It’s not that I don’t like sports – it’s just that I don’t follow them. So imagine my horror when I was told I’d be entering the office pool for March Madness with exactly zero college basketball knowledge.
I did pretty okay for a broad that has no idea what she’s doing, right?
I won’t lie: I used the internet and a friend’s advice to fill this thing out. But still! Look at my workplace team spirit! Woo, go basketball dudes!
There’s two things I love in life: John Mayer and senseless Japanese cat videos on YouTube. They are consistently dubbed over with the weirdest music choices, too. If my cat did more than sleep, eat, and stare at me with a mild level of contempt I would force her into this YouTube-based brand of humiliation.
I was recently turned on to And I Am Not Lying by a few friends – but today someone sent me to read this post which definitely takes the cake.
For some context: this list of 90 types of bitches was found on the floor of a third grade classroom in DC. While some folks are expressing concern about the state of America, I think any of us that were even a little bit “bad” as kids can appreciate this for what it is: absolutely hilarious.
I know lots of you hate John Mayer and think I’m totally retarded for liking him. That’s fine, because particular gems of man-to-man advice like the one below should not be ignored.
Don’t get me wrong, we all can appreciate those good intentions. However, they don’t say that the road to hell is paved with them for without reason. If you can be direct while still using tact (which is every bit as difficult as it sounds) you will have hit the goldmine.
I think about a lot of sad things. Last summer a friend told me it’s tied to the fact that most of what I listen to would be classified as “sad music”. I guess I feel like there’s a time and a place for happy music–and I don’t listen to it unless I’m already in a good mood. Happy music when I’m bummed out is like a guilt trip from your grandma about not calling her every weekend… which, if I spoke to my grandmother on a regular basis, I would avoid at all costs.
I can’t connect to something joyous during the colder months of the year, either. There’s something about driving around with the windows down once you feel “real” spring/summer has arrived, listening to songs that remind you of the best days and nights of your life. Even if I wasn’t listening to exactly those songs during that chain of events, they take me back. Really I just like any excuse to do a little time traveling, with sunshine on my face and a warm breeze blowing my hair into some ridiculous fluffy arrangement.
I guess I feel like happiness is not really conducive to productivity. Happy people like to admire things and feel content, while sad people lament and pick apart every part of their lives that leaves them feeling unsatisfied. Happiness leads to idleness, which just sounds like stunting of your growth as a human being to me. I learn best through those rough and tumble ‘bad’ experiences more than the good ones. If things go well, I must have done them right; in contrast, if things do not turn out as I wanted I must have done it all wrong. Most of us have heard the phrase about the definition of insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly, but expecting different results. While I’m not sure if that’s even true or one of those phrases that everyone just says, I do feel like there’s a degree of truth to it. As I fuck things up, I learn from them. To the best of my ability to self-assess, I feel like I don’t repeat most of my mistakes. I try a new approach, or to change my line of thinking about something… which still might not lead to the outcome I was hoping for, and that is okay in its own way.
Regardless, I am hardly an optimist. If something can go wrong, it will. I stand by that viewpoint based off my own experiences. Yet sometimes when my inner secret optimist shows up and suggests that just maybe things will be different this time, I buy into it. I don’t want to be a bitter, sad, emotionally weathered old woman in the future. (Not that I want to be a disappointed daydreamer either, for the record.)
I feel like all these sad songs are really just my way of making sure I keep a reality check on hand. Like those “break glass in case of emergency” gag gifts that contain a cigarette, or a bottle of whiskey. Reality is a lot scarier than those two coping mechanisms, obviously. I guess that’s why they’re the gag gifts, and nobody has ever received a “reality check” behind glass from their coworker that does all their holiday shopping at Spencer’s.
I don’t give a shit how sappy this makes me look. I am fairly sure it’s not real, but that’s not the point. Better hope your girlfriend never sees this fellas, we’ll think you’d go to the end of the earth (or at least hop through a few countries in your undies) for us, too.
Found via InternetToday.
Courtesy of an anonymous friend, because we all know I can’t write blogs worth reading all the time. 
This is completely paraphrased and I can’t even tell you which of my friends originally said it, but it went something like this: There’s no such thing as a gateway drug. If you drink or do drugs, then you have made the decision to BE a person who drinks or does drugs. People, American people, too often are caught up in the minutia of the different negative connotations of abusing their bodies one way or another and attach their own version of righteousness or rationalize it however they want. The fact remains, you are fucking with your chemistry to achieve a certain effect.
How do you think this applies to sex? Continue Reading »
… First, in he deserts and veldts arose oral culture, the culture of the spoken word. Then in the cities with their temples and bazaars came the pictographs, and later, symbols that produced sounds as if by magic, and what followed was written culture. Then, in the universities and under the steeples of young nations, print culture. These–oral culture, written culture, the culture of print–these have always been considered the great epochs of man.
But we have entered a new age. We are a new people. It is now the age of oneiric culture, the culture of dreams.
And we are the nation of dreams. We are seers. We are wizards. We speak in visions. Our letters are like flocks of doves, released from under our hats. We have only to stretch out our hand and desire, and what we wish for settles like a kerchief in our palm. We are a race of sorcerers, enchanters. We are Atlantis. We are the wizard-isle of Mu.
What we wish for, is ours.
It is the age of oneiric culture. And we, America, we are the nation dreams.
From Feed by M.T. Anderson. You may need to at least read a bit about the story for some context to understand what I’m getting at here. It’s not irony or sarcasm… it’s just the truth.
Driving home this morning, this song came on my iPod’s shuffle. I don’t remember downloading it or ever having heard it before, but it was perfect for riding in a car by myself. I felt like I was in a movie; there was a wordless soundtrack in the background to perfectly ‘narrate’ my trip home, anxiously chewing on my own lips and thinking about all the big things I’m worrying about in the coming months. Do you ever experience that? Those perfect twenty minutes where there’s music on, even if only in your head, and it’s like a perfect movie scene where you just watch the main character going through the motions without experiencing anything? They happen to me all the time, and I’ve been a bit swept up by them lately.
Sorry I’ve been a bad blogger, I just feel like maybe rambling isn’t attractive outside of blogs like Hipstercrite. You want stories, and I feel like the ones I have left have to be mine for a while. I’ve found myself dabbling in creative writing again after an especially long hiatus, but to be real with you (yes, the proverbial “you” since I never know who exactly is reading this) I’m starting to wonder if having a gift with words isn’t a bit cliche for someone my age. I even went so far as to start keeping a journal again… not the kind I lock up on the internet, either. In that Mead composition notebook I just let it all out–I’ve never really had a problem with allowing myself to do that on paper. Really, it’s the realization that most of what I complain about is petty and trivial in the scheme of things.
I’m not going to go on some long tirade about how there are starving children in Africa, forced teenage prostitutes in Austin, and natural disasters occurring with the regular frequency you can only associate with the coming summer months. You’ve heard it all before from a hundred liberal hippie friends that like to stand in front of the grocery store campaigning for equal rights for gays and money to support your local homeless shelters. I feel like maybe art isn’t saving me right now, and that’s a scary thought. Art and words and photos and thoughts are supposed to be freeing.
I don’t want a gift that I can’t share, and all the limitations I feel surrounded by right now are bumming me out. I’ll get over it, and not just because I know there’s people out there with “real” problems that would love to switch places with my whiny, overly-entitled and educated Caucasian self. These might just be the not-quite-spring blues, or a temporary side effect from realizing that some of the shit I’ve been working toward is finally, possibly, REALLY happening. You know, those things you want and then suddenly it seems feasible.
I am terrified, and in a sick way that is a refreshing sensation.
Yes, the image above is ugly. Much like this crappy layout, but I needed a change (at least a temporary one) before my super awesome layout of doom arrives in my hot little e-hands.
And don’t worry, I have lots to say once I quit working on shit until the wee hours of the morning every night.
