thank the gods for facebook

my junior year in high school i used to eat a green pepper for lunch every day and these sophmore guys that sat at a table by ours used to stare at me the whole time like they never saw anybody eat a green pepper before. then i would go outside and smoke and they would come outside and stand around awkwardly not smoking because they all played basketball and one of them asked me to homecoming one year and i said NO. i used to call them the starers. anyway this girl that grew up down the street from me just contacted me on facebook to tell me she is now dating one of them. i used to walk home from school with this girl and my sophmore year i dated this guy for like two months just because she liked him and she convinced me to do it so we could all hang out together because she was fat and it wasn't like he was ever going to date her. he is in prison now. anyway i wrote her back and asked said HAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAH WHICH STARER ARE YOU DATING I HOPE IT IS NOT LUKE LEMONS, which is the one that asked me to homecoming, and then i said she should have written me on the 21st because that is the birthday of the guy i let finger me behind a dumpster just so she could live vicariously through me, and if she wrote me on the 21st we could have sent him a card in prison. she wrote me back and told me luke lemons is dead and we can always send dumpster fingerbang a card next year because he is going to be in prison for like 10 more years. LUKE LEMONS IS DEAD? but i thought glorious tow headed rosy cheeked high school athletes never died. MAYBE HE IS STARING AT ME FROM HEAVEN. maybe he is watching me take showers! also, why is it that every year i can still remember dumpster fingerbang's birthday? i can't even remember dave's birthday and he is my best friend. i know it is in september and that is it. dumpster fingerbang's real name is sean, and he is half black and half puertorican and he used to force me to listen to pj harvey. when a black lady and a peurtorican man have a baby what on earth would possess them to name him sean. this is the question i have been asking myself for the past 15 years.

you're right, i'm so stupid, i should have sent the fillings to cash for gold.

seriously how did i not think of that myself. that commercial is only on ten thousand times a day. and i guess people must be super poor now because it is not just on during the day. when you see a cash for gold commercial during prime time viewing hours you are pretty much living during the great depression.

i really hate that commercial. the people on it are so amazed that gold is worth money. YOU MEAN GOLD IS WORTH MONEY??? do they really say that in that commercial, or am i just remembering this wrong because that's what i say every time i see it. i feel like they might really say that because that is how stupid the writers of this commercial think that people are. a four year old knows that gold is worth money.

sign me up to put a bunch of gold in an envelope and stick it in the mail. my mailman steals my mail all the time. mandy sent me a postcard with a man who went blind from art on it and he even stole that. i would have thought the only person who would want that postcard was me, i guess i am not as unique and wonderful as i thought i was. after i am done writing this i am going to write a short film about my mailman having a serious mental dilemma about whether or not he should steal the giant envelope made out to cash for gold.

the number 13

today i got a letter from a guy named jason voorhees. woah! i said. I JUST GOT A LETTER FROM JASON VOORHEES! nobody in my office knew what i was talking about. what is wrong with these people? i had to call the one attorney that wears fingerless gloves to court and put him on speaker so that i could tell him i got a letter from jason because i felt alienated from society due to the people in my office being such idiots. seriously, in a room full of four people more than one of them should know who jason is. didn't a a new friday the 13th movie come out like 20 days ago, are these people not living in the same america that i am living in?

i don't even know what is supposed to be so scary about the number 13. i was born on the 13th so of course it is my favorite number because i am obsessed with myself. i also work on the 13th floor. which is weird now that i think of it, i am not sure if buildings are even supposed to have a 13th floor. is this a dream? AM I EVEN REAL? i guess i am not dreaming because i would definitely be able to tell. in my last dream that i remember i lived in a castle in the middle of the sea and i had a rooster following me around speaking portuguese and in the one before that i was chace crawford. nobody ever works in my dreams, next time i have one i am going to ask somebody where the money comes from, maybe i can get some ideas. actually i don't even know if i have ever seen money in a dream. it is like my dreams are utopia. except for the forty percent of them in which there are dead animal carcasses everywhere and i keep trying to go around them but i can't because they are falling from the sky and growing from the ground. i should ask my psychiatrist what that means.

yes i go to a psychiatrist, mostly because my mom is one of those people who think that everyone in the world needs to go to a psychiatrist. also because i think it is romantic to go there. i will even dress up for it. i don't mean dress up like dress nice, i mean dress up like a character. stilfled fifties woman of means! a pauvre daisy buchannon! alice in wonderland if she was 20! my psychiatrist think i am absolutely delightful. last time i was there i told him that i wanted to believe in heaven and he laughed and told me i was just not stupid enough for that and i was like no shit, right?

rape town

there is a raper on the lose in my neighborhood, great. i will tell you a story. when i was seven years old my mom took me on a tour at the lion house at lincoln park zoo. one of the lady lions started going crazy and the tour guide explained to everyone that the lion had set her sights on me and was performing stalking behaviors. this is how i learned that something about the way i look makes me stand out among a crowd of people as the best one to kill. so i know that if they do not catch this guy he is eventually going to try raping me being that he is hanging around the train i take every day and what not THIS IS SO GREAT, so i decided i was not going to walk anywhere anymore, but then i remembered that i love walking everywhere, so that was a conundrum, don't worry, i solved it, i am now carrying a giant knife around in my purse. that is what the rapist is carrying, so now we are even, there, problem solved. i know that i am prepared because i made luke simulate an attack on me for practice. COME HELP ME PRACTICE HOW I AM GOING TO GUT THE RAPIST. it was luke's idea in the first place that i start carrying knives. being married is truly wonderful.

thank you for making me read this horrible book mom, you must hate me.

i am reading this book called pearl right now, i do not want to read it but my mom gave it to me. my mom gives me lots of books i don't read, but this time she was really excited about it. 'avis wanted to borrow it but i told her NO, i have to give this to erin' she said. it's kind of weird that she still thinks like this because she is constantly trying to give me books she's finished and every time i am like NO, i would not read this EVER. i don't feel bad telling my mom that all the books she likes are shit because when i was like seven i was really into stephen king and she spent the entire year rolling her eyes and telling me i should be reading classic literature and not garbage. anyway now i have to read this book called pearl. when she gave it to me i asked her why it didn't have a seal on it. wait, this book didn't win ANY awards? then i turned it over and saw that it had a review from the christian science monitor. THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR? IS THAT SOME KIND OF A JOKE? anyway i am reading this book now and it is driving me insane. it is pretty much in third person omniscient or whatever, except sometimes the narrator talks to you and says shit like 'what do you think? i think blah blah blah.' it makes me feel like my kindergarten teacher is reading out loud to me. is there such a thing as first person omnisceint? i'm not sure, this book might defy categorization. anyway the most annoying part today was that this girl is in the hospital and she is talking/thinking whatever about her catheter and saying she has a tube stuck in her vagina. um, i thought the catheter goes in your urethra. i guess the urethra is kind of in your vagina? still. aslo the narrator uses the same phrases that the characters use. if you are not a good enough writer to give the characters different voices you should probably write in first person. anyway, the catheter in the vag part whas where i decided this book was one hundred percent annoying. it's about this stupid girl who wants to hunger strike herself to death in ireland for no reason. i hope she dies. i hope she dies so much i had to write it on my envelope/book mark. I HOPE SHE DIES. here, i'll transcribe the whole envelope for you.

I HOPE SHE DIES.

NO, I HOPE THEY ALL DIE.

I HOPE THE STUPID NARRATOR DIES AND THE REST OF THE BOOK CAN BE IN THIRD PERSON.

HOW DOES THE NARRATOR KNOW SO MUCH? IS THE NARRATOR GOD? BARF.

this is the kind of thing i do on the train, write down conversations with myself on envelopes.

my family started cleaning out my uncle's house the other day. because he killed himself like ten months ago, and that is how my family does things, waits around for three hundred and forty days wondering if maybe it will do itself by magic. and this house was not just my uncle's house, this house was also my grandmother's house, so basically a house inhabited by two generations of people who never threw anything away ever. this is where i differ from everybody else in my family, because i will throw anything away. shit, i've probably thrown away money before. the other way i differ from everyone in my family is that i am somewhat capable of planning. which means if i do not go to the house nothing is going to get done because all my dad is going to do is wander around all the rooms looking at shit for two hours and then go home. when we went there the other day i was like IN THE KITCHEN NOW WE ARE GOING TO DO THE KITCHEN and then i attempted to throw away everything in the kitchen. except apparently my dad is into the earth because he set up a recycling box and took everything i threw in the garbage and tried to recycle it. you guys, my dad tried to recycle a waffle iron. this is how it went:
"dad, you can not recycle A WAFFLE IRON"
"sure you can, it's metal. scrap metal!"
"THAT IS NOT HOW YOU DO SCRAP METAL, YOU THROW SCRAP METAL IN THE STREET AND THEN SANFORD AND SON COME PICK IT UP IN THEIR TRUCK, THAT IS HOW YOU DO SCRAP METAL."

my dad also thinks you can recycle CLOTH. i tried to call my mom on the phone to tell on my dad for being stupid. "I'M CALLING MOM" i said. it took me twenty minutes to call her on the rotary dial phone. my mom's phone number is like all eights. if you tried to call 9-1-1 on a rotary dial phone you would probably be raped twice before you got the dispatcher. my mom wasn't even home but during the time i was trying to call her my dad found a jar of sand in the pantry and would not let me throw it away. "but it says miami on the bottom of it!" this is why i told everyone to throw everything away and not look at shit. when you start looking at shit is when you end up with a stupid jar of sand from miami because you think it is so precious that your grandmother brought home a giant jar of sand and labelled it. what the fuck was my grandma even doing in miami??? my dad also saved two giant mason jars of matchbooks. i love how doing things with my family makes me act like i am fucking sixteen years old, and a bitch. my dad asked me if i wanted the pots and pans and i'm like "FOR WHAT," in the snottiest voice ever, "remember how i got married and people gave me pots and pans from france that cost $300 each, NO I DO NOT WANT THESE STUPID POTS AND PANS." if anybody else asked me if i wanted some pots and pans i would probably be like "oh no, i have so many new pots and pans, but thanks for thinking of me!" but my dad asks me this and i act like he asked me if i wanted chlamydia. my dad also tried to save everything for the estate sale. i don't even know what an estate sale is, but i do know that the estate sale lady is not going to want to sell a turkey baster from 1922. "if anybody wanted a turkey baster they would go to target and buy it for one dollar." this is what i told my dad but he thinks there is some kind of market for antique turkey basters i guess. that's what he said. "it's an antique!" i can't wait to see my dad on antiques road show with a turkey baster and a jar of vintage sand.

basically i threw everything away and my dad took everything out of the garbage and i waited until he wasn't looking and threw it all back in there. too bad someone wasn't there filming us because if you watched it high speed it would probaly look like fucking benny hill. something we all agreed we could throw away was a box of GOLD FILLINGS. i opened this box and dropped it on the floor. "WHAT IS THIS???" it was what i thought it was, hundreds of gold fillings. was my grandma a nazi? when my dad agreed to let me throw it away i was stunned into not pressing that issue, which is probably why he did it, he probably dug it out of the garbage when i wasn't looking. i am going to have to tell my mom to be on the lookout for nazi contraband around their house.

i guess i am going to move into this house eventually because it is mine now, my mom is all worried it is going to haunt me. something else stupid that my mom thinks is that my uncle was maybe murdered. i think my whole family thinks this for some reason, they even hired a private investigator. maybe my uncle's ghost will haunt me into solving the crime, then i can star on forensic files.

xoxo

so i woke up this morning and i asked myself DID I DREAM I HAD A THREESOME WITH THESE GUYS FROM GOSSIP GIRL?

because it seemed like i dreamed that, but also like i definitely did not dream that. OH SHIT, I KNOW I DID NOT DREAM I WAS ONE OF THEM, FUCKING THE OTHER ONE OF THEM. oh yes i did. FAGGOTRY! in case you wondered i was the cuter and more boring one in my dream. this is one of those times i thank the fucking gods that i am a girl. if i was a dude i would probably be on the sex offender registry by now. or at least i would be seriously reevaluating my life.

well hello there.

i wonder if it is a problem that i am a seventeen year old sexually confused male in my dreams. actually i wasn't that confused, i think the chuck was kind of confused, but i helped him figure shit out. oh my god i am a latent pederast.

reading

today i was talking to dave at work and i got a text from mandy that john updike died. my first thought was, who cares, because caring when somebody you don't know dies is stupid. i learned that at a young age when kurt cobain died and every loser i went to school with wore black. STOP CRYING ABOUT KURT COBAIN, YOU ARE 12 YEARS OLD. but then i thought more about john updike and i realized that he is one of the only writers i like that is still writing books, like all the time, which even if not every one of them is as good as rabbit run they are still all probably better than whatever else people are writing these days. so i guess that fucking sucks. all of the other writers i like are either dead or they only write a book like every ten years. which really pisses me off because seriously once you're written three or four books how hard can it really be? STOP SLACKING.

i feel like for some reason the only writers that put shit out regularly are writers that fucking suck. like chuck palahniuk, it seems like every time i go to borders that fucker has a new book, and i usually buy it, and they usually suck. fool me twice shame on me i guess. the last book i read by him was rant, and let me tell you it fucking sucked. i thought it was about a serial killer, but it turned out it was about time travel and magic, basically harry potter, if harry potter talked about pussy more. GAY. it was also written from the points of view of like 70 different people, except i guess nobody told chuck palahniuk that he is a shit writer and doesn't know how to use more than one narrative voice. something else that nobody ever told him is that most of the people who read his books are not smart enough to figure out how to pronounce his name, fuck even i have no idea how you pronounce that shit and i am basically a god damn genius. TIME TO GET A PEN NAME.

i am reading a book of common prayer by joan didion right now, which is awesome, even though i usually try to avoid reading books with the word prayer in the title. too bad joan didion has only written FIVE BOOKS and she is probably going to die any day now, i mean seriously, look at her


anyway, john updike. i remember the first time i read the a&p, i guess this story is pretty much about nothing which is the best kind because then you can think about it however you like. what i thought about it was that life starts disappointing you when you are 14 and it never stops until you become a shell of a person. except it doesn't stop then either, you just don't notice anymore. which i guess is depressing except the other nice thing about stories about nothing is that everybody experiences nothing little boring situations every day, and if you think about them like a story they can all be beautiful. so thanks for that, mr. updike.

dave's scarf

dave stupidly left his scarf with me at the empty bottle this weekend. he carries this scarf around like a talisman all winter so i pretended like i lost it and proceeded to take a picture of everyone at the bar wearing it.

hey can i take a picture of you wearing this scarf under a sign that says booty clown?

i think i am going to start carrying props around with me to photograph strangers with all the time because people seriously loved it, and i aim to please. this guy is not actually a stranger though, and he is in a perpetual state of bliss anyway.

this girl is a stranger, and she looks pretty excited.

i am going to print all these pictures out and fax one to dave at work every fifteen minutes. i should probably write messages on all of them. I HAZ YOUR SKARFF.

orange is probably not this guy's color.

this is jenn, she is the drummer for tyler john tyler. say hi to jenn and her blue glasses. HI JENN. tyler john tyler is a real person. yes, there is an actual person named that, ya heard? the real tyler john tyler says i smell like freedom. we couldn't find the real tjt at this time which sucked because he probably would have done something amazing with this scarf. like made love to it.

this is becca, also in tyler john tyler. i think the real tjt left after they played because he probably didn't want to know what was going to happen next. last time they played what happened next was the most horrible band i've ever seen. it had like eight people in it. WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE, THE WU TANG CLAN? they all stood in a line and did annoying things into their respective microphones. such as playing the saxophone, or screaming.

i think the whole reason i was wearing dave's scarf in the first place was because i decided to wear a tank top to the bar even though it was negative four degrees. being a grown up is fucking awesome because if you don't want to dress in a weather appropriate manner nobody is going to make you.

this guy kind of looks like dave, same hair, same cardigan. plus he was already wearing an orange scarf. maybe they're brothers, i don't think anybody really knows for sure what dave's dad was up to in the seventies.

this guy doesn't look that excited about me taking his picture, but he does look like he might be about to blow up a building.

this busted ass version of ryan gosling absolutely did not want to wear this scarf. OH, YOU WANT TO, YOU JUST DON'T KNOW THAT YOU WANT TO. i should write him a missed connections. I SAW YOU at the empty bottle. i made you wear my friend's scarf.

this guy on the other hand was super excited to wear it. look at him, he's glowing.

a lot of these people have weird facial hair.

nice bangs dude. this guy looks like he gets his eyebrows professionaly groomed but cuts his hair at home. i cut my hair at home too but i actually look in the mirror while i'm doing it. just kidding, this guy was nice. i mean, i don't remember if he was nice, but he looks like he probably was.

jay z has these same reading glasses.

this guy probably knew i was going to talk shit about all of these people on my blog so he hid his face. is he giving me a thumbs up?? seriously though, i love all of these people, except for the busted ryan gosling, who i hate. i'm sure he hates me more because i harassed him for ten minutes until he finally put the fucking scarf on. seriously dude, why are you trying to rain on my parade?

this guy must watch america's next top model because he knows not to let his beauty overtake the scarf as the focal point of the photograph.

i don't really have anything to say about the rest of these.

this guy looks pretty natural in a bears scarf. is he wearing mascara?

here's kristina, making the bears scarf look elegant.

if it wasn't so cold i would keeps dave's scarf for a whole week. i would send him a postcard from his scarf. WISH YOU WERE HERE.

ohio

i went to delphos ohio this weekend. if you want to know what is in delphos ohio, the answer is NOTHING. i wanted to go there because my uncle's dead body is there. isn't that so gross? dead bodies being buried places? next time you go to a cemetery make sure you think about how all the people are under there with all their little clothes and shoes. do they even put shoes on dead bodies? i have no idea. but make sure you think about all their clothes, and how the people buried in 2008 are wearing 2008 clothes but they are buried next to people in, like, 1916 clothes. that is what i think about. i don't even know what people used to wear in 1916. probably tiny clothes, weren't people a lot smaller then? anyway apparently my dad and brother made plans to go to delphos and they didn't invite me because they are assholes, but then of course my brother flaked out on that plan, but HA HA me and mandy had our own plan to go there, LOOK WHO IS THE ONLY PERSON GOING TO DELPHOS NOW, THE ONE WHO WASN'T INVITED. i told my dad he could meet us there because i am a wonderful and munificent person. my dad wanted to stop at his friend's house along the way because nobody had been able to get ahold of this friend and my dad thought maybe he had shot himself in the head or something so he wanted to go there, i guess because my dad likes discovering suicide victims once per year. anyway me and mandy ended up driving with my dad, pretty much because i thought i could write a great short story about that, driving to delphos and finding a suicide along the way. like maybe my dad would have to clean the blood off of everything with paper towels and i could write about all the balled up paper towels, tinged with pink and gently unfurling, like peonies. i guess i am going to have to save that line for a different story because his friend was fine. i guess. except when my dad said he was glad he was fine he said something like 'i'm not really.'

my dad is hilarious. when we got to the microtel inn in delphos he asked the 16 year old behind the counter if there was 'a nice place where we can get a steak and a martini.' she said no so we went to this place called the rusty buggy. they did make us martinis there but i don't think the lady ever made one before because we asked for them straight up and they came to the table in tiny goblets full of ice. then the waitress showed us pictures of her kids austin and nadine, and told us that when they when they go off to college she would like to study graphic design in paris. then we went to a bar and my dad told us his philosophy on obscenity, which is that nobody is offended by the word fuck anymore so people are going to have to come up with new swearing, and his example was, i'm not even kidding, THROW A JEW IN THE OVEN. my mom is a jew.

the next day we went to the awesomest antique store ever and mandy found a sign that said slag on it. for some reason it cost $62, i probably should have bought it anyway.

i bought a dress for two dollars, i can't tell if it's a prom dress or 1950s loungerie but it was only TWO DOLLARS. then my dad bought me a christmas ornament that said 1979 on it because that is how old i am, one thousand nine hundred and seventy nine years old.

also i forgot about how we got lost in chesterton indiana and some guy got all pissed at us because we stopped in the middle of the highway, and then when we went to the gas station to get directions the angry guy was there BUYING ROOT BEER AND MILK and he gave us FAKE DIRECTIONS. then he came back out and gave us real directions because he 'wasn't pissed at us no more.' i should have told him to go throw another jew in the oven but i don't even know if that would offend anybody in indiana.