Awkwardly Social

My dear friend BAM, who I couldn’t have made it through undergrad without, blogged about me today, and she said such nice things too…

BAM made me sign up for a class on money and literature once, and I being a glutton for punishment did. She then dropped out leaving me in a class with 5 people and 400 pages of reading to do each week. That meant you would actually have to do the 400 pages of reading and come to class with some sort of real and interesting comprehension/discussion point about those pages. I would have been mad at her, but I couldn’t blame her. I have never met a woman who has been so kind and understanding to me, especially when I was lonely and depressed and needed a friend who knew where all the good pubs were.

Thanks BAM. I miss you!

I just posted this photo to Flickr, because it’s a rare one that has me smiling with my teeth showing. After I quit smoking, I decided I don’t like my teeth. The inside of my head is whackadoodudalydoo.

Then I went back to my old site and found the entry about that weekend, because as I was looking at the picture remembering how we barely had enough weed to get high, I remembered the crazy fake cab driver who might have been trying to murder us. I moved it over here, because for some reason it never made it over in the great migration to Typepad.

Here it is it is for your blast to the past perusal.

I wonder what I’ll be doing three years from now.

I don’t know what to say here anymore. Maybe I’ve said it all. It’s interesting that this current lull of things to say is happening so close to the two year anniversary of the blog.

You guys watching the stuporbowl? I guess I have to. I don’t know. Maybe I’ll just sit in my room and watch TiVo. Or Netflix.

God, this entry is boring. I’m bored of writing it.

The new Black Cherry Vanilla Diet Coke is good, but the title is cumbersome. How many more descriptive words do we want. It’s like we’ve gotten so used to ordering our coffee (non-fat, decaf, no whip, extra hot chai tea latte), that now we want everything to have super descriptive titles. This is my shit-box, broken down, gas guzzling, red interiored car. I’d go on, but I’m tired.

Have a good weekend folks. Think good thoughts about my left calf muscle, I have a 16 mile run on Saturday.

I spent much of my day yesterday fighting back tears. Not because I was particularly sad, oh no. No, because I was particularly over-full of hormones. I had to watch some movies, and they made me cry. Sure, “To Kill a Mockingbird” is worthy of my tears, but honestly, I… was overwrought. Barak Obama’s DNC speech is quite moving yes, but one should not have to rewind because one missed what he was saying because of the tears. Yes, George W. Bush does not know how to pronounce ‘nuclear’ but is that really a reason to pull off to the side of the road because I am sobbing?

Seriously, Uterus. Give me a fucking break. I’ve got work to do.

I have a lot to say, but I don’t have time to say it.

1. Allie gave me the best birthday present. She cleaned the apartment and hosted a dinner party.
2. I ran into Louie’s dad while I was running. My voice raised 30 octaves. Why do I do that? I sound so fake and annoying.
3. My dad is a CPA, making me ashamed of my panic attack last night in which I convinced Allie and me that we owed $1000 to the government. I’m retarded.
4. I eat two lunches now. The running is making my metabolism super hungry.

La!

(Waller, just skip this one.)

My uterus is pissing me off. More than usual. She’s making me about 10% less cranky than I was in the first week of quitting smoking and about 45% more cranky than I normally am the week before the dot. My boobs are huge and sore. Three sports bras aren’t even enough this week (for running). I went on an eating binge last night the likes of which I haven’t partaken in since I finished grad school, the kind where I stood at the refrigerator and just ate and ate and felt guilty and hoped Allie wouldn’t walk in. And today, to make matters worse, the bitch is commenting on people’s blogs. Mine included. It’s disconcerting.

But! I have a theory. Last weekend was spent in Las Vegas, smoking capital of America. (Smoking capital of the world, I believe, is either Moscow or somewhere in China.) I didn’t smoke one cigarette. I didn’t even have a drag of someone’s cigarette. I longed for them and I thought about it a lot, but I didn’t do it. The trouble is, just being in a casino, especially the older ones (like “The Trop”) where the ventilation isn’t so good, you leave there having smoked at least half a pack of unfiltered. So I think my body is quitting smoking all over again.

Or I’m a total bitch and my period is going to take me down next week.

Sometime in the future, there will be kids sitting around smoking weed, wearing berets and drinking whiskey. Those kids will talk about us, the most fucked up generation. We had it all, we had a hip name (Gen X), we had college degrees, we had cool jobs that took us to the most awesome places, but we were all big fat liars. Jason Blair, Stephen Glass, James Frey, and all the rest. We wrote what we wanted to, said it was true, but it was all a fucking lie.

We will be called the Embellishers. I’m guilty of this too. I cannot tell the whole truth anymore. Every story has to be bigger and funnier and more outrageous than the next. I used to think this was because I was the second child. I had to embellish in order to get any goddamned attention. Now I know it’s because I’m a product of my generation. I am the best (and worst) liar. I must tell 100 lies a day. Some of it is self defense, but honestly (ha) most of the time I just do it to get by. I’m so used to doing it, sometimes I don’t even realize I’ve done it until someone says, “No you didn’t!” and then I stop, think and remember, no, I actually didn’t. Then I lie again and say, “Yeah! Of course I did!”

Look, we wouldn’t do it if it didn’t work. Clearly, even after the Glass and Blair incidents we still get into trouble (I’m looking at you GWB…) and yet, we don’t come out and say, “Fuck, I fucking lied. I needed the people to believe this story, so I made up facts.”

I know why we do it. We do it because we are also the generation that gets told every damned minute we try to do something creative or innovative, that we are just an echo, a shadow, a pale imitation of what has come before us. Do we have a choice? Fuck yeah, and we choose to be liars. Because it’s cool. It’s fine. Our GODDAMNED President gets away with it, why can’t we?

Truth be told, I could give a rats ass about James Frey and the fracas that is surrounding that book. Did the book change public policy? Did the book send us to war? Did the book spy on people illegally? No. The book made some goddamned housewives cry and now Oprah is mad. What I’d really like to see is all of us (you, too, Oprah) getting up in arms about a group of “Swift Boat Veterans” smearing an actual war hero with lies, getting furious about a string of lies that mislead Congress and our country into going to war, not about a goddamned memoir.

Please.

We lie. Everyone does it. (I lied at least twice in this very post.) Our generation just happens to do it and make buckets of money, not kill thousands of men.

There’s a sore throat sneaking up on me. I was feeling all high and mighty the past couple of weeks, hearing about how everyone was getting sick and I was Super-Healthy. And then I came home from Vegas.

There’s a certain magic about Theraflu. It has a specialness that cannot be achieved with Nyquil. It doesn’t give you the dizzy’s it just numbs you and gives you the sleeps. And I heart it. Even though it kind of tastes like dog vomit that has been watered down with urine. Not that I would actually know what that tastes like. It’s just a guess. It’s nasty. But sort of sweet. And then as you keep drinking it you sort of like it. And that’s what I imagine being held hostage by some semi-evil people would be like. You’re scared of them at first, especially because they’re making you drink your own urine with dog vomit in it. But then you start to like them because they tell a good joke (it’s in a language you can’t understand, but the way the other hostage takers are laughing you know it’s hilarious, and they tell it so often you have it memorized, you know exactly when the punchline is coming, and you intend to have it translated when you get home, that is, if they don’t kill you first) and by the time they have secured your ransom you know you’re going to miss them.

Because these guys made urine dog vomit taste like home. And really, that’s all you can ask for in a hostage situation.

Tiny recap

1. I have friends with great pharmaceuticals.
2. The Tropicana has rooms with mirrors on the ceiling.
3. Once you turn thirty, you no longer care about the hip club - because you hear it has a line.
4. My friends love to gamble.
5. One of them has an inner force that he must feed called “Gamblor.”
6. Generous, generous friends.
7. I might have picked the most expensive restaurant on the strip for dinner, but it was totally worth it.
8. Drunk men in casinos loved my new jeans.
9. I heard Happy Birthday said to me 20 million times.
10. Craps is called that for a reason.
11. What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, unless you bring home evidence.

Last night I went shopping. Because people in their thirties don’t have only one pair of jeans. Bonus, I discovered that people in their thirties find awesome sales on J Crew jeans. Also, people in their thirties are totally still trying to find a pair of designer jeans that don’t A. show ass crack, and B. make them cry.

I also did laundry last night. Because people in their thirties come home from their vacations with clean sheets, and clothes to wear to work on Monday.

People in their thirties are so… prepared.

but, there is a down side. People in their thirties still stay up too late watching Battlestar Gallactica and then press the snooze a few too many times.

I’m off to Vegas.

If you go out drinking tonight, toast one to me, in my thirties.