Life is a Drain

I have an apt metaphor for my life:  the clogged drains in my basement.  I spent five fucking hours trying to unclog the drains, and guess what?  They are still fucked up.  I have hazardous chemicals all over me, because they were spraying up after the Drano wouldn’t go down the pipes, but I can’t bathe.  You know why?  Because the fucking water will just end up on the floor in my basement.

I looked at apartments downtown today, because I’m ready to get the fuck out of this suburban hell.  Oh wait, I can’t afford to even hire a plumber, let alone live the life I want to live.  So … I guess I’ll just fucking rot away in this shithole.  Awesome. 

I will never, EVER buy another house again.  This piece of shit house is killing me bit by bit.  When I have a stroke and die, don’t doubt for a second that I either died of a cerebral hemorrhage because I was so angry about ANOTHER BROKEN PIECE OF SHIT in my house or that I simply died of a broken heart.  A person can only hold so much disappointment in their hands before it starts to run over and drown them. 

Thus, here is my advice (which is fucking irrelevant, because apparently I can’t even follow my own advice): 

1)       Don’t buy a house.  The only exceptions are if you make a truly obscene amount of money and can afford all the stupid bullshit which comes with owning a house.  Apartments/rentals come with a landlord who HAS to fix all the bullshit, free of charge. 

2)  .     Don’t get married.  It’s the last legal form of slavery in America.  It is antiquated and fucking stupid.  The only exception to this rule is if you KNOW.  (People who KNOW will understand what I mean.)  I didn’t KNOW.  If there was a checklist for all the reasons a person SHOULDN”T get married, I would have checked about 90% of them.

3)       Don’t have children.  Just kidding.  They’re wonderful.  But make sure you know what the fuck you’re doing!  (for example, marrying someone who will not help you parent them is a bad idea.  And in the back of your head, you will know if he/she is up to the job or not.)

4)       Love your job.  And when you don’t love it any more, quit doing it.  I am perilously close to not loving my job any more.  It weighs on me every single day.  I can’t even read a book without trying to segue into teaching it.  (EQUALS UNHEALTHY.)  I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, I should probably just get a job at Trader Joe’s scanning people’s tofu and cheap wine. 

5)        Find good friends.  I don’t have any.  Seriously, not a single one.  My children are my only friends; and not only is that unhealthy, it’s not fair to them.  My problem is that most people suck and only care about themselves, so I have a hard time relating to anyone.  Oh, and the fact that I can’t ever leave my house because I have children and a husband who is NEVER home.  Did I mention that the husband has hundreds of friends?  That motherfucker never goes anywhere without someone knowing him and having stories.  How lovely.  (About as lovely as a pile of fucking dog shit on fire on my front porch.)

6)       Don’t listen to old hacks who don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about and who can’t make their own lives work.

Secret Santa

                I want to play a rousing game of Secret Santa.  In this game, I will give a gift to a number of people who have made my list.  Let’s get it straight up front that “making my list” is not necessarily (though it could be) a good thing.  I will not name names, because that would be rude (and would thus ruin the Christmas Spirit). 

To _____:  I want to bake you a big, fat chocolate cake full of Viagra.  After you enjoy the luscious chocolate dessert, I will inject you with dopamine, serotonin, and Armani Aqua di Gio (for aesthetic reasons).  Merry Christmas to me. 

To _____:  First, I will go to the weird Asian store at Oak View Mall, and I will buy a samurai sword.  I will then oil it with the venom from a poison tree frog, then I will cut your fucking head off in one fell swoop.  You won’t even see it coming, so it can’t be considered unusually cruel or unusual.  My gift to you (and to the rest of the world) is that once your head is gone (and you are stone-cold dead), you won’t be able to open your obnoxious mouth ever again. 

To _____:  I give you the gift of cotton balls.  100 of them.  They will all go in your mouth at the same time, and you will have to decide whether to swallow or salivate or just wait.  You will be on stage so I can share this fine gift of silence and choking on the words you are unable to say anymore with the rest of the people who fucking hate the sound of your voice.

To _____:  I wish for you to be set in the middle of South-Central L.A. with your iphone and your $1,000 coat and your stupid, bedazzled ass-pocket jeans in the middle of the night so you can see that you don’t really matter.  Your ability to bullshit suburban idiots will get you exactly nowhere in the ghetto.  Have fun!  Call me when you’re bleeding out rectally from all the new friends you’ve made in jail. 

To _____:  Here’s some duct tape.  Cover all your holes.

To _____:  You’re super cool, because you take drugs and tell everyone about it.  So my gift to you is a needle and a balloon full of heroin.  When the drool is coming out of your mouth as you slowly die, I want you to think of my friend who died with the needle still sticking out of his vein and wonder whether you’re still as cool as you think you are now. 

To _____:  Since I know you are such a good Christian (at least when you’re in public and people are listening to you pompously orate about your special relationship with Jesus Christ), I give you a Quran.  You can either read it or shove it up your ass – I don’t see the outcome being any different. 

To _____:  I am going to donate you to an African family.  At least a sheep would have a purpose in Africa.  They could eat you or shave you and then you wouldn’t be such a fucking doormat piece of furniture, bleating for no reason.

To _____:  I love you.  SO MUCH!  So I give you a year in the Peace Corps to see what people who really have to suffer look like.  You’re a spoiled cow.  My gift is self-actualization.  Drink it in. 

To ______:  Thank you for being the only person today to say “I appreciate you” today, even though those words were never said.  Sensory candles, a candy cane.  It’s the little things that make me happy, and it’s the little things that make me want to kill people with a machete.  So my wish for you is lifelong happiness and the pursuit of knowledge. 

To the rest of you who I love and admire:  I want to give the gift of the better version of myself.  Although I am adamantly opposed to New Year’s Resolutions, I would like to  vow to live my life the way I preach it; hopefully culminating in the relocation and reinvention of me.  Or my gift to you will be a spectacular version of my own death, because I’d rather live than settle.     

Secret Santa

                I want to play a rousing game of Secret Santa.  In this game, I will give a gift to a number of people who have made my list.  Let’s get it straight up front that “making my list” is not necessarily GOOD, (though it could be) a good thing.  I will not name names, because that would be rude (and would thus ruin the Christmas Spirit). 

To _____:  I want to bake you a big, fat chocolate cake full of Viagra.  After you enjoy the luscious chocolate dessert, I will inject you with dopamine, serotonin, and Armani Aqua di Gio (for aesthetic reasons).  Merry Christmas to me. 

To _____:  First, I will go to the weird Asian store at Oak View Mall, and I will buy a samurai sword.  I will then oil it with the venom from a poison tree frog, then I will cut your fucking head off in one fell swoop.  You won’t even see it coming, so it can’t be considered unusually cruel or unusual.  My gift to you (and to the rest of the world) is that once your head is gone (and you are stone-cold dead), you won’t be able to open your obnoxious mouth ever again. 

To _____:  I give you the gift of cotton balls.  100 of them.  They will all go in your mouth at the same time, and you will have to decide whether to swallow or salivate or just wait.  You will be on stage so I can share this fine gift of silence and choking on the words you are unable to say anymore with the rest of the people who fucking hate the sound of your voice.

To _____:  I wish for you to be set in the middle of South-Central L.A. with your iphone and your $1,000 coat and your stupid, bedazzled ass-pocket jeans in the middle of the night so you can see that you don’t really matter.  Your ability to bullshit suburban idiots will get you exactly nowhere in the ghetto.  Have fun!  Call me when you’re bleeding out rectally from all the new friends you’ve made in jail. 

To _____:  Here’s some duct tape.  Cover all your holes.

To _____:  You’re super cool, because you take drugs and tell everyone about it.  So my gift to you is a needle and a balloon full of heroin.  When the drool is coming out of your mouth as you slowly die, I want you to think of my friend who died with the needle still sticking out of his vein and wonder whether you’re still as cool as you think you are now. 

To _____:  Since I know you are such a good Christian (at least when you’re in public and people are listening to you pompously orate about your special relationship with Jesus Christ), I give you a Quran.  You can either read it or shove it up your ass – I don’t see the outcome being any different. 

To _____:  I am going to donate you to an African family.  At least a sheep would have a purpose in Africa.  They could eat you or shave you and then you wouldn’t be such a fucking doormat piece of furniture, bleating for no reason.

To _____:  I love you.  SO MUCH!  So I give you a year in the Peace Corps to see what people who really have to suffer look like.  You’re a spoiled cow.  My gift is self-actualization.  Drink it in. 

To ______:  Thank you for being the only person today to say “I appreciate you”  today, even though those words were never said.  Sensory candles, a candy cane.  It’s the little things that make me happy, and it’s the little things that make me want to kill people with a machete.  So my wish for you is lifelong happiness and the pursuit of knowledge. 

To the rest of you who I love and admire:  I want to give the gift of the better version of myself.  Although I am adamantly opposed to New Year’s Resolutions, I would like to  vow to live my life the way I preach it; hopefully culminating in the relocation and reinvention of me.  Or my gift to you will be my own death, because I’d rather live than settle.     

Druids, Pagans, Jesus Christ & Rededicated Jews

                Leave it to the religious people to take a fairly simple idea (the winter solstice) and turn it into a fucking shitfest.  I love the idea of Christmas as much as anyone.  It’s ingrained in the common culture of my life – every December of my whole life I have admired a bejeweled tree, placed presents underneath it, carefully considered the best gifts for everyone on my list, and sent out season’s greeting to friends and family.  The IDEA is lovely, but the perversion of the idea is what kills me.  We can’t just admire a pretty tree anymore; no, it got turned into a marketing assault, forced familial bonding, and a reason to put things on credit which we could otherwise never afford.  Where is religion in all this again?  Oh right, the nativity scenes available at Walmart.  Baby Jesus lights up - how cute. 

                The winter break is better celebrated the way the druids did it back in the day:  dress up a tree and sing some songs with the people you love.  And (conveniently) there are four other solstices throughout the year, so the happiness gets spread around. 

                If a person who isn’t from America visited our country in December, they’d be like, “what the fuck is going on here?”  Who is this fat red-suited man invading homes under the guise that it’s Jesus’ birthday?  If it’s JC’s birthday, are the presents for him?  Why do these little American pricks think they should be showered with gifts just because it’s the 25^th of December?  Does the greenery have some symbolic meaning tying back to the pagan woodlands?  Isn’t a bit environmentally dangerous to mass-produce and sell millions of rolls of colorful paper which will not be recycled?  Is it part of the secret plan that outdoor lights never work for more than one year?  Since when are icicles multi-colored?

                Don’t get me wrong; I love the whole ho-ho-ho, festive-cocktail-party, cookie-making, anticipatory, holiday merrymaking, but I think maybe society has jumped off the deep end a bit and made what should be a festive celebration of life more of a guilt-inducing DUTY.  I don’t like that part.  I don’t want to see Christmas decorations in Target the day after Halloween.  Stop trying to market my life to me, Target, Inc.!  Dammit! 

                Another bone of contention for me is that I take gift-giving quite seriously.  I start picking up gifts in October (primarily because I can’t afford to buy them all in December) because I put THOUGHT into what I give to people.  While other (unnamed) people buy everything two days before Christmas.  No thought, no picking just the right thing.  It’s like, “well, Anne Marie has teeth, so I’ll buy her this toothbrush.”  Fuckers.  That’s not fair. By extension, I’m trying to impart the importance of GIVING to my kids, but (excepting the oldest one), they don’t get it.  At all.  It kind of makes me want to grab one of those little plastic baby Jesuses and punt it across the frozen tundra of the park.  (Just kidding, Catholic people!  I already know you think I’m going to hell.  Too bad there’s no such thing.  Joke’s on you!)

                So besides getting all kinds of drunk and belligerent this holiday season, how will I celebrate the season without the gaudy religious iconography being rammed down my throat at every store?  I don’t know.  I wish I had some clever pithy Christmas philosophy to present, but maybe staying drunk wasn’t such a bad idea.  That will help me ignore all the seasonal Christians coming out of the woodwork.   As Holden Caulfield so aptly put it, “Jesus would’ve puked.”  I don’t need to freeze my ass off in the middle of a bunch of other people oohing and aahing about the pretty lights in the trees.  I can drive by a week later from the warmth of my car and appreciate it just as much (or more, because I’m warm).  I sort of want to handcraft a huge menorah for my front yard, just to stir up some religious zealotry, but I have no carpentry skills.

                Just one more thing, while we’re here together:  the yearly Christmas letter.  Getting a mass-produced letter from my family members is probably the dumbest fucking thing I’ve ever heard of.  If I needed to know about your various life events, I already know.  Chances are, I don’t care anyway.  I got a card yesterday that said “Happy Everything.”  What the fuck does that mean?  Either make up your mind about what you’re celebrating, or keep the pictures of your children on your refrigerator where they belong.  Send the money you spent on that professional photographer to Africa where it will make more of an impact than it does sitting at the bottom of my garbage can. 

Two years ago I sent out a letter with a pack of hyberbolic lies about my children and I – modeling gigs, sports contracts, Rhodes Scholar.  The next year I just stole a bunch of Bill Watterson’s quotes about materialism and holidays, put them in my own voice, and sent it out.  (Turns out the family didn’t find it very funny.)  This year I’m boycotting the whole bloody mess.  I’d love to do my part to keep the U.S. Post Office in business, but no dice.  I’m going to beam the good will towards others (who deserve it) out through my brain instead.  Cheaper.  Less work.  Less fakely (is that a word?) cheerful. 

Celebrate the druids.  Hug a tree.  Pass it on. 

Earth signs & poverty

                So … I’m selling my shit now.  My finances have arguably never been in a worse place.  I do not go out and spend extraordinary amounts of money on stupid crap, but I certainly make enough money that I should not be stalking ebay to find money to buy Christmas presents.  Fucking ridiculous.  

                What’s a girl to do?  Find a new husband who is stupid and wealthy?  Coerce my husband into changing professions (and ultimately making LESS money)?  Stop using the ONLY things which distract me?  (Netflix and movies On Demand?)  This should NOT be happening.  I have stuck to a job I love (seriously, honestly, no lies…), but I am NOT meant to do the same thing for the rest of my life.  I know that at the very bottom of my existence. 

                An (unnamed) person pointed out a hokey thing the other day which really hit home. I am an Earth Sign.  I had no idea what that meant, so he looked it up for me.   Here is the explanation of what earth signs are supposed to be like …

 Talk about rocks. The most stable, consistent and sometimes rigid of all the signs. Once they make up their minds, like mountains they cannot be moved without huge efforts. Practical, patient, reasonable, and persistent are these signs. If you want to make sure a project gets done and gets done "right," call on an earth person. They will stick with it until the bitter end. Not much one for spontaneity or flexibility. (that’s the air signs) Not as sensitive as the water signs, the earth signs are still aware of the needs and often want to serve others. These people are not much one for the limelight. If it can be done, an earth sign will do it without the need for recognition.

Often so rigid, they become stuck with old routines to the point of impracticality. Fear of starting something new, earth signs can be very cautious to the point of missing a great opportunity. Conventional to a point of boredom.

If you see an adult asking why repeatedly, you can pretty much be assured you are in the company of an earth sign.

                Well, shit.  Summed up by some semi-astrological internet site.  I want to argue with it, but … what’s the point?  

                So I start off talking about being poor and stalking ebay and end up delineating my qualities as an earth sign.  Maybe the subconscious notation here is that I should sell myself, although I think the proper channel there is craigslist, not ebay.  At least I might be able to sell a kidney or some other organ I don’t really need.  Any one need a body part? 

Philosophical Lint

So I’m cleaning my room, and there are piles of very important things everywhere.  By “very important” I mean things which could, possibly be useful and relevant and insightful if only I could get around to dealing with them. I was paging through one such item, my notes from all the philosophy projects I listened to, (these notes have been sitting on a shelf for roughly nine months, mocking me with their just-out-reach knowledge) and I came across a quote from Albert Einstein:  “The only thing that interferes with my learning is education.”  Damn, Albert.  You have just summed up my life in 10 words. 

If I didn’t have to do all the busywork associated with teaching and educating I could be a fucking genius.  I’d finish reading Animal Liberation and Fernando Pessoa and The Myth of Sisyphus and the Koran.  I’d REREAD the bible.  Maybe even read the Book of Mormon.  Shit, I might even write my own bible like Thomas Jefferson and Leo Tolstoy, taking out all the bits I find troublesome.

I have a whole stack of books I want to read, but I CAN’T, because I don’t have time.  And then I get on this fucking computer and lose all direction.  The attention deficit is part of the problem, but when I have papers to grade or three classes to plan or textbooks to read and pick apart to teach … well, time slips into the void.  SCHOOL becomes the very thing which stops me from learning.  I wonder if students feel the same way.  I wish I could just be one of those intellectual types back in the day who got paid to tutor students and just read books, argue with other philosophers, and write down my thoughts occasionally.  Unfortunately, that’s not one of the jobs listed in the Want Ads. 

Oh, and I’d like to be a rock star too, even though I have no actual talent.

But back to this dictionary I’ve been staring at for five minutes.  I bet there are a thousand words in there just waiting to be discovered by me and then used in drive-by conversations with people.   On the other side of my desk is a book called Open Your Mind.  Open Your Life.  I haven’t even opened the book, let alone read pithy philosophical sayings while trying to apply them to my daily life.  The book, by the way, is sitting on top of a lottery ticket from July that I bought and never checked. 

I feel like Simone de Beauvoir had it right when she extolled the benefits of “human projects”, or things which are only about furthering the self above all else.  To truly put education at the top of my list would be to stop doing petty, distracting things and focus almost solely on intellectual and physical improvement.   This is a great idea, but I need to log off the computer first.  And maybe stop hoarding the notes – just recycle them and move on.  Because if I don’t, I’m not living the best life I can, and THEN, Nietzsche starts gnawing at the back of my head.  He proffered the idea of Eternal Recurrence in which we live the same life over and over, so we need to live life to the fullest.  In which case I’m fucked, because I definitely don’t do that.  And if I have to life this particular life over and over (in some Highlander kind of way) I will go on a killing spree after the second or third time.  Embrace change, overcome myself, create my own good and evil … blah, blah, blah.  I get it, Freidrich. 

Off I go to read Superfreakonomics.  It’s going to happen. 

Unless I see something shiny.

Small Talk – The Death of Communication

                It’s a series of little deaths, every time my husband calls me (you see, our communication is nearly always via telephone, since I work all day and he works all night) and he says  … “HELLO?!” (It’s always a yelling sort of tone.)  I always thought that when you called someone, it was your responsibility to start a conversation.  As in, you call someone, they say hello, and you say something like, “Hi!  I was just thinking about you and I wanted to say hello.”  Or … “Hey, I just wanted to hear the sound of your voice, so I called.”  Or … “Life is like a box of chocolates.”  ANYTHING, but an atonal, irrelevant, uninterested “HELLO?!” 

                I detest small talk.  I would rather pull out my fucking fingernails than talk to people about the weather.  I want to be genuinely engaged by conversations.  Why is that asking so much?  I desperately need to talk to people about things that matter.  I need for the people in my life to engage me, rather than talking AT me about bullshit.  Life deserves to be digested and debated and embraced, not just trivialized and truncated.  I want the dream.  I feel like everyone deserves their dream, not some abbreviated version of it. 

You don't understand; no one does. When a woman makes the choice to marry, to have children; in one way her life begins but in another way it stops. You build a life of details. You become a mother, a wife, and you stop and stay steady so that your children can move. And when they leave they take your life of details with them. And then you're expected to move again, only you don't remember what moves you because no one has asked in so long. Not even yourself. You never in your life think that life can disappear so easily into the details – that your life can become something so ordinary and conventional.  It’s remarkable the extent to which people can forget what inspires them – can leave their youth and vigor behind in exchange for an illusion of stability or some disillusioned shot at the American Dream.

We want so much in life, and then we forget to go after it, because we get so entrenched in dishes and laundry and soccer practice ad bullshit.  We forget how important connections are – how important being in love is.  When the foundation is gone, you’re left trying to quick-step out of the sand – waiting for someone to say a word or reach out a hand and pull you out. 

Life should be beautiful every day.  There should not be a bridge we cross where we stop looking to improve ourselves.  We shouldn’t settle, in any sense of the word.  People who love each other make each other stronger and better versions of themselves.  They don’t belittle or marginalize or ignore.  Life should be a celebration; and while every moment can’t be revelatory, when the moments are collected, they should create a pattern that reflects the dream.  At least most of the time.  Disappointment is extraordinarily powerful, chipping away at who we are.  Casting shadows. 

                I want to do what I can to be happy in this life.  I don’t want to wait until my ashes are scattered in the Pacific to find a place that feels like home.  I’m so tired of pretending the small talk is enough.  It’s not.  I want it all.  And I think it’s out there somewhere; I just don’t have time to find it because my calendar is filled with the lives of other people.  I’m ready for my life to celebrate me, because only then will I teach my children the important lessons of life.  They should know to grab for genuine happiness, because it happens so infrequently.  I suck at making myself happy.  I give it all over to other people and have nothing left for myself.  I’m going to learn, and then I’m going to do.   Somehow.  Someway.  It’s the only way to live a life worth living.

Fuck this

If I had the courage, I would take a knife and slit my fucking throat right now.  I am so fucking sick and tired of this life that I want to fucking scream until I lose consciousness and die.  I don’t want to explain my reasons for wanting people to just do what the fuck they are supposed to do any more.  A thousand times I have to explain the same motherfucking thing to people, and somehow they still don’t understand.   They refuse to open their fucking ears and just listen to what’s being said.  Instead, they put up a fucking wall, plug their ears like a child, and refuse to listen to reason.  I refuse to engage in another petty fucking argument with another uninformed, single-minded, immature asshole.  My head is going to blow apart into little pieces.  I WISH my head would blow apart into little pieces, because then I wouldn’t have to listen to this fucking whining from other people.  It’s all about them.  They WANT.  They NEED.  Well, you know what, asshole?  Me too.  I want and I need.  And my wants and needs have nothing to do with your fucking pathetic complaining.  I am tired of being the only one who keeps everything together by doing the work of everyone else around me.  It’s not fair, and it fucking sucks.