Gone Under the Knife Much?

YIKES.

Thanks, Guys!

I emailed a bunch of friends about my blog last week and my little counter shows that my numbers have gone up a bunch, so thanks for coming by. Next marketing trick will be a corresponding Twitter account. I should probably come up with some new blog posts though. You know, some actual content. I don't really have any good ideas at the moment. I was gonna write about all this TSA business. I'm traveling soon—would I rather be irradiated or groped? (Groped.) But I've since heard that they aren't really doing either, so kind of a moot point. I promise to come up with some good, or at least decent, ideas in the next day or two. Let me know if you have any. Much obliged.

Priorities

I finally finished my two weeks of bland dieting. I started Phase II yesterday, which consists of adding one prohibited item to my diet for three days to see if it has a negative effect on me. I can only add one thing at a time (otherwise I won't know what I'm reacting to). I had a difficult decision to make yesterday: what to add? It was a toss up between spicy food and booze. Spicy food won! I've been hitting the [hot sauce] bottle pretty heavily for a few meals and so far, so good. THANK GOD. I didn't plan it, but I just realized that day 1 of experimentation with the next "food group", alcohol, conveniently falls on Thanksgiving, a day filled with foods I can eat (except for cranberry sauce, which is gross anyway).
So here's to a lot of gobble gobbling, good times with friends and family, and general, non-irritating gluttony! Cheers! xx

The Devil's in the Details (aka I'm a Perv)

Jane Donuts just alerted me to this site, which is dedicated to the funny messages sometimes created with iPhone's autocorrect. There's some gold in them there hills.

I was reminded of a hilarious instance in which this happened to me. And then I realized that that's not at all what happened. What did happen was this: I was having an IM conversation with a friend of mine who was working for the State Department (I think) in Afghanistan. We were talking about Afghanistan vs. Los Angeles (hardly indistinguishable, as you may guess). It was early, I guess I was skimming, and this occurred:

Oh, the Humanity

Yesterday, I was driving to a doctor's appointment when I looked over to the sidewalk. The first thing I saw was some butt cleavage. Then I noticed that it was a man, hunched over, washing his hair. He was getting the water from a spigot attached to some Melrose Ave. store. At first I thought it was kind of funny and random. Then I thought, "Oh god, how horribly depressing. He cares." It's not depressing that he cares, it's, in fact, a good sign that he hasn't slipped too far into what I've seen plague a lot of homeless people: namely, mental illness and addiction. What was depressing is that he was aware of his state.

When people have gotten to this stage, it's easy to discount their humanness. I will admit to having thought of more than one homeless person as feral. They are so dirty and wild-eyed and crazy-haired. It's hard not to. And then I think about them once having been fresh, pink (or brown) babies and wonder at what point in their lives the shit storm began. Because, there was definitely at one point in their lives–or, at many points in their lives–a shit storm or several. Maybe it was straight out of the womb. Maybe it was while they were still in the womb. Maybe it took until their late teens or early 20s, when mental illness tends to set in. Or maybe a personal tragedy, in relationships, finances, or something else, sent them over the edge later in life.

I used to have a job where I interviewed mentally ill addicts. A lot of people I talked to were homeless, or had been. A lot of stories I heard were basically nauseating. I found myself thinking, "I can't believe humans do these sorts of things to one another." It's a cycle: one person does something inhuman to another, converts that person, who then does something inhuman to someone else. I talked to people who were guilty of continuing the cycle. Some were repentant, some were not. Many didn't have the clarity to think about it deeply. I talked to others, however, who were survivors. Yes, they were addicts, but they were, in large part, self-medicating. They were trying to get better and they weren't taking any prisoners in the process. They knew they had suffered injustices and were doing the best they could to overcome them. They still had the seed of knowledge about what was right and what was wasn't and they weren't giving up. I like to think that the sidewalk hair washer was in that place. Taking care of what he could, moving forward in whatever increments he's capable of.

When I saw him, I texted a friend (who's Jewish) to tell her about it.
She said, "At least he's washing."
I responded, "I know. I was pretty impressed. Also depressed. Because, you know, he *cared*"
She said, "Yeah. Only the people with self-preserving/humanizing rituals survived the camps... as my dad would tell me."

I don't really know what my final point is. I guess it's to treat other people with kindness. Especially those to whom it might be hardest to be kind to. Because they've almost certainly been through some shit that you don't know about. Shit that you might not be able to handle either. It's hard to do this. I admit to not being very good at it. I'm not outright mean or anything, but I'll definitely do my best to ignore the guy at the side of the road. I'm not saying that you should give him money or anything, but a nice hello might be greatly appreciated. It sounds silly maybe, greeting someone that you've not going to give anything to. Maybe it is, but I'm going to try to work on it. Because here's something that maybe made my heart scream more during my interviewing job than stories of adults abusing children: being thanked by the interviewee for talking to them because it was the most anyone had ever listened to them in their lives.

I've Got Real Problems

I have caught myself twice in the past two days staring lovingly and longingly at a bottle of hot sauce.

Five more days of this bland diet. I seem to have lost a bit of weight in the process, but I would gladly put on a few lbs in exchange for a burrito in my mouth right now!

I Want a Taco, Dammit!

I am on a doctor-prescribed diet for two weeks for a health issue. The good news is that it seems to be working. The bad news is that it's keeping me from eating all the foods that are dear to me, mainly, tacos. I'm not allowed:
Booze
Caffeine
Anything carbonated
Anything acidic (so, my beverage options are water and blueberry juice)
Anything spicy (THE HORROR)
Fruits (except blueberries and pears)
Soy anything
Chocolate
Hazelnuts
Tomatoes (it is HARD to avoid these)
Mustard
Ketchup
Pickles
Salad dressing
Other things, I'm sure.

My first attempt at going out to dinner went like this: Friend: Can you eat fish? Me: yeah. Friend: can you eat rice? Me: yeah. Friend: Let's go get sushi. Me: great idea!
So, we get there and sit down and I realize I can't have soy sauce, wasabi, or ginger. As much as I love sushi and want to say it's good on its own, it really isn't.

Things I Dropped in My Cleavage Today

A french fry
A receipt

The Dangers of Online Dating

From time to time, I find myself online dating. I don't have anything against it and am not ashamed of it, but it's not my favorite way to meet dudes. But being a shut-in hermit isn't the best way to meet the less fair sex, so sometimes I turn to it. There are (obviously) a number of weirdos on there. There are also a lot of nice guys. There aren't very many guys that I would consider dating. But, I persist. In part because some insanely good stories (or at least forwards) come out of it. And now, this blog post.

THE STORY OF CHRIS
The other night, I got an email from a guy, Coastal_Life81. Something complimentary and asking if I had gmail chat. I told him that I did, but it was under my full name and I didn't want him to know that. He said he was not a weirdo and we should chat. I was bored and he was cute,

so I made up another gmail account using my username on the site (I should note that I'm on OK Cupid now, which BY FAR, has way more pervs than any other site I've been on. I should also note that while I generally think it's totally tacky for a guy to have a shirtless pic, well, he was hot. I let it slide.). His profile said that he was a PhD in Biology, currently teaching at the University of Auckland. In his email, he said he was coming to LA soon to do research on the Channel Islands.

We start chatting, and it gets weird fast. By weird, I mean within two or three exchanges, he's told me that he has an 11-inch penis and that most of the girls in New Zealand are scared of it, so he's excited to come back to America, where girls are more "adventurous." He then proceeds to ask me all sorts of questions about my sex life. I humor him with some, refuse to answer others. I'm mostly getting a kick out of this guy. Not in the he-makes-me-hot-way, but in the I'm-basically-anonymous-and-this-doesn't-matter-way. Plus, I was IMing with a friend at the same time.  So, yeah, I was entertained. He kept steering the conversation to certain topics and I would go on some tangent and he would guide me back. Not discreetly. It was pretty obvious he wanted me to talk about fucking big dicks. I definitely had nothing to say about sex with 11-inch peens. Eventually, I got tired of it and told him I was going to bed. He persisted and then I told him it was getting old. He signed off by saying, "I think we'd have a really good repore." Repore. I guess I wasn't paying attention, but that was the first moment when I thought, "Wait, this guy has a PhD???"

Next day, I'm bored at work and decide to start doing some research. He says he's at U Auckland, so I go to their Bio department and find a lecturer with the name of Chris. Get a last name, search images. Don't see anything resembling the hunk of meat above. Check Google Scholar for academic articles. You can't have a PhD without having some publications, I reason. Find the U Auckland guy. Earliest articles are from when Chris would have been 19. Possible, but unlikely. He had to have been a bit of a prodigy and, yeah, I know this is biased, but I don't really think prodigies are that hot. Then I run into a bunch of dead ends and finally just email him and ask him his full name so I can internet stalk him. He writes back with an email address that he says I can search on Facebook. I key it in and get a profile that's totally private. I have to be his friend to see anything. Fuck that! I watched Catfish—I know that the presence of a Facebook profile means nothing. But now I had a last name (from his email and different than the University of Auckland one I'd dug up before). I google that. Nothing. Then I google it and "University of Auckland" and come upon a journal entry from a girl in NY on OK Cupid. This is it:

So, besides the fact that this is a pretty ridiculous conversation, what really struck me was that some of the things he said here, he said to me, verbatim. He was actually cutting and pasting while we were chatting! I emailed him and told him he was a fraud and that was that.  Crazy, no?

TWO GUYS

I got this email last night. My response was, "Uh, no. Also, LOL."

I am really tempted to email these guys and ask them how their quest is going. I mean, do women really respond to these sorts of things? (UPDATE: It turns out that a lot of people, females mostly (only?), don't know what a DP is. Double penetration. Wash your ears out with soap now.)

TMI

There's a question that's something like, "What's the most private thing you're willing to admit here?" Some guy responded, "I pee sitting down."

It was basically a self-castration.

Anyway, I'll share some more funny stories as they come up.

Okay, I'm Doing a Terrible Job Keeping Up With This

The creative juices are not totally flowing. In the meantime, here's this, courtesy of Jane Donuts.
She sent it to me today. Told me it had 30 million views and she'd never even heard of it. Me either!

I Just Had This Thought:

If you think about whether you need to shower for longer than 30 minutes, you probably need to shower.

With that, I'm going to hop in the shower now.
More thoughtful posts to come, I promise!

Also, I think I'm ditching the question at the end of the post format. I think the request for comments is implied in most blog posts, no?

I just voted

to, among other things, legalize marijuana.
I'm really happy that made it on the ballot. I've read the proposition and it's true that it's poorly written. I'm not sure that it will win, so that's ok. But I'm glad that enough people recognize the hypocrisy of the legality of alcohol and tobacco. I don't know if that sentence made sense. I DO know that booze and ciggies are way worse for you and have a MUCH higher social, personal (for some), and public health cost than grass. Thanks, California, for at least giving it a shot.

GO VOTE TODAY!!!