Thursday, September 30, 2010

I Have Always Hated Puzzles and Loved Murder Mysteries


I feel more and more like the things I think about are fracturing into smaller pieces of a whole. Like, before I was always, no matter what, sure about something in my head. There was a larger picture. Now it feels like I am watching every larger picture I believed in shatter into mosaics, I can see components, little blocks of memory or feeling or just reaction repeating themselves in patterns to make up a day. Is this the building of experience? Seeing what makes up the whole? I'm not sure if I enjoy it yet or not. It's nice to feel smarter, like complicated things do. It sucks to see too many details. Also I find it incredible to believe, actually fucking impossible if I'm being totally honest, that I would ever be the kind of girl who would have any wisdom at all, and I think it's probably not that at all, but just the accumulation of debris in my brain, gunking up my used to be OEM mechanisms. Original Equipment Manufacturer, that's what that means. Whoever thought I would grow up to know that shit? It's not crazy but its just weird.

Wednesday, September 29, 2010

A List of Things That Children's Stories Starring Talking Animals Taught Me



1. The very best party food in the world, especially for chipmunks, is a corn cob roasted with honey. This is not true. I have tried it, multiple times, and it sucks. Also not on my party menu - thistle cream with boiled walnut pudding.

2. Making friends with birds is worth it, because someday they will fly you over the sea, or out of the Stalin era rabbit warren. It's true. Birds are like the airplanes of the world. Only they aren't friends with mice. They eat them. Also they are dinosaurs. Also they are stupid vicious mean dinosaurs.

3. Drinking dandelion wine you make yourself in your cardboard home in Times Square is not at all the same as being an alcoholic hobo. If you are a mouse.

4. Any animal with a scar or mutilation or opposing political viewpoint is a villain. And will eat your baby hedgehogs. Which all of your close multi-species allies might do at anytime too, but they won't, cause they have honor and speckled Devonshire cream tarts.

5. Cats are always evil. Unless they are not. But mostly they are. Do not fuck with them.

6. Animals grouped in militaristic societies are doomed to failure. Agricultural based communes will always succeed against overwhelming odds. Provided they know squirrels with archery skills. So the ideal community to be in is the peaceful rural one that has tribal, nomadic, but bearing no resemblance to a government, trained in the ancient violent arts allies who can be called upon when anything bad comes up, and take no payment.

7. Death is around every corner.

8. Animals should not travel in motorized conveyances. Not Toads. Not crickets. Not rabbits. Not penguins. Not mice. Never.

9. There is no such thing as a flighty bear. All bears are warriors. Pooh will secretly eat your face off. That's why everyone else in the 100 Acres Wood is so damned nervous all the time.

10. The most important thing to have on a quest is lots of really good food. And someone who speaks Otter.

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

The Sweet Spot


The beginning of your relationship with a building, with a thick sort of thing made of concrete and steel and brick, is exciting and troubled. Walking up to it, through the rain, the tension builds in your chest. You approach it slowly, wary, but pretending boldness. Your teeth are unconsciously clenched. Your ears and eyes are straining. You are trying to be observant. You want to understand the truth of the situation.


Once inside, it's a tightrope along the dark unknown floors. You clench close to your friend. You shuffle along, feeling for ledges and stairs with your toes. Out loud, like saying a prayer in public, you proclaim your love for the fear, for the excitement, the frontier. I love you, you say furtively. I believe we have some sort of chance here. I'm tougher than you, I'll fight you, but I don't want to.

And maybe it has nothing. Maybe all it has are unlit rooms, broken fluorescent lights, boring piles of debris. Maybe you are secretly disappointed in the place, and a little resigned, and a little let down. You make your way out with a feeling of calm dejection, deflation. You feel good for having braved the darkness, but it looks like it might not work out.

Then someone spots a door, and tries it. It's unlocked. And oh thank god, there's another chance.

As you climb the stairs, discovery grips you again. There's light coming through, and colors again, and the darkness lifts off your shoulders and chest like a thick cloak of rain burning off the sky. It's as if the place had to test you, and you passed, and suddenly you have reasons to smile again.
Sometimes walking into a new building, no, every time walking into a new building is exactly like walking into a museum.

It is almost a perfect first date. Adrenalin followed by quiet elation. It's that sweet spot between worlds, that builds like a favorite chord. Oh how many things we all have done to find that spot. Oh how many failures we've built around us, hoping for something to break down the wall, and then maybe it doesn't. But sometimes someone, something, some turn of events comes along and rescues you. Hope right? Isn't this what you fuckers are on about all the time? This chemical reaction to darkness followed by light? Your Computer having an equal and opposite reaction.

There should be a guidebook for people, How to Learn the Mild Magics.

So when we touched today, when we hugged, or you handed me my change for coffee, or you held my hand going up the wooden stairs, at those moments my entire chemical makeup was shifted oh so slightly. The songs I chose to listen to today. The words I chose to say to you. What you chose to say to me. Everything mapped out in the neurons of a brain that finds its greatest pleasure in this shifting of our physical reactions.



More photos from Master Screw here.

Sunday, September 26, 2010

Storytime: The Boy Who Ate The Walnut

Once upon a time there was a little boy. He was alternatively serious and smiling, like the most intelligent little boys are. He had deep founts of intention mixed with jags of utter and complete impulse. He did things without thinking, and did not do other things because he thought too much. His wardrobe consisted of t-shirts he found funny, and pants with double seams, in case one seam were to rip.

His mother kept nothing but diet food in the house. Celery sticks and smelly shakes. Thin granola bars and fibrous cereals. He could never eat enough, his growing frame needed calories and more calories. He was always hungry.

When he was six, he was sitting in his classroom, tiled linoleum floors and high pastel painted walls like any other public school room. As always, he was starving. In the very corner of the floor, there was a small patch of dust, where the scythe like long broom of the custodian had missed, was designed to miss always. And in that corner, among the dust bunnies, he spotted a walnut. Not in the shell but the very nut of it, exposed. And he couldn't help himself, he didn't even think about it, but picked it up and ate it. He immediately regretted it, the inside of his mouth turned sour.

When he was seven or eight, he was hanging out at the playground, on the roundabout. He couldn't spin it around himself, more than one kid was needed to run and get it going enough. So instead he lay at the center of it, staring at the sky. He noticed something shining at the center of it, where the pole met the ground, and reaching with his grubby little fingers, he found a Chunky bar. Still immaculately wrapped in its silver and red foil. He ran home with it, and hid it from his parents by camping out in the garage to eat it. It was rock hard, so he used a screwdriver to break pieces off of it, in the musky darkness.

In high school, he joined the swim team. Now more than ever, he could not eat enough. His body was screaming for carbs, protein, sugars, fats. He went to the store and bought enough materials to make ten huge sub sandwiches. When he took it home and put it in the fridge, his mother screamed at him. "What if your father eats it!" she yelled, constantly concerned about his father's heart, which was probably going to give out early, like his father's father's had. He looked her in the face, a tall rangy boy at the height of his adolescence, and told her he would continue to buy this stuff and bring it home if she refused to put real food in the house.

His early job history was full of food. He was fired from the gas station for eating all the beef jerky. He was fired from McDonalds for eating chicken nuggets. The deli fired him for eating all the matzoh balls and way too many pickles from the barrel. The grocery store fired him for once again eating too much beef jerky.

Finally finding a non-food related career he was good at, his adult fridge was no better. Jars and jars of pickles. Nothing but plastic containers of oily olives. Wholesale cartons of his beloved Chunky bars.

At the height of his bachelorhood diet, nothing but pizza, steaks, homemade jerky, home-brewed beer, 8 pieces of french toast in the morning and jars of Vienna sausages as snacks, he met a girl who could eat nothing. At first, she was fine, ate ice creams and fried things and mochas. But as she got older, and they fell in love year after year, her body changed, rejecting everything. First no dairy. No meat. No gluten. No sugar. No caffeine. No alcohol. No butter. Her body became a battlezone of chemicals and one after another, she became the girl who lived on nothing. As if his gluttony touched her, and transferred to her, but changed and mutated, canceled each other out. She was the antidote that is just another virus itself, would make her sick without the disease to fight, would be meaningless and deadly on its own, but had purpose when there was something to push back. They lived together, the boy who ate everything and the girl who ate nothing, and between them found a balance, that resulted bags of strange candy lying around everywhere. But it worked. He finally had enough calories.

Saturday, September 25, 2010

Questions the Troll Will Ask You, If You Go Under the Bridge

Question One: If a line starts in the middle, and moves like a caterpillar sleeping in its chrysalis, why do you assume the line exists?

Two: If there is a full moon, how does this effect a city's birth rate?

Three: What are the actual colors of things that have no color of their own?

Four: Are you brave enough to walk on the edge of it?

Five: How many stray cats equal one marriage?

Six: How do you squeeze water out of stone?

Seven: To defeat the dragon, do you use parsley, basil, or garlic?

Eight: Does the princess actually want to be rescued?

Eight and a half: Do you deserve to come back?

Friday, September 24, 2010

The Thing About Betty White

Look, Betty White was funny as Rose, because Rose was a really well written character. And she was funny in Lake Placid because she was still Rose to you. But she was not that funny on SNL. She has not been that funny in most of cameos that are popping up all over like the lady is trying to finance a serious gambling addiction. I can only watch the "old lady swearing" schtick so many times. After all, so what, I know lots of old ladies who swear like 3 dollar hookers. In fact, pretty much every old lady I know, but that might have more to do with the fact they are all nurses. Nurses are potty mouths. However, as Community proved last night, if you give the lady good writing, she knows what to do with it. So fine, whatever, everyone rave about Betty White some more. I just hope when I'm really old, I also have some pop culture niche I can exploit to fund my donations to Columbian economic support and development.



When you are done watching that 5 or 6 times in a row because it's awesome (dogs used to eat me, now they bring the paper in), go to Turning River to see my new post up there, and Jere's new one is up too!

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Inside the Giant Gray Temple Building That Has No Windows

I have been staring at this building for my entire fucking childhood, adolescence, awkward twenties. I mean, it's right in the middle of Ohio City. It was right next to the overly ornate church we went to before Mom made us Catholic again. All of you have lived over by it at some point and we've turned around drunk in it's steep little parking lot while searching for your new apartment. And it has no fucking windows. That alone, but no, it gets better. I remember exactly the day when I asked my mother what it was, and she told me it was a Masonic temple and BOOM my little imaginary mind was blown. First of all, no windows. Second of all, Masons? The very concept is enough to ruin an 8 yr old for anything productive for the next three years. Third, it looks like a temple. It looks more like a temple than how I imagined temples should look. It looks like exactly what they intended it to be, a place where you don't get to see what the fuck is going on in there.

Well, ha, look at that. Look who got inside, you dowdy old long dead men in weird robes (there were pictures, and there were costumes, promise). Who thinks your place is the coolest building ever. Definitely right up there with the Cleveland Trust Rotunda, which had all those crazy bank vaults and that stained glass, so that's stiff competition, but it stands up. This building had crazy amounts of huge massive safes. 1920s bank robber safes. Huge double desks made of entire trees. And a boxing ring! And sepia tinted roll call photos everywhere! And lamps made of skin!

Plus thick solid beautiful old wood, and a marble staircase, and secret throne room chairs with ornate esoteric carvings, and falling apart old books with odes and songs and MASONIC STUFF. Faces of old men everywhere, and their trophy cases, and their plaques.

Also ashtrays everywhere. Everywhere. I won't even start to talk about the kitchen cabinets which went miles to the ceiling. It was like hanging out in the best church basement ever invented. It made you crave watery coffee and stale jelly donuts after mass, even if you had to stand in the corner while Mom said hi to everyone.

I don't know if I was just blinded in my youth by other things, or maybe I just sucked horribly at math and therefore never even thought about engineering or architecture because like space travel, it was just not something I was good enough to do. But why aren't we all just in constant awe of the buildings around us? We live in Cleveland, for gods sakes. Building is something we did really really well for a long time. Thank god my parents didn't make me grow up in someplace like Phoenix, or anywhere in Florida, where things are new and flat and don't have secret old pianos hanging out behind thick stage curtains on old polished floors. Why aren't we just constantly marveling at the designs of man all the fucking time?

Don't you just want to stay back there behind the curtains forever? Don't you just want to sleep there overnight? Who needs love when you have flooring like this? This building doesn't care about you and your problems, it just exists and asks to be used well and with respect. Hurting this building would be like throwing a stone at an elephant. You'd have to try really hard to have any affect on the elephant. You could hurt it, but you'd have to have hate in your heart and a lot of fucking balls. This building is what every little girl wants.

Friday, September 17, 2010

Hansel and Gretel

1. Hansel lived with the witch before Gretel. He had found the witch, living happily in her gingerbread house, alone with her cats, and moved in. When this all happened, Hansel was not a boy. He was in fact 33.

2. After years of living together, Hansel started staying overnight when he went into town to buy supplies. The Witch was suspicious. Hansel pointedly told her she was crazy.

3. One day, he "found" teenage Gretel wandering in the woods. "She's just a friend. Stop being such a bitch. We're just hanging out" he told the Witch.

4. The Witch loved Hansel very much. Witches are not creatures to fuck around with. They live on the edge of madness, in a darkness of words and intentions. They are fragile when they are sane. They are sincere when they are hurt.

5. Hansel and Gretel ran away together, but the woods are wild, and soon Hansel decided that he deserved to live in the gingerbread house as well, because he couldn't let one witch's pain manipulate his life.

6. So they came back and Hansel had a plan.

7. First he told the Witch how much he loved her, and regretted hurting her. He slept with her to stop her from crying hot witch tears. Then he told her things were over with Gretel.

8. Things were not over with Gretel.

9. The Witch sat outside her house all day, contemplating the large brick ovens by the chicken coop. She felt impotent, used, unwanted, betrayed.

10. Hansel found her, and held her. He told her again how much he loved her, and how beautiful she was, and touched her in the secret witch places. The next day he told her again it was over with Gretel.

11. It was not over with Gretel.

12. Hansel and Gretel came to the house together. "Stop trying to keep us apart you stupid old witch" they told her, standing over her drunk weakened frame. "Stop trying to manipulate us you crazy hag. We are young and free and strong, and you could never come between us. Standing still is what kills us, we have to sleep with everyone, and go to shows every night, and be among the well dressed people in order to have love."

13. The Witch looked at them in their terrible intent. "You are not young Hansel, you are 33. You are older than me. And Gretel, you are young, and you are stupid, but someday you will learn better."

14. Then she crawled into the ovens, and shut the door.

Sunday, September 12, 2010

This is obviously a metaphor. Obviously.

Last Spring, I broke a cobalt blue glass in my kitchen. It shattered everywhere, and by shattered, I mean the tiniest slivers, fragments, sparkles of glass. I swept. I vacuumed. I have in fact done both of those things multiple times, after all it's been six months. But I still keep stepping on glass. I have scars all over the bottom of my left foot, because this is magical glass that is only attracted to my left foot, or possible I step everywhere on my left foot first? (branch metaphor - what does leading with my left foot say about my brain, and corollary, is some emotional part of me trying to cripple that brain thing by cutting it to pieces, and thirdly, is my right foot smarter and manipulating my left foot into taking the fire?)

Last week, I stepped on another tiny tiny miniscule piece. I couldn't even see it. It went into my left big toe, and I examined that mother for an hour, poking and prodding, but couldn't see anything. So I figured I just stepped on it and it was somewhere on my floor again.

But over the past few days, there has been a hardening lump on my toe, that's starting to hurt more and more when I step on it. I made an attempt to ignore it. I spent a good couple of days in complete denial of it. Then I justified it as "well, I can still walk on it, it will eventually go away." This morning I looked at it again, and there are two tiny dark parts showing up quite clear against the lump. Which isn't red or anything. No, the pain is from my skin literally growing over this tiny tiny almost invisible thing.

So I have said to myself "this must be my toe skin pushing out the foreign object, and if I just wait it out, it will fall out, because the skin on the bottom of your feet grows out so quickly and sloughs off and ect I don't need to dig this out. Or eventually it will just be a callous and part of my foot and whats so bad about that?"

The logical part of me knows this is bullshit. But the emotional part of me says that just like flying penguins and tiramisu in space, this could be true. And thinks of when I was a little girl and got a splinter, which my mom tried to dig out, and I screamed bloody murder before she even touched it. Apparently, once something gets under my skin, I'd rather just leave it there, no matter if it hurts or not. I need someone who is good at wielding tweezers and doesn't mind me screaming a lot for no good reason. And who isn't a serial killer, though technically, they would probably meet the qualifications.

Saturday, September 11, 2010

Not in the weird Christian way though.

That was a lot longer rant below than I meant to make, but I'm horribly sad, because I've been left behind and there will be no one knocking at my door with surprise coffee this morning. Maybe I like to find the secret places because I am a sick dog, trying to hobble to the place where I can die quietly. Maybe dying animals are only trying to not get killed before their time. Or maybe they are actually waiting to ambush something, to get one last kill in before they expire.

Either way, I need coffee.

The Devil is in the Words



Today is a loaded day. For some of you, it's because you are actually affected by a violent act that happened on this day 9 years ago, and you have trauma to deal with and death. For others, today matters because of the consequences of that act, war and surveillance and the death of the always safe empire. But to me, this is the day when certain words died, and were resurrected as different unclean things. The birth of zombie words, and all the rules that came about as society tried to survive these words. Terrorism, patriotism, conservative, liberal, homeland, security. None of these words mean what they meant before. They will never have their original shape again in our country. Even writing the word country, it's unfamiliar. It's an attack word. Typing it out is like trying to throw a knife, you gain accuracy with practice. I'm scared to use it, because others are so much better with it than I am.

There are things you are not supposed to say or think, because these are things that make you a bad person. You are not supposed to say you think everyone is an asshole, or way more stupid than you. You are not supposed to voice the fact that you think about killing yourself, or killing other people, or burning things down. You are not supposed to say that death is cheap and easy and isn't that big of a deal because it happens everywhere, all the time. Because we aren't allowed to say these things, when someone does, we overreact. We label them irrevocably cynical, or mentally disturbed, or out to get cheap thrills. Or worse, we tell people they are insensitive. They aren't nice thoughts sure. People shouldn't think them all the time. But people do think them, and by banning them we give the words more power than they should have. Today is the worse day for this.

9/11 was not some singular major event. It was a sad thing, because it's always sad when people in a city are afraid, and when people lose their friends and family members. But evil things happen all the time. Buildings get bombed,infrastructures burn, entire fucking countries flood. Fucking Katrina happened and destroyed way more lives. So 9/11 doesn't mean that much to me. It was an inevitable thing that was going to happen. Other bombings will happen. They happen to other countries all the time. Lots more people die in bigger ones. It is what happens in a world made of boundaries. It shouldn't have been the beginning of a war. It wasn't another country bombing us. It wasn't the start of an invasion. It was an isolated terrible thing. I wasn't scared when it happened. I wasn't sitting around at work thinking Cleveland was next. I mean, Cleveland could have been next, I guess. I could have also been hit by a car that day, or any other day. Approximately 110 people die a day in car crashes, I could have easily been one of them. I could have contracted AIDS. 5700 people in the world die of AIDS every day, one of them could have been me. I could have been randomly mugged and stabbed. I could have been kidnapped and raped. I could have died because of an unknown allergy. I could have come home to a gas leak and lit a cigarette. There are lots of ways I could die every day, and on that particular day a group of people died in an unfortunate evil way.

So the act itself is not something I need to reverently think about every year. If anything, it's a day of shame, because of how our country reacted, and all the hate and stupidity that grew out of it. The people who died are not saints just because they were killed. It's not like all our best people, our most heroic and intelligent and beautiful people, were in those buildings. They were just normal people. Some of them were loved very much, and probably there were some nasty people in there too, and unloved ones, and ones that did bad things. If every year, the country marked the anniversary with just sadness, then okay. I'm okay with remembering a tragedy. Out of tragedies should come progress. But instead every year, this becomes a day to reinforce the Fears, to use those loaded attack words over and over, to talk about war and honorable death and patriotism, how to save the American Empire. Instead of moving forward with an intent to fix things, we are stuck in a permanent celebration of our own bravery.

All the evil that was created on 9/11 came from us. It was waiting there, to jump on an opportunity, to feed like a fungus on someones pain. And we let it grow. It's still growing. We are the ones killing the American empire, through mistreatment and entitlement and ego and God. The world is not safer. The world will never be safer. The world we have now is created on a foundation of death and battle and bloodshed and ownership, that is the history of the human race. If we want to live like this, in a rich and powerful country, in a fucking empire, then this is one of the consequences, people will try to kill us. There are other more important consequences too, like the resources of continents being raped, the world being sucked dry around us. Our economy is a vampire. Our patriotism is the equivalent of Twilight, painting sexiness around death. The only thing this parade of condensed Americana does is save us from having to think about our own major moral problems. Not just as Americans but as humans. We are criminals, and we should not be hiding our own serial killings by saying "look, they hit me, it was self-defense."

It's not like we have to hear this crap on just one day, and so therefore I should just shut up and let them have their one special day. No, this has been a constant barrage, for 9 years. An almost decade of feeding those fake words with old dried blood, and new fresh blood. If you wanted the numbers 9/11 to mean something to me other than hate, then you should have tried something other than war and revenge. You should have tried guilt.

But now, this will make me cynical. This will make me insensitive. This will make me unAmerican. The zombie words will come after me.

Friday, September 10, 2010

"But the tigers come at night,
With their voices soft as thunder,
As they tear your hope apart
As they turn your dreams to shame"

Thursday, September 9, 2010

Thursday, September 2, 2010

A Few Things I Wrote

Go to Ohio Authority to read my review of drinks at Light Bistro.

Or go to Turning River to read about my brief love affair with a rubber coyote.

Wednesday, September 1, 2010

These are Important Things. You Need to Choose Wisely. Updated.

B: You have all gotten away from the important point here. Which is unicorns.

M.: Do you know about Team Unicorn & Team Zombie? I'm on the former.

B: I don't know about that, but I know zombies are no match for unicorns, like, at all.

L: Zombies en masse can probably take down anything up to and including a brontosaur (Apatosaur for the perfectionists out there). That being said ol'uni can just teleport out of there.

K: The unicorn could also just cure them all with a touch of its horn! It's the unicorn.

L: Well. Actually they would be destroyed as They are undead. But again: see my point about zombies en masse. Unicorns can only touch so many targets so fast.

B: Unicorns are half laser.

K: Zombies are far, far overrated. Think of how fast a Unicorn is? I don't think a zombie apocalypse could really offer up much of a fight against even a horse, let alone the Unicorn.


-------Update------

NC: The problem is, as Stephen King points out, that zombies really represent the anxieties over cannibalism we previously associated with vampires, before vampires before a metaphor for STDs and rape. If zombies go after a unicorn, they loose all meta-textual significance. And without that, the plot no longer demands they win! They're just a bunch of smelly yahoos

KT: Zombies are also the metaphor for the existential other, the urban condition of being confronted by the nameless faceless callously hostile people of the world. What if they were all really against you, or anyway, more actively against you? The Unicorn is the symbol of the forest as sublime, of solitude as peaceful - it's the opposite of the urban horror of the zombie.

B: Well then I think it makes perfect sense that the two would be mortal enemies.

NC: The unicorn is also the other -- the unobtainable other. We chase the unicorn and ran from the zombie. So really, they'd conspire together to drive us mad.

B: This is a representation of urban sprawl attacking the rural community. The unicorn, with it's health and beauty, is besieged by the anonymous thousands who spread disease and sin. Sure, we chase the unicorn, like mom chases her farm, but eventually the unicorn is cornered and needs to fight back. How does the rural culture defend itself against the multitudes who don't stop coming?

I think I just said that the unicorns are Amish.

NC: So, really, at the end of his quest, Sir Gawain must stand between the unicorn and the zombies and contemplate which he resembles.

Why Pointing Out What Sign You Are to People Who Don't Care is Maybe Not a Good Idea

Bridget's Interpretation of the Astrological Signs
as aided by caffeine withdrawal, a twix bar for breakfast,
and general lack of respect for the whole damn thing. I don't believe this shit.
(due to certain conversations, I feel compelled to make this clear. I am making all this up)


Capricorn - The Goat

Capricorns are driven people. Driven to be intellectual snobs. Driven to be exclusive. Driven to be in control of their situation, even if that means staying in their house every day playing computer games because its the only thing they are good at, and if they leave the house they might have to experience this thing called an emotion, which frankly they don't see the point of. They love to talk to you if you're smart, but only as long as you don't admit to knowing more than them. If you don't meet their standards, then they will probably still sleep with you, but will not call you in the morning and probably won't enjoy it anyway. They like trench coats, IT jobs, and symmetrical pictures of nature. If you meet a capricorn with excellent social skills, it probably means they make a lot more money than you.

Aquarius - The Water Bearer

Aquarius likes to be thought of as unique. You know what's not unique? Telling everyone how unique you are. If you tell me that you are "crazy and weird", then you're probably neither of those things. Unless while you tell me this, you are also juggling stray cats and wearing a caftan you knitted to symbolize world drought. In other words, Aquarius tries too hard. They are most likely to try and change the world, and most likely to drive everyone crazy by preaching about veganism and alien encounters. They infest non-profits and college activism groups like pesky squirrels. I suspect most of them are bi-polar, since a disproportionate amount of them claim angels talk to them. Also, what the fuck is a water bearer? Cause to me that reads slave.

Pisces - The Fish

Pisces are sluts. Seriously, any Pisces will sleep with you. If you're into anal, go out with a Pisces. They will totally fall in love with you though. Sweet, slutty Pisces.

Aries - The Ram

Aries are totally adventurous, and will do most anything. Whether or not its dangerous. Need someone to walk into a den of badgers? Call an Aries. Need someone to hang from an airplane over the Andes and lure condors with chum? Call an Aries. Some people think this stupid, careless, reckless. After all, who does dumb shit like scuba diving under the Artic shelf? Whatever, you don't even know what living is. Aries write a lot of survival guides, and frankly, if there is an apocalypse, you should get one on your side. Aries are physically incapable of becoming zombies. In fact, we should be farming them for anti-zombie stem cells.

Taurus - The Bull

Once upon a time, you used to date this guy who seemed totally calm and collected, had a good job, a house, was unflinchingly loyal and paid your car bills and stuff. Then he went on your facebook, saw how many guy friends you had, and suddenly he was suspicious of everything you were doing. Who was that on the phone? Why can't you come over tonight? When you asked him what the hell was up, he wouldn't tell you, just made sad puppy dog eyes at you. Eventually he got really defensive at everything, started snapping anytime you disagreed about something, and started drinking a lot. He was a Taurus. You dumped him for a Pisces.

Gemini- The Twins

No matter how awesome that collage you made for their birthday is, a Gemini will still think they are more creative than you. Don't worry about trying to make plans with them either, because Geminis are notorious for not calling you for months, then all of a sudden totally having to see you on this specific day at this specific time, and if you don't do it then, you may never see or hear from them again. Not because they don't like you. They are just too busy being awesome. Geminis are great for doing drugs with, as long as you catch them on the upside of their monthly mood cycle. Otherwise it's kind of depressing. And they sort of become addicts. Which is more depressing.

Cancer - The Crab

Do you like watching a woman cry? Do you like watching her cry because you did something conceptually hurtful, even though no solid action took place? Do you have a pressing need to take care of someone, manage their budget, comfort them when they get irrationally insecure, and put up with their entertainment demands even though you're footing the bill because she is too busy writing her novel to go to work? Does her having big tits and giving good blowjobs, plus being really fun to drink with, make up for all of that? Then call me.


Leo - The Lion

Leos get hurt just as easily as Cancers, only they're too proud to actually say anything about it. It's sweet, until they get super passive aggressive. They try to be steady, not cause a fuss, but if you step on them they get totally irrationally angry. Leos hold a grudge like nobody's business. Well, I mean, technically it should be their business. If only there was a way to profit off hating people, places, and things. I wonder what the quantity of Leos on staff at Fox News is? As long as you stay on their good side, then they're great friends. But good luck with that. It's a minefield. Start with never ever telling them what to do. Send them to Africa to travel down the Congo and find a crazy man.

Virgo - The Virgin

When I asked my friends to contribute lists of their perfect mates, the first 2 who responded were Virgos, because they already had lists. Their houses are always clean. Their bank accounts are always in order. They are disgustingly perfect and well balanced. Virgos should probably run the world, but if you tell them I said that I'll deny it. They are good friends to have, but they are always asking you to go out which can be frustrating, since their budgets are like a well oiled machine and yours is closer to an 85 Chevy that needs a transmission flush. If a Virgo falls in love with you, you should probably shut the fuck up and consider yourself lucky. If your Virgo is a girl, she's probably vegan. If it's a guy, he belongs to a gym. Seriously, they will make you doubt your self-worth.

Libra - The Scales

Libras are totally delusional. They are all born thinking that they are destined to live some special grand life, and when that doesn't happen, they start irrationally grabbing onto anything that can cover up their mediocrity and give them the appearance of individuality. This makes them lots of fun, because they really really want to seem fun. It also makes them the worst flirts ever, because they want to look popular and in demand and adored. If you want to love a Libra, be prepared to deny reality often, and agree with them about how awful everyone else is except them. Also be prepared to be dumped when the next new thing comes along that's shinier than you. Libras are like ravens, constantly swooping off path for bits of tinfoil to help them pretend their nest is silver.

Scorpio - The Scorpion

Scorpios are assholes. But if you like someone dominating every aspect of your life, and dictating what you think and who your friends are and what kind of politics you have, then hey. They're good in the sack. They're sort of like the military version of Pisces. A Scorpio would totally murder a Pisces, and get away with it. If you want to murder someone and get away with it, call a Scorpio. If you need a short man to lead your army across Europe, call a Scorpio.

Sagittarius - The Archer

The worst thing you can do to a Sag is tell them they have to do something because they are "supposed to". However, if you give them a reason to "want to" then they are on it. They are the nice versions of Capricorns. But if you dropped a Sag and Cap somewhere deep in the woods, and told them to kill each other, my money's on the Cap because they usually own guns.