Dear Facebook Aliens, I'm on to you

In keeping with what will probably be my new year's resolution to write in here more often (or in general, I guess), I am going to attempt a post today. Or maybe not, because goals are meant to be followed and resolutions are meant to be broken. New year's resolutions really are just our way of balancing our life; if we got EVERYTHING done that we set out to do, then we would never experience the euphoria of accomplishing anything because we would always get everything done. Somewhere along the line, I'm sure some human invented the idea of the New Year's resolution to help society become more productive. Plus, if we accomplished everything we set out to do, we would become cocky little jerks and everyone would hate people even more than they already do. So really, when you think about it, creating this blog was just a way for me to make me more tolerable to people. You're welcome.

I'm sure I've written in here about how much I despise facebook, you know, despite my pretty frequent usage. Actually, when you think about it, using facebook kind of perpetuates an addictive/self-loathing kind of behavior. You get on, and then you can't get off. You are literally stuck. You find yourself scrolling through cat videos and buzzfeed recipe videos for whatever cheesy, bacon-y, oven broiled monstrosity your friends swear up and down they're going to make for their next party, meanwhile, the voice in the back of your head is trying to tell you to do something productive, so you get off, and then immediately forget what it was you got off your phone to go do*, and you get back on the phone for another four hours. I swear, it's like aliens invented this shit to turn all of our brains to mush and turn us all into mindless zombies.

*You know, like when you walk up three flights of stairs in your house with the intention to go do something, and then you get upstairs and you forget why you went up there? Or when you go stand in front of the fridge for ten minutes trying to figure out why you are standing there? On second thought, I just came up with a million dollar idea. How cool would it be to have a fridge that you could open, and as you're sitting there in a mind trance waiting for your brain to start working again, it throws a sandwich at you, or a beer or something. Like "HERE, QUIT WASTING MY TIME AND GO AWAY." Or what if your fridge gave you something to do? If you stand in front of it long enough, it'll tell you to go clean your room, or it'll give you a pinterest worthy project to work on. That way, you can go upstairs and work on a Paper Mache collage of the universe instead of bathing the dog which is what you were going to do before you went and stood in front of the fridge.

Anyway, back to aliens. Today, I hate facebook because it keeps insisting it knows me better than I know myself. It's like when the internet uses your cookies to track what you're searching for and then you find those same searches in the side bar of your webpage. Before I knew why that happened, it would really freak me out because I would be like "Whoa, how did the internet know I was looking for a fancy lunchbox?" Cookies, that's how.

But I don't even think facebook uses cookies; it's facebook aliens trying to destroy humanity. I have seen suggested posts for things that I have had nothing to do with ever. Back in college for instance, I ended up putting on some weight (you know, because I was a little busy trying to graduate a year early, commute to school, and basically work full time in a damn bakery all at the same time), and I would get on facebook and it would recommend baby stuff to me. Like, you little condescending piece of shit, there are better ways to tell me to lose weight. And then sometimes, it just tries to make me feel worse about myself. Like on days that I feel kind of down and blue, and it comes up with a suggested post that says something about helping starving kids in Africa, or an article titled, "How to Make Friends in Real Life," or a book that I should read called "How to Get the F*** Over Yourself." Or it'll take every lifetime achievement of my facebook friends and permanently pin it to the top of my page. Hey, facebook, if I decide to post some cryptic song lyrics, just lay off, yeah? Or how about recommending me a hug and a bottle of wine?

Don't take advice from stick figures

I will have to admit that one of my favorite past times is making fun of stupid pictures people put on Facebook. You know, the ones that have some "inspiring" quote in front of a picture that does not at all relate to the subject? How about the ones that take some really inspirational quote from someone like ghandi and set it to a picture of some emo teenage couple doing a pinky promise? I've never actually seen that one to be fair, but with half of the crap that I see on the Internet, I won't doubt it's existence. Or my personal favorites, the bucket list excerpts written by obsessive teenage girls about how they want their future guy to act. "23: to find a guy who makes you breakfast in bed every single morning" or "4556743: to find a guy who loves me so much, he spends all night staring at me and obsesses over me every damn second of the day." Adorable.

Anyway, seething animosity aside for ditzy teenage girls aside, I found this picture today. I don't really want to make fun of it, because the picture has a lot of good intentions, but I had so many objections to pretty much everything in this picture. The pic is below, titled "How to Not be Hard on Yourself." First and foremost, I would like to say how wonderful this idea was. I think that we are all a bit too hard on ourselves. I mean, for God's sake, the fact that you are alive today means that you were the one out of billions of sperm cells that made it to the egg and finished the job. You literally grew yourself into a human from a blind date between two cells. You fight gravity every single day. You take food and turn it into poop. Seriously, if anything, just take five minutes out of your day and just think about that. 

That being said, I will now rip this picture to shreds with my biting sarcasm. 

My mistakes are part of my learning. So every time I go out and get drunk and make bad decisions, it's really just like going to school, right? And school is good. Everyone says to never stop learning so basically I should never stop making mistakes. 

There is no right way to do anything? This implies there is no WRONG way to do anything either, and I'm pretty sure if you get out of bed in the morning head first, you might break your neck. 

Stand up for what I believe in, even if it's popular. Except maybe advocating killing other people, because that's pretty unpopular and you should never advocate that. I feel as though maybe Hitler took this advice the wrong way. 

Learn from people who criticize me. The only thing I've learned from people who criticize me is that I'm basically worthless scum. You should learn to take CONSTRUCTIVE criticism and think about it carefully. 

Look at my past as an adventurous biography. Except it's an autobiography because I'm pretty sure I wrote it.

Don't underestimate your talent until you apply it 100 times. After that, you just suck and should learn from the criticism you get for wasting your time.

Express your anger in a positive way. Like beating the shit out of a punching bag while eating a turkey leg. 

But I get it, there's a lot of pressure on us. I think it has something to do with our place in history. The problem is that there have been SO many awesome people before us that have done so many awesome things. We are literally running out of things to be accomplished so honestly, I think that makes even getting out of bed and living day to day without dying or being eaten by killer geese a pretty spectacular accomplishment. 

Things that Don't Make Any Damn Sense

So I noticed my blog is getting some random views so I figured maybe I should write something in here, yes?

Anyway, I don't normally title my posts, but I'm going to preemptively (I'll have you know it took me way too long to spell that word because my phone claims it doesn't exist. Liar.) call it Things that Don't Make any Damn Sense. And actually I was going to start with pickles, but I've been inspired by creating my title, so the list now goes as follows:

1) Why we Capitalize Some Words in Titles but Not Others and How the Hell do I Figure Out the Difference?

Wow that title alone annoyed me. So what determines if a word gets capitalized in a title? This is one of those random facts that just kind of slips its way into your brain when you're not looking. Like how you learned what a gondola is (true fact from a conversation I had in real life today). You just kind of wake up one morning and you know more stuff. It's like there's a knowledge fairy that comes and pays you a visit when you're sleeping. Anyway, I think I was taught in school that only important words get capitalized in a title, but how exactly do we define "importance?" Because the words "and," "if," "but," "the," "in," "we," "do," well, they're all kind of reeeeally important words. If any of those words do get capitalized and I have simply neglected to do so, please let me know. Or don't, because you shouldn't take anything I say seriously anyway. In fact, these words are like the under appreciated housewives of word society. I think they should all go on strike. That's as much as I care to write about words because now we're going to talk about....

2) ...PICKLES.

Pickles make no sense to me. I mentioned this to a friend actually, so to at least one person, this conversation will sound familiar. Anyway, who in their right mind was like, "hey! Let's take this perfectly good and delicious cucumber and bathe it in vinegar and then eat it?? Well, I will tell you! Apparently, after googling it, it was the Mesopotamians. Blame Mesopotami and the deranged science that led to the creation of pickles! Blame one of the earliest human civilizations! Also apparently Thomas Jefferson enjoyed pickles, but only in the summertime as I can garner.

3) mushrooms

This I seriously don't understand. Let's pick something that grew in a pile of shit and eat it! I blame drugs.

I get inspired by older black ladies

I have had something completely uneventful happen to me today. I have had a very bad day. You know, one of those days where you just want to take a bottle of wine and go hide under a rock (forever)? I kind of wish we all had giant pods, kind of like something in a totally crazy spacey sci-fi movie where the main characters are all wearing skin tight leotards and doing some weird shit like trying to colonize another planet with only blood type AB+ people. On a totally unrelated topic, WHY do people think that spandex is the best thing to wear in space? If I were in space, I would probably be wearing some kind of industrial grade shit that is literally one step short of a walking dungeon. It would be the only thing to keep my ovaries safe from the outstanding amount of radiation  that everyone forgets actually happens in space, thus protecting the unborn children who will ultimately carry on the name of the human race. We don't want them possessing an extra arm. Although, that probably went out the window when we all decided to leave planet earth for an entire lifetime spent aimlessly drifting through the void and sleeping in those little pod things. Oh, right! The pods. And the bad day. Back to that. 

I don't need to go into details about the bad day. It was just kind of one of those "the universe hates me and is trying to stop every bit of progress I make right in its tracks" days. Maybe the universe was mortally offended over something I said? Maybe this is some supreme higher powers way of "making me a better person by mentally beating the crap out of me?" I've stopped trying to make sense of it at this point. 

              Dear universe,

                      I see your "totally shit day" and raise you one "popcorn and wine for dinner." 

                Take that!

                Emily. 

I always kind of feel bad for feeling bad. I mean, I really don't have a BUNCH of stuff to complain about. I mean, there are starving children in Africa being hunted down by hippos and I'm sitting here tapping away on an iPad. As if the thought of that isn't enough, the other day at the metro, I saw a guy in a wheelchair just chilling in the lobby sleeping. Upon closer examination, I noticed a cord coming from the chair. Plugged into the wall. That guy literally couldn't go anywhere because his wheelchair battery died. It. Died. The poor dude literally had nothing else he could do except just sit there and try to catch some Z's until that he could eventually make it home. 

And it's that kind of stuff that just puts it all into perspective. I think the worst thing to do when you're sad is to think of ways it could be worse. The only thing you're actually doing is tempting the universe, not to mention, reminding yourself that the world can be an awful, dreadful place. I'm not saying that you shouldn't count your blessings, because you definitely should, but don't distract yourself from sadness. Sadness is the natural balance of things. It exists to make the happy stuff feel good. Revel in it. Bathe in it. Appreciate it. And then when it's ready to leave, make sure it has its coat and walk it out to the car. It's only polite. 

I hate commuting with every ounce of my being. Having to shove past people while dealing with  temperamental subway service and the overpowering feeling of JUST WANTING TO BE HOME while someone is standing next to you with their ass in your face is just about unbearable at times. And unfortunately, I'm not one of those people who can be perky about a bad situation. It's almost  inhuman. But as I was waiting on the platform for ages after leaving work a half hour late, teeth grinding and trying desperately to think of the silver lining in my awful day, the lady next to me, An older black ladies (the "fountain of wisdom" type) asked where the train was (because it was literally taking forever and a day) and upon being notified that it was literally nowhere to be found, she turned to me and said something that made me laugh. 

                                                         "Woo! Ain't that some bullshit?!"

Lady, you took the words right out of my mouth. 

Dog ladies have more fun anyway

I kind of wish more people read my blog... Sigh.

Just kidding, that sounds unnecessarily needy. My blog is really for me. Why? Because I've discovered that if you make people laugh, they will like you more. Even better though, if I can make myself laugh, then I like myself a little more. It's kind of a win-win situation.

I've been thinking a lot about just what makes a person successful, mostly just because I have an undying desire to just be successful right now. At 22. Hey, if Taylor swift can do it, why can't I, right?  WRONG. I know that deep down, success is just what you make of it. Unfortunately, it's not just like getting a bunch of signatures on a petition, like HEY YOU'VE REACHED YOUR 50 SIGNATURES CONGRATULATIONS YOU ARE OFFICIALLY PERFECT. That kind of makes it sound as though adulthood is an exclusive club. Just pay a certain amount each month, and you can have a cool box mailed to you every month with stuff like Adult Magazine, and shit like kale chips and fiber biscuits and if you pay more, you can have the premium box that includes really good wine and your own personal therapist.

I guess really, my biggest fear being the young tadpole that I am, is that I'll never know what I truly want out of life, that I base my decisions on what other people want for me, and what others will find impressive. Even worse, I'm nervous that I'll never make sense out of anything that life throws at me. Why do bad things happen to good people? Why do people intentionally hurt other people? Why does the government take so much of my money and what do they actually do with it anyway? (you know, since all of the public transit I ride is from 1975, all of the roads are falling apart, and I don't see public schools doing much for kids these days)

Sometimes I wish that I was surrounded by people my own age more often. Graduating early sounded like such a great idea until I entered the work force and realized that I'm the only one who deals with the issues I do. You know, the "twenty something" issues. If you still have no clue, I'm pretty sure Buzzfeed comes out with daily articles on crazy life is in your twenties. The truth is, though, that older people make the best company. While it sucks being around other people who seemingly have everything figured out and who seem to have some sort of stability and control in their lives, it's a reminder that eventually I will be like that. I'm sure if I could manage to find some magic glasses that made it so I was able to see others when they were my age (definitely not unlike some sort of cool x-Ray vision type shit) I would see myself in a lot of them.

And sometimes it's hard, because I see older people who still don't seem to have things figured out. I see little old ladies, crocheting on the train, with cat hair all over their coats and a look in their face that is filled with regret and loneliness. Sometimes I get scared, too. Life is literally like having a friend who will love and hug you and build you up, but is also subject to random bouts of beating the crap out of you in a dark alley and stealing the shirt right off your back. I guess it is all about hindsight though. Maybe you got the shit beaten out of you because you genuinely needed it. Or it got you out of going to something you truly didn't want to go to. And maybe that shirt was way too small, or unflattering. It's always hard not to constantly think about all of the "what-if's." It's also hard to come to the conclusion that I can kind of control things. If I don't want to be a sad, lonely old cat lady, I just won't allow myself to fill the voids in my life by allowing feral cats into my home. I've been pretty good at it so far. Anyway, I'll be a dog lady, they're much cooler :)

Why can't TLC just pay me to do something pointless?

Sometimes in life, you just have to appreciate the little things. One of the things that intrigue me the most (especially since reading a comprehensive history on the English language ((it was more interesting that it sounds)) ) is when we come up with words that don’t actually mean the thing that they’re supposed to mean. Like, how panda bears aren’t actually bears at all. Why don’t we call them Panda Raccoons, which is what they are? Maybe it’s because too many stupid people would associate raccoons with pandas and attempt to go pet whatever is digging through their trash. Although, I’m not too sure why you would see a bear with its huge claws and super sharp teeth and be like “Awwww it’s so cute I’M GOING TO GO PET IT.” I think it’s actually something to do with saving the Pandas. People care more about bears than raccoons.

 

Or maybe like “human resources,” which is literally the biggest joke in the world. Honestly, though, I know that it would be a mouthful to say something like “Humans that may or may not answer their phones/emails and if they do at all, they do it on their own time because they are too busy derping around all day,” or “humans hired to process paperwork at painfully slow speeds.”

 

Now that my defamation of Human Resources Depts everywhere is done and over with, I would like to get to the biggest paradox I have ever encountered in my life: TLC.

 

TLC, or The Learning Channel, is literally the biggest bullshit excuse of a channel ever created. I have learned nothing on that channel that I can apply to real life. It kind of reminds me of half of the core classes that I had to take in college, especially that one about Medical Ethics. When am I ever going to need to make a life or death decision on someone else’s part that involves their religious beliefs? Hopefully never. But then again, I did find out that my Rabbi professor was arrested for videotaping Jewish ladies taking ceremonial baths, so I guess anything can happen. And I’ll go ahead and write a letter to my old professor in jail and let him know that what he taught me was super helpful and I’m forever grateful that I paid like, $700 for him to tell me that Catholics don’t like abortions. It’s funny the kind of stuff you think of every time you make a student loan payment. I’ve decided that March’s loan payment will go out to the band director who gave me a B in marching band.

 

Anyway, diversions aside, the only thing that I remember being on TLC that was even remotely educational was Magic School Bus, which came on for 20 minutes before school started, but it was only a small glimmer of hope that was to be later crushed by marathons of “A Wedding Story.” My favourite part about the channel was the one night a week where it just showed TV shows of people who had eaten themselves out of the ability to walk out of their bedroom door. Is there anything I learned from these marathons? Only that in the case that my emotions become absolutely too much to handle, I really shouldn’t eat 20 candy bars, 2 whole rotisserie chickens, 7 ears of corn, a baby elephant, a Game of Thrones style 17 course meal and finish it off with a Ben and Jerry’s Vermonster for dessert. So far, I can safely say that I have never had that urge though.

 

Whatever intellectual content that was ever once on TLC, however, is gone forever now, and has been replaced by awesome trashy reality TV instead. I mean, really, 19 Kids and Counting is really just a show about a lady who covers herself up by day and perpetually puts out by night; she’s basically a baby-making werewolf. I love the show so much, because deep down, I know that the odds are too great that with 19 children, at least one has to break free and go nuts. My money is on Jinger, mostly just because her parents gave her that awful name. Or maybe even Josie, since she is apparently incapable of leaving her shirt on. Behind the blank stares and the eerie smiles and perfect long, wavy hair, you know shit is about to get real, and I’m gonna be watching when it does.

 

My real fascination though is with all of the shows on “little people.” I personally can understand something like that Mermaid Girl special, or “9,000 pounds and pregnant with an alien” because those are shows that show people who actually live differently than the norm. But midget shows are pretty much the ultimate paradox. The purpose of the TV show is to show us normal folk that little people can lead normal lives, and in so doing, they show us that their lives are completely fucking normal and not really worthy of a freaking TV show. I can’t think of anything more boring than watching a show like “Little People, Big World.” The only thing they do differently is that sometimes they crawl around on countertops, but hey, I do that and I’m normal sized. How am I learning anything at all from this show?

 

All kidding aside though, if TLC is ever willing to pay me huge dollar signs to walk around on countertops, or have a million babies, or try on wedding dresses, you bet your ass I’ll do it.

I wish I could have learned this stuff in high school instead

I've come to the conclusion (again) that growing up is really hard. In the attempt to navigate life's treacherous waters while staying afloat and not getting the awesome metaphorical pirate hat that I'm probably wearing wet, I have succeeded and failed and succeeded again multiple times already. One thing I'm slowly learning to accept though is the fact that sometimes life throws you a huge storm and sometimes you just gotta ride it out. The best way to ride out a storm? Movies. What better way to relive your childhood than with a good old Disney movie?

Anyone who knows me in real life will know that I will always to my grave argue that The Lion King is the best damn movie ever created, and of course, with the new Frozen craze, I have pissed off (and by pissed off, I mean mildly annoyed people who proceeded to not listen to me anyway) many good folk. However, it came to me (in the shower, as many good moments of genius often do) that some of the Disney movies that I watched growing up have TERRIBLE messages.

*DISCLAIMER: I absolutely do not advocate never watching the following movies again. You probably learned worse things in public school anyway. This is purely for the purpose of me being a jerk and ruining your favourite movies for you :P

POCAHONTAS: Someone strange walks into your village from a different country? By all means, be totally naive to their ulterior motives. Odds are they probably won't try to kill you with smallpox blankets (what they never show you in the sequel is that the reason she went off to England is actually because they destroyed her village with smallpox blankets.)

CINDERELLA: I'm pretty sure my cousin inspired this one. If a guy you danced with was too drunk to remember what your face looked like and therefore tried to cover his tracks by making every girl in the village try on a shoe, you should definitely marry that guy because he's rich and you don't care anyway. I laugh because when she got married, she probably though she was done cleaning up after people lolololololol

THE LITTLE MERMAID: If you meet a really hot guy on the beach, change everything you are to be with him. Seriously, even your species.

SLEEPING BEAUTY: Meet a hot stranger in the woods? Dance with him. Find out that he was totally fondling you in your sleep? Marry him.

SNOW WHITE: I seriously don't know what this gullible bitch was thinking. If a strange old lady randomly gives you an apple, and then cackles as you take and eat it, you are just asking for trouble. She probably left her drink unattended in bars too and just ignored the funny taste it had when she came back or the strange guy lurking dangerously close.

I'm not even going near the movie Frozen, since I'm pretty sure that Elsa was just paid off by climate change deniers to cause an eternal winter. And also, if you have freaky uncontrollable ice powers, try seeing a doctor. At the very least, maybe a shrink so you can at least make an attempt to control them.

I just love The Lion King because it is the perfect coming of age tale. First of all, it is Hamlet with lions. How is that not cool? Let's take one of the greatest playwrights in history and use one of his stories as our next movie! Sounds good to me.

Also, I have no clue if maybe it's just because gender roles don't really apply to lions, since they are basically backwards anyway, but the lionesses literally don't take shit from anyone. Most Disney princesses live on the premise that as long as they do their daily pilates, there will always be someone to take care of the rest. Nala, however, is a self sufficient lioness who isn't afraid to get what she wants.

Most of all, it's so realistic. It literally goes through everything that a typical young adult would go through. Seriously who doesn't have at least one evil uncle? Just kidding. Actually I'm pretty sure I do.... But I can safely say that he's never tried to kill my father and blame me for it.

Anyway, aside from all of that, it really is realistic. What young adult doesn't see themselves in Simba? When you're little, you think you're invincible, right? And I like that simba is a cocky little shit in the beginning, because you know what? We all were. You were bullied in school because as a kid, you think that you can literally do and say anything you want to anyone and there are no consequences. Simba is the perfect comparison to a child's free, optimistic, "rose coloured glasses" spirit.

And then guess what, his dad dies. Mufasa, literally the most badass lion father who ever lived, it turns out is actually just mortal. We have all had our "mufasa dies" moment. Whether it is puberty, or simply the lesson that you can't get what you want in life all the time, or maybe someone actually died, we've all been there. I have a firm belief that in order to be a good person, life has to bitch slap you in the face at least once. At LEAST once.

This is getting long winded, so to wrap it up, we all know how it ends. Simba runs away with some vagabond hippies, smokes some grass, sees his father's ghost and realizes that he can't change the past, but he must learn from it. It's a tough pill to swallow, but he literally ran back towards his problems, beat the shit out of them, and reaped the sweet lion rewards.

So for the record, if life knocks you down and steals your crown, get up, put that shit behind you and go reclaim your rightful place in the universe. That's a life lesson that I can get behind.