the quiet eye.

That Asshole Who Picks Out All of the Macadamias

Taking a Shower Every Hour, Otherwise Known as “Hurricane Preparedness”

I don’t know about all of you fools, but as a newly minted a-d-u-l-t, I do not like to be caught unprepared for things. I carry an extra set of work-acceptable clothes in my car, I always plan ahead, and I schedule everything. That’s why the predicted unpredictability of something like a hurricane leaves me absolutely nutty.

I worked out today, certain that if we lost power I wouldn’t be able to because, um, showering and all. I also showered again a few minutes ago, even though I showered and did my hair after my workout. I have dry shampoo, baby wipes, and face wipes. It is unlikely that even without power that I might be mistaken for someone coming back from Burning Man. However, I am still wracking my brains about how to even better prepare for not having electricity.

All my laundry is clean. I have food. I have fresh food that can be easily prepared without heat (for the presumed beginning of an outage) and canned (for the potentially dire days later in a power outage where everyone starts looking a little wild-eyed and starts to catch themselves thinking that the Donner party weren’t that crazy, were they?).

This idea of being able to prepare for everything, especially for nature’s eventualities is obviously one of the newer tools in the human acumen. Being proactive (read setting a trap in a commonly-traveled wildebeest valley) as opposed to reactive (stabbing one of said wildebeest frantically when they happen to trample you as you camp out in said valley) is obviously helping to further the human race. But how far can this be taken, especially before it becomes a laughable hindrance as opposed to a necessary survival tool. For instance, there are two huge laundry tubs full of water in my downstairs shower. Assuming we never lose power, I will have just forced myself to relocate and use the upstairs shower for two days. 

So, what is the right amount of emergency preparedness? A few cans of soup? A well-stocked pantry full of astronaut food in a bomb shelter basement? A fully charged cell phone? Six solar power cell-phone chargers? A few sleeping bags? A fire in a trash can in your living room? 

How do you do emergency preparedness?

Fake it Till You Make It (Title Has Nothing To Do With Content, Just FYI)

Fake boobs. Honestly, fake boobs are a topic about which I have always been utterly confused. Not about what they are. I get it. I understand the mechanics behind breast implants. What I mean to say is that I am confused about how I feel about them. On the one hand I think, “Well, to each their own.” And then immediately I follow this up with: “Ew, no, that’s so gross. Voluntarily having someone cut open your boobs and put foreign objects inside? Yuck.” And then right after that it is, “I wonder if I’d look good with them. What size would I get…Maybe just a lift…”

My schizophrenic thoughts about fake boobs only got worse when I found out that the ex-girlfriend of the guy I am dating has tits that were not made by God. Previous to this knowledge I had been settled pretty firmly in the “Boob jobs are gross and small boobs are chicer” camp for a long time (about 3 months). This mindset was made all the more attractive by the fact that my boobs are currently smaller than in years past. But finding out that there is a girl out there, who the guy I like to kiss used to kiss, with fake knockers? And presumably he liked them enough to hang around with them for a year and a half? That’s enough to send me back into a flurry of contradicting boob job feelings. 

My self esteem is high enough to feel pretty fucking awesome about myself the majority of the time. However, I’m not actually crazy or so out-of-touch that I never get a twinge of insecurity. It does give me pause, though, to think about the girls out there playing the game a little more aggressively than I am. I am not committed enough to the cause of looking fly to invade my body with plastic pieces (is that how they do implants now, I don’t even know what I’m talking about, ahhh!). Plus, about 99.3% of the time I think girls with small boobs look the flyest (personal preference, not trying to diss any naturally bodacious broads out there). But that .7% shows up real fast when talking about girls who have also gotten attention from the cute and exceedingly poor Scrabble player that I currently get attention from.

Boob jobs are like Bump-its: you think you might spruce up your look a little if you get one, but you simultaneously acknowledge that you have literally no practical use for that in your life. (Actually, now that I think about it, boob jobs and Bump-its are really similar in a lot of ways - think about it: Jersey, makes things bigger and rounder, things your weird Aunt Sally bought after the divorce, etc.)

Sleeping is seriously so Bush League. I say this knowing full well that I am a sleep fanatic. But it really is lame. My best friend sleeps four hours a night. Four hours, that’s it. No naps, no siestas, no anything but those four hours. She knows what’s up. I, on the other hand waste wayyyyy too much of my life dreaming about wheelchairs and drooling onto my pillow (everybody drools in their sleep, don’t act like you don’t). And did I mention sleeping through things? I know myself well enough not to schedule things to sleep through when other people will be relying on me, but I sleep through shit I want to do for myself on a pretty much daily basis. Work out, grab coffee before work, tame my hair…can literally never make myself get up for it. Maybe I’m secretly just saying “F you” to everything, but there is no incentive for me to leave that haven of blissful sleep. Ever.

Let me say first that this by no means meant to be some pathetic and half-witted attempt to suck at the teat of fame by endorsing Tucker Max. The truth of the matter is that he’s a narcissistic misogynist. But he knows this. My issue is more with the whiny, bored people with middle-of-the-road intelligence levels who so vehemently abhor and denounce him. Point número uno: he’s just a dude and he’s kidding. Stop projecting onto one guy the issues with society that you concocted in your intermediate level Women’s Studies class during your undergrad at Sarah Lawrence. Yes, he does call women mean names. But so have I and so have you. Everybody does it. And before you start in with your refutation of the “everybody does it” justification, let me say one thing: human nature. For my second point I’d love to tell you all to get a sense of humor, but God knows that is not going to happen. Instead I’ll just tell you to stop impeding everyone else’s good time. If people want to spend $15.99 or even $1500.99 on material penned by Tucker Max, let them. They will undoubtedly be having more fun reading his stuff than you will bitching about it.

Bluetooths, or, Make a Decision, You’re An Adult

Bluetooths. Wow. Where to even begin? I suppose I should preface this by saying that one of my best friends has, and openly wears, a Bluetooth. I respect her beyond measure. The Bluetooth, however, is a stain upon the humanity of any and all who use them. Despite the fact that a Bluetooth wearer is actually providing radiation with a direct tunnel into his or her brain, my issues with Bluetooth lie more with its inherent suggestions. The Bluetooth suggests to all who see it, peeping out from a tuft of hair, that the wearer has infinitely important business to which he or she has to attend. So important is this mystery business that the wearer does not even have the time to stop what they are doing and hold his or her cell phone. And herein lies the inherent contradiction, and further infuriating implication, of the Bluetooth. The business on the phone is so important one does not have time to hold on to and fumble with a cell phone. However, this implies that whatever else the wearer is engaged in is so important they cannot free one of their hands to hold a cell phone. So which important piece of business takes precedent? Non-Bluetooth wearers make these little decisions all day. This phone call is more important than grabbing this box of Cheez-Its or my homework is more important than gabbing to Erin. Hey Bluetooth people, grow a pair and make some grown- up decisions. Put the video game controller down and chat with your mom. Or don’t. I don’t really care at all. They just look really dumb.

Why do all the misspeaks I encounter happen to be very hilarious and occur during meetings? Like the time my boss said “If you ever perspire to be a leader…” - “Oh! Oh! Right over here! The guy to my left is perspiring to be a leader right through his sweatshirt!” 

Or the time this girl said “We were working on tobacco sensation, as well…Oh, well with tobacco sensation, for example…” DUDE! Tobacco sensation?!!! Does that make any sense? What does that even mean? You’re trying to effect more sensory awareness with tobacco? I think nicotine pretty much has that covered for you, but we’ll call you up if it falls through.

You know, I really wish I could know the thought process behind the first ever human ancestor to eat an animal. Like, even if it was all very primitive, there had to be some thought going on there. Conceptualized conversation:

Dude: “Hey, dude, think we could eat that thing that is also walking around doing the same shit as us?”

Dude 2: “I don’t know, I wonder what it looks like on the inside.”

Dude: “I guess it could be a little dangerous to try that out.”

Dude 2: “Yo, fuck it, this grass tastes like shit anyway.” 

Look, I like being a glutton just as much as the next clinically depressed food aficionado. But someone please explain to me the point of professional hot dog eating contests? Those dudes soak the buns in water to make them take up less room in their stomachs. How f-ing gross is that? Soggy buns? If I wanted soggy buns…nope, not even going to bother making that joke, too obvious. And then they don’t even enjoy the tube of nitrates and pig hearts. That sucks. First of all, since I am a lady, I resent the idea of ingesting all of those cals (calories for all of you people with normal relationships with food). Second of all, since I am a lady who likes hot dogs (but sadly never eats them because of cals, nitrates, and pig hearts) I think it’s CRAZY that someone would ingest all of those cals without at least enjoying them. Sick of me saying “cals” yet? Too bad. Because I’m not done. Cals. All right, now I am.

Lately I’ve been really admiring the truly creative and groundbreaking work that goes into being a hipster. I mean, taking things that were once cool to other people and re-appropriating them for their own ironic purposes? GENIUS! Having a pipe that you do not smoke out of but just hold in your mouth as you breeze across town in your wingtips? So debonair. Thick rim glasses that do nothing for your 20-20 vision but make you appear to have an astigmatism? Pragmatism at its best. Listening to bands you secretly love but pretend you hate so you can say you like them ironically as you listen to them on vinyl? The coolest. Mustaches that rival Tom Selleck’s for the shear hilarity of having a mustache that rivals Tom Selleck’s even though it prevents you from eating solid food? You must beat the girls away with a stick, sir.

Facebook. I Don’t Have One. Really. I’m Normal, I Promise.

I don’t have Facebook. I know as a 23-year-old female without any of my own cats this is a shocking announcement. In fact, when most people find that out about me their faces look akin to what I would imagine them looking like if they had just found out their third grade teacher was actually a Neo-Nazi. It’s a big deal for most people.

People have different reactions. Perhaps my favorite is, “Wow, I really respect that.” Really? You respect that I don’t have Facebook? Why…I mean, it’s not as if not having Facebook is curing anyone of cancer or getting this world any closer to being Gaga-free. I’d like to think it makes me a little cooler than everybody else (hipsters excluded, obviously), but more respectable? Probably not. See, even though I don’t have Facebook, there’s still a pretty good chance that on any given Saturday night I can be found having one too many glasses of wine and telling some person I just met that the other person I just met to my right is my new best friend. Not having Facebook doesn’t make me Mother Theresa. 

The reaction I get most often from girls is “How?!” I then have to launch into a long explanation of the very, VERY annoying process of how to delete a Facebook profile. Facebook really designed it so that deleting your profile is about as hard as retrieving KGB records in English. I would know. I’ve done both of those things. But I digress. What all of these girls really mean is: “How do you stalk your ex-boyfriend, current boyfriend, and future boyfriends without Facebook?” My answer to this is, of course, “I don’t.” Here’s the thing, I don’t give a shit what my ex-boyfriend is doing. He’s probably banging a tall girl with red hair and loving it. I hope he is. I hope he is doing that girl like he means it. But, at the end of the day, me knowing this for sure does no one any favors. Because Facebook knowledge like that leads to Crazy Girl Syndrome (CGS for all of you Psych majors). CGS has a variety of symptoms, including but not limited to the following: obsessing over guys, obsessing over girls, obsessing over pictures of guys, obsessing over pictures of girls, obsessing over pictures of guys and girls, obsessing over pictures of dogs, obsessing over pictures of guys and dogs, obsessing over pictures of weddings, obsessing over pictures of parties, calling friends to update them about changes to Facebook profiles of people they’ve never met, and, finally, crying. Now, it is important to note that CGS can strike at ANY time, and can leave an otherwise sane female pretty much at Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction level (or maybe that was Sharon Stone, but Michael Douglas was in a movie like that with both actresses, right guys?). The only way to truly avoid CGS is to delete Facebook. Just cut it off at the source. Quitting might seem hard, but I did it, so you can too.

The last reaction I get is the rarest, but probably the most rich in shock on my part. This is the reaction I get from people of older generations. They want to know: “What is Facebook?” Nah, I’m just kidding, most of those old peeps know what Facebook is. And they have their own. Littered with status updates like “steven reed albuquerque” with dozens of their equally geriatric friends commenting “ALICE YOU TYPED THAT IN YOUR STATUS UPDATe NOT THE SEARCH FEATURE„,” Or postings about donating money to build fences to save lemurs from committing mass suicides in Africa…Just googled that, turns out those are lemmings, not lemurs. My bad, you guys.

Anyway, peace out, Facebook down.