Tag Archives: college

college, Humor, Life

THE UNIVERSE IS TEXTING ME AND IT’S COSTING ME A FORTUNE

Written after wearing a NASA baseball cap in Starbucks and running into a guy wearing an (acid-washed, but we all make mistakes) NASA t-shirt and saying goodbye to him as my “NASA buddy”. In related news, I’m planning a spring wedding, space-themed.  

I’m sitting on a bench in front of my college, having just ordered a “grande cold brew, with an espresso shot. Light ice” in a high, irritating voice, because if my drink order is going to be complicated as fuck, then I might as well go the full mile. Also, I didn’t get it sweetened because I firmly believe that if your order requires three specifications or more, you’re outing yourself to the world as a potential serial killer. I also put “three” because I’m trying to conceal the fact that I’m a potential serial killer for as long as possible.

I had my first “Zen Meditation” class today, and besides the mortal fear of farting into the silence, I actually found it to be a really interesting experience. We sat like pretzels—srry for appropriating dough culture—we laid down and listened to music, and we talked about shit like “being okay with mental discomfort” and finding more value in the “question, rather than the answer.” Because once you have an answer, you put yourself into a tiny little box and you die.

As I was telling my friend Shelby—remember that salty old bitch?—I feel like a lot of things in my life are getting together and producing a cosmic neon sign about my life. That’s such a millennial thing to think, by the way, that all the forces of the universe are cooperating to send some dickhead blogger a message about his post-graduate aspirations (asspirations, amiright hahaihatemyself). But let me back up.

Here are the signs the universe has been sending me (at the low low cost of $0.99 per text).

DO YOU THINK THE UNIVERSE HAS AN ANDROID OR IPHONE: 

1). Zen Meditation: Our teacher (professor? Shaman? Medicine man? Witch?) told us a lot of mdeditation is not following every thought and letting ourselves immerse in the murkiness of the unknown. He didn’t say it as eloquently as that, but I’m embellishing. So much of life is unknown, but the more you worry about it, the more you suck away at the present and lose life. Rough. Rough stuff.

2). Chelsea: I’ve been watching a lot of Chelsea Handler, and she was interviewed by Ashly Perez of BuzzFeed (wow, Microsoft Word recognizes “Ashly” but not “BuzzFeed”), and basically just talked about pursuing what you’re passionate about. That’s an easy thing for a multimillionaire to say, but she brought up Sophia Amoruso, the founder of Nasty Gal. Amoruso started out dumpster-diving for vintage stuff and selling it on eBay. She followed her passion for vintage clothing and it led somewhere lucrative. Doing things purely for money leads you to glassy-eyed, dead-souled hell.

As a graduating senior, the idea of following your dreams is scary as hell, and often gets masked by the need for “job security” and a “healthy income” and a “401k” (idk I think there’s a period in there somewhere but who knows?). our parents want to see returns on the investment they made, and so we feel this pressure (external and internal) to prove that the last four years have resulted in something.

3). Blerg: I’m taking a beat reporting class, and we had to do “mock-interviews” with a partner, research that partner online and then turn that interview into a 100-word profile. Mine was fucking well-written, and my partner discovered my fat whale of a blog. When people discover my blog, I treat it like an entertaining, but stupid, child of mine. Like I’m proud that it’s made you laugh, but I don’t want you to delve too deeply into it and see what I’ve done wrong. In the profile done on me, my interviewer said that I was “hesitant to label myself a journalist” (true) but that I had a lot to say (very fucking true). Part of my weirdness about school is that I’m not a very “journalist-y” journalist. Unbiased reporting bores me. I like drama, I like weirdness, I like being funny. I have no interest in being impartial, or ferreting out the “story.” So to have someone see my blog, arguably the most raw/polished online representation of myself, and ask what I wanted to do for a career, felt a little bit like someone bursting into me taking a shower and asking me what I planned to do about my problem areas.

FUCK IF I KNOW.

***

The interview thing happened before the Zen thing, so I feel like the universe heard my question of “Da fuck am I supposed to do” and answered with “idk but chill out dude.” Technically the question is supposed to be more important than the answer, and I’m not supposed to be comfortable in answers, so maybe the universe actually didn’t answer me, or it was a wrong number. But I’m going to take it as my own.

I don’t have any direction. I don’t have any goal. But I know what I’m good at. And if the universe/Chelsea Handler has made one thing clear, it’s that that’s what I should focus on. Following what drives my passion, what I’m good at, and finding solace in that. And trusting in that.

Did this make any sense? Should it make any sense? Maybe I should pretend that the reason it’s all rambling is because it’s actually elevated thinking and it’s not supposed to make sense and then it seems like I’m smarter than you. Yeah, I’m gonna do that. Just ignore that train of thought and focus on the fact that I’m smarter than you. Much smarter.

In related news, what do you think the Universe thinks of the iPhone 7? Do you think it’s a matte-black or jet-black kind of bitch? What kind of bitch am I? Will I ever be confident enough to get a jet-black phone? Or will I forever float in the safety of silver?

Also I can’t wait for all the horrible monster-gays to decide what phone means what sexual preference you are. I don’t even know if they updated the chart (cuz there’s definitely a chart) for the inclusion of Rose Gold. If anyone says the gays are beasts, they’re totally fucking right.

Omg I just saw someone I have a crush on and I need to look hotter but I don’t. Fuck my life.

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Humor, Life, Rambles

SISYPHUS, “SHEEPDOGGING” AND MY LUBEY THIGHS

Written after picking a scab and now I will bleed forever for a thousand moons until the oceans have dried up, the tectonic plates have cracked and man’s cities have crumbled to dust and alien life forms will come to our desiccated husk of a world and my scab will still be fucking bleeding.

I was walking back from the gym this morning (#FitFam) and as I was walking, I happened across a couple who were walking in the same direction, wearing athletic clothing. I didn’t really think anything of it, and since I have long muscular legs (ohmygod I have been chafing so much that if we were stuck in the desert together sans supplies, I could start a fire with my thighs), I quickly power-walked past them.

I’m walking, walking, listening to a podcast—okay it’s the Bitch Bible podcast which I recently subscribed to and I’m such a stereotype—when suddenly the couple comes sprinting up behind me, except I didn’t know until they sped around me like a roaring river and made me quirk. However, it was just a short sprint, so, like, twenty paces up, they stopped running and starting walking very slowly.

And I fucking realized that with my long muscular legs and thick thighs, that at the pace they were going at and the pace I was going at, I would soon overtake them (physics (?)). I guess I could’ve slowed my pace but death is imminent and I had eggs to fry for breakfast so my pace waits for no man. Praying that they were done sprinting/would drop dead, I went around as we both crossed the street.

Butthole clenched, I walked along the—now much narrower—sidewalk, tensed like I was in the g*ddamn Hunger Games, and lo-and-fucking-behold, they come sprinting past me and ten paces up, drop off into a leisurely jog.

Side bar: THIS DOES NOTHING FOR YOU. Yes, sporadic sprints will confuse your muscles and help you burn more calories, but then dropping off into a FUCKING SLOW WALK will just put you at risk for my foot into your lower spine.

If you took Ancient Greek in high school/didn’t have many friends in middle school and read Greek mythology (I was both of these), then you might’ve heard of the myth of Sisyphus. Damned by the gods for…idk, skipping out on his cable bill or something, Sisyphus was forced in the afterlife (it’s like life, but more dead) to push a huge boulder up a hill. That in itself is actually just a CrossFit workout (wow, “CrossFit” is a recognized word in my Microsoft cuz I got that 2016 download), so the gods wanted to make it harder. When Sisyphus reaches the top of the hill, the boulder rolls back down and Sissy must start again. And that’s the real punishment for Sisyphus: the futile nature of his struggle, the constant cycle, no real traction gained despite his efforts.

Walking, like a sheep hemmed in by a pair of fucking sheepdogs in Nike gear, I felt like I was trapped in my own Sisyphean hellscape. Except I would rather burn campus to the ground than get stuck in an endless cycle with these fucks.

End of the story is that eventually we came to a corner and the path diverged into two. I hovered gently behind them and decided I would take the road less traveled on, aka the road where these two fucking weren’t. I can’t handle couples in general, but I especially can’t handle being herded by a couple.

Couple of fucks.

I moved back to school on Thursday, which is why I didn’t post anything that day. Not because I didn’t have the time. I had the time. I just didn’t want to.

This might just be a ~quirky little quirk~ of someone who had a double helping of anxiety and depression (greedy, I know), but transitions (school to home, home to school, USSR to Russia—fucked me up) are especially difficult for me to process. So my first day back—Thursday—after my parents left, I busied myself before hanging out with a friend and then hanging out with another friend and watching RuPaul’s Drag Race: AllStars 2 (#spon?) to ride out the lingering anxiety of being in a “new” place even though I moved back into my old apartment and I’m a fucking senior on campus. Anxiety has no rhyme or reason or rhythm (much like myself).

It’s Saturday today, and I definitely feel a lot more calmed and grounded—fame hasn’t gotten to my head—and also the Sisyphus-sheepdog incident really made me laugh, so I decided that I was in a stable enough condition to write this.

Ohmygod side bar: I’m gonna say what, but I’m making a very big life decision within the next few weeks, and I will be revealing that when it comes to fruition. VERY EXCITING STUFF.

So that’s really it. I’ve been wearing a lot of light-wash denim lately, and the other day I wore my Birkenstocks for so long I got a blister. Also I’ve been chafing up a storm lately for some reason, and I rubbed deodorant on my inner thighs this morning (per a friend’s suggestion, that is not a usual thing I do), and it helped a little bit. But I couldn’t quite get used to the feeling of lubey thighs and that really affected my mentality for the day.

Side bar: Buy my single “Lubey Thighs” on iTunes. The full album will be dropping later this month, Diary-Ah.

#LUBEYTHIGHS

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Humor, Life, Love & Romance

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN I TRY TO BE HIP

In the Splash Zone.

“Okay, so take a candid photo of me looking away, but I want to be laughing, and I want to look thin,” I say, punching the emphasis on the last clause, hoping to impress the very dire nature of having a Thinstagram (making that happen?) onto JR, who is not exactly up to the onerous task but is the only person who is sitting across from me, thus giving him the ability to angle the camera in a flattering way.

In the swampy air of the bar, sitting on a reclaimed church pew and in a $10 Uniqlo shirt, I swivel towards Loren, because in this “candid” photo, she’s the one I’m “laughing” with. Sweaty fingers curl around the sweating glass, and as I turn and dive into the first “pose”, the cup slips out of my fingers. The G&T contents douse my left leg but most goes directly into Loren’s crotch as the cup bounces off her thighs and rolls into the nether regions of the Brooklyn bar floor.

JR was kind enough to capture my immediate shock and mortification, so here is that photo.

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Source: Danny McCarthy

After mopping up the church pew and Loren’s vagina, we sat back down and listened to a sixty-five-year-old man backed up by a black woman in Casual Friday realness and a drummer in a Los Pollos Hermanos t-shirt and wedding ring.

Source: Danny McCarthy// Immediately after.
Source: Danny McCarthy// Mopping up the shame.

Do you remember in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows when Aberforth Dumbledore was introduced and you were like “Oh wow, there’s someone who’s an even bigger old hippie than Albus Dumbledore?” This lead singer was the Aberforth to Bernie Sanders’s Albus.

Thirty minutes previous.

Sandwiched between Loren and JR and heavily aware that I’m blocking Cool Black Girl in Red Braids and Snapback from seeing the band we came to see, I’m staring at Hot Lead Singer. He’s lean in the way that all indie singers are, with large capable hands and artistic veins tracing up his smooth forearms. He croons into the microphone, the bulb of which nuzzles his hooked nose. The way he sings feels authentic enough, but it’s like watching a TV show of what an indie band should look like. The low, gravelly voice, the scrunched eyes, the intensity. The overlarge Hawaiian shirt open over a sharp-clavicled chest and clashing printed shorts.

As the sweat pools in my lower back, I realize that this could be my future. Dark, swampy Brooklyn bars, JR and Loren, making eye contact with cute boys in polo shirts. Sweating glasses of amoretto sours and clinking bottles of Blue Moon. The wreathing aroma of someone’s last blunt, the ember of which is probably scattered on the front stoop. For the first time, after the initial awkwardness fades, this feels like it could become something grounded in our reality.

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Source: Danny McCarthy// Be honest, is this an Instagram or a THINstagram??

I’m graduating in less than a year. In less than a year, I’ll have to be figuring out my plan for the next few months. If I stay in New York, manage to get a job, and eventually scrape enough money together to move out, I could make this—standing in bars, listening to alt bands, black tees and light-wash denim, gin and tonics splashing onto my shoes—into a life.

Back at Splashgate.

But this is what I get for trying to be a hip Brooklynite: drinkless and sitting next to someone whose vagina is wet because of me (yes, I hear it too. It’s a hilarious joke, but focus on Splashgate).

And when I think I’m all cool and hip, I remember that I ate a Frosty in the car on the way over, and that I still can’t properly pronounce “February.” And these are things—I’m imagining—real adults can do. Not the Frosty part; everyone loves a good fucking Frosty.

Trying to plan for the future feels a little premature when I still feel like such a kid. I mean, all around me, people are growing up, but I think it’s a mark of still being in school—and in that school mindset—that I see myself as a kid. I work with seven-year-olds, and really, their frame of mind is not that different than mine. I have a slighter firmer grasp on economics and a better appreciation for logic, but other than that, we’re the same.

*****

Anywayanywayanyway, this post has been sitting in my “Minimized” folder for almost a week, and I didn’t plan ahead for a blog today—spoiler, I write them ahead of time—so I figured I would just publish this one. Also I’m gonna do a quickie bonus post either today or some other time, of an article I thought was funny, but a little sparse. Kind of like a bald comedian—eyoooooo.

Source: Danny McCarthy// The photo after Splashgate.
Source: Danny McCarthy// This cackle is fake as fuck.

Literally what was I talking about?

BYE.

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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).

raw

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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