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Oprah: The Solver of My Middle Class Problems

23 Oct

Is it absurd to think this is a good time to enter every contest imaginable? 

For those of you who didn’t get a chance to read yesterday, our car was totaled.  With the bike obliterated from the accident involving it less than 2 weeks before, we are now completely without transportation aside from our feet.  I suggested to Dave that feet will do for now with a bit of planning, but Pittsburgh’s colds are so bad that you think you’ll never be warm ever again.  So obviously when the time comes, we’ll need to invest in sled dogs.

Because the chances that we’ll be able to house and use for transportation a pair of highly trained huskies throughout the winter is just about as likely as us getting a new car.

There’s a certain thought process one goes through when attempting to solve these adult life problems.  It’s this weird line of thinking

Magical problem-solving Oprah, hear my poor plight.

where you literally work through all the important things that your new situation affects and try to manage the disasters that are on their way prior to their actually being here.

It’s an art.  A painful, exhausting art.

So last night I sat and thought through Dave’s gigs, my work, Dave’s work, weekends we had planned away, and the upcoming holidays with my family in Amish country and his in New York.   And short of picking up a horse and buggy to be home for Thanksgiving and renting it out until Christmas, the sled dogs seem like our best bet.   I worked through the money lots of different ways.  And no matter what it comes down to, I just need more of it.  I just – need more of it.  I don’t have enough to fix my problems.

And then with no ideas and seemingly no options, I considered hooking.

You know: a lady of the night.  I mean, not really.  I couldn’t possibly be a hooker.  But mind you, this is how people come to the conclusion.  Dave is skeptic of that theory but it seems sensical to me.  

So the only other option if I can’t afford a car, need a car, and can’t be a hooker, is that I will have to win a contest.  Not just small contests – big contests.  I need car sweepstakes entries and lottery tickets.  I need to entice Oprah herself to be all like “Hey Jackie, nice blog.  Here’s a car.  I don’t have the show anymore but I like to give out the same amount per year anyway.  You know, for the karma.”

I think that’d be great press for her, you know? “Oprah gives car to famous blogger”.  

Feel free to notify her of my plan. ♣

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Shaking Things Up

22 Oct

Our car got totaled yesterday. Dave was driving. He’s fine.

I like to get all the information out in the open real quick. See? All the information you need is right there for you … Everything you could want to know. Your questions have been pre answered.

This comes at an unnerving time as Dave just recently survived a biking accident.  Luckily, as I stated, Dave is fine. But the compounded effect of having a rain cloud the shade of catastrophe over your head is hard to take.

Usually when you get in an accident you can take solace is the fact that it’s unlikely to happen again soon.  So yeah, It’s rough but at least you got it out of the way.

Maybe thats just me. You know. Sally Sunshine.

His bad luck is systematically eradicating ever form of  transportation I have. The car was totaled. So  Two weeks ago the bike, today the car… Maybe tomorrow he can take me out at the knees.

Anyway now I have to do all this big kid stuff with insurance and having a job with no way to easily get to it.   Being an adult sucks at times like this.  It’s these moments that make me appreciate childhood. Or even that period when I didn’t think I was a child but happily lapped pup the privileges of identifying as one regardless.

I think I’m being forced into walking everywhere for the sake of my health.  Nothing else got me exercising so God decided that I can either walk to work or i can be fat and poor.  I can’t imagine a better plan.

So I guess I should be thankful. After all, thanks to Dave totaling the car I have a workout program I have no choice but to stick to. And on the other bright side, at least Dave has been in two accidents and it’s unlikely he’ll be in a third anytime soon.

Maybe I’ll lock him inside just to be sure. ♣

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Wrestling with a Poltergeist

21 Oct

Disclaimer: I am not this tall.

Dave has cursed our apartment with a poltergeist.

“Honey”, he says to me in the car yesterday, “this is the first time in my life that I feel I’m not really celebrating October.”

“What do you mean?  I bought pumpkin candles, we decorated the house for fall, and we have a Halloween party to go to at the end of the month.  What else do you need?”

He thought for a moment and said “more horror flicks, I guess”.

I don’t do scary movies. It isn’t so much a problem in the moment that I watch them – it’s the moments after.   I can’t even watch stupid ones.  I mean, I can.  And I’ll even laugh and not jump in my seat and talk about how it’s no big deal.  But truth be told, when the lights are all out and I hear things going bump in the night, I forget about the poor makeup and special effects and I completely let fall from my head the terrible storyline and the stupid acting.  All I can think about is “Oh my bajeezus.  Freddy is coming for me.”

C’mon, I have cats.  They make terrible security guards.

I’ve started a deal with Dave where I’ll watch the occasional horror flick so long as he checks every nook and cranny in the house before bedtime and promises to escort me anywhere in the dark I very well please.  He must tell me that I’m being silly and that my mind is playing tricks on me.  He must do this infinitely until I stop voicing my concerns because I warned him what would happen if I had to watch a movie.

It appears that by Dave voicing his concern for an underwhelming amount of freakiness, we have been since blessed with our fair share.  Last night as he was leaving for a show, I noticed our kitchen light flickering.  Dave said it was no problem – we have plenty of light bulbs stowed away from that research bus we got on a few weeks ago.  But this was no light-dying flicker.  We left our apartment to an eerie, low hum accompanied by zaps and sparks;  there was an electrical fire sprouting from the tentacles of cords on the pole outside.

Someone called it in and I went to the store to get ingredients to bake.  It seemed like a good time for a cake.

But – rather predictably I suppose – when I came home the electricity was out on my street.  With Dave at the show and me home alone, I got to walk through the creepy corridors of my apartment building in the pitch black.  Pretty amusing given that I left a lamp on so I didn’t have to come home to a dark house.

After I lit every tea light we had and cracked an Emergency glow stick (my favorite part of power outages), I sat in my lemongrass/mulberry/cinnamon bun/pumpkin spice scented dining room and thanked God that my laptop was charged so I could at least write something as I waited.

I looked to the living room, where I threw the glow stick for good measure.  It cast a creepy green glow throughout that made me think of Dave’s wish for October horror.   As I tried to shake off the crazies, I noticed that my window was ever so slightly ajar and a high pitched whistle was whirring through the apartment.

I stayed calm.  I thought I’d make a cake by candlelight and embrace the ways of the Amish, so I called my mom for a bit of direction.  She promptly reminded me that I couldn’t use the mixer or the oven.

I told her my oven is gas but she totally won with the mixer.

So I sat.  And stared.  And breathed in the grassy/berry/pumpkiny/cinnamony air.

That’s when my window fell down.

Like, fell down.  The entire bottom half of my two-part window completely came off its tracking and dove onto the dining room table, where I had a variety of candles lit for my comfort.  I rushed to put it back in place, trying to ignore what this would could mean in the context of Dave’s eerie wish, the power outage, the green glow in my apartment, and the super creepy whistle that wouldn’t go away even once the window was yoinked.

What if I wasn’t there to fix it? What if I weren’t sitting right beside where it happened?  It’d be like a creepy poltergeist flick where something inexplicably falls onto a bunch of lit candles and everything starts to slowly catch fire.

What it if I were pooping? I could have burned to death on the toilet.

The power returned to us precisely 2 minutes before Dave reentered the house – an odd timing indeed.  This was just day one of his curse upon our apartment.    

I still have 11 more days to try to survive. ♣

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Who Snatched the WordPress Wizards?

20 Oct
I apologize for the WordPress.com-themed post today, as I recognize (and love) that a lot of my subscribers and readers are not, in fact, WordPress.com users and may not have any idea what I’m talking about.  But good news! I write every day.  And there are 364 posts that will be featured here for 2011 that can tickle your non-Wordpress.com user fancies.  Because today, I have a pressing matter to address:
 

Who snatched the WordPress wizards?

Has anyone else noticed things are a little…strange around here lately?  I don’t know about you, but I’ve got an absurd number of hits from WordPress.com these past two days and try as I might I can’t find my blog featured anywhere in particular.  Typically it tells me what tag it’s from or which blog, but now it’s just straight-feeding general stats.  I certainly don’t mind, but it’s a little confusing when paired with my next area of concern:

Why hasn’t Freshly Pressed changed? Even if it updates later this morning, it still went the entire weekend and three weekdays without changing over.  I know there’s only a handful of WordPress wizards to go around, and no offense to the currently featured folks who are no doubt enjoying the consistent slew of hits and comments.  My issue isn’t that they’re still up… it’s that I fear something has happened to the wizards.

Has it?

I saw a couple new themes roll out, so someone must be updating Twitter.  And The Daily Post is still alive and kicking.  But… but what about everyone else? Are the crazy number of new WordPress hits linked to the lack of Freshly Pressed

Have you seen the WordPress Wizards? Don't be freaked out by the dead eyes. They're good people.

rollover?

What is this madness!?

I tried to Google these issues last night to see if anyone else was concerned, but I only found a few tweets in the sidebar of this blog mentioning the same things I was experiencing (Hi Deborah.  Thank you for your shared concern for the wizards).  If we go the whole week with these anomalies, I might start a search party.  Possible tomfoolery regarding the WordPress Wizards includes but is not limited to:

  • They were stolen and replaced by hackers who failed to realize that in order to maintain the facade of normalcy, they must continue to rotate Freshly Pressed features
  • They got golden tickets to the Wonka factory and are working to craft the most amazing insider testimonial blog post ever
  • They have been eaten by the exotic animals running amok in Ohio
Or maybe they quit.  But that seems silly.  Who would quit such a glamorous job? No one, that’s who.
I’m not sure how to start an Internet search party.  But I know how to cause a ruckus.  And maybe once I navigate a how-to, I can publish a book on Internet Search Parties, wherein I am the grand know-it-all.  I can go to forums and teach classes and be all superior about my Internet Search Party knowledge and talk about how it all started because the WordPress Wizards went MIA.
Who’s in? ♣

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Lions, Tigers, and Bears – Oh My! Exotic Animals Run Free in Ohio

19 Oct

It appears that Ohio has a circus on its hands.

Or so the Associated Press reported yesterday.  Not in those specific words, but after reading an article on how scores of exotic animals escaped an Ohio farm, I could easily draw the conclusion.  

Yesterday the fences were “left unsecured” at the Muskingum County Animal Farm, which housed wolves, bears, tigers, giraffes, and various other animals that are now roaming the roadways and suburban developments of east-central Ohio.   Authorities reported to the scene after calls during rush hour that wild animals were spotted along the road.  

How I’ve longed to be on my way home from work one day and see a giraffe trotting along, minding its own business.  I feel like that would really help alleviate my end-of-day stress. 

 

 

It appears that things happened quite out of order in this scenario.  Now, I’m not an authority of any kind, but it seems to me that when one gets a call about exotic animals on the loose, one calls animal handlers, heads to the scene, and waits for their arrival. Instead, it appears that deputies simply began shooting animals with assault rifles.  I’m sorry, you probably think I meant tranquilizers.  I didn’t.  I meant assault rifles.

 

The deputies, who saw many animals standing outside their cages and others that had escaped past the fencing surrounding the property, began shooting them. They said there had been no reports of injuries among the public.

Staffers from the Columbus Zoo went to the scene, hoping to tranquilize and capture the animals. The sheriff said caretakers might put food in the animals’ open cages to try to lure them back. (Associated Press via FoxNews.com)

If you put an assault rifle in that left hand instead, I imagine the scene looked much the same as this.

25, by the way.  In case you were wondering how many animals were shot.  Animals in cage = pay admission.  Animals out of cage = SHOOT! FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, SHOOT!

There’s a silver lining to all of this.  Local school districts canceled classes for today.  That’s kind of cool.  I always loved a good snow day, but nothing beats staying inside for fear that an ostrich will peck you to death or a tiger will pounce the school bus.  That’s rad.

My favorite quotation in the article is from Sheriff Matt Lut, who says “Any kind of cat species or bear species is what we are concerned about.  We don’t know how much of a head start these animals have on us”.  He talked about them like they’re escaped murder convicts.  I can just see the staff meeting now, with maps and pushpins up all CSI-like as they try to get inside the tigers’ heads and figure out where their next stops would be. 

The article mentions that Ohio happens to have the nation’s weakest restrictions on exotic pets.  It requires permits for bears, but so long as you snatch yourself a lion, tiger, or other nonnative animal, you don’t need to worry about regulation for now.   So strap up and head over to Ohio before the deputies down them all with assault rifles.  And if you happen to be an Ohio native, enjoy your day off school, and take a family field trip to the Interstate.  See if dad can finally round up that camel you’ve asked for every Christmas. ♣

You can read more about the incident here, at FoxNews.com.  Just promise you won’t believe the little tagline under their logo that reads “fair and balanced”.

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A Walk Through Occupy Pittsburgh

18 Oct

It’s a ripe time for protest, friends.  And since I’m in my 20’s, live in a city, and have yet to experience the fiery passion of gathering around a cause, I decided to mosey on over to Occupy Pittsburgh this week, which set up camp this past Friday.  Pittsburgh is one of many cities to join the Occupy Wall Street movement, and since it’s right in my backyard, I didn’t have much of an excuse to ignore it.

Happy Lollipop Tuesday ya’ll.  Not sure what Lollipop Tuesday is? Check out the nifty link at the top.  It’s okay, take your time.  I’ll be here all year.  No really, I will.  I’m posting every day in 2011 cuz that’s how I roll.

But this is my first day posting about a protest, so let’s get to it.

I don’t really know how I feel about the whole Occupy Wall Street thing.   I appreciate the idea of gathering around a cause and I agree that our current system isn’t really working out for folks right now. But the idea of a protest that isn’t really protesting something, I don’t know – specific – is odd to me.  Let’s say everyone joins in and agrees – what then?  Is the plan to start coming up with solutions?  Because I thought that the whole idea is for folks to make demands.  It appears there has been a list released of a few things – albeit somewhat vague and not all measurable – and there has been quite a bit of media buzz surrounding the dichotomy between those protesters who want to move to goals and solutions and those who don’t deem either of those necessary.

I don’t know, I’m new to the whole thing.  So instead of getting all excited about it and going in there demanding that people start talking concretely about what they want, I decided to just go talk to people and see what it was like to be there.  I actually had a lot of questions – like what they do all day when they aren’t marching, meeting, or debating ideas.  I wondered where they got their food from and what the little micro society was like that they set up.

As it turns out, my questions were answered in pictures I took while walking through.  Well, those and by a lengthy discussion with two gentlemen named Earl and Johnathan, who were set up behind the food table, giving me the lay of the land.  You can read more about Pittsburgh’s version of the now-global m0vement/initiative/gathering/whatsit at OccupyPittsburgh.org.  Or if you’d rather just look at the pictures (it’s okay, no one can judge you), scroll away my friends.  Bask in the glory of my 5-year-old camera phone.

A view of the camp from 6th and Grant, downtown. It happens to be conveniently positioned in front of two prominent Pittsburgh companies: BNY Mellon, the target of a picket scheduled for the 17th, and UPMC, a 9 billion dollar Pittsburgh-based healthcare system.

It's a pretty muddy area they've staked out for themselves, which has been remedied by the creation of cardboard sidewalks.

Along the way, I ran into a fellow crafting a sign for himself. Cardboard seems to be the doer-of-all-things here. Hey, it's recyclable and found in abundance; I can dig it.

At the food tent, I found Earl (left) and Johnathan (right), who gave me the lay of the land and welcomed me warmly. Earl loves that he can have conversations with people of all ages, backgrounds, and political perspectives here. Johnathan is from Colorado and on his way to Occupy Wall Street. They both tell me of how readily everyone lends a hand, how all the food in front of them is free for the taking, and how people are just eager to talk to one another about ideas. "This", Earl says, "is true democracy".

Another cardboard creation, advertising the free food and encouraging donations. Baskets of cereal boxes, a plethora of bottled water, a bowl of fresh fruit, and other various foods littered the tent. People bring what they can and eat what they need. Later on I hear one gentleman tell another, "Yeah man! There's free food! I'm never leaving!"

Earl was pretty intent on me including these folks, who he says are mainly responsible for the food tent. Lauren (in the yellow hat), he notes is particularly organized and hardworking, making sure there is order in what may otherwise be a tent of delicious chaos.

A modest dry erase board propped up against a pole features agenda highlights.

On the way out (or in - I suppose it's a matter of perspective), a few tattered boxes lay to collect donations of various kinds.

To learn more about Occupy Pittsburgh, check out OccupyPittsburgh.org.  To learn more about the spot that spawned a global movement, check out OccupyWallSt.org. ♣

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My Big, Dumb Teeth

17 Oct

For quite a long time, I’ve been hoping to someday save enough money to fix what is to me a monstrous overbite.  Of course, things always seem incredibly exaggerated when you’re the one attached to the body parts you’re criticizing.  But nonetheless, it’s  my reality. I took the time this weekend to look up what such a procedure would be like should I choose to finally embark on the journey.

It’s awful.  Truly awful.  Turns out it could rock my world to the tune of $50,000 and may or  may not lead to a few months with my jaw clamped shut.  Not to mention a decent sized percentage of lip and chin numbness for the rest of my life.  All things considered, it appears as if my perfect teeth-wielding dreams will have to be put to rest.  And in honor of the fact that I must do so, I’ve decided to repost a tale of those teeth, written by a much younger, much more blog-neglecting, equally tooth-0bsessed Jackie.  Enjoy. ♣


I’ve had several less-than-glamorous moments that compose the fuzzy collage of what is my childhood. From leopard pants paired with bright blue tops, fuschia skirts and lime green blouses, to even day-glo, all-green Reeboks, I didn’t have a care in the world for what it thought of me and was more than happy to show off my fashionable fashion taste I could display as I debuted the new seasons of hand-me-downs and thrift store pizzazz. One could say I was the Vera Wang of the lower class.

The beauty of those times is encapsulated in how gorgeously apathetic and ignorant I was to the opinions that surrounded me. I gorged myself on books about Jim Carrey and aspired to be him. My face got stretchier, my clothes more exotic, and my life even more enjoyable. Yeah, I wore big glasses and had permed hair long enough to adequately lustrate my lower region, but I had spunk. And big teeth.

Lots of them, actually. Lots of big, freakin teeth.

One could say I hated them from the beginning. I scooted around the house as a toddler with teeth to the wind, running at full speed toward any solid object that dare enter my field of vision. By the time I was 6, they had to be removed. They were black, cracked apart, and dead to me. Success!

Until they grew back.

They grew back with a vengeance. All of them did. Angry at what I’d done to their brothers and sisters, they came back fiercer, bulkier, and more demanding than ever before. Jutting out from all sides of my jaw, I wondered how it was that I would avoid swallowing them. On the roof of my mouth, in every crevice, outside every natural jaw line, and even deep in the roots of my wisdom teeth, they multiplied. And at the front of the militia, two perfectly straight, perfectly large teeth shone for all the world to see, forcing their way past the others in a desperate cry for attention. … and that they got.

I became instantly famous for a gag called “The Bunny Face” in which I embraced my curse, scrunched up my nose, put my fingers behind my head, and chomped up and down as a small woodland creature might chew upon a small twig. Instant fame. The cheers and pleads for The Bunny Face lived from 3rd grade up until my freshman year of college, when I officially retired it and publicly announced that it would no longer be featured on the Jackie Baker Showtime Hour.

My mouth retaliated.

A trip to the dentist revealed more troops; at the back of my jaw, six wisdom teeth had begun to move in. That’s right: six. If indeed an average person has all their wisdom teeth come in, it often denotes four. I, however, am a special case. A small percentage of lucky, tooth-blessed folk get what are called “super incisors,” which grow in immediately behind the regular two on the upper jaw. Super Incisors. Sounds almost… bunny-like.

I underwent a ridiculous procedure in which eight teeth were removed. At the same time. Six wisdom teeth and two regular asshole teeth that wouldn’t behave, one of which was located right on the roof of my mouth. Really.

By my sophomore year of college, my mouth was looking good compared to its sordid, toothy past. My smile line was lookin’ swell, and I was on my way toward worry-free dentistry.

Cue senior year: audition feedback meetings. After a silent two years, my front teeth are back and bold. It is brought to my attention that my overbite is interfering with my ability to speak well. My front teeth are older, wiser. With no Bunny Face with which to bombard me, they have struck in a much more intellectual way: by stunting my ability to easily handle the speech mechanisms that compose the Shakespearean language. Blasted!

And so my battle begins again. I care more about what the world thinks these days than I did in my thrift store fashionista days. After two years of pride, I’ve been reduced to The Girl with the Overbite. I struggle, I pine, but alas, I can do little to help my moneyless estate.

Since the dental procedure required involves a great deal of money, I must settle for investing in one-holed ski masks. I will immediately cease talking and will invest in a variety of bold and bright colors and they shall mask my pain. … and my overbite. Leopard print, bright blue, fuschia, and lime green. I’ll wear them with every outfit, I’ll set new trends, I will overcome the setbacks of my toothy past and shoot for the stars. I shall return to my childhood splendor and set new standards of fashion amongst the criminal demographic.

I, Jackie Baker, will no longer be set back by my bulky, malicious front teeth. ♣

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How I Almost Went to an Elf Convention

16 Oct

I had the most epic Lollipop Tuesday planned for this coming week.

Epic.

There’s a billboard near my apartment just by the on-ramp to the highway that advertised the Middle Earth Society, which was slated to have a convention this weekend.  I couldn’t make out too much on the billboard but there was a website listed that I could go to.  Something like middleearthsociety.com.

For those of you who are not total losers like myself, Middle Earth refers to Lord of the Rings.  And I fear that some of you may not even know what Lord of the Rings is.  Lord of the Rings is what Dungeons and Dragons was based on.  And Dungeons and Dragons is…

Oh never mind.  Elves and dwarves and things.  Okay?  It’s about elves and dwarves and things.

Anyway, I was incredibly excited for the opportunity to dress up and go to a nerd convention.  Every time I went to look up the details online and gets tickets, though, I didn’t see it on the convention center list or see any blogs or other Internet information alluding to it.  I kept going by the billboard and trying to get more information to make sure I had the dates right, but it’s really positioned in a difficult-to-slow-down area and there was a lot of small font.

Yesterday I slowed way down and tasked Dave with reading the information while I fended off any cursing drivers behind me.  As I glanced to the left to make sure he was reading the right one (there were two), something vital caught my eye: an “s”.

As it turns out, I had just assumed that this convention was for the Middle Earth society because they had a rune-like logo and my mind wanted to read that it was for Middle Earth.

When in fact, it was for the Middle East.

That’s right: The Middle East Society was hosting a convention.    I honestly almost bought tickets and showed up to an academic convention and forum for debate on the state of the Middle East looking like an elf from Middle Earth.

What would I have done in such a situation? Would I have just pulled off my costume ears and excused away the odd garb as part of a culture they obviously don’t understand because they’re clouded by their academic prowess?  Or would I have just slithered home after seeing what I’m sure would be enormous signs welcoming visitors at the convention center to the Middle East Society?

It’s a question that will forever burn in our cerebrums; we shall never know.

Glad I didn’t splurge on that elf getup. ♣

A glimpse of what almost was. Except I would cover up more. Not a lot of plump elves dwelling in Middle Earth, I hear.

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The Iceman Cometh

15 Oct

It’s cold.

I know, I know – I asked for this.  I praised autumn in a post that could have inspired people to fashion little idols of autumn and worship them in their backyards.  After autumn comes winter, so by praising one, it implies that I am encouraging what follows.

To be clear, I’m not.  I hate winter.  I used to like it back when it was 1/4 of the year, but now it’s half and it makes me want to die.

I usually don’t mind the autumn chill; I’m more than happy to have an excuse to bust out the scarves a little early.  But I have a small problem.  My landlord isn’t turning on the heat.

I’m not sure what his rules and regulations are.  I don’t know what temperature it has to get to for him to decide it’s inhumane to give us the gift of fire, but sometimes it gets pretty darn cold overnight and there’s nothing I can do but fashion a cocoon of blankets and hope til morning. 

It’s kind of a strange retribution, you know?  I went all summer long without air conditioning in order to save money and to cater to my occasional need to indulge my hippie sensibilities.  Maybe my landlord (let’s call him Smee) caught wind that I was torturing Dave and my cats and now he’s going to teach me a lesson.  Maybe Dave called Smee and asked him to teach me a lesson.  

After all, men are furry.  They can endure the cold.  I’m naked as a baby mole rat from my head to my toes; there’s no hope for me.

I try to combat the chill by baking and cooking a lot.  I threw a few potatoes in the oven the other night just to fire up the gas.  Our gas bill is included in our rent, so I can use all the oven time I want.  I wasn’t really hungry, but like the late Mitch Hedberg said: “It takes forever to cook a baked potato in a conventional oven. Sometimes, I’ll just throw one in there, even if I don’t want one. By the time it’s done, who knows?”

I like to take my life advice from comedians.  Sometimes that can be problematic.

As it turns out, I didn’t want the baked potato when it was done.  I don’t really like them.  But I was warm.

I have a few poorly constructed plans for how to endure part of the winter should Smee refuse to loosen the purse strings.  Most of them have to do with funneling the heat from the oven into other parts of the house with Dr. Seuss-like contraptions.   That’s probably a fast track to a fiery death.

At least I’ll be warm when I go. ♣

 

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Zooey Deschanel Is Mocking Me

14 Oct

Zooey Deschanel and I are kind of fighting right now.

I say kind of because she doesn’t know who I am, even though she is obviously playing out my entire life on national television.

For those of you who don’t know who I’m talking about, allow me to post a picture of enlightenment.  But I warn you: she’s totally cute.  So if you’re a guy and you don’t already know who she is, prepare yourself to get a little excited by her adorableness.  And if you’re a girl who doesn’t already know who she is, prepare to feel inferior.   Not inferior in a ‘wow she’s hot’ kind of way.  Inferior in a ‘man she’s really lovely and looks like she’s probably a nice person too.  Sonuvagun’ kind of way.

Look at her basking in her awesome life. For the record, I got this image from a site that claimed to have gotten the image from another site. So to go ahead and bypass all that mumbo jumbo let's just say this obviously isn't mine and you can click on the image to find lots more pictures of her that aren't mine.

 You might recognize her face as the crazy girl from 500 Days of Summer.  Or maybe as the crazy girlfriend on Weeds.  Or maybe as the crazy roommate in Failure to Launch.  Or, most recently, as the star of the show ‘New Girl’, which was stolen from the transcripts of my life.

I was first made aware of this travesty when one of my older brothers texted me telling me I had to watch it right away because it was me.  The premise of the show is that the lead – Jess, played by the offender in question – has just been cheated on and moves in with a houseful of guys, where she talks in crazy voices, does stupid things, and makes up her own jingles.  And with only a few almost unnoticeable adjustments, this is my life from college.  Except New Girl replaced all of my awesome guy roommates with bad actors.  Also, I’m not as attractive as her. 

This makes me upset.  Not just the not-being-as-attractive-as-her thing, but the whole shebang.  Zooey Deschanel is exactly what I’ve always wished I looked like, starring in a sitcom I always wish I could have had.  And guess what: she has a band.  Yeah.  She gets her singer-songwriter on too.  The real kicker is that she isn’t even very good at any of these things. Honestly, she’s not.  I’m not being rude – she’s very lovely and I don’t hold anything against her except that she has entirely and heartlessly usurped my dreams from me by claiming them for her own.  But it’s just an empirical observation that she’s rather average in every area outside of her bangin’ cute looks and soul-slurping doe eyes.   She just tries to be amusing about the fact that she’s average and people like that about her.

She even has likability.

So I keep watching New Girl.  Over and over again.  I don’t even think it’s very good.  It could have been good if they would have called me to get more information instead of just running with the basics.  But they missed a few very key points about the roommates that I’d love to fill them in on.  You know, if they’ll replace Zooey with me.  Obviously.  And they’re going to need a few cats.  The cats are vital. But I keep watching it in spite of its mediocrity because I’m in shock at how much she is like me and how completely annoying I am. 

Look at her. She knows what she's doing. (Photo by Noel Vasquez – Image courtesy gettyimages.com)

 

Really, I can’t stand her character.  I don’t know how people put up with me.  At least when I lived with four guys I could kind of spread my personality amongst them all.  Now that I live with just one – oh man.  How does Dave do it?! Honestly, how does he not smother me in my sleep?

The other day I woke him up with an improvised song about how he was wrapped up in his blanket all funny.  It was called Breakfast Burrito.  And while I was proud of my rendition at the time, I’m now watching Zooey ‘I-steal-your-dreams-and-play-them-out-in-front-of-you’ Deschanel and I’m thinking Woooow.  Someone needs to body slam me until I shut up.

Really.  If Zooey woke me up with a song about how I looked like a breakfast burrito, I’d have the urge to take her out at the knees.

Well, at least maybe then I’ll have a shot at understudy. ♣

 

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