Marina Rose Martinez

Water who feeds us

Dirt from whom we grow

And

Fire who kills us and makes us strong.

I’ve been meaning to write a blog post about how my recent weight loss has been making me crazy in the head (moreso than usual at least.) I even wrote one recently and never published it, because it was very long and convoluted and had references to Greek mythology and I totally wasn’t joking. And once you’re making references to Greek mythology with your serious pants on, it’s time to give up the ghost.

So, don’t know if this is ever going to see the light of day, seeing as it’s proved to be a difficult task for me to articulate the myriad of rainbow feelings I’m having in regards to this issue, but here goes.

I’m starting to loose weight, just as a side effect of me being in a better job, where I make enough to eat good food and where I’m happy, so I want to take care of myself and be active. I’ve been in the job a year now, so this is about the point where other people have started to notice the effects of my healthy activeness, but the crazy started way before that.

This blog is so hard to write because I want to write everything, from my anorexic-bulimic early teen years, to my feminism, to the non-stop business of college that took priority over maintaining my physical health. I want to understand and I want to be understood. I want this craziness out of my head, trapped inside words where it can’t fuck with me anymore. I’m positively schizophrenic about this issue, and I have been since I had hardly begin to loose weight.

When I first started to change my habits, I knew this storm was coming and I’ve tried to baton down the hatches as best I could, but a year after starting regular exercise I’m quite insane, despite my efforts to avoid it. Which mostly means that I try to deny my weight loss… while simultaneously being desperate for someone to notice it and praise me… and then when I do get praise for it, I feel filthy and sad… except for that 13 year old anorexic me in my head which yells “yay!” and thinks that this means that we’re finally worth something… and then the logic tends to kick in and I thank them for the compliment which is nice but has nothing to do with my inherent value as a human being…. and then feels deeply disappointed that loosing weight is what passes for an accomplishment in our society… and then feels like I should be praised to choosing to be healthier, and I’m just being grumpy… and then feels like putting value judgments like that on what’s basically a side effect of taking care of my physical self is just ridiculous… and then wonders why I didn’t have this sort of experience when I graduated from college, a much much harder and (I think) more valuable accomplishment in my life. There’s at least 10 more things that go on, but those are the main ones.

There’s also the issue that I worked really hard to live in my whole body, to love my whole body and appreciate my whole body. I know that eating well and exercising is just an extension of loving my body and taking care of it, but I’m sad to see the fat go. Maybe it’s living and growing up in LA, maybe it’s being a woman or growing up with violence, but I feel so encouraged to hate my physical self, and I think that other people feel this too. They have absolutely no concept that I might be sad to be missing a part of myself, of my body that I made myself love completely. I know that I’m healthier like this, that I feel better, but I’m still loosing something in the process.

There’s also the issue of safety. It’s not so present in my mind now that I live closer to work and drive there, but when I was taking the train in from Anaheim, the more weight I lost the less safe I felt on the bus and the subway. In my experience there is a direct correlation between how thin I am and how sexually available strange men perceive me to be. There’s also a direct correlation between how fat I am and how I am able to command the attention of those around me. It could just me my confidence, but I feel less and less able to make demands when I need to, to ask store clerks about things, to call attention to myself.

And of course, I feel the need to point out that I’m no supermodel here. Despite the weight loss, I am still shopping in the fat end of the store, designers still don’t make clothes in my size and no one would consider me petite. I hope and pray that this remains the case because I just don’t need the drama of being considered attractive by the rest of the world. (Don’t get all stupid on me for saying that, you know what I mean.) The logical, grown-up part of me just wants to be healthy, to not have knee pain, to be able to run and play without stopping if I don’t want to. Yes, there is an angry little girl in my head who can’t believe that we’ve even been alive this long, and worse–that we’re fat. But she’s not in charge. I keep telling myself that I know my worth, at any weight; that I should focus on how I feel physically better and better every day, that I’m caring for myself, and that I even feel more sane aside from all this weight bullshit. But sometimes when people congratulate me on loosing weight, or when they don’t, when my old clothes are falling off me, or when they’re not falling off enough; the crazies come creeping into my head, making me consider weight loss to be a goal and a value rather than a side effect, and I get kinda strange. Because despite being years behind me, my head is still filled with great new ways to make my weight and weight loss the one deciding factor on weather or not my life is worthwhile. And when I play by those rules, it never is.

I wrote a comic. I took a picture of each panel with my cell phone. I don’t know if the letters are coming through clear enough so I’m going to write it under each panel.

“Oh Dr. Banner, your sex is like magic”

*’SPLODE*blood*

“Oops. Hulk guess it doesn’t just happen when hulk angry”

So I took my Grandma out to lunch for her birthday this Saturday and learned some fun new things my shit family has decided are true about me. Well, I always knew that they thought a few of them, but as we’re all adults now (some of us have been for decades) I’m pretty pissed that they can’t wise up and stop repeating school-yard rumors.

So, because my mom was a heroin addicted homeless person, I was raised by my grandma and her husband who hit me, and made it known that I was less valuable than shit on his shoe for every waking moment of my young life.

Whatever, that’s over I’m a gown up person now and I have a lot of years of 12 stepping behind me. I try to act like a human adult instead of an abused child so that’s just context.

Anyway, because I was raised by these people, they had the funds to send me to a lower budget private school until 8th grade. It was basically the hippie equivalent of Catholic school. Because I was a poor, fat orphan with bad social skills and thrift store clothes this was a horrible experience for me. Those kids were piranhas and I was an injured hippo. This is also context.

I moved with my mom to the eastern edge of L.A. county for a decent public high school experience where she discovered that copious amounts of prescription drugs don’t count against sobriety. By Junior year she would keep me up all night with her crazy druggie antics and babbling, and when I finally went to sleep she would start screaming at me, calling me names and drag me from my bed by my ankles, all the while I’m trying to figure out what the fuck is happening.

In her less demonstrative moments she would take my hand, sit next to me and explain how much she worried about my obvious inability to function, tell me that she really couldn’t see how I could take care of myself because I was so clearly an emotionally stunted retard. If I got into college–and that was looking unlikely to her– I would have to live with her because I was so incapable of being responsible that I would surely fail out and die. At this time I was working two part time jobs, performing insanely well academically, buying my own groceries and clothes and trying to stay sane.

Despite the fact that she had me at least 80% convinced that I was fundamentally bad, stupid and generally incapable of life without her, I was also sure that her behavior had started to affect my school work, and her yelling had elevated to shoving and her shoving had elevated to shaking, and I didn’t want to stick around for the next step. I finally left and moved into Kate’s garage. With a combination of the kindness of friends, and strangers I only had to sleep in my car 3 separate nights. My father gave me a beat-up Chrysler and my grandma gave me $50 a month for books. The rest was my hard work.

By Junior year I was taking 5 classes and working 50 hours a week. I got in three separate car accidents because I fell asleep at the wheel and woke up at green lights in the empty early-morning streets more times than I care to remember. The only thing I regret is that I put a burden on my friends by living with them without paying rent.

That was all context also. I hope that it didn’t come off too self-righteous. I know that it must have at least a little because I happen to be feeling very self-righteous right now. All of that text was a set-up to the real subject of this blog. I understand that my struggle is not unique, everyone suffers etc. I hope that I was able to convey a sense of my experience without attempting to invoke anyone’s pity or make any one else feel badly in any way. Fuck you if I did, you could have stopped reading at any time (I’m sure most of you already have).

Anyway, my grandmother that raised me has a son who feels that I got all the good things that he never had. He feels abandoned by his mother because my addict mom got all the attention when they were kids and I got all the attention when she turned out to be a shit parent. He was raised by the same two people that I was, and in fact it is my understanding that our horrible monster of a father figure was less jazzed about boxing children when my uncle was under his care. It seems to be a passion he discovered as he got older. Yay for me.

So despite his and my common experience of being raised in this hellish mess of a household–because let’s face it, just because grandpa got more punchy doesn’t mean he wasn’t always a piece of shit asshole–my dear uncle assumes that I am some sort of Pikenees-person, pampered and privileged.

When I bought the car I currently own out of my own student loan money, he was on the phone to my grandma in what seemed like hours, asking for her to pay several thousand for him (a grown man) to get his entire house re-carpeted because I (a college student) got a new car. He refused to believe that I was capable of buying a car for myself and continues to tell his children that I’ve always gotten everything I ever wanted, that my college was paid for and that the only reason I am successful today is because I got everything he (and they) never had.

And then he calls me, sweet as pie, and tells me how impressed he is with me, how he wonders how I have accomplished so much in my young life, “I mean if I knew your secret…”

At first, I would start telling him about my 12-step program because in my mind, it is probably the thing most responsible for my sanity. But he doesn’t want to hear about it, he’s waiting for me to break down and admit that I got everything and he got nothing. Yeah, I got all the punches in the head, I got all the hiding in the yard waiting for that bastard to move to another part of the house so I could sneak into my room. I got all the feeling really inadequate with all the other kids and their money and parents that loved them, and I got all of the waking up with silverfish in my hair because I lived in a fucking garage! (No offense Kate, a garage is better than a street corner. It’s just that it did have silverfish in it sometimes.)

Dear uncle, I’m sorry that you couldn’t care for your children because you never fucking grew up and I’m sorry that you’re experiencing sibling rivalry with someone 25 years your junior. I’m very sorry that you have decided to live in my shadow but please stop telling your children that I am some sort of princess. They never met the man that raised us. Only we know what he’s really like. You telling them that my sweet grandparents just threw money and love down on me is completely wrong, and you know that.

And don’t try to deny it, or why else would my cousin call my grandma and complain that I had college paid for and he doesn’t? Where would he get that delusion except from your lying mouth? Now your son has one more reason for being an unaccomplished loser drifter just like you. Now your child can lay around and do nothing all the while thinking that he is unable to care for himself.

Thank God I got nothing, because by the time I was his age if I wanted a place to lie around and be lazy in, it was called the motherfucking sidewalk. Thank God I had no parents because if I’d had you all up in my ears, telling me to blame someone else for your shitty parenting, I’d probably be just as whiny and entitled as your dough faced brat.

Even if I was the debutante that you think I am, that’s no reason to blame a child for your own children’s lack of support. Why is it that so many people just think that things should be handed to them, and when they’re not, they whine and cry about how unfair it is? No wonder you’re a failure. It’s just sad you’re making your kid into one too.

Dear cousin, you seem to be a somewhat level-headed, creative young person. I’m sorry that you think I’m a spoiled brat. I feel the same way about you. However, whatever we think of each other is irrelevant, as I hope to never have to deal with you after our grandmother passes away (god forbid, but we all know she’s not getting any younger). It does seem to me that I at least owe you this much: I put myself through private college in Orange County, Ca. I was able to live indoors the whole time except for the aforementioned three nights in the car. I graduated in four years and I now have a job I love and a decent paycheck for someone my age (24). If you choose to think that I was unable to do this on my own, then you will also think that you are unable to do this on your own. This is untrue. Please get a job and learn to support yourself, you’ll be much happier for it. Goodbye.

So… this is about to get really lame. Stop reading if you’re tired of hearing about my stupid momma drama. I’m hoping that this won’t just be another of the millions of poor me, I cut my self and the sadness pours out of me, LJ-style pity-fests, so here goes nothing.

Monday my mom called me, and if you know me, you know that I haven’t really talked with her since May of 07. After years of trying to be a good daughter and have loving compassion for her as a child of god despite her pill addiction and various other crippling, untreated personality disorders I decided that the only way to be a good daughter to her while still preserving my self respect was to take a break from her. Well, she never really understood the meaning of the word “no,” so she continues to call me every so often, much to my distress. While this will probably sound crazy to all you normal people out there, it makes very specific sense to me and probably will to you if you are lucky enough to have a chronically lying, manipulative addict for a mother like myself (and if you do, God bless you and thank you for not shooting yourself in the head).

Anyway, I recently moved from Anaheim (see Seven Years with Good Rent) to Hawthorne-surprisingly without a rent raise BTW-to be closer to work. I chose not to tell her I was moving, and not to tell her when I moved and not to give her my new address. Not so much because I mind her having these things, but really because I still don’t want to talk to her, and I see no need for her to have this information. So much for that.

So on Monday, I get a message from her that her crazy money hungry grifter of a fake Hindu holy man is coming to Hawthorne “I believe that’s the town you moved to” and would I like to come listen to this wack-job promise me eternal whatever the fuck I want for the low low price of $500 + every paycheck I’ll earn after he ropes me in + my estate after I die, especially if I am rich and old. Every normal person who’s reading this is probably just thinking ’she’s in a cult, it’s what they do.’ First, let me just say: aren’t cult leaders supposed to discourage their members from family contact? The one good thing about my mother being in a cult is that this fuck could keep her locked up in his fake ashram and far away from me. I’ll bet he knows she’s insane and has her calling me in the hopes that I’ll hire a team of anti-cult activists in a van to kidnap her and take her off his hands. No deal swami gimmi monie, no fucking deal at all.

Back to the facts. The facts which are this: The only important part of that message is the part where she lets me know that she knows what city I live in despite the fact that I did not tell her this thing. Remember when I said that I really don’t mind her having my address? I kind of don’t, but now I actually do, because she can’t just have my address and take solace in the fact that someone in this family is still dumb enough to communicate with her tongue chewing, toxic, carcass (Grandma, I’m looking at you-you’re a sweet old lady, but you’re letting the wolf in). She has to call me and lie through her teeth about something which she knows I care nothing for, all the while trusting that her secret mom-code will worm it’s way out of the phone speaker and into my brain like a fungus of anger and guilt. It totally worked.

So now I’m obsessed with the concept of her baffling ability to get under my skin a full year and a half after I decided that the door was closed, that the deal was done, and that she wasn’t allowed inside my fucking head again. She’s back like a cockroach, shitting and reproducing behind the stove of my subconscious, eating away at my mental property value shit by shit. Why do I do this?! Why is it that I absolutely lack the ability to be corporeal when faced with the succubus that is my mother and she’s not even here?

A co-worker had to point out to me that I didn’t have to listen to her voicemail. To be honest, it never occurred to me not to. Here I just opened the door and said “please do come in, vampire queen, tear my heart out and eat it, shit it out and jam it back into my gaping, bloody chest wound. Can I take your coat?” What is so important that this woman has to say to me that I can’t hear it from somebody else faster and more accurately?

I don’t know what’s worse, the idea that this is the relationship that I get to have with my mother who used to be a real person, and not this cliche sack of nastiness, or the fact that I’ve done this to myself. I hold the only key into my mind and heart and I give it to her every fucking time. I don’t have to listen to a word she has to say. If there is anyone alive in this world who has lost the ability to command my attention, it should be her, and yet, I waste my time thinking about her intent, her process, her cruel and selfish actions. Why do I do it, why do I open the door like this? I guess I really have to know that every time she’s going to fuck with my head, I have to test the oven to see if it’s still hot, every single time.

The good thing that comes out of this for me is that next time I’ll be less likely to listen to the message, and the next time I’ll be even less likely than that. I think I just have to know a thing a hundred percent. I have to be sure that the mom that I knew from when she was sober; the good, loving woman that I trusted and cared about, who I learned from and looked to for guidance and comfort is completely dead. And no matter if I answer the phone or don’t, if I listen to a thousand messages from her or I never hear from her again, that trust is broken. I guess sometimes it’s better for me to check the message, just to be sure than to never check the message and think that I could have seen the person I loved again, if only for a little bit. But the truth is that there’s no romantic come-back. There were only 9 years of her life where she wasn’t a miserable cunt and just because I was there for them doesn’t mean anything now. I have a life that I cherish, that I built from practically nothing, and I can’t let the shadow of her addiction, of her depression and desperation cast itself over what I’ve worked so hard to carve out for myself in an otherwise dark and uncaring world. It’s sad that she’s such a mess, but I can’t fall apart because of it

If you managed to slog through all that I hope it was entertaining enough. I tried to make it at least a little bit funny in the middle even if it got pretty sad at the end.

I was raised without religion. I understand that my grandmother was raised an atheist, as in “this family does not believe in God” type of organized atheism. She just didn’t take a stand one way or the other with me because she wanted me to have my own opinion, and she opposed my Mexican grandparents when they wanted to baptize me in the catholic church.

There were times when I hated the fact that I wasn’t religious, just because it was one more thing that set me and my crazy family apart from the rest of the Country, and I felt I was already different enough. Now I’m glad that she didn’t force religion onto me. I’ve seen how it messed with my friends and I’m already messed up enough.

I did go to Sunday school with my best friend sometimes and I remember once there was a work sheet handed out that had this scenario: “Emily’s mommy is in the hospital. Emily prayed really hard for her mom to get better and God made her better. In response to God’s kindness, Emily should A. Go have fun with her mom, god brought her back for a reason B. Go straight to church and pray to God to thank him” C and D were obviously wrong. I answered A, probably because the picture of A was Emily smiling in a park or something with her mom and B was Emily all alone in a dark, empty, church. I was told I was wrong, and of course I objected because it was stupid that God would want a little girl to be alone in a church while her sick mom was unable to spend some of her (possibly) last moments with her child. I was incensed and there was some sort of fight, which is when I decided that Christians are morons.

I was probably more effected by it since my own mom was indisposed (read: streets homeless drug addict) and I came to the conclusion that if there was a god that would give her back to me, that meant that he could have done that the whole fucking time she was gone, and that he wouldn’t have ever had to take her away in the first place, and that meant that he was just playing with me like you would play with a cat with a string except that instead if a cat I was a little girl and instead of a string, it was my mom who I hadn’t yet learned to hate and distrust and who I worshiped and who left me with my grandma and a douche bag that hit me so she could continue to live a life unfettered by the responsibilities of parenthood.

Needless to say, I was violently atheist for a few years early in my tweens/teens, only to realize that I hated the christian god so much it was like a religion in its own right, and I calmed down a little bit.

Around this time (12/13) my mom was around and she was really into eastern religion. And by that I mean to say she would appropriate the most attractive parts of foreign spiritualist traditions, claim that they were without the faults of the judeo-christian traditions and use the bullshit tropes of said vague spiritualist amalgamation in order to justify misbehavior and self-righteousness.

It seemed like a good idea, so I did the same until about age 15/16 when I began to notice how any structured belief system could lead to hypocrisy and moronic behavior, not just judeo-christian ones. I came to realize that there were bastards in spiritualism the same as in christianity and moved away from eastern spiritualism, and towards a stark theory of ethics, built on evidence, examination and conclusion.

Later on around 18, after my mom went back to drugs and I moved into Kate’s garage, and found myself struggling with how to treat a woman who was a good mom for at least 7 years of my tweens and teens, until she left AA, and everything fell apart. After years of fighting and resentment, we had finally got a good relationship, and then she started to say little things, that wormed their way into my head because I trusted her completely. She told me she was worried about how I would be able to support myself as an adult. She criticized the things I was most proud of. Because I wasn’t expecting anything, because I had thought that we were fine, that I was fine, she wore my self esteem down to where I was an A student, high achiever etc who thought that I couldn’t do the simplest task by myself since I was such a moron. I felt like I couldn’t make logical conclusions, that I had no ethical basis for valuing myself. I couldn’t conceive of a life where my mother wasn’t cell for cell a part of me.

At that point, I needed something that would be a constant in my life even when I was completely lost. Being in a 12 step program myself, I had a ‘higher power’ but this is when it really came into being more tangible to me than vague. I felt that not only was there a power greater that myself, but it cared for me specifically and wanted me to get out from under the depression and self doubt I found myself in. It had love for me like my own parents never would or could.

This worked until after college graduation when I realized that everything I had worked so hard for and felt so intensely about was for shit and I had an english degree and 40k in college loan debt with no job prospects at all, with little hope of them being in a related field.

I managed to get a job in my field, but it paid me less than I needed to be able to pay my bills. I felt like a failure. What little savings I had was going down the drain while I worked at a dead end company with no sign of an upturn. I wondered what this could mean, asked myself why I had even bothered to go to college. It wasn’t fun for me like it was for so many of my more privileged classmates. I worked all the time, slept very little and ate shitty food. By the time college was over, there wasn’t much left of me and I badly needed to slow down. I was driving an hour each way when gas prices were over $4 a gallon, then working as a tutor after work and on the weekends. I was totally drained, lost, and convinced that college had been a mistake. Then a man I looked up to, who I felt was an example of the type of high-achieving self made individual I would want to grow into killed himself. That combined with the debt, and the perceived failure of my young life left me feeling completely abandoned by a god I thought had cared for me. I wondered what the purpose was to life if not achievements, money, friends and family. I realized that it had to be something else that I didn’t think I possessed.

Looking back, I was right where I needed to be. I had lived my entire life chasing one hollow, materialistic token after another, thinking each time that ‘this one’ would be the one to fix the massive list of shit that’s wrong with me. If I just proved I was smart enough, I wouldn’t feel so stupid, if I could just prove that I was worthwhile, I wouldn’t feel so worthless. And of course, each thing I did was good for awhile, but the glory faded because the truth is that when a person feels like that, nothing is enough, nothing ever will be enough because the problem isn’t quantifiable. I needed to be enough for me, by myself with shit or without it, sane or insane, educated or ignorant, attractive or repulsive etc. There had to be an inherent value inside of me, and while it was nice to believe in a higher power that believed I had value, I needed to believe I had value directly, completely and without hesitation.

My relationship with my higher power is much more quiet than it was in college, maybe even subdued. Maybe I don’t feel like I need my god as much as I did then, or maybe I feel like it’s not as artificial as it was. Either way, I think that people forget that with or without God, horrible things will happen, nothing is sacred (pun intended). The advantage that I feel I have is that I at least feel like god is a constant for me. When everything is different, when there’s no frame of reference for me, I have a god that is always nearby. My belief in a higher power is a good companion in hard times and good ones, but during the hard times I also have to keep hold of my self worth, and the knowledge that I do have inherent value, independent from anything I will ever do, be, say, or feel.

I went to Night Traffic Court for doing a California roll right turn on a red light, and it was boring so I decided what would make it less boring was to let you all peek into the window of misery and despair that is Night Traffic Court.


4:30 PM - At traffic court
4:35 PM - Girl in front of me at the traffic court line is staring at everything like it’s covered in shit. It’s traffic court, it sucks, get over it
4:50 PM - Country dough face in cheap shoes, jean skirt and water polo shirt listens to ipod, stares out into space
4:52 PM - I got all claustrophobic and tried to leave through the emergency exit. It buzzed at me.
5:10 PM - Cell phones are not allowed to be in the traffic courtroom so I am writing this in my moleskin to be transcribed later.
5:10-5:25 - Q&A with the bailiff. Don’t try to explain. Plead guilty, not guilty or a third thing I forgot. Baliff is not a good teacher. He doesn’t repeat the question and he does not answer loud enough. Most of this is lost on me
5:27 PM - I can’t tell if the Spanish section is better off because they get to ask questions of the translator, or worse off because they don’t get to ask questions of the bailiff.
5:28 PM - Court clerks, bailiffs and translator chat and socialize, waiting for the judge to come in.
5:28 PM - Nobody else is listening to their ipod, not even country dough face. I decided to turn mine off. Never know what’ll offend a judge, especially a night traffic court judge.
5:28 PM - I have a feeling this will not be over at 6PM. Do you think I could be held in contempt of court for sleeping?
5:29 PM - Court is now in session
5:29 PM - The judge looks like a nice old guy. Says that he’ll probably slash fines, unless you asked for your fine to be slashed, then you’ll probably get whatever you already got. Tells us that there are two kinds of people that don’t get on well in his courtroom and they are unreformed multi-offenders and people who ask for their fines to be slashed. He also hates it when people don’t get up as soon as he calls their name. Like I said, a nice old guy.
5:29 PM - I am convinced the clock has stopped.
5:30 PM - In consideration of the judge’s advanced age, I have taken my lip ring out.
5:30 PM - Wherein we learn that the judge prefers to be called sir, and will take offense if he is not. This is no time for hippie egalitarianism.
5:32 PM - Judge orders a 16 year old ticketed for underage smoking to write him a 5 page essay on the dangers of cigarettes in the hopes that he’ll “knock that silliness off.” Also references the activity of ‘camping with your father’ in his lecture to the boy. Not to be judgmental, but I have a feeling that mini-hulk here has never been camping with his father, if he even knows who that is.
5:34 PM - Judge gets sassy with the first douche to ask for a slashed fine. “This is not a Burger King, sir.” Go judge, it’s your birfday…
5:40 PM - I notice that the judge is dismissing every single photo enforcement ticket that comes across his desk. This continues the rest of the night. Go judge.
5:41 PM - Man ticketed for “driving on the wrong side of the road and without a license.” The entire courtroom laughed.
5:44 PM - A lot of the Spanish speakers don’t have licenses.
5:53 PM - Every time he slashes a fine, he says “It was supposed to be X, it’s going to be Y. That’s a bargain”
6:00 PM - I’m up
6:15 PM - I got my ticket cut in half! two-seventy something looks so much prettier than the four-seventy something I was going to be paying.
6:30 PM - Couple in matching khakis clings to each other like they’ve just been thrown into the thunder dome. It’s just night traffic court bitches!
7:00 PM - Waiting around to get my payment plan instated. Boredy bored bored
7:30 PM - Final Outcome: the fine, including processing fees comes out to $313, to be paid in $50 monthly installments over the next 6 months. I’m on my own recognizance to send the money in, I will not get a bill.
7:33 PM - On my way out, I trip on a line separator thingy and the younger bailiff tells me to “watch where you walk.” It’s been a long stressful day, and I’m tired and and it hurts my soul a little bit to chuckle at such a douchey statement as if it was funny, but $200 off a ticket is there to help me forget about my dignity.
10:00 PM - At home, I write out all the checks I’ll be paying, put them in the specially formatted envelopes that the court gave me and clip them to their corresponding page on the calender so I won’t forget to send them on time. I even stamp them. I am the king of this shit right now.

I worked at Blockbuster for almost 2 years in college, and I have a few horror stories from that.


My favorite one happened towards the end of my tenure there, but it was so perfect that it pretty much made me immune to every ass-hat that tried to fuck with my calm, customer service demeanor after that.


It was an incredibly hot so-cal night, and this really, abnormally non-plussed teen girl comes up to me and asks for 9/11, which wasn’t out on DVD at the time. I told her that, and she indicated that 9/11 wasn’t what she was looking for, even though that’s what she asked for, as if it was a burden to her to have to articulate her needs beyond the 4 syllables she’d already graced upon my humble hears. I figure that she probably had a school project that she was not excited about and showed her our fairly impressive set of 9/11 and 9/11 related documentaries, asked if she was fine, she made an affirmative sound and I went back to help the growing line of customers.

Long enough later that I had pretty much forgotten about this foray into the conversational skills of the modern American teenager, a very fat, very agitated woman waddled up to my counter to check out, and when I asked her if she found everything alright-as per Blockbuster policy-she replied that she did not, and indicated that she was shocked that I could even dress myself in the morning, judging by how stupid and incompetent I appeared to be. I inquired after her disgruntled-ness, and she yelled that I had failed to help her daughter find the proper 9/11 documentary, and that I was obviously a retarded cunt, because anyone who was not a retarded cunt would have been able to show her inarticulate and sulky child the 9/11 documentaries, as I had not done. Ignorantly, I countered that I had showed her daughter the 9/11 documentaries, and she began yelling louder, asked if I was calling her sweet child a liar (how can the girl be a liar when she’s clearly a mute) and created a list of things that were wrong with me, people like me, my clear lack of customer training, as well as the character of the faceless multinational corporation by whom I was employed. At this point, I noticed that, due to the heat, and her current exertions, she was sweating like a basketball player, and as fat drops of sweat rolled down her chins, and jiggled on her neck fat, I noticed that her white t-shit was completely translucent… and she wasn’t wearing a bra. I began to smile. I realized that I had maintained my calm while this fat, jellyroll pig was sweaty, yelling and had her large, long, flat chichis, and dirt brown, 3″ in diameter nips out on display for the entire world. I was almost laughing when I thanked her for her input, asked if she wanted to see the 9/11 documentaries and thanked her again when she told me to eat shit and die, or threatened to have me fired (from my shitty job I hate? oh no, not that!), or some similar angry customer stand-by.

I will never forget that great fat bitch for teaching me the lesson of a lifetime. If someone is yelling at you, you only look stupid if you yell back, but they look like an absolute retard if you maintain your cool and stand your ground.


Thank you, rolly-polly cunt from Anaheim, Ca with waster daughter and husband so deathly silent he didn’t even warrant a mention in this story, your ugly chichis opened my eyes.

Once upon a time, a notebook paper crane befriended a construction paper crane…





…and they fell in love…





…and everything got better, everywhere around them.


I folded the cranes, made the heart out of some post-it and a paper-clip, took a picture and the MS Painted then fuck out of it.