Everything You Never Wanted to Know About Meghan McBlogger...

An email I recieved a few weeks ago: 

Hey Meg: 

Fellow blogger and big fan here. 

A little background. My blog is http://payattentionto.blogspot.com and has been growing a lot lately - people go crazy for the Jersey Shore and Real Housewives entries to name a couple (no big) (ok, ok, big). P.S., I link out to you as a Favorite - mwah. 

Anhyoozles, I got to thinking that the time you did a Q&A post was hilarious. Thought it would be fun to send you some Q's for you to consider answering for a future post on your blog. Would also be honored if I could include it a duplicate on mine - but totally fine if you'd prefer not to. Self-promotion is not the underlying intent. Swears. You don't even have to mention a name at all if that's better for you.

Oh man. I know it's completley self-indulgent to want to answer these questions, but frankly, my brain still hurts from so selflessly fighting to find the cause a possible cause of Landing Boner, so I think I deserve this little cerebral break. Right? Right. Take it away, Fellow Blogger. 

Q: What's it like now that your sister is married? Any awkward moments?

A: To be 100% honest with you, my sister's marriage hasn't affected my life in the slightest. IS IT SUPPOSED TO?! I mean, she wasn't at Christmas dinner this year because she was away on her honeymoon, so I guess that was weird. But then again it wasn't, because Andrew of the Great Juno Debate came as her proxy. I made him strap on a brown wig and roughhouse with me on the carpet for a while, so it was kind of like she was there. Andrew really was a good sport about the whole thing. Some say he got too into it, some say not enough. Only time will tell. 

And as far as awkward moments go, I think the most awkward thing that ever happened between me and Geoff actually happened last Fall when he and Becca were still engaged. Helena, Laura, and I were about to leave for our big camping excursion, but I needed to swing by the bar Geoff manages part-time to get the key to his truck first. Geoff is like this all-American, cornhusking, sturdy, frat boy. He calls waiters "Boss" and ladies "babe" or "beh-beh". God only knows what motivated me to do this, but as I took the keys from him and prepared to say goodbye, I decided that that would be the perfect time to jump on his terms of endearment bandwagon and call him "babe". Again, I don't really know what I was thinking. Sometimes I'm afraid I come off as uppity and stand-offish to him, so I think I was trying to be like, "SEE?! SEE?! I CAN BE FUN AND LAID BACK TOO, BABE!" So I tried to say, "Thanks for the keys, babe! Have a good night!" but it came out, "Thanks for the keys, baby! Have a good night!" That may not sound like a big deal, but I was M-M-M-MORTIFIED. I ran back to my car and immediatley called Becca all, "I DON'T KNOW IF GEOFF HAS CALLED TO TELL YOU YET BUT I TRIED TO CALL HIM 'BABE' AND IT ACCIDENTALLY CAME OUT 'BABY' WITH A HARD 'Y' AND I WASN'T TRYING TO HIT ON HIM AND I DON'T THINK OF HIM LIKE THAT AND I'M REALLY SORRY!!!1" She was like "Yyyyyeah...I don't think he noticed. Or cared. At all. Calm down over there." So then not only was it embarrassing because it was just embarrassing, it was embarrassing because I made this huge deal out of it. Ugh. I don't know. I don't want to talk about this anymore.

Also, when our families get together, I somehow always end up drunk in a corner harrassing Geoff's dad to talk to me about the Marines because I'm fascinated by the armed services. Not enough to join, mind you. Just enough to harass a retired military officer over cocktails to take me out to Quantico to see if I could survive the Quigley. He always says no, but once he did offer to make a giant mud pit for me in his backyard and watch me flounder around in it for a while. And I am UP for that, sir! Semper fi! In my mind, Geoff's dad and I are best friends. According to Becca, every time she sees him he asks how her "worthless sister" is doing, and the meaner he is to you, the more he likes you. SO HAY BIFFLES!

Q: What are you doing right now? Don't lie. Go.

A: At the moment it's 1:41 in the morning, I'm wearing madras booty shorts and a wife beater, and I'm laying across my bed and answering your questions in one tab and watching the PBS special The Marines in another. And that is honestly what I'm doing right now. Pretty par for the course, really.

Q: If I can speak for all of your fans, and I think I will, we LOVE your dad. He sounds like the perfect, Tommy Bahama wearing, supportive, corny joke-telling dude. What was he like when he was younger? He's gotta have some hippy stories no?

A: Thank Christ my dad doesn't read this blog. Not because I talk about my porn preferences, not because I talk about my sex life, or alcohol/drug use, or how hardcore I cheated in high school, but because I think he would hurl himself directly out of his office window if he knew that my fans picture him in a Tommy Bahama shirt. My dad is the most well-dressed gentleman I know. I mean, he's the kind of person who dresses up to fly. After he got his posh new Italian suit for my sister's wedding, he circulated an email around the family just to preemptivley make us all aware of how good he looked in it. I met him at the metro a few days ago in a bomber jacket that I had just bought at Target, and after I hugged him hello, he literally recoiled and said "Is that pleather??" It's obnoxious.

My dad has gone through quite an interesting metamorphosis throughout his life. Rumor has it he was a bit of a hellraiser in his youth. He got arrested a few times and kicked out of not one, but two colleges; the second for telling the Dean to go fuck himself. He ended up at NYU's film school and spent the better part of the late sixties in Washington Square Park, so yes, I'd say he's got some pretty good hippie stories. I'm not even going to try to tell them though because I could never do them justice. In high school, my friends used to come over for dinner all the time just to hear them and ask my dad all sorts of questions about his shenanigan-filled youth. (This is my life—my parents and hairpeice are more popular than I am.) 

Just to give you an idea, there was the time my dad went to a Black Panther party in the Bronx, looked around the room and said, "Man! So not all of you guys can dance!" before he even realized what was coming out of his mouth. There was the time he found himself in a bar fight (unrelated to the Black Panther incident) (shockingly) and picked up a beer bottle by the neck to smash over the bar and use as a weapon. Not realizing that the beer was full, he raised the bottle over his head and ended up pouring it directly down his sleeve, thereby ending the fight due to LOLZ. There was the time he was a high school bus driver. There was the time he managed a leisure suit store. There was the time he worked for SNL. There was the time he almost ran over Gene Wilder. And just recently my dad's oldest friend, John, informed me that when they were in college—my dad at NYU and John at Pratt—they got a job writing erotica together for extra cash but got fired because their pieces were always too plot-driven. I mean, my stories are like, "HAR HAR, I WENT TO REN FEST TODAY AND SOMEONE CALLED ALEX GAY. I SHOULD WRITE A BOOK." Please. I think I'm funny and well-dressed until I look at my dad and realize I'm just Dave Coullier in a pleated skort.

Sidenote: Speaking of how my dad is a hero of mine and all that mushy jazz, one day in college I thought it would be really clever to change the "About Me" section of my LiveJournal profile to the video for the Simian Mobile Disco song "Hustler". (Lyrics: "I'm a hustler baby, that's what my daddy made me.") A few days after I put it up, it sunk in that while the lyrics might be applicable, the video is just a bunch of hipster girls playing a game of telephone that slowly morphs into a softcore lesbian orgy.

So basically, I had just changed my profile to:

About Me:

I AM A GAY DISCO EXPLOSION!!!!!!!!!!!! 

That was a humbling moment.

Q: I tried watching Soap and I wasn't really into it. What do you have to say about that?

A: I respect that. I don't like "Glee" and get a bunch of a shit for it, so you do you and I'll do me.

Q: OK, now that you're done going off on me, you should know that I like Benson - does that count?

A: If you like Benson, give Florida from "Maude" a try. As far as stereotypically sassy black housekeepers go, she's the tits.

Q: What shows have you been watching on Hulu lately?

A: I actually don't watch a ton of Hulu. I watched it a lot when I was a receptionist because I was just sitting in front of a computer all day with eight hours to kill and no Netflix, but (thank God) things are different now. That being said, my Saturday ritual is waking up and watching that week's "Parks & Rec", "30 Rock", and last week's "Simpsons". With my incredibly attractive boyfriend. While we spoon. And he does the Times crossword puzzle. And tells me how great I am. And then we have The Sex.

Q: We want to know more about your hair... haven't heard much about it lately. Are you still dying it? What color these days? Do you still have the weave thingy? What's your hair regimen?

A: First of all, I never had a weave, thank you. I had a Jessica Simpson/Ken Paves HairDo piece. Second of all, she had a name: Weekend Hair. And I'd appreciate it if you would use it. 

My beloved Weekend Hair died in 2008 and has since gone to the big frat party in the sky. These days I'm all natural. My hair is dark brown, long-ish, with sideswept bangs...it's not terribly interesting. And as far as my hair regimen goes, that's even more uninteresting. I was telling Tulane Chris about it last weekend and stopped mid-sentence because I realized it was the most boring conversation I'd ever been in, which is saying something because it was about me and I was the only person talking. It's so much sexier when Christian Bale does it in American Psycho...

[Ugh, embedding disabled by request. You're breakin' my balls here, Lions Gate.]

But out of respect to you, here it is:

I have naturally curly hair, so the entire purpose of my hair regime is to beat it into straight submission. I wash my hair with Philosophy's Purity shampoo because my mom bought it for me, and I condition with off-brand Pantene Pro-V conditioner because I bought it for me. Before I blow dry, I use Garnier Full Control Mousse and a few spritzes of Frizz brand Styling Spray. Then I blow dry, pin that shit back while I do my make up, straighten with a T3 flat iron, and finish with a little shaping creme to tame the flyaways. It's pretty sexy, I guess. I know I'm not not wet...

Q: Are you a fashionista or more of a "dress for comfort" sensible shoes type gal? (Yes I really just said gal)

A: I'm hesitant to say I'm a "fashionista" because I feel like girls who self-identify as "fashionistas" are the same girls who order cosmos at sports bars and say things like, "When people call me a bitch, I say thank you." But I'm defiantly not a sensible shoes kind of gal. (Although I do have a pair of fur-lined urban mocosins that I wear in public more than I should because they're obscenely comfortable.) I'd like to think I'm stylish. I like clothes, I like dressing up, I like putting together outfits. I don't know. I feel like there's not a way to talk about this without sounding like a giant asshole. Let's talk about my hair again.

Q: If Larry Hagman called you right now, what would you say to him?

A: That's such an impossible question to answer. My friend Caroline has this story about how she was at her mom's candle store in Georgetown Park Mall one day when she was eight or so, and Bill Clinton, who was the President at the time, came to the mall to Christmas shop and meet people. Although unimpressed, she went and stood in line to meet him. When it was her turn to shake his hand, she froze, and the only thing she could think to say to him was, "..................GOD BLESS YOU, SIR" with these wide eyes. I feel like that's what would happen if Larry Hagman called me. I'd just burst into tears and talk about Jesus for a while.

Q: What's your #1, 2, and 3 favorite food? And don't say gummy fangs. Real food.

A: Oh God. Ummmmm...hmm. Well, I have this really weird neurosis where I don't like to eat food that's wrapped in other food, so my entire life I pooh-poohed the idea of a Chipotle burrito. But then once day I had a burrito bowl and it was like I had tasted God's tears. Serioiusly, it changed my life. I'm also a huge fan of Belgian food: waffles, steak, mussels, fries, cold beer...it doen't really get much better than that. (Shout-out to Bistro du Coin and Belga Café. Moules and frites, baby. Moules and frites.) And pad thai is another go-to food staple of mine. When I lived in Brooklyn, my apartment was over a thai food restaraunt called Thai Tony's and that, plus DiGiorno pizzas from the gas station across the street, is pretty much all I ate. But at least I made a friend out of old Thai Tony. He was fine with me meandering in two glasses of Pinot deep in my pajamas on various weekday nights and being like, "SIR ANTHONY—PAD SEE EW ME!" Ex Co-Blogger Chris and I still email each other frequently to reminisce about Thai Tony and whether or not he's also looking up at the moon and if somehow, in that moment, we're all connected...?

Q: Did you get an advance for your book? AKA did you pay the %&$* cable bill yet???

A: Yes I did. And then I split that advance with Tulane Chris. And then I split what was leftover with Comcast. And then I blew a guy for $30 and fell into a K-hole.

Q: Are you really still looking for a job? Or freelancing? Or focusing solely on writing?

A: I'm not answering that question based on my suspicion it was ghostwritten by my mother. I'm still single and have been going to the gym lately, if those are your next two questions.

Q: Do you have a drop date for your book yet (yes I said it like that on purpose - makes it sound more rap album-y dontcha think)? Have you shot the cover art yet?

A: Our book drops September 18th and I haven't seen the final cover yet. I need to figure out if it's better for you guys to pre-order it, or wait until the first week it comes out. So. Note to self.

Q: Have you talked to Eddie lately? What's she up to?

A: Yep! We just had dinner when I was up in Philly the other weekend. Eddie got her MSW last May from Penn and now she works in Philly as a federal sex educator. I know that sounds like the plot line to a movie that heavily involves a ruler in a non-measuring or making straight lines context, but basically the great state of Pennsylvania pays Eddie to go around to different schools and teach Philadelphia's youth about important things like why you should always wear a condom and how fingerbanging should be a track meet, not a marathon. She also does a lot of volunteer work counseling LGTBQXYZ%^4 at-risk youth. The stories she tells about it really stress me out and confirm that it's a good thing I just sit in my apartment writing fart jokes all day and don't interact with children. Or people in general, really.

Have a good one.

Thanks for being interested!

Now, enough about me; what do you think of me?

> 140

To the group of women who, for some ungodly reason, chose to gather around my treadmill at the gym to loudly argue about The Patriarchy:

Thank you for taking what was already an uncomfortable half an hour for me and making it downright un-American.

Slash, I kind of wanted to let them know about our book, because one of the subtitles we kicked around was: The Misanthrope's Guide to Life: Meg and Chris Joke About The Patriarchy for 250 Pages and Then Sulk in a Corner Because They Weren't Allowed to Make Abortion or Suicide Jokes and Had to Change the Occasional "Fuck" to "Screw" Here and There, Thereby Compromising Their "Artistic" Integrity, And if You Couldn't Tell by the Scare Quotes, I'm Using the phrase "Artistic" Very Loosely.

It. is. a. PAGE TURNER.

Family Matters:

- So it turns out not everyone appreciated my hardcore porn post from the other week, including my mother. I gots a-talking-to, you guys. HARDCORE. Diane was offended on the following levels:

1.) They were crass photos

2.) It was beneath the blog; we're better than that

3.) As she shrieked at me on a very crowded Connecticut Avenue last Thursday night, "I just keep imagining some random person BEATING OFF to your blog, Meghan!"

4.) I used Evie's head to censor the genitals

In my defense:

1.) Well, yes, they were crass, but more importantly, they were hilarious. I wasn't just posting random pornographic images for funzies. That's what my private tumblr blog, www.megsfucknasTpix.tumblr.com, is for. Obvs.

2.) I genuinely appreciate that my mom holds the blog in such high regard, but at the same time, this isn't exactly Faulkner. I primarily write about bodily functions and laziness and my main literary technique is the Zack Morris time-out. And !!!1. I feel like the odd porn excerpt here and there isn't that unexpected.

3.) Look, I'm not here to control what people do or do not beat off to on the Internet. And frankly, if you can successfully whack it to a picture of a porn star three hep's to the wind with giant Evie heads covering the interesting bits—hats off to you.

4.) Point taken. So to make it right, here's a picture of Evie with floating Jenna Jameson heads of censorship:

Aaaaaand all is right with the world again.

- Speaking of my mom, guess who's our new advice columnist? My mom! CRAZY, RIGHT? Amy did an awesome job at Queer Abby and truthfully, there's no reason we stopped doing it. The last round of questions she sent me, I was like "Oh, I'll just save this for a rainy day on the blog," proceeded to straight-up forget about it, and by the time I realized we hadn't done a QA post in a while, a really awkward amount of time had gone by and I assumed she thought I was a giant asshole, so I just kind of slinked off to a dark corner. Which is exactly what I was telling some readers at the YMTE podcast event when it was suggested that my mom do an advice column, à la this edition of QA. And I thought it was genius! Anyone who knows Diane knows that that woman gives some damn good advice. But like, really good advice. It's kind of just that easy. We don't really a shtick. So, my mom is the new advice columnist! And here's a quick word from her to you:

hello. my name is diane and i am meg's mother. no, this is not the start of some strange 2b1b twelve step program. since meg and i will be writing the advice column together for a while, i thought i would introduce myself to you. i was a bit surprised when meg invited me to join her, but i was also very flattered, so here i am. i figure there might be a few things you should know about me before trusting me with some details of your life.

the first fact you have no doubt figured out by now. i am considerably older than you are. my language is different, my music is different, my cultural references are different. when i was in my twenties, we were at war with viet nam. we had no cell phones, no home computers. when we found ourselves near a man with two pierced ears who was seemingly talking to himself, we were strongly urged to cross the street. for many of those years i could be found, along with my long brown hair, t shirt, hip hugger bell bottoms and genuine indian moccasins, at my little art school in connecticut. not much in common.....well, there is that sex and drugs thing. that should count for something. [Editor's Note: Crass.]

i do have some qualifications.
1. i have been a mother for 30 years, and even though they don't always take it, my girls say i give good advice.
2. ever since i was a kid, i've been told i was a "good listener." now you may assume that in high school i was the slightly over-weight girl of average looks with lots of prettier more popular girl friends and lots of boy friends eager to hook up with said girl friends...and you may be right,
3. i was just told last year by a psychic i met in england that i am what is known in her world as a "helper." she also told me i was a good listener. assume what you will.

unless meg has corrected this entry before posting it ['Eh, I started to but gave up half an hour later when I was only on the third sentence and needed my life back], you will have noticed that i do not capitalize anything. this is not an affectation on my part, or an homage to e.e. cummings. i simply find the thought of depressing two keys at once that often exhausting. please, just go with it. which brings me to my next point....please don't bother correcting my spelling, grammar, ect. do not point out any misused words or phrases. i figure there must be some stuff i never learned, and i know there is a lot of stuff i have forgotten. chalk it up to a quirky literary style (that diane, so creative with her over used comas and annoying dot, dot, dots). thank you in advance.

well, i guess that's it. if you feel that meg and i can help you in any way, just e mail meg. [Don't do that. I lose enough emails and piss off enough people as it is. Email AskYoMama@2birds1blog.com and I'll teach you how to check it, mom. And no, it won't change the settings on your computer. I can hear you sighing from here. I swear to God, it's easy to check and I'll write down the instructions and leave them with you. This feels like something we should have talked about before this went up, and yet...here we are.] we will treat your request with respect and gravity. at least i will, i'm never sure about meg. [And you never will be, madam.]

so, until next time, i send you my warm regards and...peace.
(i know, i know, but thinking about the 60's and the 70's just brought it all back, man.)

AskYoMama@2birds1blog.com!

- My brother-in-law recently confided in me that every time he flies, he gets a spontaneous erection during the plane’s descent in a medical anomaly he calls “Landing Boner”. I thought this was fascinating, to say the least, and he in turn appreciated that I was the only person he’d told this to who didn’t automatically disregard it as “weird” or “creepy”. Apparently he’s yet to find another guy who experiences Landing Boner and the preliminary research he did of Googling “Why do I get an erection during landing?” didn’t yield anything helpful. Me? I just heard “BONER MYSTERY” and told him that now he was talkin' my language. (And you’re welcome, sir. Every now and then it helps to have someone like me in your familial corner.)

Apparently what makes Landing Boner so horrific is that it hits exactly when the flight attendents start going up and down the aisles to look at your groin and make sure your seat belt is fastened. Now of course when he told me that, I laughed and laughed, and laughed and laughed for a long, long time, but I also decided then and there that I would be the one to get to the bottom of this so-called Landing Boner mystery. And, embarrassingly enough, that’s why there was no post yesterday. Because I spent my entire Sunday night writing time researching air pressure, commercial flying altitudes, and the male erection. My inclination is to apologize, but you know what? Family first.

The good news is, I think I’ve successfully solved the mystery of the Landing Boner. (Or as I was a hot second away from texting to my sister today, “I think I’ve cracked your husband’s boner code!” Christ.)

The reason Landing Boner initially made so much sense to me was because air pressure fluxuates during a flight. If it’s enough to make me puffy and thirsty, it’s got to be enough to wreak havoc on the wang, right? The flaw in this logic, however, is that air pressure increases as altitude decreases, so during landing, you’d think it would actually be harder to get a boner (wakka, wakka, no pun intended). But that wasn’t enough to stop me. No, it only drew me in further.

After an embarrassingly long amount of time doing research, here’s my final summation: while not being a medical doctor or physicist, I’m 99.9% sure that Lading Boner does make physiological sense. What I failed to take into account before is how air pressure works inside the aircraft. Commercial airplanes pump pressurized air into the cabin during a flight to avoid its passengers from getting Hypoxia, Altitude Sickness, or Barotrauma. During descent, however, the air is slowly depressurized before being turned off all together at around 10,000 feet. Now according to my research, although the pressure is constantly adjusting itself to match that of around 8,000 feet, it’s a.) not perfect, and b.) noticeable during take off and landing.

So during landing, although the atmospheric pressure may be increasing, air pressure inside the cabin is actually decreasing. And if the air pressure in the cabin is decreasing, the blood begins to flow faster, which added to the gentle vibration of the engine and that flight attendant with an ass that just won’t quit—BOOM! Mega-huge boner.

Truthfully the blood pressure part of my theory is a little shoddy because I don’t understand what blood pressure is and how it works and frankly never will. I know it has something to do with the walls of your blood vessells and two different measurements and listening for something and Tippecanoe and Tyler too and I just never know how to react when they take my blood pressure at the doctor’s and tell it to me. You could tell me my blood pressure is 5,000/32 virgins and I’d still think I was in the best shape of my life.

So yes, Landing Boner—as the pressure inside the cabin drops, your blood vessels expand, allowing blood to start-a-free-flowin’ and suddenly you’re DTF, right? I assume if I’m wrong, you won’t hesitate to tell me, so either way, we’ll get to the bottom of this, Brah. Oh, and I’m not a total asshole, by the way. Geoff was more than fine with me writing about this because he's desperate to find some brothers in the fight that is Landing Boner. So if it happens to you, you are not alone!

...Also, I'd also just like it to be known that if I could travel around the country in a van with a pug just eating sandwiches and solving boner-related mysteries, I would never be sad again. So. There's that.

The Great Depression: Meg vs. Chris

As mentioned yesterday, I spent the better part of this past weekend and the first half of this week in Philadelphia with Chris, wrapping up the first round of editing our book and finessing another project we've got in the works. We got a lot of good work done, but we also got in our first fight. That's right, we fought. But like, for realizes fought. Don't get me wrong, it's not like Chris and I get along all of the time; we actually fight a lot. We fight about everything from the pronunciation of the word "cashew" to whether or not we're even friends, but it's always done in a cheeky "HA HA, YOU," kind of way. Monday night, however, was a different story. It was the first time we fought about something and actually meant it. So, what was it about? Was it a disagreement about editing the book? No. Was it about the direction of our new project? No. Was it even related to our writing at all? No. It was about catfish noodling. After five years of knowing each other, Chris and I got in our first real-live fight about catfish noodling.

Looking back, I'm not even entirely sure how it all started. I think I wrote a joke about crawfish that Chris rejected because it quote, "sounded too delicious." This opened up a whole can of worms about Chris' southern roots and their culture of eating all sorts of disgusting river creatures for pleasure, and I believe that led to an anecdote about how during the Great Depression, Chris' grandfather's brothers would go down to the crick and catfish noodle. 

"Uh, excuse me, but what exactly is catfish noodling?"

"You don't know what catfish noodling is?!"

"No."

"Seriously?"

"No."

"Well, you know how catfish are bottom-dwellers who swim with their mouths open?"

"a.) You just said 'bottom-dwellers' and b.) Yes, I do. Proceed."

"Well when you catfish noodle, a spotter finds a catfish hole, and the noodler reaches in and either shoves his hand into the catfish's mouth and through the gills, then pulls him out, or uses himself as bait by letting the catfish clamp down on him, and then pulls him out."

Not to sound like a big city Yankee, walking around a-snappin' my suspenders and calling the shots, but I was horrified. Catfish are some straight-up voodoo shit:

Look at that. Horrifying. The only thing more horrifying than catfish is the concept of shoving my fist down one's throat, letting it sink all of its teeth into me, and pulling it out and into my boat. And yet, noodling is a real thing! A real thing done by real people other than Chris' backwoods southern relatives during lean times! At present, noodling is legal in 11 out of 50 states (all in the South—shocking, I know), and the biggest catfish ever noodled (Christ...) weighed 60 pounds. Apparently the worst a catfish can really do to you is give you some superficial cuts and minor wounds, but OH, watch out for the alligators, snakes, beavers, muskrats, and snapping turtles who adopt abandoned catfish holes as their new homes.

Here's the thing: for being such a absurdly attractive woman, I'm actually not that much of a girly-girl. I'm not saying I walk around in a sports bra and mesh basketball shorts all day, but, you know, I like to camp. I spent the majority of the summers in my youth at a lake in Western Maryland redneck country. If you've been to my apartment, you know from some key pieces of artwork that I have a thing for rats; I had a pet chameleon in Elementary School—basically, I'm not constantly concerned that your newfangled motorcar is going to splash my perfectly pressed petticoats. That being said, I have to draw the line somewhere. And that line is square down the middle of catfish noodling. The very concept makes my skin crawl, which is exactly what I told Chris.

"You'd make a horrible poor person," Chris said. But he didn't just say it. He obnoxiously scoffed at me first, and then said it in a tone that was unbelievably patronizing and dripping in judgement. Oozing, really. And I love Chris dearly, but you know what? Fuck you, buddy. Because who are you to tell me that I'd make a horrible poor person? While I fully acknowledge that the concept of two middle-class white kids sitting around talking about who'd make the better poor person is so obnoxious the world might explode, it still pissed me off. Because although I'm not exactly living in a cardboard box on the steps of the post office, I'm also not walking around town with grillz on my teeth that spell "AWK-WARD" in diamonds, with a couple of high-class hookers on each arm. I make a small amount of money each month, but I make it work. And again, I know that's an obnoxious statement because if I'm ever out of money and literally starving, I can always call up my sister and she'll take me out for fajitas and I can dump two bowls of tortilla chips into my purse and put a spare flan in my pocket, but still! I consolidate three meals a day into one super meal I call "Breaklinner" because it's cheaper than eating thrice a day, and have recently adopted a Robin Hood-like approach to acquiring things like toilet paper and coffee. While I'm not saying that qualifies me as ghetto superstar, I am saying that I'm not a total princess.

"Excuse you, why would I be a horrible poor person?" I asked him.

"Because you're not willing to do what it takes to survive."

"Yes I am! I'm just not willing to catfish noodle!"

"Well, I think that proves that you don't have the skills it would take to survive a depression."

"There are other means of surviving a depression besides catfish noodling."

And that's when Chris literally pushed the computer off his lap, whipped around, and bellowed at me, "NAME SIX!"

Shit. Got. Real. And I know just reading that, you're probably like, "HA HA, old Meg and Chris got into an argument about catfish noodling and think that constitutes a real fight! LOL!!" But the argument really was void of any joking tone whatsoever and was oddly serious.

"This is stupid and we have work to do, let's just forget it," I said. Mostly because I couldn't come up with six ways of surviving a depression other than catfish noodling, as my mind was too busy trying to wrap itself around the concept that catfish noodling was even an option to begin with. 

We went back to work, but distracted, I started looking for noodling videos on YouTube and found this little gem:

Not only does this video offend me for obvious catfish-based reasons, I'm also enraged that these "fishermen" refer to the practice of noodling as "hand-grabbin'". I'm not saying Wordsworth would give a of tip his hat to whoever came up with the term "catfish noodling", but at least it's not the circle jerk of hillbilly redundancy that is "hand-grabbin'". Maybe if Mr. Mott did a little more brain-thinkin' he could have come up with something slightly more creative...

I went out to dinner with my parents tonight and asked them what my grandparents were doing during the Great Depression, thinking it would provide me a few concrete noodling-free depression alternatives. This turned out to be an extremely poor decision on my part. My great-grandfather was the buyer for Gimball's department store in New York, so apparently my grandmother "didn't even know there was a depression going on", and nobody really knows what my grandfather was doing for work at the time, just that he was in Chicago and then New York. I held out hope that my father's side—the scrappy Irish side—would give me a little more grit cred.

"So what did Grandpa Bern do during the Depression, Dad?"

"He worked on Wall Street."

"Oh man, he must have been pretty fucked after the market crashed, huh?"

"Hmm? Oh no, he was fine."

"What do you mean, he was fine?"

"I mean he was fine. He probably lived with his parents, if that helps?"

"[Sigh] What about Grandma Catherine?"

"Well, her family owned a pig farm outside the city in New Jersey, right around where Giant's stadium is today."

"Ooo! So she was a lowly pig farmer during the Depression?"

"No. She was a secretary in Manhattan."

"GOD DAMNIT! So what you're saying is, nobody in our family ever catfish noodled to get by?"

My parent's exchanged a sideways glance at each other, resulting in my father deciding to take this one. "Meghan, you come from a long line of hardened city people who wouldn't know a catfish if it crawled up the toilet and bit them on the ass. We know how to shop, drink, and go out to eat."

"This isn't helping my point in the slightest."

"I don't know why Chris is acting so high-and-mighty," my mom added, "He's the one with a hyphenated last name!"

So my relative theory was a bust and might actually make me sound more like an asshole, if that's even possible, but I still think I'd survive a depression just fine, thank you. I'm not saying that if you held a gun to my head and said, "Noodle this catfish or I'm going to shoot you," I'd say goodnight and that would be that—I'd noodle the god damn catfish, I'm just saying I'd prefer to explore other options first if given the opportunity. And I don't think that reflects negatively on my survival skills at all. In fact, I think in a Darwinian sense, that makes me even more likely to survive! Because when the chips are down and the well runs dry, I wouldn't be the one shoving my dick into a catfish or a beehive all willy-nilly; I'd probably be looking for some sort of berry alternative or something that doesn't involve sticking my extremeties directly into sharp. BUT, OOOOOO! Don't listen to me; I'm such an East-Coast Liberal Elitist! Run the other direction if you see me during an emergency because my Robert Frost anthology and menorah certainly aren't going to point us in the right direction!

Although we had decided to drop it, about an hour after our initial fight, I made the mistake of bringing it up again.

"I can't believe you don't think I have the survival skills it takes to survive a depression," I said to Chris.

"I definately did before tonight..." he replied, but with so much smugness and so much passive-aggression that afterwards, we both just kind of stared at each other in that distinct Mexican standoff where one person has just taken it slightly too far and the other can't decide if they should go deeper down the rabbit hole or just let it go entirely and you're both kind of shocked and confused how you got there, until Chris finally said, "I don't think either of us have the emotional energy to go where this conversation is gonna take us tonight."

"Agreed."

"Wanna go to the sports bar around the corner and get burgers and beer?"

"Yes. Yes, I do."

And that was the end of that. I think every couple (romantic or otherwise) has that one dumb thing that they disagree on and decide to never talk about with each other for the sake of the relationship. For my sister and her husband, it's "The Daily Show"; for Chris and Ex-Co Blogger Eddie, it's Chloë Sevigny; and apparently for Chris and me, it's catfish noodling. To test that theory, I asked my parents if they have a That Thing they can't agree on and don't bring up around each other.

"You mean besides Bavarian sex acts?" my dad responded.

"Yeah! Like, you know, just something stupid that you both always...wait...I GET THAT. And that is disgusting."

Damn sassy, entitled East Coast brats...where's the humbling mouth of a trout when you need one?

If I had wings I would fly...

Just got back from a long four days working in Philly for The Man and THIS is what I come home to?! God: You more of a bitch than a bitch.

My Sitting Shiva playlist:

























R.I.P. Nate Dogg. Melodious dream maker. Hook master. West Coast legend. Sigh.

Come on Maryland, get your shit together

I had to share. From a phone conversation I just had with my mom:

Me: I just read on Twitter that the Maryland House killed the same-sex marriage bill. That's some fucking bullshit right there!

Diane: That is too bad.

M: [Reading from the Post] 'The Maryland House of Delegates has voted to effectively kill for this year a bill that would have allowed same-sex marriage in the state. The House approved on voice vote a motion to send the bill back to the Judiciary Committee, an acknowledgment by supporters that it did not have sufficient votes to pass on the floor.'

D: I thought it was expected to go through?

M: Well, it says a few paragraphs down that 'The bill had significant momentum coming out of the Senate but ran into resistance in the Democratic-led House from African-American lawmakers from Prince George's County, who cited religious opposition in their districts, and conservative Democrats in Southern Maryland and the Baltimore suburbs.'

D: Aren't African American men the ones with that culture of low...low-down...?

M: Down-Low Brothers.

D: [Sighs] You can do it in the middle of a poker game, but you can't get married.

...Never has "Down-Low" homosexuality been so eloquently defined.

Diane: A++

My beloved Maryland: See me after class, young lady

Do it 'til it hurts

As of March 11, 2011 at 8:26am, Larry Hagman is...alive!