humans are funny

Author: laurenne

  • Stop looking at my soul. It feels weird.

    Today I had a somewhat life-altering phone call to make. I knew whatever this person on the other end of the line said would be filled with either opportunity or disappointment. I decided to go sit down in the perfect place on Venice beach in order to brace myself. I bought a lemonade. Lemonade always helps when bracing yourself.

    I dialed the number.
    It rang once.

    Just then, a man approached me.
    “You’re destined for greatness,” he said. He looked like a regular old Jewish father. His T-shirt and shorts did not peg him as the average crazy from Venice beach. I didn’t sense he was on meth.

    I thought the timing was strange because I was just about to make a phone call that would tell me whether or not I am destined for greatness. I hung up the phone to hear what he had to say. Maybe this stranger would tell me the size of the greatness or the exact kind of greatness.

    “I see your soul,” he said.
    I just spent a year studying Spritual Psychology, so I am all about souls. I decided to give him a chance.
    “Your soul says you are headed in the right direction,” he said.
    Yes! Yes! Please tell me more!! Validate me, fine sir.
    “I just got off the phone with Madonna. She was crying about her 13 million in real estate she lost. Money is not the answer.”

    Hmmm…. I am pretty sure there are other ways to teach me about money without dropping names. But, it’s LA. I gave him another shot. Maybe he could be my guru.

    “Tell me your father’s first initial?”
    “J.”
    “Yes, that’s what I thought. I am a see-er. I see everything around us right now. Your father is right here. What was his name?”
    “James.”
    “Yes. That is correct.”

    What?

    Of course it’s correct. I know my father’s name, and, yep, that is sure it. I wanted to tell this ‘see-er’ that HE was supposed to be the one to do the naming. He was doing it all wrong. He said that he is a Kabbalah master for all these celebrities including Steven Spielberg and Bla Bla and Bla Bla.

     And he could see my soul.
    All I could see was a yacht ride with Madonna as we tied on each other’s red bracelets and laughed about adoption law in Africa.

    After bragging many times that he speaks fluent Hebrew, he told me he could fix all my problems. He said that the ‘other side’ did not want me to reach my goals but that he could fix that by doing some healing work on my lower back.

    “I’m going to go get a water. You make your phone call. I’ll come back and ‘treat you.’”
    “I’m not sure,” I said.
    “You’re not sure? Well then, forget it.” He got up, pissed, and walked away.
    “I mean, can we maybe meet up later?” I called after him.

    Was my chance at being a big deal walking away? What if this Kabbalah guy really was a healer and everything holding me back in life is stuck in my lower back? WHAT IF?

    But I was really hungry and wanted to make a phone call. So I let him walk away. And now that I am home, I am so happy I did not agree to some lower back servicing. I mean, come on! DUH! I don’t even like Madonna. At all. How did that work on me? I am such a fucking sucker, and I’m sick of being a sucker. I paid $50 for a car wash the other day because it was a special detail ‘just for me.’

    In India, a similar ‘see-er’ approached me. He said he could read my mind. He really hooked me while I was lamenting that his underarms emitted quite an onion scent. He said ‘I think American girls smell bad. It’s just a cultural thing.’ HE DID READ MY MIND (I was not thinking that all Indian men smell like onions– only him, but it was close enough)! And my mind was talking shit about him. So embarrassing.

    I spent ELEVEN days under his guidance. We spent ELEVEN days eating meals together that I paid for. We talked about life, and he told me when I was being negative. That’s it. Those were his services. They were actually really helpful. After gaining my trust, he said my problem was that I needed to feel unconditional love. And he said that would happen by us laying in bed together hugging.

    Come on!
    I understand that I may look gullible. Or stupid. There must be something about me that tells all these people I will fall for their schemes. And maybe I do sometimes fall for their schemes. BUT LAYING IN A BED with a smelly Indian stranger to experience unconditional love? Um, sorry. I could buy a dog, or I don’t know… call my friends and family who love me unconditionally! When I said no, there was a similar angry huffing like Kabbalah Man’s. As if passing up an opportunity to lay in a bed with a stranger in street clothes (barf!– I wouldn’t lie with Javier Bardem in street clothes on my bed) was the most unbelievable thing anyone could ever do.

    They must teach that in sales school or something. Because, damn. Getting angry at rejection really makes people (or maybe just me) feel like they’re missing out on something big.

    Well, I am not falling for it anymore. Done. Today’s Hebrew-speaking name dropper has shown me the light. I think what these people see in me is my lack of trust. If I am looking to some stranger to tell me I’m destined for greatness, that must mean I’m lacking some confidence in myself. Fuck that. I know I am destined for greatness. Who isn’t? I don’t need anyone else to tell me. No see-ers. No gurus. No phone calls. Nobody but me. I happen to know myself really well, and even though I wear pajamas most of the day and sometimes forget to brush my teeth, I am fucking destined for fucking greatness, dammit.

    The next person who tries to give me a deal ‘just for me’ gets a crotch punch.

    This is my Indian guru on the top of a mountain. This wasn’t just any mountain. This was a ‘special’ mountain where he only took ‘special’ people. 

    When looking through my India photos, I noticed this guy. I think this is India’s version of white people. Thankfully, most of us don’t really look like Spicoli with blue highlights.

    _______________

    blog news! You can now enter your email over there to the left so that you will get a notice every time some words get posted here.
    Also, I am now blogging about life every Wednesday here: Stratejoy 

  • It was me. Sorry.

    We are a society of blame.

    It always feels better when we know who did something.

    If a kid comes home with gum in her hair, we gotta find out who put it there. If we get anonymous flowers in the mail, we cannot rest until we figure out who sent them (And when we find out it was our girlfriend instead of a secret admirer, we try not to look disappointed– not that this helps me make any point. This isn’t even about blame. In fact, I should just delete these parenthesis. But I’m not going to, and now you already forgot what this paragraph is about. Fuck.). If someone gets pregnant, everyone usually asks who did it.

    Our brains have to make sense of it all. And if we know who it was, we can make up some story to explain away the predicament. “Oh, It was Javier who murdered that squirrel in the playground with that shank he made out of pen parts and duct tape? Well, his parents are going through a divorce.”

    First we find out the person responsible. Then we or the person make up an explanation for the action. Then we decide whether the action is acceptable. The mixing and matching of the explanation and person is very important in our blaming process and the resulting response.

    For example, an entire town’s dictionaries are found burning in the middle of a street. They’ve been robbed from all the town’s houses and sit there melting into ash.

    The townsmen panic. They first want to know WHO did it. WHO was it? They must blame someone!

    There are two suspects found with ink on their fingers: Michele Bachmann and Vanna White.

    The reason “She couldn’t stand the idea of seeing another letter” means something totally different for either suspect. It makes sense for either one since one sees letters every day and one has a hard time forming sentences. However, for one suspect with this reasoning, the burning of the dictionaries might even be forgiven. This is why the WHO is so important.

    There’s always gotta be someone. Someone to blame. Someone ELSE to blame. Not you. Not me. Someone else.

    That is the problem with living alone and being an independent person. I am so tired of not having anyone else to blame. When I get a late charge for paying my bills after the 20th, all I want to do is find out who was responsible for paying the bills this month and then see if his reasoning is good enough. But there is nobody to make suspect but me, and my reasons are never good.

    The other day I got pulled over by a nice policeman for talking on the phone while driving. It was the morning after a Taboo Tales show, and an audience member was telling me how great it was.

    “But officer, I had a show last night, and I needed to hear some validation.”

    That reasoning wasn’t good enough for the officer AND there was no other suspect in sight. I wanted to blame Obama or blame my parents. But, I couldn’t. Dammit, I couldn’t. I had to send in a check for $160 yesterday because it was truly my fault.

    Double Dammit.

    That’s why I would like to be in a relationship. I want to be able to blame the missing quinoa or the lack of garbage bags or the busted hot tub on someone else (I also just want a hot tub.).

    But I can’t. I am forced to take responsibility for my own actions, which seems foreign in this society. Debt crisis? That was the banks! No… it was Wall Street! No… the mortgage brokers. Definitely not the government. And cancer? Nope. Not our fault. It’s not the society that thinks maltodextrine should be in every cracker and shampoos should be filled with a ton of chemicals we’ve never heard of. No way. Nope. Not our fault. In fact, that cancer thing nobody understands. Mystery. Too big to blame it on anyone. Just do some more charity walks and everything will be fine.

    Fuck that. I’m gonna make it cool to take responsibility. So, I’m gonna say it here: I sometimes pay my bills late because I don’t really keep that shit on a calendar. AND… I was talking on the phone while driving because I’m an insecure narcissist who needed some validation from a voice on the other end. And I also contributed to the failing economy because I’m really cheap and I refuse to spend more than $20 on any item of clothing.

    Damn it feels good to take responsibility. Try it. AhemGeorgeBush.

    This post is randomly political. I didn’t mean for it to be since I try to steer clear of that arena. As you can tell, my bank crisis and George Bush references are pretty old. It’s been a while since I watched the news. There has been a president elected after Bush, right? I hope this shit is still relevant. Is Michele Bachmann still around? I thought I saw her burning dictionaries the other day.

  • Eyeballs matter

    Sometimes I wonder if I am an adult. When I’m arguing with the insurance lady about coverage, I feel like one. And when I’m reading in bed at the ripe time of 10pm after clipping my toenails and playing Scrabble, I know I’m an adult.

    But, when I fall off my bike because I’m texting or when I receive a notice in the mail about a delinquent payment from that same insurance provider, I question my status.

    After much thought, I have defined what it means to be mature (said with a hard T, very fancy-like). Being an adult means buying art and never running out of toilet paper. It’s that simple. If you have enough shopping consistency to keep up your TP supply, it means you have a routine, you buy groceries, and you do not have an old Tupperware filled with unidentifiable foodstuffs in the very back of your refrigerator. If you buy art, you have disposable income, you have solidified your tastes, and you probably have a home in which this art will live.

    Based on both these requirements, I am far, far, far from being an adult.

    I rent an apartment with a popcorn ceiling and vertical blinds. I love it because it’s two stories and, while it looks like a place Jack Tripper would have loved, it’s next to the beach. I wouldn’t say it’s a very ‘adult’ place to live, although the place is crawling with older people. Based on my criteria, I might be the only non-adult here, my fridge crying out for more consistency.

    “Stop settling for PBJs,” it says. That’s when I go for the hummus.

    I have one piece of artwork that I love, but it was painted by my gay dad’s first wife (who is my friend and who also married my dad’s best friend after divorcing my dad. Screenplay pending.). Even though it’s my very own artwork that I love, it doesn’t count toward adult status. I know the artist, and, while I did spot it on her Facebook page and instantly love it, I didn’t spot it in a gallery in Manhattan and plunk down thousands of dollars for it. It simply cannot count.

    With the cardboard of my empty toilet paper roll taunting me, I knew I had to do something adult. I had to buy some art.

    Venice has an art walk once a month where local artists sell their wares on the streets. I went a few months back. I had some wine and dropped artsy terms like ‘color profile’ and ‘canvas.’ Searching for the perfect piece, I eyed some photography. Not only were the shots expensive, they were photos of violence. I don’t have a mantel that’s quite right for a black and white photo of a man’s brains blown out on the street by my favorite cafe (Venice!). There were other things as well, all for way out of my price-range. I started home, feeling like a failed adult.

    But then I saw her, a unique beauty for the low price of $60. And how cool was the shape of her canvas? That’s some art!

    “Please, don’t sell her,” I told the artist. “I will be right back from the ATM!”

    I ran as fast as I could, yearning to prove that, YES, I am an adult and can own something I bought for myself.

    I walked the heavy wood painting back to my apartment and leaned it against the perfect wall. Hmm… It didn’t look good. Maybe that other wall? Nope.

    Shit.

    That’s when I noticed: The art I bought is really ugly.

    “No!” I thought. I just have to give it a chance.

    So I’ve been letting her sit in my bedroom for months now. You’d think it wouldn’t matter because she only takes up a sliver of floor space. But, no. Her presence is always home. And it’s still ugly.

    Every morning, I wake to her staring at me. I size up her body structure. How is her boob so big on the side? Are her boobs really far apart in the middle? I’ve seen that before. Why is her shoulder so out of proportion to her tiny hips? Where is her eyeball? Why is her butt so flat? What is she, a size one?  Seriously, where is her eyeball?

    Each morning, I find that I can’t get out of bed before I try to figure her out. Is she supposed to be an android or an alien? And where the fuck is her eyeball?

    It’s too much. After analyzing her body structure for a half an hour this weekend, I felt a rage I hadn’t felt before. In a panic, I walked her out to the street. Fuck her and her alien hair. I thought about selling her on Craigslist, but I didn’t want to put anyone else through this misery.

    I put her on the street at 10am.

    At 10am THE NEXT DAY, she was still there.

    NOBODY ELSE wants her either! That’s how ugly she is. That’s how bad I am at choosing art. I am scared to look and see if she’s still there. I feel like I’m abandoning her, like I’m judging her on appearances. She can’t help it that her butt is so flat. She can’t help it if she has no eyeball. In fact, it’s probably better for her in that she doesn’t have to look at herself. Even with so much guilt and a need to prove that body image is not the basis of love, I couldn’t find it in my heart to rescue her. I’m not sure anyone has. Days later, she might still be there. I am scared to look.

    In trying to be an adult, I have learned a valuable lesson: I have horrible taste. I should never EVER trust myself to buy art. Also, I’m not so bad. I may have unidentifiable foodstuffs in the back of my fridge, but at least I have an eyeball.

  • Hair today. Gone tomorrow.

    I wouldn’t say my mom is a hoarder. She’s more of a connoisseur of collecting. She’s organized about it. And there aren’t boxes obstructing the walkways in our house. But if I tell her that I really wish I could find the pink spandex outfit I wore in the fourth grade talent show or if I asked her if she still has that mug she got from the restaurant where she worked in 1978, the answer would be the same: it’s in the garage. Our garage has been home to old lawnmowers, bike pumps that don’t work, hoes (the garden kind), rusty tools (the garden kind), things seen on TV that only work on TV, sometimes a car, and thousands upon thousands of nostalgic relics.

    Since my mom is trying to sell the house, she’s been cleaning out the garage and saying goodbye to the past. Therefore, I’ve been the lucky receiver of several boxes full of stuff. The most recent box housed a book we read together in third grade, a manuscript she wrote in 1983 (It’s amazing, written on a typewriter, and totally publishable.), and a HUSTLER magazine from 1976.

    I know what you’re thinking: What kind of articles are in that 1976 HUSTLER magazine? Well, there’s a profile on Doyle Brunson, the world’s greatest poker player at the time. There’s a story called ‘The Fiend’ by Charles Bukowski. And there are jokes like, “The HUSTLER dictionary defines a cheap loser as a guy who fucks an old whore, turns the rubber inside out, fucks her again, and catches the clap.”

    Man, after the seventies, clap jokes really fell off.

    I cannot get over the sex pots of this magazine. Of course their makeup and shoes contrast the recent, but the actual bodies look almost alien compared to those of today. Because they’re real. There are no implants or photoshop in this HUSTLER and, actually, there don’t seem to be any razors either. It’s just a real celebration of the female body. The real, natural female body. I just happened to have a HUSTLER from 2011 in my possession (the articles!), so I compared. Photoshop plus the melange of treatments we give our bodies to remove our hair or bleach our assholes or tighten our vaginas or re-size our nipples or lift our faces just make us seem so… fake. I bet if a Hustler model from today walked onto a HUSTLER shoot from 1976, people would scream, poke at her boobs in fear, and then fuck her (because, come on… It’s a HUSTLER shoot).

    I vowed recently to stop writing about vaginas because I am more than a mere vagina writer, but there’s no way to look at a HUSTLER without commenting on the vag-er-oos. The ones from 1976 are basically nests of hair with a tiny bit of pink poking through. It’s a hair parade. In fact, I thought for a minute this was a magazine you get at the hair salon to showcase all the new styles. Hair. And it’s not even pruned around the edges for easy swimsuit wear. We’ve been convinced in the last few decades to think that hair is bad, but these women don’t seem to mind it. It’s natural. It’s part of the human body. While the vaginas of today are completely bald, they’re also so unnaturally monochrome that they look like plastic copies of pre-pubescent vaginas. They’ve been so photoshopped or bleached or chopped that even real fourteen-year-old girls probably think these vaginas look young.

    I’ve known for a while that we’ve been creating this unattainable ideal, but putting these magazines side by side actually scared me. We have trained society to beat off to something that doesn’t even exist naturally. There is so much plastic and fakery in these HUSTLER bodies that I barely see a difference between jerking off to them or a mailbox. Or a set of forks. Or a Conair 1800-watt blowdryer with retractible cord. I not only fear for women who see this stuff and feel like beauty is unattainable, I fear a constant disappointment. This and every other magazine is teaching men to be attracted to something other than the natural female body, which seems a bit counterproductive to procreation.  Eve: Let’s fill the earth with the fruit of our loins. Adam: I’m actually not really feeling it. But maybe if you shove some plastic bags filled with silicone under your nipples, get laser hair removal, and cut an inch off your labia minora.

    Oh, humans are funny. I hope this is just a phase and we can all soon go back to appreciating what we already have. I am oddly okay with a good wax though. Just to better see the goods. Show the goods! The real ones.

  • People who live in glass houses should not have pencil mustaches

    In Catholicism, the choosing of a baby’s godparents is a big deal. In case the child is ever orphaned, those godparents take over. They must be carefully inspected because their lifestyles have to match that of the parents. They should be close friends or relatives who can be trusted with the emergency upbringing of a child. In most families, they do not have to kill anybody or put horse heads in anyone’s bed.

    Since my dad was an atheist, I am pretty sure he didn’t take this task of searching for the perfect substitute parents very seriously.

    He asked a dude from his office.

    This was 1980 and he worked for IBM, so I’m sure there was some excited water cooler talk between the two of them. (The eighties did have great water coolers.) I don’t doubt he got to know this man well. They probably made fun of Carol in accounting and maybe expensed some lunches together. But godfather? Man who might possibly have to raise his daughter one day?

    If it was a joke on the whole idea of baptism, the guy still said yes! He probably leaned over the cardboard wall of his cubicle, uttered some quip about MS-DOS or staplers, and then agreed to take me in if my parents ever died. He went to the baptism. He poured water on my little head, and BAM– godfather. His job description also said he must pretend to care about my drawings and recitals and just kind of ‘spot’ me until my parents died.

    The plan was working.

    And then my dad came out of the closet.

    Suddenly, this sideliner of mine wanted nothing to do with me. I wonder what his thought process was at the time? “That girl might grow up to be a gross lesbian, so I take back everything I said when I splashed water on her at the church.” Or perhaps “Jim’s a fag and he’s gonna try to stick his dick in me. I better run. Help!” (Please note that the below picture proves this was absolutely NOT a legitimate fear.)

    Whatever his fears, he decided he no longer wanted the duty of being my substitute parent. I’m not sure how it affected the talk around the old water cooler, but I’m thinking it was awkward. I’m thinking Carol from accounting did some whispering from her cubicle about my dad. “How could Jim be a homo?” she surely asked. Homosexuality was still considered a mental disorder back then, so I can’t blame them for wondering. I just hope some of them were whispering about my deadbeat goddad as well.

    I never really knew the man since he deserted his duties when I was only three. I’ve wished for a substitute father just a few times. Like when I went to buy my first car and cried throughout the entire process (It’s not that I’m emotionally unstable. The salesmen were peeling onions that day.) I have always at least wondered who the guy was and how he could REALLY be that scared of associating himself with a friend who turned out to be gay.

    And now my mom found a picture of him after all these years:

    That’s the judgemental guy?
    Him?

    I’m slightly relieved this man wasn’t in my life. And also more angry with my father for choosing him. A pipe and a pencil mustache? Really? Come on! A PIPE? What if I grew up with a god-oedipus complex and learned to think that pencil mustaches were attractive?! I already have a problem with my attraction to men like my actual father (unemployed depressed Latinos). Thank the lord I didn’t have that pencil mustache in the mix. And this guy looks boring. His wife can’t even keep her eyes open when they’re together. I’m thinking it’s probably better that he and his hatred weren’t in my life.

    But I’m wondering (if he’s not already dead) how he’s dealing with all the legalized gay marriages and the greater acceptance of homosexuality. Are you freaking out, man? By the looks of this picture, I sort of have a feeling you either spend your days complaining about squirrels or you, yourself, are actually married to a man. I just have a feeling. I’d love to know. If anyone knows this man, come forth! I swear I won’t be mad and give you shit about my abandonment issues. Swear. If you still have a pencil mustache, I might be a little scared. But not mad.

    Note: I am aware that judging one based on his style of facial hair is just as evil as judging one based on his sexual preference. However, let’s all be honest: a pencil mustache is much, much worse.