The Crymes Syndicate

Rick Santorum thinks talking about your loved ones is a sex act

2011-09-23T15:44:00.000-07:00

A few ugly Americans flew their bigot flags on national television during last night's Fox News/Google-sponsored Republican primary debate. Stephen Hill, a gay soldier currently serving in Iraq, asked the candidates whether they planned to reinstate DADT if elected. A fistful of audience members booed the active duty serviceman as he asked his question, adding "booing a soldier" to a rap sheet which already includes "cheering for the death penalty" and "cheering for the deaths of the uninsured." One wonders if the jeering meatheads would be willing to fly to Iraq in order to boo Mr. Hill's rippling biceps in person.

Co-moderator Megyn Kelly directed the active duty soldier's question to professional gay-basher Rick Santorum, who answered with his usual steaming pile of incoherent, pseudo-moralistic excrement:

SANTORUM: I would say any type of sexual activity has absolutely no place in the military. The fact they are making a point to include it as a provision within the military that we are going to recognize a group of people and give them a special privilege to, and removing don't ask don’t tell. I think tries to inject social policy into the military. And the military's job is to do one thing: to defend our country...

KELLY: What would you do with soldiers like Stephen Hill?

SANTORUM: What we are doing is playing social experimentation with our military right now. That’s tragic. I would just say that going forward we would reinstitute that policy if Rick Santorum was president. That policy would be re-instituted as far as people in, I would not throw them out because that would be unfair to them because of the policy of this administration. But we would move forward in conformity with what was happening in the past. Which was- sex is not an issue. It should not be an issue. Leave it alone. Keep it to yourself whether you are heterosexual or homosexual.

What "special privilege" did the repeal of DADT give gay & lesbian service members other than the right to willingly risk taking a bullet (or, more likely, an IED) without having to lie about who they're writing home to? Gay & lesbian service members haven't been granted any "special" privileges in a post-DADT military, they've just been granted regular privileges—like the right to speak with honesty about how much they miss their significant others without fear of being booted out of an all-volunteer armed forces.

Santorum's incoherence reached operatically idiotic heights as he argued that "sex is not an issue" in the military, that it should be "left alone" and people should just keep their orientations to themselves. Mr. Santorum, like many of his ilk, fails to understand what "keep it to yourself" really ~~means~~ meant for a gay soldier.

It meant that when everyone else talked about missing their wives, husbands, boyfriends, and girlfriends, the gay soldier had to remain silent. Or, if s/he wanted to commiserate with buddies about the pain of being separated from a significant other, then the gay soldier was forced to lie. It meant that gay soldiers had to actively hide their private lives from their fellows and superiors, constantly living with lying just to continue to be allowed the "privilege" of risking their lives for people who would boo them on national television.

Men like Rick Santorum believe homosexuality is only about having sex. In his world, gay people don't form genuine bonds with their significant others, they don't rely and depend upon their partners for support, they don't yoke themselves to each other and build a life together. In Rick Santorum's world, DADT served the purpose of shutting gay soldiers up because he thinks they're icky.

"I would say any type of sexual activity has absolutely no place in the military." Rick proclaimed. But DADT wasn't really about just sexual activity, it was about orientation. A straight soldier saying "Hey, I sure miss my wife!" is not a heterosexual sex act, and a gay soldier saying "Hey, I sure miss my boyfriend!" is not a homosexual sex act. Stephen Hill was not committing a sex act when he showed his face on national television and admitted to being a gay soldier, which could have gotten him discharged just one year ago.

Of course, Mr. Santorum might actually believe that service members ought not be allowed to talk about their significant others, period. But more likely he just doesn't want to face the reality that there are gays & lesbians who chose to do something he has never done: risk life & limb for their country while enduring long separations from loved ones. And he can't tell them to shut up anymore.

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In which I tack toward dead people & people who are just dead inside

2011-09-19T17:16:00.000-07:00

My willingness to be intimate with the whole internet only goes so far. Once I'd shared my thoughts on divorce and nasty break-ups, my well of personal-narrative flavored blog fodder went dry. If I had a nickel for every time I've attempted to write a post only to end up in the fetal position at the bottom of the self-defeat pit, I'd be pissing off some bank tellers or diving into a pool full of nickels while wearing a duck bill. Either or. After several months of weighing the pros and cons, I've officially decided to talk history & politics here at the Syndicate.

For a long time I've been hesitant to write about much more than my own inability to walk in a straight line even when sober, partially because female bloggers are often subject to psychotic harassment. I get the feeling that women who write about politics & history are even more subject to the rantings of frothy market-and/or-biblical fundamentalists than your average narrative blogger. I considered writing anonymously. Then I rejected that idea. While I do not have colossal delusions of grandeur (usually), I like being recognized when my internal chimpanzees manage to pound out something intelligible.

Second, I've been hesitant to pontificate at length about history, politics, and related topics because I'm painfully aware that while I'm certainly more intelligent (or at the least more knowledgeable) than most people, I'm also acutely aware that what I don't know could displace every water molecule in the Mariana Trench. I'm the daughter of a man with degrees in political science from Oxford and Duke (not to mention a published book & a half). Every time I think I know what's up I go home for dinner only to realize that, compared to the genius-level types, I am every bit as lacking as the people who believe Jesus & George Washington wrote the Constitution on the back of the Ten Commandments after the Noah's Ark rainbow prophesied the Laffer curve.

But while I readily and happily admit that there is much that I do not know, and much more that I might never know, I get stark raving angry when I encounter ignorance—especially if the ignorance seems willful. Think about how much you hated Felix Gaeta by the end of BSG. It's like that. My desire to write about politics stems not from a desire to be the Explainer (the world has plenty of those), but because I need an outlet. Otherwise, I fear I may die of a ruptured temple or a heart attack.

For example, my conversational partner in a recent social media dust-up curtly (if not smugly!) informed me that the Post Office is an unjust encroachment by the government upon an industry that "should have remained private", and as such is counter to the founding ideals of our country. Nearly a month later, I am still flabbergasted. I thought it was common knowledge that the Post Office is explicitly mandated by the 1787 Constitution. That someone with any level of higher education could be so apparently clueless about the history of the USPS and its origins in the founding of America kept me up nights; partially because ignorance makes me sad, but moreso because my eyeballs throb with rage when obvious falsehoods & inaccuracies are cited as though they are self-evident facts .

The Federation doesn't even use the Constitution anymore and they know that sh*t.

With that said, I won't just be dealing in current events. I'll be discussing American history in general (those of you who follow my tumblr aren't surprised), as well as pop culture through a historical and political lens. I fully expect that I will demonstrate huge gaps in knowledge and understanding on a regular basis. It is my hope that at least a few of my more authoritative readers will help me fill those gaps when they crop up. To that end, I plan to install a more interactive comment platform before lift-off.

While this is a major shift in subject matter, don't expect a huge shift in tone. Political and historical ignorance might make me Hulk-out, but not so much that I lose my sense of humor. Also, while I think a lot of ideas and beliefs are patently stupid, I also understand that people (generally) come by these ideas sincerely. I'm not out to make anyone feel bad about themselves, but when Texas is replacing Thomas Jefferson with St. Thomas Aquinas & John Calvin or when perfectly intelligent people long for the non-existent halcyon days when we "just got along" I am single-minded in my compulsion to call that crap out.

Finally, I have a few loyal followers spread across several social networks who have often encouraged me to alight the soapbox in a more public setting. As a gigantic walking mouth, I am happy to oblige.

And just where have you been, young lady?

2011-02-10T15:20:00.000-08:00

Mid-term elections have a tendency to whip me into a rabid frenzy; those of you who keep up with me on Twitter can confirm that last November's results gave me what I'd like to casually dub a rage boner. Years like 2010, I thank myself profusely for giving up cable television in favor of making the monthly comics budget rain. Even without cable news to rile me up like a wet bobcat in a gunny sack I still spent the last few months writhing in the throes of political junky-ism. Rather than allowing the Syndicate to morph into a spittle & froth coated amateur politics blog, I opted to take a sabbatical. (You're welcome.)

When I wasn't twitching uncontrollably at some new spurt of idiotic demagoguery, Husband and I spent the last few months of 2010 preparing for our escape from Orange County. We came tantalizingly close to moving just a stone's throw down I-40 away from my hometown, but we changed our plans just as my visions of Carolina-born babies were looking more and more like imminent reality. Instead, we stayed in California and moved to an old (and until recently, decaying) citrus boom town with a population of just 70,000.

Granted, 70k isn't small by my grandmother's standards - she grew up in a Virginia-Carolina border town home to less than 200 people (I'm related by blood or marriage to just about all 200 of them) - but 70k seems downright quaint once you've lived in a major population center for a decade.

Moving away from Orange County lowered our expenses by hundreds of dollars, freeing me up to quit my labor-intensive job and dedicate myself to taking care of our house (read as: preparing it for the spawn we plan to make in the next year or so). I'm relieved and grateful to have been freed from the shackles of punching a time clock, but I still need something other than the relative strength of various household cleaning agents to occupy my brain cells. To keep my synapses from atrophying irrevocably, I'm going after a few freelance writing gigs. We'll see how it goes.

Now that I'm not busy packing up all of our worldly possessions or ripping my hair out in frustration over election-season hackery and my rather serious crisis of confidence has abated, stay tuned for more regular posting.

Thanks to everyone who asked after me during my radio silence.

See you next week.

"That Black Boy Took My Swing!" or, Dr. Laura Deserves a Time-Out

2010-08-26T13:26:00.000-07:00

Soon-to-be former talk radio personality Dr. Laura believes that she's "lost her First Amendment rights" because sponsors aren't willing to stick with a woman whose advice to a black caller concerned about how to deal with epithets from her husband's friends was that she "shouldn't have married outside of her race." Here's the thing Dr. Laura: You can holler the N-word all you want and (not-so) obliquely insist upon racial purity all you want. You can even do so without legal recourse as long as you're not attempting to incite a hate crime, but that doesn't mean anyone has to listen to, condone, or finance your drivel in national syndication. You can still go get yourself a soapbox and a megaphone and stand up on a street corner and holler whatever you want - but nowhere in the First Amendment are you guaranteed freedom from criticism or the social consequences of acting like an asshole.

One sticky Carolina afternoon a year or so after Reagan left office, I made a complete ass of myself too. I took a flying leap from a swing on a dare and landed nearly knee first in the dirt. Triumphantly, I dusted myself off and turned around to go again, but my swing? Was occupied.

A little boy whose name I can't remember had quickly usurped the vacated swing the second I flung myself off of it and into the air. I was pissed.

"I. Am. TELLING!" I shrieked, and I stomped off to the gazebo where our afterschool counselors were gathered around a picnic table, ostensibly making sure no one died.

I marched up to one of them, interrupting the counselors' (I just realized they were younger than I am now) rousing game of Uno. I tugged at at the nearest grown-up sleeve and pointed towards the playground.

"That little black boy took my swing!" I shouted nastily.

The counselor's eyes popped wide open in shock. He slid off of the picnic table bench and squatted down. I began to shift my feet around inside my Keds as he looked me square in the eyes.

"Who took your swing now?"

I set my jaw.

"That. Little. BLACK. BOY!"

I should point out that the afterschool counselor was also black. (I can't remember his name either, and I'm not sure what that says about me considering my usual propensity to never forget anyone, ever.)

"Do you mean the little boy took your swing?" .

"NO! I mean that BLACK boy TOOK! IT!"

The counselor shook his head and walked over the the gazebo's railing. I followed, expecting justice for my stolen swing to be quickly meted out just as soon as the counselor realized that I'd been robbed; that he was focusing on the wrong thing here.

Instead, the counselor came back down to eye level and asked me a question I've never forgotten.

"Why did you call him black?"

What the hell kind of a question was that? And what about my SWING, HUH?

"Because he is black!"

"What if a white boy had taken your swing? Would you have screamed that the white boy took it?"

I turned that one over for a moment.

"No. But that boy is BLACK. And he TOOK my swing! And I WANT IT BACK!"

The counselor looked away for a moment.

"Did he push you off of the swing?"

"No."

"Did you get to swing for a long time before he got on?"

"Yes."

"Don't you think you ought to be sharing?"

"Y- NO! I was THERE FIRST! And I just did my jump and I was going to go back and then that-"

I pointed again, wildly,

"-little black boy took it away!"

The counselor had finally had enough.

"Margaret. I want you to sit here. For ten minutes. And I want you to really think about sharing. And about why you feel like you need to holler about what color he is."

I was shocked. Time out was unacceptable. My swing had been stolen, where was MY justice? Why was I being punished for calling the swing thief what he so obviously was? I crossed my arms and slunk to the ground to do my time, but just in case the counselor didn't know how I felt about this whole thing, I yelled,

"Fine! But I am TELLING that you put me in time out because I said he's black when he IS! You put me here because I'm WHITE!"

He walked back to other counselors and re-joined the Uno game. I thought one of the white counselors might release me from my time out; I was obviously being punished unfairly. After a few minutes of enraged muttering, which impressed no one, I fell silent.

So I sat and I pouted, but inevitably, I pondered. In 1990, I was sure I'd been grievously wronged, that the counselor and the boy were obviously in league against me because they were black and I was white.

In high school, after not thinking about the incident for years, I recounted the story to a friend and realized that I had been a complete asshole.

The counselor didn't put me in time out because I was white. He put me in time out because I'd come up to the counselors demanding that the little boy be ejected from the swing because I wanted it all to myself, and on top of that I'd felt the need to scream about the boy's race, even though that wasn't the issue.

But it wasn't simply that I'd said it. It was how I said it.

I can still hear my voice, a tiny five year old white Southern girl demanding - in her haughtiest, most nasty voice possible - for that swing thieving little black boy to be dealt with, because she sure as hell didn't HAVE to share with him or anybody else.

I deserved those ten minutes. That time out didn't harm me. That time out didn't squelch my First Amendment rights; they let me holler and mutter until I wore myself out. But it did punish me for acting like a greedy, borderline racist little brat.

When I hear people screeching that their First Amendment rights have been violated because no one wants to put up with their borderline or blatantly racist drivel (What up, Dr. Laura?), I almost always flash immediately back to that afternoon, and I can't help but wonder:

Are you really being discriminated against, or silenced unfairly? Or are you just getting a Time Out for acting like an asshole?

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The Giraffe-Necked Baby Was All In Your Head

2010-08-03T00:57:00.000-07:00

Thursday night, I dreamed that I gave birth to a little giraffe-necked girl who could talk from the moment she was born.

When my dream-water broke, Husband and I drove to a bizarre urban log-cabin house-that-was-a-hospital, where I was assigned to a birthing room filled by an enormous bed. As soon as I was prone, a nurse straight out of 1944 stuck me with a gigantic syringe. I must have Dream-Blacked-Out, because the next moment I was waking up as Husband handed me our little long-necked girl.

I want boys, by the way. More than once I've instructed Husband to inform his swimmers of my preference.

We called her Julie or Juliana or some variation thereof, but she insisted at least twice that she wanted to be named after me (Listen, my darling little dreamed up giraffe-necked talking baby girl, do NOT encourage me. Your mother is self-aggrandizing enough as it is.). The dream was so vivid that my brain kept trying to force the whole scenario to jive with reality. When our families paraded in to meet her, not even the presence of dead grandparents was enough to set off my "This Isn't Real!" alarm. My sense of reality was completely warped. Dream-Husband and I were willing to reconcile ourselves to just about any absurdity. We even dismissed with a laugh how strange it was that I gave birth so suddenly - we didn't even know I was pregnant!

And when I woke up it took several minutes for me to register that it was all just a dream. I opened my eyes confused, wondering where my kid was. I almost called in sick to work.

"I can't come in today, I had a baby last night."
"Wait. You were pregnant?"
"I know! So weird! We didn't even know until- waaaait a second."

For a moment I lay in bed, gripping my phone and ready to dial. I even heard wailing from the next room.

"Ohmigosh! I've got to go get the baby!" I thought, and then immediately after,

"Wait. That's the cat."

I put the phone down as I realized that my giraffe-necked daughter didn't exist. For a few groggy minutes, I was heartbroken.

And there was no flute in a space-probe to remember her with.

I spent most of Friday hoping against all logic that the churning in my stomach meant I was pregnant (except I was also broken out and bloated, so not so much.) My reproductive organs snaked up through my body and my fallopian tubes plugged themselves directly into my brain which is now screaming "BAYBEE!!! BAYBAY!!!"

(Not that I wasn't gung-ho to spawn before my brain decided to trick me into believing I had a daughter. The little voice in my head has been hollering ever since we made a solid plan to start trying next year.)

When Husband got home I told him all about our little giraffe-necked baby girl, how I spent half the dream worrying that she'd manage to break her freakishly long neck. And how I missed her. He grinned, not a little bit smugly, and said

"Does this mean you're okay with having girls now?"

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The Rubber Snake I Won at that Primm, Nevada Casino is Very Precious to Me

2010-07-29T00:31:00.000-07:00

Today, I deleted my MySpace account.

I also inadvertently deleted the first "Hey! Let's hang out!" message Husband ever sent to me. I just missed screencapping it - by about ten seconds - before the account cancellation took effect and y'all? I was devastated. At first, I thought, "Oh! I'll just log into Husband's account and get it!"

Except Husband isn't a massive digital packrat who keeps messages from over three years ago hanging out in in his inbox, unarchived.

Husband: I don't think I saved that, Honey. I don't save my messages.
Margaret: NOOOOOO :-(

Husband: Sorry, honey. If I'd known back then, I would have saved it for you.

I chose to appreciate how nice he is and ignore the fact that my first thought was, "Well, you should have known!" Because I am a little bit crazy. But just a little bit, because I only thought it. Because I would actually be a little weirded out if he'd known he was going to marry me when he asked if I wanted to carpool to a Deerhoof show. Anyway.

We moved into our cozy little half of a 1949 duplex the moment we got legally married. Over a year and a half later, Husband's parents still have a closet half-full of his stuff, waiting for the day I throw away enough of my crap to make room for it here.

I keep everything - everything - but earlier this year I managed to part with enough little bits of paper and plastic to fill our trash collection bin twice. I still had piles left over afterward. A few weeks ago, I moved ten more huge boxes of stuff out to the garage. (Fine. Technically Husband moved the huge boxes of stuff out to the garage.)

As I pawed through the garage-bound tubs, I found a marked-up copy of Macbeth from my junior year of high school, which, now that I've actually looked inside it, isn't even my old copy of MacBeth, but High School Boyfriend's copy. As I shelved it with some other old paperback books, I commented that we were mostly re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic as far as my pack-rat tendencies go, but at least the deck chairs were finally out in the garage, not piled up behind the couch gathering enough cat hair to knit a sweater.

Maybe I save everything because I've moved every two years or so since I was ten years old. Maybe I hang on to things because the people and moments they remind me of were mostly lost to interstate moves and growing pains.

Maybe Husband doesn't feel compelled to save things the way I do because he's lived within the same thirteen mile radius his entire life. If he wants to go hang out in his hometown or visit his boyhood home, where his parents still live, we can drive there in about ten minutes. For me to do the same, we've got to shill out a few hundred dollars to fly east and knock on familiar doors belonging to strange people.

(Or maybe it's just because I'm lady and he's a dude.)

Even though my nostalgia is heavily mired in geography, I didn't just save pieces of back home. There's a box for all but one of my ex-boyfriends. (I guess I finally had some memories I didn't want. I torched a shoe box full of mementos and threw the jewelry into a man-made lake a few years back, and that may have marked the first time I ever got rid of any of my personal relics on purpose.) There's a box for every session of Jesus Camp, and a box for every year of Marching Band. I've got copies of my high school literary magazine and a box full of black & white xeroxed rock show flyers. I've saved hundreds of concert tickets, airline tickets, train tickets, baseball tickets, and I've got movie tickets so faded I can't even make out what the film was anymore.

I've got a cloth napkin that High School Boyfriend swiped from Disneyland, an empty pack of cigarettes First Boyfriend and I shared right before I moved to California, notes my girlfriends slipped into my locker in seventh grade, huge D&D grids covered in sharpie-drawn maps scribbled all over by the folks I used to play with, programs from shows I was in, programs from shows I wasn't in, dilapidated puff paint t-shirts from elementary school Field Days, a weird half bandanna from a Disney Cruise, my baby teeth, sugar packets from some restaurant in D.C., a paper crane made out of a San Francisco restaurant menu, and a few hotel key cards from the Marriott near Vegas where we stayed during a marching band trip. Oh! And my old colorguard uniforms - spandex I'll never fit into again, packed in an unfinished cedar chest my great-grandfather made just before he died, right next to my cheerleading trophy and the dress my mom married my Bio-Dad in.

That's just a sampler. I've got tubs upon meticulously labeled tubs full of proof that I Did Things and Knew People, and when you click back through my Gmail inbox you'll hit 2004 after a few thousand messages. In the days before the advent of Gmail's nearly endless storage, I printed out emails because I wanted to save them. I've got boxes for those too.

Part of me is still devastated not to have at least a JPEG of the first time Husband asked me to hang out.

But then I realized something.

I still have him, so what do I need the JPEG for?

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There's a Difference Between an Etch-a-Sketch Drawing and a Master's Degree

2010-07-21T11:00:00.000-07:00

If we throw out everything I wanted to grow up to be when I was a kid - Astronaut, Starfleet Officer, Writer, or President - and make a list of only the majors and career paths I've gone down (or talked about going down) as an adult, here's what you get:

Marine Biologist because I once got a 100% on an oceanography exam.

Teacher because I was working with kids.

Early Childhood Administrator see above.

Social Worker see above.

Fashion Designer because I remembered I was kind of okay at sewing after I caught an episode of Project Runway.

Cruise Ship Worker because I went on a cruise and the DJ was hot and I and didn't realize the workers slept in racks.

Merchandising Manager because I got 13 sketches in and realized I'd actually be a crap fashion designer.

Rock Music Journalist because I once read a lot of Pitchfork and then re-watched Almost Famous.

Event Planner because getting paid to party is a sweet job.

Mathematician because I got smashingly good grades in Calculus when I bothered to show up.

Accountant because it was a more viable ($$) career choice than mathematician.

Famous Genealogist because I didn't realize it had already been done.

My day job involves food and a hat, so obviously none of those illustrious careers ever panned out. Some of them might have gone somewhere if I'd cared enough to make them happen, but I was distracted by a Boyfriend or some free beer or some other lark every time. By the time I'd put my sh*t together again I was on to the next thing.

Buckling down and doing something felt claustrophobic; and I resented feeling like I had to choose which Barbie I wanted to be for The Rest of My Life. So I flitted about from True Calling to True Calling until I wound up dependent on my paycheck. Luckily, I'm paid so ridiculously well for what I do that when a girlfriend of mine told me how much she'd be making if she landed a job she interviewed for at Google, I laughed and pointed out that she'd be making less at Google than I make wrapping hamburgers.

You can go cry over your master's degree now. I'll wait.

But I'm not slinging burgers because I've finally realized my lofty dreams of grease-covered glory. I'm there because it's a living. I'm there because I like it alright and it pays the bills and leaves my brain free to think about other things, like making jokes on the internet. I'm there because I had a proper grown-up job with a cubicle and a title and business cards- and it made me so miserable that I clawed my face in my sleep.

My back hurts sometimes, but I? Never go to bed worried about office drama.

But as I was portioning out a fry one day, one of our regulars asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up.

"Well, I was going to be an astronaut!" I answered cheerily.

I slipped a napkin in the bag and handed him his food with a big smile and then I died a little bit inside as he laughed at my Funny Joke.

My twenty sixth birthday is looming less than two weeks away and I still have no idea what I'm going to be when I grow up. I've got no designs on Fast Food Management and I flubbed the whole astronaut gig when I f*cked off in the eighth grade. And NASA cut the budget on the manned space program anyway.

My options are limited by more than just the crap economy; I never did get around to procuring an expensive bit of paper to prove that I'm as smart as my Mama says I am.

And even if I had a Master's Degree, or even a Bachelor's, I would cry over mine too because I wouldn't know what to do with a degree- other than hang it up in a gilt-frame and screech,

"LOOK. AH'M SMART. AH GOT MAH PAYPER!" every time I noticed someone noticing it.

On the other hand, I'm happy to not be working my student loans off in indentured servitude to the Olive Garden, which is where quite a few Masters of Whatever slag off even with a fancy smart paper. Standardized testing and the 99th percentile I scored every time back in high school be damned- I don't have mah payper, y'all. I've been running around doing just about anything I wanted (other than finding a Real Job) for eight years.

Astronaut is out, Starfleet's not real, and President looks like a loser job (in the sense that if you have it, you can't win), so out of the all the things I swore I'd grow up to be, Writer would appear to be the only viable option left.

But I am deathly afeared of sucking at it.

So thanks for reading.

If next week I decide I'm going to be a chef because I parked my ass in front of TLC for a few hours, y'all will be the first to know.

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(this title of this post was lifted from the song "Permanent Kitten" by the now defunct band The Actual.)

Star Wars versus Star Trek: Mommy and Daddy, Why Are You Fighting?

2010-07-20T00:47:00.000-07:00

Guys. Guys. You guys. Look. Star Wars and Star Trek both have "Star" in the title, but that doesn't mean we can't fervently love both franchises. This is not a sports rivalry. This is not Duke versus Carolina. This is not Jacob versus Edward (about which I know next to nothing, but a lot of other people with matching chromosomes do. And they take that rivalry pretty f*cking seriously.)

Star Wars? Is six movies. Seven, if you count The Clone Wars. Which I don't.

Star Trek is eleven movies and thirty seasons of serial television, encompassing seven hundred and twenty seven episodes in all. And yes, some of them are awful.

Just like the Star Wars prequels.

So let's just throw out the crappy phoned-in episodes of Star Trek and pretend the Star Wars prequels didn't happen.

Both franchises involve SPACESHIPS AND SPACE, but they aren't about the same thing.

Star Wars is about redemption. And loyalty. And why fascism is bad and Han Solo (or Slave Leia if you're a dude, or both if you're into that) is the sexiest anything ever. Star Trek is about humans convincing ourselves that we don't suck - only to find out that we still sort of do - so we gallivant about the galaxy trying not to suck. Star Wars is about what people are like when we're awesome, even though we kind of suck. Star Trek is about what people would be like if we were awesome, but still sucked sometimes. Star Wars is a character piece. Star Trek is a morality play.

Check us out! BFFs! Hey! Where are you going? To have sex and play football? FINE.

Star Wars is about its characters. Star Trek is about an idea.

Star Wars happened to some other folks a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. Star Trek happens to us in a few hundred years.

Yes. The Empire could crush the Federation with one or two well-placed Death Star blasts. But the Empire? Was a bunch of Assholes.

Star Wars and Star Trek aren't rivals. They're not even playing the same game. Saying you can't love one if you love the other is like saying you can't root for the Dodgers if you're a Laker fan.

The one thing I'm sure we can all agree on? Pre-Sith Anakin Skywalker and Season 1-3 Wesley Crusher were equally annoying.

These are the things that keep me up at night, people.

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The Story of DICKME or, I Got B.O.N.ed!

2010-07-19T15:59:00.000-07:00

Blogger decided to wave the magic Blogs of Note wand over me! Now that some guy named TG has taken the time to spam every entry I've ever written with a link to his "custom wood furniture," I suppose I should answer a few questions. By the way TG, I admire your pluck, but if you want adspace please send me one million dollars first.

(1) You spelled Crymes wrong.

First of all, that's not a question. Second of all, it's my last name so no I didn't spell it wrong. The dictionary spelled it wrong.

(2) Is that really your last name?

Yup. I married into it. My maiden name involved a slang term for the male anatomy. When I took the PSAT many moons ago, I was required to bubble in the first four letters of my last name, followed by my first initial, followed by my middle initial, which spelled out, wait for it:

DICKME

The PTA-mom proctor of the exam walked by and told me to "TAKE THIS SERIOUSLY!" I didn't have a photo I.D. at the time so they had to call the assistant principal down to confirm that no, I was not actually f*cking off. For once.

I really like my new last name. The Husband it came with is cool too.

(3) Why "The Crymes Syndicate" then?

Ever heard of a little place called Earth-3?

(4) What are you doing here?

Running my mouth on the internet. What are you doing here?

(5) The photo of you in your "About Me" is really small. I can't tell if you're hot.

Again, not a question. But here you go:

You've interrupted my binge. And no, I don't pluck these brows.

Here are some entries I'm particularly proud of:

Stuff My Parents Taught Me: There's No 'C' in Klingon
Karma is a Bitch and I'm Gonna Delete All You Haters! (Please Like Me.)
Don't Make Fun of My Sunflower Shoes, I Will Fork You Up
The Sliding Scale of Suck
Your Mother Got Engaged on a Pirate Ship!

So there you have it. Now subscribe! I'll need about one thousand of you to fire up the death ray and take the world hostage for a lifetime supply of Oreos. Let's make it happen, people. Teamwork makes the dream work. I'll even share the Oreos after I'm done licking off all the frosting.

You can also follow me on The Twitter for more hijinks.

Wait for the Ding! or, The Day We Thought We Were Dead

2010-07-11T00:01:00.000-07:00

When Husband and I have cause to travel by plane, we're usually headed all the way back east (or further) to visit my family. We rarely find ourselves on a flight shorter than five hours.

Three weeks ago: We're leaving North Carolina, a few thousand feet up in the sky on the first leg of our trip back to California. Husband is staring past me, out the window. And Husband? Looks agitated, like a dog before an earthquake. I glance up from my Economist, concerned.

"What's wrong, honey?" I asked, my voice still dripping with drawl after a week back home.

"We're descending really fast," he said, "It feels too early for that."

I peered out at the wing.

"Oh my gosh, we are!"

The passengers around us seemed blissfully ignorant of our imminent demise. I dropped my voice to a whisper so I wouldn't disturb them and continued, "Isn't it too soon? It is too soon.We're descending real fast."

Silently, we grasped hands as our dreams and plans for our entire life together crumbled. We gazed at each other, eyes full of fear and love and trepidation.

"Wait. Honey. This flight's only from Charlotte to Atlanta. We're just landing."

Ding!

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Five Things That Are Still Awesome About Air Travel

2010-07-07T14:20:00.000-07:00

With my family scattered haphazardly around the country and the two years my mom & stepdad spent living in England, I've spent more time on an airplane than your average bear. (Bears, on average, fly once or twice in their lifetimes, usually because they refuse to mate with the only other bear at the zoo so they're shuffled around via FedEx until they make more bears. I'm sure this is a fact.) Maybe I have fewer SkyMiles than the Executive Vice President Of Making More Money than Me, but there's still been a lot of airport security in my life. And I hate flying. I despise it. The air is icky and the seats hurt my butt and even getting drunk sucks. But even though flying is the bane of my first world existence, I present for your stale pretzel snacking enjoyment: Things That Are Still Awesome About Air Travel.

(1) Winning at Security: Remember ten years ago when you could just get on a plane? I remember hopping off a plane at LAX with High School Boyfriend in August 2001. His mom met us immediately at the gate next to the little airport Wolfgang Puck's. I mean she was RIGHT THERE. Then 9/11 happened almost exactly a month later and now we're scared of shampoo, so airport security is a little more intense than it used to be. Still, I pretty much always win at baggage/body screening. I'm so good at travel that I don't check bags. No, I enter the screening area with all my sh*t and I can get my laptop out of its case and my shoes off my feet before the rest of y'all even realize you'll have to remove your belts. The TSA loves me. In some airports, they even have a special Black Diamond "expert" lane for people like me, people who are awesome at airport security.

(2) The People Mover: This thing is like the Speed Force. You get on it and you're walking at TWICE your normal speed while your badass rolling suitcase grinds along behind you. You can thumb your nose at the plebes on their first plane ride to Orlando who don't understand that they're supposed to stand on the right so you can breeze by them on the left in a cloud of self importance as strong as half a bottle of Clinique Happy. Don't they know who you are? Don't they know you're in seat 38C on the next Delta flight? MOVE.

(3) Airports with Trains in Them: Because they are airports. With trains in them. Detroit probably has the best example of a Train in an Airport, but they also sell underwear with "Motown" scribbled across the butt, which almost cancels out the indoor train, but not quite.

Add a log flume & a dark ride and you've got a theme park.

(4) Excuse to Buy Celebrity Gossip Rags: Sadly, I don't take advantage of this nearly often enough. I usually buy The Economist because I am a self important windbag who is terribly concerned about what other people on the plane will think of me, and at the very least I want to make certain they all notice that I'm more worldly and intelligent than they are because I'm reading the f*cking Economist on an AIRPLANE while they thumb through last week's People. Hell, reading The Economist should get you automatically bumped to first class. Dear Sir - I am awesome. Except when I'm travelling with my sister. She buys People. And I desperately beg her to share.

(5) SkyMall: SkyMall is the greatest thing ever. Only when flying would it occur to anyone that they definitely need a six foot replica of King Tut's sarcophagus to go with their new "personal massager." While you're at it, why don't you get some patio furniture covers, a bridge for the front yard and a f*cking seat from Yankee Stadium.

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In Which I Lament My Guatemalan Place Mats

2010-07-06T14:46:00.000-07:00

I almost cried over Guatemalan place mats the other night, and before you ask, no I wasn't PMS-ing or pregnant. I just take place mats pretty f*cking seriously.

Husband picked up a bigger share of the chores when I starting picking up longer shifts at work. On the night in question, he cleaned the kitchen counters, put away the dishes and all sorts of other helpful things. He's so awesome you probably want me to clone him, but I've seen that episode of Star Trek y'all, and genetic decay is NASTY.

So, Husband, because he is helpful and awesome, noticed that our place mats were dirty and asked if we shouldn't wash them. Overwhelmed by his loving attention to detail, I said,

"Sure! Throw them suckers in there with the dish towels!"

Except...except that our place mats have frayed edges (you know, like cut-off jeans) and Husband put the place mats in the dryer. (Because that's what you DO when you wash things. He's no dummy. It should have occurred to me to tell him not to dry them, because according to perfectly reasonable Boy Logic what comes out of the washer goes into the dryer. The nuances of tumble dry versus hang dry versus OH MY GOD DO NOT PUT THAT IN THE DRYER YOU WILL END THE WORLD dry are not part of Boy Land. Or part of Margaret Land most of the time, for that matter.)

Four of our six place-mats are a good two to three inches smaller than the other two now, and the edges are an absolute snarl of unraveled threads. When Husband brought them into the house and unfolded them, the backs of my eyes started to sting and I smacked the counter and hollered "F*ck!" Then I snatched up my beer and had to 'rassle with my internal gamma radiation so I didn't Hulk-out at Husband over f*cking place mats, but they were a wedding present from one of my closest girlfriends and she got them in Guatemala so it's not like I can just hop over to Bed, Bath, & Beyond to replace them and she also gave us matching napkins and now two of my place mats are 20% larger than the other four and I felt like they really pulled the room together and THIS IS WHY I CANNOT HAVE NICE THINGS, EVER.

Don't even try to front. This would drive you crazy too.

Husband can tell when I'm about to go supernova over something stupid, and unlike pretty much everyone else I ever dated, ever, rather than attempting to contain the implosion himself (as if he could), he quietly left the room. After a few minutes of slamming around spaghetti ingredients and cursing the lentils, I shuffled over to the bathroom doorway to talk to Husband, who was perched on the edge of the tub.

"Um, honey, you know I'm not mad at you, right? I mean, it's not your fault, you were just trying to wash the place mats and that was really nice of you I'm just sad because I can't go to Guatemala and I really liked the place mats. It's kind of like when your parents' house got robbed and your mom was more upset about the pillow sham the robbers jacked to carry the jewelry away in than she was about the jewelry, because she was going to have to buy another full set to replace the one sham, and that's a real pain in the ass you know? This is like that, but slightly worse because they were a Friend Present. So do you wanna come be around me again now?"

And he did. He came into the kitchen and annoyed me while I cooked dinner which made me laugh which made me mostly Get Over It. After a few minutes, I gave him a hug and then, without prompting, he said, "I'm sorry," even though the Place Mat Annihilation wasn't really his fault. He thinks I'm crazy and he's right, but he totally gets it when it comes to Stupid Girl Things like lamentations over the loss of matching Guatemalan place mats.

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[Um, wanna buy a book from me? Or some other stuff? Then I can go to Guatemala and get new place mats.]

Cuervo-Infused Minds Think Alike: A Shakespeare Quickie

2010-07-05T19:37:00.000-07:00

After the fireworks ended last night, a few girlfriends and I were out back on the patio slurping the last of the AMERICA flavored Jell-O shots when Husband's Buddy and his Wife came outside to say their goodbyes.

"Friends-," Husband's Buddy began, saluting.

"- Roman Countrymen!" three of us shot back in chorus. I turned to the others.

"Whoa! Did we all just do that? High Fives!"

We slapped hands and burst into giggles. After a few moments, I stuck my palm out.

"No, but seriously, your ears. Give me them."

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Wait, We Can't Just Drink Until Morning Anymore?

2010-06-30T14:34:00.000-07:00

From being a few twenties short of rent to filling each others' gas tanks to sharing groceries to buying (very necessary) Comic-Con passes for each other, my girlfriends and I have bailed each other out of some tough spots over the years. Two of us even went as far as swapping our matching cars for a month to hide from the Repo Man when he was after us both, so spotting each other some cash on Girls' Night Out is a given. If one of us is unemployed or just plain broke, the rest of us cover her; no questions asked, no IOUs written, and it almost always shakes out in the end.

Unless you're Emilio Estevez circa 1984, you ain't gettin' our Corollas!

(They eventually got our Corollas.)

After I got married, Girls' Night became a painstakingly scheduled-in-advance, once-a-month event instead of an automatic two nights a week out at the bar. At the time, I had a Proper Grown Up Job as an accounting assistant for a medium-sized online retailer, raking in more money than I remember earning in my entire life, (except for the time I shilled overpriced sunglasses in a Major Upscale Department Store.) Girls' Night 2.0 relocated from the dive bar to the wine bar and if anyone came up short, I'd slap my debit card down and cover her myself. I was finally rolling in the coinage a la Scrooge McDuck and I was determined to help a sister out whenever I could.

All was well. We'd split the cost of fancy wine & cheese, we'd clink our fancy glasses full of fancy booze, and for a while no one's wallet felt too violated. I don't even like Sex and the City that much, but I think we all felt Very Cosmopolitan. Everything was coming up Charlotte (I'm no Carrie), so naturally it all went wrong after a few months. The Chief Financial Officer I assisted turned out to be a corrupt sleazo who skimmed off the top, cooked the books and made me a party to his Joel Osteen-inspired embezzlement. I hand-picked my replacement and ran screaming back to my blue collar restaurant job after eight months. A month after I left, the company's original founder marched in with a court order and took the company (and the company cars) back from the sleazo, who had to hitch a ride home in some other guy's mini-van.

The decision to leave that job was one of the smartest I've ever made (and other than marrying Husband, most of my decisions have been questionable, at best), but we took a big hit in the pockets when my Batman-like sense of morality forced me to ditch the accounting gig. For the first few months, Husband and I didn't feel the slowly tightening pinch. We had savings, because we were pretty Good at Life, but they ran out. A few "Oh, I'll just put the groceries on the credit card and pay it off on paydays" later, we were up to our waists in late bills and credit card debt - and while I certainly owed the State of California huge amounts of money in unpaid traffic tickets when I was in my late teens and very early twenties, credit card debt is something I've never had to wrangle with until recently.

Scrooge would never embezzle or defraud anyone!
That money is clean enough to swim in!

By the time husband and I got hitched, I'd paid off nearly all of my random debts (traffic tickets, medical bills, a $400 library fine) and saved up a four digit dowry. I even blogged about tightwaddery in your twenties for a while. When we found ourselves in the red after the wedding and the income drop, I felt like a failure. Not only were we barely scraping by, but I felt like I'd failed Husband. I was so despondent I stuck my head in the sand for months, refusing to deal. Suddenly, I was the one who needed to be covered on Girls' Night.

When I answered the questions asked by Charles Schwab's new financial fitness check-up tool based on my pre-marriage money habits, I scored a 78, well within the range of "Good" or "Hey! You Don't Suck too Bad! Congratulations!" When I took the test again based on our post-marriage financial situation, Husband & I scored a dismal 49, which is "Fair" or "Hey! What the Hell Happened, You Slob?!" Losing that many points (I hate losing!) inspired me to start trying to Win at Money again, with Husband's help. We've got a budget and a cash flow spreadsheet, we freeze meals in advance, and we've made the switch from Good Beer to Cheap Beer. We're going to kick this, and we're going to score at least a 90 the next time I take that check up quiz.

Last time the girls and I went out, one of them was going to pay my way at the wine bar, but her debit card was declined. Without hesitation, another girlfriend whipped her card out- and it was declined too. I grudgingly pulled my card out and threw in a little more than I could afford. We hit an ATM after we paid for our cheese and wine, and lo and behold, both girls actually had more than enough money in their accounts to cover their portion of the night's festivities. Cursing the wine bar's card reader, we moved on. Seated around a half circle booth in a sports bar with two $12 pitchers of beer, we merrily sipped our pint glasses while one girlfriend hopped on her Super Fancy Internet Phone and used Amazon gift cards to pay us back in earrings and comic books. I felt guilty about whipping out the debit card to help pay for drinks when I knew we couldn't afford it, so I requested a trade paperback I knew Husband wanted (Freakangels Volume Three) instead of something for myself.

"How did we manage to afford to drink so much when we were younger?" I asked the table.

"I don't think we were paying full price."

"Well sh*t."

"Maybe from now on, we just go straight to the $12 pitchers." We clinked glasses in agreement.

Before Marriage, most of my recreational spending was influenced by my girlfriends, and most of my recreational spending was alcohol-related (alcohol, getting food so we'd be able to drink more alcohol, buying tickets to rock shows at which we'd drink alcohol, buying hot clothes to wear while drinking alcohol, getting more food to recover from drinking so much alcohol). Post-Marriage, I do most of my drinking at home with Husband, we're too tired to go to rock shows, my new fashion philosophy is "F*ck it, I'm married!". Dropping more than twenty bucks when I go out with the girls makes me feel so guilty I can barely deal.

For those of us that have them, our partners and children are starting to eclipse our friends' influence on our finances. When it comes to Girls' Night, the wine bar is nice, but we're going out to be with each other, not to imbibe the fanciest booze we can collectively afford just to prove we can. I'm married, another girlfriend is engaged, another is a mom, and we're hitting the point in our lives where we are a group of near-married, married, or otherwise beholden to other folks adults, not just younger women with no real responsibilities who can do Jell-O shots until last call and hang the consequences. Sometimes the dichotomy between the single/no kids ladies and the married/with kids ladies is painfully apparent, but ultimately we're all beginning to think beyond our next Jack & Coke.

Most of the time.

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[This post is part of the latest 20SB Carnival, Friends & Money.]
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Disclaimer: This post is part of the 20SB Blog Carnival: Friends & Money, sponsored by Charles Schwab. Prizes may be awarded to selected posts. The information and opinions expressed in this post do not reflect the views or opinions of Charles Schwab. Details on the event, eligibility, and a complete list of participating bloggers can be found here.

The Sliding Scale of Suck

2010-06-23T12:02:00.000-07:00

Beginning with the first time I scraped my knee and blood came out, I've been convinced that each new life experience was going to kill me and/or end the world. Parents divorced? END OF THE EARTH. Girls make fun of my shoes? SURELY THE PALE HORSE IS NIGH! Don't even get me started on the first time I got dumped. (Let's just say: the technical term is "Virgin Snap" and leave it at that for the moment.)

When your own personal Armageddon approaches, at least one friend/neighbor/cousin/crazy-haired janitor lady at the mall who gave you a Hershey bar when she saw you crying in the Food Court (true story) will fail to truly sympathize. "Oh, you'll live," she'll cluck, "I've been through worse." We've all said it at some point, but is the fact that you've been through worse supposed to comfort a person who's never been through worse? Enter the sliding scale of suck.

The sliding scale of suck suggests that any particular event in your life will be placed on your Suck Scale according to your ability to deal. The first level of my suck scale (Level One) is "Oh sh*t, I left my cell phone at home!" The worst thing I can think of, my Level Ten, is: "My whole family got killed and then I lost my body up to my neck and now I live in a jar and then the world really ended this time so it's just me in my jar and the cockroaches."

Anything less than this I can pretty much handle. Eventually.

Someone else might place leaving her cell phone at home all the way up at a ten. A parking ticket might be a three to someone who makes six figures a year and an eight to someone making a Starbucks income. The main thing to note about The Sliding Scale of Suck is that it's all relative.

At the ripe old age of fourteen, my first break-up had me single-handedly keeping the entire black eyeliner industry afloat, not to mention helping Tori Amos get a few more platinum records under her belt. My first time playing the role of the dumpee had me flinging a spiked bracelet across the lunch table at a boy with a purple mohawk, and let me tell you - First Boyfriend's rejection was a nine on my Suck Scale. But then I had another break-up, and another, and another, and so on until my final break-up some six years later. When the last break-up went down, I was sure my life was over, that I was in the middle of another nine. Yet even as I flipped my sh*t over College Boyfriend, there was a tiny voice in the back of my head whispering, "but, you know in the long run this is really a 3.5."

If you've never been through a knock-down drag-out break-up, that kind of Suck might not even be on your scale - or perhaps it is. Maybe you've placed it on your Suck Scale conceptually (like losing all your limbs) and you imagine that your first heartbreak will be a four. It won't be. The first one will feel like an eleven until you pull yourself together; the idea of a failsafe on the doomsday device is entirely out of the question. After my fistful of long-term relationships (can anyone say "serial monogamy?"), I never even flinched when things didn't work out with a guy after a few dates. That was nothing. Rejection after few dates didn't even merit placement on my Scale of Suck.

Until you go through a big doozy, you have no idea what it's like to snap. You might even freak out when things don't work out after a few dates, and that's fine, if it's the worst thing you've experienced when it comes to dating. But someone who has suffered the loss of a long term relationship will probably watch as you lament the end of a two month dalliance and think, "Jeez, what the f*ck is wrong with you? This is a point five. At most." When a girlfriend approaches me in distress after a guy disappears after three dates, I have a hard time swallowing it. I think, "My God woman, he doesn't owe you anything. It is perfectly acceptable for him to disappear. He does not owe you closure! Why do you even need 'closure' after hanging out for maybe 15 hours, tops?"

It goes up from there. Complaining about the break-up of your five year relationship to a divorcée who got ditched after 20+ years for another woman (or man) is like complaining about your Charlie Horse to a double amputee. You're not going to get much sympathy. I once lived in a house with no stove, I'm not terribly sympathetic when someone complains about not having a dishwasher. I imagine that rape victims aren't terribly sympathetic when I tell the story of the creeper who lifted up my skirt and ran his hand up my leg when I was making out with an ex at the beach.

When it comes to sympathy for others in distress, too often we fail to realize that the worst thing you've ever been through is the worst thing you've ever been through. We turn our noses up when someone can't clear a hurdle we've been over a million times on the first try. We forget how hard it was the first time we had to jump it. When someone else flips out over something that doesn't even qualify for our own Suck Scale, we're almost repulsed.

Even if you can conceive of something more horrible then your worst experience, if you've never actually been through it, it doesn't do you any immediate good when it comes to coping with some new brand of Suck. Placing your own suck scale in its proper spot on the Global Scale of Suck can help you get a little perspective - "Women are still dying of AIDS contracted from rapes during the Rwandan genocide, I really need to calm down about losing eight hours of game play in Baldur's Gate because there's no effing Auto-Save in the Underdark." - but perspective doesn't mean you're any less likely to freak out for at least a few minutes when you break a nail, or get dumped, or drop your phone in the toilet.

So when the chick in the next bathroom stall breaks her nail while fishing her phone out of the toilet while blubbering over getting dumped, before you roll your eyes and thank God you're not That Girl, remember- it might be her first time.

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You Don't Understand! The Prada Bag Completes Me!

2010-06-08T15:51:00.000-07:00

For a hot minute after my twenty-first birthday, I was in the middle of a deep post-apocalyptic depression. To fight it, I decided to get myself all done up like a hipster fashion plate at all times. Maybe I thought that if I looked pulled together on the outside, my insides would follow, but I should have remembered the sagelike advice of Oscar Wilde: "She wore far too much rouge last night and not quite enough clothes. That is always a sign of despair in a woman."

The whole thing started innocently enough. Several months before my life blew up, I got it into my head that I was going to be a Famous Fashion Designer (Yeah, no. Bless my little heart.). Part of my scheme involved a major revamp of my wardrobe; I would have to look the part to become a Famous Fashion Designer, right? So I threw over my raggedy blue faux-adidas sweatpants for some cute skirts. Then I upgraded my flip flops to sparkly ballerina flats. Then I swapped out my chapstick & Cover Girl pressed powder for a gigantic collection of high end cosmetic potions. Worst of all, I gave up my Dungeon Master's Guide for back issues of InStyle.

After I snapped, the clothing compulsion stopped having anything to do with some ill-conceived manic career path and morphed into something a bit more insidious; I was fighting the blues by wearing nothing but designer labels and (admittedly) fabulous shoes. The habit began small - a backless club top here, some lace up jeans there, and then tights and rompers and jumpers, and pointy toed cigarette heels and adorable embroidered trench coats - eventually the obsession ballooned to the point where I made bank in the high triple digits a few years later when I finally hawked about half my wardrobe to make rent. At a resting state, I don't give three sh*ts about who designed my pants or whether I can pull off three-inch heels (I can), but I was flailing around in a despondent liquored-up haze and just about the only thing I felt like I had any control over was my wardrobe.

Well, obviously I'm fine. My lipssshtick ish perfect, see?
Wait! Waitaminnit! Where are you taking my keyssh?!

Around the same time, my nannying gig came to an end and I went looking for work. By then I considered myself quite the fashion diva, so I applied to the accessories department of a Major Upscale Department Store. Even with the crazy-eyes I was sporting pretty much constantly in those days, they hired me. And that's the story of how, for about six months, I worked in a Major Upscale Department store shilling sunglasses to two kinds of people:

(a) Filthy rich Orange County denizens who managed to - I assume, judging by how many repeat customers I had - continually misplace $500 sunglasses and,

(b) The Not-So-Filthy rich employees from the mall's boutique stores - mostly female - who regularly spent their entire measly paychecks on Chanel mother-of-pearl tortoise-shell frames.

To ramp up my sales, I came up with some truly ridiculous pitches. I'd convince hapless customers that wearing Real Glasses clearly made me an expert on the proper fit for designer sunglasses. My foolproof move was to select a random pair of frames for the customer, and as she (sometimes he) hunched over the countertop peering into the little round magnification mirror, I'd say,

"Now, do you see here how this frame really goes along with the contour of your eyebrows?"

I felt like an asshole with nearly every sale I rang up - a feeling that absolutely gnawed at me when I knew there was no way my customer could afford whatever crap I'd talked her into buying - but the pay was amazing. I was making more money than I'd ever made before, but because I was working in an upscale department store catering to the Filthy Rich (or the wannabe Filthy Rich) I had to, well, look the part. Luckily my wardrobe was bursting with pieces worth more than what Husband & I spend on our winter electricity bills now. To my credit, most of it was purchased secondhand, but I still shudder to think about how much I spent. The Major Upscale Department store might as well have paid me in store credit. To be surrounded by fabulous, expensive clothes all day and not buy them at a discount? Yeah, right. My wardrobe ballooned. I felt pretty! I was a-okay, y'all!

There was a snag though. Attempting to look like a fashion plate at six in the morning so you can get to work by seven is a far cry from getting hot to go out drinking - especially if you were out partying until long after last call the night before. More than once my poor roommate woke up to my pained howling and teeth gnashing as I burned myself with one of my five curling irons or stabbed myself in the eye with a mascara wand in a still-drunk-from-last night stupor.

One afternoon I climbed up the ladder to dust off the Gucci display. Some dickhead strode by and cat-called me, "Yeah baby! You just stay rigggght there!" I'd had enough. That night I went out and drank my entire paycheck. I didn't show up for work the next morning. Or the next.

I went back to the land of uniformed food service, relieved. Jeans and black t-shirts slowly assumed their new place as my standard uniform. (You'll still won't catch me out in public wearing raggedy sweatpants ever again, so leave Stacy & Clinton out of this.) I started to recognize myself when I looked in the mirror. My friends were relieved when they could talk to me without being bombarded with shoe after handbag after close-cropped blazer as I assaulted them with a manic laundry list of pretty things I'd bought to prove that I was Doing Just Fine, OKAY? Jeez!

Two weeks ago, my sister and I went dress shopping for a family wedding. I've rarely gone shopping since I snapped out of the Dark Cloud of Clothing Compulsion, but while we were out I slipped on a little black dress and a pair of strappy three-inch heels. Turns out I can still work it if I want to.

I just don't need to anymore.

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Shameless Pop: Roof-top Cartoon Dance Party!

2010-06-04T17:27:00.000-07:00

A few days ago, one of the many, many Temptations died, which naturally set me off on a Temptations kick, which set me off on a Motown kick. During said kick, I had a fever dream - a vague memory of Rod Stewart in a yellow suit dancing on cartoon rooftop, with The (animated) Temptations singing back-up. For a minute, I thought I'd finally flipped my sh*t, but no - the dream was real. The year was 1991, b*tches. Music video producers were super excited about green-screening REAL LIFE PEOPLE next to cartoons. (See: Paula Abdul.) Also featured? Cameos from Cartoon Vanilla Ice, Cartoon Elton John, Cartoon Sinead O'Connor, Cartoon Michael Jackson, and freaking Cartoon Madonna.

Also, is it just me or did they pretty much lampoon everyone except The Temptations and Elton?

[More Shameless Pop.]
[I'm an early nineties pop culture whore. You can get all crazy about it on Twitter with me.]

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Unless You're the Cleavers, This is Going to Suck

2010-06-03T08:42:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago - for Science! - I took an informal poll on Facebook about divorce. According to Science, most of the folks I know are children of divorce, but I also know a few people who suffered though "stay together for the kids," some of whom went on to become adult children of divorce themselves. Amid the statistically inevitable chorus of "me toos!" when I write about divorce, at least one victim from the other camp will chime in.

"I agree," said one commenter, "but for the record, I had the "stay together for the kid[s]" parents and that was its own messed up situation.. just sayin' ;)"

Responses like this always surprise me, and I'm never sure how to react. I would never dismiss how difficult it must have been for kids who grew up underneath a barrage of flying flatware, but as a child of the opposite phenomenon, I will never know what it's like to grow up in a bent-but-not-yet-broken home. When someone assures me that my parents' divorce was maybe a sorta kinda Good Thing, I begin to wonder if they are under the impression that I grew up believing that my life would have been better sans divorce.

Certainly I had daydreams about growing up with of some other set of parents. Sometimes I imagined that there was a mix-up at the hospital, that my real parents were blissfully married and Good at Life; when they finally came to get me, it was going to be awesome. Probably all young children of divorce wish for a do-over with different parents, but if I ever entertained fantasies of my parents themselves getting back together, I don't remember it. I was an intelligent enough child to accept my parents' divorce as a matter of no-take-backsies fact, but when my father (who moved out and remarried less than six months after the divorce) attempted to explain to me, with nothing but good intentions I'm sure, that he hadn't moved away from me, I thought it was the stupidest thing my four year old ears had ever heard.

You have physically vacated the premises. That's leaving. Now, if you'll excuse me, She-Ra is on.

Unlike my younger sister, who was shocked right down to her jellie sandals when she learned in pre-school that at one point we'd lived with both of our Real Parents, I could clearly remember a time when the four of us lived together in a dingy little apartment. But even with the few happy memories I have (and I do have them) - the truth is, if my parents had remained together they would have wrought WWIII upon one another. I'd be a whole different brand of screwed up.

My mom and dad might never have gotten married four months into their freshman year of college if not for extenuating circumstances. If my math is correct, they got pregnant with me after dating for just one month. Two years later, there was my sister. As someone who went through a crazed, co-destructive relationship during my own nascent adulthood (which did not result in spawn, thank the deity), I actually understand that my parents never should have been married to begin with. But understanding this as an adult doesn't reach back through time and make it any easier to have had a parent move several states away when I was four years old. To a four year old, it doesn't matter if a parent leaves for good reasons or bad ones. All you know is that you've been left behind.

By the time we grow up, children of divorce usually understand that there was no way for our parents to remain together. When we tell you that our parents' divorces f*cked us up, we don't necessarily want sympathy for the divorce itself. What we really mean is, "One of my parents moved away and it broke me." To their credit, my parents did a mostly solid job of making it clear to me that the divorce wasn't my fault, but again, I was a smart kid and I realized something very early on:

No marriage? No divorce. Do you see where this is going?

Obviously I know that the divorce wasn't my fault, but if my parents had been better acquainted with birth control, or if my mother had opted for (god forbid) an abortion, none of this ever would have happened. I would also totally NOT EXIST. So basically, in order for me (or my sister) to walk this earth at all, we had to be born to two reckless teenagers who had no idea what the hell they were doing. I've had twenty plus years to accept my origin story, even to revel in the absurdity of it, but when I put the timeline together as a little kid it was philosophically overwhelming. Take that sense of being a catalyst (though not a direct cause) and add to it a parent physically absent from my day-to-day life, causing all of the abandonment issues that go along with that, and you can begin to understand why I was such an angry little girl.

It didn't seem like too much to expect grown-ups to stay put and act like grown-ups or to wish for what were, to me, the relatively simple difficulties of a nuclear family. I was sure that a regular family (whatever that is) was something I would never have, at least not until I was an adult with my own children and a husband who would never, ever leave me. (Which is probably why the history of my post-pubescent life is BOYS - I just wanted someone to pick me - but that's another post entirely.)

Ultimately, children of divorce and children of should-have-divorced can never fully empathize with each other, because it's nearly impossible to experience both. A child of divorce thinks, "Well, at least both of your parents were there!" and someone whose parents stayed together to only to fight thinks, "But if one of them had moved out it would have been SO much better!"

Two-twos is NOT AWESOME, I don't care what Baby-sitter's Little Sister said.

So which is worse? Losing a parent or being stuck in a home with two parents who hate each other? Even without parental baiting, children from both camps feel pressured to choose a side. Children of divorce tend to disassociate from their absent parent, which fills a kid up with a wad of guilt and anger far too intense for a four year old to process. For children of "stay together for the kids," my guess is that they resent both parents for their folly; if and when a divorce occurs, they are old enough and emotionally mature enough to be relieved. Probably, they think I should feel relieved that my parents "had the sense" to split when I was little.

Well yes, of course I'm relieved now. I can only imagine the horrors staying together might have wrought! But the thing is, there was no way to win. Staying together, getting a divorce- neither option was going to do my sister or I any good, and I've got a sneaking suspicion that the same is true for people who think their lives would have been better with a divorce. To be quite honest, if it wouldn't negate my entire existence, I wish my parents had just "had the sense" to wear a condom.

But then we wouldn't be having this conversation, would we?

[So, I have a twitter you can follow.]

[Also, you can subscribe and be a minion. When I win at the universe, you can each have an island.]

If I Ever Get to be in a Montage: Passion Pit's "Little Secrets"

2010-06-01T06:47:00.000-07:00

When it comes to music, I have two kinds of friends: the kind who heard this song last year, and the kind who've never heard it and never would without someone from the first group to force it upon them.

"Little Secrets" features the PS22 kids on back-up vocals. Upbeat electro-pop songs showcasing a Winwood-esque riff and a childrens' choir that got famous on the YouTube are apparently aural prozac to me. If I ever overcome enough adversity that I get to star in a montage, I want it to be set to this song, and I want at least one of the clips to be me pumping the air with free weights, wearing legwarmers.

- The words, for those of you who need to know that sort of thing.- Passion Pit's official website.- More Shameless Pop
[I have a twitter. You can subscribe to my posts. HIGHER AND HIGHER AND HIGHER.]

Don't Make Fun of My Sunflower Shoes, I Will Fork You Up

2010-05-31T10:32:00.000-07:00

When I first uncovered this artifact, I couldn't actually remember attacking another little girl with a fork, which was odd. When it comes to my more extreme outbursts of violence as a kid, I can usually remember at least the first and last names of the kids I shanked and, more importantly, why I thought they had it coming. In fifth grade, a girl called me names all through library period and I felt so cornered that I snatched her hand up and chomped down on it. Hard. (We're Facebook friends now. If you're reading this BB, I am so sorry and I think I speak for us both when I say, "Thank God, I didn't give you rabies after all."). In seventh grade, a boy mocked me all through art class for, of all things, being a cheerleader. (Yes, I was cheerleader. Who defected to marching band. More on that later.). Anyway, I smashed that f*cker in the head with a metal barstool. Surreptitious non-violent revenge was a foreign concept to me; the one and only time I took the passive aggressive route instead of morphing into a rampaging bite-sized She-Hulk, I peed my pants.

My existence on this planet is the byproduct of an ill-fated dorm room hookup in the early eighties; I'm not saying that it's bad, I'm just saying that it's so. Some quick blog-stalking and a little mental math will reveal that my parents were younger than I am now when they went their separate ways, divorcing when I was four. My Bio-dad moved out and got remarried almost immediately. My mother went to work full time and I was shunted into daycare. Unlike my younger sister, I was old enough at the time of the divorce to realize that something had gone horribly wrong and I was definitely getting screwed- stop me if you've heard this one before, y'all. Still, spread some serious anxiety issues on top of that fairly commonplace crap-sandwich and you've got a recipe for Crazy Eyes, not to mention an almost psychotic desire to get picked first for kickball.

If I've learned anything from the internet, it's that there are hundreds upon thousands of girls like me, with almost identical stories. We just had no means of finding each other until the word "blog" was invented, so we spent most of our childhoods emotionally hunched in a corner alone, shifty-eyed and hyperventilating. Divorce is bad, y'all. That said, children of divorce are not automatically granted licenses to bite and kick and rage their way through primary school. I'm not saying that being a veritable Tasmanian Devil was awesome or cool or good, I'm just saying that it's what I did, and in retrospect, some of the things I flipped out over are hilarious.

Now that it's been a few days since this old disciplinary note floated to the top of my packrat pile, I've pieced together some memories and I think I may have a good theory as to what transpired during playtime on September 21, 1992. When I started third grade, my mom bought some awesome shoes for me, a pair of lace up Keds covered with a sunflower pattern, because sunflowers were the motif in 1992. My family's financial situation usually precluded Cool, but we could totally afford Keds, and I felt like I'd won the shoe lottery. These were the Manolo Blahniks of the third grade, y'all. I was eager to show them off, but sadly, the big debut for my sweet new shoes didn't exactly go as I'd imagined it would. It turned out that I was the second girl in Mrs. Freemans's third grade class to acquire some sunflower Keds. Shanna Mavery had beaten me to the punch, and she was not pleased.

Wait. Shouldn't we be EXCITED about matching flower shoes?

I couldn't figure out why I was in such big trouble for having the same shoes as Shanna Mavery. I mean, they were just shoes, right? And if we matched, shouldn't we be BEST FRIENDS FOREVER now? Wasn't this a sign from the Best Friends Shoe Gods? Instead of compliments, I got jabs. I felt like a Big Fat Jerk for having nice new shoes. I wanted to take my tainted flower shoes off right there and go barefoot the rest of the day; I wanted to give them a viking funeral and never ever wear them again. The backs of my eyes stung and I felt my face get hot. My stomach rumbled and I snapped.

Yeah. Still not sure where the fork came from.

When I finally calmed down I was deeply ashamed of both my accidental shoe copying and my rage blackout. After shoving the sunflower shoes to the back of my closet, hoping my mother wouldn't notice their disappearance, I crammed my feet into my too-small second grade sneakers for weeks.

Maybe another kid would have told the teacher, told her mom, gotten Shanna Mavery punished for bullying, but in my world, Grown Ups didn't protect you from bullies; they were too busy. They went off to stupid places, like work all day (mom) and New York (dad). I thought I had to handle Shanna Mavery all by myself and no way was I going to be a tattletale on TOP of being a copier. In my maladjusted little head, scratching Shanna Mavery with a conveniently available fork was the only recourse open to me, a perfectly acceptable form of exacting vigilante playground justice and so, like a psychotic mongoose, I struck. But maybe Shanna Mavery thought I'd gotten the matching shoes on purpose, that I'd meant to be a copier, to show her up. Maybe my new shoes shoes had genuinely hurt her eight year old feelings just as surely as her mockery had hurt mine. Maybe in Shanna Mavery's world, I was the mean ol' meanie, the big bad bully weirdo who copied her shoes and then stabbed her with a fork, and if she ever starts her own blog, she'll describe me as a crazy, fork wielding, evil stick-midget, frothing at the mouth, hungry for blood.

WHY DON'T YOU LIKE ME?!?

Y'all ever lose your mind and get stabby over something this silly? What happened? Let's have some mortifying group therapy in the comments!

[I promise not to attack you with a fork on Twitter.]

[There is a facebook page now, if that's what you're into.]

If I Were Good at Life: Morning Edition

2010-05-28T09:21:00.000-07:00

Today, just for funsies, I decided to attempt to wake up about the same time as Husband, and then I actually did it. Now he's really confused and I kind of don't know what's going on, which is why I usually leave being Good at Life up to Husband, who has more practice. But sometimes I like to imagine what my life would be like if I made a serious effort to be Good at It instead of Just Going With It. Based on an extensive survey of me, here are three things I would do in the morning if I suddenly became Good at Life.

Step 1 - I Would Wake Up Before Ten o'Clock. In fact, I would wake up at a truly ungodly hour, so I could brag about it to people who are less Good at Life than me. I'd probably rise and shine at 5:00, which is when the Rooster wakes up. The clock radio would always be set to NPR for our mental enrichment (or to one of the Mexican stations, because Super Estrella is ultra wakey wakey). With a 5 a.m. wake up call, I'd have anywhere from four to five hours to kill before going to work. I could use those hours to do whatever it is people who are Good at Life do (see Step 2). Reason I Might Actually Be Able to Bring Myself to Do This: When I stay up super-late, I kid myself that I'm writing or researching or doing anything I care about even a little bit, but what I'm really doing is this:

...shut up. You've done it.

Step 2 - I Would do Yoga. For years, my mother has insisted that Yoga will make me all bendy and zen (though she's never done yoga, so how would she know?). Mom says that science said that people with mood disorders are better at life if they are bendy-zen (zendy?), but the idea of taking a yoga class in Orange County is downright frightening; mostly because not even over my dead body will I wear a pair of velour sweatpants with a big word on my butt. Also, I do not generally enjoy things that involve moving and effort. But, if I were Good at Life, which I'm not, I would definitely do yoga in the mornings. Reason I Might Actually Be Able to Bring Myself to Do This: Danica McKellar made a Yoga tape. I mean DVD. (For some reason I can't bring myself to think of workout tapes as anything other than tapes, no matter what format they're actually on.) Anyway, I could do Yoga with Winnie Cooper in the privacy of my own living room. That is, I could if I ever work up the maturity to even attempt Step 1 with any sort of regularity. Still, I imagine that productive women are yoga-ing all the time; maybe if I yoga-ed too I'd become Good at Life.

No, sweetie.

Step 3 - I Would Drink a Protein Shake. My usual breakfast is a half-pot of coffee. If I were Good at Life, I'd wait on coffee until after the afternoon jog I would definitely start taking, when I'd order a counterproductive (decaf) frappucino (no whip). In the morning, I would have a delicious protein shake. Besides protein, it would also contain calcium and have other vitamins in it. If I were Good at Life, I'd be drinking this complete breakfast, because even people who are Good at Life know that waffles are a dinner food. Reason I Might Actually Be Able to Bring Myself to Do This: I think protein shakes come in chocolate flavor.

It's got electrolytes!

What other things do well-adjusted people do in the morning? They probably rescue five shelter dogs before I'm even done putting on my pants.

[You see just how not Good at Life I am by how often I Twitter.]

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Karma is a Bitch and I'm Gonna Delete All You Haters! (Please Like Me.)

2010-05-27T15:57:00.000-07:00

Every time I watch a couple implode on Facebook, I take a moment to thank the deity that I was well on my way toward Married-Town when Facebook became so popular that my even my Grandmother joined.

When Failbook debuted, rife with awkward screencaps of Your Mama jokes gone horribly wrong and passive-aggressive teenage tiffs, I thought, "Whoa. People are actually doing this? On Facebook?" But as my friends list has grown, so have the dramz, and it's not just couples. Girl-fights and broken bromances are played out on Facebook too, now that everyone's migrated over from MySpace. And yes, there was a brief phase during which Facebook was open to the public but the youngest of the public clung desperately to their "don't hate the playa" glitter JPEGS. Back then, Facebook was blissfully free from bizarre usernames and snotty, self-important, desperate little barbs disguised as status updates:

"kArMa iS a bItCh. :-) if you do something i don't like even a little, i'm going to smugly tell facebook about karma, which i don't really understand but i'm pretty sure it proves you're wrong and I'm right."

"i'm going to be purging my friends list soon, so if you don't validate me at least once between now and my psychotic deletion fit, we aren't internet friends anymore. next week, i'll freak out and ask why you deleted me."

"i'm so sick of all the fake people. so sick of them, in fact that i'm going to distill my rage into a trite little attention-starved comment on the internet. y'all fake."

"whatever HATERS! now i'm going to make a smiley or an lol so you won't know just how close I am to cutting myself over the fact that you all think i'm a crazy bitch. i am so alone. lol."

"lol can't find my pants! this status update is in no way targeted at my ex-paramour, who i imagine will be insanely jealous. but really he or she is just really creeped out. and possibly relieved."

Why, for the love of reconstructed Double-Stuf Oreos, do people over the legal drinking age play out their short-fuse squabbles on Facebook?

I'm no stranger to Internet Drama. Years ago, College Boyfriend's Best Friend made some nasty, not-so-anonymous livejournal comments in the wake of our final break-up, which, he'd decided, was an audience participation event and as such he ought to valiantly volunteer his services and make it even worse. (Because to do so is a Dude Best Friend's sacred duty. That's just How it Works with bros.) But I, of course, not knowing How It Worked back then, and not being one to put up with that kind of bullsh*t when cornered (I pee on backpacks remember?), retaliated with epic crazy-force. The whole fiasco was so over the top that I couldn't believe anyone with half a brain was actually going along with it.

At a resting, non-agitated state, most of the kids involved, myself included, were not descipable, horrible, nasty people. Maybe someone slipped some seriously psychotic drugs into our illegally-procured Bailey's Irish Creme. Especially mine. Let me tell y'all, I escalated the sh*t out of that hot-mess-livejournal-comment-drama because I believed right up to the end it was all just a huge misunderstanding between friends, something I could clear up if I could just say or do the right thing. It never occurred to me until much later that the drama was probably, in Reality Land, a targeted campaign to get rid of a girl that many of them never actually liked too terribly much to begin with. Years later, I realized that I'd probably misgauged the depth of a few of those friendships - and not because they were fakers who'd deliberately tricked me. I'd just wanted so desperately to have a pack to belong to that I'd convinced myself it was all very Zack Attack, that at the end of the half hour I'd wake up from the bizarro Casey Kasem-narrated nightmare where everyone hated me and we'd all go to the Max.

I was quite mistaken. The whole saga played out on livejournal until the last of us (probably me) finally grew out of it. Not everyone hated me, but the most vocal few did. They seemed to have no idea that I'd ever genuinely cared; perhaps, for them, the feeling had never been mutual. They couldn't figure out why I wouldn't just let it go, why I still cared enough to keep trying, to keep speaking up, to keep trying to fix this broken thing they didn't believe even existed. The whole thing was dehumanizing and mortifying and just...stupid in retrospect, but while livejournal is certainly a semi-public forum, it's nothing compared to Facebook.

My drama unfolded in front of about thirty people on livejournal, not the WHOLE INTERNET and everyone I'd ever met, ever, including my parents and possibly grandparents, and (depending on how well you understand Facebook's privacy settings) everyone else within two social degrees.

If you're a young 'un? I get it. I do. I've been in the dark scary crazy-eyes place too, the place where you think your brilliantly crafted (in my day) AIM away message is going to somehow inspire someone who doesn't like you, or is out to get you, or is completely apathetic toward you to suddenly flip a 180 and be the friend you want them to be. "Oh!," you think, "So-and-so will read my badly punctuated cliché and it will OPEN HER EYES! We'll be holding hands and making daisy chains and skipping merrily through the mall before you know it! And they'll LIKE ME. They'll really like me!" But when you've dug yourself deep enough into the dumps that you think you can control the way people feel about you by posting some insipid little zinger on the internet, you need to either get therapy or lay off the Jagermeister.

But if you're old enough to legally drink, you've got no excuse. Get off the damn internet. Learn to be okay with the fact that sometimes perfectly decent people just plain-old don't like you, and they want you to stop.They aren't fakers or haters, and karma probably isn't going to get them; they just don't care. What's more, they're perfectly within their rights to not care. There is nothing you can do. This isn't just some misunderstanding you can fix with a quick copy and paste from WikiQuote. You are making it worse for yourself. For the love of Mint Milanos, just back away from the keyboard, sweetie. I promise you, you'll be okay.

You don't wanna be around them haters anyway, right?

Have you ever had Internet Drama? Ever posted a snippy status update hoping to inspire someone to change their behavior? Tell me about it in the comments!

[You can passive aggressively @reply me on Twitter.]
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In Which I Take a Revenge Piss

2010-05-26T15:41:00.000-07:00

Back in fourth grade, Taylor Smolt just would not back the f*ck off. He made our after-school program a living hell for me; I'd find myself publicly in tears at least once a week, and even with my big mouth I never could hit him with a scathing enough comeback to make it stop. I'd hide from Taylor in the bathroom, sobbing and wiping my nose raw with horrid industrial-strength public school paper towels, seething with hatred.

Sometimes I want to Google him; to say: "Seriously? What did I ever do to you? I was a weird maladjusted kid, I fully accept that I probably did something to deserve your constant derision, but I'll be damned if I know what it was. Did I swipe something of yours in my klepto phase? Look at you funny? Butt in on a conversation I wasn't cool enough to be in? What?"

Finally, the opportunity for revenge presented itself. Late one afternoon, a small group of us filed into the computer lab, where we perched on sticky plastic chairs in front of boxy, putty-colored Apple IIEs and played the original Oregon Trail. (Did I just carbon-date myself?). I wound up stuck next to Taylor Smolt, so I concentrated real hard on my little 8-bit oxen and did my best ignore Taylor's taunts about my glasses, my overalls, and the fact that I'd named my wagon party after the crew of the Enterprise-D. For nearly forty five minutes, Taylor Smolt found new ways to torture me while I tried my best to focus on hunting more buffalo than I could carry back to the wagon, my heart pounding in fear. I could feel my rage rolling around in my chest, but I just kept going. Most of my wagon party was lost to cholera ("Here Lies Commander Data," we lost him just past Chimney Rock), and I really, really had to pee.

I started rocking the chair back and forth and wiggling, not wanting to leave my seat before I could ford the river to Willamette. Taylor Smolt cackled. I looked down, ready to cry again, preparing to bolt for the bathroom, my eyes stinging, my face hot. And then I noticed Taylor Smolt's backpack underneath my chair.

A diabolical grin stretched itself across my face and I decided to sacrifice what little dignity I had in the name of revenge. Served hot.

Instead of getting up and trotting down the hall to the bathroom, I relaxed. Taylor Smolt's nose began to wrinkle.

"Oh my god! You just peed! You're peeing!"

I defiantly stared him down as I finished my business. When I'd completely emptied my bulging bladder, I got up and shook the last drops off my leg. My white overalls were a little damp, but they were bone dry compared Taylor Smolt's fancy Jansport backpack. I'd tilted my chair for maximum coverage.

Taylor Smolt, not yet fully aware of what I'd done other than embarrass myself, leaned his chair back and howled with cruel glee. He must have smelled blood. And then he looked under my chair.

I'd absolutely baptized his backpack.

Taylor Smolt squealed. The whole room roared with laughter, probably mostly at me, but I didn't care. All I had to do was find somewhere to hide until I could go home or change my clothes, but all of his stuff was going to smell like piss for at least the rest of the day. Maybe longer.

I called this one a win until years later, at YMCA day camp in middle school. Horrible luck placed me in the same group as Taylor Smolt and within an hour I was The Girl Who Peed on Taylor's Backpack Four Years Ago. Once again, I couldn't think of anything to say - and besides, deliberately losing control of your bladder in fourth grade is pretty indefensible. For the rest of the camp session I mostly hid in a corner with my Walkman turned all the way up, listening to a warped Ace of Base tape and glowering.

Adolescent shaming notwithstanding, I'd still go back to 1994 and high five nine-year-old-me for that one small victory in the computer lab. Fourth grade is far too old for pissing yourself, but the look on Taylor Smolt's face when he picked up that urine-soaked backpack and for just a few seconds, couldn't think of anything horrible to say? That felt good.

F*cker.

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Your Mother Got Engaged on a Pirate Ship!

2010-05-25T12:49:00.000-07:00

Ever seen Master & Commander? Well, one day, Husband and I will force our kids to watch it as we hold hands and make googly eyes at each other, because we got engaged aboard this sucker:

Surprising me is difficult. The second I find out you've got a surprise in store, I will annoy you until you tell me what's up your sleeve. (I once shouted "TELL ME! TELL ME! TELLMETELLMETELLME!" at High School Boyfriend for about an hour before he finally caved and revealed...wow, I can't even remember what he was withholding now. God love him.) If that doesn't work, I will snoop until I find out what you're planning. I just feel better when I know what's going on. Is that really so wrong?

Once Husband got it into his head to propose, he quickly saved up for a ring and started formulating a plan. He knew that whisking me off somewhere for a random weekend getaway wouldn't work because I'd smell ENGAGEMENT the second we loaded up the car. But he didn't want to just take a knee in my living room, so he waited for a decoy which, lucky for him, conveniently presented itself.

Husband really loves the symphony. He's a total geek for it; if he happens to own the score to a piece he will bring it with him to a performance and follow along. I've taken him to the symphony for his birthday nearly every year that we've been together. For his 26th birthday, I made plans to combine his symphonic birthday with a trip to San Diego. I planned a pleasant weekend jaunt; nice hotel, symphony on Saturday night, trip to the zoo, fancy birthday dinner. The works, because I am an awesome girlfriend.

On our first day in town, after we'd dropped our bags off at the hotel, we had a few hours to kill. I couldn't choose between heading over to Balboa Park or making our way to the Maritime Museum (to which we'd purchased annual passes during a random day trip a few months before.) Finally, Husband couldn't take the indecision anymore.

"Why don't we just go to the ships!? I love the ships!" he exclaimed with an out of character intensity.

"Really honey?" I said, beaming. "I didn't know you liked the old boats so much! I thought it was just me!"

We poked around in a Soviet Era Submarine, and then, on the deck of the Star of India (the oldest seaworthy tall ship in the world!), I gave then-Boyfriend a big hug. He was shaking like a leaf! For a moment I thought "Oh my gosh, is he going to propose?!" But then he didn't so I thought maybe he was just trembling because I'm super awesome and he was having a moment. We headed over to the next boat in the museum's collection of tall ships, the HMS Surprise, a replica of an 18th century frigate and the real star of Master & Commander.

Because the Surprise is actually a modern ship, unlike the rest of the museum's antique collection, she's a more adaptable exhibit space; moving things around aboard the Surprise doesn't f*ck with history. The Maritime Museum has a wonderful exhibit on piracy in the belly of the Surprise, including a small kids' area with tables and benches outfitted with lots of paper and markers for drawing treasure maps.

I'm five years old, so the second we walked by the markers I poked my tongue out and announced,

"Honey! Let's color! I'ma draw you a picture! But you can't look at it until I'm done!"

"Fine!" he said. "I'm gonna make you one too then."

I made a barrier out of the marker cups and glowered across the table as I colored to make sure he wasn't peeking. A few minutes later, I proudly presented to then-Boyfriend a birthday card with a picture of beloved Christmas-time star Frosty the Snowman exclaiming "Hap-PY Birthday!" I thought it was hilarious.

He didn't laugh. I felt sad and a little dumb.

"Well, I made you a note," he said. I am not going to lie, y'all; his non-reaction to my amazing birthday card had me worried. He slid a folded up bit of paper across the table and I opened it.

Turns out, he was too nervous about this to give a sh*t about my freaky snowman card.

Y'all should note that he improvised this adorable proposal, because he knew surprising me would have been near-impossible. Now-Fiancé had allowed me to plan the entire weekend under the auspices of being a super awesome girlfriend who plans wicked awesome birthdays, when in reality he was trying to find a way to propose without alerting my nose to the scent of surprise.

So there, across from an exhibit on the Pirate Code, on a long wooden bench in the belly of the HMS Surprise, now-Husband gave me a shiny thing and there you have it.

I'm serious about making the kids watch Master & Commander though. It's a moral imperative to mortify your spawn with your obnoxious love story, right?

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The Ruins of the White City: In Which I Become a Mountaineer

2010-05-24T10:56:00.000-07:00

See that teeny tiny blob of taller buildings in the middle? That's Downtown Los Angeles

My Husband, In-Laws, and Wil Wheaton are all at least marginally involved in a conspiracy to turn me into a fit outdoorsy person instead of a cookie-guzzling lazy bones.

As far as I'm concerned, The Great Outdoors is just another place to have beers. Plus, I'm on my feet all day at work so obviously I abhor grueling physical activity without compensation. Yet somehow I found myself halfway up a mountain at ten o'clock on a Saturday morning. Husband and I were perhaps two thousand feet above Los Angeles without cookies. Or beer. Or even water. (Whoops.) But because I love Husband with the heat of a thousand twin suns, I'd woken up before seven in the morning (and we all know how much I love that) to hike with him to the Ruins of the White City in Alta Dena.

You can all thank Wil Wheaton for landing me in this predicament. A few weeks ago, in order to gently remind Husband how awesome I am just in case he forgot, I linked him to a post Wheaton wrote about his not-so-geeky wife. (Ann strikes me as mondo-awesome, by the way. I just wanted Husband to appreciate that I so would have stood in the Free Comic Book Day line. Whether he liked it or not.) Husband skimmed over most of the piece, but he latched on to the Wheatons' picnic upon Echo Mountain because the "hiked up to the old White City" part caught his eye. Husband started having visions of Gondor.

(re-enactment of Google Chatz)

Husband: CAN WE GO ON THAT? PLEASE HONEY? I wanna see the Ruins!

Margaret: Sure! That sounds cool!

Because Husband never gets terribly worked up about things (that's my job), I didn't Google before I agreed to schlep up what turned out to be a two and a half mile trail. (Whoops.) But I promised, so I woke up at 6:34 a.m. on a Saturday and I wore shorts. (A thousand twin suns, y'all.)

After we arrived, we followed what we thought was the right trail for about fifteen minutes before we realized that there was NO WAY the maintenance road we were on could possibly connect to the switchbacks we could see snaking up the mountain on the other side of the canyon. Where people were hiking. (Whoops.) We doubled back, found the right trail, and set off. Again.

The going wasn't so hard; the first mile was downright easy. But just before we hit the two mile marker, I became convinced I was going to fall off the mountain or drop dead because my legs had turned to rock. I guess hikers coming down a mountain LOVE to say "good morning" to the people going up, but after the first mile I couldn't manage much more than a curt nod in return. Couldn't these people tell I was at death's door?

I huffed and puffed and regretted not having more than a cup of coffee and half of a leftover Starbucks cinnamon roll for breakfast.

"Honey, I'm gonna die!" I whimpered.

"Sweetie, we can always turn around..."

"No! I'm a winner! I didn't get up at no 6:34 and I didn't hike up no stinkin' hill to not see me some ruint-up buildings!"

"Winner, huh?"

"Yes. I'm totally a winner!" I declared as I marched up a particularly steep incline. "I still might die though."

"Well, just remember, this is Wil Wheaton's fault. Also, I think you meant 'whiner.'"

But coming down the trail as we went ascended were old ladies, teeny boppers and toddlers. There was no way I was about to let a bunch of old people, Miley Cyrus clones, and some BABIES show me up. And then we hit the two mile marker. And the trail got steeper.

"DAMN YOU WHEATON!" I shouted into the canyon.

The last half mile is a blur, but we made it to the ruins after hiking two and a half miles in just under an hour and a half. As I watched the other hikers picnicking, I instantly regretted thinking we'd just grab lunch once we got back down the mountain. Starving, Husband and I poked around the ruins of the early 20th century Alpine Lodge Resort.

Every hiking review site ever says you're supposed to shout into this old echo phone, but Husband reads instructions. You're supposed to listen through it. The more you know.

Not quite Gondor, but still pretty cool.

You can even hike another two miles up to some place called Inspiration Point, where the view goes for miles and miles in any direction. (We did not attempt this on Saturday.) What husband doesn't realize is now that I've hiked most of the way up a mountain and not-died, I consider myself a hiker. He has created a monster. Hiking will be my new Thing I Am The Most Interested In for about six months.

I'll need some fancy hiker boots and a GPS and maybe a walking stick, because I guess people do something called "training for Half Dome" and if there's anything I love, it's bragging rights! I spent most of the wee hours of last night googling local trails and getting myself all worked up, but I don't want to be a hiker hiker. I don't want Husband to grow up to be one of those eerily fit old guys with a long scraggly beard and a baseball cap with a flap on the back, you know?

I grew up in North Carolina; crowding and congestion are the two things I've hated the most about Southern California since arriving here ten years ago. I wish I'd realized sooner that all I needed to do to escape was head up, rather than east.

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I win at mountain!