Category Archives: Rambles

Humor, Rambles

I BUILT A GAY ARMOIRE AND MY DOG THINKS I’M DYING

I’m currently a stay-at-home child. I don’t have a job. When my friends and peers are suiting up and heading out to their internships, I’m deciding whether or not I’ll spring for the chino shorts or if I’ll just slide into another pair of gym shorts and prove that I have fully and truly given up on life.

But because I stay at home—tending the chickens, doing watercolors, and growing yams for my own organic lubricant—I’ve really gotten to know myself on a deeper level and I’ve also developed some amazing hobbies to keep myself busy and keep my mind as sharp as it usually is (a dull 7/10).

I finished building an armoire today. So weird, but every time I say “Armoire” (and I say it a lot because I’m very self-conscious about the fact that I don’t have an internship, so whenever I meet anyone, I blurt out, “I’M BUILDING AN ARMOIRE” like I’m some sort of guerilla interior designer) I feel like I’m one of those Ina Garten gays who wears multi-pattern silk overshirts and paisley ascots. Now that I think about it, I’m kind of into it.

Side bar: I’m that asshole who tries to pronounce everything in the “correct” way. So it’s not “arm-whar.” It’s “arm-mwah (while twirling curlicue mustache)”.

But anyway, yeah I built an armoire. And I can’t even pretend it’s very “masc 4 masc” of me because 1) It’s an armoire (which is the gayest of all furniture storage besides ottomans and Lazy Susans) 2) I did it while listening to podcasts, and 3) I complained so much that out of the six or so hours it took me to put Armand (the armoire) together, five of them were me just complaining to my mother. However, I did use a power drill (or power-screwdriver ? Unclear) and I, like the true serial killer in the making I am, just pressed the button and watched the power-drill whirl around, screeching its beautiful metal melody.

So besides building an armoire, power-washing my front stoop, going to the gym (omg am I secretly the most masc person ever? Is this like the time I didn’t know that I loved Beyoncé?), I’ve been watching a ton of TV and listening to a bunch of amazing podcasts. Is it so boring to name the things I’ve been absorbing lately? Or is that cool? Okay I’m gonna list the podcasts and stuff I’ve been listening to and the shows I’ve been watching, so if you don’t care, just scroll past.

  1. Throwing Shade podcast
  2. Weird Adults With Little Esther podcast
  3. Anna Faris Is Unqualified podcast
  4. Bitch Sesh podcast
  5. Candidly Nicole—a faux VH1 TV about Nicole Richie
  6. Not Safe With Nikki Glaser—tv show
  7. The Week With Charlie Rose—just fucking with you guys.

I’ve also been reading a ton—menus, receipts, subpoenas—which has been soy nice because I’ve just been so oversaturated from my school year of reading serious literature. How boring. Trying to make me a “better person.”

I made this catchy title before I finished writing the post, so I should probably talk about my dog. He’s following me around everywhere—like will not leave me alone at any point. I was washing a cup in the bathroom, he was standing at my heels (size 11 Louboutins). I’m doing laps around the first floor (something I do when I keep forgetting things and have to keep getting them) and his little feet are click-clacking behind me (I forgot to mention that he’s also wearing Louboutins in this scenario). I’ve read somewhere that dogs can sense ghosts. I mean, animals can sense tsunamis or whatever, so I don’t think it’s that big of a stretch that they can sense the supernatural.

So I’ve come to the conclusion that either I’m a tsnumani, or I’m about to die/become a medium/there’s a ghost who is obsessed with me, because my dog cannot leave me alone. I hope it’s that I’m a medium, because that’s the most positive out of all the three possible outcomes I’ve discussed. But if I die then people will find this blog post and think that I’m clairvoyant or that my dog is a witch, and I cannot condone the next round of canine Salem Witch Trials. I will not let this happen.

Also the photos I’ve chosen have no real relevance, I’m just getting burritos and don’t have time to be visually hilarious. Plus those are funny tweets.

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Life, Rambles

YIPS-EE KI-YAY, M*THAF*CKA

Alternately titled “YIP, YIP, HOORAY!”

I have the yips. And if we’re being honest, I’ve had them for a while.

Side bar: “Yips” sounds like an STD (a STD?), but something particularly embarrassing. Something Tiger Woods would’ve gotten from one of his 15 prostitutes. I really don’t know why I’m starting this post by talking about El Tigre.

I’ve had the yips ever since I wrote the post about suicide and depression. It got so many views (roughly twelve times more than I’m used to) and the resulting feeling was a deer in headlights. But that doesn’t feel quite right. More like when you disturb a rock and the beetle that’s been making its home underneath freezes, suddenly aware of the vastness above it. I’m the beetle in this metaphor.

And since I’ve been made aware of the vast curve above me, I’ve realized that people might actually be reading what I write—a concept that had not been fully concretized in my head—and having opinions about my writing, and that’s led to the yips.

I do much better when no one’s watching—actually I do much better when people are actively rooting against me. In my freshman year of high school, my track coach knocked me back one running group. We would run in heats, so Group A would start their sprinting lap, then ten seconds later, Group B would start, and so on and so on.

He called out my name—well actually, he thought my name was “Murphy” so he called out “Murphy”—“Go to Group Six.” Group Six was the slowest runners—I had previously been Group Five, which was the mingled remains of runners who were not quite slow but not quite fast (Groups One to Three were largely interchangeable in speed, Group Four was always vying for the chance to jump ahead, and Five was largely content to swim in its own pond). Six was the asthmatics and the fatties.

Instead of being shamed into embarrassment, the demotion kick-started dogged stubbornness, and I roiled internally.

Group Five would go into their lap. Ten seconds. Group Six, me poised at the very edge of the line, would go. I sprinted, pumping limbs, and caught up with Group Five. The next round, I would pass the slowest member of Group Five. Then the next slowest. After every lap, I would stand, gasping, and make direct, combative eye contact with my coach. He didn’t notice, but I knew that I had made my point.

Group Five.

This anecdote tells us a few things. One, I might not know when to quit. Two, I’m very aggressive. Three, I succeed with flying colors when no one has any possible expectations of me. The minute people expect something, I deflate like a bouncy castle at the close of a middle schooler’s birthday party.

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Source: Imgur

And it sucks, because I don’t want to have the yips. I want to use my blog for what it’s meant for—complaining about boys, writing veiled personal essays to catch certain people’s attentions, and cutting up pop culture for general consumption.

So I’m officially casting off all expectations. Most people have very low ones of me already, but shed those too. Because mama’s back, and there’s some good shit we need to discuss.

I don’t know if I should talk about them here….or….?

…

See, I started writing this on Tuesday and now it’s Thursday and I was going to write more but I was apparently distracted—probably by, like, a butterfly or I went to get something to eat. Regardless, I did not finish this post, but I want to. I think I’m going to go back to my roots and start forcing myself to write biweekly posts, yips be damned.

Side bar: I’m writing this having just woken up from a nap. I was reading Kim Barker’s book The Taliban Shuffle (which became the movie Whiskey Tango Foxtrot with Tina Fey) and that is one book you don’t want to be reading when you fall asleep because all my dreams were about the Taliban and me wanting to go to the mall.

I’M BACK.

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Source: PopSugar

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Love & Romance, Rambles

ROM-COMS HAVE SUNK THEIR GILA MONSTER FANGS INTO MY HEART

(written after eating Panda Express and talking about RuPaul’s Drag Race with Thea, a tru g0ddess)

Mindy Kaling once said that she classifies rom-coms in the genre of science fiction, and I agree. The premises are so thin, the coincidences are so transparent, and the characters are…Matthew McConaughey.

But there’s something about the rom-com that appeals to me, and since its Gila monster fangs into my heart. Rom-coms shape, for better or for worse, how we interpret romance. We think it should be hard, with twists and turns, and at the end, we believe that everything will work out in the end. And that’s not bad, and I don’t want to stop believing that. Because the alternative to the rom-com world—likely Nihilism—sucks ass.

Rom-coms allow us to take the shitty and spin them into gold. The boy that didn’t call back, who was kind of a douche—instead of taking them as them, you take them as the steady montage of Boys That Weren’t, before the Boy That Was. Unconventional romances take the tune of a No Strings Attached.

Side bar: remember when everyone was very into the “friends with benefits” movement? That’s very much the grandfather, or slutty uncle, to our “hookup culture.”

And the boy that drags our hearts through the mud like a kite—made on last week’s episode of The Amazing Race—becomes not just another guy, but the One. We make all these excuses and parse all these moments for hidden meanings; we peel apart words like artichokes, searching layers for the core.

Sometimes things aren’t artichokes. Sometimes they are, but sometimes they aren’t. and that really sucks. But I don’t know if I can shift my frame of mind to believe that. For better or worse, I’m a sucker for a Mindy Kaling, Nora Ephron moment, a swell of non-diegetic music when their name pops up on your screen. There’s something painfully beautiful when fantasies crumble, a la Her, but life is hard enough. I have depression and anxiety—I feel like I’ve filled my cup full of all that kind of hardship. I’ll keep believing in rom-coms and even when the poison incapacitates me, I’ll welcome that fat, slobby Gila monster into my bed.

Because why not? It’s better than nihilism; it’s better than cynicism. The world is built for cynics, and who wants to follow that crowd? I might be dumb and hopeful and completely wrong, but all that buildup before the fall is excruciately beautiful and inspirational and worth it. I don’t mind falling and breaking and sad. I can deal with that. I’ve been dealing with that. But to put up with the inevitable fall for the taste of rushing wind and the excitement before the strike of teeth and flash of pain…that seems like a good trade for the flush of excitement when he likes your Instagram, or when she looks your way. In a sickening way, it’s all worth it. Even when it’s not.

Give me a Troop Beverly Hills over a Ten. Give me Guardians of the Galaxy. Give me improbable love that I can ingest and carry with me even when I’m feeling like smacking books out of people’s hands. Give me unlikely, unrealistic, sci-fi-worthy romance that’s so saccharine it’s painful. I’ll deal. I’ll take it all. I don’t have a sweet tooth, but I can handle it.

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Inspirational, Life, Rambles

BAD DIVING BOARD METAPHOR

(Written in front of Tatte Bakery while shivering violently and pretending that I’m not)

Today in the last British Literature class I’ll ever (hopefully) take, my professor asked us if we write in journals. He did, and he said how fun it was to look back on journals from years ago and read what he thought. I had to bite my tongue to avoid plugging my blog (because not even I’m that obnoxious to do a shameless plug in British Literature)—

I should point out, legally, that I have actually put my Twitter/Instagram handle on the blackboard in this class; but that’s less of a shameless plug and more of a public service to my classmates. @dnnymccrthy on Instagram and Twitter.

—and thought back on when I had my old, horrific teenage blog—The Amazing Unicorn Files—where literally all I did was talk about boys I had a crush on, Honey Boo Boo (she was big in 2012), and vaguely offensive satiric “articles.” I have since shoved a stake into that blog’s heart and started this wonderful old broad. And this Elaine Stritch of a blog—shocking, funny, elderly—has morphed to be greater than TAUF. I get to write about politics and pop culture and what’s happening in my world.

But when I look back on this blog in a week, or a month, or a decade, I don’t think I’ll care about Donald Trump—unless he’s Il Duce Trump by then—or Lemonade or what queen went home on that week’s RuPaul’s Drag Race. I’ll still care about the Kardashians obviously, but that’s because I’ll be curious to see how Kris Jenner manages to outlive everyone else in her family.

I’ll care about what I felt, and what was happening in my life. What boys I liked, and what friends I had made, and how good I looked that day. I plan on getting extensive plastic surgery when I turn 40, so it’ll be nice to be able to look back on that youthful boy that I’m desperately trying to recreate.

So I just finished the last day of classes in my junior year. I still have finals and papers to write and loose ends to tie up, but that’s next week and an eternity away. Right now I’m sitting in front of a very chic café, watching cars go alongside my table and shivering from what I’ll say is the cold but might just be the coffee that I’m sucking down but don’t want to acknowledge because coffee shouldn’t make me spasm like a dying fish.

I’ve just finished my junior year of college and the long slab of summer lies ahead of me, but it’s weird, right? It’s odd. Suddenly, I’m about to reach this huge milestone—21, senior year of college, the world beyond—and it feels like it’s all happening too soon. I’m a kid. I don’t know how to get a job. I just figured out how people get cake pops to stick together. I can’t provide for myself. I can barely provide a hilarious one-liner response to cute cashiers.

I have friends who are graduating in a few days. I have friends who are engaged, or are in relationships that could blossom into long-term situations. I can see people going into jobs that lead to careers that lead to the rest of their lives. I can see it all, and it’s making me want to break a table. Because my life is one big sexy, messy black hole.

I feel like I’m always referencing my Brit Lit class, but bear with me. we read Gerard Manly Hopkins this week, and his poetry stuck in my brain like a half-remembered song. He writes like I write, adjectival and messy and complicated and complex. It’s a structure compounded words and thoughts, weaving together to create a parts-of-the-whole thing. And that made me flutter. Because here was someone who did what I want to do. Who was a writer and successful (I mean, he died at 45 of typhoid or something, and all of his poems were published posthumously, so I don’t want to do exactly what he did, also he was a priest which is so not my MO, but still) and loved what he did.

I can’t see my future and I can’t see what the next step should be, but I know what I want my narrative to be. I want to be able to get a job where I can be weird and funny and write in my voice. I want a cool life. I want to not find love right away and be able to have one of those twenties where I can have a shit ton of content off being a twentysomething. I want to live somewhere warm. I want to laugh until I cry, and choke on food and cackle-scream. I cackle-scream now, but I want to keep cackle-screaming.

(I had to move inside because I was cold and can’t pull off that “artist suffering for their work” mentality.)

I want all of these things and it’s weird that they’re beginning to be possible. That in a year, maybe less, I’ll have to start making big-boy-out-of-Pampers decisions. What a horrific image. Maybe I can pull a Lisa Rinna and make my money off adult diapers. That must be my rock bottom, but no one says you can’t make bank on the bottom (insert filthy joke here).

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Source: riffsy.com

I don’t want this to turn into one of those fucking annoying feel-good posts, or one of those “Don’t make me adult” travesties. I want to adult. But it feels a little like being a kid at my grandma’s pool club. There was this huge dive—literally massive when you’re six—and one day, I decided to conquer it. Obviously this is a metaphor—pay attention.

I was—am—a total chickenshit, so I don’t know what made me think I could confidently pull this off, but maybe even then, I was trying to self-destruct. I climb up, and I’m eager. I want to be at the top; I want to make the jump. And suddenly, I’m at the top, and the breeze is stronger up here than it was on the ground, and everyone looks tiny, and that water looks like it’s going to hurt an awful lot from this high up. And so I’m torn, because I want to jump, but suddenly I’m thinking about the very concrete logistics. What will I look like as I fall? Should I tuck my arms in? Fling them out? How deep into the water will I go? Should I scream?

Then the lifeguard and my sister hovering on the top of the ladder are letting me know that I’m holding up everyone and I have to jump. I have to disregard all the questions and queries and potential situations. And so I curl my toes over the edge as the diving board wobbles underneath my weight. And almost before my brain can become okay with it, my feet make my decision for me and step off the edge.

The way down is as ungraceful as I feared, and the primitive instinct within me is making me flap my wings but if I’m a bird, I’m Big Bird, and I’m plummeting to the earth with the help of vengeful gravity. And I hit the water like a cannon, and shoot deep into the depths. My palms sear from the impact, but I float upwards without thinking and start swimming.

I’m hoping that life after college will start like that. That my body will move ahead of my over-agonizing mind and my palms will sear from the pain but that I can rely on muscle memory and start swimming towards something, anything.

I just had a really good conversation with a friend—let’s call her Libby—and she basically said that after college you just look at what the next best decision is, and you take it like that. Step. Step. Step. Evaluate. Step. Step. And if that’s not exactly what you meant, Libby, frankly take that up with my lawyers. Creative license. I’ll have my day in court.

I’m on that diving board and the wind is picking up. It’s fucking terrifying, but I’ve seen all my friends jump, so I have to assume that there’s something spectacular in the deep end. At the very least, there’s got to be something spectacular in the fall. And maybe that’s all that we can be promised at this point as soon-to-be functioning people. The fall is fun and shit-scary and your palms with sear with the impact but you’ll start swimming.

That seems like enough metaphors for today. This was fun. This was right.

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Source: Giphy

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pop culture, Rambles, Things I Like

APPARENTLY I’M A HUGE BEYONCÉ FAN, AND I DIDN’T EVEN KNOW

(Written in a campus Starbucks because my lifeline has been voodoo-linked to my Gold Card status)

I’ve been starting every conversation I’ve had this week with, “Have you listened to Lemonade?” It’s a good ice-breaker, and allows me to know who I should shun and who I shouldn’t (shundn’t?). I’m a pop culture whore/anthropologist, so it’s important to me thtat I surround myself with like-minded people. Or rich people. Or people who can explain how planes get off the ground. I get the whole “in flight” thing, but how do they get there?

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Source: Giphy

Anyway, anyway. When a major cultural moment occurs—Adele’s 25, Britney shaving her head, Justin Bieber’s nudism—we as a people need to acknowledge it. I was simply doing my part. I found out about the album dropping almost accidentally on Sunday night (pure luck) and have been listening to it pretty much this entire week (I mean, it’s Wednesday, but nothing sells a story like hyperbole).

My favorites are “Pray You Catch Me,” “Hold Up,” “Daddy Lessons,” “Freedom,” and “Don’t Hurt Yourself.” I’m not mentioning “Formation” because that’s obvious. Anyway. I’ve been thinking about it, and I have poor impulse control, so since I’ve been thinking it, I’ve been bringing it up in conversation. Sue me.

Side bar: I’m pretty sure Beyoncé was wearing Yeezy Season Threezy in her visual album. I think the song was “Don’t Hurt Yourself.” It was definitely when she was screaming that she would “bounce to the next dick.”

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Source: Giphy

I have an in-depth discussion of the visual album with my coworkers. I insist that my classmate finds some way to access Tidal purely so she can listen to the album and we can talk about it. Normal, sane things.

I’m at a meeting for the magazine I work for—City Editor—and I was casually bringing up Lemonade because, remember, culture. Then someone at the table remarked, “Wow, you really like Beyoncé.”

“No I don’t!” I objected. Which is technically true. I like Beyoncé, but do I love Beyoncé? Well…yes. But am I obsessed with her? Am I a diehard fan? Of course not. I appreciate her as a vehicle for discussion, and for what she represents. And also for how sick her vocals are and how bomb her nails are. Seriously, did you see how good her nails were when she was in that bathtub singing…“Pray You Catch Me(?)”?

And then someone pointed out that my sweatshirt, which has a picture of the painting Madame X (one of my all-time favorites), had Beyoncé lyrics over it: “I walk like this cause I can back it up,” from “Ego.” And that my phone’s background was just an endless repetition of the lemon and bee emojis. And that I had brought up Lemonade at least sixteen times within a half hour meeting. And suddenly…my world spun.

Lemonde Background

Source: Danny McCarthy via his phone “Voldemort”

Was I a huge Beyoncé fan? How could I have missed it?

My whole image of myself shattered. I had always thought that I never stanned for anybody, that as a journalist I kept a healthy distance from my pop queens. Sure, I track RuPaul’s Drag Race tags on Tumblr, and my phone backgrounds include a regular rotation of gag-worthy pop culture icons.

But apparently, this entire time, I was harboring a secret love for Beyoncé. My journalistic ethics have been biased this entire time (beyased—omg, I can’t be stopped. I’m addicted). Since I’m now a huge fan, I need to change a few things in my life. Firstly, I’ll get a social media face-lift: everything that can be Beyoncé will be Beyoncé. No more funny Real Housewives testimonials. No more picture of drag queens caught at unflattering angles. No. I will be committed, and I will not waver.

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Source: Giphy

One thing I’m still wondering—am I still allowed to make fun of Kelly Rowland and Michelle Williams? I feel like that’s a definite gray area for us Beyoncé fans.

In other news, I started the week by dry-heaving halfway through my workout. I had just finished doing squats and lunges, and had stopped to talk to my friend Thea. We’re having a conversation about a class that I’m in now that she took last semester. In the middle of discussing the video project, I stop talking and inform that I need to excuse myself because I’m pretty sure “I’m going to vomit.”

I did that fast diarrhea walk to the bathroom—you guys know the one—and promptly started gagging as soon as I was in the bathroom. I didn’t end up throwing up—frankly, a letdown—but after I was sure that my bile would not make an appearance, I shakily rose from my Hidden Tiger Crouching Dragon position, washed my hands, and walked back over to Thea to finish our conversation. I’m nothing if not a professional. I decided to cut that workout short and go home.

That’s been my week so far—Beyoncé and dry-heaving. Not that different from my usual. Except maybe a little more Beyoncé. I feel like I’ve fulfilled my dry-heaving quota for the month. That feels good to get that off my chest. I almost named this post: “DRY-HEAVING TO BEYONCÉ,” but that’s a little niched. Trying to broaden my audience.

Also I realize in my fervent attempt to convince everyone that I’m not a Beyoncé fan, I’ve written a 1000-word article entirely about Beyoncé. The irony is not lost on me. But I am lost. Can I borrow your cell phone to call my mom?

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Life, Rambles

MEMORY CANNIBAL, also known as THE TONYA HARDING STORY

As a writer, you’re constantly handling the balance of how much of your personal life to divulge to your audience. As a comedy person, you’re constantly balancing how much of the painful details to twist into a funny anecdote. So when you’re a comedy writer, you’re basically playing the game of “Which horrific moment of my life can be a funny essay without me completely selling my soul to the Devil, Faustus-style?”

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Source: thatslutinthearmchair.tumblr.com via Giphy. Caveat: I’ve been watching a lot of Happy Endings recently and all of the gifs will come from there. You’re welcome.

I’m not a comedy writer, or a comedy person, or a writer. I’m not even legally a human. But as a professional Ina Garten drag impersonator and someone who operates a blog, I find that more and more, I’m running into that issue. When nothing was happening in my personal life, it was easy to write about it. But as I grow and evolve, and the issues in my life grow and evolve, I am beginning to notice a line in the sand that is harder and harder to cross.

And it’s only until things actually started happening in my life that I realized that the “life” that I was writing about was literally nothing. But now my life is actually starting to roll, and not just in the same sense as the Gloucester Cheese Roll Competition. Because that’s funny.

There is an intense impulse to publish for writers. My journalism professor talks about that impulse all the time, or at least I’m assuming he does, because I spend most of my time in that class reading RuPaul’s Drag Race recaps. But when something happens to me, like that time I fell down the stairs or the time I sat on a plate of quesadillas or any time I make a fool of myself in front of a boy, my first instinct is to share it, Tweet it, or blog it. And that instinct is more than just the desire to share something that happens. It’s the desire to take back control of the situation.

Blogging incapsulates your life, packaging it into palatable, hilarious little morsels. The tale of me getting hurt by the first boy I cared about becomes a funny essay. A bad date becomes fodder for griping. The various aches and pains of existing as a real-life scarecrow—my brand—translates into rubbery antics. Writing takes the sting out of embarrassment and hurt and pain, and turns it into comedy. And on one hand, it’s extremely cathartic. It provides me the distance to process and dissect something, to take myself out of the equation.

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Source: jparx.tumblr.com via Giphy

Recently things have been happening to me. Some are amazing. Some are terrible. And my first instinct has always been to blog about them. But for the wrong reasons. I want to take myself out of these moments, but I’m also afraid to. I’m afraid to talk about the crazy, shitty things that are monumental in my life because then I relinquish control of them. They cease being intimate to me. They become content, public domain. They are no longer mine. And that’s been hard to come to terms with. That some things could easily be sting-less and funny and palatable, but that would mean losing my place in them. It would be accepting them as past and renaming them as something meant to be consumed.

My wanting to blog them is my wanting to stop them from hurting. Things have been rough lately, and that kneejerk reaction to make the bad thing stop is very much in play. But sometimes things have to hurt. I can’t—I shouldn’t—blog my way out of this. I’m trying not to make it into a joke or a punchline or a laugh. I’m trying to give it gravity. It’s really fucking hard, and lousy and frustrating. Because my instinct, as a writer and a former dork and a wannabe cool kid, is to cannibalize, produce and de-sting all the awkard’s and ew’s and damn’s of my life.

I’m a memory cannibal, and that’s not always a bad thing. A lot of amazing things come out of shitty situations, but I’m in this weird position of realizing that if I mean to take this writing thing seriously, there are lines in the sand that I have to respect. One of my favorite writers, Ryan O’Connell, wrote about the same kind of experience. And as he got older, he realized that he couldn’t just write about every drug trip, bad sexual experience, and “Ouch-funny” moment that happened. That knowing the difference is the divide between “writing” and “being a writer.”

So in true self-absorbed writer fashion, I’m writing about writing about something. Maybe one day in the future, when I have enough money to hire a defense lawyer, I’ll tell some of the stories that I’m keeping in the vault. They’ll be good then, and I’ll have distance. And in my tell-all book, Telling It All—The Tonya Harding Story (Just Kidding, It’s Me, Danny), I’ll reference this blog post, and people will go to their antique Macs and pull up the article while sitting in their hover-houses with their pleasure-robots (I hope).

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Humor, Life, Rambles

I’M CHRYSALIS-ING

Do you ever do that thing where you let yourself get as unkempt and scraggly as possible, and then when you finally take care of yourself, you get to treat yourself to a The Princess Diaries movie montage makeup transformation? That’s what I’m doing now.

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Source: hercampus.com. A) How weird is this gif? B) I am more befores and none of the after.

I haven’t shaved since last Wednesday (it’s Sunday). Normally I shave every other day, but I’ve been putting it off because I want to Princess Diaries myself. Also, apparently, despite shaving for five (nearly six) years, I still have no f*cking clue what I’m doing because I’m constantly dealing with razor burn. And lately it’s been particularly bad, so maybe I’m shaving even more wrong?

In addition, I’ve been having a Prison Break-out of acne and I have not been feeling cute.

Side bar: I just Googled Prison Break and saw that Wentworth Miller was in it, and I always, for some reason, thought that he was in that other prison show, Oz, which I always thought was ironic because he’s gay. And Oz…Never mind, I might’ve just hate-crimed myself.

Side bar side bar: Once my mom and I were talking about Wentworth Miller—I’m not sure why/how—and she was all like, “Oh he’s so handsome,” and I told her he was gay, and she just sighed, like she hadn’t been married to my dad for almost thirty years. Also, it was one of the first moments where we actually talked about the gay thing, without skirting around it.

Side bar side bar side bar: Now my parents are convinced I have gaydar. They think that David Muir from ABC is gay and that he’s dating Gio Benitez because someone told my dad and my dad told my mom and then my mom asked me for confirmation. Apparently Gio Benitez just got married to his boyfriend, so I texted my mother to let her know and all she responded with was, “I think he was too young for David Muir,” as if we know anything.

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Source: Danny McCarthy

Side bar side bar side bar fun fact: Gio Benitez and his boyfriend (husband, whatever) met via Instagram, which is the gayest/most millennial thing ever, and this was reported in The New York Times.

Side bar conclusion: I think David Muir is hot.

However, I recently got in a fresh batch of acne medication—you know, sometimes I think my life is boring, and then I write blog posts where I say things like “my mom asked me if David Muir is gay” and “fresh batch of medication” and I know that actually my life is the most interesting ever—and I’ve been giving my skin a break from constant chafing…from shaving, not something weird.

In nature (I almost put that in quotes, like it was contested), the caterpillar goes through the strenuous process of becoming a butterfly by wrapping itself in a cocoon of silk. That cocoon is called the chrysalis, and that’s what I feel like. I feel like I’ve wrapped myself in a cocoon of reddish stubble and acne cream, and I’m patiently baking—I’m mixing metaphors, but who cares—and soon—probably tomorrow—I’ll shave and slap on a fresh coat of aftershave and I’ll emerge from my chrysalis as a sexy, sexy butterfly.

Or I’ll turn out like Heimlich the butterfly from A Bug’s Life and emerge from my chrysalis just as fat and busted as before, but with a pair of ineffectual wings.

Side bar: I chose to call it “chrysalis-ing” as opposed to “caterpillar-ing” or “cocoon-ing” because “chrysalis” is a prettier word.

I was so worried this would be a sparse blog—the subject matter can only go so far—but I should’ve known that my rampant tangents would fill space. My inability to really focus on anything truly serves me well when I’m writing a blog, but shoots me in the kneecaps when I’m trying to write a paper. Technically, you could consider this entire blog post a rampant tangent from the paper that I should be writing. But where is the fun is writing without an impending deadline and a cartload of stress?

Side bar: Do you think anyone in this library suspects that I’ve written an entire blog post about chrysalis-ing, or that I’ve made two Twitter polls in the last two minutes?

BYE.

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Celebrity Sunday, Life, pop culture, Rambles

WHAT’S BEEN HAPPENING: KYLIE JENNER HAS HER GRIP ON THE THROAT OF POP CULTURE AND NO ONE CAN DO ANYTHING TO STOP IT

Did you miss these? You didn’t care? That’s fine. I didn’t care either. I didn’t even THINK ABOUT IT, DEREK. Just kidding, I thought of you all the time. I wrote you every day for a year. That’s from The Notebook, right? That seems like a lot of work. Also, did you not get the hint when a year went by without a response? Take a hint: either she’s dead, illiterate, or over you.

I ate like complete garbage this weekend, and my body is sorely paying me back for the abuse I’ve put it through. I’ll try to be better, body. Although the other day, I woke up, looked in the mirror, and just thought that my body looked snatched. In a good way; not in a “snatched as in Taken” kind of way.

Anyway, anyway—let’s dive into some good, old-fashioned, Wunderkindof-prime, grade A beef.

WHAT’S HAPPENING RN:

1). Kylie Jenner released her new line of glosses: If you didn’t get that tidbit from her gloss-release video, that’s fine. That video was more confusing than watching an old Italian movie sans subtitles. It basically involves Kylie lounging in a Rolls Royce while three girls—the embodiment of her glosses “Like,” “Literally,” and “So Cute”—serve us some Breaking Bad–Nikita realness.

It’s smart of Kylie to branch out into something other than the Lip Kit, and the release of the glosses prove me right when I predicted that the change of her Instagram name from “lipkitbykylie” to “kyliecosmetics” means that she’s going to be a make-up mogul. If she releases a line of jungle-themed cosmetics, then she might be a make-up Mowgli. Ah? Ah? No? That’s fine.

The addition of “Like,” “Literally,” and “So Cute” up her lipcare products to eleven, and cement her dainty, Cartier Love bracelet grip on the throat of pop culture.

2). Beyoncé released a clothing line called Ivy Park: Everyone is jumping on this athleisure train and Beyoncé is leading as conductor, which would actually be a fitting sequel to “Telephone.” It’s a lot of black and gray and white, with “IVY PARK” branded everywhere—which is…chic, let’s be honest. But is it weird that I’m a tiny bit over it already? Maybe it’s the fact that everywhere we look we have celebrity products—let us all take a moment for Yeezy Season Threezy—but I want to be wowed. I’ll be wowed by the Formation album, but let me know when Beyoncé drops a line of affordable menswear capes.

3). Trump stuck in his foot in his mouth and somehow this time managed to screw up: Donald Trump said, when pushed by MSBNC town hall host Chris Matthews, that women who receive abortions should be punished. This then set off a whirling dervish of statements, reversals, and redactions, which proves that Trump neither has no idea what he’s saying and really doesn’t actually care. I’m glad that people are starting to hold him accountable, and force him to take a stance, rather than allow him to hide behind bluffing, waffling, and running out the clock. I wrote an entire article about it for The Odyssey Online, which I’ll link here when it comes out, because I don’t feel like repeating myself.

4). I started watching The Real O’Neals and Difficult People and both made me only mildly uncomfortable: Because I spent most of this weekend trying to lure people to my apartment—friends, not lovers or strangers—I ended up watching a lot of Hulu. I used to hate Hulu because it’s kind of the fucking worst, but it has some good shows on it. I found The Real O’Neals which is both unrealistic on a Catholic level and on a homosexual level, but it makes me feel slightly better about being a gay from a private Catholic school background, and also slightly worse because why can my skin have been that flawless while I was in high school? Then Difficult People makes me feel both slightly better about being mean to people and infinitely worse about wanting to make people laugh at/like me a profession.

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Source: Giphy

5). Will I ever not read into cute boys following me on Instagram?: Survey says…probably not.

6). I dressed in blacks and grays today, and did a Mary-Kate Olsen mouth: Which is neither a cry for help nor a victory, but somehow both and neither. This weekend I actively tried to be lazy. I succeeded, and somehow that didn’t make me feel better. It didn’t make me feel worse though, so I guess that’s a success.

7). Can I rant for a second: So I was sitting at Pavement, a coffeehouse on campus because sometimes I can’t help but be insufferably stereotypical—I also stare out of windows when it’s raining, so get those stones ready—and my laptop was dying because it’s old and the free Internet was about to run out. I stand up, start putting my stuff into my bag and before I could say “Beetlejuice” three times, someone was already standing right next to me.

“Are you leaving?” she asked. “Oh, yeah, I am,” I said, brightly. Then she starts dumping her stuff onto the table, nearly crushing my new J.Crew sunglasses. Now, I can hover with the best of them when it comes to securing coffeehouse tables, but there are rules, as typical to any civilized society. One: don’t move in before I’m ready. Two: don’t mess with my stuff. Three: back off, bitch, you’ll get your table.

I wanted to pinch her so hard, but I needed coffee more, and even though I was in a coffee shop, I walked four minutes away to the nearest Starbucks because my mom gave me a gift card and I’m skint.

8). What is the acceptable amount of time to absent-mindedly stare at someone before it gets weird: I was on the street the other day, and I read a text from a friend who had seen me walking on the street, commented on my outfit, leading me to absently stare around, looking for him. I then realize, when a person started walking toward me, that I had been staring accidentally at an acquaintance and she thought I was non-absently looking at her.

It wasn’t a horrible interaction, but I keep getting caught doing things like this—staring at people accidentally, or smiling at them when I don’t mean to but that small desire to be liked wins out. I thought I had an unlikable face—in fact, I was kind of banking on it—but the world refuses to acknowledge that, and everyone thinks that I want to be their best friend. Truth update: I have one best friend, and her name is Ina Garten and she doesn’t know I exist. There’s no other room in my world for extraneous people. Cue the mantra: “Don’t be extra-nice to extraneous.” In my head, that kind of worked.

*****

I only got mildly misanthropic in this blog post, so it’s a win. But then again, I managed to turn a “what’s happening in the world” post into a “what’s currently wrong in the seventh-grade science fair experiment that is my life” so let’s call today an Even-Stevens.

On a side note, I can’t wait to be 37 and bitter. Being 20 and bitter is exhausting, and—frankly—not great for my skin.

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Celebrity Sunday, pop culture, Rambles

SPRING FLING ME OFF A BUILDING

Today I wore very “Free-wheeling Metrosexual in the Hamptons/Yacht-faring Heterosexual in Miami” pants to Easter mass. They’re from J.Crew and they’re different than what I would usually wear, so I was a little wary of wearing them. Luckily, my family only made two passive-aggressive comments, so that’s a relative win.

I’ve really been lax about my blog lately, and I think that it’s a mixture of not sure how much of my personal life to divulge and also just a general exhaustion. But not writing makes me all angsty and antsy, so I’m going to make a commitment to you, the reader, and you, the blog, to really write. Like really, truly give it my all.

So let’s do some “Things That Are Happening Right Now”!

Things That Are Happening Right Now

1). My friend retweeted an article from Total Frat Move, so I clicked on it, read it, threw up, and then started looking through the website. They have this ongoing series called “Babe of the Week” where it’s just blonde girls who submit their Instagrams of them doing their best, “Trust Fund Baby-I’m A Mouse Duh” impressions. And the guy who writes the articles is this total douchey bro and I’m obsessed with him. I have a fascination with Greek life in the same way as I have a fascination with rom-coms as a sub-genre of science fiction—they exist in a parallel universe to mine.

2). My family is redoing our kitchen and I’ve been watching a lot of “flipping house” shows. The two combined have made me feel like I’m a relative expert on terms such as “subway tile” and “cabinets going all the way up to the ceiling” (to draw the eye upwards and make the ceilings appear taller). Also, I don’t fully understand Love It Or List It. Who fronts the money for the renovations on the “Love It” side? Does the show take care of selling the house if the couple decides to “List It”?

3). I love how much Trump threatens and blusters if he doesn’t get the Republican nomination. He’s literally a villain at the end of a Scooby Doo episode after those pesky teens have pulled off his mask. He’s doing the media-equivalent to shaking his fist as the police drag him away, as he says, “I would’ve gotten away with it too!” He says that if he doesn’t receive the nomination and the Republicans go to a contested convention—where if Trump doesn’t get enough delegates to automatically receive the nomination, the Republicans will engage in super-delegate vote trading and re-votes until a nominee wins—riots will break out. I kinda hope that happens. Not in a “Some men just want to see the world burn” way, but in a “Bored on a Tuesday night” way.

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Source: Giphy

4). Former House Speaker John Boehner would support current Speaker Paul Ryan as the Republican nominee. My only comment is that Paul Ryan is hot, and it would be a very “Fitz from Scandal IRL” moment if he became President.

5). One of the most meta moments in my recent life was when Kylie Jenner used one of the new Snapchat filters, one that gives you a crazy-clown plastic surgery smile, and just went, “Did they base this off me?” And my entire world just reverberated.

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Source: Giphy

6). Is a spring fling an actual thing? Because I was walking back from the gym on the first warm day of the season, and literally everywhere I saw people holding hands. And maybe my college is particularly bad at dating, but I ~never~ see people in relationships in the winter. All of sudden, though, I see either uncomfortably close friends or mediumly close relationships, and I’m like, “Who are these people?” I don’t get it.

Omg, so I’m done. I just ate Easter dinner, and now I’m watching Long Island Medium so I’m obviously done writing this blog post. It’s so bad that I can’t look away, so I need to focus on that rather than this. But side bar, I see Easter as the gateway to spring, so now—for me—spring has officially sprung. Yass yas.

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Rambles

PATHETIC FALLACY, INTENSELY NARCISSISTIC, & ROMANTICISM

The pathetic fallacy is the attribution of your emotions to outside forces. Trees, the sky, other people. It’s basically a literary term for the incredibly narcissistic. And ya boy’s got it bad.

I’m in a funk—whenever I type the word “funk” I think of Tobias Funke from Arrested Development and how they pronounced it “Fwoon-kay” and I thought that was so weird until I realized it’s the legitimate German way to pronounce that surname—and because I’m a massive narcissist, I’m seeing it reflected back onto the external world.

Gilmore Girls is getting particularly dark. A YouTube favorite of mine just got dumped. There was another bombing in Belgium today. Former mayor Rob Ford died. These things are not on the same level, and they’re not caused or related back to me. they’re bad things that are happening in the world.

And it’s hard to find the energy to try to be positive right now, to spin a web—anyone get that RHOBH reference—because sometimes the world is an incredibly ugly, harsh, dark place. But I think if I didn’t write it out, if I didn’t put it onto paper, it would roil inside me like a miasma, and it would sicken me. We need to talk about things. About the bombing. About death.

In my English class, we’re talking about Romanticism. And it deals a lot with balance and equality. Not in a Neoclassicist, orderly way, but in a more wild, vicious way. Beauty is vicious. Pain is artful. Pain is ugly. Beauty is harsh. And somehow the world keeps spinning, even though that’s a fucking rude thing to do, world.

I think I’ve been in a slump for a while now and I’m just realizing. It’s funny how that happens. The slip is so gradual and soft that you don’t realize, until suddenly you look up and the sky is a pinprick in velvet darkness and you’re sloshing around in quicksand. Do you slosh in quicksand? I saw How To Be Single last night and they mention “dicksand” which I think was supposed to be more metaphorical and less horrific, but it still sticks in the brain like…well, like dicksand.

Ugh. Literally ugh.

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