A rare, midweek post

Just a few, quick notes:

1. I’m not happy to be home for the holiday’s
2. I do not welcome Happy New Year wishes from the Smith’s
3. We shouldn’t talk about what our child want’s for Christmas
4. We should not congratulate all of the hero’s out there
5. No one should heed a sign that says “Employee’s only!”
6. And similarly, we should shun all containers that state, “Newspaper’s only

Because all of that shit is wrong.  WRONG. 

An apostrophe “s” is only used to show possession, not to make something plural.  Okay?  To make something plural, just add a fucking “s” to it without the apostrophe. This is actually something that will take LESS work and LESS effort and LESS thought from you.  Occasionally, you might have to add “es,” now that I think about it.  For example, writing “I just bought six dresss” would look really weird, so you just say, “I just bought six dresses.”  NEVER “I just bought six dress’s.”  That is so horribly wrong.  You are a lazy fucker if you don’t know this by now, and I do NOT forgive you. 

 

 

 

Humblebragging

I just learned a term, called “humblebragging.” And I’m obsessed with it. Humblebragging goes something like this:


“Argh! Couldn't get anything at the big sale at Banana Republic! They have size 0, but no 0 talls!”

Or

“Dammit, the flight attendant just gave away the last blanket! First class isn’t what it used to be!”

Get it? Humblebragging is expressing regret about an unlucky break, while secretly rubbing everyone else’s face in your good fortune. My friends at the Urban Dictionary define it as, “To bring up one's accomplishments in conversation and contextualize them as a harrowing burden or the product of an accident or fluke.” Sounds swell.

Now, if you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you already know that I think many people are totally faking everything most of the time, and that people buy a lot of shit to try to make them appear on the outside the way they wish they were on the inside, except that they will never be on the inside what they hope people see on the outside because they are too busy thinking about looking good, rather than working on actually being good, and that maybe these people should start reading books or something. Real books. Not The Help. I also wish that people would just come out and say what they really think and feel, rather than humblebragging about it. Here are a few examples:

Humblebrag: “Does anyone know where to get 1500 thread count sheets? We accidentally left our favorite pair in Paris. Price is no option.”

Keepin’ it real: “Hey, y’all, Would someone please notice how rich and hard to please I am? Thank you.”

Humblebrag: “Just got mistaken for my daughter’s sister…again. I kind of feel bad for her.”

Keepin’ it real: “Hey, y’all, I have nothing but my looks. But thank God I’ve got my looks.”

Humblebrag: “Just went to the doctor for yearly physical, and had lost ten pounds! Anyone have a recipe for organic Ensure?”

Keepin’ in real: “I know that you’re probably fat, but I’m not. I don’t know any other way to talk about this. Please don’t eat me.”

Get the picture? Not only would it be refreshing if people used the keepin’ in real response, but it would also be refreshing, because we could respond genuinely, too. I mean, think about it. When someone humblebrags to you, you feel forced to say something thoroughly disingenuous, like, “Awwwww. Hope you find some new sheets, sweetie!” or you feel compelled to provide a fucking recipe for organic Ensure*. This is no fun for anyone except the humblebragger. But if people chose the keepin’ it real response, then we could actually respond in a way that acknowledges that the humblebrag is borne out of the same insecurities that we all carry around. Or at least most of us carry around. Some people have their servants carry them around in the same parcel that contains their 1500 count sheets.

*Recipe for organic Ensure: 1) five scoops Graeters ice cream 2) ½ cup whole milk. Blend ice cream and milk in blender. Serve in glass with straw.

Cee Lo, Obviously

So, there is a show that is on roughly eleven times a week, called The Voice. The premise of this show is that four superstar mentors get the chance to choose a team of talented singers and develop them. The auditions for the teams are “blind,” meaning that the potential superstar mentors can’t see the contestants, and have to judge them by the promise of their voice alone. Every week, after mentors have chosen their teams, team members get voted off or dismissed, until, at the end, there is one mentee remaining, and one superstar coach who is the winner.


Now, here’s the hard part: during the blind auditions, if a superstar mentor wants you on his or her team, he or she hits a button that turns his/her chair around. If more than one superstar mentor turns around, then it’s up to the contestant to choose which mentor he or she wants to work with. The superstar mentors are Christina Aguilera, Adam Levine, Blake Shelton, and Cee Lo Green. If you don’t know who these people are, I would suggest that you Google them, but you probably don’t know what Google is, either, so just take my word that they are legit, mentor-wise.

During the show, the contestants always hem and haw over who to choose when more than one superstar mentor turns around. To me, it would be the easiest decision in the world. Number One: Cee Lo. Number Two: Xtina. Number Three: Blake Shelton. Number Four: Adam. Here’s why:

#1 - Cee Lo: First of all, he is the most relevant artist on the board. Musically, he just does whatever he wants, and somehow makes it work. If I am on Cee Lo’s team, I know that he will work with me as I am, and not according to the one genre he understands. Also, Cee Lo looks just like Grimace from McDonalds. Same tubby body, unnaturally short arms, and bald head. It’s kind of eerie. I also firmly believe that Cee Lo is the kind of person who could pull up next to some stranger in a panel van with blacked out windows, say, “Come with me, miss. Let’s go down to the river where I will kill you and dispose of your body,” and the stranger would just say, “Okay, Cee Lo. If it’s with you, that sounds good.” I feel like there’s probably a whole host of dead lady bodies down by some river somewhere. He is just that creepily charismatic. Also, if you think you don’t like Cee Lo, listen to his song “Wildflower.” The man can do no wrong.

#2 - Xtina: Some people actually do not love Xtina!!! But how could anyone not love her? She is a first-class diva, and if she wants to wear sparkly underpants and a bustier with a little organ-grinder monkey hat and a fan, then that is what she will wear. She is so awesome, and on top of that, she is actually a good coach, who offers very specific critiques to the people she is mentoring. I mean, if you cross her, the bitch will cut you, and stand over your body watching your blood slowly drain into the gutter, but other than that, her sense of drama is the best.

#3 - Blake Shelton: Basically, Blake came in third place because a) fourth place was specifically reserved for the dreadful Adam Levine, and b) his contestants have done well. Otherwise, Blake just seems like a big, goofy dude, and I am pretty sure he doesn’t have any specific “coaching” that he gives his contestants other than unconditional love, pep talks, probably candy, and folksy Oklahoma sayings.

Last - Adam Levine: Here are some facts about Adam Levine: 1) the only good songs he’s ever done are the ones he’s done OUTSIDE his own band (e.g., Heard ‘Em Say w/Kanye West, Stereo Hearts w/Gym Class Heroes); b) I suspect that Adam requires a LOT of takes in the studio. He never sounds good at all when he sings live; c) he is so gross. And maybe that’s just my particular bias – I went to high school with a million tiny, skinny, Jewy guys who had more moxy than talent, so I think I was overexposed or something at a young age. But I also think he’s a crappy coach, despite the fact that his mentee won the first year. I don’t think that was Adam’s doing, as Adam seems to generally be asleep during the “coaching” sessions.

There it is, easy as can be. Considering that each mentor has approximately seven hundred singers on his or her team this year, I figure we’ll have a winner sometime around 2014.

On Stress and Semi-Truck Accidents

Fact: My friend Juliet Soper, who was from New Zealand (not important to this story, but I like to add a little detail every once in a while), once told me about how her father was hit by a semi truck and walked away, unscathed.


“What the fuck, Juliet,” I responded.

“It’s true,” she said in her adorable Kiwi accent, which sounds like an Aussie accent if the Aussie was standing in the bottom of a barrel filled with feathers. “He got thrown thirty feet (yes, they measure in feet in New Zealand) and then got up and walked away.”

“How did he manage that?” I asked.

“Well,” she said, “He had no idea the truck was coming, and so he didn’t tense up any of his muscles. Because he was completely relaxed, he didn’t break any bones. It was a minor miracle!”

Now, I suspect alcohol had something to do with the fact that he was a) hit by a truck, b) completely relaxed, and c) didn’t hear the damn thing coming, but that is merely a suspicion. The more important lesson in this is that this story would have been a lot less interesting if he would have broken all of his bones and died.

And I’m telling you this story as a lead in to something I just read in Mindy Kaling’s memoir Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? Mindy Kaling was a writer and actor on The Office, and now has her own show called The Mindy Project. I bought her memoir because I was killing time in the Denver airport, and it was either that or Fifty Shades of Grey, and I will GO TO MY GRAVE before I buy into that fifty shades nonsense. Here’s what Mindy Kaling says: “No one ever wants to hear how stressed out anyone else is, because most of the time everyone is stressed out. Going on and on in detail about how stressed out I am isn’t conversation. It’ll never lead anywhere. No one is going to say, ‘Wow…you really have it especially bad. I have heard some stories of stress, but this just takes the cake.’"

I totally agree. I have found that the people I tend to be friends with are the ones who look at life as a series of highly inconvenient circumstances that prevent them from watching more Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. The people I tend to not be friends with are the ones who see everything that occurs in the world as a catastrophic event that has to be shouted about and continually validated on Facebook every other second. Nobody thinks your stress makes you look like a badass. It just makes you look like someone who has nothing more interesting to talk about than the mundane shit that we all have to deal with. Not to say that NO stress is interesting. Here are a few examples of interesting versus uninteresting stress:

Uninteresting:
Your homework

Interesting!
You mistook your homework for a bowl of potato chips and methodically ate it all while watching The Voice!

Uninteresting:
Your schedule

Interesting!
Videos of people falling down set to music!

Uninteresting:
Your children’s schedule

Interesting!
Your children are missing! (Zombies?)

Uninteresting:
Everything that needs to get done in order for you to go on vacation

Interesting!
Everything that needs to get done in order for your house to not fall into an ever-growing sinkhole!

Uninteresting:
Your goddamn exercise schedule

Interesting!
Tigers!

Uninteresting:
How hard your job is

Interesting!
How hard your job as a cagefighter is!

Uninteresting:
The fact that you have a million things to do and you are also sick

So Interesting!
The plot of Season I of Homeland*

Do you see the difference between interesting and not interesting? I hope so. If not, I can’t help you. But here’s the thing, from the very bottom of my heart. Juliet Soper’s dad is proof positive that being consumed by stress is one way to get tossed to pieces by a semi-truck. Instead of being all about the stress, he just went with the flow, and lived to tell about it. So take a lesson from a drunk Kiwi – don’t let your stress be the most important factor in your life. It could save your ass.


* I just discovered Homeland, and now I’m obsessed. I’m not quite finished watching season one. Wondering when Brian Krakow is going to make his first appearance. Anyone who wants to talk about Homeland with me should DO SO IMMEDIATELY! I am open for all Homeland-discussion-business!

Waiting

I took the July bar exam, and I’ll find out the results in a few weeks.  When all is said and done, I will have waited a full quarter year to find out whether I passed or failed.  Waiting sucks.  I’ve talked to my friends who are currently waiting or who have gone through the ordeal of waiting themselves, and they all agree.  Waiting sucks. 

Why does waiting suck?  Because the bar exam is a culmination of three or four years of work, not to mention months of dedicated preparation.  By “dedicated preparation” I mean memorizing somewhere in the neighborhood of twelve completely separate areas of law, all day, every day.  Thousands of multiple choice practice problems.  Hours of essay writing.  Hundreds of passes through meticulously-crafted flashcards.  And it all comes down to twelve fiendish essay questions, 200 extraordinarily detailed multiple choice questions, and two long, grueling practical writing problems.  And then three months of waiting.  And answering questions from well-meaning but unconsciously cruel people.  Here’s what they ask:

1. What are you going to do if you fail? 
2. Do you think you’re going to fail?
3. Will you take the test again if you fail?
4. When can you take the test again if you fail?
5. Lots of people fail, right?

For the record: failing the bar exam isn’t like failing your driver’s license test.  My mother tricked me into taking my driving test when I was home from school with tonsillitis.  “Let’s go for a drive,” she said, and before I knew it, I was at the DMV, parallel parking my mom’s Grand Am with an unsmiling deputy in the passenger seat.  My very first license picture screamed, “I AM VERY ILL.  THIS IS NOT MY BEST DAY.”  Had I failed that test, I could have taken it again the very next day, and no one would have been the wiser.  With the bar exam, I will find out my results on the internet at the exact same time as the rest of THE WORLD.  So, to be clear: three months of waiting, constant questions about my failure plan, and public disclosure.

So, please forgive me if I’m jittery and tense (crap, I mean MORE jittery and MORE tense) for the next few weeks.  And, on behalf of all of my fellow bar-takers, I would like to say the following:

"Thank you for your interest in my bar exam results.  While there is no shame in failure, there is considerable heartbreak and disappointment.  I would rather not talk about my particular chances for passing and failure.  While I understand your good intentions in saying, 'I’m sure you aced it; you have nothing to worry about,' the fact of the matter is that I used the word 'banana' in one of my essay answers.  Was it a banana-related law?  It seemed that way at the time, but upon deeper reflection, there is no banana law.  If I do manage to pass, you will know.  If I fail, I will jump in a hole.  Just a shallow hole, but one that is deep enough to hide in for a little while.  If I were less law-abiding, or if I knew more interesting people, I would have already made arrangements to be roofied the night before the results are posted so that I don’t have to endure the utter mental clusterfuck that will be the state of my anxiety. As it stands, I do not know such people, so I will have to face my fate in an un-roofied state.  If I fail, it won’t be the end of the world, but all the same, I will let you know when I’m ready to talk about it.  Thank you again for your support, and keep your fingers crossed for me."