Cosmopolitans, Castro, A Frontal Lobotomy, and A Whole Lot of Hash Browns
"Scattered, smothered, covered, topped, and just about everything else."
This is what I found myself slurring at 4 am last night, while staring at the "I Want Butt Plug" scrawled on the inside of my forearm in pen, wondering if it was all worth it.
Why do I feel like I continually wonder if it's worth it? Hangover today is quite nasty, despite not really being that drunk last night (or at least, "New Year's Drunk", which has become the new standard of just what I am capable of).
So last night, my friend J and I went to Dark Horse Tavern, aka The Best Place Ever For Drinking And Watching Incredibly Good-Looking Guys All Night Long. Had I known this place was such an aesthetically-pleasing sausagefest, I would have certainly traded in many a weekend night watching "House Hunters" on HGTV and catching up on sleep in favor of going here. I think the last time I saw this many good-looking men in one place was Greek Week 2000 in college.
J and I quickly sat down at the bar, ordered drinks, and hung out as usual. But rather inexplicably, and in a pleasant twist of fate, our Mojo was in full swing. And let me tell you - it's good to know my Mojo still exists, because I sure as f*ck haven't seen it since April 2005.
We spent most of the night talking to incredibly good looking guys, two of whom appeared rather interested in yours truly. I played them both like 8th grade band instruments. Why, you might ask? Because I could. I called one of them "That Ass" all night for reasons that just probably wouldn't make sense to you (although important to note that it was quite funny when I kept asking, "Where's That Ass?" all night, and he would come hither). That Ass had a phone number scrawled on the inside of his arm, one that he claimed was from some college "friend" whose number he didn't have. Without missing a beat, I offered to give him my phone number to add to his forearm collection, pulled out a pen, and wrote "Pen15" in huge letters. Served him right for lying. To his credit, he attempted revenge by scrawling "I Want Butt Plug" on my arm, but it paled in comparison. Sad ending for That Ass - he drank a too much and rubbed up on me rather inappropriately one too many times, thus causing me to turn my attention to his equally-cute, but less drunk friend, MHI.
MHI and I spent most of the night talking and hanging out, and I can proudly say that I didn't lose interest in him once the entire night! We talked about normal, everyday things for quite a bit of time. He was engaging, funny, and cute, and in what I think is sort of adorable and sort of creepy act, even followed me to the bathroom to talk to me so we could chat outside of the group of people we were standing with at the front of the bar. Good thing he found me just as I was embarrassingly walking out of the men's room after a momentary lapse in knowledge where I thought "lasses" on the door meant "men's room". Whoops.
In the meantime, J was hanging out with two guys, one of whom was sort of pathetically amusing, as he was trying to quit smoking and was chewing Nicorette the entire night. His last name was Castro, which I thought was weird. I paused briefly to ponder what it would be like if my last name was "Mussolini" or "Milosevic", and then turned my attention back to MHI.
So, much like any other night I meet someone I like, I am beginning to get sort of excited about this very cute guy, and then somehow, the topic turned towards his brain surgery.
Eek.
Now, I am hardly the expert at suggested bar conversation, but I don't think I'm too far off the mark when I say that your Massive Head Injury (hence, MHI) is an not the best subject to broach when we're just getting to know one another. While I'm sure it's probably a big part of your life, can't we hold off on the details of your frontal lobotomy for a date or two? Shit, if we're going to discuss that, let's just open the floodgates to dead relatives, mass genocide, and old men crying over spilled milk. And yes, maybe that sounds insensitive, but if the guy was trying to work me, which he clearly was, he was not doing such a good job by forcing me put my index finger to his temple so that I could touch the four holes they had drilled into his skull to alleviate the epidermal hematoma after a bad car accident last year. Bottom line on this: touching surgery scars does not good foreplay make.
I tried to be compassionate and empathetic, but my buzz was just getting going and I felt like kind of an asshole. Thankfully (or maybe not), he switched the topic to his passion for engineering and whether or not he believes time travel is possible. I tried my best to keep up - I really did - but at this point I was just wondering whether he was going to ask me for my number, and thinking that if I could just get him back onto a normal topic, like Jager or "CSI", we would probably get along really well.
After all of the hematoma, momentum, and butt plug discussion, he did not ask me for my number. He made some lame excuse about having to drive his friends home, mentioned that he was at the bar a lot and wanted to hang out sometime, hugged and kissed me, and then stupidly walked off. Ouch.
I wandered over to J and company, who were oddly discussing politics - a topic she was clearly trying to veer off of, because if anyone else understands appropriate bar conversational etiquette, it's J. Perhaps debating politics with friends is acceptable, but there's something a little off-putting about debating Roe vs. Wade with total strangers over a couple of cocktails, which might lead to some careless sex at someone's apartment, which could knock you up and force you to discuss the topic at a later time, only this time within the context of having the guy's baby. Like I said, off-putting. At one point, the Nicorette Dictator guy was so frustrated with his lack of oral fixation, he kept pulling the gum out of his mouth, ripping it to little pieces with his fingers, and throwing it back in his mouth. I sincerely hope that J does not go out with this guy. He too was guilty of the overly drunkenness, and I was feeling vicious, so when he asked someone in the group "What are you, some kind of dictator?" I couldn't help but chime in with, "No, Castro, I'm pretty sure
you are." Ha. Mussolini 1, Castro 0. Hey, I struck out at the bar, but at least I was still sharp as a tack.
Thus my smart ass ended up at Waffle House with J at 4 am, trying to drown my sorrows in a ginormous pile of hash browns.
I am disappointed to announce that due to scheduling conflicts, the Man Plan will be postponed until a later, undetermined date. This was a difficult decision that was made due to a number of factors, one of which entails some unfinished business at the Dark Horse Tavern. Until then, I am going to hop right back in the saddle.
McNuggets of Wisdom-y Goodness
Has anyone ever visited
The West Virginia Surf Report? Or
Bob From Accounting? Amazing websites...truly amazing. (And if you like this post, definitely check out
Black Box Stew and
The WalMart Game on WVSR, and pretty much anything from Bob.) My good friend Rob got me hooked on those sites, and after reading my post about the Chinese proverbs on this very site a few days ago, reminded me about the WVSR's running list of "Rules of Thumb". So, with permission (or at least credit given), here we go. Rules of Thumb to make living your life much easier:
FROM ISSUE TWELVE
-A person who wears a fanny pack loves science fiction, and vice versa.
-A person who wears a belt with shorts is probably religious.
-If a person says he enjoys the opera, that person is a liar.
-If the outside of the CD has the word "Zappa" on it, you're going to be disappointed by the music inside.
-If the video box shows a beautiful woman pointing a gun, the movie is shit.
-If the flyer shows the band standing on the railroad tracks, the band is shit.
-If a guy has cords on his sunglasses, he's a dick. If the sunglasses are mirrored, he's probably dangerous.
-All golfers like women.
-If she smokes, she f*cks.
FROM ISSUE THIRTEEN
-There's nothing uglier than a thirteen year old boy.
-If a person says, "Go look in the sink" - don't.
-The day a person goes to the store to buy a book of word-search puzzles marks the beginning of the long, slow decline to death.
-Women with homemade tattoos on their hands don't know shit about Graham Greene.
-You should always steer clear of Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, regardless of the city you are in.
-Ugly travels in packs.
FROM ISSUE FOURTEEN
-A drunk fat woman is louder than The Who.
-If you make fun of Kevin Bacon too much, your nose will stay that way.
-People who are good at math make bad zines.
-No black person has ever used the term "Bumf*ck, Egypt."
-If the letters PhD appear after a person's name, that person will remain outdoors even after it's started raining.
-Celebrity overdoses are all the more tragic because the person was always right on the verge of getting their life turned around.
-Nobody cares about the weird dream you had last night.
-You CAN judge a book by its cover.
-If a man says he has a large penis, he has a small penis. If a man says he has a small penis, he has a small penis.
-If the term "lift-kit" is in your vocabulary, you've never kept a journal.
-If you open a shit cafe in a trendy neighborhood, people will line up with money in their hands begging to eat shit.
NEW!! WEB EXCLUSIVE TRUISMS
-Anything above 87 octane is specially formulated for suckers.
-A disabled person is courageous. There is no such thing as a crippled coward.
-People who say, "Whoa, I'm not even going to touch that one!!" can't think of anything clever to say.
-One of the main requirements for being a basketball coach is the ability to act like you just can't f*cking believe it.
I think that pretty much covers it, but if you know of something else that is true, please post it to our
Surf Report forum. Do it for the children, won't you?
No Dick Repellent Necessary, Thanks
My house-hunting quest continues. And no, I haven't gotten a lot of goodtimes from the boys all that recently, so until that happens, we're talking houses, people.
Tonight, my Wife and I continued my endless quest for a home with our Realtor, Lisa Leslie. (Okay, so she's not Lisa Leslie, but she did definitely have a stint in the WNBA before something unknown happened to make her move to Atlanta and go into real estate, but I like calling her Lisa Leslie, who is the only WNBA person I know, and only thanks to "Love and Basketball", which is one of my favorite, highly-underrated movies of all time.)
The end result of tonight's hunt? We have FOUR frontrunners. Oh yes, one two three FOUR places that I love. Oddly enough, three of them are the exact same floor plan with different units (and one is in a totally different area of Atlanta). I suspect they were built by the same builder, and I suspect that liking all three of them means that I am probably destined to move into one of them.
Househunting is so much fun. Beyond learning about all of the cool stuff in a house (i.e. the water heater, the flooring, the seller's disclosure) - beyond even imagining what it would be like to live in that house every time you set foot in the door - househunting is great because you can snoop through people's shit.
Oh yes, I said it. Snooping through shit is great fun!
You can tell a lot about a person by the home they keep. Leather sofa? Single. Tile backsplash in the kitchen? Good cook. Locked armoir full of Beanie Babies in the master bedroom with a lock on the door and a little dangly pillow that says, "How many frogs must I kiss?" Circus freak.
One of the units we saw tonight is in the perfect neighborhood, in the perfect location, with the perfect little brick exterior, and perfect price range. I had only seen pictures earlier this week, and I was so nervous to see it tonight - the same kind of nervous one feels when you're about to head out on a date with someone that you really liked at the outset...you're so excited, and you have a feeling that this could totally be a life-changer, but you're terrified that you'll be let down somehow.
With the owner still living in this particular unit, we called to make sure she wasn't home. And of course she was, and refused to leave the house while we walked through. Oh yes - she greeted us at the door, forced us to take off our shoes before we even walked into the place (heaven forbid we taint her beige carpeting with our dirty bum feet), and offered to take us on a tour.
Now here's the thing - no one takes me on a tour. Ever. Not even my real estate agent. I need some room to breathe, walk around at my own pace, scope the place out, and snoop.
Anyway, this lady, who had to be in her forties (at least), and had a fake tan that would put Paris to shame, sat in her living room and watches CNN while we poked through the place. Let me tell you how comfortable it was. I couldn't talk to Erica, or my realtor...we had to rely solely on making faces. Heaven forbid we insult anything this woman owns. She did not look like she wanted to be f*cked with. It was so uncomfortable it felt like I had just stuck a tampon up my nostril. That level of discomfort, definitely.
The living room and the dining room checked out okay. The backyard was adorably fenced in and woodsy and cute, although she hadn't really done shit with it. And then we got to the kitchen. And the half bath downstairs. And the upstairs.
All of which, I would gently mention, looked like Laura Ashley had thrown up all over the f*cking house.
And here's the real kicker, guys - in the master bedroom, across from her frilly pink-and-lace bedspread and her hideous Laura Ashley potpourri decor, was a locked wooden armoire filled with....Beanie Babies.
Are. You. Shitting. Me?
Because clearly, the first thing I'd want to protect in the event of burglary was my Beanie Baby collection. I mean, take the plasma tv (she had one, and no, it wasn't nailed to the floor), take the furniture, but
DO NOT, under any circumstances, steal the Beanies.
Covering the lock, I might add, was a little pillow dangling that said, "How many frogs must I kiss?"
And then, as if this isn't odd and disturbing enough, when we looked up at the ceiling in the hallway, the one that has the little pull down string for the attic, the pull-down string was black suede string in the shape of a noose. So she could kill anyone that laughed at her Beanie collection, presumably.
Hark! I have uncovered the eighth wonder of the world - one more elusive and rare than the Sphinx in Egypt. Yes kids, while house hunting, I unearthed A Man's Greatest Nightmare.
Let's see here...you're fortyish. You're single. Your house reeks so strongly of cinnamon that I believe my Wife complained of a cinnamon smell in her nostrils long after we left the place. You have pink everything. Lace everything. You have a fuzzy pink toilet seat cover. You have a locked armoire full of Beanie Babies. You have a pull-down on your attic that is a noose. And you wonder why you're still single.
Here, let me take that Dick Repellent out of your hand, dear lady. I'm pretty sure that even without the spray, you've got this one covered.
Let me tell you - this lady's house made my week. Anywhere I go from here, anything I do for the rest of the week - any time I need a good hoot, I'm going to think of those poor little Beanies, suffocating in the cinnamon air.
And yet in spite of all of this, the floor plan is great and the price is nearly right. I may make an offer on the house if she goes low enough. I might be able to knock off a tenner in the thousands department, especially if I make it clear that she can take the Beanies with her. Because I'll need that money for fumigation and wallpaper removal.
Morsels of Wisdom-y Goodness
Rarely do I get email forwards that make me laugh out loud. In fact, I hate a lot of them, and delete most of them. Luckily, my sweet little ex was kind enough to pass this along, and I was smart enough to open it. Enjoy.
CHINESE PROVERBS
Man who run in front of car get tired.
Man who run behind car get exhausted.
Man who walk through airport turnstile sideways going to Bangkok.
Man with one chopstick go hungry.
Man who scratch ass should not bite fingernails.
Man who eat many prunes get good run for money.
Baseball is wrong: man with four balls cannot walk.
Panties not best thing on earth! But next to best thing on earth.
War does not determine who is right, war determine who is left.
Wife who put husband in doghouse soon find him in cat house.
Man who fight with wife all day get no piece at night.
It take many nails to build crib, but one screw to fill it.
Man who drive like hell, bound to get there.
Man who stand on toilet is high on pot.
Man who live in glass house should change clothes in basement.
Man who fish in other man's well often catch crabs.
Man who fart in church sit in own pew.
Crowded elevator smell different to midget.
Is It Right To Buy A House Just So You Can F*ck on the Floor?
I've been house hunting for the past few weeks, and let me tell you - it's a lot harder than I thought.
Everyone warned me that it would be a lot of work, but I had no idea just how much.
Don't get me wrong - buying a house is exciting, and I'm thrilled that I'm finally at a point in my life where I can stop cutting rent checks and start painting my walls black and hanging up all of my skull and crossbones statues that I've kept in hiding for so long. But it is a big decision. Big. Right on par with deciding what kind of car I'll be driving for the next five years, or who the last person I will (hopefully) ever sleep with will be when I decide to get married and take myself off the market. (I'm reviewing applications and proposals. It's an ongoing process.)
My realtor, who is a former WNBA player (information courtesy of her website), is great, but she can't really make my decisions for me. Do I want a house? A townhome? A condo? Do I want new construction? Renovated units? Or maybe even just a cardboard box that I can spend countless hours renovating myself? The whole decision-making process is nervewracking! As nice as it will be to be able to call something mine, every decision I make on this one is going to have a huge impact on my day-to-day life for the next 83 years, which is the current estimated amount of time it will take me to pay off my mortgage.
Last week, after going to so many open houses I can't even count, I finally set some parameters. I want a townhome, I want at least 2 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms, and I don't want to live in a ghetto, sippin' on gin and juice. Surprisingly, this was all I even needed to tell her. She handled the rest, and yesterday morning, I met her bright and early to look at places.
We looked at nine different places all around the city. Of those places, I liked two. F*ck. If I like a place, I expect to feel the same way I feel whenever I've just met some guy that I suspect might change my life - butterflies, excitement, and the San Francisco boys choir singing shit like "Hark! Hallelujah Jesus!" in my ears.
The first place was golden, and I was just about to tell her to look into it more when King Fat Ass Kong, who would presumably be my upstairs neighbor, put on some high heels that made noises so loud, I thought the apocalypse had come. In the blink of an eye, my dream of living in this place was totally shattered. There is no way in hell I'm going to be woken up by Jimmy Choo in the morning, and that's only when she puts on her shoes. Can you imagine how depressing it would be to hear her f*cking her boyfriend? I refuse to stand for having tangible evidence that my neighbor is getting more ass than I am. That's a dealbreaker, if only for the sake of my mental health.
Another townhouse we looked at was shit. I mean, yuck. The appliances were old, the place was filthy, but I wanted to date the former owner. It looked like he had moved out long ago, but he left some of the stuff there. The dining room chandelier was an industrial-style urn-looking thing that glowed red when you turned it on, the nightstand in the guest room was a canoe that had been converted into a table, and there was a turntable and some drums on the second floor balcony overlook. It was ugly as shit, but I would bet you that guy was both a pimp and a total Dick. Too bad he had moved out, because I wasn't going to buy his place, but I'd definitely hit it. (Kidding...I'm kidding! I have moved beyond Dicks, remember? Or so I'm trying. It's an uphill battle.)
After a few more instant "no's" (including an awesome townhouse in an "up-and-coming", which is real estate shorthand for "still-a-50%-hood-where-crack-dealers-abound" that had - verbatim - "your a bich" scrawled on the refuse dumpster), we headed to a more civilized neighborhood, and I found it.
I found it!
The dream home.
The only problem is, it's hella expensive. And although it met absolutely all of my needs, I think the only reason I really liked it so much was because of the floors.
I wanted to f*ck on those floors.
This was no average, ordinary flooring. It wasn't hardwood, it wasn't carpet, and it wasn't tile. It was....bamboo. Oh yes, bamboo. It is this shiny, amazing, hard surface that looks so clean I would have eaten McDonald's off of it. And it's everywhere (well, everywhere downstairs - the upstairs is carpeted)!
As soon as we stepped in the door, I was awestruck. Immediately, I had visions of myself and some really hot guy going at it in the kitchen. (And no, it wasn't a specific guy, he was faceless, but beautifully endowed.) I had visions of sitting on the couch with Faceless Guy, watching Grey's Anatomy, and just looking at the floor, looking at him, and tackling him to the ground while we had some hot, primitive goodness on my bamboo-floored living room.
So when my realtor finally asked me what I thought, I was so totally engrossed in my fantasy that I had a hard time coming up with something. I can't remember exactly what I said, but I veered away from, "I want to f*ck on this floor!" and went more with something along the lines of, "The appliances are brand-new. What a plus!"
After careful review, I am moving forward on making an offer on the house with the f*ckable bamboo, and trying to track down Mr. Canoe Turntables, in the hopes that he is still single, and moved into a bigger house. I'll keep you posted.
Proof that I Am Now One Of Those People
Earlier this afternoon:
Me (to cat): Come here! Come here, little Gargamel McMuffinpants. Goo goo ga ga koo koo ka.
My sister: You are f*cking crazy. Your cat is going to hate you if he doesn't already. Listen
to how stupid this sounds, "Goo goo ga ga koo koo ka."
Me: You're not saying it with the right accent.
My sister: Sorry. You'll have to excuse me - I'm from North Crazy, not South.
Eureka! It's Time For A Highly-Scientific Social Experiment.
If you've read the post below and thought I was done talking, then clearly you don't know me all that well.
Yes, my friends, I've thought long and hard about my dilemma with meeting good quality men.
Traditionally, I've had a lot of different eggs in a lot of different baskets. Almost to a fault, really. Certainly I have discouraged or driven at least a few people away because they think I am flighty, or dare I say - whorelike - when it comes to keeping my options open. More recently, I have either exhausted all of my options or blatantly dismissed them. And that's not good, because I've always been a math girl at heart. I believe the more you've got going, the better odds you have of finding something good.
With that in mind, I've devised a Highly-Scientific Social Experiment, and this one is so profound, so destined to be wildly successful, that my Wife Erica has jumped on board and volunteered herself to participate as well.
We are off to answer one of the modern single person's biggest questions. As a young single person in a city, what is the best way to meet new people?
The experiment will begin February 1st, and last for eight weeks. Yes! Eight weeks. That's two months for those of you who have a hard time converting units of measured time.
We, with our Highly Scientific methods, will spend two weeks each on four different methods of meeting people, and report our findings here, on this very blog. And you, dear readers, can live vicariously through us by visiting this site. For free. We won't even charge you! Lucky bastards.
Phase One: What About Your Friendsters?This horribly cheesy moniker, adapted from the ridiculous TLC song in 1994, "What About Your Friends", will explore the fascinating world of Friendster (MySpace ruled out instantaneously for trash factor). My lab partner and I will Scientifically email second and third degree Friendsters who we do not already know in the hopes of striking up some conversation, and perhaps a love connection. A two-week chronicle of our successes, failures, and odd little anecdotes will be posted here for your viewing pleasure.
Phase Two: Bars, Bars, BarsThis horribly named phase of the experiment, named as a cheap knockoff of the most awesome Motley Crue song, "Girls Girls Girls", will take us to various bars in and around the Atlanta metropolitan area. As we go out at least 3-4 times/week, it is here where we will do our bests to maintain scientific integrity, not get too shitfaced, and keep our eyes on the Balls as we test out how well finding good loving can work at the bar scene.
Phase Three: Match PointMuch like the game of tennis, Match.com is like ping pong, but over the Internet. I don't know how this metaphor is relevant to anything other than that it sounds really smart, so I'm going with it. My lab partner and I will be joining Match.com for two weeks, in order to "browse" for someone who "clicks our mouse" so to speak. Midgets and hermaphrodites need not apply.
Phase Four: Activities of Shared InterestIn this last phase, we will be investigating events that surround what we call "activities of shared interest". This includes, but is not limited to, college alumni events (go Redhawks and Dawgs), professional sporting events, drinks at the High Museum, and concerts. It is here where we hope that mutual interests will lead to mutual satisfaction...in more ways than one.
I will be spending the next couple of weeks putting together an itinerary, establishing Scientific Rules, and making my hypothesis as to the most successful method.
And because this is an interactive site, please feel free to state and explain what you think the most successful Phase will be and why.
In the meantime, I'd highly recommend you throw out your Corn Flakes, because it's going to be one interesting ride.
I'm Out of Cinnamon Toast Crunch.
Everyone has one of those foods you just can't live without. The food that, at your local grocery, never eludes you. The food that sustains you. That brings you joy. That makes you go home, kick off your shoes, and dig into those morsels of gluttonous happiness, whatever they may be.
One day, a few months ago, I was perusing the aisles of my local Publix (Kroger = disastrous produce section and awful customer service), when I spotted my own personal Holy Grail of cereals: Cinnamon Toast Crunch. The cereal that my Mom would never let me eat, due to its ludicrous sugar content. Growing up, my mom made me eat cereal for breakfast every morning before school, and it was always something gross, like Corn Flakes or Raisin Bran. And while I understand her motherly responsibility to keep me regular, I always felt like I was being cheated somehow. And no amount of packets of Equal dumped into the bowl while she wasn't looking could possibly compare.
So you can imagine my excitement to rediscover CTC, and the realization that at 25 years old, I can buy and eat my own f*cking preferred brand of cereal, cavities be damned.
It's now a staple food in my cabinet. And yes - there are plenty of times where I ain't got no milk, I ain't got no bread, but I sure as hell always have some CTC on hand to help me get through the day.
Now I find that there's nothing quite like the panic of being down to my last half-box of CTC. Once that reality kicks in, I will do whatever it takes to make sure I have enough Toasty goodness in stock, for whenever the situation arises.
Do you know where I'm going with this? Neither do I.
Okay, no, wait. I remember now.
You see, Cinnamon Toast Crunch is a euphemism. For men. Much like Mikey needs Life cereal, much like Kate Moss needs 10 lines of blow in a recording studio, and much like the white-collared businessman needs a five dollar blow job from a cheap hooker named Tootsie to feel powerful, I need some more men in my cereal cabinet. Seriously.
I've had a few dates in the past couple of months. I never blog about them because frankly, they're so boring that just a few weeks ago, I found myself counting Equal packets at the table at the Cheesecake Factory, waxing nostalgic about my forced childhood ingestion of Raisin Bran. It was the only thing that kept me from dying of boredom. After a half an hour discussion about whether or not we liked what we did for a living (I do, he doesn't), and whether or not we cared about being cool in high school (he cared, and probably was somewhat cool, I didn't care, and definitely wasn't), I looked for a modicum of desire within to suck face with this guy just to get him to shut up and couldn't even muster any fake desire. Ouch.
The whole date was Raisin Bran. But not even - there weren't even those little wrinkly bits of raisin surprise scattered throughout. The date was f*cking Corn Flakes. Seriously.
I wouldn't consider myself to be a desperate person, nor one who feels the incessant needling within to be in relationships with people as a measure of self-worth. I am quite fine being single, but it does get kind of lonely. It'd be nice to have someone, outside of friends, to hang out with and make out with and bring to the endless weddings (particularly since two more of my friends have gotten engaged in the last month). I'd like for someone to drag me to action movies, instead of shit like "Memoirs of a Geisha". I'd like a box of chocolates on Valentine's Day - the fancy kind where every truffle is infused with something weird like wasabi or chili peppers and there's a guide to what's what on the inside cover of the chocolate box. I don't think there's anything wrong with that.
My problem, I have come to believe, is in selection. I just don't meet a lot of quality people, and anytime I do meet people, they usually tend to be non-quality and I choose to go out with them anyway. And yet, no matter how hard I try to convince myself that maybe this date will be interesting, that maybe he's not as obnoxious as he came off to be when we were talking, I find myself eating Wheat Chex and craving Cinnamon Toast Crunch.
So where the hell do I go to meet some normal people? I'm on my last box of cereal, and I still have to eat breakfast for the rest of the week.
How About Them Sex on Wheels?
You can't see it, but I swear my hands are on 10 and 2. And I can't believe that I actually took this picture, but I figured an action shot was totally necessary.
Sorry for the delay...I've been sick, and then ridiculously busy.
Having sex. On wheels.
I have been entirely too amused with my new car, purchased just over a week ago. My 2006 Acura TSX (silver exterior, quartz interior) has given me more climax than....well, that's totally beside the point. This car is insanely insane. I have been scooting around town in a car that is way too cool for me.
I almost crashed it the other day while driving in the rain. I was at a stoplight with a co-worker in the passenger's seat, and we realized that the windshield wipers (set to "intermittent") will automatically slow down/speed up based on the speed of both the rain and the car itself. Amazing. My little toot toot is so smart!
This is a totally new experience for me - I'd never negotiated, purchased, or driven a brand-new car. But now that I've gone through this little ordeal, I'm thinking I should buy another car next year, except for not from Eric at the Acura dealership, who gave me the hardest time on a good trade-in, yet still had the nerve to ask me on a date. He was your typical divorced, older car salesman, who wore his jacket two sizes too big and styled himself like a poor woman's Brian McKnight. But I digress.
I would highly recommend my purchase to anyone in the market for a new car. No doubt the TSX is among the best cars on the market. Like a trashy hooker in Amsterdam, it's a great bang for your buck, and can outperform almost anything else out there.
I'm already planning some road trips.
I've Eaten 6 Baked Potatoes in Two Days
I know it's been a week since I last posted, but I've been sick as a dog the last week. After expunging futile and merciless fluids from my body, I am only now beginning to feel like normal again. Source of sickness is unknown, but it has rendered me useless, and only able to eat plain baked potatoes from Wendy's for every meal for the last three days.
Posting will resume once I am back on my feet and can cease being a couch "potato" (pun absolutely intended).
For Your Viewing Pleasure
I have an overwhelming sense of ickiness. And no, I'm not pregnant. But Angelina is. With Brad's kid. That bitch.
But seriously, I feel icky. I think I have some sort of flu.
So due to just receiving the pictures, as well as this awful virus that is currently ravaging my body, rendering me useless in either working from home or posting anything of relative significance, New Year's 2006 Pictures have been posted in
The Portal. I tried to post the pictures that would give you the best feel for the evening, even if some of them made me look like a total jackass.
Enjoy.
You're My Boy, Blue
Blue from "Old School" has passed away. He was 86.
Related tangent: I had no idea he was the millionaire dog owner in "Best in Show". I adore that movie. It produced one of my favorite movie quotes in recent memory:
"We have so much in common, we both love soup and snow peas, we love the outdoors, and talking and not talking. We could not talk or talk forever and still find things to not talk about."
Moment of silence for Old Blue.
Life's A Bitch, And It's Always Having Midget Trolls
Happy New Year's, everyone. Hope it was a good one.
If yours was anything like mine, it was the best in many years. If yours was anything unlike mine, you are able to recount every minute of it.
I really didn't intend to drink that much, but what can I say, that's what running around the entire day with just a chicken sandwich from Burger King and an iced latte will do for you.
I probably got what I deserved.
And now I am sitting online, surfing my 2006 yearly horoscope, as I do every single January 2nd. I know, I know, horoscopes are shit. But honestly, things have been so crazy around here lately that a little suggestion at what some stuffy British clairvoyant quack suggests could possibly happen will probably give me more direction than the sharpest instinct I own (including my treasured Magic 8 Ball).
The common theme this year in the romance astrology department seems to be letting go of the past.
You think I need to let go of my past, Sherlock? No f*cking shit.
New years are a good opportunity to turn over a new leaf. Out with the old, in with the new. But while contact lenses, clothing, takeout containers, and even condom wrappers are all quite disposable, memories are - in this case, unfortunately - not.
How much does our past really dictate our future? Is it really possible to exorcise ourselves of shit that we've been hanging on to for months, years, or in some cases, decades?
I have thought long and hard about the things I need to let go of, and some are much easier than others. But I am going to do the best I can to let go of everything, because I've realized that it has held me back, to some degree, for a long time. And I'm pretty tired of it. It's time to let it go.
My Wife and I did New Year's together this year, and it was fantastic. We started with a pre-party at another friend's house, and slowly made our way to the bar party. Actually, I'm not sure if it was slowly or quickly, but it sure seemed like it was in slow motion, so let's go with that.
Cute Boy was there. Oh, Cute Boy was definitely there. He was as cute and as fun as ever, and I wanted a piece. I'll admit it, I really did. So with my painstakingly applied "natural" makeup, my blown out hair, and my festive little outfit, I pulled out what was left of my Mojo from 2005 and went to work.
At one point, Cute Boy and I were conversing at the bar, and things were looking pretty good. I had sources notifying me of his interest, I had enough liquid confidence to go for it, and I was wearing really super cute underwear.
But just then, the most curious thing happened. He mentioned that he went to the same small college as my ex-boyfriend, the Midget Troll of 2 years, and when I asked if he knew the MT, his jaw hit the floor. Did he know him? Shit, he was incredibly good friends with him.
Wait, he asks, did I date the MT for two years while I was an undergrad and he was going for his MBA? (Yes.) Did the MT and I live together in college? (Yes, mistakenly, we did.) Did we break up in 2001? (Yes.)
"Well KA," he said to me, with a face full of strange recognition and new understanding, "I know
a lot about you."
It turns out, the Midget Troll had pre-emptively soiled my romantic future, because shortly after we broke up, he went to visit Cute Boy (who interestingly enough, I had never met during the course of my relationship with MT), and came down there all crying and shit about how I had ruined his life and how badly I broke his heart.
Does anyone else hear little animated puppets singing "It's A Small World..." right now? Or is that just me.The good news is that once this little degree of separation was established, we sort of bizarrely went from 0 to 60 on the makeout scale in 2 seconds flat. We made out once or twice, and all over the place. My Wife (aka my Memory, as I had blacked out shortly after Makeout #1) confirmed over brunch at IHOP yesterday morning that Cute Boy and I made out at least 4 or 5 times, and that had social mores permitted dry humping at a New Year's party on the dance floor while "Saturday Night" was playing, we would have probably gone for it. And hey, it was - from what I remember - a fantastic New Year's makeout. I only wish there hadn't been an audience of 50 to witness. Or pictures to prove it. Because that's embarassing, and kind of yucky.
It was probably after Makeout #3 that I decided that yes, I definitely had a bit of a crush on the Cute Boy. I would go out with him. Hell, he had the potential to maybe even, after a few months, be a new boyfriend. After all, he was cute, smart, nice, fun, and unlike most guys that I have dated, or even made out with, (sorry, but I did say most, not
all), he was good at kissing the shit out of me.
The next thing I knew, I was being pulled into the corner. A few mumbled words in my ear, and he was gone.
I believe, looking back, that the mumbled words were something to the effect of, "I think you are really great, and I like you a lot, but it weirds me out to know that you dated one of my friends, and I just don't know if I can handle that. I know you broke his heart. That just kind of freaks me out."
My suspicions were confirmed yesterday when the Wife reiterated these sentiments. Apparently he was "thoughtful" enough to mention this to her too, before he bolted for the night, and I was left to pass out - fully clothed and ridiculously, blackout drunk - in Wife's bed at her house.
As my friend Bethany says, "Life's a bitch, and it's always having puppies." But seriously, f*ck me. I thought the word was puppies, not Midget Trolls. Apparently they're one and the same.
Everyone deserves a clean slate, and no one more so than me. I have a seasoned past, and no, I'm not jumping the couch over a lot of it. But seriously, what a blow. I am now being held responsible for relationships that happened 5 years ago! What can I say - I was 20 years old, I was living with my boyfriend, and I didn't want to get married then, or anytime remotely thereafter. I made my choices as best I could, and now, five years later, in a different city and practically a different world, it freaked the Cute Boy out. Give me a f*cking break, man.
Which begs the question: to what extent do choices and experiences like this affect tomorrow? Is the job you have today going to hold you back from the dream job you'll interview for a year from now? Is the guy you're dating the best friend, the brother, the college friend, of someone you'll be wanting to make out with in the middle of a bar on New Year's Eve 2009? And perhaps most importantly, can I stop somehow meeting people that know people that just ruin shit for me?
Perhaps - and the best I can hope for - is that I did my closet cleaning on January 1. Because if not, it's going to be a hell of a year.
No More Love Songs
As a change of pace, I decided to change the Yahoo! radio station I listened to while at work today. Instead of "Adult Alternative", I switched it up to "Love Songs".
It has turned me into a manic depressive.
No more Love Songs for me.
Oh, but Happy 2006. More on that later.
