7 Things You Didn't Know About Me: 6-7

6.) I had a pet chameleon when I was in eight. His name was Abu and he was so noble and adorable that I want to vomit everywhere just thinking about him. 

My family had mixed emotions about old Abu. Becca was a straight-up hater (speaking of our shitty relationship growing up) because I had adopted him from Olney Elementary's third grade this-is-how-you-take-care-of-a-lizard unit...that apparently happened. Five years prior to this adoption, Becca asked if she could adopt her class' lizard and our parents wouldn't even entertain the thought. Five years later I asked and our family gained a new beloved pet. Similarly, Becca wasn't allowed to have an American Girl doll because our parents thought that they were laughably expensive and frankly, you've got some stones for even asking, missy. But me? Proud owner of both Samantha and Kirsten. Is this evidence that our parents love me more? One could certainly make that argument.

My father, on the other hand, was a big Abu fan. I might even go as far as to say that he was Abu's best friend...? In the whole world...? When I first got Abu, it was very much a FINE, BUT HE'S YOUR RESPONSIBILITY, YOUNG LADY situation, but somewhere down the line he stole Richard's heart and my dad spoiled that damn lizard rotten. Every Friday he'd go into the pet store he passed on his way home from work and buy Abu some new top of the line lizard accessory or gourmet bag of crickets the store clerk promised you couldn't find anywhere else. To give you an idea, Abu came to us in a small plastic fish aquarium and left in a giant glass habitat with mahogany detail, deluxe electric heat rock, and his choice of five high-res images of the Grand Canyon to serve as a backdrop, depending on his mood. (Although he didn't have an American Girl doll, so: Abu: 1, Meg: 1, Becca:...it's questionable.)

As far as pet's deaths go, Abu's was pretty traumatic. (Not as bad as the time Rachel killed my cat when we were in Hawaii and I missed the luau because I couldn't stop crying, but hey—we all make mistakes.) Like any other morning, I woke up, spritzed some water onto the side of his habitat and waited for him to scamper over and PFFFT! PFFT! PFFFT! it up with his little missile tongue. Instead, Abu, who was noticeably struggling to breathe, could only manage to turn his little lizard head towards the water and stick out a tiny portion of his pink little tongue before he collapsed completely. This image is scorched into my memory. This happened 18 years ago and I can still remember what pajamas I was wearing and what was on that bookshelf. It was almost as bad as the Christmas morning my family sat down at the kitchen table for breakfast and our neighborhood fox walked up to the deck and dropped dead. Almost. 

Back in 1993, I freeeeeeaked the fuck out, burst into tears, ran to get my mom and made her call pretty much every veterinarian in the state of Maryland until she found one who'd be like, "A one-year-old shitty little class chameleon? THAT'S AN EASY FIX! Bring 'em on in!!!" But she never found one. SHE NEVER. FOUND ONE. Instead, my mom sat me down on the living room couch and very sweetly explained to me that all the vets she talked to agreed that one year is an impressive amount of time for a chameleon like Abu to live and maybe this was just his time to go. Holy shit. It was horrible.

I blamed myself for Abu's death for months afterward because I was also babysitting Teresa's chameleon at the time, and instead of putting hers in a separate room, I put him on the table across from Abu so they could see each other. I thought he died of jealousy. How tragic is that??

Oh my God. Why did I choose to tell this to you this story? I feel like I'm about to cry and all I want to do is call my mom, but it's 5 o'clock in the morning and I feel like she'd disinvite me to Hanukkah dinner and Lord knows she only makes those sweet, sweet latkes once a year. I am completely miserable, San Diego.

7.) This last one isn't so much a piece of trivia as an anecdote Dan's been trying to get me to tell on the blog for a year now but I've been resisting because it makes me seem...well, racist.

Growing up, I lived a few streets over from an African American girl named Amber who's father was a police officer. A few years ago I somehow found myself having a conversation with a co-worker about how cops are assholes. My co-worker made the point that although yes, most police officers are assholes, it's also a really mentally and emotionally draining job that in the long run can have damaging effects. 

"So many of these cops," she said, "are put in a position where they have to shoot someone on the scene because it's a matter of public safety, but afterwards, it really fucks with their head and they're never the same. Nobody really thinks about that."

"Oh my God, I know exactly what you're talking about," I told her, "My friend Amber's dad was a cop and he had to pull a gun on someone one day and it totally fucked with him. He came home and got his hand stuck in a pickle jar and I remember he lashed out at Amber's mom and she was like, 'It's not about the pickles, is it? You had to pull a gun on the job again today, didn't you?' It really does affects family's lives."

After I said that my co-worker continued on with our conversation, but in my head I stopped and was like, "Huh...I wasn't really that good of friends with Amber. How do I know all of that? Specifically the pickle jar thing. Why can I see that happening so vividly...?" And that's when I realized that that in no way happened to my friend Amber's dad—I was thinking of a plot line from Family Matters. I had just confused the black family in our neighborhood with a cop for a dad with THE WINSLOWS.

I immediately turned beet red and all I wanted to do was acknowledge what had just happened, but I didn't really know this girl well enough to be like LOL RACE LOL!, so I had to just stand there like an asshole and finish having this conversation about my "friend" who's "dad" got his "hand stuck in a pickle jar" and then he and his neighbor got in the "Sexy Urkel Machine" and "Laura" was suddenly "interested" and it was an important "life lesson" about how it's what's on the "inside" that counts.

A year has passed since I told this story to Dan, who has since moved halfway around the world, but I still regularly get text messages from him being like, "I just thought about how you told someone your friend Carl Winslow got his hand stuck in a pickle jar and laughed-out-loud in a meeting," and all I want to do is melt into a puddle and slither out of the room Alex Mack style because it's so fucking mortifying.

So, 7.) I am a racist asshole.

Let’s just acknowledge all the elephants in the room...

(Chris: Now let’s put a picture of an elephant and a picture of a room. Ooo! And can it have a speech bubble that says, “Hi, my name is Chad. I’m in sales.”??

Meg, eager to be agreeable in light of recent events: …Sssssure.)

- Meg hasn’t been posting because she fucked up her hand. Well guess what, butter? It’s feeling better and I’m back. I can grip things again, which is genuinely exciting. And kind of sounds like I’m referring to hand jobs, but I just mean I can blow dry my hair again. And drive stick. If I ever could. Either way, thank you for your patience while my little talon healed.

- Meg and Chris got into a TIG ‘OLE FIGHT. Which didn’t “enhance” productivity, per se. That being said, we’re friends again. The doors of communication were flung open so wide the doorknob made a dent in the side of the wall when I called Chris hysterically crying the night I broke my hand. It was that kind of hysterical crying where you can’t catch your breath and have to repeat everything twenty times because everything just comes out as “ghhhheh, ghhhheh, ghhhheh, GAAAAH!” It was embarrassing. But not as embarrassing as the admission that I don’t remember the twenty minutes of the phone call when he pitched book ideas to me because I took four Tylenol PMs, passed out, and went on “Auto Agree”. But they’re good ideas sober, so we’re back in business!

- Chris hasn’t been posting because he went on an extended “Visiting Loved Ones Who Might Die” tour. It was, to put it mildly, extremely depressing. Silver lining: he found out he’s descended from Pocahontas! Since then, he’s been spending most of his time wearing a denim vest and a shit-load of turquoise jewelry, painting with all the colors of the wind.

- Meg’s dad emailed her last week to reprimand her and Chris for not posting regularly. And SHIT. GOT. REAL. Because you know you’ve fucked up when the official Non-Nagging Parent nags you.

SORR ABOUT THE NAG!!!1!

- The job search has been humiliating for both of us, but probably more so Chris because he's gotten further. He actually got a call from a real live human woman who found his resume on Career Builder and wanted him to come in for an interview. He got a haircut, clipped his moustache, and squeezed into his cotton Dockers and went down for the interview, only to find that the woman who had contacted him had been fired in the interim. He was allowed to interview with someone else who told him not to get his hopes up and assured him that a 27-year-old with a master's degree and three published books is still entry-level. There might be something in King of Prussia in a few months. He will let Chris know. South of the Mason-Dixon, Meg was denied a job at a bakery.

- Chris bought Meg an “apology candle”, but Meg did not return the favor. This will be remedied in 3-5 days. In lavender.

- There’s a porno spoof of Pocahontas called Poke-a-Hot-Ass. This isn’t an elephant in the room as much as a play on words that seriously got Meg through some hard times in 2007.

- Also the guitarist from GWAR died. This has fucked everything up.

- We’re out of elephants (for the moment. The night is young and we have a brand new bottle of generic Adderall), but we recognize that as it stands, this is a short blog post and probably will not suffice. That being said, we also recognize that the entire reason we’re together right now is to do a nauseating amount of editing on book #3 before Thanksgiving and we haven’t started yet. Therefore, I will now show you pictures of things in Chris’ apartment that fascinate me and allow Chris to explain them, if he can.

This ceramic piggyback from Tampa, Florida:

“Oh, I bought that for you during a layover in June. Happy Hanukkah.” [Ed. Note: BOO YEAH!!!!!!!!1!!] [Ed. Note: Full disclosure, I actually said “BOOYAKASHA!!!!!!!!1!!”, which has somehow worked its way into my vocabulary seven years after the fact and taken my self-loathing to a level I never dreamed possible.]

This Gone with the Wind musicbox:

Primarily because this Scarlett O’Hara looks disturbingly like Ex Co-Blogger Eddie.

“A few months ago a friend sent me a package and I undid the paper and the box was for a musical Gone with the Wind musical statuette. I thought, ‘Oh, how funny. She bought me a present and went to the trouble of finding a Gone with the Wind musical statuette box to wrap it in.' Then I opened the box and it was actually a Gone with the Wind musical statuette. It plays 'Tara’s Theme' very, very slowly.”

This large fleece wolf blanket:

“I have a lot of aunts and I’m kind of hard to shop for. I also, in all seriousness, like this and it’s warm.”

This signed picture of Christine Baranski with Certificate of Authenticity:

“This was a gift from the same friend that got me the Gone with the Wind musical statuette. It's also my favorite object in the world. Cut-up episodes of Cybill on YouTube literally kept me from committing suicide in 2008. I wrote a letter to Christine Baranski thanking her and she never wrote back. I don’t blame her.”

This picture of wee baby Chrislet on the fridge:

“I was going to tell you not to put that on the blog, but I’d feel like a bad sport because there are so many pictures of baby Meglet. Note that I’m already worried.”

This compilation of Jeff Leedy cartoons called “The Check is in the Mail”:

We were in a desperate, desperate time crunch while writing Brainwashing... and my discovery of this on Chris' bookshelf derailed us in a way that's borderline concerning. We spent a solid hour curled up on the floor, flipping through this book, laughing at, not with, the cartoonists. Here are some of our favorites:

This ceramic ornament of Garfield embracing an entire turkey:

“Meg, get out of my hope chest.”

In Defense of CJ Fam

If I'm not mistaken, Rebecca Black's viral star has officially become a supernova, right? I mean, she hasn't been a trending topic on Twitter for days now and even worse, I'm writing about her, so she must have as much street cred as a six pack of Coke Blak wrapped in an Ed Hardy shirt. For those of you who have no clue who Rebecca Black is: congratulations. You probably have intercourse on a regular basis. What's that like? But for the sake of us all being on the same page, here's a quick rundown:

So there's this production company in LA called Ark Music Factory. Ark is essentially a Barbizon modeling school for tween girls who want to be pop stars but don't have a lick of talent, bless their prepubescent hearts. To compensate, their parents give Ark $2,000 and Ark whips up a song for them in about five minutes while on the terlet, pops them in front of a green screen, Auto-Tunes the shit out of it until they sound like Stephen Hawking delivering a lecture on the nature of space and time at Cornell and puts the entire thing on YouTube so Baby Girl can go to science class the next day and be like, "SEE?? I told you I had a single, Stephanie." Pretty ingenious, right? Right. OK, so Rebecca Black made one of these videos to a song called "Friday" and the Internet shat itself because it was so bad. Like if we're subscribing to Andy Warhol's whole "Don't pay attention to what they write about you, just measure it in inches" theory, we'd have to measure Rebecca Black in miles. "Friday" was uploaded to YouTube a little over two weeks ago and as right now it has over 62 million hits. She's kicked Justin Bieber's ass on all sorts of charts and consistently trended higher on Twitter than the disaster in Japan. Shit. Be. Ridiculous.

But now everyone's kind of over it and we're all moving on and getting our lives back and one day soon we'll realize it's Friday and think, "Oh, half-price apps ends at 7:30; we should probably hustle," instead of, "FRY-EEE-DAYEE! FRY-EEE-DAYEE! GOTTA GET DOWN ON FRY-EEE-DAYEE!" And it will be good.

So now that we're all on the same page, here's the thing: I don't understand why Rebecca Black was Ark Music's viral meme. Don't get me wrong, Ark Music Factory: LOL. I'm not trying to make this a morality contest; 12-year-old girls paying to make fools out of themselves on the Internet is and always will be funny. But out of all of the stars in the Ark galaxy, Rebecca Black?? I mean, yeah, she kind of sounds like a Canadian robot which is weird because she's an American human and sure, her song gives a whole new meaning to the term "simple", but 62 million?! I think the entire world needs to go back to eyeball school and meet CJ Fam:

Now that is what I call a meme. That deserves 62 million hits. That deserves 137,000 "likes" and over a million "dislikes". That could make The Land of the Rising Sun.......................nope. Executive decision—still too soon. Let's move on. Andrew of the Great Juno Debate sat me down a few weeks ago and told me to watch "Friday" because it's his unofficial job to keep me up on the kids and their haps, and afterwards we explored Ark's other videos and discovered my beloved CJ Fam. I was like, "Oh, well obviously other people will look at Ark's other videos, find CJ fam, The Blogs will pick up on it and BOOM, she'll be the new Rebecca Black. Case closed." But (to my knowledge) it never happened. "Ordinary Pop Star" has over 770,00 hits, but that's just a fraction of Rebecca Black's success and Ark's 15 minutes are quickly running out. And I just don't get it. What happened, world? Why aren't we seeing eye to eye on this one? Why didn't you bust a proverbial nut over CJ Fam like I did? I liked the Keyboard Cat. I Numa-Numa-ed with the best of them. But Rebecca Black > CJ Fam? I thought I knew you... 

10 Reasons Why CJ Fam is more meme-worthy than Rebecca Black:

#10: Rebecca Black seems to be in on the joke; CJ Fam does not
Every interview I've seen of Rebecca Black (which admittedly is one) has given me the impression that she's...well...nice. She just seems like a nice girl who accidentally got über YouTube famous and is aware that any second now the clock could strike midnight and she'll be just another pumpkin at the El Rancho Charter School eighth grade sock hop. She knows she's famous for singing a horrible song and is like, "Yeah, that's fair. I'm not the worst, but I'm not the best. This has been fun though," whereas the majority of people in her shoes would take the, "Y'ALL JUST JEALOUS!!! Y'ALL JUST JEALOUS!!!" route. No matter how shitty her singing is, you kind of have to respect that. And can you really respect a meme?

Also, while you get the impression that Rebecca Black "signed" with Ark to have the best 13th birthday ever, CJ Fam's Ark profile makes it embarrassingly apparent that she's using this as an actual avenue to become a recording artist. And that, like some of the best Shakespearean theater, is both tragic and hilarious. CJ Fam is the personification of Cymbeline. She is Fletcher's The Faithful Shepherdess but less Jacobean and more...rooted...to the ground. By sturdy legs.

#9: Fam's "Ordinary Pop Star" is exponentially more nonsensical than Black's "Friday"
Look, "Friday" is about as creative as a cat licking it's own ass, I'll give you that, but lyrically it makes sense. The days of the week go: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Valid. When getting into an automobile, you typically have a choice of sitting in the front seat or the back seat. I've been there. Everybody has their own concept of what's "fun" and knows what it is. ("Night Court" marathon and a TIG 'OLE spliff.) "Friday" is laughably stupid and I don't remember a time in my life when it wasn't stuck in my head, but hey, that's pop-music. "Ordinary Pop Star", however, empirically doesn't make sense and people who unapologetically dump dumb shit onto the culture landscape deserve our mockery, not nice girls from Anaheim who can't decide if they want to ride shotgun.

Lyrics: "I want to be an ordinary pop star. I want to be like those normal girls. I want to live a regular life again, like going to school and having good friends. You know, you know what I mean?"

Yes. Yes, I do. You want to be an ordinary girl. What you just described is the life of an ordinary girl. An ordinary pop star is a contradiction, because pop stars, by the very nature of pop stardom, are not ordinary people. They are extraordinary. The entire point of the song makes zero sense. It's like saying you want to be a Zionist anti-Semite. Or a carnivorous vegan. It just doesn't make sense, and nobody stopped to tell you that because your parents paid them $2,000 to shut their mouths and go with God. And even if you accept that there is such a thing as an ordinary pop star, they certainly don't go to school or have good friends. They're taught by tutors on a Disney lot and their best friend is a toss-up between a 45-year-old William Morris agent or that guy from craft services who just gets you. That is an ordinary pop star. P-P-P-Pop star.

#8: You went to school with a CJ Fam
We all did. Lord knows I went to school with more than a few. They're big fish in small ponds. They take voice lessons from some broad in a basement between bible study sessions and lord it over the rest of the Fall musical cast that they're classically trained. They don't go to college because they're going to "move to New York and dive right into auditions," but end up working at Hair Cuttery and teaching Tap I to a whole new generation of CJ Fams. All they talk about in school is how they just recorded a demo and Tommy Mattolla heard it and thinks they're going to be the next Britney Spears and it's like, really? You're wearing Keds and we're both struggling to light the same Bunsen burner. Something tells me Tommy Mattolla doesn't know you from a waxed asshole. They're never good people. They're phonies, pure and simple, and phonies deserve 62 million people reminding them of that.

#7: Because both sketchy Ark producers are in her video, erotically nodding


Does that not make you want to put on another layer? A modest Zbornakian cowel neck sweater perhaps? And the best part is that the guy on the right, Ark CEO Patrice Wilson, serves double duty in this video as CJ Fam's producer and chauffeur:

So let me get this straight, Ark: you could find 35 kids to cross their eyes, pretend they're meeting Miley Cyrus and herniate a disc, but you couldn't find AN other man to play the chauffeur? Not her dad? A janitor? Anything? For $2,000, I'd expend a higher level of attention to details, sirs.

#6: Because Fam's video has a glorious fake TMZ montage



My favorite is the ever-so-slightly Lohan/Ronsen-esque one:

I fully expected the next one to be, CJ FAM DYKES OUT WITH TILA TEQUILA AT SKY BAR!!!! And you know what? I think I was understandably disappointed when it wasn't.

#5: Because this is her headshot:



#4: And this photo exists. Period.

I know this is hypocritical because I've certainly shared more of my life online than the average Jane, but I shudder at the thought of my children ever using the Internet. Why? Because one minute they're researching Kubla Khan for a history project and the next they're ambiguously nude on a floral bedspread that says "I HEART U" in rose petals and it's being downloaded by every inmate in Seven Locks. (Fun fact: Did you know that Seven Locks is a correctional facility in Rockville, Maryland? Did you know that it's also the name of my friend Pete's band? It totally is! So you should check 'em out. Once time Pete's girlfriend, Katie, and I were flying back to DC from Miami and she waited in line with me for a really long time at 7 o'clock in the morning to yell at American Airlines for losing my ticket, and when I finally got up to the counter, it was politely pointed out that I was on a United flight. HA HA HA! Ohhhh...we laughed and laughed and then one of us cried. This message brought to you by: friendship.)

#3: Because she's from Ft. Lauderdale
And nothing—and I mean nothing—is as funny to me as the concept of being from Ft. Lauderdale. (Maybe Tampa.) 

#2: Because when she performs she wears a headset and movement clothes:

But when she's off-stage, she just another girl on a Razor scooter in knockoff Garanimals:
 

#1: Because the world needs a chubby Jewish pop star
I understand that the overall tone of this blog post is slightly cruel, but I mean that honestly. I was a chubby Jewish 12-year-old girl once myself who had no idea how to polish that turd and OOF—shit was rough. Thankfully one day I was like, "Threading. Flat iron. Bathing. WORD," but it would have been nice to have an equally awkward-looking tween idol to look up to in the interim. Rebecca Black might be a shitty singer who got famous from an even shittier song, but Ryan Seacrest has hooked her up with a non-cat-fashion-show music contract and I can't help but think that could have been Fam. My sweet, sweet Fam. But maybe it's not too late...?

TEAM FAM FAM-TASTIC 4 LYFE!!!!!1

RE: Yesterday's Post

Oh, I'M sorry, did someone just say...Glamour Shots?

Yep. That just happened. Meg McBlogger. 1991. A modest six-years-young. And just a liiiiiiiiiitle bit Jonbenet-ed out.

Tulane Chris post up later today. In the mean time, you're welcome.

More tales from the Meglet Crypt

Yeah I do. I completely forgot about that promise. But I'm good for it!

Let me tell you why this picture will forever be one of my favorite pictures of all time, despite the fact that it was taken the summer after fifth grade, a.k.a. the start of the darkest time of my life. Besides right now, I guess.

This picture was taken during my Girl Scout troop's trip to Savannah, Georgia, birthplace of Girl Scouts founder Juliette Gordon Low. That was a unique trip. And not because we stayed in a HoJo by the airport and I had my first panic attack during an intense game of sharks and minnows, which was misdiagnosed as dehydration and I had to chug Gatorade until I pissed myself. Well actually, yes, because of that, but also because our troop went to Juliette Gordon Low's house/Girl Scouts Museum for an all-day learning jamboree type thing about technology, and it was there that this picture was taken.

Before I get to the root of this story, you should know a few things about my involvement in Girl Scouts: like most activities I've taken part in, it was motivated mostly by the outfit. I really wanted a Girl Scout's uniform and I wanted patches—glorious, glorious patches!—so I joined Girl Scouts in fourth grade with my friends Meagan, Melissa, Markita and Teresa.

We were kind of the, oh how do I say this politely?, the assholes of our troop. We didn't take part in any of the activities (SAVE FOR ROLLERBLADING AT LONGWOOD REC CENTER DAY!!!1) and had a penchant for wandering off at meetings and hiding out in the teacher's lounge to get hopped up on Sprite and talk shit. Which, I should mention, we thought we were so badass for doing. In retrospect, there's actually nothing less badass than taking a break from your community service group to drink caffeine-free soda in a room surrounded by teamwork posters and abandoned tupperware. But, I digress.

My friends and I were in typical "badass" form at the Girl Scouts and Technology...thing. There was some long presentation (which we obviously didn't pay attention to) and after it ended, we were supposed to break up into small groups and write a 30 second skit to perform in front of the entire jamboree about the importance of technology in society or some shit, using the costume chest to enhance our performances. All we heard, however, was "blah blah blah blah COSTUME CHEST!!!!! blah blah." Meagan, Markita, Teresa and I quickly formed a group, threw elbows to get to the costume chest first and shotgunned three matching princess dresses, which Meagan, Teresa and I wore while Markita settled on this bizarre Friar's costume she found at the bottom of the chest that kind of went along with the princess theme. If you squinted.

During the allotted time to write our skits and while the other groups performed theirs, our group did one thing and one thing only: SPUN AROUND IN PRETTY PRINCESS DRESSES!!! Who can think about writing when you're wearing a princess dress?!?! Guess what I'm wearing right now? A Jäger thong that someone hit me up on Twitter to send me (if you thought I was too good to get my underpants from fans via Twitter, you are sorely mistaken), a t-shirt that says "I'd Rather Be Fishing" and that's the ballgame. Why? Because you can't write well when you feel attractive; everyone knows that.

Before we knew it, we were the only group who hadn't performed and were being called up on stage. I can not impress upon you enough how mortifying this situation was. We didn't have anything prepared—we were in medieval princess costumes to do a presentation on modern technology, for Christ's sake. We kind of stood there on stage staring at each other and exchanging awkward, "uhhh.........uhhhhh's", when out of nowhere Markita, who suddenly had a novelty oversized brass key from the costume chest in her hand, threw on a pair of Oakley sunglasses, took center stage and yelled, "DROP A BEAT!" Meagan, Teresa and I looked at each other with the fear of God in our eyes and rigidly shuffled back and forth while we did a little, "boom-boom, kschhh, boom-boom kschhh". Markita began to rap:

Yo, yo what's up?

I'm Friar Tuck

And I've got the key to technology

So if you want to see my key

You've GOT. TO. BELIEVE.

You've GOT. TO. BELIEVE.

PEACE.

And then she walked off the stage. A hush fell upon the crowd as Meagan, Teresa and I shifted our eyes back and forth and slowly stretched our arms out towards the audience all, "TA-DAH?" More silence. And then the crowd burst into applause. We were the hit of the fucking jamboree, despite the fact that our stance on technology was that for it to be effective, you had to believe in it, like it was Tinkerbell or some shit. I will never forget the lyrics or the tune to that rap for the rest of my life. It's etched in my memory. Like...I would record that now and release it for sale on iTunes if I could. It was just that groundbreaking. The picture above was taken just moments after we got off stage and that is why, despite being from circa middle school, it will always be one of my favorites.

Little did I know that something similar would happen eight years later, only with less successful results. I took some hippie dippie sociology class my sophomore year of college with my friends Ashleigh and Christie to fulfill a Gen-Ed. I completely forget what the class was officially called, mostly because we exclusively referred to it as "Hot Kianda's Class." (RIP) (Side note: I appreciate that even The Washington Post article about his death makes a point to mention that he was "handsome and scholarly." Because I said god damn; yes he was.)

One day Hot Kianda made our class go to a symposium about I-don't-remember-what-but-it-probably-involved-race-class-and-gender-because-I'm-sure-at-least-two-of-those-were-in-the-class-title-because-it's-AU at Howard University. Now, I'm going to be honest with you—sociology doesn't interest me at all. I appreciate that it interests other people, I applaud those people, but to me, sociology is about as interesting as a box of hair. Truthfully, probably less interesting. Thus during said symposium, I kind of just sat in the back, zoned out and listened to the Howard gospel choir rehearse in the auditorium next door. I figured when all of the (many) speakers were done, that would be that and the symposium would be over. Incorrect.

After that we were placed into groups for a group dialogue about...race, class, gender-y...things. To make matters even worse, I was the only person from AU in my group. I was the AU representative in a group of Howard and GW sociology majors and grad students, which should have frightened the shit out of the AU Sociology Department. To make matters even worse still, we had to go around the group and share what constitutional amendment we thought had the most social impact on race, class gender, race, class, gender, jargon, jargon blah.

I was fucked. I couldn't even name a (non-Prohibition related) constitutional amendment, nevertheless one that had to do with whatever the fuck we were talking about. As we went around the circle, my heart started pounding, I began sweating profusely and I couldn't breathe. I had no idea what to say. As the person next to me began speaking, all I could think to say when it was my turn was, "I'M SO SORRY, I'M AN ART MAJOR AND I'M TAKING THIS CLASS AS A GEN-ED AND I DON'T KNOW WHAT THE FUCK ANY OF YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT BECAUSE I DON'T DO ANY OF THE READING AND I JUST STARE AT KIANDA'S ASS DURING CLASS AND WONDER IF YOU COULD BOUNCE A QUARTER OFF IT AND THE IRRITATING THING IS I'LL STILL END UP GETTING AN A IN THIS CLASS BECAUSE IN DESPERATION I'M GOING TO GOOGLE THE TAKE-HOME FINAL EXAM QUESTIONS AND THE ANSWERS WILL ALL BE ON LINE AND IT'S NOT MY FAULT FOR DISCOVERING THAT. IT'S NOT. MY. FAULT!!!!"

But I couldn't say that. So in the micro-seconds between someone telling me it was my turn and me opening my mouth to speak, my options boiled down to:

1.) Go the "WWMD (What Would Markita Do?)" route and rap my way out of it. Which, given my audience, seemed like a grossly inappropriate thing to do at the time.

or 2.) Slaves. Just say, "Slaves." Slavery was legal, then it wasn't, a constitutional amendment made that happen, race was involved, just say "Slaves," hope they think you're high and move on.

By the time I opened my mouth and got "S—" out, the proctor interrupted and announced that time had run out and we had to move on. Everyone in my group apologized that I didn't get a chance to share, I vomited in my mouth slightly, shook like a leaf the entire metro ride home and that was that. Fucking Gen-Eds...

Although, I should say, that class was completely worth taking and not just because of Hot Kianda. You know that token dick in your class who always has something to say about everything and is a pompous asshole and spells "color" as "colour" and you just want to set them on fire? Well, that person in Hot Kianda's class was this god awful girl who I obviously couldn't stand. As she got ready to give her final presentation towards the end of the semester, she plugged her laptop into the projector and gave the class a bit of a warning:

"I just want to say before I turn on my computer that a friend pulled a prank on me and made a gross picture pop up on the screen every time I start my computer or wake it from sleep mode and I don't know the password to change it. I apologize and thank you." Click.

And that's when a giant picture of a naked girl sucking off a very well endowed donkey popped up on the 10-foot wall of one of the giant lecture halls in the basement of Ward and stayed there for about eight seconds, while Bitchface had to stand next to it in shame and Kianda got so flustered that he walked out of the classroom all together. And it was the most magical moment of my life up until that point.

It was trumped, however, two years later when through a series of technological fails, my meeky Costume Design professor was forced to ditch his work computer and plug in his personal laptop into the projector. As he searched the folders on his desktop for whatever it was he wanted to show us, some kid raised their hand and pointed out (and I swear to Christ this is all true) that one of the folders on his desktop was named "Hot Cunts". Incredibly flustered, our professor clicked the name of the file and mashed the keyboard with his fist to rename it anything. PER CHANCE, in doing so, he had renamed the file "JIHAD".

"Sir, now it says, JIHAD!"

...Projector mishaps are amazing. Thank god I believe in technology.