Floods

At any given second, someone is thinking about you. Whether its a friend, a family, someone walking by you in the store or driving past you in a car, or just processing the endless chain of paperwork or databases containing your name that exists everywhere in the world all at once. You are always on someone's mind. Almost as if what keeps us together as identities is this complex network of impressing ourselves on every neuron we come across, and if suddenly it were all to blink out, just snap shut like the clasp on a clutch, then you would be gone. I think sometimes we really do think that, that this new connectivity which has entered our history has changed us, chemically emotionally physically, and now there is a fear. There's always a fear. But now there's like, a new fear. Unrelated to sin or cornflakes or moths or gas masks. Something different, which is waiting, like a snake, to be named.




Another thing that bothers me is this inability to talk about bad emotions. Sure, we all bitch and moan about our work days, and sometimes something really bad happens, and we tell our online worlds "my dad died" or "I lost my house" or "there was a car accident." But that's it. It wouldn't do to have more than two posts in a row about it, and really, you can't mention it more than once, or suddenly you are just the one who's "really only ever talking about that, you know, thing."

I guess that's not confined to the internet. I guess that's a thing that happens in real life too, the inability to really be honest about the chain gang of thoughts beating around your skull with pick axes into the soft coal veins of your stability as a person. I wonder about the darkest places of my friends. Even the ones, no especially the ones I've known forever. I mean, really, who's seen me cry? I cried a lot last year, and I think maybe two people that knew me actually physically saw it. Besides my family, but that's the thing about family, you can cry at the drop of a hat with them.



But maybe the thing that stop us from going really deep into the worst parts online is that you know as soon as you say anything dark, obviously unhealthy, or even just particularly melancholy, you're going to get a barrage of comments about hanging in there, or it's not so bad or THIS IS A LEARNING EXPERIENCE. Yes, I know it's a learning experience. That's why I'm thinking about it. And the immediate assumption that this is AN EVENT. There is this THING that has happened that has you thinking this way, and you just need to get over this THING. An expectation that of course all you need is support and sympathy and you will be fine.

But nothing's wrong. There is no event. If you are thinking about something, anything, all the time, if you are constantly creating fake conversations in your head between scenarios that don't exist, and with every interaction you are imagining the equal and opposite reactions, all the unique ways a situation could go, then Jesus, of course you are going to think about the dark things too. It doesn't do to pretend you don't have dark things. Really dark things. If you tell me you don't, you are either a liar or traumatized or stupid.




I have an excess of imagination. It's not a good thing or a bad thing. No, actually, it's a little bit of a bad thing. It's just the way I function. I talk to myself. I have conversations with people over and over again that will never see daylight or candlelight or streetlight or dome light. It's an ever changing mess in my head of miscellaneous story arcs. It sucks. It's hard to accept things the way they are sometimes, when you have already scripted how they could be, and actually, properly edited, should be. When you can see how they might be. And then you can't even use most of the pretend conversations and put them down properly, because your friends will think you are weird and/or maybe misinterpreted things. If you and I have had a conversation, I have probably had that conversation again in my head at least three different ways, all leading to different outcomes and then different actions the next day and so on and so forth, entirely new universes that have been sprung into existence by two separate lines or two steps to the right. I don't necessarily want things to be different, the potentials just exist already, I didn't put them there. It happens automatically, and it starts the minute I'm alone. Have you ever called me late at night, just randomly about something, and noticed how spacey I sound? It's probably cause I've been talking to myself for the last hour.

I probably need to learn how to hide stories better. Disguise them. It's like photoshopping pictures though. The originals always look better than the fucked with ones.



What I talked to myself about yesterday, after driving around the southern western valleys looking at flooded creeks and melting hillsides, was about disappearing. Just somehow figuring out how to get everyone in the world to stop thinking about or reading or seeing me. But like, not gradually, all at once. In a really quick blink. I think it might be impossible. I don't think even if you tried, you could erase all evidence of me, I think I'm spread too thin in random places, some mark of me would remain. An insignificant mark, but a rub nonetheless. A trace of paperwork in some creditor's office. So that's got to be somewhat comforting to those people who need heaven, the thought that, at least among a certain social economic class, there is no more "gone." In this moment though, I stood right next to the river bank and it was actually scary, to be next to the roaring flood all mud colored and snow cold, and I thought it would be really cool to disappear completely and see what happened if I talked to no one ever again. In what particular and unique way would I go crazy? I hope we've all thought about this at some point, because it would be weird to be as old as you are and not pondered it. It's a secret of course, what horrible points of my nature would lead to my mental demise. But I've got at least two candidates. I just can't tell you, because what if someday someone kidnaps me, and they've read this, and then they know the exact ways to torture me? You never know, I might be worth kidnapping some day.

And I also thought about being alone, not because it's a problem but because it's a fact. I'm not supposed to talk about that, because it's unhealthy and not productive and not attractive or interesting. Really though, what's the point of saying anything about it until I've figured out the new angle? It's not inherently boring, to read about loneliness, dozens of very good writers have have tackled it quite well. But that was the trick see. Everyone wants to talk about how lonely they are, but only those who have something new to say about it, or some new way to frame it, succeed in getting people to listen.

Heavy is the Head That Wears the Crown: the 2011 Oscars, Sort of

8:03 James Franco is doing an interview in the Green Room, and he's got this look on his face like he just realized that he has bitten off more than he can chew. Like, all this publicity and weirdness and now hosting this show has just landed on him like a big old freight train of despairing nervousness. He doesn't even say anything odd. He's totally caught. Everyone is going to see him for the fraud he is, you can see it in his eyes.

Now Tim Gunn is talking to Justin Timberlake, who just outed the red carpet for being fuschia and is obviously on drugs. The Social Network was great by the way, and Justin is who I want to hang out with when I'm dead, naked. Tim is way more excited than Justin.

I forgot how cute Nicole Kidman is when she talks, with her little accent. But christ I hate Keith for using the word eclectic. Really, the minute you use the word eclectic, I want to walk away from you and forget your existence. Also, her Dior gown makes me want to write a screen play for an aging She Ra, who has to adjust to life as a past prime defender of the universe, and cast her in it.

Why are we letting Gwenyth Paltrow get this far? Seriously? Though I really do want to see her do a duet with Jay Z. I want them to cover Islands in the Stream.

Does Christian Bale really have that accent, or is he faking it for some reason? It really takes away some of my desire to lick him.

8:22pm Seriously, we needed an inset countdown to the Oscars on the screen? Also, Halle Berry? I can think of several better places you could be to honor Lena Horne. SEVERAL.

8:31pm I totally wasn't paying attention and this intro started, and I thought it was actually a trailer for another completely different upcoming film, I was all like, who has the audacity to buy an ad for their movie during the Oscars? But no, just an intro. A really really good intro. The music montage. Not this awful host introduction.

Ann's dress is all sorts of awesome though. Like a tiara exploded on her waist. Now they are introducing their mom and grandmom. Which is cute.

I feel like being a set designer for the Oscars is like, the biggest thing ever, for set designers.
And who's going to see Gone with the Wind with me at the Capitol? I fucking love that movie. But I may never forgive Tom Hanks for reminding me Titanic the movie exists. I had almost managed to forget it completely. It was a better time, 2 minutes ago, I had a better life.

I really have to see True Grit. It's awfully dumb I haven't yet.


8:51pm Do you see that lighting effect they are doing behind Kirk Douglas's grandfather? Where you have those really oversized light reflections? I want that on my walls all the time.

Remind me to watch Animal Kingdom.

8:58pm Melissa Leo is genuinely overwhelmed. Oh geez, man, this shit gets me every time. She's going to watch that tape back and realize she just flirted with Kirk Douglas's mummy. And swore in front of national television. But mostly hit on a mummy. Looking at her cast mates' faces, it seems like maybe they didn't like her all that much, like maybe she's this dramatic when she's ordering a coffee too, and they are just about done with this shit.

Yes Anne, that is exactly the sound I make when I say Timberlake's name too. And the sound I'm making now. Oh Southland Tales, Oh Justin.
They should have had Justin and Mila host the Oscars. Then Justin and Mila should be sent into space to populate some distant planet with their offspring.

9:07pm I bet Pixar is in fact the best place on the planet period. Like, you probably walk in the door and they feed you cocaine cotton candy and monkeys rub your head all the time, and unicorns walk around with donuts on their horns.

Seriously Sorkin, you are going to name drop during your acceptance speech? I bet you're just a blast at parties, aren't you? I do like how he's just ignoring the music.

9:19pm This writer guy who won for screenplay is awesome and I want to live next to him and shovel his driveway for him, and then sit in his living room smoking weed and listening to all his stories about being broke. Maybe I should start drinking in bars next to retirement homes in Hollywood. That doesn't really strike me as a bad life direction.

Is Anne going to sing? Her shoes are amazing. I bet anyone would sound good in those shoes. She's like an actual live Disney princess. With magic shoes. That her fairy drag queen gave her.
Oh, speaking of drag queens..."she's a dame, he recently married one" is like, the best line so far.

I wish Russell Brand would cut his hair and get a divorce, and disappear into...

OH I WANTED TO SEE DOGTOOTH. No one would go with me when it came here, because you all suck. SEE maybe you'll believe me now that it looks awesome.

It must be weird to be a foreign actor and win an Oscar. I wonder how the rest of the world sees that.

I take it back. I don't think it's the accent that's killing Christian Bale for me, I think it's the beard. It doesn't look good on him. I did see a really good beard on Thursday night, and then the same guy again on Saturday, and I even went up to him and told him we had been admiring his beard. He appreciated it.

Oh, and it turns out the answer to who has the audacity to run a trailer for their movie during the Oscars is Spielberg. Big surprise.

9:40pm
The Social Network score should totally win.
And look! They did. It's nice when sometimes tv admits I'm right.
I wish I knew more geniuses. I know some, I'm pretty sure, but more would fun. I wonder how you go about tracking down geniuses.

Scarlett Johansson looks like she ordered her dress from a Victoria's Secret catalog.

9:50 Man, I had almost managed to wipe Burton's Alice from my head as well, and now these fuckers are just going to remind me. Fuck you Costume Design.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH GO AWAY CELINE DION GO AWAY! Goddamnit. The Oscars is SCREWING me.



That young girl engineer in that pan shot of the nerds is my hero.
Cate Blanchett is also sort of my hero. And I love that every time she goes anywhere they play the Lord of the Rings music. She's wearing a dress made of bubble tea.

What was Barney's Version? That goes on the list too. Maybe. I'm always up in the air about that guy. But I like the word Version a lot.

Also on the list? I Am Love and The Tempest. Man, I really didn't see any movies this year, what happened?

I always really like the Movie Song category. It's how I found Triplets of Belleville. And thank god for that, right? I mean, Marty would have shown it to me eventually anyway, but still.
8 Mile is also my favorite movie song too, Random Dude.
Oh jesus, Obama, really? REALLY?



Really?



Kevin Spacey should be married to me.

I feel like no Hollywood experience is complete without Mandy Moore.
WAIT WHAT? HE was the other voice in Tangles? CHUCK?
That's Chuck.
Singing with Mandy Moore.
The world is so very strange. So very very very weird. It's like we're all just randomly colliding into nonconsecutive pockets of alternate universes.
I do always get him mixed up with the guy from Scrubs.

List: God of Love

10:20 The Oscars enlisted Prozzac to write a musical montage. Okay.

10:22 Oprah is coming on the Oscars to announce her galactic space fleet is ready to launch, and that all world leaders are ordered to report to her secret Artic fortress immediately for reassignment.

10:30 Is Billy Crystal really such a big deal that everyone has to give him a standing ovation? I mean, I like him too. But he's not dead or recovering from cancer or something. Or is he? Is Billy Crystal dead?

Did Bob Hope die and I just forgot?

10:33 I don't usually say shit like this, but Robert Downey Jr and Jude Law together is about as hot as it gets.
Unless it's just Clive Owen. Alone. In a suit. Angry.
Hey, someone who knows these things, tell me why I love Jude's accent but hate Christian Bale's? Am I some sort of London accent snob?


This show is never going to end.


Also I'm really not into Florence and the Machine.

10:46pm Gwenyth Paltrow is finally going through with the live performance that everyone has been talking about for a fucking year, so I guess I should be glad it's over, but jesus, that girl needs to stop. Someone needs to tell her to stop. This is the worst performance. No really, it's bad. It's a bad song. She can't sing. She looks tired. That was terrible.

Jennifer Hudson also looks like she can't quite catch her breath.

Randy Newman is like...a county sheriff.

me: so I just googled Randy Newman and apparently he's like a born again and speaks out against gay marriage

which is funny, cause I was googling to see if he was gay

Sarah: hm i thought he was gay

me: right? NO

but you know, probably

Sarah: oh yeah

those types always are

and by "those types" i mean people who irrationally hate gay marriage

not composers

Edit: I looked it up again today, and maybe it's another Randy Newman in fact, some Christian author. So, sorry original Randy Newman. But I still don't like your music.

10:56pm Fuckin Celine Dion.
The List of People I Probably Read About At The Time But Have Since Completely Forgotten Died This Year: Tony Curtis SALLY MENKE (when did that happen? What?) Leslie Nielsen Pete Lynn Redgrave Anne Francis Dennis Hopper and Lena Horne.

It turns out that after having to see it several times, I heavily resent JP Morgan Chase for using that Cat Stevens song in their horrible evil commercial.

11:09pm The Kings Speech Director just won for best acceptance speech of the night.

Man, I thought for a moment that Francis Ford Coppola died! That's what I get for not paying attention.

I think James Franco wants to kill Anne Hathaway. Kill her a lot.

Best Actress: Natalie. Alright, we all knew that right? I can't bring myself to see that film because Jere said there was "nail" stuff in it, and nails are like the back of the knees to me, it's the worst.
Natalie Portman has had a manager for 18 years. Geez.

Best Actor: Javier Bardem. How could anyone who woke up every day to Javier Bardem's face not be incredibly happy? But he didn't win. Colin Firth did.
I wonder what it's like if you're dating a movie star, and they win, and then in the acceptance speech they thank you, but they call you their "friend"?

On the Waterfront. I wanna watch that right now.

The montages this year have been particularly engaging for me.

Best Picture: The movie I haven't seen yet.

I'm done. I may in fact be a completely different person from this moment on, and not in the best way. Goodnight. Someone send me the video of Michelle Williams later.

ANTM Cycle 16: Why Guys Don't Make Passes at Girls Who Can't Walk Properly in Giant Flotation Devices

(alternatively titled: What if the supposed seasonal memory lapse of people who have winters turned out to be an actual and true thing, caused by something they've been putting in the water, to keep us around past summer?)





Sarah: I am watching VH1 Behind the Music: Motley Crue
it's horrifying

Bridget: I have been watching NCIS for the last hour

Sarah: I think these horrors have adequately prepared us for Tyra

At the beginning, in the beginning, there were would be months without magic and the villagers would be relieved. It was the period of incubation, when deep down at the ocean depths, the Sea Witch would carefully tend her nest, culling the dead eggs, cradling the hatchlings with the longest limbs folded inside their embryonic shells like fluttering birds. The ocean currents rocked them to sleep, and the creatures of the sea floor sustained them, their tiny little claws learning to grab quick and quietly from the shadows an unsuspecting lobster or crab, their tiny new little teeth cracking the shells with little horrible snaps and cracks, the tinkling of shiny clean enamel and shiny new purpose.

In the spring, as the winter icebergs floated away to the far away dimensions fleeing the sun, the storms came, and in her cave, the Sea Witch surveyed her survivors, tall and young and proud, and pronounced them fit for the trials. The villagers saw the winds changing, knew what the red sunrises predicted, red like patent leather, red like lipstick, red like blood soaked manicures. One night, when the lightning flashed the brightest, the mothers stowed their babes safe away and locked the windows tight, and up from the raging waves came the initiates, encased in plastic placentas, stumbling on their recently formed perfect limbs, swaying newborn colts. And the games began, the annual curse of every man and woman who chose to make their livelihood on this wretched coast.

Sarah: "give me another runway without a bubble on it"
if I had a nickel for every time I said that

The witch laughed at herself, knowing the faces of her children already, since they were the same faces she conjured every year. The Vulcan. The Trailer Park Queen. The Southern Belle. The Art Student. It didn't matter to know their names now, most of them would not survive the coming tests, they would crumble and cry and turn to dust. But she searched the faces, looking for the one she knew had something, a taste for sweat and sex and money. It hid in their doe eyes, underneath their dewy fresh cheeks. One of them had the beast in her. She would strip them down, peel their souls like old paint until they stood exposed in front her, and the fangs bared.

The first trial had been survival from the waves. The second trial was a portrait painted by a blind man with glass eyes. It was all very boring, the beginning. The witch cracked her knuckles, and scratched new catchphrases on her thighs with a small butter knife. She pictured them falling one by one, and smiled, but only with her eyes.

Bridget: That weird curly brown haired one is my enemy

Sarah: jaclyn?

Bridget: I don't know, I just missed her name AGAIN
I'm just going to pretend she doesn't have one



The full transcript of our liveblog can be found here. Welcome back bitches.

Some fucking pictures of some fucking ice

My mother hates when I use the word fuck. Sorry Mom.



One of the things that can happen to you in a medium sized city is that you see the same people over and over again. Some people are quality, some are not. That's not what I'm going to talk about. That's just a fact in any community. That's just a fact about people.



And you begin to see that everyone new you meet also know the same people.



And when people start to begin to know you, you feel self conscious, and start to try to be a better person in the eyes of the world. And maybe you feel like you should be smarter, or wittier, or more charming. That totally happens, no matter who you are or how confident you are. It's the disease of being too social. You are supposed to fight it, especially girls my age, because we were raised with the constant cry of "be yourself". When our mothers were our age, and still remembered the sunrise of feminism. I don't know, obviously not every girl had that. But I think most of my friends' mothers. So we know how we are supposed to be, but sometimes we don't even realize the infection is in us until there are visible symptoms. The stress of trying too hard takes a little bit of time to show itself.



The point, I guess, is this. This week we had an ice storm and honestly, this is one of my favorite parts of winter, when the ice hits. I went out and took a bunch of photos the first day, because seriously, it's awesome. But then this guy I follow on twitter said something like "oh hey, I can't wait to see everyone's pictures of ice #sarcasm" and I actually felt bad. I was like, oh, I'm one of those people *sad face*.



And that's exactly the opposite of the reaction I should have had, which should have been to immediately post as many goddamn pictures of the ice as I wanted.

Strathspey by the River Spey

You know who's from Moray by Greater Speyside? Macbeth. Duke of Moray. King of Alba. When he was around 30, he may have met Cnut the Great, then King of England, at Malcolm's court, like around 1031. Then, you know, later, King of Scotland, blood, death, witches, ect.

Then, 980 years later, his birthplace is full of belching distilleries, and we all gathered together on the edge of the great Western continent, to listen to a lecture by another Knut, about Speyside Scotches.



Scotch is about memory. It smells and tastes like whatever you associate with it, if that's the memory of peat or war or boyfriends or dark musty bars or the empty bottle you left on top of the fridge falling that one time and bruising the fuck out of your big toe. It tastes like cold car rides home, or walking in Tremont at night. It burns in that familiar "I am not making a face" way. It shines gold like a night light.



That last statement is, of course, completely untrue (yet absolutely the truth at the same time), and all the boys with me that night would argue against it, but there were also charts. Knut's drawings are like Roald Dahl illustrations. I love his casks. Molecular bonds between alcohol and water were discussed, and even argued. Why does the water turn cloudy? Because the alcohol beats the crap out of it, because the alcohol throws that water on the street and curbkicks it in the head. No. Something about the impurities shining through because the water is a mirror, just like it shows your impurities when you go swimming in the lake at high noon. No. Something more scientific than that.



The idea of Scotland paints pictures of crazy old saints, with long beards and antisocial tendencies, hermiting in already decrepit falling down monasteries, wrecked on the fierce Atlantic coasts, covered in bird shit. Scaring village children, drunk all the time, writing out the words of god that came to them in psychotic breaks.

Scotch tastes like that. Like God is forcing the visions on you from within the evil depths of your chemical imbalances, from the part of your brain that can't identify the rough tear of reality, doesn't see the imperceptible shift between what you're remembering and what everyone else is seeing. Scotch, made by schizophrenics for practicing monks and ex boyfriends.

It also tastes like a ghost of someone much cooler than you is slipping you some tongue.



There were a lot of princes and princesses at the table that night. Two warriors. One troubadour. And one witch. Who stayed up later than everyone again, and sipped the Glenrothes while trying to read the Confessions of St. Augustine, just to keep the whole lives of the saints thing going.

Ad From My Facebook Page and Why It Reflects the Vast and Unspeakable Confusion That is the Universe

Hpnotiq
“Like” us and next time you catch a guy checking you out at the bar he’ll be begging to buy you another HPNOTIQ cocktail!
Like · 41,802 people like this.

1) Live Louder does not make any sense. All of evolution should teach us to be quieter, so we don't get eaten by bears or raped by nomadic hunters. Even in the context of this ad, which one presumes takes place in a modern day W.6th with much less bears and rape, it still doesn't make sense to be louder because that's how you get arrested and/or noticed by the guy who sees how drunk you are and steals your purse.

2) The name is misspelled. In a way that makes me think it is a computer product.

3) From wikipedia - "Hpnotiq was created by Raphael Yakoby in 2001, a college dropout living with his parents in Long Island, New York, who, after seeing a blue perfume at Bloomingdale's, decided to create a blue liqueur"

4) I think it goes without saying that "liking" something on facebook isn't going to ensure the kind of drink a guy buys you at the bar, unless of course that guy has been stalking you for months, and has written down every single thing you've "liked" ever. Hint: If he starts talking about how great Darkwing Duck was, and how he really likes "not letting bitches keep you down", run.

5) There are 41,802 people in this world who I know I definitely never want to meet ever under any circumstances, unless I'm looking to buy an 8ball or an underage New Jersey hooker.

6) Technically, a bottle of fruit juice, vodka, and cognac already is a cocktail. If you make another cocktail out of the first cocktail, then you have a punch. True.

Fridays Questions Know It was the Butler in the Pantry with the Wasp Poison.

Last night was wicked. The wind was blowing things out of existence, and the raccoons were running the neighborhood, and the stop signs were launching down the street like saw mill blades. It was wonderful. The Oncoming Storm of Spring.

What else is wonderful is how much coffee I have in the house. Enough coffee that even if my house were torn up from the roots by the wind, and launched through the sky into a world of witches and oompa loompas, I would still have enough to get this damn project done this weekend. It's awfully comforting, to have so much coffee in the house. I imagine this must have been what Ma and Pa Ingall felt like when they sold the harvest and got to go to town and stock up on things, like real coffee or flour not made from grass. I prefer to believe that all of us have had some point in our lives of not being able to afford coffee, and therefore understand this feeling of security when you have enough of something.



What should I plant this year?

I think you should go through every Miss Marple book, and plant an entire garden of flowers that have been used as death threats, warnings, and poison delivery devices. The English Garden of Death. Hydrangeas. Lily of the Valley. Sage. Yew. Lots of flowering ground cover for hiding bodies. Roses. Geraniums.

Or you could do an entire garden of flowers that mean bad things. Like rhododendrons mean "beware", marigolds mean "pain", mint means "suspicion" and aloe means "grief. Hydrangea mean "heartless". Think of all the awesome bouquet combinations you could give people, and no one would know.

What is the first thing you are going to do when it gets warm?

I'm taking a road trip to Harrison County OH. It's full of ditches and small hills of kudzu and warm wet green and mud and those weird little towns where everyone goes to the lottery place for entertainment. And I'm going to take lots and lots of photos, of everything. I think a project this year might be to hit up different counties for the day each weekend. I like that idea a lot. There's ten counties along the lake alone. It could keep me occupied for, well, 88 weekends at least.

I'm going to a yoga class tomorrow. What foods should I eat that will give me particularly noxious gas?

Hot wings. Kraft Macaroni and Cheese. Broccoli. Nunzio's pizza. Oreos.

What the hell is up with yoga recently? I mean, it's been a staple of the hipster lifestyle for years, but all of sudden its like everyone I know is going to yoga every night. Hot Yoga, Rock n Roll Yoga, Midnight Yoga, Lesbian Yoga, Beer and Yoga. It's like Yoga suddenly diversified. OR it's like yoga is actually the code word for brainwashing sessions, where humans are turned into mindless drones by insidiously thin alien overlords.

What I'm worried about is how flexible you will all be while I'm trying to kill you all during the invasion.

Weather's nice innit? How many suicides do you think it is preventing?

None of them.
Nice weather only highlights how miserable and despicable you are, deep down inside your soul. Warm weather makes people want things they don't have, and hate themselves for not having them. At least when it's cold and barren and awful, you can stay in bed and not feel guilty. But when it's beautiful outside, then you're a waste for staying in bed for 12 hours.

Which is why you should always make your friends go outside when they hang out with you. Just to be sure. The more outside a person is forced to be, the happier they will be, true story. Houses are terrible things.

The TV news has been saying that Egypt is the most culturally significant Arabic country. Uh, wouldn't that more likely be Saudia Arabia? And is Egypt really "Arabic"?

I mean, it is technically the Arab Republic of Egypt.
And they are part of the Arab League.
Saudi Arabia has more land mass, maybe, I think, but Egypt has the largest Arab population.
Also I would agree they are way more culturally significant than Saudi Arabia, because the Saudis are just sort of stuck, whereas Egypt has been unstuck. And really, in perspective, Egypt is changing all the time, cause 30 years is just a drop in history, and Egypt's had all sort of governments and occupations and stuff like that. Change of any sort, whether good or bad, leads to cultural significance. Egypt still has the active muscle to go places, whereas the Saudis are all sorts of wasting away in their cage.

Ask Me Anything

ANTM: Some Greatest Hits

There are three people in the world who still get excited for America's Next Top Model. Those people are Sarah, M., and myself. But luckily, there are more of you who only like to read my recaps. So in celebration of this next season, which starts next Wednesday, and the fact that this blog will soon stop being lame posts about the weathers, and instead become awesome posts about buildings and sunshine and crazy fucking television again, here are some of my Recap Greatest Hits. I am stocking up the wine as we speak.


Finale from Last Season: Sarah and I liveblog it.

ANTM Cycle 14: Mommy, what's a Whitney Port?

Cycle 14: Amoebas don't make motorcycles and atomic bombs!

Cycle 14: I hope Vampires Are Real Out of Spite

What the Fuck Tyra?

All of Cycle 12 in one handy post

Thaw Prayer

To Winter;

We are all very sorry. Even that asshole who didn't shovel their sidewalk for the last two months. Except that was my house. And you know why? Because I believe in the power of snow. I refuse to touch it's holy presence. I'm that devoted to you, Winter. That's called respect.

But your time is waning, and I have a few requests. Just to, you know, comfort me in your absence.


Please don't let all the animals be dead.
You can kill a few of them sure, but just not all of them.

We saw a whole flock of robins outside yesterday. Like, twenty of them. You know how robins are all cute and hopeful and iconic when you see the first one? Well it turns out in mobs, they are sort of sinister.


Please send lots of rain to wash that ice away, so I can walk like a normal person instead of penguin with vertigo. Also, I'm sorry about that time last week when I was bragging, and you saw fit to punish my hubris by sending me into a puddle of car slush ass first. I deserved that.

When I came outside today, and saw the first patches of clear dry asphalt? It was like seeing my first daffodil. I wanted to pet it, to make sure it felt the same.

Please be sure to return the color green to its original state. No substitutions please.
(seriously, wouldn't it be the worst thing if one spring, nothing grew back green at all? Like, it all grew back yellow or brown? I might kill myself.)

If there is no more water because you turned it all into ice, I will be very upset. I expect every drop of that lake to be where we left it. Omnipotent season or not, there's no reason to be greedy.

Yes, that includes Rocky River. Though if you wanna leave it half frozen a little bit longer than usual, I could spend some quality time down there laughing at the assholes standing in that shit fishing. It's called a supermarket, and you are not cool for giving yourself hypothermia. I wish a giant carp would mistake your finger for a piece of corn, and chews it right off. I also wish carp had teeth.



Also, maybe speed it up a little, because if I don't put this cat outside soon, I'm going to accidentally step on her head. Or her Tail of Unexplainable Vigor is going to knock a soda onto the computer, and she's going electrocute herself. Then I will be out a cat and a computer. And I will move to New Mexico and grow peyote. Because that's what people who don't own stupid cats get to do.

I'm not joking. I was looking at job boards there. It could happen. All I'm saying is...convince me.

Friday's Questions: Valentines Day Edition (alternatively titled Everyone is Depressed)

Before we get into this, here is my one Valentine's Day complaint. I am perfectly happy being single right now, because I don't currently know anyone I want to go out with, so it's cool. I like Valentine's Day, I think it's sweet, and I hope you all get lots of head. But what needs to stop is the avalanche of VDay spam I've been getting. Used to be it was just Christian Singles stalking me. Now it's 20 thousand messages about "Love by the Dozens" and "Covering Your Love With Chocolate" and "Someone Winked at You!" and "Engagement Rings for Your Fiancee!" (for the fiancee we know you don't have because we also sent you ads for Christian Singles). Even worse, some of the more intrepid spammers have been sending me emails from MY EX BOYFRIEND, or at least people with his same last name, WHICH IS JUST AWFUL. Hey, while we are reminding you how single you are, let's also remind you of the worst break up you ever had, and how you failed to be good enough for someone. THANKS INTERNET.

So what I want for Valentine's Day is not chocolate, or flowers, but instead for every asshole spammer using the last name Ayers to develop a horrible pustulating rash with no known cure. Thank you.


Why don't women my age (26) like body hair as much as the older set?

Since maybe technically I AM the older set here? I think you may be mistaken about that.

I mean, there's nothing inherently wrong with body hair.

I guess.

But it sucks getting rug burn from just making out.

So maybe it's because younger girls' skin is not calloused and over-tanned like a football left out in the backyard over the winter, and therefore more sensitive?

Or maybe younger girls still bother taking care of their body hair, so they expect you to too?

You know what all girls like? Guys who don't care about their body issues.



Why bother being productive? Nothing really matters anyway.

If there's absolutely nothing you care about doing or accomplishing in your life, like if you have no desire to travel or make friends or see cool shows or work at a job that doesn't kill your soul in hourly increments, then you are absolutely right. You should just give up now. But if you are going to give up completely, then make sure you are also not posting about it to FB or twitter or on your depressing tumblr, because if you do, you're not really giving up, and then on top of being a depressing and unproductive person, you are also a hypocrite.

Things that are worth trying to be productive for:

1) A sense of well being because your house is clean and doesn't remind your friends of an episode of hoarders.
2) sex
3) money
4) a group of friends that will hide your obvious alcohol issues under a blanket of being "social"
5) fame (see #4)
6) a sense of making the world a better place (see #2)
7) having developed and interesting hobbies so you aren't forced to think about yourself and your failure as a member of society, and maybe you have something else to do on a beautiful day rather than watching Law and Order reruns and eating microwaved fish sticks.



What should I get my significant other for Valentine's Day?

A car!
No, a pony!
No, a painting!
No, a necklace!
No, a gym membership!*
No, a month's paid utilities!
No, 3 acres on the moon!
No, a hotel room and a bottle of vodka!
No, a manifesto listing all of their closest friends, and why you would never sleep with them!
No, a food processor!
No, a gift certificate to a wine shop!
No, a video of you listing all the reasons you really hope they never stop sleeping with you!
No, a trip to the sex shop to buy anything she/he wants!

(that last one is a real one that one of my friends is doing, which is a pretty good one. Or seriously, a food processor.)

*actually, you really shouldn't do this one. You shouldn't probably even bring up the gym to them ever.



Are you coming to tango on Monday?

No. I am avoiding everything having to do with couples at all on Monday. I am very happy for all of you that are couples, there are some pretty good couples out there right now, but going out on Valentine's Day if you're single means you will only be around couples or desperate bitter singles who are looking for someone to validate their not by choice lifestyle. If you want to find me, I will be at the gym, singing under my breath to Vampire Weekend and watching muted Discovery Channel shows. If I'm not there, it means there's someone I'm not telling you about.



Who do I have to fuck to get a good blow job around here?

Someone who likes giving blow jobs. Duh.



How excited are you about the February 23 premiere of American's Next Top Model?!

Oh My God SO EXCITED. Jere told me the other day I sounded like I really needed ANTM to start again, didn't I? And I immediately got super happy that it was going to! Soon! And then I will have stuff to be mean about again! Oh man, I am just going to rip into them this season. This is going to be my best season of recaps ever in the history of me writing about tv shows that nobody but me and Sarah care about anymore. I think I might even post a greatest hits collection this week, to get us all psyched up for it.

I'm sorry, did you think this blog was about something worthwhile? Sucker.


Why don't people make any sense? Why do I have such self-loathing when the problem really does seem to be everybody else? At what point should one simply give up on society and become a total hermit?

People do nothing but make sense. They are always predictable in their responses, they do the same things over and over again, they are as easy to analyze as the back of the cereal box.

It's just that you probably don't like the answers. And you think things should be different. But they are not. They are always the same. That's what you have to work with. If you can't adapt, then
that's your decision.

Being a hermit isn't very appealing though. Hermits never get laid, and they dress very badly, and they are stuck with their own putrid thoughts all the time. I think the main purpose in interacting with other people is so you don't have to think about just yourself all the time.

If that's appealing to you though, then go for it. But don't go halfway. Do it all the way. Get rid of any pets you have, for starters. They lie to you.


How is this even fucking possible?

Well it's all a series of bells and whistles, like we all access it at different points, and enter information, and then that information gets coded and stored in a server, which then makes it accessible to millions of different networks, and there is a magician who sits on top of a frozen pyramid somewhere in Antartica and he sacrifices small goats, like twenty at a time, on the Ides of every month right at the peak of the moon's ascent, and then all that information that you translated from your misfiring neurons into arbitrary words and then arbitrary pixels get beamed to someone else's screen, and then sometimes they call you and you get laid and the whole thing is FUCKING INCREDIBLE.



As a card-carrying atheist, what is the best solution to getting your point of view across to a born again Christian? Is banging one's head repeatedly against a solid flat object for many hours more productive than attempting to illustrate the fallacy?

So the "right" answer is to point out that if a Born Again was constantly trying to argue you out of being an atheist, you would want to slap them silly and freeze their assets, maybe sell them to an Ukrainian slave trader.

But my actual answer is: Live a better life than them. It's usually not hard.



I'm ok with my decay.

Oh, me too. I like your decay a lot.


Ask Me Anything

A Modern Glossary of Common Fairy Tale Terminology

Princess: Every girl who has drawn hearts around someone's name in a notebook, and worn thick purple eyeshadow at least three times in her life. Each girl that has read a Bronte or Austen novel when she was sick, and also Little House on the Prairie or Harriet the Spy or Nancy Drew in rotting old book bindings, pages all brown and yellow, with mummified hardcovers dirty and mottled, with crackling remains of flies between the chapters, from grandmother's house, from her mother's old bedroom. Some girls that are obnoxious, with too much hair product and flowing chiffony blouses and chunky jewelry, dressing like secretaries on lunch break. Other girls that don't buy new clothes hardly ever, and regularly leave the house with no makeup. Every girl that plays music at home when she's alone. The definition of princess is broad. Mostly it means the girls who someone loves, even if it makes no sense and even if they are really the ugly stepsisters. Get it? Because someone has to love them in order to appreciate the girly side, the paper dolls and the love of sparkly things, and the ability to get passionate over My Little Ponies but also abortion.

Magician: The lurking skinny man at the bar, and sometimes in pictures from unknown cities, blurry pictures from inside cars and at random unknown street corners. The one who used to quote Dylan lyrics on the insides of his journals in high school, and the other one who used to drink at the dive bar on Wednesday nights, beer and singing along to old 80s songs on jukeboxes. Sometimes he takes you back to his apartment, some nights, not too often, and you sit on his mismatched furniture and he talks about bands he used to listen to and then some stuff will happen and your glasses will fall off and get bent, and there's always something breaking or getting lost when you hang out with Magicians. Sometimes, when they get older, they go crazy for good, and then everyone feels bad for thinking they were so "quirky" before, when really they were just crazy assholes, and they end up squatting in warehouses and sometimes scrounging money for beers, where people that used to know them will run into them, and feel bad, and also wonder how someone so attractive could have gotten so ugly. This is what magic does to some people.

Dragons: The sign of insecure people who think if they pretend to be good at something, people will like them more and overlook the fact that they have the charisma of a sea urchin. Dragons like to wear flashy clothes and talk to you about muay thai, which in any good and decent world would mean "more thai food" but instead stands for a lifetime of having to protect themselves from being discovered. If you can find a dragon's hoard of gold, and destroy it, sometimes they become better people. Other times they become alcoholics.

Witch: The woman who has a power you want, that you don't quite understand. But she's good at "things". And simultaneously, miraculously, she sort of wants what you have. Witches have spells too. Like digging up dinosaur bones and writing screenplays and talking to strangers and always having the right thing to say and wearing clothes that make you think she is beautiful, even though she is quite normal and a little crooked. Witches also throw things. Sleep with best friends. Get along without you. They live in perpetual states of doing something you wish you were into. They are terrible.



Prince: a boy with the wrong kind of confidence, but often the right kind of common sense. Has worn a fake mustache at some point. Sometimes he gets turned into a dragon, like all enchanted like. Sometimes he turns out to be a hero, all rescuing and galloping and cunning. Sometimes he instead turns out hapless, drugged by an old queen and kept prisoner in a tower by the North Wind/The Man.

Ogres: the old people, the old people with crippling things and twisted noses and shaky hands, or the people who smell, or who are really unfortunately ugly, or who dress awfully, or who make noises when they shouldn't. The people you look at and automatically feel a shiver of repulsion that you subsequently hate yourself for and fight against, but it doesn't stop you from always judging, always stepping a little away at first, you horrible excuse for a human being you sad pathetic sack of immoral shit. There are a lot of Ogres on the bus.

Shoemaker: Your mom, or dad, or whoever gives you money when you really need it. Builds robots and then feels bad about when they turn on humanity. Builds bombs for the government in order to fund their propulsion research. Fixed your bike for you that one summer. Lets you move back in when you come back broke.

Fairy: The thing you want that is not actually a good idea.

The Castle: The bar you go to when you just want to sit in the corner with your friend, whose eyes always crinkle now that he's older, and you talk about shit like girls and old presidents and feelings of disconnection, small social anxieties that stray into our words. A constant lilt of this is what I want, this is what you need, advice. Always order a pineapple and vodka in the Castle. In castles, when you walk back from the bathroom, there will be a song playing that will make you strut, and slide back into your bar stool with confidence, replaced quickly by a desire to lay your head on your arms, and just listen and sip.

Monsters: Everything around us swallowing us whole. Like snow and buildings and cars and cargo ships and mountains and lakes and people in mass. The thing that hovers above our thoughts, burns into our brains a feeling that we can't quite articulate, this concept of huge and unknown that sits like a shadow on our brainstems and whispers superstitions. The multiple aspects of living that give us the uneasiness of being small. The creature living in a dark place just past the horizon that is complicated and orchestrated and beyond our control. Everything is a monster if you look at it closely enough, really stare at it. The atomic bonds of monsters glisten with beauty.

Unicorn:

Surrender

So today I spent all day with my sister getting fucked up, doing tarot card readings, vacuuming, laughing ourselves into convulsions, and watching every episode of Community I had saved on the DVR, which by the way is the most brilliant show on tv right now, no arguments, no contest. Nothing is tighter than the writing on that show. Then we ate a lot of pizza, cleaned off my car, and went to the Robyn concert. I was a big Robyn hater, but this was her Christmas present, and it reminded me to trust my blood, because it was an amazing show, it was kick ass, it was everything a show should be. Surrender is the theme of tonight, surrender to your blood and your day and other people's tastes and plans and dancing. Nobody knows you better than family, at least in the ways that matter, which are the ways of having conversations and the ways of having reference and points of basis, and the ways of knowing what is good. And if there was any justice in the world, someone would have snapped photos of me at three points today - 1) sitting on the living room carpet, arguing why I was the Queen of Swords, while my cat sat there in the middle of the deck, because that is truly what I am, I am the owner of this ornery crazy cat - 2) vacuuming my hallway on hand and knee by hose attachment, in my peasant shift dress, with crazy hair - 3) picking my way back carefully through the snow walking down the middle of my street at 1am, in my completely sequined mirror dress and little red sweater, with little green clutch held firmly in hand, streetlight above. Amen to the images someone should have taken of us, on the days when it matters.
And Amen to hot chocolate at the end of it all. And Amen to my sister who is cooler than all you fuckers. Which is how it should be. The Callahan sisters are great at everything, except financial or emotional stability. But everything else? We are aces.

But now I miss my brother.

February Made Me Shiver

Rule #205: No matter how flash frozen and thawed and frozen again you feel, like an abused saran wrapped piece of meat with ice burn, forgotten in the depths of the Great Lakes freezer, you can always make yourself feel better by finding the food coloring.

Note: You must never be afraid to kneel in the snow. While you sit there kneeling in the ice, and feel the wet soak through your jeans, and the blood rush to your cheeks and the tip of your nose, remember also to feel the sun burning through the rest of you. Focus not just on one sensation, but on all the sensations, and it will be a quality package deal. You will find you have to move positions because of the sun first, because it's just too hot on the back of your calf. That's awesome by the way, to feel something burning again. That feels like someday there will be the beach again, and car trips with the windows down, and porch hang outs. That feels like some of your cells might still be alive.

Later in the day Marty mentioned how lucky we were there was no sound in space, because otherwise the noise of the constant ginormous 100 million nuclear explosions from the sun would be huge and loud and all around us all the time, growling like a huge African cat outside our window.

Spray bottles are your friend. Stencils are an essential skill. Mix your colors as bright as you can make them. Next time, we will have more tools, funnels and basters and maybe freeze the surface hard the night before and paint on the ice like stained glass.



Cause we are just 12 yr olds really, at that awkward time when you still make your dolls talk out loud, but also have to write papers for school on the constitution, and maybe start to have to try and understand algebra too. There is a part of your brain stuck there, and that's the place I want to live on all my off days. When algebra still seemed magical and murmured, when maybe you also hated it, but hate was an uncomplicated thought that didn't last long in your little head, and you didn't think about your boots being ruined or your mascara running when you went outside on the first sunny day in a month. A sunny day is too precious to waste wondering what the neighbors think of two middle aged women in their backyard painting snow.

Later we drove to Akron to see the babies. You could see that everyone was feeling the sunshine. The cars were moving faster, and people were talking more, faster, happier, like they had to talk just to hear the sound come out of their mouths unmuffled by snow.

The hospital was full of giant rocking horses and mechanical mousetrap sculptures. And yes, it's the childrens museum, I mean, hospital, but all this art was created by adults, for adults, and that's reassuring, that the best way to comfort stressed out parents is still surrounding them with bright colors and fish murals and towering toys. I like the fact that part of our brain is always there to fall back on for warmth.


The babies were all up and kicking and stretching when we got there, Rebecca in her rocking chair playing Madonna with Addy, and Evie fussing her space pod, stretching her little toes like she was swimming. It was quiet in the ward, and we had to whisper, while the nurses gathered in little groups talking and eating red foil wrapped candies.

Confession: I want to paint the babies with food coloring too.

Later, after the baby break, there were hot chocolate drinks, the kind with alcohol, slipping and laughing and not falling but sliding over sidewalks, and Pechakucha, which was packed, overpacked, at capacity. So that you saw people you knew across the room, but there was no possible way to get to them, unless you played the centipede game. Shoulder up, shift, smile bashedly at men with beers who may move to let you through. Like dancing really. And someday, here's the thing, Evie and Addy will be those well clad shoes below, all grown up, sitting through presentations about community development, and then driving to Cleveland Heights to birthday parties, picking out discounted wines and trying not to fall on the ice because they wore the cute boots with no tread. And by that time, I will be the crazy gray haired woman who paints her backyard, and they will probably think I am lame, until someday they are 30 themselves and sick of being stuck inside.

The Winter Nothings: Give Me More Things To Hate Please

This song is like, the only thing keeping me going today so thanks Elly, I owe you.

It started last week, and has crept into my bones like some sort of evil nasty dinosaur skull eating parasite - The Winter Blues. Not even Blues, cause I like the color blue, and I have blue eyes, so technically I always have the Blues. Didn't you know that's what that means? People who are so full of the Blues it shines from inside their head out their corneas? So, not the Blues, the WINTER NOTHINGS.

Also, let's be honest. This blog has sucked the last week, possibly much longer. I need to be outside exploring things, not answering questions and writing long suck things about personal thought SUCK. My last good post was the one about the babies, and for god sakes, they're babies. Like, I couldn't have fucked that up if I tried.

I did do some cooking. I made a tomato tart, and a chicken/rice/mushroom thing, and an oatmeal loaf. But I also ate a lot of cold cereal. I am uncharacteristically bored with television and mad I can't go to the gym because of the ice. GRUMP. I am a big lurking troll grump right now. Also, did you know going to the gym every day makes you hate yourself? A lot? All the time? It makes you feel ugly and awful and not fit to go in public. My face has broken out badly. My body is swollen and painful and exhausted all the time. I sort of want to cry constantly. I do cry, a little. I can't even imagine having sex with anyone ever again. Whatever fucking endorphins you people are on about all the time are apparently hormonal poison to me. I mean, has anyone thought about that? That maybe the reason I've been fat all my life is because working out makes me feel awful, that my body is allergic to those particular chemicals? I feel like this could be a real thing. That guy was right about the butterflies after all.

I know logically that this is probably my hormones trying to balance themselves out, after such a long period of being one way, and then suddenly being forced to deal with new chemicals in amounts they're not used to. I know the blame probably lies in my thyroid or my estrogen levels or some horrible crap like that, because in reality I'm just a robot who should be getting regularly scheduled oil changes. I know I'm supposed to give it three months and it's supposed to get better.

Either that, or I should just put a salt lick in my kitchen. A salt lick and a sugar lick, right next to a water fountain. And I can stand there, next to my cats, licking until I feel better.

Please let the snow go away soon. Actually not the snow. I like the snow. It's the bone crunching cold I'm done with. The cold is trying to digest me. It's molars are grinding me to dust.

My Dad once told me that I was good when I was being mean to people. So I figured, let's try and do a whole post where I talk about things I hate. Maybe that will get the little impy spirits pumping, right? Only I CAN'T THINK OF ANYTHING TO HATE ON. This is how grudged and apathetic I am right now. I am seriously trying to think of things I want to make fun of, and NOTHING is coming to mind. I don't even feel hate towards any ridiculous politicians right now. That thing about the stunt gun law in South Dakota? I'm like FINE, require everyone to buy a gun, DO IT. I don't care. Maybe they will all kill themselves in the dead of winter, and I won't have to listen to their shit about how cold it is. They live in South Dakota, they might as well be dead already.

Oh, wait, there it is.

You know what else I hate? THIS FUCKING ARTICLE ABOUT HOW PEOPLE SHOULDN'T MAKE RUIN PORN. So because you think it makes a city look bad, I shouldn't take photos of the abandoned buildings there? Because it makes people think a city is dead? Are you serious? How about you thank your lucky stars that I have found a way to be happy in this city, and therefore haven't moved years ago, and taken my bar tabs and fucking taxes with me? If you want me to only take pictures of happy shiny pretty new things? Then maybe BUILD SOME. In case you haven't noticed, I like taking pictures of buildings. Not just old ones. Any ones.

I try to see my city as an organic thing, a breathing thing that lives on a timescale outside of people, something beyond our little plastic lives. A building itself is an art form, its a creature. It doesn't stop being a creature when the people go away. We make these animals that last beyond our uses and then they become landscape, like mountains or rivers. If I was trying to write commentary about unemployment and poverty, then I would take photos of people. But my hobby is making stories up, not telling ones. That's what journalists are for. And anyway, whatever, it's my city too. I'll live in it how I want to. This city existed before you and will exist after us, and denying its shedded skins are lying around isn't going to make them blink out of reality. There is a level to a city that is bigger than anyone in it at any given point in time. There's this thing called history that molts and drives forwards and knocks things down and doesn't stop to pick up its litter. We are all just little ants crawling around on rubble constantly, don't tell me it's wrong to look up every once in a while.

The best response to this story was one of the comments "The photography of contemporary ruins however, presents moments of understanding of cultural decay, change, architectural and archeological documentation, and the rediscovery of forgotten moments of cities in a state of constant change and not the static atmosphere we would perceive cities to be in." What that guy said. Only with some curse words added.

Let's see, other things that piss me off? Well, I just lost my power, just now. Fuck you winter.

How about instead of leaving me all that unwanted support about working out that I know you're just itching to do in the comments? How about instead you all just give me topics to hate on and I'll add them to this post as they come. This will be our Wednesday game.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

First Hate: Swimsuit season. I love going to the beach. I will spend all day in the water if you let me. But it should be called beach season. It should be a celebration that everyone gets to be outside and warm and happy. Not this constant grind of "you are not pretty enough, you look ridiculous, you are a bad person" because you're not eating fucking Special K three times a day, or living off black forest cake flavored yogurt, which by the way is an abomination and a slap in the face to everything pure and good about yogurt. Special K reminds me of how cornflakes came to be, the whole history of cold cereal being this health food craze they tried to sell you in asylums for rich people at the turn of the century. I want to create an anti Special K campaign calling them hacks and kooks and witch doctors. Grape nuts. Eat some fucking grape nuts people.

Second hate: Toenails. Toenails and fingernails are gross because they are bones growing outside our bodies. Enough said. I love my feet because they work hard for me and get me places, but I refuse to expect them to look pretty, because by definition toes and fingers are ugly. They are ugly weird stumpy things growing out of the ends of our bodies. And toenails are like the useless soft shells that serve only to give voodoo doctors a way of cursing me.
Now if they were razor sharp claws, with some sort of use, for either killing or climbing, then I might bother to care about them.

Third hate: YES IT IS COLD ENOUGH FOR ME. Because if I buried your frozen body in the snow, nobody would smell it until April.

Fourth hates: Well, Laura had multiple hates, but since I am guilty of talking on my cell while driving (no texting though) and I understand why Pandora has to give me ads, and I would be even more creeped out if the internet was able to see I already had one insurance company and not show me those specific ads, we're going with the last one. People who wear cologne or perfume to the gym. WHY? WHY WOULD YOU WEAR ANYTHING? The only time you'll see makeup on me at the gym is when I'm forcing myself to go after hanging out with friends, before I go to sleep. I know I just bitched about how awful I feel from working out, but I do like my gym. Mostly because it's empty all the time, and when there are people there, they don't make eye contact. So luckily I have yet to run into the over-cologned guy. I don't think the classy old gay guys at mine would ever make that mistake. As someone who does get sick around too much perfume, and who one time had to run out of a room to vomit because this woman was chewing grape bubblegum when I had a migraine, I sympathize Laura. If it makes you feel better, I'm 99% sure that all those chemicals are soaking into that guys inflamed sweaty skin, and poisoning him from the inside out. Burning his organs into infected pussy black goo.

Fifth hate: Not being able to sing like Aloe Blacc, or wear white pants. Oh Vapid, I know. It's terrible unfair being a pretty talented blonde runner :P But yes, I also hate the fact I cannot sing like him. Or dress like him. Or have a recording contract like him.

Sixth hate: Hipsters who think too much of themselves and lack basic reading comprehension skills. This one comes from C., who ranted about this article that was posted on facebook recently, where the author mentioned the fact that Cleveland isn't known for it's music scene. The point of the article was to then post a mixtape of awesome older Cleveland music. But apparently he got a lot of haters, kids who were upset he dare insult their local bands this way. Well, first of all, the point of his statement was not to disparage the quality of local music, but that no one outside Cleveland knows who the bands are here. THIS IS TRUE. Point of fact, most of Cleveland is also completely unaware of your existence. Point of fact, there are a million people in this county, and probably only about 300 of them know who you are, and out of that there are probably 150 who give a shit. Stop bitching about something that is true. And if you are going to bitch, then at least bitch on topic. Don't be the vegan punk equivalent of those awful commentators on Cleveland.com.

Seventh hate: People who act as Cleveland Cheerleaders without thinking of actual Cleveland at all. There is this twitter thing going on called the #Cle20. Its supposed to foster discussion on twitter about Cleveland's development and issues. I am not faulting the concept here, and I'm not bitching about every person participating. But last night I made the mistake of reading it, and here were the suggestions for Cleveland's development: 1)Build a fancier airport. 2)Put a BSpot burgers in the airport 2)have winning sports teams. 4)Cleveland hasn't got a content problem, but an image problem.

Hey, guess what, Cleveland does have a content problem. It's called nobody with the money to get out wants to live in any of the actual Cleveland neighborhoods, because they are not as nice as Middleburgh Heights. Though some of us would rather die than live in MH. So shut the fuck up about sports teams and the dining scene, that most of the actual Cleveland residents don't use at all, and start talking about the fact that as soon as your wife gets pregnant, you move out to the suburbs because the school system sucks. And instead of trying to lure suburb yuppies back into the neighborhoods, (which sure, is nice, if they come, but hasn't exactly filled up any neighborhoods besides Ohio City), how about you talk about what efforts we could make as a city to try and keep the people who do live here employed, and able to make mortgage payments, and able to educate their children and have neighborhood resources and put new roofs on their aging houses, and not have to deal with their cars being broken into constantly or terrible public transportation that only takes them downtown and not to any of the suburbs where the actual jobs are. Talk about supporting the community development projects that matter, the ones who are working to help out actual Cleveland residents. I don't give a fuck about tourism, and I'm sick of this idea that all these people from the suburbs are going to revitalize my city with the money they spend on Friday nights. Those all have their place in the grand strategy, but what should matter is how many Cleveland residents are not able to pay their heating bills. Because when you bring up the people who actually live on a street, and make it easier for them to pay bills and live in nice looking houses, then people might actually want to move to that street someday. And the people who live there now might not just automatically move away as soon as they get some money.

And oh my god, if I hear one more suggestion to pour money into the airport, I am going to scream. It will be an epic scream, the kind that curdles flesh off your bones.

Eighth Hate: The Bachelor. The only way they could change the Bachelor to make me watch it would be if he turned out to be a parasitic alien, who implants these women with alien babies, who suck out all the marrow from their bones to gestate, live on television. OR even better, if at some point, all the women got to come back and beat the crap out of the producers and the bachelor, live on television. OR if they made a sequel show, chronicling all the contestants going through therapy.