Things I Am Over!

Bad Dreams

After a long history with all sorts of sleep aids and narcotics, I decided to switch back to the herbal type this week, the slightly useful Melatonin. In the years since I've taken the stuff I've forgotten what kind of deep, hypnotic sleep it will pull over you in five minutes flat, but it's also the first time I've woken up at 6 am with the gusto of a college cheerleader ready for a long bus ride across state lines. Basically I'm awake, but it didn't come without cost.

In the past two nights I've had the most frightening nightmares of my life, the depths and crevasses of my psyche making themselves known through subconscious self-expression. Last night was the worst ever. After watching a terrifying Prime Time Live about these deep water divers who died retrieving the skeleton of another deep water diver 850 feet below and this other nature show about the world's longest python that two huge men couldn't even pin down, it was obvious my dreams were going to be of the nightmare variety.

But drowning and snakes have nothing on my brain, I dreamed of something far more horrifying: I had a nightmare that my body was possessed by the spirit of Tom Arnold.

FAR MORE HORRIFYING!

In this dream within a dream, I could see myself in my own body, desperately trying to open my eyes but being held back by the demon spirit of Tom Arnold. The rouse here, the scary part if you will, is that the me inside my dream was being tortured with flashbacks of Tom Arnold's life and career every time I closed my eyes. They fluttered shut despite my resistance and whole episodes of Roseanne flashed before me mixed with sidebars of True Lies and that one guest staring role on Veronica's Closet. The whole time he cackled in my ear devilishly declaring he had tattooed my face on his chest, and kept holding me down to show it off.

WTF? I have no idea.

I woke from the dream at 3:16 am soaking with sweat as if I had been thrashing around fighting off the devil of Tom Arnold in real life. My heart pounded as my entire soul shook within me in absolute fear. It was the kind of fear you feel when you hear a sound outside your window at night and spend the next 4 hours awake wondering if someone is breaking into your house and if so, what you'll use to kill him once he's in your room.

The rest of the night I laid in bed shivering with fear, oscillating between brief intervals of sleep and waking in a panic. I managed to finally doze off for good a few hours later but when I woke up, I felt dirty, like my dreams had totally contaminated my body with evil. Later in the day someone asked me if I'd slept well the night before, I must have been acting incredibly off-kilt for it to shine through my usually strange and awkward personality. I responded without hesitation, "I had a dream I was being possessed by the demon spirit of Tom Arnold," and immediately heard all these cuckoo clocks going off.

Young Tony Danza

One song that really annoys me is Elton John's Candle In The Wind. This is mostly because it's just an annoying song but also because I have these odd memories of it that span my entire life until adulthood, when I finally figured out what the song even meant.

I have memories of hearing the song while sitting in the back of my parent's sedan when I was probably aged 7 or 8, and for some reason at that time the lyrics "They crawled out of the woodwork" meant only two things to me: termites and Pinocchio. Now since termites weren't something a person would write a love song about, Candle in the Wind was obviously about Pinocchio. Probably not the Pinocchio, I thought, but a girl version, since he says how she looked like Marilyn Monroe. And when he said he saw her in the 22nd row, it was at one of those marionette shows just like in the movie, except she probably still had her strings. Obviously.

For many years of my life I was content with this explanation of the song and frankly, I don't even know if I ever considered any other meaning behind Elton’s words. Until I happened to be dating a guy whose mother was incredibly southern, and southern women love Elton John, and once we went to see him in concert. Elton John fans don't just like Elton John any more than Muslim extremist  have an OK feeling about Muhammad. Elton John fans don't just sing along during a concert, they revere each syllable that drops from the lips of their Messiah.

But this woman I was with was an entirely different kind of Elton fan in that she revered him while also being completely wrong about the lyrics to his songs. Maybe not the lyrics exactly, since she knew all those and shouted them loudly from our sky box high above the stage, hoping I’m sure that her voice would carry across the legions of people and settle on the ears of her idol, a pang of beauty that resounded above the pedestrian fawning he was so used to. She sang and she swayed with each verse and chorus, stopping every once in a while to turn around and see if we too were singing and swaying along, which we weren't, because we weren't crazy.

This was a woman whose entire home was wallpapered with bright yellow satiny fabric overlaid with purple velvet filigrees winding up the walls to elaborate gilded crown molding. This matched her purple and yellow wingback chairs and her purple and yellow floor-length curtains that were fit for tearing down and making matching outfits from for a gaggle of Austrian children. Singing and swaying with her would be acknowledging such things were right to do.

What she seemed to get wrong most of the time was the meanings to Elton John songs. Rocket Man became an ode to the United States space program. Tiny Dancer was about, "those Olympic skaters? You know the ones that skate in the teams where they skate on their own and then come back together and hold each other while they skate." Bennie and the Jets was to her obviously a song about a football player. Toward the end of the night he began to play Candle In The Wind and she turned to look at us with a pure joy flickering in her eyes and said, "This one's about his mama!"

I scrunched my forehead in thought and remembered what lyrics I could of the song, something about him being a kid? Something about a lady being naked? Or something? I started contextualizing these images with the idea he wrote the song about his mother and mixed with the 5 free sky box cocktails I'd had my thoughts blurred into a panic of pedophilia. Was Elton John molested by his mother?? Why do people like this song!?

That crazy southern lady just shouted out, "That boy just loved his mama! Writin' that song for her and all!"

A few months later when I finally broke up with that guy, I sent a short email to his mother telling her that I was sorry things didn't work out with me and her son, but given that he was an asshole who tried to buy my affection instead of communicating with his words, it was inevitable. I wanted to say that it was probably her fault for coddling him so much as a child and leading him to believe that romance was of greater importance than building a functioning relationship with a person, but instead I just said, "And by the way, Candle In The Wind isn't about his mother, and every idiot knows that. It's about Pinocchio."

You mock me once, never do it again.

So far 2007 is proving itself to be a skilled and treacherous enemy I never knew I was about to have. December 31 was great, December 30 was even greater, and just when I though January 1 couldn't get better reality kicked me in the stomach. I suppose this is much like a great king sitting atop his throne of cupcakes, eating furiously with both hands while laughing off any thought of a downfall, and then encountering a thick line of marching ants circling his ankles. It's the same, except I didn't even get to have a cupcake yet.

I'm trying not to be a fatalist. I'm trying to have hope and think positively and know that I am swelled with love and good intentions, and I want those intentions to work out, just for once, just to see what it feels like for things to fall into place. I want it so bad I spent the night with knots in my throat, refusing to sink into anything more than just a temporary case of disillusionment. It will pass, I say to myself. It's only day 2. There are 363 days left to make this year better than ever. Your feelings are true and things will work out and you'll see that it's all going to be ok.

Then this morning as I was walking to the train a pair of small birds flying past me lost their course and hit me straight in the face and while they were flapping about one got tangled in my hair.

I. HATE. THIS. YEAR. This means war.

McManipulater

I haven’t watched Grey's Anatomy until now for one reason alone: The guy in it looks like someone I used to date. And from what I’ve heard, the guy in Grey’s Anatomy is a real dick, sporting himself around all these desperate women while he just stands there looking smug, which is basically just like the guy I used to date. Seeing his stupid beautiful face all over the TV is unappealing to me, so I’ve avoided Grey’s Anatomy just like any ex-boyfriend, and we all know how that ends: I had too much to drink and ended up flipping to its channel and watched four episodes in a row.

And what else happens when you drink too much and turn to your ex-boyfriend’s TV show accidentally? You just sit there watching it, remembering all the good times, and then you just randomly forget how stupid and dickish he was to you the whole time and you call him up and leave a long message about how you were just watching his TV show and you hope he’s doing well, and call me! And he never calls, obviously.

So this guy on Grey’s Anatomy who looks like someone I used to date infuriates me to no end, not only because he’s referred to as “Dr. McDreamy” but because he knows it. Dating a guy who knows how good looking he is might jut be the worst kind of relationship to be in, since being that good looking means by default they can’t ever be blamed for anything. Good looking people are never to blame for anything that ever happens in the world since that burden always falls on the shoulders of the toothless and dirty and poor.

It would probably do wonders for the Pro-Choice movement if they just had Heidi Klum start performing abortions. She could go in front of Congress, speculum in hand, and every conservative Republican would just stare at her, mouths agape and say, “Uhhh….please continue?”

When you’re dating Zoolander it’s the same situation, he could intentionally blow off your dinner plans because he was “tired” and when you’re standing in front of him absolutely fuming with rage, he’ll just go, “Yeah, but don’t you think my eyes are pretty?” Then you sigh and go, “Yeah, you’re right. I’m tired too. Sorry.” Or you'll see a picture of him with his ex-girlfriend taken the night before and confront him about it, and he'll go, "That's not me! I'm hot!" And even though the guy in the picture is wearing the sweater you gave him for Christmas, you just look at him hypnotized by the glare of his perfect skin and say, "Just kidding!"

This guy on Grey's Anatomy? Total dick. He's sleeping around on his wife and manipulating circumstance to his favor, and it would take a soulless creature to truly love him for what he is. You think this while someone else on the screen is giving a perfectly well-written speech to him about his dickishness, then the camera pans back to his face and you forget it all. It’s seriously so fucked up, and all we can do about it is keep watching the show.

We keep watching thinking Maybe he’ll change! Maybe he’ll learn his lesson! Maybe he won’t, LADIES! They don't EVER CHANGE! Guys like that will always know how great they look and wield the power against you in your most desperate times, when you’re broken and craving affection and they’re willing to give it to you, and these guys know all they’re really doing is taking advantage of your emotion, and hold on it’s back from commercial break. BRB.

Soon these tears will all be dryin'

When I saw the headline on Drudge Report that read, "Bolton: Unanimity Not Necessary on Iran," I immediately got SO FREAKING EXCITED to read Michale Bolton's thoughts on the Iran missile crisis.

I put on my "BOLTON in 2008" pullover sweatshirt and matching track pants, turned up "Said I Loved You But I Lied," drew the shades and lit some vanilla-scented candles in sweet anticipation of reading every last political leaning of The Voice. I held my breath and clicked the link with my eyes closed, and then!

Apparently there's some ambassador at the UN named "John Bolton" that they're actually quoting?!?! I tell you, this nation--nay, this WORLD is out of control when a girl can't even get excited about Michael Bolton musing on nuclear warfare without being let down.

Fresh Ink.

A short while ago I applied for a copywriting position I found on Craigslist. Everything was going great in the interview process, until they told me the company produced greeting cards. They asked me to draft examples of greeting cards I would like to see in production, perhaps to gauge my wit and sense of  non-demographic humor and my ability to bridge an awkward silence between two people with puns and anonymous poetry.

The first card I presented to them was a simple, “Thinking Of You…” card, the type sweeping across the front in a beautiful script atop a soft, pastel illustration of two bunnies opening their mail. The front read, "Just thinking of somebunny..." And the inside read, “…while I’m sitting here unemployed. Hope you're doing well. P.S. What’s it like paying your bills on time?”

The company just sent me an email thanking me for my submission, but unfortunately the position has been filled. Pity.

Statement of faith.

It's gotten to the point where I've even started being very envious of people who's lives are so fucking awesome all the time since mine is just about as non-awesome as it gets.

Like this guy? I want to track this guy down and say DUDE, way to go. Your life is sweet!

I've really never been under as much stress and pressure and anxiety and fear as I have been this past month. I can't recall one thing in the past 30 days that has gone right, or has gone right without me having to shove it into place with several phone calls, monetary bribes and the promise of whichever sexual favors are necessary so long as it just fucking goes right already. And then it goes, "Well GAWD, I'm not going right if it means I have to get sexual favors from you," and I go, Oh thanks for boosting my confidence there.

I'm in a state of limbo that is akin to straddling the widest part of the Grand Canyon while juggling batons, batons that of course are filled with gun powder and have a short, flaming wick burning down to their tops. And of course I'd be weeping and snot would just be running down my face since I couldn't very well wipe it off. And of course I'd be blindfolded. And of course I'd have to pee. And of course I'd be on camera, the video transmitted via satellite to a million YouTubers all sitting around thinking they're better than me, and of course my zipper would be down the whole time.

It's just like one thing after the other is wrong and bad and frustrating and way too much to deal with, and I'm just about to fold to the idea of checking myself into a mental institution until I've forgotten why I'm there. It's just people, dealing with people and their asshole, bitchy, self-important ways, and dealing with their reactions of shock and dismay and OFFENSE every time I try to do something fucking nice for them. Jesus.

So here's the deal: People are assholes and I can't take it anymore. I am going to embark on an experiment where I have no human contact for the course of a year.

All my communication is going to be virtual. Once a month I will make up to 5 phone calls in a row, all lasting no more than 10 minutes, for the most urgent of needs (i.e. the fire department, poison control, tracking amazon grocery deliveries, voting on America's Got Talent). All my relationships and business contacts will be maintained strictly by email, text message and limited use of instant messaging, perhaps 1-2 hours a day. When i arrive from my coccoon of Castaway-esque isolation, I shall be a better, more tolerant person, who craves just once for someone to tell me how they, "don't give a shit."

Who's with me on this? Who else is ready to pawn off the entire human race for one good year without dealing with fucking idiots and people who have no capacity TO BE NICE TO YOU WHATSOEVER WHEN YOU'RE IN A FRAGILE STATE AND WANT TO DIE.

Amazon Woman

Everything I said yesterday, I can safely take it all back today. As of this morning at about 12:34 am, our first book is now listed on Amazon. This is akin to a musician working tirelessly on their craft for years and finally getting to play an arena show for thousands of hungry fans. Or a community theatre actor winning the starring role in a major blockbuster hit.

Or that one guy on American Idol who got to sing with Clay Aiken on the season finale. It's in fact more like singing with Clay Aiken than any other analogy I can come up with.

I’ve been struggling a lot recently with finding my own successes in the jumble of riches and fame everyone around me seems to be enjoying. There’s a lot of jealousy involved that quickly dissolves into self-pity, and then of course I muck around in that while half-heartedly attempting to boost my self-esteem by posting semi-flattering self portraits to Flickr. This no longer works as I’ve found posting self-portraits of yourself on Flickr more than once a month and allowing the comment stream to rumble on at 18+ vapid compliments from strangers is a fast lane to Douchebagsville.

I’ve just barely moved out of Asshole Town and into the hamlet of Pseudo-Self Absorbedston, so I’m hoping to hold steady here for a while. But just in case my sublease expires and I’m forced to move to Douchebagsville, I’ll be able to do so with the pride of saying to my new neighbors, “Hey, nice open mouth smile you’ve got there. Is it on Amazon? Can I add it to my wishlist? No? Then try losing the teeth for a minute until you’ve really got something to smile about."

Awkward awkward!

Today at the grocery store, after having a few drinks and running to the nearest United States Postal Service Approved Mailing Center, I was walking toward the door when a huge display of Failure to Launch DVDs caught my eye. I kept both eyes on it while I walked, I don't know what compelled me to***, and then suddenly  the man walking in front of me stopped short and I ran smack into his back.

But what's awkward here is that I'd just started blowing a bubble with my gum, which means it was *my tongue* that ran smack into his back.

***Matthew Machaughhaugheuheyy.

Calling Michael Long

J has a new car. It came equipped with Bluetooth for some unknown goddammed reason, and it's just One More Thing™ he's really happy with that I can't help but find useless and extravagant, much like The Great Housekeeper Debate of 2005.

J: I'm driving and your call is coming through my stereo speakers!
Me: So I'm like KITT?
J: No, I'm not using my hands, I'm just talking outloud to the car.
Me: So how's the reception?
J: Anyway, I'm driving so I'll call you back in a bit.
Me: But you just called me to show me how you can drive and talk??!
J: I don't know, I'm just going to do driving for a while somewhere. What are you going to do?
Me: OMG BYE.