Does someone have a birthday coming up?

Why, yes! On Thanksgiving, I will turn 23 for the fourth consecutive year. I’m excited because it’s my last good birthday for a while: 27 is “your late twenties,” 28 is “about thirty,” and then decay, senility, death, and reincarnation as a porcupine. So I have one more year of “mid-twenties” to be young and festive and free before Death starts winding me up in my shroud. Mom, never one to be left behind, is already on the case. I hurt my knee a couple of weeks ago. Nothing major, but getting out of the chair was a one-dammit job and getting out of bed usually got a “damn it to hell.”

Mom: Is your knee better?

TC: It’s still a little stiff, but it’s better.

Mom: Well, you’re aging.

TC: I’m 23 for the third time. That’s not ancient.

Mom: No, but it’s starting. You peak in your early twenties and then things just start blowing out, like a Dodge Dart. You’re lucky to get a week between acne and gout. I only really felt healthy for one day in 1976, but then your father…

TC: Did you want something, or is this your usual “remember, man, that thou art dust” Sunday call?

Mom: Yes, I called to ask what you wanted for your birthday! Are you excited?

(Spoiler alert: She called me back to tell me to “just pick out a nice wallet and she’ll send me the cash.” I do love her.)

So, in no particular order, here’s what I want for my birthday (although cash is lovingly accepted):

A tape recording of my mother telling the story of my birth: My mother was in labor for about 62 hours. I have heard about it for 23 and three years. If you want a gay son, start with a “sensitive” child and then tell him about the awful things that can happen to female genitals. My whole childhood, every birthday, she would tell the story ritually like the Seder:

“About now, eight years ago, I was trying to enjoy some pumpkin pie when I noticed a twinge. And then a tearing pain.”

“Yes, about now, ten years ago, the midwife said ‘This child’s head is the size of a cantaloupe. I’ll deny it if you tell anyone I said this, but moonbeams and patience aren’t going to work this time. We’d better go to the hospital.’”

“Twelve years ago tonight, the man you think is your father was feeding me ice chips as you rent my loins asunder.”

Sunrise, sunset. My grandmother thinks this is the funniest thing she’s ever seen and jokes about it every time I speak to her:

“Have you talked to your mother?”

“Yes, she’s fine.”

“Did she talk about childbirth? Did you tell her that if it lasted as long as she said it did, she’d have had to give birth on the steps of the high school and send you directly to class?”

So, for my birthday, I’d like this to be immortalized. I plan to hijack those radio towers and shoot it into space and see what it does to the aliens.

A cardboard stand-up Garrett Hartley: I always wanted a cardboard stand-up and I never knew how to get them. People I knew had them, but they were never of people I liked (how does an eight-year-old even know who Tallulah Bankhead is?) and they were always vague about how they got them:

“Oh, you know, my cousin’s boyfriend’s sister’s… Siamese twin’s… boss’s… birth mother… works at an f.y.e….”

I don’t even know if you can buy them or if they just work through the cycle of store -> kid’s room -> garage -> dorm room once the celebrity in question becomes “ironic” -> bonfire topper.

An engraved flask: I read a comic once in which a character owned a flask that read “The People vs. Character’s Name, Exhibit A” and I thought it was the funniest thing I ever saw. I always half-meant to get my flask engraved with something similar – Delaware vs. Tulane Chris, Exhibit A or similar.  It has to be a weird jurisdiction, I think. Some “why were you there?” kind of place.

An exotic pet: When Giant Camel and I were first dating, he took me on a terrible date. (I may have mentioned this.) Not the “I’m lost in the woods and the only prescription is more Entourage” date, but down there. We went to the “Austin” “Zoo.” “Austin” is in quotes because it’s several miles out of down some “Your Mom Kills and Eats Passersby” dirt roads, and “Zoo” because zoos are fun, and this place is anything but. All of the animals are rescues, which is noble, but they all have hardcore shell shock. They don’t scamper or scurry or eat little things with their paws or make sounds. They sit in their enclosures and try to heal, and it is grim, grim, grim. Fully half of the animals were rescued from “a traveling religious circus,” which fascinates me completely. Their two “features” animals – their pandas and elephants – were a binturong and a New Guinea Singing Dog. The only notable fact about the binturong they’d put on his label was “many people think binturongs smell like Fritos.” They do, so now of course I think Fritos smell like sad, abused tree mammals and can’t eat them anymore.

I’ll believe that the binturong was real, although it may have been a wet carpet sample, but I call applesauce on the New Guinea Singing Dog. A-pple-sauce. It was clearly a dog, but… no. I don’t buy it. It wasn’t singing or violently masturbating, which is what Wikipedia would have me believe is what they do. So, for my birthday, I want an actual, factual, screaming, masturbating, New Guinea Singing Dog. Failing that, I want any creature whose name fits the pattern

[exotic island] [activity] [general animal]

Madagascar Hissing Cockroach

Tonga Worrying Thrush

Greenland Vomiting Sloth

Sri Lanka Critical Hen (“You call this a coop? This is a shithole. Bok.”)

These are starting points, obviously.

Tickets to the Traveling Religious Circus: Yes, yes, a thousand times yes. I have to know. Is it one religion or kind of a smorgasbord? How closely do they hew to the circus theme? The bearded nun! Shooting a rabbi out of a cannon! Orange-robed Buddhist monks on the flying trapeze! A human pyramid of whirling dervishes! (Yeah, I know it’s probably just a buzzkill about hell, but a man can dream.)

A layered meat: Would you believe I’ve never had a turducken, let alone one of those old-woman-who-swallowed-the-fly Bedouin stuffed camels? Granted, I probably couldn’t ever eat an actual camel – I’d imagine my own camel’s sweet scowling little face – but I’m in love with the idea and imagine myself burrowing in until only my fat little feet stick out cartoonishly from the side of a buffalo. “2Birds1blog Investigates: the Interior of a Meat.”

A big Cadillac with longhorn horns on the hood and a horn that plays “The Yellow Rose of Texas”: Because I’m an asshole. I want it to be a garish color and for the stereo to only play Hank Williams and Patsy Cline.

But as I said, cash is lovingly accepted.

Oh, and FYI:

It's T.G.I. Hagman—TELL 'EM WHAT THEY WANT, SON!

As of 1:16am on November, 19, 2010, Larry Hagman is...alive! And holding out on TNT's Dallas 2.0 remake for more money, apparently. You know, on top of the $11.1 million dollar Citigroup lawsuit he won last month. I can only assume Hagman's been stockpiling all this money recently because he's got a secret plan to repay a certain "self-financed", "terrace-dwelling" blogger for keeping his name relevant among the hip and happenin' young kids all these years, asking for nothing in return except for him to, you know, not die. Right? RIGHT?! Larry Hagman: keep living if that's your big, secret plan.


As of 1:27am on November 19, 2010, Larry Hagman is...still alive! YES! I knew it! I'm going to buy two solid gold pugs and name them J.R. and Sue Ellen. And together, the three of us shall: buy a ranch; name it "Southfart"; move in; throw glamorous, yet slightly country parties; drink Maker's Mark out of porcelain dog bowels; and sexually harass our secretaries all day until we pass out or die trying. Not necessarily in that order.


And with that, I wish you a good weekend.
xo.

Charlie Brown's Statutory Thanksgiving

Although Fall is always a very nostalgic time for me, this Fall in particular has made me incredibly nostalgic for college. Everything these days reminds me of it. The change of the seasons; the smell of the cold; cozy sweaters and Ugg boots; vomitting Goldschläger and wondering how many papayas in Zimbabwe those real gold flakes dancing around my toilet bowl could buy—it all just puts a little lump in my throat and makes me wish I could go back and do it all over again. Which is kind of odd, considering I spent a good 60% of my college experience hating life and wishing it was over and done with. But now that I've been out of school for three years and the Quarter-Life Crisis' claws have a vice-like grip around my life, I can't help but think, it wasn't that bad...was it?


I have a very complicated love/hate relationship with my alma mater. On one hand, I never actually wanted to go there in the first place. AU was my safety school and I guess nobody's really like, "HURRAY!!! WE'RE GOING WITH PLAN C!!!!" On the other hand, once I actually got there, I slowly realized that most of my new friends were smarter than me and it felt like maybe I should pipe down, feel lucky to be there, pick up a book and learn some shit. But then again, the giant bureaucratic circle jerk that is the AU administration made my life hell, and I loathed the average AU kid; or "WONKS", as I believe they're called now. (We just called them "ASSHOLES" in my day, but those were simpler times, weren't they?) But on the other hand, I met most of my favorite people at AU. Alex, Helena, Laura, both Andrews, Ex Co-Blogger Eddie, Ashleigh, Lara, College Roommate Danielle, Rachel, Dan, Jenna, Carl—all AU Eagles. But do I feel like I got an education there that I couldn't have gotten for significantly less money at UMD? Not really. See? I waver. But god forbid I hear someone talk shit about AU or I'm all up in their face with more glowing statistics about our academics and rankings than an admissions counseler on crack.


A few months ago (I think?) I was at a party or something talking with some friends of a friend (I know this intro sounds incredibly vague, but then again I don't remember an entire week of October. During these trying times, you're just going to have to bear with me,) and one of them asked me where I went to school. "Oh, I went to AU," I replied. Two of the girls instantly turned to each other and burst into laughter.


"Sorry, we don't mean to laugh, it's just we have this inside joke with our friends that AU is a fake school." That's when I gave her a look that clearly conveyed, "I have a liver full of three glasses of Robert Mandovi and a hot Irish temper—shall we dance?" and the other started to back-peddle.


"Well, I mean, we know it's a real school. It's just we used to drive by it on Mass every morning on our way to work and we never saw anybody walking around there. So we had this joke that nobody actually went there and it was like just some big conspiracy or something."


Now, from the amount of shit I talk about AU on a daily basis, you'd think I'd be like, "Ha ha, yeah, well, it might as well have been a fake school from the education I got," or something, but instead I freaked out all, "OH, I'M SORRY, BUT WE DON'T GO TO CLASS IN THE MIDDLE OF MASSACHUSETTES AVENUE LIKE A PACK OF WILD STREET URCHINS ROAMING THE CITY, PICKING UP BITS OF KNOWLEDGE AND HOT DOG SCRAPS WHEREVER WE CAN—WE HAVE AN INTIMATE CAMPUS TUCKED AWAY FROM PRYING EYES. THAT'S RIGHT, A CAMPUS IN THE CITY. IT'S THE BEST OF BOTH WORLDS. AND IT'S A GORGEOUS CAMPUS, BY THE WAY. OUR FRIEDHEIM QUAD WAS DESIGNED BY FREDERICK LAW OLMSTEAD, DESIGNER OF A LITTLE SOMETHING CALLED CENTRAL PARK. EVER HEARD OF IT? YEAH. THOUGHT SO. EVER HEARD OF JUDGE JUDY OR GOLDIE HAWN? YEAH, TOKEN ALMUNAE. NO BIG DEAL. SO I RECCOMEND YOU SPEND LESS TIME MAKING INSIDE JOKES AND MORE TIME TRYING NOT TO SUCK MY DICK SO HARD."


And then six hours later and I was back to making "the Harvard of Spring Valley" jokes. 


But there's one aspect of AU that I have never, and will never waver on: the food. (Slightly predictable, I know.) The food at AU is delicious, and it certainly made those four years more do-able. I remember when I was a senior in high school looking through Princeton Review books, the little "at-a-glance" survey for AU was always like:

Campus Life

Liquor is popular

  Drugs are popular

       Most students smoke

                 Most students are unhappy

                                                  The food is amazing. But like, stupid amazing.

And that's when I said, "Sign this girl up."

Helena was over one night a few months ago and we started talking about how much we missed college and how our sophomore year was the best year ever, and we miss the food and OH MAN—REMEMBER TDR THANSKGIVING??!!

TDR Thankgiving was the pinnacle of our year. (Or my year, at least.) Every year, the week before Thanksgiving break, TDR (or, the Terrace Dining Room, if you will. Basements are called "terraces" at AU. It's kind of like how White Town calls being unsigned, being "an independently financed band." It just sounds more dignified. American University—polishing that turd since 1893.) holds a big, delicious Thanksgiving dinner and it was always the best day of TDR food evz. Suddenly Helena and I had hatched a plan to figure out the date of this year's TDR Thanksgiving; find a freshman who'd obviously have a shit ton of meal blocks leftover because when you're a freshman, your parents are like, "GET THE 5,000 BLOCK MEAL PLAN! MY BABY WILL NOT GO WITHOUT!" and then the next year they wise up and send you off with a pack of Luna bars and their best wishes; get them to swipe us in; and FEAST  slash relive some of our old college glory days. It was an amazing plan. But where to find that freshman...?

And that's when fate came a-knockin' on my door. Or blog, as it were.

And Bingo was his name-o. Well, Meaghan, actually. AND GOD BLESS HER HEART. Because last night she and her friends swiped me, Helena, Laura and Andrew of the Great Juno Debate into TDR Thanksgiving and then into our old dorm to let us wander around and reminisce. And the results were...mixed.

First and foremost, homegirl and her friends were friggin' adorable. I should really meet up with readers more often because I never don't like them. Although it did freak me out that they were all class of '14. '14! What's even the point of going to college at that point? We'll all be dead by then. But, really. Adorable. She took a picture with me to send to her mom. I mean, really.

Second and secondmost, TDR Thanksgiving did not dissapoint. Being in TDR felt like being home again, and I mean that in the least morbidly obese way possible. It's just whereas the rest of our newly renovated Mary Graydon Center now looks like a discarded set from a "Saved By the Bell" episode heavily centered at The Max, TDR looks exactly the same. And there's something oddly comforting about that. Come, take a walk down memory lane with me:

The old Salad Bar! This takes me back to four years of meals spent with Ex Co-Blogger Eddie being like, "Did you know that colleges wash their lettuce in sugar water so that the girls with eating disorders who only eat lettuce get some amount of sugar?" And me being like, "That's the biggest crock of shit I've ever heard. Because if that were true, how could diabetic students eat salad?" And her being like, "No, it's true." ...I don't really know why I told that story, except to point out one more time that I think I'm right.

The old Comfort Zone.

Truly the finest zone of them all.

This image is pretty much all I think of when I think of TDR. That queer little bin full of chicken and the vat of queso and hot dogs. 

And the french fry station and how the quality of my day was dicated by whether or not they had curly fries. This, clearly, was destined to be a poor night.

TURKEY CARVING STATION!!!1

That, again, has nothing to do with TDR. That's a picture of my freshman year Understanding Mass Comm professor, Daryl Hayes. His class came up in dinner conversation and I remembered what a huge crush I had on him. He had this absurdly soothing voice and he was always flicking the front part of his hair away with this graceful little -swoop!- and it was hypnotizing. He was also brutally honest that he was never going to remember all of our names, so on the first day of class, he took a picture of each of us holding a sign with our name on it in front of our chests. Just think, he has that picture somewhere...

Which is why I don't feel awkward that he's now my phone's screensaver.

So, yes. Dinner was magical, the reminiscing was magical, but then we made the mistake of asking if we could tag along and come back to the dorm with them. And eesh. Shit crossed over from, "OH HA HA REMEMBER WHEN?" to being curled up in the fetal position, weeping, and harrassing young students as they tried to study and/or go to bed.

Before I go into this, I just need to express what a poignant year of my life sophomore year, living on the second floor of Hughes Hall was. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. That year, by the fate of the Housing and Dining gods, a motley crew of 40 of the most random, off-beat, and fun people you'll ever meet were gathered together to live on the same floor and the results were, in my mind at least, epic. I would love to write a short story about said experience and the characters involved. Maybe I will. Good. Done. Goals.

Anyway, because I associate Hughes Hall with all of these powerful memories and because I hadn't been there there since moving out, being back there last night was an incredibly bizarre experience. Like the smell of it. It smelled like all of these random, yet oddly specific moments that weren't necessarily important to me, but are clearly still floating around my subconscious. I can only imagine what Meaghan and her friends thought of the four of us, barging our way into their dorm, wandering around, frantically sniffing the air and alternating between shouting, "THIS IS WEIRD," "I'M NERVOUS," and "DO YOU MIND IF WE GO SMELL THE FORMAL LOUNGE?!"

After we thoroughly sniffed out the lobby, we went upstairs and Meaghan showed us her dorm room, which is when Andrew got sufficiently spooked and bailed. Laura, Helena and I, however, wanted to press on and go downstairs and revisit the old second floor. To me, this seemed like a completely reasonable thing to want to do, but apparently to a bunch of 18-year-olds, it's kind of "weird" when three 25-year-old women come up to your place of residence at 10 o'clock on a Wednesday night to wander around all, "NO, IT'S COOL, WE LIVED HERE IN 2004!!!" 

Although, we did run into one kid who was actually pretty cool about us being there. (AN single kid.) He gave us the skinny on the floor's 2010 shenanigans and was even up for listening to us talk about how it was in our day, even if it was just because he didn't want to do his business homework. Although I did appreciate this conversation:

Kid: So where do you guys live now?

Me: I live in Dupont.

Laura: Cleaveland Park.

Kid: Oh, wow, that's cool!

Laura: Yeah. We moved slightly further down the red line. It is really...cool.

Things could have ended there and I suppose it would have been fine, but I got it in my head that I really wanted to see inside my old dorm room. (Remember: so much happened there.) In my head, this is how it would go: I'd go down to my old room, the door would be open, two kids would be listening to music and browsing the 'nets, I'd be all, "Knock, knock. Hi, I used to live here back in the day. Just thought I'd shoot down and take a gander." "Oh, that's cool." "Welp, thanks!" "Later." But of course, nothing in my life is ever that easy.

First, our new Hughes Deuce ambassador advised me that given who lives in my room now, he didn't think it would be a great idea if I asked if I could go in and see it. And look, I liked this kid. I trusted him. I was willing to abandon my dreams and let that be that. But then suddenly, a kid who looked pretty much like The Bee Keeper from Wet Hot American Summer, if he took a shower, walked off the elevator and into the lounge, and my new friend nodded in his direction and gave me a, "That's him!" look. Ok. Point taken. He looked sufficiently weirded out that we were even standing in the hall, nevertheless trying to get into his room. But I was still undecided. I asked Laura what I should do—"Let it go." I turned to Helena—"I say do it." Damn.

Suddenly, The Bee Keeper walked out of the lounge and started heading for the stairwell. My chance to see my old room was about to slip out of my hands. And that's when one of Meaghan's friends we went to dinner with, Alyssa, walked onto the floor and said hi to The Bee Keeper. WE HAD A MUTUAL FRIEND! Now it wouldn't be weird if I asked him if I could see his room! But he was about to leave—time was of the essence.

Thus, feeling the pressure, I lunged towards him and shouted, "CAN I SEE YOUR ROOM!??!?!"

OK, that wasn't quite the way I had originally planned on asking, yes, but the moment was slipping away from me and I had a goal. You would have done the same. DON'T JUDGE ME.

That being said, he looked at me like I had just asked if I could check him for ticks.

"Uh...you want to see my room?"

"Yeah. I used to live there and we're back tonight and I just was wondering if I could see it for old time's sake?"

After some cajoling, he begrudgingly agreed to take me down and show me the room. We walked down and he opened the door wide enough so I could see in, but not quite wide enough so that I'd feel invited to physically enter.

"Well, this is it," he said. 

"YES. IT. IS." A flood of memories, some good, some bad, came back to me. That year man. That fucking year. I was a bit caught up in my emotions while simultaneously trying to carry on a conversation with this kid who obviously didn't trust me or what I was doing there, and as we all know, multi-tasking is not one of my strong suites.

"So, which side of the room is yours?" I asked, somewhat absentmindedly.

"Uh, that one," he said, awkwardly nodding towards the far side of the room.

"That was my side of the room too!" I said. My eyes went up to the curtains and I imagined the star-shaped twinkle lights my roommate had put up hanging over them. My gaze wandered to the wall where I hung all of my pictures, down to the heater, and stopped at the bed. I imagined my navy sheets and the white and navy toile duvet cover I bought at Ikea the summer before on the bed where his blue rumpled sheets were currently wadded up in a ball.

"Yep, I used to sleep in that bed," I said. Except I didn't really say it like that. And he didn't know that I was thinking about my navy sheets and toile duvet cover when I said it. And when I feel awkward but am trying not to be, sometimes the tone of my voice auto-pilots onto: FLiRt! mode. So it came out sounding a little bit more like this:

"AHHH. Yyyyyep. I used to sleep...in that bed. Wiiiiink!" The Bee Keeper immediately backed into the hall, forcing me out of the doorway, and slammed the door.

"NOPE. NOPE. THIS IS TOO WEIRD. THAT'S ENOUGH. THAT'S BEEN ENOUGH FOR ONE NIGHT. YOU SAW IT, YOU CAN GO NOW." 

"No, wait! I didn't mean it like that!" I yelled after him, as my friends, Meaghan, Meaghan's friends and our newfound Hughes Deuce friend stood there laughing at me. "Well, thank you for letting me see your room!" The door to the stairwell slammed.

I think our original plan was to stick around and have a drink with the girls, but after that I just felt insanely creepy and wanted to get the hell out of there as fast as I could. A line had been crossed. Well, I think a few lines had been crossed (some by accident) but it was definitely time to go. 

We said our goodbyes to our new AU friends and ran across the street just in time to catch the shuttle bus. As we rode to the metro, I got more and more fired up about what happened with The Bee Keeper. I mean, first of all, I was obviously not trying to pull anything with that kid. And if I were to pull anything with anyone, it would have been with that Hughes Deuce kid because he wasn't horrible on the eyes and seemed to have a considerably more open mind. Second, you should be so lucky that I physically come to your person, ask you to take me to your room and pull something with you. My ex-gentleman friend from New York texted me, "text me something raunchy" last night, and I didn't solely based on the fact that I couldn't reach my phone without raising my torso and I was watching Netflix. YOU. SHOULD. BE. SO. LUCKY. Third, just be cool about shit, kid. That situation would have been infinitely less awkward had you not been so awkward about it in the first place. I wasn't asking to give you a colonoscopy with my beak; I just wanted to see my old room. React accordingly.

When we got to the metro and it was time to say goodbye to Laura and Helena, I was livid. "I MEAN, I'M NOT CREEPY, AM I?" I asked them.

Laura responded first, "I mean, I don't think you are, but then again I've fallen asleep with you before."

I don't know why, but that statement completely hit the spot. I think it's because it's just such an ass-backwards way of saying, "I don't think you're creepy, but then again we're friends." Oh, Laura.

I think all in all what I've learned is that although it was fun and meaningful at the time, it's probably a good thing that we're not in college anymore. Procuring the money to buy alcohol is hard enough, nevertheless having to go that extra step and hide it. Not to mention the actual work involved in going to school, which is an aspect I always forget about. I mean, nowadays when I have a hard day at work, it's generally because "Night Court" isn't available on Instant Watch, Subway doesn't deliver and I lost a few Twitter followers. Can you imagine if a group meeting was somewhere in that mix?? Although my (unemployed) lifestyle may suggest otherwise, adulthood can be pretty cool. 

Plus, those college guys are fuckin' prudes.

On Today’s Episode, Tulane Chris Answers Recent Readers’ Questions, Then Goes on a Weird, Emotional Tirade about Breast Cancer in Advertising

“Will you make bad internet dates a regular feature on the blog?”

Not regular, although I might get drunk enough to do it occasionally. I don’t have a huge amount of free time, and I’m a little nervous of where the feature might lead. I’m afraid I’d develop a tolerance pretty quickly, and then it’s all “Is this guy posing with a power drill and a cow’s skull really weird enough? I don’t know. Maybe I should go with the leper.”

“What did Giant Camel say about the internet date post?”

He said, “That’s the funniest thing you’ve ever written. Are you going to marry him and triple-barrel your name? Blogger-Blog-VenomKitty? Wait, is this the fat guy who hangs out in front of the art supply store and hits on the road crew?”

“Doesn’t Tulane Chris live with Giant Camel?”

Not at the moment. Giant Camel allegedly went back to Texas to take a contract job, but I suspect something more sordid.

“Why don’t you make ‘sorr’ cards for special occasions?”

I have mixed feelings about this. One the one hand, part of the beauty of ‘sorr’ is its spontaneity: “Did you vomit in my purse?” “Sorr about the bag…” On the other hand, I would love to see nice ivory cardstock, deep-embossed with legends like “Sorr you’re such a bitch,” “Sorr your marriage has failed as disastrously as your business” and “Sorr your children were such bitter disappointments.” File this one under development. Someone did make a “sorr about the bag” e-card.

“Why don’t you create a nemesis for Kevin Yang called Kevin Yin?”

I don’t mind this idea. Kind of an eternal “Spy vs. Spy,” played out in every bakery, interracial gay bar and Vans outlet between Florida and Hong Kong. I’m hitting a wall imagining Kevin Yin, though. Would he just be barely skewed Kevin Yang? Different color sneakers, hair parted on the other side, goes on disastrous non-dates with Hispanics? Works in a diner instead of a bakery, smokes pot instead of drinks? If they ever meet, the universe will be instantly eradicated by the explosion into life of another, grander universe, full of powdered sugar, incoherent similes, and shitty makeouts on an air mattress? I bet we could sell this as a comic book if we worked on it.

“How about an ‘Around the World with Tulane Chris’ feature?”

I’d like to quote here a conversation I had the other night with a friend who’s teaching English in Vietnam (Vietnam. Imports: French, American, and Chinese soldiers. Exports: French, American, and Chinese soldiers with gonorrhea):

College Friend Nora “Apples” Podjeska: Oh, you should come visit me here.

TC: That’s not terribly realistic. I buy irregular underpants in bulk . I don’t think I could afford…

CFN“A”P: But you’d love it. There’s so much history, and there are all these beautiful gardens, and the food is so good and cheap. You like Asian guys, don’t you? I bet for five bucks you could go to town.

TC: As tempting as that sounds, I’m not entirely sure…

CFN“A”P: It would take a little getting used to. There are crowds everywhere – Chris, everywhere – and we live next door to a dump so there are minor odor and vermin problems. Just wear a lot of cologne and wash your hands a lot.

TC: I already do.

CFN“A”P: You might have a little problem… I mean, the thing about eating dogs is true. It’s fairly upsetting the first time you pass a butcher’s, and anyway, you’ve always been good in a crisis. You’d love it. Except for the crowds and the dog-eating. Oh, and leave your shirt on so they can’t see your “Better Dead than Red” backpiece. It’s not really funny here yet.

Did you catch that she described my theoretical vacation as a “crisis?” I would like to visit her and see Vietnam, but somehow setting it up as “spend a lot of money to interact with your three least favorite things: people who hurt dogs, large crowds, and totalitarian government” didn’t… sell it. I do love to travel and I do regret not having the money to do it. When I was younger (last week) I used to fantasize about becoming a travel writer. So, if you send me somewhere, within reason, I will write about it. However, until then, we’ll have to settle with tucking a little imports/exports behind every country I mention. (India. Imports: tech support calls. Exports: the phrase “Have you tried turning it off and then on again, sir” in perfectly grammatical, heavily accented English)

………………………………INTERMISSION………………………………

"If a tree falls in the woods and no ones around, does it raise awareness of breast cancer?"

I’ve waffled on writing about this because I was worried it would be misinterpreted, but after seeing someone else with similar opinions, I decided to wade in. I’m tired of breast cancer branding. It upsets me and I don’t think I’m alone.

Point the first: ubiquity. I have seen breast cancer-branded: wine, eggs, yogurt, snuggies, football games, Waxahachie Fire and Rescue, water, meat, tennis balls, scrubs, soybeans… Overexposure makes anything stale. Notice how even Leno gave up Paris Hilton jokes? When something’s completely expected, it’s simply not a grabber anymore. The newspaper seldom reads “Sun Rises in East; Proceeds Westward Across Sky.” It’s just another bland truism: congress is bickering instead of running the country, today’s teenagers are shocking, and there are little pink ribbons on every available surface.

Point the second: What do they mean by “awareness?” These labels all seem to read that they’re trying to raise “awareness.” Well, of what? The overwhelming majority of people know that there’s a disease called breast cancer. Just saying “breast cancer breast cancer breast cancer” over and over doesn’t do anything. The snuggie isn’t embroidered with the phrase “Women over 50 should have regular mammograms.” One egg in every dozen doesn’t crack open to reveal a little folded sheet explaining how to do self-exams. At halftime, Garrett “Sugar Balls” Hartley didn’t show a PSA about how some high-risk women may need to be screened for the BRIC gene. Just because someone’s talking doesn’t mean they’re saying anything. Is it too idealistic to just want a poster that says, “Get a damn mammogram?” Ellen and Designing Women both did Very Special Episodes about breast cancer, in which characters went to the doctor and learned about it. It wasn’t just Jean Smart and Delta Burke sitting around saying:

“Did you know that breasts can develop cancerous tumors?”

“Yes.”

“Me too. Do you think I should tell Julia? JULIA! DID YOU KNOW….”

Point the third: How much money is actually going to breast cancer research? I can’t say for sure, but I’m inclined to agree with the author of the post I linked to above that changing the packaging probably costs more than the donation, at least in some cases. This makes it, essentially, an advertising expense, on par with adding the word “X-TREME.” A lot of products say “a portion” of the proceeds go to breast cancer research. That could mean any damn thing. 0.001% is technically a portion. Yes, it’s still better to have the money for research than not, and it’s naïve to expect businesses to do anything for the common good, but still. It’s slimy.

Point the fourth: It is ghoulish. When I was a child, my mother had a breast cancer scare. Everything turned out to be fine, but it was very tense for a while. It offends me that these companies are essentially profiteering off this. “Don’t you wish there was a cure? Buy these green beans. If you care about the women in your life, you’ll buy this battery!” I get enough nagging about whether or not I love my mother from my actual mother – I don’t need Piggly Damn Wiggly weighing in. And besides, don’t you think women who have breast cancer deserve a break? They can’t leave the house – hell, they can’t open the cupboard – without being reminded that they’re sick. But they’re not struggling in vain! Their illness helped sell some peas. If this blog folds, I’m going to start making candy and selling it under the name “Chris’s Costochondritis Snaps.”

This wasn’t as funny as I thought it would be, and I realize it’s because I’m genuinely angry. I’m willing to concede that a lot of individuals involved in these marketing decisions may have been very well-meaning, but I also don’t think that’s really the point. Good intentions are useless without common sense. A small check to a reputable charity does more than a cartful of pink-ribboned groceries, and it’s more civilized. If the breast cancer branding is as successful as it seems to be, we may be perilously close to seeing Uncle Ben’s colonoscopy.

Also about women: My school’s sororities recently did their community service push. One of them chose violence against women, so they covered the lamps on the main campus thoroughfare with sheets of awareness-purple acetate… which made the whole area much darker… and significantly more dangerous…