"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 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.

Because Sex doesn't sell, Embarrassing does.

For many years now, I have classified certain instances as "butt clench moments" regardless of whether or not my partner(s) in conversation are familiar with my coined classification. Right now, I'm feeling considerate (or is that listlessness? eh.) so I'll be more thoughtful than usual and take the time to clarify.

butt clench moment, n. /bʌt klɛntʃ ˈmoʊmənt/
1. Occurrence when a person is embarrassed, either vicariously and/or personally, to the extent that he or she cringes so much that his or her butt clenches. (Toes might also curl, but not a requirement.)
Etymology: 2000, MHG coined the term to describe the way she felt when the boy cast as Joseph in that year's Christmas pageant started crying on stage after a failed attempt to warble his solo. 


Now that we're all the wiser, I'd like to share the source of some of my personal BCMs.
A list of my celebrity crushes throughout the years after the jump.