You, Me, and Takeshi

Well, dear Josh, my new boyfriend, Takeshi, and I are letting you into our love line segment so we can form a love triangle. These winter holidays times are rough, and so, not to have pity or anything sentimental like that, I am letting you back into my entourage. Will things ever be the same? Probably not. I mean, just look at what the three of us did to the traditional valentine heart-shape:

But, you know, whatever.
Here is a montage of our happy times:

Yep.
 

Dear Josh, I am leaving you for a gentleman who creates aliens and deformed babies for a living

My Dearest Josh...
I am leaving you for Takeshi Yamada because he is a great artist and you are an astrologer. He makes molds of alien heads and models of deformed babies from his own skin and hair, and has stuffed a rabbit with a mermaid tail. He also teaches painting in Chelsea. You cheat at scrabble. He wears a suit and mardi gras beads everyday and everywhere. He lives in Coney Island, which is like the St. Barts of New York. He is charming and 26 years my senior. We are adorable together:

Anyways, it has been fun. We've had good times--like last weekend when we went to Target and took a gypsy cab back home. I hope you understand why I am picking Takeshi over you.

Don't worry. I will make us both fat.

As some of you may know, Josh says some pretty stupid things like, "I do not put dressing on my salad", and "Catherine, macaroni and cheese from a box is not healthy", and "they don't carry the kind of yogurt I eat." Well, here is how I feel about it:

In the past year or so, I have overcompensated in an attempt to redeem myself from the obnoxious health-food-poseur lifestyle I once took so much pride in. Not too long ago, while chain smoking in college and standing up for animal rights, I use to say stuff like: "oh, there is cheese in here? Oh, no, I cannot eat that. I am vegan", and "it's organic!" and "quinoa". I am not sure what happened between then and now, but I have become a human garbage disposal and am slowly taking down my boyfriend with me.
For example, yesterday, while at Target I got tired from picking out ornaments and toilet paper, so I bought a delicious child's Red Icee. The consistency was perfect. Josh would never get off his high salad horse to order one for himself. However, after I purchased one he drank almost half! While he will never admit to liking it... I know he enjoyed every last corn syrup drop of the slush. He always "samples" the foods that he typically dismisses as "gross" when these things are on my plate. Sometimes he will groan about how terrible something is while eating the very item. I take great satisfaction in these moments.

Once home, I wanted to go to McDonald's because they were giving away Sanrio digital watches in the happy meals (I have always wanted a wrist watch!). Yep, Target and McDonald's in the same day, we are America! Josh gallantly volunteered  to eat my French fries and save me from the disaster that I was setting up for my digestive track.

Although he grimaced in each bite... looking into his eyes I saw a gleam more glittery than the ornaments we purchased the hour prior. Go on and continue eating your healthful foods, Joshy... I will slowly show you the dark side.

Thanksgiving 2010

Yesterday was a great Thanksgiving. We had plenty of friends over and all the food collaborations were delicious. However, before the festivities Josh got stuck in our elevator while trying to fetch the laundry. Our building supervisor had to bring in elevator specialists to pry open the door and free Josh. It was a hectic time. I kept Josh company by yelling at our broken elevator door like a crazy person. Later, I got bored, realized there was nothing I could do, and went back into the apartment to talk to my sister on the phone. She is doing well.

In the days leading up to our Thanksgiving dinner I obsessed over scented candles. I have been wanting a scented candle for about two months now. A lot of thought went into what kind of scent I could live with. There was also a fear that the cats might play with candle fire and then catch on fire and then die.

I had the idea that our apartment had to smell like holiday and not crazy mystery before the guests arrived. The fear of cat fire was still in the back of my mind, but with some reasoning my concerns were at ease. <Cats should know not to play with fire... right? But then again, it is not like they invented fire, so would they know? How natural is fire in nature? Well, pretty natural, I guess, considering my house almost burned down in the fire of 2002. 2003? No, 2002. 2002 because that fire happened the same year that the kid whose house burned down started wearing a t-shirt that read: 'Jesus is my Homie', so yes, 2002. Should our cats deserve to live if they do not know how to interact with fire? Whatever, this house needs to smell like holiday magic.> The night before Thanksgiving I made Josh and Kyle come with me to Duane Reade (I hate you, Duane Reade). It was a last minute desperate attempt to make the apartment smell magical. I had been thinking too much about candles and not actually shopping for candles--inevitably leading to a pathetic attempt at 10pm to improvise magic from the crap bomb that is Duane Reade. I bought something that purported a permeating apple cinnamon scent. Thanksgiving morning I lit the candle. Four hours later I got sick from the smell and had to open the window, but I left the candle burning because I wanted our guests to feel like it is holiday... With the window open the smell dissipated. Candles suck. Duane Reade sucks. Luckily, no cat fires.

I don't want to end up working at Duane Reade and admitting to my mother that she was right about how I should have gone into pharmaceuticals , or married a doctor with a nice Mercedes, or business man with a fuckin' private jet like Bill Gates

I am applying to grad schools this winter, as I have written about and alluded to a billion times.
Recently, I lost the taxidermy workshop I was organizing, I was rejected from the Seattle art gallery because the hipsters think my works are priced too high (I say, not high enough!), I stopped going to ballet, my nose is peeling all the time, and I am slightly behind in my research paper... Well, at least I have not been officially rejected from the smaller publishers... my agent tells me it should take awhile before we hear back from the smaller guys... And, I have my health, which is great--except I have developed a fear of eating hard-candy alone (I could choke and die with no one around to try to save me or listen to my last words, "arg, argh, always check the stove before you leave the house, arg, arg!").

Things feel like garbage even though I know these things are not THAT bad--and in fact, compared to other people's situations, my life is baller.
Very much a part of my quarter-life crisis, (1) I am finally realizing that one day I am going to die... and while there was a time in which death felt eons away, I have already gone through a quarter of my life--and that is generously assuming that I am going to live up to 96, which we know is not going to happen because of my diet of corn syrup and wine--it's probably going to be diabetes or liver failure around 65, right before retirement (2) I don't want to be mediocre, but I am realizing that a lot of people are mediocre. I am not going to be a Beyonce or an Ellen or an Oprah or a Boyle.
After all of my reality checks, I just want to go to graduate school, get my Ph.D. in sociology, work as a researcher/professor at a second tier university, publish some of my fiction, and skin road kill on my spare time.
This is where I am today:

I don't want to end up managing a flippin' Duane Reade.

I thought I was going to tell a cute story and specify all the things I hate about Duane Reade, but I spent too much effort on the picture above, so I'm just going to go make more popcorn and end this post.
The main point is, I want to get into grad school and if I do not get into a school this year I am going to barf.

This Research Paper is Killing Me

I have been laboring over this research paper for days now and am going out-of-my-mind-bonkers. However, while real work has not been accomplished, I have been getting some business done online. I have made like fifty new facebook friends, read the newspaper (like the real newspaper, not just the most circulated articles), and quietly cried in my little work corner while watching that Susan Boyle sing "I dreamed a dream".

I think I will go follow up on that baby in Cambodia who smokes cigarettes now...

In case people are taking the poll without knowing what a Quagga is...

Squirrels hate you

Over the past few weeks I have been co-organizing a taxidermy workshop that was intended to be held at the end of this month. Because of a minor financial shortage brought on to us by a church that wants to charge us $150 an hour for the use of its recreation room for skinning and stuffing... we are now without an affordable workshop (why a church? well the taxidermy workshop is full of bears right now because hunting season just started). In addition, it is hunting season, so our taxidermist is struggling with scheduling... ARGH MY LIFE! Somewhere in Jersey there is a freezer with nine dead frozen squirrels waiting for me.

I hate you, Mission Statement!

The GRE victory high is over...
I am now writing my mission statement. Writing the mission statement makes me feel inadequate. It feels like this:

SUCK IT, GRE, SUCK IT!

This was me and the GREs last fall when I did not study and thought that I could just waltz in and ace the mofo... which is bonkers because by looking at my school records and history of anxiety you will see that I do horribly on in-class and standardized exams. How the hell I made it this far is beyond me.

Okay... so this year I wised up and actually prepared for this stinkin' test because I really want to get into a PhD program--you know what people with Sociology Masters do? Duane Reade. You probably get to manage a fuckin' Duane Reade, congratulations smart-ass, you were some how better off with just a BA because when you had just a BA they made you queen of autism back in 2007 (I was a behavioral therapist before all this). Whatever. Let us get to the good part. I did not get a perfect score. My adviser told me that it was acceptable--"could be better" but acceptable. However... while I maybe could have done better, it was a victory! For the first time I did an acceptable job on a standardized exam... Yes, I took three calm pills before going in, but I don't think they work because I broke down while trying to analyze a pie chart--why do we care about the retail price of mattresses?! Luckily, I snapped out of it... and by the end of the exam it felt like this:

 

 

There is a lesson to be learned in today's post: L-Theanine does not work.

"Want me to get rid of the purple crap radiating from your head?" ...No, I'll keep it. I'll let you know if the infection gets worse.

Yesterday's 6pm meeting with the psychic was a big waste of ten dollars and ten minutes. The psychic, Grace, buzzed me up to her apartment on 5th ave and 30th... Holy freak, nice place for a psychic! As expected everything she said/asked could have applied to anyone. She closed her eyes and solemnly asked me when my last heartbreak was--this did not really go anywhere. She then warned that one of my good friends is talking bitchy-crap behind my back; she asked me who that person is and I said 'I don't know, who is it?' She then told me that I have a great year coming up but because my aura is purple and not glowing yellow like the one in the picture I am going to get nowhere in life. I told her the purple crap radiating from my head has not been bothering me. She told me that whether I realize it or not, whether it interferes with my life or not, it is going to make my life bonkers... what? but for more money she could exorcise it. Yep, there we go. At that point I told her that I am going to keep my purple shit, paid her ten for the 'energy' reading, and handed back her flier with the spelling and grammar corrections I had made over lunch. A bit annoyed, she told me her business has been doing fine even with the spelling and grammatical errors.

Sometimes it's not supernatural. Sometimes it's just Manhattan.

The flip was in that Mediterranean wrap I ate?

About a month ago--October 7th to be exact (the day before I went to Boston to see the Vans--how could anyone forget?)--I was standing in front of the Pizza Cone (a pizza cone is a pizza in a cone) waiting for a friend. A woman who does not look unlike Norah Jones told me that I have crazy aura radiating from my pores or something like that. She gave me her card, which was just littered with misspellings and grammar errors. I dismissed her as a charlatan and went on with my business.
Today, while standing on 30th and 5th ave I see this woman trying to make her way across the street while traffic was approaching. I thought she was stupid. I also felt bitter because had she been someone not so attractive the taxis would have angrily honked in admonishment. I waited for the lights to change and she told me that my aura was radiating crap again. I told her that she had approached me before. She used this to support the hypothesis that my radiation was in fact meaningful, and you know, something, something, 'meant to be'. I decided I would give her a chance (Pass for Persistence). I told her I did not have much money (to which she just said $10--a minutes? a half hour? an hour?) and that I had an appointment to get to a 7 (she said that I will be done by then--done? like robbed blind? massacred?). Anyhow, I have an appointment at 6pm.
Shame to say, but for the next few hours I tried to let myself believe in... whatever you want to call it... I tried to superimpose meaning on the earlier incident, but then I walked into Starbucks and something set my head straight.
While I was standing in line at Starbucks I noticed the man standing in front of me. I have stood in line behind him before. How can I forget? He is a disturbingly handsome Indian man measuring well over six and a half feet tall! Oh... and his fashion sense. Perfectly tailored trousers. He wore nice trousers last time I stood behind him, too. Was this strange? I asked myself. Was this strange to run into two different strangers for the second time in the same day? Was it... fate? The answer is: hell, no. There is no supernatural or luck or fate or any of that bringing me back to these people. It is the size of mid-town. Mid-town is small. People cross streets. People go to Starbucks.
I am still going to that psychic read at 6 though...

Nutrisystem: scavenged through a pile of garbage

Halloween times!
For Halloween, April, Kyle, Josh (that's my boyfriend), and I scavenged through the give away table downstairs in our lobby. Wowzahs, we dragged upstairs three sacks of Nutrisystem diet food. Three sacks! All that crap must have cost like freakin'... $500 or something. Well, right after setting the sacks down we went out to the Halloween parade in the village. Unfortunately, it was a ruse. We did not see any flippin' parade. No, we were smothered in a morass of drunk people and were almost crushed by an ambulance while a guy pulled an unconscious girl through the street. Fast forward to one gypsy cab later...
We arrive home, safe from the public... but not safe from ourselves... We ate the crap out of Nutrisystem diet food with wine through a series of dares and challenges, "put it in your body!!!" Carmel bars "breakfast time", honey mustard pretzels "dessert time", tortellini "lunch time", chocolate muffin "breakfast time", peanut butter crunch "breakfast time", carrot cake "dessert time", chocolate brownie "dessert time", soy bbq chips "dessert time", peppermint patty-type deal "dessert time"... a lot of crap is what we ate. A lot of crap. We do not feel good right now. April is almost completely passed out and Kyle is too wired from his crazy sugar cocktail and Josh is too good for Nutrisystem, so he is fine. I'm writing this blog. I am going to throw up neon shit now. Happies Hallowen.

$9.00 for a smoked salmon sandwhich--pthd, what the bonkers are the salmon made of? Platinum?

$9.00 for a salmon sandwich with cucumbers is bonkers. Right? like... it's flippin' fish... and cucumber, which barely qualifies as a real vegetable because it has almost zero nutritional (I just spent two minutes trying to figure out how to spell that, coffee needs to kick in) value. The bread is hearty though... I will give them that.

Whao, the Swan Lake we just saw was nothing like The Swan Princess movie which was inspired by the traditional telling of Swan Lake the ballet

Earlier tonight Josh and I got into our fancy clothes and went to the ballet--we are sophisticated adults!
The ballet we saw was Swan Lake, directed by Matthew Bourne. I was not familiar with the story of Swan Lake before this experience, so now I feel very caught up on another culture thing. I must say, Swan Lake is one flippin' tragic tale of a prince's coming out at his mother gala, which ends in his institutionalization and ultimate death... oh yeah, and the hooker that tried to save him from the swan dies, too. Tchaikovsky, you have some serious emotional business to take care of.
For those of you not familiar with the story--those of you still uncultured like I was four hours ago--let me summarize the tale while it is still fresh in my memory.
There is a prince who has a very strained relationship with his mother. One day the prince meets an attention-hungry, money-grubbing, unrefined wench. The queen disapproves of her gauche behavior at the opera and tells the prince that he should not see her anymore. The prince gets drunk and heads out to a club where he finds out that his ladyfriend is a hooker. On the miserable walk home, the prince stops at a park where he runs into a bevy of swans. He falls in love with the man-swan and they dance together--or had sex, so hard to tell when expressed in dance (what is this? charades?). The swan-man allows the prince to caress his lanuginous thighs and twirl with the other swans in all sorts of interpretive manners (so I assume they have sex... or some intense foreplay). So... on the night of the queen's gala--it gets good--the man-swan that the prince is in love with drops by BUT the man-swan is dressed like a suave man-man. The man-swan dressed like a man-man seduces the queen, which enrages the prince. The prince tries to seduce the man-swan back but only succeeds in getting the hooker shot and drawing attention to his very public and unplanned coming out... what?! YES! Anyways... the prince is then institutionalized and administered ECT. The man-swan comes back with his other man-swan friends. They and the prince dance some more... I don't know what happens in between the jumping and the spinning... but the prince dies, okay? Queen comes in and is all like, "what?!" The end.
All in all it was a good performance.
Josh and I later went out to A Voce for drinks. It is fun to go out with boyfriend!

No Halloween.

Okay--So every year my enthusiasm for finding the right Halloween costume goes something like this (refer to table).











As you can see my enthusiasm has dropped dramatically. Originally, I had wanted to go as a bag of Crunchitos (the off brand "organic" cheetos). I would have had to go out and buy a bunch of felt. This would have cost me over $25 and hours of my time (going to the garment district, returning home, cutting, sewing, screwing up, calling do-over, going back to the garment district...)! No thank you, sir. So... I am going to be lazy again this year and go out and buy some mouse ears and paint whiskers on my face and maybe pin a stuffed sock to my butt and say I am a chinchilla. I will probably look something like this:

This was originally a picture of me after finals.... I still look like this.

This dog is a thief.

It is Sunday morning and I am too lazy to get out of bed and do work like I said I would last night with glowing drunk ambition.
Instead, I went on Criag's list to read misconnections and look at the pictures of pets that people are trying to get rid of (if you are in the NYC area there is a one-eyed gray kitten that is really cute in a sad one-eyed kitten sort of way). I only wanted to look at cats, kittens, rodents, and reptiles. However, there was an ad for a shih tzu. I thought to myself, "a lot of people talk about these things... what the bonkers do they look like?" I opened up the image... "oh, gross, why do people want these things?" AND THEN I noticed its barrette. So familiar... Holy crap weasels! That barrette is MINE! That motherflippin' shih tzu stole my red cat playing a banjo barrette! I had lost it months ago... So, I need someone to adopt that dog so I can get my barrette back. It is very important and has immense sentimental value because my good friends had stolen it for me when they did not want to stand in the long line at Target the day before Halloween. Please, whether you adopt this thief or run into it on the street one day... tell it to give me back my motherflippin' barrette or just yank it off and mail it back to me... My cat playing a banjo barrette does not belong on a shih tzu.

I got a Follower!!!!

It is 8:08pm and very close to snack time... wait... "Josh, are you wanting dinner?... or... what? right. So... do you want snack? I want snack." Congratulations to Cathy Madeo! She's my first follower! Thank you Cathy!!! From all the people here at This-Is-Bonkers... You are super cool. This is my earnest attempt at capturing her hip style and classic beauty on the computer art program... She is holding an iphone.

When I am older am I going to drink soda out of a can with a straw like my grandmother?

Well, am I?

Today I have just been peeing like a broken person. I figure that if I drink a lot of fluids all the crap I ate today will flush out of my system before all the calories have the chance to absorb into my body and turn into fat pockets which I will have to work off... but who has the time? I spend most of my day slouching in a chair and crossing my legs. This equals: fat butt and scoliosis or something. I realized that Chipotle is a flippin liar is what it is... so at the 'restaurant' there is a calorie count next to each item... my item's estimate was like 400 more or less... uh, no. I went on the Chipotle website to use the calorie calculator just because I was curious and did not want to do my work. Surprise. No... the total calories was 900. Eek. So... I am peeing it out like a champ. I don't really think it works this way. I am in it for the placebo effect... no I really don't think it works this way either... I don't know.

Bleh

Today is Tuesday, which means research day. One of my subjects told me I look like Wendy Williams because I wore high heels--I like to think I remind him of Wendy Williams because of my flair. My research site had a Ripley's special edition book. I convinced one of my subjects that that was the book he wanted to read for his free time. When I brought the book to the table for him I told him to read it to me. He did not want to read the Ripley's book, so I took it and looked at the pictures and only read the captions of interesting pictures. There is a guy in Coronado who froze his grandfather. The grandfather had a blue face and blacked out eyes and a Cosby sweater. I tried to engage my subject by showing him the pictures of all the different people who were naturally mummified in the dirt (or wherever it was that nature had its way--I did not read many of these captions). The two-faced cat comes up in every edition...
This morning my agent told me that one of our prospective editors got laid off... leaving only 3 left in the second round. Not so good for Catherine Tan. Anyways... I ate a cheddar and tomato sandwich for lunch and a croissant for second lunch.
Tonight is the night for Hoarders. I am looking forward to this.

I need a theme

I realize that this blog does not have a theme or topic of interest. I need one.
Anyhow, today I spilled tea on my field notes... and yes, this is bonkers because my hand writing is hardly legible to begin with.
Tonight I am going to go home and pull down the projector screen and watch an all new episode of Hoarders on www.aetv.com. Hoarders is a great television show that I watch. While one might think it is just about cats and poop, it is so much more than that. It is about spectacle! America! Exploitation! Surprises! Plot twists! Child protection! Family drama! and love.
Hoarders... tonight... I am going to watch the crap out of you. I am also going to watch the crap within your nasty home--TWIST!

Today is Josh's Birthday

Today is Josh's 30th birthday--but what does it mean for Catherine? It means Catherine cleaned the litter box today.

It is Morning Egg Salad Sandwich Wrap Time

It is 12:30 PM Eggstern Standwich Time! I should probably do some work today, as work I have not had done.

I ate chips.

It is currently 4:00 pm and my belly is full of chips. I bought the big bag thinking that my snacktimes will be taken care of for the next four days. Nope.