Identifying a Stupid: A Guide to Recognizing the Idiots that Walk Among Us

Disclaimer: I am aware that writing a rant inspired by the incorrect pronunciation of a word during a news story about a horrible tragedy makes me a douche bag.  I do not care.

There is a news guy on my TV right now who I rather like.  He seems to know what the hell he's talking about most of the time, and also gives the slight impression he might be a bit demented.  He has nice hair as well.  These three things generally combine to create a newscaster I enjoy watching.  But today he fucked up, and now I think he might be a Stupid.

He was speaking about the earthquake in Japan and the subsequent tsunami -- specifically, what's happening at a nuclear power plant in Japan.  Or, as he called it, a nuculear power plant.  THAT IS NOT A FUCKING WORD.  NUCULEAR IS NOT A WORD NO IT'S NOT SHUT UP.  If you see a clear sky, you do not say "Ooh!  Look at that beautiful culear sky!  That sky is so culear!  I could stare at that culear sky for hours and hours and hours because I am a Stupid, and staring at things for hours and hours and hours is what my slow and stupid brain likes to do!"  You can't just put letters into words that weren't there before.  You're not in charge of words.  I can understand if the word is weird and you maybe haven't heard it said out loud before (phlegm, facetious) or if you have been hit repeatedly in the back of the head with a shovel for some reason, but if you are a regular, everyday, normally-educated person and the word looks like this: NUCLEAR, then I cannot think of any reason for you to say NUCULEAR other than you're a Stupid.

Your brain is seeing and then saying a letter THAT IS NOT THERE.  You are hallucinating a letter.  This also applies to: cavalry, especially, ask, escape, February, library, Arctic, jewelry and realtor.

The inability to see and then say a word that SOUNDS EXACTLY AS IT IS SPELLED is not the only way to identify a Stupid.  There are millions of ways, and I can't possibly list them all, but I'm going to point out a few of the ones that drive me the most insane.

Inability to retain information pertaining to major events

Actual conversation I had with an actual person within the last five years (not verbatim, but close enough)

Person: "I love Johnny Cash."
Me: "Yeah, he was good."
Person: "I'd love to see him perform live someday."
Me: "That would be terrifying."
Person: "Why?"
Me: "Because he's been dead since 2003, and if you ever see him perform live that means he is a zombie and we are all fucked."
Person: "Really?"
Me: falls over unconscious and twitching from the sheer stupidity of conversation.

I assume this person (who, sadly, I am related to) is a Johnny Cash fan.  I make this assumption based on the fact that she said she loves Johnny Cash.  She enjoys his music so much that she would like to see him perform live.  Yet she does not know that this musician, WHO SHE LOVES, is dead.  Even people who don't like Johnny Cash know he's dead.  Even people who would, if they had the chance, drop Johnny Cash from a tall building even if it meant he'd land on and crush a velvet-lined basket of adorable orphaned puppies as he plummeted to his death know that Johnny Cash is dead.  But not this fucktard.  Nope.  No damn idea.  I could understand if we were talking about the producer of a documentary about the life and times of the rare Indonesian Rice Mouse (I made that up, don't bother Googling it) because who the fuck would know/care about that guy, but a major recording artist of whom you are a self-described fan?  Yeah, maybe you should know he's dead.  Just a thought.

Lack of understanding of how simple things happen/do not happen

I know someone who did not know you could buy clothes hangers at stores.  She thought they "came with the house."  She was Paris Hilton before Paris Hilton was Paris Hilton.  A Stupid ahead of her time.

Mouth-breathers

(exemption for those with colds/allergies/no nostrils)

If you breathe with your gaping maw hanging open, then you are so stupid that even your basic, instinctual bodily functions and abilities do not work properly.  Also, you are fucking gross.

Inability to recognize a fact even after that fact has been proven

Remember when the remake of Godzilla came out?  Yeah, that movie was terrible.  Whoever made that movie should be fired out of a cannon into a brick wall decorated with the severed limbs of his or her favourite people.  Despite that, the soundtrack wasn't too bad.  I even bought it.  There's a Puff Daddy/P-Diddy/Puffy/Sean Combs/I Don't Fucking Care Anymore What His Name Is song on there that samples Led Zeppelin's 'Kashmir.'  Jimmy Page was OK with that (even approved it, the big jerk) but that's besides the point.  The problem here is that a generation of Stupids grew to believe that this abortion of an excellent song WAS THE FIRST SONG TO USE THAT MUSIC.  Fine.  If you've never heard the original song, then that sort of makes sense.  You would have no way of knowing that Puff Douchey's 'song' samples part of a good song if you had never listened to Led Zeppelin.  But when someone tells you that Puff Dickbag did not come up with that hook, and then plays you 'Kashmir' on a CD that clearly states on the back of the CD case that it came out in 1974, and then goes on the Internet and shows you every conceivable website that proves 'Kashmir' existed DECADES before the shitty song you like, yet you STILL insist Puff Dingledick came up with it first, then you are a Stupid, and you deserved me flicking you in your ear and had no business whining to people that I hit you, you uppity bitch.

This is what he looks like when he poops.

Continued belief into adulthood in shit people told you when you were five

Gum does not take seven years to digest if you swallow it.  THINK, moron: Your stomach can digest steak.  It can digest meat-gristle (but please don't eat that -- it's really disgusting when people eat that).  It can digest Pop Tarts, and Pop Tarts ARE NOT EVEN FOOD.  What magical fucking ingredients do you think gum is made of, that your stomach acid cannot break it up in less than seven years?  Sweet FUCK -- if gum is that powerful, we should really start building planes out of gum.  We should make bulletproof vests for the police and military out of gum.  We should wrap babies in gum the second they're born, protecting them until they are seven and better able to protect themselves.

Seriously, people.  It's ok.  Go ahead and swallow.....heh heh heh.

Oh relax -- it's whipped cream, you effing prude.

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Weeeeee! I'm a Horsie!

You might be SHOCKED to learn I use this blog sometimes to write inappropriate and fucked-up weird shit when I feel like crap.  By SHOCKED, I mean you're all very smart, and you already knew that.  For every one thing I write about how hurricanes names are apparently selected by people who eat wallpaper or how Christmas music by Paul McCartney is mind-bendingly boring, there are five posts about how shitty life can be, but how it's not really that bad if you put it in the right perspective.  Some days, that perspective is easier to find than others.  Today, it's somewhere in here:

Finding a needle in a haystack?  Piece of cake, compared to finding the damn thing when it's piled up WITH A BILLION OTHER NEEDLES, jackass.

To be clear, this is not a veiled cry for help.  Or even an obvious cry for help.  I just feel like shit and I can't find the right perspective, and writing about it and making jokes and putting up funny pictures makes me feel better.  It's my version of talking it over with a friend, but I get to do it while on my couch, eating potato chips, and not having to wear sunglasses so you can't see my stupid cry-eyes.  This is like my therapy, and you guys are my therapists -- you sit there while I talk and talk and talk until I realize I'm retarded and I already knew the answer.  But I'm not paying you to listen, so if you're looking for some sort of hourly rate here, then you can piss right off.

I have a friend -- someone I've known for about 10 years, someone who will always be my friend even though we live far away from each other now -- who I probably could have fallen in love with.  But I didn't.  Couldn't.  Right place, wrong time, blah blah blah.  Or maybe I did, but my brain knew better than to let me know it had happened.  Sometimes my brain can be smart.  So instead of falling madly in love with this male version of me, I ended up making a friend who I don't think I could live without.  He has a good life now and a beautiful family, and someday I'll stop being so lazy, and I'll go visit him.  And yes -- I am talking about you, mister.  Bet you didn't know any of that, did you?  Should make my next visit slightly awkward :)

Possibly even more awkward than this.

I used to think I missed out big-time, when I missed out on him.  But realized a few years ago that's stupid.  If I'd fallen for him, I'd never be able to lean on him the way I can now.  And he has no idea just how much I lean on him, just by knowing he's out there.  I wouldn't have that friend -- far away and infrequently seen, yet more important to me than he could ever know.

This is too mushy.

That's better.

I have another friend (well, I have several -- but for the sake of this part of the tale, we'll talk about just this one.)  He's honest and straightforward and doesn't bullshit me.  Sometimes that hurts, but only because I know what he says is true, and I have to accept that he's onto my devious little plan to fade into the background, avoiding anything that could even remotely lead to pain. And it's like every part of me from the top of my head to my freakishly-shaped nugget-like baby toenails and every part of me from the middle of my insides all they way out to my outsides knew the second I met him, without question, that I would need him to be my friend.

Getting mushy again.

That's better.  Again.

So, I feel like shit.  Even though I've thought about that first friend and I've talked to that second friend, it's not going away yet.  Even the pictures of horribly deadified cartoon animals isn't helping, which is pretty much unprecidented.  I've made jokes and been self-deprecating and as close to honest as I care to come right now.  These are the things that usually work.  Fuck.

So on I go, doing my best to be open and honest.  Using the Interpipes to semi-but-not-really-anonymously talk to my friends about what's bothering me.  Writing on a goofy blog instead of doing what normal people do, and just sitting down and talking to someone else.  I know I should do that, but it involves face-to-face contact and crying and sometimes a snotty nose, and I don't wanna.  You can't make me.  So there.

Everyone around me is doing stuff.  Things for them are changing, moving forward.

And then there's me.

Or at least, that's how I feel today.  I know it's not really true.  I know that's not really me.  For one thing, my ass isn't nearly that big.  But today, and lots of other days lately, I feel like a big stupid horse with my big stupid head stuck in a big stupid tree.  So I'm sitting here thinking about that today, and thinking about how everybody probably feels like that sometimes, and thinking about how when they feel that way, they feel just like me right now: that they're the only one.  That all the other horsies who aren't fucktards are running ahead, and I'll never catch up because I apparently thought it would be a super idea to stuff my head in a tree -- even though I'm a horse and nothing I eat lives inside trees.

Seems every few days I find myself with my head stuck in a different tree.  I got used to it.  Can't see the scary things around me -- the things I should be doing to keep up with the other horses.  Can't see them getting further and further ahead of me.  If I don't see it, it ain't happening.  If I don't know it, it's not real.

No one likes an oblivious beaver.

So today I pulled my head out of a tree.  And it fucking hurt.  Not because I wanted to keep my head in the tree forever, not because I'd developed some sort of inappropriate fascination with the tree, but because this tree, this particularly comfortable tree with it's strong branches and sturdy trunk and calming shade, made me feel safe.  Kept me from having to see what the other horses were doing.  Gave me somewhere to hide away from everything.  Gave me an excuse not to look around me for somewhere to go.

Now my head hurts and I'm a bit wobbly from trying to hold myself up after leaning for too long.  It's too bright and windy.  But it feels good, too.  It feels right.  The other horses are still pretty far ahead of me, and I'm still terrified I won't catch up and I'll be left by myself, just looking for more trees to stick my head in.  And I'm worried when I look back, my tree won't be there anymore.  It might fall down, it might be gone if I need it again to protect me or give me somewhere to hide for a while.  There's nothing I can do about that.  Horses aren't in charge of trees, because horses are (despite what people who haven't had horses might think) kind of dumb.  Don't believe me?  Scroll up and take another look at the horse with it's head stuck in a frigging tree.

How exactly did I turn into a horse in this story?  Oh.  Right.  Heaven forbid I just come out and say something straightforward.  Wouldn't want to accidentally be open about how I feel.  Might come across as a dufus or a loser or some sort of dufus/loser hybrid.................

You had to know I'd work this skidmark into the story somehow. 

Long story short (which actually makes this entire story longer, when you think of it) -- I'm trying to keep up, but I keep finding something to lean on.  Something that makes it ok for me not move forward.  Something that validates my staying behind, so I won't have to admit that maybe I feel left behind not because I have been left behind, but because I haven't even bothered to keep up.  Because I'm scared that if I try and fail like I so often have, I'll fall and lose even more ground, like I often do.  And because it breaks my heart to think maybe the place all the others are going to isn't the place for me.

I hope I can get up and go.  I hope I can keep up with the rest of my herd and stay with them for as long as I can.  I hope I can stop sticking my head in trees and hiding -- because one day, one of those trees might break.

I hope that the horses coming up behind me -- instead of seeing me with my cracked-out cranium crammed in a tree-hole, leaning and hiding and avoiding changing and growing -- get a big eyeful of this as I move on with my life:

A horse's ass.



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HOLY CRAP!!! A FACEBOOK QUESTIONNAIRE!!!

1.  Hi!  This is Facebook!  Your friend Blorp has tagged you in the "The Things You Should Know About Me (But This is Not Just Me Being Self-Indulgent) Questionnaire!  Do you want to do it?  No.

2.  But Blorp really wants to know about you.  Don't you want your friend to know really important things about you, like the last time you were kissed and what your favourite ice cream is?  Again, No.

3.  Bitch.  That's not a question.

4.  OK.  WHY are you such a bitch?  Because this is stupid and I don't wanna do it.

5.  Please?  For Blorp?  He took the time to tag you :(  FINE.  I will do it.  Jesus Christ.

6.  Did you read Blorp's answers yet?  No.

7.  You should.  I mean, it will help you better know your friend.  Don't you want that?  Look, I barely know the guy.  I went to high school with him or something.  I just accepted his friend request because it seemed rude not to.

8.  Oh -- and it's NOT rude to ignore something he thought was important enough to share with you?  FINE, GOD DAMMIT.  I WILL READ HIS STUPID ANSWERS.

9.  Are you done?  Did you learn all about Blorp?  Yep.  Sure did.  Now that I know what colour the death of his first pet felt like, I totally understand him.  Wow.  He's deep.

10.  Cool!  Ready to start your answers?  Sure.  Whatever.

11.  What flower do you think of when you think of the person who tagged you in this questionnaire?  The kind of flower that I allegedly sat beside in math class and haven't seen in 15 years.

12.  Have you ever REALLY loved someone?  Yes, until the drugs wore off and he woke up and started crying.

13.  What feat are you most proud of?  Not setting my computer on fire.  Yet.

14.  If you were an animal, what kind of animal would you be?  Whatever animal Blorp might be allergic to.

15.  If you could say one nice thing about the person who tagged you, what would it be?

16.  I said: If you could say one nice thing about the person who tagged you, what would it be?  I know what you said.  You said "IF you could say one nice thing..."  I can't.  So I didn't.


17.  Wow.  You are so not taking this seriously, are you?  I'm really not.

18.  Huh.  Guess you don't care about Blorp, then?  I really don't.

19.  Fine.  We'll skip to the last few questions.  Think you can act like a grown-up for a few more minutes and try to connect with your friend on a higher level?  Sure.  This could be fun.

20.  What's your favourite flavour of ice cream?  Hmmmm......I like lots of flavours, but I only eat ice cream recently purged by bulimics.  It's delicious.  Soft soft serve.

21.  Quit being such an asshole.  What are the first three things you see when you look around you as you type this?  A jar of peanut butter, a dog, and Blorp's naked mom.

22.  Not cool, dude.  Blorp's mom has a borderline peanut allergy. Last question - and please try to take it seriously:  What's the first thing you're going to do after you complete this questionaire?  (Hint: saying you're going to send a message to Blorp to catch up and see how he's been doing all these years and maybe invite him to meet up for coffee would be a pretty great answer!)  I'm going to block the fucker, report him for porn, then videotape whatever his mom is about to do with that dog and put it on Youtube.

23.  Thanks for taking the time to fill this out and read your friend's answers!  Now you'll get all those obscure references in the note he leaves behind!



~~~~~

(What I Can Only Assume Are) Actual Thoughts Had By People I Have Been Exposed to Recently

"My current employer?  The drivers of cars waiting at the red light at the St. Laurent off ramp." ~ Guy who stared in my car window for a full minute while holding a cardboard sign requesting money.

"Fuck it -- I'll just kill people with my car." ~ Everyone driving through the St. Laurent Centre parking lot Saturday.

"Fuck it -- I'll just get killed by a car." ~ Everyone walking through the St. Laurent Centre parking lot Saturday.

"This is probably where used Kleenexes go." ~ Some guy at the convenience store where I stopped to buy milk today, as he tucked a snot-rag among the chocolate bar display.

"It is a scientific fact that bathroom stalls block out the sounds that farts make." ~ Woman in the same bathroom as me.

"I'm not creepy."  ~ Guy at La Senza.  Looking at bras.  Alone.

"I'm not a douchebag." ~ Douchebag walking down the street yapping loudly and with great self-importance into his Bluetooth.

"I'm super-coordinated and don't look ridiculous." ~ Chick balancing tray holding five cups from Starbucks while talking on her cell phone.

"SHOWERS ARE HOW THE DEVIL GETS INSIDE YOU AND ALSO I HAVE A RAT LIVING IN MY BRAIN CAN I BORROW A FORK TO GET IT OUT???" ~ Crazy guy

Can I Fix You a Shit Sandwich?

I have this thing where my brain frequently thinks thoughts that are stupid.  I think it's called "being alive."  

My most-stupid frequently-thought thought is "(blank) should not happen/I should not be expected to (blank)/(blank) is not fair, because I'm still a frigging KID."  Except I am NOT a frigging kid.  I'm 31 years old.  I'm not sure why my brain is stuck in perma-young person mode, but it is.  Maybe I'm mentally deficient.  I'm probably mentally deficient.

After having the "I'm just a kid" thought today (because someone was mean to me or I imagined someone was being mean to me, and why would they do that?  Don't they know I'm just a kid?) I gave my brain a swift, metaphorical (obviously) kick in the head, then sat quietly and pondered stuff for a while.  All that pondering has led me to the conclusion that I need to grow the fuck up and start acting like a grown-the-fuck-up person.

Sure is a good thing Maury Povich exists.

So now begins the tedious task of training my brain to think like the brain of a 31-year-old woman, and not the brain of a wimpy little teenager afraid of loud noises and her own shadow and what people are thinking and also squirrels.  What better way to do that than by using goofy photos, lots of cursing and self-deprecating, often rambling humour?  Actually, there are probably a million better ways to do it, but this is the one I'm going with, so go fuck yourself if you don't like it.  

And with that, I present to you: Shit I Know Now That I'm in My 30's (a.k.a. Grow Up and Deal With it, You Turd) feat. T-Pain.

Because everything's more awesome when it feat.'s T-Pain.

1.  'Cheerios' aren't a supper food.  In the same vein, 'Absolutely Nothing' isn't a breakfast food.  And it is not acceptable to have three cookies and a pen lid for lunch.

2.  People can see the dirt you've swept into a corner and hidden by leaving the broom there.

3.  Comfortable shoes are better than awesome shoes.  It doesn't matter, and I will still continue to wear awesome shoes instead of comfortable ones, but at least I know I'm an idiot for doing it.

4.  You shouldn't lie to people who trust you.  Even little tiny lies that you think you're telling for the right reasons. Even lies you think you are telling to protect yourself or someone else.  That's not to say I think you should run around confessing your dirtiest little secrets (I'd be fucked with a harpoon to the moon and back if I did that) but if someone who trusts you asks you a question, you should answer it, and you should answer it with the truth.

5.  Underwear goes under your clothes.  Always.

6.  If a pillow isn't comfortable enough to lay your head on, you don't need it.

7.  Sometimes, people have other stuff to do.  Don't be sad if that stuff keeps them from being around.  It's OK.  They still like you.

8.  Sometimes, YOU have other stuff to do.  Don't put your life on hold every single time someone needs something.  It's OK.  You still like them.

9.   Porn isn't a bad thing.

10.  But tequila is.

11.  There's a fairly good chance 95% of the people you talk to each day don't give a shit about what you're saying.  And be honest -- you don't care about most of what they have to say, either.

12.  Posters of musicians stop being acceptable bedroom decor the second you move out of your parents' house. Which is why I took down my Who and Rolling Stones posters.  (About a month ago.)

13.  Furry cheese is still good.  Just peel the fur off.

14.  Some people aren't people you need to be friends with.  You might not like them.  They might not like you.  Or you might like them, but being friends with them does not make you happy most of the time.  Stop hanging out with those people, even if it makes you sad for a little while.

15.  Ice cube trays don't fill themselves.  Which is why I buy ice by the bag at the convenience store.

16.  Sometimes, you will do bad stuff.  Sometimes, when you do that bad stuff, you won't feel bad about it.  Did anyone die?  No?  Then don't worry about it.

17.  Buying celery is pointless if you don't eat it.

18.  Crying about something probably won't fix it.

19.  If you briefly forget you're a grown-up and you do something shitty to someone, say you're sorry.  And forgive yourself.  You didn't mean it.

20.  Most of the people around you don't always remember they're grown-ups, either.  If they do something shitty to you, forgive them.  They're sorry.  They didn't mean it.

So that's the list.  I don't really think it's my strongest work, but I like it anyway.  If you like it, feel free to print it off and make it into a needlepoint picture and frame it and hang it in your bathroom.  If you don't like it, feel free to eat a shit sandwich.

Well of COURSE I was going to find a picture of a shit sandwich.  Duh.

~~~~~

This One Isn't Funny

First, I'd like you to watch this.  It's a little over 12 minutes long, and I will understand if you don't want to watch it -- but I think you should.  Especially if you have kids, because I want you to see that while it does "get better" (as all the celebrities are rightly saying in the anti-bullying videos making the rounds these days) it never ever really goes away.

I'm willing to bet every single one of you reading this has been teased or picked on in your life, for silly things or serious things or things you don't understand.  For many people, it's nothing.  It's one jerk saying something mean to you, or a friend who takes a joke too far, and sometimes it hurts like hell.  Then you forget about it and move on and it never comes up again.  But think of one of those times right now, and try to remember how bad you felt in the moment it happened.  Now, try to think of how much of that you would be able to take before you jumped off a bridge or hanged yourself in your bedroom or shot yourself in the head.  Because that's what has been happening.  Kids are being terrorized and kids are killing themselves.

I was bullied when I was a kid.  From kindergarten until the day I graduated high school, I was teased and tortured almost every single school day.  It felt awful and it felt like it would never end, but it did.  I finished high school a year earlier than I had to and I left and I will be perfectly happy if I never see any of the pathetic pieces of shit that bullied me ever again.  But as bad as it was for me, I never wanted to die because of it.  That's why it's like a punch in the heart every time I see a story in the news about a bullied kid committing suicide -- because I know how much it hurt when I was bullied, yet I can't even begin to comprehend how much it has to hurt before a person takes their own life.

It's pretty common, I think, for adults to tell kids to be tough or suck it up when someone teases them.  Sometimes it's what you have to do, to help a kid grow up strong and able to stand up for him or herself.  But for fucksake, do NOT ignore your son or daughter if they say they're being bullied or you think they're being bullied -- because while it does get better ( I know this because it got better for me) the effects of being bullied never completely go away (I also know this because it also happened to me.)  You'll see that if you watch the video I linked to at the beginning of this post.  You'll see a man who has grown up to be very successful in his life and his work after a childhood of being terrorized.....but you'll also see a man who is obviously still hurting from everything that happened to him and everything that was said to him all those years ago.  

There are people who argue being bullied makes a child a stronger adult.  I agree with that, but it pisses me right the fuck off anyway.  Yes, maybe I'm tougher now because I had to be when I was a kid -- but I was forced into it.  I'd rather be able to say that I'm tough because I chose to be, not because I had to be because the alternative was to fall apart.  I hope if you're a parent, that's what you want for your kids, too.

So we can confirm (based on my scientific analysis of me) that being bullied can lead to tougher adults.  I guess in the grander scheme of things, that's not a bad thing.  But do you know what is a bad thing?  Wondering if people actually like you, or if they're just putting up with you until you go away.  Not being able to fully believe that a friend's light-hearted, good-natured teasing isn't really cruelty in disguise.  Thinking that you're alone at night not because you just happen to be alone, but because there's no one who can stand being around you.  Being afraid sometimes that everything bad everyone ever said to you might be true.

I'm never telling anyone the things people said or did to me when I was a kid.  I've tried to before, and it hurts like hell just to almost say those things aloud.  But I will tell you that I sometimes feel all of those things I mentioned above.  I graduated high school when I was 18.  I'm 31 as I write this.  It's been 13 years since I was bullied (don't bother pointing it out if that number is wrong -- I am well aware I blow at math) and it still affects me.  I think it always will.

I'm not writing this for sympathy.  I'm not writing this because I actually want to talk to people in great detail about it, despite my protests that I don't.  Ask almost any adult you know who was bullied as a kid to describe the things they were bullied about, and I wish you luck getting them to answer you.  We losers and nerds and punching bags don't particularly want to re-live the specifics of our loser-ness and nerd-ness and punching bag-ness.

So, no -- I'm not writing this for attention.  I'm writing this and I'm telling you that it still affects me because I want you to be able to help your kids so that it won't be affecting them when they are 31.  It's hard to stop it if you don't know it's happening ( I didn't exactly come home from school and tell my parents that everyone thought I was a loser) but the way things are now, I think parents need to pay better attention.  Kids are killing themselves.  I can't believe that there aren't signs well in advance that something is going wrong.  

I don't have kids.  I don't know the answer.  I don't know how to let your children know it's OK and it's not weak to come to you for help, but you have to find a way to do just that.  Please please PLEASE don't let your children grow up to be like me.  Don't get me wrong -- I think I'm pretty awesome.  I have a kick-ass job and very awesome friends.  I'm smart and I'm funny and I'm cute and I'm nice.  I don't punch babies or kick dogs.  I've never killed a hobo and left his carcass on train tracks.  I will probably never be described by my neighbours as someone who "seemed so normal until they found all those bodies in her basement."  But I'm also very insecure a lot of the time.  I can be paranoid, and I often wonder if people actually like me.  And a lot of the time, I wonder why they do.  I cry sometimes when I (mistakenly) think people are being mean to me, and I cry sometimes when people are being nice, because deep down, I don't think I'm always sure I deserve it.  And the entire time I'm feeling any of those things, I know I'm being a dumbass -- but I truly can't help it.  You don't want that for your kids.  You don't want your kids to grow up and wonder even one-percent of the time whether they actually deserve to be happy.  

As much as it sucked when I was a kid, and as much as it affects me now, at least I'm still here.  I wish I could say that for Tyler Clementi.  And Ryan Halligan.  And Megan Meier.  Phoebe Prince.  Jared High.  April Himes.  And who knows how many more.  

To my friends who have kids and my friends who will: Please don't let them to grow up to be insecure.  Please don't let them grow up questioning whether they are worthy of their friends.  Please don't let them grow up to be someone who cries when someone says something nice to them because sometimes they just can't fathom another person seeing anything good in them.  And please make sure I never have to read their name in a news story about a kid who just couldn't take it anymore.

~~~

Thanksgiving: An Important Day, and Also an Opportunity to Post Photos of Adult Movie Covers and Zombies

According to Wikipedia (which is pretty much Google with fewer pictures of naked asses when I search for 'butt load') Thanksgiving is "as annual Canadian holiday to give thanks at the close of the harvest season."

They just harvested your grandma.

I didn't harvest anything this year because I'm lazy, and because my neighbours would probably get pissed off if I started growing corn in the front yard.  Mostly because this is what I'd put up to keep the crows away:

Also effective against anyone who might want to come to my door to "talk to me for a minute."

I am, of course, thankful for my family*.

Fairly accurate, actually.

My immediate family is pretty small, but I have lots of aunts and uncles and cousins.  Almost everyone I'm related to is insane.  Some people have boring families -- I have the least boring family ever.  And somehow, all the genetics and traits of all my ancestors combined to make a whole bunch of really cool (insane) people.  I'm thankful that I'm one of them.

(*Thankfulness does not extend to all members of family.  Null and void for the stupid ones that I don't like.)

I am thankful for my friends.

I'm not implying all my friends are jackasses.  I'm flat-out saying it.  You are all jackasses.

And that's why I like them.  I'm a jackass, too, so I prefer to run with a herd of jackasses.  You guys are all the best jackasses ever.

I'm thankful for my job.

This is not my job, but it has some similarities: There are some dicks, they can be hard (to work with), but it often works out in the end. (Ha ha!  Get it?  The END!!  HA!)

Maybe this is shallow, but I'm thankful for the things I have. 

My car:

Looks just like this, but without some guy in it.  And not parked in front of a church (because of the whole bursting-into-flames thing)

My house:

Like this one, but shitty.

My DVDs:

Right now you're wondering if I'm kidding.  And also if you can borrow them if I'm not.

I'm thankful that I live in a country where I can write a blog featuring photos of pornographic movies.  Where I can call a politician a moron.  Where I can learn and work and live my life without being told that I can't.  Where I never stop before I walk outside and think "I hope I've covered up enough of my body to be allowed out in public."  Or "I hope the place where I work is still standing when I get to it."  Or "I hope I'm still around to come back home later today."  I'm thankful that I live in a place where people get angry when they hear a news story about someone being beaten or bullied for being different.  Where thousands of people will come together and walk along our city's streets to raise money for people who are hurting.  Where they will gather in public and hold signs and yell at the top of their lungs about something they care about, even if it's something I think is complete bullshit.  (And quite frankly, I usually think it's complete bullshit.)  But I'm thankful that there are so many people who care enough about something to tell the rest of us about it.  I'm also thankful for the middle fingers I have on both hands which I can show these people when I drive by them.

So thanks, Thanksgiving, for giving me an opportunity to write this.  It's nice to say thanks for everyone and everything I love having in my life.  You all make me a better person, and I'd hate this world if even one of you wasn't on it.

As of midnight tonight, Thanksgiving will be over.  Which means I can go back to being greedy and thankless, and you can all go screw yourself until next year.

~~~~~