Agatha

Pop culture sneaks up on me all the time. It’s a lot like that stock scene from a horror movie: a woman in a nightdress is in the bathroom, about to wash her face, when she thinks she hears something. She goes into the other room and looks around anxiously, the music swells – oh, what a relief! The dog just tipped over his dish! She goes back into the bathroom and begins to wash her face, only to look up and see the killer in the mirror, directly behind her. That’s how pop culture usually happens to me, except the “false alarm” sound is Wacky Wanda having a breakdown in the hallway and the killer is a Justin Bieber bobblehead. (The nightgown is accurate.)

So, I’m being intentionally vague about What Exactly My Shitty Temp Job Is, because it would be extremely inconvenient to be fired at the moment. Broadly, it involves testing mobile phone apps to see if they work. It doesn’t matter if they’re crappy or not – that’s a different department – but they have to “sort of work.” Now, until recently, I also tested them for general offensiveness (they clearly did not go over my resume too carefully), but that’s gone to another department now too.

[UPDATE LOL JUST GOT LAID OFF TEN MINUTES AFTER WRITING THIS POST REPEAT LOL]

So, one day very shortly after I’d started working there, I had a mobile phone app that was full of Polish comics. I had to translate them “by hand,” meaning typing what was on the screen into Google Translate on the computer. The swears were, hilariously, in English a lot of the time, so there was a lot of “wdzlwzldwdlzw FUCK wdzrlzdswl v TIT wldzdlsrmt.” The universal language, or something.

I was FASCINATED by these comics. They were all strange and full of non sequiturs, and since I was only getting a rough translation they were especially mysterious. I was especially fascinated by this one:

Google doesn’t know what “yyy” means but the rest of it is roughly:

“Do you know where Iza lives?”

“Next to Agatha.”

“And where does Agatha live?”

“Next to Iza.”

“And where do Iza and Agatha live?”

“Next to each other.”

I think you can probably just puzzle out the English.

I was (and remain) absolutely fascinated by this, and thought I had this secret window into the Polish mind or something. I wanted to know more about this odd world, where tiny blonde women approach red-haired women with massive Slavic jaws and aggressive yellow post-Soviet tits for help with directions, and the red-haired post-Soviet-titted women are so obstructive that they literally cause the smaller women to become deformed.

I wanted to know where the background photo was taken. I wanted to know why the artist decided that Soviet Tits should be making that exact curled-finger gesture in the third panel. I wanted to know if yellow eyeshadow is all the rage in Krakow. I wanted to know if Agatha and Iza hired Soviet Tits to frustrate Little Blonde, who is a bill collector or something. I wanted “Fuck Yea” to appear in foot-high red letters every time I succeeded. I was ready to go back to school and design my own major, “Figure Out This Fucking Cartoon.”

I showed it to Giant Camel:

“See, I think if I can just figure this out, I can understand the Polish mind, and then maybe that will help me understand the Russian mind, and then… not to oversell this, but I think if I figure out this comic I might be able to bring about world peace. No pressure.”

“Chris, do you understand that this is a rage comic, a fairly common internet meme?”

“… It is not. It is the Rosetta Stone of eastern Europe.”

“Remember lolcats? This is what those people moved on to.”

“But… but I was going to save the world!”

“Well, sorry. Hey, when’s dinner?”

This disappointment had the side effect of making me fascinated with rage comics. I don’t understand them at all. It’s like that one concept in school you never quite got:

“And so to diagram that sentence, the gerund phrase goes on crow’s feet…”

“See, a cotangent repeats and is not bound between negative one and one…”

“The supply curve…”

GAH.  If rage comics were a person, they would be a drunk Vanuatuan woman I met once. All yelling at each other in our mutually bad French, I’m making sure there’s nothing between me and the door…

I Wikipedia’d them and, allegedly, some people are using them to teach English, “because the expressions are so recognizeable.” Bullcorn, bullcorn, bullcorn. Some people may well be using them to teach English, but they’re doing it to be able to say xX LOL RAGECOMIX IN CLASS LOL Xx, not because they help.

This face, according to internet, is called “me gusta.”

Things this face looks like:
- The man in the moon has just eaten a bad fig
- An overweight ghost
- Sean Payton watching a losing game

Things this face does not look like:
- Anyone remotely pleased by, about or on behalf of anything

I’ll grant that this face looks irritated, but is that the only emotion you want your ESL students to be able to communicate? “Aujourd’hui, je me sens, uh… irritated, aggravated, annoyed, piqued, dismayed, frustrated, world-weary.”

I think this is supposed to be schadenfreude. Have fun explaining that to a roomful of Somali immigrants. Also, this is clearly not schadenfreude, but the smirking, hungry face of Death.

I’ll close by saying that, in preparation for this post, I had to find the original comic online, which took forever. I needed to translate a lot of the website interface, and in looking for help with Polish words I found a website that listed “Polish names, names of the months, and common causes of death.” Oh, those merry Poles.

Oh, and here’s what they think about breakfast:

UPDATE

Remember Unsolved Mysteries, and how every few episodes they’d solve a mystery and announce “UPDATE?”

Well, here’s my update. You’ll get the whole story in a post later this week, but I got all kinds of laid off last week. Financially this is extremely inconvenient, but a) Goddamn, I hated the job and b) as soon as I get my last paycheck I can write a post about the job, which will be a treat for me and hopefully for you. The layoff happened Thursday. Friday, I was hemming and hawing over whether I should go out Laid Off Drinkin’, when I heard your favorite crazy neighbor and mine, Wacky Wanda, clanking around in the hall. Of course I started to eavesdrop, and it turned out she was making a long, emotional farewell to another neighbor, Girl-Who-Slams-Doors, in which Wacky Wanda thanked Girl-Who-Slams-Doors for the “positive energy.” Doesn’t “positive energy” sound like an aerobics class for people with HIV?

Anyway, fool that I am, I assumed Wacky Wanda was saying goodbye because she was leaving, so I went out and got xX lol drunk Xx on half-price Applebee’s Long Island Iced Teas, because I’m a 34-year-old divorcee. I then didn’t see Wacky Wanda for a few days, and thought she was gone.

Well, no. At eleven last night (Monday 20^th) Wacky Wanda starts banging on the door screaming, “Somebody, please, help me!” over and over. Now, not to sound cruel, but Wacky Wanda has broken into my apartment, called me a thief, almost burned down my apartment, aired her plumbing-problem stench into the hall, blared the Cranberries with her door open at night, and woken me up twice. I’m on the side of whatever she wants help against. So Giant Camel and I gather ‘round ye olde peephole to watch. “Please, I did it before, and I don’t want to do it again! I SMELL BURNING! SOMEBODY HELP ME!” Girl-Who-Slams-Doors rode to the rescue. Why Wacky Wanda feels like we’re on good enough terms to come to us for help is an unanswerable question.

About an hour later, Giant Camel went out, and what did he find leaning against our door?

An umbrella, a dress, three shoes, and a glove. Later, she went downstairs and put a box of raisins and a pile of k. d. lang CDs on the free table. She’s still not the worst neighbor I’ve ever had.

Mole Day!

I was waffling about whether to go to my ten-year high school reunion (it’s not till 2013, but it’s never too early to worry,) so I made a pro/con list:

PRO:

-       There will probably be beer

-       I can show up and talk about my “literary career”

-       I can try to have sex with that guy I always said I’d try to have sex with at the reunion

-       Romy and Michele

CON:

-       Several hundred dollars of airfare and car rental just to talk about my “literary career”

-       It’ll be at the high school or the County Expo Center, where they also have cattle shows

-       There’s an annual theater department reunion to which I have never been invited, and those people ostensibly liked me

-       The thought of being 28 and having my mother ask me when I’ll be home and insisting I call her if my ride has even one drink, despite the fact that she doesn’t have a car

-       It would bring back memories of all of high school, including freshman year, which in terms of horror was basically Eighth Grade II: The Awkwarding.

It was about even, and then I remembered Mole Day, so I won’t be going. Ever.

Now… let me paint the picture. Ninth grade chemistry. I really, really enjoyed chemistry on paper. I found in interesting. The class was a nightmare in three acts.

Act I: The teacher. Mrs. Anders was one of those people who’s really aggressively jolly all the time. She was always drinking out of one of those reusable gas-station mugs. Everyone said she was an alcoholic and her mug was filled with 89-octane screwdrivers, and I absolutely refused to believe them. Now that I’m grown, I bet she was tanked every second of the school day. You had to pay for lab supplies you broke – one time a guy dropped a beaker and she yelled “BUMMER!” at the top of her lungs. One – “bummer?” Really? Were you the understudy for the teacher in Encino Man? And two, don’t yell while teenagers are handling acids. Mrs. Anders was the only person I’ve ever met who said “cool beans” and meant it.

Act II: My lab partner. He was the most awkward person I’ve ever met. Meg and I joke about being awkward, but he was the real McCoy. We got in trouble because he lost our magnesium. How do you lose a chunk of metal in the three minutes it takes to set up a high school chemistry experiment? No one knows. This is the same kid who, when we went around to say what we were thankful for near Thanksgiving, said “I’m thankful for my multiple personalities.” I was always sitting next to him when he did something like that. It was assumed we were friends.

Act III: John Berman. In high school and early college, I didn’t really feel like being gay – can you blame me for not wanting to join a group known for public enthusiasm? I was willing to make an EXCEPTION for John Berman. I had a sighing, sweating, I-think-I-can-smell-his-Axe-body-spray, doodling-his-name-in-my-notebook crush on John Berman. I also had a lush, magnificent crop of acne and whiskers I only needed to shave every nine days, so I was resigned to lust from afar – and actually vastly preferred lusting from afar to having John Berman look over at my side of the room when my lab partner said “Mrs. Anders! I think we’re reaching critical mass!”

So, into this mess wades Mole Day. Do you know what a mole is? I do, because it is seared on my memory. If you have twelve of something, you have a dozen; if you have 6.0221415 x 10²³ of something, you have a mole. It’s the number of molecules in a liter of an ideal gas at rest, or something. It’s also the name of a kind of rodent. This whole story rests on that pun.

So, high school chemistry teachers, jealous of Pi Day (March 14 – 3/14 – 3.14, GET IT?!!?!?!?!?!?), established Mole Day on October 23 (October 23 – 10/23 – 6.0221415 x 10²³, GET IT ?!?!!??!?!!?), expanding the already bloated calendar of learning-opportunity quasi-festivals. We all had to do Something Involving Moles for Mole Day. It could be anything tangentially related to moles, of any kind.

Did John Berman simply write “Mole Day” on a white t-shirt in sharpie, looking both cool and hot? Yes.

Did my lab partner roll in with a homemade mole puppet that he made say disturbing things? Yes.

Did I wait until the last minute? Did I write a page-long essay on “Great Moles In History?” WAS I FORCED TO READ IT ALOUD IN FRONT OF JOHN BERMAN AND HIS BODY? Yes, yes, yes.

Now, looking back, that essay was kind of a cool idea. The only ones I can remember are John Moleton, (like John Milton but a mole, GET IT !?!?!??!), who wrote Paradise Lost in very, very small letters, and Wolfgang Amadeus Molezart, who adapted bows so they could be held in the claw. I’ve absolutely written worse things. I did not, however, have to read them aloud in front of the class.

So, naturally, the cool thing to do would have been to just own it. Make my mole puns, loud and proud, sell it to the balcony, and balls the balls off of it. Instead, I opted to speed-mumble my page of rodent-themed history puns. “Mrmrmrmmmrmrmr Oliver Crommole mrmrmrmmrmr Toad Hall mrmrmrmrmrmrmr Pope Moletus VII mrmrmrmmrr.” Did I stare at the page the whole time and pick up speed as I went along? Brother, you know it! It was so powerfully uncomfortable. I could have saved everyone a lot of time by saying, “You know what? I’m really weird, really awkward, and in about five years I’m going to lose an amateur strip contest at college night in a really shitty gay bar in New Orleans. Just thought you should know.” I was so obviously being forced to come out as weird. Most people averted their eyes in sympathy – of course, John Berman gave me a look of perplexed pity. The same look you give a hurt bird. There’s nothing you can reasonably be expected to do to help, but you’re sorry it happened, and you’ll be a little sad the rest of the day without really knowing why.

Later, John Berman had a kid with this girl who stole money out of the cash register at Quizno’s and ran away to Dallas, so we’re kind of even, but I still don’t want to go back up to the high school. If those walls could talk, they’d be saying “The unsinkable Moley Brown? Can you believe this jackass?”

Mail Bag

Wow, hi Meggles!

I started this email a LONNNNNG time ago and got stuck so it has been sitting in my draft box.

Soooo...I figured I should just send it. I had made it originally for you to answer on days you had writers block, because I love when you just answer people's questions.

Sooo...yeah. There ya go.

Hope all is well! Still reading strong!

<3 jen

Let's do this, Sanchez.

1. Marry Fuck Kill:

Dr. Reuben

Larry Hagman

John McCain

Ooo, GOOD ONE. I've been thinking about this all weekend, and here's my final answer: I'd marry Larry Hagman and we'd live a long, happy life together, thank you; fuck Dr. Reuben because I've always wondered what making love to a Jiffy Bag-covered penis would feel like; and I'd kill John McCain because that son of a bitch never hugged me and/or his daughter is society's longest active queef.

2. When do you actually sleep, Meg?

5-11:00am. Ish.

3. Have you tried wiping standing up yet?

Yes. Everyday for the past 23 years.

4. Would you be upset if Tulane Chris began dating Bobby Flay?

I would feel hurt, betrayed, confused, tickled, aroused, livid, and hurt. In that order.

5. What Would Meg Do?

Oh, God. Meg would take a nap and avoid the situation entirely, then regret it later when it's too late. WWMD? is not a lifestyle I recommend.

6. If your life were a movie, who would play you?

I mean, that's really nice and all, but truthfully, it would probably be a cross between Gabourey Sidibe and Charles Grodin.

7. Have you ever been in a threesome? Do you have plans to be?

I was once an active, and some say uncomfortably competitive, participant in a threeway hookup, but I've never taken it to the next level. (<--- Please know I just re-wrote that sentence so it didn't include the word "penetration".) I don't have any threesomes planned at the moment, but if Hunter's Dean of Admissions and Anthony Bourdain are up for it, I wouldn't say no. (<--- Please know, I just took out an "I'd have no reservations!" joke.) (Or "joke", if you will.)

8. What would you do with $1,000,000?

#1: Buy a membership to Sports Club/LA

#2: Pay off my student loans

#3: Pay back my parents all the money I've borrowed from them over the years

#4: Pay back Chris the $57 I owe him

#5: Pay my bills

#6: PAY COMCAST TO PUBLICLY SUCK MY DICK

#7: Buy Chris and I matching red velor track suits with our initials embroidered on the left breast, so we can wear them: a.) all the time and b.) in a picture where we're standing back-to-back with our arms crossed, glass of whiskey in one hand and mischievous grins on our faces, which will from there on out be used as our official headshot. (This has been an actual goal of ours for almost a year now.)

#8: Buy a new laptop because this one is almost dead and the S, L, F8, and Control buttons are broken. It's exhausting.

#9: Adopt a pug

#10: Buy a couch

#11: Buy an office chair

#12: Bribe the recruiters at my temp agency to actually find me some work

#13: Buy equipment for the podcast Chris and I want to do

#14: Get a tattoo of Homer's bifocals on my ass

#15: Buy a night of hot, passionate lovemaking with Nick Hawk from Showtime's Gigolos (whose rates are surprisingly reasonable, by the way...)

#16: Buy myself a bike, because Lord knows that infuriating situation hasn't been resolved yet

#17: Visit my friends on the west coast and in the middle east

#18: Buy a really, really nice knife set

#19: Buy Evie a...Nope. That cat has literally anything she could ever want and/or need. And I'm jealous of her.

#20: Donate the rest to Howard University, so Becca and I can finally go to Howard homecoming

9. Would you ever go on Fear Factor?

Absolutely not, because if there's anything I hate more than confronting my fears, it's Joe Rogen.

10. Diane invites you over for dinner. When you walk in the house, Jeremy Piven is sitting at the table, helping himself to some potatoes. Describe what happens next.

First, I'd take a moment to pause and let it all just wash over me. Then, like a horny C-level magician, I'd haphazardly yank the table cloth off the table, sending plates, artisan bread, and salad forks flying everywhere. Then, I'd hop up on the table, make the international "suck it" motion across my crotch, rip open my shirt, and crawl towards The Piv while whipping my hair around and eating the odd biscuit, like a hungry hungry Tawny Kitaen. Now in front of Piven, I'd choke him with his own necktie, slap him in the face, slap myself in the face, and lick gravy off his receding hairline until neither of us can take it anymore, and I climb into his lap and make dirty, forceful love to him, right there in front of God, my parents, and everyone.

That's the short answer. The long one involves a few erotic venn diagrams and a lot more swears.

11. Good looking or rich?

Neither; personality. HA HA! Just kidding. Rich. I really want a membership to Sports Club/LA. Do you know how happy access to a lap pool would make me? Also, sometimes I pleasure myself to their group exercise schedule. Like most of my porn, it's sad and extremely effective.

12. Would you rather have invisibility powers or read minds?

Invisibility. That way I could work out at Sports Club/LA without a membership and NO ONE WOULD EVER KNOW!

13. Did Sophie make the right choice?

You mean the choice to whore out herself and her blog for a membership to Sports Club/LA? Yes. Yes, I do. And speaking of whoring myself out (which, again, I would absolutely do), the following is an exchange I had with my mom last night while discussing my current financial situation:

Me: You know what? Fuck it. I'm just going to whore myself out in the streets for top dollar.

Mom, in the most heartfelt tone I have ever heard her speak in: Oh, sweetheart. Nickles and pennies aren't going to help us now.

...You know what? Well played, Diane Rowland. Well played.

#SaturdayNight #BuffyDowner

Go Wildcats!

Well, I didn’t get fired yet, but the guy I ask for help did, so it’s just a matter of time. Since business has been slow, I got short-shifted at work, and decided to catch up with some old friends from high school, which resulted in the following conversations:

“I feel a lot better since I joined a support group for wives of inmates. I found out about it after a guard groped me, but I’m still glad to have met these women. Oh, also, I found out there’s been a warrant out for my arrest in Bell County since 2007, so at some point when I go visit Mom I need to go get arrested and pay that fine.”

“I should make some money this weekend. The moving company I work for got hired to clean out a hoarder’s house. They estimate thirty truckloads, so I should get some overtime. We keep a keg in the truck for days like these.”

“I thought social work wouldn’t involve my having to explain that marijuana is illegal and has been for generations, but these people don’t read newspapers very closely. Oh, do you remember Alice? She and her husband got so good at Catholic birth control – you have to take your vaginal temperature, thank God for Martin Luther – that they got hired to teach it to everyone in the entire diocese.”

“I had to drop off a semen sample in case the estrogen makes me infertile, which doesn’t always happen but better safe than sorry. They were playing easy listening in the lab – it’s daunting trying to give a plastic cup a very special day while listening to a gentle, instrumental version of ‘The Girl from Ipanema.’”

I added a couple of punchlines and the marijuana conversation actually happened last week, but otherwise this is what’s going on among Temple High School alumni. Go Wildcats! For context, my friend safeguarding his, shortly her, fertility once accidentally stabbed my friend helping the hoarder move – and hoarder-move friend is the same one who used to live on a goat farm. (Oh, the grammatical Twister I play not to use people’s real names in case somehow being associated with me would injure them.)

Now, I don’t care that my friend is having gender reassignment – if anyone feels strongly enough about a situation to have puberty twice, they can count on my blessing – but, as with any time someone you know does something unconventional, I have more questions than I can politely ask. No one likes to be interrogated except my friend who married the inmate, who merrily volunteered how, since Texas doesn’t allow conjugal visits, one keeps the magic alive. I limited my questions about the transition to two:

Q: How did you pick your new name?

A: It’s what I would have been named had I been born a girl – well, more apparently a girl.

Q: So is getting your sperm stored, like, a one-time expense, or are there recurring costs?

A: There’s a storage fee, but it’s pretty cheap. It costs less than high-speed internet.

Q: High-speed internet is expensive up here.

A: I don’t know what to tell you. Maybe you should budget. Or have a career more stable and lucrative than writing toilet books.

Q: It’s a vocation.

A: It’s a trilogy called Delta Burke and Diarrhea: Meg and Chris’ Big Book of Bodily Mishaps and 80s TV Jokes.

Q: That’s the working title.

A: Oh, of course. I forgot you were also considering Shits and Shoulder Pads.

So now, my new game is imagining the threats the lab that stores your “essence” sends if you don’t pay your bill. My favorites so far are “if your account is not brought up to date, we will pair your sperm with leftover ova from Eva Braun” and “if this bill is not paid, your semen will be thawed and sent to a pornography studio to be used as ‘filler’ in case Todd Strokely starts running dry.” My new new game is imagining asking the bank loan officer for money to open a sperm bank. My new, new new game is imagining being the state sperm bank inspector:

Tulane Chris, Licensed Sperm Bank Inspector: Sir, have you just been cramming Ziplocs full of genetic material in around the edges of your kegerator?

Dan of Dan’s Discount DNA: Times are tough.

…I smell a sitcom. Well, I smell something.

How was your commute?

The bad news is that, haha, I owe several hundred dollars in takes this year literally because I only learned yesterday how tax brackets work. The good news is that I got a DVD of “Who’s the Boss” from Netflix the other day, and it featured an episode guest-starring Delta Burke as a promiscuous socialite and another featuring Betty White as a ruthless TV host. #suicidepostponed #this is a non sequitur but I had an erotic dream about garry shandling the other day like for real #he didn’t let me finish either @meg

Twitter-format jokes: more fun than twitter since 2011.

So, as I mentioned, I’m on the bus three to four (closer to four) hours per work day. Except for the terrible tailbone pain – the seats are ergonomic, but not for Earthlings – it’s a really manageable kind of misery in the mornings. Everyone else is on a long early-morning bus ride. No one wants to talk or make eye contact except for the guy at the transfer station who I overheard say, “I’ll be a pervert till I die!” and I feel like the rest of us have a tacit alliance against encouraging him.

Coming home is a different story. My bus goes past the agricultural high school, for all those Philadelphia School District kids who go on to farm, and it gets there right at the time school lets out, so the bus is literally packed to capacity with teenagers.

Things I Have Learned About Teenagers:

1)    Loud

2)    Talk about sex, masturbation, and the human body more in 15 miles than Meg and I do in our entire humor book about war crimes

3)    Loud

4)    They’ll just put their leg on yours so that you have to move your leg so you’re not a child molester

5)    Loud

6)    Oh my God, Loud

7)    Teenagers have an odor. It results from having the energy to run around and sweat, then covering the sweat smell with Bath and Body Works Hayfever and Diabetes in A Jar Turbofloral Spray.

Things I have learned about these particular teenagers:

1)    They’re still undecided about what they think about the new girl, Brooklyn, but suspect she will turn out to be a bitch.

2)    Brad cheated on Tanya first, which if you know that doesn’t make her look as bad as he tried to make her look, and she broke up with him first too, and he’s texting her now.

3)    They do not intend to save anything for marriage. It is a struggle to save it until they get off the bus.

So, hooray. Youths. God bless ‘em. Imagine how thrilled I was to get The Early Bus home the other day, which passes the school too early for the kids?

Now imagine how thrilled I was to see someone shoot heroin on the bus.

Let me take you through it. I’ve been on the bus a few minutes, and we stop near a shopping center. A guy gets on with a suitcase and gigantic Ikea carrying bag and asks the driver for change. The bus driver does not have change, but they manage to work out a deal, and homeboy sits down nearish me.

Chris’ Brain: Oh, he’s cute.

Chris’ Brain: Are you kidding? He’s sweating in that indoor way. He looks like he needs an IV, a steak, and like twenty naps. A solid hose-off in the yard wouldn’t go amiss, either.

Chris’ Brain: We’ve done worse.

Chris’ Brain: …Granted. But that was college.

Homeboy proceeds to root through the suitcase, find a candy bar (I feel it’s important to note it’s WHITE CHOCOLATE with little cookie bits in it), and eat it like… well, like it was heroin. I’m doing that thing where you stare right next to someone so you can watch them and pretend to zone out or be looking out the window if they catch you. He wraps up the last bit of his bar and stows it, then starts rummaging in his pants – his arm is down the outside of his pant leg, so I think he’s either the least efficient masturbator in the world or getting a gun. I barely have time to think “well, if I get shot Meg will benefit from heightened book sales,” before I realize that most mad shooters probably don’t have to spend five minutes rummaging in their pants for a gun and that something weirder is afoot. Sure enough, Homeboy proceeds to flop over from the waist and sway bonelessly along to the bouncing of the bus. Absolutely no one else appears to be watching. After a couple minutes, he straightens up, works something down his pant leg and apparently tucks it in his sock, and starts making small talk about guitars with someone else on the bus. I texted roughly a dozen people to be like “HEROIN ON THE BUS BIG CITY LOL” and at least three people asked me if I was sure, like sure sure, that it wasn’t insulin.

Yes, I’m sure. Because ten minutes later he did it again, and followed it with some vigorous stretching.

When he got done stretching, he asked me if I had change for a five – I didn’t, but I gave him a subway token. I figured that since I was absolutely going to blog about his addiction, it was least I could do.

Here are the morals I’ve drawn: HANDS DOWN better to be confined somewhere with a junkie than a meth-head, and I wish I’d tried heroin when I was young enough for it to be considered “finding myself.” I know damn well who I am at this point, but God, he looked calm. I’ve never been as calm as that in my entire life.

On the home front, remember my crazy neighbor? Well, the woman in the apartment next to her has started teaching herself some kind of loud “power ukulele.” We might make it to the end of the month before my building is reclassified as a mental hospital, but it’s going to be a squeaker.

3 (Self-Serving) Things:

1.) Guess what?! It's that time of the year again when I harass you to vote for us for best blog/blogger for Washington City Paper's Best of DC awards! Although, I'm going to be real honest: I'm not going to push for it this year. I'm aware that we didn't post nearly enough in 2011 to warrant my typical obnoxiousness, so I'm just going to say that if you'd like to vote for us for best blog/blogger, you may do so here (People & Places), and I thank you. 

2.) I am, however, going to obnoxiously push for Best DC Twitter. (@2birds1blog) Why? Because:

DAMMIT. Why hasn't the Internet made a gif of the woman saying "I want that", re: the free mini sailboat with the 24-piece set from Napoleon Dynamite yet?? Fuck. Youtube videos never work as well, but, because:

Well, that didn't work. And it's the wrong size. I want it, OK? That's why. I'm aware that DC is a town of movers and shakers (and candlestick makers) (Meg, please), and typically, the people who win Best Twitter are city councilmen, activists, and people generally "in the know" who actually tweet informative things about the District, and respect knuckles all around, but come on! I tweeted a picture of myself in an exam gown at the gynecologist's office because I was surprised how good I looked in salmon!

Would Vincent Gray do that? I think not. (And Lord knows that man could pull off a coral, blush, or peach if he wanted to and, frankly, I dare him to try.) But I argue that tweet is informative and DC-based! a.) Salmon: who knew? Now you do. You're welcome, and b.) Dr. Stephen J. Horowitz is located at 2141 K street, God bless his heart! Does Eleanor Holmes Norton tweet a disturbing number of photos of her parents' aggressive show cat? Not to my knowledge. But guess who does? This guy.

So, that's pretty much my entire argument for why I think you should vote for me for Best DC Twitter account. Because I'm a narcissistic cat lady with paradoxically low self-esteem and awards make me feel better about myself/my horrible life choices. VOTE FOR ME! Like last year, if I win, I'd be proud to take one of you fine readers as my hot date to the WCP Best Of party. I don't really know how we'll pick this year. Email me, or pick/nominate amongst yourselves. I don't really know how that would work, but you guys seem to always be infinitely more on the ball than I am, so go with God! Polls close March 1st.

3.) Speaking of calendar dates and not being on the ball, next Tuesday is Valentine's Day! What better way to say "thank you for being a friend" you "motherfucker", than with a 2birds1blog Dr. Dre/Eminem "What's the Difference?" Valentine's Day card???? Devotees will remember that I made these cards last year to send to my friends, immediately felt awkward because not everyone knows obscure Chronic 2001 lyrics off the top of their heads, oh wait—yes they do, and they were a total hit. Now you can buy a pack of six A7 (5" x 7") flat cards with six red A7 envelopes for the completely reasonable price of $12, plus a flat $2 shipping fee. Each shipment comes with a free 2birds1blog sticker and a little love note from yours truly. HOLLER! Considering I just got my Internet turned back on yesterday, I didn't have a ton of money to front for supplies and I might get sued by Interscope/Aftermath Records, so these are extremely limited edition. Act fast. But like, REAL fast.

OK, well I have a night of printing ahead of me because I want to make sure these are DTF for tomorrow morning (or right now, if you will), so I'm going to cut this obnoxiously short. Vote, vote, vote! Tweet, tweet, tweet!

A Tribute to Dad

…I’m okay.

I had an embarrassing freakout this past weekend. I’m fairly confident I’m going to get laid off in the next few weeks, and feel silly even using “laid off” to describe “losing a temp job you’ve had for six weeks because there’s not enough work to justify keeping Dawn Davenport around.” Wacky Wanda started a fire Thursday night. Let me paint you the picture: I’m lying in “bed” (the pile of blankets on the floor I sleep in because we didn’t have enough money for a mattress when we moved to Philadelphia and sleeping on the floor, like, fixed my back). I’m playing everyone’s favorite game, I Might Have To Vomit, But Maybe If I Fall Asleep I’ll Be Fine In the Morning. I hear a loud buzzer, and my first thought is “Dammit, I thought I turned off my phone ringer.” My second thought is “Well, she’s burned down the building.” I checked the hall, and lo and behold, it’s full of smoke, with Wacky Wanda standing in the doorway of her apartment trying to air the smoke into the hall, where it belongs. I had the presence of mind to wet a bathrobe and jam it into the crack between the door and the floor. That’s where my presence of mind left me. I managed to leave the house with my iPod, but not with:

-       My keys

-       The framed photograph of my late grandfather holding a Boston terrier

-       My passport

-       shoes

I then proceeded to announce, to the assembled tenants, that “that crazy fucking bitch I hate and ruins everyone’s life” started a fire. I discovered a new emotion, “too angry to vomit.”

My Stomach: I’ve decided that English muffin did have a little mold on it. I’d like to be rid of it.

The Valve That Connects My Stomach to My Esophagus: FUCK YOU, GIRLY-GIRL. THE REST OF US ARE DEALING WITH MADENESS AND FIRE. YOU CAN DIGEST BREAD MOLD.

So, it turns out she made a fire smoky enough to evacuate an entire building in the microwave. I don’t have the words. Especially in this building, with built-in ex-Soviet microwaves that make food “as warm as a Latvian autumn.” Her excuse was “I fell asleep.”

Hey, we all do it. Staying up for a whole day – hell, for the five minutes it takes to make a Healthy Choice meal – is for pussies. Remember the Spanish Armada? “Pssst. Liz. Your Majesty. A storm destroyed our enemy’s fleet. Go back to sleep.” Remember Appomattox? Lee gently placing his sword on the table so as not to wake Grant, who was “at Nappy’s house?”

After the firemen gave the all clear, I calmed down by watching “Death Becomes Her,” drinking red wine spritzers (I didn’t want to push it re: vomiting) and playing a computer game where you get to fight wars in medieval Europe.

SO, with that kind of a Thursday, I spent Friday having stress-induced costochondritis , eating banana bread, and playing the same computer game (the fucking queen of Castile wouldn’t marry me no matter what I did.)

So, Saturday… we’ve had this conversation ad nauseam. Cover letters. Stupid. No one reads. Useless. Depressing.

So I called Dad, and he helped. He was very polite about it: “Yeah, it sucks, but you’ll probably have a career eventually. Everyone on the Keith and the Girl comment boards seemed to like the show you were on. I didn’t listen to all of it because I’m tired of hearing about you getting hand jobs, but other people seem to like it.” This is so much more reassuring than “God has a plan,” which was Giant Camel’s contribution, and to which the obvious reply is “Yes, but it might be for me to eventually stand between a scientist and a gunman, and that doesn’t help with March’s rent.”

Dad also helped me plan a post I’m working on for later this week, gossiped with me about Texas Instruments, and generally soothed me. So, in gratitude, I’m going to tell you something funny he did.

About ten minutes before the Saints/49ers game, which after I tell this story will NEVER BE DISCUSSED AGAIN, Dad called me:

“I just wanted to tell you good luck, and tell you about a disturbing dream I had. I dreamt I was a stand-up comic, basically a Rodney Dangerfield knockoff. I fiddled with my tie and everything. My whole act was this single joke: ‘So, my wife asks me what I want for our anniversary, and I said “Honey, after all these years, I really just want a blow job.” So gives me fifty dollars and says “There, go get one,” and I was really touched because it was enough to afford a hooker who still had teeth.’ I thought you could use that on Keith and the Girl if you got stuck.”

My father: providing emergency blow job jokes since 1950.