A Crazies Free Crazy Christmas

"'Twas the week before Christmas and all through the house all hell broke loose. Exception: a mouse."

It started as all great plans do with one rule. Avoid my family. Which is really something incredibly challenging especially over the holidays. This year however it all seemed to plop into place so perfectly that I really should have been suspicious.

My parents moved to Wyoming right after Thanksgiving, so their plan was to celebrate alone in the vast expanse of the middle of nowhere known as the ranch, while my grandma was going back to Kansas with my aunt to celebrate there which diverted all the crazies there and left the Florissant house vacant for me, my younger sister, and her boyfriend to take over in a glorious display of our adulthood. That of course meant a raging party with soda, candy, boardgames, and cleaning everything up afterwards (oh, yeah we're badasses). As well as a lot of time spent playing Donkey Kong on the Nintendo 64 and Pokemon on our Gameboy Advances.

My younger sister and her boyfriend arrived at Florissant house first because they agreed to take a cat from our older sister's friend who had to move and couldn't take the cat with her. The cat was dubbed Milo and was very much an adorable kitty. He however didn't seem to like my sister's boyfriend and attacked his leg twice, but since he wasn't fixed we just assumed that it was a territorial thing and he would mellow out upon being fixed.

A couple days later I was collected from Denver with my cat and mass amounts of dirty laundry. (Don't judge I at least wash the laundry myself.) That is when things got interesting. Upon arriving back at the house there was a lot of "The hell were people doing before they left?" My grandma and aunt left the house while less than an average Robinson disaster zone very much in a general state of random weirdness that you just have to not ask and walk away.

For starters, we had to hunt about the house for the mouse traps that had been set. There were supposed to be six in total and it was like some version of a scavenger hunt where if you won pain was a viable prize. No mice have been seen since we arrived and no one was snapped by a mouse trap. Mostly because I just didn't participate in this scavenger hunt.

As well as our mouse trap scavenger hunt, the microwave was pulled out from the wall and stuff was just placed randomly. To anyone that didn't grow up as a Robinson it would look like someone did a half assed job of looting the place then got bored and left. To someone who grew up as a Robinson, it would be recognized as what likes to be called cleaning.

Once the kitchen was returned to a livable state and the mouse traps found we settled into a pretty nice groove. That of course, by rules of both television and my life meant chaos was finishing up that last cocktail before stopping by for a visit.

It started with fish tacos. We all worked together and made a pretty exciting dinner and it was almost finished when I sent my sister's boyfriend downstairs to take the trash down to the garage. Angel seized this opportunity to book it into the basement to escape Milo who seized that as an invitation to chase after her into the one place in the house he is terrified of. I called downstairs after my sister's boyfriend to ask if he could bring up the box of taco shells. I was answered with a cat yowling and for a moment I almost thought that that was my sister's boyfriend reply. While this may seem odd to the people reading about it, it really wouldn't be out of character or all that surprising if it was.

But no it was the cat. That noise was probably the most terrifying animal noise I have ever heard in my life. Comparable only to that of the fox (no seriously an actual fox. I'm not a reference to the music video). It was just this terrified cat screeching yowling noise and while I could probably simulate it with my voice the closest thing you get in type it this: "YAAAUAUAUAAAAAAAAAAW! AAAAAAAAOOOUAAAAAAAA!" Now just screech that at the top of your lungs in the highest pitch possible and combine it with that of a screaming child and your close. Milo had cornered my sister's boyfriend and Angel in the basement and was just standing there with wide-eyed terror making that noise. So my sister did the logical thing and shooed me out of the basement, then picked up the cat to carry it upstairs. Milo waited until he had been carried about halfway up the basement steps before digging his teeth and claws violently into my sisters face, hand, and boob leaving her boyfriend to pry him off.

YAAAUAUAUAAAAAAAW! AAAAAAAAOOOUAAAAAAAA!

He then chased my sister's boyfriend up the stairs to the main floor and he sat there at the top of the stairs continuing his screech of doom until we chased him back into the basement and shut him down there. While we doctored my sister and among lots of blood, bandages, and disinfectant we actually found one of his claws broken off into my sister's boob.

After doctoring my sister's head, hand, and boob, the goal was to get Milo out of the terror death trap of the basement. Me being the only one having yet to experience an attack volunteered (I generally don't think these things through until after the fact). I got down to the bottom of the stairs and remembered that the light was burnt out, so I called upstairs for a flashlight in a classic moment of frobelinkensteinerbean. (frobelinkensteinerbean (noun): the moment when you realize you either just did or are in the middle of doing something you yell at people in movies for) My sister's boyfriend kindly obliged and I entered the dark basement with a pocket flashlight and a dear skin coat as armor looking for a vicious  black cat. (Horror movies really do write themselves.)

As I enter the basement I saw no cat and a flat box that had toppled over. I picked up the box leaning it against the piano and sure enough the cat just casually strolled out from behind that piano like he was the happiest most adorable thing in the world. (You were expecting him to leap out of the box weren't you? So was I.) I came up to him nicely and he remained cute and nice until I scooped him up. Then he proceeded to go completely berserk. He spent the next few moments, as I held him tightly, attacking the hell out of what he wanted to be my arm. Doing something between a march and the awkward jog you do when a car stops for you to cross the road, I got the cat upstairs and shut into the guess room with only two tiny little nicks upon my wrist that didn't even bleed. Finally we ate dinner.

After much discussion amongst ourselves and with the previous owner, we decided that the best thing to do would actually be to take it to the Humane Society. That cat was terrified of the house we were in, my cat was terrified of him, and he had attacked both the people that were his owners quite viciously. It was actually discovered while patching up my sister that part of his claw had actually been broken off in one of my sister's boobs. It was incredibly brutal and my sister's face was swollen for a few days afterwards as a result.

Sorry, couldn't resist.

So the next day me and my sister's boyfriend took Milo to the Humane Society. It was really simple to get Milo into the carrying case and he was really sweet and mellow about it. We started to feel a bit bad about giving up on him so quickly, but both agreed that it wouldn't end well if we kept him, so we went about our plan. We took him to the Humane Society and the lady we were talking to was one of the most furiously condescending people I have ever had the displeasure of speaking with. We explained why we were giving up the cat and due to Milo's cute looks and innocent meows she actually talked to the cat with more respect than she did to us. She told us all about how cats take time to adjust to new places, how cats mellow out when they get fixed, and all those other cat facts that we actually already knew.

While she obviously didn't believe a single word we had said and thought we were dumb as a blond teenager in a horror movie, she suggested a couple other cat specific shelters we should try first. Which we agreed to since we still felt bad for the little cat and wanted him to find a good home. One shelter was closed and the other was in Denver so we decided screw it and were going to just take him to the animal shelter in Divide. That of course was also closed as well. So, we just gave up, brought the little bugger home, and placed him back in the guest room thinking it was a sign to give him another chance.

That night all our friends came over for our exciting party where we drank Mountain Dew, ate candy, played a home-made version of Twister, and everyone decided that going into the room with the cat we specifically told them to leave alone was a good idea. That of course meant that Milo was the most innocent cute looking kitty that could possibly be found, so everyone was quite certain we were crazy. By the next day we had become quite convinced we were giving up too easily as well and let Milo run about the house again. It actually didn't seem like a bad idea for most of the day. While he did a good job of bothering Angel, there were no major issues with the cat until the house started to flood.

While we were watching a movie, I got up to pee and upon entering the bathroom I plunged my foot into a copious amount of ice water. (This is starting to become a recurring theme I'm afraid. See Dry Feet, Water, Again?, and Pfft) There was water gushing out of the toilet. I tried to unclog it with no success before I dove for the water valve and just shut it off. After that there was a lot of towels used to clean up the mess and we thought that we were okay. Then my younger sister opened the door to the basement to toss the watery towels down the stairs to the laundry room when Angel used it as an escape from Milo and Milo followed.

My sister ran down after the cat to try and grab him before he started panicking, but got a bit distracted by the absurd amount of flooding in the basement. It was dripping from the pipes and heating vents just pouring from the ceiling. After several phone calls between us and our older sister and several messages left to both my mother and aunt, we got the water shut of and were quite certain that a pipe had frozen and burst since there were ice chunks everywhere.

My sister and her boyfriend were put in charge of getting the water stopped, while I worked on my cat herding skills. Since Milo and his death yowl decided that crammed under the doll house table was the best possible place to panic I couldn't actually get ahold of him even with my armor. After a few minutes of trying, I decided I'd use a squeegee, that for some reason was sitting on the floor in the basement, and use it to pull the cat out of his crevice. This yielded some interesting results when I discovered he was terrified of it. It was like that squeegee was the spawn of satan. The yowling increased and he straight up went berserk and booked it past me towards the stairs. At that point, Milo was twice is terrified as before, so I had my sister's boyfriend bring me oven mitts for extra armor after Milo ripped the flesh off my hand. This time with extra armor when I grabbed for him he ripped the mitt off my hand with one paw and ripped more skin off my hand with the other. At that point I just chased him upstairs where we shut him while we cleaned up the water.

The next day after parental lectures, some phone tag, and finally a resolution, we got the plumber called and as it turns out the pipe didn't freeze and burst. Instead, the ancient toilet, that hasn't been replaced within my lifetime at least, was full of sand from the well. Since the toilet was filling with water so quickly it was both able to drudge up enough to flood through the vents into the basement and was flowing so rapidly the water wasn't defrosting giving us the ice chunks. The toilet just needs to be replaced and it was nothing that we did that caused it to flood. That is hilarious to me. Mostly because for the rest of my life I will be hearing about the time we flooded grandma's house.

On Christmas Eve we finally took Milo down to the Humane society. This of course involved getting him into the carrying case and he was quite certain that wasn't going to happen. It started with using the Swiffer sweeper to get him towards the carrying case in hopes he'd go in. This didn't work because he ran around the swifter and under the bed. After getting him out from under the bed we switched to the foam dog bed as our herding device. This worked really well since he couldn't get around it, but he leapt over the carrying case and brutally attacked the carrying case. After much ado, using a foam dog bed, two chair cushions, and a door as a barricade, we got him into the carrying case with five minutes to spare before we had to leave. In total it took us twenty-five minutes to heard him where we wanted him, but I do believe we have received our cat herding licenses at this point.

At the Humane Society, the lady we talked to actually talked to us like the adults we were and we omitted all the attacking parts from the report and it went smoothly without any of the condescension. Whoever said honesty is the best policy, has never actually had to deal with other people. We were in and out cat free within ten minutes where as previously it took us half an hour and we still left with the cat.

On Christmas we had a fun feast with my older sister, her boyfriend, his daughter, and couple family friends that went a billion and five times more smoothly in both preparation and the actually eating of it than any Christmas meal has ever gone with my family and the break has continued to run smoothly ever since.

"Twas the week after Christmas and all through the house stuffs not exploding and the cat ate a mouse."

It's A Mystery

I for one absolutely love a good mystery. I always have. From my childhood obsessions with Scooby Doo and crime scene investigation to the present day where those things are still totally awesome. Due to my life long love of mystery I have however made myself completely terrified of the genre at large. And no it's not because of murder, but because there are way too many absolutely terrible mysteries.

I am really good at predicting plot twists. Ask my younger sister who has thrown more than a few shoes at me when less than half way through the episode/movie I have predicted the ending. This usually goes "I know who did it." My younger sister replies, "Don't tell me!" Ten minutes later during commercial break or when we have to pause because of her squirrel bladder she ends up asking me to tell her and I do. Then at the end of the film she yells at me for telling her.

As much as this skill annoys the crap out of people around me, it drives me twice as crazy. You know the guy in Men In Black 3 that can see all possible futures. It's sort of like that, but on a less catastrophic scale. It's a giant pain in the ass and has led to me scorning many many things I love.

Being very nerdy by nature, I spent a lot of my time growing up reading pretty much everything I could get my hands on. While it seems like a good idea at the time it is a terrible idea and just don't do it! EVER! It was that willingness to try everything that has left me really paranoid and had made a hobby out of biting my ass.

For the past two months I have really wanted to read a good mystery, but I haven't been able to bring myself to start one. The last time I got a in the mystery machine (sorry couldn't resist) was in high school and I ruined the experience for myself. Somehow when picking out mystery novels to read I happened to pick absolutely terrible ones. I respect books too much to abuse them (seriously dog earing pages is the eighth deadly sin and you may be maimed if I ever catch you doing so), but even I came close to murdering one after reading Velocity by Dean Koontz where I predicted who the killer was on the first damn page. (The more Dean Koontz you read the more you want to run him over with a tractor repeatedly.) Another book I read through I predicted who the murderer was when he was introduced in Chapter 2, but remained optimistic thinking I just want him to be the killer because it would be a good plot twist. I am a liar and should not be trusted in such matters. No it was not a good plot twist!

It was my binge reading younger years where I was on a first name basis with every librarian because I was constantly checking out books that has made me terrified of starting new mysteries. Everytime I go to the library, I spend about twenty minutes carrying arround a stack of novels most of which are mysteries. By the time I decide to check out I have put all, but one mystery back. (In the proper place because my mother trained me well.) I check out with a handful of books in other genres, but only one mystery which is destined to sit around my apartment unopened for six weeks at which point I can no longer renew it and have to return the book. This has been going on for months and it has become an entirely new level of ridiculous.

To use a horse metaphor my dad would no doubt be proud of, I just need to get back in the saddle. I did back in high school after reading Velocity. But the next one I picked up was the other one I previously mentioned. I can't remember it's name. I just know it took place in Silverton, Colorado and had some lame plot twist with a high school student that was using a World War II microwave radiation weapon to cook people. It may have been cool if the killer wasn't a predictable cutout cookie (the bland stale ones that have been forgotten until months later when someone opens the cookie jar randomly) and the author didn't try to distract from that fact with annoying teen romance. Even after that disaster I was willing to climb back up there and once again I was sent flying. (I can't remember what that mystery was probably because I chose to strike it from my memory for all eternity.) It was at that point I decided to just leave the blasted horse alone and try riding something nicer like a llama.

So here I am a couple years later and terrified of opening a mystery novel. I love reading and I love reading mysteries, but I hate the feeling of having wasted my life on a bad book. Very few books have made me hate them so much that I actually want to hurt them. Two to be exact. Heart of Darkness because dear god that was boring and Velocity by Dean Koontz because seriously screw Dean Koontz. I really don't want to add to that, but mysteries when well written are so good.

I decided I'd only read ones my mother recommended and yet I still stand there looking at the book for an absurdly long time before I put it back on the shelf. I am determined to get over this fear. I don't care how long it takes. I will get over my Post Traumatic Terrible Mystery Disorder (PTTMD) and I am going to be able to read mysteries again! I don't care if it kills me and causes some detective to investigate my death.

A Summer At Netflix

I like many other relatively lazy Americans I love Netflix because let's face it Netflix is awesome. I originally got an account when my older sister booted me off of hers. I was half way through every season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer ever and being terribly addicted forced myself to buy my own account. It's eight bucks a month so really who can complain?

And the answer to that question is a lot of people. Over the summer I worked tech support for Netflix. I never truly understood the dense mother fucker jokes or how unbelievably entitled people are until I had to explain to the same someone several times in a row that unplugging the blu-ray while you are waiting for it to load won't help and had someone tell me that buffer was a plot for us to steal their money. (It's twenty-eight cents a day, by making it buffer through one episode of Breaking Bad we don't get that much money.)

I started off my summer by applying to every available job in the area (so many in fact I couldnt actually remember where I applied) and got called back for one interview. Working as support for the online Abercrombie & Fich store. When I went in to interview they decided I would be better off working for Netflix and ended up going through a second interview and was hired as a member of the Netflix staff.

On my first day of training the training instructor, who ironically enough, had the same exact name as my mother, botched my name and called me Sam. After a couple years portraying a male soldier named Sam in my father's Civil War reenacting venture crew, I still have a compulsion to answer to it and thus did without thinking. This led to three months of endless confusion for both me and my coworkers. I did correct the training instructor, but the damage was done and my entire training class will forever know me as Sam. Thus kicked off my summer at Netflix.

My schedule was chaotic. It changed often because I had no life and when someone was asking who could be moved about the answer was always me. All summer long I worked nights and at first was aligned enough with the Denver bus schedule that it worked well.

I'd catch the bus and get to work at 6:00pm work until 3:00am then watch shows on the TV larger than my living room in the break room until 4:00am when I'd catch the bus home. That was on weekdays. Weekends the bus didn't come until five so I'd walk to IHOP with the plan of waiting from the bus, but get sick of waiting around and just walk home anyways. That is how I became the only person in recorded history to get in shape because of Netflix.

I lived five mile away. When my schedule changed so that I got off of work at 2:00am instead of 3:00am I got bored way to easily to wait around. I started off riding my bike that didn't last very long because some drunken ass hole when I was coming home at three in the morning ran into my bike's front tire rendering it useless. (He didn't even slow down.) I started bussing to work then walking the five miles home. That continued for most of the summer.

There was about one week each month after I paid rent and was waiting for my next paycheck that I wouldn't have enough cash for even the bus. During those weeks, this was my schedule:

2:00pm - wake up and put clothes on

2:30pm - eat shitty ramen for breakfast and pack shitty ramen to be eaten later.

3:30pm - walk five miles to work.

5:00pm - get to work and chill in the break room for half an hour to prepare for my shift.

5:30pm - start work.

10:30pm - eat shitty ramen for lunch.

2:00am - get off work and walk five miles home.

3:30am - arrive home, eat shitty ramen for dinner, and watch an episode of something on Netflix.

4:30am - pass out.

2:00pm - It starts again.

For an entire week once every month, I was walking ten miles a day five days a week for three months. The other days I was riding the bus to work and walking five miles home because I was too impatient to wait for the bus. All that put together, I walked roughly 375 miles over the summer just going to and from work. No wonder the traction on my sneakers was practically worn flat.

When one of my coworkers offered to give me rides home the last couple weeks I worked there it was a God send. And when I one of my best friends in the whole world bought me a new bike it was the happiest moment. It took me hours to put it together, but my golly it's nice and oh, so wonderful. I didn't get to actually use it much for going to work because I had a ride home and as such got lazy riding the bus to work and getting a wide home from coworkers.

The commute however was lovely compared to working tech support. Working phone tech support is hell. Not only do you have to actually hear people yell in your ear about how they can't unplug the Blu-Ray Player because there is a TV, an Xbox, and a cat on top of it and it's all pushed up against the wall so they can't get to it, but you also have to try and explain to them in a calm and confident manner why that will fix the problem. This is really difficult when they just keep yelling the same thing again and again like magically it will reveal all the issues to me so I can push a magic button and make their Netflix start working.

As I was told multiple times by my boss I was quick and talented at fixing the problem, but I was too curt in my responses and didn't sound confident. I tend to give really short responses that answer the question without a lot of fluff added, so people think I'm just being rude. As a stutterer by nature, I don't generally sound like I'm all that confident in what I'm saying either. If you were to look at me while I was explaining you could probably tell that I knew what I was talking about (at least I like to think so), but from my voice alone there isn't much hope in my explaination, apparently. It's not the first time that I've been scolded for stuttering either. In sixth grade my English teacher who, let's face it, hated me decided that my stuttering through a presentation was a sign I didn't prepare enough and should be docked a crap load of points. I will never understand this mentality. It literally makes no sense to me whatsoever.

Once you've worked tech support, I promise you the joke of "Have you tried turning it on and off again?" is no longer funny. I kid you not, almost nobody has tried that by the time they call in to complain and the excuses I tell you are beautiful. I have heard, "I can't reset the router by unplugging it because I'm using truck stop Wi-Fi and it's Netflix just trying to steal my money." (That one was a popular theory.) To the much more polite and less conspiratory "Crap! I have a God awful amount of stuff piled on it. Can we do something else?"

People really don't have to want to work to get their Netflix working. I swear to God I almost slapped a friend of mine about a month ago when she decided to complain about Netflix tech support. She couldn't log into her account so she called and they sent her a password reset which she never got. When that happens something went wrong obviously and usually it means that you are trying to use the wrong email address or less likely if it's something on our end you news to call us back so we know it happened and can look into it. Technology isn't magic people. (Just don't bitch about Netflix tech support to me if you don't want a lecture, mmkay?)

After about a month, there was glorious moment when I, Sam, was given the chance to take a typing test to be switched to chat tech support. I leapt at the chance and literally danced when I finished my last day of voice. (Granted that was more because we had an impromptu flash mob at work than anything else, but there was dancing.)

Chat is pretty much the same as voice except you don't have to actually hear the stupid people, you can watch movies while you work, and you get a shit ton more people chatting in to request that we get a specific title. I got so excited when I saw that Dexter was on Netflix I literally did a little dance. Not because I liked the show (haven't actually seen it), but because it meant people wouldn't be bitching at tech support because Netflix doesn't have it. (The fact that I had stopped working at Netflix months ago was irrelevant.) There are two moments of my life where I lost all hope for humanity while working tech support. 1) was when some jackass spent an hour just repeatedly asking me to suck his dick (at one point he asked me to suck the skin off his dick. Seriously, dude? That can't be comfortable.) And 2) was when I had someone chat in two days (yes two days) after Orange is the New Black premiered on Netflix to complain that we didn't have the second season yet. I get the show is amazing and addicting and all that, but we have to actually make the second season first. The instant cassettes from Space Balls don't actually exist.

Now on chat, I had a new boss that called me Sarah and there was another guy on the team named Sam. My boss gave me some incredibly strange looks when I'd turn around because she called for Sam. The chat floor manager also really liked to yell "Sarah" when the two Sarah that worked there were on the floor just for the sake of seeing us both turn around. It was a really confusing time in my life. (Ranked up there with questioning one's sexuality and trying to figure out where the hell you are supposed to go in a game of Forsaken.) While I was quite convinced before that common names were evil, I became quite solidified in this belief from working at Netflix. Seriously, why are names so difficult?

While I hated working tech support because "dumb as a box of rocks" doesn't accurately describe people that call in, I loved working for Netflix. It was an incredibly relaxed environment. Much like how in high school I had friends that wore capes to school, at Netflix I had coworkers that did so. There was often a high risk of getting shot unexpectedly in the head by a foam dart or paper ball. There was always free popcorn (this along with ramen was a staple of my diet). We had a type off to celebrate the Forth of July. The winner was a guy that typed so fast the official statement was made, "It's like if Jesus could type." Corporate would come and listen to our feedback as to how things could be improved. And above all else everyone there is really great to work with. They understand the concept of playing why you work and still being a professional to the customer even if you are just repeatedly bashing your head into the keyboard in hope that it will make them seem smarter.

Most people who call and chat in are generally nice and just not sure how technology works, but there are enough of the incredibly dumb and rude ones to make you rampage and when you get a customer that understands technology just isn't sure what's going on you literally dance. (There is enough dancing at Netflix to be an episode of Glee. It's just not organized, synchronized, or pretty to watch in anyway.)

So as someone who has worked tech support I beg of all humans who call or chat in, be nice to the person your talking to, there isn't a magic fix all button, and I swear to God you will not die because Netflix got rid of that one show or movie.

Santa vs. Jesus

As most people who grew up celebrating Christmas, I once believed in Santa. Also as someone who grew up celebrating Christmas, I was taught all about Jesus. For a lot of people questioning the existence of either is usually a moment you remember quite well.

As quite the atheist I have realized something terribly funny to me. It was much more disappointing and more surprising to me when I realized Santa wasn't real than when I came to the same conclusion about all the stuff in the Bible. (Now, to be fair, I was much younger with the Santa thing than the God thing.)

Like a lot of people, I grew up getting dragged to church on Sundays, celebrating Easter and Christmas, and even participating in all the fun church events. When I was really little we actually succeeded at making it to church more than once every two or three months. For awhile my mom even taught Sunday school. By all means I should have had a successful brain washing. Problem was the Bible, much like the ungodly amounts of fairy tales I read as kid, never had any proof that they were true. Santa on the other hand had a lot of evidence in his favor even if it was entirely circumstancial.

I never even thought about religion until I hit middle school. I was neither questioning it or accepting it as true. Church was just the place we went to hear stories and play with other kids so long as our fancy clothes weren't injured in anyway (which usually wasn't a success in my case). Looking back, I remember liking Sunday school because we got to color, make things, and read stories. When I discovered that adult services offered little plastic cups with grape juice and bread, I wanted to go to adult services because snacks. I went to vacation Bible school, in fourth grade, because it was jungle themed and meant hanging out with my friends. I joined the youth choir in sixth grade because it meant I got to hang out with one of my best friends. And in seventh grade I joined the church band because I wanted to play the drums. Never once in my entire childhood of growing up in a religious family did I ever do anything church related for my love of God or Jesus. I did it solely for the purpose that whatever I was doing seemed fun or interesting. Which is still to this day exactly how I decide what to do.

I don't think I ever really believed the Bible. It was just a giant book full of fun stories that sat on the shelf next to my giant book of fairy tales. My favorite fairy tale was Little Red Riding Hood and my favorite Bible story was the one about Ester. (The one about Sarah, which I was forced to read multiple times because it's what I'm named after was boring and I never liked it.) I never questioned that fairy tales weren't real because I never thought about it. The same goes for the Bible. I didn't care. It was just fun. Church was a once a week club dedicated to reading and discussing fairy tales.

My mom tells me that when I was little I didn't ask a lot of questions like my sisters did. That's probably because I have always liked to figure things out on my own. I had questions, but instead of asking adults, who I was never entirely convinced knew what they were talking about, I just did research. (Boy was I naturally inclined to be a nerd.) Research in my case meant actually investigating rather than asking people questions. I actually used to solve "mysteries" on my own in my backyard as a kid and for awhile wanted to be a crime scene investigator or forensic scientist. (This was probably where my obsession with the way blood moves and looks began. Which is quite useful knowledge in film school and actually came in handy tonight while painting a T-shirt to look like it was covered in drying blood.)

When my older sister, being a professional bubble burster at a young age, told me Santa wasn't real I refused to take her word for it and started my investigation. It was sort of difficult because I had to actually wait for Christmas. My older sister's evidence was that Santa's handwriting matched Mom's. I had a plan to investigate this as well as the cookies for santa and the carrots for his raindeer. I was planning to stay up all night and slip downstairs to hide under the dining room table once my parents went to bed. This didn't end up happening though because my parents had become lazy Santas and on Christmas Eve we did our annual opening of one present each. I, while digging for a present my mom could open, found a Santa present addressed to my mom.

Mystery solved my parents were Santa. It was really upsetting. Yes, because I had been told a lie, but mostly because it meant my older sister was right and I couldn't prove her wrong and also she figured it out first. That was what upset me the most. Those are still things that irritate me quite a bit. I like being ahead of people and figuring things out first. And I really hate having to prove people right when it comes to something I was slow on the uptake of. In fact, when I first figured out I was gay, I the most upset about the fact it meant that everyone was right all along I was the last to figure it out, and now I had to own up to it.

In seventh grade, my Atheist Epiphany was, brought on by my being the auxiliary percussionist in the middle school church rock band. Two things you should know are: 1) middle school church rock bands suck and 2) the auxiliary percussionist is the person that plays all the other instruments that aren't drums and plays the drums when the actual drummer is sick. In short, I was the tambourine player.

That year I learned some very important things. The main one being cowbell sucks! I may be the only percussionist to ever say it, but there never has been or ever will anything cool or exciting about the fucking Cowbell. It is an obnoxious loud hollow chunk of metal that should be left for the purpose of hearing a cow approaching. Thanks to the actual drummer, a kid a year older than me, who actually happens to be the older brother of my younger sister's boyfriend, I heard that obnoxious hunk of metal played in my ear constantly while waiting for tambourine cues because he liked to use it as a cymbal. The Cowbell sucks! Fact!

The other thing I learned was that there is very little meaning in Christian music and that anytime anyone ever says the phrase "awesome God" I will for the rest of my life have terribly annoying song with just a few lines on repeat for about three minutes stuck in my head.

I'm not saying Christian music sucks. I'm saying simplistic Christian rock that middle schoolers can play sucks. It was that terrible music on a tambourine that gave me time to think. Any idiot can play a tambourine on cue and anyone that's not an idiot can do so whike thinking about lots of other things. Since I heard the phrase, "our God is an awesome God" on repeat and paraphrased by other phrases for three hours every Wednesday night for a school year I started thinking about God and decided that I wasn't so interested in worshiping him. My conclusion was I didn't care if he existed, I was going to do what I was going to do anyways and that if I was ever going to worship him there had to be a more creative way than repeating the same basic concept over and over again to music.

My realizations that Santa didn't exist was far more devastating than thinking about God ever has been for me. Sure the God thing has drawn more arguments and lectures, but it had the same effect as church rock band did on me. Basically, I've heard what has to be said so many times and in the few ways possible so many times that my head just zones out. The same goes for the lectures I get on not liking the Cowbell which can't actually be diversified past, "what's wrong with you?! How can you not like Cowbell?"

A Robinson Family Thanksmas

This year my older sister in what I can only assume was a momentarily decreased mental state decided to host Thanksgiving at her place. Since everyone is whizzing off in several directions for Christmas this year we combined the holidays into an event I call Thanksmas. As chaotic as Thanksgiving has always been with my family, Christmas has always been twice as much so. Combining the two was like dropping a series of chaos bombs on my sister's apartment.

It started like Thanksgiving normally does. Me, my younger sister, and her boyfriend being three people of the poor college student variety, are the three people given permission to actually stay at my sister and her boyfriend's place. We arrived midafternoon and after some bumming around the bookstore where my sister works Thai food was eaten before heading back to her place to prepare for Dungeons and Dragons. Yes, we play Dungeons and Dragons and there is a very likely chance it will become a standard holiday tradition with all future generations.

Sometime in the evening my aunt arrives and drops off all sorts of stuff for cooking food and a break from D&D preparations were made while last minute grocery shopping occured, but the chaos party didn't really start until my parents arrived with my other aunt and grandma.

Now, arrive is an understatement. They more or less exploded onto the scene in an array of Christmas presents, old people needing to pee, and various allergen free pies. It took at least twenty minutes to unload everything they had to drop off and come the next day there was somehow still more stuff. My parents while completely insane have mastered how to turn small cars into areas of infinite holding. (I do believe I may have inherited this trait from them allowing me to keep two days worth of things needed to survive in my pockets.) Amongst all of these things was a rolling pin my dad gave me and resulted in me hearing the phrase "don't forget your rolling pin," enough time to make me use it as a murder weapons.

Now before I go on let me explain something about Thanksgiving dinner in my family. We all have various allergies and other food related issues. My mom is allergic to gluten and dairy. My younger sister is allergic to green peppers (the lucky brat has nothing to worry about in Thanksgiving foods). My younger sister's boyfriend is allergic to peanuts and shellfish (again one of the lucky Thanksgiving bastards). I'm allergic to tomatoes and potatoes. And the collector of the most allergy trading cards is my older sister. She is allergic to gluten, dairy, soy and potatoes. Also, on top of that my siblings are vegetarians. As you can imagine group meals like Thanksgiving are a bitch to make.

We have a lot of labels on Thanksgiving to make sure no one is inadvertently murdered by food(passive aggressively murdered is another story). The pie table alone is insanity. There's always an apple pie for my dad. Then next to that we have the fancy one that my mom likes to make, but can't eat. Then we have the pumpkin pies. There's always two gluten free dairy free soy free pumpkin pies and the two regular ones for the rest of us.

It doesn't stop at pie either. Most years (this one being an exception) we have the gluten free dairy free vegetarian stuffing and the normal meat eater stuffing. Then we have mashed potatoes for the lucky bastards that can eat them and there are usually like three kinds just to add to the torture. We of course then have the standard classics of green bean casserole, sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce, and Turkey. That's where we get to the meat replacement dish for the vegetarians. My family doesnt do tofurkey. We do something weird obscure and completely unthanksgiving related. It varies from year to year. This years was a mushroom rissoto.

Making all that and keeping it straight drives all the designated chefs insane and come time to eat all the guests not properly versed in Robinson culture (such as my sisters' boyfriends) are promptly driven insane as well. The people allergic to things get up first and collect their plates full of the things they can eat, then everybody else gets up and gets to decide if gluten free vegetarian stuffing actually counts as a food and if they want to try it.

Seating placement is crucial for such gatherings. My older sister rented the club house event room place for her apartment complex so that we had breathing room and acrobatics weren't necessary when getting seconds. Even with the extra space it took my younger sister and I about twenty minutes of rearranging place cards before we finally figured out how we could seat people to avoid arguments. If you sit this person next to that person they'll start with the racism, and if dad sits across from this aunt they'll fight about something. And oh yeah, this person's not talking to this person because something that happened months ago so they can't be next to each other. In order to avoid conflict yes my family needs assigned seats like an elementary classroom. Now once we're eating, we're happy because, well, food. So argument chance decreases naturally and we're seated properly so no one can easily start an argument. It is hard to tell if things are this difficult in other families, but mine is like herding angry declawed cats into a pond.

After dinner was the tricky part. Because Americans are fucking crazy, Black Friday now starts at six pm on Thanksgiving. My dad in desperate desire for a new TV decided to go shopping. My older sister, aunt, and mom went with leaving my younger sister, her boyfriend, my older sister's boyfriend, and me to move everything back to the actual house. We left the three remaining old people in the club house while we hung out for awhile and did a little bit of excavation on our sanity.

After enough of our sanity was recovered, we decided that we should probably lock up the club house and collect the old people, so we did. This is collectively regarded as a terrible move and should have never been done. For the next hour or so the living room was split. On one side there was good old fashioned wholesome family racism. On the other side there were the rest of us trying to ignore it by playing zombie risk, and a violent videogame. It almost escalated past a passive aggressive statement and jaw clenching, but luckily everyone's return was never more welcome or perfectly timed.

Then we did presents because remember it's Thanksmas. (And yes we all forgot at the time as well.) It was your basic Christmas morning scenario. Awesome gifts mixed in with the subpar and the "the hell?" ones. It was a fun Christmas morning held at eight o'clock at night on Thanksgiving. And afterwards they all left. This like everything else was an ordeal and I was reminded no less than five times to remember my rolling pin, but eventually they were gone and no one had been murdered.

While we love our presents and family dearly, their leaving meant alcohol, foot room, and Dungeons & Dragons for everyone, so we we're quite happy. It's amazing how effective that combination can be.

Without Men

Once again I find myself having to explain why I love a film a lot of people hate. Without Men starring Eva Longoria is one of my all time favorite films. Since it so happens to be one of my favorite films, as usual I have discovered that it is hated by the masses.

I love this movie for a lot of reasons. The main one being that it's just awesome. The main premise of the movie is that a small Latin American village is left stranded without any men when all of the men are drug off to fight in a war. That premise is what originally got me to watch the film and I have loved it ever since.

One of the things that hurt this film a lot was the way it was marketed. The poster for the film is arranged in such away that if you were to just see it at a movie theater you would automatically assume that it was a romantic comedy about a man hating woman who by the end of the film ends up with Christian Slater. That is so unbelievably not the case it's down right hilarious. The trailer didn't help either. The trailer doesn't make it appear to be a run of the mill romantic comedy like the poster, but oh boy is it bad. It starts by explaining the premise of the film then proceeds to show a series of the parts of the film that make the women in it seem stupid. Out of context it's just painful to watch and had I seen the trailer first I probably never would have watched the movie.

I find reviews for movies completely useless when it comes to picking things to watch. I never give even the slightest regard to any review whatsoever mostly because I never actually agree once I've seen the film. Sometimes for fun I do read them after I've seen the movie just to see what other people thought and that is usually where I hear that people freaking hate that movie I love. It happens a lot to me. In regards to Without Men I discovered that people freaking hated it.

The reporter's boss in the film is a total ball buster woman. In the opening scene we actually see her getting sexually serviced by a coworker while she's on the phone. The complaint I've heard is that no woman in real life would risk the lawsuits. Well, the film's not supposed to be a realistic slice of life. It's supposed to be over the top and in this particular case a point is being made. In like everything ever (well not everything, but a lot) the male boss sleeps with the females that work under him. The point in this film being that a woman is just as sexually charged as anyone with a penis. It's actually one of the main points of the film, that women want it as much as men and really aren't too different in such regards.

In one review I read, the guy who wrote it actually admitted he didn't finish watching it. That alone should make all comments he made void, but, you know, the internet. He stopped near the beginning when the women are first complaining about all the things they don't know how to do without men. I will admit, upon first watching the film, I did debate turning it off myself because it was a little bit painful how stupid and antifeminist the women characters are, but I'm glad I stuck it out. That scene is over exaggerated for the purpose of being melodramatic. Eva Longoria's character, Rosalba, is the only one who is appalled by the statements made. Just about every feminist woman I have ever met has had a moment when talking with other women that you hear something like this and you just want to pile drive your head through a wall.

The film starts off with the women being overly exaggerated as useless for a couple reasons. One being entertainment value and the main one being to make the character transformation a bit more prominent. It's an over the top comedy of manners so it's supposed to be exaggerated. The whole point of the film is that men and women really aren't that different even though at first you're not really sure where it is going.

Another thing I love about it is that it's one of the few films I've ever seen that really has fun with female sexuality and that's probably why it got it's R rating. With the lack if F-bombs and incredibly tame sex scenes it's could easily get away with a PG-13 rating and were it men making the same jokes it probably would have. It's so absurd and fun when it goes there yet still quite true you have two choices: sit there awkwardly or laugh (and I suppose you could also add laugh awkwardly). Men can be crude about things without question in films so it is really fun to see women doing the same thing and to not have it be in The Sex in the City just sleep with everyone fashion.

What I love most about this film is that it shows women don't need men, but they do still want them and that's okay. In the film, Father Rafael says, "Life was finally how God intended it to be. The mans on one side the womans on the other." And I love that the entire film works to rip that apart entirely.

It's a strange film and not everyone will appreciate it, but by no means deserves the 1.5 star rating it has on IMDB. It should be given a fair chance and if by the end of the film you still don't like it fair enough (but you're probably a bit stupid).

Cryptic Messages From My Past

My class notebooks are plastered from cover to cover with writing. Most people think it's because I'm either incredibly studious or I am using class time to pen that novel.  Both are acceptable answers (neither are correct).

The fact of the matter is that I am taking notes on the class and what we're supposed to be learning, but I'm also writing down every other thought that pops into my head as well. This works out fine for me because writing things down helps me to remember it, but if anyone ever wishes to read my notes it would be like trying to discuss physics in Wonderland. You get a few lines of how that science thing actually works before all of a sudden there is a giant caterpillar asking questions like, "The Square Crows Heros?" and all you can do is just move on and hope to God you can get out of there without losing your soul to the black gobliny thing doodled in the margin.

While my notebooks are useless for navigating my classes, they are useful in finding ideas for things. (I actually wrote an entire script for one of my classes in the margins once.) I can reread them and totally know what was going on in my mind at that time. Well, in most cases that is. There are sometimes when I am looking through them and I can't for the life of me figure out why I wrote "FROZEN TURKEY" or "3480 South Galena." Then like a month later I totally remember that it's because we were discussing Thanksgiving leftovers in class or that I was getting a friend directions.

I don't just leave these cryptic notes in my class notebooks either. I'll be on the phone with my mom and need to write something down. The next thing you know I not only have a pie recipe, but a friendly squirrel named Bunny to share it with as well as several questions on what the purpose of a cuticle is. Then later on I'll look at that same recipe on my bulletin board and stare at it for an hour as I try to figure out what, "Ninja Bitch!" has to do with anything.

The amazing thing is, I actually forget that it's weird until the guy I sit next to in public speaking class who wasn't there last class asks if he can copy my notes. I always say, "yeah, sure thing," and open to the page. Then two things happen: 1) he can't read my handwriting for shit and 2) the only part he can read is my philosophical thoughts on Wheat Thins.

I thoroughly suspect that one day in the future, if I put together all the tidbits of my notes I can't figure out how they relate, I will have elaborate instructions on how to get to a magical unexplored land called my subconscious.

A Bizarre Consensus

Somehow without my knowledge a good deal of women have come to the consensus that I am at an entire loss on how to attract men. While this fact is very untrue, the most entertaining part of it all is how little I actually care to attract men. (And I get hit on by creepy old men, foreign guys, and highly antisocial nerdy guys just like the rest of you people thankyouverymuch!)

It is expected for my mother to give me the obligatory "get your hair out of your eyes" or "dress like a girl for once." I even expect them from my various family members during almost any conversation that I somehow ended up the topic of choice. But it's the people that I'm not related to and don't know all that well that baffle me entirely.

I like having conversations with people, so I'll talk to just about anyone (for awhile at least before running, hiding, or faking my own death). Most of the time they have some interesting stuff to say, but somehow above all other conversations I end up with them giving me fashion advice on how to make it so the boys won't stay away when I talk to women.

Awhile I ago I was back home visiting my family and I spent a day at work with my mom. Since it's a library, it's a lot of sitting around reading or doing useless stuff on the internet. About four hours into this though I get bored and start helping out with things like shelving books, or finding the movies to put in the cases, or most often spinning a lot in the desk chair.

One such occasion as I was inspecting the contents of the desk drawer looking for mints or Altoids or candy of some sort (no I was not ten in this story in case you were wondering), my Mom's boss's wife came up and started chatting with me. Conversation ensued of the "wow your all grown up" variety and quickly transitioned to the "do you have a boyfriend" one. When I gave my standard scoff and "no" reply (I can't help the scoff. It's an uncontrollable compulsion caused by amusement when asked this question), she immediately leapt into how doing something with my hair and wearing a skirt (or something like that) would make it impossible for the boys to stay away.

Why I find the entire conversation amusing what I find the most ridiculous is 1) that when she leapt into the tirade it became quite obvious the sole purpose of the conversation was to give me her fashion advice and 2) how she completely refused to accept my loose "I'm not really worried about it" as an answer and just brushed right by my more solid "Yeah, I'm not too worried about impressing boys" like all I had done was sneezed.

It was quite spectacular how she could not take a hint actually. Now my family is oblivious I expect that. I even expect other people to be it a fair deal of the time. But what I will never understand is why and how people have come to their conclusions that 1) all I care about is impressing boys and 2) that I give half a hoot about how they say I can do so.

It's not just older women who do it either. I've had people my own age give me these same lectures. It's like some bizarre compulsion women have. It's like they see me looking comfortable and enjoying the feeling in my feet and they can't help but exclaim "A comfortable woman! This must be stopped! What treachery is this!"

Complete strangers have never given me the lecture, but those few acquaintances I know through the grape vine, seem to be very interested in telling me how to look better. Of course they can't emphasize the look better part without sounding rude, so they give me the very week excuse of how it will make boys fall all over me. Had they known me at all, they'd know such a tactic would only lead to my spending the rest of the conversation configuring escape routes and the proper way to fake my death.

Lost and Stubbornly Found

A very well known fact is that I am incredibly stubborn. Another very well known fact is that I lose stuff a lot. A less known fact is that I'm actually really good at finding the things I've lost. My stubbornness would be the cause of my finding the things.

In the past three days I have lost three things: my debit card, my keys, and my phone.

My Debit Card
I lost the debit card while visiting my older sister in Fort Collins and as a result had to go downtown to get a replacement. I didn't find the debit card. Mostly because I didn't care that much (it expired in two months so..). I did however have one hell of a time finding the bank.

Unlike every other bank in the area mine had to be located inside a freaking hotel! (The perks of Denver, Ladies and Gentlemen.) I walked around the block like four times looking at the map on my phone trying to figure out where the hell the bleeding thing was. (If you didn't already guess I hadn't been to this particular location before.) Eventually I did find it after about twenty minutes of endless confusion and wandering about looking like a very confused and lost person.

My Keys
I haven't found my keys yet, but I haven't looked and I know they are somewhere in my apartment.

This morning as I was leaving for class, I grabbed my main key set and had it in my hand. By the time I got out the door with my bicycle they were no longer in my hand. I have no memory of putting them down, but obviously I did. (Either that or my arch enemies the gnomes put a vanishing spell on them.) Not having time to worry about it, I just walked back inside and grabbed my spare. I have no idea what the hell happened to them (but it is very likely I will be traveling to someone's front yard and roughing up a garden gnome to find out).

My Phone
Speaking of front yards that's sort of where I found my phone. As I  biked my sorry ass home today, I had to wait at a stop light for like ten minutes because it decided that it no longer liked working and cops were trying to figure out how to direct traffic. I noted that I got a text 'cause I herd and felt it, but didn't check it because I had the very spectacular luck of being able to go at that moment.

I was all in a good mood thinking about how I  was going to flop on my sofa when I got home and was listening to A Bad Night For A Hero (a brilliant local band everyone should check out). Of course this happy moment quickly collided with a brick wall. My phone wasn't in my pocket when I pulled up to my apartment building and the dropping of f-bombs under my breath began.

I took my crap up to my flat and walked back to the light where I got my text looking all the way and asked two cops, an electrician, and two people waiting for the bus if they'd seen it. Their answer "nope, that sucks. I'll keep my eye out." So I then started walking back looking as I went. At one point I heard what sounded like the Pikachu noise which is my email ring tone so I froze and looked around. I then decided it was just the kids across the street and I was crazy.

When I got back to my flat, I grabbed my bike and rode back along that path looking and decided to go back to school thinking that maybe I was crazy and didn't have it at the stop light. Still didn't find it and more muttered f-bombs occurred.

After asking all of the five people who happened to be inhabiting the film school, I remembered Google invented this thing that can tell you where the hell your phone is with an accuracy up to seven yards. Sure enough it was right where I heard the Pikachu noise. I fled the computer lab and biked my ass off to get back to that area and started searching the bushes.

I was about to give up when I heard the low battery noise of my phone. Still couldn't find the damn thing and assumed I had gone crazy and someone was just locking their car.

Just as I was I was walking to knock on a house to ask if they could call it, I saw it sitting on the other side of the fence on someone's front steps. The phone didn't just fall out of my pocket it flew to a new home.

After two hours of searching,, I found it with three percent battery life sitting happily mocking me in it's bright pink case. (Just to be fair, I do wear glasses and it was getting dark, so I do have a properly  paper thin excuse at my disposal.)

Conclusion
So there you have it. I am a very mindless dumbass, but it's okay because I can stubbornly save my dumb ass after such dumbassery.

P.S.
While writing this blog I got up to pee. When I came back I found my missing keys sitting right next to where I was sitting on my sofa. Right on top of my stack of nerd books. (I should maybe get my eyes checked.)

Digital Adventure

Yes, I Am A Woman

There is one thing I find really absurd. Well, actually, I find lots of things absurd, but this is one of the things I feel like ranting about at the moment. It's hilarious when people get surprised that I like something. No one bats an eyelash when I tell them that I love Star Wars, Spiderman, and Xena (although, someone which hasn't seen the show once told me it was appalling that I liked it), but as soon as I wear heels, have a pink phone, or get caught watching a Disney movie marathon, the what bet did you lose jokes start.

It makes sense that no one is surprised at my standard guy nerd interests because to be fair I am likely wearing a T-shirt that states the fact. But what I don't get is why people are so surprised when I like "chick" things. Contrary to popular belief I am a woman. (Please hold off all gasp spasms until the end.)

I like fashion to some extent. (Hold it.) I'm not talking the runway bologna, but actual clothes that people wear. The way style changes over time just fascinates me as well as why a person chooses the clothes they do. Believe it or not I can actually help you pick out a nice outfit (if need be just hold your breath). I just don't want one for myself. I'll be the comfortable one over here thanks. Nothing compares to the wide-eyed looks of "did that just happen?" when I comment on how much I love that one character's dress. The shiney black dress in Shock Treatment made me all giddy. (Seriously, you're going to pass out of hyperventilation if you don't wait.)

I say I love the show Pretty Little Liars and some people's heads just up and explode. When I tell them I love the outfits the characters are wearing I have lost them entirely. They end up like the on ship computer when Arthur Dent tried to explain tea to it. It may have been easier to explain rocket science in a few of these cases.

When I say I love Disney movies it somehow manages to be the most baffling thing in the world to people despite it being something everyone loves. (If you say you don't love at least one you are a liar!) My theory is that this stems from my hatred of being called a princess that arrose from a very unique form of child rearing in which you drown your child in a subject until they hate it. In this case it would be called Princess Smoothing. I do love fairy tales, but hell will have to freeze over, explode like a Michael Bay movie, and then reassemble like a Dragonball Z villain before I will ever want to be a princess. (Though, if someone wanting to give me Amazon princesshood or a chakrum...)

Moving on, I am a big fan of the novel Pride and Prejudice. The fact people are surprised by this has to be one of the most baffling things to me. It's a famous example of early feminism. Come on people. That ass is not supposed to be a hat. I actually know very few people who have read the book (no the version with zombies doesn't count). But I say I like it and I get that same look as if I just declared I was a one eyed purple unicorn named Frank. The movie Lost in Austen (which is a must see for all fans of Pride and Prejudice) is one of my favorite things ever because it runs amuck with the story in the most hilariously respectful way. When I mentioned this fact to my older sister, the thing she said is, "it's funny how you'll get into such girly movies."

I know this may be hard for the world to understand, but I am a woman. (Alright, go ahead and gasp spasm already. You're turning purple anyways.) Can you people not see that I have boobs? I know the comfy clothing may abstruct your view a bit, but they are there I promise. I can like princesses without wanting to be one. I can read "girly" novels (except Twilight! Shoot me if I ever read Twilight!) I can even like dresses and still not want to wear one ever. (Sorry mom it's not happening.)

I find people's reactions so ridiculous when they find these things out. It's like I just told them Santa Claus isn't real and they didn't get the build up as a small child where they already sorta had it figured out. To be honest I could probably say the one eyed purple unicorn thing and get less weird looks than I do when I say, "damn, I love that dress!" (My actual statement upon seeing the black dress in Shock Treatment.)

More Accepted?

This is just something that has been bothering me lately. Everyone is always telling me that being a gay chick is more accepted than being a gay guy. To which I loudly declare, "Bullshit!" And go on a ten minute rant.

The truth is that it's not more accepted. Sure you do hear people bitching about two guys kissing more than two women doing so, but that is because the two guys kissing is taken seriously.

People only get upset when they think that something is a threat. Two guys kissing equals threat. Two women kissing equals entertainment. You have to admit there is a good deal of thought process behind women kissing that goes along the lines of, "they're doing it to impress guys." That thought process does not exist when it comes to two guys kissing. They're not doing it to impress girls they are just gay.

Let's look at media. Despite the fact that a shit ton of LGBT media is incredibly depressing (a rant for another time) there is always more graphic sex scenes in the movies about two women. Exhibit A: Brokeback Mountain vs. Black Swan. Both won Oscars and to be fair they aren't really the same thing, but think about it. Mila Kunis and Natalie Portman together was a far more graphic sex scene than Jake Gillenhall and Heath Ledger. In films about gay guys, the sex bit is danced around whereas just about any film ever with two woman it is played up as much as possible.

Another thing you will notice is that in films about gay men, they don't pull the whole well actually he's bi thing. I have read and seen a few to many books, movies, and TV shows where they pull that card to create drama or they pull the whole it was just a phase thing. Sure sexuality can be pretty fluid, but dear God, it's the same for men. Can we please stop seeing this plot twist or show at least one show in which that "gay" guy somehow falls for the chick. Please?

Then there is the one thing that bothers me just in general. Will and Grace. (Gasp Spasm!) I know I just blasphemed over the entire world of the gay best friend obsessed, but come on. I've seen episodes of Will and Grace, so I'm not just spouting from ignorance here and I will admit some of the jokes are fabulous. They just make them to much and if I watch more than an episode at a time I get monumentally annoyed. I actually did a little math. (Yes I'm a nerd. Moving on.)

After watching a few shows, I came to an average of about seven gay jokes per episode. In a television show that averages 22 minutes once you cut out commercials that leaves you with a gay joke every 3 minutes-ish. (If you want to get down to the second do the math yourself.) I don't know about you, but my sexuality is talked about not often actually. I do other stuff in my day to day life besides just be gay or do things gayly. (Gasp Spasm!)

Yes it does come up so I don't expect it to never be mentioned, but dear lord every three minutes is a bit much. There are about three television shows I can think of where these people (yes normal average people) actually act like they are normal average people. Pretty Little Liars, Buffy The Vampire Slayer, and Lost Girl. (I especially love Lost Girl for the fact that they don't label any of the sexuality stuff. It's just this dude has a husband and this chick has a girlfriend. Moving on.)

While other shows have gay characters they spend a bit too much time talking about being gay. Greek (which has great dialog and humor for the most part, but a shoddy plot) actually has a character that pretty much just complains about the fact that when you're gay all anyone talks about is your being gay. While I get your point, shut up already! You're not helping the cause!

Every single plot point for that character, of course, revolves around his being gay. The other more hetero characters have plot points about well stuff like failing classes, partying to much, or even the obligatory pissing off of the parents. Not the gay guy though he just gets to struggle with the ins and out of being gay. Like having a crush on your roommate or loving musicals and decorating, but not being able to admit it. (The true challenge of all gay men, apparently.)

Into that same show there is a plot point where a chick declares she's a lesbian and goes on the "obligatory" college lesbian fling, but then decides she was wrong. She's not gay. While I get annoyed with the way the gay guy was portrayed, the gay chick thing was far more obnoxious. The gay guy character was a gay guy. The gay chick character was a three episode story arch in which she was just going through a phase.

So, that would be my rant for this evening brought on by an abundance of free time due to illness and watching feminist documentaries in that free time.

Transportation

So in the past year that I've lived on my own, my transportation has evolved quite a lot.

One year ago, when I started out, I had a scooter. Most people upon hearing that say something along the lines of, "Oh cool. Is it just a little electric one?" No I had a foot powered scooter. I seriously just hopped on it and just ride down hill to school. It was pretty awesome and when I feel like I haven't put in enough effort getting from place to place I even still ride it.

After awhile my parents bought me a bicycle at a garage sale. It was a pretty decent bicycle. The problem was that I am short and it was built for a person who wasn't. I rode it a couple times before I decided being alive and uninjured was nice and continued on with the scooter.

When the second semester of college began my parents had boughten another bicycle off of some friends. This one was slightly too small, but with creative adjustments I had a fully functioning bicycle I could ride to go do things. I finally had timely transportation.

It was such a nice bike and hadthe added benefit if being pink so very few people weren't surprised when they learned it was mine. (I also have a pink phone which somehow happens to boggle everyone's mind.) This bike met a very sad demise though when I was coming home from work at 3:00am.

Some dill hole ran into the front tire with his car. I was crossing on the crosswalk. I wasn't even riding and I was doing so with the light, but this jackass decided that turning left was more important than my being alive and while he turned left plowed into my front tire obliterating my bike. The bastard didn't even slow down. Just kept going. And for added effect he was on the wrong side of the rode as well.

So for at least a month I had two bicycles sitting in my apartment neither of which was ridable for me. Then a couple weeks ago I got a brand new bicycle that is just my size and works wonderfully so I had three bicycles filling up my living room.

Since I first got the bicycle that was too big, I had been trying to sell it or even give it to someone. People would mention that they needed a bike and I'd say, "well, I have an extra one if you'd like it." Then they just shrug it off as if they realize that if someone gives them a bicycle they have no excuse to be out of shape.

That is until last night. I was taking the nonfunctioning bicycle down to the dumpster when a lady who had just moved in asked if I was getting rid of it and said she'd take it. This allowed me to offer her the one that was too big and she took it! Hallelujah!

It only took me ten months to get rid of the blasted thing. (It's like the worlds most unwanted bicycle.) I now have so much free space in my living room, I don't even know what to do with it.

No Plans

I, unlike most people, don't hate Mondays. This may be attributed more to the fact that Monday acts as a Saturday in terms of the rest of the world. This means that my standard plans usually consist of sleeping in until 4:00pm. (I know you're starting with the judging and I will have you know that I work until 2:00am, so bite me!) Then I nuke corndogs and pretend that watching The Middleman counts as being productive.

The past two Mondays have been quite different from my usually ones. In other words I actually went places. (Initiate gasp spasm here.)

(Insert exhale exhale exhale here.)

Last weekend (Monday for you people with normal schedules) consisted of a lot of insanity only made more absurd by a lack of sleep. The plan was for me to go to work and when I got home my younger sister and her boyfriend would be at my place where they were going to stay the night before we caught the first busses to Fort Collins to visit our older sister. This worked about as well as capturing a squirrel with a tin can while you're on crutches because you lost a leg.

My dad decided that since he was going up to Wyoming anyways he was just going to drive my sister and her boyfriend up to Fort Collins. My dad, being a master of passive aggression, decided that he was not going to pick me up on the way because "he didn't have room in the car." It was "not" because he has been pissed at me for the past three months about a blog post I wrote about the insanity of my sister's graduation in which he comes out as far less of a gentleman than he would have the world think of his "cowboy" ass. (I'd link you to it, but I took it down to end the email lectures argument I was having with my mother.) I was trying to think of a way in which his excuse may have actually been viable and for a little while was on the "well if he's driving the truck he wouldn't" page for about an hour and wasn't as pissed. Then I realized that even in the truck he'd have room and pissed off resumed. I don't care how pissed at a person I was, if they needed a ride somewhere I was already going so that they could hang out with their sisters before one moved to Texas, I'd give them a damn ride. Especially if I'm related to them. Maybe I'm a little preachy because I've never been in that situation, but if I did blow them off I could at least think up a solid excuse.

So my Friday (Sunday in normal world relation) was a shit day. It was in fact The Never Ending Day From Hell.

I worked all day as tech support (which is actually my job even though I sort of made it sound like it was a one time thing). It is normally not such a terrible thing, but when you are already having a shit day dealing with entitled assholes that think 28¢ a day entitles them to every movie ever made on a golden platter that is guarenteed to make the movie play perfectly without issue and that there is a magic fix all button because all they know about technology is what they've seen in 80's movies and Hackers (which is actually a fun movie despite it's inaccuracy), can make you want to pull a supervillain and destroy the world with that doomsday device I've totally been building because I'm a Bond villain.

Anyways, it was getting close to 2:00am and my day was finally almost over when I got a chat from a bored no life psych major who somehow thought that online tech support was the place to collect smart ass puns and use your psychological expertise. I was thus on a chat for an hour past when I was supposed to leave because Americans seriously need lives! So at 3:00 am I finally got to get off the computer and by 3:15am I begun my five mile trek home.

At 5:00am, after stopping for salty and surprisingly healthy snack food, I actually got home and had fifteen minutes to lay down and pretend I could actually stay in bed before I had to pack up my shit and catch the bus to downtown Denver. Where I then caught the bus to Longmont. I actually got about half an hour of sleep on this bus which worked quite nicely in getting rid of my urge to blow up the earth.

By the time I caught the bus to Fort Collins my reserve tank kicked in and I was somehow able to have a conversation with some vagabonds that had a kitty and not seem crazy. This was likely due more to the fact I was talking to vagabonds than that I actually seemed like a normal person. Then when I got to FoCo, I got to catch another, bus to meet my sister. Three hours from catching my first bus I was able to crash land on my sister's couch and not sleep because I get excited when I see people I like.

A steaming cup of coffee and an episode or two of Orange is The New Black later, my Dad arrived with the human cargo he's had a conversations longer than "Hey Dad! Happy Forth!" "Do you want to talk to your mother?" in the past three months. This led to an awkward lunch in which my dad said nothing to me before he quickly needed to leave and we shared a half hearted murmur filled obligatory hug.

After Pops left, we hung out which I don't really remember much about because my brain was sleeping even while I was fully awake. Then towards the end of the day we watched Jericho (which could not capture my sleep deprived brain's attention for shit), ate pasta and went to a carnival.

The carnival was just like any other one a person would go to. Obligatory mocking of the fully capable people that refuse to go on rides. Mocking the faces of people who do go on the rides. A ferris wheel. And of course eating vendor food which in this case was the Holy Grail of corndogs. (Maybe because I was sleep deprived and hungry, but my younger sister's boyfriend agreed so I think it was.) Then after I ate the corndog, my body started crashing so I took a bajillion photos to avoid falling asleep next to that spinny swing ride and being trampled by masses of carnival goers rushing to vomit.

I sleapt in the car back to my sister's place and managed to stay up for a couple more hours with both my sister's boyfriends and the pumpkin of my younger sister asleep on the couch. So, thirty-six hours from my waking up at 1:00pm on Sunday and running on a couple of small naps I finally passed out on my sister's sofa. 

So Sunday (Tuesday in relative terms), I woke up at what I claim as too early to fiddle music (not kidding) and me and my siblings with the younger one's boyfriend in tow went to get matching tattoos of the three stars from th Harry Potter books (something I didn't actually notice existed until my sisters mentioned getting tattoos of them). We then walked to get frozen yogurt while I debated Star Wars with the boyfriend. Then after buying henna in a pungently sweet Indian shop and purchasing Peace Tea we went back to my sister's and played Supernatural Risk (which is just  Risk, but no one dies just switches sides, so taking over the world is fucking difficult). Then after going to a nerd shop ("Hobby Shop" for the people too pompous to admit their nerdom), played D&D while drinking until 2:00am. Which as it turns out was plenty of time for me to be raped by a lizard woman until I was on the verge of death from aids. (Yeah D&D is weird with my friends.)

Then I woke up again too damn early and started the three hour bus ride with my younger sister and her boyfriend who stayed at my flat for the next two days and saw very little of me because I work nights.

So yeah that was last weekend. This weekend has been quite different despite being still on the quite crazy side.

Yesterday I got up early (and by early I mean 11:00am) to eat tomato free cheese pizza and discuss nerdy things with a friend from high school I hadn't seen in awhile on her way up Fort Collins. Then after she departed I went back into my apartment for a little while with the plans of watching The Middleman (seriously check this show out). This of course didn't work due to the fact that there was a black out in my area that left the windowless hallways of my building feeling like a level of Silent Hill. So I rode the bus downtown to check out the show my friend who is touring Colorado was playing in the basement of a coffee shop. I then hung out with this friend and his friend for the rest of the day whichever basically consisted of dark humor jokes involving dead hookers, while I navigated the drive in their man-stanky car to Westminster where me and the friend I went to go see play at the coffee shop cooked a pasta stir-fry (something we invented after I berated him for thinking canned ravioli counted was food) while his friend serenaded us on his guitar. We then drove back to downtown Denver where they played in a coffee shop bar combo where the audience fluctuated in its ability to give a crap. At this place my friend was told by J Megatron that his shit was dope but he needed to own it and recieved a free lecture on the magic of Tupac. We then went back to my place where my friend crashed and I hung out with his friend until 2:00am.

They woke up at 7:00am and I woke up with them, made them frozen waffles, then passed back out until 4:00pm. Then proceeded with my normal weekend plans of microwave food and watching The Middleman. (I do watch other shows this is just what I've been watching lately.) That's when I got a text that they forgot stuff. Stuff that I then noticed was laying in the middle of my floor and the two traveling musicians returned.

After a trip to the grocery store, in which I discovered men can't find things you send them to find, laughed a bit too hard at Naked! (yes the juice) related puns, and was told laughing in the produce section isn't allowed because produce is serious buisiness, we returned to my flat where my friend passed out on my sofa, I made fried cheese tortilla things (I'd say the actually name, but for some reason I can't remember how it's spelled), and my friend's friend did my dishes. I then chilled and watched The Middleman (is this reference number four?) for a couple hours before he went to bed. So yes as of right now I have two traveling musicians who haven't showered in a few days passed out on my sofa.

I do really enjoy having no plans because it leads to far more adventures and interesting things then having them. When you have a plan for the day you never get to experience the deliciousness of pasta stir-fry, the suffocating stench of being crammed in a man-stank filled car, or understand how serious the business of produce is.

The Sexy Scientist

Who doesn't love a good sexy scientist character? Even straight chicks can't deny the awesomeness of a well written sexy scientist type character. That being said, the sexy scientist has to actually, well, be a scientist not just boobs in a lab coat.

I spent last weekend as any self respecting nerdy film student would. That is working on a film set. I was production designer which was awesome because it was a science fiction shoot and I got to build some really awesome props and put together some awesome costumes. I seriously did more sewing and even some ironing than any person should do because seriously I was the only person that knew how. (The damn director didn't even know what was needed to work an iron.) It was a lot of work, but I enjoy making props and costumes a lot so I was fine with it.

The original script I liked a lot. It was a first draft so it probably needed a couple tweaks, but was over all pretty awesome! One of the main characters was a female scientist. Yes, she was the signature sexy scientist, but you could tell that she actually had the brain power to do science and I quite liked her character. So, starting out, I was pretty damn excited to work on the shoot. All the cool stuff I got to design and build as well as the cool characters made it a dream job.

Things only started to get iffy when the director decided to rewrite the script. It wasn't originally the director's script. A friend of ours wrote it and if it needed revisions, for all intensive purposes, it should have been the writer to make them, but the director opted to do it himself. The script suddenly ended up being twice as long (mostly because he pumped up the dialog), it made the assassin a guy who apparently doesn't know how to unfurl his eyebrows (this one at least worked), and stripped our friend the sexy scientist of a brain. Instead of the smart, but sexy scientist we all know and love, she has now become a woman who got the job apparently because she has boobs (which to be fair might know more about science than the actual scientist). The character felt a fair amount like a stripper doing a sexy doctor strip tease.

I must give kudos to the actress who played our doctor, however. Somehow when we started out filming and before the director gave her the instructions of "act slutty" she somehow managed to make the line "I left my makeup in the car. I wanted to touch up before the surprise party!" sound like it was coming from an intelligent woman and wasn't just written by some guy who apparently never talks to girls. That line physically made me cringe everytime I heard it. I had to fight the urge to either 1. Walk out the door and take all my props with me or 2. Confront the director and beg him to change that line to something someone might actually. Even the most stereotypical of woman don't say shit like that.

It was frustrating, very damn frustrating and I wasn't the only one who left that shoot more than a little annoyed. The guy who was the director really is a great guy, but there are two things he needs to do. 1. Learn how the hell time management works. (There was way to much waiting around for him.) And 2. Maybe just ask and actual woman how her brain functions. And possibly 3. Stop watching so much porn. (It's starting to show in your work, dude.)

Like I said I'm all for a sexy scientist, but can you please keep them as actual scientists. This director isn't the only one to do it. It's all over Hollywood movies. There's the sexy scientist that doesn't actually seem to know what science is, or in at least a couple cases, she knows, but is to preoccupied with love interests. (*cough* Suzanne Storm *cough*)

Come on filmmakers. Is it really too much to ask for a sexy scientist that actually knows and cares about her work. Sorry to burst your guy bubbles people, but we don't just get jobs with our boobs and there isn't a special branch of science where woman are chosen as scientists by the quality of said boobs under a lab coat.

An Amazingly Comfortable Shirt

I have a shirt that is so endlessly comfortable, it beats out the feeling of new socks ten fold. And no matter how many times I wear it, it still feels that comfortable. It clings to my body in just the right fashion using static cling to it's advantage. Then, throughout the day, the cloud like material stretches out perfectly. Upon washing it, the fabric contracts back to where it was when the day began. It is even so comfortable, I can't even feel itchy.

I kid you not, this shirt is like snuggling with a kitten on the inside of a new sock! It is just that comfortable. I don't even know what the hell it's made out of. (I could check, but that would involve taking off the shirt and I'm pretty sure the label is worn off anyways.) I just feel so cozy and relaxed like all is right with the world when I wear this shirt. Seriously if you want world peace, give everyone one of these shirts. (You have to try to want to blow something or someone up while wearing something this comfortable.) I'm pretty sure people aren't promised shirts this comfortable in heaven.

Just to demonstrate the power of this shirt, let me tell you a little story. This morning I woke up like an hour earlier than usual, so I had an extra hour to bum around before going to school. This of course ment that I spent the time reading Cracked.com. Somehow, I stumbled upon a website called Conservapedia. (I only suggest you click that link if you feel the need to induce forehead swelling via face palms.) Anyways, after browsing for a bit I  was feeling more than a little bit sad for the human race. I decided to get up and ready for school before I reached a point where I wanted to slap the dumb out of people so much I actually tried it. I then found this shirt on the top of the hamper and in no time I forgot all about the stupidity of people. Even one of my lead actors being an hour late didn't bother me. It's just hard to be pissed off when you're this comfortable.

While my shirt is so wonderfully comfortable, it really isn't a shirt for wearing in public. It started out as one of those long sleeved under shirts you wear to keep your arms warm and give you a schnazzy look when it decides to snow in May. (I'm talking to you Colorado!) It was never designed to be worn alone in public, but really just to make you feel wonderfully cozy underneath that T-shirt. Over time and due to lots of use, it lost the sleeves about half way down the arm giving it a bizarre cut off t-shirt look. So now when I wear it I just have these areas at the bottom of my sleaves where it's splayed out all funky. In other words I just look strange.

While before I put on the shirt I may contemplate how bizarre I will look, as soon as that shirt is on, I am so confortable, I don't care if I look like a homeless person. (Something my siblings accused me of for most of middle school. That is looking like a homeless person not actually being one.) I've always preferred comfort to looks, but this shirt just adds to the weirdness of my day to day appearance. (At least my hair no longer makes me look like a Muppet.)

The saddest thought, though, is that eventually this shirt will completely die. The already holey wonderous material, will eventually fall so far apart that I will be forced to do away with this shirt. I feel like a shirt this spectacular deserves it's own funeral. So if a few year down the road I invite you to it's funeral please just sit politely in the back giving me "what the hell" looks while I deliver the eulogy. (Also maybe call the nut house.)

Laughable

For years, my best friend has been laughing at my family when they argue. I've always found humor in my family's arguments, but I never got how absolutely hilarious they were until I got to listen to one objectively.

Normally, when my family argues, I'm right in the middle of it, so it's near impossible to laugh at until much later (usually when I write about it on my blog). But this weekend, when I visited them, I got to hear an argument I had no participation in. And damn it was funny!

Of all the absurd things they were arguing about bird seed. Not even about something like what type of bird seed to get or how much to use, but where to put it for feeding the birds. Apparently, she had put it in the wrong place. For a good twenty minutes at least my mom and sister were arguing like this.

My mom's argument:
The birds are used to it being on the picnic table. You should have put it where we normally put it.

My sister's argument: They're wild birds they'll find the food.

My mom's argument: You were just being too lazy to walk to the picnic table and back to the shed.

My sister's argument: That if you spread out the bird seed more birds could eat it without fighting with other birds.

Then the arguments just looped for twenty minutes. To be fair, my sister was probably just being lazy. (I spent all of high school and probably middle school doing the same things.) Also, i really doubt the birds give a crap where the free food is. (College students don't.)

While I have always found our family arguments ridiculous, I never realized how hilarious they were until I wasn't participating. I get it, Holly, my family truly is hilarious.

My Music Collection

I love music. It's just one of those things that is awesome and everyone loves in some form or other. I just happen to be slightly crazy when it comes to my music collection.

I have so much music on my computer that I could push play and it would continue for ten days straight without stopping and without repeating a song. And that's just the music on my computer. I'm always finding new music I love and adding to my already insane collection. I expect that by the time I get old (assuming I survive my inability to do anything without injury) I will have enough music to play for at least a month straight.

Now my music collection appears as quite random to a lot of people and often leads to many very notable "what the hell" looks from friends when I have it on shuffle (which is almost always). I will start off playing something like A.F.I. and then the song will change to Let's Go Sailing (since you probably don't know who that is, I assure that is a drastic change). Then some Rasputina, followed by Phineas and Ferb (I really have a bit too much of this). Then it's likely to leap to Jet and then onto some Patsy Cline. After some good old Patsy, there's Jimmy Hendricks, which will change to Demi Lovato (my sisters never stop giving me crap about this one). Next up some Beyonce followed by some Scooby-Doo chase music. And to top it all off some Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong. (This list could go on for pages, but ain't nobody got time for that.)

Like I said, I love music. I really don't care the genre (except dubstep. I have no idea what the hell that is!), as long as it's good music. There are only a handful of artists that I absolutely can't stand listening to for even a moment in time. One of those is Serg Tankian. (I like his lyrics and meaning, but I prefer nails on a chalkboard to his voice.) Another would be Nicki Minaj because seriously that's not music. (My friend insists on playing this when I ride in her car and I have on occasion debated just opening the door and leaping to freedom.) Just about everything else I can stand even if I don't enjoy it. But Nicki Minaj and Serg Tankian are so invasive it physically hurts. (I am convinced if I listen to them for too long, I will end up like the aliens from Mars Attacks.)

The most prominent part of my music collection is oldies. I'm always jamming to oldies. Seriously, if I could only listen to one artist for the rest of my life it would be Ella Fitzgerald (and if you don't know who that is drop everything you are currently doing and Google her. Also that's just sad, dude). She has one of the greatest voices ever! (When an episode of Code Name Kids Next Door made a joke about a disease called Salmonella Fitzgerald that made you scat sing, it made my day. (Then it made me sad because I realized how few children would actually get it.) My favorite song is her version of It Don't Mean A Thing If It Ain't Got That Swing. (I listen to that no less than twice a week.)

While no one would ever dare mock someone for a love of classic jazz and swing, my love of doo-wop is often called into question. Of all my musical obsessions doo-wop is the most random. Seriously, like no one likes doo-wop. Even in my music appreciation class last year, the teacher (who was supposed to be teaching us all the great things about music) kept calling doo-wop "terrible music." I felt so awkward sitting there actually enjoying the doo-wop, while everyone, including the teacher, was treating it as a boring required part of the class. Seriously is doo-wop that bad?

A random side note of awesome: While listening to my music on shuffle, one of my best guy friends (who happens to be my sister's boyfriend) didn't bat an eyelash at The Platters (doo-wop in case you were wondering), but seriously questioned my sanity when Cohead and Cambria began to play. (For the record they have an awesome drummer.)

I love my music and am not afraid to show it. Life's just too damn short to not be singing I Feel Pretty while riding your bike to school (something I do daily, although the song changes). I love my music collection and am damn proud of it. Also I can out nerd even the nerdiest people with it. (Nothing can beat the Japanese Spiderman theme song.) And just so everyone knows, I will likely be the only old lady of this generation who will be playing the music of her grandma's generation. (A lot of Bing Crosby I'm afraid.)