i entered this because i love parks and rec. i watched the first two seasons in the span of ten hours. i’d be alarmed by that myself, except things like that are happening more regularly now that Nanook is in Canada.

anyway, i entered the poster contest with this delightful piece:

i told the judges that “this is a poster of Leslie majestically riding the spirit of Li’l Sebastian into the Pawnee wilderness, fraught with political strife and looming budget woes. The headdress symbolizes Leslie’s connection with the land, her maverick spirit, and is a nod to the city’s tense relationship with the native peoples. She waves her arms majestically as if to say, ‘don’t you dare vote nope to Knope in 2012.’”

i’m sure we will all see my name in lights real, real soon.

The first is that a hefty percentage of the views this blog gets are because people have googled ‘can I smell yo’ dick,’ or some variation thereof, and found my post about my discovery of that song. I think finding this blog instead of that lovely ditty is probably a real disappointment for a lot of people. But it’s also sort of a disappointment for me, because while this blog is a dog and pony show, I’d rather it not be a dog and pony show focusing on philandering genitalia. Oh well.

The second thing I have to report is that I just returned from Canada. The trip was really, really fantastic and I should warn my loyal readers in advance that I’m going to start learning all things hockey and maple.

But I don’t want to focus on the wonderful parts of the visit, I want to do what I do best and fixate on the one bizarre incident I had on the bus in Ottawa.

You see, prior to this visit I was convinced (based on my sole other trip to Canada) that all Canadians were friendly, polite, and un-insane. Nanook tried to tell me this wasn’t the case, but I simply did not believer her.

But now I believe her, because on this outing I discovered the elusive Canadian asshole.

What happened was this: Nanook and I spent a lovely day exploring downtown Ottawa on Friday, and I got to get in touch with my Scandinavian heritage and embraced the cold. It was adorable, or as I like to say, romantic and shit. But we had to head back to her apartment that evening to feed her roommate’s cat. We hopped on the crowded bus and headed south… and then it happened.

As soon as we got on the bus I heard a distinctly crazy, old cat lady voice yelling at people that someone was getting off the bus with a duffle bag (foreshadowing – no one had a duffle bag). I’m nosy and like to see what my Mother might turn into one day, so I was looking around while standing at the front of the bus trying to find the source of the cat-lady-esque shrieking.

And I found it.

And I really wish I hadn’t.

CCL (crazy cat lady) and I locked eyes, and as soon as it happened I knew something terrible was going to unfold. A malicious grin spread across her face and she opened her mouth to yell something else to the bus. I tried to look away but I couldn’t, because I knew shit was about to get real.

CCL, who was also in her 70s and quite rotund, smiled at me and asked loudly if I would like her seat, and before I could utter any sort of response she smiled even more broadly and said, ‘because you’re pregnant, aren’t you?’

Now would be a good time to mention a couple of things. I am not pregnant. I do not look remotely pregnant. What I look like is a lesbian with short hair and an over-sized chest, but I definitely do not look pregnant. All things considered, I look pretty fly. I also don’t look like I would ever be happily sperminated. That being said, I am not the improv aficionado B Team is, so instead of rolling with the punches, I just looked horrified and shook my head. CCL continued to smile and said ‘oh,’ chuckled to herself, and then I’m pretty sure she winked at me. Homegirl knew I wasn’t with child.

Now, I was not upset because I’m self-conscious about what I look like, I was upset because I didn’t have a witty retort. I let CCL best me, and that really pisses me off.

Nanook and I discussed the possible things that I should have said (after I spent 10 minutes trying to figure out if I have a serious case of body dysmorphic disorder, of course).

The top two things we decided I really should have done were:

1) Said thanks and taken her seat.

2) The second thing I could have done was tell her that no, in fact I’m not pregnant, but I was definitely glowing because Nanook and I just visited Ottawa’s premiere LGBT adult store and did she want to see what I got? And yes I would gladly take her seat because some of those things really require you to be seated for proper demonstration.

Both would have been hilarious and appropriate. But I didn’t do either of those things, instead I let the elusive Canadian asshole best me in some weird battle of ‘who can be a bigger asshole’ on the bus. And guess what? The Canadian won. I’m sorry, America.

On an unrelated note, I registered for the Chicago Marathon, so I am going to go jog now.

That’s in part because Arizona turned 100 today, which was exhilarating for me. Really and truly elating – but I couldn’t focus on just how epic that was because I was too alarmed by the hole I dug myself into.  And I couldn’t focus on my home state’s centennial because, as is usually the case in life, the terrible news overshadowed the good.

You see, the other thing that happened today is that it was Valentine’s Day. Maybe you noticed.

Valentine’s Day wasn’t terrible because I’m alone, bitter, and carrying myself across the threshold of adult-onset-diabetes with all the chocolate I’m eating to make myself feel better.

No, Valentine’s Day was frightening because I did something adorable for Nanook in an attempt to warm the cockles of her heart all the way up in the Canadian tundra. It was so thoughtful that I fear I have set an alarming – and untenable – precedent of me being sweet and considerate.

The thing is, Nanook loves the cartoon strip Girls With Slingshots. I don’t blame her. It’s amazing, moreover one of the characters is a talking Irish cactus named McPedro. And do you know who is from Arizona and will gladly give any cactus-related gift? THIS KID.

I was inspired by the cacti and Nanook’s fondness for sugar, so I scoured the interwebs to find a cupcake place that would customize some ‘cakes and decorate them a la GWS. I was lucky enough to find Ottawa’s own Geek Sweets, and the proprietress Jenny did a fan-effing-tastic job on the cupcakes.

But before I show you how impressive the cupcakes were. I want to first show you the degree to which I taunted Nanook with her Valentine’s Day surprise, which was almost more fun than her reaction to the actual cupcakes.

For some reason Nanook was convinced that because I wanted to have the cupcakes delivered to her work and not left on her doorstep I was therefore sending her a puppy in a box.

Seriously.

At some point this afternoon she actually said: Though I am still convinced that because it’s not flowers and I need to receive it in person, it is a puppy in a box.

I told her that was absurd. I said: it’s not a puppy in a box.

it’s a wombat in a box.

just kidding.

it’s not that either.

it’s a platypus in a box.

jk.

absolutely not that.

I was toying with a very strung-out federal employee, so I shouldn’t have been surprised with her response of: Oh my God I temporarily thought you were serious about the wombat. Had I been at home, I would have been ecstatic. But I was worried about what I might do with it at work this afternoon.

That was weird so I ignored, and told her I hoped it would be there by 1 this afternoon.

An hour later she said: It’s now after 1! Ahhhhh!

Good lord, Nannok. I tried to calm her down and reported that I was sure they were on their way.

She said: WHAT DOES THAT MEAN??? Will it be here in 10? 20? Oh my God.

I told her to calm down and that I was sure the puppy wouldn’t die in the box.

I then taunted her further and said I had received photos of her present and it was epic.

She said: WHAT DOES THAT MEAN???  I think I’m getting an ulcer.

I said that wasn’t very romantic.

Anyway long story short, I’m a terrible/amazing girlfriend and she got them and loved them, though she experienced a lot of guilt after eating her McPedro cupcake.

Happy Valentine’s Day.

Reblogged from laurenceofarizona:

I didn’t blog this week because absolutely nothing funny happened. On the contrary: I was pretty sure I had SARS and I was definitely hallucinating. I actually felt compelled to write out the directions to the nearest hospital for the roommate, B Team, to take me to should I become volatile or unresponsive. The illness, which I suspect I picked up at MRF2011 – hence my initial diagnosis of The Plague – got real bad around Thursday afternoon when I started to get delirious at work, and then even worse …

In the spirit of ‘Happy Arizona Centennial Day!!’ here is a post that i think really speaks to my love of my homeland. an oldy, but obviously a goody. bear down.

And you are going to read it.

Because it’s fucking Meryl Streep.

As you may remember, my very first post back in September 2011 discussed how much I hate Nicolas Cage. The root of my dislike is entirely appropriate given the fact he was in the film Adaptation, which I bothered to go see in theatres back in 2002. That fateful evening I settled into my seat and tried to ignore my growing discomfort for the first 40 minutes of the film, after which point I could no longer control myself and had a full-fledged panic attack.

The only reason I didn’t have a panic attack as soon as the movie started is, I believe, because Meryl Streep was in the film and has the healing powers of a Navajo medicine woman, and was able to stave off my impending mental implosion for a good half an hour. Thirty minutes of sanity may not sound like much to you, but I think it’s pretty impressive given the vigor and speed with which the psyche likes to go kaput from time to time.

And the fact that Meryl Streep was somehow able to telekinetically help me hold on to the vestiges of my mental health, if only for a few moments, AND is a brilliant actress AND is probably my distant, distant relative, means that I’m obsessed with her.

I’m fixated on a few actresses, actually. But one, Elizabeth Taylor, is dead, and the other, Lauren Bacall, has slipped pretty deeply into senility, I’m afraid.

So, I’m going to focus on Meryl Streep because she is 1) alive and 2) seems sane.

And what’s the best way to pay homage these days? MEMES!

welp. this homage got weird in a hurry.

…inside:

someone should make these and then sell them for a gazillion dollars and then give me all the profits plus interest. yes? yes.

So many different things can be heartbreaking. Maybe a thing is heartbreaking because it’s sad, or because it’s beautiful, or because it’s so pathetic and adorable it makes you want to cry.

I was thinking about this whole idea of heartbreak because lately I’ve been, I’ll just go ahead and say it, frighteningly emotional. It may be because life is just at one of those moments when it feels like I must become a full-fledged, emotionally healthy, and financially successful adult IMMEDIATELY. This freaks me out to the point that I have started making light of my impending panic attack with B Team, like the panic attack and I are playing hide-and-seek or something and it’s really unclear what ‘winning’ such a game of cat-and-mouse means.

Or I may be thinking about sad shit because my girlfriend got deported. Or it may be because people have feelings when they are not heavily sedated all the time. Speaking of which…

As you may or may not recall, this whole blog started out because I decided to go off my medication and come to grips with the fact that I do, in fact, have feelings – feelings I should probably try to get a better sense of before I became the most self-destructive asshole in asshole town.

Which reminds me of a funny story.

Have I ever told you guys about my senior year of college when I liked ambien a little too much?

No?

Oh. It’s a good story.

You see, back in my college days I thought I was really grabbing life by the balls. I have no idea why I thought that, but I definitely did.

I think one of the reasons I thought I was doing so much ball-grabbing was because I was on ambien an inappropriate amount of the time. And I would like to preface this all by saying that I really believe that stuff is amazing and I 100% understand where Tiger Woods was coming from with all his crazy ambien-sexcapades. Anyway, I was on ambien all the time because my nerves were fried and I could not sleep, and the ambien was supposed to help with that. Which it did for, like, a month.

But then I started to notice a funny thing. Ambien makes you feel like a golden god when you don’t actually use it to fall asleep.

Feeling like a golden god is fun and all, but it became a real problem when I started wandering around like a hummingbird on acid every morning until 4 AM.

I think the main reason that was such a problem was because I had a girlfriend at the time, and I think I can say with a moderate amount of certainty that she was not the biggest fan on my ambien usage.

This might have been because I refused to ever talk about ‘things’ before midnight. Or maybe it was because I never ended up sleeping or understanding that some people try to make a habit out of that sort of thing. But if I had to nail down a really firm reason, it probably ruffled her feathers the most because I almost burned down her apartment by inappropriate microwave usage during an ambien-induced haze.

Lolz.

You see, several things were going on in my life my senior year of college. The big things were these: 1) I was avoiding the fact that I would be graduating shortly 2) I was dating a girl who was a vegan/vegetarian and we ended up going to Trader Joe’s a lot so she could eat stuff, and 3) I spent pretty much the entirety of my senior year at her apartment playing Mario Kart, using her microwave, and only occasionally being fun to hang out with.

Anyway, graduation time was fast approaching and I’m pretty sure I ratcheted up the prescription drug abuse around then. One night around 1 AM when I might have been on ambien, I decided I definitely needed to make a Trader Joe’s instant noodle bowl. The thing with these noodle bowls is that there are only four steps involved, which means that each step is more important than the last. The first step is to open the bowl and examine all its pre-packaged contents, the second step is to empty all the noodle packets into the bowl, the third is to add water, and the fourth is to put it all in the microwave for two minutes.

I learned that the third step is the most crucial if you want to avoid a catastrophe.

One night I was a little toooo relaxed and forgot that step, and when I put the bowl in the microwave filled with not but dry noodles and some sort of oil, the microwave started to get really, really fucking hot and loud and started hissing all sorts of black smoke throughout the apartment. It also smelled really bad. Really, really bad. Nothing caught on fire or exploded, thank god, but the smell lingered. Which was really unfortunate because if I recall correctly, we were just about to graduate so stuff was being packed and re-packed throughout the apartment and nothing was in storage, so I made all of her things smell like burnt noodles and prescription drug abuse.

I’m not really clear where I’m going with this, except to say that I hope not taking an excessive amount of sedatives all the time and being a little emotional is better than abusing said sedatives and almost causing a microwave fire and giving my significant other an apartment full of rancid-smelling possessions.

i have a few thoughts on this, and i’m going to share them with you.

so let’s get started. i’m aware that planned parenthood does so much more than provide abortion-related services and that the vast majority of their time and effort goes into contraception and reproductive healthcare. but let’s be real. the debate is really about abortion, whether or not a woman has the right to have one and whether it’s legal or moral to provide one, so that’s what i’m going to talk about.

my first thought is this – the susan g komen foundation is a private organization and it is entitled to give its money to whoever it wants. if it doesn’t want to give money to an organization like planned parenthood because associating with them is seen as a liability – fine. it’s cowardice and a disservice to their constituents, but fine.

my second thought, which is the real issue, is that the whole problem the komen conundrum brings up is that we have to rely on private organizations and charities like susan g komen to donate to other private organizations like planned parenthood for vital healthcare services. relying on organizations that are subject to the whims of private benefactors will always be unreliable and politically motivated (despite what the komen foundation says) because their motives are economic.

the reality of the situation is that society doesn’t provide an avenue for women, particularly poor women, to seek comprehensive and reliable medical treatment – especially when reproductive rights are involved – because society as a whole does not value them.

i don’t mean that individuals don’t care. i mean that societal institutions do not care. and societal institutions do not care because they were not initially established for people like me or many of the women i know to participate, much less to succeed, in them. our most essential governmental institutions were established at a time when women were unanimously excluded from politics and the economy, and our rights and control over our bodies were irrelevant. and if these institutions continue to treat women’s rights as irrelevant or secondary, our society will ultimately flounder.

my main point is this: the cognitive disconnect and the outrage that many people feel about the susan g komen and planned parenthood situation results from the fact that women are being incorporated more into politics and the economy, but our full citizenship and exclusive rights to our bodies are not recognized by our political institutions. we are in turn forced to rely on the taciturn nature of private organizations for our healthcare service.

i applaud the women and men who are vocalizing their concern and outrage about susan g komen’s funding of planned parenthood, and i agree with you – it’s a result of cowardice and greed. but i would also urge us all to take it further. take your ire and your fear to your representatives and your senators and your president. make sure that women’s rights and access to healthcare are set in stone, not subject to change every time susan g komen gets a new board member.

1) The title isn’t about what you think it is.

2) This is ERIKA THE RED’s 1st and hopefully not last guest blog. my comments be in italic red. my illustrations, as always, speak for themselves and are unanimously accurate representations of what happens in real life. Let’s begin.

Erika says:

So basically I eat 5 kinds of meat and have to explain this to people kind of a lot, because it’s not religious, or really based in anything beyond personal preference… and whenever we meet new people i always bring up her meat categorization and make her explain it.

…

…

so, let’s not dilly-dally around and just get started with the monologue I’ve been editing my entire life and start off with my favorite, which is chicken.

Really any kind of chicken, but especially fried or BBQ-ed, and this is my main staple as far as meats go

because it basically just tastes like whatever sauce or seasoning it’s been soaking in.

And then comes turkey, and really, again, any kind of turkey, but I guess there’s really only one or two ways to make turkey – although I would say it is kind of dry and can we all just man up and admit that we like mashed potatoes and stuffing more?

but back to the bigger issue, which is that it makes me really tired (my friend at work thinks this is all in my head and I just like to take naps when I’m full, which, well, is true but I’m pretty sure I’m also being drugged).

And now rounding out our rotund flying rodent population for all intents and purposes, it’s important to note that I tried duck recently, prepared in little strips, and since it was hot pink in color, I think it was soaked in beats or frosting or something and so I couldn’t really taste it - so that brings us to 2.5 meats.

Taking us past the halfway mark all the way to 3 meats is bacon bits/hotdogs/pepperoni, which, when I’m feeling defensive, splits into three separate meat categories – since really each could be made of some mystery substance and is in all likelihood made of plastic. but either way I’ll eat those bits/dogs/ronis in or on pretty much anything, but let’s not get crazy because if you EVER make me a ham and turkey sandwich and think you can just remove the pork once it’s been sweating its smelly juices on my sandwich, well then you have another thing coming because I SWEAR I can taste/smell it even after it’s gone.

and speaking of smelly and really strange flavors, that brings me to number 4 which is salmon and tuna, the only two fish I eat

which is actually kind of weird because it’s not exactly flavorless but also not that interesting.

so moving on to number 5 which is ground beef. yes, ground up and fully cooked through, meaning not a steak, not ground up and mushed back into a grody coagulated patty, but ground up and frankly usually put into Mexican food or in a chili which I think pretty clearly means I just like spicy sauces (and cheese with carbs). and GODAMN give me some taco bell any day, especially since the world recently learned that the taco meat at the Bell is basically not a meat at all, something that is sort of a selling point for me, and that’s about it.

so I know this means that most people, and likely you, think I’m picky, but I wouldn’t say that, in fact, it’s actually that when it comes to meats, I have really high standards… and IN FACT, I think my level of attention to the meats I eat actually makes me a more serious meateater than you are. Also I love tofu.

you, madam, are fascinating.