Edgar Sux

• 2012-05-22

  I had 4 pairs of contacts that I saved for the summer. The idea has been to ration them for times when I really need them. 

  Arthur is in a show at the Orlando Fringe Festival and I promised him I would go. I actually didn’t promise him anything, nor did I even tell him I’d go, the obligation of it all just seems more important and in a post about taking a fairly short drive, I’d like it if at least a small bit of this didn’t sound like complete melodrama. Honestly, he told me I should come and being one of his good friends and he one of mine (ha! I say “one of,” but come on), I knew I had to show up. Today was one of his performances and so this morning I woke up and tore open one of my contact cartridges. 

  I’m 20 years old and I have never driven anywhere other than school or work. I’ve never been lost because I’ve never allowed myself to. I’d love to think that I’m the kind of person that’s comfortable with uncertainty, that doesn’t need to be sure or know what I’m doing or even be right. I’m starting to realize that I’m not. I can’t go somewhere before Mapquest-ing the directions three days prior, I’ve taken the same route to school for three years now, the one exception being a day when one of the streets I usually (always) take was closed and I didn’t handle having to think and make decisions on the spot well. I’m probably not giving myself enough credit, I did find my way home. Ultimately that’s what this is about.

  So it was something like 150 degrees today and I prepared for my 26 minute odyssey by writing out the directions as goofy as possible to assure myself that getting from point A to point B in a car in the year 2012 when phones and gps’s exist is not anything serious and I wore my favorite underwear and a nice enough cardigan so I wouldn’t have my clothes to worry about because as much as I like to believe that I’m not vain, I also know that I can get very insecure, and still it was the most terrifying ride of my life. I had to have missed at least four merges and my lips and forehead were so drenched and my skin so pale I’m positive people at red lights must have thought I was a drown victim. I was scared because my car has this funny little quirk where if the tank is below halfway sometimes it just shuts down with absolutely no care as to where I am on the road or how fast I’m going. I was scared because there was an almost ominous lack of good music on the radio and I’ve seen enough Blade films to know that techno means certain death. I was scared because I had two and a half cups of coffee before I left at 5 PM and had beforehand never paid attention to the part of the city I was in, which is outrageous because I’ve lived here for 8 years yet the slightest deviation from the drive to school is enough to send me into convulsions. Also I had to pee a lot. 

  Driving around Orlando I saw places I must have passed a thousand times but never took a good look at. There was a Tattoo Chapel with skulls and roses with thorns and girls in bikinis plastered on all of its walls and a tiny bakery jammed between two tall lackluster buildings named after the lady who runs it and a bike shop and a ski shop and a family owned pool supply store and other places that weren’t so quaint like Win-Dixies and a few Wendy’s that nevertheless seemed alien to me because I’d never really seen them from the vantage point of someone going somewhere new on their own. Like I said, I’ve been here 8 years but still feel like a foreigner. I was Marco Polo and the moment I got to the festival I wanted to shout out all of the wonders I’d thought I’d discovered to the Far East that everyone had unbeknownst to me already uncovered centuries ago. None of this was new, it just took me slightly longer to catch on. 

  The show was great of course. I fell in love with the lead of course. I went alone, which is something I’ve been trying to make myself do more often instead of waiting for other people to get me to leave my apartment, but I ended up running into a group I knew so I didn’t have to sit there biting my nails on my own. 

  I remember when I spent a lot of time on Myspace and not so much in public that the site was trying to revamp its look and it did this by introducing status updates with emoticons to match your current mood and I remember one of the options was “vital” — there was a little vampire to depict the feeling. So many times I told everyone in my shallow niche that I felt “vital” after I’d done nothing more than gone to the movies or listened to a Taking Back Sunday ep, not knowing what that really meant. I hate to say it but I felt more alive today than I have in months, and it’s a sad thing really because I didn’t do anything out of the ordinary. I went to see a show hundreds of other people also attended and to them it was nothing more than a bullet on a to do list, yet here I am having a life altering experience simply because I strayed an inch or two from my bedroom and my Pinocchio poster and Glade air freshener in the grand scheme of things. Leaving the grounds, every song that came on was almost comically apt (well, Something to Talk About wasn’t exactly pertinent, but still) and with the drivers behind me giving me indignant glares, rightfully, because of my going 20 in a 40 so I wouldn’t miss any of my turns, and the bars downtown flipping on their neon lights and preparing for the Tuesday night summer rush, the day didn’t entirely have a story book ending but it was real and I lived it and despite my useless, useless nerves, I made it home. Really, that’s all I could have asked for. 

  I had 4 pairs of contacts this morning and now I have three. The next couple of months are going to drive me crazy but I’ll be fucked if I don’t make something new out of every breath. 

  Source: Spotify

• 2012-05-17

  Had an epiphany over a personal pizza today.

  I don’t want to invalidate anyone’s feelings and of course you’re the only one who knows yourself completely, but I don’t think you’re in love. I think it’s something we all do, including me. We’re all just bored so we arbitrarily pick some guy and delude ourselves into believing we love, love, love them because it’s a nice thing to have, but we’re not really. We’re bored. We’re just bored. When people ask us what we’re up to, we want to be able to say something dramatic and interesting and the problem lies in the fact that we’re too young to be dramatic or interesting. I think the best solution is to focus on other things. In my case, that’s getting my degree and enjoying the things I do have instead of wallowing in what I think I want but don’t really know because I’m 20 and you’re probably close to that. Truth be told, nothing we do in the meanwhile will even remotely matter in the long run at all. All that stuff about permanent records and two weeks notices for your fast food job are a load of rubbish. 

  I know a lot of people feel like they have no purpose or are stuck where they are and should be somewhere by now, but that doesn’t resonate with me in the least. I totally feel that way at times too, but it only takes a good sit to realize how nonsensical that is. We’re not supposed to be anywhere doing anything other than being 20. We’re supposed to be stupid and making dumb decisions and feeling like we should be somewhere else, but we’re way too immature and naive to do anything important right now. It may seem like a waste of time, but I think we kind of just have to sit around and wait till we’re experienced enough to make big decisions like marrying someone or having kids or worrying about jobs or whatever. And rest assured, I haven’t the slightest idea when that time will be because I literally don’t know anything about anything. 

  I imagine that when I’m ready for that kind of commitment or decision I’ll know, and if you really have to second guess something, it’s probably not a good idea. Some people know that kind of stuff at an early age, but honestly, I don’t think most of us are one of those people. I mean, just think back to a year or two ago at some of the dumb shit we were going through that we thought was “so big.” It’s almost repulsive how much we thought all of those meaningless little things meant something.

  Eventually all of those trivial little things you worry about turn into actual important things and I think that’s when you know you’re a grownup. Till then, just fuck it and watch Lost all day and order a personal pizza and stop taking everything so seriously because what we do right now is mostly just filler with a few in betweens we didn’t plan for and came along naturally. If it’s important, it’ll happen on it’s own. There’s no need to rush out and find it. 

  But what do I know?

• 2012-05-14

  • One container of cinnamon nuggets and a side of light cream cheese dip in and my heart is racing. I’m putting in my two weeks and scared and exhausted and don’t know how to phrase what I’m about to say and it’s not a big deal at all but it feels like it is, probably because I don’t have much going on and even the slightest deviation from the everyday is a grenade in my hand and there’s something lodged in my throat and I can’t tell if I want to cry because I’m nervous or because I’m mad at myself for being nervous but I excuse myself to the bathroom anyway and leave my hands under the warm water for a little while even after they’re already clean. 
  • Refill of mango coke and Teavana guy #2 walks up and a few days ago a coworker told him I “like” him, though I don’t know him at all and only mentioned offhandedly that I think he’s cute. He’s dressed up for something today but I don’t ask. I don’t have anything to ask. I think of things to ask. Another of my coworkers walks up and chats him up for a few minutes and he looks over my head and has his conversation and I’m wishing he would leave so I could exhale again and still thinking he’s cute, especially when he does this little wry smirk when he says “goodbye,” but my coworker shouldn’t have said anything. I told her that if anything were to happen, I want it to be organic. I’m Jennifer Lopez and my heel gets caught in a storm drain and a car is hurling towards me and he takes me up in his arms just in the nick of time and whisks me away and Jane Fonda attends our wedding in a charming lavender gown. “Organic.” 
  • Salted nugget right out of the oven tray, fuck it’s hot, and Teavana guy #1 (You might remember him, he was the one I stopped talking to because he told me he really liked the lyric book to Evanescence’s latest album, that it was his favorite book even, though we once argued whether he ever really said this or not, he did, and later discovered this blog.) comes into view in my peripheral and I immediately duck behind the counter, overwhelmed (and a little amused by) the idea that I, a 20 year old college student, could think of no better plan of action than to duck behind a counter. That in all this time I’m still a sophomore and working in my high school’s “Media Center,” tallying the people coming in and out and rushing to the back room when I see an ex boyfriend near the front door. I’m 13 and poke my eyes out to see that he’s walking straight towards me so I stand up and pretend I was doing something down there. I fix my apron and I can’t control my panicking so I laugh instead, so much so that I have to bring my drink up to cover the curve of my lips but I know I’m not fooling anyone. I’m having a heart attack and he’s almost off puttingly polite. I thought there’d be a chance I’d run into him when I took the job again, but someone told me he’d transferred elsewhere so I was under the impression I’d be ok to work the summer. He asked me what I was doing and I asked him in return and it was like floating face up in a pool: it’s fine — not fun, tolerable — for the first few seconds but then your ears get clogged and everything starts sinking. After a while it’s just splashing and your realize you may as well have just skipped to this point from the get go. Why even bother, you know? Maybe it had nothing to do with him, I hate small talk and the “How’s your mom?”s and “What are you doing now?”s people try to work in. They don’t mean anything and no one really cares. I hope I didn’t seem condescending, I just had no other reaction up my sleeve and edgy is my default. He was too nice. It doesn’t make any sense. I’d rehearsed scenarios in my head should I ever run into him again, but 2 minutes of avoiding eye contact wasn’t ever something I thought I’d need to plan for. 
  • Two cinnamon pretzels in a paper bag and the drive home was ok and I didn’t think about much other than showering for 20 minutes and how many books I’ll get through when these two weeks are through. I bought Jerry Seinfeld’s “SeinLanguage” at Goodwill for two dollars a few days ago as a joke, but there’s a little part of me that really wants to read it. Life is stupid. 

• 2012-04-28

  

  When I was in the 10th grade, my best friend at the time, Eryn, and I thought it’d be a really adult thing to do to write out a list of the sexual acts we wanted to accomplish by the time we graduated. The list became overwhelming and wildly unrealistic, so we ended up scrapping it and making another. Instead of setting our own ambitions, this new list comprised of each other’s suggestions should someone decide that our bacne ridden bodies were good enough for some prepubescent sex. 

  Eryn’s mom looked through her book bag one day and happened upon “The List.” Instead of punishing her or calling my mom for our being naive (dumb) high schoolers, she laughed it off and added a few annotations of her own.

  If I ever have kids, I want to be like Eryn’s mom. Such a cool ‘tude. 

• 2012-04-26

  My mom’s husband bought a pizza but didn’t outright offer me some.

  He placed it on the kitchen table, where I was sitting and working on a paper, took a slice and sat down on the couch. That was three hours ago. 

  Any other person would think, “Well, he’s your mom’s husband, so why wouldn’t it be ok for you to take one? What is he going to do? Is he going to beat you up? Is he going to beat you up for taking a slice of pizza? Get over yourself, idiot.” Assuming “any other person” also kind of hates themselves, that is. But he didn’t offer! It may have been implied but I also may have Asperger’s and by implication no real sense of social perception, so it’s a toss up. 

  The point is that I circled that pizza box for a good 15 minutes, walked away, opened every single cabinet, ate a few bites of ice cream that was so old it had ice growing on it, opened the pizza box, examined the toppings (strips of chicken, green peppers, unidentified red stuff), thought, “These are the kind of toppings a person who has no consideration for anyone else gets! Green peppers? Red stuff? That’s some á la carte shit! This pizza wasn’t meant to be shared!”, closed the box, ate more ice-ice cream, re-opened the box, took a pizza, shoved it into my mouth, thought, “It’s too late now. Got ya, brain! No going back now.”

  And now I’m sitting here blogging about a fucking pizza I ate and the three and a half hour spectacle I put on to will myself to take it. 

• 2012-02-15

  [Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

  Today I volunteered with a guy that told me his band once opened for Metro Station. Well, he didn’t tell me, per se, but he told another of the volunteers who then told me: “He said his band played with… er… Metro… Metro something?” 

  He did tell me he has Asperger’s, though he isn’t on any medication. He was before, but he didn’t like the way it made him “feel,” so he told his doctor where “he could put it” and that he would deal with it himself. He told me he had some sort of position of power at my school’s GSA (Gay Straight Alliance) and that he was detained for picketing a Chick Fil A at Florida State once. He told me that if you threw a dart at a map of the Disney park he works at, odds are “I know someone in that area, or I’ve slept with a girl there.” He told me he worked for some time at a local TV station, that he has stock in Coca Cola and that he tried to go vegetarian once, but that he just “couldn’t do it.”

  When a 22 year old frat boy (He was wearing his fraternity’s shirt. It was a conspicuous red and had his last name in an organic looking font on the back.) tells you he’s done more with his life than you’re entire group of friends put together, you can’t help but approach anything he says with a little skepticism. At one point he began chatting up one of my coworkers about a burrito recipe on a flier we had at the pantry. Naturally, I thought it’d be hysterical if I stood up and left her to fend for herself. I don’t think she found it as funny, because as I walked away, she threw me the wildest look I’ve ever seen on someone who isn’t my mother or Arthur. When I got back, he was recounting an early memory of his family being selected to star as extras in The Truman Show. Yes, that The Truman Show. The only The Truman Show. 

  He was good looking in the way that most frat guys are. You take him out of the shirt with the last name on the back; you slip the bass pro shop hat off; you remove any trace of cargo pant: he’s unremarkable. You combine these elements, however, and you can’t help but admire a guy that owns a pair of wrap around sunglasses and wears open toe’d sandals year round. That takes guts. I like my guys blissfully unaware of any established social norms, that way when I lower my voice in public and say “I’m addicted to Nyquil” a la Ray Romano’s TV big bro, I’m not worried of embarrassing him. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not attracted to this guy on any kind of real level. Here is a reminder that his band opened for Metro Station. I just think his appearance is interesting to note, just like the fact that when he realized we keep a fridge in the back and one of the volunteers emerged with a can of soda, he seemingly reflexively squealed, “There’s Cokes?!” 

  The second he left, the few of us that were there immediately formed a circle.

  “Thank God he’s gone so we can talk about him!” Me. 

  “I know.” Them, in the way where you have everything to say but find yourself only being able to mutter monosyllabic words and still it’s just enough. 

  The general consensus was that he was crazy. Not a lunatic, not on the verge of a homicidal rampage, just crazy. We speculated about him being a compulsive liar, but that never really took off — I think because the idea of having a crazy person in our midst is way more interesting than one who suffers from an actual social disorder we can’t laugh as freely about. Crazy is funny; compulsive liar can get sad after a few minutes. Crazy was more likely, anyway. I personally checked the schedule TWICE and he was nowhere to be found, though I’m guessing this was wishful thinking because he was there the third time I looked, after he’d left and we were still in our hypothesizing stage. 

  I decided the first course of action would be to Google him. If this guy really did open for Metro Station (Not only is this a ‘thing’, but I think he was actually proud of it. A defining bullet on his list of Major Life Events.), surely he’d be a quick search away. He wasn’t. This was an Aha! moment. Aha! He is crazy. Aha! He made all of it up. Aha! We can stop feeling shitty about ourselves for not having accomplished anything in our short, easy lives! Aha! I can finish watching Dollhouse later tonight and I’m not a dick for not having an investment portfolio! 

  The next thing to do was to Facebook him. This bothered me, not because I thought I was intruding on his privacy (we later looked through all his mom’s photos with ZERO sense of awareness), but because, even though his display picture wasn’t of his face, I straightaway knew I’d found him. I have a sixth sense for tracking down crazy people on the internet. I’m still in the pioneering phase of converting that into a marketable skill. Right now it only comes in handy for finding porn. 

  As we scrolled through his likes we began to see a trend. “Chick Fil A.” Liked. “Coca Cola.” Liked. “Straight Gay Alliance.” Liked! Nina Simone would say, “Mississippi God Damn!” 

  Then I thought it’d be a good idea to check out his About Me, which included a tid bit about his friends calling him The Radiator or The Machine or something along those lines. This pleased me. This pleased me because I knew then that even if everything he said was true, I would still be just a little bit better than him. I may not be accomplished, but the only nickname I will ever go by is the self propagated “Edgay,” because I think it’s too good an opportunity to pass up. Smh @ everyone I went to high school with who didn’t have the common decency to uncover this. 

  Then we found his Websites section, which included a link to his Flickr as well as his old band’s Myspace page. His Flickr included such photographs as him “glowsticking” (his words), a girl in her underwear covered in words I can’t remember at what appeared to be some kind of performance art show, and low and behold, his band opening for Metro Station. Okay, it may not have been Metro Station. I don’t know what they look like, but it was definitely HIS band opening for some group at a REAL LIFE concert with PEOPLE and angsty TEENAGERS and REFRESHMENTS and everything you would expect from a picture of Metro Station, if you expect anything from them at all. 

  I won’t go into his Myspace as much because he somehow managed to cover most of his bases through the Flickr account, but you should know his About Me was multi paragraphed and included a line about being influenced by Reggae and Ska music, as well as something about aforementioned “glow sticking.” 

  Also know that under his mom’s Activities, she listed “Asperger’s.” 

  Earlier today, on my way to school and before I met him, I was trying to think of a joke about the expression “Don’t judge a book by its cover.” I’m reading a book about orchids and I removed the title sleeve because I don’t want people in the real world to know that I’m apparently the kind of person that reads books about orchids, which is why I was thinking about the expression to begin with. Like with most things I put actual effort into, I had nothing. So, like most things I put actual effort into, I dropped it. 

  If you were walking around campus and saw this guy pass by you, you probably wouldn’t think anything of it. Why would you? You probably wouldn’t think that you can freeze a shot of The Truman Show and see him and his dad strolling idly in the background. Again, why would you? But that’s who he is. He’s the vague outline of a person in the back of a Jim Carrey movie, and no matter how hard you squeeze your eyes and try to get him into focus, you’ll never be able to really find him out. He’ll always be a little bit foggy; just out of reaching distance. 

  Who’s the crazy person? Is it the guy in the fraternity who opened for Metro Station and has Asperger’s and a stock portfolio at 22, or is it the guy who sees someone he doesn’t know and hopes he’s crazy and hopes he’s making everything up and hopes he’ll get to hear more because even if none of it is true, at least it makes him the slightest degree more interesting, if only by association? 

  Source: SoundCloud / amnyam

• →

  I think I’m the only 19 year old who’s constantly worried about having peaked.

  As if that’s not the most self-important thing I’ve ever said. Still though, immediately after making a post or telling someone a joke, I think, “Alright. You had a good run. It’s not getting better than this. It’s not getting better than the buttmagazine.com reference you just made. You’re done. It’s time to compile your greatest hits.” 

  It’s gotten to the point where I almost don’t want to be funny (once more for being modest!) just to avoid the inevitable weeklong period afterward where I’m scouring the internet for something to comment on. It’s hard work, being this hilarious. It really is the most terrifying thing. Because a personality isn’t something tangible (as if you don’t already know that). It’s not something you can buy at a store and put away in a drawer for when you need it next. It’s not even something particularly consistent. One day it’s there and one day it’s gone, or feels like it could be. 

  The only thing that can get me out of that asshole, arrogant mindset is remembering how shitty everything is. How shitty I am, really. It sounds awful, but I can’t imagine not going through a day without finding something to make fun of, and in that sense, I’ll always have something to say about something. Not that I find my opinion on things of any importance, but I need to know that they’re there and didn’t just magically dissipate while I took an afternoon nap. Usually it’s me, too. I mean, I’ll be listening to Billie Holiday at 3 pm (if you think I’m being full of myself now…) on a weekday and think, “Okay, well if this isn’t my pièce de résistance, if this doesn’t make me the worst person in the world, I don’t know what [apart from this entire blog entry] is.” Sometimes I think my life is just one big performance art piece and everything I do is driven by an unconscious desire to remind everyone that everything is stupid. I don’t think it’s possible for someone to listen to Billie Holiday at 3 pm on a weekday and really mean it, you know? It’s like all of those people who are constantly talking about how great Roseanne and the Golden Girls were. I mean, they’re OK shows, but let’s be honest, if it’s 50~ slurpees vs a Roseanne box set, I think the choice is pretty obvious. 

  I think what I’m really scared of is that one day I’ll wake up and not find the same things I find funny right now funny anymore. That’s probably wrong. I hope that happens. I hope that I’m not still laughing at things like asking people if I can stick things in their butt when I’m 30. I’d call that a move forward. Progress. I guess what I’m actually worried about is waking up and not finding anything funny at all. Or finding awful things funny. Think about it. What if you woke up and overnight you’d unwillingly swapped brains with someone in any of your classes or your job or covenant? What do other people even find funny? I went to a matinee of One for the Money with my mom the other day (hope to still be laughing about that when I’m 30) and people in the theater were genuinely enjoying themselves. There must have been a point in their lives when they became those people, right? Those people that go to matinee screenings of One for the Money and put their feet up and laugh unironically and think lines like “She shot his pecker,” (“his” being a turkey) are hysterical. How did that happen? What fork in the road did they take to deliver them to this place of such complete, unadulterated and uninhibited bliss?

  And my mom was one of them! So it must be in my genes! I must have some hidden latent potential for not being a huge buzz kill. I’d love to suddenly mature and find “She shot his pecker!” hilarious, but I’m guessing that when all these people chose to go left, I got sidetracked complaining about my legs hurting or us not packing enough snacks, sat down and fell behind, so that while they’ve sailed off into the rom-com sunset, I’m in the dust wondering why remembering the episode of Smart Guy with the pedophile who lured Tahj Mowry and his friends with an interactive surfing game is enough to send me into uncontrollable convulsions in the middle of my PR class so that people who once thought of me as an elusive man of mystery (in my head) are now 100% certain that I suffer from Schizophrenia. 

  Everyone I’m friends with is one Elliot Smith song and Smart Guy reference from taking a shotgun to the forehead and I don’t ever want to be not funny. 

• 2012-02-09

  Sometimes I’m genuinely shocked that there are people out there with the audacity to not hate themselves.

  Even a 15 minute bus ride turns into the most unnerving thing. 

  Riding a bus listening to Joni Mitchell, could this seriously be more self indulgent? Why don’t you just go ahead and make yourself cry so you have all your bases covered while you’re at it? Well, I guess all of life is self indulgent really, isn’t it? Wow, that was really ‘deep’. You should think about writing a novel, you asshole. “You’re in my blood you’re my holy wineeeee!” You’ve never even been in love! What are you doing?! You’re life isn’t even that bad! I’m done. I am done. 

  And it’s like, all the while this is going on inwardly, what are other people even thinking about? What they’re going to make for dinner? Valentine’s Day plans? I’m not judging. Good for them! But could you at least throw in an “I’m insignificant!” or a “Nothing I do will ever matter!” Out of common courtesy. Isn’t being humble a virtue? What is more humbling than suicide? Or thinking about it, at least? I’m not saying to do it, but think about it every now and then. At least acknowledge that it’s a possibility. I mean, if you’ve never even considered it, who do you think you are? You suck! You’re the worst! Don’t kill yourself. Really. Don’t. But you suck! I suck! Altogether, we are all one giant black hole and not even the good, Itsgonnahurt.com kind! Literally the only thing any of us has to be thankful for is that I was never a Sex & the City writer because every episode would be built around me making an Itsgonnahurt.com reference. 

  For me. Do it for me. I need to know that I’m not the only crazy person riding the bus wondering how, if there’s ever a fire, I’m supposed to latch onto the roof and climb out of the fire escape. Do people really expect me to be able to reach that? Or why this guy next to me is wearing a full length, black trench coat in the middle of Florida and whether he’s going to kill us all any minute now or if he’s just going to try to peddle some stolen watches. I bet he hates himself. I already like this dude more than I like any of you. 

• 2012-02-08

  Everyone on my bus route always thanks the driver. I don’t understand it. It would be one thing if they were genuinely thankful, but they’re not. No one really is. When it comes down to it, thanking the bus driver is completely self indulgent. You’re not thanking them because you’re appreciative that they got up that morning to drive you to where you need to go, you just want the people around you to hear you thanking them. If not, you’re inwardly praising yourself for how good a deed you just did to make up for the fact that you block every person that reblogs missing children posts on your gay blog. Or, if there’s already a conga line of people thanking the driver, you don’t want to be the one asshole who doesn’t. It’s like those people who get to movies late and have to shuffle to get to their seats on the inside aisle. No one needs to hear each of you say “I’m sorry” a thousand times, just go on with it. 

  When you’ve worked in fast food, you realize how crap thank you is. Thank you for pressing a cup against a nozzle and waiting 10 seconds for it to fill up, then another ten for the fizz to come down so you can put the top on all the while contemplating impaling yourself with a straw because you’re missing Kendra. Thank you for the generic smile you give me when I throw my money on the counter instead of handing it to you in your hand, though both require the same amount of work. Thank you for not having a special, contaminated tub of lemonade for dick customers like me, though it’s entirely within your range of abilities to do so. 

  I’d understand it on a public bus where half the riders smell like piss and the other half are so anxious to get off that their Paris Hilton Dollar General perfume/sweat combos end up making them smell like piss too. I’m the exception here. I carry a consistent odor of cocoa butter and Nyquil wherever I go.

  The thing is, if you’re going to have a 15 minute long conversation about the Superbowl with someone sitting at the opposite end of the bus so that everyone on board is forced to hear you talk about how good guacamole dip is, the only thanks anyone needs from you is to get the fuck off. Everyone knows how good guacamole dip is! Guacamole dip is the shit! 

  Thank you is bullshit. If you were thankful, you’d tip them or tell them how thin they look. “Have you lost weight? Bye!”  

• 2012-02-06

  I need everyone who’s more talented than me to be at least 40 with a noticeable mole.

  People are always trying to throw the “That’s just a sign of insecurity” line at me, but I don’t quite understand the point, because it being a sign of insecurity is so obvious it should be wearing a Broken Social Scene t-shirt and a rainbow flag wristband. 

  I get it. If I were more confident in some of the things I did, I wouldn’t need everyone I’ve deluded myself into believing I’m in any sort of competition with to be chronically single with a 100% completed (it’s impossible) OkCupid profile, but I’m not and here I am, looking at your mylife.com to make sure you weren’t born before ’82. 

  I just can’t imagine how a person could be 23 or 19, have a face that understands proportion, balance a set of friends and know how to put words down on paper and arrange them into something funny. While I’m trying to figure out how to list things in three’s or whether or not the period goes inside the quotations, there are people out there who are only a few years older living a life I could only imagine someone who’s read Madame Bovary several times could lead. You guys, Madame Bovary was so boring. It was so fucking boring. I tried. I tried to like it. I really did. I even told people it was really good and insightful and that it was genius how the structure of the novel parallels the life of the protagonist, but even as the words came out of my mouth, my eyes glazed over and I thought about how badly I wanted to talk about how good Bridget Jones’s Diary was and to, “Shut the fuck up because I googled it the other day and Renée got nominated for an Academy Award for that! An ACADEMY AWARD! That means something. That means she managed to get a bunch of 67 year old men hard without having to weigh 97 lbs. She’s changing the game!” 

  But I’m going to be honest and say that Madame Bovary was boring as shit because I’m not a liar. The thing is, most of the people I admire would agree with that, so it’s not really an excuse yet still I’m writing garbage about bad dates or how much I really liked that Rilo Kiley song. 

  I read once that Michael Jordan grew like, three or four inches in college. I think I also read that he auditioned for his high school’s basketball team and didn’t make it the first time. I don’t frequent sports blogs and I can’t remember the last time I was in a Champs, so in all probability I gained this knowledge through osmosis, but saying “I read once,” is the the equivalent of “Madame Bovary was a masterpiece. What.A.Read!” and I’m not ready to give up on that dream just yet. The point, however, is that he grew a few inches in college and I’m a Sophomore now, still 5’5 and occasionally making use of “words” like “righter” in arguments with friends. So when is this spurt supposed to happen? Did I miss it? When I lied in bed at night praying for my mom to give me twenty two dollars so I could get a new shirt at Hot-Topic, had that been it? Was that my chance? Did I throw away any possibility of a future of doing something I like over an item with a Taking Back Sunday logo?

  I know the righter thing would be to accept that people have paid their dues and worked hard to get to where they are, but I can’t help feeling the world would be a better place if everyone with a column had a snaggle tooth.