so what if i am?

I would like to preface this post by saying that I really don't think I'm bitter, so much as genuinely confused. A different outcome in this circumstance wouldn't really have changed my life any more that probably given me a little more validation for the way in which I allowed myself to waste my college years. Also, I love the idea of buying something handmade from a "craftsman" or whatever they want to be called, rather than a corporation that will barely pay the six year old Asian kid who made it. Regardless of any of this, I think this little iPod thing is adorable.

Now I will move on to the judgment I'm about to make. With all that ass-kissing, it was inevitable. I spent four years in college working tirelessly at a pointless, pretentious art major with an emphasis in sculpture. I was okay at it, I guess. It was pretty typical - I used interesting materials I found at hardware stores and in the basement of my dorm, I ironed and welded and tied vinyl, rope, fabric, burlap, wire, and a various assortment of caustic plastics together to make lumpy shaped, life-like forms that were supposed to represent my feminist isolation. I spent four years doing this and drinking, almost exclusively, in a huge wood shop with only one other dude and my male art professor, who probably thought I was a cute excuse for diversity in the sculpture department, which made me pretty hell-bent on receiving some sort of pat on the back (or at least its equivalent) for all that self-imposed white girl suffering. I set up and put on two solo shows in the tiny gallery student gallery - which consisted of hanging and transporting really heavy stuff mostly by myself up four flights of stairs. I was only one of two art majors at my liberal arts college to put on two shows by myself like that. A lot of people jump on the art major bandwagon toward the end of college. Most of them were girls, and all of them except for me and another girl (who had been an art major all through college) won an art award.

So when it came time to announce senior awards at our joke of a senior show, the girl who won the biggest female art award made some shit that basically looked like that: felted iPod cases. I guess letting her win was representing the significant shift in art toward the end of the decade, and the rise of etsy and crafting and the huge need for people to buy something in which to put their chilly iPods, but there are about fifty etsy sellers who make iPod hats and sell them online, and a lot of them look very professional and like something I would actually buy. I'm not saying I was God's gift to the art department at my university - I certainly wasn't. I also didn't demonstrate a proven commitment to staying active in art - I had an AmeriCorps position way before the awards were announced. I was just looking for something to pay my $500 in unpaid Home Depot Bills, really. I get it, though. Eva Hesse was a big deal a long time ago.

If you want to buy that thing (it's really growing on me), you can do it here.

merry christmas, self

After decorating my apartment for Christmas, I took joke Christmas card pictures. I guess this is what you'd call an outtake (left), if you were wearing clips poked into the sides of your hair and a men's flannel thrift store shirt in all of the other ones, too. The best one has my head positioned right under the ribbon to look like it is also a hanging ornament (right).

I am probably the only one who will find this creative and well-executed. It's easy with an audience of one.

i'll just have to see how it goes

So lately errbody in my life is telling me I should have a blog. My mom is telling me that I should have a blog and upload pictures of myself in the outfits I wear and then write amusing anecdotes about all the dudes I’m not dating, sort of like I did in college, minus the pictures, because all I wore in college was knitwear and leggings. She doesn't realize that if the outfits were really that cute, then maybe the second part of the subject would be unnecessary. She also doesn’t realize that just about every girl in a moderately sized city who’s read Marie Claire magazine and lives within a five mile radius of Urban Outfitters or Forever 21 has a blog like this now, thanks to the internets and iPhone cameras. After a while, it gets to be kind of like, okay whatever I have that same top. But I look way fatter in mine. Cool.

I don’t have an iPhone, I don’t have a tripod, and I certainly don’t have the budget to even think about buying either of those things. I’ve heard you can procure a tripod for about $20 on the internets, but that’s just about the price of a 12 pack. It never stood a chance, to be honest. I do have a digital camera that I recently popped back together after some douche at a bar stepped on it, a repertoire of facial expressions that rivals Stephen Colbert’s, a biting sense of humor that is often mistaken for self-loathing or confusion, and an ever-expanding closet because I’ve been the same size since eighth grade. (Evidently, I had few friends then, and probably fewer now!) Also, I don’t really look cute even twice a week. I hit the nail on the head about once a week, at most, when I wear all my best clothes and put on a belt. Then everyone (the secretary in my building) is all, “oh, what a cute outfit, you look beautiful, you’re so creative, what a great outfit, you look so nice!” and my mom’s all, “you should start a fashion blog because you always look so put together!” I mean I look okay sometimes, but everybody looks okay sometimes. She's also, like, my mom.

My boss suggested that I start a blog about my experiences on the bus, which are unbelievable, but that’s certainly not my doing, and it seems a little opportunistic to take credit for every insane person in the city of Milwaukee. I certainly didn’t put them all here! She also suggested that I include my struggles with my entrée into adulthood. I don’t quite know how I feel about this, as she is my boss, and has been the main observer and instigator of pretty much all of those struggles that don’t directly involve things that don’t work in my apartment or my inability to make men see me as any more than a novelty. But generally I complain about that stuff to her too, because usually she thinks it’s funny. But I’m also the only other person who works in our office consistently. On some days, I laugh at the copy machine voice. I laugh at things I would NEVER LAUGH AT ANYWHERE ELSE.

I was going to use my two great talents - looking okay sometimes and being sardonically humorous - to write a satire of the fashion blogs that are OMG everywhere, but I actually think a lot of those people who write them are well-intentioned and cute, and they are helpful. (They give good sizing advice sometimes. They all wear size 0's all the time, so it's really easy to tell what size I should wear. Not that one.) It's really too bad no one wants to look at a blog of drunk pictures of me making fun of other people in bars with my face while wearing mildly cute outfits, because I have about two blogs' worth of those.

So I haven’t really done it. I mean, what if everybody thinks my outfit sucks? A lot of times I think that. I like outfits with hoods or big necks that you can pull up over your face. In winter, which is most of my life, I wear this, three pairs of leggings or tights, and boots, almost exclusively, and almost always entirely in black, to reflect my frost-bitten soul. Mostly, I really don’t care what anyone else thinks of my outfits, because I’m more concerned about accounting for all my appendages underneath at least three layers and survival, unless you are Joseph Gordon-Levitt and then I really care. What if no one thinks I’m funny? That would be even worse. I have had little success with blogging in the past, Julie/Julia effect aside, and to be honest, I don’t think I’m the kind of person that appeals to a mass audience. I think I mostly appeal to a drunk, 19-25, male flannel-shirt-wearing audience. They couldn’t give a shit about where I bought this wrap cardigan. But I’m going to give it the old college try, mostly because I’m poor, and even the one in one zillion odds that someone will read this and give me my own advice column like they gave to Eliot Spitzer’s twenty-something embarrassment, are good enough for me. I could take a babe shot in that same outfit and ask Meredith in Queens why she’s writing to a call girl to ask for advice about her misbehaving teenage daughter, and wham - instant fame.

there's no such thing as that

i call this one, "Happy Winter, Charlie Brown."

Please enjoy the shot of my "pet" dachshund in the background.

i guess they are winning

I thought my neighbor was having a domestic dispute with her boyfriend, but then I realized she was just cheering for the Packers. Cool. Glad I didn't call the police...

when you're rich, then asparagus is yummy

Whenever I order food for myself (which is OFTEN, or at least WAS often, when I was in college and perpetually drunk and fat) I always pretend that I'm with someone else who is going to assist me with the eating, or that I'm at least ordering for me and someone else who will appear at the time of eating. I've developed many ways to do this, the most trusty of which is simply minimally covering the receiver while pretending to shout to someone else about details of the order, or whether we have enough cash between us for the order. It's pretty easy to do, by using simple phrases like, "Let me check..." ("Do you want extra ranch sauce?" "Let me check... Um, yeah, I guess we do.") "Wait a minute..." ("Will that be cash or credit?" "Wait a minute. Do you guys have any cash? No? I guess not.")

Lately, I've developed a new technique, which is slightly trickier. I inquire about the order as if I am ordering for someone else, like I do when I order food for my boss at work. I invent a serious of nonsense questions, and then I respond to the answers: "Are there onions? Oh, no, he doesn't like onions." "Okay, my friend wants to know if we can get that with extra cheese." "Let me check, it's not for me, it's for someone else." (This is a combination of TWO methods, and requires extreme commitment, because it's a dead giveaway if mishandled.)

The shame has doubled since my new commitment to not eating like a sixteen year old boy, which means, among other things, avoiding excessive amounts of cheese and fried items.

i'm in the wrong industry

Recently looking up my newest obsession online:

The camilla and marc Cadero jacket/blazer in beautiful sparkly gold.

But wait - oh cool. It is $998. That's just about exactly one hundred dollars more than I will make this month, before I pay my stupid big girl bills.

A "splurge" for me, at this point, is a 500 mL bottle of Fiji water on the way home from the gym - $2.12 with taxes at Whole Foods hollllller.