Soon!

I have not been posting, but it is not my fault. I have been busy lately. I am VERY important.

THINGS I HAVE BEEN BUSY DOING

1) Acquiring a (FREE) stress ball shaped like a smiling penis. It is smiling because it is so healthy (I think). At the bottom of the penis it says “Get tested for syphilis five times a year!”

2) Watching The Wire. All of it. I sat through a lot of fake shootings, fake beatings, and fake accents–because the guy who plays McNulty is secretly British, and so is the guy who plays Stringer! My dad showed me a YouTube clip of Stringer (“Idris Elba”) introducing some Masterpiece Theater and calling people “ahtists” in a shirt that I think was SILK. Actors, man. You can never tell how much silk they own!!!

3) Talking to my dad about elliptical trainers. He doesn’t like them because he can’t figure out if he’s going forwards or backwards. Or, as he put it: “I get on them, and I start moving, and I’m like, what IS that?” My dad is a college professor. To all his students who are scared of him: you are also scared of elliptical trainers indirectly. Which means double indirectly, you are scared of walking. Which means suck it up.

4) Buying a bed. It was surprisingly hard (no pun intended) (especially no dirty pun, what would that EVEN MEAN) because whenever I lie on a mattress that is for sale, I want it. It feels great. Lying down is sick. Eventually, I picked (at random) a ridiculously hard mattress–it is like I have an icebox where my mattress used to be, ONE COULD SAY–but I don’t even care. Other people care. Other people think I must be kind of severe. But I am in my extremely firm bed right now, getting enough back support for at least four people, and I am so happy!

So, those are my top four excuses for having no internet presence. I’ll try to write something SOON/tomorrow? Love to anyone who has stuck with my blog through the thick and the very very vanishingly thin.

Fuckin you whether times are good or bad, happy or sad!

The other day I was explaining radio censorship to my dad. We were listening to the top 40 radio station (because  my dad an I only listen to XTREME CLUB ANTHEMS) (because we are XTREMELY RELATED) and it was playing that Enrique song, “Tonight (I’m Lovin’ You).”

SIDE NOTE: I love the parentheses in that song title. I literally could look at them all day while smiling lovingly. The only way the title could be better is if it was “(Tonight) I’m (Lovin’ You)” or maybe “(Tonight I’m)(Lovin’ You)” and then you would have to use the FOIL method to talk about the song at all.

We’re listening to this song and my dad’s like, “This song is kind of… shrill,” and I was like, “Also, fun fact: it’s actually called ‘Tonight I’m Fuckin’ You.’ This is the radio edit.”

My dad, being old, is shocked and like, wonders if this has something to do with Twitter. Which is what old people wonder about everything. They see a cloud in the sky and they are like, “It is there because of Twitter.”

So later that day we’re driving back from wherever we were driving to, and that Nelly song “Just A Dream” is on the radio. And we’re listening to the part where Nelly’s telling you to put your hands up if you’ve ever loved somebody, and suddenly my dad (as if waking from a long sleep! Which is weird because he was driving and being asleep while you drive is party foul numero uno!) goes:

“But he’s really saying ‘If you’ve ever fucked somebody put your hands up.’ Right?”

Which is not right, but I bet someone makes a song that says that soon. People like putting their hands up, people like profanity… it seems like a hit waiting to happen! Or multiple hits waiting to happen! Once “If you’ve ever fucked somebody put your hands up” drops, it’s only a matter of time before “If you’ve ever shat somewhere put your hands up.”  And THEN it’s only a matter of time before insta-classic of 2016, “If you’ve ever ass put your hands up.”

New York I love you but I don’t love the G train

I moved to New York! At least for the summer, and maybe for longer. So far, everything has worked out perfectly, and I am living in a nice apartment I found on Craigslist (where you can find everything nice, and also serial killers!). People keep hating on my living sitch, though, for two reasons:

1) It is near the worst train ever, the G train. This is the main way I have made friends so far. People talk about trains all the time here (I don’t know why… I overheard a couple arguing for so long about the relative merits of uptown routes that I thought they were going to BREAK UP and then MURDER EACH OTHER and then GO UPTOWN ON THE 1 AND 2 RESPECTIVELY but as ghosts) and so when I meet someone new I try to weave into the conversation that I take the G to work. You think no one in New York has maternal impulses, because they are coldhearted city slickers, but that is just because YOU commute on the A. I have never gotten more pity. It’s pretty deserved, though–the G is always getting rerouted so that like, instead of a bunch of stops, there is just one stop. And the one stop is like,  jail. Automatic 20-life sentence! Do not pass go! Do not collect $200! Thanks for taking the G train!

2) My immediate neighborhood is very nice. There are a lot of bodegas, where you can buy many, many different kinds of meat. In bulk! Marcy Houses is in my less immediate neighborhood, though, which makes some of my friends think I am going to die immediately. On the other hand, it makes my dad very happy. He called me after he Googled my neighborhood, and he said it looked a littttttle shady.

“Then again,” he said, “it can’t be that bad. Jay-Z is from right around there!”

This comment raises a lot of questions, the main one being: How does my dad know where Jay-Z grew up? Is he secretly young? Does he have a Twitter account that he keeps on the DL? Does he know what FUPA means? You should ask him, because I don’t want to…

It’s sort of like consulting…

I just finished writing this story for my fiction class, and somehow it had all these sex scenes in it. Or at least, foreplay scenes. And here is what I have learned: Writing sex scenes is hard. Difficult things include:

1) Getting them workshopped. This was especially hard in my current fiction class, because you are not allowed to speak while the class discusses your story. So if someone had said, “Mae seems like a pervert,” I would have just had to sit there like a mute while everyone shook their heads sadly. Not that that happened. On the other hand, no one was like, “Mae really doesn’t seem like a pervert.”

2)  Actually writing them. There are a lot of words I want to exist that just aren’t in the English language. For example, if you want to talk about a penis, “penis” is pretty clinical; “dick” is pretty British street urchin-y, and also the name of my childhood piano teacher; “wang” just makes you sound like a wang (the boomerang of penis vocabulary!)… etc. I went with dick but didn’t feel great about it.

3) Related to (2), but there are also a bunch of words you can’t use because of romance novels, like “ravish” and “throbbing” and “member” (ughhhhh it makes me never want to join a club again… because then I will be a member! Badum chhhhh) and “yearn.” No one should yearn for a ravishing member to throb over to their house. You know? But then it’s like Fabio stole half your vocabulary. (In India, one of the beach shacks had a lot of romance novels, and I read one called The Billionaire’s Step-Daughter’s Love Child’s Lover. Or something. That is why I know about this. Also, I read Twilight, although that was more a “liquid eyes”/”bronze hair”/”no sex” situation.)

4) My parents are really supportive about how I like to write, so they asked to see my story. And I was like, “Well… no” and they were like, “Why? It’s okay if it’s bad… we’ve read a lot of other bad stuff you’ve written.” (Which they really have.)

So then I had to be like, “You know how all my friends got consulting jobs? Well, I’m sort of like them. Except instead of doing consulting for money, I write porn. For free.”

Sorry dad!

My dad is a pretty chill dude, but one of the few things that stresses him out is my texting habits.  I don’t have unlimited texting (because apparently I have a cell phone plan from 1412 BC – I only have enough texts to like, let my immediate family know I found a mastodon for dinner).  So I am constantly going over my limit, and then my dad complains about my cell phone bill and says, “What are you even texting people about?”

This is a great question that I wonder about sometimes too.  What AM I texting people about? And recently I had a moment of epiphany where I was like, THIS.

Here’s what happened.  I was walking to Starbucks (not that I ever buy coffee there – I just like to walk there, for my health) and I saw this bunny. And it was rubbing its nose, and it was just so cute.  So I sent my friend a text message that said, “I JUST SAW A BUNNY RUBBING IT’S NOSE!!!!!”

And then she sent me back a text that said, “In real life?!”

And then I sent her a text that said, “In real life!”

And then I think she might have even texted me back and said, “Wow!!”

So that was four text messages right there (I get charged when I receive text messages on my plan, as well as when I send them.  My plan was invented by like, Stalin). (But it is also from 1412 BC.)  (I am like a walking PSA about what happens when you don’t have a good grasp on world history.)

Anyway, it explains a lot. It’s not even my fault I text so much!  It’s the bunnies.  My dad should make THEM pay my phone bill. By rubbing their noses. For money. That could totally be a business… or maybe like a pay-per-view webcam… I don’t know when this became incredibly creepy but I wish I could go back to that time and change the course of events.

The most baffling kind of skydiving

When school gets out, the first thing I am doing is going to Vegas with my dad. Duh.  Who else would I go to Vegas with?  A “peer”?  Don’t be ridiculous.

And when we get to Vegas, the first thing we are going to do is go indoor skydiving.  Double duh.  Is there something else people do in Vegas?  Gambling?  What is gambling?  Also, what is outdoor skydiving?  Vegas is where you go to jump inside, and so THAT’S WHAT I’M GOING TO DO.

You may wonder what indoor skydiving is.  I certainly do.  Not to be a hater, but indoors, there is no sky.  To dive out of.  Per se.  So I Googled indoor skydiving, and I found the least illuminating set of photos ever.  (Watch the photos go through a cycle and then ask yourself, “What?”  You will definitely not be able to come up with an answer.) All I know for sure from my research is that indoor skydiving involves a wind tunnel and takes an hour.

My research has left me with many unsubstantiated suspicions, however.  For example, I suspect that:

1) In Vegas, if I try, I will be able to find indoor skydiving porn.  Not that I will try, but the floating people… in the human bat costumes… wearing masks… you know someone is into it.

2) When I finish indoor skydiving, the first thing I am going to say to my dad is “We have achieved the dream of human flight at Vegas Indoor Skydiving!” Then we will high five. That’s not a suspicion, actually – that is an OATH.

3) This is actually some sort of cult recruitment ritual.  It just has that vibe about it. I would give my dad a heads up, but there’s no way he is backing out now.  He has a coupon, and there is nothing he loves more than having a coupon.  Sometimes, when he gets a really good one, he literally says “Oh boy, oh boy!”

TWICE.

So if I start acting a little culty in about a week, you’ll know why.

My Family Is The Coolest Family In Town (Now)

So yesterday was Christmas (in case you need help knowing that) and my friend and her family came over, which was fun because a) they are nice, fun people and that is the most important thing!  Not material things! and b) they only give us presents labeled “as seen on TV.”

This is great because I love “as seen on TV” things.  Don’t even get me started on how much I love the Ultimate Chopper.  OH LOOK YOU DID okay so the Ultimate Chopper?  It’s the best thing ever.  It’s a compact kitchen tool that  can, according to its website, do anything, including “chop, grate, grind, mince, puree, whip, swim, fly, and speak in grammatically correct sentences.”   It can also GRIND CEMENT and is available in five fun, festive colors.  So you can match your cement grinder to your fun, festive outfit!  Finally!

Here look SERIOUSLY go to the Ultimate Chopper website  and order one for me.  Actually, order me two – what’s a thing without a backup thing?

(You can get one too if you want.)

Anyway, as you can see,  I love infomercial products, and so I had the best Christmas ever because guess what my friend’s fam got my fam this year?  SNUGGIES.  I HAVE A SNUGGIE.  It is a very tasteful forest green, and it’s great because the sleeves are really long, so if your legs are cold and your arms are warm you can just switch up that orientation and BAM!  It’s a blanket with pants!

Having the Snuggies as a family is especially great, though, because it means we can do group Snuggie activities, like watch a movie.  And my dad’s Snuggie is bright blue so when he puts it on, he looks goofy.

OK FINE FINE what I mean is that he looks like Dumbledore.

Welcome home, Mae!

MY DAD:  Oh, hey, I forgot – I got you some gloves.  It’s sort of a welcome home gift.

ME:  Wow, thanks!  Where did you get them?

MY DAD:  I got them for free in the mail.

THIS IS REALLY LONG: Teaching, Learning, Dying

This is something I wrote a couple of months ago for a class. It’s not a real blog post (although I have blogged about teaching these kids before). It is long. I figure, though, that I get to post a real honker every once in a while.  In the spirit of all my blog posts, this is mostly true but not totally. The names are changed (they really have to be because it’s about minors; I’m no lawyer but DUDE). The poems are very real, though. As are the stories about my pets. Just FYI.

Okay. GO!

Teaching, Learning, Dying

I was talking to my dad on the phone the other day, and he asked me how my creative writing class was going.

“Good!” I said. “I really like teaching the kids. Even Kyle.”

“But Kyle hates you and wants you to die, right?”

“Yeah. I kind of like it, though.”

My dad figured out I was a weird kid a long time ago, but I think this still surprised him. “You like it that he wants you to die?”

“I like that he’s spunky.”

“You like that he spunkily wants you to die?”

“Yes.”

*

There is only one thing I find truly upsetting about Kyle, and it isn’t that he wants me to die. It’s that he doesn’t think I know who 50 Cent is.

Zac Efron is ruining my life.

I have liked Zac Efron ironically for a long time.  His existence is just so entertaining!  Whoever thought you could become a star by doing synchronized dances with basketballs?  Chastely?

The answer is: no one.  NO ONE THOUGHT THAT WAS POSSIBLE until Zac Efron came along and was like, “What up, guys?  My chaste basketball dancing just made me a bajillion dollars!”

I liked him for that – for demonstrating that really, anything is possible.  Anything!  The guy is a sex symbol and he looks like a girl.  (For a while, I thought he secretly was a girl – I was a Zac Efron conspiracy theorist.  I was cool.)

So I liked him ironically – yada yada, ironic liking, ironic liking – and then something happened.

It started when I was at Target with my mom, and I saw a notebook.  The cover was pink and green argyle, and then there was a picture of Zac Efron in the middle of it.  If pictures could talk it would have said, “Hi!  I’m Zac Efron, and I don’t think!”  It was on sale for a dollar.

I said, “Mom, I need to get that notebook.  It’s so funny.”

“I don’t think that sort of thing is cool with people your age,” my mom said kindly. “It’s more for younger kids.”

I ignored her and bought the notebook.

Then one thing led to another and what do you know?  I rented 17 Again.  And watched it.  Alone.  And I laughed at the jokes that were like, written in the script, and I actually thought Zac Efron was kinda hot, even though he was trying to act like Matthew Perry, who is REALLY unhot because his forehead is bigger than my whole body.  And when the movie finished I had officially seen every single Zac Efron movie. Most of them twice.

That was when I realized: I don’t like him ironically.  I actually like him.

This is even worse than what I’ve always considered The Worst Thing Ever: seriously liking Ja Rule.  As an artist.  I mean, Ja is bad – when you beef with 50 Cent and lose, it’s time to leave the country and start fresh in like, Finland – but at least he has enough dignity not to do this.