Or, well, technically I just threw it in the trash. But it was a tough decision to make! After nine fun years together, I said a final farewell to Milf, my pet suitcase.
I first found Milf at a thrift store and it was love at first sight. After seeing him dressed all snazzy in vintage, fuzzy plaid, I couldn't leave him all sad and without an owner. And not with a name like Milf. No really, the suitcase is labelled with the initials "MLF". What a cute little bugger!
Milf wasn't just a suitcase to me, he was also a friend. I used to bring him everywhere. I took him on walks, I wheeled him to the pizza parlor, and I even had him carry my books to class. (The hottie professor I crushed on thought the concept of owning a pet suitcase was amazing, which only served to encourage me further.) Milf was the best (and most practical) pet a guy living in a college dorm could have.
As I let him go, I thought back to all of our good times, like:
The time Dani was doing… whatever she's doing… next to Milf:
And the time we all dressed up for a roller disco, I had Milf roll right along with me:
And the time… okay, I can't find any more photos at the moment. Milf was a little camera shy, anyway. That's just one of the things I loved about him.
Milf went from carrying my school books to later holding my teacher credential papers. He's been a loyal companion through many phases of my life. It's a shame that his wheels broke, his locks jammed, and his interior was stained from when I tried storing a leaky container of laundry detergent in it for a summer.
I'll miss you, Milf buddy. You truly were a suitcase I'd like to fuck.
Basically I got to try my hand at being a laughably cruddy romance writer. Unless you're a publishing company who actually likes my ideas, in which case, yes I am talented, and I'm willing to sell out for a pretty cheap price, so let's talk.
I've put off doing my first article for HG because the site is about creating a safe internet space for young women free of the typical "boy's club humor" and I respect that. Therefore, I've been apprehensive of being condescending to the largely young, female readership when it is my nature to just be flippant about everything. Then I clearly threw caution entirely to the wind by taking on the favorite author of many a young female, Nicholas Sparks. Fortunately, it seemed that nearly everyone saw the humor in it. Take THAT Nicholas Sparks!
Then I just noticed that Hello Giggles put a poll up on its Facebook page a few hours after publishing my article that asked which Nicholas Sparks novel is their readers' favorite. Now there are dozens of girls saying "The Notebook!" and such without any irony. So alas, it looks like I haven't singlehandedly taken down Nicholas Sparks… yet*. In the meantime, I'm going to keep checking back to the Facebook poll until I see one of the young ladies mention one of my Nicholas Sparks books as her favorite.
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* No, but really, we should take Nicholas Sparks down. In this interview, he puts down romance novelists for being repetitive with their stories, but then differentiates himself from them by saying he is a fiction writer on par with Shakespeare and Hemingway. Sparks also insists, "There are no authors in my genre. No one is doing what I do," and cites his own book as the all-time best coming-of-age tale. DOUCHE DOUCHE DOUCHE!
If you want to throw a bitching party, have a game where you award a $30 dartboard to the person who puts the most temporary tattoos on herself in a short amount of time. Not only do you get to embarrass your guests, it's also visually entertaining for your non-participating guests, particularly when a frantic fight hunt for the remaining tattoos emerges.
Someone from ING should get give me an advertising job. I just came up with a pretty clever marketing campaign. Those logos are in places you can't help but look at.
Found this in the backseat of Adam's car: As tempted as I am, I think I'm going to resist the urge to comment on Mr. Luv Jones as the flyer says enough on its own, other than to say I wish I found this before March 20th so I could have witnessed the future of R&B... now.
My friends went on a hike on Saturday, but I had to decline to fulfill some obligations: activism and apartment-hunting. I sent my regards to Jenna, and she wished me luck. I received her text at the same time I arrived at my appointment with a potential landlord. He had put some phony photos on craiglist and said it "ready to move in", but now that I was at the building in person, it was clearly dilapidated. There was a hole in the roof, holes in the walls, and trash all over the yard. No way, I decided.
As I brainstormed an excuse to send to the landlord as to why I wasn't showing up, I decided to first send an update message to Jenna since I had just seen her "good luck" text. It was flippant, but purposely so. Then I get an immediate reply from the landlord I was supposed to meet: "OK". What is he saying OK to?, I wondered. That's when I noticed he was responding to the text that I had intended to send to Jenna. I had absentmindedly sent it to the slumlord instead.
I was mortified. Granted, I would never move into a place like that, but I would also never so bluntly talk to someone like that, particularly starting with an "Omg". Since I received the message while I was still standing on the sidewalk next to the broken home, I then had to run a block back to my car out of fear that we'd have a face to face confrontation. Later, I cringed a lot each time I thought back to it throughout the day, but you know what? Fine. That asshole deserved to the truth, which I would have never been able to give to him purposefully. But I've got to watch who I'm texting more closely.
That probably sounds sarcastic, but I am pretty excited. There's been a boy band void since the '90s that I didn't even know I wanted filled until I watched some of last week's Saturday Night Live. One Direction, a British boy band that I knew of by name but not music, was the musical guest. My first reaction was: They look alike, are they brothers? My next reaction was: Oh gee, they don't sing that well live. But my third reaction was: Damn, what a catchy chorus, I'm going to listen to this again even though I'm a little ashamed to do it.
It made me nostalgic for the Backstreet Boys. Upon the second listen, I realized that was because it practically IS a Backstreet Boy's song. "One Thing" is a remake of "I Want It That Way." For real, when One Direction sings "I need that one thing" or any variation of that, try singing the lyric "I want it that way" just as you remember it from 1999. It fits perfectly. That's not a condemnation, though. If you're in a boy band, you should be trying to sing something as close to "I Want It That Way" every time.
I checked Billboard to see if One Direction is charting, and they are in fact at #4 with another song. It's not quite as good (probably because it's not a direct Backstreet ripoff), but it is about a girl who doesn't think she's pretty, while the boys think she's beautiful. What a brilliant way to get teenage girls in their awkward phase to think they have a chance with famous, cute singers. That's gonna make them some serious money.
The #3 song on Billboard is "Glad You Came" by The Wanted, another Brit boy band. It's pretty hokey, but… I like it. It came on the radio recently, and I didn't change it. And with a considerate sentiment like "I'm glad you came" - that's not a boy band, that's a gentleman band.
While I was on a boy band roll, I tried listening to #5, Justin Bieber's "Boyfriend", but it is legitimately awful. And no, I'm not just saying that in order to protect my credibility by being anti-Bieber. I mean, have you been reading this post?
Since sugary pop music isn't all just young boys, I then also listened to #10, Carly Rae Jepsen's "Call Me Maybe". Previously, I had seen a lot of joking references to it on Tumblr, so I figured it was some sort of Rebecca Black-like thing, not a top ten song. Indeed, it has stupid lyrics, a stupid video… but it's also pretty fun. The odds of me playing it again are more than a Maybe.
Some of my friends are at Coachella right now seeing talented, respected musicians, yet I've spent the weekend learning (and largely liking) the latest in teeny-bopper music. I'm making great strides at being a grownup.
While walking downtown today, I passed a tiny woman located on the other side of a fence who was pointing at something behind me for some reason. As I turned my head to see what she was gesturing toward, I heard a man's voice behind me shout, "Hey!" Before I could even see what the matter was, I felt a thump against my backside.
I screamed, probably like a girl, and practically fell to my knees. I'm being mugged, I thought. I'm being attacked!
There was no mugger, however. It was a large piece of styrofoam blowing in the wind. After it struck me, it continued blowing up the sidewalk and then into the road. Both the woman and the man, who apparently had been trying to warn me that a giant square of stryofoam was floating in my direction, smiled at my overreaction. You know they're going to be repeating that story for the next couple of weeks.
Yeah, things are going great in my life. I thought a piece of litter was trying to kill me.
Welp, I'm obsessed with the Eurovision Song Contest again. For the uninitiated, Eurovision is a cross-continental competition where each European nation enters its best song to earn the votes of both the judges and the viewing public. Invariably, the contest turns into some cheesy shit show. Not only are European musical tastes a little… well, let's say "off", but often the choices made in regards to the costuming, choreography, and lyrics are downright laughable.
Even though the competition is still a month and a half away, I couldn't help but peek at this year's 43 entries early. From there, I compiled the 15 songs I found the most ridiculous. You're going to get a kick out of these songs.
Some additional comments on each video clip: 15. MOLDOVA: "Lautar - Pasha Parfeny I love the inevitable so-simple-they're-stupid lyrics of non-native English speakers like, "This trumpet makes you mine girl." 14. THE NETHERLANDS: "You and Me" - Joan I've got no beef with the simple folk song, but those unrelated and offensive Native American costumes really make this one a standout. 13. ALBANIA: "Suus" - Rona Nishliu I think Nishliu can actually sing, but it's hard to tell because she's always screaming. I might, too, if I were a statue. 12. SWITZERLAND: "Unbreakable" - Sinplus Were it not for the singer's comical accent, this song could probably - unfortunately - be a hit in America, too. 11. CROATIA: "Nebo" - Nina Badric I'm not sure what she's singing about, but if it's not naked men engaged in a fight against gravity, I'll be disappointed. 10. IRELAND: "Waterline" - Jedward Twins, scary hair, and cheesy choreography all equal a sight you can't turn away from. 9. SLOVENIA: "Verjamem" - Eva Boto If there's one thing that can make you look away from that woman's OMG hat, it's the audience's utter inability to sway in a coordinated fashion. 8. RUSSIA: "Party for Everybody" - Buranovskiye Babushki These old ladies know how to party. I like the woman in the back who doesn't sing at all (she's just a pretty face, I guess,) and obviously the tiny toothless gremlin-looking one who's always a couple of beats behind and seems pretty confused as to where she is. 7. ISRAEL: "Time" - Izabo Drugs, right? This has got to be the result of recreational drugs. 6. LATVIA: "Beautiful Song" - Anmary Look, I know it's a songwriting competition, but writing a chorus that goes "Beautiful song is on the radio/is on the tv shows/and plays on and on/Beautiful song/that everybody hums/and everybody loves" is not going to fool anyone into thinking it's actually a beautiful song. Also, who is this woman who thinks she's too important for Mick Jagger and a collaborator with Paul McCartney? 5. GEORGIA: "I'm a Joker" - Anri Jokhadze It's a good thing he's a joker, because it's hard to take Jokhadze's singing voice seriously. 4. AUSTRIA: "Woki Mit Deim Popo" - Trackshittaz Highly-sexualized songs with glow-in-the-dark asses are the future of music. 3. TURKEY: "Love Me Back" - Can Bonomo This guy needs to stop trying so hard, or - better yet - stop trying altogether. 2. MONTENEGRO: "Euro Neuro" - Rambo Amadeus I hope this old, off-key man with some highly politicized rapping revolutionizes hip hop. I mean, he's already redefined what it means for a rapper to "ride an ass". 1. SAN MARINO: "The Social Network Song" - Valentina Monetta I don't know what to make of this auto-tuned ode to Facebook that includes lines like "Do you want to play cybersex again?" and "Click me with your mouse", but if this is honestly the best song your country has to offer, maybe just call in sick instead.
The Eurovision semifinal and final rounds will be held at the end of May and usually streams for free live online, so clear your calendar.
I saw a lone Peep laying on the sidewalk - seemingly in good condition - and I stopped for a solid thirty seconds contemplating whether I was too good to eat it.
On the one hand, it's an unwrapped piece of candy from who knows where that's sitting in the dirt.
On the other hand, it's a delicious, sugary Peep.
I didn't do it. Since I don't hold myself in high regard, why am I cursed to believe that I'm just barely better than eating a Peep in those circumstances?
"Tim" is an acquaintance of mine - a friend of a friend who shows up early to and leaves early from every party he's invited to. Tim is a nice, well-intentioned guy, but maybe too polite for his own good, and a little bit of a square. Conversation can be pretty difficult. Oh, and he always, always wears a yarmulke. In an attempt to loosen him up, my friends once coaxed him into doing a keg stand… and he left his yarmulke on. It was quite a sight.
A good friend of mine ran into Tim at Jewish singles mixer held on Christmas (how clever, Jews). She didn't know him that well, but she learned a lot about him when he took oversharing to a whole new level. I guess because Tim was drunk and had relationships on the brain, he admitted that he had married young, but his wife divorced him because of his addiction to porn.
Is porn addiction something you admit to a near-stranger outside of a support group environment? Not to mention someone you're presumably trying to hit on at a singles mixer. Still, it's funny to learn that a guy we thought needed to loosen up had a not-so-wholesome side.
Which begs the question - what kind of porn? That's the first question for all of us that hear the story, actually. Standard missionary? Foot fetish? BBW? Gay? We really want to know, as the type of pornography is likely to have caused the divorce.
Tim came up for one reason or another over dinner last night, and three of us psychoanalyzed him for more than an hour. Here's what we think: he's not even addicted to porn! I know that's the trait that actually makes TIm interesting in the first place, but we don't give him credit for that. He just thinks he's addicted to porn because he looked at it a few times and feels ashamed because of his strong religious values.
He also feels ashamed because of his wife. She's a prude who probably never had sex with him anyway and when she caught him watching porn, immediately labelled it some major problem. She probably introduced the phrase "porn addiction" to him, and being the nice guy that he is, Tim accepted it because he didn't understand how else to explain his failing marriage. Even though there are millions of guys who watch more porn than Tim, it became the point of contention in a marriage that was bound to fail anyway after he married too young due to religious pressures. And motherly pressures, too. There's always a nagging Jewish mother.
And then we decided that we wanted to take Tim - the guy we normally avoid conversation with - under our wing. We could cure him! Not of his porn addiction because we don't believe that's his actual problem, but cure him of his rigidness. Our first psychiatric duty would be to prescribe him drugs - recreational drugs - to help him let his hair down… or yarmulke down, as the case may be.
Only after we were confident we had him all figured out did we stop and reflect on the fact that we don't actually know anything about Tim. Heck, I couldn't even remember Tim's name before the conversation started. The only facts we knew were that he wears a yarmulke and once drunkenly admitted to getting a divorce due to porn addiction. Nonetheless, we still managed to invent a whole history to go along with these sparse details including a whole bitchy personality for his ex-wife we know literally nothing about, to the extent that we actually believed we could fix him.
Tim would probably be mortified to learn that people knew even the one tidbit about him, let alone that we discussed him at length, but it's all for the best. Our trio of aspiring therapists is going to help him shake the guilt of the problems he only perceives himself to have, and then tackle the real problems we actually think he has.
You think I'm joking, but I'm not. This dude's look is captivating. It's not always about being attractive, and Davis is certainly not. It's about having a signature look that others can't help but stop and stare at. As I watched him lead Kentucky to a national championship, I couldn't avert my eyes from this strange dude. Everything about him is so wrong it's right.
Those thick, villainous eyebrows! Or should I say eyebrow, because that is a unibrow if I've ever seen one. Those insanely janky teeth. It also doesn't hurt that he's the tallest guy on the court - which is saying something when you're talking about basketball players.
He may have only just turned 19, but Davis has it figured out. It's not like he has to worry about attracting ladies, his inevitable NBA millions will take care of that. If you can't be the handsomest man in basketball, why not be the funniest looking guy? What Davis has going is a brand identity. And he's going to show you just how smart his appearance is once he's no longer a student athlete and able to cash in on those tweezer/Invisalign endorsement deals.
(Okay, but for real, I was kind of inspired to grow out a unibrow, but then I realized that since I don't pluck as is, one is not about to magically show up. Does anyone know whether you can Rogaine your forehead?)
I didn't play the lottery like everyone else did this weekend (I get too much anxiety), but due to lottery fever and today's April Fool's Day holiday, I find myself recalling a time my mom played a prank on me.
Many years ago on Christmas morning, my family and I were unwrapping the gifts in our stockings. Every year, we each get a couple of scratch-off lottery tickets and someone will win $10 or so, which works out to be a net loss. On this occasion, I scratched at a ticket with a penny, and found myself staring at three $10,000s, which if I read the instructions correctly, meant that I won that prize amount.
Normally, I double check a losing ticket before discarding it, but this time I had to double, triple, and even quadruple check that I had in fact won. Still unable to comprehend a prize of this size, I finally said to my family very plainly, "I think I won $10,000." My mom acted excited and tried to prod a bigger reaction from me, but I never changed my name. I just sat there, not sure what else to do.
Disappointed by my lackluster response, my mom admit that the ticket wasn't real. She had bought a phony winning ticket and was hoping to get a real rise from me. It's not that I didn't fall for the trick, just that I'm not excited enough about money to care one way or the other. My mom realized she should have tried to play this prank on someone a bit more materialistic. Heck, my sister probably would have spent half the cash before anyone could tell her it was a joke. Perhaps my mom's mistake was not giving me a few spiked eggnogs first. You'd be surprised how much I clap and cheer each time I win $5 at a Vegas blackjack table.
Fortunately for my mom, she had bought a second phony ticket, and decided to try again on my cousin. When he arrived a few hours later, he was unaware of the previous prank, and immediately screamed when scratching his "winning" ticket. "I won $10,000! I won 10,000!" My aunt didn't hesitate to verify his claims by looking at his ticket before screeching with glee. Meanwhile, my cousin's sister, who isn't normally affectionate with her brother, sprinted across the room to give him a hug and said "I love you, I love you!" Someone wanted a piece of that money…
It was quite a show. This time, the prank went a little too well, and it made for an awkward moment when my mom had to confess the ticket was fake. My aunt still refers to that incident as a "sick joke", but I think it was a perfectly great way to add tension to a family holiday.
