How To Make Yourself Appear Graceful

With the holidays coming up, and (hopefully) holiday parties, t'is the season of pretty dresses and fancy parties.

Now, of course a fancy dress makes a girl feel fancy, but fancy is usually seen as synonymous with graceful, and a fancy dress does not make a girl graceful.

I wear fancy dresses all the time and I still trip over my own toes.

(Okay, that's a lie. I don't wear fancy dresses. But I could, and... I'm sure you get my point.)

So, in the spirit of giving, I come to you, the Ghost of Christmas Clumsy, to tell you how to make yourself appear graceful in order to fool anyone who doesn't know you better, because honesty is what the holidays are all about.

(And I do acknowledge in advance that most of these strategies are geared toward girls. What can I say? You write what you know. So if you are a man reading this, just, um... add "in a manly way" to the end of whatever I'm saying. That should work.)

Strategy Number 1:

Only one bite at at a time.

I know that holiday parties are really on the hors d'oeuvres that are only about the size of your finger and are not nearly large enough to serve as an acceptable counterpart to the abundant number of holiday drinks that will surely be consumed, but please. Pace yourself.

Holiday parties will not be impressed that you can fit your fist (or a fistful of tiny crackers topped with some kind of pretentious cheese) into your mouth.

(It's okay, though. I'm impressed. You go.)

So take it slow, okay? Eat as much as your little heart desires, just don't let anybody catch on.

Remember: You are graceful. You are hungry. You are stealth.


Strategy Number 2:

Alcohol and heels don't mix.

Unless you're actually good at walking in heels (and therefore among the elite, congratulations) you're going to look like a lurchy little dolt.

Just wear shorter heels, or a nice pair of flats. If your dress isn't too fancy, nobody will object to the tall leather boots look.

(Although that look gets tricky. Try and avoid looking like the party ho-ho-hoe.)

Or, if you are going to wear heels (because I know how hard it is to resist this particular temptation), just find any excuse you can to not walk around. Make the men come to you.

Or, you know, just anybody.

What I'm saying is tape some mistletoe above your head and you're good. Capiche?


Strategy Number 3:

You know those little cookie sandwiches stuck together with frosting that always look so delicious?

Don't.


Strategy Number 4:

I know that in movies people always walk really slowly and it makes them look mysterious and relaxed and cool, but... I don't know if you've ever tried walking slow, because shit's hard.

Unless you have good balance to begin with (which I don't) then you'll have a very hard time walking in a straight line (I do) and you will end up teetering on the edges of your feet (even in flats) and looking really dumb (I did).

Don't walk like you're on a mission either, because who can talk to you when you're practically bowling them over.

Just pick a pace. A good one. Similar to the pace with which you're shoving your face with food. That's a good pace. Keep it up.


Strategy Number 5:

If somebody tries to talk to you while you're in stealth hunger mode, just remember what your momma taught you and chew and swallow before you reply.

There is a time and a place for looking like a neanderthal.

That is basically every other time and place.

A holiday party is the only exception to that rule.

Remember: holiday parties = grace. You are grace. Grace doesn't talk with her mouth full.


I'm actually not all that well versed in being graceful (surprise surprise, I called myself the Ghost of Christmas Clumsy for a reason) so this is the last strategy I'm able to offer you:

Strategy Number 6:

Lip gloss is never a good idea.

Sure, it looks great when you first put it on, and it's scented like candy canes and damn don't you just feel festive, but you will regret your decision as soon as your hair starts sticking to it and your cup starts sticking to it and everything you put in your mouth that touches your lips on the way in carries a faint overtone of wax-flavored candy canes.

Plus, you don't want everybody at the party knowing who you kissed under that mistletoe you taped above your head, do you?

(Hahahaha oh, I crack myself up. I don't even know what mistletoe is for.)

Anyway, long story short, lip gloss is bad. It is the evil elf of the makeup world. Just use tinted chapstick like me instead. I'm clearly a fashion and beauty icon. Watch me toss my hair.


Now go forth to your own holiday parties, my children, and exude grace.

Failing that, just try not to embarrass yourself too much.

(But if you do, be sure to send pictures.)

My Fake Apology

I should really learn never to make promises. Especially not promises about my writing.

Remember that short story I said I was writing?

Yeah, still not done.

Remember that blog post I said was imminent?

Well, it's written.

...in my head.

That counts, right?

See, in my defense, I have been doing a lot of writing for school. You know, being a journalism major and all that.

I just finished two really great articles today about the experiences of some intercultural students, and I realize that I shouldn't say they're great because it's my own writing, but I feel like I can say they're great because it's my own writing... anyway, I want you all to be able to read them!

And then you'll know that I actually am still writing!

I'm writing this post last so that the two articles will be listed directly below it (look at me, besting technology) and I sincerely hope that you all read them! They're about some very interesting people that I feel very lucky to have had the privilege to meet and talk to, even if the articles skimmed more of a general surface than a personality piece.

Now, I would like to make a promise.

I promise you that I will be posting two articles soon.

Very soon.

I bet if you scroll down they're already there.

(Best promise ever.)

A Place of Her Own

                Some people find a new hobby to break up the monotony of their work. Andrea Guevara decided to find a new country.  At the age of 31, after years of working as a corporate lawyer in Caracas, the capital of Venezuela, she needed a change of pace: something that didn’t involve her company, her government, or the crime rate of Caracas.

                When Andrea got on a plane for Colorado last spring, the President of Venezuela was still Hugo Chavéz. Having risen to power democratically in 1998, he was doing everything he could to alter Venezuelan laws and allow himself to stay in power forever, according to Simon Rimero of the New York Times. In his obituary of Chavéz, Rimero wrote about the former President’s dreams of becoming a caudillo. Chavéz even penned a new constitution after his inauguration in 1999 that stated the presidency would be decided by election for six-year terms, and presidents could be re-elected for successive terms – with no end date in mind.¹  The effects of this desire did not go unfelt by the Venezuelan people. “I’m not glad about all the things that he suffered, because he suffered from cancer. But I feel a relief at some point when I find out that this terrible man was dying,” Andrea said. Elections held following Chavéz’s death in March, 2013 appointed a new President within two weeks. Already out of the country at this point, Andrea did not have a chance to participate in the vote. “I was angry about it, because that was not the right procedure to follow… it was my first election that I couldn’t vote since I turned 18, and I vote every single time,” Andrea said.

                The political turmoil was not the only reason that Andrea wanted to leave Venezuela behind. Her job as a lawyer for Pepsi-Cola was becoming dull, and she felt the need to make a change. “I felt tired, I was sick about everything. I was sick about traffic, I was sick about my work, I was sick about everything. The whole environment. And I felt like I needed to do something more for me and for my career, because I love what I do. So I decided to come here and improve my English because I know that it will be a big issue, an obstacle, to get admission into any program,” she said. Though in the process of earning the equivalent of a master’s degree in her home country, Andrea packed up for Colorado in the hopes that, once here, she could find a master’s program that would help her perfect her legal English and better her chances of finding a job with an American company. “I’m just looking for quality of life, and I don’t have that in my country, unfortunately,” she said. While perfectly qualified to be a lawyer in Venezuela, Andrea is hoping to learn legal English so that she can continue to do what she loves while also enjoying that quality of life offered by the States. “I’m afraid I’ll send someone an opinion or answer some email and my English is not good enough and they will say ‘Oh, this person is helping me with this issue but she doesn’t understand English, how can I trust [her]. I think that English is a tool that is really helpful and today in the corporate world you have to learn another language,” she said.

                By moving to Colorado, not only did Andrea better her chances of getting into an English-speaking master’s program, but she also found a different pace of life that suited her much better than the high-strung paranoia of Caracas. “Colorado is so friendly. It’s peaceful, and for me, that’s the way it makes me feel. Safe and peaceful. I don’t get frustrated about things that used to make me [angry], and I really appreciate it,” she said. Many people who know the name of Venezuela’s capital may not know its nickname: “The world’s murder capital.”² In 2012, OSAC reported 100 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants in the Miranda state, an area that includes much of metropolitan Caracas. “I like to go to the movies, and [not] pay attention to if I’m smoking a cigarette and I have my window down. I couldn’t do that in my home country,” Andrea said. Colorado’s slower pace and safer environment are the flip side of Venezuela’s coin. “[I can] walk in the street, and take out my dog, and do silly things that aren’t silly: they’re important things,” she said.

                The transition to living in the States wasn’t too tough for Andrea to handle. When her parents got divorced, her father moved to New York and her mother moved to Mexico with her new husband. She got her fair share of traveling visiting the two of them, as well as her brother and sister who both moved to Spain. No stranger to new places, the choice to move to Colorado was one based on personal need. “The program that I wanted to apply [to] is here, is at DU. So I came here for that reason. Second, because my [family] is all around the world and I just want to find a place for me, in the middle,” she said.

¹ Information on the 1999 Constitution found at www.venezuela-us.org/politics (Website for the Embassy of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela).

² Reported by Caitlin Dewey for The Washington Post, article titled State Dept. report for Caracas personnel: Crime level ‘critical’.

The Quiet Side of the Sea

When Vanilo Antonio walks out the door in the morning, it’s only what he hears that reminds him of where he is: in America. A native of Luanda, Angola, he has spoken English for years, but still finds himself doing a mental double-take when the people going to and from class with him aren’t speaking in Portuguese. “You keep expecting people to actually speak your native language, [so] from time to time you stop from the middle of the street and go ‘Where am I? What happened?’” Vanilo said.

                The 18 year-old learned to speak English when he was only six, listening to his older brother when he came back to Angola for visits from his new home in Texas. Though he has spoken the language for longer than Alvaro Tendula, a 20 year-old Angolan who began learning English in primary school around eight years ago, he still finds it strange to be completely surrounded by it. “[We have] about 18 languages… People don’t just speak in Portuguese, even on the street,” Vanilo said. A.T. reported a similar experience of not always knowing where he was when he walked out the door, and being thrown off by only hearing one language around him; especially when that language isn’t Portuguese. After becoming a Portuguese colony in 1575¹, the language of Angola was switched from the varieties of tribal languages that separated the country to one introduced language that unified it. That did not eliminate the use of these tribal languages, though, and overheard speech is much more diverse on the streets of Luanda than in Colorado. “While you’re walking around you might hear, I don’t know, maybe two to three different languages depending on where you’re at,” Vanilo said.

                Not only are none of the people on the streets of Colorado speaking Portuguese, there are also a significantly smaller number of them than on the streets of Luanda. “It’s always loud there. I keep expecting to get out of the house and hear a lot of noise; so traffic, people talking really loudly, the ladies selling on the street,” Vanilo said. He got used to always listening to his music at full volume just so he could hear it over the sounds of Luanda. “I still do it, even… before I go out the house I put my earphones on and I put the music on the highest volume I’ve got. [Here] when I leave I only hear music, but back home it was like, I leave my house, I put my foot out the door, [and] I can still hear what’s happening outside. [The quiet is] my reminder that I’m not back home,” he said.  The crowds that stay on the sidewalks in the States take to the streets in Angola and biking and walking is common, as cars are less than practical during Luanda’s rush hour. The morning work traffic often gets so bad that people even leave their cars and walk to work in order to be on time, according to A.T. “You see people just leave their cars right there in the middle of the road, and they call somebody from their house to go and pick up the car later after they leave. You just see an army of people in suits going out on the streets,” Vanilo said. Even the idle hours in Luanda are loud compared Colorado, and unless one is listening between the hours of 3 and 5 in the morning, there is no quiet to be heard.

                Other than the sound shock, the culture in America didn’t take much getting used to for either A.T. or Vanilo. Instead, they found issue with a non-human element of the state: the climate. The air in Angola is much wetter, and the temperature never drops below a comfortable warmth except during the rainy season. When they first got to Colorado, A.T. and Vanilo would play basketball outside, but found the game much more difficult than it was back home. “It was hard to breathe. You would really feel like your throat was completely dried out because of the altitude, and we still weren’t pretty used to drinking water all the time. We would only be able to play for tops twenty minutes,” Vanilo said. Besides being a much drier climate, Colorado also has a fair amount of altitude that is foreign to those from Angola. The capital is on the coast, putting the boys’ home roughly a mile below their current location. The altitude adjustment is one that is common for almost all newcomers to Colorado, whether from Angola, Africa, or Virginia, USA.

                Another struggle that Vanilo and A.T. share with many other college students is the distance from their family. Unlike American students, though, they are separated from their loved ones by an ocean, not just a long drive. Family life in Angola is also much more tightly knit than in America, with weekends commonly being spent with visits to or from extended family. “We would always get together... [spend] the day together, if possible spend the whole weekend, if not just one day, maybe Saturday or Sunday. We would be pretty close, always together if possible,” Vanilo said.

                Despite the distance, they still find a way to stay connected with their families. “You miss them all the time. You’re always trying to call them, whenever possible of course. You’re always trying to keep in touch, to know if something’s happening, if everything’s good. I actually talked to my father this morning,” Vanilo said. International cell phone plans, Skype calls, and internet communication make it easier to keep in touch across the Atlantic.

                Moving always presents obstacles that require adjustment, no matter where a person is coming from or what their final destination is. The similarities of culture between Angola and Colorado certainly made it easier on both A.T. and Vanilo, and the amenities of modern technology are helping to ease the distance of the move.  Like many other college students, they are experiencing the degrees of separation that come from being apart from family and friends, with two additional hefty obstacles: the English language and the Atlantic Ocean.

¹ Historical information from www.angola.org

Drink Your Way Through The Classics

Some stories everyone just knows. They've been around for so long that it's just assumed that everybody has read them.

Which most people haven't.

But if someone mentions, for example, Homer's The Iliad, everyone will at least know what they're talking about.

And that's where literature nerds come in.

We're the ones who have actually read the classics, who tell the stories of the classics to the ignorants who haven't, and who keep the myth that everyone has read the classics going.

But if you've ever tried to read a classic, you will know that the going can be really. fucking. slow.

Sure, some just whiz by.

The Great Gatsby? Read it in three days. To Kill a Mockingbird? Loved it.

The Iliad?

Ugh.

There's a reason that the classics are classic. They're old. In fact, that particular one was written so long ago that nobody actually knows who the author was.

(And before you get all wise with me, yes, I am aware the author is said to be Homer. The question is who Homer was. There's speculation that he was not a man but actually a girl, or even a group of men who got together and wrote the story like some weird self-imposed group project.)

((Which is clearly not true. Even in ancient Greece nobody liked group projects.))

Anyway, writing has a come a long way since then. We're used to reading books that don't make us want to cry out of boredom for the two hundred pages in the middle.

Our modern standards of entertainment can make even the most dedicated of literature nerds want to throw in the proverbial towel and stop trying to read some predictable drivel written by a person long dead.

So what do I do instead?

I drink my way through it.

I got the idea from a friend, who runs a blog dedicated to literature-related drinking games. They're quite entertaining, to say the least, and let me just tell you:

The last 100 pages of this book went so much faster when there was wine involved.

(Also, let's be real. If you're going to inebriate yourself while reading vintage literature, at least be classy about it. Drink wine.)

I do encourage you all to try it sometime.

But before you do, some ground rules:

• Don't keep reading if you're sloshed. This is literature, for fuck's sake. Show some respect.
• Drink classy liquor. (Like I said, wine is encouraged).
• Remember the whole book. It's like saying "pics or it didn't happen." If you don't remember it, you're going to have to read it again. And sober this time. Sorry.

Now, for inquisitive minds, here was how I read The Iliad tonight:

(Side note: These rules work best if you apply them during the slow bit in the middle. Homer actually gets creative or some weird shit like that and makes it so the ending isn't nearly as predictable.)

Drink every time: 

• The phrase "with might and main" is used.
• Someone is compared to a wild animal.
• Hera's an interfering bitch.
• The phrase "in the belly" or "above the nipple" is used.
• Someone is referred to by both their name and who they're the son of (seriously Homer, so unnecessary).
• There's a superfluous dialogue paragraph in the middle of a battle (yes, drink for each one).
• Apollo speaks to someone in the form of someone else.
• Briseis is mentioned.
• There's a list of names you can't even pronounce.
• Paris is a pussy.
• "Armor rang rattling" is used when someone falls/dies.
• Someone is stripped of their armor.

Finish your drink every time:

• A main hero is killed.

And the best part about this game? You can alter it to like rules and use it for any book on your shelf.

Trying to work your way through a book for class? Easy. Drink your way through it instead.

Got a book that's taking up time, because it goes so slowly but you can't move on to your other ones until you finish it? Drink.

Bored for a night and have no friends to hang out with? Drink drink drink.

(Wait, scratch that last one. There are no books involved. (And it's slightly pathetic. (Which I wouldn't know from experience. (You know what, you can do it, just don't tell anyone.))))

It's not our fault that books get repetitive. In fact, it may not even be the author's fault.

We understand, Homer. You were limited in your language. You had to write about a giant war and you were quickly running out of ways to say "fight hard" and "die" without resorting to ridiculous phrases like "go fight win" and "suck an egg, you worthless trojan."

And so we commiserate. With alcohol.

And it works beautifully.

P.S. Holy fucking jesus I'm finally done with that book QUICK SOMEBODY THROW ME A PARTY. I'LL BRING THE GLITTER.

I'm Back?

I'm actually starting to feel creative again.

You guys.

I feel creative.

CREATIVE!

Miraculous, really. I thought the muses had abandoned me forever.

Maybe they were just mad about my excessive gaming.

Or the fact that I watch shows on netflix that I hate just because I can't stop without finishing every available episode.

Or the depressing reality that I am still reading The Iliad.

(Seriously. It is so slow. Get to the good stuff, Homer.)

((On the bright side, I have fewer than a hundred pages left and I think I'm going to make it into a wine-fueled drinking game tomorrow just to get me through it.))

(((There are just so many unnecessary details. I don't really need to remember them all.)))

Anyway, because I like to pretend that there are some people who actually enjoy reading the things that I write, and because in that grand delusion I also tell myself that those people are probably sad when I don't write at all, I would like to promise you imaginary people that there are good things coming.

I have a great idea for a post that will (hopefully) happen soon, (might) be funny, and (with any luck) might actually contain the same number of points that I say it will.

I'm also writing a short story that somebody might like to read. You know, wishful thinking.

And I'm going to try and keep this shit up in the future.

Like, not forget that I have a blog all the time and stuff like that.

And maybe write some things on a semi-regular basis.

Because I'm a fucking writer.

And that's what writers do.

Wish me luck with the Iliad.

(Please. Seriously. Wish me luck.)

Maybe the next time we chat I'll have actually finished it.

Google Is For Kittens

Being born in 1994, I always considered myself a kid of the nineties.

Until of course the "you're not a true 90s kid if" posts came out. Trying to jog memories about a television show or a hairstyle that was so hip when you were four is a little hard to do.

Apparently those six years of my life don't really count.

So, according to the internet, not a true nineties kid. Whatever. Not the point.

The point is that I'm enough of a nineties kid to be able to say that I was born into the generation with technology.

I'm down.

I've got the 4-1-1.

I grew up with all of this tech-y shit and, like most of my generation, I fucking love it.

No denial that dictionary.com has turned me off of ever using a real dictionary again, and if I like you enough I may even admit that thesaurus.com is on my chrome homepage as one of my eight most visited sites.

We can all agree, why use paper and time when instead you can just type in what you want and find it in a matter of seconds?

But I have bad news.

I think the people who create all of these super easy, convenient websites and apps are onto us, folks.

They are probably aware that even though I downloaded the quick Google search app onto my iPhone, its primary use has become to look up pictures of cats.

Using Google for facts? What? Fuck that.

I much prefer to lay in bed for two hours in the morning running my phone battery down on the "kittens" tag.

And they totally know it.

I saw a movie today and one of the previews tried to sell smartphones by saying that they are a constant learning tool.

They actually expected parents to believe that if they bought their kids a smartphone, the majority of their time on it would be spent looking up history facts or teaching themselves how to better solve an algebra equation.

How dumb can they be. I mean really.

Of course their kid isn't going to use their smartphone to actually make themselves smarter.

They're going to do what any normal person would do and use the super accurate touchscreen technology to text their friends a lot instead of going outside, and then melt their brain to mush playing candy crush.

But the best part about it was that the people who thought up the ad probably did it because they were fucking bored and appalled by how little people actually care about what they're using the internet for.

Come on, you guys.

We're actually boring the internet.

We're all sitting on our asses in the middle of the day looking at gifs of people hitting their faces on various objects, and the internet is just sitting there like "Guys, come on. I was meant for more than this."

Even the new twitter update is bored by us.

Twitter, the most boring and pointless social media out there, and even it is bored.

Don't get me wrong, I fucking love twitter. And I will not hate on you for using any form of social media because honestly, after spending as many hours looking at my Tumblr dash and mindlessly refreshing my Facebook feed as I have, there is absolutely no room for me to judge.

But seriously, if the new update has to add a highlights tab and change the background color on some "important" tweets to try and get you to stop swinging your thumb like a monkey and actually fucking read for once, something's wrong.

If somebody had told the internet when it was first born and still in its swaddling clothes with a colored bow on its forehead so that everyone would know what gender it was that when it grew up it would be no better than television, it would have cried.

And not just because it's a baby.

(And before you ask, no, I don't know what gender the internet is. I'm going to go with a girl. Because it's always right.)

At least TV has the excuse that it's supposed to be at least a little bit mind-numbing. A few channels excepted, it's meant for entertainment, not education.

With all of the commercials and shit that you have to sit through to make it through a single program anyway, television is the ultimate multitasker. There's almost no way you can watch it without at least periodically doing something else.

The internet wasn't supposed to be like that.

It's a tool.

Not like one of those guys who backs their car into the parking spot. Like a mouse-ka-tool.

You guys. The internet is the mystery mouse-ka-tool.

(If you don't get that reference, you're too old. Go home.)

((Or maybe I should just stop watching kids shows.))

(((Hey. I'm not judging you for your social media, so don't judge me.)))

And right now the internet's crying because it has seen too many pictures of cats and not nearly enough intelligent usage.

It is full of words, and information, and things other than memes that stopped being funny six months ago.

I dare you to get off your ass and scrounge up at least a shred of a fuck to pretend to give about the real importance of the internet.

I double dare you.

I triple dog dare you.

Because when we're so boring that we make the internet think we're too apathetic, we have to start admitting that there's a problem.

This Flavor Not Tested On Animals

I was unwrapping a bag of caramels in my pajamas-and-glasses bakery this morning when I noticed a note on the bottom of the bag: artificially flavored.

Vanilla caramels.

Artificially flavored.

Why?

Does it not seem easy enough to just flavor them with actual vanilla? I've made caramel before, and it's not like there are that many ingredients.

I may not be well versed in the chemical market, but it seems like much more work to come up with an artificial flavoring that tastes like vanilla than to just buy a bottle of real vanilla.

There would have to be multiple tries, of course, multiple rounds of tests and alterations, and it probably took weeks (if not months) for the company to come up with just the right artificial semblance of the flavor that they could have had from the beginning if they just used the real stuff.

I mean, this judgment may be a little harsh, because it is coming from a person who won't even be happy using the store brand vanilla; I would much rather buy Penzeys vanilla made from Madagascan beans because, to me, the flavor is worth the cost.

But still.

Harsh or not, you can't deny that the concept of creating a flavor that already exists is more than a little ridiculous.

Beside the fact that it takes much more time to artificially manufacture something instead of just using the real product, I also can't imagine that it really costs that much less.

But you know, these are corporations. They're all about saving the pennies and dimes so they can give their CEOs million dollar bonuses at the end of the year.

And, with the growing amount of things that aren't flavored with anything meant to be edible, they can now feel super special when they actually sell a naturally flavored product!

Just walking through the grocery store, it's hard not to notice how fucking proud they are of that.

Check out this breakfast sandwich, made with REAL CHEESE!!

"Seriously? Real cheese? OH MY GOD, I DIDN'T KNOW THAT EXISTED ANY MORE! THANK YOU, FROZEN FOOD GODS, FOR PROVIDING ME WITH REAL FOOD THAT IS MEANT TO BE INGESTED! YOU'RE LIKE JESUS, ONLY BETTER!"

...is definitely not what I say.

Because if real cheese was such a revelation, I wouldn't be able to walk over to the deli and buy myself a pound of it for five fucking dollars.

Yet people continue buying things that are made with nothing real, and paying more for things that act special and hike up their price because of their "REAL!" ingredients.

And we wonder why America's fat.

Keep Those Expectations Low

The day is young, the hour is not yet 10:00, yet already I have learned an important lesson today:

Don't be nice to people.

Be an asshole instead, and your life will be so much easier.

Because if you go out of your way to be nice to people, those people will end up fucking with your plans (which were basically selfish asshole plans anyway), and then you will have to end up being an asshole just so you can stick to plans that were already going to make you an asshole.

See? It's totally circular.

So I figure, if you just plan on being an asshole to begin with, then nobody will expect you to be nice at any point in the process, meaning that you can just be an asshole all of the time and nobody will really mind!

I'm telling you, it's genius.

Plus, I don't really like being nice to people solely because of that stupid "internal struggle" motif, so I figure that if I'm just always an asshole, then people won't bother to expect me not to be an asshole, which means that I win extra brownie points when I'm nice, but at the same time I have fewer people that actually hang around me and expect me to be nice. It's a win-win-win.

Or maybe just a win... I don't know. I think I'm really the only one coming out on top in this situation.

But that's okay with me.

Because remember? I'm an asshole. So I don't care.

Also, it can't be that bad of a philosophy, because I swear the universe taught it to me. Every time I'm nice because I'm aware that it makes me a good person, I end up having to be a bad person at some point anyway. And my brother agrees with me, so that says something, right?

You bet it does.

It says that now there are TWO assholes to look out for. Told you it was brilliant.

Toe Tag on a Shoe

I want to write a real post soon so that the million and a half people who read my last really depressing one (seriously, what the hell guys) don't just think that I'm a total buzz-kill who sucks a lot.

Because I'm not. Usually.

But, alas, I didn't.

So instead, here's a poem that I wrote a bit ago but haven't shared yet.


Toe Tag on a Shoe

One of these days

I’m going to write a calling card

And tattoo it on the bottom

of my foot:

If found please return

To another time

(Maybe another place

if you can find one

better)

So when I’m found

With my head in my arms

Warm blood turning thick

in my sluggish veins

Some kind soul

can revive me

with my own instructions.