I wish I could italicize blog titles...

Oh, hey gurl. I'm back. And stressed out by my own absence. I've been avoiding reading blog comments for the past few days because I know when posts go down, hostile blog comments go up. And I get it; it makes sense and I accept that it's part of the job. But with things as touch-and-go as they've been in my personal life lately, I'd just rather not read about how I'm the least funny thing since Serbian genocide and my mom should have aborted me in June, 1984 and saved the world a lot of grammatically-based trouble. Because while I'm not saying that you don't have a point, I am saying that sometimes I'm more emotionally equipped to handle rough blog comments than others.

Which is why it's sort of regrettable that I keep getting emails from people being like, "Dear Meg: I'm a big fan of the blog, which is why it's been so rough reading the comments recently. That shit is FUCKED UP. Don't do that to yourself with a soldering iron. And nobody actually thinks your mom has Hepatitis. Plus, you said you're locking your door from now on, so I don't think anyone will actually rape the lazy out of you, you know?" I'm like, "Wait, I stopped reading blog comments for a few days. Is it really that bad?" And then either a.) I don't get an email back, or b.) I get back an awkward, "Oh...................don't worry about it. Great talking to you, BYE! "

I was at work once and Alex was in the neighborhood, so he stopped in to say hi. I was psyched to see him until he dove into, "HA HA OH MAN, someone on the Internet really hates you!"

"WAIT. I haven't had a chance to read blog comments today, what did they say?"

"Oh. Uh. You know, just the usual. Nothing too bad. I wouldn't worry about it."

"You just went 10 neighborhoods out of your way to talk to me about whatever it is that they said."

"Yeah. Well. I mean, you know how it is.................OK, WELL I BETTER GET GOING, GREAT TO SEE YOU! MWA, MWA!"

The same thing pretty much happened when Talia came over tonight for dinner. We were catching up and giggling and gossiping the general what-not, when out of nowhere she was like, "God, so the blog comments have been fuckin' brutal lately, huh??" I was like, "GOD DAMNIT! I KEEP GETTING EMAILS ABOUT IT AND NOW I'M TOO SCARED TO LOOK. WHAT ARE PEOPLE SAYING?" Never much of a liar, bless her heart, Talia proceeded to legitimately shift her eyes around the room for a few seconds until she managed to get out, "I mean, it's kind of a good thing when you really think about it!"

So I have a new rule: if I get a specifically cruel comment or comments; don't tell me. That's right, for a very homo friendly blog, I'm instating a Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy. Because whatever was said, I'll read it eventually and it will suck and I'll do my stress vomits, but then I'll move on and you'll move on and we'll all be better people because of it. Deal? Deal.

I really bring this up because I can't decide if people would be more pissed off if I explain where I've been the past couple of days or if I gloss over it completely and pretend like it never happened. I mean, I guess either way someone's going to tell me to abort myself, so it really doesn't matter. I've been out-of-town working on blog business stuff with Chris without Internet access. Sorry, it's not really that glamorous of an explanation. (Although Chris' dad told Chris to take me out to dinner Saturday night and pay for it with his card. He later referred to this dinner as our first date. TEEHEHEHEHEHAHAHAHEHEHEHEHEOOOOO!) But we're done. (With our blog work, that is. Me and Chris' dad are just beginning.) Fingers crossed something good comes out of it so we can keep the blog a-growin'. But in the mean time, I'm back with a constant source of wireless Internet and cable TV, so hey HEY hey. K. I'll just be aborting myself now. —Flush!—

(By the way: Larry Hagman is alive; you'll get a double Jersey Shore recap this Friday and Queer Abby will be back tomorrow.)

So, I really liked Chris' post yesterday. I mean, I always like Chris' posts. I'd read them even if they weren't on my blog. (YEAH. YOU'RE WELCOME, SIR.) But I specifically liked his post yesterday. I've been mulling over his proposed list of new getting-to-know-you questions all day and even though I'm not going back to school (HA HA...what if?), I thought I'd share my answers with you anyway.

"What song will your bathtub suicide anthem be?" GOD DAMNIT. Chris totally took the best one. This question gave me the most trouble. And you might think we're morbid fucks for thinking about this, but seriously, your bathtub suicide anthem says a lot about you. What way would you go—ironic? Reassuring? Disturbing? Topical? It's important to think about now because you don't want to make a hasty decision in the moment and be That Guy who the cops find dead in the tub with Black Eyed Peas' "Pump It" on repeat. Unless you do. In which case, you know, maybe it was for the best...

Case study: Top 3 Cinematic Suicide Anthems:

3.) Girl, Interrupted: "End of the World", Skeeter Davis.

Points for irony.

2.) The Rules of Attraction: "I Can't Live (If Living Is Without You)", Harry Nilsson.

[Embedding disabled, click here.]

Points for irony and points for how delightfully emo this scene is. Especially:

I love this movie and I love this scene. It would have been #1 on the list, but one thing consistently bothers me about this scene no matter how many times I've seen it: she sits in a college dorm bathtub. Eww. Every time I watch it, I want to be in the moment and be sad for her and feel tense, but instead I'm like, "Aw, that poor girl, this is so disturb—oh, god, no, DON'T SIT, WEAR SHOWER PANTS, WARTS!!!!" They say you need balls to kill yourself, but that requires cojones of steel.

1.) The Royal Tenenbaums: "Needle In The Hay," Elliot Smith.

Well played, Mr. Wilson. By the way, this is absolutely the most disturbing thing I've ever seen in my entire life:

When you get down to brass tacks, I agree with Chris; I'd want to go out on the angstiest song humanly possible. And since he took "All The Things She Said," I'm going to have to go with "Stay Together For the Kids" by Blink-182. Because if there's anything angstier than suicide, it's early '00's teenagers dealing with divorce emotions.

HA HA HA HA...Mark Hoppus. Plus, that would eradicate any lingering "WAS IT OUR FAULT?!" feelings my parents may be struggling with. The cops would be like, "She was playing Blink-182's 'Stay Together For the Kids' on repeat."

"But...we did."

"Well ma'am, you clearly did everything you could."

"Oh. Well then! Brunch?"

See? See how thoughtful I am, even in death, mom?

"What's the lamest thing you ever did?" That's like asking Larry the Cable Guy the most redneck thing he's ever done. I guess I'll default to Simpsons tattoo and a locally recognized blog?

"What is your most embarrassing fear?" That part of I-95 in north New Jersey you have to drive through right before you get to New York where it's all industrial and nothing but scary piping and metal and ominous lighting and steam and bridges and oh my fucking god. I don't know what that area is technically called, but I strictly refer to it as The Devil's Workshop. Why? Because that's exactly what it looks like. I only just got to the point where I can drive through without having a panic attack, but that's only as a passenger. I haven't even begun to tackle driving it myself and honestly, I probably never will. And I'm fine with that. I know exactly what rest stop to get off at to switch drivers in time for me to take a Klonopin, close my eyes, put my fingers in my ears and la-la-la-la-la all the way through the Devil's Workshop.

"What's your default drunk singing songs?"

"Brandy (You're a Fine Girl)", Looking Glass.

My #1 go-to drunk karaoke song and personal theme song. Junior year Halloween, me, Helena and Alex went as this song: I was Brandy, Alex was The Sailor and Helena was The Sea. Still hands down my favorite Halloween costume ever. (Sorry, Jäger Deer.) The night before I moved to New York, I had a goodbye party at Millie & Al's to do Jell-o shots and karaoke for old time's sake, and when I sang this song, everyone stood up and sang along and it kind of felt like my heart had just been pulled out of my body with a corkscrew via my asshole. Memories...

"Since U Been Gone," Kelly Clarkson.

Yeah? What of it.

"All I Want For Christmas," Mariah Carey

Somewhere in Greenbelt, Maryland, Ashleigh has a really amazing video of the AU gang in Helena and Alex's old kitchen, wasted, dancing around and singing this at the top of our lungs. Helena, Alex and their then roommate Lauren threw a holiday party at their old house on Capitol Hill and it was right around the time I moved back from New York, so I was really excited to go and meet their new friends. Now, I was under the impression that this was a dress-up holiday party, so I rolled up in a red mini dress and 5-inch black leather booties, smoky eyes and my hair up in a french twist. Thus, you can imagine how uncomfortable I felt when I opened the door and saw a sea of hipsters in jeans and t-shirts. I was like, "Oooo...I grossly misunderstood the assignment." I felt like such a jackhole, as if I were playing into the whole, "Hi I'm MEG, I just moved back from NEW YORK, I'm FABULOUS, my skirt barely covers my LABIA!" I chose to deal with this embarrassment by marinating my liver in the punch bowl for the rest of the night. And say what you will about alcoholism, but it totally helped. Hours later I was singing and dancing to "All I Want For Christmas" in the kitchen, not giving two shits about what I was wearing.

And that was today's Meg's Lessons on Self-Esteem, kids.

"What's the Lamest Thing You Ever Cried At?" Uh, when Kermit's suicide montage flashed a picture of him and Jim Henson five minutes ago? Although I don't think that's lame, as much as it is completely justified.

"Do You Have Any Humiliating Medical Problems?" Yes. Yes, I do.

"What's the most horrifically inappropriate sentence you've ever heard?" OK, well if Chris gets to cheat and say something that he didn't actually hear, I get to say something that I didn't actually say. But I came disturbingly close.

Back story: When I was living at home in December 2008 (right around the time I was flashing my shit all over town to expand my social circle,) I went with my parents to get our Christmas tree. When we got it back to the house, my dad started obsessively vacuuming and re-arranging the furniture in our living room before he set up the tree, during which I chose to entertain myself by snapping a little branch off the tree and whittling it down until it resembled a Harry Potter wand. I was really, really proud of myself. I loved my Harry Potter wand. I spent the better part of that evening, as well as many others, prancing around the house casting various spells on things. (Yes, I was 23, but I was also unemployed and had been living at home for four months. I don't really know what to tell you.) I could only remember two actual spells from Harry Potter: alohomora and wingardium leviosa! So when those got old, I got creative. For example, if Evie wouldn't stop meowing: CATETH VON SHUTETH! If I wanted my dad to get me a glass of wine? PINOTIUS GRIGIOUS! If I was hungry? SNACKUMS DELICIOSO!

Now, while I thought this was hilarious, my mom didn't exactly feel the same way. After a few days, she gave me an ultimatum: throw out my Harry Potter wand, or have it shoved up my ass. Frankly, I didn't want either of those things to happen, so I told her I threw it out, but actually hid it on one of the branches deep in the Christmas tree. (23-years-old.) Then when I moved out of the house and into my apartment a few weeks later, I crept into the living room, took it out of the tree and packed it in one of my suitcases. It currently resides in my closet in an old digital camera box.

Flash forward to my cab ride to National Airport, en route to Ireland this past June. Halfway through the ride, my cabbie started fiddling with his sun visor. I looked up to see what he was doing and I swear to all that is good and holy, this is what I saw:

He had a god damn little tree branch shoved in his visor. Absolutely no amount of science can measure how close I came to shouting, "DID YOU WHITTLE YOURSELF A HARRY POTTER WAND TOO!?!?!?" And just knowing that that sentence could exist in my lexicon was slightly depressing.

At best.

Attn: Kathy Griffin (& a Giveaway!)

When it comes to advertising on this blog, I'm surprisingly selective for someone who openly peruses the Craigslist adult gigs section to make ends meet. Every now and then someone will contact me about doing a giveaway, and while I enjoy the idea of you guys getting free shit, 9 times out of 10 it's just not a right fit. I feel like I know you guys pretty well. We converse on a daily basis. You've always been extremely good to me, so I feel obligated to be good to you. (Plus you know how I fear/am in awe of the 2b1b army's wrath and power...) Thus we've never done any giveaways for titanium promise rings or organic period keepers. (Although if you're into that, let me know. I could have been way off.) Because really, I don't mind letting a 48 SWM/DDF watch me smoke a few Parliment Lights every now and then if it means I don't alienate the crap out of you guys.

Up until a few weeks ago, I think the most impressive giveaway opportunity I had ever been contacted with was from someone at Warner Brothers who emailed to ask if I'd advertise a competition to write jokes for Lisa Lampanelli. What would the winner get? An autographed photo of Lisa Lampanelli. I realize beggars can't be choosers, especially when I ate a bag of baked lays dipped in off-brand peanut butter for dinner tonight, but I think I actually laughed out loud when I read that email. Because that's like a competition to kill yourself and the winner gets raped. Pass, thank you.

Last week, however, I got an email about a giveaway opportunity that I was actually pretty excited about. It was from a promoter at the Seminole Hard Rock Hollywood Hotel & Casino asking if we'd do a giveaway to promote Kathy Griffin's upcoming performance on August 11th. Now, I love Kathy Griffin just as much as the next girl, but after reading his email, I knew I had to immediately contact two people: my mom and Dan.

I'm going to say something about my mother, and I need you to know that I am in no way just saying this for comedic effect: my mother loves Kathy Griffin absolutely more than me and perhaps slightly more than Evie. Yeah. I know. Them be fightin' words. If Kathy Griffin and Evie were dangling from a cliff and Diane could only save one, I think she'd a.) push me over for good measure, despite not being involved in this little Sophie's Choice to begin with; b.) think about her options for an obscenely long amount of time; and c.) ultimately decide to grab both of their paws and jump in some sort of a dramatic, twisted, three-way, feline Thelma & Louise style ending.

Truthfully, as I've discussed before, my mom is pretty supportive of this cat fashion show of a blog and my writing in general, despite it being primarily about body fluids, laziness and emotions. However, she thinks I'm greatly in need of a mentor. And who does she think that mentor should be? Kathy Griffin. Because besides being a fan, my mom also thinks she knows Kathy Griffin (or "my Kathy", or "my best friend Kathy Griffin", as she's more frequently referred to) and Diane knows that if I emailed Kathy with a few samples of my writing, she'd be on the next flight to DC to spoon with me in bed and tell me what to do the next time I get sued.

I, however, feel slightly less confident about that. First of all, I don't think Kathy Griffin is somewhere in LA just waiting to receive an email from me that says, "Hi Kathy. My name is Meg and I'm a moderately well-known comedy blogger who has emotions and diarrhea. Hold me?" Secondly, why is the answer to everything in my family always "email Kathy Griffin"? I hate to break it to my parents, but we don't actually know Kathy Griffin, nor do we know her email address. Every time I need guidance, both of my parents' go-to suggestion is always, "email Kathy about it." Really? Where do you suppose I do that? Kathy@Griffin.sup? "So google her." GOOGLE HER?! What sort of Pleasentville-like reality are my parents living in that they think I can just google Kathy Griffin's personal email address. I can't even track down my lawyer's new email address, and that's a woman who's cell phone number I have. "Well, use the contact page on her website." And that's when I'm forced into this uncomfortable position where I want to tell my parents that that email will probably never see the light of day, but there's such an adorable amount of faith and hope in their bright little eyes that she sits there reading her public contact email all day and suddenly I feel like I'm telling my kids that there's no Santa Claus, except in this situation I'm the parent, my parents are my kids and Santa Claus is Kathy Griffin and wooooo! It's just to much for a Sunday. So I'm like, "......Yes...I'll go do that...'right now'," and skulk away into the shadows hoping that they'll forget we ever just had that conversation. It's exhausting. And it happens more than you'd think. Surprisingly.

And then there's Dan. Poor, poor, Dan. You see, Dan is in a bit of a conundrum. He loves Kathy Griffin as well and apparently her new book was a very meaningful read for him. Now Dan is on a mission to somehow personally convey to Kathy Griffin how much she means to him. (Seriously, I can't tell you how many late-night drunken conversations we've had that end in Dan slurring about how if he could just talk to Kathy...) The problem here is that because Dan works in PR, he uses his Twitter account for business, so he doesn't want tweets about field research in Lebanon sandwiched between, "@kathygriffin ZOMG OH HAI GIRLFRIEND!! LOVE 2 LOVE U!!!!1" Because if there is a faster or more efficient way to out yourself in the office not involving homoerotic photographs, I'd love to know what it is.

I keep telling Dan that he should make a second Twitter account for the sole purpose of tweeting Kathy Griffin, but apparently he doesn't want to be That Guy. But you know what guy he will be? The guy who uses my blog to openly gush about his love for Kathy Griffin. That's right, after I told my mom about Hard Rock's email, I told Dan and suggested on the off chance that she see this blog one day, he should take this opportunity to tell her everything he's ever wanted to say but can't. Five minutes later, this letter was born:

Hi Kathy,

I love you, and I've been wanting to tell you this for so long. I've been wanting to twat you (thinking it would be the most direct way to get to you) forever, but unfortunately I use my Twitter for only professional stuff. Which prevents me from tweeting most of the real things in my life, like, "Kathy you gave me #tears when you introduced Maggie to Don Rickles " or, "What's taking Pizza Bolis so long?" - though I did break that rule when I found out Levi and Bristol were getting back together. WTF! (update: they're broken up now but I'm still shaken).

I'm a fan of yours. A huge fan, actually. I've seen all your stand-ups (taped, sadly), most of the D-lists, read your book, and follow you on Twitter. In the past year I've gone from a casual fan to being a serious having-gay-romantic feelings fan. You're hysterical, and everything you do is my favorite... but I also feel like its a lot more than that. I loved your book, and how heartfelt and honest you were in it...and so, now that I hopefully have your attention, I'm going to come out and say, I'M YOUR NUMBER 1 FAN!!!! (oh, and I'm also a red-head).

Love,

Dan

God bless him. God bless his heart.

So will we be doing the Hard Rock/Kathy Griffin giveaway today? Of course we will. I think Diane would kill me, raise me from the dead, and kill me again if we didn't. The day I got the email from Hard Rock, I called her to be like, "Oh, guess what? Your best friend is doing a gig at the Hard Rock in Florida and a promoter contacted me about doing something on the blog about it." "Why did they contact you?" she asked. "I don't know. I guess we have a similar humor and fanbase?"

And then from somewhere deep, deep in her bowels, she screamed in a guttural way that I didn't even know she was capable of, "WHAT DID I SAY?! WHAT DID I SAY, MEGHAN CATHERINE?! WHAT HAVE I BEEN TELLING YOU FOR YEARS AND YOU LAUGH AT ME?!?!"

"I know, I know..."

"SAY IT. SAY WHAT I'VE BEEN TELLING YOU FOR YEARS."

"...That I should email Kathy Griffin because you think our humor is similar."

"AND NOW WHAT'S HAPPENED?"

"Sigh. A consultant for Hard Rock wants me to promote her gig."

"WHY?!"

"Because our humor is similar."

"AND NOW YOU WILL EMAIL MR. PAMPALONE BACK IMMEDIATELY AND TELL HIM THAT YOU'D BE HONORED."

"His name is Mike, mom."

"YOU WILL NOT RUIN THIS FOR BOTH OF US BY CARELESSLY TOSSING AROUND HIS CHRISTIAN NAME!!!!"

I genuinely can't tell if my mom's zeal about this giveaway is because she thinks this is a good networking move for my career, or if because she thinks in some ass-backwards that this might result in her meeting her best friend and idol, Kathy Griffin? Either way, we're totally doing the giveaway.

In honor of Kathy Griffin's upcoming performance at Seminole Hard Rock Hollywood Casino & Hotel, on Wednesday August 11th at 8pm (tickets info available here), we will be giving away two copies of her new book, "Official Book Club Selection: A Memoir According to Kathy Griffin", and two ultra bad-ass Hard Rock watches.

For those of us who aren't math-savvy, that's a total of four winners. Hellz. Yeah. To enter, just leave a comment in today's comment section and I'll think of one of my fail-proof, highly scientific ways to pick winners (probably involving my mom and Dan, let's not lie) and let you know the results tomorrow.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'll be celebrating my ticket to a lifetime of piña coladas, loud farts and full-time blogging, should you need me.

I still say we write about our MSG shenanigans...

Well, reactions to “Worst of Netflix” were decidedly mixed, so we’re going to go with our second-choice new feature, Geography Pun of the Day.

In among all the “you suck” and “you didn’t suck until you did this, but now I’m reevaluating” and the occasional “MORE BLOODY BREASTS,” I noticed two repeating themes in the comment on my review of Grace:

You think I should watch “The Human Centipede,” and some of you don’t like features and prefer it when Meg and I talk about our lives. I looked “Human Centipede” up and I am SOLD whenever it comes to DVD. As far as the other goes: I like writing about things that happen to me better too. Those posts are generally easier to write, and I’m usually more satisfied with them. I have to point something out, though. I can’t vouch for Meg, but occasionally a day goes by when I don’t humiliate myself in public or Indian leg-wrestle a clairvoyant prostitute named Boom-Boom Jarowski. Once, in 2006, I went through a whole week of days like that, but then I may or may not have ruined that streak by falling onto a luggage-claim carousel and being dragged several feet, nearly realizing my fear of having my death reported under the headline, “Area Man Dies in Fluke (random object) Accident.” I know I make a big deal out of being “zany” and whatnot, but the sad fact is that a sizable minority of my days go by like last Tuesday did. I got up, formatted and published a blog post, ate a French bread pizza, drank a bottle of wine, and passed out watching cartoons. Humiliating? Sure, but not enough. I could lie and say, for example, that I started to choke and had to pull the French bread pizza out of my throat with two fingers, or that this terrible diet made me have

diarrhea

in front of everyone I knew, but I try to keep my writing truthful except for the stuff I tack on about sex and alcohol to make it more exciting. (Hi, Dad!)

Sometimes, the best-laid plans of bloggers fall flat. I had high hopes for a family fishing trip I went on a couple of weekends ago. Family? Rural setting? Catfish? I expected to get an epic out of it, a goofball farce before the mesquite-and-red-dust background of West Texas. Nope. Everyone behaved themselves, no one got drunk and fell in the lake, and the family was balanced enough between Democrats, Republicans, and secessionists that we left politics alone. The only remotely blog-worthy thing that happened was our emergency run to Bronte (not Bron-tay like the authors but Bront as in Brontosaurus – it’s about 20 miles from Tennyson) to get seasoned salt. I thought the phrase “We have to go to Bronte to get seasoned salt” was hilarious and giggled to myself the whole drive there. My sniggers were punctuated by Mom’s comments, inspired by an AARP magazine she found in the back seat, about her decision never, never, ever again to have a colonoscopy. It had all the ingredients - Mom, buttholes, austere Western landscapes – but it just wasn’t enough to make a post.

Likewise, last Saturday I had to work a Fourth of July children’s event. I don’t technically like children. They’re loud, they move fast, and they as often as not have snot all over their faces. I have a hard enough time talking to other adults; it’s nearly impossible with kids. It’s illegal (and impractical) to talk to them about sex and immoral to talk to them about liquor, which cuts my small-talk options down to the New Orleans Saints and medieval English history. These almost never work.

So, I had to sit at a table teaching kids to write with “quill pens.” Now, the organization sponsoring this event neither provided me with quill pens nor taught me how to use them. What they did was give me some feathers, a box cutter, and a jar of ink with the words, “You’re smart. You can figure it out.” That’s what they said about human interaction, and we can all see how that went. The whole situation was farcical but not really eventful, except when I was pulled onto the porch to help give a dramatic reading of the Declaration of Independence.

Even when we actively court blog-worthy events, sometimes fate intervenes. Meg and I were all primed to do an inaugural “2 Birds Investigates” about MSG, the flavor-enhancing food additive. This took the form of me stirring MSG into helpings of Chef Boyardee ravioli, Chicken Out mashed potatoes, beer, and butterscotch pudding, as Meg flopped over a chair and watched me with cold, dead eyes. We tasted the doctored helpings along with control servings of the foods, and it turns out MSG makes a noticeable difference, especially in the pudding. How did we think we would make this into a blog post? I don’t know. Similarly, today I was at the drugstore and thought, “You know, we talk about colon cleansing a lot, maybe I should just do it. Maybe it’s like LSD or a threesome and no one will know unless someone just DOES IT.” I ran into the following problems. Turns out, colon cleansers come in one strength: super. Nope. I’ll do a lot for my readers (both of you) but zero-to-sixty colon cleanse that throws me a foot in the air even as the toilet shatters – naaah. It is also impossible to buy single servings: the smallest amount I could buy was 240 capsules, totaling presumably dozens of anus-shredding “super” cleanses.

So, we’ll have to make some sort of deal. You put up with the occasional feature, and I promise to tell you immediately when something embarrassing happens. Everybody loses wins!

How to get an A in PR

They say when life gives you lemons, make lemonade, right? Well, that's exactly what I'm trying to do with this whole "getting fired" thing. Sure the entire experience was mildly traumatizing and has me spinning upside down on a pole three nights a week at Camelot (Mondays, Thursdays and Fridays. Ask for Fallon O'Carrington.) but I think it may have been the kick in the ass I need to get more serious about my writing and finding a way to make this here rickety old blog my bread and butter. Unfortunately to do this you need to be far more communications savvy than I actually am. If you need someone to come over and watch reality TV with you, crack a few mildly humorous jokes and eventually give you a really half-assed hand job; I'm your girl. If you need someone to market your blog to potential sponsors, advertisers and media people in a professional and confident manner; I am not your girl. Either way; sucks to be me.

I can't market this blog to save my life. Wanna know a little fun fact I never told you about? I had a very casual meeting with MTV in December. They like my writing, bless their hearts. Then they had to go and actually talk to me in person. MISTAKE #1, YOU GUYS. Mistake #1. Why? Oh, I don't know. Maybe because when they asked me what my five year plan was I rambled about exercising more and getting a pug while struggling to find a way a to make my arm placement look natural? How about that? Sigh.

If I really do just want to sit here all day writing love letters to you fine people (which I do), I need to find a way to confidently talk about my blog without de-railing 13 seconds in and concluding with, "NEVER MIND IT'S STUPID I MOSTLY JUST TALK ABOUT MY BOWEL MOVEMENTS AND HOW AWKWARD I AM I'VE JUST WASTED YOUR TIME SO G2G KILL MYSELF NOW BYE." How did this happen? I was a communications minor, for Christ's sake! And isn't AU's SOC supposed to be like, really good or some shit? That's when I remember the absolute show that was COMM-301 (Public Relations) and suddenly my complete and utter communication ineptitude makes a a lot more sense.

I took PR my last semester at college and it was destined to be a hot mess from the start. First of all, it was a block class. May god smite you all in the American University registrar's office for your intense love of block scheduling! For those of you not in the know, block scheduling is when instead of having a class twice a week, you only have it once a week, but it's two and a half hours long. Look guy, that is a tall fucking order. I can't even concentrate on a date for that long and that has the possibility of ending in sex. To make matters worse, it was my second back-to-back block class of the day. Right before PR, I had a two and a half hour Postmodern Art History class. And yowzahs. What a Wednesday. I was sufficiently chock full o' bullshit by the end of that semester.

What really didn't help my already dwindling attention span was the fact that I took this class with College Roommate Danielle. In retrospect, what a grossly horrible idea that was. Danielle and I have the combined maturity of Romper Room. We once stole a life-size cardboard cut out of LeBron James from Mazza Galleria based solely on the absurdity that is this commercial:

Locking us in a class full of comm nerds for two and a half hours was like giving a couple of 12-year-old boys with severe ADHD a handful of pixie sticks, a box of fireworks and a match and saying, "Have at it." Was it entertaining? God yes. Did we learn anything? God no.

I did love our professor, however. He was an adjunct professor by the name of Tim Wild* who works at a major PR firm downtown. I'm utilizing an asterisk there because that's obviously in no way his real name. (Sorry. A girl as lazy as me can only handle so many lawsuits at once.) We were 100% obsessed with Tim Wild. Like, perhaps inappropriately so. And I'd like to think he loved us right back! To this day we're his only two friends on Facebook and it warms my little heart. Every now and then Facebook suggests I "reconnect" with Tim Wild and I'm like, "IF ONLY!!!1"

Professor Wild—who we (very much to his face) called (and not because he told us to) Timmy—had just moved to DC from Houston where he was the head of PR for a major rodeo arena. I'd say about an hour and 45 minutes of every class was spent listening to Timmy's wacky tales of rodeo life. Lord knows they had absolutely nothing to do with PR, but Christ I'm glad I know about 'em.

Just like how I couldn't concentrate in therapy because my therapist looked like a tall Verne "Mini-Me" Troyer, I couldn't concentrate in PR because Timmy Wild looks just like Peter Griffin from Family Guy. Seriously. The resemblance is uncanny in the most distracting way possible and made everything he said that much more hilarious. Not like Timmy needed any help in the humor department. If an hour and 45 minutes of class was dedicated to rodeo stories, the other 45 minutes were dedicated to his hee-larious and long-winded tangents. A lecture with Timmy would start out being about the value of press ethics and morph into a 30-minute rant about what a bitch Ashley Judd was when she stood up Timmy's radio show in college to go to a sorority event. Seriously, that's one of the few things I retained from that class. Ashley Judd went to college with Professor Timmy Wild and stood up his radio show. What a bitch. How do you write a press release? Fuck if I know.

Our classmates were just as ridiculous as our beloved Timmy. I'm more than aware I'm about to alienate a large portion of readers when I say this, but I can not stand overzealous comm majors. I get it. You're really good with people. You like to mingle. And network. You have a blackberry yet can't legally drink at a bar yet. You're very important; got it. Now stop reminding me every single chance you get. No one gives a shit about your internship or what local NBC news anchor you met over the weekend. Christ. Being a comm minor, I had to deal with overzealous comm majors frequently, but I had never experienced such an overwhelmingly high concentration of them in once class like I did in PR. Danielle and I immediately found and befriended the only two other slackers in the class (that's out of a class of 35...) and we made a pact that we'd always work together in the far too frequent "real world scenario" group exercises. One chick was a stoner who sold hula hoops on the quad and the other was quite possibly the most Bro-tastic frat boy to ever exist at AU, who fell off a porch and broke his leg a week into the semester and rarely showed up. We were like the Geneva Convention of slack assery. We'd be given a task like figure out what we'd do if we were the PR people for NIH and Avian Flu broke out or something like that and while every other group would present these polished press releases that they had already gotten published on the wire just for funzies, Timmy would call on our group and be like, "Well, well, well...what did you four geniuses cook up today?" We'd then awkwardly shuffle papers back and forth and look at each other expectantly until Danielle inevitably got up, shifted her eyes back and forth, slowly said "Synergy" and sat back down. Then Timmy would be like "OH, YOU GUYS!" and move on. Every single time. God I loved that man.

I've given it some honest-to-god thought, and I can say I only remember learning four concrete lessons in that class (besides the fact that Ashley Judd is a bitch and will stand you up if you have a radio show), which I will gladly share with you now.

#1. Professor Wild had a little saying that he told us often, but not nearly often enough. It was Timmy's mantra when he did PR for the rodeo. What was it? "Send in the retards." I'm not saying it's right, I'm not saying I agree with it, I'm just saying that that was Timmy's go-to motto when things got rough. "If something goes wrong, and I mean like really, really wrong," Professor Wild told us, "I always say this little phrase we had at the rodeo—send in the retards." [Pause for Danielle and I to shoot awake and give each other synchronized looks that clearly communicate "DID HE JUST SAY THAT?!", glance around the room, notice that nobody is sharing our reaction, proceed to urinate pants, move on.] "You see, whenever something really unfavorable or embarrassing happened at the rodeo that put us in a bad light, we'd host a day for the mentally disabled or a local elementary school or something. Because you see class, sometimes the best thing to do in a crisis situation is to admit fault and work to shift the focus from the negative back to the positive. So, send in the retards!"

This lesson, to this day, is one of the most absurdly ridiculous things I have ever heard in my entire life. Not because it's heinously inappropriate, not because it came from the real life manifestation of Peter Griffin, but mostly because it came out of the mouth of a man paid buku dollars for his expertise in how to appropriately address the public. Uh-mazing irony.

#2. One day the PR Director for some ocean conserving non-profit...thing came in to give our class a presentation on how to handle a last minute catastrophe. The title of his presentation had "catastrophe" in it, so I figured it had to be interesting, right? Wrong. This was the most boring two hours of my entire life and I still resent that man for taking them away from me. The PR Director was this thin waif of a blonde gentleman wearing a queer little seashell tie, who needed a stern lesson in how to tell a story. Allow me to compress an hour of his story into one sentence: his non-profit led an expedition into a sunken battleship from the Civil War and they made a startling discovery. He would not shut up about this alleged startling discovery. The build-up was insane. For a solid 15 minutes he was like, "What we found on that ship changed everything for everyone. TIME STOOD STILL. Worlds collided. Men were made and broken in a single moment. Dreams were shattered. Lives destroyed. Friends became foe. It was the most intense moment of my entire professional career and the lives of 100 men and women relied on my next move." BLOKAY! WE GET IT! SHUT THE FUCK UP AND TELL US WHAT HAPPENED ALREADY, YOU LITTLE TWIT! Finally he told us what happened: they found human skeletal remains. On the sunken battle ship. From a war. Yes, a battle ship used in war. That sank. Somebody died. That was the big controversial catastrophe.

Danielle raised her hand, "Uh, I think I'm a little confused here. Why is it so shocking that you found skeletal remains on a sunken battle ship from 1863?" The PR director laughed at her like she had just asked, "Was there scary octopuses on there, mister?!"

"I don't think you get it, young lady. We found human remains on a battle ship from the Civil War. People are still awfully sensitive about that. Especially in the south!"

"Yeah..." Danielle continued, "But it's a sunken battleship. How could you not think you'd find human remains?"

"Well! As it turns out, we did! I looked in the communications guide for the expedition and there was a whole chapter on how to handle finding human remains! So we were fine! Moral of the story: always be prepared."

I thought I was going to shoot myself in the fucking face. An hour and a half build-up for that. I guess I learned three things here: 1.) The south is still deeply sensitive about the Civil War; 2.) Always be prepared; 3.) Storytelling is not an art form for everyone.

3.) For our final project, we had to design a professional PR plan for the business of our choice. A girl we called "Southern Girl" did her project on a new home development in her home state of Oklahoma. Southern Girl was 16 different kinds of insufferable. She looked like Jenna Bush, dressed like Barbara Bush, Sr. had an obnoxiously large Louis Vuitton bag that she was forever fishing shit out of, had a deep southern accent and despite being dumb as a box of hair thought she was the tits. Southern Girl delivered her PR presentation like a slick big-city lawyer type. She wore a business suit! She had a laser pointer! She walked slowly around the room with her fingers interlaced like Mr. Burns and nodded her head a lot! It was, for lack of better words, fucking obnoxious. Then she got to the portion of her presentation where she talked about what kind of homes would be located on the development: log cabins.

"But these aren't just any log cabins," Southern Girl explained, "These log cabins are made from jen-you-wine spruce trees grown right here in the great state of Oklahoma. Our craftsmen shave these trees down by hand for a finish that is out of this world. Our hand smoothed logs will be like nothing you have ever seen and nothing you've ever touched before. Nobody has logs smoother than ours! You can't help yourself but reach out and touch our hand smoothed logs as you walk by. You just gotta feel our hand smoothed logs once to know what kind of quality this development will house. I got a sample here; feel free to come up and rub our hand smoothed logs for yourself."

I thought I was going to pee my pants if she said "hand smoothed log" one more time. Because: penis. Penis, penis, penis. It was one of those situations I frequently find myself in where I'm internally laughing about something because I'm a child and then I realize that someone else, in this case Danielle, is also trying not to laugh and the situation becomes that much more impossible. Lesson learned: "hand smoothed log" is never not the funniest thing to come out of the mouth of a homely girl in a business suit.

4.) This last lesson was learned immediately after Southern Girl finished her presentation. The next person to present was this Meeky girl who was clearly really nervous and struggling to get through her presentation. Her voice was trembling and she was saying "uh" and "um" a lot and talking on the fly, versus Southern Girl and her well rehearsed script. I understand that when you're talking off of the top of your head, you don't phrase things exactly the way you mean to. I get that. However, this girl accidentally said the most magical thing. She delivered a good point about how the best way to publicize an event for her business was to inundate the internet, radio and television with advertisements. Then, probably due to nerves, she kept rambling and said the following sentence:

"We need to advertise in as many places as possible. Because, you know, sometimes you just have to come [pauses] in their faces.........[longer pause].................................................................with information."

Danielle and I 100% lost our shit. All the "hand smoothed log" laughter we had been suppressing came pouring out and then some. Tears were streaming down our faces; we were physically grabbing each other for support. By the time we had regained composure, we looked around the room and realized that we were the only people laughing. Frankly, any embarrassment I should have been feeling was canceled out by how confused I was that nobody else in a class of 35 people thought the wholesome looking Meek saying "Sometimes you just have to come in their faces," was the funniest thing uttered in the history of human speech. Every time Danielle says it to me, it's like I'm hearing it for the first time. I am literally cackling in the darkness of my apartment, alone, as I write this right now. If I close my eyes I can still see her saying it. I remember everything about what she was wearing that day and where I was sitting in relation to where she was sitting and just everything. It was like falling in love for the first time.

So final lesson learned: sometimes you just have to come [pause] in their faces.

...And yes I did get an A in this class. God bless you, American University. Welp! I'll be telling potential advertisers to fuck off and die if anyone needs me! L8r!