Monday, May 4, 2015
Answers to Last Week’s Quiz “What Kind of Woman Are You?”
As promised, here are the answers to last week’s quiz, “What Kind of Woman are You?," as adapted from Cosmopolitan magazine.
KEY: A = 1 point; B = 2 points; C = 3 points; D = 4 points
0-6: Humblebrag Frienemy: You’re the woman every other woman loves to hate. If it were up to your frienemies, they'd break into your Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired beach-front home in the night; kidnap you; tie you up with decorative polka-dot ribbon on your kitchen island’s granite counter-top; roast you in the red clay chiminea on your patio; chop you up into little pieces with your sharpest Shun Classic Hollow-Ground 4” Santoku kitchen knife; stick you in a dozen Tupperware containers in your sub-zero freezer; and turn your rock-hard glutes into fondue cubes for their next book club meeting (Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible). Your life is Pinterest-perfect, and you make sure everyone knows it: You just gave a wildly popular TED (not even TEDx) Talk on work-life balance; your kids won first place in the school science fair with their stupid volcano; their lunch boxes look like they were packed by (the no-longer-incarcerated) Martha Stewart herself; and they never do obnoxious things like copy every word you say, blow spit bubbles, and/or drop their wet towels on the floor. Your husband does 100 sit-ups and push-ups at 5:00 a.m. every morning, and then brings you a spinach and egg white omelette with a side of fresh strawberries in bed before going down on you and driving the kids to school, leaving you to start your work day with an hour of quiet yoga and transcendental meditation by the sea. Oh, and the whole world knows all of this, because you just updated your Facebook status to report it. With photos.
7-12: Placated Hamster: Overall, you're pretty happy with your life. Well, at least as long as you keep running in that plastic wheel, eating your pellets, and dropping regular turds on your proverbial bed of straw. You thumb mindlessly through the “Celebrities, they’re just like us!” feature of US Weekly in an effort to distract yourself from the ever-widening gulf between the woman you are and the woman you thought you'd be as a young girl, when becoming the first female president, an astronaut, or an opera singer seemed remotely realistic. As those possibilities telescope inward toward impossibility with each passing 24-hour cycle of interrupted sleep; domestic morning mayhem that culminates in your blazer coated in a thin layer of maple syrup; and reply-all emails about service upgrades, you begin to favor websites like Boredpanda and Etsy. That's where you let yourself zone out into a shame spiral about how you'll never go sailing around Fiji or make hand-knit beanie hats for victims of the Nepal earthquake. The seven-minute New York Times workout looks promising at first, but after three days it suddenly feels six minutes too long. The highlight of your day is an unusually high number of re-tweets and Facebook likes, and the discovery of three expired Percosets in the back of your medicine cabinet after 5:00 p.m. on a weeknight.
13-24: Demi Moore in St. Elmo’s Fire: You’re a dreamer. Specifically, you daydream of taking out a global terrorist network with hair that looks like it was just featured in a Pantene commercial. But then you remember you have persistent dandruff that the closest you got to Oxford was the Oxford English dictionary. Also you failed to marry George Clooney and are coming home tonight to a basement carpeted with Magentic tile toys and broken doll strollers. So it's kind of miraculous that you don’t spend every day curled up in a ball in the corner of your tiny closet, with your arms wrapped around your legs, rocking back and forth like Demi Moore in St. Elmo’s Fire. Your mind ping-pongs wildly between narcissistic delusions of grandeur and plummeting self-esteem, as you recognize you have nothing to complain about aside from the fact that there is no Chipotle near your home or office. You berate your tendency toward self-pity, daring the universe to drop the other shoe and really give you something to cry about! You know you have to start cherishing the shit out of every minute you have on this planet, yet the task feels daunting. Instead, you spend that time wondering if you should finally read Fifty Shades of Grey and/or start having sex in a dungeon. As the bathroom scale creeps upward for the third consecutive week, you contemplate "making time" for exercise that occurs at neither 5:00 a.m. nor 9:00 p.m., currently the only two apparently viable hours for such an endeavor. And even after more than two decades of menstruating, you're rarely prepared for the arrival of your period, having recently found yourself behind a tree in the woods adjacent to an elementary school playground, discreetly inserting a tampon and washing your hands in a puddle. As you check your online checking account to make sure your last impulsive purchase of plane tickets did not yield an overdraft fee, you fall asleep in a world where a convicted domestic violence offender was just rewarded with $100 million for punching someone's lights out in public.
KEY: A = 1 point; B = 2 points; C = 3 points; D = 4 points
0-6: Humblebrag Frienemy: You’re the woman every other woman loves to hate. If it were up to your frienemies, they'd break into your Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired beach-front home in the night; kidnap you; tie you up with decorative polka-dot ribbon on your kitchen island’s granite counter-top; roast you in the red clay chiminea on your patio; chop you up into little pieces with your sharpest Shun Classic Hollow-Ground 4” Santoku kitchen knife; stick you in a dozen Tupperware containers in your sub-zero freezer; and turn your rock-hard glutes into fondue cubes for their next book club meeting (Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible). Your life is Pinterest-perfect, and you make sure everyone knows it: You just gave a wildly popular TED (not even TEDx) Talk on work-life balance; your kids won first place in the school science fair with their stupid volcano; their lunch boxes look like they were packed by (the no-longer-incarcerated) Martha Stewart herself; and they never do obnoxious things like copy every word you say, blow spit bubbles, and/or drop their wet towels on the floor. Your husband does 100 sit-ups and push-ups at 5:00 a.m. every morning, and then brings you a spinach and egg white omelette with a side of fresh strawberries in bed before going down on you and driving the kids to school, leaving you to start your work day with an hour of quiet yoga and transcendental meditation by the sea. Oh, and the whole world knows all of this, because you just updated your Facebook status to report it. With photos.
7-12: Placated Hamster: Overall, you're pretty happy with your life. Well, at least as long as you keep running in that plastic wheel, eating your pellets, and dropping regular turds on your proverbial bed of straw. You thumb mindlessly through the “Celebrities, they’re just like us!” feature of US Weekly in an effort to distract yourself from the ever-widening gulf between the woman you are and the woman you thought you'd be as a young girl, when becoming the first female president, an astronaut, or an opera singer seemed remotely realistic. As those possibilities telescope inward toward impossibility with each passing 24-hour cycle of interrupted sleep; domestic morning mayhem that culminates in your blazer coated in a thin layer of maple syrup; and reply-all emails about service upgrades, you begin to favor websites like Boredpanda and Etsy. That's where you let yourself zone out into a shame spiral about how you'll never go sailing around Fiji or make hand-knit beanie hats for victims of the Nepal earthquake. The seven-minute New York Times workout looks promising at first, but after three days it suddenly feels six minutes too long. The highlight of your day is an unusually high number of re-tweets and Facebook likes, and the discovery of three expired Percosets in the back of your medicine cabinet after 5:00 p.m. on a weeknight.
13-24: Demi Moore in St. Elmo’s Fire: You’re a dreamer. Specifically, you daydream of taking out a global terrorist network with hair that looks like it was just featured in a Pantene commercial. But then you remember you have persistent dandruff that the closest you got to Oxford was the Oxford English dictionary. Also you failed to marry George Clooney and are coming home tonight to a basement carpeted with Magentic tile toys and broken doll strollers. So it's kind of miraculous that you don’t spend every day curled up in a ball in the corner of your tiny closet, with your arms wrapped around your legs, rocking back and forth like Demi Moore in St. Elmo’s Fire. Your mind ping-pongs wildly between narcissistic delusions of grandeur and plummeting self-esteem, as you recognize you have nothing to complain about aside from the fact that there is no Chipotle near your home or office. You berate your tendency toward self-pity, daring the universe to drop the other shoe and really give you something to cry about! You know you have to start cherishing the shit out of every minute you have on this planet, yet the task feels daunting. Instead, you spend that time wondering if you should finally read Fifty Shades of Grey and/or start having sex in a dungeon. As the bathroom scale creeps upward for the third consecutive week, you contemplate "making time" for exercise that occurs at neither 5:00 a.m. nor 9:00 p.m., currently the only two apparently viable hours for such an endeavor. And even after more than two decades of menstruating, you're rarely prepared for the arrival of your period, having recently found yourself behind a tree in the woods adjacent to an elementary school playground, discreetly inserting a tampon and washing your hands in a puddle. As you check your online checking account to make sure your last impulsive purchase of plane tickets did not yield an overdraft fee, you fall asleep in a world where a convicted domestic violence offender was just rewarded with $100 million for punching someone's lights out in public.
Sunday, May 3, 2015
I Fucking Hate Face Paint
Face paint, face paint, face paint. I fucking hate face paint. Chances are if you have a child between the ages of 0 and 12, or have recently been around a group of five or more children in that age range, you fucking hate face paint too.
Oh look, there's a fundraiser carnival-slash-birthday party for something-slash-someone. There's nothing to do there, but one thing's for sure: there's gonna be face paint! We gotta go get our faces painted. Yeah the adults too. No one's face is safe from the forced joviality of face painting.
Oh Christ. The line is so long. Who cares! Let's stand here with our proverbial dicks in our hands for 25 minutes while we wait for a 16 year-old to paint a little butterfly or superhero symbol on your cheek. Oh yay, it's finally done. Wait what is that? It looks like something Vincent Van Gogh made while he was literally in the middle of chopping off his own ear.
Wow. That's a LOT of greasy, slimy, multicolored paint on your face now. What. You want to buy your own face paint kit from that bitch JoAnn? Cause you know she sells face paint--with glitter--in addition to fabrics. Oh look it's only $40. Let's buy it so you can keep doing this over and over again to yourselves and your friends at home.
Holy shit. It's everywhere! And by the way, what you just made is only the vaguest approximation of the professional looking designs in the book, but don't cry. No seriously, stop crying. You need to realize that the photographs in that book are taken by professional photographers, and the face paint designs were obviously made by professional face painters with airbrush equipment that does not come with this fucking kit and book. And I'm sorry, but no child has EVER been that happy. Not even after getting a perfect Mask of Zoro or Frozen-themed face paint design plastered onto their face.
You're tired. Go to sleep now. Oh you don't want to wash the face paint off? You would rather have it get all over your pillowcases and sheets so that we have to wash them, and then the paint gets all over everything else in the washing machine? Ok fine.
And then you want to go to school with a face that looks like your step-dad just beat you up for stealing Cheerios and all of the teachers do a double-take and contemplate making a mandatory report to children's services before they take a closer look and realize that it's just FUCKING FACE PAINT AGAIN?!
Oh Ok. Awesome. Yay face paint. Let's do this shit!
Oh look, there's a fundraiser carnival-slash-birthday party for something-slash-someone. There's nothing to do there, but one thing's for sure: there's gonna be face paint! We gotta go get our faces painted. Yeah the adults too. No one's face is safe from the forced joviality of face painting.
Oh Christ. The line is so long. Who cares! Let's stand here with our proverbial dicks in our hands for 25 minutes while we wait for a 16 year-old to paint a little butterfly or superhero symbol on your cheek. Oh yay, it's finally done. Wait what is that? It looks like something Vincent Van Gogh made while he was literally in the middle of chopping off his own ear.
Wow. That's a LOT of greasy, slimy, multicolored paint on your face now. What. You want to buy your own face paint kit from that bitch JoAnn? Cause you know she sells face paint--with glitter--in addition to fabrics. Oh look it's only $40. Let's buy it so you can keep doing this over and over again to yourselves and your friends at home.
Holy shit. It's everywhere! And by the way, what you just made is only the vaguest approximation of the professional looking designs in the book, but don't cry. No seriously, stop crying. You need to realize that the photographs in that book are taken by professional photographers, and the face paint designs were obviously made by professional face painters with airbrush equipment that does not come with this fucking kit and book. And I'm sorry, but no child has EVER been that happy. Not even after getting a perfect Mask of Zoro or Frozen-themed face paint design plastered onto their face.
You're tired. Go to sleep now. Oh you don't want to wash the face paint off? You would rather have it get all over your pillowcases and sheets so that we have to wash them, and then the paint gets all over everything else in the washing machine? Ok fine.
And then you want to go to school with a face that looks like your step-dad just beat you up for stealing Cheerios and all of the teachers do a double-take and contemplate making a mandatory report to children's services before they take a closer look and realize that it's just FUCKING FACE PAINT AGAIN?!
Oh Ok. Awesome. Yay face paint. Let's do this shit!
Hear Ye, Hear Ye, A Girl Child Hath Been Born!
Hear ye, hear ye, peasants of Current Earth. A girl child hath been born to our most highest royal stratospheric highness--the Duchess of Cambridge! The precious girl child shall be fourth in line to the THRONE OF ENGLAND!
What's that you say, lowly serf? It's 2015 and royalty is for fairy tales and Disney movies? Shuttest thou mouth and showeth respect for the three millionth baby born on Current Earth in the last five minutes!
To gaze upon her fine newborn visage is to know the true meaning of blue blood beauty and stature. We knoweth not her name, but it likely shall be revealed in the coming days to be Anne, Elizabeth, or Victoria.
Bow down, mortals! And worship at the diaper of THE ROYAL PRINCESS OF CAMBRIDGE! Rejoice, all ye loyal subjects! A thousand doves shall fly and a thousand bells shall ring throughout the land. For today is the day that the heir to the throne of England--where there is incredulously a ridiculous and laughable figurehead tabloid monarchy--has been born unto us.
Saturday, May 2, 2015
Quiz: What Kind of Woman Are You?
This quiz is adapted from a quiz by the same name, and with the same questions, in Cosmopolitan magazine, 7/4/14. The answers will be posted separately, so think carefully and take your time!
How do you feel about your job?
a. You love it! You live to work!
b. It would be better if people stopped telling you to smile more.
c. You wish it paid seven figures.
d. It often makes you want to poke yourself in the face with a hard metal object.
Which of these do you dream of?
a. Having a great career and a happy family.
b. Consuming opioids with impunity and without adverse consequences to your health.
c. Being alone for 24 consecutive hours.
d. Temporarily running very far away.
After you have kids, you...
a. Will always be kind and gentle and put their needs above your own.
b. Will know they hate you, and with good reason.
c. Will know the true meaning of fear and the full extent of your deficiencies as a human being.
d. Will occasionally contemplate a poetic, feminine suicide such as sticking your head in the oven (Sylvia Plath) or drowning yourself with stones in the pockets of your petticoat (Virginia Woolf).
What kind of guy are you looking for?
a. One who loves dogs, sunsets, long walks on the beach, and has a great sense of humor.
b. One who isn't threatened by your vibrator.
c. One named George Clooney.
d. One who is sane and has a pulse.
How do you feel about relationships?
a. You enjoy being in a relationship, but you also love your independence.
b. They make you shake your fists at the sky and curse your daddy.
c. They tend to have a laxative effect.
d. You wish they didn't feel so necessary.
What do you do in your spare time?
a. Travel, cook, read, knit, do yoga, and go for long runs outside.
b. As many drugs as you can get your hands on.
c. Cry into your pillow.
d. Lie awake in bed wondering how much longer until humanity makes itself go extinct.
How do you feel about your job?
a. You love it! You live to work!
b. It would be better if people stopped telling you to smile more.
c. You wish it paid seven figures.
d. It often makes you want to poke yourself in the face with a hard metal object.
Which of these do you dream of?
a. Having a great career and a happy family.
b. Consuming opioids with impunity and without adverse consequences to your health.
c. Being alone for 24 consecutive hours.
d. Temporarily running very far away.
After you have kids, you...
a. Will always be kind and gentle and put their needs above your own.
b. Will know they hate you, and with good reason.
c. Will know the true meaning of fear and the full extent of your deficiencies as a human being.
d. Will occasionally contemplate a poetic, feminine suicide such as sticking your head in the oven (Sylvia Plath) or drowning yourself with stones in the pockets of your petticoat (Virginia Woolf).
What kind of guy are you looking for?
a. One who loves dogs, sunsets, long walks on the beach, and has a great sense of humor.
b. One who isn't threatened by your vibrator.
c. One named George Clooney.
d. One who is sane and has a pulse.
How do you feel about relationships?
a. You enjoy being in a relationship, but you also love your independence.
b. They make you shake your fists at the sky and curse your daddy.
c. They tend to have a laxative effect.
d. You wish they didn't feel so necessary.
What do you do in your spare time?
a. Travel, cook, read, knit, do yoga, and go for long runs outside.
b. As many drugs as you can get your hands on.
c. Cry into your pillow.
d. Lie awake in bed wondering how much longer until humanity makes itself go extinct.
Friday, May 1, 2015
Parental Yoga Poses
1. Standing Coat Rack: Stand against a wall with your arms outstretched. Wait for your children to give you their jackets, sweatshirts, backpacks, mittens, and hats.
2. Crumpled Tissue: Sit on a bench with your knees spread slightly apart and elbows on your knees. Wait for your children to run over and wipe their noses and mouths on your sweatshirt.
3. Leaning Garbage Can: Stand upright with one leg in the car, one leg out, and one arm outstretched. Wait for your children to hand you cheese stick wrappers, empty apple sauce pouches, and half-eaten granola bars.
4. Lotus Armchair: Sit in the lotus position and breathe for ten seconds. After ten breaths a child will sit in your lap.
5. Dampened Towel: Sit on your knees with your forearms in the bathtub. Breathe and wait for water to splash all over your clothes and for a wet child to climb from the tub and affix him or herself to your body, completing the soaking series.
6. Junkie's Pose: Curl up in the fetal position and allow a thin stream of drool to dribble out of the side of your mouth as you breathe deeply and repeat "whathaveidonewhathaveidone" over and over again.
Namaste!
2. Crumpled Tissue: Sit on a bench with your knees spread slightly apart and elbows on your knees. Wait for your children to run over and wipe their noses and mouths on your sweatshirt.
3. Leaning Garbage Can: Stand upright with one leg in the car, one leg out, and one arm outstretched. Wait for your children to hand you cheese stick wrappers, empty apple sauce pouches, and half-eaten granola bars.
4. Lotus Armchair: Sit in the lotus position and breathe for ten seconds. After ten breaths a child will sit in your lap.
5. Dampened Towel: Sit on your knees with your forearms in the bathtub. Breathe and wait for water to splash all over your clothes and for a wet child to climb from the tub and affix him or herself to your body, completing the soaking series.
6. Junkie's Pose: Curl up in the fetal position and allow a thin stream of drool to dribble out of the side of your mouth as you breathe deeply and repeat "whathaveidonewhathaveidone" over and over again.
Namaste!
Game of Thrones Intervention
I've been meaning to talk to you about this for awhile, and I've really searched my heart and soul. I must've gone back and forth a zillion times about whether to confront you, and it was a hard decision, but ultimately I decided I couldn't stay silent any longer. I'm only doing this because I love you. Please know that. But you need help, and you need it now. I was up all night crying because I'm honestly not sure what will become of you if this intervention fails. This is your wake-up call.
Ok. This is hard. But here it is. You need to watch Game of Thrones. Like, all of it. Or at least get started on Season 1. The fact that you've never seen even a single minute of a single episode of this American fantasy drama series that premiered on HBO in 2011 is unconscionable.
It's like you've cut yourself off from society. Game of Thrones is in its fifth--FIFTH--season and it's like you're the ONLY person in the whole Seven Kingdoms of Westeros (AND the Icy North and both sides of the Narrow Sea) who doesn't care who ends up controlling The Iron Throne.
How can you be so apathetic to the fate of the realm's noble families? Don't you care what befalls each member of the sprawling ensemble cast? Don't you even want to know who violently dies or gets raped or gets incinerated by a fire-breathing dragon each week in a fictitious Middle Earth?
Your friends and family are really worried about you. We can't enable you anymore. We can't stand idly by while you fail to appreciate the ceiling-shattering work of little person actor Peter Dinklage, who plays Tyrrion Lannister. Have you even BEEN on the internet recently? Didn't you know that people are naming their actual babies after Game of Thrones characters? Names like Catelyn, Sansa, Arya, Bran, Bronn, Roose, Gendry, Brienne, Tommen, Stannis, Shae, Jeor, Gilly, and Ygritte?
Oh what. You thought bran was just something your mom put in her cereal when you were a kid to make her "regular?" Well, not anymore, homeslice. Bran is a key character on Game of Thrones. And actual human babies are being born on current earth, and getting named Bran. But you wouldn't know that. Would you?
Why are you looking at me like that? I'm not making this up. Don't look at me like I'm the crazy one here. You're the one who has never watched even one SECOND of Game of Thrones!
By failing to watch Game of Thrones, you are missing at least 65% of all references made on social media and in common conversation. The longer you go without watching Game of Thrones, the more isolated, alienated, and ostracized you become, and it's both sad and terrifying to me and everyone who loves and cares about you.
There's not much time left. Season six is already in production, and at this point you're so far behind you might never catch up. Please. I'm begging you. Start watching Game of Thrones before it's too late, and you're attacked by White Walkers and undead wildlings.
The choice is yours, and it's simple: Watch Game of Thrones, or risk losing contact with everyone you know and love forever.
Ok. This is hard. But here it is. You need to watch Game of Thrones. Like, all of it. Or at least get started on Season 1. The fact that you've never seen even a single minute of a single episode of this American fantasy drama series that premiered on HBO in 2011 is unconscionable.
It's like you've cut yourself off from society. Game of Thrones is in its fifth--FIFTH--season and it's like you're the ONLY person in the whole Seven Kingdoms of Westeros (AND the Icy North and both sides of the Narrow Sea) who doesn't care who ends up controlling The Iron Throne.
How can you be so apathetic to the fate of the realm's noble families? Don't you care what befalls each member of the sprawling ensemble cast? Don't you even want to know who violently dies or gets raped or gets incinerated by a fire-breathing dragon each week in a fictitious Middle Earth?
Your friends and family are really worried about you. We can't enable you anymore. We can't stand idly by while you fail to appreciate the ceiling-shattering work of little person actor Peter Dinklage, who plays Tyrrion Lannister. Have you even BEEN on the internet recently? Didn't you know that people are naming their actual babies after Game of Thrones characters? Names like Catelyn, Sansa, Arya, Bran, Bronn, Roose, Gendry, Brienne, Tommen, Stannis, Shae, Jeor, Gilly, and Ygritte?
Oh what. You thought bran was just something your mom put in her cereal when you were a kid to make her "regular?" Well, not anymore, homeslice. Bran is a key character on Game of Thrones. And actual human babies are being born on current earth, and getting named Bran. But you wouldn't know that. Would you?
Why are you looking at me like that? I'm not making this up. Don't look at me like I'm the crazy one here. You're the one who has never watched even one SECOND of Game of Thrones!
By failing to watch Game of Thrones, you are missing at least 65% of all references made on social media and in common conversation. The longer you go without watching Game of Thrones, the more isolated, alienated, and ostracized you become, and it's both sad and terrifying to me and everyone who loves and cares about you.
There's not much time left. Season six is already in production, and at this point you're so far behind you might never catch up. Please. I'm begging you. Start watching Game of Thrones before it's too late, and you're attacked by White Walkers and undead wildlings.
The choice is yours, and it's simple: Watch Game of Thrones, or risk losing contact with everyone you know and love forever.
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