Where have I been?

People (like, two people) have been asking why I have not been posting any new blog posts. Why? I have been freakin' busy. I have been busy reading Gawker, Jezebel, Buzzfeed, Huffington, and journal articles. I have been busy online shopping. I have been busy writing stuff and editing other things for school. I have been busy thinking about hypotheticals (through this process, I realized that I would definitely eat my cats and boyfriend's severed arm in an apocalypse-type situation). I have been busy engaging in imaginary fights and arguments with people I know and strangers I pass on the streets. I have been busy whispering bitchy class-ist, age-ist, and size-ist comments that embarrass friends and family. I have been busy thinking about my political platform as I consider running for state senator (24 hour trains and buses! Keep bars open until 4am! Let the people have their happy hour! Parental competency exams! Dissolve birth control pills in soda sold at high schools to reduce teen pregnancy! More funding for cats! No more recycling! Ban gratuitous public singing--there will be no unsolicited singing in public!). I have been busy trying to figure out how to use the updated MS paint program. Guess what? It sucks. The new MS paint on my computer sucks. I hate it.

Anyway, I have also been busy with being upset about my mortality--I call this phase two of my existential struggle. The first stage was easy. In the first stage I questioned reality: "Is this real? How do I define real? Is there a real-reality? Who is to say what is the real-reality? What if I am not me but someone else? What if I'm mentally ill and everything I sense is fabricated? Does it really matter that I am the only one who sees that triple-headed falcon? What if I have been possessed by aliens? How will that matter? And how will it affect my summer plans?" I was satisfied with knowing that I can only deal with what I am experiencing in-the-moment, thus rendering all these questions nonsense (my reality is my reality and there is nothing I can do to figure out if it's real or not real or whatever). Now that I am in my late-twenties and my parents and cats are getting old and I am gradually aging and everyone is reproducing and gas prices are just insane and my student loans keep emailing me and AHHHH--with all this going on, I am not even asking existential questions. I am just straight up rejecting the idea of death.

I saw the first twenty minutes of "A Certain Kind of Death" in 2010. Such regret. I am not blaming my second existential crisis on a single documentary, but I am not going to reduce its significance. It scared the shit out of me. Oh my goodness, decomposing bodies are disgusting--no thank you. Death and dying are scary things. I refuse to die and let the rest of society continue on without me. No, if I am not going to be at the party THERE WILL BE NO PARTY. So... in "Fried Green Tomatoes" Ruth dies (oh... spoiler) and the entire town she lived in shut down after her death. First of all, Ruth was not even that great. Ruth was the side-kick and she basically killed Buddy. I still cannot believe that Buddy had to die. I mean, I would totally get it if the town closed because of Idgie but Ruth? RUTH?! Come-on! Where am I going with this? Oh, right, um... so, I am okay with towns closing after I die. They should close. Everyone has to be miserable forever if I ever die.

My sister says that she believes in ghosts and that helps her through existential crises. I know a few people who believe in the Jesus. I know others who are at peace with becoming fertilizer (manfriend is all like, "oh death, whatever."). No. No. No. No. ...No. I am going to live forever, so suck it.

Boston, you scare me.

Recently, I relocated to Boston to go to school. My studio apartment is located in the North End, a community rich in history (Paul Revere rode through my neighborhood!--not recently or anything), Italian restaurants (why don't any of you take card?!), dumb tourists, uneven/narrow roads, tiny side streets, and notable landmarks that I haven't really checked out yet, but they are definitely there. People tell me there is much to love about this place because it is cute and has that "European"-feel. If "European" means "someone is going to stab you in a dark alley" or "ghosts are going to eat you" or "this street is just quiet because the person who was here before you is now locked in some car's trunk and will soon be harvested for organs" or "this sewer leakage is actually human juice from the funeral home", then yes, North End has a "European"-feel.

My walk home from school involves me crossing a funeral home with business at all hours of the day and a cemetery as old as this country (which is not THAT old, but old enough to look extremely creepy). This is bullshit. What the freak, man?! My quarter-life crisis obsession with and rejection of death did not ask for exposure therapy. I was going to go through the more conventional avenue of cognitive behavioral therapy.

I do not enjoy this. Fortunately, about two hours ago I discovered a new, longer way home to avoid this nonsense.

The first night in my new apartment was, to say the least, horrifying. The building I live in, like all others in the area, is flippin' old. Ancient! Built in the late 1800s, this little brick building has seen some major stuff go down, such as the molasses flood of 1919. My squeaky floors are distorted and slanted. It is like living in a fun house except the fun stops when I realize this is actually where I live. Anyway, the first night--I was startled awake by sporadic scratching sounds. My echolocation told me that the sounds were coming from the closet. Yes, of course, the closet! The source of all nightmares! In my blurry dream-conscious state, I was briefly concern that the scratching noise came from a ghost, or possibly ghosts. This scared the shit out of me for two reasons (1) what if it tries to kill me? (2) I don't believe in ghosts! This is not in line with my beliefs! There is no scientific evidence supporting ghosts! Why am I even considering ghosts as a possibility?!

I oscillated between fear and humility for about three hours throughout the night.

I concluded that the sounds were probably coming from rats, rats living in the walls of my apartment. At three in the morning this made sense. I live in an area with tons of restaurants=rats are living in the walls of my apartment. I was not as scared after concluding that the scratching sounds were produced by rats trying to break through the plaster. I figured that once the rats get into the kitchen they will see that I don't have any food. They will then promptly leave without hurting me. They will only hurt me if they know I am awake and watching them. I will pretend to be asleep, so they can carry on their business and leave me be. I will kill them tomorrow.

In the morning I investigated. With a clear head, I was skeptical about my rat theories and still pissed at myself for truly believing in ghosts haunting the apartment.
Let me get to the ending real quick before my laptop runs out of power.

It was the blinds. The window was open and there was a storm and a crap ton of wind... The sounds came from the blinds. I even reproduced the scratching sounds.

What have I been doing?!

My 25th birthday is coming up this Tuesday, as most people might know from of my constant reminders and messages and emails and texts, and now, this post. A whole quarter-century has passed and what the flip have I done?

Ugh, twenty-five, that is an actual grown-up age. When I was a kid I thought by 25 I would be working as a glamorous pharmacist, married to either Freddie Prinze Jr. or Prince William or Jonathan Taylor Thomas, and buying stuff with my own money, like land and patio furniture and a laserdisc player and the Spice Girls album and corduroy overalls. I also dreamt of purchasing an old power plant and living in it because I had so much money I needed to be humbled... JTT and I would sew our own clothes and I would say stuff like, "did you bring home coal from the coal forest to heat our stove for dinner?" Whatever.

Our neighbor's tortoise used to get lost in our front yard... tortoises live longer than people. I don't know exactly which species of tortoises, but there are definitely certain kinds out there that can outlive humans--up to probably 150 years or something. Our neighbor's tortoise was probably not one of these super tortoises, and if it were--it was too adventurous, so it's most likely dead now--or lost, or soup, who knows. I think many people, particularly Josh, Kyle, and Radim, have heard this complaint. It makes me sad that I cannot live as long as tortoises. Tortoises are not worthy of such long lives! Death is--oh my god, Sri (the cat) is trying to dig a cheese puff out of my loafer, so cute!--death is going to happen one day and it makes me sad that I have already spent 25 years of my life. If I am lucky, I will live up to 95... or up to whenever I completely lose control of my bowel movements, which will probably be around 90 or 95. However, there are crap loads of things that can kill me before old-age.

AND to make matters worst, I do not have an afterlife or a religion to calm my nerves (disclaimer: this is not an invitation to convert me, people). It is straight into the ground after all this! Crap! I refuse to be compost! Something about becoming 25 is really making me think about my own mortality. Some people will argue that I am being ridiculous and that 25 is not old... well, I am not saying that 25 is old, jerks. I am saying that it is the beginning of adulthood (none of this 18 year-old business, no one is an adult at 18 or 21! That's nuts!) and adulthood leads into geriatricism, which leads to death. Major companies now agree that I have gathered enough sapience and real-world experience to rent a car... a whole flippin' car... a machine as big as a rhinoceros. People trust me with rhinoceroses!

 Well, on that note, I look forward to my birthday party Tuesday. And if I have not said it enough... there is going to be

a pinata to distract me from the fact that I am getting old and will die in 70 years if I am lucky enough to avoid assassination, disease, freak accidents, and dangerous animals/insects.

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.