself into my perfect me.

Of course, I know I can just as easily do that with the treadmill in the next room over and God's gift of word processing, but I'd prefer to believe the only reason I haven't gotten there is because I'm here, and as soon as I get there, I will have arrived into the here and now -- humor me, it staves off the guilty self-loathing.

I'm going to make up a famous movie quote that says: "I've acted in a million films, dated a million women, drunk a million martinis, but never felt like a million bucks, because I've never had a million moments with you." That's basically how I'm feeling right now -- minus the overtones of fame and hedonism.

I know I must be drawing you in like crazy, so I feel that now is a good time to say I have no idea where I'm going with this.

*I will so write this book/create this show one day: it's an episodic commentary of an anonymous first-person narrator who lives among New York's haughty and affluent and spends his nights hitting and participating in iconic subsets of NY culture. You may not find it interesting, but I would pay to see the dry humor and sly observations into human nature that this setup is ripe for. It's sort of like the test-tube lovechild of Invisible Man, Gossip Girl, the "Poker Face" music video, and any PSA on violence and drug use in impoverished neighborhoods.

Saturday, November 14, 2009

We All Need Something to Define Ourselves


When people ask me what I am, I tell them I'm a writer. I consider this a perfectly legitimate response because a) I have a "creative writing" folder on my desktop (that hasn't been touched in about eleventy-two months), b) I've won awards (tiny, no cash prizes, no publications, but my Mommy is proud), c) and my history professor read my essay aloud to the class (and while it was technically required and technically not at all creative but instead on the similarities and differences between the early American colonies while remaining utterly chock full of art and emotion that I deserved it so just SHUT UP, I love you).

I dream that someday I will be sitting over lattes with an avid and cunning young interviewer, describing my newest bestseller with drawling prose and languid hand gestures. At one point, gently egging me towards the contemptuous fit of a narcissistic artiste, the young woman coyly mentions critical reviews questioning the artistic integrity of the book whose writing I ostensibly attributed to the school of decadent writing. I'll chuckle and shake my head, looking across the street to where the glossy cover of my novel winks at me through the front window of Barnes & Noble. "Oh, honey," I'll murmur, "I hardly intended for it to be the next War and Peace. I've always held that a major role of fiction is escapism, and I think I've managed to craft something which both provides a light and compelling break from life without being insulting to the reader's intelligence." I'll cock a brow and mischievously add, "Surely no coffee house Pulitzer will deny that?" before taking a satisfying sip of my beverage.

(In case you were wondering, this is usually the part in my daydream when Freddie Mercury picks me up so we can go leotard shopping and I'm fed Rainbow Goldfish by Margo Channing.)

The cool, elitist self confidence and best seller are equally out of my reach for the present, however. This has more to do with the fact that I'd actually have to, ya know, spend time writing rather than any real lack of talent on my part (I hope. I lie.). It doesn't matter how often I put a pen to paper, I am a writer simply because I want to be. I use school hours to jot down impossible scenarios in my notebook when the lecture gets boring, I've stayed up into the wee hours of the morning chasing down a plot bunny that trails off into oblivion, I draw from my experiences to mold something new and wonderful to share with others -- so give me my BA in Writing and put up some dough to back my youthful caprices!

And if anyone asks for a sample, I'll brush up whatever that thing was I did two years ago.

Monday, October 12, 2009

I'd say Grace Kelly is lovely, but that would be a non sequitur.

I sometimes wonder how a biographer would look at this period of my life. If could go one of two ways in my mind: 1) the transition period in my life where I've decided to slow down and chug the coffee (why would you smell it?), dallying through the days and focusing my attention on what makes me smile instead of manically planning the microbial details of what will get me ahead; or 2) the transition period in my life where I've become aimless and apathetic, stalling on the road map to a secure future to instead waste my time on fleeting trifles and fancies.


I'm not sure what to think of that, really.

The past six-or-so months have been somewhat of a rabbit hole for me. Before this summer I cannot remember a time when I wasn't stressed and unhappy, at least in some corner of my mind. I always seemed to be afraid that something in the no-wiggle-room plan for my life would be derailed. I was always doubting myself, my family, my friends -- human species as a whole, to be quite honest.

Something shifted drastically, though: as in, one morning I woke up and thought, "I should stop crying over Goodbye Yellow Brick Road on repeat and go outside, because it's a beautiful day and life's worth living." Now, if someone held a gun to my head and demanded to know what, exactly, it was that changed, well -- the last time you'd see me would be on the 8 o'clock news.

I've been swinging between blissful, sleepy, and content, with no substantial dark clouds on my horizon to speak of. Not that bad or anxiety-inducing things haven't happened, just that, although my brain may register the event and label it as "mucho unhappy times," the unpleasant feelings that logic dictates should follow never do. I sometimes wonder if this is a true transformation so much as the psychological equivalent of endorphins, the body's natural anesthetic.

While this entire post smacks a little too much of the inane ramblings of a burned out teenage goth post The Cure bender for my taste, it . . . well, there is no excuse, really . . . "this is my blog, so deal"? Yeah, that works.

I was feeling a little introspective. So sue me.

Wednesday, October 7, 2009

In Which I Am a Stick in the Mud

Halloween is such an odd holiday to me. It seems like only yesterday we were celebrating it by slaughtering livestock for wintertime, right? We did this every year for whoknowshowlong, until one day it's like wha-bam! and we're hemming our gingham dresses up to out hoo-has.

I'd like to be a able to offer you a detailed, thoughtful analysis on what caused this shift in paradox, but that's not what I'm going to school for; because honestly, where can Holiday Studies 101 get me in life? And I'm too lazy to read the whole Wikipedia page.

I'd assume that somewhere down the line people realized it was sort of a BS endeavor to be wearing masks and lighting bonfires in an attempt to placate evil spirits that threatened the harvest. The specifics of this realization evolving into "so let's instead wear cheaply manufactured costumes that would fit my 12-year-old sister" I'm not sure. It might have something to do with the psychological need to embrace or acknowledge, and therefore release the fear of, one's "shadow aspect" -- those dark wants (e.g. to be OMG naughty) in our nature -- as Jung would say; or possibly as a way to gain control over others through shock, if someone felt she had very little power in her life. But I'm just taking a shot in the dark, here.

My point? Gorging on Twix, I love. Having Halloween being fashioned ever more surely into a holiday centered solely around skank wear, however, makes me cry a little in the dark. I miss the bed sheet ghosts and thrift store hobos of my childhood.

Monday, October 5, 2009

Mob Involvement on Wikipedia

Wikipedia are such Nazis. They didn't even give my revision to David Bowie's page two minutes to live.

(Click to enlarge. I'm gonna toot my own horn and say it's worth it.)

Thursday, October 1, 2009

Excuse Me, Boy Who Gave Me a Flower?

Is that really you? Wow, small world. Yeah, yeah, I've been great. Going to school, reading, spending time on the internet . . . and, you know, going to lots of parties with drugs and hookers and stuff. And yourself? Oh, how lovely for you.

Look, I don't mean to be forward, but I need to get something off my chest with you. Retract your hand. I didn't mean that.

You see, Flower Boy, I've been thinking about you lately. You want to know why? Because whatever we could've had was ruined by your lack of balls.

You're right, that was kind of harsh -- I'm sorry. No I'm not.

The thing is, you were the first person who's ever given me flowers. Why would you even bring that up? Yes, I know it was technically a single flower, but dontcha think it helps your case if we pretend it was more? Imagination is a rainbow.

But I digress.

Point being, we could've had something, because I was dazzled by your froufrou card and brightly colored vegetation. Cross my heart, you could've been a dead ringer for Gary Busey and I would've fallen all over you -- because you gave me my first flower.

Really, are you twelve? Not that flower. I'm trying to have an adult conversation here, stunted-romanticist to stunted-romanticist. Hang with me.

But you blew it, turtledove. You blew it because it was anonymous. You gave me an anonymous present. At first this didn't bother me, because I was certain you would identify yourself at a later date. Well, as my French professor would say, "J'ai eu tort." I was wronger than Kanye West at the VMA's.

Well, yes, I know Kanye was wrong as in "improper" and I was wrong as in "incorrect" but I was just trying to be funny. You know what, no one cares what you think about Taylor Swift's feelings. Can we just move on? I have a conclusion here I'd like to make.

I don't know what you felt for me, anonymous-flower-boy, but I do know this: whatever it was, you should've told me. Giving me that pretty flower and then letting it wilt without me ever knowing your name is like writing your girlfriend a break-up note on a molding Cheez-It -- it's dirty and upsetting.

I've moved on now, AFB, to someone who isn't an emotional coward, to someone who has the drive to go after what he wants without dropping cryptic gifty hints before class then leaving me to hang. I'm happy, and I'm sure you are too, but I can't help but thinking about it some nights when I'm fighting sleep.

Who knows: Maybe you'd have changed the course of my unborn children's future if you'd just grown a pair.

Sorry, that's my order -- I've gotta fly. Aw, don't look at me like. Remember, it takes less muscles to smile!

Friday, September 18, 2009

Cop Out/Picspam Survey! (edited for decency)

I'm in need of a post and so I've turned to the oldest and most trusted friend of any internet blogger: the survey.

But it isn't a (total) cop out, because this one has pictures! Pretty, shiny, delicious pictures cooked up fresh for your viewing pleasure.

Original rules: "GAME: Comment here asking me to choose a person for you (someone I know you like), and answer these questions with a pic of that person."

1. Choose a picture of the funniest face on your person.

You've gotta wonder what's going on in the background.

In which Bowie has an extra chromosome.

So. Many. Things. Wrong.

2. Choose a picture of your person eating.

He's not good at the whole eating thing yet.

Don't judge me.

How nice of Liz Taylor to feed him his lunch.

3. Choose a picture of your person with an animal.

What's that magazine doing there?

Rock stars love a spot of falconry just as much as the next guy.

Gladly.

4. Choose a picture of your person with a member of the opposite sex.

Mick Jagger is a woman, okay?

I don't even know where to begin. Maybe with that woman's hair: a bender is no excuse for a rat's nest.

Too bad Angie turned out to be a psycho, they were a pretty hot couple.

This one is basically hilarious.

He's wondering why he dated her all those years ago. Or maybe he's trying to remember dating her all those years ago.

Iman is just unfair.

5. Choose a picture where you would kiss this person.

You know I literally have hundreds of pictures of him?

I wish I could get these first two bigger and better for you:

He's just a regular ray of sunshine.

This is his sensitive and yearning face.

Basically this makes me lmao irl.

Hottest mugshot I've ever seen. The original sold on eBay for thousands.

"What do you mean unicorns aren't real?"

He's like the prettied up gangster of my dreams.

Incidentally, I get the feeling that he and the cameraman are getting ready to do just that.

6. Choose a picture of your favorite outfit on this person.

Basically whatever he's picked out in the dark that morning . . .

Just for the record, the guy on the right does nothing for me.

David is wistfully disillusioned and in love with his tweezers.

He's your interior decorator, and he's very upset you don't like the drapes he's picked out.

Why is he allowed to pull off this outfit?

He loves suits and sunglasses. So do I. Coincidence? I think not.

My grandma never knits anything that sexy for me.

Boots, boots, boots . . . I. Want.

My parents have a picture of themselves that looks a bit like this. Oh Bowie, you marvelous little thing, you.

D'aw, he's just a whippersnapper!

People ask me why I don't like like Hugh Grant, and to them I say, "Did Hugh Grant ever wear silky pirate pants?"

7. Choose a picture of your person smiling.

Elton John called: he wants his glasses back.

*hair*


( Why must he look like the Goofy Gopher on the right?)

Someone once compared his pre-fixed teeth to "untended tombstones after a nuclear holocaust," but I will always love his wonky smile.

I wanna join their chess club.

8. Choose a picture of your person half naked.

Sometimes words aren't necessary. *click, save*

Disgusting hair but nice feet, no?

I seriously debated putting this one in before hormones won out.

O HAI. No, David, I haven't heard of knocking.

Your trips to the dentist will never be the same.

9. Choose a picture of your person doing an outdoor activity.

He hesitates in his doorway, staring with great uncertainty at the outside world. Perhaps it would be better if he stayed indoors.

Dear Bowie is still greatly confused by all the grass and oxygen and lack of screaming groupies.

Ah, he's discovered what to do: pose!

I've only put together about two of these, the really cheap ones made of Styrofoam. I always wound up snapping the wings off.

He sunbathes fully clothed too! We're clearly meant for each other.

10. Choose your favorite picture of this person.

Jeez, why not just ask me to choose my favorite ice cream flavor while you're at it!



But, I have enough restraint to narrow it down to these.