I recently decided to be honest with myself about the kinds of people I like to be around and act accordingly.
In middle school, here was my policy: if a person was willing to spend time with me, then I liked to be around that person. There were no exceptions to this. The person did not even have to be nice. As long as the person would put up with me for more than 15 minutes, the person was my favorite person.
Read MoreI had meant to spend yesterday afternoon working in sulky solitude on all the projects I have to do but have no interest in doing. Obviously I failed at that because I have virtually no self-regulation. Instead, I ran into my friend Ned at the coffee shop (where the work was supposed to be done), and he said, "Do you want to go to this exhibit at the Contemporary Art Center called 30 Americans right now?"
Read MoreOn Friday (Valentine's Day), I was asked to substitute assistant teach in a kindergarten classroom at the charter school that had employed me for five years. I spend a lot of time at this school anyway, since it is one of the closest approximations to a home I have ever really known.
Read MoreYesterday I got a letter in the mail from a pen pal in Portland. It was written by a girl I thought I was going to hate -- she was dating one of my best friends from high school, and I'm really picky about the people my friends date. I want them all to be dating humanitarian celebrities, since whomever they marry is going to end up one of my new best friends, too. It's all very selfish. Anyway, the girl turned out to be incredible -- like, if you read her character in a comic book you'd say, "Man, I love everything Dan Clowes does, but frankly, this girl is too good to be believed."
Read MoreWhen I was six years old, I had insomnia, and it was cute. I was little, and I had adorable fears the way children do: lizard monsters, cave monsters, bed monsters, closet monsters, invisible monsters. Just your basic monster stuff.
Read MoreMy favorite magazine, hands down, is Seventeen. I think I subscribed to it for the first time at the age of 22 because I saw an ad that promised free lip gloss with a $10 subscription. I'm a sucker for free gifts -- I have so many New Yorker Dog Books that I could outfit every upscale vet practice waiting room in the city of New Orleans. Anyway, Seventeen is my favorite because (1) It's pretty offensive, and nothing gets me off more than feeling self-righteously better than everyone else by calling out other peoples' (or magazines') insolence; and (2) GREAT MAKE-UP TIPS.
Read MoreI want to write about literally anything else. I am racking my brain for a subject. Let's see let's see let's see. This weekend I went to a letterpress opening, and I watched two really girly comedy movies, and the weather wasn't so bad, and I coached improv; I'm trying to find a good angle for those things, but all I can think about is how I had a very public, very ugly panic attack last night. I still feel it in parts of my body. I should probably still be sleeping it off, but my cat is like an Insane Clown Posse concert at four in the morning (very loud, lots of black and white).
Read MoreAmelia Bird might dislike me. Or, at least, she might not trust me very much, because when I walked into the letterpress print shop she is helping to open in New Orleans on Saturday, I lost my shit completely and acted exactly and precisely like a four-year-old who just found out that toys were a thing. That kind of behavior is charming for about three minutes, but I bounced around the studio space -- aptly called Baskerville -- for more like forty-five, rubbing the gorgeous letterpresses and fingering the heavy-grain paper. When a person is effusive like that for that extent of time, one should probably assume they either want something from you, or are on cocaine. Neither were true for me last night, and you have to believe me: I was just really, really excited to be in that space.
Read MoreI have been writing morning pages every morning for three years now. Morning pages were probably not Julia Cameron's idea, but she's the one who named them "morning pages," and so she's the one who gets all the credit.
Read MoreOn Friday night, I had a single margarita and was basically instantly drunk. That's not unlike me, mind you. That's really pretty typical. I shouldn't say "Friday night," though. I should say, "On Friday at 6 p.m."
Read MoreI just got out of the bath. I have to go to work really early today -- I mean, I have to be there by 6:30 a.m., which was my reality Monday through Friday for five years in a row; but just a few months out of the cycle, I feel like I'm being tortured. If you see a teacher on the street sometime, seriously, hug them or something. They really need it.
Read MoreThere's a terrific mix CD in my car right now, like it's 2005 or something. I actually received it in the mail just a month or two ago, when I was feeling sad. (That's my default emotion. The friend who sent this to me clearly thought that sadness was a novelty -- like, a once-in-a-blue-moon kind of thing. This is a new friend, obviously.)
Read MoreNew Orleans has declared it a "snow day." What this really means is that New Orleans hasn't heard about salt. But no matter. I am inside, listening to it "snow," thinking about actual snow, and actual snow days, like all the other people here who are not from here and are reminiscing about the exact same thing.
Read MoreToday I published this piece in Punchnel's: A Woman Walks Into A Life-Changing Sex Comedy Show.
This piece is a big deal for me, although it's possible that won't be clear in reading it. It's not written in my usual style (long-winded, endlessly verbose, looooonnnnnng-winded). That's because the editors at Punchnel's were like, "Hey, we will consider publishing this piece, but it needs to be edited a LOT." The original version started with a bunch of paragraphs about women in comedy. Here are some of the paragraphs that got cut:
Read MoreJust because you weren't born somewhere doesn't mean you shouldn't live there! Although, please do the right thing and adjust for gentrification. "Just because you weren't born somewhere doesn't mean you shouldn't live there" is something that mostly privileged white people get to say. OK? Cool! Now take this quiz and enjoy your privilege!
Read MoreYesterday I went on a date. It was not a date with myself -- I am kind of good at those, though, because I'm a great conversationalist, and so am I. But this time around, I went on a date with my roommate, Derek.
Read MoreYesterday my friend Charles invited me to play frisbee golf with him.
That's not actually accurate. He invited me to join him and his (very good-looking) friends to play laser tag, which everyone knows is totally different from frisbee golf. He said, "Meet us in City Park, we are all going to play laser tag." And I thought, "That's a fun and quirky way to celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. I will go and do that, I think."
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