oh my god, nobody cares.

 

I know I am a mutant. I know I am the only woman on the face of the earth who can't stand babies. I am aware of this already. No one needs to lambast me for it. 

So this should come as no surprise to any of you that I am tired of hearing about them. I want to preface this by saying that I am not tired of hearing about children and the weird/funny things they do. I am not against children. As soon as they can emote and pick up shit on their own, I'm all about it. 

But there is a proliferation of baby-TMI going on, particularly on social networking sites, and I'm really over it.

I am really tired of hearing about how people's newborns shit all over themselves, or how they didn't sleep through the night, or how they cried when their foreskin was cut. 

And what is with the pictures of new born babies and their shriveled, rotting, black umbilical cords? It looks like they have leeches crawling out of their stomachs. Attractive.

You are not special for having a kid.

I am completely irritated by the maternal smugness that fills the air every time a child slides out of a vagina. Some women seem to think that giving birth is the greatest accomplishment of their lives. I hate to break it to you, but women have only been doing it since... oh, I dunno, the beginning of the species. You don't deserve a fucking trophy for being rawdogged. I've realized that two consequences of unprotected sex, STDs and children, have a lot in common, actually... they're lasting reminders of bad decisions that both irritate and destroy any opportunity for future intercourse.

On another note,  I don't give a shit what Louis C.K. says, all babies look the same.

I hate to be a total bitch to the most innocent of human creatures (okay, actually I don't really care), but I don't understand why people will take 65390173190 pictures of their newborns. Pretty much all babies look the same to me until they're at least 6 months old. Not to mention the fact that newborn babies have absolutely no personality. Nobody is as boring of a photo subject as a baby who can't even lift its own head. You might as well take pictures of your cat's asshole or a turd in the toilet - at least these things respond to stimuli.

And yes, if I ever give birth, it will be to a giant cigarette. Or an Absolut bottle. At least these will actually serve a function for me. And neither of them shit themselves.

50 things that I like.

So I spend a lot of time on this blog talking about shit that I DON'T like. Inspired by niotillfem, I've decided to come up with a list of 50 things that I really like. (She did 101, but I can't go that far. I'm too sarcastic to even feign enthusiasm for living). Here's to a deeper examination of my psyche, and a laundry list that will probably someday need be submitted to a mental health professional for analysis.

Eccentric old cat ladies are right up there, probably because I realize I'll be one some day.

1 The feeling of being the only holder of a secret; when someone tells you something and says "I've never told anyone this before..."

2 The satisfaction of cooking a meal and knowing it will taste good

3 The smell of sweat on someone else's skin

4 Smoking cigarettes on the porch as the sun is setting

5 The exquisite nature of pain that means something

6 Telling someone something honest that is blunt or scary, even to you

7 Wearing only a bathrobe

8 Drinking a bottle of champagne on a Wednesday afternoon with your best friend

9 Singing along to Alanis Morrissette and Melissa Etheridge in a bar and humiliating myself

10 The moment you dunk your head underwater in the ocean and the cold of the water shocks you

11 Finding a new song every week that exactly fits what you're going through

12 Reading about people who have absolutely no reason to be happy, yet they are anyway

13 Walking to work and thinking about all of the history that surrounds me, and all the people who walked these streets before

14 The second of unadulterated joy when you're at a concert and the band plays your favorite song

15 The calm that comes and blankets you post-cry

16 Looking at photographs of family members when they were young, and noticing how beautiful they were

17 Putting on red lipstick and looking at myself in the mirror

18 Finding some amazing overlooked item at a thrift store

19 Calling myself a feminist and atheist and not being afraid of what people are going to think or say

20 Writing a piece of poetry - even a line - and finding it later and remarking at how good it is

21 Looking at massive things (mountains, skyscrapers, the ocean) that make me feel small

22 Watching ridiculously gorgeous women who have no idea how beautiful they are do mundane tasks

23 The challenge of filling a notebook with your thoughts

24 Dancing anywhere, to anything, at any time

25 Meeting a person and feeling a click when you realize that you like them and want to be friends with them

26 Glamorous ingenues of past eras

27 Cities on hills

28 Drinking people under the table, especially if they're men

29 Huge waves that pummel you and knock your breath away, that leave you choking and laughing

30 Creating hilarious monikers for people

31 Putting on a pretty dress even if I have nowhere to wear it

32 Sitting on patios adorned with lights

33 Showing up at a bar that's full of people you know, and realizing that everyone is exactly the same as they've been and will be

34 Being told I'm intelligent

35 Seeing someone's house for the first time

36 Watching my dad get beet red and weep from laughing too hard

37 Rubbing the ears of a cat

38 Carnival lights and being at the top of a Ferris wheel

39 Practicing my handwriting on everything I can

40 Mint chocolate chip ice cream at 7 pm on a hot summer day

41 Finding someone's hand in the dark

42 The way the beach smells just after rain

43 The sound of high heels down a long tiled hallway

44 The feeling of my hair whipping when I'm driving and the windows are down

45 Facing the day in a cool pair of sunglasses

46 Dried roses

47 Reading transgressive fiction that elicits an actual emotional response

48 An incredibly crisp french fry

49 Driving around at Christmastime using the excuse of looking at people's light displays to peek into their windows

50 Stupid things I did when I was 16 that I can reminisce about

how do you not know he's gay?!?!?

I am the queen of speculation. I spend vast amounts of spare time speculating about people and their deepest fears/desires/secrets. It's an amusing way to pass the time - I particularly enjoy speculating about people speculating about me. Coupled with this brilliant imagination of mine is an almost dead-accurate gaydar. I believe I hold this gift because gay men flock to me - I am, simply, a gay man in a woman's body - and because of my judge-reduce-reject philosophy on strangers. Yes, I judge you, I reduce you to the most base elements of your personality, and then, I reject you. Unless I happen to end up liking you, but that's pretty rare.

So anyway, it always falls upon me to wonder - how do some people not know someone is gay?

I will admit - even with my acute homoception, I slipped. A kid who worked at my office was peculiar for numerous reasons, but something about him really bugged me and I couldn't put my finger on it. He had really unfashionable glasses and talked endless about the stock market, so why would I question his sexuality? It didn't dawn on me until I saw him strutting down Summer Street, lanky stubbled gay-babe in tow. HOW DID I NOT KNOW? The signs were right in front of me. He often spoke about visiting a male friend from college down in St. Louis. He was completely disinterested in breasts. He stole an expensive bottle of scotch from his father to give to one of our strapping young lads at the company. I was so foolish.

Regardless, it blows my mind that most of America is unable to detect the gay. Let's dissect the obliviousness, shall we?

Okay, let's start with the obvious. Ricky Martin.

I would make some sort of gay-Livin' La Vida Loca pun, but it's been done to death.

Girl shaves her face with a Schick Intuition. COME ON. Next.


Clay Aiken

He's wearing a thumb ring, for Christ's sake.

Now, I don't watch American Idol. But in my opinion, any guy who wants to go on national television and sing "Somewhere Out There" from An American Tail is gay as the day is schlong. NEXT.


Sir Elton

Anyone who likes zany glasses is gay. I happen to be the authority on this.

Do you remember when Elton John married a woman? He wore a white tailcoat and a purple bow tie. I'll let you visualize that one.


Liberace

Americans are so fucking stupid.



Hot Mormon dudes

I'll listen to your missionary LDS crap for some PIV.

When you are this attractive, why would you 1). remain a virgin until marriage, and 2). get married so, so young? Dude could lay any chick he wants, ever. But no, he's looking for a beard! How convenient is it to choose from a bevy of beautiful, pristine Mormon madonnas who just want to find "the one" and pop out some well-adjusted, shiny, attractive children? Then you'll maintain a sense of filial piety, have a trophy on your arm, AND you can pretend you're doing a guy during the mandated missionary lights-off sex.

Boy band members

There are more of them. Believe me. I'm sure of it.

v-cards: part two, the higher education edition.

This was sort of what I was like, except I didn't have any friends.

God, I hated college.

College is really weird because essentially you're just throwing horny, inexperienced children into a building where they can sleep together and throw up from drinking too much Bacardi 151. You don't know ANYBODY and you're desperate to make friends, so you hang out with people who have absolutely nothing in common with you and would otherwise make your skin crawl. You'll try anything, you'll talk to anyone, you'll wear whatever. You'll encounter many people that are nothing like you.

So anyway, I met a guy. Actually, I met a lot of guys. A lot of virgin guys.

My whorish self was quite unaccustomed to having someone stop me when I reached for their pants.

"Wait, Chelsea, I have something to tell you... I'm a virgin."

"Are you fucking serious? AGAIN?"

But, I fell for one of the never-been-touched crowd. I have no idea what it was I liked about this guy. Really. I couldn't articulate it if I wanted to. He was unambitious, pretentiously into literature, and ridiculously jealous of my success in school. He was one of those guys that sits in basements and plays World of Warcraft. His mother still did his laundry. He wasn't very good at oral sex. I had to pressure him after three months to actually become my boyfriend. Yes. I had to talk him into it. I'm not going to go into how wrong that is - you should already know.

But you know how these things go. You love people, for reasons that no one, especially not you, understands. You pretend to like metal and get taped for the Killswitch Engage tour DVD. You pretend to enjoy playing MMORPGs and hanging out in his crappy small town in central Massachusetts. You pretend to like his mother. You pretend to understand the big words he drops to make himself feel intelligent. You pretend to like his poetry. You pretend, and pretend, and fake everything because you're so desperate to keep this person near you.

And so I pretended to treat taking his virginity like a BFD (big fucking deal, for those of you not versed in hip acronyms). 

It was an afternoon, just like any other afternoon. The door to my single bedroom was closed. I don't think any of my other roommates were home. The shades were drawn on the windows, which overlooked a 6' by 6' concrete courtyard with dead pigeons in it, and the light was soft. I don't remember the exact logistics - a problem to be blamed on my overzealous alcohol consumption and the fact that I try to block out any and all memories of my mouse-infested shithole of a freshman dorm room. His apprehension was boring, as all perceived apprehension about something is when you're the one who's done it a million times. I believe it was missionary. I don't believe it took very long. I believe he made some statement post-coitus about his feelings, which I'm sure I dismissed with some kind of assuaging statement. And all I remember thinking was: I shaved my pubes for this?

 What a waste. Razors are so expensive.

Every first time, for the most part, sucks. It has to suck. It's a sport - some would say, even a game - and everybody sucks when they start playing. This is why I don't understand why virginity is valued so highly. It just means that when you finally have sex with that person, it's guaranteed to be awful.

I like to think of my v-card takings as an act of valiance, freeing these men from the inevitability of terrible intercourse with hopes to set them on a path toward a more fulfilling sex life. It's a thankless job, but someone's got to do it. I've gone into retirement, but I'll never forget the acts I did in the name of mankind.

I can't stop reading Mormon lady blogs.

I can't help myself. I feel like I'm on a different planet than these people. They're all shiny, attractive, wrinkle-free and wholesome. They've never smoked a cigarette in their lives and they don't watch cable television because it's too crass. They got married at 19 and knocked up at 20 because they're all dying to address their sexualities but aren't allowed to do so outside the contract of matrimony. They think coffee is the work of the devil and they all end up with men that are pre-med but somehow have the money to buy new houses and cars. These people live in an alternate universe where no one is black, gay, fat, poor, or cynical. They put on a happy face and pretend that life is beautiful while they suffocate under the burden of being perfect. They chastize the drunks and addicts but make sure to take their Prozac and Xanax every day, claiming the hand of a doctor somehow divine. They redress doubt not through exploration or rejection, but reaffirmation.

Now, don't consider me an expert. I've only met three actual church-going Mormons in my life. The first two were missionaries brought into my Comparative Religions class in high school. The only things I remember about them were their strange, stilted way of speaking about their church, and the long dowdy skirts they wore. The only other Mormon? A closeted beefcake of a man who slept with Joel. My interest in the culture of LDS and Utah grew, naturally, through the depiction of a polygamous fundamental LDS family on a critically-acclaimed cable television show. Yes, I'm talking about Big Love.

 

I don't know what I find more fascinating - their complete naivete or their thinly-veiled pretentiousness. They're so excited about "helping" people, but their version of helping is bothering people at home and telling them their religion is unsatisfactory and that they need to join the "one true church." They post RENT lyrics and videos of Kristin Chenowith on Broadway, yet pay their tithes to an organized religion that works to ban gay marriage and the ERA.

I guess what intrigues me most is that elements of my life that are SO mundane and banal - getting an iced coffee, dropping an F bomb, wearing a short skirt, buying condoms, having a beer after work, criticizing authority, giving homeless people change - all these things that create the backdrop of my life are not even present in their sheltered little world. Experiences that I find fundamentally American in nature are never experienced by these people. It continues to astound me how multi-layered our society is.

Furthermore, I can't hide my disdain for LDS. I can't pretend I'm not disgusted by the fact one of the faith's founders claimed to have a "calling" just so he could sleep with as many teenaged girls as he wanted without receiving disdain from his followers. I won't trust a religion that refuses to allow the "non-worthy" into their temples, even for their children's weddings. A true church would not turn anyone away. THAT'S "charity"... not baptizing someone posthumously against their wishes. Religion has nothing to do with building $3 billion malls... and it never should.

But that doesn't mean I'm going to stop reading about their alcohol-free Cinco de Mayo festivities and their Vegas honeymoons sans gambling. There are, apparently, numerous Americas - and I'm happy to live in one of them that's real.

talking 'bout my (so sad, so sorry) generation.

 The other night I watched "Reality Bites" for the first time of my twenties. I had seen the movie when I was younger, but the message was not quite as clear or relevant as it appears now that I'm older.

I know it speaks to the issues faced by those a bit older than me, but I find my own generation is not too far behind. We struggle with the same demons - inherent desire to do well, but a lack of resources, and a sense of entitlement that mismatches the opportunities available to us. We were the generation who were told that we were 'special' - special enough, it now seems, to be saddled with economic collapse, environmental catastrophe and financial ruin. The Greatest Generation cash their Social Security checks; the baby boomers sleep at night knowing they did the best they could by their children; even Generation X came out of their existential crises to own America's homes and run America's companies. We are left with astronomical student loans, a dismal job market and no chance of ever retiring.

Without going too far into detail about the logistics of my current life, things are a little tough right now. My grandmother is very ill. I received some good news about work but it has yet to come to fruition, and I am feeling somewhat disillusioned. My endlessly bright and talented husband has been forced to apply for internships, despite the fact that he just received a master's degree. The world seems like a hostile place, and I'm not sure I'm ready for the implications of real life.

I guess I perform it every day; I wake up, get myself to work on time. I perform numerous tasks, ranging from the challenging to the mundane. I go home and play the role of wife, daughter, friend. In all of this, I feel the slip of things I used to do when time wasn't so wrapped up in itself, when things weren't so dictated. I wrote poems. I made collages. I obsessed about all of my relationships. I felt, often it wasn't pure and often it was overly dramatic, but I felt, and I had the pursuit of finding myself to guide the forward motion of my life. Desperation only existed in my head. Things weren't so final. Possibilities were endless.

Now, I find myself adrift, just another Lelaina of a generation failed. We all wanted to really be something by the time we were 23. We all swore we would break out of the chains of college, an out-of-the-box sprint toward career success. We were all given the opportunities our parents sacrificed for. Now we're working as personal trainers and waitresses and cubicle rats, numbing our minds with low-calorie beers and reality television.

I know I sound jaded. It's hard not to. Nobody wants to work at the Burger-Rama (which is why we need immigrants coming into this country, but that's a rant for another day), and nobody wants to sell out. Everyone just wants to shut their eyes and their minds and pretend that none of it is happening. Stop watching the news. Drink another Coke. Go to Walmart. Spend a fortune on a wedding. Have a baby. Get a tummy tuck. Buy some Louboutins.

Or, we can act out in little ways every day. We either change the status quo, or we die this way.

"And they wonder why those of us in our twenties refuse to work an 80-hour week... just so we can afford to buy their BMWs... why we aren't interested in the counterculture that they invented... as if we did not see them disembowel their revolution for a pair of running shoes. But the question remains... what are we going to do now? How can we repair all the damage we inherited? Fellow graduates, the answer is simple.

The answer is... The answer is... I don't know."

if we don't make it, we'll fake it. well, all you broads will.

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I slept with a hipster once. second worst lay of my life.

It was a very, very low point in my life. I was trying really hard to be part of that lifestyle.

Yes, I say "try" because that's all you can do. Nobody just "is" a hipster, they actually have to try to do it. They have to spend hours scouring Etsy for appropriately large non-prescription glasses, because it's totally cool to wear things you don't need. They starve themselves so they can squeeze their asses into American Apparel jeans and they save pennies so they can buy Parliaments. I know. I was a coke-addled poseur at one time, too.

I know it's hard to believe that someone who owns more than one item of clothing with tulle would identify with those people, but I wanted to. I always felt like my stupid black-streaked hair and multitude of studded belts and math rock playlists would bring me closer to that ultimate idea of cool, but it failed. It failed so hard that I became a yuppie with an anchor tattoo (so sue me).

Lately I've come to revile all the shit that screams "I have nothing better to do than drink PBR and waste my parents' money," and I was reminded of this the last time I looked at the Urban Outfitters website. I used to shop there, but now, I can't understand why people drop legitimate money on this crap.

You know what's the greatest thing about these? They're EIGHTY-EIGHT DOLLARS. If only I had remembered to save the leggings I got from my Walgreen's halloween costume three years ago.

By "I fought the law," I mean that I had to go to traffic court once, and my dad told them what a good kid I was so they continued my case without a finding for a year. (This really did happen to me. What can I say, it's easier to make fun of kids who think they're cool when you know for sure that you're not).

 I wish someone told me 15 years ago that my bedspread, my mom's jeans and the sewing skills of a fourth grader would be all I'd need to have a totally rad outfit in 2010.

I'll never understand why hipster companies are so intent on only selling their clothes to ridiculously skinny people. Fat money is good money too! Personally, I know about two women who have boobs that could actually be small enough to fit into one of these things. And they're both incredibly thin. And I hate them for it, but most of all I hate myself for hating them for it, and I hate reconciling my feminist views with my body issues, and I hate having to apologize for feeling that way. Anyway, fuck you and your stupid bralette.

 One of the words I hate more than anything is "flouncy." Flouncy implies that something is both decorative and cheerful, concepts which make me want to stab a piece of glass in my eye. Accordingly, I find these flouncy shorts extremely offensive. Not to mention ugly.

YOU CAN'T HAVE IT BOTH WAYS. Pick a shoe style, and stay there.

 This is marketed as a jacket. On what planet is this a jacket? In what universe?

Come. On.
What. The fuck. Is this.