Category Archives: Modern Life

Nov 05 2012
4 Comments
Modern Life, Serious-ish, Three minute read, Writing

The Mask’s Inside, Dummy

Amsterdam.

Sitting at a café on Geary and 6th Avenue. I’m in San Francisco, dummy. This is the part of San Francisco that tourists don’t come to because Geary looks like a highway and is lined by things like lamp shops, which are uninteresting to the visitor but for people who like to read a little bit in bed before they go to sleep and also sleep nightly in the city, lamps are of a certain kind of appeal and necessity and knowing where to purchase one is even more crucial.

Last Saturday, I want to a masquerade-themed party in Oakland, at my friend’s house where there are trees outside every window and spiders weave webs wherever they can, and there are tubs of things like spelt flour in the basement. Freaking hippies. I made a mask by smearing glue all over a pre-made plastic mask from Michael’s and sprinkling sequins on it. It took about 5 minutes. My primary goal in every craft project is to finish it. I’m not great at crafts.

The party was fun, but it was surprisingly hard to talk to people wearing masks, not being able to see their faces or mouths moving, to calculate if they’re joking or if I went over the line with my last comment. We depend so much on everything besides words, so don’t you forget it. That’s why I thought I wouldn’t get the job at an interview because I was blinking too much. Did I seem nervous? Unprepared? Bizarre and/or inhuman, like the algorithm that controls my blinking was out of whack?

And then at the party I was talking to a girl/woman/lady/chick/gal about why I’d left the field of International Relations. She’s in law school, trying to decide between international law and intellectual property, and she wants to have a career she finds meaningful and help people. And she asked me “what’s Oklahoma like” and I droned on about obesity and chain restaurants before she got bored and wanted to take pictures with everyone else. I was bored of the subject too so I was glad to leave it but I was left with a taste in my mouth like doubt. She seemed so smart and passionate and should I go to law school and do something sexy like maritime law and defend the lives of refugees? Is that even what they do?

She was dressed as what she imagined to be a woodland elf and I got the impression she wanted to be that free-spirited-pixie girl, the one who is brilliant but also fun and spontaneous. Did she even know what it takes to be a woodland elf? Would a woodland elf go to law school and try to figure out what kind of legislation helps the most people? Would a woodland elf even care? Depending on how nerdy you want to go, it’s possible to theorize that because elves are immortal, they would view the suffering of others as so temporary as to not be worth their time. So there.

And my facebook status hasn’t been getting as much traction as I would have liked.

Is it about the journey? Is it possible to get to what you think you want to be, even when it’s proven that most people know nothing until they’ve turned 50 and it seems like it’s too late?

Join me over the next decades and we’ll find out!

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Nov 02 2012
15 Comments
Humorous, Modern Life

Television Shows I’ve Regretted Watching with My Parents

This proved too much for mother.

My parents, who read this blog regularly, are wonderful. They truly are. They only desire to see me wearing shoes without holes in them and have a coat during the winter. On that note, parents, please send both of those things to area code 94122.

They are, for the most part, wonderful people who raised me on the firm belief that television was a treat, and that in general, the shows the children watched should keep sex and witchcraft to a minimum. In my many years of television watching, I’ve undergone some awkward moments with the parents that came from a surfeit of one or both of these elements.

1. The Bachelor/Bachelorette (with Dad): Something about women in tight gold dresses slinking around one bare chested man in a quest for true love just doesn’t scream good father-daughter watching material. On the other hand, 20 men puffing their chests out and wrestling each other to win the heart of a woman is probably more terrifying for a father.

2. Lady Gaga on American Idol (with Mom): Let’s just say she’s more comfortable with clothing made out of textiles.

3. Charmed: I can’t remember what put this on the banned list, but I bet someone was making out with a warlock and it was just too weird for my parents to imagine any of it could be wholesome. “Change it,” Dad said.

4. Sabrina the Teenage Witch: Maybe the talking cat pissed off my parents? Harvey and Sabrina held hands too closely? I’m really not sure about this one, but I do know it was a show we weren’t technically allowed to watch.

5. The Office: This is a family friendly, funny show, right? WRONG. You’d never notice it unless Mom is sitting right there, but every other sentence is about sex, which is evil.

6. Family Guy: See above.

7. Late Night with Conan O’Brien: Lucky for me, my parents went to bed before 12:30 and never got to see how soul-rotting this show was. All I can say is that if they’d ever witnessed the masturbating bear, they would have thought twice about letting me stay up so late by myself.

8. The Tonight Show with Jay Leno: Sometimes Jay was just a little too racy to watch with the whole family. Also, he was/is depressingly unfunny.

9. The Office, British Version: One episode featured a dildo. Need I say more?

10. Dancing with the Stars: The dancing is beautiful and the grinding can be horrific.

Safe bets:

Extreme Makeover Home Edition

The 5 o’clock news

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Oct 30 2012
11 Comments
Humorous, Modern Life, Two minute read, Writing

A Desire Burns in My Breast

So I want to change the world. Go figure. Who doesn’t? The question is: how the blork am I going to do that?

The solid, hot truth is that I have no freaking marbled cake idea of how this dumb globe even works. Thanks a lot, 4-year education at an “accredited” institution.

If only I’d read a little bit more Dante maybe I’d know what the heck was going on, and how hurricane what’s-her-face is connected to the plight of migrant workers is connected to Wal-Mart is connected to the Christ and Madonna and soaring flocks of macaws in the Amazon.

Heck, I don’t even know how to dress myself. Every single pair of pants I own has or had a hole in it, and I spent two hours today trying to figure out what a person who goes to a professional job for work looks like. I failed miserably and ended up gawking at tubs of extra-terrestrial creatures at an Asian supermarket before day drinking and retiring to my abode where I contemplated the chocolate-covered toffee on my desk and felt the impending free time about to destroy my brain.

I must do something.

This is the eternal desire, the ever-burning flame within my pasty breast. I must do something. But what does it look like? How does it taste and smell? Does it like children? Will the child I babysit like it more than me? These questions bubble to the surface of my existence like those tell-tale doom bubbles in the lower intestine after a July chili cook-off.

What must I do? Should I climb the tallest mountain? Should I chop down the tallest tree in the forest? Should I drink the tallest milk shake? Tell the tallest tall-tale? Slap the tallest man? Braid the hair of the tallest woman? Wear the tallest pants? Take a dump in the tallest building?

Am I even on the right track with the tallest thing? Do you see the problem here? Sometimes the world is spinning and spinning and just when I think I have the game down and I’m hopping and stepping in time with everyone else like at St. Gregory’s Church, I catch my breath and realize I have little to no idea what’s going on.

It’s refreshing and terrifying, like a cucumber-scented bodywash that dissolves your skin days after you use it.

And then, after I figure out what I must do, how do I do it? Are the discovery and the doing part of the same thing? Can you have one without the other?

But here’s a better question: how do I forget all of this and just get to the point where I want to make a lot of money? Isn’t that a safer and less confusing place to be—more easily quantified too!

And then I could blog about money, and everyone would want to read my words and learn out how to get rich like me and I would purchase a pair of shoes without holes.

Alas alas, I am in the holey time of my life, and there is much pondering to do. Join me, if you dare. Mock me, if you will. Just don’t ask to see the inner thighs of my pants.

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Oct 23 2012
23 Comments
Humorous, Modern Life, San Francisco

Please Love Me

I’m looking for housing. Unfortunately, I live in San Francisco, where housing prices operate on some sort of looped scheme from the future so everything’s too expensive. In other words: it’s a long, pricey journey to find a place to rest my head.

Take a look at the first couple craigslist postings and you’ll see what I mean. One person asked me to write three paragraphs on myself just so they could consider whether or not they want me. And I did it knowing I’ll probably never hear from them. I’d have written a short story, composed a poem, or emailed them a video of me dancing. I would do whatever it takes. We all would. We are the housing seekers, and we are something less than human.

It’s not enough to have friends in the city. You need to have 800 friends in the city, and not so they can let you know if anything’s opening up in their apartment building, because there isn’t. And if there is, it’s too expensive or there’s a drug lord that lives downstairs or it’s a 20 minute walk to the nearest pharmacy and you don’t like the idea that one day you’ll have to debate letting that infection fester or walking a mile in the dark to pick up the prescription, your mind addled with fever. You need the friends so you can stay with them indefinitely, so that when one friend tires of your presence, you can move onto the next who will welcome you with open arms and a warm place for your head.

If I could say anything to the people with an empty room in their apartment out there in this city, especially if they’re closer to downtown, the Mission, or Alamo Square, I would say: please love me. I’m out here trying to make it, just like you. If it pleases you I’ll be quiet and clean, and if not I’ll be loud and messy. If you want, I’ll chat with you in the kitchen after you get home from work, maybe make you a cup of tea or offer you a cold one or a wet one if you’d prefer that. I might kiss you on the cheek, if you really need that kind of support, and I’d certainly offer to tuck you into bed at night and turn the lights out and say I love you even if I don’t mean it. I’d do that for you.

And one day, when I’m a famous author, I’ll mention you to the crowd as I accept the Pulitzer Prize for best work in science fiction humor journalism, and say that it was Cynthia Crabblestick after all who helped me be who I was today, because she let me into her home and let me pay rent and wash my dishes (and hers sometimes), and didn’t complain when I woke up early or when I was laughing by myself in my bedroom.

Thank you, Cynthia. This is for you. Let me take you out to coffee with my millions of dollars of winnings.

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Sep 26 2012
6 Comments
Modern Life, San Francisco, Serious-ish

And You Wonder What’ll Happen to You

Got one!

Every day begins the same. The curtains open onto the morning. Waking up. Either too early or too late, the last dreamy wisps evaporating, leaving only vague recollections of my father, Colorado, and a buffet. The hot water boiler takes the same amount of time, with its impossible churning and final beep beep beep “I’m done.”

One cup of hand-brewed coffee, because Folger’s isn’t ground for the French press, and it’s either Folger’s or Ralph’s coffee crystals, which look like brown glitter and taste like a nightmare, so the Folger’s is in my cup, and yes, it’s a pretty damned good part about waking up.

And then I’m at the computer, my morning, evening, and afternoon friend, my whirring, over-heating, crashing buddy, my decrepit warehouse. My morning deletion of emails is followed by the usual wondering what to read, the nagging feeling that something better is always out there, and that my time would probably be best spent reading articles all day and learning about the world since it’s so easy to have it shrink to the size of my personal experience.

I read an article and in the back of my mind I want to be looking for jobs instead, jobs that will bring me into new social circles, to new realms of pay, to continued lack or blessed presence of health benefits, to 9-5, to an office with catered food or an office where I’ll be bringing my PB&J or something else entirely.

And then it’s Halloween again, and I’m wondering what I want to be today. What is the perfect intersection of my dreams, my skills, and the realities of living what with the mounting cost of soft serve ice cream? What is the worth of each corner of the triangle—are dreams less valuable than reality even though I think I was told I could be anything I wanted to be?

The game is different than I thought it would be. I’m not sure of the rules, how it’s won, and who’s on my team. Making a difference seems secondary to making a living.

And you wonder what’ll happen to you, when the things you thought you believed in don’t affect your actions, when there are so many opportunities for you to become either someone you wanted to be or something you never thought you would be.

It’s easy for these things to change based on your neighborhood.

Maybe I’ll go hunt unicorns in ancient Redwood forest groves, but not to capture them. I just want to speak with them, and find out how they’ve managed to stay who they are for so long.

Then I’ll trap them, and start a circus about following your dreams.

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