The little things...

There's something about Sunday. I wake up feeling like doing absolutely nothing but eating pancakes and watching movies, mostly to calm the anxiety of starting another new week the next day. So I woke up today, put on a pair of sweat pants and an old basketball jersey.

I made my cozy little comfort breakfast and proceeded to watch 'The Number 23.'




The movie is pretty nonsensical, far-fetched, and almost unwatchable after the first 15 minutes. Basically, the main character becomes obsessed with the number 23, and goes crazy turning his entire life and the world into a big math problem where everything equals 23. EVERYTHING is 23.

I've probably stretched this little story on for too long, but the point is that, being that I was pretty bored, I went to the bathroom in the middle of the movie without fear of missing anything remotely important or entertaining.




So I'm standing at the bathroom mirror washing my hands, and of course I happen to look at my reflection. Who doesn't? I'm still wearing my college basketball jersey that I had put on earlier in the morning.

What number is on the jersey?

23.

Spoooooooky, right?

Nope, instead of being creeped out I laughed hysterically to myself for 15 minutes, which is actually just about as much time as anyone should spend watching this ridiculously lame movie. But I thought the coincidence was funny.

Also, for those that don't know, Rhona Mitra (a badass better known as the original Lara Croft, Tomb raider) is one of my favorite actresses, and really, the only reason I continued watching Jim Carrey narrate his life in the slowest, most painfully monotone voice possible, was because I heard that she was in the movie. But beware, America, she is only onscreen for 5 minutes. Literally 5 minutes, and you have to watch 75 minutes of garbage just to get to it.





Please don't waste your time.

They really aren't Cheaper By The Dozen...

For the record, Nadya Suleman is a baby-hoarding psycopath. After hearing about this ridiculous single mother with 14 children, including newborn octuplets, I really have to question the sanity of America.




What angers me the most is the fact that in the greater scheme of things, she's broke. As a fellow poor person in these great United States, I'm pretty sure the last brilliant idea I could come up with would be to have 8 babies. I don't even want one baby, and right now I'm collecting spare change just to keep my chihuahua in Kibbles 'N Bits. Surrogacy, maybe. Selling my eggs, sure. But risking my wallet and my vagina for a litter of screaming poop machines is just not my cup of tea.

So now here comes this nutjob with an infant addiction and all I can think is that my income taxes are going straight to her welfare check. I'm not working 40 hours a weeek to buy government cheese for a family of 15 whose mother had 6 fertilized eggs in vitro, a.k.a on purpose. I would be much better able to stomach this debacle if she'd said she had 14 "accidents," (or "surprises" for the the faint of heart). I would even feel much more at ease if she'd said she got drunk one night, took too much heroin, not enough birth control, and had sex with 8 guys at a party. At least then I'd get a good episode of Maury Povich out of it.

You ARE the father.
You are NOT the father!



But no. This lunatic actually admits with a straight face to paying a similarly ludicrous doctor to put 6 buns in her huge, greedy oven (2 of those buns becoming twins, or biscuits?). And twice! I'm sorry lady, but unless you're Angelina Jolie, you shouldn't have 14 children. In fact, please, give her a few.

We outlaw gay marriage, create a system that takes years just for some people to adopt children, and then we let this looney tune run around grabbing up eggs and popping out babies like we're some sort of endangered species in desperate need of breeding.

We're not.
This place is crowded enough as it is.

And please stop doing interviews, this woman needs to go straight to a mental institution (which, coincidentally is where she once worked), and not appearing on the Today Show. If Pampers, or Huggies, or Gerber, or any of those breeding goods corporations start giving her endorsements and free products, I'm running straight to the animal shelter, adopting and then mating 27 cats. I'm not quite sure what point I would be proving, but the idea seems just as rational. And much cheaper. And without the tearing. Or stretching.




I'm just hoping some good can come out of this horrific incident. Perhaps it will cause a boost in the economy by creating jobs, because let's face it, she'll have to hire an entire cheerleading team of babysitters, at least half a dozen wet nurses, and a handful of nannies. When they come of age, she should seriously consider opening a sweatshop. We all know those little hands are great at cross-stitching.

If I wasn't allergic to crying, sick desperation, dirty diapers, and the smell of baby food, I might submit an application. But until then, Ms. Suleman, you and your clan are on my virtual hitlist (meaning I loathe you from afar and you should constantly feel my eyes of judgement).

Somewhere in Between...

The term limbo has several similar meanings (none of which involve a horizontal pole, embarrassment, and back-breaking flexibility). Religious people adopt the notion that limbo is some gray region on the border of Heaven and Hell, like the stuffy waiting room of afterlife. More commonly, it's simply a place or state of oblivion, a home for things that are cast aside, forgotten, or unresolved. Placed on life's transitional little backburner.

More scientifically, the word is derived from limbus, usually associated with the distinctive border between the cornea and the sclera of the eye. It's always interesting how a definition so vague can walk hand-in-hand with one so completely literal and exact.



Limbo. There's something poetic about constantly hovering on a border, a state of sheer indecision. We face it every day as we open our eyes, daylight shining onto that microscopic border just ahead of those delicate optic nerves. You can always make a decision to quit, stop trying. Or you get up and face another day.

Limbo can also be described as a place of imprisonment or confinement. Those times you feel damned if you do, damned if you don't. But you still have to choose. Limbo is never a place that can you stay, it's never really a home.

Melancholy much?

Some people say that absence makes the heart grow fonder. Sometimes you are led to believe that a long time away from the place that you call home will make you appreciate the small things, the mediocrity. No. Most times a little vacation can make you recognize the voids in your life. We all have our empty spaces and our dark corners where nothing can really hide. We mask and we run, turning out lights and extinguishing candles. Fleeing back to the light of familiarity which is nothing but exactly that: what we know. It’s all about those well-placed reminders, the pint-sized intangibles like the smell of a worn out blanket or a favorite song.

You take these precautions in life to make sure that things will never bend beyond your control. I’ll have a job, and a roof over my head, and reliable transportation, and a meal in my stomach, and clothes on my back, and someone to call at night, and I’ll have some sort of purpose in this ridiculous mess that has become my existence. I’ll have good credit, and an impressive resume, and I’ll have self-confidence because nothing can ever, ever go wrong. People will like me and I will be fine.

But it’s all a mirror image. We become these characters, play these parts, build these facades and perpetuate the charades. It’s a sort of sonar. Waves bouncing back and forth to create a picture of who we really are, or who we want to be. People will tell you jokes so that you’ll think they’re funny or buy you flowers so that you’ll think they’re thoughtful. They’ll ask you about your feelings so they can appear caring and simultaneously convince others that they are a plethora of self-loathing information. He said, she said.

She’ll cry to you so that you can tell her everything will be okay, and you’ll cry back because it feels good for someone to tell you that it can only get better. Before it gets worse. I’m just beginning to question why it is that we lean on people. Why we support people that cannot reciprocate the basics of humanity. People who kick you when you’re down. People that abandon you when you are all but alone. People that will tell you lies and disguise the truth in pretty gift-wrapped packages.

So you start stacking bricks. You begin with one story, spread a layer of mortar and expand to two. You build these walls and use your self-proclaimed fortress as a reason to be dismissive of any brave soul who knocks at the castle walls. Lose yourself in the notion of being completely independent of vulnerability. So I give up. White flag.

Warm sands, palm trees, and margaritas at one o’clock in the afternoon will only teach you that you aren’t taking your life for granted. Life is taking you for granted. People in your life are mostly taking you for granted. I’m not a gambling person for the sole reason that I don’t have much to gamble. But I’d bet that eliminating negative people is a lot more profitable than eliminating life. And vacations are fantastic.

Dangerously delicious...

Warning: Do not eat the following product on an empty stomach...and especially not for breakfast.



And if you do make the mistake of consuming said product in either of the preformentioned conditions, do not, I repeat do NOT flush the internal fire with water. The burning of your stomach lining will only become worse.

That being said, once the hole in my small intestine heals, I plan to finish the bag.

Dedication (or lack thereof)

I've been seriously neglecting my writing. This is counterproductive for several reasons, but mostly because my thoughts are much easier to digest when they are written rather than screamed at an unsuspecting stranger out of bottled up anger. That being said, the New Year's resolution that I never made in the first place will be replaced by the promise that I will write every day no matter rain, shine, sleet, snow, vodka, exhaustion, tequila, annoyance, general inebriation, or how tempting my Nintendo Wii may seem.

That is all.

Ruts and Routines...

I am not a creature of habit. For some odd reason I am not consistent in any capacity other than being destructively impulsive. I'm all about restrospect rather than forsight, which is probably why I always find myself in unfortunate situations. This is definitely the root of my increasingly recurring anxiety, which is slowly affecting my sleep patterns. You grow up thinking that your brain shuts down during sleep, sort of like a computer that needs to be rebooted. Your body is nothing but metabolical functions and cell repair, eyelids twittering over the whites of your eyes in an REM cycle.

But no. The day follows you, thoughts trailing into dark corners of your mind, resurfacing only in the unconscious state of dreaming. Tossing and turning, I feel like I spend the whole of 8 hours merely trying to get comfortable. Trying to curl up into the fetal position and find some sort of transient peace. Instead, I wake up aching, breathless and exhausted merely from the effort of attempting sleep. My chest feels tight and weighted like a long-time smoker with congested lungs.

Most mornings, the only way I know I have actually slept are the waking recollections of vivid dreams. Broken memories and fragmented images which seem so tangible and real, but are just obscure enough to be recognized as nothing but my imagination in the night hours. I awaken with headaches, all creaky bones and stiff joints. Cloudy thoughts. That existential feeling of dread, where you question the day's purpose. The purpose of your routine. It stinks of dramatics, reaks of overthinking inevitable things that just are. But we all have our doubts, the prickly notions of ourselves that tug at the back of your brainstem like silent assailants you can't shake.

You can see it in a person's eyes. The one who hasn't slept or who spent the night crying, angry, or worrying about things they can't control. No one is truly immune, it has to happen eventually. Eyes transparent like stainless glass, simply color with nothing behind them but the light of another lifeless day.

I'm not sure when the exact moment occurred that we trapped ourselves in awkwardness instead of bliss. I don't know when we became encased in this vague medium where actions are premeditated and words are left unsaid. I can no longer draw the line between what isn't and what should be.

I suppose that people have different ways of acceptance. Realization is subjective, and it is always relative. You grow to understand differences without neglecting truths in a reality where everything seems so disproportionate. I can't expect other personas to imitate mine.

For a week I'll be happy every day. For a month I will write every single day. For a year I will wake up and go to work every passing day. And then it all stops. It fades to black. That creature of habit sidles up beside me in my dreams, and it all stops as I run screaming. Screaming in my sleep, waking with a strained voice and a need of escape. Find another impulse. Keep running. Keep searching. Keep remaining lost and trying to be found.

Keep trying to break the glass and examine what's inside. Gears grind like the notched wheels of a clock, always turning, ticking, triggering and moving. Clocks do not stop at night. Thoughts do not cease to tock.

She'll understand eventually. She'll get it. I'll fall asleep eventually.