A very zen approach to having a panic attack.

I'm Fucked: A Series of Haiku Poems
by Meghan McBlogger

Labor Day was brief,
Conference calls and dog-walking;
Can't turn off my phone.

Early to rise and
Scramble to put out big fires
Not of my making.

Mr. Foxx once said,
Blame it on the alcohol!
My boss prefers me.

Communication
Is the key to good business;
Got no Blackberry.

I emailed you twice!
Saturday nights reserved for
Red Stripe, not email.

I shoulder the blame
So my boss looks less inept,
Hark! It's Saint Meggles!

Scene from Rock of Love:
Don't throw me under the bus!
My boss is Lacey.

An office full of
Executives not so pleased,
Thank God for Xanax.

Feeling depressed I
Struggle to courtesy laugh;
You aint no Saget.

Oh, VP of Sales!
I've met you one-thousand times,
You should know my name.

I anxiously wait
For Boss number two to come.
Enter, Diablo!

What would Diane say
If I get fired today?
Goodbye apartment.

Twirling and whirling
Sliding down the pole with ease,
A limber new job.

A silver lining!
No dress code and finally
Some health insurance.

Drinking Game Friday is totally roofus

Happy Drinking Game Friday everyone! I had planned to spend this DGF at home in my bed, far, far away from this office hell hole, but my request for a day off was Denied with a capital D. Why? Because a contractor is stopping by this morning to pick up a key. That's it. That's the entire reason I'm in the office today. To slide a manila envelope across my desk, smile and say, "you take care now." Why I can't just leave the key with our concierge at the front desk is beyond me, but as far as depressing aspects of my life go, I've got bigger fish to fry.

Yesterday I realized something: I have a problem. And if I've learned anything from Intervention, it's that admitting you have a problem is the first step towards recovery, so here it goes. Deep breath. I, Meghan C. McBlogger am a giant fucking loser. There. I said it. Out loud. (Sort of.) I feel better. (Not really.)

Yesterday, Tricia, from our Baltimore office, stopped by the studio to drop off a bunch of contracts. I genuinely like Tricia. I mean, I'm not about to sneak out of work to get friendship bracelets with her, but as far as co-workers go, she's completely tolerable. Yesterday was the first time I've seen Tricia since the New York trip debacle, so we decided to go to Starbucks, get ourselves a cup of coffee and catch-up. I heard all about her vacation to Jamaica, her kids, her husband, their new shitty GPS system and such and such, until it was her turn to ask about me.

"So what's new with you? How's your summer been?"

This is a very simple question. However, all I could do in response was to stare at Tricia blankly, synapses a-firin', searching for something—anything—worth sharing. Which was an incredibly difficult task considering the following is what's new with me:

- I went to Ren Fest last weekend!
This seriously almost came flying out of my mouth with a little too much excitement for my liking until what's left of the cool little Meglet within screamed, "STOP!!!! DO NOT let yourself be that guy who tells her co-workers about Ren Fest. No matter how fall we've fallen, I can not let you hit this rock-bottom. There is nothing I won't do to help you get better, but I will not love you to death!"

- I got a haircut!
The woman has eyes. She can see this. She didn't compliment you. Fish for compliments at a different swimmin' hole.

- I'm making a conscious effort to improve my posture!
This is true. And a lot more difficult than I thought.

- I dreamt I was in an episode of Step-by-Step the other night!
I was emptying the dishwasher and Frank was mad at me because he couldn't take the kids shoe shopping until I finished and I was going too slowly.

- My mom got me a single-serving coffee maker because I'm sick of my french press!
God I'm white.

- I'm breaking out like a 12-year-old and my boobs hurt, so I hope I get my period soon!
This really is the most relevant thing happening in my life right now, but I decided to keep it to myself, as period stories are more Boss #1's thing.

- I just discovered I get the National Geographic channel and it's changed my life!
Really though. NatGeo and Discovery Health are pretty much all I watch now. I watched a two-hour show about the Black Death followed by a documentary about polygamist CULTS back-to-back the other night. Best channel EVER.

- I'm tired!
I mean, that's kind of what's always "going on" with me at any given moment. It's not really newsworthy or specifically applicable to Summer.

I decided that none of these were acceptable or interesting enough to share with Tricia, so after an uncomfortably long silence, I decided to go with:

"I'm dog sitting!"

"Oh. Cool." But she said "cool" like just I told her I bought a crisp new pair of jean shorts.

"Umm, but the dog is a Hearst!"
"What?"
"The dog. She's a Hearst. Like the family."

This is true. Lily Hearst—niece of Patty Hearst, cousin of Lydia Hearst—rescued Cella from a life of pit-bull fights and doggy abuse and eventually gave her to my friend Becky, for whom I am dog-sitting. Which is all good and fun, but it was then that I realized that I had just name-dropped a fucking dog. That's how lame I am. I name-drop dogs. And my life is so boring, name-dropping dogs is the only thing worth mentioning.

"Oh...well, that's cool."
"Yeah. [Awkwardly shifts eyes] It's been a really boring summer."

So I'm a boring loser. Who name-drops dogs. And I don't know how to remedy it. I think I might just embrace it and go with god. And speaking of embracing one's inner loser, it's time for this week's drinking game—The Never Been Kissed Drinking Game!


Rules:
Drink When:
- Anyone says "Josie Grossie"
- Josie corrects someone's grammar
- Molly Shannon alludes that she is a slut
- Aldys divulges one of her life aspirations (i.e. potter, painter, candlestick maker)
- Anyone says "Northwestern"
- Anyone says "roofus"
- Anyone says "prom"
- There's a flashback
- Someone makes friends with a whole table of rastafari. Not just one, a whole table.
- "Yikes bikes." Mainly because after seeing this movie it became a very important phrase in my daily vernacular.
- The Denominators wear their sweatshirts
- Someone refers to Aldys as "Alpo"
- Sam and Josie have a teacher/student inappropriate conversation
- My favorite Anita line: "Sex. Yes well Sex. What do you say about sex really. You like a guy... you do it with him... sometimes he calls, sometimes he doesn't!"
- Anyone gets their first kiss

As per usual, thank you so much for reading, twittering, forwarding, emailing, facebooking and voting here, here and especially here. (Yea man, someone nominated us for a third category! You should vote! I mean, you already went through the hassle of creating an account, so the hard and part is over! KTHNX!) Hope you have a great long weekend! Cella, Chris and I will see you back here Monday morning!


(Cella Hearst, doglebrity. I know her. No big deal.)

It's not you, it's me, Facebook

I have this funny habit of picking up a trend when its too late. Like I’m the world’s father and once I start doing something, it’s no longer cool. Like in 5th grade, I was the last person to get a Starter jacket (Dallas Cowboys, like I even cared) before they went south.

But there are a few things that I have gotten in on the ground floor on. Track jackets (you’re welcome, men aged 13-28), the RZR phone, the following Rachel Zoe video (thank you, reader Patricia!)and Facebook.

Remember back in the day when Facebook was only available to college students because it started in college? My school was one of the first colleges (after Harvard, because Lord knows I was not smart enough to get in there) to get Facebook in March of 2004. I can distinctly recall walking out of the dining hall and hearing everyone talking about this new website called “The Facebook”. Because, if you remember, you originally had to go to "thefacebook.com”. And like a true freshman, I talked about it with my friends to make sure they were going to join before joining myself.

And while there were only a few colleges online at this juncture, that still added up to a sizable population of co-eds to stalk. Who is that cute guy in your Intro to Econ class? Find him on Facebook. What about the total bitch who sits next to you in World Civ? Facebook. I was frequently up until 4 AM accompanied by all my new friends on Facebook. And whenever the homepage updated with new colleges added, I’d see if I knew anyone who went there so I could friend them right away. Which would always be followed by some witty “Welcome to Facebook! Say goodbye to your social life!” wall post.

Because it was true. I gave Facebook an inordinate amount of my time in college. Granted, my life in college consisted of about 12 hours of class a week and 156 hours of God-knows-what-but-usually-Facebook. But still, not only could you stalk people you’d never met, you could make groups, see what parties people were going to, etc. It was amazing.

But that was the thing about Facebook way back when. It was like a club that you had to wait to be granted access. Like Studio 54 without the AIDS. And everyone knows word of mouth is the best publicity (see Season 3, Episode 7 of Ugly Betty, namely “The Roof. Be there.”) so if everyone on campus is talking about Facebook, you aren’t going to want to be the only one who has no idea what they are talking about. “What do you mean it’s now just facebook.com? I never even knew about thefacebook.com” See? It just sounds like someone waiting for their lunch money to be taken.

For a while, Facebook was my number one most visited non-adult website. You could enjoy all the stalking you wanted in the privacy of your dorm room. 99.9% of colleges were online, so you were guaranteed to have already found everyone you knew from high school and were able to laugh at the misfortune of some and feel overwhelmingly jealous of others. As long as you had a valid college email address, you were welcome to stalk your little heart out. (Sidebar: I was always personally opposed, however, to the pre-frosh who joined Facebook with their college emails before they ever set foot on campus. Sure, you have a college email, but unless you’ve already skipped a class solely because you were too busy stalking, you can’t have more than 100 friends yet. I’m sorry but you just can’t.)

And as if that wasn’t bad enough, they went and let the riff raff in.

When I heard from the gossip mill that Facebook was expanding to high schools, I was in no way pleased. What right do high schoolers have to be on Facebook? Shouldn’t they be studying specifically so that they could get into college so they could thus use their school email address to join Facebook?! Isn’t that what America is about?! Then came the first Facebook facelift which did not go over well with the general populace, myself included. Then applications started to be added. Then another facelift. More applications. And ads. All of a sudden, anyone can join. Studio 54 just opening its doors to homeless men off the street. Now Studio 54 has become Times Square. All glitz, no glamour, and certainly no exclusivity.

What really put the nail in Fbook’s coffin for me is the sudden influx of my family members online. First and foremost, my Facebook marriage has already caused a problem with one of my cousins, who believed she was left off the guest list to my wedding. Secondly, I don’t know how comfortable I am with my aunts and uncles looking at pictures of me drunk at numerous parties over the years. This could lead to a variety of awkward Thanksgiving conversations, including, but not limited to “How exactly do you play flip cup? You seem to be very good at it.”

After graduating, I thought I’d spend a lot more time on Facebook than I have. Those friends that I want to keep in touch with, I can Gchat with (God willing, barring another unfortunate server overload). Anyone beyond that, I’ve got their phone numbers. For me, the novelty of Facebook has worn off. “Facebook me” is no longer a cute way to make friends. It still happens, but it’s a lot harder to bump into your new Facebook friend in a city full of millions of people than it is on a campus of 1,000. In short, what I’m driving at might seem like a crazy idea to most of you, but I think I might be quitting Facebook. Is this as crazy as it sounds?

Recrap Wednesday and the Case of the Familial Cockblock

Last night's episode of More to Love was all about surprises. Like how surprised I was when the opening scene wasn't of the girls shoving waffles and turkey legs down their throats for once. That was refreshing. Instead our episode opened with a shot of Luke shaving. Like a 7-year-old. All rough and jabby and not going against the grain. Come on Luke, do we need to put you on Queer Eye for the Fat Guy? After Luke finishes chiseling his face away, it's time for his one-on-one date with The Tranny.

The Tranny confuses me for a cornucopia of reasons, including, but not limited to the fact that she says she's had "a lot of doors slammed in her face because of her weight." Which confuses me. Because she's blatantly not fat. She just has humongous ta-dows crafted by the finest sex-change doctor in all of Israel. Since when does that equal fat? Really the only fat chick left is Malissa, and she's only recently fat. She still has the soul of a thin person, which hasn't been properly broken yet. Plus she can dance.

Anychub, Tranny and Luke go on a bro-ed out date to the go-kart track. They drive around, Tranny gets competitive, Luke finds it hot, the testosterone flies, blickity blah-blah-blah. They sit down to have lunch and SURPRISE! Tranny's Aunt and Uncle join them! Tranny's aunt is a kindly, older Israeli woman and her uncle is some random American dude. Over lunch, Uncle Sam explains the difficulties of being an American marrying into an all-Israeli family. "It's like, you know you're an excellent man," he explains, "but you're never quite good enough." Not to take away from Uncle Sam's cross-cultural struggle, but isn't that just part of being in a Jewish family? Doesn't that sense of "I'LL NEVER BE GOOD ENOUGH FOR YOU!!!" [Slams Door] just come with the territory? Either way, Uncle Sam totally cockblocks Tranny like it's nobodies business. He takes Luke aside to stress that Tranny's grandparent's are very orthodox and very religious and if you marry into this family you're going to regret it til the day you die and RUN! RUN AS FAST AS YOUR FAT LITTLE SAUSAGE LEGS WILL CARRY YOU!!!!! Luke wastes no time as he jumps into his go-kart, hops the rail and drives off into the sunset as Uncle Sam watches with a single tear streaming down his face, as he knows Luke will now get to enjoy the precious freedom from Jewish Judgment that he never will.

Back at the house, there's a new Sheriff of Crazy Town and her name is Mandy. Or, Manic Mandy, as I now call her. As Mandy gets ready for her one-on-one date with Luke, Malissa starts asking her questions about how she feels about him. "What do you think bonds you guys? How do you know you have a connection? Where's the beef?" Instead of being like, "Hey Maliss, step the fuck out or I'll harpoon you like the whale you are," Mandy spontaneously bursts into tears, locks herself in the bathroom as she shouts, "I'M FINE I'M FINE!!!!" Yowzah. Sure you are. And I'm "working hard" at my job right now.

Mandy collects herself and climbs into the limo with Luke. She reaches over for a hug and for a hot second, I totally thought she was going all Rock of Love and climbing on top of him. But no. She just wanted to be held. Because fat people have emotions, can't dance, didn't go to prom, never get second dates, still have their hymens, break bicycles and like hugs. Everything I needed to know about fat people, I learned from Fox.

Luke and Mandy arrive at a tropical themed yacht (?) where SURPRISE! Mandy's mom and dad are waiting for them! I'm 99.9% sure my parents would disown me if I ever went on a reality dating competition show and 110% sure that if I did, they would never be on the "meet the family" episode. But it gave me a giggle to think about what that meeting would be like if they did. I can see my dad bringing a book and my mom going to the bathroom a lot. Mandy's parents, however, are pretty psyched to meet Luke. It's during this scene that Luke divulges that he's a "son of a butcher" which is why he's so large, as "he always had the best cuts of meat." I would like to let you all know that, "son-of-a-butcher" is now the official cut-down of 2birds1blog. Get excited.

The theme of cock-blockery continues when Mandy's mom pretty much point-blank tells Luke that her daughter is crazy. She actually uses the word, "crazy." It's awkward. She unsuccessfully tries to laugh it off. Crickets chirp. Tumbleweeds roll. Luke chooses this moment to ask Mandy's parents if they think she's ready to settle down, as Luke is lookin' to get married ASAPS! And isn't it every parent's dream to have their baby girl get married to a husky real estate developer she met a month ago on a Fox reality show? Mandy's parents awkwardly smile and shift their eyes around the room for a while until Mandy's mom says she thinks Mandy is ready for a serious relationship, but she doesn't think she's ready to jump to the wedding chapel. "THERE'S NO NEED TO RUSH THINGS! HAHA! WHY RUSH THINGS?! HAHA!" Mandy's dad awkwardly chimes in. This does not sit well with Luke. He needs a wife like I need a nap: rull bad.

The Tour of Awkward Cockblocks continues with Anna. Anna and Luke head to the bowling alley for their one-on-one date, which makes me wonder which Producer put their 12-year-old son in charge of location scouting, as our romantic spots thus far have included a go-kart track, a tropical party yacht and a bowling alley. Either way, Anna is PSYCHED about this date because she used to go to bowling summer camp. Which doesn't surprise me in the least.

Wanna take a hot guess as to who's at the bowling alley? Yep! Anna's parents! And guess what they do? You're right again! Cockblock! Ahhh consistency. It's a beautiful thing. You see, Anna is a model* and her parents are worried what will happen to her career* if she settles down with Luke. "What would happen if she has to go to London* for a year?" her dad asks Luke. And Luke doesn't know. He just knows he's not pleased. Because that son-of-a-butcher needs a wife, and he needs one now. He can't have The Mrs. flying all over the world*, strutting down cat-walks* and plastering her face all over billboards* when he needs her at home with the kids! What's a man to do?

[*HAHAHAHAHA! I KNOW!]

Winner of the Most Interesting Family Award goes to Malissa. Malissa's two younger sisters show up, to Malissa's surprise, and they are some unique-looking individuals. Well, the youngest one really isn't that bad, but the middle sister, Kat, is a horse of different color. Kat has bleached blonde hair that has clearly been scrunched using Dep brand gel. She has outrageously long red acrylic nails and her eyebrows are a hazy shade of gray. I couldn't quite put my finger on what was going on with Kat's look until Rachel texted me: "Malissa's sister Kat looks like Hatchet Face from Cry-Baby!!!" And frankly, I have never been text messaged a more accurate statement in my entire life:


Hatchet Face grills Luke with questions and then moves on to cockblocking Malissa. I know, it was terribly shocking for me too. Luke mentions that he wants kids and Kat (who has a 4-year-old) says the idea of Malissa having kids is laughable. Apparently Malissa doesn't even like kids! OH SHIT! Although Malissa lives a mere 10 minutes away from Kat, she's never offered to babysit her nephew ONCE! Luke, however, babysits his nieces and nephews whenever he gets a chance so he starts to get a little nervous. To make matters worse, Malissa's youngest sister explains that Malissa has always been thick, but only recently gained most of her weight. UMMMMM, hi. If my sister were to ever use the term "thick" as an adjective to describe my body, I would take my salad fork, reach across the table, stab her directly in the eye and twirl like it's a never ending bowl of pasta from Olive Garden. So kindly keep that in mind, Rebecca. At the very least, always be conscious of the location of my salad fork.

There are only two things worth mentioning about the pre-elimination mixer:
1.) At one point the camera slowly zooms in on Mandy's dress for no other reason than to emphasize that the pattern is animal print and river water:


and 2.) Malissa's boobs are fucking enormous:



Finally, it's elimination time. Malissa gets called first, which isn't really a huge surprise. (BAHAHA...huge.) The Tranny gets called second (?) and it's down to either Anna or Mandy. Personally, I'd choose Anna because Mandy seems kind of drunk and tired all the time whereas Anna went to bowling camp, but because nothing about this show makes any sense, my money was on Luke keeping Mandy and sending home Anna. Which is exactly what happened. Anna looked PISSED and I completely zoned out as a defense mechanism because these elimination scenes are way too heartbreaking to deal with at 10 o'clock at night.

Final Cry Count: 6

Next Week: The final three go to Hawaii and meet Luke's parents! If someone doesn't have sex with Luke, or at least go to third base, I'm putting all of their vaginas on probation.

First ever Smug Pug Award!

This past Sunday morning I was laying in my bed, wishing I had some coffee and perhaps a helper monkey and reading DCist, when I came across this article by Kriston Capps:

We Apologize for the Fact that you Still Can't Get Up There

Unsuck DC Metro looks back in time at a novel proposal ever so briefly considered by WMATA, one that never loses its commonsensical appeal: Screw the broken escalators, let's have stairs! A look at the minutes from the 2006 Customer Service, Operations and Safety Committee meeting finds that Metro could save some $1.2 million in annual operating expenses by replacing escalators with stairs -- you know, turning the escalators off -- at some 14 Metro stations. Stations with three or more escalators were only to see one set of escalators turned into stairs (but why?), while stations with those 12 kilometer-long escalators like Tenleytown would be unaffected (but why not?).

It's my understanding that the disabled and the elderly are advised to take Metro's elevators and to plot their Metro routes by elevator availability whenever using Metro. So the argument that strikes me as the obvious case against stairs is mitigated. On the other hand, stairs promote health and would save the Metro system money. On the other other hand, it seems that at any given time there are a fixed number of Metro escalators that are (broken) stairs anyway.

Would stairs slow ridership? Would tourists make moving onto and off of station platforms even more difficult if they were responsible for their own locomotion? Would this happen on a large scale? My guess: Like all healthy, cost-saving measures, the change would be both positive and super annoying.

"Hmm. That was an impressive level of smuggery," I mused to my invisible helper monkey. But I shrugged it off and moved on to the next article, also by Kriston Capps:

You Kids Get Off My Lot

"College kids with cars pay a parking premium if they keep their wheels on campus," reports the Washington Post, in the best news I've heard all day. It's expensive, and colleges intend to keep it that way. George Washington University students, for example, must pay $550 per semester for a parking decal and Georgetown students pay even more -- $656 per semester -- to park at satellite lots in Rosslyn; other Metro area schools must pay similarly high fees to keep a car at school. This seems wholly reasonable for schools located in an urban environment that is well served by public transportation. College campuses, too, are designed to offer students many (if not all) the services they require in one place, from health clinics to computer software stores. Granted, out-of-state students might ought need to go home once in a while -- but where in the U.S. can you not fly for $600 round-trip once a semester? If anything, it seems that students -- who, I'm sure we can all agree, don't really do anything with those cars but cause trouble -- aren't paying enough to park their jalopies in the District.

And holy Jimminy James Christ if that is not the most self-satisfied piece of yowzah I have ever read in my entire life. Not to be mean or anything. You know I fear blog wars like I fear Meeks, D&D nights, leather horse art and...Ren Fest? (Damnit!) But both of these articles express a truly impressive and infuriating level of smug. What crawled up your tawt asshole, K-Dawg? Why are you trying to make me hoof it up stairs and utilize public transportation? I hate the public. I don't want to transport with them. And that's my choice!

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's examine the first article, shall we?

Upon first glance, I was totally on Kriston's side. I think we can all agree that the metro is about as reliable as a molestery uncle and needs to be fixed, but turning off the escalators? Really? Why? So we can replace the 1.2 million dollars Metro will save from cutting operating expenses with the new 1.2 million dollar "Oh-my-God-I'm-Having-a-Fucking-Heart-Attack" Fund? Metro escalators aren't like malls escalators―they go hundreds of feet below street level. That's steep. Like, really steep. Like, challenging to walk up them, steep. And I consider myself to be a relatively fit person. I go to the gym roughly 4-5 days a week but I still gasp for air like I just finished the Iron Man Challenge after walking a broken set of Dupont escalator stairs. And honestly, I don't think replacing the escalator system with stairs is a horrible idea. New York's MTA stairs are pretty effective, but they're a platform-stairs-platform-stairs set-up that makes jogging up and down them pretty effortless. The average Washingtonian can't jauntily jog up and down a steep, stopped metro escalator.

And I will gladly be the fat kid who says out loud that I would rather move out of this city than have to wheeze my way up and down stopped metro stairs day in and day out just because Kriston Capps think it would make the city healthier. Because who are you, Ms. Mr. Capps, to decide how to make people healthier? You're like that office manager who only stocks the fridge with water because soda rots your teeth and wastes calories. I'm a grown-ass woman. Let me make my own health choices. If you health-rape me, I will blow my whistle.

I guess we're all supposed to ascertain from Kriston's article that she he can run up and down stopped metro stairs with grace and ease. Well good for fucking you. Guess what? I can do the electric slide at double speed and rock the fucking wheels off any bar mitzvah. And good for fucking me! We all excel in different physical arenas. Should I propose that we get healthier and save on transportation expenses by forgoing the metro completely and electric sliding our way to work? Uh, Boogie-oogie-oogie-fuck-no! Sure I'd love it if that were the case, but not everybody else would. And part of living in a civilized society and being a good person is thinking about others and not being so god-damn impressed with yourself. Oogie-Oogie.

Next Article:

Guess what? I went to a DC school and had a car. All four years. And it helped me out exponentially. Frankly, I don't even understand how this made it into DCist in the first place. This isn't so much news as what sounds like a whiny rant from someone who didn't have a car in college.

I can't decide which part of this article I find the most smug and offensive, so let's just go through point by point, shall we?

"This seems wholly reasonable for schools located in an urban environment that is well served by public transportation."
- Only GW is really a self-sustaining urban campus. AU is in the middle of bumble-fuck nowhere Spring Valley and Georgetown is in...well...Georgetown, where there isn't a metro. It just takes shit longer to get done in these parts of town. And didn't we just go over how unreliable the metro is? Junior year, for example, I took 18 credits and had an internship AND a job (OH SHIT! IT'S A MOTHERFUCKING SMUG-OFF!) I had to zip my ass from AU all over town and life would have been considerably more difficult if I had to rely on public transportation (and this wasn't even factoring in hypothetical steep-stair-hiking time!) Shit was just easier with a car and I'm really grateful that I had one. Does that make me less of a person?...Not really. It kind of just makes me a mediocre person with a car.

"College campuses, too, are designed to offer students many (if not all) the services they require in one place, from health clinics to computer software stores. Granted, out-of-state students might ought need to go home once in a while -- but where in the U.S. can you not fly for $600 round-trip once a semester?"
- You just sound fucking crazy right now. College campuses aren't Utopian little societies where you only leave once a semester to fly home. Which also sound a little cultish to me, frankly. Reasons I left campus via car: to visit my parents more than once a semester because I like them, buy art supplies besides the one piece of poster board and glue stick the bookstore carried, go to my internship, go to my job, take friends to run errands not accessible via metro or metrobus, weekend road trips, weekly traditional California Tortilla night, go to the doctor (I'm terribly sorry I don't trust my person to the campus provided student health center where the answer to everything is pregnancy or spinal meningitis,) and that's just naming a few. And I don't think these are terribly frivolous or ludicrous reasons to leave campus either. I mean college isn't the Army, I'm pretty sure you're allowed to leave any time you want...

"Granted, out-of-state students might ought need to go home once in a while -- but where in the U.S. can you not fly for $600 round-trip once a semester?"
- Again, who are you to dictate how many times people leave campus to see their parents or friends? Hi, AU (bless it's heart) was boring as fuck-all, sometimes it was necessary to leave. And that was my prerogative. I had the means, I had the desire, so I left. Again, does this make me a bad person? ...Again, not really.

"I'm sure we can all agree, students don't really do anything with those cars but cause trouble."
- What 1950's American Graffiti movie are you living in?! I worked in Georgetown for two years and never once saw drags of GU kids hot-rodding down M street in their Thunderbirds, a-blastin' their rock 'n' roll music, drinkin' their caffeinated colas and shaking their hips all provocative and un-Christian-like. Mostly I just saw a lot of Vineyard Vines tote bags and popped collars.

"If anything, it seems students...aren't paying enough to park their jalopies in the District."
- You sound pleasant.

The ultimate irony here, of course, is that I'm being smug about not being smug and in the end who gives a shit, but still! K. Capps pissed me off with her his award-winning level of smug. So I'm going to give her him an award!

Congratuatlions Kriston Capps, you are the first winner of the 2birds1blog's Smug Pug Award!

Thank you for enriching our community with your extreme sense of self-satisfaction. I recommend you watch the South Park episode entitled "Smug Alert!" and mentally replace Mr. Broflovski with yourself. Given my aversion to steep stairs, I will also allow you to replace Cartman with me.

TALOL: Ren Fest Edition

OK. I need to tell you something. I can do this. Just do it like a band-aid Meg, just do it like a band-aid...Here we go...I went to The Maryland Renaissance Festival over the weekend. WAIT! WAIT! WAIT! DON'T GO! Here me out:
 
a.) I didn't go in costume. (Obviously.)
b.) It was Becca's idea. And my sister could be like, "I'm going to skip stones down by the river" and I'd be all, "COOL!!!!! CAN I COME?!?!" Although she didn't really have to spend much time convincing me to go. She had me at "whimsical hair braiding."
c.) Delicious fried foods on sticks.
d.) Endless beer.
e.) There was a two-headed turtle freak show. I mean. Please.
f.) It was the Olympic Games of people watching. A visual all-you-can-eat buffet of sexually active Theater Geeks and weirdos! To which I say, yes and please!

I would be a whore and a liar if I said it wasn't awesome. Maybe the best part of my entire Summer. Yeah, I know, strong statement. But I mean, honestly! It was a free pass to get drunk at 10 o'clock in the morning and observe Meeks in their natural habitat! And they were corseted and chain-mailed Meeks, none-the-less! I had a digital camera, a liver full of Sam Adams Oktoberfest and zero inhibitions. It. Was. Awesome.












A FURRY! I couldn't even contain my excitement.




(That's what she said.)



Raver Furry. He had "pierced ears" and punk pants. I just...I can't.


Screw Gym-Crush Kyle. This is my new imaginary boyfriend.




At ye olde Cod-Piecery.


It must suck to work on your dragon costume all year and then show up on opening day in 95-degree weather with no breeze and immediately regret that decision.


I didn't know they had Real Dolls in the Renaissance...






I kind of hope I get reincarnated into the wench who gets to spend the end of her summer wandering around Ren Fest shouting, "SWEET NUTS! WHO WANTS A TASTE OF MY SWEET NUTS?!"


Heaving bosoms you guys. Heaving bosoms and bees all over the fuckin' place.


What is it with Meeks and leather horse art?




A beeswax candle of a dolphin. Because of course it is.








TWO TURTLES IN ONE?! The only thing that could be cuter is if they both raped a shoe.






Seriously...cod pieces and heaving bosoms as far as the eye could see.




Mmm...Oktoberfest, fried foods and Meek-hunting.





Uh, HBO Real Sex on Pony Play anyone?!


"THE KING IS AT O'SHUCK'S!!!" - Becca


I was peer-pressured into buying red nymph ears. Here they are. I don't know. In my defense when I bought these I had reached a point where body was comprised of equal parts beer to sweat and I probably would have done anything anyone told me to do. Plus they opened the door to endless "is the maiden horny??" jokes from gentle sirs passing by.




Faire ye well, indeed.

...Don't judge me.