Step 1: Alienate everyone in your life.
Step 2: Dissociate completely.
                                             < ---You are  here!
Step 3: Final preparations. (Get rid of your junk. It's polite.)
Step 4: Spend all your money! (Fun part)
Step 5: Fini.

Wow, I found my old blog. Isolating myself and ranting into the ether. Just like the old days, eh? Not as hideous as LiveJournal, though (maybe?). Strangely familiar. Nice to compose a thought, at least. Like writing an essay. About m'self. Blogging: A compilation of self-absorbed essays.

I have an old wool coat that's long and warm and functional; I wear it every day in the cold season. It looks pretty nice from the front so people often don't know why I need to replace it. It's gotta be at least 15 years old, though; it just can't recover from the hard wear of the accumulated years. The fabric is worn so thin in some spots. There's a huge gaping hole in the back from my backpack rubbing on it, which I used to darn and repair repeatedly but the fabric just won't hold up anymore. Same with the big rip under the right arm. I could patch and patch forever but at this point it'd essentially be like making a new coat, so I've started* on that. I've of course given up on this coat entirely; I'm just letting it degenerate. But I don't have anything better at the moment. So I just continue to wear it. Carrying my backpack to hide the enormous hole. Against both the cold and embarrassment, I suppose. The length is still warm. The hood still blocks the chill. A garbage heap for a garbage person. Getting worn down and I just don't care anymore. I let it; it's beyond repair. But at least it's not really noticeable.

And if that ain't an analogy for my life, I don't know what is.

*Sort of. Theoretically. I don't get around to it, and that's okay too.

I think dating is a horrifically bad idea. You can probably just file it under "You're doing it wrong!" No matter what way you're doing it, it's probably wrong.

One popular option is going to a movie. Where you sit in the dark and ignore each other. Brilliant.

Dating ads have their own bizarre culture, whereby people list crap that's totally irrelevant simply because that's what's popular to mention in ads. Like how they like to hang out with friends and eat good food (who doesn't??). Next you're going to tell me you like to laugh.

But it's not like I'm any less of a disaster. Either I'm sober and I'm really uptight and boring (and can't stop talking), or I'm drinking and just turn into some moronic floozy (who can't stop talking). No one enjoys the former but if anyone enjoys the drunken floozy it just makes me wonder WHY THE HELL THEY LIKE DRUNKEN FLOOZIES.

I'm with Groucho Marx: I wouldn't be part of any club that would have me as a member.

Time Travel Phenomenon?

Today somebody from 1993 called the lab.

They were trying to get directions for Holladay Park. That's the name of my building, and for some reason we get people who're trying to reach the main number calling our cytogenetics department number. I guess it's listed wrong in some directory somewhere; sometimes I try to ask where they got the number, but no one ever seems to know. It's a wonder these people manage to function, out there bumbling around, no concept of where they got anything, no fucking sources. It's bewildering, frankly. I usually just give them the number for the lobby front desk.

But that's not what this person was looking for. She wasn't looking for the Holladay Park building; she was looking for the PARK. As in, that place outside with trees and fountains and shit. She was trying to call a park. Perhaps she's never been to a real park before, and figured they'd have a receptionist stationed near the restrooms. Perhaps where she's from trained squirrels field questions about when they open and where they're located.

But what tipped me off to the fact that she was calling from 1993 was her lack of access to the internet. If you google "Holladay Park" the very first hit has its location. Not to mention you can just map it. She'd obviously found our number in a  paper phone book or something. Someone out there, using paper phone books. I know, I'm scared too. 

I walk by that park on the way to work and this morning I noticed tent canopies, so I made conversation as I googled the park and pulled up the cross streets . She said there was a bike ride going on and she was supposed to meet her husband there. I told her it was right by Lloyd center, but she still seemed confused. She was all, "Does it have an actual address?" I said, "You mean to type into a GPS? Yeah, you can just put in those cross streets. It spans a couple blocks." Apparently she hadn't really used a GPS before, either, though she most certainly had one. She wasn't using a paper map because you can SEE PARKS ON MAPS.

This was all very bizarre because she didn't SOUND like she was some 85-year-old lady who hadn't adjusted to new technology. She sounded, you know, maybe 40. No concept of what a park is. In her mind, parks have residential addresses and you can call them up like a freaking library and perhaps make reservations or something. Maybe she was from a completely different dimension.

When Are Girl-Products Going to Quit Being So Damn Girly?

Hey world.

I am a girl. It's true: I have an entire bathroom drawer devoted to make-up, I own way too many shoes, and I have ordered the salad at a restaurant. But shockingly, SHOCKINGLY, there are girls in existence who are not butch-dyke ballers yet also do not aspire to be fairy princesses. I am not drawn towards things that are pink and glittery and festooned with cutesy bows. I don't care about diamonds and in my opinion no one over the age of 10 should ever wear a tiara.

I guess my brand says, "There may be a riding crop concealed somewhere on my person," more than, "Someday my prince will come."

That's why I resent girl products. Just because they're products used by women-folk doesn't mean they have to foist their incessant barf-worthy sucrose girlishness upon me. Must a device that I have to shove up my snatch every month have the word "diva" attached to it? I am not a diva. Nor do I glory in the bullshit womanhood that my "moontime" supposedly imbues me with. If I didn't have to bleed all over myself twelve times a year that'd be fine with me; I'm never having kids so nobody cares.

For once I would like to buy an epilator that isn't pink, purple, sparkly, has flowers painted on it, or a fucking jewel as an on/off switch (I really wish I was exaggerating this for comedic affect...I'm not). I will gladly buy men's razors if it means I don't have to be subject to five tons of extra moisturizing strips, toggle heads, and bikini-zone crap. I don't need to "luxuriate" in a bubble bath with aromatherapy bath salts--I just want a fucking razor. Hair removal does not inspire me to think, "I feel pretty!" but rather allows me to contemplate what a hairy motherfucker I am and that by god, I just want to keep it all from overflowing out of my eye-patch of a g-string (which again, is not lacy and adorable for your pleasure, but plain and black and tiny because let's face it, any underwear is going to resolutely ride up my ass so it might as well be a thin strip instead of a huge wad of fabric).

I don't need a different soap for each part of my body. Hell, I use the same soap to brush my teeth as I do to wash my face.

I went to a gun and weapons show once and there were regular guns (black) and then there were pink guns. Presumably for women. No other colors--just pink. 'Cause obviously that's the color that vaginas prefer.

So...I guess I either have hairy armpits and weary jockey shorts, or else I would like to ride a unicorn that has rainbows shooting out of its ass. Those are the choices.

And I get it, some people are just like that. It's not brain-washing; they're actually just BORN that way, loving Barbie and playing house. They'd like to wear their vagina as a great big hat and they plan their wedding 12 years in advance. Of even meeting the groom.* I contend that these people belong in the kitchen, not the workplace. But the point here is that some of us AREN'T like that. We're just people. We like black and we have no use for your frills. That's why someone needs to launch a line of non-froofy products. I could go for some black fucking running shoes. Men's shoes come in black--how come women's are all retarded colors? I would just buy men's but the sizes start in huge-and-a-half. DO YOU SEE MY POINT. I can always get an ammo box instead of buying one of those pearlized purple tackle box monstrosities for my under-the-bathroom-sink miscellanea, but these stop-gaps only go so far. THERE ARE NO GENDER-NEUTRAL MENSTRUAL PRODUCTS.  

*For the record, this is super creepy.  

I guess you can't post pictures from mobile blogger...

I went to see Voltaire last Saturday! Apparently he has a website: the Voltaire Lair. He was pretty funny and earnest, sometimes stopping mid-song all, "No, that's not how the song goes! I'm drunk!" and then resuming with audience prompt. Last time I saw him, at the Fez, he had a band with him but this time he was up there on stage all alone with his guitar. I do like his violin-y songs, but it was an entertaining evening nonetheless. Even though he's incredibly bawdy on stage, he's rather gracious, you know, and thanks each person for coming out to see him.

Wow, I just rearranged a sentence there so it'd make more sense. Man, I miss blogging. You can organize your words in some sort of thoughtful manner rather than just...brain vomit that happens on Facebook or G+ (although you know what, that's what a lot of people's blogs were like anyway, so if we can eliminate those people from blogging then I say that's a good outlet for them--as it is, I'm a little too wordy for that format?).

Well enough messing about on Blogger; I need to get to bed.