Why I Don't Have Birthday Parties...

So, the last, "official" birthday party I had was in eighth grade when I thought it would be hilarious to subject my friends to a "Bug's Life" themed party, complete with a theme cake, decorations, and a screening of the movie. It was terrible, and an asshole-ish thing to do, and I thought it was hilarious. My friends did not. At one point my parents had to intervene because one of my friends was slamming his head against the wall. We stopped the movie and talked awkwardly about sex instead. That was way more awesome. Not.

Since then I've had many a birthday celebration, but nothing strictly classifiable as a party. Enjoy a brief synopsis:

We'll start with my twentieth birthday. My friends and I went to dinner and then out for drinks, where I proceeded to get incredibly drunk and make out with twelve of my closest friends, to include the guy my best friend was dating. Don't worry, I had enough sobriety in me to wait until my friend was in the bathroom. This was the year that I had two birthday parties. In December, after having dinner with my family for my little sister's birthday (where I received an incredibly belated birthday card with enough money in it to make up for the fact that it was nearly three months late) I treated several of my friends to several hundred dollars worth of drinks, smoked some pot, and then sat in the Taco Bell drive thru line for 45 minutes. Oh yeah, I forgot an interesting part about the first party of this year: after bar time we all went back to my apartment where I stripped down to my underwear and literally forced my best friend's boy-person to do a whip-it. Because I'm awesome.

And then, the obligatory twenty first birthday. At the time I was living in New York and didn't really have many friends yet. You all know how friendly I am. Anyway, I spent the evening with my friend Dustin, his boyfriend James (who I, to this day do not like) and a bunch of James' friends. It was a very nice gesture, don't get me wrong. We went to happy hour at 6 o'clock and by 6:15 I was tanked. Around 6:45, sixteen sheets into my inebriation, my family called and I had the pleasure of rambling drunkenly to my little sister for half an hour. Then they took me to the gayest of all gay clubs in NY, where I decided it would be a good idea to ask the drag queen mc, by means of yelling at her while she was on stage, when she was going to shut the fuck up. A fight nearly ensued, James lifted me off my feet and spun me around on the dance floor like a limp ragdoll, I nearly got decapitated hanging my head out the window of a cab, passed out by midnight on Dustin's couch but not before he had to yell at me several times to put pants on because his straight roommate was going to be home soon, woke up at 7 (drunk as hell), took the subway home and had to run out of the station to throw up on the the street.

Twenty second birthday wasn't very eventful. Lonney and I went to Spokane. Got drunk. Sat in a sauna for two hours, completely shit faced, eating edamame. Then I passed out in my underwear, in my bed, while I was trying to tell Lonney that he was not allowed to sleep in my bed, that he needed to stop trying to cuddle with me... and then I woke up next to Lonney. My underwear woke up on the floor, nowhere near my body.

So, I guess what I'm trying to say is that while I really do love the idea of spending the day with my friends, I've had my fill of awkward, belligerently drunk, poorly thought out birthdays that usually end in me naked (possibly raped) and not in a good way.

Add This To The Birthday List

I know there's been a lot of debate lately who my "real" friends are, or whether I even have such things, but I know that if they exist, they would definitely buy me this for my birthday...

Via men.style.com:

This track bike, made by Aurumania, is plated in 24-karat gold and then adorned with 600 plus Swarovski crystals. It runs a cool $148,500, but men.style.com posits that if the economy gets much worse one could melt it down and trade it for food.

Pretty please?

Rockin'!!!

Via Engadget:

Hey guys! Guess what?

"Girls can like, totally rock now!"

The game developers for Wii and PS2 finally realized that those of us not naturally equipped with a joystick were having trouble getting into Guitar Hero and Rock Band. And you know what our problem was?

No, silly: it's not because GH and RB are like, seriously lame games.

It's because they haven't produced "some seriously rockin' game controllers!"



Thankfully, PDP teamed up with Disney's Ally & AJ [Author's Note: Who the fuck are Ally & AJ?], and as of mid-October, riot grrrrls everywhere will finally be able to "choose either the rockin' pink Strat-looking guitar with red skull and crossbones motif, or the totally rockin' pink heart-shaped guitar with purple zebra print," both for the "rockin' price of $69.99."

Thanks dudes! Now I can like, totally truly feel my self-worth or whatever. I was afraid to play such a masculine game, because like, I'm a girl. It was totally the sad-tastic coloring of the old controllers that made me not want to play and stuff. But now, armed with my pink plastic heart-guitar-shaped game controller, I can like, totally rock on while flipping my hair around and looking (acceptably) bad-a$$. And girly!

From the Girl with the Semi-Colon and Ellipsis Tattoos:

I can't believe I missed National Punctuation Day (September 24). The one 'holiday' I can really get behind, and I missed it.

This calls for punctuation marks manipulated to convey emotion. >:(

Next year... Next year, there will be a proper celebration. Be prepared.

Good Plans Gone Awry...

A few weeks ago I found myself scheming, which I never do. I came up with a fail-safe plan to curb my relationship related loneliness that involved dating high school girls. I mean, come on, they're a young, fertile, naive, easily manipulated, untapped dating pool. And the best part is that the vast majority of them don't have a keen enough sense of homosexuality to recognize my birth defect. (Yes, homosexuality is a birth defect. And thanks for bringing it up, as if it's not already hard enough to deal with without you poking fun. "Look at him! He's so weird and gay!" I'm dealing with it very well, though. Clearly. Thanks for asking.) Trust me, I've played this game before.

Fast forward to today. I haven't yet found the necessary spare time to put my plan into hardcore action, which is a shame. Anyway, I was sitting outside the UC with Dallas before her radio show, smoking cigarettes, as we do, when I was approached by a fine young lady, clearly dressed in her gym garb. I was confused for a moment, but then she asked if she could "borrow" a cigarette. I told her sure, she could even have one, and then asked if she needed a light. She hesitated and said yes. Then, after lighting her cigarette she simply stood there and stared at me, completely ignoring the fact that Dallas was sitting with me. I didn't say anything, people lover that I am, and finally she said thanks and walked away.

At this point I sat pensive for a moment and then turned to Dal and found myself asking for confirmation that I had just been flirted with. My plan (Well not quite my plan, but close. She was probably a freshman.) had practically enacted itself and I dropped the ball. I do, however, have to applaud the young, probably-not-actually-a-smoker, assertive coed for approaching a guy, especially a guy as good looking as me.

So, on this day, a mere two weeks shy of the one year anniversary of the last time I had sex, I am here to tell you that when you think there's no hope of getting effed, maybe you just need to lower your standards.

Who Did We Laugh At Before Sarah Palin?

Courtesy of SNL, via Hulu:

An Army of Chuckys and Rubber Duckies.

Clicking through Time's Pictures of the Week for last week, I was horrified to find this:


Apparently, this week marked the 20th anniversary of the movie Child's Play. Which is all well and good, but I have to say: the only thing creepier than a movie about a possessed, evil doll is troop of Lilliputians masquerading as possessed, evil dolls. It's like fucking Point Break meets Goosebumps meets the corner of Hell and my nightmares (and, apparently, 49th St.) When this image finally loaded, I thought I was going to retch all over my keyboard.

Fortunately, I managed to keep my coffee down and continue browsing the images chosen to represent this week in history, and came across this:


Last Sunday was The Great British Duck Race! 165,000 rubber ducks floating down the Thames! In case y'all failed to notice, I have a penchant for the whimsical, and The Great British Duck Race is as whimsical as it gets. I can't help but think of Friendly Floatees (which have always fascinated and delighted me) and Pooh-sticks (which I'll never tire of).

With all of the 'grown up' life decisions and stress and financial responsibilities that I've been concentrating on, I needed the ducks. Maybe it's frivolous, but the idea of hundreds of thousands of rubber ducks wafting down the Thames suddenly made all the rest of the shit that's been weighing me down seem... irrelevant.

Life is absurd. But totally worth it.

I just needed a reminder.

Ha.

From Married To The Sea:

Why I suck

Hey everybody. Just writing to let you know that I have the backbone of a crippled elderly lady after a lifetime of scoliosis (probably in her late 80s). Judge as you see fit...

...fermented in a bottle like the best French sp...

I needed a laugh, this kind of did it:

See more funny videos at Funny or Die

À la grande maison, le premier

Wisdom imparted upon me, via the walls of my humble space:

- B Strong

- One day at a time

- 406 691 1342

- SEL 3

 (I was in cell three)

- Fuck the police and fuq u

- Brandon Woollam is a faggot dog

The funny thing about all of these scrawlings, is you would think that in a rather small, bare room they would jump out at you. Strangely, though, I only seemed to notice them as I was waking up and staring at some random bit of wall or ceiling. Also, there were orange-ish stains on the walls that I didn't pay much mind until the last few hours of my last day when I finally realized they were blood. Everywhere. Blood. Everywhere.

On leaving, as best put by the head writer of The Onion

Hey everybody, this great podcast called The Moth has this great story about moving on and the power of apathy as told by the head writer of The Onion. I can't directly link the tale but it's definitely worth listening to. Sometimes Madison, Wisconsin can send you to Brooklyn at some point.

why people don't uproot themselves.

So I'm in Chicago finally, and I realized, as I was trying to set up an internet connection in my apartment and find a local bank, why people stay where they are, why they just give in to the mundane routine of their everyday lives where ever they are.....it takes so much motivation to put up with the bullshit of uprooting yourself.  It takes so much desire for change that only those who really want it will ever get out of their safe little worlds and move on.

I just loaded everything I owned onto a rented truck, drove 1600 miles across the country to Chicago and moved into a new apartment I found over the internet.  Now I have to get a new job, or two, find a bank, find new places to hang out and some new friends.  I have to get a new driver's license and new car insurance.  Get a new library card and find a new place to rent movies, hopefully its not blockbuster.

Everything I took for granted in Missoula is gone, the good with the bad.   I guess the bad was bad enough to motivate me to leave.  That says a lot.  I mean a year ago things were on the path to greatness, everything in Missoula was chugging along so nicely.  I thought I could conquer the world, with the help of my friends.  Then the drugs, egos, sexual politics and such ruined everything.  But still most people would sit back and just try to reconfigure how to go about living in Missoula.  Changing bars and sifting through your friends is much easier than leaving to go across the country to fix things.  Thats  why most of the people we know will never leave.

Never.  That;s right.  Most people just don't want to go through the trenches to change things.  It takes a lot out of you.  I'm exhausted already, and I haven't even found a job yet.  But I am happy.  With one exception.  There are about ten people I miss dearly.  I want them here with me right now.  

But at least I know these people that I hold close have the strength to change.  To move on to better things.  I think that is what solidified our little circle of friends.  Not bitching or haterade.  But the desire for more and the courage to change.  

Cause moving sucks.  But what is worse is just staying where you are, hoping things will just fix themselves. 

I know I will see all of you soon that are my dear friends, and the rest of those suckers will continue to wallow in their weakness and apathy.

love,

j/m

I Go Out Walking...

There are a dozen or so streets in Missoula that, when on foot, I avoid. It's true that some of them I avoid because of negative associations, e.g.: on that street corner, I got in a near-apocalyptic fight with one of my best friends; the duration of My Year From Hell was spent living in two separate apartments on this street; on that bench, after What's-His-Face broke up with me, I called a friend to come pick me up because I was crying so hard I threw up; I owe the owner of the establishment on that street $140, and don't plan on paying it; I don't go to Bernice's nearly as much as I used to, because I lost it in the divorce; etc.

But a lot of them I avoid because I can't handle the flood of positive memories. I can't walk down 1st anymore because I've spent so much time at that one house and while some of those memories I'd rather not hold on to, there are a million more I wouldn't trade for the world. Spruce is hard for me. 5th is nearly impossible: Erica's and my old apartment (the house of a thousand laughs), Melissa's old apartment, Big Dipper (Oh! the amazing things that have happened while getting ice cream!), and What's-His-Face's apartment are constituents of one of the best summers of my life, and thus thereby 5th is tantamount to a gauntlet.

And it's not that those memories are what make me sad. I love those memories. What's breaks my heart is that the circumstances and people that made those memories possible are no longer. The people have moved, we're not friends anymore, etc.

That's what makes me sad.

That, I think, is why I don't go to the Complex anymore: not because I hate what it's become, but I because really miss what it used to be.

Anyway. The point of all of this is that the list of places I'm avoiding grows exponentially every day. Pretty soon, I'll have to move. Or, you know... Never leave my house.

Exhibit A.

In support of my own eternal damnation:

Today, while pursuing the selection of Wii games at Super Store X (none of which I can technically afford), I noticed a redneck and his young male companion doing the same. The redneck kept asking the boy to pick out what he wanted, and finally the boy hesitantly admitted that he wanted Super Mario Galaxy and Pokemon Battle Revolution.

"Ok," said the redneck. "Anything else?"
"Um... Super Smash Brothers?" said the boy.
"Well, let's find someone to grab 'em. Do we need another controller?"

I was so jealous that this kid had someone to buy him video games that I had to tell myself that he was probably molested on a bi-weekly basis by Uncle Jim-Bob, and the games were hush-money, compensation for getting raped.

Smugly, I looked at the kid and thought, "Ha. You might have someone to buy your stupid games, but at least I'm not getting ass-pounded by a man who smells like beef jerky and gasoline. Nee-ner nee-ner neeeeee-ner!"

It took everything I had not to blow raspberries at the boy.







It also took four aisles of browsing before it occurred to me that I might be a bad person...