Category: Favorites

May 6, 2013

A Shack of My Own

So this happened:

I think the question we all want to know the answer to is can The @corcoran_group find me a shack to die in?

— Marina Rose Martinez (@Marinaisgo) May 3, 2013

@marinaisgo We’re here for you whenever you’re ready Marina

— Matthew Shadbolt (@Corcoran_Group) May 3, 2013

I was feeling kind of shitty Friday night, so I was marathoning Amy Poehler’s Ask Amy, and this commercial came on which I think is hilarious because Ask Amy is essentially for children.

I’m amused because I was basically sitting in the dark in my underwear, kind of sort of crying about the turn my life has taken and the Gods of the Internet were like “this looks like a woman who needs luxury accommodations quickly and easily.” Like, I know that it was probably just reading all the cookies I got from ogling rich people’s houses on Curbed, or however that works, but I thought it was hilarious, so I tweeted about it.

Good to know that whatever fate this shitshow deals me, I will at least have the support of whoever runs the twitter for an upscale Manhattan real estate broker. That’s all that really counts, isn’t it?

We also saw Iron Man 3 this weekend. I’m already guilty about spending good money on a movie when I still don’t know if I’m about to get laid off, but I feel like sometimes you just need to escape into an action film. They’re so full of innocent hope that the impossible could just be possible if we were only wonderful enough. I think a person needs that when things are difficult.

You know, sometimes you just have to drag your iron man through the snow for a little bit (don’t trip, it’s in the trailer), but you’ll be back on your feet soon enough. I know Tony Stark is a super genius and I’m just a fat whore but we do actually have some things in common. For example, we both suffer from insomnia. We’re both brunettes, and we’re both to some extent fictional characters. And No, I’m not going to think of the emotional implications of believing I could prevent bad things if I were just smart enough, cool enough, or possessing of enough firepower. That’s not what were doing right now.

Anyway, no spoilers but my one major complaint about any movie with women in it is how the writers so frequently use the irrational behavior and/or demands of female characters instead of actual writing in order to advance the plot. Can we please fucking stop this? For real, Pepper Potts is just a screaming plot device this entire film. If it weren’t for her, the movie would have been great. And it’s not like it would have taken that long to figure out some other, better motivation for half the shit Tony does than “well, my girlfriend said…” It pisses me off so much. If you don’t want spoilers, don’t click this link behind which I talk about my growing hatred for Pepper Stupid Potts. I can’t believe she’s named after my dog.

Who’s the best Pepper?

P.S. You probably noticed that I still don’t know if I’m going to get laid off. To my knowledge I am still employed thus far, and in fact may be employed for this entire week without knowing if it’s me on the list. Since I already had some really great getting laid off contingency plans, as well as some not getting laid off contingency plans, hearing that I may not know for at least one more week was basically the worst news I could have gotten. One more week of not knowing and not being able to do anything but impotently apply for jobs that never call me back. I’d be really frustrated if I weren’t almost completely numb. I can’t possibly deal with this stress any longer.

May 3, 2013

Lists of Plans

Remember that bit of icon work I showed you guys on Wednesday? Well, here’s what it turned into:

I’m bothered by the hair and the lack of eyebrow, although lack of eyebrow is really an illusion caused by the hair. So I guess I’m only bothered by the hair. I would have given it more time, but I had an urgent need to get that done today because I feel very strongly that I may not have a job at end of day today. Technically the word is supposed to come down on Monday, but I’m taking a personal day to go for my annual check-up on Monday, so they may just do it now so I don’t have to drive all the way back on Tuesday.

Either way I might come by Monday anyway just to see who’s in the bar on the ground floor.

I called our Employee Assistance Program (kindly provided to help with this transition) and the nice lady on the other end of the line told me I should make a list of things I’ll finally have time to do if I get laid off.

Clean the living room.
Sit next to the beach.
Avoid traffic.
Deal with the fact that my grandmother’s getting older and will probably need a higher level of care in this, the last stage of her life (fun!)
Watch all the last seasons of the Netflix shows I have abandoned.
Drum up freelance work. Or any work, really.
Be extremely careful with my health as I will no longer have insurance.
Consider selling everything we own, shipping the things we really can’t part with, and moving up to the Oregon Coast where life will surely be better, or at least no worse than it is here in L.A.
Where I will contract Seasonal Affective Disorder and sink into a depression.
Or maybe I can take advantage of the (much) lower cost of living to finally make my money how I’ve always wanted to: as an independent contractor.
And once I make enough money, I can get some other people in on this thing and have a business.
Where I’ll be wildly successful, and start my own empire from the Oregon coast.
And Ben and I can raise amazing children to be conscientious citizens and not the totally spoiled and shitty brats they would have turned into down here.
Even if they might be a little bit racist from having never seen a person of color in their lives,
they’ll still vote Democrat, and that’s what matters.
Or I could turn to food,
become even more morbidly obese
and
Die alone

See? The world is full of possibilities.

Anyway, please remind me on Monday day to ask the doctor for a year’s worth of birth control and allergy meds because without those two things I will be a completely useless ball of snot and pain.

May 2, 2013

The Falsehood of Strength

This is the post I’ve been trying, and failing to write for the last few days. Due to some upcoming lay-offs at work, I’ve been even more stressed out than usual. At first I wasn’t sleeping at all, then when I did manage to sleep I had nightmares. I feel pretty stupid about it. I mean, my life has taken some really shitty turns and I’m afraid of an idiot little issue like being unemployed? It’s all a bit melodramatic, even for me.

I used to have terrible nightmares as a kid. Then when I was about 9 I realized that everything bad that would probably ever happen to me had already happened. I’d already been beaten, neglected, and my mom’s boyfriend tried to straight up murder me. What could the monsters in my dreams possibly do that my own parents hadn’t already made a reality? So I stopped having nightmares. As an adult I know how much worse it could have been, but the childish assumption that my bad luck had peeked in the third grade kept me nightmare free until college.

I managed to get though my mom’s relapse, grandma’s bypass surgery, her cancer, homelessness, and the stress of freshman orientation until I started having dreams about the security guards dragging me off campus shouting insults at me while everyone stood and stared.

I was so afraid to be found out for the imposter I really was. I had lived through the shit, but a private university in Orange County broke me in the first month. I had never been anywhere as nice as that campus. The groundskeepers pulled every single flowering plant and replaced them with new ones at a rate of once a week so that everything was constantly in bloom. The level of decadence in that place fucking terrified me.

So I had nightmares that I didn’t belong, and nightmares that I couldn’t perform, and nightmares that I would be caught and called out for trying to fit in somewhere I clearly was not meant to be. I’m sure it’s not a coincidence that the nightmares I’m having about this lay off are pretty much the same. Straight down to being dragged away by security.

For the last year there have been things about this company that I just don’t understand, and it has been a struggle to try and fit in with the new order. One more time, it feels like everybody’s speaking a language I never learned, and to a certain extent they are. The atmosphere has changed, and not in my favor. I’ve tried to go along to get along, but that’s never been a good look on me and it’s wearing me out. I used to wake up excited to do my job. That sounds stupid, but I loved it. Even when it was hard, I knew we were doing good stuff and all I wanted was to be a part of it. Now, I stick out like a sore thumb. I come home exhausted, but I feel like I haven’t made anything worthwhile so I don’t sleep. Instead I just wait in my house until it’s time to go back. All the energy I manage to scrape together in those restless hours gets poured, not into creation, but into maintenance and modification. Not of work, but of myself. It takes a lot of effort to keep my head down when all it wants to do is pop up and help.

I’m miserable. I’ve been miserable, but I just told myself that it was an adjustment period after an historic event, and we’d be back again. But we won’t and I won’t. I feel almost heartbroken. I loved this job. I had a really good time, but things have changed and I’ve been trying to get out in different ways for a couple of months. Then all of a sudden (actually not so sudden for anybody who can math), lay offs start next Monday. I’m terrified to be on the list and I’m terrified to be not on the list. Getting asked to leave, however unrelated to my personal abilities or performance, is never anybody’s idea of a good exit.

Which brings me back to my nightmares. I may know in my mind that everything will work out, I may have this experience of feeling like something is an end when really it’s necessary for growth. But here in the real world, I haven’t been unemployed since I was 14. Violence, poverty, hunger, all those things I’ve dealt with. Shit most people are afraid of doesn’t scare me. Because I’ve walked through that fire. But this normal world of employment, unemployment, performance, and evaluation is completely foreign to me. What doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger in the face of that which failed to kill you. That’s a skill you have to develop in multiple circumstances throughout your life before it becomes useful.

April 29, 2013

The Cost of Living

I see a lot of poor people like myself really upset about their student loans. And sometimes I think to myself that I live in a shitty apartment, we can’t afford to take vacations or buy all the nice things we’d like because the money that would pay for those nice things is going to student loans. But I have a very strong suspicion if Ben and I hadn’t gone to college, all that income we’re currently paying back in student loans would probably not be coming in in the first place. We both work jobs that, for whatever stupid reason, require a degree to even interview for.

I’m not saying you need a degree to be comfortable in life, but if you have determined that you want to do the kind of work that, just or unjust, requires a degree to do it, you have to weigh the cost of that degree against your desire to work in your chosen field. Maybe it’s unfair that this cost is higher to the poor, but what in life is fair? So much time is wasted in sitting around looking at other people’s outsides and wondering why it’s so easy for them, or how they have it so good. The answer to that question is always that they don’t. When we judge other people based on random impressions, we’re looking through a keyhole at a twenty story building. It’s going to provide some clues as to what’s inside, but it’s nowhere near enough information for a real judgement.

In this life you will take damage. You’re going to graduate with more in debt than you’ll make the first two or five, or fifteen years after graduation, you’re going to love people who can’t or won’t love you back, and at several points along the way you will load all your hopes and dreams onto a vehicle only to watch it crash and burn in increasingly more complex and impressive ways. But this is better than the alternative.

If you don’t want college debt, make other choices. You don’t have to do something just because everybody else did. Weigh your options, make your decision, take your knocks. You’ll find we’re all just working to gather what resources we have available and figure out what we’re building with them. It’s a construction project that none of us will ever finish. It was left to us, and we will leave it to others. It has a lot of problems, but it’s also pretty impressive.

As usual, there’s a lot of stuff going on and I’m extremely worried about my job situation. But it’s really only the most obvious feature of a problem I’ve been working on for awhile now. I keep taking apart all the pieces of my life and laying them out like they’ll tell me something. As if somewhere there’s a recipe that calls for one English degree, 6 years of marketing experience, fifteen years of 12 steps, significant childhood trauma and a really strong conviction to be more than the sum of one’s parts. Overachieving gutterpunk cake with dick cheese frosting. But for all the times I pour my guts out and put them back in, I’m still the same weird fat bastard I’ve always been.

I know what I have, I know what I want, and I know who I am, and yet I’m no closer to knowing what to do than I’ve ever been. But I guess that’s kind of my style. I tend to careen through everything by the seat of my pants, telling everyone who will listen that I know exactly what I’m doing when I really only have the vaguest outline of a clue. I mean, that makes me sound reckless. But it usually turns out OK. In some ways, not having a plan is superior in that it makes you flexible to new opportunities.

So I don’t have an exact plan. When was that ever a requirement for fun or success?

April 26, 2013

How To Know If Your Boyfriend Loves You

This was one of the suggested search topics I might want to cater to according to my SEO keyword thingy. Finding out if your boyfriend loves you is a simple three step process.

1. Ask him.
2. Listen to his answer.
3. Go on with your life.

If you have the type of boyfriend who you can’t trust to answer you honestly, you have way more problems than love can fix.

There is so much nonsense out there that tries to act like love is the be all and end all of human connection and that’s shit. You love things and people that are bad for you all the time. I still love my abusive mother. That’s complete idiocy! That’s like loving the bear that mauled you.

Nobody does this with any other impulse. I was hungry, so I ate some nails, yeah I know nails aren’t edible, but I was really hungry you guys.

You see what I mean?

Anyway, goodnight.

April 23, 2013

Share the Hate

I’m not having a good day.

Rather than talk about that, let me introduce my new Tumblr project: The Hate Report. I’m collecting quotes and stories that have to do with hateful-ass shit that people say to each other. I think it’s doing pretty good, I got 4 submissions in the first day. I hope to keep this going, so if you have any hateful memories, please feel free to share. The more hateful the better. Nothing is too much, although I will be starring out portions of slurs.

I also bought this tonight. It has no reviews, and subsequently no stars, but I thought I might as well give it a go. It beats playing Candy Crush. At least productivity-wise. It actually seems quite a bit more boring and far less forget-yout-troubles-ey than Candy Crush. I’ll let you know if it helps me. In any way.

Also also, we just watched the Odan episode of Star Trek the Next Generation. What the actual fuck, Beverly? (BTW, this is the one where Beverly falls in love with a Trill who’s host body dies and gets temporarily implanted into Riker if you haven’t seen it before.) It’s totally cool that you totally hog-headed your nominal brother, never mind how Riker might feel about such an arrangement, but if there’s boobs involved, you’re suddenly all cold fish? Ugh.

April 12, 2013

Clothing That Looks Like Vaginas

The other day Ben and I happened to see a woman wearing boots like these:

Ben: It looks like she stuck her foot in a vagina.
Me: Yeah, and she came away with a little bit.

There’s more of them.

Let’s not even talk about these:

April 10, 2013

Mr. White Man

I was walking in to work this morning, listening to the music on my phone and Brother Ali’s The Travelers came on. If you’re wondering how a person could make a serious version of Accidental Racist that still has flow and a beat, here it is.

Lyrics:

Shackles are heavy on the wrist
Stacked like sardines, belly of a ship
Live in your own piss and shit and being seasick
Cracked across your back with a thick leather whip
Salt water burns through your wounds
Women are starving with babies in their wombs
On your hands and knees trying to cry God please
Exhausted your voice is too weak to speak
Neighbors and strangers are dying beside you
Their decaying bodies you’re tied to
Cling tight to your fight for survival
Wonder if your tribe will ever try to find you
Arrive somewhere strange, the air is cold
You can see your breath and you’re barely clothed
Your first time ever seeing snow
Sleeping next to it on a hard dirt floor
Go from can’t seeing see in the morning to can’t see at night
You work till your hands bleed white
Your native language you can’t recite
Murdered on sight if you try to read or write
When you bend all of your life and can’t see the light
It get’s painful to stand upright
Right?
And your eyes bear the sight of your wife
Being being pulled from your shack and brutalized at night
You only taste joy when babies are born
Which becomes an occasion to mourn
Separated, torn from your celebrating arms
Then as quickly as they came they were gone
Sold away from your farm this is all they’ve known
Never heard stories from home
They forget your name
The culture from which you came
Teaching it’ll get you slain.
Praying to your god will get you the same and tortured to near death lest you complain
No choice left you sing through the pain and pray that your suffering wasn’t in vain
End of your chain, end of your life
Your grandchildren born with no end is sight
So you muster up all of your might
And your last breath comes out…fight
This is actually true
Now stop and imagine that’s you
Now stop imagining unravel the truth and ask just who is it happening to
Everything that the passenger do
The driver experience too
So if humanity is one
Then we all get burned when it’s hell that we’re traveling through

(Chorus)
You’ve got to save my soul
Put me back together make me whole
Said we don’t know which way to go
Take my hand and place me on that road

(Verse 2)
Trapped in a history we don’t understand
Can’t remember how this blood got on our hands
Never been taught about the ugly past
Expecting God not to punish man
Our ancestors brought us control
We realize now that the cost was our soul
Got me feeling like an empty shell
Prison guard that inherited a cell
I’m desperate to find my place
Emptiness lies behind my face
Flowers only die in a vase
A heart only dies encased in a lie we call race
I hear the song but I can’t sing along
Something’s really wrong I can’t put my finger on
Terrified to admit it’s wrong
Cause I’m hiding in the ruins of a legacy that still lives on
Our identity is hinged upon the miserable myth we’ve been caught since we’re born
Until we mend what was torn
The debt of a sin lingers long after the vicitim’s moans
This is actually true
Now stop and imagine that’s you
Now stop imagining unravel the truth
And ask just who is it happening to
Everything that the passenger do the driver experience too
So if humanity is one then we all get burned when it’s hell that we’re traveling through

(Chorus)

Brother Ali is someone you should familiarize yourself with because he is a rare find: Someone who is positive, progressive and political without sounding shitty.

As far as Accidental Racist goes, now that everybody’s got their giggles out people seem to be divided over weather to pan Brad and J for making such a corny mess or break out the participant ribbons. I mean, they did come all this way to join the conversation about race in America. Their song was bad, and their ham handed dad-like awkwardness didn’t help. But should they feel bad? I mean, how many people listened to that song and didn’t see a thing wrong with it? I’m not sure, but we know of at least two.

On the one hand, bigotry is far from over (honestly, may never be over) and Coke commercial platitudes aren’t doing anybody any favors. On the other hand, this may be somebody’s introduction to the discussion, and the welcome wagon seems to be packed with snarky academics with itchy critics fingers.

I feel like there needs to be some kind of progressive scale of engagement over here. Ok yeah, this shit pretends that the centuries old tension between majority and minority in this country can be solved with a simple acknowledgement that one man’s do-rag is a other man’s cowboy hat (tactfully ignoring that both headgear choices are fucking stupid looking.) We’re so used to extremely schooled apathy couched in unwavering expertise that when we see this earnest but doomed attempt it’s difficult to move past mockery or moralizing.

I’m the kind of person that loves to see other people lose their shit. Not because it makes me better than them, but because it proves I’m not worse. I am an awkward mess, and not in the Zooey Deschanel way. In the awkward fucking mess way. So Accidental Racist is kind of a steaming pile. Good. We all make shitheaps, and not just sometimes. We make shitheaps constantly. It’s the human condition. Why do you think we all get so excited when one of us finally had an excellent couple of minutes and makes something actually really good?

The college educated, or more likely college attending public will eat race politics for breakfast and shit feminist post-modernist analysis mid morning between their Psychology of the Romantic Poets lecture and the bi-monthly meeting of the Progressive Atheists for Meaningful Action. Clearly, this ballad is not for them. But Accidental Racist is more than just an awareness booster for the unwashed, ungraduated masses. What I, an educated middle class Latina have in common with my working class sisters is so miniscule it’s basically statistically irrelevant. Because of racism, we are tied together politically and socially, which is important, but that working class Latina can relate far more easily to a working class white person or another working class person of color despite the cultural differences.

The poor are the most powerful lobby our nation has, and so far they don’t work together because of cultural and racial divides. What if this shitty song turned out to be the banner that marked the turning point in American history from race warfare to class warfare? Even as our economy recovers, low earners continue to get trampled*. What if, instead of allowing themselves to be distracted by artificial cultural divisions along racial lines, America’s poor finally stood together for once? Honestly, I’m cool with a thousand Accidental Racists if that would be the case.

*That article is sort of doomsday-ey, but the links seem legit and the statistics are far-reaching.

April 3, 2013

Dating Sim and Janis Joplin

So I’ve started planning my dating sim for this weekend’s jam. Here’s what I have so far:

Possible titles: Wrench in the Works, Stool Pigeon Heart, A Con Game Called Love, For Love and Money, Can’t Heist Me Love, The Brotherhood of the Heart, The Last Job, Retirement Money, Trail of Fire.

Plot summary: You are an accomplished thief with a crack team about to hit the biggest score of your life. You know that the decisions you make could land you in early retirement or an early grave, but the one eventuality you couldn’t have planned for is the eventuality of the heart.

Characters:
Player – Weapons and tactics, ring leader, idea person. I’m seriously thinking of leaving the gender completely ambiguous.
Milo – Mild mannered old friend and faithful tech guy. He’s been there through thick and thin.
Dax – Flashy, charming face man. Always ready with a compliment and usually with a different lady on his arm every night.
Amy – Ex-Marine demolitions lady. Brassy, crass, and takes no bullshit.

On another note, tonight I’m going to see One Night with Janis Joplin at the Pasadena Playhouse with a few friends, so I’ll tell you about it tomorrow. My grandma’s friend went and according to her it’s all “loud music and flashing lights.” So I think we’ll be pleased. The tickets were a gift to Pepper for graduating from dog school from my grandma’s other friend who was not interested in the flashing lights and loud music show. Since dogs can’t go to the theater, I will be going in her place.

Oh yeah, Pepper graduated dog school this weekend.

To celebrate, she has decided that she is now terrified of her own harness.

Someday. Someday she will be a normal dog.