How's that for being self aware

This post is a marker saying that I spent three hours sitting in front of my computer trying to write something, and then realizing that I am just an attention whore who wants to do this blog so that it will be easier to imagine that everyone thinks i'm funny and interesting and just an amazing person, without me having to put in any effort outside of pounding these keys and using a little artistic license to make it seem like i don't just sit in my house worrying about how i'm not a 40-year-old accomplished humorist tucked in a 21-year-old body and about the less-than-ten-greater-than-eight cavities just sitting around idly in between my molars.

Other realizations:
- I took a year off of writing to focus on reading, which then spanned into two years, not because i was actually focusing on reading to better my writing but because I am lazy and scared that I'm not funny anymore and that my moment as a published writer is now behind me.
- What's the worst that could happen if i just told the truth? Context: this blog would be significantly better if my mom didn't barrage me with articles about how you have to list every internet alias you've ever used if you ever want to get a job with the government or how if you do anything slightly adventurous or out of the norm with your life you will never be allowed around children again. The latter of which I'm sure isn't true, or is at least completely unwarranted, since i know a tattooed, pot-smoking daycare teacher who is incredibly invested in her job and the welfare of her charges, and godspeed to her. Would Hunter S. Thompson be able to find employment in today's workplace? Does everyone realize that it would be a crime if he didn't exist as a force within journalism?

Also I'm afraid of telling my family things, even though it might make things more interesting.

But it's not like they're your real family, Cara.

True and false. On paper they are. But I am living proof that genetic relation does matter - ex: I clearly missed out on the Catholic gene, which, much to my continued shock, everyone else in my family possesses.

 So, you tell them the truth, thereby standing by your life choices and having integrity, and the number of interactions between your extended family and you falls from "incredibly rare" to "none." And there'd probably be a good story involved.

You're right. This is really a win-win.

- I think i've lost all my empathy and understanding of others' points of view and become a radical.
- The only thing i'm an expert on anymore is myself.

Simple Request

I just want to die with a wikipedia article written about me, is that too much to ask?

21 and Overly-Emotional

It's already two in the morning and all i have to say for myself is that i watched all six episodes of 16 and Pregnant + the reunion episode in the last twenty-four hours. Recommend not starting with the last episode, especially if you are an adoptee because you will spend your evening in your bedroom, by yourself, bawling your eyes out and wondering why this show couldn't be about dumb teenagers doing stupid shit. Thankfully, every other episode is.

Most of the girls on 16 and Pregnant have absolutely no concept of what it takes to raise a child, but assume that everything will magically fall into place as quickly and easily as it was to make their little bundle of runny feces. Not Catelynn and Tyler, though. It's obvious the facts that they look (and probably are) the youngest of the couples and that they have significantly less money and more familial problems play into their decision to give up their child, but it's no less shocking. As the youngest, they should lack the maturity to make such a decision, and as the least privileged, they should be the ones to repeat the cycle, but they're not - in fact, Catelynn and Tyler go out of their way to make it clear to their parents (which, p.s. her wastrel mother and his ex-con father got married after meeting through their children) that they're going to give their child what they never received from them.

Ironically, through the process of giving their daughter up for adoption, Catelynn and Tyler prove themselves to be the most responsible and ready to be parents of all of the couples. While Farrah is busy worrying about what type of car her parents are going to replace the vehicle she wrecked with, Catelynn is choosing what family will provide the best life for her daughter. And Tyler blows all of the other baby daddies out of the water by not only sticking with Catelynn throughout her pregnancy and afterwards, but fiercely defending their choices as a couple to their deadbeat parents, who fight Caitlynn and Tyler's decision tooth and nail. And you thought Gary returning his new Playstation 3 was good teen parenting.

Watching Catelynn and Tyler interact with their daughter's prospective adoptive family was completely heart-wrenching. I'd never seen that side of adoption before, the actual real process of handing your child over to another family. The adoptive mother's eagerness reminded me of Jennifer Garner's character in Juno - you could just tell how achingly desperate she was for a child. Even though she was clearly elated to have been chosen it was written all over her face how terrified she was that things weren't going to work out, and once you meet the adoptive couple, the tension of the episode builds as you worry that Catelynn might just keep the baby and crush these people's hearts. During every scene with the adoptive parents i could see my parents, twenty-one years younger, right in their places - explaining their lifestyle and hobbies, making their case for why they deserved to raise me, waiting in agonizing anticipation until i just showed up in their lives completely unannounced. It was absolutely excruciating. In the last few years i've experienced a great range of inner conflict about the idea of adoption and how it has shaped me, but rarely do i think about what it's like (and is still like) for the other two parties involved. At this point, i feel like it's old news to everyone but me - but if it's still an issue for me twenty-one years later, the one party who wasn't even really there for most of the actual process, why wouldn't everyone else still be thinking about it as well?

All in all, i'm rather floored at how much 16 and Pregnant really got to me, considering I was looking for more maury-esque escapades from it than anything else. Thank god for Maci and Farrah. Fuming over them totally helped bring me back to my usual schadenfreude-lovin' self.

(Also I can't stand how boring and dry I sound in this, but god, at least i wrote something. And I've written two abandoned half-essays. But mostly I'm blowing through backissues of The Believer. Why didn't i bring more than 7 issues with me? Oh that's right because i figured i wouldn't read them just like i haven't read through all of the other 30 that are sitting in my Lawrence storage unit. Wah wah wahhh. )

Mind Obesity

(Can you just get through the plan without bogging it down with other little comments and criticisms to and of yourself?)

The Writerly Workout:
You, the participant in this program guaranteed to make you become a better writer in less than a lifetime, will spend at one hour a day focusing on writerly concerns. Just one hour a day has seen proven results in increased muscularity of your writing and will tone and define your reading and language skills. Participants have gained 4-5 new vocabulary words each week with just a bare minimum of one hour a day of concentrated, focused reading or organized, thoughtful writing. Our simple, easy-to-use equipment – the sharpened pencil with dual precise inscription and clean erase technology, stylish spiral notebook for both quick note taking or intense compositional sessions, and a great selection of intellectual, informative, and fun! reading materials – create a system that insure your desired writerly prowess.

But wait, there’s more! For those days when those synapses are just snapping with intellectual energy to burn, you can supplement your regiment with an extra hour of writerly workout. Choose from any one of our additional programs that will stimulate the mind and keep those compositional skill in perfect shape:
- Attend a reading!
- Have a literary discussion with friends, family, even your cat!
- Read news articles, book reviews, obituaries!
- And so much more!

Other plans are hard to follow with their stringent rules, complicated equipment, and overwhelming time commitment. With our easy to use system, you’ll be a real published writer at least by your 40s!

Christmas Elves

Because I haven't learned well enough the lesson of not living with english department superstars, my future roommate, current friend, and now former essay writing peer has landed herself a reading at one of the bookstores in Lawrence, and my happiness for her is completely consumed by my overwhelming feelings of total failure as a writer and, as such, a human being.

I always felt like we had always started off from the same point - we lived next door to each other in the dorms, both honors students, took similar classes, and even worked at the paper the same semester - and she has blossomed throughout college into this incredibly put together, polished, highly esteemed member of the english department society, and i - i am signing on to take another year of college partially because I really genuinely want to get another degree, and partially because I still have no direction in life whatsoever.

But at least i made sure to quit IHOP in good standing, a feat rare amongst former wearers of the blue apron, so I always have that to fall back on. And if i keep repeating to myself that David Rakoff and David Sedaris both worked as christmas elves before they ever became writers, I can pretend like i still have some sort of a chance.

Driving to North Carolina, A.I.

After an already emotionally trying day of driving 12 hours in the car with my mother (fights about: my car, how i drive my car, Sarah Palin, if you would save in a house fire a paraplegic or a box of fetuses - and you can't put the box of fetuses in the lap of the wheelchair bound person and also why is there a box of fetuses in a house anyway - and of course the obligatory "no i don't want to discuss your sexuality issues right now, i've instantly got a raging headache that will only get worse with increased awareness about your lady-dating") i get "home" to North Carolina to find my dad watching the end of Steven Spielberg's A.I., the movie that made me fall madly in love with Jude Law and also the most over the top depressing film that i've ever seen.

A summary of the end of A.I., also known as the four unnecessary levels of depression:

Level One: David and hotsexygoddamn Jude Law arrive in the dream land Man-Hattan to find that the whole place in underwater and basically completely destroyed. David then finds out that the one thing that he's had to hold on to his whole life, the idea that he's special and unique, is totally false, and there is a million other Davids in boxes just waiting to live out lives of soul-crushing sadness just like he has. His only freaking semi-human friend is sucked up into the air randomly, probably to be dismembered in front of David's eyes in a scene cut from the movie to save time for significantly more horrifically sad events. David then jumps in the neosubmarine, plunges himself into the ocean, an ocean of his tears, where he finally finds the blue fairy, and then prays to her until HE and the ENTIRE WORLD FREEZES TO DEATH IN SORROW.

This is where a normal movie might end, But Steven Speilburg, that gosh-darn sadist, does not want to leave any cringe-worthy weeping-willow-type leaf left unturned.

Level Two: After being frozen for 2000 fucking years in an ice cube meant to represent the coldness of a mother's heart, a mother who is willing to leave her robot son out in the cold to be raped and robot-murdered by dirty carnies of the future, David is rescued by beautiful aliens that only a 15 year old nerd could imagine, aliens made of computers with the bodies of anorexic models. Oh but first, David's new god, the blue fairy statue, CRUMBLES IN FRONT OF HIS FREAKING TEAR-ICICLED EYES. David is not programed for this level of sadness and has a freaking mini-seizure.

But wait, there's more.

Level Three: The aliens, who have magic greater than the coolest wizards, tell David that they can totally bring his mom back, who, even though she's a syphilis-ridden soulless whore who doesn't deserve any love, even the love of a machine wearing a cute little boy suit, is all that David ever really wants in his sad, wretched nightmare of a thing he calls a life. David cries such wonderful tears that they turn into diamonds, which the aliens collect in a secret side plan where they want to enslave him to bring them riches. They'll just bring him to the cusp of finally having one good thing happen to him in life, and then steal the diamonds and lock him in a box for later. As such, after he's cried his beautiful diamond tears, they throw him back in his empty house, where some sucker alien who clearly drew the shortest straw (or maybe the longest, those sick fucks) mimics his mother's voice to lure David in, and then tells him his mother is DEAD FOREVER. EXCEPT MAYBE FOR ONE DAY. BUT REALLY FOREVER.

Then Teddy, in his one minute of glory, whips out a wad of mom-hair that he'd been holding onto for "special keeping" and David finally wins something, a few beautiful hours with his mom, who is suddenly an angel and not one step above Andrea Yates. Make that one step below.

Level Four: We get to watch David live out the one happy day in his entire freaking life, the highlights of which include making coffee like a good little slave and hiding in the closet, which i guess is slightly better than coming out to a world where everyone likes to kill children. Then, much like Our Town, the audience must be put back in their place and reminded the life can never be good, ever, not even for sweet little traumatized half-children, not even for cherubs like Haley Joel Osment. At the end of the day, his mother, just like him, is not special, and she dies, and then HE dies, and then, once you think it's all over and the sad music is about to play for, i shit you not, ten minutes just to make sure you dehydrate your whole body, right down to your toenails, you see that TEDDY IS STILL ALIVE, and EVEN THOUGH HE SAVED THE FREAKING DAY, HE IS NOW STUCK ALONE IN THE HOUSE WITH TWO DEAD DEPRESSASAURUSES FOR THE REST. OF. TIME.

And then i got up and found out that toilet bowl cleaner had spilled all over the stuff packed in my car.
What a day.