If there’s one thing I hate more than the fact that even with all the scientists in the world we still can’t come up with a way to make fat-free chips and alcohol (probably because they’re all so busy trying to cure cancer as if THAT will ever help me eat and drink without consequences), it’s ballsy, buggery old people all up in my business.

Respect your elders? PLEASE. These elders aren’t the same as the ones back in the theoretical days of old that I have pieced together in my mind to look a little something like Dr. Quinn: Medicine Woman meets The Karate Kid, where anyone over the age of 55 passes some Buddhist test of wisdom instead of just graduating to high-waisted pants. These magical old saints only spoke to drop philosophical bombs on misguided youth who need to overcome Whooping Cough or the big martial arts match or the post-shame of a first sexual experience.

But now? OH NO. BIG difference. Old people today are a brazen, unruly bunch who seem all too proud to be completely out of touch with social norms – essentially little, grey-haired, wrinkled Lindsay Lohans and Paris Hiltons, running around like they can do whatever they want and forgetting to put on their underwear.

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Case Number – Get-Your-Ass-Out-Of-My-Kitchen: It’s eightish and good friends are over at the house for a night of snacks, drinks, and the newf yelling because his ADHD doesn’t allow for a proper round of Scattergories when all of a sudden the next-door-neighbours, known as the people who sent a ‘Keep Christ In Christmas’ card over to the newf and only the newf, are at our front window insisting we leave the comfort of our living room and sit by a bonfire with them. Fine – sometimes you just have to just suck it up and do something for the same of keeping face on the ole cul de sac*. We could surely handle this…

(*Never again will I put the word ‘face’ that close to anything sounding like ‘sack’. My apologies.)

Flash-forward to an hour-and-a-half later when we’re STILL sitting outside of their house, listening to Christian rock music, and slurred stories about their three-legged dog getting hit by cars. At that point, I excuse us all under the impression that we need to go eat dinner only to hear our neighbour joke, “Great! We’ll see you in half an hour for snacks!”

HA. HA. HA HA HA. Foreshadowing.

Thirty minutes later, he’s fall-down drunk, stumbling into our house without knocking, and drooling food all over our kitchen until MIDNIGHT. Yes – I was staring my college years in the face of a fifty-year-old man and I didn’t like it one bit. Not to mention the fact that this pious drunk was resting his hand mere inches from where the very explicit Clone-a-Cock kit that I won from Toy With Me in Vegas was resting on the kitchen counter.

What? When you have one of those it tends to come out during parties. I mean, c’mon. You can make a vibrating dildo out of anyone’s junk!

The verdict: One charge of ruining my night, one charge of making me listen to music involving the lyrics: ‘Our God is an awesome God’, one charge of Clone-a-Cock-Blocking the flow that could have led to having a hysterically inappropriate centerpiece for the kitchen table, and eighteen charges of making me far too OCD about locking all doors and windows.

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Case Number – The-Gays-Need-24-hours-notice-prior-to-photo-taking: It’s a weeknight and I am in the middle of nowhere eating at a seafood specialty place whose vegetarian option is the no-name brand of whatever Chef Boyardee throws up after an all-night bender spent wooing hoes with Beeferoni money.

While trying to make the best of it by focusing on the $20 bottles of wine and the fact that my dad was footing the bill, I almost forgot that I was sitting in a room of old people who very well may be leeching my life force through the air whilst they suck back lobster carrion. This blissful ignorance almost got me through the whole experience until it was interrupted by the flash of a camera being held by some crazy old woman RANDOMLY TAKING A PICTURE OF OUR FAMILY FUCKING DINNER BEFORE SLINKING BACK TO HER OLD PERSON TABLE TO SHOW HER OLD PERSON FRIENDS.

And it wasn’t even taken while the newf was pretending to be an X-Man which I could at least have understood…

Really, old people? If you’re going to take pictures of strangers at least do it with a camera phone by awkwardly pretending to check a text message from your grandkid or funeral home director while holding it in mid-air, awkwardly tilted in someone’s direction as if people don’t notice when iPhones are pointing directly at their fashion don’ts and gunts. Honestly…have some class.

The Verdict: One charge of being superridiculouscreepy and giving me nightmares about how she uses that picture to pretend she has a family while her own family hides in the witness protection program from what can be assumed is a dangerous menace to society. That, or she’s some strange paparazzo for Lonely Women’s Weekly under the pen-name Blanche, Pearl, or Hyacinth.

From: Ben / To: Tia

Date: 4:43pm, August 31

Subject: Ha.

It’s California hot here this week and branches of government have literally shut down because of ‘extreme heat’ in their buildings.

Canada is hilarious.

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From: Tia / To: Ben

Date: 9:41pm, August 31

Subject: Re: Ha.

I love that you guys use BOTH ends of the weather spectrum to create days off.  ”Extreme heat day” is my second favorite only to “Random Queen Day”.

Bogus Canadian holidays FTW!

(ps it’s ALWAYS Random Queen Day in San Diego.  At least, for me.)

Photo Credit: Jaceks

“We’d like to give you $100 to spend anywhere you like in Downtown Halifax so that you can write about your experience and show people the your ideal way to spend a day in the city. What do you think?”

“Would you like my pants on or off?”

Last month, we once again learned that I am a powerful negotiator whose number one priority is to stay true to the vision of the blog unless of course you offer me anything greater than $20 in value at which point I will laugh all the way to the bank. And by ‘laugh’, I mean ‘squeal at an octave audible only to dogs whilst jumping and clapping’. And by ‘to the bank’, I mean ‘to the newf’ because with multiple $300 belts gathering dust in the closet and math skills that are shaky at best, I am not to be trusted with prepaid credit cards of any kind. Besides, had I not handed in the card for safe-keeping, it would be fair to assume that I would have blown all $100 on tequila shots and slap bracelets.

[If someone wants to give me $100 to spend exclusively on tequila shots and slap bracelets, now would be the time to get in touch. We can super your logo and URL over the video footage. You'll sell millions. Trust me - I'm a professional.]

So what happens when you send the newf and I downtown to find the BEST! EVER! WAY! to spend $100? Well. At first we just spun around in circles, overwhelmed by the fact that we were no longer surrounded by the numbing monotony of suburbia. And then we got day drunk, bought candy, and played with sex toys. I mean, of course that’s what we did.

And before you get all judgey, eat chocolate and peruse high-end erotica while intoxicated and just try and tell me it’s not the best thing since ice cream made out of puppies. No really – you should try it and report back. My combination of choice was Harp beer, Peanut M&Ms, and beautiful books of nudies that would be perfect for a coffee table if you were the type that might need well-endowed men to finish off your living room. Which, who knows…you might be.

(Aren’t we all?)

Now unfortunately there was one very big hiccup in our damn near perfect afternoon – we had only spent $30 and were now faced with the combined onset of the post-sugar crash, the post-day-drunk headache, and the post-sex-shop funny feelings. Rather than trying to power through the last $70 just for the sake of getting the job done, we called it a day, giving me time to get over the disappointment of not bringing home some vibrating contraption that vaguely resembled a rabbit-dolphin with tumors, and the shock of having such a hard time deciding what to spend my money on when usually I just Hansel and Gretel my way around leaving a rash of receipts in my tracks.

The next night or the night after or some night that occurred at some time prior to writing this post (I can either do the mental math of tracking my expenses or keep tabs on the passage of time. I’ve made my choice), we rallied for what turned out to be the ultimate downtown Halifax experience that I was looking for. As chance would have it, a good friend of ours named Jon Cornwall was playing his debut show at The Carleton which at $10 a ticket for over two hours of music was the best thing since beer, chocolate and porn combined.

We ate, we drank, we laughed, we stayed up too late, and we got a little teary eyed over Jon’s unbelievable songwriting and his incredible duets with special guest Ryan MacGrath. Or at least I did because I am a giant shmoop when it comes to watching really talented people do what they love. Or maybe there was something in my eye. Or maybe it was the wine.

All in all, it was damn near perfect except again for another very big hiccup – my prepaid credit card wouldn’t work so my dad ended up having to pay for everything which in itself was still kind of perfect because – HELLO – you’re never too old to let your parents buy you stuff even when you have free money in your pocket. So…one month and two credit-card-equipped downtown excursions later and I still manage to have $70 left to spend. And yes, if I had any sense at all I’d use it to do something nice for my dad in return.

Or…

…much better.

[Top Photo Credit: Grantmac]

Here’s a little lesson, direct from me to you. You know those great friends you have that will drop everything in order to help you? The ones who will walk away from their own relaxation time to make your life a little easier? The besties that stick around for the not-so-fun parts that come after the fun parts? Well. Eventually they call in their chits.

Also, chits is a gross word.

We have a set of lesbians – that is, the far more useful yet somehow less sought-after version of gay men. Lesbians are the types to care for you, to help you, and to have fun no matter what you do while the gay men will be insisting that you get changed before you bring them their Appletinis because looking at poly-blends hurts their eyes.

Our lesbians both come from construction empires, both know how to build things and tear things down, and both seem to pull some innate satisfaction from doing all the things that the newf and I hate – i.e. lifting, moving, packing, unpacking, cleaning, manual labour, caring for others, and spending time with old people. They have helped us move twice, they’ve built barbecues and bedroom sets, they’ve fixed everything in our home from lighting and showers to clotheslines and hammocks, and they’ve answered every single call we put out for anyone with a pick-up truck with smiles on their faces. They’re sick. I mean they actually must suffer from some mental illness.

These ladies have truly been the absolute best thing to happen to us. Not to mention the fact that they are BEYOND fun, are always good for beer and food that we shouldn’t be eating, and their parents have an in-ground, heated pool the size of my house. But unfortunately, our friendship has to come to an end. Because apparently they expect the same in return.

Two weeks ago they took possession on a house. A big house. A big, fixer-upper house. A big, fixer-upper house that needs lots of hands on deck to turn into the dream home they have in their minds. And they have years and years and years of friend-favours that they can call in at any time resulting in last weekend’s landscaping marathon that involved me moving five-and-a-half truckloads of shrubbery around and suffering life-threatening injuries like hand blisters and scratches on my ankles. It was serious.

So basically I’m just going to stop picking up their phone calls and jump straight into Code Mormons when I see them coming down the street which clearly means grabbing whatever cheese and wine is within reach and making for the panic room. That they built for me. Without asking for anything in return. Because they’re so nice.

OH GOD WHY CAN’T I BE A TERRIBLE FRIEND WITHOUT THE ASSOCIATED GUILT?!

[Photo Credit: _Saturnine]

[This post dedicated to the fine ladies of Fashionable People, Questionable Things - local fashion bloggers with whom I have been suitably enamored ever since their epic Dress Like Carrie Challenge.]

I know I’ve mentioned in the past the newf’s affinity for any direct-to-DVD movie with a shirtless torso on the cover. Well, during the summer months when he’s got nothing but time and a 40-something inch television, it gets so. much. worse. Like…full boxsets of never popular TV shows worse. And that’s what I’m here to discuss with you today. Because when you have four discs of the gay black version of Sex and the City sitting in your TV room, it just needs to be shared with the world.

First of all, it’s called Noah’s Arc (it should be called Topless Black Hotties With Pecs) so let’s give a warm welcome to the poor misguided Sunday School teachers who end up here. HIIIII NEW FRIENDS. I was going to post one of the DVD covers or promotional images at the top of this post but since you all read at work, you probably don’t want near-naked, ripped black men coming up on your screen. Or maybe you do. In which case, click here and thank me later.

Do we need to review the plot of the show? Well. It’s Sex and the City if you could imagine that show being made any gayer than it already is. Four characters, a hopelessly romantic writer who dresses like he’s about four Ecstasy pills and a cocktail of mixed hallucinogens in, the slutty one, the conservative one, and the one that no one really cares about when push comes to shove.

This is quite possibly one of five pictures in which the cast is actually wearing clothes, which, for the record, was a wondrous surprise as I filtered through 56 pages of Google Images of gorgeous men writhing around on top of each other with biblical clip art and the occasional malnourished rescue dog thrown in for good measure. I PUT IN EFFORT HERE, FOLKS. But let’s focus in on the Carrie of the show, shall we? And by that, I mean please direct your attention to the calamity of textures and clothing features operating entirely independent from one another.

SLEEVES OR WRIST CUFFS – MAKE A CHOICE.

But it gets worse…so much worse.

I am actually distressed over this. I can’t help but think of the impressionable young gay men watching this television show thinking that any of this is okay. And by ‘this’, I mean the two counts of cinched belts – one of which being at least six inches in width, the two counts of shirts or blazers acting as Spice Girl mini dresses, the one count of cropped jean jacket, the one count of your grandmother slash preschool teacher’s favourite cardigan, and the one very blurry but trust me it’s there count of Sailor Moon-style hair buns in the top left. DISTRESSED.

And the worst part of all? The show ran in 2005 and 2006 – we can’t even use the SATC Clause and blame this shit on the late-nineties. No wait. That’s not the worst part of it all. This is:

Not pictured: the thigh-high, white leather, four-inch heel with pointed toe boots.

Almost pictured: This guy’s vajunk barely covered by what I assume to be a skirt made of drapery.

Note: There’s a big difference between a judgey gay who makes you feel bad for showing up in anything but stilettos, and one who shows up wearing shoes that are higher and more expensive than yours. Let that be a lesson to all of you.

Oh – and through my research for this post, I found out that there was a Noah’s Arc movie made after the show went off the air. I give it three days before the newf comes home looking at me with that sparkle in his eye that can only mean one thing: “Don’t come downstairs – I don’t want these gay black hotties to be interrupted by reality.”

To which I say, “Fuck off. True Blood’s on.”

I’ve had a bit of a revelation. You might not know it, but I’m still very much in recovery mode from the sixth month of 2010 that seemed so insistent on doing things to me that haven’t been done since Greek mythology went all bananas on just about any unlucky sap who showed up. Yeah. June made me feel like that guy who had each of his nosehairs plucked out by a rabid howler monkey for having sex with that tree that was actually a nymph that was actually one of Zeus’ wives that was actually just a tree.

I’m pretty sure that happened. Maybe it was just a regular howler monkey. Or maybe the howler monkey was actually Zeus. Or Ke$ha.

Regardless…the further I get away from Overdramatic Deathwatch 2010, the more I’m starting to feel like I’m a seasoned genius who because of his supposed hardship (read: Greek Mythological Bananas) has wisdom to share with the rest of the civilized world. Only I’m less Viet Nam Veteran and more Privileged White Homo Who Has Yet To Face Any Real Turmoil Besides Deciding Which Hand-Paddled Ice Cream To Regret After Consumption.

I’m sorry…were you scoffing? I couldn’t hear you over my housekeeper vacuuming up my filth.

(The newf is my housekeeper.)

So. Revelation. I was having coffee with my boss (who writes lovely and insightful things here and is pretty much adorbs) at work this afternoon which usually ends up looking like two people who generally have obnoxious standards for themselves and communicate almost entirely in strings of overhonest statements that probably shouldn’t be said between coworkers but whatever. These coffees often end in stunned silences and too many ideas about THE FUTURE – said of course with lightening machines, dry ice, and one of those echoey plastic microphones from the early nineties. We were talking about the agony of believing that getting a job isn’t worth it unless that job is General Manager of the Universe (a position that is held by my mother but that’s another story) and the amount of effort we tend to put into trying to accomplish just that, when I realize that the best thing I’ve done for myself in the past eight weeks was declaring myself Energy Bankrupt.

Bankrupt – legal declaration of an individual or organization’s inability to pay its creditors. Origin: England circa 1542.

Energy Bankrupt – internal acceptance of an individual’s inability to make good on the expectations placed upon him or her. Origin: This blog circa right now.

Much like being bankrupt in the financial sense, I took a minute to recognize and accept that there was absolutely no way I could continue to mismanage my attention and motivation without dire results, freeing me up to call that mess a wash, accept the consequences with dignity, and start over. And since then? Things have been fine.

Have I been able to return to the productivity I had before? No. Can I dedicate as much of my time to volunteering? No. Do I feel like every day could be the day that I take over the world? No. But hot damn do I ever feel good about what I AM accomplishing which lately is involving a lot of hot yoga, authentic relationship time (no smartphones, no distractions), and careful planning to welcome responsibilities back into my life one by one, only as I secure a foundation that protects the most important parts. Much like rebuilding a new plan for your finances after going bankrupt, I’m taking my time to make sure that my life is solid and that the areas offering the biggest, risk-free, long-term rewards are getting the largest portion of my attention.

And so, without sounding too much like I’m about to wear a cape made out of hemp and join a commune in India (I only wear capes when pretending to be a superhero whose power is sexiness…or Britney Spears), I’m happily moving forward, leaving the manscaping howler monkey and that seductive whore-tree well behind me.

Chapter closed.

[Photo Credit: Euthman]

Ah yes. If my life were to have a Frequently Asked Questions page, this one would hold the top slot for the summer months. It’s a troublesome weasel of a question as answering it means dipping your toes into the troublesome waters known as the Sensitive Teacher Topics Tropics. And lemme just tell you…bad things happen to well-intentioned people there.

Here’s what you need to come to terms with before we go any further. Yes – the newf is off all summer. If you want to be off all summer, you should have been a teacher. If you don’t think teachers deserve summers off, you should try to survive a week in a classroom filled with six-year-olds. Good? Good.

The newf’s average day starts at 8am as he gently wakes up to his favourite science-fiction something or other on television that I kindly turn on for him because I am nicer before breakfast than most people are all day. Mostly because my niceness isn’t sustainable – it’s more of a binge and purge situation: LOOK AT ME BEING NICE! OH WAIT – ‘BE NICE’ TIME IS OVER NOW! BOW TO MY EVERY WHIM!

Case and point? Fifteen minutes later I leave the house with our only car, leaving him in solitary suburban confinement with no means of escape. Spending all of your days in the ‘burbs by yourself for two and a half months? Not so fun, as it turns out. I mean, I shouldn’t be surprised – his only options for entertainment are The View, not letting sleeping dogs lie, or his usual favourite, rearranging things in the house while I’m not home to intervene which is what he does every. single. day. From furniture change-outs to glassware staged in half-moons in our cupboards, it’s like he’s coaching our entire collection of belongings to be a synchronized swimming team. Every day there are new and confusing angles, off-kilter focal points and waterproof glitter paste.

My own interior design beliefs aside (summed up perfectly by this 67-second video), it’s a blind person’s worst nightmare. Even with complete vision I’m still very much at risk of experiencing blunt force trauma at the hand of a new lamp, shelf or potted plant that wasn’t there eight hours before. I can only assume that he shops in bulk, hides his wares somewhere on the property, and brings each piece out over the course of several days while I’m at work. I must have taught him that when I came home from California last summer and suddenly found three pairs of designer jeans from before we dated that miraculously still fit and were still in style.

Shhhhh….

Unfortunately for our dear newf however, my senses are finely tuned to pick up on any unauthorized changes to my living space. Even stumbling into the house drunk off work stress and too many Skittles with two dogs jumping all over my legs, tripping me with my own laptop bag (fine…it’s a purse), I will INSTANTLY b-line for whatever is different and point at it while making dry-heavey noises until someone moves it back to the way it was - a necessary skill on the days when you come home to find out that someone bought $200 worth of plants and now your living room looks like it was sexually assaulted during a vigorous game of Jumanji. I’ve had to start underground-railroading plants out of our living room just so I can keep a grasp on when I’m inside and when I’m outside.

And so continues the two-year-long power struggle of my amateur design chops (they’re genetic) versus his spare time and willingness to actually do stuff around the house. Next summer I’m going to have to bring in back-up. Like a nanny. Or pool boy. But preferably an ugly one. I don’t want to have to compete in my own bloody home.

[Photo Credit: IronRodArt]

Right. So remember that time I was part of a threeway of horrendously offensive comments and career-limiting statements? ME NEITHER! Um yeah. The Special Pleading webcast almost died a slow and painful death as Joel, Amy and I filmed multiple episodes that were all deemed too horrible to share with the public or attach to our names.

Considering that we’ve AIRED the episodes where we condone eating disorders and discuss which Hollywood fatties we’d sleep with, that’s saying a lot.

But alas, we haven’t learned our lesson yet so we’re back with another colossal episode that includes shopping solutions for well-endowed children, Amy’s sexual habits, and awkward and unsubtle background appearances from the newf.

It’s long…so take your time with it. Maybe work it down in chunks. Maybe just grab on and ride it out. Maybe spend some time thinking about what I’m really talking about here. No matter what you choose…just click over and watch.

I sort of just have to come out and say something.

It might not be pretty, you might not agree with it, and you might not like it, but it needs to be said before I write anything else. If it softens the blow, at least know that I feel like a total knob about it (that’s a lie…I feel awesome), and I’m consumed with guilt knowing that something that a ton of people are dying for just fell on my lap (some guilt…but mostly happy explosions of unicorns).

Right. So. On the way home from a road trip with my mom, just after she tried to make me wear her sequined, orange shawl to avoid getting a sunburn through the car window and upon my refusal shouted: “…not gay enough, more like!”, and just before I spent the next four days pacing back and forth in a house all to myself, I got an email.

An email from a literary agent.

An email from a literary agent in New York.

An email from a literary agent in New York who wants to work with me on a book.

Ahem.

I don’t know what your first reactions are like right now but I can tell you that mine were something along the lines of the following:

1. I’M GOING TO GET TO DATE JAKE GYLLENHAAL!

2. OH SHIT SO MANY BLOGGERS ARE GOING TO HATE ME!

3. OH SHIT I’D HATE IF THIS HAPPENED TO ANYONE BUT ME!

4. OH MY GOD THE NERVOUS POOPS!

5. NO BUT SERIOUSLY JAKE GYLLENHAAL?

Yes. It’s true. A real live professional overlooked all my flaws (as if I have any…), saw a glimpse of potential (dumbstruck by my modelesque appearance and flexible morals, no doubt), and asked if I might be interested (ummmmmmmmmmmFUCKYES) in working with her team to come up with something amazing. That is, my dream of maybe potentially perhaps becoming an author someday that I’ve had since I was five might just actually stand a chance at coming true – unlike my dream of becoming a Detective who was also a dog.

It’s not a book deal, there are no promises, and there are still about 3598155 ways that I can screw this up, but it’s a glimmer of hope that’s about to send me on the craziest ride of my life. Aside from that, you just need to know that this agency also represents 50 Cent, Eminem, the guy who had Pluto delisted as a planet, and Lance Bass.

Guess which end of the spectrum I’m on.

In closing, I will take a handful of questions before retiring to a truffle oil bath administered by the entire Spanish World Cup team, each wearing naughty football uniforms made of edible gold – a.k.a. what my life will soon be like assuming that my book will be as widely sold as The Bible which it totally will and don’t you dare try to tell me that it won’t:

• Are you going to be famous? Undoubtedly.
• Will you remember the little people? Most certainly not. I’ll be doing too much coke.
• Can you give me your agent’s contact info? Um. Can you let me dupe her into working on MY book first?.
• How do you go about writing a book? Don’t worry, my ghostwriter will handle it.
• What kind of book will you write? An awesome one that you will love.
• What’s your favourite colour? Stop wasting my time. I’m busy.

Hello boys….

Oh look – ashes! How about I rise out of them like some sort of flaming bird?

….a phoenix, you assholes.

Yes, I’ve pretty much pulled my shit together again after taking a total nosedive on life and it feels good to be back. As much fun as it was to veer so far away from all the things that make me ME that I couldn’t even remember what I who I was in the first place, I much prefer being able to sleep at night, digest food properly, and ohhh you know…smile from time to time. Let’s face it, tragic is not my colour. My colour is clearly Marc Jacobs.

I’ve basically been alone for the past ten days. The newf retreated away from Ben’s Ground Zero to visit his family back in the Promise Land for a while (he comes back tomorrow – finally someone can deal with the insect situation we have going on here. I swear, bugs are getting way too sinister), leaving me to press Ctrl Alt Delete on…well…everything that was getting in the way of the life I wanted to be living. That’s basically a fancy way of saying that I’ve been watching a lot of cartoons, dancing in my underpants, finding mental and physical breakthroughs with a totally granola chiropractor/life-coach/magic woman, and consistently cramping Theo’s style while he tries to be all aloof because I won’t let him go to third base on my eardrum.

So as I move out of the sad and pathetic recovery phase into the progressive rebuilding phase of overachievery, I’ll leave you with a short survival guide to ensure that when you become a living, breathing disaster out of nowhere for no particular reason, your transition is smoother than my own.

1. Get off the grid. Turn off your phone. Shut down your email. Do whatever you need to do to make your own bubble of solitude. Then take that bubble and fill it with a streaming 80s radio station and internet porn. You’ll feel better eventually. Then a little worse. Then a little better again. But mostly worse. It’s all part of the process.

2. Tell someone off who doesn’t deserve it. Think children or the elderly. Or a puppy.

3. Make sure your friends know the difference between Upset You and Loner Zombie You. I chose to communicate this through a series of subtle and cryptic facial expressions that when examined under a blacklight, showed signs of distress beyond the usual, “Lauren Conrad is a bestselling author. My brain refuses to comprehend a world in which that can happen.”

4. Buy something new. Preferably something frivolous that will get you in trouble with the spouse. Like a Brazilian pool boy. Or cocaine.

5. Regurgitate a year of pent-up feelings in obscenely long emails to people that you met through the internet. This is mostly to make other people feel better about the fact that their lives aren’t as off the rails as yours. I mean, just because your life is falling apart doesn’t mean that you can’t make someone else feel nice. IT’S NOT ALWAYS ABOUT YOU.

6. Send me flirty pictures. Hotties only please.

7. Hate a lot of people. I’ve always found the grocery store to be a good place to get this one crossed off the list. Stupid people should all have to shop on the same day. If people need a license to operate a vehicle, they should at least have to perform a written test and interview before being given a shopping cart.

8. Vote for LiLu so she can be the first ever MTV Twitter Jockey. Once she wins, she’ll just have whoever you hate killed. Or at least that’s what she told me.

9. Experiment with your diet. If your life is going to be thrown into upheaval, there may be no better time to give up lattés. You will clearly have nothing to lose by adding a massive, four-day headache into the mix and you’ll appreciate the reduced dairy once the nervous poops kick in.

10. Remember that we’re rooting for you. It can be tough out there. You’ll get through it.