I'm A Creep

Also, just so you all know, I'm watching you...

This is a single user from my stat counter.  And I know exactly who it is.  Bwahahahahaha!

This Is How It Is

I think The Boyfriend’s car may be officially dead.  But, on the plus side, ONLY ONE MONTH TIL MY BIRTHDAY!

This is exciting because I will be 23.  I don’t know why yet that excites me, but it does.  There’s something about 23 that sounds adult.  I was horrified of 22 because that was when I officially entered into the second quarter of my life and I realized I had to do all the second-quarter things which are really intense.  You see, I have a theory:

Life can be broken into four quarters, each consisting of 22 years.

That’s pretty much the theory.  After you turn 88 those are just bonus years.  You accumulate those in the more perilous sections of dungeons and in treasure chest that can only be opened with the Keyblade.  It’s complicated.

Also, each quarter contains certain achievements that typically need to be mastered.  This allows you to level up appropriately so that the following quarter isn’t too out of your skill level.  Again, complicated, I know.  The quarters are, of course, able to be completed with the previous quarter’s achievements still locked; however, this usually results in slow load screens and less valuable side quests.  Puzzles are also more difficult.  And you don’t get the thunder spell til like seven chapters later which is a real bummer because it super helps in the Cave of Doom.

Oh, I think I just figured out why this is so exciting: I’ll be 23 on the 23^rd.  This must mean something magical, right?  It’s the only time it will ever happen.  I’ll have to do some internet research and find out.

The Things One Will Do

Probably because of all the job hunting I’ve been doing lately, I had this crazy dream that I applied to be a receptionist at a dance studio, but when I went in for an interview, the woman there was like, “Now, you must dance for me.”  And I was all, “Um, but I’m applying to take calls and do schedules and smile and say ‘Hi!’ all cheerily to people when they walk in.”  But she was like, “You dance now!”  It was really weird and I’m rather glad it was a dream except, oh wait:

It really fucking happened.

I used the internet for job searching to no avail.  Then, I used the paper, to a tiny bit of an avail, but ultimately horridness.  So then I decided on the perfect mix of the two: Craigslist.

Craigslist is great because everything is equal--no ad stands out more than any other.  Of course half of the things are scams, but seeing as I’m kind of a genius I can pick them out.  Where Craigslist fails is that it is up for so much human error.  It makes me the judge, jury and executioner; I can tell from an ad if the writer is a complete moron, but I’m often overly judgmental and a little typo becomes a big deal to me.

That “I” isn’t capitalized!  What a fucking moron!  Ugh, they’re probably a rapist who wants to “interview” me in a van.

But then I send in a resume anyway.

I replied to upwards of thirty ads in one night, a relatively easy task, and one actually replied to me!  First of all, let’s take a look at the ad, verbatim:

Looking for part time-evenings employee to work for [Name of Place] Greet Students ,make phone calls. do schedualing, and reports. Dance backround is helpful but not nessary 

Okay, typos are prevalent, but they actually had the organization’s name and a phone number and address, so I knew it was legit.  They said I had to apply in person.  Fine.  I did on Monday.

I go in, fill out a form, and this woman asks me to come back at 4:30 to dance.  I think I haven’t heard correctly because this woman is some kind of Asian and her English is  questionable, pronunciation skewed.  Dance?  Like, audition?  Yes.  Dance.  But I’ve never danced.

“It okay--I teach you.”

Great.

I’ll find out later that this woman is, as she says it, “not cheap” and has been on Dancing With The Stars.  That’s right--she’s a big deal.

So, I went home and stressed out.  She told me I’d meet my “competitors” when I came back.  I imagined them, long-legged, graceful on heels, perfect bodies, dancing since before they could walk.  I was going to be laughed out of the studio.  It was going to be So You Think You Can Dance? and I was going to be Sex:

But I was determined.  I needed a job and, dammit, this was the only place that responded.  I’ll fucking dance if you say to dance, pride and ability be damned!  I found more suitable dancing clothes than my business casual black slacks and dress shirt.  I’ve seen lots of dancing TV shows, I know what those kids wear.  If I was going to suck at this, I was at least going to look good sucking, so I put on nude pantyhose, black short-shorts, a pink tank top, and my dress heels (she said to wear them).  I looked good.  Too good.  I freaked out and found knee-length shorts and pulled them on over the other three layers covering my already broken-out-into-nervous-sweats vagina.

Back at the studio I sat on their teal, ripped, deflated couch, waiting.  I was early, to show my promptness.  Then another girl comes in.  She’s tall, blonde, smiling wider than her face should have allowed her, and wearing a dress and accessories.  I think she works there already.  Is she going to, like, judge me?  Help me?  I’m scared of her already.  She goes to the counter, “I’m a would-be receptionist for the group interview.”

Shit.

She sits down next to me.  Her ass hit’s the seat, and I immediately hate her.  This hate is only amplified later by her plastic bitchery and possibly egged on slightly by the fact that she’s loads better than me.  Still, I attempt niceties while on the couch, trying to stamp out the embers of hate encircling my brain.  No, don’t attempt, friggin excel at.  I’ve never been that open and cordial to a stranger while not being paid to do so in my life.  She smiles brightly at me and every word out of her mouth is plastic and catty, but she’s smiling so goddamn much you can’t call her out on it or not smile back.  It was horrible.

Example: Dude in the running with us offers her a piece of gum.  She refuses.  He chews nervously and they kind of chat while he does so.  He then gets up and goes and spits out the gum so he’s not chewing it while dancing.  Girl says, “Well, that was full of couth.”  Total bitch move.  However, she’s smiling that re-goddamn-diculous smile and her inflection is amiable, so it’s like “Shit, how do I respond?”  And the only way to react is just to kind of take it and be nervous.

Anyway, she quickly gets out of the conversation with me and starts talking to the temporary receptionist--a grown man who’s used the same joke on her that he used on me a few minutes ago (“Ah, so you’re here to take my job!”) and that he’ll then use on the other three candidates who I see come in.  All of her responses are borderline rude, but done through this ridiculous smile that says, “Oh, I’m only joking--no need to get all huffy” before you even have the chance to huff once.

Enough of her though.  I ended up in a class with about seven other people, none of whom really had any kind of formal training.  This calmed me except they were all in business casual clothes and I was in my Halloween-esque SYTYCD getup.  I was, just for a second, overwhelmingly thrilled to have that fourth layer on and not black hotpants.  We learn to waltz and some other partnered things.  I do acceptably and the teacher is my partner.  She tells me I’m doing good.  Well, I do know how to count music.  We all switch partners.  Now I’m with some girl.  She’s actually nice.  She isn’t, however, rhythmic in any sense of the word.  She’s the male, I have to follow her, but she has a complete disregard for the music.  And her counting isn’t even in any kind of time with itself.  I get yelled at for counting aloud and trying to get her on beat.  This is frustrating because later we’ll get yelled at for being out of time with the music.  I want to scream, “Bitch, I can fucking count!  I’ve played music for almost ten years!  I’m the only one here who knows what ¾ time is!  PLEASE BELIEVE ME!!!”

By the end I’m frustrated, but by God I am smiling like someone’s stapled the corners of my lips to my ears.

I get a short interview with the owner.  He asks me to tell him about myself then interrupts me and actually does all the talking.  We spend less than five minutes together.  There’s no hand shaking.  I do get to tell him about my martial arts training.  Guess what?  He’s trained too.  I find that lots of people tell you this, then they quickly abridge it with some random color they got to (which doesn’t matter because it’s different among different schools, but they don’t know this because they haven’t been practicing long enough to know that) and then you also find out it was when they were ten.  So, to him, martial arts were something his parents made him do to “shut him up.”  Great.

Once I got home I realized we were all asked to come back the next day for another lesson.  So there are two sides to this.  First, the one everyone else sees: “That’s so cool and so much fun--free dance lessons!”  This is true.  It really was fun in it’s own way.  However, it wasn’t recreational for me or anyone else there.  It was a competition for a part-time secretary that, apparently, also needed to be trained in dancing for the school’s parties and stuff.  It was me with no other prospects whatsoever.  It was me, driving to and from having mood swings that brought from tears to elation at the prospects of getting or not getting this job.  It was terrifying and sad and embarrassing.

I also realized that no one had put a cap on where this thing ended.  After another day of classes we were all invited back again.  There were less of us though, people had cut themselves, and the position actually seemed within reach.  I’d committed three days of sweating to them after all, I think I was entitled to a bit of optimism about it.

Finally, on the forth day, I got a second interview directly after the class.  This is the real bullshit part.  The owner tells me they’ve chosen two people from the class to continue on with training for the job.  But this was directly after our lesson--this decision was made before I stepped in the door that day.  This was a completely wasted day.  A day I could have spent in New Lexington seeing my friends instead of rushing back just to be berated for not being amazing at something I’d only just learned a few days prior.  They could have called me, saved me time, gas, bodily fluids.

But here’s the consolation prize--I could continue on if I wanted, just in case someone didn’t “graduate” their program and they still needed somebody.  The fact that I hadn’t been chosen was still sinking in when this was offered to me, so I took it.  I was still smiling but I knew it was kind of falling.  I forgot to thank anyone for whatever opportunity I’d been given.  I don’t even remember how I retrieved my keys before I left.  In a way I was completely heartbroken--it certainly wasn’t my dream job, but I’d devoted so much time and effort to it, and I’d screwed up The Boyfriend’s vacation which we didn’t go on because I had an interview.  I stopped at Giant Eagle on the way home because I was embarrassed and felt like crap about ruining The Boyfriend’s chance at going anywhere.  I had to traverse the store twice in my heels to find bread.

So this post is really coming off way more depressing than I had originally intended.  I don’t mean it to be--it’s behind me now and this is my way of closure.  My intention was to offer you an anecdote about the ridiculousness that has been my past week.  So, to lift the mood, please enjoy this lolcat:

Greatest Hits

I've been feeling a bit down lately what with job searching and all, so I decided to cheer myself up by showing you some of my ivory tower ridiculousness. Here's a compilation of some of the stellar (and not-so-stellar) sentences I wrote in papers that got me my lovely degree in English, all written before the world shat all over my dream of becoming...God, what the fuck did I ever plan on being? Jeez. Anyway, what I'd like you to remember is that I received 'A's on about all of these papers, so suck it!

September 2006, Shakespeare: "Corruption.  Fraud.  Sin.  All terms one would use to describe a comedy, yes?"

October 2006, Comp II: "Americans experience what I call Halloween syndrome; the American tendency to trivialize death for celebratory purposes."

November 2006, Shakespeare: "Othello was a wickedly awesome play, but it would have been so much better if the main character just was not in it."

December 2006, Anthropology: "But it’s more fun to think that aliens landed on earth centuries ago and bred some backward creatures in an experiment, leaving us to our own devices until we become able bodied enough to take back home and become their slaves."

January 2007, Comp III: "'Well, it turns out he’s the Antichrist and he gets adopted by the President of the United States.'  That’s it, the ending to the film, and you’ve just paid your ten dollars for a ticket and splurged on popcorn and one of those monstrous sodas that make you pee twice during the feature and miss imperative plot points that would leave you wondering just what the heck is going on at the end if you hadn’t already heard it from some idiot in the theatre’s lobby."

May 2007, Anthropology: "I mean, it’s not impossible that women gave birth, handed the baby off to the man, made placental war-paint, and toted spears out into the tundra in search of saber tooth steaks, but it’s impossible for us to envision because we refuse to do so."

October 2007, Tutoring Course: "I was discouraged to find from this piece that I need to shut the heck up and that I am trying to get him to say what I want him to say."

October 2007, Victorian-Era Poetry: "It is innate to the female to be miserable for she cannot hope for any better."

January 2008, American Poetry: "Is there a rationale to the Dickinsonian dash? Save for aesthetic value, which is really no small thing in poetry, it seems Emily Dickinson is completely indiscriminate in its use."

March 2008, British Poetry: "The armadillo, however, is an essentially different creature: openly defiant and perhaps even mad."

May 2008, Political Science: "It is a sad and scary time for America and when I look around at my peers I can practically feel the next Great Awakening coming on. And I know it’s ironic, but all I can do is pray that that will not happen."

And my favorite (out of chronological order):

January 2008, Linguistics: "And though I know I make grammatical errors frequently, I believe that if we forsake those generally accepted conventions prancing around as “rules,” we will eventually no longer be able to understand one another and the human race will consequently become extinct from mushroom poisoning."

Britney's Sermon

Back when I was in college (hah) and being a somewhat productive, or a hoping-to-be productive, member of society, I had an assignment to write a piece where every sentence had 4 more or 4 less words than the previous sentence. I wrote the following, based on the idea that, because Britney was texting during church, the pastor made her give her own sermon the next Sunday:

So, like, God is pretty great. I’m sure you all agree seeing as you’re all, like, here. Still, some just don’t get it. But, whatevs. That’s not really my point here. What I want to say is Jesus really, really cares. And, like, a lot ya’ll cause he all died for our sins and stuff. And "he who is without sin cast the first stone." I don’t see any flying rocks! But what was up with that whole peace bringer thing? I mean, wouldn’t it have been way more easy to just make some plague? It’s not like he couldn’t do other magic what with curing that icky falling apart disease and stuff. And who wouldn’t want to party with a guy who’s a walking keg, right? But no; some dudes were all like, "That Jesus sucks." I know, they were not nice. So mean. But J-Dawg was cool with it. He was all, "Turn the other cheek and just chill."

It’s kinda like with my friend Christy and this group of girls at school. Last winter, Christy’s dad promised to get Neo to come to her birthday and she told us all. People were stoked, but these jealous girls got all bitchy and started talking smack. I have no idea why cause they all got invites. Those girls were even like, "I bet your deadbeat dad doesn’t even know him!" And that’s total crap because Mr. Blake has a cousin who hooked up with Neo’s PR guy’s sister. So, I was like, "Hey, Christy, let’s fill up those skanks’ lockers with condoms!" But Christy was all, "No, Britney, that would be wrong." She still let them come and never said a mean word about those hos. I swear, Christy is like a total saint sometimes, ya’ll. But, in the end, Neo showed and it shut those bitches up good. So, I guess if you just act cool, stuff will work itself out and that’s what Jesus meant.

Babies

Holy crap, so many babies!  First, let me sum up for you my feelings on babies:

They are terrifying.

It’s basically the fact that they are so completely dependant and breakable that frightens me so much.  It’s not like alligator frightening, like I think the baby is going to attack me, sink its three teeth in and spin around, crushing me under its seven pounds and four ounces, whip me in what’s left of my face with its scaly tail, and then drag me down into the swampy deep to tenderize for easier consumption at a later date. (See, that’s another thing: I don’t know shit about them.  Those facts are probably all wrong.  I don’t think the seven pounders even have teeth.)  It’s more the fear of being responsible for and then breaking them.  They can’t hold their own heads up!  That is way too much responsibility for a girl like me who often spills cups of soda because I need to carry something else too and the full cup is just easier to carry on its side.  (That was a long way to go for an analogy and makes much more visual sense.)

I also think I see babies differently than a lot of other people, probably due to never having been around them.  I really mean never: I have no siblings, no cousins.  Babies are just compact, defenseless humans, not some other species who require a different language to communicate.  Or maybe they do.  See, I don’t know.

So, as you can see, I don’t hate them, I’m just scared shitless of them.  What if they break?  What if I’m handed one and it starts crying and then I’m marked as evil and unlovable because babies (like animals) can sense evil?  What if their first word is “fuck?”

That would surely be my fault.

So, babies.  Ashley (not me) had her baby.  This is a girl I went to high school with.  We graduated together.  We also went camping together once and she asked a road worker if the direction the arrow pointed on a detour sign were, in fact, the correct direction in which to go.  That’s a completely different story, though.  The point is, we’re very much the same and now SHE HAS A BABY.  That’s just weird.  And amazing.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m excited for her and that child, but mostly I’m in a state of sort of shocked awe.  Like, how’d that happen?

Okay, I have an idea of how that happened.

Also, I met The Boyfriend’s older brother and The Boyfriend’s sister-in-law and The Boyfriend’s niece.  Excuse me, The Boyfriend’s seven month old niece.  Cue wide, horrified eyes.  My fears: What if I have to hold her?  What if she hates me?  What if we have completely contradictory political and religious views and we experience an awkward silence that we can't get over???

Are you starting to understand the terrifiedness?

Finally, I went to a baby shower just recently.  I admit, I love baby showers, but that should be expected--there aren’t babies there.  Baby showers are all about the cuteness of tiny, pastel things.  Tiny pastel shirts, tiny pastel socks, tiny pastel accessories--it’s a 13-year-old Japanese girl’s wet dream.  (That wasn’t supposed to be racist or about penises, by the way, but take it as you will.)

I even made the cake for this shower:

Be sure to check out how dangerously close that cake is to falling right off the fucking table.  I am pretty amazing at not ruining things--really, this should be enough proof to myself that I can handle a baby.  Then again, if that cake fell I could make another one in like an hour; if I break someone’s baby I am sure as hell not willing to make them another one.  Not after the first hour at least.

The point of all this is: new humans are just exhausting.  We should be like Merlin, born old.  Also, we should have magic.  And awesome, white beards.  And pointy, starred hats.  And miniseries in which we are portrayed by Sam Neill.

What was I talking about?

Oh, Jurassic Park.

Anyway, you need to learn how to distinguish between tyrannosaurus poop and triceratops poop.  It could save your life someday.

How To Protect Yourself With Everyday Objects

The Boyfriend has one of those cups with water trapped in its sides that you freeze and then use in lieu of ice cubes.  It has fishies on it.  I broke it yesterday.

Upon pulling it out of the freezer, it slipped from my hands and crashed to the ground, shattering at the bottom rim and spraying a few chunks of plastic blindly across our itty bitty kitchen not to be found until forgotten about and in bare feet.  The Boyfriend was sorely disappointed, immediately shouting, “Oh, no!  I love my fishy cup!”  After I scowled at him he was quick to then admit that he didn’t know that the point of the water in the cup was to keep it in the freezer until we met and I showed him.  Still, he was sad.  I told him we have two more, but then again, those don’t have fishies on them.  I felt bad.

However, I found out today that all is not lost--the fishy freezy cup lives!  The bottom is only chipped.  After spending the night in the sink and defrosting, the water hadn’t leaked out.  I told The Boyfriend this.  I think he is satisfied with it.

However, I now realize I should not have told him the fishy freezy cup is fine.  I should have told him the fishy freezy cup is not only fine but actually improved because now it is not only a handy drinking device, but it is also a formidable weapon.  And this is fucking perfect.

Why, you ask?  Why would anyone need a weapon on the bottom of a fishy freezy cup?  Just by the simple fact that you are asking that question should be your answer: hoodwinkery.  When drinking from any freezy cup you are probably the most vulnerable to attack that you’ll ever be.  The fact that the pre-frozen cup will keep beverages ice cold for a lengthy amount of time without being watered down by ice cubes lulls the drinker into a false sense of security.  The amiable fishies adorning its outside certainly do not help.  The cup is, essentially, deceiving you about the entire world.  Oh, I don’t need ice cubes to keep things cold anymore--what a glorious and safe existence mine is!  And then that’s when it happens:

An alligator slithers in through your doggy door and death rolls you.  It death rolls you dead.  And there’s nothing you can do to stop it because you’re so disillusioned by the greatness of full-flavored soda.

But if that freezy cup has a jagged edge to its bottom rim, well, your chances of survival just multiplied by 78--I’ve done the math.  You smash that sharpened plastic into the gator’s eyes, stun it, and safely climb the nearest tree, remembering to run in a zigzag pattern in case it regains consciousness before you find a good foothold.  This works for nearly any attacker except for tree climbers which, as we all know, are impervious to plastic, but they’re mostly docile to begin with.

So, really, The Boyfriend should be thrilled I broke his fishy freezy cup--I just saved his life.

Pride

I'm too proud of this awesome picture I did today to not share it on here. But first, the setup.

Molly tweeted this morning: "Well, there goes my Saturday of no work. And another example of how anyone can get me to do anything. I need a spine."

And I obliged: "Here, I haven't been using mine for years."

God damn, I'm amazing!  That is the best foreshortening I have ever done..especially since I basically didn't do anything.