I've got the Late-Twenties-Staring-At-The-Thirties Blues

If we knew, when we began, what it would be like, would we keep going? Would we continue to grow and mature and reach for each birthday, each accomplishment, each stage completed like some kind of live-action Mario Bros with crappy bosses but good graphics?

Look at the facts; the older we get, the less impressed we are with the little miracles of daily life, the more mundane our daily activities become, the more responsibilities we acquire with fewer fun and exciting new rewards. It really is all like a crappy Mario Bros game! Follow me on this one. It all starts out so new and exciting, because you’ve never seen any of this before, and each mushroom is a thrill, each minor accomplishment is high-five worthy, and the first time you best a major foe, achieve something major, the payout is phenomenal. And then you go to the next level. There are new things, it’s still interesting, but the same shit from the last stage in life doesn’t thrill you the way it used to. You need fireballs now; just jumping on your foes isn’t interesting enough. And the challenges have to become bigger, more complex to hold your interest and challenge you. But at the end you still get fireworks, you still get a sense of accomplishment, you still feel like high fiving because you are moving forward on to bigger and better things.
But this is Mario Bros/Life. Eventually, around the fifth or sixth level, you realize there’s a recognizable pattern to all of this, and you figure out how to make your way through on auto pilot. I’m not saying there aren’t still challenges, you may even have to repeat a level once in a while, but the thrill is, as the song says, gone. There are no more major surprises, you have seen everything your pixilated world can offer, and rearranging it doesn’t make it new. You still high-five after an accomplishment, but your heart’s not in it because you know there’s going to be another one in due time. And you know there’s no magic to success, you just figure out the pattern and beat it and move on. It all becomes hollow and meaningless; you’ve seen the fireworks one hundred times and are no longer impressed, and even the tiny pixilated princess doesn’t thrill you. So you just wait for it all to end, because nothing will ever take you back to that level of excitement you felt the first time you played the first level, and saw it all with new eyes.

Who knew a chubby Italian plumber in red overalls could be so dark, right? Or is that just me?

Grammar Nazi

Now that I have a cell phone, I am forced to stop complaining about most to the viral annoyances brought forcefully into contemporary culture via the Typhoid Mary that is text messaging. I now text while walking, shopping, talking, driving, etc, and begrudgingly absorb all the disgusted looks I earn, only mildly nostalgic for the days when I gave those same looks to others.

BUT I will not abide the further degradation of the English language, especially that of the written. It does not take that much longer to write "are" than "R". Are those two button clicks really going to make or break your life's efficiency? Wigger please.

The problem is the written word, and grammar in general, is already facing such shocking abuse. I have, in my still short life, seen the accepted spelling of the word "okay" shift to "ok", which while succinct, is just shamefully lazy and a clear act of submission. The shift is still not complete; I find my Mozilla browser still recognizes the full spelling as correct, and the abbreviation as incorrect. But I know Word prefers the two-letter spelling, and I can't help but always remember cartoonist Bill Watterson's story of an editor changing his text from the correct spelling of okay to the abbreviation. I know it's incredibly pretentious, but I empathize with his outrage.

For me, though, the largest outrage is the increasingly flagrant abuse of the apostrophe. Let me begin this rant by disclosing that I have often had difficulty remembering when it was appropriate to use and apostrophe with "its". You know, until I managed to just remember the rule. However, the growing use of an apostrophe when pluralizing anything is astonishing and sick-making. Honestly. It is not that difficult, we all learned this in elementary school. Apostrophes are for possession and contractions. period. Except for with it's and its, but really. There is never any need to use an apostrophe when writing the word "balls", as in "Your usage of the written word sucks balls".
Except, I guess, for the rare situation when you would write something like, "That ball's vein looks like it's going to burst." But really, how often does someone write that? This might be the first time in the history of the written word. Maybe.

I don't have any succinct way to wrap this all up. I suppose with more time I might come up with another mildly funny point, then join all my points into a neat bouquet of bitter rage and present them with a final thought, but I've been on hold with the county of Los Angeles for a full 27 minutes now, and i think my head may explode from the repetitive stress of listening to their Muzak over and over.
My whatever god they pray to have mercy on their souls. And mine.

The Sizzler

It is so hot here. Why do people put cities in the desert? Don’t they realize that the heat and spiky plants are the universe’s way of telling people to go home, don’t build a resort community here?

To make matters worse, I still feel pretty awkward. I mean, it’s been a nice day, but I feel like every conversation is a balancing act of sarcasm and saccharine. I am human sweet and sour pork. Or at the very least, conversational sweet and sour pork. What am I doing here.

He asks where I want to eat. I scan the approaching horizon for signs of decent food. Keep scanning, keep scanning. He offers up options, Mc Donald’s, Taco Bell, Wendy’s. Tired of all the games, I finally say it flat out, “no where that has a drive through, please”. So we settle on Sizzler. I vaguely remember going to a Sizzler when I was about 7 years old. We were on the way home from a wedding, and I was sick, and my mom and I spent about 35 minutes in the bathroom trying to get me to swallow an aspirin or a Tylenol or something. I think, how bad can it be? Plus, I feel like a princess and a whiner for turning down perfectly pleasant dinning establishments like Jack in The Box in favor of “real food”.

So we walk in, order of the giant menu posted on the wall and they both sneak off to the bathroom to wash our hands. Apparently you now pay before you sit at Sizzler, so when I come out of the bathroom first ( he is such a girl, always takes longer in the bathroom than me), the girl looks at me like I’m a little dim. Part of me, the sweaty tired, I could be having a beer or at least wearing shorts part of me, wants to snark at her that I haven’t had a job that requires a name tag since becoming old enough to buy beer, but the other part of my smiles apologetically and whips out my debit card to pay the thirty dollars for what I presume will be rubbery meat and greasy, fat soaked sides. Did you know Sizzler doesn’t have much of a vegetarian menu? I go to sit down as he comes out, confused. So I explain what just happened and he scoffs. Why did you do that? I was going to pay! You just wasted your money! He calls me stupid, which is what he does when he thinks he’s right and I’m wrong, and for some reason, something in me snaps, and I turn my head so he can’t tell that I’m suddenly holding back tears. In Sizzler. In the middle of the desert. Surrounded by early-bird special with a side of diabetes types. I tell him he needs to not call me stupid anymore, and he falls back, suddenly realizing I’m not enjoying the repartee anymore. I don’t mean it like that, he says. That’s just what I say. English is my third language, you know. I know. I tell him to forget it and go get a salad from the salad bar, which also contains nacho cheese, naturally.

As I sit down, he says, see? This is why we’ll never work in the long run.

I know. We’re just too different. I think we can be great friends, and we connect in other ways, but I don’t think we’re meant to be together.

I didn’t expect this all to happen so soon. I thought he was pulling away, but I really didn’t think we’d have this conversations this way, so I say my peace into my napkin, eyes down and feigning any strength I don’t have handy to be as adult in this as he is. It’s cool, I knew it would happen eventually. Then I look up.

Oh shit.

His eyes are wide. I have never seen this look before. He looks…wounded.

I was joking. Are you serious? Oh my god, you’re serious.

Oh shit. What do you say to that? What do I say to that? There’s no way to back away quietly; this is like asking a fat chick when she’s due, you can’t back up and pull your foot out of your mouth, you have to just fall head first into the pile of shit you laid out for yourself.

So I say something about how much I care about him, but how I don’t see us ending up together. I have never seen him like this. I will probably never see him this vulnerable again. This thought haunts me.

Do you think I won’t be a good father?

No! Of course not! I know you will be a fabulous father.

How long have you felt like this?

Um...

All I keep thinking is, don’t say a couple of weeks, you asshole. Don’t say since we fought over fingernails and you told me we were done and then waited for my call. Fight the melodrama because I think you are doing something very bad here. Okay, I don’t actually think it. I feel it as I stare at my chicken breast soaking in its “lemon herb sauce”.

A couple of days.

Since when?

I don’t know.

HOURS OF SILENCE PASS.

Maybe longer than a couple of days.

Yeah, I guess so.

Now my heart is breaking. He starts talking about how he was getting closer, he was about to open up. He wanted to come to thanksgiving, meet my family, have me meet his. He thought we were moving to the next level.

I have to move. I can’t do this across a sticky Formica table with the surf and turf special and my crappy chicken on it. I sit next to him. I want to hold him. I start to cry. I tell him I care about him, but I thought he was getting tired of me. I thought he was sick of me.

He doesn’t seem to believe that, he keeps asking for more reasons why. He also wants to know why I’m crying; I’m the one getting dumped, he says.

I’m not dumping you!

Whatever you want to call it.

But I still care about you, I still want to spend time with you…

This is so bad, it’s clearly going nowhere. I would not have believed it possible, but my chicken now looks even less appetizing. This is the second time in my entire life a man has made me lose my appetite. That is not a good sign. What if I am screwing everything up, and he is the one? How could I know, why couldn't I see that he was getting serious? How did I ignore the jokes about playing house and having a family this morning, and focus on the joke about paying for lunch? What the hell is wrong with me?

I swear, if the waitress comes by one more time to ask us how everything is, I am going to shove my barely-serrated steak knife down her perky little throat.
He tells her we’re fine, charming as always. Then he turns to me and tells me he doesn’t think he likes Sizzler anymore. I actually think the words, “well, at least we were eating somewhere shitty when this happened. At least I didn’t ruin his favorite sushi place”. I think this may make me even more of an asshole. I may be the world's biggest ass hole. Ever. I feel so shitty, and it’s all my own doing. I want to hug him and hold him and cry and have him hit me to get some of his frustrations out, but I know that only one of those things is likely to happen. Me crying. Later. Alone in my car as I spend the one hour drive thinking about what I’ve done.

We talk more on the way back to Palm Springs. He tries to keep it light, after a while, talking about architecture and pointing things out to me. Already, he’s regaining his calm, his composure. He’s building himself back up, filling in any holes I may have made faster than I can count the holes I’m suddenly find erupting in me. How did this even happen? This can’t be real. I try to make sense of it, talking to him, but different words seem to convey the same things over and over and he doesn’t want to talk about it anymore.

I get it. There are still holes he’ll need to fill in before he can look at me again. He has to rebuild the façade, pull back from the surface, and begin treating me like everyone else. I realize then how much I am going to miss seeing him, his soft, underneath parts. I can’t believe how much I took for granted.

I notice he is quickly shifting the radio from station to station. Why are all songs invariably about love? It’s like an ongoing joke the happy play on the miserable. Passive aggressive bastards.

I want to make him stay with me in the house. I want to talk, to make it go away. I want him to never cover up the person I saw staring at me, wide eyed and crushed, and I want to kiss it and make it better and hold him until we fall asleep together, tear soaked, red eyed, and puffy. I want to take it all back, make it better, start over, start from here.
I also want to kick him and myself for not understanding each other. I thought he was growing disdainful, and he was falling in love. What the fuck is up with that.

This is the stuff of black comedies. If my life were a movie, Julia Roberts would not even cameo as the friend. I would be played by the chick from “In Her Shoes”, or Shannyn Sossamon. He would be played by Colin Farrel, and eventually fall in love with a blonde pair of legs with perfect hair, nails, and skin. She would be smart, but not too smart, and would always laugh at his jokes and know confidently that they were a good match. When he looked in the mirror with her and said, “we make a good looking couple”, she would smile knowingly, and then kiss him softly on the check in a way that enticed him to kiss her back. Cut to love making scene. Actually, the movie would be about him, and I would be played by Molly Shannon in a hilarious build-up to the real love story. This isn’t even my story.

God, could I feel any more sorry for myself? Pity is so easy to wear, but it’s really incredibly unflattering. Pity is the sweat pants I’ve had since high school, covered with hair dye and paint and full of holes. Not meant for the public.


He doesn’t let me stay, he says he has to leave, go back to work, and he doesn’t want to talk anymore. He says he doesn’t know what else he might say.
I feel that strange, dirty mix of fear and excitement and the idea of him showing anger towards me. But mostly I’m just sad. We hug. Hard. Long. Sweet. It’s a goodbye hug, there is no other way to interpret it. I have had many goodbye hugs in my life, I know them. I am a pro at good-bye hugs. I try to make it memorable.

I now realize I can’t imagine not going to sleep at his house in two or three nights. How will I sleep?

We get into separate cars. I don’t know whether to wave or not. How do you wave at a moment like this? But I don’t want to leave. I want to roll down the window and say something smart, sassy, perfect, that will erase everything else I’ve said today. Erase all the moodiness I’ve carried over the last two weeks. Because nothing cures broken hearts and dreams like a knock knock joke told at a stop sign in the desert between two cars.

It is truly a miracle anyone sleeps with me ever, let alone considers being in a relationship with me.


As soon as I pull on to the freeway, the loud, ugly, howling cry comes out. I’d like to say it slipped out, because I wasn’t expecting it, but things that big and loud don’t slip. It comes tumbling out of my mouth like a Saint Bernard running down stairs.

What have I done?

Upside Down and Inside Out

How, exactly, is one supposed to judge the direction of one's life? I ask because, to me, it seems like life is lived on one of those fabulous carnival rides that's constantly shifting, trying to throw you off your balance. Which is good, in that life is never boring, and bad, in that it can be incredibly easy to loose your perspective.

I want a quiet place to sit and think, clear my head, and try to find the base of this whirling ride called life so that I can be sure, at the lease, which way up is. Because then, at least, I;d know whether I was standing on my feet or on my head. Unfortunately modern life seems to be short on quiet, firm places where you can watch the flow of time stretch out in front of you for a few minutes and regain your bearings.

Sometimes I think introspection is one of those fabulous double-edged swords, like manic depression, that gives great gifts at great costs. Or maybe that's just another one of those life things. Good with the bad, light with the dark, smooth creamy goodness with loads of saturated fat.

I am sitting at the computer at 12:30 am in my moms house, researching bladder cancer. Ah, the carefree life of a swinging single 25-year-old gal. That life can suddenly pile so very much on a person who was, by all accounts, living a quite mundane life not long before (even if i was living said mundane life in a loud, fun way) , is very disturbing. If it didn't make so much sense in a rain-on-your-wedding-day kind of way, I'd find it positively tragic. But, fortunately, this is the stuff of a moving, powerful, and growth inspiring life. wheee.

my version of How to LOVE the new person in your life


Getting to love your step-mom (or bonus mom….or the chick your dad married) is like getting to know that one camp counselor you hated until your friend, who you’ve known for days, made you hang with her.
Basically, what I’m trying to say, is that no matter how badly you want to hate her ( or no matter how strong your irrationally fears are) you will eventually, no matter how much time it take, get down to the person inside the evil archetype you’ve spent you’re recent life hating and realize that this is someone who loves you father, and whom your father loves, and learn to shut the fuck up and appreciate the little gifts life send your way even when you don’t want it…..

Feminesto

I was reading recently about the inception of the second wave of feminism. How the ( attempted) burning of bras, aprons, and other implements of patriarchal oppression finally brought the political home to meet the personal, the private. And how that wedding of the political to the personal made the movement powerful, loaded it with the passion women have used for years to fuel and endure their personal lives, whatever their choices and options. The author went on to explain how, for third wave feminists, this marriage (if you’ll pardon my usage) of personal and political was less clear, less distinct. The author implied that the difference between second and third wave feminists was the view that the personal was in fact political.

And then I started thinking about my own life, my own goals. I was probably a feminist before I knew what the word was, thanks to the strong women in my life and my family, and the loving and sensitive men around me. I have been fortunate enough to have never felt the dark forces of patriarchy imposing so heavily upon me that I refused to call myself a feminist. I found economics as my calling after several failed attempts at various schools of study, and am fortunate enough to be able to shape my study of economics with a hearty feminists attitude. And now I am in the process of trying to get into a graduate program for economics. Which of course mean I have to clarify and reclarify my goals in the most powerful language I can muster, so that an unseen panel of academics and bureaucrats will let me sink myself further into debt while working my ass off for a few more years. Somehow, it always seems to come out soft, compared to how strongly I feel.

It actually hit me when I was painting a deck in Syracuse, Indiana. Trying to save up a couple of bucks, I found my self thinking about all of this while I watched four separate teams of service providers (myself included) toil at a family’s summer house in the hot sun. And that’s when it hit me. You may not know it by looking at me in my paint-stained shorts and dirty hair, but I want to get my PhD in Economics. You may not know it by looking at me painting this bourgeois whore’s deck, but I want to work for an NGO and help some developing nation create jobs, commerce, and independence by using the skills and resources they’ve honed for generations. You may not know it from looking at the globs of paint and dead bugs wedged inside my sports bra, but I want to be the next chairperson of the federal reserve board, because I realized a long time ago that I had too much conscience for the presidency, and have decided I could do far more at the Fed. And then I started thinking about the things I would tell my young cousins when I was completing my PhD and doing my research and traveling to new and interesting places. And hopefully, through hearing my stories and seeing what I’ve been able to do, they would be emboldened to make better, more fulfilling decisions for themselves, in their lives. And counsel their friends to buck the standard. And be an example to other young women on the street wondering whether to play it safe and get married in college, or make a run for it and try a semester abroad. And my decisions would reverberate throughout society, in a rocking feminist way. And I would carry that kernel of knowledge with me wherever I went, and It would inspire me to continue to make the right, strong choice, even if it wasn’t an easy choice.

And, to me, that is the definition, the quintessential truth, to the feminist maxim that the personal is political.

You haven't lived until you've spent a Saturday afternoon cleaning while quite drunk.

Which is not to say that that's all I did today. I woke up on someone’s couch at 8 am. I said goodbye to some friends and then brushed my teeth at 5am. I went downtown and watched the start of the Kinetic Sculpture Race and took about a million pictures. I made a fantastic gorgonzola and white wine cream sauce. I even got a free sticky bun and made a few phone calls, which is hard to do when you have no phone. But I have to say that the highlight of my day has been getting smashed on random bottles of booze while I cleaned windows, banisters, and doors, uploaded pictures, and listened to a startling array of music.

Woo Haw! That's what weekends are about, finding new and interesting ways to make alcohol a larger part of your life.
In a matter of days I am leaving the place I've considered home for about 7 years now, and I have to say, the catharsis of cleaning and drinking alone to music I forgot I liked has be like a tonic. Now all I need are my three road trips to completely wipe the slate clean, and a new, improved Andrea will emerge for all the world to enjoy.

palabra.

It’s taken me a while to dig out the root of my bitterness surrounding the Virginia Tech shootings and the emotional aftermath. Of course, I am moved to the defensive by my fear that white America will somehow try to make an example of this Korean immigrant who, ironically enough, is the child of dry cleaners. And, of course, I am enraged by Christians and other Jesus-Loving church goers’ inevitable and unchallenged claim for the moral high ground as counselors and caretakers of those left in the aftermath. Not that I’m against the idea of them helping. I just get pissed when no one talks about atheists bringing pot roasts over or rabbis leading prayers for those who’ve passed, or Buddhists mourning the loss of all life, including young Mr. Cho.

What really frustrates me is they way everyone, from the mourning friends and family to the story-hungry media, search for a meaning. I know I can’t be the first person to have realized this, but it seems to me that society is going through some of the stages of grief together, as a unit. And

Subsequently we are left with a nation of newscasters and reporters, and the entire investigative force of Virginia, dedicated to searching out the reason why Cho Seung-Hui acted out so violently. Apparently, everyone else in the United States is blinded by grief, but that’s okay. I’m here to tell you all why something like this happened to so many innocent people. Because Cho was unstable and freaked out in a violent way against other people. That’s it. It wasn’t that there was too much pressure to perform at school. It wasn’t because he listened to Marilyn Manson or played Grand Theft Auto (neither of which I believe he did, but you know, those are the usually suspects). We couldn’t have caught him early with our over reacting to and alienating hundreds of other creative, individualistic, and probably depressive young people. The fact of the matter is that sometimes some one just snaps and there’s not much we can do to control it, prevent it, or explain it.

In nature a single animal will occasionally freak out and act out against its community. Zoologists write it off as a variation of normal and move on. Humans, especially humans so obsessed with control they ear pieces for their cell phones lest they spend 10 minutes incommunicado while driving to the store, have a difficult time understanding how that can happen in our carefully manicured society. After all the time, money, and energy the media has spent socializing these young people, how dare they react to normal stimuli in an abnormal way?
This is not to say that what happened at Virginia Tech was not a horrible tragedy. And I do not mean to make light of the suffering of those close to the victims. I just find it interesting that the media and the public can’t seem to accept that sometimes sick people make plans and act them out, and it turns out that there was nothing we could do about it. You can’t prevent a disturbed person from taking his or her dementia out on his or her peers any more than you can prevent a hurricane or earthquake from decimating our infrastructure. All you can do is be prepared for the tragedies you can foresee and live your life to the best of your ability while it’s still yours.

The world will probably never know why Cho Seung-Hui felt so ostracized and so alienated from his society that he felt he had to shoot and kill his classmates and then himself. We can just move on, try to make the most of our days, and use this as a reminder that there are plenty of people out there who could probably use a smile, and be grateful that our lives aren’t so depressing that we’re hoarding hallow point bullets.

Dancing Feet

After spending most of my work day casually looking through Sheila's travel photos, i finally put my finger on exactly how they make me feel.

It's the exact opposite of home sick. They make me wanna run far and fast and now. They make me not want to study for the GRE tonight. They make me want to escape my job and my apartment and my bills and the people I've grown tired of looking at every god damn day. Jenna and Jon excluded.
I want to go places I've never been and meet people I'd otherwise never know.

I feel like i'm ready to jump out of my skin and run into the ocean.
right
now.

My SoulMate

I just talked to sheila on Gmail Chat about poop.

Now I miss her even more.

Fucking Roulette

So, when you hop in the sack with someone, there's only so much you can know in advance. Ya know, before you actually take the thing out for a spin.
With cars, you can look at the exterior, the interior, try to get a general idea of how the vehicle is going to perform ahead of time. You can even take the puppy out for a test drive around the block to make sure nothing weird pops up.
Dudes, it turns out, are similar. The real challenge is finding out as much as you can as quickly as you can, so you don't end up investing too much time in a dud.

This is where judgment of outer appearance comes in handy. If the dude's got a swagger, a look of confidence, and is comfortable walking up and conversing with new people, chances are his last date didn't come from the sock drawer. nothing against masturbation, but you don't sit at home with Jenna Jameson all day and then talk to real girls at night. it's usually either the real girls, or the imaginary ones.
A little bit of experiential wisdom from Big Momma, though, is that nice clothes, good hygiene, and a nice job don't mean shit in the sack. If you want to actually date the dude, then of course these things are of value, but if you're just looking for a fun romp, it turns out that hobos, old folks, stinkies and uglies can be good in bed. I'm speaking from experience here, it's sad but it's true.

Most people become good at sex from experience. anything you do by yourself, though it can be helpful, is not experience. that would fall under the category of Research and Development.
So, it follows that any indicator that someone's had a lot of sex is a good indicator that they'll be able to curl your toes. Age, for example, is usually a good indicator. This is why there are absolutely no porno scenarios of ladies taking young, virginal boys roughly for the first time. No woman really want to take a dude's virginity, because she could just as easily spend those 15 minutes trying to clean her ears out with her toes, and cause less bodily harm with less awkwardness. (Teaching young things some moves is a sexy enough fantasy, but who really wants a fucking 16 year old virgin boy with a couple of pubes and a cracking voice?) Older dudes, with more experience, have been to Vagina Town, walked around, checked out the sights, and probably have a few favorite spots there and in the outlying areas. Plus, they're familiar enough with the area to follow directions.

Guys who drink a lot can be good in bed, too, although you may need to match them for inebration to fully appreciate the experience. This is because drunk people get horny and hook up. the more often you drink, the more horney nights you'll spend learning a few new tricks from someone who's last name you'll never know.

People who appear exsessivly cool can go either way. It's the whole hot chick/fat chick debate; on the one hand, she's a hot chick, but on the other hand, the fat chick will be soo gratefull...
Seriously. Hot and cool folks tend to get laid more often because everyone wants to do them. but there's always a strong chance thast, because of their apeal, they've never been told, "hell no you can't stick that in my ear!" so they might try to do some funky, lame, or just plain immature shit to you. Your best bet here is someone who used to be nerdy, geeky, or generally unlikeable, but has recently overcome that awkwardness to mature into a super hottie. Then, on the inside the person is still insecure and in need of validation and subseqently with aim to please, but on the outside is the stone cold fox you would have been thinking about in bed with someone else.
That's what we call a win-win.

A warning sign that I'm sure we all know to watch out for is religious affiliation. But I'm gonna restate the obviouse in case you're new to the world of fucking. When seeking a sexual partner (expecially short term) the best religious affiliation is no religious affiliation. God doesn't belong in my pussy, and God shouldn't be hanging around your dick. Religion often makes people think stupid thoughts like, "i should be in love when i have sex" or "masterbation is wrong" or "someone besides the leather-clad chick in the corner is watching me and judgeing me".
All serious downers.
There is the exception of the recently fallen religious person, who wants to make up for lost time, and you can find a lot fo great enthusiasm there. But there's always the chance of a painful relaps into religosity that may include crying, and enthusiasm can't always compensate for skill and experience.

but, ya know, you've all been out there a lond time, grabbign ass and scoring drinks, so you know what you're doing.
And this has gotten really long.
So, mother fuckers, be safe out there, and tell people when they're fuckin it all up! The next person will thank you.

So, I have lately begun stalking my ex-boyfriend. Not for any really reason, mostly out of boy-boredom. He and I broke up when I was in High school and he was in college (how did I now see that cliché playing out, I know!) and I've never really had any interest in him since, but I gotta admit, just knowing he's someone that at one time in my life I didn't mind spending a couple of hours a day with makes him pretty attractive.
The majority of the population, of late, can abuse me socially for about 45 minutes before I start to fantasize about throwing them out the nearest window.

Many of you might not be professional stalkers, but my close friends and I are, so they'll know exactly what I mean when I say that, after spending fake time learning about fractions of his life, i start thinking stupid things. Like how we should hang out. And how it would be cool to catch up. And how he really wasn't that weird looking, nerdy, and obnoxiously sinophilic. And then I begin to wonder if maybe he's thinking about how much more awesome I've most likely gotten since we last talked, and thinking about how much hotter I am than him.

None of these thoughts lead anywhere other than the highway to stalker town. Where increasingly weirder thoughts begin to brew.

Which is why I need a new hobby. And not crocheting. That has never held my attention for longer than a week. Maybe a hearty Ritalin habit?  Or I could start working part time as one of the crazy fuckers who begs for money drunk. That would incorporate some of my pre-existing hobbies, like drinking and being loud.
hrm.

It has taken me a while to figure out where I am in the post-breakup universe of feelings and stages. Maybe it's taken so long because the end of my last serious relationship left me completely numb for over a year and ignorant of my sexual needs (which included a very man-free first semester of college). Finally, after hours of quite reflection in bed with the covers pulled over my head, I think I've finally diagnosed my post-break-up condition; I am in desperate need of a rebound fling to satisfy the physical (and not just sexual) needs burgeoning within in me but have neither the means nor the capacity for such a fling.

For one thing, I've never been one who really enjoyed ‘dating’. I just actually hate it. The nervous phone calls, then getting to know someone who will invariably maintain a level of attraction completely different from you, nervous and expensive dates, the “When do we finally fuck and can we cuddle and does one of us have to call afterwards and what if the quality of sex is better/worse than the relationship that was a shame to begin with” bullshit. Nothing about it appeals to me. Not to mention the fact that my last relationship has, in fact, left me dead inside and the cold, unfeeling shrew I've become has no interest making small talk of coffee I don't drink anyway.

Finally, I happen to live in Arcata, a small college town that is geographically and even culturally isolated (I mean, where else do people actually still sell tie dye? Costume shops?). So even if I wanted to go out there and find some cute-ish nice enough guy to spend a few meals with and take for a couple of spins around the ol’ bedroom, the chances of me finding a suitable guy, who I haven't already fucked, and hasn't dated one of my close friends, and isn't gay, and isn't somehow personally connected to me, are slim. Winning the lottery slim.

Which is why I have surrendered myself to a strict regimen of television, beer, and online shopping to get me through this rough patch. As long as my credit cards hold out, and my roommate keeps renting movies, I know I can make it through this, and move on to the next stage in my post-breakup development; whoring around like there’s no tomorrow!

Sober Andrea just talked about her poop and how she most enjoys wiping it. Durnk Andrea now wants to talk about her period, and how she most likes to "maintain it".

Now, all you boys who've never had a period, or those boys (ALL of you fuckers) who've had a serious girlfriend and never gotten to know the nature of her menstrual cycle, will need a warm up conversation detailing the essentials fo the periods and period-time materials.

Here's the break down:

Every month every girl (who is not chemically altered in some way) gets her period.
If the bitch is on the pill (which is one way to be chemically altered, BTW) she gets it every 21 days based on her consistency with taking her pills. With current technology, there are variations therein that I will delve into at a later date.

When a girl gets her period, in addition to her PMS (which seems to be what most boys are concerned with, because it's the only aspect of a girls period that affects them regardless of their behavior), she also bleeds from her Cunt.

*** this is the interlude where I explain that I use the word Cunt not because I'm an alterna-whore, but because Cunt, which means "anatomical jewel" is waaay better than vagina which means "sheath for a sword". To quote my lady Inga Muscio, "Ain't got no vagina!***

In an effort to conduct business as usually, ladies need to somehow incapacitate the bleeding they experience from their Cunts to go on with life normally. Most do so with tampons or pads. Ladies back in the day used pads attached to belts called "sanitary napkins". Ladies waay back in the day used rags, weeds, and other objects at hand to stuff up their Cunts or wedge against their garments to prevent the bleeding from cramping their style. Today, ladies have an multitude of choices. I'm gonna talk about my favorite. The Sponge.

**This is the part where I tell you that you could learn all of this by reading Cunt by Inga Muscio**

Since for a long time, women have off and on used Sea Sponges to stop their menstrual flow. It makes a hell of a lot of sense for the busy, sexually aware lady of today because; 1) it is completely non-toxic, unlike tampons and pads made with things like fiberglass, asbestos, and rayon which can, in turn, cause Toxic Shock Syndrome, which leads to 2) the sponge is completely non-toxic and harmless. In other words, you could lose the bitch up in the inner caverns of your Cunt and, worst case scenario, it falls out or dissolves. Fuck the numbering, here are the brass tacks. Sea Sponges are Cheap (about $2 for about a year's worth of use, or $2 a month if you're a huge pansy/prude), Healthy (NO dangers of Toxic Shock Syndrome, or any other know illnesses. it's natural and it'll stop sucking fluids out of you when you stop giving), and relatively easy.
This is where I run into the most trouble. USE of a sea sponge means that you buy the mother fucker, boil it in water to eliminate the chance of bactieria, then insert it into your vag. When it gets full (and if you've had your period for more than a year you'll know), you reach up into your cunt, pull it out, and rinse the blood out before reinserting for the next run. The bonus is tatt you can just keep using it until it starts to break apart. The bad news is that there's no easy way to pull the bitch out. I( usually have to reach a good 2 fingers up my chach to grab a hold of the bitch and pull it out.

All that being said, I used the sponge for a few months, then quit for a few months ( for a stupid boy/reason) and Just came back to the sponge.


Lemmie tell you ladies. I would NOT have written this much about sea sponges if I didn't love them up, down, and cross ways!!!!
period.
Now, go get one!!!!

Today I used my last Kandoo. For the uninitiated, Kandoos are "flushable toilet wipes" for kids learning to use the toilet. They're also moist, sturdy, and make your butt smell like apples!

I learned about Kandoos from Laura, who astonished me when she first told me about her own apple-butt-smelling expereince. This is mostly because Laura really isn't the kind to talk about her butt. Or her poop. She's really not that big into poop. But I am!!

I love pooping and anything that makes it cleaner, more fun, more smelly, or allows me to talk about it! I love the idea of buying a special kind of toilet paper just for pooping!


And Kandoos really do help in the pooping process; you can poop with greater abandon when you know you've got a sturdy, moist wipe waiting for you, to get that final clean up done. Ass-splatters be damned, the Kandoo is larger than normal toilet paper, and designed to be stronger and thicker, so there's no finger-blow-through! Because Kandoos are moist and not dry like traditional toilet paper, you can achieve that just-showered or bidet-fresh feeling for your anus every time you wipe! And even though Kandoos are designed for toilet training children, I think everyone who occasionally comes down with a case of the whiskey-shits could use a box of easy-to-dispense Kandoos with which to wipe clean your bung hole.

I also used my Kandoos for tricky menstrual time peeing.

But now I am out of Kandoos, and the question is, am I too cheap to buy more, or can I just not live with out that fresh apples smell on my ass.

My Love Affair with Birth Control...

I got my period yesterday. Again. I calculated it, and I've had over 140 periods in my life so far. That's a fuck load of blood, craps, bitching, being horney, crying, beings snotty, eating everything in sight, and wacking off. Ya see, masturbation is my own personal no-fail cure for cramps. But I digress.
I remember my first period. Before all the bleeding, i was being a pissy little bitch. I remember actually being pissed that a 5 year old girl got more easter eggs than I did on the easter egg hunt. This girl was my friend and i was 12 freakin years old.
I also remember years of subsequent periods. In junior high, sitting in the school's admin office waiting for a telephoned okay from my mom so that i could limp home from school because my cramps were so bad i couldn't concentrate in class. Even rubbing one out couldn't cure them back then.
I remember trying my mom's old trick of stuffing two tampons up my vag, one after the other, in an effort to stop the hemorrhaging. That was fun. Can I get a what-what from all the chicks who’ve ever doubled up the tampon and pad situation in an effort to control the blood, and still ended up with stains on her new panties/skirt/pants/bath mat.
Point being, thanks to the magic of three little pills, all of these problems have faded into the background. My cramps now tentatively appear on the first day I bleed, and are never enough to make me do more than clear my throat. My additional bitching is now discernable only to those most familiar with my personality, and almost all of my blood for the day soaks neatly up into one or two o.b. juniors. The occasional panty liner is used mostly as a precaution. And yeah, sure, Ortho Tricyclin’s snotty younger sister Depoprovera may have taken my period away for a few months, and then brought it back at a maddeningly constant slow drip, but my light blue, dark blue, and white pills have never steered me wrong. They’ve managed to make the last 72 or so periods really manageable.
Thanks, Birth Control!


(On a side note, I spell checked this mother, and it turns out Microsoft Word does not recognize the word “horney”. I got “horned”, “honey”, “hornet”, and “honeys”. And while honeys may get my horn going, and my giant hornet knows the way to a sweet honey pot, none of this is really quite the same as being able to say “I’m Horney and I’m, proud”. Bummer.)

Right now I can hear my neighbors having some really loud sex. From across the parking lot. Either that, or someone's taking their time in killing this poor girl.


I feel like this must right some karmic wrong. Sheila, Jenna, Anja, Laura, Parisa, everyone who lived within a one block radius over the past few years; I'm sorry.

Hobo Jungle

Last Sunday some of my dear friends and I went for a walk in what is affectionately known as Hobo Field.

Armed with a couple of cans of spray paint, two bottles
of beer and a disposable camera, we commenced to tag the large cement blocks in the field.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. Andrea’s not nearly ill enough to go out tagging. Was she perhaps accompanied by some more street-wise, possibly even thuggish accomplices? No. I was with Jenna, her boyfriend, her sister and her cousin. Two dykes, a kitten lover and a pushover. Which implies that tagging is no longer the domain of the hard core. Especially since the least hard core person was the first to complete her image. Admittedly, it was a kitten face, but…

i am so tough.

My dearest chums and I have recently come to a series of revelations concluding in the creation of a (I know it is so damn cliché now...) MySpace group, "Birth Control Has Left Me Dead on the Inside"

please consider this an open invitation to other bitter whores like myself and my associates who agree with what we feel:

We represent an organization, nay a generation, of women who are tired of the same old bullshit. We watched Disney movies and Saturday morning television where people were capable of changing the world and finding love with the first hot guy that rode past on his white horse.

Then we grew up. Eventually, we all began to use some birth control. Maybe at first it was to control the bad skin that Barbie and Jem never had, but eventually it was to create a barren wasteland in our once fertile wombs. This was not out of bitterness or with any real thought to population growth, but so that we could have carefree, worry free sex knowing that the best birth control was redundant birth control.

Years later we’ve fallen in and out of love. We’ve tried bad guys, good guys, gay guys, jocks, nerds, losers, idiots, and pretentious assholes. They’ve all been disappointing in one way or another. We’ve dumped them and they’ve dumped us, we’ve rebounded so often that there are divots in the pavement. We’ve tried the friends with benefits, the committed relationships, living together, leather, celibacy, lesbianism, threesomes, random hookups and A LOT of masturbation. And all of it has left us generally under whelmed. Between the repeated disappointments in our love and sex lives, we’ve grown bitter, cynical, and difficult to impress.

Naturally, as personal disappointments mirror professional disappointments, the general cynicism bleeds into other aspects of our lives. We don’t cry at Hallmark commercials, or at the end of Meryl Streep movies. Most of us don’t even like that bitch. We prefer Margaret Cho, Sara Silverman, Janeane Garofalo, Michelle Rodriguez. Bitches who make us laugh, chicks we can respect. We don’t get all worked up over things that don’t affect us directly, we don’t see the point in making a scene unless it’s a really big one, and most of the world never sees that. Most of the world sees us as generally under whelmed. We feel generally under whelmed. A little dead inside. And while birth control has merely created an unnaturally long winter in our wombs, freezing our reproductive mechanisms into inactivity while we search for a reason to revive them, the connection between our sentiments and our ovaries has not escaped us, and irony is always interesting, usually effective, and often very funny.

That is why we say Birth Control Has Left Me Dead on the Inside.