On Fire

SO many bloggable things have happened to me in the last few weeks I don't even know where to begin. The things is, they're all almost supernaturally positive things and I've just generally been on something that feels like an endorphin high for a few days straight at this point, like...to the extent that writing about it in a public space would be bragging. I keep coming here and starting all these effusive rainbow-drenched, hearts-over-all-the-i's posts and when I read it back even I can tell I sound like a drug addict. I can't do that shit right now. It would be rude.

Maybe another time though. Or you can text me and I'd be happy to write you an iPhone novella on the topic.

Oh yeah, I got an iPhone. I guess I can tell you that.

UPDATED: I just saw that this is pretty much just plagiarized from a post I wrote exactly a month ago. So. I guess no news is good news?

Girl. I been there.

BLAH

THERE ARE SOME THINGS WHICH I JUST CAN'T BLOG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

When it Rains it Pours

Suddenly the Good Things I whined about so thoroughly not that long ago have started flooding in. Maybe I really did just need April to end.

Anyway, I'm making progress with finals, just turned in one of the best assignments I've ever put together, and I graduate this summer. I am really struggling not to get too poetic about the torrents that have been lashing Houston lately; I FEEL CLEANSED etc. But the rigor of finals and the isolation that rigor engenders, and the rain...it's hard not to dramatize it, perhaps because I have gone largely without human interaction (other than my mom, Jesus God give me succor) for almost two weeks and relating to things on a non-hyperbolic level has ceased to be stimulating. I think I'm describing cabin fever? Am I describing cabin fever?

I must be because otherwise I wouldn't even be here. I have some very interesting self-analytic speculations about my motives here but it would be gauche to express them publicly so I will just sit here on my hands and you can guess about the craven nonsense my mind has invented to keep me up at night. I guess my next good thing should be sleeping through the night, a task that NEWBORN BABIES CAN MASTER.

April Showers

This whole stupid month needs to GO TO BED!!!!!!!

Hubris Comes Before the Fall, or: Learning to Just Shut the Fuck Up Because You're Not That Smart

I'm not very original in that I think I'm an advice genius. I know what's wrong with everyone and I know how to fix it, if only they would listen. It's so obvious because I'm an objective observer, you know? They can't help it because they're too close to the problem. Poor fools. If only they could just back away enough to see that I'm just trying to help!

I AM, however, original in that I've gone to the lengths of putting a time stamp on advice that I think is particularly good and taking note of how long it takes my friends to come to the realization that I was right (no idea what happens when my advice was wrong, no surprise there either). I've concluded "it takes 3 years for anyone to realize that I was right all along", of course said with a tone of disdain for people's myopia and obdurateness. I usually follow this up with "Human nature, you know? Haha so sad", SUBTEXT: "I'm above this even though I too am demonstrably a human". This statement is the result of two different friends acting on points I said might be important 3 years prior. They eventually agreed with me, which should have been enough, but the fact that they did it in their own time, by their own means was somehow an affront to me. Like they didn't agree with me fast enough so it doesn't count. One of these was advice I gave a friend about her relationship (he's not right for you in the long-term because you have fundamentally different life goals), the other was about a job (you should work in a field that has to do with your major, your passions, or your strengths, because languishing around in sales is beneath your intellect).

Well, today I was thinking about my problems, feeling stupid because a lot of the root causes were so obvious in retrospect. I was thinking, "Why I didn't see everything coming sooner?" I went into my journal to read my thoughts at the beginning of the process, trying to make sense of it all, and realized that it's been 3 years since I didn't take the advice I gave myself in those pages, before everything got so complicated and confusing.

FFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

#FleshSacProblems

I do NOT understand people who are proud of their bodies. I mean, mine is HORRIBLE. Just really, really bad. And it's not even just an aesthetic thing; not only is it ugly but it just doesn't work right. What is it like to have a good body, and know it?

My guess is that it sucks just as much as everything else does but that particular sentiment is so foreign to me that I can't even approximate the feeling. I can't even get to the point of "it must be like 'I'm Doing Okay' but stronger". All I know is it fucks you up in the head in a very specific way (a way that makes you intolerable).

I have been thinking about my Rotting FleshSacTM a lot lately, obviously. Lord knows why. I would really rather never think about it.

If you have the answer to "What is it like to have a good body'" do not even bother writing in and telling me because I already hate your fucking guts. Go drink a Muscle Milk or whatever and leave me to the unending study of societally assigned worthlessness!!!!!!!!!

God I have been ending on dark notes a lot lately. I'm aware of that, and I want you to know I'm actually doing okay. It's just midterms and I long for death in the most sincere way possible. SORRY. I had to. On lighter notes, I think I'm going to start watching The Cosby Show from Season 1, Episode 1 soon, and I think I'm going to livetweet, or possibly live-blog, the whole process. That will be good and lighthearted right?! With the puddin' pops and such.

Work Ethic

Why is it that when I'm spending 6 nights a week smoking weed and watching movies with Boyf and generally have long expanses of time when I'm not expected to produce anything or be anywhere in particular I have nothing to say, and then when midterms come around and I'm cramming and sweating and worried I won't know how the terms of trade improve for a large importing nation when a smaller exporting nation changes its tariff policy...THEN I'm awake till the wee hours full of nonsense?

I have tried everything and can't sleep. I played with my hair, I played with my makeup, I cleaned up, I read beauty blogs and feminist blogs and political blogs, I finally listened to "Thrift Shop" all the way through in the name of being at least semi-prepared for Summerfest this year.

Summerfest, or, in the long form, Free Press Summer Fest, is a music festival that started a few years ago here in Houston. It's always the first weekend of June and even though the heat doesn't hit its peak for another couple of months, it always makes you feel like a real pro to make it both days without passing out. A couple years ago I wrote out 10 things you can do to Survive Summerfest, but I can pretty much boil it down to: just keep drinking. Beers, daquiris, mint juleps, anything you can get your hands on. Yes, the alcohol is technically working to dehydrate you further, but the trick is to drink enough in sheer volume that you stay ahead of the curve and are taking in more liquid than you're metabolizing/sweating out. This is actually a two-fold technique because if you really are drinking enough, you get so drunk that you don't mind the heat. I'm being facetious. Don't be an idiot. Drink a lot of water and stay the fuck out of the sun as much as possible unless you want to ruin everyone's vibe by dying. I know you don't want to do that. Nobody likes a vibe-ruiner! Everyone will be like "So sad that he/she died, but why did they have to do it during Summerfest!?"

Speaking of songs I finally got around to listening to: I bought Kitty Pryde's "Okay Cupid" off iTunes a couple days ago and after a few listens that felt like eating 10 bites after you're already really really full just for the sake of cleaning your plate, I have to say I am not sold on it. Possible contributing factors: slow rap does not inspire me on any level, I have nothing but disdain for people who were born after 1990 and this girl sounds and talks like she doesn't remember a time before tweens were showing off their thigh gaps on Tumblr (and then when I went to her Tumblr it was COMPLETELY ILLEGIBLE, and I don't even mean that in a supercilious literary way like she has bad grammar - I didn't even get to the grammar because she just has a really obnoxious background. It's the visual equivalent of that ringtone that people over 25 can't hear), Rolling Stone named it one of the top 50 songs of 2012 and I feel like I haven't loved a contemporary song in 6 years. So a lot of that is the fault of my own preconceived notions but I am too old to be changing my ways now. Congrats on writing a successful thesis on hookup culture or WHATEVER the fuck you're talking about, Kitty, but Jesus that was a test of my endurance. I think this what it's like to be an engaged parent. You go "Tell me about the music you listen to, I want to Relate" and the kid is like "Well I'm really into FRED right now?" so you go look it up because you give a shit and it's just this bullshit



and you're very certain that this isn't art, because you have read a FUCKING BOOK in your life, it's just a spoiled, over-indulged, under-educated child that other over-indulged, under-educated children (like your own, you realize) have latched on to because they're SO shitty that they think this idiocy is compelling, but you have to bite your tongue and go "So I checked out that Fred character and he is really something!" in the best I Am Down With This voice you can muster, even though every atom of you shudders and wants to shriek supersonically until it vomits blood with such force that it is eventually, mercifully, extinguished forever.

I'm going to go listen to Million Dollar Bill on repeat while in the fetal position because this is really exacerbating my I'm a Naturally Formless, Etherial Alien Being Doomed to Live Amongst You Filthy Humans in this Wretched Rotting FleshSacTM problem.

Follow Through

HELLO yes I decided am going to post AT LEAST once a month in here (because I realized I at the last minute that I can actually follow through on this). I am mentally empty right now but I'm going to make a post about something god dammit! Uhhh school school school. I haven't gotten a haircut in a YEAR because I've been caught up in school and work and life. I need a haircut. So badly. Ugh. But all I can do is obsess about accounting because I am soooo so bad at it. I mean, all my life (until high school) I was a straight A student except in math. Starting freshman year I got 89s in every math class I ever took and it's been DRIVING ME MAD. And of allll the subjects I was alright at, and the few that I was good at, and the ONE subject I was REALLY good at...I chose to get a master's degree in what has amounted to MATH. Fucking hell. My life is hell. I mean...yes, it's hell, but not in a way where I actively fantasize about ending it all, so that's good.

I'm going to strive to name...
FIVE Other things that are good:
- Boyf
- Baby Elephants
- Naps
- Cute Underpants
- Carbs

There. I did it. Wasn't much of a stretch, I'll admit it, but maybe I can do 5 good things every month? I'm dubious about that part because I'm such a curmudgeon but I think I can at least post. Okay. Let's do it. POST POST POST POST POST

Fucking 2013 Already

Hey I have a blog! I mean, everyone has a blog, even if you don't write in it I bet you have a blog somewhere. Even if you didn't set it up. It's a law. We must all have blogs. By 2015 there will be a Blog Committee and we will all be put in Instagram Jail if we don't shove our lattes and cats under other people's noses at least 5 times a day. Not to mention all the fucking babies. That is such a tired complaint but oh my god. Go tell a therapist about it if you need to talk about your kids that much. Talk about your kids, but more importantly, talk about your need to talk about your kids to the exclusion of everything else...that is an unfair remark. The moms I know are remarkably well-balanced and still quite fun, if not as social as my non-be-offsprung friends. Except for one, and she was reallyyyyyyyyyyyy dull to begin with. It was like the baby finally gave a differentiating facet to her personality, except for the fact that it's happened like 100 billion times already. Practically everyone does it. She shouldn't brag - when you think about it, the really smart people are the ones who don't have children. They're the ones with all the money and free time and will to live. Or the first two anyway. I KNOW that last paragraph is so done, so obvious, but I can't delete it. I want to delete it because of its STARK UNORIGINALITY but I just feel it a lot right now. I'm  being true to myself by whining about Facebook Moms.

I have been watching an English show called Rev. on Hulu and it's really cute. It's about a hapless vicar who smokes and drinks and has problems but still strives to be good (actually aren't most British shows about hapless vicars who strive to be good? And they say Americans are obsessed with religion. Can you think of a SINGLE American sitcom about religion? Other than Seinfeld obviously). I relate to it because of my ongoing struggle to enhance my own Inner Beauty. Oh this is fortuitous! It's my first entry of the new year and I am talking about my resolutions. I resolved to develop my Inner Beauty again this year because it was so successful in 2012, and also because I am practically perfect in every other way and so couldn't think of anything else to formally resolve to do. I mean of course I resolve to lose weight and read more books but those are more perpetual resolutions...so perpetual as to be almost Sisyphean...

I remember in 1995, I was in 5th grade. I calculated how old I would be in 2000, the new century. I would be 14. I wished I had been born in 1985 so I'd be 15, a nice round number. In the end it wouldn't have mattered because whatever year I was born in, I'd still be the same rambling twat I am now, and I blame that on my parents. The 80s were a bad choice. They should have waited to have me until the 90s. I'd be much younger now and the so-called Millenials are much less self-aware of their insufferability so I would have less crippling self-hatred. But I would also be a much worse person, in terms of quality, so I guess we can leave it the way it is now.

I just deleted a passive-aggressive part about how I blow-dried my hair all nice for Boyf yesterday but he didn't really seem to notice! So the Inner Beauty thing is working. Although now I'm telling you about it so :(

Did you guys hear the new David Bowie song?

Makes me want to hear what a back-from-retirement Talking Heads would sound like.

Okay that's enough for a whole post right? I think it is, especially since the last one was so serious and this one is so full of bullshit. Too much contrast. Maybe I'll resolve to write in here more often!

To Believe

What does it mean to trust a person, an institution, or a whole society? What do I lose when I trust? What do I gain? And when I have lost my ability to trust, what does it mean for myself, for others? So far I've been struggling to get past the obvious conclusions about how trusting is a good thing because it leads to inner peace and stuff.

A cynical way of thinking about religion is that man is afraid of death and created gods in various forms to give himself something to look forward to in the afterlife. Maybe another way is to think it is man created religion because he wanted to have someone to trust in, when the ones who are closest to us betray us, or if someone far away betrays society.

If I trust in someone who has made mistakes in the past, I am merely extending the same belief in core goodness that he extends me. I have made mistakes too. Although that doesn't make it AT ALL easier to do. I try. But what if when I try I fail? And fail again? I'm not the kind of person that has a problem and lets it lie. I need to solve it. The moment I'm presented with a problem I start to look for ways out. There is something to be said for staying the course but there's also something to be said for admitting that I was wrong.

Stupid vague blog post I won't even understand 6 months from now: /rant

I'm stuck!

TRY HARDER

me: btw [high school classmate] just friended me on facebook!

12:23 PM i accepted her

  then it showed me that she was with [another high school classmate] AT ROAK FOR NEW YEARS

  LOL

 Devon: WOW

  people...change??

 me: i'm going to need so much inner beauty to get through this

You know why I always recommend taking the high road? So there's more room for me...ON THE LOW ROAD. I wish everyone would get off my inner beauty's dick lately. I'M A BITCH. JUST LET ME WORK IT.

Hey what the hell happened around here? Or: The Epic Story of One Girl's Descent Into Madness, Brought to You by Blogger

So Blogger went and redesigned the page right out from under me! Up is down. Black is white. I can barely double-click a mouse and now they want me to do HTML? Exhausted. I'm out of practice.
If blogging were exercise Fairly Alarmed would be a fat sweaty 45 year old man who hates his job.

Ugh, just looked at this thing from the viewer side and I see my fucking sidebars look like shit and everything is just all janked up everywhere. I even hate the stupid background I picked after looking around for two seconds because I was frustrated.

Okay now I've gone through a little more thoroughly. So at first I hated the new dashboard and interface but after messing around with it a little bit I've started to realize it's actually much better. For example, I never knew how to make the white space bigger in my old layout so YouTube videos would extend past the page boundary and look stupid and sloppy, but as you can see I managed to finally fix that!

Well! That was a very interesting story. If you are interested in publishing my adventure in your local (or national!) journalistic publication, please email me: YouStink at NoTalent dot com. Allow me to suggest some headlines for your story - If I may be so bold!

• Area Girl First Intimidated by Change, Adjusts
• Area Girl Lives Story of Empowerment Through The Miracle of Self-Agency
• Area Girl Overcomes Extremely Minor Product Confusion by Pretty Much Just Reading the Instructions

Look at that punctuation and everything! I'm getting pretty good at this. You can put that in your article if you want to.

Confusing Ad Campaign

There's this movie called "Drive" coming out soon, and it stars Ryan Gosling. That's all I know about it. I am, however, pretty sure it is NOT about Ryan Gosling getting his groove back in the big city. So what the hell is this?



Unless it IS about Ryan Gosling getting his groove back in the big city, in which case, sign me up for 15 thousand tickets please.

Pondering My Quarter of a Life on Saturday Night

Science has proven that a person's brain has completed its growing and pruning by age 25. This means that the person can now reliably think in adult terms, accurately weighing or linking risks, rewards, actions and consequences. What it comes down to is: a 25 year old is physiologically capable of making better decisions. This is the reasoning behind the oft-cited "25 year" rule of renting cars - after you turn 25, the rate per day charged when you rent a car drops dramatically, because after 25, you're much less likely to rent cars and trash them for funsies or something? 1. Johnny Knoxville would beg to differ, and 2. Any 24 year old that rents cars just to trash them for funsies has a lot more to worry about than their brain's pruning status.

I turned 25 yesterday. Since I read a bunch of studies about what makes a 25 year old's brain different (better) than a 24 year old's, I've spent the last 6 months or so looking forward to my shiny new Grown Up Brain. I couldn't wait to finally take interest in calcium intake, interior decorating, and What's Wrong With Kids Today, if only because I thought it would allow for significantly less boredom at family get-togethers (I'm the oldest unmarried cousin in my family, so I don't usually have a lot of company at the kids' table). I kind of expected to wake up today with a whole new perspective on all the adventure, ambition, and general folly of my first 25 years, a perspective (like my parents') that instead labeled all that time with words like ludicrous, reckless, needlessly rebellious.

I didn't! I rolled out of bed this morning with the same stupid hangover I've had just about every weekend since I turned 23 (I drank before then, of course, but with COMPLETE IMPUNITY - this is the detail which prompts me to join those shaky, wrinkled ranks, wailing, YOUTH IS WASTED ON THE YOUNG!), and felt the same about my past as I always have: not all that bothered about it, even kind of confused. I mean, unless something has gone horribly wrong, is a person supposed to spend a lot of time thinking about the past? The past is gone. All that exists is what you do in the current moment, right? Only the future can be considered, and even then only through the thick, distorting lens of chance. Of course, a 25 year old would think that; an 85 year old might be more prone to think the opposite - I imagine for the elderly it's so uncertain that the future will even come to pass that the past has a far more compelling draw. I don't know. Life at 85 is purely theoretical for me.

I once had a friend who wholeheartedly believed that Christ was going to return before she graduated from college, so she didn't really worry about the marketability of her degree. I sort of feel the same way about getting old. Oh well, I'm pretty sure I'll just kill myself at age 50 when anti-wrinkle creams are more a Resolute Gesture than Preemptive Strike, so why worry about 80? Which means that whatever I'm dealing with now is not a Quarter Life Crisis but a Half Life Crisis. What am I going to do with the next half? If the future is all that bears consideration, consider the future. Fine:

In the next half of my life, I plan to accomplish the following.
- Take more time for quiet reflection, writing (deciding if I even CAN write), reading for pleasure
- NO MORE DRINKING
- Finish school
- Get a job
- Finally resolve my internal tussle with the notion that I am very happily monogamous but marrying a man seems like the equivalent of entering a legally binding contract with a puppy on crack
- Decide whether my uterus is a political battlefield only or a political battlefield AND a place to grow someone who will definitely get fucked over by politics
- Learn to live with my mother's constant, unending disapproval of literally every thing in the world
- Learn to live with my dad's constant, unending assertion that he knows everything about literally every thing
- Learn to live with the fact that I AM THEM AUGHHHHHHH

Tall orders all, but when it comes to planning an adventure I do like to be ambitious.

Why, Lord? WHY.

This trailer just ruined so many things for me. Life, for example.

I been there.

This beaver is like "Ummm I DON'T THINK SO" and I totally understand.

...Did you hear it click?!

Oh god these two. What a couple of sweethearts. I'm dying.

Oh, RYE RYE!

RYE RYE, WHEN ARE YOU GONNA DROP YOUR ALBUM ON US!!!!?