H. Claire Taylor's Blog, page 8

From Your Friends at The Preserve

Some of you may already be familiar with the amazing emails from my apartment complex. The main office is that adult whose helicopter parent has never really let it experience the harshness of the world, and now it’s basically crying itself to sleep every night.

As someone whose husband is a cop, and whose husband entered into the police academy the same week that a little something called Ferguson, Missouri, entered into the news, my nerves are basically shot when it comes to danger. I’m not immune, but like, I get it, okay? I’ve already had the 5 am call waking me up to tell me something bad has happened. And for each shit that I don’t have left to give, John has five fewer.

So when The Preserve sends me an email telling me to be scared, it’s really more of a gift, like one of the wise men traveling across the expanse to bring comedy gold to my nativity. That was a terrible simile.

Anyway, I received this email today. Keep in mind that the apartment complex I lived in before this one was actually a little dangerous. It had a sliding glass door leading up from a public-access stairway and leading into my bedroom. The Yelp for that place is basically full of reviews mentioning peeping Toms. I was walking my dogs back from the school field next door at night when I saw this lovely three-generation troop of grandfather, father, and son walking toward me. I smiled, thinking how nice it was to see fathers involved in the lives of their sons, before the grandfather, who, once I was in close proximity I realized was drunk, said, “Daaaamn girl! What you got in those pants?!” (I didn’t think I needed to explain it, really.) I had my car stolen from the parking lot there, and when the cop showed up, he said, “Yeah, we’ll find it a couple streets over in a while,” and he was right. Dude called it. The list goes on with that place, so when I moved to The Preserve, I might not have felt at home without a little bit of crime. And finally it has arrived. Finally. The Preserve has not handled it well, though, and it has shaken this quiet community to its middle-class core. Below is the email regarding the recent crimes, with my edits in red, because if they’re really trying to scare their residents (which seems likely) I think they could do better:

Please be advised that we have been informed of recent criminal activity involving alleged stolen vehicles. This incident occurred at The Preserve at […] at approximately 3am on 11/24/15.  This is an unfortunate reminder that crime can happen anywhere and at any time. And if you’re reading this, it’s happening right behind you! But seriously, you could die at any time. Furthermore, we would like to take this opportunity to remind you, your family, occupants and visitors to be as cautious as possible with respect to your property and your surroundings. Everything you hold dear is now in jeopardy.

We have reached out to the APD and they have stated that no information regarding this alleged incident is being released at this time. We take that to mean that something really bad has transpired that is beyond the capacity of your imagination. 

We would like to suggest that you get to know your neighbors, especially the one that’s a cop, because otherwise your neighbors really aren’t that useful and always lock your door(s) and windows when you leave your apartment. We also suggest keeping your door(s) and windows locked when you are inside your apartment, because that’s when they strike. We urge you to make sure all existing locks and latches in your apartment are working properly. Also, your mother asked us to remind you to please do not answer the door to anyone that you do not know and is not expected. You should remember this from back when your mother decided nine was old enough to be left home alone if it meant she wouldn’t murder you in a bathtub the next time you listed off the limited edition Ty Beanie Babies you wanted for Christmas. Please notify us in writing, immediately, if any repairs need to be made. We will complete your service request within 168 hours, due to our reluctance to pay more than one maintenance guy to service all 500 units, and assuming you are not already murdered by then.

If you have occasion to walk around the community at night (you creep), we urge that you refrain from walking alone, because that’s just asking for it, you know? I mean, we’ve had a car stolen, so this is basically international waters now. We also suggest that you contact your insurance agent and maintain insurance coverage to protect yourself [wait are they suggesting I need ample life insurance to live here?], your personal belongings and those of your guests, assuming you have any guests brave enough to visit you in what is now, statistically, “the hood.“

If you ever notice any of the following, please contact the local law enforcement agency or 911 immediately. [And this is where I get really lost, because I don’t understand what law enforcement number is better suited for an emergency than 911.]

Suspicious persons, including but not limited to car thieves. And people who are, um, tall and maybe look like they could play college basketball… You know what we mean. Athletes. [This is where most of my neighbors nod and give meaningful looks to their computer screens.]
Suspicious activity, such as crawling through windows that are unlocked or walking alone at night without a companion, or dribbling a basketball.
Observe a crime in progress. Resist the impulse to sigh in satisfaction at seeing a job well done, because that is obviously the first impulse of many when witnessing a goddamn crime in progress.
Or, need police assistance of any kind. Did you even know what 911 was for before this? We didn’t think so. 

After notifying the local authorities, please contact the management office, apartment answering service or other appropriate on-site personnel*, assuming you are not already dead.

As even you can understand, no one can ensure the personal safety of yourself or that of your guests, not even God Himself. God doesn’t care about you, and you’re on your own. We regret to be the ones to inform you of this. We believe that by taking an active role in personal safety and security, you may be able to deter unnecessary issues that can arise involving yourself, your guests and others around you, and if you don’t, that’s on you, asshole. Don’t even think about suing us. It’s not our responsibility to make sure the entry gates work properly or that the locks on pedestrian gates are activated. 

*So I have to tell this story. A neighbor approaches John and tells him that her neighbor had a prowler the previous night. John says he’ll report it to the office. So he goes to the office and lets one of the leasing consultants know that a resident reported a prowler. She says, “Why didn’t she report it to the cops?” And he says, “She did. I’m a cop.” And she says, “Well, she needs to file a report with a cop.” And he says, “She did. She told me.” And she said, “Why did she tell you?” And he said, “Because I’m a cop. And I’m letting you know right now that there was a prowler.” And she says, “Well, she needs to come in here and report it herself.” And he says, “Okay. But I’m an Austin police officer and I’m telling you.” And she says, “She need to come in and report it herself.” 

So for those of you who aren’t living in the shanty town we call The Preserve, with hike-and-bike trails, two pools, free weekly yoga and fitness classes, community movie nights, a privately contracted security officer, and multiple car thefts, I hope that you are able to enjoy your Thanksgiving with family and this year add something new to your list of things for which to be thankful: the blessed knowledge that no matter what you do, danger always lurks around the corner. No matter what you do. Amen.

Setting the Makeup Gun to Whore

Let me tear off the Band-Aid quickly: I’m going makeup-free for 30 days. Some of you might not find this remarkable, and if you’re one of those people who doesn’t feel the need to wear makeup out, go ahead and stop reading because you’re beautiful and the world needs to see your shining, unblemished face. But the rest of you gorgons might be able to relate.

I don’t usually wear a lot of makeup (partly because I work from home now, so I don’t usually wear pants, either), but lately it’s been snowballing. That’s partly due to (men: skip down to asterisk) hormones that have been going out of control. And before you ask, no I’m not pregnant. I just hate being dependent on anything, including a daily pill, so I dropped it. And now I have the hormones of a fifteen-year-old. *Acne abound, y’all.

So, with reborn insecurities I thought I’d buried in the ground back in high school, my usual regimen of powder foundation, a little concealer under the eyes, mascara, eyeliner optional, immediately snowballs into one of my favorite (and oddly, most referenced) Simpsons bits:

It’s easy to fall into that trap, though: (Who knew there could be so many shades of pink on a face?) foundation to smooth, (God, I look like I didn’t sleep at all) a little concealer here, (why is one eye squintier than the other?) a little eye liner there, (is it normal to be able to see veins on eyelids?) a little eyeshadow to spice things up, (why do my eyes look so dead?) some mascara to open the eyes, (how did I not realize the full expanse my forehead?!) some eyebrow powder to help your brows be assertive without coming off as bossy, (so was the baby fat supposed to be gone by now?) and to finish it off, some blush to define the jaw.

Then POW, you’ve set the makeup gun to whore without even realizing it.

Now, I know all of this sounds like a fun artistic expression of insecurity, but what’s noteworthy is how freaking long it takes to do. And when you add body-hair maintenance into that, there’s really no time for anything else.

I was meditating on greatness the other day while I walked the dogs (after begrudgingly putting on pants). And like a nerd, I made a little thought web with greatness in the middle, branching out into the various facets of my life that mattered to me. It was like a nightmarish team meeting at work, but I did it to myself (because I’m my own boss now, bitches!). As I went through each part and listed all the things keeping me from being what I see as great, vanity started popping up a lot in various forms.

It actually surprised me, because I really thought the deadly sin I was most susceptible to was wrath or maybe sloth (dibs on Wrathful Sloth as a band name). But vanity is the deadly sin that helps women get farthest in society, because for women, it’s seen as a virtue, not a sin. As someone who constantly has people treat me like a child because I look young, then constantly has to listen to the patronizing “you’ll appreciate looking young when you’re older,” I get it. To be taken seriously, I have to look like a much older woman who looks young for her age. That’s very specific. I’ve been trying to identify the sweet spot, and I think it’s looking like a forty-year-old who looks like a thirty-two-year-old. You have to look old enough to have experience, but not so old that the males in the office wouldn’t have sex with you. Maybe I’ll get there someday, but for now, I’m just a twenty-eight-year-old who looks like an eighteen-year-old who has seen some shit, y’all.

The fact that my face can’t even right now (along with my energy, my hair, my ovaries, my patience, my sleep… actually my brain as a whole) makes the temptation for vanity even stronger. But given that the mere hint of dependency on anything gives me the heebie-jeebies, I’ve decided there’s only one thing to do, and that’s break my never-ending cycle of caking my broken-out face until it breaks out even worse, then caking it some more, ad infinitum.

So I’m committing to 30 days without make-up. That takes me from now until Christmas Eve, and I’m not even kidding myself about what I’m going to look like come Christmas day:

Because that’s how you fall of a wagon like a real woman… or dude in woman’s makeup.

I’m not trying to encourage anyone else to try this, because I already know it’s going to be awful. I’m not doing this to make a statement. If I’m being completely honest, I’m actually doing it for the sake of vanity, in hopes that my face will stop breaking out. I already know I’m probably not going to want to leave the house because when I do, people will ask me if I’m okay, or if I’m feeling all right, or if I can show some ID to buy a ticket to that rated-R movie, and then in my head, Wrathful Sloth will start shredding on the guitar, and things will go downhill from there for anyone within arm’s reach.

But in my meditation on greatness, I did make one observation. When I drew out what were important areas in my life, “face” was not one of them. I don’t think “face” would be one for many people, but we spend so much time worrying about it because “face” is so important in the way people relate to us. So I hope that we all can be a little more mindful of how much “face” plays into the daily lives of women, and how little it actually matters. I feel like it’s one of those well-known things that we’re explicitly told since childhood but then subtly sent opposite messages about for the rest of our lives.

Face doesn’t matter. That’s my mantra. You can steal it for a few days if you want.

And if you’re still wondering what the motivation was behind this long post, I’ll be honest: I wanted to write about the importance of welcoming Syrian refugees as an approach to this “war on terror,” but I didn’t want to seem controversial to all the xenophobes out there who simply want to enjoy their not-at-all-ironic Thanksgiving break. Phew! Glad I avoided that topic!

Happy Thanksgiving!

I Don’t Know How to Woman

There’s something that became clear to me around puberty, and it really hasn’t changed: I don’t feel like a woman. To clarify, I didn’t feel like a woman before puberty and then suddenly stop feeling like a woman; I’ve never felt particularly woman-y.

I should probably clarify that I don’t feel like a man, either. That’s especially important to note since I’m still technically a newlywed and don’t want to freak out my in-laws who might read this.

The unfortunate truth is that I just feel like a person, and that’s been a huge frustration in my life. I don’t believe that I’m alone in feeling this way, either. With the exception of when I’m looking in a mirror (“Yep, still look like a lady.”) and when someone is assuming I have a proclivity for receptionist duties, despite what my actual job title might be at the time, I usually forget altogether that I have a gender. It takes me by surprise sometimes, and when that sudden awareness dawns on me, I always end up feeling like a monster.

I acknowledge that there are biological differences between males and females. What must it be like, I sometimes wonder, to have your emotions flow in a straight line, rather than riding a tilt-a-whirl of progesterone and estrogen? What if I could focus more on developing an iron-clad daily routine and less on taking daily iron supplements and hoping that it’s not one of those days where every smell makes me nauseated?

But outside of the hormones, there really isn’t that much to being a woman, so I have a few bones to pick with people who view me as a woman rather than a person:

It’s hard to remember to be a woman

For example:

No one is that. That model is not even that. People have to try to be that. Maybe they can convince themselves that they are that for a few minutes, and if the photographer is good, they can immortalize that moment. Like, what thoughts could even accompany that pose? All I can think of is, “Mmm… men. I sure love men. I hope they adore me. I need to find a husband.”

But seriously, full disclosure: I did a shoot sort of like this one once. It was just for fun with a girlfriend.

What went through my mind with each photo was that I looked like a complete buffoon and that I hoped my friend was really talented with Photoshop. We got five good photos from it, and it took all night. And there’s the takeaway: For each sexy photo of a woman, there are at least two people who spent a night’s worth of productivity on taking one stupid photo. Think of all the crappy things that could have been improved even slightly during that time instead. Women: Do you really want to spend your time this way? Men: Do you really care that much about looking at a picture of a woman?

Not looking feminine makes women a subtle disappointment to everyone

It’s easy to fall into the trap of viewing people by their gender, even if you don’t view yourself that way, because you see them. Some of them have breasts (most of those are women), and some of them don’t (some of those are women, too). Some put on makeup (most of those are women), some roll out of bed and show up at work that way (some of those are women, too). Of the above distinctions, women are the ones who are normally expected to have breasts and put on makeup. Men do not need to have breasts or wear makeup. As a woman whose breasts are 90% brought to you by Victoria’s Secret and who only wears whatever makeup can be applied at red lights on the commute (assuming I’m not already occupied with eating breakfast off of a paper towel on my lap), I’m a huge disappointment to everyone’s gender stereotypes. If I’m going to disappoint everyone, I want it to be from doing something I love, not from being busy and flat chested.

Managing body hair can be a part-time job

I saw an article the other day that explained proper daily eyebrow care for women. I’m supposed to be plucking and shading in my eyebrows before I leave the house, apparently. And don’t even get me started on contouring. When I read about the myriad things I should be doing to my face on a daily basis, all I could think was, “Guess I won’t have time to keep learning Spanish now.” I haven’t taken official measurements, but I feel safe saying that 80% of my 5’10” stature is made up of legs, so I’m pretty sure if I actually shaved them as often as the public would like, I would lose something like six days out of every year. Here are some things that can be accomplished in six days:

Fly to Paris, view every exhibit at the Louvre, hold a seance at Pere Lachaise Cemetery wherein I summon the spirit of Oscar Wilde and he reads me his complete works, then I fly back to the States.
Watch every episode of all eight seasons of 24 and then decide that it’s not even worth it to watch the 9th season, even though I’ve come this far already.
Do the same thing but for Scrubs.
Build a well for Africans or whatever.

But no, I’ll be shaving my legs instead.

Getting dressed in the morning uses up all my decision making for the day

Question: What do Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs, and Mark Cuban have in common besides too much money, male parts, and no sense of ethics? Answer: The laziest wardrobes of all times. I imagine organizing their closets is fairly simple.

Taking a page out of the Doug Funnie book.

Those who see me on a somewhat regular basis know I am not the best at putting together outfits (see selfies). More often than not, I end up in costume. But do you know what would happen if I wore the same thing to work every day for just one week?

“Hey, girl. If you need to talk, I’m always here for you.”

“I was wondering if you could help with… um, never mind. I can do it myself.”

The second example is actually not helping my argument, because it’s a desirable outcome. But the point is that for years, instead of getting out of bed when my alarm went off to get some writing done first thing in the morning, I slept in because facing the decision of what to wear is just that exhausting. I don’t think guys even realize that if a woman changes her mind on what shirt she’s wearing, that often requires changing her bra, too. Samesies for pants and underwear. You know what has to happen when a guy decides to change his shirt? From all my empirical data, I conclude that he sniffs the pits. Good? Put it on. “Dress for the job you want, not the one you have.” Fine, I’m dressing like a man from now on. I want to be a man in the workplace and get paid more.

Watching sports is the last frontier for shouting and blind hatred

Where besides driving does a person get to shout horrible things at another person? Sometimes we all just need to shout horrific wishes at each other, even if you don’t really hope they crash their freaking truck into a pole. Sometimes shouting that just makes life easier and no harm done because the thought was contained in a fairly soundproof box, and that person really needs to wake the hell up if they’re going to drive that unnecessarily big truck around and ride on your ass when you’re already going 85mph in the left lane.

Anyway, the answer to the original question is that watching sports is the only other place where that sort of horrible stuff can be shouted. Now think back to the last time you just got to tell someone that their preference was not only wrong, but made them a stupid person. (Now think of when you weren’t just being an asshole on Facebook.) And I mean, you just looked them in the eyes and said, “My preference is better than yours. Yours sucks.” Doing that feels amazing. This is where watching sports comes in handy.

But watching sports is still mostly a “guy thing.” So the NFL and Papa John’s have thrown a couple women into their commercials. Doesn’t mean the battle is won. Dads are still teaching their sons about football rather than their daughters. That leaves female sports fans a bit lonely.

Here’s what happens almost every week between September and January. There I am, happily watching the Cowboys lose in stunning fashion, when I look around the full room and realize I am one of the only females, if not the only one. I’m also probably shouting the most obscenities of anyone in the room, but that’s beside the point. This all-too-common situation is a classic case of women being left out from something good. No, something great. Under the veil of sports, I have told multiple people from New York and Philadelphia that they’re “f***ing dead to me,” something which I know most Texans have wanted to say to New Yorkers and Philadelphians for a whole slew of reasons, but which only sports fandom makes socially acceptable.

I don’t know how not to curse when I watch this.

Getting pregnant is too hard/not hard enough

This one varies from woman to woman, but it’s never not a thing. If your circumstance is that you really, really don’t want to have a baby in your life, then your problem is that it’s really hard to keep from having a baby. If your situation is perfect for introducing a baby and now all you need is a baby, oh look! No baby!

I don’t actually know how this works, but the point is that it’s up to the woman to figure it all out. And this is not a simple equation. Would you like a heaping dose of hormones that will put you in a haze you don’t even notice until you’re out of it years down the road, or would you like a device inserted into you that may or may not cause complications (if your body even keeps it in), or would you like to take your temperature every morning for months to chart your ovulation? If your sex life involves an Excel sheet, things have officially gotten too complicated. You think men are using Excel for their sex life? The main sexual responsibility assigned to them by society is pondering the not-so-many not-so-subtleties of consent, and for that, I’ve created a handy flow chart that could be printed out and put in one’s pocket for reference purposes:

This chart does not require Excel. It is a fairly simple chart that gives the immediate false impression that only one out of four possible outcomes will be consensual sex. But in fact, if you men play your cards right, you could have consensual sex every time! Meanwhile, I’m going to be averaging days between periods to calculate the window when I should most definitely not even think about the word sex, so that I don’t— Oh wait! There’s a supermoon this month! *Tears up printed Excel sheet* *Starts all over again*

The Final Solution… no wait.

No one likes a complainer who just wants to complain, so here’s my proposed solution to go along with it all:

Everyone—men and women alike—stop expecting anything from anyone based on gender. We’ll all be happier for it, I promise. When I bring my Dallas Cowboys tumbler around with me, don’t wonder if I borrowed it from the man in my life. The man in my life is a cop who is way better at yoga than I am and who spends his free nights at poetry readings. I know, I don’t understand it either. But I’m glad I got to know him as a person, because he’s wonderful.

And when a woman shows up somewhere without makeup, go a step beyond not asking her about it and start to train your brain to not care about it. This will take effort, but do it anyway. Just remember, makeup is fun sometimes; other times it’s not. Who gives a shit, really? It’s just paint.

Imagine if women didn’t have to try to be women. How many more bilingual females would this world have? How many more wells would there be in Africa?

No seriously, how many? I’m too busy with the calculus of ovulation to sit down and figure it out.

The 7 Habits of Slightly Effective People

In our overachieving society, the words “mediocre” and “average” have a negative connotation, when in reality, they should be neutral. We can’t all be go-getters, and by definition, we can’t all be above average. Whether from sheer laziness, hormonal imbalance, or early childhood cranial trauma, some of us will just never be Highly Effective People. But we can all be slightly effective, and that can be good enough.

I don’t mean to brag, but I consider myself to be extremely slightly effective. I’ve just about mastered it, and you can too, if you follow my seven habits. Take a look through them, and if you don’t make it all the way to the end of the list, that’s okay. No biggie. Just shoot to get through #4, and you’ve gotten off to a fair start. Don’t beat yourself up, is what I’m saying.

1. Take afternoon naps

Not all of us are blessed with hyperthyroid disorder or a desire to eat healthy. So for those who can’t face staying awake for more than 12 hours a day, the best way to be slightly effective is to embrace the afternoon nap.

I know what you’re thinking: “Why didn’t I think of that?” Because it’s not in your nature to be this innovative.

You will never, I repeat, never be successful if you’re only awake for 10-12 hours a day. I’m sorry, that’s the way it goes. You need to be awake for at least 13 hours each day to make a slight positive impact on your life and the life of those around you. I hate to be a hardass, but thirteen is the minimum. I’m not asking you to stay awake for 16+ hours here—that’s the domain of the highly successful, and we’ve already established that you’re not in that category, nor will you ever be.

Afternoon naps are a great way to break up each 14-hour day into two seven-hour days, which is totally manageable, right? It’s really all about tricking your shitty, lazy brain, and naps are the perfect method for that. You have to do things during those two seven-hours stints, though, or else you’re just slightly ineffective. Sorry. Life can’t be all sunshine, rainbows, and naps.

2. Develop your social media presence

Focusing on your social media success is a great way to be slightly effective in all that you do. The best approach is to set arbitrary benchmarks for success, like reaching 200 followers on Twitter, or having ten Linked In profile views in a month. Expanding your personal brand is crucial for having your opinions be heard far and wide, and that’s really what it’s all about, isn’t it?

I’m sure those realtors handpicked you because of your many endorsements for “Microsoft Office”

Focusing ten minutes to seven hours a day on building up your social media presence is a great way to give off a strong sense of effectiveness to others without having to actually be consistently effective. If you can stage a strong visual impression of effectiveness long enough for a good Instagram or Vine, you’re well on your way to being slightly effective in reality. Remember that book The Secret that everyone raved about and you almost read but never got around to? Creating the impression on social media that you’re a Highly Effective Person works kind of like that: If you can just convince others, maybe that’s all that matters. Or something like that. I never actually read the book.

3. Achieve the Bare Minimum (BM)

“Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you land among the stars.” The Slightly Effective Person™ knows this is bullshit, because shooting for the moon is already more effort than you’re willing to put forth. That’s some NASA-level shit, and you got a C in the astronomy class you took in college to avoid taking physics or chemistry or anything else that seemed too “math heavy.”

So don’t worry about shooting for the moon. Unfortunately, though, to do have to set a bar and reach it, even if it’s a really, really low bar. And this means every time (unless you have a really good excuse). It’s not about setting records, it’s about checking things off your to-do list.

 

SEP don’t knock participation awards, because they understand it means someone finished something and finishing is usually slightly effective.

One strength of the Slightly Effective Person™ is knowing just how low to set the bar for him or herself, because Slightly Effective People™ have plenty of time to internally negotiate that during the twilight hour following a long afternoon nap: “Maybe I could just knock out [X] before bed… No. Not when I’m this sluggish. I could probably get a good start on it, though, and maybe finish it tomorrow morning.” Keeping your verbiage as vague as possible, using terms like “good start,” helps ensure success.

Highly Effective People develop strong negotiating skills with others. Slightly Effective People™ develop strong negotiating skills with themselves.

This is where I become a bit of a hardass on the rules. If you don’t achieve the Bare Minimum (BM), you cannot call yourself a Slightly Effective Person™ because I will sue you for doing it. We both know it’ll never go to trial and we’ll settle out of court, but still. Neither of us wants to put forth that effort. If you don’t achieve a good, solid BM every day, you’re simply a Slightly Ineffective Person, which I didn’t bother trademarking, because it didn’t seem entirely necessary.

In some cases, it’s good to give yourself a day off from a BM to let yourself recharge through ample napping.

4. Focus on worst-case scenarios

Business strategies are for people who have a lot of drive, more drive than the SEP™ will ever have. So don’t even bother. You don’t want a lot of success, you just want your little share of it. The best way to do that is to focus on all the worst-case scenarios you can think of and come up with contingency plans for each and every one of them. If you can’t think of a contingency plan, you need to keep trying. This should take up most of your planning resources so that you have no mental energy left to put toward strategy. Then, when something bad finally happens—because we both know it can and will—you’ll be almost ready for it and can throw yourself at it completely: emotionally, financially, religiously, physically, and irrationally.

But of course, thinking up a plan for each worst-case scenario and actually preparing for it are two different things.

Ex: Knowing to take a punch in the obliques (whatever those are) and actually strengthening your obliques are two separate steps.

It’s a Highly Effective Person who can come up with a plan and then follow through with it, and that’s most definitely not you (we’ve been over this). So while you might be able to take a financial/emotional/physical hit and survive, it’s going to hurt like a bitch and you might need someone to drive you to the ER.

5. Talk about your passion. A lot.

Talking about the thing you most enjoy doing is a great way to temper your desire to actually do it, which allows you to complete that project “eventually,” or start on that novel you’ve been thinking about “sometime soon.” Sure, you’ll complete the project one day, but you’re not going to be one of those folks who commits yourself entirely to it and finishes it in a story-worthy amount of time. That’s not you. That’s a Highly Effective Person. Maybe one of your siblings falls into the category, but you definitely don’t (I spoke with your mother about it, so I know).

The best time to talk about your passion is while you’re drinking alcohol, because in certain cases, talking about your passion can actually get you fired up about it, which might make you feel highly effective, but I’ve been pretty clear about all that and we’re not even going there, okay? So in case you’re talking about your passion and it’s gotten you extra motivated to get started on a major undertaking, be sure you’re just drunk enough that the first step of getting out of your seat is a little too much effort. Talking about it is always way more energizing than actually doing it anyway.

The more people with whom you can discuss your passion, the better. Keep talking about it until you get the response you want, which will never happen because no one cares about your passion the way you do. But keep looking for validation anyway.

Note: This much interest should arouse suspicion. Flex your obliques and expect the worst-case scenario.

Talk to your significant other about it. Then talk to a couple friends about it. If you still feel passionate, talk to a neighbor or a coworker about it, especially one who you don’t really give a shit about. Lastly, talk with an immediate family member about it, and that should just about crush your desire to get going on it right away.

6. Work in bursts

Chipping methodically away at a problem or project every day might seem compatible with a good, solid BM approach, but it’s not. Working on things consistently requires the kind of self-discipline that Highly Effective Individuals can develop, but remember how your parents just bought you the toys you wanted when you asked for them? Yeah, you didn’t develop that kind of discipline, so forget about it.

Working in bursts feels a little like this movie, except you’re basically all limits.

Besides delivering a BM each day, in between allergy seasons you might get a burst of inspiration when there’s no one readily available to talk to about it. Relax. This is actually okay, because working in bursts is about the only way you’ll ever get anything sufficient done since you lack even basic self-discipline. Maximize these bursts by drinking all the caffeine you can get your hands on to see how much you can accomplish before you completely crash. Phew! You got 70% finished! Let’s call it a day!

Now put the project aside until you feel like going back to it, maybe around the holidays. No, not those holidays, the ones after those. Yeah, that’s more like it. Now spend some time thinking about how awesome it’ll be once forces outside of your control (i.e. harvest moons, celebrity deaths in threes, tax increases) give you the burst of energy you need to finish that project!

7. Create alliances

This habit is not to be confused with actual networking. There’s a difference between creating alliances and building strong relationships. Alliances rely heavily on leverage and collateral, which is what you need to dig for. Alliances can be mutually beneficial, which is a plus, or they can be mutually destructive, which is okay, too, so long as you benefit from them for a while and know when to jump the damn ship. The key is to make sure that no matter what, you have the upper hand. Creating a healthy supply of favors to call in later should be your goal. Remember: helping others without expecting future favors is just called charity. Maybe “charity” is on the list of 7 Habits for Highly Generous Suckers, but that’s not the list you’re reading now (assuming you didn’t stop reading at #4).

Alliances are like networking, if by networking you mean hacking into a secured government network, stealing all the damning information, and then just sitting on it for a while until it matures into leverage.

What separates the Slightly Effective Person™  from the Slightly Ineffective Person, is that the SEP™ knows when an alliance is nearing the end of its run and can leave while things are still good…

Exhibit A

…while the SIP is unable to recognize when an alliance has essentially become deadweight, a little depressing, and a lament of the glory that it once had.

Exhibit B

To Conclude:

With enough practice and perseverance, you can adopt these 7 Habits of Slightly Effective People™ and become a person who isn’t altogether a disappointment.

Unfortunately we both know developing habits requires self-discipline that you will probably never have, which is a catch that I considered but didn’t feel like fully problem-solving.

Stop Going Into the Basement!

I was a big fan of��Choose Your Own Adventure��books as a kid. They allowed me to control some of the action, and rather than watching the protagonist slip into some stupid drama that could have easily been solved through better communication or��not going into the basement, I got to choose where the story went. I��think��the intention was to empower kids, but it also could have been to sell a lot of books. The problem, though, was that sometimes��this happened:

You find a gold statue on the ground and pick it up [Me: No, I don’t want to pick it up. It’s clearly cursed because this is called The Curse of the Golden Statue]. It’s warm to the touch, but isn’t gold supposed to be cold? It’s been sitting in this old pyramid for thousands of years [Me: I don’t even want to be in this stupid pyramid! I wanted to obey the “No Entrance” sign!], so the sun couldn’t have warmed it. Suddenly you hear footsteps behind you, so you shove the statue in your knapsack [Me: But I don’t want to shove it in my knapsack. I want to leave it here. Like I said, I’m fairly certain it’s cursed, and stealing is wrong] and look around the cavern for somewhere to hide.

If you want to hide from whoever is coming, turn to page 45.

If you want to stand your ground and open fire with the AK-47 you have, turn to page 72.��

I want neither of those, CYOA!��I never wanted to pick up the stupid statue!

Why can’t I choose to drop it like it’s hot?!

The good news is that you grow up and you realize (hopefully) that��you don’t just have a choice about what you do sometimes, you have a choice about what you do��constantly. That’s a lot of responsibility, but like paying taxes or wearing clothes, you gotta do it anyway. If you don’t make the right choices along the way, you tend to end up either cowering behind some dusty��sarcophagus like the thief you are, or you have to open fire with an AK-47 on what turns out to be one tour-bus worth of retirees (I mean,��COME ON, Choose You’re Own Adventure books. Throw me a freaking��bone here!).

Two��and a half weeks ago, my now-husband��graduated from the Austin Police Department’s academy, we got married, we nursed our first hangover as a married couple, and then he began his shifts.

What I’ve already come to realize is that most of being a cop is just putting people to bed.

HUSBAND: Sir, you can’t be walking down the frontage road in just your underwear.

UNDERWEAR BANDIT: Okay.

HUSBAND: I’m going to need you to go back to your hotel room and stay there until the smorgasbord��of drugs��you ingested��work their way through your system.

While some of his clientele actually do suffer from mental illness, the rest have basically been living their life like a CYOA book.��One bad decision after another, maybe not even aware that there were decisions��to be made, then BLAM! They find themselves stuck in a haunted mansion where the only options they can see are to trust the floating spirit of what may or may not be a little girl, or go in the goddamn basement.

A lot of people don’t want to talk about how many decisions there are in life. But trust me when I say that every time someone says they didn’t have a choice in the matter, a dead freedom fighter rolls over in his or her grave.

So, to those people who have used, “You can’t help who you love,” as an excuse for wasting time and energy on a worthless, mean person, I have a confession: When I said, “Sure, but you can choose who you spend your time with,” that was a terrible concession to make. You can absolutely choose who you fall in love with. In fact, as an adult, it’s your responsibility/civic duty to make sure you’re being smart��about who you fall in love with, because abusive relationships tear apart��more lives than just your own.

I have two friends in an abusive relationship at the moment. One, let’s call her Echo, is dating an abusive man (I hate even calling him that), and the other, let’s call him Hamlet,��is dating an abusive woman (yay gender equality?). While everyone’s quicker to tell Echo��that she’s in an abusive relationship than people are to label��Hamlet’s situation as abusive (boo gender inequality?), both share similar symptoms:

Dating a psychopath

Loss of will to decide things

Loss of time with other friends

Loss of other friends

Decreasing self-esteem

Increasing tolerance for abuser’s criticism

Neither Echo nor Hamlet suffers from any mental illness that I’m aware of, and neither has ever put up with this kind of abuse before. Nor has either had a harsh upbringing that got their life off to a rocky start.

The continuation of this��abuse is entirely a result of their choices.

Now, I know that might seem like I’m blaming the victim, and if you believe that, you’re an idiot who doesn’t understand subtlety. It’s not Echo’s or Hamlet’s fault that their abusers��are awful, arguably soulless people who treat them poorly, but it is Echo’s and Hamlet’s responsibility to say enough is enough. Admittedly, after a certain point, that gets more and more difficult, but that doesn’t mean that every insult they accept isn’t still a choice.

Very few people above the age of 14 believe in love at first sight. Love develops slowly (just like opinions should) as one gains more knowledge about the subject��and continues to make this��decision about every three seconds: “Yes, I still like this person, and I should continue on with this.” Then you continue hanging��around that person, and maybe they buy you your favorite flower or cancel a work meeting to spend time with you, and you think, “Wow, that was unnecessary, but I’m in to it.” And then maybe you spend some time considering a way to make that person happy and then you go and do that thing and they become happy, so you check back in, and you decide, “Yes! I like making this person happy. There are no terrible caveats to it that I can see, either, so I’m going to continue with this!”

Congratulations! You’ve already made a tremendous amount of decisions about that person at this point, whether you realize it or not! Then one day you have to cancel plans with that special person because a good friend of yours is having a difficult day and just wants to talk, and you expect your special someone to say, “No problem. I know how it goes,” but instead that someone says, “You’re so selfish. I spent $100 on your dinner last night, and you ditch me for a friend?”

Part of being a teacher in Texas is teaching kids how to pass the STAAR test. One test technique I would show the students��is to cross out all the information that��is not actually relevant to the question and only there to distract or confuse you (because the state of Texas loves distracting and confusing kids). So if the above��hypothetical situation��were on a STAAR test and the question was Should you continue spending time with this special someone?��Here’s how I would suggest the student start in answering the question:

“You’re so selfish. I spent $100 on your dinner last night, and you ditch me for a friend?”

There. Much easier to approach the question of��Should you continue spending time��with this special someone?�� Once you cross out the irrelevant information of how much dinner cost, you’re left with someone accusing you of being selfish for helping out a friend. So the correct answer is C)��Tell that special someone to go choke on an artichoke.

And that’s not even one of the most advanced questions. That one was fairly easy, but you’d be surprised how often people get it wrong. Here’s another:

Q:��The last time you saw your special someone was on your birthday. He got mad that you were spending so much time with your friends, and he left you downtown at 3am to walk back to his house. Today he called and said he was sorry and had changed. What do you do? Select the best answer from the choices below.

A)��Make plans immediately to see him so he can make it up to you.

B)��Tell him you think he’s a damaged person and that he should seek help for his��anger issues, and��you don’t ever want to hear from him again.

C)��Post a not-so-cryptic Facebook status about how much you love him because you’re too scared to actually just tell your friends that you’re back with your abuser.

D) Tell him to��rub his apology in cacti then stick it where the sun don’t shine.

Okay, so let’s do some underlining of important information and cross out the unimportant information:

Q:��The last time you saw your special someone was on your birthday. He got mad that you were spending so much time with your friends, and he��left you downtown at 3am to walk back to his house. Today he called and said he was sorry and had changed. What do you do? Select the best answer from the choices below.��

See, this would be one of those tricky and confusing questions because really both B and D seem to be correct, so which do you choose?��That’s why I underlined “best,” because since��that’s the case, it’s probably B, but an argument could be made for D. A strong argument.

And then there’s choice E, which is also acceptable.

In life, though, there’s no such thing as cheating on these decision tests; you can ask your friends what they think the answer is, you can even ask your teachers. And most of the time, victims of abusive relationships do this, and the people who love them say, “Leave her! You’re worth more than that!” or “This either ends with you leaving or him killing you,” and they’re not just saying that. Unfortunately, victims of abuse rarely listen to that advice.

What’s the solution for helping your friends remain��cognizant of the decisions they’re making? How do you help your friends avoid an abusive relationship, or, if you can’t prevent that, get out of an abusive relationship?

Uh, that wasn’t hypothetical, I’m really asking. Because I still don’t know. All I can do anymore is sit around and frustratedly shout, “For the love of God, stop going in the basement!“

The Best of 2014

Let’s just come out and say it: your life sucks compared to your friends’. I know you’ve suspected it for a while, and I’m here to tell you that your suspicions are��correct. You know how I know? Because while you were washing your dishes and thinking about whether your day��would be better served drinking coffee alone or drinking beer alone, your friends and I were at a coffee house, then at a bar, taking the best selfies of our��lives and generally living it up.

While your day was��a little like this:

I was out with all of your friends except you.

OMG we had so much fun together and so many things happened that we can’t even explain to anyone who wasn’t there. There were blood pacts and everything.

There seems to be too much going on that we’re all supposed to stay in the know about, whether it’s professional sports, TV shows, movies, parties, or books (just kidding, no one reads those anymore, so you’re fine). It’s a wonder we don’t all live knee-deep in trash that we don’t have the time to take out. Well, some of us do, and there’s a TLC show for that. My point is, when is there time to do it all?

Spoiler alert: There isn’t time to do it all. Oh, do you also have a full-time job? Yeah, you’re definitely screwed.

The only way to stay in the loop is to go over the highlights of everything, follow it all in summary, boil down complex events into a few main points. Social media does this really freaking well. It’s actually all social media does.

“Facebook Depression” is a thing, y’all. That’s where we are. Facebook Depression. Let me put��some perspective on how ludicrous that seems.

Step 1: Watch this.

Step 2: Read this.

FACEBOOK DEPRESSION

There’s already an entire generation of kids who didn’t have the opportunity to not know��all the fun stuff their friends were doing at any given time. You guys remember that? For me, that stopped my freshman year of college. Sure, there were Friday nights in high school where no one asked me to hang out and I stayed at home wondering if they were all having a party without me (a couple times they were, because high school girls are the worst). That sucked. What sucks more is not being invited out anywhere on a Friday and sitting at home not only��knowing your friends are all having a party without you, but being able to see the damn party as it’s happening without you. That may not seem like such a big difference, but as someone who knows firsthand��the fun experience of having had all those who I considered my closest friends throw a party on my birthday and (oops) not��invite me, I can tell you there’s a damn difference.

Sometimes it’s not even malicious. Sometimes you just fall through the cracks of the invite list. Doesn’t make you wonder any less if you could lawyer up enough later to get away with what you feel like doing��right then.

The scariest��part of��this new generation who doesn’t know the bliss of not knowing all their��friends are having fun without them��is that they’re also probably the most devoid of media awareness of any generation thus far. By that I mean it’s a generation who doesn’t realize how the media works, or how government works for that matter, so they seem to believe that news is actually giving them all the facts, or at least presenting the facts in an unbiased and totally double-checked way (“His name’s Zimmerman? Gotta be a white dude. Post it.”). That’s a totally anecdotal personal observation, but��I could sit here waiting for someone to argue it and I think I’d be waiting for a long while. In the meantime, go ask a teenager about the business model for online news sites. They’ll have no idea about that or about from��where��Buzzfeed or TMZ or Perez Hilton receive funding. They also won’t yet understand how fear and anger are the easiest manipulative tools in any persuasive arsenal because they’ve mostly never been asked to study the art of persuasion. They won’t know what a strawman argument is, or that correlation��doesn’t equal causation. Then ask a twenty-something. With few exceptions, they won’t know either.��So combine zero��media awareness with a constant bombardment of their friends’ personal highlight reels, and what do you get? Facebook Depression. Just writing that phrase and thereby acknowledging that it’s a real thing is making me depressed. It’s so metadepressing.

The problem with highlight reels is the ease with which they can be manipulated into whatever narrative is convenient. If you take a random sampling of a thousand Austinites, you might have a pretty good representation of Austin (as long as��you didn’t just pull them from Rainey St., in which case you’ll conclude all Austinites are drunk assclowns). Ten thousand Austinites is better, but it’s much less manageable. (If you get that many in one place, they start protesting immediately.) Now imagine this article: “Top 10,000 Celebrity Selfies of 2014.” Yeah, not clicking that. Even if I liked celebrity selfies, I couldn’t justify going through that many, and I would right off the bat doubt the quality of them, since the criteria probably weren’t super selective. Although, if I were to actually go through it, I would feel pretty confident that I had an accurate understanding��of how celebrities approached selfies in the year 2014.

But the lists tend to be more along the lines of “Top 10 Celebrity Selfies of 2014.” But with only ten, the author of the article could pick ten of Miley Cyrus, leaving me, among other things, believing that Hannah Montana��is the undisputed queen of the selfie.

This is a pretty basic concept I’m bringing up here, so I don’t expect this to be news to anyone over the age of eighteen. But it’s good to have a reminder, because no matter how much you intellectually understand that all the information you’re receiving from others is in one way or another filtered to what��the relayer of information��believes you should know, your brain doesn’t actually know that.��It doesn’t acknowledge this fact automatically.��It has not evolved to respond to stimuli that way. It has responded in a way that’s very convenient for survival, Agatha Christie novels, and people who are being cheated on, but very inconvenient for everything else; it’s evolved to connect whatever dots it’s given.��The danger comes when we don’t analyze��why we’ve been given the dots we’ve been given.

Last year I started a blog called Selfie a Day. The experiment was to have myself and some of my friends take one selfie a day for a month and post it on the internet forever. This included the bad days. Turns out that’s not easy for anyone who doesn’t suffer Narcissistic Personality Disorder (about as legit of a medical diagnosis as Facebook Depression).��Despite the strict orders to post every day, most people only ended up posting selfies on their best hair days. And these were good, honest people, too, which tells me that it is somehow contrary to��self-preservation to post low points on the internet.��In the spirit of leading by example, here are some of my lowlights from that experiment, hung up like soiled underwear flapping shamelessly��in the wind��on a clothesline for all the neighborhood to see:

My stomach was hemorrhaging or something.

Still hemorrhaging…

Accidentally dressed like a lumbersexual.

Accidentally dressed Amish.

Accidentally dressed like a bag lady, so I took a duck-face bathroom selfie to further my��shame.

Looking at those��hurts me physically because I’m a goddamn adult and I experience��way too many wardrobe malfunctions that leave me basically dressing in costume. You’d think I’d have this thing down by now, or at least my Facebook might leave you thinking that, because I most definitely did not post the above��selfies on Facebook.

What I’m getting at is that we’re living in a highlight culture but as a human race we haven’t really gotten better at��any��of the basics. So we just end up feeling farther and farther below average on everything, and there’s no time like the new year to make people feel like absolute shit so that they’ll spend money��for the sake of self-improvement.

I’m here to tell you that you’re probably fine in life, though. If you’re a dumb person, you’re still at least average, because a lot of people are dumb. So what if you sometimes accidentally dress like you’re Amish or occasionally you stay at home and clean up the damn place because it’s��Saturday and you work Monday through Friday and didn’t have time to do it then? You’re an adult now, and that’s a pretty awful gig for everyone. Take back some of the control. Find a way to limit the pictures of your friends’ highlights, of celebrity highlights, of officer-involved shooting highlights (had to), and��if Saturday night’s the only time you have to scrub your toilet, then scrub the foul��thing on a Saturday night, because you’re a goddamn adult now, and it’s gotten absolutely disgusting.

Or��at least I know mine has.

See? Nobody wins with candid, lowlight��selfies. That’s why they don’t��happen.

Happy new year! Your 2015 will probably seem��much worse than all your friends’ 2015!

Throwing Wine is Not the Answer!

When I worked at a private academy full of kids from wealthy families, I mentioned that I didn’t have cable TV. I had to explain that it was because��cable TV cost money, and I didn’t really have that. A small riot of indignation erupted, and I had to squash their plans for a benefit 5K for��me, which is how problems are solved in that type of community. (Later that day, before I pulled out of the parking lot, I scooted underneath the hood of my ’96 Accord��and punched the plastic cover until it went back into place before wishing I’d graciously accepted the offer of a benefit run for me so that I could have��a car that was younger than at least one of my students.)

The unexpected consequence of not having cable TV was that I had some iota of control over what information seeped into my brain, or in the case of cable news stations, what information bitch slapped me and asked me where its money was.

The other day, the Internet taught me what entropy is. I thought that was a pretty cool thing for the Internet to do. I found the Internet useful. Today, I clicked on a Huff Po article about an Amber Alert for four kids, and the following news stories were then suggested for me:

Teen Gouged Out Girl’s Eye Before Killing Her

Security Camera Captured Last Glimpse of Teen Before She Was Burned Alive

Drunk Lawyer’s Mentally Handicapped Client to be Executed

Police Hunt for Man, Son After Mom Found in Fridge

Julia Roberts Like You’ve Never Seen Her Before

I’m not sure which one I find more upsetting, but basically the Internet was saying, “Oh, you like Amber Alerts, you sicko? Then you’re gonna love this other upsetting stuff, you sociopath.” Why did the Internet do that to me? Because that’s how the Internet was raised. “You want to know about something? Clearly you want to read only about that thing for the next ten days until you think that thing is all there is in the world.” It’s easy to get lost down these rabbit holes (I learned a bunch of cool things about Ancient Greece and the Old Testament from just such Wikipedia rabbit holes when I edited erotic romance), so don’t feel bad if it happens to you.

Not only does this happen because the Internet is set up to connect one like story to another to reach a target audience, but also because there are people who generate those stories and those headlines and who benefit from my new fear of being burned alive and probably stuffed in a fridge by those I trust the most. If I told you that a person��just like you��had her eyes gouged out by someone she trusted��just like you trust someone,��and then I told��you that there might be a way to avoid it, but you had to continue reading my blogs for the next ten years to figure out the pattern (which I would create myself by handpicking eye-gouging stories for you to use to connect the dots), I would probably create a strong readership.

** Teacher Tip!** End a class by telling��your students the story of��a woman who was beaten to death in a Walmart for ending a sentence with a preposition, then tell them that if they do their homework, you’ll begin the next class by explaining how to avoid ending sentences with a preposition. Watch the homework roll in!

Anyway, what I’m getting at is that if something you’re reading from a news or “news” or “””””news”””” source is making you feel afraid, it behooves you to train your brain to see that as a red flag.��Gentleman, it’s similar to if a girl you’d like to date tells you she’s really into horses. Ladies, it’s similar to if a guy tells you he’s really into��MMA.��Learning to identify red flags is an important survival skill.

If this doesn’t look like a big, waving red flag to you, you deserve the pain that will follow.

So what should you do if a news story makes you fearful? Should you throw wine in its face? Maybe not right away (but wouldn’t that feel amazing?). There are some things in this world that are scary, so just because the news has covered one doesn’t mean it’s wine throwing time. What you might consider doing after you’ve acknowledged your fear is to ask yourself, “Does��knowing this change my life?” Then be sure you ask yourself, “Should��knowing this change my life?” I’d wager your answer might be yes to the first (depending on the depravity of the story), and no to the second.

Now follow me into a dark place. I used to have a friend who lived approximately 1,500 miles away from me, and he somehow got it in his head to kill himself. Spoiler alert: he didn’t. But I would get these weeknight texts from him just as I was falling to sleep about how he’d had a bad day and was thinking about killing himself. At first I was fearful, then eventually I became callous as all hell, just short of asking him to at least��live-Tweet it for posterity (#nothingicandotohelpyou). What exactly did he expect me to do from all the way across the country? He had confidants within a closer radius than me. What was I expected to do? What��could I do?��I didn’t know his address, I didn’t know anyone up there who knew him, I was basically helpless and that made me want to throw wine in Life’s face.

So now, if you’ve been paying close attention, I’ve set up a few premises:

The news and Internet are a bombardment of hand-picked horrible things (except entropy, which is pretty cool).
The only way to control the horrible things you are exposed to is to make a conscious effort to avoid them or be too��poor for cable or Internet.
When horrible things are happening on the other side of the country, there’s nothing you can really do, and that makes you want to throw wine (but don’t waste wine!) or��watch something burn like it’s wearing a fake hair wig too close to an open flame on Halloween.

But because I know that people basically just think of life in terms of the hashtags nowadays, here’s the premises in a more palatable form:

#horriblestories #yesallnews��#entropy4lyfe
#NoIn7ern3t #momoneymoproblems
#nothingicandotohelp #allwinematters

So here’s the “therefore.” If you feel like the world is a scary place and that it’s getting worse by the day and that everything is going to hell around you, try turning off the TV and getting off the HuffPos and Drudge Reports of the world, taking a deep breath and looking around you. You know what I see when I do that? A couple dogs who have been lying on the bed for an hour with their eyes glued to me to see if maybe I notice they’re there and take them out because they have to pee really badly, some dirty laundry that I’ve been putting off, a fiance who’s exhausted from work, and dammit, the kitchen is a wreck. You know what I don’t see? Police officers with their nightsticks out, ready to inflict pain upon me for no reason��(which��reminds me of this one romance scene I edited…), scary black men putting their wives in fridges, scary white men putting their wives in fridges, and Julia Roberts as I’ve never seen her before. And if I leave my apartment and venture into the surrounding area, sometimes I see stray dogs wandering in dangerous parking lots or a piece of trash that should be recycled, or even a kid who looks like he’s having a rough day and could use someone to talk to. Those are all things I can do something about, and actually do something about,��so they don’t leave me feeling like throwing wine in anyone’s face; they just leave me feeling like I’ve earned��a glass of wine for a job well done.

So the next time you feel that the��news from the whole wide world is��being slung at you like a monkey slings poo, and you feel so angry and impotent all at once (pretty sure Angry and Impotent was a book��I… never mind. Sorry, Mom.) back up and ask yourself the most important question that has ever been asked in the history of mankind:

“Why?”

Why are you seeing those stories?��I believe��I know the answer, but I’ll let you critically think out this one. What does your anger lead to? Who does that anger benefit? I’ll give you the answer to this one:��the anger is��not��for your personal benefit, or even the benefit of those whom the stories represent as victims.

I leave you with this thought, which this was all sort of building toward and you should have known was coming. Police have had conflict with young black men for years and years, this is nothing new. If media outlets��had wanted to before now, they could have hand picked and highlighted��stories of young black men committing petty crime that resulted in an altercation with a cop who pulled��the trigger. But no one really did. Until now. Why now? Who benefits from your rage as you see these stories coming in from across��the country like a suicidal friend texting you at 11pm every Thursday when you can do nothing about it? Where does that rage go? Where does it focus, and what nearby problems do you overlook because your focus has been stirred and manipulated to an issue you cannot��properly address? It’s the typical “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!” syndrome. Once you’re mad enough,��helpless enough, all someone has to do is provide a narrative outlet and then you’re too busy protesting something that happened 3,000 miles away to take your dog for walks or do anything else that actually helps others.

We’re just people, unfortunately. Even Julia Roberts. But if we each focused on a smaller radius, everything would still be taken care of, and we could effect real positive change.

You know, Change We Can Believe In��Change In Which We Can Believe

Seven Reasons Why We Don’t Need Cops – #4 Made Me Rage Vomit!

With the verdict on the Ferguson trial only hours behind us, there’s been a lot of talk about police brutality, which begs the question: Why do we even have police anymore? I certainly can’t think of any reasons. So here you have 7��reasons why we don’t need cops.

1. Cops are��all��prejudiced against drug users

You can’t even light up a crack pipe without one of them being all, “Hey, you’re going to jail.” Like, what?

Cops will never understand.

2. Cops��love killing people

I mean, really. They love it, and you want to know why? Because of the paperwork involved in it. There’s nothing cops like doing more when they get off a ten-hour shift than sitting around, filing reports. As long as we have cops, we’ll have paperwork jamming up all the Internet, so we should probably just get rid of cops.

So much paperwork.

3. Cops are��all white

Now, I know what you’re going to say, and yes, not all of them are white, but did you know that if you say something enough times it starts to be true?

See? These actors playing peace officers are white, so I think it’s fair to say all cops are white.

4. Cops��rig juries

This is a proven fact that has been proven by the fact that all cops are not in jail. Did you know that cops are allowed to just shoot people for no reason at all, just because the person is aiming a loaded gun at the cop and yelling, “Die, pig! Die!” It’s just crazy. Because cops are paid so much money, they can blow all their wages on paying off jurors. This is a proven fact, like I said.

This is an exact reenactment of a cop paying off a juror.

5. Cops are always looking for respect

I mean, really, cop, you have to��earn my respect if you want it. You think just because you arrested a man who was threatening to kill his wife that I’m supposed to call you a hero and show you my ID when you pull me over for going twenty over the speed limit with a tail light out?

So pushy.

6. Cops are��always asking for your ID

Pig please. I’m a citizen of the United States of America, even if I can’t prove it. Can’t you tell just by looking at me? What? Americans look all different kinds of ways? Please, racist. Always bringing race into it. Cops love pointing out race.

Look at this white cop asking for ID and disrespecting someone for having a fake one.

7. Cops love using evidence against people

Seriously, though, like, why are they always bringing up evidence about this interaction or that when everybody already knows what happened because the media told us what happened? Don’t go muddying up the finely crafted narrative with evidence that refutes it. Look, now everyone was super sure things were one way because we were��told by various bloggers and pseudo-news sites that it was, and when you bring your evidence and expert testimony around that says something different, it just makes everyone super upset. Now we have to set stuff on fire, and that’s on the police, not us. I��was going to wait until Black Friday to mug someone to get a 50″ TV, but now that you brought evidence into the mix, I’m going to have to go out tonight and mug someone to get a 50″ TV, only this time I’ll be shouting obscenities at the cop who tries to stop me. I really wish I didn’t have to do that.

God, we know, Dean. We know.

Because Living.

If you haven’t already read the New York Times’ interview with Jaden and Willow Smith, you’re going to want to do that before you even touch this post with a twenty-foot pole. Read it here.

Now, normally, I wouldn’t make fun of a fourteen- and sixteen-year-old (not true, they’re the best targets, especially online), and I’m about 3k words behind on NaNoWriMo, but I just felt compelled, because while Will Smith has saved the world multiple times and in multiple ways, there’s just no way in hell he will be able to save us from his own kids.

So with that knowledge, let’s take a look into the future to prepare ourselves for what we’re up against.

I give you: An Interview With Jaden and Willow Smith in the Year 2029

Q. What have you been reading?

A. WILLOW: I’ve finished all the books already, so I’ve just been writing novels in my head because putting them on paper taints the duality, and then I’ve been reading them back in my brain and they make me smile and there’s oneness.

JADEN: I’ve been reading a lot of brail lately. It’s really amazing the energy that comes off those little bumpy things. You can like, feel it in your fingertips, and you just don’t get that with reading words on pages.

How long did it take you to learn to read brail?

JADEN: I didn’t. It’s not about that.

WILLOW: Because blindness and heightened senses and prana.

How has your music evolved since you were teenagers?

WILLOW: It pulses a lot. Like when you stub your toe and you feel the pulse in it. That’s my music in your toe. I just feel it and sometimes it catches on the coffee table, you know?

JADEN: [bursts into laughter] Do people even have coffee tables anymore? My music has changed because I’ve changed, but at the same time, I remain unchanging. Like imagine an apple. It rots, but it’s still an apple, you know? Then you get it bronzed and it stays the same forever, but it’s still an apple, so you add it to your bronzed fruit collection.

How do you write? What’s your process?

JADEN: She just gets in the booth, puts the headphones on, then starts burning hundred dollar bills.

WILLOW: Yeah, that’s how my last hit, “Burning Money ‘Cause I Got Too Much” came about. I really hope that it helps girls all around the world feel comfortable taking all the hundred dollar bills they’ve been given by their parents and just lighting them on fire. It feels really great to solve that problem for everyone in the world. Money is just a thing that doesn’t exist, and that’s weird to think about, but don’t think about it. Just know it.

JADEN: Yeah, sometimes I just start saying a word, and I say that word real slow and then I say another word, and if you just put one word after another enough times, you get a song. Songs are just words pieced together.

What things are worth having?

JADEN: Apples. Microphones. Apple microphones.

WILLOW: Soft spots on baby heads. Jackets made by tying together tails from the dead squirrels I see. I make those, then I just wear them around like I was throwing on anything and let people take pictures of me climbing trees because I got all that squirrelness around me.

JADEN: She never stops doing that because that’s just who she is.

WILLOW: It’s just who I am.

Tell me about what it felt like to face such harsh criticism when you two decided to get married. 

WILLOW: The criticism was like quantum physics. It wasn’t real, but it was all that existed, and that makes it more than real.

JADEN: Right, but we knew we went together like chocolate and nougat. We were like this cosmic Three Musketeers bar that made music together and then exploded into prana energy that seeped into babies.

Speaking of babies, do you two, um, do you plan on starting a family?

JADEN: Nah. We don’t believe in having sex. We just stay away from it.

Oh thank god.

JADEN: Do you know how many of my friends went through sex ed and then ended up having accidents? Think about how many accidents happen every day. I’m like, what’s up? You went and got educated, and you keep having accidents, so I’m just not going to get educated on it.

WILLOW: I’m not even sure how it works. I’m just going to keep on living like I do until the day I’m in my bed.

So what’s next?

WILLOW: I’m going back to the recording studio to light some stuff on fire and free the world.

JADEN: I’m going to keep staying crazy and climbing Olympic Mountain until I just turn into energy and imprint myself on everything in this world.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

How to Build Your Case Against Someone

I remember my dad suggesting I try out law school after I received my ever-useful degree in English. I scoffed at the idea then, but now I’m starting to realize I might have made a great lawyer. Case in point: I’m a master at building a case against people. Let me teach you.

First you have to encounter someone who rubs you the wrong way. If you’re like me, this won’t be hard. Look for someone who makes loud noises, or maybe a coworker who is terrible at his job and tries to push his work onto you, or even a friend who posts overly political things on Facebook. You already have someone in mind, I bet. I have twenty-seven in mind right off the bat (I’m amazing at mental grudge lists).

Once you’ve decided on your hate target, it’s time to build your case. That can be done with a few easy steps.

1. Articulate. Really spend some time brooding until you can clearly explain to someone why your target is the worst person in the world. What is it exactly? Laziness? Impulse control? Intolerance? You’re really going to want a strong label before you move onto the next step.

Example: The vacant apartment downstairs just got a new tenant. That tenant hired an 18-wheeler to move all the stuff into the apartment. That 18-wheeler made it difficult for me to park. This person clearly thinks they have more of a claim over the parking lot than the rest of us who do not need an 18-wheeler to hold all our possessions. This person is an elitist.

2. Gather evidence. This part is important. Gathering evidence is crucial to being able to explain to someone why this person is whatever way you’ve decided to describe them from step 1. Anecdotes and good, pictures are better.

Example of anecdote: I could barely get past all the giant boxes left outside the new neighbor’s apartment to get to my own apartment. What a bitch.

Example of photographic evidence:

She really thinks she’s something, with her POD taking up an entire parking spot. TOO GOOD FOR A STORAGE UNIT LIKE THE REST OF US?!

Psh. Just leaving her paint cans outside like she can’t be bothered. She didn’t even paint the interior herself! She hired someone else to do it before she moved in!

This bitch, am I right? She’s always leaving her blinds open at night so that everyone can see all the expensive furniture and decor she can afford. GO BACK TO WESTLAKE!

It should be said that if you’re an elitist who thinks communal space is suddenly your space, I get to take pictures as I pass by your window.

3. Check for validation. Once you’ve figured out how to articulate why the target is a horrible person and gathered the evidence to back up your case (did I mention all her boxes were from West End? Why buy from West End just to live in a one-bedroom apartment right by the AC units with a view of the back of garages?) it’s time to check for validation. If you haven’t constructed your case well enough, this is where you’ll know. When checking for validation, simply find someone who might also hate this horrible person, and present the evidence against them, being sure to articulate what kind of person it is. Label, label, label.

If the person to whom you’re making your case seems slightly disgusted or even angry with the target for existing, congratulations! You’ve build a strong case against someone! If the person to whom you’re making your case says anything in defense of the target, sorry, but you’re going to need to go back to step 1 and try again.