End Times Are Nigh

Three times this week – THREE TIMES! – a 7-up truck has crossed my path.

Doesn’t that seem strange to you?

7-up, my friends. When was the last time you had a 7-up? When was the last time you saw enough 7-up in one place to suggest that an entire TRUCKLOAD was needed for the delivery? 7-up just seems like one of those sad, forgotten soft drinks you never think about purchasing unless you have no other alternative. Or have been up all night with food poisoning. It’s like that lone, dusty 12-pack of Squirt I saw on the grocery store shelf yesterday, which prompted me to exclaim, “They still make SQUIRT?!” to a very confused older lady browsing the ginger ale.

I miss you, Overtly Sexual Soft Drink.

As a person who likes to assign meaning to random things (I got a paper cut today! Surely a message lies within!), I can’t help but think that my THREE sightings of The Un-cola are more than a coincidence. Sure, mock me now – but we’ll see who has the last laugh whenever Obama gets elected president, declares himself the anti-Christ, enslaves all of humankind, then tears off his face to reveal his true identity:

Mercy from the destructive power of my unholy wrath? Never had it, never will!

How Did God Punish People Before Email?

This forwarded email was sitting in my inbox this morning:

Give me a fucking break.

If God is wielding his Great and Mighty Hand based on whether or not I forward emails, then fuck it. I’m worshiping a lawn chair from now on.

Also, is that Jesus’s senior picture? I feel like he should be leaning on a giant “95″ with a trombone in his hand.

He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My City

This past weekend, HoST & I took a lovely little weekend jaunt to Philadelphia. We stayed in a fancy hotel, ate at fancy restaurants, and basically spent three days pretending we were wealthy, eccentric old ladies whose days were filled with brunches, long walks, and throwing back highballs in the hotel lobby.

“Where’s that damn waiter with my Pall Malls?”

Neither one of us had ever been to Philadelphia before, and I have to say I was really pleasantly surprised. I had heard my fair share of Philly-bashing over the years, especially since we moved to Pittsburgh. The rivalry between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia is nothing compared to ill-will between Pittsburgh and Cleveland, but still, it’s significant enough for me to hear Philadelphia described as glowingly as you might describe a particularly nasty hemorrhoid. That is to say, not glowingly at all.

Officially more embarrassing to buy than both tampons and condoms combined.

I was actually a little embarrassed that I even fell for the “[Random City] is such a shit-hole” routine. As someone who was born in Pittsburgh and then spent years living in West Virginia (with smaller stints in Kentucky, New Jersey, and New York), I am no stranger to people making derogatory comments about my place of residence.

Derogatory comments about this guy are fine.

I’m still downright amazed when people visit Pittsburgh for the first time, and are completely and utterly surprised that we aren’t cloaked in darkness from the sooty emissions of steel mills [that closed down DECADES AGO]. And then there are the Pittsburghers who love to make inbreeding-and-moonshine jokes about West Virginia, a state that lies a mere 45 miles to the south of them. I’ve known West Virginians to deem New York City the Sodom & Gomorrah of our time (which…is exactly why we moved there), and don’t even get me started on New Yorkers who actually take pride in thinking that anything beyond their skinny little island is a worthless flyover cow town filled to the brim with illiterate rednecks.

Lest I remind you that this one’s all yours, New York.

And then there’s the hate that New Jersey gets. We only lived there for a year (and our apartment was somewhere between “the projects” and “drug-addled slums”), but there’s a very special place in my heart for the good ol’ Garden State (Garden Not Included). HoST and I moved to New Jersey right after we got married, and we had our very first apartment there, as well as our first year of marriage. And nothing makes a newly married couple grow closer together than close proximity to major drug deals and violent crime.

Darling, will you be my human shield?

Seriously, though, New Jersey was actually a perfectly nice place to live, and there are tons of beautiful parts of the state that never get any mention because it’s too easy to make fun of Newark (sorry, Newark, but…you know). Also? New Jersey had DRIVE-THRU DUNKIN DONUTS. I rest my case.

So, being a person who believes there is merit in every city, articles like “America’s Most Miserable Cities” from Forbes really piss me off. I know they made their selections based on things like unemployment, long commutes and exorbitant taxes, and they even have a weak little paragraph to support their oh-so-scientific use of the [subjective] concept of “miserable,” but still. I can’t shake the feeling that the point of this whole article is to shit on certain cities and get a rise out of people while upping their page hits, which…is exactly the reaction and result they’ve gotten out of me. Nice.

BUT. Know where Forbes is headquartered? New York. Know what city is on the list?

Giddy-up.

Oh, I know. It’s not like they went to draw up the list and were like “Horrors! Our beloved metropolis surely cannot be one of the miserable!” but I like to think that everyone loves their city enough to at least be a little put-off whenever someone else deems it a shithole. Also, is New York miserable? The city that never sleeps? The crossroads of the world? The mecca of art, culture, and fashion? The place that sucked my soul and bank account dry and made me bear witness to people pooping on street corners and jerking off next to me on the train?

Forbes, I’m beginning to see your point.

Oh, but I kid. New York is great, it just…wasn’t for me. Know what is for me?

1. Giving a city you know nothing about a fair shake before you make a judgment.
2. Pittsburgh.
3. Drive-thru Dunkin Donuts.

I think I’ll miss you most of all.

Things That Make My Heart Stop, Vol. 1

One of my new favorite shows on TV is Paranormal State, a documentary series about a bunch of college-age kids from Penn State’s Paranormal Research Society who basically go around ghost-hunting and helping people deal with their various hauntings. I actually spent weeks avoiding the show because I wasn’t sure I’d be able to handle it, which sounds exceedingly lame, I know, but I don’t deal so well with the scary stuff. So even though the commercials for the show totally scared the shit out of me, I found the subject matter so interesting that I finally caved and watched an episode 1) with HoST in attendance, and 2) in broad daylight.

The show? Awesome. My pants? Mildly soiled.

Don’t hate.

While I still can’t watch an episode alone, I’ve graduated to being able to watch them at night. Honestly, the shows don’t scare me as much as I thought they would. I find them more interesting than anything else, although I do tend to be a little jumpy afterwards – something I don’t generally notice unless the cat startles me and…

Here we go again.

So, last night HoST and I were watching the latest episode about a house (in our very own city!) that was being haunted by what seemed to be the ghost of a woman who lived there in the 1800s. The investigation crew was in the midst of Dead Time (when they attempt to communicate with spirits), when – and I SHIT YOU NOT – the following happened:

PARANORMAL STATE VOICEOVER ON TV: We’re getting ready for Dead Time in hopes of communicating with the spirit in this house.

HoST: [watching intently]

CAT: [asleep on back of couch]

LAMP ON THE END TABLE: [flickers from normal light to dim light exactly 3 times, at uniform intervals]

ME: [trying to remain calm; reminding my heart that it needs to resume beating] HoST, can you please make sure that lightbulb is screwed in tight enough? It must be loose.

HoST: [pauses TV, checks lightbulb] It’s not loose.

ME:

Something was loose, I’ll say that much.

Seriously. What the fuckity-fuck-fuck was THAT? Look – our house is old. Nearly 100 years old, as best we can tell. I know for a fact that someone has died in the house, but there is not any sort of negative energy whatsoever. So methinks something was seriously fucking with us – fucking with ME. And really, I can’t blame it. I’m such an easy target. So HAR HAR HAR, Shecky McSpirit. I GET IT. Now cut it out, please, before I have to invest in vinyl slipcovers.

On the upside, my slutty couch won’t get pregnant again.

 

She Wore a Bolo Tie: One Girl’s Struggle with Personal Style (or Lack Thereof)

One of my favorite parts of going to the hair salon every 10 weeks or so (besides paying out the ass to have toxic chemicals applied to my tender scalp) is the fact that I get to sit around and read women’s magazines for a couple of hours. The only other time I read magazines is when I fly, but reading an article about this year’s best crop of wrinkle-reducing moisturizers isn’t the same when I’m being constantly interrupted by my jittery colon sending messages of ABORT! ABORT! ABORT! every ten minutes.

Do you MIND? I’m trying to find out my Intimacy IQ!

It’s just so much fun to page through a glossy spread about bangle bracelets or espadrilles and pretend like I’m actually going to apply these things to my daily wardrobe. Maybe it’s the smell of chemically burned hair that clouds my thinking, but as I’m surrounded by all that estrogen and hair spray, I find myself completely convinced that from this day forward, I will shop only at vintage stores and sample sales, practice yoga at my desk, take Women’s Studies classes in the evenings, and make my own exfoliating face scrub out of grapefruit juice and grits.

Mel’s Diner meets Clinique

But it’s really all pretend. Because after 31 years on this earth, I have learned to accept the fact that I will never be the girl who adjusts her eye makeup depending on the time of day, and I will never know how to transform a business suit to a fun drinks-with-the-girls outfit by simply removing/adding a couple accessories. I don’t even have a dress code at work, so I can basically coast through the week on jeans and sweaters and not look out of place in the least. And that’s OK with me, because I’ve never been what you’d call “fashionable,” or “a girl with a strong sense of personal style,” or “a person who has the ability to match two things together without the aid of the internet, a color wheel, and an encyclopedia.”

When bridesmaid’s dresses cross-breed.

Actually, that’s not quite right. I can tell when things match, I know enough not to wear white pumps with stirrup pants, and I can put together a perfectly acceptable outfit for my daily intents and purposes, it’s just that I never really had my own style, you know? That ability to just inherently know what to wear and how to put clothes together that go beyond the realm of jeans and t-shirts. You know those people who can pair a quirky skirt with a vintage tank top and manage to look cute instead of homeless? That’s who I admire. That’s who I hate with the intense gut-burning fires of jealousy, but also: admire. And I might as well take it one step further and confess who I’ve always been secretly jealous of. Ready for this?

My soul aches with pain and despair, for I am late for my shift at Hot Topic.

Yes, I’m actually jealous of the Goths. And not the ones who do it for a few years in high school just to piss off their parents, the ones who really mean it. The ones who dress that way because that’s just who they are and how they like to express themselves. There’s no embarrassment, there’s no self-doubt. They have the balls to show the world who they are, no matter how hard it makes their grandma cry.

Your grandfather didn’t lose a leg in Normandy so you could wear Wet-n-Wild eyeliner, young man.

So while I never really felt the calling to be a Goth, that doesn’t mean I didn’t try to force some semblance of personal style upon myself back when I didn’t know any better (a.k.a “junior high”). Yes, my junior high days were the breeding ground for my many experimentations with personal style. During those dark days, I had tapestry vests and black acid-washed jeans in heavy rotation when it came to my daily fashion choices. Did I mention there was a bolo tie? Because there was. And it was glorious.

The “Kick Me” sign of the accessory world

But nothing was as tragic as the time I went to the mall in search of a new outfit. Not just any new outfit, THE new outfit. The outfit so magically rad that I’d be catapulted to the highest realms of junior high popularity, and soon girls with unwieldy bangs and thick glasses would be the Cindy Crawfords of the hallways. Armed with babysitting money and a healthy dose of self-delusion, I made a bee-line for my favorite store and dove into the racks. Perhaps sensing my desperation and eagerness to part with my cash, one of the salesladies offered to help me pick a few things out, and I agreed. This was where things got a little…weird. She started picking things that were pretty far out of my comfort zone, and I remember thinking that maybe she was going a little heavy on the shoulder pads…but no! I have to let this lady work her magic, I thought. After all, what I was wearing was getting me nowhere, so it only makes sense that I’d have to leap pretty far out of my usual realm to make a significant change, right? RIGHT?

Well, technically, that was right. But the outfit she chose for me? Wrong. So, so wrong. I’ve tried to scrub the image of it from my brain for years now, but I can definitely tell you that it involved really large buttons, obscenely pointy shoulder pads, animal prints, and lots of mustard yellow. As for the overall style of the clothes, let’s just say it was somewhere in this neighborhood:

Please Hammer, Don’t Clothe ‘Em

Unfortunately, as most stories of this ilk go, I did not realize how thoroughly ridiculous my outfit was until the instant I stepped onto school property the next day. I don’t recall anyone making fun of me to my face, and actually, their silence was somehow worse. It was as if they felt I was doing a fine job humiliating myself and they need not intervene. Or maybe they were afraid of me. After all, if a 14-year-old girl willingly wears clothes from the Arsenio For Her collection, what won’t she do? I’m not sure why they spared me, but I do know that those 8 hours were the longest of my life.

What that little stunt taught me is that – no matter how hard I want to be – I will never be one of those people who can pull off a tunic or cowboy boots without looking like a total douche. The downside is that I’ll always feel like a total outsider when it comes to trying trendy new clothing fads. The upside? There’s never any danger I’ll be the first to sink my money into something as unflattering as Uggs.

They make my ankles look fat, my legs look stumpy, AND they’re suspiciously similar to the diabetes booties my Gram wears around the house? Where do I sign?!?

Google-mania!

One of the highlights of my morning (and there are precious few) is checking my blog stats and seeing what crazy-ass shit people are Googling to get to my site. Allow me – if you will – to present you with a sampling:

• “JIVE TURKEY RESTAURANT.” I get this one all the time, and I guess it’s no big mystery as there is an actual Jive Turkey restaurant in in New York City. I always feel slightly guilty knowing that some poor soul is just looking for a place to get dinner, and instead gets an essay about my childhood crush on Steve Guttenberg. Sorry about that. Although, I suppose I am not helping matters by typing the phrase “Jive Turkey restaurant” in this entry multiple times. Sorry about that, too.
• “WHY CAN’T YOU EAT A JIVE TURKEY?” I got this one a couple of days ago, and I feel it necessary to point out that I would probably be stringy, and perhaps a tad dry.
• “HOW TO TELL IF YOU’RE AN ASSHOLE.” Ah! Finally something I can help you out with.
• “MADISON PEE GOLDEN.” Huh. Well, I think I know what this possible resident of Wisconsin was looking for, although I think that “Madison P. Golden” sounds like an old-fashioned oil tycoon, or perhaps a relative of the Monopoly guy.

Pass go, collect $200, and piss on me, you dirty whore!

Morning Haterade

I had a really nice weekend. I got a lot of things accomplished around the house, saw my friend in a play, spent some quality time with HoST, relaxed and watched some good TV. And there was something else, something else good that happened…now what was that? I’m having a hard time remembering…

Oh, yeah.

Haaaaaaaaahahaha.

Oh, man, was it EVER satisfying to watch that smug little asshole & his team self-destruct. Brilliant. I suppose now he’ll just have to go cry into his supermodel girlfriend’s bosoms, and Bill Belichick will return to his off-season job as the Devil’s handmaiden.

Dark Lord, have you seen my hooded sweatshirt?