Yeah, I write a blog it’s called The New York Times. It’s basically about things that happen in the world, and in the United States that I’m interested in or feel bad that I’m not interested in. It’s a lot like any 20-something’s blog except that in The New York Times the stories aren’t about getting drunk and sleeping with your ex, but about getting drunk and starting a war with an entire country of exes and not yet exes.
I know I have a pretty loyal readership, so I feel a lot of pressure to come out with new shit every day, but sometimes when I’m really hungover and cranky I just tell the same story, but in a slightly different way. Like I wrote about how the economic crisis is affecting Americans in the Midwest, and then I wrote about how Midwesterners are being affected by the economic crisis, and then I wrote about how rheumatoid arthritis sucks. Not exactly horses of different colors, but not exactly horses of the same colors either.
I have a bunch of different pages on my blog not because I’m so interested in The Arts, or Health, or fucking Science, but because I need to have some legitimate bookends for the Style section, and honestly Arts is just not serious enough by itself. So, I guess you could say 99% of my blog’s coverage of Obama and Iraq and arthritis is a front so I can sneak in stories about Tinsley Mortimer.
As soon as my readers read one of my articles or even just the headline of one of my articles, which are really a story in themselves, and also usually a haiku, they start to care a lot about rheumatoid arthritis, and typically start to worry that they might have it, and I guess this is what God meant when he asked me and Oprah and Tinsely Mortimer to come up with two words for “world domination.”
People love to tell you that “it is what it is” like this is some kind of secret that’s going to change your life. But I would like to let these people in on another secret, the fact that the things that are happening right now are happening right now is not a secret. It’s not even an inside joke, or an outside joke, but a statement so indisputable that it really doesn’t need to ever be said again or in the first place. If these people are looking for more ways to confound their friends with obviousness here are some they might try:
The present is now.
The past is what happened before.
Look, sky.
The past? It already happened, and it’s over. (see #2)
The future comes later.
Prediction can be difficult.
The amount of control you have over the future is either some or almost none at all.
Act accordingly.
The way you act is how you are acting.
There are cats. Lots of cats.
That cloud looks like a collection of rabbit tails.
What will be will be. I promise. (see #1)
Look, sky. (I know I already said that, but there’s so much of it)
Pomeranians are cute.
There is no spoon
People can be loud.
Travel? Yes I like it. It’s good for you even when it’s hard. And when it gets hard, just remember…
It is what it is.
Riding the 21 home with J, we’re sharing headphones, listening to Santigold. The bus is crowded, and we are tired. J closes her eyes.
At the bottom of Alamo Square the bus stops to let someone off. We are absorbed, she tries to remind me of the thing I said at a party that I wasn’t even at. Must have been someone else she says. Funny how my presence interjects itself when I’m not watching.
The bus has been stopped a long time. J notices before I do. All this time a man has been struggling to get out of the first seat. He is not doing alright. Drugs or AIDS or something else. Something bad. I’m watching this. Everyone is watching in a kind of secretive way. But I’m watching J too, because I have a feeling about J. I see the hesitation make a decision, and she’s up.
She walks up and asks him, simple as anything, if he needs help. He does. The bus has been stopped forever. If we were ever going anywhere we are not going there now. It’s just J, and this man, and she’s holding his elbow and they are inching forward. It looks impossible. He is never going to be able to get off, and how could he be out alone, and how will he get home? I want to help her, and I get up and stand frozen in front of my seat like someone on the deck of a sinking ship. I don’t move and none of us move, and J and her charge are the only ones who make it off alive.
When he is off the bus and finally enveloped by the dark, J returns to her seat, and all I can do is tell her that that was humane, and all she does is put out her hand for the headphone, and we are listening to Santigold again, and the bus lumbers up the hill.
A person could avoid busses forever so as not to have to know themselves like this. I might have been ashamed, but what I really felt was lucky, not to be healthy, which would come later, but just to have a friend like her.
So there I am on the 22. The bus is packed, and I am fresh off a shopping trip to Safeway, which means straddling one bag so it doesn’t fall over while carrying another in my arms like it’s a baby. I get the feeling that this is what it must be like to have twins, except I’m pretty sure you’re never supposed to set your child down on the floor and straddle it, or even think about doing that.
At the next stop, a young man gets on followed by even more people, and they start moving toward the middle of the bus where I’m stationed with my bags, and there’s about as much likelihood that I’m going to move aside for them as there is likelihood for anything to move that is definitely not going to move.
I think he must have seen the fear in my eyes, because as soon as he gets to me he says, “Don’t worry this is fine.” Bus equilibrium has been reached. I smile at him, as though he had just saved one of my twins from an alligator and say, “Thank God.”
I look away to check the status of the floor twin, and I hear him say, “Do you live on Oak?”
“Yes,” I say, and then because it seems like the right question to ask, “Do you live on Oak?”
He answers in the affirmative. “I feel like I know you,” he says.
I’m wondering if he might be the father of my twins (!?) and I look down at the one on the floor and smile in a benevolent way that I think says, Daddy’s home! But what I really say is, “Oh?”
And he says, “Were you looking for a roommate awhile back?”
“Not that I know of,” I say. (as though I am so nonchalant about looking for roommates that I might be doing it right now and not even know about it).
And he says, “Oh.” And then we both get off the bus. “So,” he says, “Do you live with a lot of people?”
“Two girls,” I say, “Do you live with a lot of people?” (these are the questions that define your life)
“Two guys and two girls. But we’re actually looking for another roommate.”
Is he asking me to move in? “Well I’m spoken for,” I say. And then he looks at me like I had just told him that he was the father of my twin grocery bags, and I have the paternity test to prove it, and I realize that maybe he thought I meant that I have a boyfriend who speaks for me and he needs to stop being so fresh and asking me to move in, so I immediately launch into, “I mean, I’m spoken for by my roommates. My roommates speak for me. Already have roommates. Not moving out. Hahahahaha. Roooooommmmaaaaaaaaaates!”
He looks at me, and I look at him and then he says, “Good luck,” and it might seem like a weird thing to say, but you wouldn’t think so if you had been there.
My mom told me she’s cleaning out my closet. I told her not to read my diary, but what I meant was DO NOT READ MY DIARY. Everyone laughs, but someone’s not laughing and that person is the person whose diary that was. One time I reread my diary from elementary school, and it was literally the most embarrassing thing I’ve ever read besides Twilight. Like Twilight the events were described in an incredibly sentimental manner. Unlike Twilight the events were things like: whether X was really going to try to ditch on Friday, the fact that J, the new girl, wore clear plastic high heels to school, and the fact that my friend had played Spin the Bottle at lunch, which I took as a personal attack on my character and the character of life in general.
The more I thought about how embarrassing that diary was the more I wanted to tell my mom: that’s not my diary, but you still shouldn’t read it, even though it’s not mine. I mean, who knows whose it is, but this is how horror movies start, with the reading of a diary that doesn’t belong to your daughter even though it’s in her closet.
Everyone knows that what you write in diaries is mostly fiction anyway. In fact, it was maybe this person’s (whose diary was in my closet) first try at fiction, and really shouldn’t be interpreted as memoir or even as English. Which is something James Frey should have considered. In fact, it’s quite possible that what you’re holding, mom, is James Frey’s diary, and in that case you should definitely not tell Oprah what you read in there, because she’ll just make James go on national TV to apologize for the inaccuracies of his own recollections. I guess what I’m saying mom, is that I know James Frey a lot better than you thought. He left his diary in my closet like 10 years ago, and if you find a diary it belongs to James, and you shouldn’t believe all the things he writes about me in there, and if I were you I wouldn’t even believe most of the things he implies about me. I would never refuse novocaine during a root canal mom. That’s just not how I was raised.
A lot has been made lately of the double tap, a shooting technique in which two shots are fired quickly at the same target. The Mafia is a fan, as are those involved in counter-terrorist combat units, and pretty much anyone whose job description includes the words special forces. Some might think it’s overkill (literally) to shoot someone in the head more than once, but we’ve all got that friend who double clicks the mouse when one would really do.
Don’t own a gun? Here are some other ways to double tap:
Tap: You hurt someone’s feelings, Double Tap: and feel so guilty about it that you stop speaking to her.
You eat your roommate’s second to last Oreo, and then throw away the rest of the box in the hopes that she will forget she had it in the first place.
You de-friend your ex on Facebook, and then text him to let him know that you de-friended him.
You call your girlfriend 30 times in a row at 3 am, and then you start ringing the doorbell.
You’re concerned about money so you pass on dinner with friends, but meet them for drinks later and feel so bad about missing dinner that you buy a round of Patron for the bar.
You tell him you’re not going to stay over, and you follow it up by staying over that night and every other night for the next 10 years.
Kate tells you how she saw a man get hit by a car while she was on the bus. Then she tells you that he was actually hit by the bus and a car.
You never could leave well enough alone.
When I got on the 21 last night, all hopped up on Zombieland, I immediately saw a woman whose face was painted to make her look like a ZOMBIE. There I was, a newly accredited Zombie Hunter, and here was my first test. I turned to Alex and said, “Zombie!!!!!” Then we loaded our shotguns, and took her down like an insane combination of Woody Harrelson and that nerdy kid who stars in the movie.
Actually what we really did was chuckle quietly to ourselves, but what I’m saying is that it’s easy to take the Halloween thing too far, as in it’s okay to dress up as a Zombie Hunter, but it’s not okay to open fire on your fellow passengers, no matter how much you claim that Halloween is your favorite holiday.
Other ways you can take Halloween costumes too far are, in no particular order:
Getting a bunch of your friends to do Aryan Nation with you.
Any costume that involves anyone who was ever involved in a hate crime. Do not go the Matthew Shepard route.
A slutty bumble bee/cat/tomato outfit that you then wear while selling your services on a street corner. This is Halloween not a method acting class. There is no need to venture deep into the psyche of your slutty bumblebee.
Mormon on a bicycle is okay. Mentally disabled Mormon on a bicycle is not.
Unless it’s Sarah Palin, I would stay away from all costumes that parody the mentally disabled.
Slutty Joe Biden is funny. Slutty Hitler is not.
Slutty anything is pretty played out, but if you must channel prostitute, Prude Hooker is a fresh take on the theme.
Navy Seal is good. Bloody Sea Lion that was just shot down at the wharf is not. Save it for a parade.
Any costume that involves live ammunition.
Unless that costume is Zombie Hunter, because killing zombies never gets awkward.
There’s someone I really think you should meet. He’s epileptic too. Oh you’re not? Then what were you doing over there on the dance floor? Oh I see. Yes, I do see. He does that too, but they don’t call it dancing. Perhaps something to take up with your doctor?
But regardless of whether you have epilepsy or not, he is seriously the greatest guy. Unless you’re one of those people who has a crazy thing about molars. Well, it was an unfortunate hunting accident. I suppose it wasn’t really an accident as the officers had been instructed to shoot to kill, but still very unfortunate to lose your lower jaw that way. You know what they say, “Crime don’t pay.” Which isn’t really true all the time, but in his case it definitely was. But that was years ago, and he’s a good example of how people can change so much that they aren’t even a glimmer of the person they used to be, and are actually not really a person at all anymore.
I’m not saying he’s like a robot or something. He’s a real estate developer, really successful. He’s got this great place on Chestnut. Well I guess it’s not really “his” place, but his mom said he could stay there as long as he needs. No, she doesn’t live there. She’s in Marin now I think, not really sure, but that would be a good conversation starter between you two. Him and his mom are super tight, and you know how they say you can tell a lot about a guy from his relationship with his mother. No, no nothing Oedipal, well Oedipal-lite maybe, but what isn’t these days? Well, I guess I see your point there, but I’m not here to judge him, just to set you guys up on a date.
He is really good looking though. There’s something about losing half your face in an accident and then having it rebuilt with bones from your foot, that is so rugged, but like futuristic at the same time. Have you ever seen Will Smith in I Am Legend? Yeah, like that. No, he doesn’t really look that much like Will Smith, but he has this very Will Smith essence. Pretty hard to describe really, but you’ll see what I mean. Yeah, I do think that’s part of the reason he hasn’t had a girlfriend in awhile. Weak women just don’t know what to do with him, which is why I thought of you, because you’ve always struck me as more like a man.
I’m not saying he’s like gay gay, but you know how it is.
My air mattress is sinking. I see that it might not last forever or even the winter, which is okay, because the hilarity of watching people try to sit on the corner only to find out there is no corner is growing thin. All but three of the seams have popped out in a way that is difficult to explain, except to say something wicked this way comes for my air mattress. The main result of these loosened seams is that it’s getting bigger, expanding across my room, and my sheets won’t really fit on it anymore. I slept on my friend’s bed a few weekends ago, and I had forgotten how nice a real mattress is. I had a boyfriend who slept on the floor of his closet, so his band could practice in his room. I understand the possibilities for the bed-less. It is no huge problem, just a small one that is expanding across the floor.
In all honesty, I’m going to be reading excerpts from this blog, and other people’s blogs that I pretend are this blog, and talking about myself in the second person during the LitQuake LitCrawl. This will happen on Saturday at 6pm at The Lab in the Mission.
Come as you are, if you wish.
