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Dunzo

For those of you who still read this, what’s wrong with you?!

I’ve decided to pursue some writing in the book form more so lately, so I believe I will bid this blog adieu…for now.

I’m proud this blog started out a little over a year ago by two young women graduating college with degrees in English, wondering how the hell we were going to get jobs.  I never expected other people to enjoy the blog as much as it appears people have in the past.  This goes to show that life after college tribulations are fairly universal.

Thanks for the memories (and readership)!  It’s been fun.

-The Leftovers

Today, a comic strip told me I was going to hell.  A month ago, a $100,000 dollar bill told me I was going to hell.   And a year ago, a Jehovah’s Witness pamphlet two well-dressed kids gave me after ringing my doorbell at 8:00AM also told me I was going to hell.  What’s up with religious people getting their marketing skillz on?

I was waiting for a friend on the Plaza and happened to find a conveniently placed IHOP comic strip laying next to me.  If I were any other pancake lover, my first assumption might be : “Neat.  A comic book about pancakes.”  But since this wasn’t my first rodeo, my thought was: “Neat.  Let me read why I’m going to hell-or to clarify-why the International House of Prayer thinks I’m going to hell.”

And so I read on to find that every soul either goes to heaven or hell and if you’ve ever lusted or told a dirty joke or breathed, you go to hell…unless you devote yourself to the coming of Jesus Christ…Superstar…Do you think you’re what they say you are?

This was pretty much what I expected from religious propaganda, although I was hoping for something a little more juicy, say, throw in a few “You’re going to hell if you’re left-handed”s or “Only people with red hair can reproduce”s and I’d have a far more interesting story to tell.   Unfortunately, the only juicy thing to find is that they may be creating a rock-religious army?  But who isn’t these days?

We all saw Jesus Camp.  The Charismatics have been growing religious children armies for years.  Not to mention the most embarrassing war in the history of white people–The Crusades.  A little music involved in the process just makes it an indie-religious crusade.  (Or a war with Pa-Zazz?)

The question is–how come religious people are so well organized with their propoganda and evangelical missions while I’m sitting here on my couch without making any sort of open-minded, “liberal” cartoon about how the whole world is crazy?

Why aren’t we offering internships and degrees for being secular?  Why don’t we have secular promotional material?  Why don’t we have non-religious cartoons?  Oh wait…it’s called the rest of the world.

And wouldn’t you rather go to hell if the rest of the world is bound for it also?  Sounds like a party to me.

Although, wouldn’t it be pretty funny if the powers that be lived down in the ground rather than p in the sky?  These people would look rather silly:

 

Moral of the story: I’m still going to hell.  And maybe you are too?

-The Leftovers

This week, I:

  • Learned how to drive a stick-shift (kind of)
  • Rode a motorcycle for the first time
  • Started my application to graduate school
  • Fulfilled a request made three years ago
  • Bought a GRE book
  • Accidentally typed ‘GED’ book instead of ‘GRE’ (same thing, right?!)
  • Began moving into my new apartment
  • Watched two little dogs shiver next to their owners (little dogs shiver a lot)
  • Planted grapevines
  • Was asked to be a godmother
  • Accidentally typed ‘grandmother’ instead of ‘godmother’ (same thing, right?!)
  • Started planning on how to lead my new godchild astray
  • Wondered why ants seem to enjoy traveling in cement cracks
  • Listened to drunk crack addicts at the Dollar Store talk about how much they love amarretto flavoring (they just love it)
  • Wondered what termites look like….THIS:

On a more important note:In addition to not being very delicious, Laffy Taffy candies are not very funny.  Or maybe I need to be thinking on a higher plane of thought in order to fully understand the humor of “What did the noodle say to the butter?” Don’t Try And Butter Me Up. 

I don’t get it.  I’m not sure why a noodle would even be talking to butter.  Do people typically use butter on their noodles?  Or is that the point of why the noodle is asking not to be buttered?  Because it’s health and cholesterol conscious?  Why couldn’t a roll be talking to butter?  They seem cool.  Rolls know how to take a joke. 

-The Leftovers

This post was going to be a very deep, insightful piece on life and living, perhaps even revealing the meaning of life to those with sunshine and rainbows in their heart and a sparkle in their eye.  Instead Wikipedia has turned my attention to far more significant things–Doris Day.

I’ve never had the pleasure of Doris Day’s acquaintance.  In fact, up until today, I thought I probably missed out on that opportunity years ago seeing as death has a funny way of picking on the elderly.  But, what?!  Doris Day still alive at 87?  Doris Day living in California and going by the alias Clara Kappelhoff?! 

This could be the beginning of a new “Sunset Boulevard” !  I could be Joe Gillis and Doris Day could be Norma Desmond–both of us living creepily together in her Hollywood mansion like some mixed-up relationship between a live-in writer and a washed-up sugar mamma.

I imagine me parading around her house every day singing her signature song “Que Sera Sera (Whatever Will Be Will Be)” while she pours herself another drink and pets one of her fifty little dogs, wishing I would shut up for once. 

What a time-honored classic.

 

*http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0054188/

Right now I’m trying to contemplate the purpose of why someone would choose to take a closet stick with them…and by closet stick, I mean that bar you hang all your clothes on in a bedroom closet so as not to go around naked or wrinkled all day. 

I can’t imagine why someone would take that out of an apartment unless they were going to another apartment that was completely void of closet sticks.  Or perhaps this old roommate had an affinity for closet sticks…so much so that she could not part with it when she left?

I picture her passively aggressively disarming her closet, hoping I would notice how inconvenient she has now made my life from hanging clothes.  Well think again, taker of (not so) pointless objects! 

I will just go to a closet stick store to buy another (what a pointless purchase).  Or maybe I’ll just hang all my clothes on the new raccoon I am also planning on finding and keeping as a pet in this new apartment.  I’m sure either will work just as well.

My Boss to a Co-Worker: “Do you know who the ballsiest member of this team is?  This one right here.”  <points at me>

Co-Worker: “What do you mean by that?”

Boss: “She’s never afraid to tell me exactly what she’s thinking–whether I want to hear it or not.  And that’s what I want to see from the whole team.”

Victory for overly-thoughtful, obnoxious children everywhere (otherwise known as only-child syndrome)…and a shout out to Montessori/Magnet and single-sex education [bitches]!

Worst. Day. Ever.

Driving back from a very fine walk through a sea of drunken bar crawl individuals, I was listening to music & contemplating what a great day it had been….

When BAM!  A pair of birds fly in front of me–one must have been hanging out with the drunks because it flew right into my windshield, spun several times in the air with feathers flying everywhere, and landed in the street.

I had hoped it would quickly recover and fly off with its friend, but alas, there it lay in the middle of the road, unable to arise.  I considered going back and checking to see if I could still save it, but the road was a fairly busy one, and I fear the bird’s prospects were slim.

I killed a fucking bird!  Worst. Day. Ever.

Ever since I was four years old, I’ve had a fear of strange men kidnapping and killing me.  I blame my parents partially for allowing me to watch the late night news at a neurotic young age (not that I ever grew out of that stage) and partially, I blame the news for giving such considerable coverage to a 1990 rape and murder case of a girl who had been four years older than myself. 

To this day, I remember everything the news covered on that little girl.  How she was just walking to the store to buy her sick brother a soda.  How her body was found much later out in the country.  And how her hair was brown and mine was blonde, but she could have easily been me.

The concept of “bad” things happening to people NOT wearing a villain costume and acting the part of Disney’s version of “evil” is a tough concept to grasp for a four-year old.  I think I’m still trying to grasp it today.

So much so that I have a slightly irrational fear of serial killers.  I say slightly because I think it’s fair to be afraid of people who wish to do you harm, but it probably crosses the line once you’ve gotten to the point that you begin to wonder if every new male you meet, especially if they are trying to pursue you in the romantic sense, is a killer.  

I picture what will happen to me once I’ve slowly let this fear take over my entire life, which is probably inevitable, much like the innate life path of becoming a cat lady…and it goes something like this:

Waiting in line in the grocery store, the elderly male courtesy clerk asks, “Paper or plastic?”  Automatically, I know he’s a serial killer.  Only serial killers are concerned with these minute details.

Next, I drive back home, noticing a car turning at the same place I’m turning.  Obviously that person is a serial killer who has been following me for the last five days.  Because only serial killers make left-hand turns.

Later, I take a walk in the park, carefully eyeing every man walking in my direction.  They may think I’m checking them out, but no.  I’m labeling them each potential threats to my life…because only serial killers would walk in a 100 mile radius of myself.

And with each daily activity and each new piece of information I establish to create the perfect profile for identifying serial killers, I will gain enough material to create a spin-off the Bailey School Kids book series of “Vampires Don’t Wear Polka Dots” and “Ghouls Don’t Scoop Ice Cream” to create my own serial killer rendition of “Serial Killers Don’t Ask Paper or Plastic” and “Serial Killers Don’t Walk Places.”

This series will inevitably hit the Best Seller list like a mentally unstable person without a straight jacket to make me a very successful Harper Lee-esque recluse.  Healthy? No.  Life plan complete? Yes.

Let me preface this entry with a bit of my own bias.  I was once told by a reader of a previous blog that I was an entertaining writer, but I tended to put people in categories.  Which is fair.  No one is ever certain if their own observations match the observations of others.  While I may think I am merely identifying what is already there, others may see me putting labels on what is not…or oversimplifying what is.  With this entry, I let the reader decide.

Last night, I went to a bar for a friend’s birthday.  Which wouldn’t be newsworthy at all had it not been for the fact that I don’t go to bars often.  And I don’t typically respond well to strangers trying to flirt with me.  This unfortunate combination typically creates some interesting events and observations–today I focus on the “type of guys” one finds hitting on you at a bar.

I haven’t been to enough bars throughout the country to know if these people are everywhere, but my guess is they are…and I have assembled a short list of some possible ways to spot them:

1. They will only talk to you about the here and the now (example: “Do you like that drink?  “How you doin’ tonight?” “Can I buy you a beer?”)

2. With this comes their hope for instant gratification, a hope that poisons everything they do (deconstruction of their thoughts: I will buy this North face jacket in hopes of gaining status.  I will dress like I just came from work, so “ladies” will think I’m successful.  I will buy my clothes from generically cool clothing stores and use terms like “bumper sticker liberal” incorrectly so I will gain status with my “bros.”)

3. They have a fondness to pretentiously show how un-pretentious they are. (example: “I will only drink American beers because I don’t need to drink that expensive import shit.”)

4.  They frequently talk about how they’re “living the dream”…yet they can be found every Friday and Saturday night at the same bars, mass-produced and nondescript.  The American dream, folks.

I understand most people can be guilty of some of the same cultural group-think…the hipster identity, the ever growing blue collar/”red neck” identity, the coffee-drinking intellectual identity, and so forth…but don’t each of these crowds merely represent a bunch of unsatisfied human beings trying to make their entire self fit a certain quintessential mold?

And ironically, each of these groups never get along because they’re each so hung up on their own causes of “only drinking green tea on Thursdays” or “only listening to Bright Eyes in the car” or “only watching sports and drinking Bud Light when it rains.” 

These people are boring.  Why are they boring, you ask?  Because their system is predictable.  And why is this even a bad thing?  Because predictability and comfort hinders progress and growth to become better people.  If you are not exploring, you are not learning.  And if you aren’t learning new things or finding new ways to become a better, more worthy individual, you might as well be dead.*

Therefore, I would like to start a new identity called identity where we all just have one that we can make as we please.

And these ”types” would say to each other: “My name is Bob and sometimes I eat potato chips, but other days I like a nice salad.  Occasionally I listen to Neil Diamond in my footy pajamas, but I also consider myself a professional wrestler.”

And we’d all go around thinking I’m not quite sure what to think of Bob.  Because we aren’t accustomed to not being able to read the symbolic clues we give each other to distinguish where we stand on these hot button issues of to gel or not to gel.  Or to tuck or not to tuck.  To wear pink or not to wear pink.

I think I’ll wear pink.  But like green better.  And be done with it.

-The Leftovers

*Of course, this is especially my mindset since I am a young, healthy individual with, potentially, quite a few years to become a complacent, predictable person with two kids and a mini-van.

This May marks the one year anniversary of my graduation from college. 

For one whole year, I have driven every morning to work–five to six days a week.  I have gone through two jobs, two promotions, three bosses, five co-workers, and a considerable amount of adjustment.  Is this progress or is this coming to terms with the reality most Americans call normal?

I don’t have an answer to that.

But I do know I started this one-year period living at my parent’s house, making $10,ooo less than my current salary, uncertain how to dress or how to interact with people 10-20 years my seniors, and completely directionless.

Then I got my own apartment.  Then I got a new job.  Then I got a new car.  And now I’m moving to a completely different apartment in a trendier location where I am interested in pursuing bigger and better  career opportunities than the ones I pursued before to just “have a job after college” and “just move out of my parents’ house.”

This perpetually momentous story is not my story alone.

Graduation part II is now approaching for my victory lap friends.  Soon, they, too will be scrambling to adjust. 

I think most of us get caught up in this whirlwind of after-college major life changes.  We face relocation of ourselves, relocation of our friends, relocation of our personality and skill set.  We find that we cannot sustain ourselves on theory alone these days.  We can no longer speak ironically of things that have now become valued resources.

Interestingly, along with my already graduating or recently graduated friends, people I don’t even really know or talk to have begun contacting me about their impending graduation and the fear that they won’t have a job.  I believe this is a universal sign for college graduates. 

If we created a symbol and said it represented the turmoil of a Leftover, I’m sure every other person would be wearing the symbol for at least 1-50 years.

Life takes some tweaking to get it right.

So here’s some advice from a brazen, chip-off-the-old-block (who really isn’t sure which block) about my own tweaking:

Just do it.  There aren’t any rules regarding how your life is supposed to look from here.  Seize opportunities.  Create your own opportunities.  Don’t wait for something better to come along–find it.  If you want experience in a certain job field, but can’t find an internship or opening–start your own goddamn company or opening.

Nothing is ever set in stone.  Except stone.  I believe stone is set in stone.  And maybe Rosetta Stone.  The name says it all, right?

Happy Graduation, all you new fledglings!

-The Leftovers

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