My Secret Identity

So I have failed to blog regularly due to the fact that I am actually a super hero and have actual responsibilities saving the world and all… but until the next time,

Go check out this comic: http://www.bunny-comic.com/1436.html

A Strange Feeling

I really do not have much to say other than:

1) I am too old for this no sleep, social calendar thing that I seem to be partaking in lately.

2) It’s not like I haven’t been doing this school thing for the past 16 years of my life, and yet this first day of school feels so foreign.  I almost feel like I have been out in the real world for years, and I am returning to this college thing as a veteran adult, looking at the younglings like I don’t quite fit in.  Or perhaps it’s just because I am sitting in the business school where I very obviously don’t fit in. Maybe the universe will realign itself when I am visiting the usual buildings that I have frequented in the past.

EM-ARE-EYE

So tomorrow I will be getting an MRI, having an MRI, undergoing an MRI…whatever. The point is me=MRI tomorrow for participation credit in a PSYC study, researching who knows what.  Especially since a scan of the inside of my brain will produce two possible results:

1) Revealing little aliens operating my body from inside my brain, just waiting for the perfect moment to burst out and take over the world. (This could explain the Pinky and the Brain thing-don’t worry, it’s a YouTube reference)

2) A single, lone tumbleweed.

en lieu of: 25 things you thought you wanted to know about me (but don’t).

So apparently the Facebook spam “ 25 things you thought you wanted to know about me (but don’t)” has inevitably arrived at my proverbial doorstep–twice actually.  And while I am sure that I consist of far more than 25 idiosyncrasies, the stubborn smart-ass within requires me to not participate in this little chain.  Nevertheless, I will publish the most current list of my 10 life goals, i.e. things that I will accomplish sometime in the hopefully not-so-distant future.

1. Live at The Lofts @ Hollywood and Vine
2. Live in Baden Baden, Germany
3. Stay for an extended time in one of the private bungalows at the Bellagio
4. Own a rear-engine car, i.e. a Ferrari or the new Audi
5. Novel(s) published
6. Poems published
7. Work as an editor of a magazine, i.e. Flaunt or something similar
8. Learn German
9. Own at least one Alexander McQueen dress
10. *

A Question of Maturity

The point at which good advice is accepted and applied is not necessarily a certain level of maturity, but rather a breaking point–a point of realization.  

Quite some time ago my aunt, with whom I am not that close, shared valuable advice with me; however, at that time I was not at the breaking point that would allow me to listen and heed her words.  I was on the phone with two of my drunken friends from early high school years while she overheard my end of the conversation.  I am not sure what she deduced from half of a phone call, but I do know that whatever her assumptions, they were bad.  She did not approve of the people with whom I was fraternizing.  After ending the conversation with my friends, I awarded her disapproving glance with a casual “My friends are wild”.  I did not mean that they were wild in a negative manner, such as irresponsible or inappropriate, but rather that they were entertaining .  Primarily they entertained me. She replied, as I will remember indefinitely, “What is important when choosing friends is their character”.  

Years later, tonight specifically, I realize the magnitude of her words.  Friends are not for entertainment, they are for support.  I cannot say this thought has never entered my mind since the beginnings of our friendships.  Character.  The first time I questioned the presence of this quality I should have resolved to end it there.  I did actually–try.  I have tried numerous times to sever the likes of you from my life, remove the poison completely, but each time I am suckered into the concord effect; each time I think that after putting so many years, time, and effort into this broken friendship, throwing it away would be a waste.  

But I will be deceived no longer.

You may call my actions immature, but the ironic fact is that neither of you even understood what I meant by “goodbye”.  You may think this temporary–”oh she’s pissed, she’s fed up”–and expect me to return the next day as if nothing ever happened, but I will be taken for granted no longer.

Apologies stand meaningless without sincerity, and they are certainly worthless when the hollow words change nothing.  I do not want an apology.  I do not even want you to change, contrary to popular belief.  Really, I would not change or wish change upon the two of you.

I just want out.  I want to spend my time with my friends who have character, upstanding character.  Friends from whom I learn.  Friends who allow me to grow.  People who do not leave me hurt and would never constantly berate me the way that you do, joking or not.  Because everyone knows you are not actually joking.

You see I really was not acting immature by giving you the “cold shoulder”.  That was not even a cold shoulder, rather I reached the breaking point of realization that what I do or say really does not matter, and my actions proved the point.  You did not even notice that I had ceased communication until the fact was pointed out to you, despite my blatant, complete silence the entire night.

You do not care what I have to say.  You do not care about what I think.  You berate me in every aspect possible: my intelligence, my personality, my feelings, my capabilities, my appearance.  You do not respect my possessions.  You appreciate neither my company nor my friendship.

I am at that breaking point where I can no longer see any reason to endure the aforementioned abuse.  You see the truly, truly ironic part about this whole situation is that the majority of all of my problems revolve around my trust issues–the trust issues that became instilled within me because of this SAME FUCKING CIRCUMSTANCE.  My heart was broken, not by a lover, but by my best friend.  This was forever ago.  Yet I still cannot put all of my trust into one person, no matter their kindness or character.  It is impossible for me to completely open up to any one single person.  Do you want to know why I have intimacy issues? BECAUSE I NEVER LEARNED.  

I never changed.  I make the same repetitive mistake like some dumbass on the shallow end of the learning curve.  Which is why I am not asking you to change.  I am the one who needs to change.

I change today.  Today at 3:18 am I change, not because I am immature, as this just might be the smartest and most mature decision I have made in awhile, but because I have reached the breaking point.  I deserve friends who act as such.  I deserve friends with character.

I Bite My Thumb at Thee*

One of my many faults (gasp! I am not perfect, oh no!) is that I clutch onto grudges with my sticky, pissy little fingers until my dying day, and I mull over these grudges and their circumstances continuously until they are imprinted into my mind the same as should be the alphabet.  Lately, I have been thinking about the time I was rebuked for my sarcastic attitude.  Nay, not sarcastic attitude, but more like a sarcastic sense of humor with a spicy touch of sardonicism.

When asked to characterize the perfect significant other or good friend, I am pretty sure that no one would prefer for the person to LACK a sense of humor.  Perhaps not always the first quality listed, it usually makes the cut…eventually following rich, handsome, boobs, hot, or dependable, nice, and fun.  However, not all humorous sixth senses register as equal on the laugh-o-meter, and the preferred type of funny remains a subjective matter.  Not everyone prefers puns to sarcasm or corny jokes to references, but does that mean that a quantitative population of people could entirely dislike a specific type of humor, i.e. sarcasm and sardonicism?   

Apparently so since Thomas Carlyle, a nineteenth Scottish historian, claimed, “Sarcasm is the language of the devil, for which reason I have long since so good as denounced it.”  Ouch.  Not strongly opinionated at all.

I have had run-ins with quite a few people who find my comments disrespectful and offensive.  Unfortunately I cannot remember the exact wording of the harsh words spoken to me in my tender junior high years, but I do remember the meanie was a high school boy quite unimpressed by my repartee.  We were at a pool party, and I believe I might have said something to the effect of “Ha! That was an amazing hit” in reference to his attempted serve over a volleyball net.  He said something similar to “You should really stop it with the sarcasm.  People don’t like it, and it’s rude.”

This really hurt.  He did not allude to one person’s opinion of my humor, but people’s opinions.  He generalized.  I was mature, smart, and confident enough to recognize the generalization, but I could not completely fend off the broken feelings that usually accompany being told that a large fraction of one’s personality is undesirable.  Sarcasm and sardonicism are not lousy tricks I pull from my back pocket in a desperate moment; they define me, a part of me that I strongly embrace, and are heavily interwoven into my literary voice.

Furthermore, my automatically generated commentary spews from my brain to mouth for the sole purpose of intellectual humor, not to degrade or belittle by any means.  After all, had I wanted to be condescending, I could have just recounted the truth: “That serve sucked.”  But this judgmental boy brings to question the general public’s perception of sarcasm.  Ignoring sardonicism for ease of discussion and narrowing our lens to that of sarcasm, is it considered offensive and disrespectful outside of the snotty collegiate student realm?

Perhaps the perspective changes between generations or regions, same as addressing one’s elders as “sir” and “ma’am”.  Truly in my opinion, calling a woman “ma’am” should be considered the cruelest of all insults, considering the person could not bother to take the time to pronounce the full “madam”.  I obviously respond only to “mademoiselle”.  This demonstrates (loosely) that the rhetoric of respect or lack thereof exists in the eye of the beholder.  Language remains a flexible vehicle of communication, traveling extensively across endless terrain and acquiring a plethora of idioms along the way.  As the vernacular changes, so does the expression of humor.  Nevertheless, in this new generation to which I belong, I still seem to find resistance to my form of wit.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky defined sarcasm as the “last refuge of modest and chaste-souled people when the privacy of their soul is coarsely and intrusively invaded”.  I do not disagree that some may resort to sarcastic remarks for this purpose, but I honestly cannot recall an instance that I used sarcasm in this manner.  As natural as sarcasm comes to me, I use it flippantly not defensively.  But I cannot speak for the whole of the planet on the common use of sarcasm.  Perhaps majority of the people fall onto sarcasm in desperation for a red herring or to belittle another.  Perhaps the general motive is to be acerbic rather than cunning.  In fact the Sarcasm Society boldly describes their namesake as such:

never [...] gentle or endearing, but rather as caustic and bitter, describing situations, persons, or things in a derogatory way in order to be funny. Appropriately, the derivations for this brutal form of wit come from the Latin ’sarcasmus,” which stems from the Greek “sarkasmos” and “sarkazein” which means literally “to bite the lips in rage.” [...] Throughout much of history sarcasm was considered a “lower form” of wit because it was considered so unabashedly disrespectful to the person or object being described.

 

 

Nevertheless, assuming the existence of proper context clues, should the phrasing of intentions be judged if the intentions themselves are pure?  I cannot answer this question, and I have no right to attempt as much.  I can promise, though, that the insanely loud sarcastic and sardonic demon controlling the neural communication wires of my brain will never surrender to an alternate form of humor.  Or perhaps I should move to Britain, where people celebrate an extensive history of sarcasm.  

*Not that I consider Shakespeare to be “urban” but this phrase is actually in the Urban Dictionary.  And you thought I failed to include UD in this post. Ha! And yes, I know that is not the actual line.  

Mad Hatter

It has now become official: Urbandictionary.com has killed my dreams, betrayed me, and permanently crippled my preferred vocabulary.  I can no longer flippantly and obsessively rely on the term “mad hatter” at my convenience for describing any trippy, psychedelic, or curious observations.  Truly I have relied on the phrase far too extensively; however, I do not appreciate now having to go cold turkey off the term.
  

Or perhaps I should blame the urban public and its constant alterations of contextual meanings.   So many common words in the English language have acquired so many different vernacular meanings, all entirely unrelated to their proper denotations, that even natively speaking English-folk can no longer properly and efficiently communicate.  Notice the subtle difference between “the shit” and “is shit”.  Since when does “deface” pertain to an online action rather than a physical show of disrespect, i.e. destroying with intention?  No, no.  “Deface” means to defriend someone on Facebook.
 

Wait.  Did I just use a previously non-existent word (defriend) and misuse the word friend?  You see, the term friend at one time applied to a person known extremely well and considered loyal, fun, and dependable.  However, with the dawn of Facebook, the term has been devalued to mere “acquaintance” or “person convenient to make me look popular like I have, like a ton of friends”.
 

But I digress.  This pertains to “mad hatter”.  Once such an inspiring character, full of endless literary opportunities, the term now flatly refers to a hand job.  Actually, a bad hand job.  Not even a good one.  In fact the hand job in question, of course called a mad hatter, goes something like this according to Urban Dictionary: “A poorly performed handjob. Usually by a girl who says she is experienced. Yet, in actuality, she jerks you off like a crazed sea dragon.”  I myself, as a chick, have never received a “hand job” nonetheless a bad one; however, I can see where the crazed sea dragon would be somewhat of a turn off.
 

If this were not a horrid enough redefining of my precious, ALAS! Urban Dictionary has provided yet another defacement of the term:

“In this situation, a man would be in the process of getting head from his Partner, while he is standing and she is on her knees. Right before ejaculation the man would pull out, cum in her eyes, sit on top of her head and drop a deuce.

Last night I picked up this ho at the club and when she was giving me head I pulled off a mad hatter.”

See this is the maddening part of it all, the term “mad hatter” is not even necessary for this situation.  This event already has a name-”Blumpkins”.  Also, a beauty of the English language: numerous and never-ending supplies of words, all to describe the same phenomenon.
 

Yes, I realize Urban Dictionary does not fully deserve the blame.  The convergence of all languages helped form the English language, thus providing multiple words with the same meaning.  This I know.  I also know that pop culture leads to references that lend to the rewriting of pages and pages within our dictionary bible.  Did you like my aforementioned “my precious” reference?  Lord of the Rings has officially contributed to our language, our vernacular; however, I must note that the definitions provided on Urban Dictionary for this term are shoddy at best.
 

Nevertheless, for one cause or for all, the term “mad hatter” has become stricken from my vocabulary archives for fear of a misinterpretation.  Contextual clues do not always save the day, especially when the phrase is employed in a vague manner, as I usually intend.  Nor does the typical accompanying of sarcasm. 
 

Let it be known that I refer not to a blumpkin when I say that Urban Dictionary and our modern tailoring of the English language have some mad hatter connotations.

 

 

 

 

From the Desk of an Invalid

I have come to realize that I very much take for granted the small things.  Like the ability to chew without thinking about chewing.  Or eating whatever I prefer.  Or the choice to toss and turn and sleep on my stomach with my face buried into the pillow if my subconscious so chooses.  As a newly rendered invalid due to the removal of four impacted wisdom teeth, I am feeling somewhat less wise, grossly unsettled, and agitated as hell.  Thus, if I was not fighting a borderline precarious state already, I am now blatantly and hopelessly stuck in the middle of a horrible funk.  Everything is too much effort, and life tastes as foul as the blood in my mouth.

I have been here before; no doubt this is anything but uncharted territory, but the external and environmental stressors certainly do not help when coupled with the pre-existing internal tumult.  I am up.  I am down.  Every moment is a struggle between a good day and a bad.  The only constant factor remains my lack of belief in myself.  I even view this blog as a failure.  As demonstrated by the calendar, much time has passed since my last post.  Each time I attempt to write, as my pen meets with paper, my words fall flat, and I am forced with the realization that they are unimportant, insignificant.  No one cares.  And if no one cares, why bother to record the monologue?

Straws

Black straws look so much more classy than clear (or gasp! white straws, eek with stripes).