LARRY HAGMAN WAS JUST DIAGNOSED WITH CANCER.

http://insidetv.ew.com/2011/10/14/larry-hagman-cancer/

I can't.

Where do we go from here?

[I'd like to preface this post by saying that I wrote it early yesterday afternoon when I was f-f-fired up. I've cooled down considerably since then (I went over to my parent's house and ate a rotisserie chicken. It's not important), but I still feel like there's an important point to be made here and I want to make it. I've been pussyfooting (vomit, I'm so sorry) around the fact that something's been going on recently, and I irritate the crap out of myself when I get all 2003 emo LiveJournal and hint that something's wrong but don't actually say what it is. So, this is what it is.]

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This might be a little heavy for a Friday, but I want to break the fourth wall and address a few blog comments.

I swear to God this isn't me be sassy, but I'm absolutely looking for a part-time job and am always looking for freelance design work. I just wrapped up two big jobs, so my schedule is now wide open, design wise. If you have any leads, send 'em my way.

And the bigger issue:

Man. I've gotten this comment over and over again since our book came out, and those comments, along with reviews like this one that only bill Chris as the author, are troubling, at best. This book was a 50/50 effort. All of our books have been. All of our books are also written in the third-person about 101 hypothetical scenarios, some of which are centered around men and some of which are centered around women. It seems absurd to me that anyone would assume that just because I'm a woman, I only wrote the scenarios about women, but that's actually what's happening. And not to get all GeNdeR LOLZ! on you, but, frankly, this shit is going to hurt my career. Our writing style, and my writing style in general, is aggressive, dark, and vulgar, which in turn is interpreted as being "masculine". I always thought that my ability to write from both a male and female perspective was a credit to my writing and would make me marketable to television's male-dominated writing staffs, but how are they supposed to acknowledge my skill as a writer if they think I only wrote the 15% of the book that's about periods and hair dye and GIRL STUFFS? This obviously begs the question: why was our book written mostly from the male perspective? Well, I don't know. It wasn't a conscious choice. Maybe it's because I like lampooning frat boys and frat boy culture. Maybe it's because women are taught to be "nice girls" and aren't typically Misanthropes. Maybe it's because I have an aggressive personality and Chris is a man. I don't know. (But it's a damn good question for an intro to gender studies class at Mount Holyoke, I can tell you that much.)

What I do know is that this has been a major blow to me personally and to my partnership with Chris. Every time I have to explain to someone that, no, we both wrote the book and believe it or not, Chris wrote the scenarios about being pregnant and I'm responsible for most of the "Tits! Bros! Booze!" jokes because I'm just that kind of modern 90's gal-on-the-go, it kills me. Just the fact that I have to clarify this right now on my own blog makes me physically nauseous. It's just so much work to not get credit for. And I'm talking about the books and the four years of blogging I did to lead up to the point of even being asked to write a book. 

Intellectually, I know that none of this is Chris' fault, but I still resent him for it and as a result, our relationship has become extremely strained. (I cAn HaZ PeRioD???!~) This situation is also hurting the blog because for the past month or so, every time I sit down at my laptop to write a blog post, I get so mad. Because it's like, what's the fucking point? We write blog posts so we can write books that will end up launching Chris' career?? Fuck that noise. I'd rather just watch old episodes of Maude on youtube and cat nap. Life's too short.

So, this leads us back to the question I posed as the title of this post: where do we go from here? Do I suck it up and risk someone big reading one of our books and only taking Chris to the next level because they think he wrote the majority of it? Do I go around the country slapping a sticker on the cover of every copy that says, "Meghan Rowland: tits like a lady, LOLs like a man!"? Do I save myself the time and give up? I don't know what the right answer is. I've been talking this over with my friends and family and Chris for a few weeks now, and none of us know what to do about this.

So, here's what I am going to do: I'm going to keep blogging. I'm going to write my crass little fart jokes in this stupid little blog everyday, Monday through Friday, like I set out to do four years ago. Because next to playing slightly sharp versions of Hall and Oates songs on the bass, it's the only thing I know how to do, and I am goddamn good at it. I don't know if I'll ever make it as a comedy writer, or if Chris will, or if we will as a team, but I do know that I'd rather keep trying and fail than look back twenty years from now and wonder what would have happened if I hadn't quit. So, I will see you Monday morning because I've got a whole notebook full of post ideas, no job, and $9 in my bank account, and if you have a problem with any of that, you can just suck my dick. Brah.

...And, you know, T.G.I. Hagman.

As of 8:00am on October 14, 2011, Larry Hagman is...alive!

Have a great weekend, everyone. <3

>140

There's a common misconception that just because I'm unapologetically lazy, my apartment must be some sort of squatter-ridden meth house with a single mattress laying on the floor and old Papa John's boxes duct taped over the windows to keep the light out. In reality, that couldn't be further from the truth. Yes, I have some crystal meth and I do like to keep my apartment dark (side note: I swear to God, I recently said "I like my apartment like I like my men: dark and frigid" to a guy in casual conversation and immediately felt uncomfortable because he was ambiguously Samoan looking and I wanted to be like, "WAIT, I'm not trying to pick you up. I just seriously like dim lighting and being chilly." I don't know. I wish I hadn't shared that anecdote with you but I'm too lazy to delete it. This is how rumors get started.), but besides that, my apartment is pretty much always clean and hyper-organized. And yet, if I had a nickel for every time someone came into my apartment and remarked, "Wow! It's actually really clean in here," I'd have enough money to buy slightly more crystal meth. I don't understand how you couldn't think that's an insulting thing to say. It's like a watered-down version of saying, "Wow! Given what a fucking shitshow your entire life is, I expected every surface of your apartment to be covered in fecal matter. Way to Windex!"

Anyway, I was walking around my apartment earlier this evening, as you do, when I noticed this disaster:

I mean...it could not be any more obvious that there's a book missing from that shelf if a cricket with a top hat was standing there, twirling his cane in one hand and alternating between frantically pointing to the gap and awkwardly pulling on his little cricket collar with the other. There are just so many unanswered questions: where did that book go? What book was it? Who took it? Will I ever see it again? Are any other books missing? Is this something I can bounce back from? Is it a sign of a bigger problem if it's not? Would my life be better if I actually had a little cricket sidekick who did vaudeville numbers every time something goes slightly awry? Answers: No clue, not sure, AN ASSHOLE, I hope so, no, yes, and yes.

So that's why I'm up right at now 1:53 in the morning. Being anxious about a missing book and fantasizing about an anthropomorphic cricket. It's a lot of look.

State of the Meg — October, 2011

- Shit went down, I decided to give up on writing, I watched an inspiring video on Facebook, I changed my mind, I'm back. GUNS BLAZING. I was actually supposed to be back Monday with guns blazing, but then I realized it was Columbus Day and no one would be in the office, and Tuesday my Internet was shut off for the majority of the day because I hadn't paid my bill in a month of Sundays. Specifically three months of Sundays, which Comcast has become increasingly less cool about. But! I paid my bill and now I have $9 left in my bank account to get me to next Tuesday. If you'd like to put a tip in the tip jar, that would be awesome. If not, I've got some yogurt in the fridge and a salmon fillet in the freezer leftover from the one time I held book club in 2010, so something tells me I'll be fine.

- AHH, WAIT! BEFORE ANYTHING ELSE HAPPENS AND/OR I FORGET TO TELL YOU FOR THE 6,000TH TIME...our book, The Misanthrope's Guide to Life, is now available for The Kindle. So go download it, or upload it, or interface with it, or however that witchcraft and wizardry works.

- Re: yesterday's post:

IT WAS SO BAD, KYLE. So, so bad. Realistically speaking, I was probably hungover from Friday morning to early Saturday afternoon. I was so hungover I felt homesick. Like, there was that same lump in my throat and waves of sadness kept washing over me and I just wanted a hug from my mom. If I had a gun and a roommate, I would have asked to be taken out back and put out of my misery. On a related note, I'd like to apologize and/or say you're welcome to my Baja Fresh delivery guy, Jose. (I don't know if his name was actually Jose. That's just pure racism right there.) I finally got the energy to go online and order food at about 3:30ish, immediately fell back asleep, and woke up 45-minutes later to angry banging on my door and six missed calls on the phone I had whaled myself on top of. I then proceeded to answer the door in a negligee that in no way housed my breasts, extended a single shaking paw out the door, took my food, mumbled thank you, and shoved pork tacos in my face while watching old episodes of Wings on Netflix. And that's how it was for quite some time. So. Mr. Lethals. Not just a cute name for a drink. More of a lifestyle.

- While I'm issuing apologies, I'd like to apologize again to my Twitter followers for that obnoxious virus I got last week. I normally know better than to click on those virusy links that are like "LOL! I saw a picture of your dick on TMZ last night! Oh my god!!!! Look~!" because I've always got one eye on my dick and one eye on TMZ, but this one was practically tailor made for me:

 

GAHHHH! You got me, you bastards! You got me good. Given how Christ-awful things were going that week, it only made sense that someone was talking shit on some blog somewhere and I completely fell for it. I'm sorry. I lost a crap-ton of followers because of it, if it makes you feel any better. But you know what? That's your loss because you people are missing out on classic Evie/Meg tweets like this little gem:

evie pictures

Yeah, that's me and Evie. BFFs^max. Gettin' ready for bed. Making Blingees. Doin' face masks. I spent the last two weeks house/Evie sitting for my parents while they were in Santa Cruz and Napa (must be nice...) and Evie and I became freakishly close. We were inseparable. And I know you're interpreting me saying we were "inseparable" as like, "Oh, cool, they got a good snuggle session in here and there," but I what I mean is we were inseparable. Like, by the strictest definition of the word. She would not leave my side. I would have to walk her down to the kitchen to eat her meals or else she'd just stay in my bedroom with me all day and not eat. Typically sitting directly on my laptop. Here she is obstructing my view of the classic 1994 film Airheads:

Here is her paw:

Every time I went down into the basement to work out, she'd follow me and jump up on my chest and want to snuggle at inopportune times, like when I was climbing a particularly steep hill on the bike:

(I know I'm not anonymous anymore, but I'm sweating profusely in that picture and the Internet is forever. What do you want?)

So, yeah. No big deal. NBD, if you will. We're just two of the best friends this world has ever seen. Although it did get weird one night when I dreamt that I was back in college and couldn't remember my schedule and was stressing out, so my dream boyfriend and I snuggled on the couch and I was like, "God. This is so nice." Then I woke up and realized I was full-blown spooning Evie. Shit got a little too real, God bless me.

- My dad asked me to do two things while they were away: call Comcast and fix the Internet and set up their wireless printer. Because I already have an established relationship with Comcast (albeit a dysfunctional one), I took care of fixing that problem first. (And because I wanted to watch Airheads.) While I was on the phone with the Comcast tech, I had to go down to the basement, get on my hands and knees, and reach behind the router to unplug it. After unplugging it, I withdrew my hand and realized that I had just inadvertently grabbed a fistful of spiders. Just a whole handful of spiders and spiderwebs. I then managed to do the following without making a single noise or dropping the phone: gag and come dangerously close to vommitting, frantically wipe the contents of my right hand off on a Longaberger basket, jam the receiver between my ear and shoulder, and rip my shirt off with my left hand. I don't know why, but every time I realize there's an insect on me, my natural reaction to rip my shirt off. Even when it's not even on my shirt. This was particularly embarrassing during The Summer of the Cicadas when I was at Best Buy and thought I felt something on my back. "Megan, is there a cicada on my back?" I asked the friend I was with at the time. "Yes Meg, there is," she calmly replied. But then instead of batting the goddamn thing off me, she booked it in the opposite direction, I freaked out, hurled my purse into a rack of candy, and ripped off my shirt in the middle of Best Buy. I swear to God. Then, as I tried to regain composure and get my shirt back on, I heard this little "It's gone!" from halfway across the store in office supplies. Thank you, Megan. Ass.

Anyway, my whole point being, Chris and I worked off and on again for about a year developing a reality show with a few of dat dem der big time Hollywood producers, but they backed out a few months ago. Which is fine because, my God, the weight we'd have to lose. But every now and then a moment like that happens and I'm kind of sad I can't make a gif out of it. So much of my sadness is gif-related. You have no idea.

- I'm speaking at Hood College later this month about blogging ethics and when I told my mom the topic, she laughed-out-loud for a depressingly long amount of time. When I told my sister, she recoiled.

- Fitness First on L and 19th is on my shit list. Hot and heavy. First and foremost: we have to sign out hand towels now and they're limit one per person? Seriously? Where are we—Communist Russia?? Do you want me to till the fields and share my apartment with six of my closest comrades while I'm at it? Second and secondmost: they closed at four on Columbus Day and I walked all the way down there at 4:30 because I didn't know that and was all emotionally ready to work out and was instead faced with the harsh reality of two locked doors. Seriously? Columbus Day?? What is the point of a gym closing on Columbus Day? Do your employees need to go home to be with their families and eat their Columbus Day turkeys and sing Columbus Day carols and open Columbus Day presents around the Columbus Day tree? Shenanigans. Lazy, gym-related, Columbus Day shenanigans. AND that hot guy who's always there when I am didn't ask me out when I told him the score of the Cardinals/Brewers game the other day. I know that's not your fault because I was the one struggling to breathe and wearing six layers of sports bra at the time, but you certainly didn't help.

- While we're on the topic of policy changes, I have a new policy of my own: if you don't lock the door behind you when you go to the bathroom and I walk in on you, I refuse to be embarrassed. It's your fault, not mine. I am so sick of walking in on people in bathroom stalls and fitting rooms and having them treat me like I'm some kind of pervert trying to sneak a peek. I just have to pee, OK? I went to the bathroom, I saw a door ajar, I naturally pushed it open, and lo and behold—there you are with your pants down all, "UM, EXCUSE ME, DO YOU MIND?!" Yes! Yes I do! I don't want to see your junk anymore more than you want to show it to me! And the thing is, this happens to me more than it should. It happened to me twice this past weekend alone. Why aren't you weirdos locking the door behind you? Are you insane?? There's a lock on every public bathroom door in America—use 'em. And let me just address the obvious comment I know I'm going to get: "Oh, Meg, what barn were you raised in? You obviously knock before you go into a bathroom." Fuck that noise! Why should I knock? I'm not coming over to your apartment with a nice bottle of Merlot for an intimate gathering of friends and colleagues—I'm trying to piss at the bar. I can't hear shit over the Wilco that's inevitably being blasted anyway. Just lock the fucking door. And if you don't and I walk in—I will no longer be embarrassed. Effective immediately. EAT IT.

- Alex, Helena and I were supposed to go camping last weekend but it started pouring as we pulled into the campgrounds and we had to throw in the towel. Speaking of towels, I should have known the trip was destined for failure when I realized that I forgot Hat. (Let that speak loudly. Forgetting Hat, forgetting Larry Hagman's birthday...God. Get your shit together, Rowland.) We got drunk on boxed wine in an Olive Garden parking lot instead, so, I mean, the night wasn't an entire loss. More to the point, en route to camping, I made Helena and Alex try my Clear Eyes Cooling Relief drops and they LOVED it. "I know! It's amazing, right? That's why I blogged about it!" Helena was then essentially like, "No offense, but I thought that post was just some bullshit filler and disregarded it. I stand corrected." So, in summary, that post where I recommended you put Clear Eyes Cooling Relief in your eyes and run really fast down a hallway? It wasn't (entirely) bullshit filler. Try it. You won't regret it.

- Speaking of blog posts that didn't get the appreciation I felt they should have, I'm going to re-post the Vance Vance Revolution graphic I made. Not only do I think it's clever, it took an embarrassingly long amount of time to research and create it, and it only got like one comment that was just someone telling me to go fuck myself. So, JIM VANCE: the revolution will be televised.

- I should go fuck myself.

Current State of the Meg: Hanging on by a thread. Slash incredibly aroused by this crisp Fall weather! Six of one, half a dozen of the other.

The Funniest Picture I Have Ever Seen In My Entire Life

I know. It's a pretty big build up. But guess what? I'll deliver. OH, I will deliver.

The Funniest Picture I Have Ever Seen In My Entire Life comes to us from Teresa. (SIDENOTE: Speaking of Teresa, let's briefly discuss last Thursday night. Last Thursday night was a show. An X-rated sideshow from a lost lagoon. I don't even know what that means, but that's where it was fucking from. I've been pretty upset recently for reasons that nobody gives a shit about so let's move on, and Teresa and I went out to dinner at Star and Shamrock Thursday night at about 9:30ish to talk it out. There, I had a hot corned beef sandwich and one meager Guinness because we both agreed we were going to "take it easy". After dinner, however, we went to Jimmy Valentine's and things took a sharp left turn. We were the only people at the bar from around 10:30–1am, and we spent most of that time shooting the shit with the bartender and not taking it easy. Well, Teresa took it easy. I did not. Actually, that's bullshit, because I really didn't drink that much. I had a DC Brau when we first got there, but then I made the questionable decision to down three Mr. Lethals. And I. Said. God. Damn. A Mr. Lethal is like an alcoholic root beer float made with crushed ice, syrup and 100-proof root beer flavored vodka. Needless to say, I got drunk. But like drunk, drunk. Like first-weekend-at-college-lose-your-virginity-in-a-frat-house-bathtub-style drunk. I think I talked to the bartender a lot about my newfound love for the Insane Clown Posse, which seems counterproductive because I'm pretty sure I was also trying to hit on him. I'm also fairly sure I at some point slurred "we're like a psychopathic family", which kind of makes me want to take sixteen showers and change my name. And the text messages I sent, you guys...CHRIST. I think when my blood alcohol level hits a certain point, my phone should just automatically shut off. Like, I should have to blow into a little tube attached to it before it lets me text message anybody. Guys, friends, a parent, my priest, my rabbi, a trusted family friend or community leader—anyone. Because the text messages I sent Thursday night were basically like a one-woman performance of The Aristocrats, except it all lead up to the punchline: "Dude, you should totally come over tonight."

Anyway, besides getting blackout drunk on root beer vodka and hurling my genitals at the world, Thursday night was memorable because at around 1am, this older, yuppie-looking guy came in and made things incredibly weird and uncomfortable. And I'm not trying to be That Girl who's all, "Oh my gawd, why are guys constantly hitting on us?! GA-ross!", but he really was creepy. Like quite possibly has a collection of mannequin hands, creepy. And he was hitting on us. And he was also wearing a wedding ring. Sir, what are you doing at a bar in the middle of the hood at 1 o'clock on a Friday morning chatting up two young ladies, one of whom is clearly a Zima away from being legally dead, when you you have a wife waiting for you at home? Riddle me that. Either way, he wouldn't leave us alone, so Teresa, who had clearly had enough, put the most glorious stop to it. She said, in full Van Der Beek southern accent: "I DON'T WANT. YOUR. LIFE."

I mean, people just don't reference Varsity Blues in everyday conversation as much as they should. Later, when I asked Teresa where the hell that beautiful VB quote came from, she deadpanned: "I don't know Meg. It's been a weird week. Steve Jobs is dead. It's 2011. Anything's possible." ..................I'm sorry, but that is the greatest explanation for anything in the history of everything. Teresa has been my best friend since third grade and I'm not mad about it. She's like the Kramer to my Seinfeld. If Kramer had some tig ol' bitties and kind of looked like Zooey Deschanel.)

OK, sorry for that tangent. Back to The Funniest Picture I Have Ever Seen In My Entire Life. So, let me give you some back-story. Teresa’s boyfriend, Dave, is a rep for a major record label, so the two of them are always at some cool show hanging out with some cool band and just generally being two of the coolest people you’ve ever met. I obviously stopped looking at their Facebook photos a long time ago because I’m a hateful, spiteful, jealous person and it really wouldn’t help anything. So, I was talking to Dave the other day at the bar before Teresa got there, asking him how work was etc. etc. and he was like, “Oh, Teresa and I met My Chemical Romance the other day. Have you seen my Facebook photos? We got a picture with them and I look laughably Photoshopped in.” While obviously a funny concept, I never followed through and looked up the picture on Facebook. Then Teresa brought it up again on Thursday night and was like, “No…really. Look it up right now.” AND THAT’S WHEN MY LIFE. CHANGED. FOREVER. Take a gander:

That is the funniest fucking shit I have ever seen in my life for the following reasons:

1.) Dave really does look Photoshopped in. But like to the nth degree. Alex has this picture with Obama that he looks Photoshopped into, but it’s really only because he’s leaning in from an awkward angle. This shit is on a whole other level. Look at Dave. The scale is wrong, the color is wrong, the lighting is wrong, he's all slap-dash down there in the corner, he's got this look on his face that says, “HEY! LOOK AT THESE GUYS!!1!” and makes it feel like he’s trying slightly too hard…which is all uncontrollably funny because he was actually there. I want to start a Tom Sellek/Waterfall/Sandwich blog where everyday I Photoshop Dave into a picture with another band.

Dave with Aerosmith:

Dave with REO Speedwagon:

Dave with the Spice Girls:

Dave with the Glenn Miller Orchestra:

Dave with Dave:

...I genuinely think it could be a hit.

2.) Apparently it was really hot on the night this was taken and Teresa had been running around all day. After talking to the band for a while, they offered to take a picture with her and Dave. “Here," they told her, "Get the middle and put your arms around us!” It was at this point Teresa became acutely aware of the pit stains on her dress and didn’t want to lift up her arms and risk showing them in the picture. Understandable, right? Not so much understandable was what she did instead: raise her arms as high as they'd go without showing her pit stains and grab the members of My Chemical Romance at that point. Which in this case happened to be square on their asses. So, when given the choice of perhaps having some slight pit stains show in a picture or sexually harass two members of the band My Chemical Romance, Teresa went with the latter. A bold choice. A bold choice for a bold woman.

3.) I don’t know why, but it’s so much funnier to me that this is My Chemical Romance. And that’s not to hate on them—Lord knows there’s nothing I love in this world more than the video for Helena. I used to do that dance at parties in college. (Which answers a lot of questions I have about why I wasn't more popular in college.) My one issue with My Chemical Romance is that because my initials are also MCR, every time they trend on Twitter, there’s like this nano second where my heart drops into my asshole and I’m like, “Holy shit, I’m trending on Twitter!” And then I realize they just announced a tour or something, and all I did was illegally download a few episodes of Selling New York and make a sandwich, so it makes sense that they’re trending and I’m not. Anyway, my point being, had this been any other band in the world, it would have made the picture marginally less funny. But because it’s MCR? Gold.

So, really this picture is funny to me for three reasons. But they’re three solid ones! Either way, I can’t stop staring at it. It’s replaced shirtless Jeremy Piven as my desktop picture. 

I don't know if Teresa and Dave ever want to get married, but if they do, I will design their invitations for them, for free, as long as it can prominently feature this picture. Wanna see my Christmas card for this year?

BOOM. 

Hanukkah cards?

Kwanzaa cards?

I'm set for the holidays. Or any holiday that involves recognizable typography and a hat, really.

I don't know if this is one of those things that's only funny to me, but I feel like we're all richer for me having shared it. So, I guess what I'm trying to say is: you're welcome.

Child Sex Murders

This isn’t a long post, but I’m tired of having a Word file called “child sex murders” on my desktop waiting for something to come a long and flesh it out.

I wouldn’t say I have a love/hate relationship with my mother, but it is something like love/extremely exasperated love. One of Mom’s favorite things is true crime, which somehow serves as an escape for her. She had a small stroke in 2009, and spent all the time she was in the hospital and didn’t have visitors watching crime shows on TV. Somehow, her healing brain got stuck on the switch:

TC: How are you today?

Mom: Oh, mending. I was watching about child sex murders on TV.

TC: Okay, if that’s what’s on, I guess… I brought you some cheese. Do you think you can eat a little?

Mom: Maybe. Help me unwrap it. Can you imagine?

TC: Imagine what?

Mom: How evil those people are. To abduct a child and kill it just because you’re a pervert.

TC: Well, no. Have you heard from physical therapy yet?

Mom: Yeah, they’re designing a program. Vicious bastards.

TC: It’s therapy, it’s not supposed to be pleasant.

Mom: No, not PT. Child murderers. They had one guy on who actually bought…

TC: I SEE YOUR PARENTS SENT YOU AN IRON PLANT IT SURE IS PRETTY I ALWAYS THINK IT’S NICE TO GIVE A LIVE PLANT AND NOT CUT FLOWERS BECAUSE THEN IT STAYS ALIVE AND THEN YOU…

Mom: Why are you so jumpy? I don’t want to talk about that iron plant. Settle down.

[Beat.]

Mom: Anyway, this one killer was so sneaky, he…

I’m exaggerating, but barely. It loses some grandeur in print; I’ve gotten so good at telling it that friends of mine think of it as her trademark story:

Rob: How’s your mother? I thought about her the other day for some reason… oh, there was that awful murder in Brooklyn.

Later that night, of course:

Mom: Oh, I didn’t call for any special reason, just checking on you. Did you hear about that terrible murder in Brooklyn?

On a side note, people have occasionally told me, “Your stories remind me of Augusten Burroughs. Have you ever read Running with Scissors?” I finally did, and now I don’t know how to respond. Nothing that ever happened to me was quite that dramatic, but at the same time I can’t genuinely say “no” if someone asks me, “Have you ever had a depressing sexual experience in a hovel full of mental patients?” Also, if the recipe for literary success is “be gay and know a lot of crazy people,” I’ve got a lock on the Burroughs-Sedaris market.

I've reached An Age...

So… I’m gonna be twenty-seven in two months. This leads me to two points: I’m going to a Gwar concert the day after my birthday and I’m incredibly excited, and I’ve reached An Age. Let me explain An Age. One of my favorite lines I ever wrote was in a blog entry about how my mother is gloomy, and I “quoted” her as saying of the aging process, “you’re lucky to have a week between acne and gout.” I was absurdly pleased with myself for this phrase, so it sucks to be An Age now and realize it’s not true. I’m clearly Getting Older, but my acne is still hanging around, like the last party guest who’s still on the couch at three AM, opening the last bottle of wine and telling you about how the price of gold “is only going to up from here.” I actually bought a blackhead extractor today, you know, so I can dig oxidized oil out of my face. 

Aside from my face, which still has the fresh inflamed bloom of a sixteen-year-old’s, I’m getting older. I’ve been logging these “I Feel Old Moments” and putting them in a Word document titled “Blog About This if the New Goddamn Book Ever Gets Done,” so – now that the new Goddamn book is done – here’s a chronicle of my increasingly headlong dash to the grave. I can only hope that there’s some kind of obscure relationship between my career getting better and my turning into a decrepit old man: I’m perfectly content to be a head in a jar with Danielle Steel-level sales figures. 

- I wrenched my shoulder the other week while scratching my back. The implication is that there are parts of my body that I simply can’t pay attention to anymore because they’re now “too distant,” despite being part of my body. The historian in me thinks about how this is like the Roman Empire abandoning Britain in 410 because it was too expensive to defend. The paranoid in me imagines being attacked at ankle level by a Yorkshire terrier and being unable to do anything about it because it’s too short to reach. 

- I was walking to work the other day and passed a sex store. I thought, “Oh, wouldn’t it be funny to skip work and go in there and poke around?” Then I thought, “That sounds infinitely, infinitely more stressful than just going and teaching kids about the SAT. I don’t want to pretend not to be shocked so the cashier won’t come over and try to guide me gently through the process of selecting a toy that really works the clitoris.” Three years ago I would have gone in and giggled at all the things people put in their butts. (Butts! Tee hee!) Now even thinking about other people’s sex lives makes me very, very tired. 

- A corollary to this: some people are apparently trying to force watersports into the porn mainstream. Not only does this annoy me because “back in my day” that was a fringe behavior, it annoys me that I’ve told at least three people, at length, about how annoyed I am about this. I’m turning into one of those people who rants about declining standards. 

- I’m paying attention to the presidential primaries, which arguably many of the candidates aren’t doing. 

- I can clearly remember staying up late to watch “Aeon Flux” the cartoon on MTV because I was about to be a teenager, and teenagers did cool things like watch weird cartoons with titties on MTV. Now people outgrow MTV by about eight years old and try to lose their virginities by twelve because teenagers aren’t virgins, how lame. 

- I look at the teenagers I teach SAT to and think about how they have their whole lives in front of them. I look at teenagers on the street and wonder why they have to be so fucking loud and weird. 

- Did I buy women’s laxative because it was half the price of gender-neutral laxative, and because I didn’t have anything to prove to the check-out guy at K-Mart? Did I take them one day when I was in a bad mood because I thought maybe “a good clean-out” would cheer me up? Did it work? Yes, yes, YES. 

- When Meg and I were getting cabin fever and frustrated with the new book, I didn’t fantasize about going out and getting wasted and making out with a dumb guy in a bar bathroom.* I fantasized about getting wasted and watching a BBC Mystery! special. 

- I can’t spell a fucking thing anymore, which I’m going to go ahead and chalk up to senility. I used to be a champion speller in elementary school; yesterday I wrote “bicycle” as “bicicycle” because I couldn’t remember if it was an I or a Y and then I just got carried away in the moment… 

*Are you with me on this? If you’re going to make out with a stranger it’s somehow more fun if they’re dumb as a post. I guess it’s because you know you have their full attention. 

The best part about all this Feeling Old business is that it’s freeing. I don’t care about being cool anymore, and increasingly I don’t even care if I look presentable when I leave the house. I used to wonder how 60-year-old men could walk around in jean shorts, black socks, and psedo-Birkenstocks. Now I realize it’s because it’s hot, they don’t want to get little chafe injuries on their feet from the straps, and because they’re sixty, dammit. Anyone who cares how you look while getting a half-price senior breakfast at Denny’s is not your friend.