Drainage

I suffer from a complete inability to care.


Except for when I’m stressed out and grumpy, in which case I’m pretty easy to piss off.


“You keep eating burritos that big, you’ll be huge!”

Thanks for the concern, sir, but burritos have beans; this is a coriander shrimp wrap. Still, you’ve got a point – what the hell am I doing, eating lunch like a normal person? Next thing you know I’ll be eating dinner or some shit. Maybe even snacks. And one day? I might descend to the level of a cupcake guzzler.

I’m not sure what it is that makes people think it’s their place to make those sorts of comments, but you know what? Shut it. Especially since I could fit in one of your pant legs and probably still need a belt.


(I’ve been sitting here listening to a bug fry in a ceiling light. The sound is like heavy radio static. Then the bug fell on my shoe and lay there twitching while I yelped and spent a good thirty seconds jumping around like Rumpelstiltskin at his most gleeful until I succeeded in shaking the thing off. And it was horrible.)


“Is there any way you could photocopy part of this book for my daughter so she doesn’t have to buy it?”

“No way that’s legal.”

Had to love the eye roll I got for that one. And I suppose my stance was pretty ridiculous. After all, what’s the problem in making illegal photocopies of books that also negate the incentive for our customers to actually, like, buy merchandise? I should be catering to even the cheapest of these peoples’ whims.

But I fail at cheapness catering, so they left. Sad news.


So, Wednesday. I was pretty relaxed on Wednesday. I’d popped some biscuits in the oven and was curled up in my nest of blankets, reading a novel completely for pleasure – no highlighter in sight. I had tea and I felt great.

And then came the stress lasers. Do you know the stress lasers? Those blazing little shitheads. They skewer your brain cells and push them out through your eyes, which, in turn, causes the cells to take on the form of giant glittering stress tears. The empty space left by these former cells is then filled with pooling golden stress light that completely incapacitates the surrounding brain material and sends the body housing the brain in question to embark on a wonderfully fun panic attack.

Stress lasers blow.


The upside: dressing as a hipster zombie for Halloween, as in the photo at the top of this page, and as below:



I may not look enthused, but I wouldn’t have relinquished that Guinness for anything.

Thanksgiving break come quick, so I can be chipper once again.

But On the Bright Side, I No Longer Read Elizabeth Wurtzel

So my dad said that writing an entire blog entry about the word "obfuscate" was a tad pretentious. Which, okay, maybe he's got a point. (I really want that entry to become a huge controversy so I can refer to it as "Obfugate." Please, someone?)

The thing is, though, I know I've had my pretentious moments, and I do my best to own them. When I was fifteen, for example, I would lock myself in my room listening to Fiona Apple and pretending to read Kierkegaard. That was pretty pretentious, yeah? By the time I was eighteen and had my head too far up my ass to walk in a straight line, I had moved on to Leonard Cohen and Elizabeth Wurtzel, which...ugh. (God, I still can't believe Wurtzel wrote an entire book about herself, then had the audacity to name it Prozac Nation. Could her narcissism be any more apparent?) Also, I read a lot of Nietzsche. Until, that is, I broke up with a guy who happened to be borrowing my Nietzsche, and who never returned it because he is a great big asspanda. Ahem.

So I don't excuse myself from criticism. I criticize myself all the time. It burns calories. And I am definitely no stranger to pretension, as anyone who has spoken to me for longer than ten minutes can attest. I mean, let's face it: I'm an English major. Semi-colons are my dearest friends, and I love verbs. My personal library is pretentious, too - though not quite as pretentious as claiming to have a "personal library" - as is my pseudo-poetic love of black coffee. (It's black like my soul, y'see.)

I take great pride in accepting my pretentiousness. I like to think that it absolves it, somewhat. I mean, it probably doesn't, but it sure is pretty to think so. (Yes, the Hemingway reference was a deliberately pretentious move on my part.) And...um...what was my point again?

Oh, right. Obfuscate. Look, I will grant that, as a word, it is irreplacable. There is no other word which could do the job that obfuscate does. However, it sounds ugly, and in that sense it is the sports bra of my vocabulary. That is to say, it is effective, but horrendously unattractive. And I still prefer "elegiac."

Um, Yes, the World DOES Revolve Around Me

I wish I was better at hiding my contempt. Actually, I wish I was just less contemptuous, but I don't think that's going to happen any time soon, so for now I'll direct my efforts toward being less obvious about it.

Botox might help. Then I wouldn't be able to move my face. My brow would never furrow; the corners of my mouth would never turn. Or I could come to work drunk. Yes, that would be messed up, but I think it might actually improve my customer service skills.

Or maybe - just maybe - people could stop being worthy of my contempt. Please?

When I worked at Quiznos, well, I was completely goddamned miserable. Who wouldn't be? I came home every night smelling like mayonnaise and sub-par swiss cheese. I worked with a bunch of meth addicts and one sober douche bag who had lost his color vision three years before when he opened an oven full of nitrogen and who was therefore convinced I was a blond. A hot blond, as he informed me on numerous occasions, definitely a hot blond. When I pointed out that I was, in fact, a redhead, he compared me to a stripper he knew in Vegas, which is stupid, because last I checked, strippers are supposed to be well-endowed. But anyway -

I blame my contempt for my Quiznos customers partially on the fact that I loathed my job with the core of my being - enough to make myself nametags with fake names, like Scarlett and Scheherezade, in a desperate attempt to conceal my true identity. (No, I wasn't surprised when it didn't work.) I hated the black visor, the matching apron, and my possibly drug-addicted boss, who bounced around like a fat, balding Tigger, clapping his hands maniacally and encouraging us to "move quick, move quick, gotta get this done." Having people order a sandwich and get all upset when it came with onions, as stated on the fucking menu, was really more than I could cheerfully deal with. The only good thing to come out of that job was that I perfected the Withering Stare From Beneath the Brim of My Visor, quickly followed by the Wide Eyes and Innocent Surprise when faced with a Completely Unwarranted Look of Annoyance From Dumbass Customer.

The thing was, when I quit/got fired, I thought I would never have to use the Withering Stare or Wide Eyes again. I thought, yay! A bookstore! My ultimate dream job! No longer will I feel contempt. I will be content. Which is good, because I find content slightly easier to pronounce.

Until I realized: I am not cut out for customer service.

There are certain customers that I really, really like. And contrary to what the contents of this blog might suggest, my first instinct is to be pleasant. But when someone is rude, dumb, a lousy parent, or speaks in a baby voice despite not being, you know, a baby, I have trouble coping. I don't know if that's because I'm hypersensitive, prematurely curmudgeonly, or just a mean, mean person, but whatever it is, I'm not sure it can be changed.

When I was a kid I wanted to be a writer. I didn't know what I wanted to write; I just had this dream of sitting at home with a bottomless mug of coffee (well, not coffee - maybe kool-aid), surrounded by loose sheets of paper with words scribbled in every margin. I pictured myself writing with pencils whittled down to within an inch of the eraser, wearing a top hat like Winona Ryder in Little Women. (I can't remember if Jo wore a top hat in the book or not. Mental note: check.) But I could never finish anything, and all that I scribbled in the margins were loose phrases that would pop into my head randomly, but which I could never attach to anything.

I know I need to go back to school. People have been telling me that for the last two and a half years, and I've never disagreed. But I feel like I've been coasting on potential my whole life, and I don't know how to change that. To put the potential into action. To write on command. To get a car, move into an apartment where the ceiling isn't being eaten away by mold (god, it's gross), to cook myself an actual meal. Hell, just dating someone who isn't an asshole would be a start.

And I guess the reason I'm so sensitive about how contemptuous I am is that I know I have no reason to be. I haven't really accomplished anything. My supposed superiority stems from all the potential I allegedly possess. "Well, you may have a degree, but I'm naturally smarter." Which may be true, or may not, but as long as I'm making $6.75 an hour whilst attempting to explain to my customers what "signed by the author" means, it really doesn't matter.

And even though this is definitely more appropriate for my personal journal, I'm going to post it anyway, because, well, it's all typed and everything, so why not?