The other day, I googled myself. Yeah I do that.
Since someone like me only really has a chance of being indexed through high school accomplishments, I usually come up with nothing. Mostly because my high school was the kind that felt it was acceptable to appropriate the Anheuser-Busch logo and somehow make it about ‘meeting new challenges every day’ instead of…beer. Which, oddly enough, the only challenge my high school faced was teenage alcoholism so I guess in retrospect, they were pulling off one fucking poignant piece of performance art.
Failed public education aside, my query is usually fruitless. But yesterday, when I searched for myself hoping to ensure that I can’t be contacted in any way by family members who should’ve been committed years ago, I found a public profile claiming I live in Nigeria. After confirming that my credit cards hadn’t been used to buy twelve XBox 360s, I noticed a link on the page, relevant of course because it was one of the few that included my name. I cringed when I saw it, but was sadistically delighted to know that it still existed. It was something my boyfriend at the time had written about me – proof that someone, somewhere loved me long enough to manufacture a few thoughts into functioning sentences:
I am with a woman so smart that she makes Annie Dillard seem like a fruit tart, so beautiful she grounds Poe’s Helen into dust, and so wonderful she makes grown men weep in her presence and women take their own lives in a fit of pure jealousy. I’m talking about CHEETOS*, the one who has single handedly has made my life more meaningful than the past 20 years combined. She’s trilingual, has amazing taste in music, and seems to be able to make me laugh no matter what. Even in an emergency room for 9 hours where we had fun playing “I Spy” and laughing at a guy with a c-cup. She’s wonderful and I just want to let you know that.
*name has been changed
A few things come to mind here – most glaring of which is that I can’t believe my pussy has put me in so much peril as to require a nine-hour emergency room visit for a urinary tract infection. Also, yes I’m an asshole for making fun of the guy with moobs. Sorry. I’m (kind of) different now. Oh, and the trilingual thing? My German and French language skills would land me in an assisted living facility for the developmentally disabled because my vocabulary boils down to, ‘Bathroom please and then we’ll see about ham.’ But, if I may brag for a moment, my grasp of English could definitely land me a position cleaning bed pans. While I’m at it, I’ll debunk the music thing too because well, come on.
I can’t vouch for the rest because it was based solely on an opinion that wasn’t mine and has since expired. But, for the sake of the authenticity of the twelve minutes taken to write it, I’ll assume that these feelings weren’t devised under false pretenses. Years ago, I would’ve tried to find a way to salt the earth and bury the page in order to dispel the idea that I am incompetent because I demolished the relationship in which these feelings existed. Because, after all, it is better to be loved without dilution than admit to everyone that you fucked it all up by not realizing that you were even loved in the first place.
Now I celebrate it. Not because the message has changed – the subtext of failure is still very present. But now, the failure is no longer the swelling tide that buries me beneath a carpet of sand and is instead the 7-11 from which I can safely eat my Funyuns while I carefully map out every ripple and finally realize what went wrong. I misdiagnosed the failure. My inability to adequately love this person was merely a symptom of the reality that I knew there was no good reason to, other than the fact that we both escaped from Budweiser High.
I still fail, and have no doubt that I always will. But I am learning how to be better at it – starting with skipping the Funyuns because they’re…just really gross.
I know it may seem like I do this Boyz II Men shtick to be funny, but that’s mostly because the reality is too grim to face. My life is one that is centered around checking if the online Boyz II Men store has opened because it has been coming soon for months now and so I am starting to think that coming soon really means hahahahaha white girl. This is where I lose my patience because if manic depressive hipsters can put together an Etsy store dedicated to screen printing Sylvia Plath’s face on oven mitts, then surely these guys can take a break from pretending they’re Stevie Wonder and provide their 11 fans with some satisfaction.
All I want is a t-shirt. Preferably in black and maybe with a design where my face is superimposed on all of their microphones, so it looks like we’re making out. Oh, and they’re not allowed to sell it to anyone else but me. Out of my caravan of good ideas, this one surprisingly ranks as one of the least insane while simultaneously being the most impossible. However, I should note that my concept of insanity is probably skewed.
Either way, Boyz II Men is touring. I know, it sounded weird to me at first too. But whatever, I’m going. I have to. Even if I am 90% sure that it’s some sort of glitch or elaborate prank put on by all of the friends I don’t have because they just love me that much. At this point, the only thing keeping me hanging on is the fact that over half the venues are at state fairs and casinos. That is the kind of authenticity that only a 21 year old musical group, whose greatest success involves Lisa Turtle being in one of their music videos, can generate.
The show is in June (or Joon, I guess if we’re trying to stay consistent with Augast) of 2010 in Bremerton, WA. So, who wants to carpool?
I talk about being unemployed a lot. Part of this is because I have this idea that if I seem really sad, then someone will read this and give me a job where I play video games, eat pizza flavored Pringles and make snarky comments about Brooke Hogan. The other part is that I’m unemployed, so when I am playing video games, eating pizza flavored Pringles and making snarky comments about Brooke Hogan, I have a lot of time on my hands to think about how I can’t possibly stand one more day of this.
As a side effect, I get handfuls of emails asking me why I don’t have ads because I could totally monetize my blog. By monetize I’m sure they mean, ‘Spend years waiting to exceed Google’s $100 minimum so you can finally buy those Air Jordans’ but whatever. Usually, I’m asked what kind of traffic I get (I’m assuming in order to determine whether I can make .10 or .40 a day), and somehow, it never stops feeling like instead, I’m being asked to wear a mesh thong for 24 hours and send it off in a Ziploc bag in exchange for pictures of someone jerking off into it.
Either way, I don’t have ads on VD because I hate them. It’s not about being anti-corporation or anti anything, really. It comes down simply to the fact that I actually read my own blog (douche) and sometimes I even giggle so I’d rather not be distracted when I’m trying to think about how many more times I can get away with mentioning Boyz II Men. My writing is the only tool I have to reconcile the reality that my life is mine, no matter how many times it deviates from the plan I originally mapped out, and I would be wasting everyone’s time if I were motivated by making $2.50 a month. The thing is, I don’t care about attracting the hundreds of visitors who come here searching for pictures of my cunt, but I definitely care about that one person who comes here to read about what I have to say when it comes to Jesus themed porn.
There’s understandably a lot of opposition to ads dealing mostly with how they are kind of like a mix of Insane Clown Posse’s Greatest Hits and the stench of Mickey Rourke’s weave in your internet all the time. There’s even a collection of tasteful icons you can display on your blog, proclaiming to everyone that you are “opposed to the use of corporate advertising on blogs”, “feel the use of corporate advertising on blogs devalues the medium”, and “do not accept money in return for advertising space…” If I ever decide to submit completely to the fact that I’m full of shit, maybe I’ll put an ad on my blog proclaiming that I don’t condone ads on my blog. Until then, I can only promise two things–I will never try to sell you weight loss pills or funny but not really t-shirts, and when I inevitably swallow a dick with my ass, I will take copious mental notes throughout so I can share every single detail.
Earlier this week, I hit the very artery from which copious amounts of bone chilling cautionary tales gush about what happens when you piss in the face of consensual relationships and decide to get a cat. This artery is better known as Cat People, a fairly low budget special on Animal Planet that documents the lives of show cats and their life partners. 
I got through only about half of the show on my high horse, pitying these people for turning their cats into giant dildos that they lube up and use for their own personal enjoyment. Then I realized, I have a lot of cat stuff (shirts, figurines, plates–the usual fare for any budding Gary Ridgway) and am probably one Tabby away from perming and bleaching my hair, dressing like Barry Gibb and taking my cat to Sears so I can share a loving embrace in front of a delicately diffused background that just happens to compliment our eyes.
I blame my dad, because years ago, he bought me a t-shirt in NYC that said “Cats Fifth Avenue” with a stylishly dressed cat on the front…shopping. Thinking back, I guess I can’t really fault him, because all he was doing was making a hunch that maybe his daughter, who practiced slow dancing to Boyz II Men with her life size Bugs Bunny stuffed animal just in case the opportunity ever arrived, would enjoy a nice cat pun on a t-shirt. Unfortunately, he was right.
Still, I never thought I was one of those people. The kind who refers to their cat as a PMSing teenager and then takes a private bath with them in their cat themed bathrobe. And I’m not, but that could be because I don’t actually have a cat…yet.
The dangerous thing about cat people is that the pictures they keep in their wallet of their cat dressed up like a pumpkin for Halloween are cute until you find out that the wallet was made by collecting materials from its hairballs and you touched it. Then, you see a list about why cats are better than people and only then do you realize that you should’ve never loaned out your favorite cashmere sweater to one of them because it’s probably being used as ceremonial de-flowering sheath this very moment. How do I know that? Probably because some of the items on the list look like this:
- You don’t have to worry that your cat will do drugs or join a gang
- Your cat usually won’t leave you for another human
- Light petting is always enough to satisfy a cat
- Cats won’t drink beer and pass out on the bathroom floor
- Cats don’t brag about whom they have slept with
Even though I was reading this in my own home, I still wanted to slowly back out of the room. The content is obese with vivid details concerning the reasons why every relationship ever in a cat person’s life dissolves because of drug abuse, infidelity, or most likely…cat obsession.
Living in the 90s bestowed upon me two things: an aversion to plaid and an inability to enjoy the last 2-3 seasons of most sitcoms from that time because a few writers and producers decided to jerk off into a bowl of Jello just to see what would happen. What resulted were a few of the most embarrassing attempts for ratings that had laugh tracks working overtime to compensate for the deafening silence that occurred after everyone collectively realized that a dirty diaper isn’t really that funny.
Nicky and Alex Katsopolis–Full House:
Nicky and Alex were the twins of Rebecca and Jesse Katsopolis, who for a moment thought about actually moving out of their Quasimodo-esque digs, until realizing that it would totally ruin the plot. First of all, any parents who live in an attic are usually referred to as unfit, and are then confirmed as clinically insane once they explain that the reason behind this is so that they can be close to Bob Saget and his children. However, much to my disappointment and despite many calls to CPS, Nicky and Alex remained on the show. Meanwhile, I was told to stop calling over a fictional issue, even though the ability for two children to ruin everything and do nothing all at once was very real to me. I mean, I know we’re talking about Full House here- a show that, if you can get through an episode without Joey doing his Popeye impression, is considered a success, but ideally, a synopsis should go beyond: ”Nicky gets a cold, Alex stands up in his crib because he wants uppies.”
Continue reading…
