"When someone loves you, the way they say your name is different. You just know that your name is safe in their mouth." - Billy, age 4

This is the best description of love I have ever heard. I have too much homework to blog properly. But I wanted to share that. (I found it on the great Sarah Knapp's Facebook) In case you were bored, here are some other things I have hijacked from Facebook over time. Enjoy.

Above left (to right): Hannah Steinberg, photographer Ben Kraus, (my second favorite James) James Franco, my favorite hula dancer Sydney McCleish and boyfriend, Nikki Sully.

Weekend Update

I have received some complaints that I haven't blogged all weekend. Before I make any excuses (*cough cough* I'm sick.) I figured I might as well upload the (really poor quality) pictures of my weekend.

1. Lets start Friday afternoon as I was leaving school...This was the license plate of the green minivan paralleled in front of me on La Jolla blvd. To be clear, personalized license plates are my #2 pet peeve. (#1 being eyebrows - both under and over-groomed.) This one makes a perfect case for my hatred, as it is stupid. I don't think people should be able to get personalized license plates until a committee of citizens who serve (not unlike jury duty) to review the license plate in question. If they can all tell what it means without a doubt, it is fit for the road. Because, if it is not, people like me, are not only at risk of road rage, but also of getting into an accident while tailgating said stupid driver and attempting to figure out what they tried to be witty about in the first place.

Take this one: I looked at it and asked, "Post Traumatic Stress Cat?". I'm not impressed.

2. Saturday morning, after a big night (watching The Ghost Writer On Demand with Brynn), I was exhausted at 9:30 AM when it was time to resign my Saturday to an 8x10, windowless, flourescently-lit, editors office. To my pleasant surprise, my friend who does the paper's graphics brought her pet hedgehog to hibernate. His name is something in Russian I cannot remember nor pronounce. He is nocturnal, pygmy, illegal, and effing adorable. Basically a cartoon character come to life. His nose is my favorite, a bit too long for his face and moves when he sniffs. A hedgehog is my new backup plan for when I live somewhere I can't bring one of my three dogs.

3. This is yesterday when I went to Buffalo Exchange in order to get out of the editors office. I found this T-Shirt with a body-hair design and because I get made fun of for being attracted to men with chest hair, I sent this out to a couple friends with the tagline, "Look - I'm James*!". Self-deprication almost always puts people at ease - especially when you are wearing a T-Shirt with nipples on it.

*James is my boyfriend. Here is us last Sunday. Yes - those are Biore pore strips.

Shrek is S.A.F.H.

What is normal? From slight diversions from the norm in physicality, sexuality, and spirituality, how different is acceptable, and how “normal” should we even try to be?

My friend sent me an extensive definition (urbandictionary.com) on what a hipster is. The words ‘different’ and ‘unique’ were repeated as positive attributes of hipsters – their fashion, their music, and their attitudes towards the “mainstream”. Why the hate on the mainstream? Is everyone else missing out while they wear their Abercrombie tank tops and blast Wiz Khalifa on weekends?

As it turns out, the mainstream is much more warped than I previously believed. In a Marie Claire article on women’s “numbers” (the number of people they have slept with), women with numbers ranging from zero to 100 explained their outlook on sexuality and lifestyle.

You would expect the two extremes to be a bit nutty (in this case a religion freak and a woman who regularly attends sex parties), but the women with numbers somewhere in between seemed just as lost in the mainstream as the rest. Take a 30-something-year-old woman who has slept with 6 men, and has been in an 11-year relationship. Seems pretty normal, right?

Turns out, behind these numbers this woman is secretly more attracted to women, even though she has no intention of leaving her boyfriend – and the father of her two children. I guess normal is never so normal after all.

With some people- you get what you see. This makes things easy, but unfortunately these people are rarely worth knowing in the first place. While hidden issues or insecurities are rarely the winning scavenger hunt find, they are part of what makes people complex, and in that nature, just as normal as a self-proclaimed anarchist who shoe gazes in his spare time.

According to Shrek, “Ogres are like onions. Layers. Onions have layers. Ogres have layers.” “You know not everybody like onions. What about a cake? Cakes have layers.”

In this situation, Shrek is clearly a hipster. He realizes that many things in this world have layers to them, as do people, but he specifically is something not many people enjoy. He likes to think of himself as an acquired taste.

Donkey prefers the mainstream. Cakes are delicious, who doesn’t like cake? The cake might have something gross hidden on the inside, like carrots. But who would bother to hide anything bad in an onion?

A hurdle applicable to both my mainstream and hipster brethren is best worded by Donkey: “You’re so wrapped up in layers, onion boy, you’re afraid of your own feelings!” So don’t get fat on cake or let onions make you cry too much. Whether mainstream or not, people are people, so you better check yourself before you wreck yourself.

Everything is different and everything stays the same.

Going back to a place you haven’t been in a while is a great way to keep in check. Today, I went back to La Jolla Crack House (aka La Jolla Music on Girard), which I hadn’t been to since my awkward phase. It has been about 4 years since I picked up an electric, and I figured there was no better way to spend my new free time.

Stepping in was nostalgic, as the same exact people still work there. The French lady who runs the place is still a bitch (however less intimidating now that I tower over her), and the musty music sheets and overpriced instruments still adorn the walls that should have been replaced after the police busted the former owners. Down the long, narrow hall marked “Teaching Studios”, the buzzing fluorescent lights illuminate 12 doors, leading to four by four windowless closets with padded walls (hence, the crack house).

This store, the only one with barred windows in La Jolla, exists for me as a kind of time vortex. A parallel universe to the time track I normally run around, (Starbucks, Bishop’s, 7/11, Windan’ Sea lot, home, repeat.) and returning to my favorite teacher, Josh, was refreshing in a very musty way. The man has not changed in the last 4 years, and comparing myself to his constant existence elicited an expected but comforting realization – I have become the person I wished I was when I was last here. I am also exactly the same.

I am the same person with uncovered traits. As we grow, no one ever really changes. It doesn’t matter if one of my best friends used to wear pink and now has 9 piercings. She is the same, especially to me. People often mistake surfacing of personality traits as changes, but if we are truthful to ourselves those things were always there, we just didn’t see them.

This is the same with ourselves. We are always who we are going to be, from a very young age, if not conception. We will never change into different people. Circumstances change, and time destroys and builds some things along the way, but personalities are constant and (usually) pleasant in that nature.

So go and visit an old friend, or an old stomping ground if you need a good look at yourself, or a reminder of who you are through who you used to be.

Well this is awkward, or is it?

There has been an awkward overuse of the word “awkward” lately. The counter to this overuse is the introduction of the word “uncomfortable” as a synonym. While this is not only incorrect, my fear is because we lack the social skills to use the term “uncomfortable” in its real context, we will overuse it to the point where it has no meaning (i.e. “awkward”).

In certain situations, one may feel genuinely uncomfortable, yet social standard tells us it is awkward to say so. This is what I call the unkward cycle.

Example 1: A quiz is placed before you that you were not expecting. I’m sure this is an uncomfortable situation for you. You know it would be unwise to tell your teacher you are uncomfortable by your lack of knowledge, so instead you and the quiz feel awkward, simply staring each other down without much interaction.

Example 2: You are on a blind date. You feel uncomfortable because your friend has no taste, and set you up with Mexican Frodo. You feel uncomfortable by the situation, and you can’t quite figure out what to do with your hands as to avoid contact with said date. You can’t decide between folding your arms across your chest and leaving them at your sides. Your indecision leaves you with your arms retracted and writs dangling. You look awkward. And like a reptar.

The reverse unkward cycle: probably worse. This here is when the unkward cycle is paused, then flipped on its head. Now instead of feeling uncomfortable and acting awkward, you feel awkward and act uncomfortably.

Example 1: Your ex-boyfriend and his best friend walk into Mandarin House on Christmas day. Your entire family, excluding you, is sitting at the front table. Everyone feels awkward. This leads your mother to fake-invite them to your upcoming New Year’s party. She then retracts the statement when she realizes what she has done by claiming she knows something is on Facebook, but doesn’t know how to work it. She states she should ask your cousin, Lauren, how to use Facebook so she can be sure. Your cousin retracts into her seat and your mom avoids all eye contact. Ex-boyfriends, fake invitations, and fake generation gaps are all uncomfortable.

Example 2: Your dad wants you to go to Hawaii with him alone for his birthday. You aren’t sure if this is awkward or not, but instinct says yes. So, when asked if you will go, you turn to his wife and ask, “Why aren’t you going with him?” Silence. This is now uncomfortable for everyone, including the Chinese delivery guy.

(Note: Mandarin House Chinese food is inherently awkward. My fortune cookie told me “You and your wife will live a long happy life together.” My dad made me trade him for, “You are original and creative.” But what if I wanted a wife?)

Now that you are well acquainted with the unkward cycle, I call on you as citizens of society and social experiment (high school) alike to call out what is uncomfortable when an uncomfortable situation arises. Also, stop calling out when things are awkward. Do your best to remedy the situation, the old-fashioned way. This is the only way to stop the unkward cycle, and the endangerment of two, very important words.

Oh, the irony

The most misplaced word in the English language today is the term irony. Lemony Snicket explained it very well to me in one of his Series of Unfortunate Events books (The Reptile Room, to be exact), and everyone should be so lucky as to have him for an English teacher.

Lemony Snicket, aka Daniel Handler, defines dramatic irony as “when a person makes a harmless remark, and someone else who hears it knows something that makes the remark have a different, and usually unpleasant meaning.” This, my friends, is the best definition of dramatic irony I have yet to find.

Even though these are children’s books, by correctly using ironic devices in his narrative and also correctly utilizing dramatic irony throughout the plots, A Series of Unfortunate Events gave me my sense of humor - right after an uncle gave me my sense of claustrophobia.

After being shut in a suitcase and wheeled around the house by my drunk uncle (a different, but equally insane one), I retreated to my room and carried on reading a book about cursed orphans: a very normal hobby for a very abnormal girl of 11.

My history with the term aside, I think it should be made a point of in English classes to teach children what the words they hear on Family Guy actually mean.

For instance, when Fireman 1 notes, “These relaxing scented candles burned down the whole house!” Fireman 2 responds in a singsong voice accompanied by a fancy two-handed finger wag, “Irony!” False.

Since I couldn’t find a Snicket definition for regular irony, here is Wikipedia’s:

A statement that, when taken in context, may actually mean something different from, or the opposite of what is written literally; the use of words expressing something other than their literal intention, notably as a form of humor.

Not only is Fireman 1 not humorous but Fireman 2 is incorrect as diagnosing his comment as ironic, as Fireman 1 meant exactly what he said. This is unless, of course, Fireman 2 was trying to be dramatically ironic. But simple irony, it is not.

Another example of misuse (also involving fire) would be to say that the burning down of my grandparents’ house due to unattended Advent candles during a trip to Costco was ironic, but it was not. It was a sign from God that my step-grandmother should have stuck to being Jewish and saved her family the torture of that Easter weekend we spent 6 hours in church watching her conversion.

Lastly, post-irony, which you should also have in your irony arsenal, is a return to the sincere after the irony card has been played. I have been described as post, post-ironic before, but I could not tell you without a shred of sarcasm what that person meant.

P.S. The term you are probably looking for when something strikes you as oddly funny is sarcasm. It is a strain of humor, which sometimes employs irony, and is popular among hipsters, the clinically depressed, and Spongebob Squarepants (which upon reflection, can all be grouped categorically, as the hipsters are probably enjoying the bob with a flourish of post-irony).

Did'ja get yer tickets?

Laws passed in Arizona following the attempted assassination of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords are similar to California’s. Some believe that these laws create a myriad of inconveniences when purchasing a gun. In the words of Homer Simpson, “But I’m angry noowww.”

Lets break it down. Because of Brady Act, California has a 10-day waiting period between the purchase and delivery of a handgun after you have proven that none of the following apply to you (injury.findlaw.com):

1. Were convicted of a crime punishable by being in prison for more than one year;

2. Are a fugitive from justice;

3. Are addicted to, or illegally use, any controlled substance;

4. Have been ruled mentally defective by a court, or are committed to a mental institution;

5. Are an illegal alien living in the United States unlawfully;

6. Received a dishonorable discharge from the U.S. Armed Forces;

7. Renounced your U.S. citizenship, if you are a U.S. citizen;

8. Are subject to a court restraining order that involves your 'intimate partner,' your partner's child, or children; or

9. Were convicted of domestic violence in any court of a misdemeanor.

These rules are stupid. Here’s why:

1. My friend's dad went to a white-collar prison for three years for tax evasion. He needs a gun to protect himself from loan sharks. What now?

2. I am a fugitive from freedom. Can I buy a gun in the name of Communism?

3. I'm not addicted. I can quit anytime.

4. Since when do gun dealers make hospital visits?

5. If I'm an illegal alien, I'm not getting my gun from the government. My printed money doesn't even come from the government.

6. This one, I have to admit, makes sense.

7. Can I buy a gun in the name of Communism?

8. What if someone besides a former sex friend has a restraining order out on me? This thing can fire from 500 ft away, right?

9. Aw man. I wasn't gonna shoot her, just give her a good pistol whipping.

As a lifetime member of the NRA, the flaws in this system sadden me. Before you look at me strangely, the membership was a Sweet 16 gift from my uncle who thought I was getting too soft living in the city and needed some culture. He in turn refuses to “stick his big toe in mentally-ill, liberal California” because of the aforementioned laws that “infringe on my [his] 2^nd amendment rights.” Go Ducks.

Because of his Oregon residency, my uncle is able to go “domestic cat hunting” and breed dogs on his 10-acre lot. His doublewide trailer is home to a wide range of shotguns, handguns, rifles, Chinese throwing stars, nun chucks, and an extensive Under Armor wardrobe. Graveyard shift at a prison in Hermaston, OR, (“They call it medium security to keep the townspeople at ease, but it’s actually maximum security”) means that he is, in fact, nocturnal, so getting a call from him at 3 am in NYC asking editorial advice on the “post apocalypse survival book” he is writing didn’t come as a surprise.

Further grievances to settle: the NRA misunderstood my registration card. My ID now boasts an enraged bald eagle and the moniker “Tata Morales”. They refused to correct this vowel confusion when I brought the issue to the NRA’s attention. Tata’s for life.