I SUCK AND OH GOD WHAT AM I DOING WITH MY LIFE! A Case For Calming Your Shit

If you’re anything like me, you constantly look at the people around you, measure yourself against their seeming successes, take a look back at yourself, mentally kick yourself in the ass for being behind/a failure/not knowing what the hell you’re doing, eat a gallon of ice cream and cry while listening to your Sia, Drake and Enya mixtape (those are still a thing, right?) as you stare at yourself sobbing in the mirror surrounded by tissues and wine and a confused looking dog. Um. Something like that completely imagined scenario. Haha, LEFT FIELD COMING IN FOR A LANDING! Amirite?

I’ve never felt good enough for much of anything. Sometimes it’s crippling enough that I choose inaction as the only action. If I do something, I’m just going to suck at it! And people will judge me. With their eyes. And words. And no thanks.

Why does anybody do this to themselves? I guess (more…)

Skip The Ball Deodorant: 21 Things Women Wish Men Knew

I originally wrote most of this for Made Woman.  Posted here in no particular order and with a more lewd makeover, as is my way.

1. If your idea of a romantic first date is at your local Red Lobster, we’re judging you for it.  No, we don’t need a fancy 5 star $200 meal.  But put a LITTLE creativity and effort into your restaurant of choice.  With Yelp in existence, there’s no excuse for such blatant laziness.
2. If you are lucky enough to get us into bed, please be advised that any mishaps you make are going to be reported to any female friend (and possibly some male friends) who will listen.  Know this: We’re worse than you are.
3. Unfortunately for you, if you’re awesome we probably won’t share any details.  You kidding?  We’re keeping that shit all to ourselves.
4. Women love great listeners, indeed it’s true.  But if you sit there saying nothing, we’re going to be tempted to check for a pulse.  That strong silent type thing doesn’t work for everyone.
5. At the same time, you should not be talking over us.  If you’re cutting us off to tell your own stories and gossip like a schoolgirl, you’ve just become our girlfriend.  Congratulations.
6. If you refuse to go downtown, you sure as hell better not expect us to.  Also: get ready to (more…)

SXSW: A Tale of Strippers, Wet Socks, YouTube Stars and Crying Livers

I had no idea SXSW was anything more than a music festival until a few weeks ago when my coworker told me she was going for the “interactive” portion – on our company’s dime.  Say whaaaat?  As it turns out, SXSW is for music, movies, comedy and the interactive part covers digital technology (think mobile, internet, robots from the future sent to perform basic human functions for us because we are all lazy pieces of shit, etc).  So I got permission from my boss and my trip to Austin, TX was booked, y’all.

The first thing I discovered preparing for this trip was that I had absolutely no idea what I had gotten myself into.  I’m talking approximately 5 trillion sessions going on at the same time, all day long, in various locations around downtown Austin.  Do I want to see Nev Schulman from Catfish leading a panel on love and identity in the digital age, or do I want to see a panel on the role of comedy in technology?  Do I want to see a session on the future of social media in television or do I want to skip all of it and go to one of the 5000 sponsored parties at bars all over town with free alcohol and food?  (Um, duh.)  I was pretty nervous heading into this thing because I hate the unexpected and knowing that I have to network with people makes me break into mental hives.

Having booked on the late side, hotels were hard to come by, so my coworker and I went through AirBNB to find an apartment to rent out.  The fact that we had stumbled into a clusterfuck of a situation was evident pretty quickly after (more…)

Rain=END OF THE WORLD & Other Things I Learned Living In Los Angeles

I moved to LA for a lot of reasons. Let’s get right to it, okay? I was on-and-off dating a guy who moved out here, and when I made the announcement that I was also moving out here, pretty much everyone I knew was convinced that I was a desperate pitiful lunatic following his ass – an ass that didn’t even really want me – across the country. Yes folks, my “friends” were SO confident in me that they were taking bets on how long I’d last out here after he cheated on me/kicked me to the curb.  Almost six years later and I’m still here so to them I say: EAT MY ASS, YOU JOYLESS PRICKS.

But were they right? Kind of.  I had wanted to move out of my hometown, Albany, since before I graduated college, but I had no one to do it with me and I was too much of a vagina to do anything about it on my own. I met this dude and fell for him, watched him make the move, visited him a few times, watched my cousin also make the move, and somewhere along the way I decided to do it myself.  Basically, meeting this guy gave me the lady-balls I needed to change my own life.

When I came out here, I thought I had LA mostly figured out.  (more…)

No, I Will Not Make Out With You

I know I can be a bitch sometimes.  I’m sorry, I blame it on my cynical outlook on the world and people in general.  Getting made fun of too much as a child?  Whatever it is, I know I can embody the true essence of a megafuckton o’bitch at times.

But as bitchy as I can be, it’s very hard for me to blatantly reject a guy.  I mean, I understand it takes balls and courage and what have you to work up the nerve to ask a girl to go out/hang out/wang out/get a drink/eat a meal/watch a stupid movie/sit on your face/whatever.   Even the least intimidating girl in the universe can seem intimidating when it’s time to lay your dick on the line and hope she doesn’t smack it away.  This is why I will never ask a guy out in my life. I cannot bear the thought of possible rejection.  Or having my dick smacked away.  Call me a pussy, I know I deserve it.

All this being said, if you ask a girl out and she politely says she’s busy or unavailable, and makes no suggestion of rescheduling, you can pretty much take that as a foolproof sign of her disinterest.  Especially if you’ve tried more than once with the same results.  She likes you but isn’t in like with you.  She thinks she should be placing her tulips on someone else’s organ.  She has to wash her hair every night for the rest of her life and you can’t help.  She just ain’t interested, brosef.  It’s not personal.  Or, okay, it is, I guess, but either way, don’t waste your time on the broad.  Seriously, screw her. This should be pretty obvious, yes?

Unfortunately…..no, not always. (more…)

It Would Be Super If (Some) Men Would Stop Being Giant Pussies

Also posted at Thought Catalog

I probably should have taken a quaalude or something before I started writing this, because it’s a topic that fires my ass right up.  After seeing a few girlfriends of mine now get unceremoniously given their walking papers by a boyfriend, who cites the reason of “just not being in love” with them anymore, and having dealt with similar things myself, I feel the need to let you guys in on a little secret: being in love does not equal shooting stars out of your ass day in, day out, every time you come in contact with your girlfriend.  You don’t have to be exploding with passion constantly in her wake.  So many of you seem to be so obsessed with what you might possibly be missing that you fail to appreciate what you have right in front of your face.

There are about a zillion people (scientific number) in the world so yeah, statistically there is a better match for you out there somewhere.  Maybe she’s in New Zealand rolling around with polar bears or something.  There are polar bears in New Zealand, right?  Yeah, I guess not.  My point is, you never are going to be 100% sure if this girl is THE ONE for you.  Sorry, that’s just life.  There’s no light that parts the skies and shines a halo over her dome in the middle of a field of hearts and moonbeams, leaving you with virtually no doubt that she was bestowed upon this earth for the sole purpose of coexisting with you and your bullshit.  Hey, newsflash!  There’s probably a better match for her out there too.  Does that mean you never slow down and put in the work with someone you get along with and DO love, because hey, there just might be some girl out there that hey, just might be better for you?  If you operate in that mindset, you’re literally never going to be satisfied.  “I love you but I’m not in love with you” has got the be the most overworked, overplayed excuse, second only to “it’s not you, it’s me.”

(more…)

Saturday, 1/5/13: The Night Me and Will Smith Didn’t Get Married

Saturday was rather eventful for this antisocial recluse who usually spends her weekends drowning alone in bottles of wine. Hey, by the way, everyone who asks why I’m single? There’s your answer.

My lovely friend invited me to go see Django Unchained with her and a group of her friends, which in actuality ended up being a 3rd wheel situation when her man friend was the only other person to show up. Luckily I am nonplussed by turns of events such as this, because I am quite familiar with being the dateless ogre sitting next to the cool kids. So anyways, this white girl and her two black friends go in to see a movie about slavery together. Awkward situation at the movie store? No, friends, no, we all laughed and cringed at the appropriate times and no unfortunate race wars broke out in the aisles. Movie was top notch by the way. I especially enjoyed watching Jamie Foxx make Quentin Tarantino’s bloated visage go boom. But the night doesn’t end there. Oh fuck no it doesn’t.

If you know me you know there’s a lot of stuff that I hate. People, places and things, mostly. So you will be shocked to know that I decided all willy nilly (foreshadowing: a concept I understand) to accompany my movie date (sans man friend) to her friend’s going away party at a bar in Studio City. STUDIO CITY. Do you know what it’s like to schlep to Studio City from West LA? That’s like, oh my god, totally the valley. And I barely knew the person whose party it was! And I wasn’t going to know anyone there besides my friend and one other friend who may or may be there! And ho boy, do I loathe forced socialization with strangers. But I decided to throw caution to the wind and go, cuz hey, maybe my future husband likes bars in Studio City? He might. And we’d break up cuz he goes to bars in Studio City, but whatever. Who am I to piss in the face of fate, right?

(more…)

I Told You I Was LOL’ing, But In Reality, I Think You’re Awful.

We LOL a lot in our textual (is that a word? it is now.) conversations, don’t we? We LOL so much that our cheeks must hurt from guffawing through them all day long. Hmmm, yes. Not exactly. I shall break down what we really mean when we tell people how goddamn funny we think they are.

I’m not laughing at all. Like, at all. I’m just saying this cuz I don’t know what else to say and it pretty much comes out automatically at this point. It doesn’t even mean anything. It might as well be a fucking period. Yeah.

You are, without a doubt, the worst person I’ve ever met.

Like, completely insufferable.

I don’t want to use LOL again, or I refuse to use it at all because you and I both know it means nothing at this point, so here. Here’s meaningless acknowledgement of the stupid thing you said.

Which also means nothing.

If we were face to face, I wouldn’t even smile politely in your general direction.

Holy shit. What you just said didn’t make me want to stab out my eyes. I actually began my stream of hahas WITH THE A.  I’m so amused I can’t even type out Hahah in the correct formation!  I can’t even spell right now!  Look, my H’s are running together!  You, my friend, are one of the chosen few. (Still not really laughing though, fuckface.)

OK, NOW I’m laughing and you know this because I made sure to actually spell out the words “I’m really laughing,” because any other aforementioned signifier of laughter is a huge fucking lie we are all in on but still use because we are all trying to follow this new breed of societal norm and not be, ya know, straight up assholes, I guess. Congratulations on eliciting a real human reaction that caused my brain to fire a neuron, because I almost forgot what that was in between brainlessly reloading my 500 social streams of data and occasionally clicking “Like” on shit so I know that I’m still alive.

And now I can never text anyone again.

My dog is an asshole – Part 1

Don’t be fooled by his face, he really is a dick.

I named him Archer, after the wise-ass tough guy animated character on the FX TV show. You know, this guy:

I did this because he’s a badass and I wanted my dog to be a badass. And if you’re about to say “well your first mistake was choosing a terrier…” just shut the fuck up. So, unfortunately, he went the complete opposite direction of his moniker and grew up to be a giant, gaping vaginal cavity. Let’s begin with the submissive urination. Holy shit, all you need to do is look at him the wrong way and he’ll leave a warm yellow present right there on the floor. For you! As an offering! Cuz you’re the boss! If anyone, virtually anyone, comes up to pet him, he will sink those little legs down and flash flood their feet. If you make the mistake of letting him jump up to greet you, he’ll decorate your pants. It’s a urine party, and urine-vited, okay?

Granted, the brat has come a long way from when he was first adopted, and he would leave trails of pee behind him as he ran across the room, but wow, this is really still happening. Now yes, thanks to Cesar Milan’s TV show where he comes into people’s houses and calmly and assertively tells them how everything their dog ever does or ever will do is their fucking fault, I do take most of the blame. My idea of handling the situation patiently is saying, “Are you goddamn kidding me, Archer? Are you goddamn peeing again? Why do you keep goddamn doing this to me?” and I’ll stomp my feet on the way to get the paper towels. This award-winning method coupled with a hyper-sensitive dog clearly works wonders.

Know what else I’ve managed to do? Make him a clingy little fuck. Somehow. I’m sure hugging him too much because no humans will hug me isn’t the problem. Let me explain. If I’m sitting on the floor playing Scramble with Friends on my phone, as I am wont to do, he will climb right over my furiously moving fingers to settle hisself into my lap.

If I’m laying on my stomach typing away on my laptop, his head is on my wrists. Or behind me on my feet. Or if it’s a special occasion, he may climb on my back and watch the screen over my shoulder.

He even watches me in the shower.

Oh, and he has two settings when it comes to other dogs: blind hatred or blind terror. A dog comes up to give a friendly sniff of the asshole to say hello, and Archer will stick his tail between his legs and sit that ass down. Sorry, guy; greeting rejected! If existing in a house where another dog dares to also exist, Archer will bark in its face and helpfully show off his teeth to show just how agreeable he is to the situation. And if he does like a dog enough to attempt to play with it, his version of playing is to aggressively sniff the dog in the shoulder and then follow it with a few headbutts.

I guess what I’m saying is, I’m going to be a great mother one day.

The Brand of (Queen) Bey

Originally posted at MadeWomanMag.com

After a 15+ year career, Beyonce has left only one question about her abilities as an entertainer and artist: Is there anything she can’t do? She puts everything she has into all that she does, from her music to her performances to her clothing line to her fragrances to her picture perfect family. With the recent birth of her baby, Beyonce can add another accomplishment to her resume: being a mom. Seriously, Webster’s should just stick a picture of Beyonce’s face next to the word BOSS in the dictionary.

Despite constantly being in the public eye, Beyonce is just as notorious for her privacy as she is for her career. She kept her relationship with Jay-Z totally under wraps for years, and even managed to pull off a wedding without so much as a leaked picture of a tablecloth from the ceremony. But since Beyonce got pregnant, we’re seeing a little more of her private life. She made a very public announcement of her impending bundle of joy by revealing her bump on stage at the MTV Awards, and while she never revealed a due date or confirmed her baby’s sex, she did reveal her name soon after birth and even shared some pics of the little Blue shortly after returning home. And now Beyonce is giving us even more of a glimpse into her world with the launch of her Tumblr account. She chose to reveal pictures from her personal collection, including some with her equally Boss husband, her sister, and her nephew. She even included a couple videos, with a highlight being the one where she stood barefoot and pregnant in front of a tree and said it was a blue ivy.

Clearly, everything that Beyonce does is carefully strategized and has a specific purpose for her brand; and with this Tumblr, it’s clear she is trying to give her ravenous fans a little more of a taste of Beyonce, the human being – not Bey the part-human-part-R&B-demigod we see on the stage all the time. And obviously, we can’t get enough. Her MTV Awards reveal garnered her Twitter’s top tweets-per-second record and we can only imagine what kind of crazy traffic her new Tumblr is getting. The site says she will continue to share pictures via the blog. And really, since she is so famously private, it feels a lot like getting a look behind the Great and Powerful Oz’s curtain or something. I gotta hand it to Bey (…again…), she made this choice to share some things with the public, and she’s doing it on her damn terms and as she damn well pleases. Shocker – Beyonce wins again.

It’s being said that her four year anniversary with Jay (which was April 4) spurred her to do this. Whatever the reason, I think it’s a great move. She’s so larger than life – it’s easy to forget she is an actual person, not some perfect singing, dancing cyborg. Getting a little peek into the world she lives in off the stage is pretty cool. It will be interesting to see if this means another evolution of the brand of Beyonce. Motherhood softening you up, Bey? Keep it coming – we love it!