Moody. October 21, 2008

It’s terrible really. No one deserves to be stuck with someone who is tired, frustrated, overwhelmed, and just trying to survive the next four-and-half hours. And yes, that was an indirect apology to everyone around me right now.

 

I hate school at this moment. Mostly because I had a test this morning that kicked my ass, and I have a huge freaking accounting test this afternoon, and there’s only another 30 hours until I can go home and sleep for four days. Why must they make the transition so painful? The worst part is that I don’ thave anything important in any of my classes tomorrow, but I can’t even skip them because I can’t get a ride home until dinnertime. PLUS TO MAKE MATTERS WORSE CFB HASN’T REALLY TALKED TO ME IN DAYS.

Ok, done bitching. Now I’m going to babble about clothes. Yes, it’s the ressurrection of the Sub-Culture Clash. I warned you it was coming. Nostradamus and I, man, we tried…

 

This weekend, I went to Walmart and bought myself a pair of black jeans. They’re just cheap black jeans, $16.95 and nothing special at all.

Surprisingly, they actually look like this on me. And mine are black.

 

 

But for whatever reason- and I’m betting it’s because I’m crazy- I LOVE THEM. They’re SO comfortable, and they look good, (as evidenced by CFB… I walked past in the caf and he followed me with his eyes a little. My friend (who has no reason to tell me this unless it actually happened, as I am not offering any kind of payment) said she saw him… I’m trying not to read too much into it, but he was sitting at a table full of girls and he looked up and watched me… ) and- here’s where the crazy kicks in- they feel so INDIE. I know right? That’s insane. And in case there’s anyone out there less crazy than me who hasn’t bothered to learn how to recognize indie, I’ll explain. It’s basically a vintage-punk cross, with varying levels of emo vibes. If that made no sense, you’re beyond my help.

 

I’m not an indie person. I don’t do the indie thing. I admire those who can, but the shapeless tunics and flowy skirts and sandals in winter are not my best look, and the emo just isn’t going to happen. I’ll admit I’d like to be able to pull off the indie look, with the skinny jeans and sepia tones… but I’ll settle for vintage jewelry and cute shoes. That’s about as close as I can get to that particular trend. HOWEVER, I have decided to up the ante a little. I know I’m thinking about this WAAY too much, but when logic is trying to convince me to review for accounting, and my body is demanding sleep, the batshit crazy starts to kick in. I’ve decidd to give in to that urge to dress according to a certain trend. There’s no need to exchange my entire wardrobe. There’s no need to freak out if five days out of the week I end up wearing exactly the same thing I would have worn before this EPIC REVELATION. There’s no need to spend extra money to buy a certain thing that I wouldn’t have bought before. I mean, there are people charging $18 for a pair of knitted gauntlet armwarmers. I could knit that shit myself for two bucks. Just this morning I chopped the fingers off a pair of dollar store ‘magic gloves’ for kicks and giggles. I ought to start selling those things…

$24. Seriously. WTF? This isn't even cute. And they're freaking SOLD OUT. What, are they hand-crocheting them in the back room at a rate of two per week?

 

So yeah. Today’s post is probably absurd to anyone who’s not trapped in the sleep-deprived, accounting-overloaded, hungry, cold, and strangely obsessive world that is my mind right now. Thanks for the patience while I act like an idiot. I’ll go home for break, sleep for 24 hours straight, and be good as new!

Sub-Culture Clash September 23, 2008

I believe that I have deep personal problems, stemming primarily from being a judgmental ass.

 

I saw a girl today, wearing a black baby tee, acid-washed skinny jeans, a black and white mod daisy-patterned bag, and a navy and grey scarf. And the first thought that passed through my mind?

 

“Oh, honey, let’s try a little harder to be different, shall we?”

 

Personally, I am not a fashionista. I do not put a ton of effort into my clothes, except for church  and special occasions. My favorite outfit includes either a hoodie, or that plaid vest that looks like I mugged a lumberjack. I don’t have much to contribute to the world of fashion, but for me it fits that age old description—I know it when I see it. I may have a different idea of what looks good than you do, or than the people writing those ragsheets in the supermarket, but if it flatters and coordinates, I’m all for it.

 

However, these cute little girls who think they are throwing off the shackles of fashion by deliberately designing outfits that burn the retinas of those who gaze upon them are not doing anyone a favor. Avant guard is best in small, incremental doses. Wear armwarmers with a rock band t-shirt, but keep the jeans normal. Wear acid wash jeans under the t-shirt, but leave out the scarf. If you pile punk on top of retro, on top of vintage, you just kill the whole vibe.  And plus, you look like a train wreck.

 

I don’t presume to be an expert. I can’t claim to have perfected the techniques myself, nor to have even identified with a particular subgenre. I bounce around. Sometimes I just feel like wearing something that has a particular vibe, but most of the time I wear a t-shirt. Best to err on the side of caution.

 

Like I said. I’m no expert. But glaringly obvious effort to stand out usually accomplishes its goal, and then some. And rest assured, there will be further meditation on this subject.

Mars vs. Venus: The Ultimate Smackdown (Part 1) September 4, 2008

 

Despite being one myself, teenage girls continue to utterly baffle me. My one friend is quite clearly PMS– she’s vomiting, cramping, and grouchy as all get out. She knows this, and will acknowledge it. But she continues to snap at me despite knowing that she is doing it, and despite knowing that she’s being irrational. HELLO, UM WHYY?!?!

 

I honestly believe I understand guys better than I do girls. It may be untrue, but at least I can guess with a guy, based on body language and conversational clues. With a girl, there is no correlation between the mind and the rest of the body. Or even the mind and the rest of the mind. That multi-tasking we do so well? Yeah, we do it too  well.

 

I suppose I do it too, but I just don’t see where being hormonal has to replace being reasonable. If you’re pregnant, that’s cool, I get it, the baby’s essentially consuming your brain cells as nourishment. Whatevs. But when you don’t even have an excuse like that, then I see no reason to not take a Mido and try to restrain the irrationality. It falls along the lines of ’siddown, shaddup, and hold on.’ At least, that’s what I try to do when someone points out to me that I’m being ridiculous.

 

And if you never hear from me again, you’ll know she found this post.

There’s that word again– ‘heavy’. Why are things so heavy in the future? Is there a problem with the earth’s gravitational pull? August 28, 2008

Heh, it took me a while but I found a BttF quote that fits my topic.

 

Boys and girls, today I am going give the obligatory blog-rant about Body Acceptance. Or as most blogs want to call it, Fat Acceptance. <See blogs like How to Eat a Cheeseburger (howtoeatacheeseburger.wordpress.com), and Shapely Prose (www.kateharding.net).>

 

Truths I hold to be self-evident:

• I do not have the ‘perfect body’.
• I do not want the ‘perfect body’.
• I am lazy.
• I  love food.
• The first two mean that I do not care about having the ‘perfect body’, nor do I want to put in the effort to attain the ‘perfect body’.
• The third and fourth mean that I will tend toward the rounded, or ‘fat’ body type.
• However, I do not desire to be ‘fat’ because personally, I find ‘fat’ unattractive.

 

Author’s Note: I emphasize personally because I know that there are others who find that curvier is better, and would disagree that ‘fat’ is unattractive. I do not make the blanket-statement that fat is unattractive, merely that I personally find it to be so. I also hate the word ‘fat’, but I refuse to be politically correct about it and use terms like ‘heavy’ or ‘plus-size’. So instead I will ‘quote’ it, to remind everyone that the term ‘fat’ is subjective, and there is no general definition. I will not assign a dress size, or pound quantity to determine what ‘fat’ is.

 

So while I may seem hypocritical, the truth is that I hold with body acceptance, but not fat acceptance. Personal philosophy is that if I am comfortable with my body at a certain weight, then that’s fine. If at any point I become uncomfortable, or the clothes that fit at the comfortable weight cease to fit as well, then healthy diet and excercise is acceptable. I also try not to go by the numbers, because I think I weigh about 10 pounds more than I look like I weigh, therefore striving to weigh 115 pounds may be a bad life choice. I like who I am, and I don’t want to be unhealthy, or to look like I just survived the Holocaust.

 

So I guess while I have moved beyond striving to look like death warmed over, I have fallen short of fat acceptance. Does that put me at the happy medium, or do I need to seek to reach that next level of celestial understanding? I feel guilty for dieting, and I feel guilty for not dieting. I can’t accept being ‘fat’, but I can’t agree that we should all look like MK Olsen. I think that there is a curvy, healthy, happy place that we can all strive toward that is not a standard weight, or BMI, or dress size. And when magazines describe a model that is slowly and painfully dying as her insides consume themselves out of want for food as sexy and hot, but then make a point of the statistic that most men prefer curves, they leave us all wondering what that standard of beauty that we are all striving toward actually means.

 

According to every single man I’ve ever asked, men like proportional women. We need to be able to stand up straight, without breaking our spines because there’s not enough muscle in our 18-inch waist to hold up our 40-inch bust. It seems to me that most men instinctively understand that our bodies were created with purpose. No one can deny that biceps are for lifting, hamstrings and quadriceps, are for walking, and fingers are for fine detail jobs. In the same way, hips were intended to cradle unborn children, not just to swing about whilst we stomp up and down a straight, elevated walkway in order for people to admire our clothes. Our waists are muscled to help us lift, and walk, and to do work, not just to cinch and shrink and use as bait for men. And everyone knows what the purpose of the part-of-us-that-requires-a-bra is. (I’m not being immature, I just don’t want creepy people searching for that certain anatomy on the internet to hit on this site just because that keyword is here.)

 

So I think that people who work out in order to reach their physical peak, and to be in the best possible form have the right idea. I admire them, and their determination to take the best care of the only body they were given. There is a certain beauty to a body that is well cared-for, and that is healthy.

 

SOPHOMORIC REASONING: There is nothing sexier than being healthy, confident, and comfortable with yourself. And that goes for guys too. As a girl, and even more so as a college sophomore, I totally get the whole pressure-to-look-a-certain-way. I get it better than most adult women do, as far as I’m concerned. But even if I want to try to deny that there is a certain human form that is more attractive than others, I have to admit that I am neither comfortable nor confident when there is an inner tube of fat ringing my waist and hips. So it’s pretty hard to think you’re attractive when you feel ‘fat’.

Re: The Haircut Sitch August 19, 2008

LOL. Using Kim Possible lingo makes me giggle.

 

I don’t know if anyone (yeah, all three or so of you) reads through the comments on my posts in addition to the posts, but honestly there’s probably more wisdom in Miriam’s little four-line replies than in a four-paragraph rant by yours truly. Yesterday’s attack on hairstyles was not my finest blogging attempt, but Miriam made a really good point:

My problem is that, since the hair dressers wet your hair and style it and spray some stuff, the way it looks when you leave the store is nowhere near the same as the way it looks after your first shower. Look, I don’t care about looking like some glossed, beautiful haired model for part of one day. Just give me some accuracy so I can complain when I figure out that my new cut frizzes like a beast.

 

I agree, Mirie! That’s exactly what the crazy lady cutting my hair did! By the time she finished cutting it, it was all slicked down and looked rather like a dark brown helmet. By the time it was dry, it had root lifter, hairspray, and texturizer in it. By the time I went to bed, all of these products had ceased to do their jobs and merely made my hair sticky and gross. I didn’t find out what my hair really looked like until this morning, and may I say now that I think I look a little like a boy. And while I did stop at CVS for some of that texturizer stuff (it makes the layers look a little choppier and less helmet-y) I didn’t need any of that other crap, and it only made me think my hair looked completely different than it does! GRR.

 

I wish that the ladies in the salon (or at SuperCuts, where cheap-ass college kids like me go when they are being forced to pay for their own haircut…) would just let us style the damn thing when they’re done. That way everyone can see what it will look like on a daily basis, and the haircutter can fix it accordingly. Isn’t that more logical?

 

And Mirie, your hair only frizzes because you refuse to ponytail it and it gets staticky.

10 Things I’ve Learned from Eat’n Park. August 14, 2008

10. If you need something, wait for your waiter. The girls in red shirts are not waitresses, and they are not all named “Miss”.

 

9. If you’re part of a party and all wish to pay separately, tell the waitress. It is much easier for them to separate the menu items than for the cashier to do it.

 

8. If you spill something and your waitress says, “Oh no, don’t worry about it– I’ll get that,” she really means “I’ll go get one of the greeters to get down on her hands and knees to scrape that out of the carpet.”

 

7. The waitresses make money from tips. Tips come from customers. And yet, almost none of the waitresses are ever pleased about customers being seated in their sections.

 

6. If you order a take-out meal, the greeter has to pack it, which means prepping all of the non-hot food and hand making all of the desserts. If you order 5 desserts to-go on a Friday night at 11, when there’s a line out the door and a mob at the register, the greeter most likely wants to kill you.

 

5. If you order desserts, your waitress has to make them all by hand. There is little chance that if you tip her poorly, she will accept it graciously and not take it out on the greeter who put you at her table.

 

4. If you have a party of thirteen people, and it’s 10:45 at night, calling ahead to warn the lone greeter is much appreciated. There’s no way she can handle pulling four tables together, laying out thirteen menus, and finding a waitress for that crapload of people if she’s also the only one seating other guests and running the register.

 

3. Fire-engine red is a color that looks good on no one.

 

2. Dishwashers are deaf, and busboys pretend to be so.

 

1. Minimum wage summer jobs are the greatest career advice ever invented. If anyone ever needs motivation to finish their degree and get a white-collar job, make them get a job in a restaurant. And not as a server either- those guys rake in the cash. Try seating tables, or running a register. There’s no greater inspiration.

Why Do We Bother Calling Them ‘Personal’ Lives? August 3, 2008

Where I work, there is a thing called gossip. Apparently, it keeps the place running more than the food, the paychecks, or even the electric company. When I started dating a cook last week, suddenly everyone wanted to know everything, from where we went, to what ice cream he ordered, to whether or not we kissed, and did I like him, and did we want to go to the same school in the fall…

 

It got me wondering why I even bothered to be surprised anymore. I mean, not that there’s really any comparison, but we do this to celebrities everyday. We want to know every detail of everyone else’s lives, so that our own lives don’t have to keep us entertained anymore. We can live everyone else’s too.

 

But don’t we call them personal lives because they’re our own and not everyone else’s? Our public lives are separate– I don’t run around in a t-shirt declaring me to be Jason’s girlfriend. I think it’s idiotic that people take all the details of everyone else’s lives and make them into public phenomenons or wildfire gossip topics. I just wish there was a little more respect for privacy these days. People bitch and moan about the government invading their lives; they should just ask the celebrities how to deal with it. They’ve been putting up with it for years.

Epic Fail. Part of a Balanced Breakast. July 24, 2008

So yeah. I have at least one serving of Fail everyday for breakfast. Why breakfast, you ask? Well, it’s because the fail usually occurs before or immediately after I get out of bed. On the wrong side, of course.

 

I begin to wonder, if you get up on the wrong side of the bed consistently enough, does it become the right side? And then do you have to switch sides in order to stay on the wrong side, or does switching sides make you less grumpy, because it retains its innate right-side-of-the-bed-ness?

 

Anyway, I’ve been really grumpy for the past couple weeks. It doesn’t seem to be letting up at all, and I’m constantly feeling tired and worn out. Even when I get up in the morning, my eyelids are heavy, and my limbs ache, and I just want to roll over and go back to sleep. I can’t stand it. All day long I want to nap, and the oddest things piss me off to no end. While I’m at work, I can keep a real smile on my face, but only for about a four-hour stretch at a time. When I get home I don’t want to deal with my family, I don’t want to sit down and have to put up with the screaming and the wrestling and the messes, I just want them to f*cking clean up after themselves and  sit quietly. But they are stuck in mess-making mode.

 

In short I’m tired. All the time. Every effing minute of my day is permeated by tiredness. I went into the doctor’s office complaining of chronic fatigue, and the first thing she asks me is if I think I’m depressed.

 

Well let me think about that one for a second… no, the FREAKING ANTI-DEPRESSANTS OUGHT TO BE TAKING CARE OF THAT. So she goes through another list of possiblities, which are summed up in the 57 blood tests I have to have done, and the night I am going to get to spend in a sleep lab, and the possible nasal reconstruction that I was slated for at eight months of age. So for now I just need to get about nine hours of sleep a night, put myself on a diet because I’m a fatass, and EXCERCISE. That’s right. For now, the cure for chronic fatigue is to sleep, eat less, and exercise. Why did I pay for this visit? Oh yeah, so you could NOT give me a straight answer, sign me up for a bajillion tests, and possible surgery, and then recommend something I can’t possibly have thought up on my own.

 

Doctor: 1, Jackie: 0.

 

I’m getting really tired of this game, God. Can I just lose now and have it be done with?

 

GOALS TO BE COMPLETED BEFORE AUGUST 23rd:

~ Lose 10 pounds.

~ Discover why the f*ck I’m so tired.

~ Find a way to remember to actually post on this damn thing.