Never, Never Land

So I was checking out my favorite new online comic to see if it was updated and low and behold it was.
Unfortunately, it scared the hell out of me.

Basically, the author is talking about his high school reunion and how he thought he'd go and see that the popular kids are now losers and he is now amazing (pretty much how I envision my reunion.)
Then I realize this dude graduated in 2002.
I graduated in 2003.

WHAT THE HELL?
5 YEAR REUNIONS?!


Seriously. 5 years?
Didn't the creation of Facebook make this totally redundant? I know what everybody looks like and that they all still live at home (HAHAH FUCKING LOSERS). And what could anyone have possibly accomplished in one year after college?

"Oh, hey guys! Yeah I got my degree! Took me about 8 months to find a decent job and since I just started I have no idea if I like it or if there are any perks and I live in the basement so I can save up some money while I pay off this massive debt I now owe. YEAH LIFE HAS CHANGED SO MUCH SINCE HIGH SCHOOL, RIGHT?!"

Honestly though, I'd love to go (after a few laps at the gym) only to see who got knocked up/fat/ugly/pretty/stupid. But knowing myself, I'd end up getting completely hammered and finally telling that one dude I always had a crush on that if he asked me to do him right then and there I would.

But I didn't come here today to talk about 5 year reunions.
I came to talk about the fact that I'm getting old.
Yes, I'm "growing up".
We all are. At least everybody I know (since I don't hang out with 18 year olds unlike some people I hang out with.)

We're at what I like to refer to as "mid-mid life crisis" time. Or what others call the "in-between" period.

We're out of school. We have time to party but we're pressured into "settling down." We must make the decision now whether we use that college degree or become vagabonds.

20 years ago, you probably didn't go to college and if you were 23, you were married or engaged and in a steady job at some company that you would most likely spend at least 15-20 years working at. You would have babies by the time you were 26 and really enjoy company parties. You'd live in a house in the burbs and drive a Toyota.

These days, since we are kinda thrown into college as High School 2: Electric Boogaloo, we don't really get out into the real world until we are 22. That's when we step outside and go "well fuck, now what do I do." And in the end, most of us do the exact same thing as above, just four years later.

But I'm here now. And I don't want to get married. I don't want to have a house in the suburbs. I don't know what I want to do with my life at all.


I just finally got a job. A 9-5 job (well, 8-5, but who's counting besides me?)
It makes me feel like an old fart (even though I dress cooler than anybody else in the office.)
I get up at 6am. I get home by 6pm. I sometimes go to the gym. I sit and watch DVDs and eat dinner. I go to bed by 11pm. Pretty lame.
I'm at the point in my life where I have to sit and think about how many hours of sleep I will get if I decide to go out. I end up calculating how many beers per hour will result in the lightest hangover.
Hell, last Monday I kept saying while drunk and dancing "OK, IF THE NEXT SONG ISN'T AWESOME, I AM GOING HOME! I GOTTA WORK!" Of course, every song, in my inebriated state was FUCKING AWESOME.
Put that with my ever present white hairs, the fact that if I don't work out I gain weight like crazy, and that I think I'm getting wrinkles all over my face as well as a double chin and FUCK.
Father Time has officially put a jihad on me.

Speaking of my job, when I told my father how much I would be making he said, "You should aim a little higher."
Apparently, when you come from a blue collar family where you are the first one to graduate college, you are supposed to come out of the gate making $70,000 a year on a measly B.A.
Hell, my mom sends me weekly emails about how the people at Leo Burnett get half day Fridays.
Thanks mom. Why don't you apply there?


But all of this pressure (from outside and within) does make me do crazy things.

Saturday night I went to an 18 and over show. Standing around with my drink in my hand and a wristband on my arm, I realized...I was one of maybe 10 people who had a drink.
I was surrounded by underagers.
They had more energy than me.
They seemed happier than me.

So I fucking hated on them all night and made sure to give them some extra elbow to the face once the pit got really going.

A few days earlier I was looking at some photo blogs from some local photographers. They were shots from an event I was at earlier that week (where I got wasted and left before most of the photographers even showed up. SEE, I'M OLD!)
As I look at the who's who of Chicago hipsters, I notice one guy.
Dude was probably freshly 21 or had a good fake ID.
The first thing I thought when I saw it was "GOD, WHAT FUCKING STUPID HAIR."

And then I smacked myself for sounding like my mother.


And all of this weird mid-mid life crisis issues seep into all facets of my life.
Especially boys.

I don't know if it's because I'm old, because I got to sow my wild oats all summer, or if it's because I really like someone, but suddenly I end up thinking about the future.

I mean, I don't sit around writing all over my folders "Mrs. Hailey Levi" or whatever (YES THAT IS A REFERENCE TO ZACHARY LEVI FROM CHUCK), and I don't think about whether I want vanilla or chocolate cake at my wedding to said Mr. Levi.

Yet if dude starts talking about how he wants to be in a traveling band touring Russia for 1 year...well I start to think "maybe I shouldn't even bother."

Every year you get older means every hookup or relationship you have becomes less and less casual.
No more screwing around, leaving 'em, and finding someone new.
Now you got less time to go out and find new ones. And the good ones are getting taken and you aren't looking any younger or prettier and FUCK. We get to the point where we gotta hold on as hard as we can to whatever we have (please refer to how women act in my last post.)

So when a dude I'm kinda sorta seeing says something that makes me think he could give two shits about seeing me as often as I want to see him, I get kind of panicky and think "Ok, I can either try hard to make this happen, follow "the rules" and hope he comes around while I play hard to get, or just give up and find someone who doesn't plan on flaking as much."

Or maybe my hormones are just going crazy because they know my uterus is about to shed.

But beyond all of that, I think the thing that really makes me realize how old I feel/am/going to be is when I talk to people about growing old. (YES, SURPRISING.)

I don't know if it's solely my generation who says stupid shit like the following or if it happens to every generation before they hit 30 and realize they were saying stupid shit, but whichever the case may be, the following shit GETS ON MY NERVES and makes me sad to be in the generation I was born into.

But for some odd reason, when I discuss growing old with friends/coworkers/acquaintances, about 70% of them say the following:

"I'm gonna die young. Like, no more than 35. What's the point?"


WHAT'S THE POINT?!
WHAT'S THE FUCKING POINT?!

I'll tell you what the point is.
Make a list of 100 things you'd like to do before you die.

I guarantee you that by the time you hit 35 you'll be lucky if you've done 35 of them.

Now, I can understand that some people say statements like this because they don't want to so old that they get dementia and can't drive and need someone to help them take a shit.
I mean, who DOES want that kind of life?
Nobody wants to live to 115 if it means you are basically a vegetable.

But 35?!
You can't even run for PRESIDENT until you are 35 (ok, maybe not the best choice of analogy.)

Some people, I hope they mean this. Because they are so drugged out/stupid in the head that I pray they die before they begin breeding.

But I know tons of amazing people who say they want to die young and are dead serious.

Talk about a selfish, selfish thing to do.
And while yeah, maybe your funeral would be the coolest party in the history of the world but SORRY BUDDY! YOU MISSED IT!


But here I am.
Sitting in my robe at 9:40pm on a Tuesday night and ready to turn on a DVD and pass out. I'm gonna get up at 6am, pack my lunch, walk to the train, and sit at my desk for 9 hours.
Then I'll come home, not go out, maybe talk to one friend on the phone. Then repeat.

I'm getting older.

But I'm getting wiser.

There's no way I could have written this when I was 15.

Back then anything I wrote was mostly about the Backstreet Boys.

SHIVER!

Maybe getting older isn't so bad after all.

At least now I can buy my own beer.
Ahh. The sweet taste of experience.

Why I'm Fabulous and Yet Unhappy

If you live anywhere in the northern part of this fair country, you've noticed that Russia decided to take a big ole shit on Canada who simply passed it down to us and now we are FREEZING our asses off!

Because of these inhuman temperatures (-5 anyone? Don't talk about the windchill), I seldom leave my house. Add in the fact that I'm unemployed and really, the only reason I get out of my robe is so that I can go run on a treadmill at the YMCA and sweat more than Jessica Simpson at a football game.

So even though it's the weekend, and there were plenty of events going on around the city, I stayed in. I made my own dinner, drank a few shitty beers in my fridge (Busch Light FTW), and fell asleep by midnight.

Last night, a dreadfully cold Saturday night, I was online, as I am every day, noon, and night, and I got invited into a three way gmail chat with two of my bestest friends.

You may be asking yourself, what is a three way gmail chat?
To answer that my friends, I will simply say, it is the best invention since the three way phone call. Even more so because I can think long and hard about what I'm going to say and I don't run up the phone bill or waste the battery in my cell. All good things.

So the three of us, two in Chicago, one in New York, are each sitting at a computer at 10pm on a Saturday night, drinking beer, wine, and hard liquor respectively, and typing away about our worries.

We all have body issues so that takes up a good amount of time. In between sips of our pure carbohydrate beverages, we sent each other messages about how we wish we were thinner or prettier or more successful with men.


And that's when the topic switched to the most horrendous, obvious, terrible, awesome, silly topic of all time for women.

MEN.


Here's the problem that I've been battling and wondering about since I was old enough to have my first crush (RIP JONATHAN BRANDIS!)

In the animal world, it is the males of each species that must fight for the girl. The male peacock shows an impressive set of feathers. The male lion, with his beautiful mane, will fight against other males. No matter how small or large the animal, they all do a dance to impress the females. The males of the animal world are usually the ones who are brightly colored and try hard to maintain a well-groomed appearance. Take a duck for instance. Male ducks have the most colorful feathers and look the shiniest. And all of these species do the dance to impress the girl. Whether it's fighting, calling, literally doing a dance, or whatever.
The females of the animal species, on the other hand, get to sit around looking ragged as hell and they get their choice of these fine ass males who will KILL for their girl. Back to ducks, the female has brown feathers, isn't shiny, and doesn't care. She still gets to pick which sexy looking male duck she wants. After they prance around for her and vy for her affection.
And all the females have to do in return, is pop out babies and care for them. The males get the food, protect her and her babies, and do whatever they can to appease their lady and their kids. Female animals have it down right. I mean, look at seahorses. They got their men so whipped, those dudes have the babies FOR the women. Now THAT'S commitment.


So, that's the rest of living beings on earth.
But let's look at the one that has climbed to the top of the food chain. The species that is supposedly the highest level of intelligence.
Human beings.

The males of the human species, compared to their animal brethren, are dirty, fat, disgusting slobs. They take as much time to get ready and looked primped as it takes for them to masturbate - about 12 seconds. If they shower, you are lucky. Shaving is a luxury half the time. And deodorant? Men apply it sometimes but usually they still reek like old socks soaked in vinegar, rubbed all over a wet dog, and left on top of a warm oven. They dress themselves as if they were planning on sitting around to watch a football game and eating nachos. And that's just how they look.
When it comes to gaining the affection of women, human males are under the impression that if they buy a female dinner, or hell, just a drink, that she will come running over to his house, with her vinyl panties already around her ankles, and hop right on his smelly, unwashed dick and ride 'em cowboy!
And god forbid he happens to get the girl pregnant and they aren't married. He will most likely deny all responsibility, try to run to Canada to avoid paying anything for the child, or simply suggest an abortion and not attempt to pay for any of it.
Human males are a disgrace to the animal kingdom. No wonder that tiger in San Francisco chewed on those boys. He was pissed off that they made him look bad.


Now, turn your attention to the human female. While human males are the laughingstock of nature, human females are on a crusade to make female animals look like the laziest bitches in the world.
Human females spend about 70% of their time worried about how they look, working on how they look, and hating on how they look. Actually, make that about 93%. If we aren't working out at the gym or vomiting up dinner so our bodies more closely resemble an underfed Russian gymnast than someone who actually has a menstrual cycle; we are busy putting on uncomfortable clothing that try to accentuate the "good" and squeeze the "bad" until we can't breathe or we try to remove a rib. Then there's makeup. And hair products. We spend hundreds of dollars on waxy shit that the poor animals have to test out for our stupid asses. And this is all before we even leave our houses.

So now that I've established that the females look like over plucked, malnourished stick-thin lollipop heads, we can discuss how they act.
Instead of just sitting around eating and getting to point to the man we want like our animal sisters do, we go out and WORK THAT SHIT like we were RuPaul or something. We throw on our highest heels, our shortest skirts, and show off our cookies trying to impress these disgusting men who see us as a bunch of holes they could possibly stick their dick in.
We dance around, we act coy, we act slutty, we play games, we feel too much and in the end, we get fucked and left for the next idiot to come along and have his cock fall into us. Oh, may we only be so lucky.

I mean, this is what women have become after the feminism of the 1970's? Don't get me wrong, some of those lesbian bitches were crazy. I mean, I still like sex. I don't want to cut off men's wangs or anything. And fuck, if I burned my bras I would get a black eye just walking down the stairs.

But I digress.

I mean, in the 1950's women were expected to look good for their husbands. But it was almost understandable since the men still went to work, paid the bills, and took care of their women to some extent. I mean, the men were no penguins, no taking care of the kids, but fuck. The women got to sit home and spend all their time making dinner, cleaning and looking good for their men. I'm sure the sex still sucked ass, I don't think men knew the word clit back then. But overall, the women still got something out of the deal. Even if it was just money.

Now, after the feminism movement, us girls are more independent. We live on our own. We have careers. We pay our own debts and buy ourselves whatever we want. Sorry if I'm sounding a little too much like Carrie Bradshaw over here. But I'm only 22 so at least I don't have wrinkles yet (just tons of white hair.)

So now us females have to be men in our professional lives. We have to "play hardball" and act like we have penises. Hell, we were pant suits for god sakes. Could that shit be any uglier?
But in our personal lives, we've gone BEYOND the 1950's. Not only do we have to dress up and make dinner and take care of the kids and clean. But we also have to be a slut! Willing to have sex whenever and with whomever just to snag a guy. I mean, whatever happened to the sweet dating of the 50's? Where the man actually PAID FOR A MEAL FOR ONCE, and took YOU out without you having to set up all the plans?
HELL! WE USUALLY HAVE TO BUY ALL THE CONDOMS NOWADAYS TOO!
WHAT THE FUCK!

We've got the worst of both worlds!

We finally got our independence in the workplace thanks to the feminists.
Yet the feminists were also mostly a bunch of lesbians who didn't care about men. So the rest of us, who still like a good dicking sometimes, were left wondering what to do now that we were men in the workplace but still wanted to be treated like women at home.
And it appears, the only answer we found was reverting to a mix of housewife and disco whore.

I think it's killing us inside. We're making less progress and as a result, we are all a lot more depressed. We know we have good jobs, we know we look good (after dieting to extremes, we obviously have to, right), and yet, we still clamber after the affection of guys who don't care and never try. We stoop to new lows, offering blow jobs simply if a boy will agree to SEE us for a few hours once a week.

What happened?
I know shows like Sex and the City are supposed to empower us, but all it did was make people who are my age, people who are TWENTY FUCKING TWO, feel like they will never find a man worthwhile unless they are Samantha Jones in the bedroom and Miranda Hobbes in the office.


I guess all I'm really trying to say with this overly drawn out metaphor is...

WHY WON'T YOU CALL ME BACK, MOTHER FUCKER!


I dedicate this blog to my two favorite girls who know who they are.
Without you guys, I think we all would have gone on a dick cutting spree by now.

And to all you men out there?
WE ARE FABULOUS!
You should be worshiping ME and fighting for MY affection.

Or else I know a tiger who is always in need of a snack.

How to Sell Your Soul

Now, I did get wasted on new years eve. I remember the countdown and after that it was just a big blur. I ran into a lot of people I know, I kissed a boy I really like, I peed in a bathtub. You know. The usual. Didn't help that it decided to snow and sleet that night/morning. Thank god for nice boys who take you home and crash on the bed with you.

But I sobered up by January 2nd, just like I wanted to.
Only I realized something.


I NEED A FUCKING JOB!


Just to remind you slow folks out there, I quit my job mid November 2007. I still had a cast on my arm at the time. I figured I'd wait until after Thanksgiving, then find some temp work or something until my wrist got better.
Well then I met a boy, got wasted, and fell on my elbow. Fucked myself up worse.
Then I got insanely sick. Couldn't eat, couldn't move, fever, the whole bit.
By the time Christmas rolled around, I had finally finished my meds.
My cast was off. My elbow was almost fully functional.

It was time to do something I haven't had to seriously do since I was about 16.

FIND A JOB.


Now, I say since I was 16 because there has been only one time in my life since then that I have been jobless. It was 3 weeks of July 2005 when I first moved to this grand city.
But then one day, I decided I was gonna get a job.
Within seven hours, I had one.

Now, let's fast forward to December 21st, 2007. I've been unemployed for a little over a month by this point.
And my funds are DWINDLING. I mean, I'm buying pints of Canadian Club whiskey for god sakes. I'm sneaking beers into bars and chugging them in the bathroom. It's BAD.

So I sign up with not one, not two, but THREE different temp agencies a few days before Christmas. I figure I'll get presents and then I'll get a job and pay off my debt from Christmas (ok, so I didn't spend any money on gifts. Handmade gifts are better anyway.)

The day after Christmas I get a call at 11am. Can I do data entry for four hours for $11/hour?

HELL YEAH!

I even go back for two hours the next morning to finish the project. Sure I'm pissed that I had to get up early only to leave by 11:15 but when you eating peanut butter sandwiches for breakfast, lunch, and dinner (and I still fucking love them), you will do anything for a bit of cash.

So I'm thinking "sweet! First day after Christmas and I already got a job! This temp thing is gonna be sweet!" Then I drank a beer I stole from my friend's fridge (hey, I was watching her cat!) and scored some free japanese and old granddad whiskey from amazing boy (I swear this boy holds the key to my heart.)

Then days kept passing. No calls. I keep emailing and calling them letting them know I'm available. But I don't think too much of it. I mean, the week between christmas and new years eve is pretty dead anyway. Most people are on vacation or simply in a food or alcohol-induced coma during this period. I was no exception. Did I mention the old granddad whiskey? Oh, and it's 100 proof.

So now we are where I left off in the beginning. January 2nd. From then until about January 11, I will call it "My Freakout Stage." Each day without a phone call turns the knife a little deeper. It gets to the point where I decide, healthy wrist or no, I need a job. Any job.
In fact, I just started sending my resume to anything that popped up on craigslist. Office work, food service, salons, non-profit, even the evil that is marketing!

My resume was now in more hands than a hooker in a gang bang. Yes, that joke could have been dirtier but as I lose money, I also lose my funny juice.


Finally, I got a call for an interview. I do dances of joy in my house. There's a lot to be said for living alone. Especially when you enjoy walking around in a robe, and only a robe, about 87% of the time.

The interview is then "rescheduled." Aka, left me a voicemail telling me to call them back. I left two messages. It's been almost a week and I've given up hope.

But then, like my mom says, when it rains it pours.

Apparently, when one person wants you, suddenly everyone does.
I got a job offer from a chocolate company (oh how I wish it was Willy Wonka, but alas, I don't go tanning nearly enough.)
I have a phone interview with a media company.
I have a second interview with a financing company.
And I actually have two full days of temp work.

Well slap my ass and call me Sally, I might just have a job come February.
And it's my mom's birthday so, hey, two birds one stone.

My only wish is that one of these interviews becomes a guaranteed job that wants to pay be about $35,000 a year.

Because while I do love chocolate, I also love my semi-girlish figure.

And fuck.

It's not Willy Wonka.