Pleasure and Guilt, Food and Poop, and (as always) Television

[witty intro]

...Hello. I’m here today to crankily type about a little something known as “guilty pleasures.” For the record, I do not have any issues with the term itself.  (The same cannot be said for terms like “make love,” “man-whore”— oh, the sexism— and “irregardless.”)

In fact, I love the idea of guilty pleasures. I’m even mother to quite a few. I think they’re a great way to get to know someone, because true-to-the-definition guilty pleasures are very similar to secrets. But so many (dare I say, majority?) of the guilty pleasures I hear of today are NOT true to the definition, and this is where the problem starts.

When magazines ask celebrities about guilty pleasures, or someone announces one in a public “place” (i.e. a locale in the real world or a status update online) I’ve learned to hold my breath and anticipate either a back-door brag or just a pleasure.

Sure, the pleasure might be a little nerdy, but if I had a nickel for every pair of Buddy Holly glasses I’ve watched ironically shuffle by me over the past year, I would spend the lump sum on a billboard reading,

“I get it: Cool = 'I’m nerdier/less-mainstream than you.' ”

Odd how no one ever seems to mistakenly label pleasure-less “guilts” as “guilty pleasures.” Maybe the conversion from adjective to noun tips them off that they’re missing something?

But enough ranting (at least in paragraph form). It's time to take this issue to the graphs. Let's start off with a celebrity example. 

"My best guilty pleasure is watching old sitcoms and eating grilled cheese and tomato soup in bed."-Padma Lakshmi

Padma, I think you're great. Love your show, yadda yadda yadda, but that's not a guilty pleasure. That's a Wednesday night.

You see, it's like this:

Need another comparison? 

Let me break it down using one of my favorite topics, television:  

dig?

...And yeah, that's pretty much all I've got right now. I might be back. 

Wow, today is not my day for segues. 

Bye? 

"kan ye" blame me?

Sometimes I fear that this blog will…become yet another item on my list of abandoned half-assed projects left to rest in pieces? Is that what you were thinking I was going to type? Yeah, well, you AND the¼ finished “make your own daffy duck rug” that sits in a closet/basement somewhere in this house. Haha, just kidding. We threw out that box of yarn aaaages ago. Also, fun fact: rugs—even unfinished ones—can’t have thoughts or opinions. (Can they?)

But, no, that’s not what I fear. That’s what I expect. (see March 2010, posts zero-zero) In fact, the thought of that not happening is shocking. Let’s stop thinking about it. Visualizing prolonged productivity wears this lady out.

What I do fear is that this blog will eventually become a collection of artifacts marking my lack of a social life and slightly-more-than-habitual crankiness. Not to mention my comma insecurities and unbridled love of stringing words together with hyphens. (Ah, vices. Cigarettes just seemed a little too cliché and a lot too risky for my asthmatic self. So naturally, I took the next best thing, punctuation marks.) 

But back to the crankiness. On harlanguage (and please get ready for an overstretched “Yanawamsayin? No?” analogy) I feel like I’m Kanye West during the Katrina telethon except there’s no camera cut away and so Mike Myers just has to stand there looking constipated until I decide to stop talking. 

Well, that's the case as far as my point of view goes. I realize most people just navigate to other pages like facebook, or that asian porn website that’s all the rage in my comments section. Seriously, check it out. (That's a link to the comments, not the website. Oh, and to the commenter, while your website isn’t really my bag, I appreciate the warm wishes—thank you, online translator—and reciprocate the sentiment. Thanks for being my most supportive follower!) 

But here, I can be like, “George Bush doesn’t care about black people…and heeerrree’s whhhyyy…” and then I pull out a scroll and start talking about the super dome and end two days later with some tangent about golf. 

...Yanawamsayin? No? 

Well, that’s okay. The important thing is I feel like I’ve atoned (by merely acknowledging my flaws and making no promises to change).

So on that note, I’ma let this finish and start on my next post.

The writing is on the wall (and the author used a red pen)

I just spent a lovely weekend in Syracuse celebrating the union of Mo and Tyson in holy matrimony. Holy smokes, did we have fun! You might even say we painted the town red. However, while we're on the topic of paint shades, I must admit that the festivities were tainted by a heated (yes, as in flames) debate. Oh, politics. The red-hot issue has yet to be resolved so I've decided to take it to the masses (ha! "masses") and ask for your opinion.

Please be honest, and even-more-please, don't be stupid. The truth is out there, and it is obvious.

Online Surveys & Market Research

Hey Paolo!

(And yes, the title is a play on Paula Abdul's failarious reality show "Hey Paula!")

The first time I heard Paolo Nutini, I was driving home on a sweaty evening in the summer of 2007. When his song "Last Request" came through my speakers, I had to turn the AC up to full blast. Lost in his raspy croon, I thought to myself, "Woo-whee. Now that sounds like a NYOILF*."

*NYOILF = A ninety year-old I'd like to...friend on facebook. 
(Hi, Mom.)

Imagine my surprise when I found out the lad is only half a year older than I am.

While Paolo's faster, upbeat tunes are fun ("Pencil Full of Lead" has a Louis Prima vibe that gets me all nostalgic) I'm partial to the songs of his that heed the instructional opening lyrics that originally got me hooked on the soulful scot.

Slow Down,

Lie Down,
Remember it's just you and me

Yes, Yes, Yes, sir.

This song, "No Other Way," from his most recent album, Sunny Side Up, is a new favorite of mine. 

That young old sound just gets me swaying. 

(Some swooning might also occur.)

What I do know

This song could kill me.
But really. I figuratively die. Figuratively.

On Angela: It started out Crumby and then turned to mush

So that last post touched on some of my feeeeelings about my peers, as it’s a topic that’s been on my mind lately. I’m almost a year out of college, no longer surrounded by hundreds of people my own age. (Dad, you’re still the coolest, of course.) This shift in company makes me think about the people I miss, and then (for the sake of acting eighty) I begin to reminisce, which reminds me just why I miss them so much.

One of my little goals for this (and maybe next) month is to write about people who are close/important to me. Since I’ve already written about my dog, my sister, and my dad, it’s time for me to do a little branching out.

I’ve been thinking about my friend Angela a lot this week. I started to call her on the afternoon of my stomach-bug incident because I knew that hearing her voice while I waited at the bus-stop would give me something to laugh about as I trundled off to my first class. Unfortunately, mid-dial I saw my phone’s battery flashing a suicide warning and I had to forgo my pre-school (ha?) pick-me-up.

But in case anyone is reading this (ha? Hi, Grover) and doesn’t know Angela, I’ll try my best to describe her.

How do I go about this? I guess I’ll aim for chronologically.

Because she was a grade behind me, our friendship in high school was somewhat distanced. We were in some of the same classes and I’d hang out with her before play/track practice, but we each had our own group of friends from our respective grades.

However, one thing I’ve always been able to appreciate about Angie is her uncanny ability to escort me from crying to laughing, no matter what the situation.

When my dog died sophomore year of high school, unlike the back pats and sympathetic hugs my other friends gave me, Angela’s condolences (and I use that term loosely) took the form of disbelief:

“No it did not. You don’t even have a dog. You’re such a liar.”

…before transitioning to full-on mockery:

“Woof…Woof!” (Yes. She barked at me.)

…after which point I got in trouble for “distracting Angela during class.” (To be fair, I don’t think she believed me when we started the conversation, and it was the first time I had laughed all day.)

Although we rarely talked on the phone during high school, whenever I felt homesick or sad during my freshman year of college I found myself calling Angie.

Everything Angela sees and every person she knows becomes fifty times funnier when she tells you about it/him/her. I really don’t know how she does it, and her humor is impossible to replicate exactly. It’s not a matter of embellishment or mockery. She just has this knack of picking out random quirks that everyone half-notices and finding the words/facial expression/voice to make them all the more hilarious. It’s like she’s full of inside jokes that anyone can join in on.
(Wow. I ended that sentence with not one, but TWO prepositions. Squirm, nerds, squirm.)

But Angela, as passionate and diligent as she is funny, is yet another friend of mine headed off in the direction of medical school.Unfortunately, following her there is not an option.

If nothing else, taking Chemistry 101 my freshman year of college meant that my fingers, soiled with wiped-away tears and "stress crumbs," pounded out weekly “YOU STILL HAVE TO LOVE ME IF WHEN I FAIL” emails to my parents. So I don't think those same hands really belong in an operating room. 

I guess my plea to Angela is not “take me with you” so much as it is “don’t go.” I’m selfish. Don’t feign surprise. I’ve told my friend, the Social Hermit, countless times that I am so jealous he got to spend three of his four years at college with Angela. But I had--what, seven?--years with her before that. I’m greedy. (Again, no fake gasps are in order.)

I know if Angela were in these grad school classes with me, she’d bring out sides of my classmates I would have never known to appreciate otherwise.

“This is why it’s funny."
"This is why it’s fun."
"This is why he’s a good person.” 

She notices and enhances the positive without being cheesy or preachy. Something I feel like I’m failing to do right now.

I guess I’m just trying to “Angelyze” (oh hey, you like my new word?) Angela. With Angie there will always be more to say, in more ways than one: more humor for her to illuminate, and more things to say about her. But for now, this is the best I can do.

Angie, this is why you’re funny.
This is why I call you.
This is why you’re so adored.  

(Yes, I shamelessly photoshopped myself into this picture.)

Eggzamining: Thoughts from the Nest

(Cheesy title, I know. Please don't PUNch me.)

I recently started graduate school towards getting a degree in early childhood education. Out of all my "when I grow up" aspirations and interests, this stands out as the one with the most concrete career path (at least as far as the near-future is concerned.)

Like many other members of my age bracket, this (laughable degree of) commitment has created some inner anxiety and doubt for me.

Am I signing my life away? Sure, it's only four classes now, but that will spiral into a degree, which will spiral into a job, which could spiral into a life of wondering "what-if?"

To sum up that last sentence, I am already pessimistically viewing fortunes (that I have yet to earn) as misfortunes.

Degree, job, lifetime: One, two, three.

I'm counting (on shaking, nail-bitten fingers) three chicks that have years--some, even decades--to hatch.

Why am I worried? Well, specific to the egg-hatching-chick metaphor, it might have to do with the fact that the only experience I've had with hatching eggs is a gruesome and morbid one.

Our second grade class had an egg-shaped incubator (unlike the normal, rectangular incubators of other classrooms) and as a result, only one of our ten eggs hatched, and the winged creature that cracked its beak through the lone shell of hope emerged with its intestines on the outside of its body.

After hobbling around a sawdust-lined cardboard box for a couple of days, "Pinky" (no, we didn't really name it that -- we were too horrified/young for dark humor) died as peacefully as a chick of its circumstance could die.

But enough about chicks. Well, except for this one. (Yeah, I called myself a chick. A little confidence never hurt anyone.)

In terms of my metaphor-free fears, I guess I'm just worried that I'll settle into a less-than-perfect fit. This is the part when my mom chimes in with something like don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good (a motto that I've abused for most of my life) or you won't know until you try, or something else that I'm not wise enough to predict. And imaginary mom is right. (UPDATE: My dad felt left out of this part. So to satisfy him, I think his words of wisdom would probably be something along the lines of well, you've got to do something--and loitering on facebook doesn't count. )

I guess some of my anxiety comes from the fact that I don't know how much I have in common with my peers right now. Kids, I can totally relate to. They're messy, they've yet to understand certain social conventions, and they half-wish they could still wear diapers. Hello, peers.

However, a fair portion of future early childhood teachers, I believe, are of a gentler breed than my own. This is not an insult, just an observation. All of my of my classmates are women, about 30% of whom wear pink or matching patterns and love cats. Again, no problem with that, just pointing out some similarities and differences (female-ness and cat-personhood, respectively.) Note to cat lovers: I'm not a hater, I just wheeze a lot. (Seriously allergic.)

However, this Tuesday in the middle of my last class I -- the self-declared Toughy McTougherson of the room -- found myself doubled-over with stomach pain as I listened to my teacher talk about the importance of morning meetings. By the time she brought out the "touch and feel" box, I was in my full "bend and weep" position.

By the grace of craft projects, teacher lady announced we'd have a brief break so that she could hand out teddy bear cut-outs for us to decorate. During this time everyone at my table asked me in some way or another whether I was going to pass out. I got a lot of you look really pale and one is it a blood sugar problem?

A woman from another table actually came over to tell me that I did not look good and I should go home. I've had vaintasies of an opposite encounter involving a modeling agent, but that dream died by puberty anyway, so I wasn't discouraged and took what she gave me as enough reason to bolt. And bolt I did, my every footstep echoing "whimp, whimp, whimp" as I shuffled out of the classroom.

The stomach pains and whimpering lasted all night, although the former was more continuous than the latter. From time to time I'd stop my crying, embarrassed by the sound of my own self-pity, and imagine the multitudes of people in far worse pain than myself.

I thought about the people Hayley sees on a day-to-day basis in Malawi, and my embarrassment turned to shame. But then another wave of nausea crashed, and I justified my tears. As the undulating pain began to soften again, I went back to reminding myself of my comparatively cushy situation.

I thought of how much more painful it would be to give birth than to face my situation. My stomach bug was nothing compared to appendicitis, or dysentery, or something really awful, like living with my intestines on the outside of my body. This last thought, of course, invited back the nausea, and so I stopped guilt-tripping myself because the ride was making me woozy.

Once more I was plaguing myself with "what if?" and, yet again, it wasn't helping anyone. So I abandoned my negative thoughts and drifted off into a light sleep.

Safe and warm under my parents' roof, I dreamt of a day when I have the strength to break the eggshell above my head, count the chicks that I've made for myself, and feel genuinely proud of them, external intestines and all.

In the evening, when the day is through

Some of my favorite songs are the ones that make me feel simultaneously happy and sad. Something about the contrast between the two emotions makes me appreciate the muddled happiness of bittersweetness more than that of pure contentment, because I'm reminded that happiness is an unstable luxury, something to be savored.

Chet Baker's performance of Time After Time,
an ode of grateful devotion set to a melancholy tune, captures this sort of perfect imperfection.

It's beautifully tarnished, like a tooth missing from a handsome face,
or a virtuoso hampered by life-long addiction.

Photochop

January has been bad in terms of my posts. Ah knoooow, y'all. Special apologies to Hayley in Malawi, whose blog updates have brought me many smiles and laughs: I am sorry I have not been adequately contributing new lame thoughts for you to read.

So, many many months ago, I created a Christmas list. On this list sat one sole item, bolded, italicized, underlined, hyperlinked to itself -- you name it: Adobe Photoshop.

My parents, being the kind and generous people that they are, granted my Christmas wish, and I am forever grateful. My creepations have increased infinifold in their realism and number. (Full disclosure: it's Photoshop Elements. I'm not complaining--beggars and choosers, as they say--just informing.)

I've gone from crass creations:

To masterful compositions:

But the thing about Photoshop, this gift that keeps on giving, is that it makes me realize just how greatly and convincingly photos are altered when they are airbrushed. Now, I know this is not a novel thought, but playing around with the liquidation filter, especially when I use pictures of myself, stirs up a lot of mixed emotions. Maybe emotions is too strong a word. Feelings. (Now I want to sing that Sesame Street song. No, staying focused.)

On the one hand, it's great for those photos that you would've loved if only your hair weren't in your face/you didn't have that pimple/you had remembered to suck in your stomach. With Photoshop, click-click, you love the photo. But part of me has to wonder whether it's the photo that I love, or just the click-clicked me. With enough money and low self esteem, who's to say I wouldn't try to snip-snip or tuck-tuck my way to click-click? (Enough sounds-sounds? Got it.)

Also, what does this say about the integrity of photographic evidence? I've seen many a troll commenting on sites like FMyLife.com with the line "pics or it didn't happen." Well, dear troll, you give me an afternoon with my laptop and I'll show you pics, though it never happened.

This is not to imply that FML is comparable to a court of law. I'm still pretty new to Photoshop, but what if someone enhances the pictured damages done to their car/body after they've been repaired/healed? Is there a way to prove that the pixels have been rearranged? I don't know, maybe there is. Just wondering.

But, going back to the standard-of-beauty issue that airbrushing presents, clearly it is not always obvious to the average consumer just how many (and to what extent) images have been digitally retouched. It is for this reason that Valérie Boyer wants all advertisement photos that are digitally altered to be published with a label indicating that they have been retouched.

I don't feel too strongly one way or the other on requiring a label, because I already assume that most advertisements are airbrushed. What I would really like to see is just less (or less extreme) airbrushing. It's no coincidence that airbrushing and plastic surgery are both much more common practices than they used to be.

Blasphemy: In a matter of minutes, I've "touched-up" the untouchable.

For me, many of those flawless magazine pictures look more like illustrations than they do photos. It's as though the models are characters from a pixar movie: they're nice to look at, and they definitely resemble humans, but they wouldn't translate naturally to real life.

After all, when a standard of beauty is something that a computer has created, meeting that standard is something only a surgeon can produce.

 In this case, some ideals are better left on paper.

Harlanguazon.com says, 
If you liked this post, you might also enjoy:
http://www.Photoshopdisasters.blogspot.com
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This Is Just To Say

I am eating

your chips

that were in

the green bag

and which

you bought probably

to eat

after school

Forgive me

though not hungover

I need

some good grease

Sorry, Caroline.

And now a message that came to me via telegram...

Boy or girl, I don't care, I'm naming my first born

"Patsy Cline."

...methinks the second born shall be called "Carol Channing."

I've found my calling...it paged me on my beeper.

Dear World,

I've just discovered that my destiny dream job is writing captions for the dating reality show "Blind Date." Please send any show connections/networking opportunities/time portals to the 1990s my way.

Love,
Me

My Mother, the Buzz Kill

(starring a young Katherine Heigl)

Sometimes when I find something funny or I'm very happy about something (read: there's a big smile on my face) and I tell it to my mom, she interrupts me mid-topic-sentence and says, "wear your retainers!" and shakes her finger at me. She really does shake her finger; I'm not making that part up.

Suddenly, I'm not so tickled to tell my story anymore.

BEFORE

AFTER

The biggest downer is that I know she's right. Those retainers kill me.

So, what have we learned from this?

Mother knows best.

It takes pains to be comely.

Two clichés in one post. And they say I'm not productive.

Golden Memories and Platinum Prophecies

As a member of the lower school community service club, I spent my Friday lunch periods in seventh and eighth grade socializing with the residents of Mount Pleasant, a nursing home located five minutes from my school.

Despite the frequency of my visits, breaking the ice was always nerve-racking for me. Conversation was a gamble. I never knew whether the people at my table would even want to talk, and during conversations I feared I’d stumble into an awkward or painful subject.

During one memorable visit, I greeted the woman to my left by asking her whether she was enjoying the nice spring weather we'd been having.

Without lifting her eyes from the untouched fish in front of her, she sighed and said,

“I’m just waiting for the day they tell me I can leave this place.”

Still optimistic, I tried to rebound by asking her what her favorite season was.

This question prompted the woman to look up from her plate and stare at me, perhaps to verify that she was not speaking to a four-year-old. The look she gave me indicated that now she was waiting for someone to tell her that at least I would leave soon.

Slightly discouraged, I turned to the man on my right and asked him whether he was enjoying his lunch. The topic seemed safe enough, considering he was licking some stray breadcrumbs stuck to the back of his fork.

“I remember you,” he said with a smile.

“You’re Jewish. We talked a couple of weeks ago.”

This was the first time someone at Mount Pleasant remembered me, or at least thought they did, and I didn't want to contradict him.

After all, I was an eighth grader whose social life was experienced vicariously through the characters of TGIF sitcoms. The idea of getting to be someone else, even if only through the eyes of a bald octogenarian, had its appeal. So I murmured an "uh huh," and made sure that my gold cross necklace was tucked underneath my shirt.

When asked, I told him honestly that no, I had not had my bat mitzvah yet. I felt guilty that he was making such an effort to remember things about the girl he thought I was, so I shifted the focus of the conversation onto him.

Soon, he was telling me about how different life was when he was growing up. Some of his friends had faced a lot of discrimination.

"One man was a Jew, such as yourself.”

He leaned in as he said this and gestured toward me with his open palm.

"Yes, jewish..." I dopily replied, bobbing my head.

However, he went on to tell me, his true passion was dancing. Deep wrinkles formed in his cheeks as he asked me whether I knew who Ann Miller was. Not wanting to disappoint him, I told him that her name sounded familiar.

“I danced with her,” he told me proudly.

Once I had learned a little more about Ann Miller, I was able to appreciate the significance of that man's treasured memory.
Dancing was what he loved most, and he was able to do it with one of the best dancers of his time.

My own life isn't devoid of celebrity encounters: I've shaken hands with Jimmy Carter. My friend's aunt was a bond girl. Heck, once I hung out with two kids from ZOOM.

I've flaunted all of these encounters before, but I aspire to have my own "Ann Miller" experience, something I'll still be bragging about sixty years from now.

I can picture myself as an eighty-two year-old somewhere like "Space Mount Pleasant," talking to a nice catholic boy who visits me weekly. I'll admire his yamaka as I ask him if he's ever heard of William Hung. He'll lie and tell me that he thinks the name rings a bell, and I'll boast that we once sang a karaoke duet together.

Then, drifting away from reality, I'll smugly reflect on my proudest memories. Lost in my thoughts, I'll lift my glass of prune juice and say with sincerest gratitude,

"L'Chaim."

The Tracks of My Years

One of my family's favorite home videos is of me when I was about three years old. The video starts out just like many others with my father, the interviewer, asking me what I had done that day. I wobble in front of the camera, scratching the underside of my chin with the back of my hand as I contemplate his question.

"Iiiyuhh…"

I look up to the ceiling, find my answer, and gaze back into the camera.

"…peed in my underpants."

My blank stare tells him I'm ready for the next question. My father delves deeper into the topic, posing his second question, and I nail the answer: peeing in my underpants was "a bad thing."

I then open up about the rest of my day, revealing that subsequent events included wanting to play "Candy Land," playing ball, napping, "having another accident," and finally participating in the interview at hand.

In case you missed it, I'll recap: by three o'clock in the afternoon, I had already peed in my pants twice.

To me it had been just another day in my (supposedly) potty-trained life. To my parents, however, it was cause for concern, or at least further investigation.

First we went to the pediatrician, whose only suggestion that I can remember was that I try going to the bathroom backwards. This helped start a day-long trend among my fellow preschoolers who, thanks to our door-less bathrooms, were inspired by my backwards squat and decided to adopt my experimental peeing pose.

Although I may have gained cool points for my bathroom creativity, I gained nothing in terms of bladder control, and the next step was to have my kidneys tested.

The kidney scan was my first hospital experience since birth. I lay down while a machine with a ninja turtle sticker on it moved above my body, and then I peed when instructed to do so. Afterwards, I got pizza. The result of the scan showed that nothing was wrong with my kidneys, I just didn't like using the bathroom.

What finally got me off accidents and onto the toilet was the looming threat that if I didn’t improve, I’d have to wear diapers.

My parents had told me about these "cool underpants" I could wear while I slept so that I wouldn’t make a mess if I accidentally wet the bed. Excited, I had imagined an undergarment made out of bathing-cap material. Instead, I woke up and found that I was wearing a pair of Huggies “Pull-Ups” training pants. Talk about a horrifying wake-up call.

I’m still just as candid today about my past of peeing in my pants as I was in that home video. My friends tell me that I should consider being less open about that part of my childhood, but I don't see their reasoning.

“What?” I say, “It’s not like I had to wear diapers.”

Fun with Family: A Touchy Topic

Happy December, Blog!

Oh gosh. I feel like I have some ‘splaining to do because I’ve been away for a bit of a while. But, as someone once said, “excuses are like [mom won't let me type this part]: everyone’s got one and they all stink.”

So ta-dah. No excuses here. I lazy. I so lazy, verbs not typed. (“typed” is  a passive past participle. Did I have to specify that I meant action verbs? Damn you, grammar nerdzis….)

So, let’s catch-up. A lot has happened since last post. Several days, one holiday (two if you count Eid), and at least two family gatherings. Most notably, I’ve become a game inventor.

The idea came to me on Thanksgiving day, post meal. My family and I were all crowded into our family room, which was awkward, because normal post-feast protocol is that the grown-ups (my parents, my great uncle and his girlfriend, my dad’s cousin and his wife) go into the living room and do whatever it is middle aged people do (drink? sleep? break dance?) and we kids (my three siblings and three second-cousins) hang out in the family room, where we watch silly television and laugh at how Caroline and Brian fall asleep after two minutes. (Whew, run-on sentence. How do you like me now, nerds?)

Back to this year. Something in my dad’s brain must have short-circuited because he led the adults into the family room to (literally) rub elbows with we childrenfolk. Both my brother and I subtly and politely tried to alert him of his faux pas, Excuse me, old man, are you lost? but he brushed off our hints, mumbling something about letting old people lie.

Regardless of their additional company, Caroline and Brian quickly fell into their ritual stupors. With football as the only source of TV “entertainment,” I soon shifted my focus from the television to the most interesting spectacle in the room: my sleeping sister. What a monumental shift that turned out to be. One glance at Caroline, and I found myself eyes-to-nostrils with an opportunity to unleash my creative genius.

I’m no artist.  I want to show you what I saw, but my passion and desire to share my gift with the world are the only things (note lack of artistic training) that guided my hand as I attempted to recreate the blank canvas that lay before me.

Don't be scared. It's just a drawing. 

I called my vision "CGGenga" (pronounced C-G-Jenga) as an homage to both my subject and the classic family game "Jenga."

My siblings and I started the first round, taking turns touching Caroline's nostril. If someone woke her up, all players would exclaim "Jenga!" and the offending toucher would be declared the loser of that round.

         

After the popularity of the preliminary rounds, cousins Olivia and Matt soon joined in on the fun, and my Great Uncle's 80-something-year-old girlfriend, Elaine, thought the game was a laugh riot. (Ah, Elaine. I knew I liked her.)

Unfortunately, Caroline didn't "get" the brilliance we had created, and deemed the game "disrespectful." Because of her pivotal role in the game, her disapproval has put any future rounds on hold. I've offered her a 20% cut of the profits, but she remains obstinate.

I'll get her one day, though.

Right now she is a sturdy tower, but I have the patience and strategy to win her over. I am Joshua, and she is my Jericho. Brick by brick, I shall work on her resistance, dreaming of the day when her walls shall come tumbling down, and my army and I shall exclaim triumphantly, "Jenga!"

It's the Most Wonderful Time for Some Tears

Oh my eggnog, how I love this photo.

I don't know if it's Griffin's look of stupefied shock as I bitterly clutch his hand and give Lydia one heck of a side-eye, or Caroline's perversely pleased expression as she watches her baby sister (seemingly) eat her own hand in horror. I can't pick.

Aahh, (sigh or scream? Your guess is as good as mine.) the holidays.

This reminds me, I hope I don't cry (like I did last year) when we attempt to take the family photo. It really throws off my 'smile for the camera.'

(Can't say my dad's "Margaret, stop looking so dopey" helped much either.)

Mo Mo Mo, How do you like it?

"Fun" Fact: The title of this post is what I wrote on the shirt I designed and wore to Mo's basketball game freshman year, aka the only Penn sporting event I attended during my entire college experience.

        Late Mid-Movember means one thing: it's pluggin' time, y'alls.

Mo, one of my dearest friends and fellow pennguists, has jumped onto the blogwagon. [Insert lame(ish) interjection like 'huzzah!' here]

Her posts will be a delightful combination of her two collegiate concentrations, Linguistics and Anthropology, not to mention her slammin' personality.

mo'phology = mo' fun

So check it/her out if ya' nasty.

The Foot, The Mouth, and The Apex

I have this habit, when my mind revisits past embarrassing moments, to uncontrollably mutter one or two words out loud to myself. Today I stood in the shower, trying to wash away who knows what, when out popped “crazy.” And with that, I was one word closer to becoming all the more so.

I think these involuntary verbal sputters are my mind's makeshift attempt to distance my present self from the unreasonable statements and butt-clench moments of my past. Some part of me figures that if time won’t do the trick fast enough, at least I’ll benefit from being [x] many more words away from a choice sentence’o’shame.

Of course, my logical side says sarcastically. Because talking is clearly the solution for your problem. You should really do more talking. 

Yet my optimistically verbose subconscious—a side of me that would probably describe Tourette’s syndrome as “cathartic”— somehow continues to prevail. At twenty-two years of age I’m rattling off interjections more than ever, as if my new words will one day bury all my regrettable past utterances.

So I let myself sputter, because if a word falls from my mouth but no one else is around to hear it, can it really do any damage?

As for the damage that’s already been done, I've noticed that most of my clench-inducing memories must wax humiliating until they reach an apex. After this apex, which is determined by some incalculable ratio of time elapsed to personal abandon, comes the point at which I can begin to forget the memory, or at least start to laugh.

But for certain memories, the apex feels like it’s located somewhere between Jupiter and Uranus. On rough days, muttering a thousand shower-time ‘crazy’s won’t render even a millimeter of space between me and the memory from which I flee.

In such cases, the best I can do is pretend that I don't mind the big toe that's gently pressing on my gag reflex, and hope that the embarrassments that hold my mind captive (or is it the other way around?) aren’t quite as memorable to any of the other people who witnessed them.

Mirror, Mirror on the screen

I worry I am just one bad face-day away from this moment: