The Cruise

I found this when I googled "Tampons Cruise Ship."

I was afraid to use a tampon until I was a sophomore in college, when my family went on a cruise over the Christmas holiday. My sister and I were sharing a cabin, and I told her I couldn't go swimming. When she found out why she gave me a fist-full of tampax and trapped me in the bathroom. I tried to get out but she leaned all her weight into her shoulder and kept the door pinned shut.

"Do it," she said.

At least that's how I remember it.

This post is brought to you by me getting my period  Every. Single. Christmas.

Last Minute Halloween Costumes, 2012 Style

I decided to help you out again this year, slacker. 

PSY, Gangnam Style Music Video

Duh. I have a feeling PSY look-alikes are going to be riding their imaginary steeds all over the country this year. So you're not going to stand out in your blue tuxedo jacket and bowtie and shades, but you at least know in ten years you can look back on the pictures you took this holiday and wonder what the fuck you were supposed to be. For the pros: Get one of your friends to dress as the guy in the yellow suit, and your other friend to dress as humpy-humpy guy in the elevator. You could also ask someone to precede you with a giant fan and spray trash in your face all night.

Maddie The Coonhound, Maddie on Things

To truly capture the essence of Maddie the Coonhound, you're going to have to focus more on your energy and state of mind than your physical props.  You can make a quick dog costume by cutting out some floppy dog ears (you can use felt or brown paper or even a paper bag!) and tape them to a headband, and paint a dog nose on your human nose, and make a tail and wear a collar. Then all night, be very patient, and polite, and climb up to very high, precarious, unexpected places and just stay there. For the pros: This would work really well if you have lots of sunspots on your skin. 

 Brandon, Shame

Dress really sharply, comb your hair neatly, speak with just the barest hint of an Irish accent. Also get a huge fake dong and hang it out of your open fly. The girls will love it. For the pros: FUCK EVERYTHING. 

Hannah Horvath, Girls

Strip on down to your birthday suit and be kind of awful to everyone. Don't forget your cupcake! For the pros: Do not, I repeat, DO NOT go to the bathroom alone or let your bffs go to the bathroom alone! This includes doing number ones and number twos and also bathing. Don't forget your cupcake!

The Higgs Boson, The Beginning of Space and Time

Pipecleaners. For the pros: More pipecleaners. 

HALLOWEEN DON'T!

Hey Mom, I'm going to be a fucking toadstool for Halloween.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

(If you really want your kid to look like a stupid mushroom you can buy this at Pottery Barn Kids. But I wouldn't recommend it!)

They've got my vote

The Script I

Trying to format a script as I write is reminiscent of when I first learned about quotation marks and would randomly use them in a sentence without any actual understanding of how they worked. Like the entry in my diary about the "new" girl in school from Japan, who I "hoped" would someday become my "friend." Reading it today, I sound like a sarcastic asshole, but I was actually just an "idiot." 

In this instance I am just CAPITALIZING random words OF LITTLE significance and hoping it is IMPRESSIVE.

Why I Can't Sleep

One Christmas my grandma gave me a clown doll. Wind a key in its back and a music box would play from from its bowels as its head rolled around on its neck. My mom put it on the dresser across from my bed where it could watch me as I lay rigid under the sheets, too fearful to sleep. It had a big red smile and orange yarn hair and loose, long arms that I imagined knotting around my throat like in Poltergeist. Sometimes in the middle of the night it would suddenly start moving, playing just a few notes as its head turned. If every muscle in my body weren't clenched I probably would have wet the bed.

When my parents noticed my fatigue, my dad recorded some soothing music to play at bedtime. He called it "space music," and you can still hear it on NPR late at night. It is weird and lonely sounding. It uses synthesizers to create desolate planetary soundscapes. It's new-agey and probably what you would find playing in a book store in Scottsdale, Arizona. This helped with my fear of the clown doll because it actually scared me more.

Help me Mr. Rogers

When the music played, I imagined myself on an icy planet with a huge, rusty apparatus bolted to my ribs. The machine attached to the poles of the planet and I was forced to walk and walk and walk forever, slowly turning the great frozen rock. The only thing worse than the 90 minutes of creepy music was when it was over. The final song would fade to silence. How long until the tape would run out? I would curl my toes, chest constricting, anticipating the BANG of the play button popping back up, deafening after the quiet of space.

Okay. Just don't listen to it, right? Hide the clown in a box somewhere and pull yourself together, child. Believe me, I tried, but I was too afraid of hurting my grandma or dad's feelings by rejecting these kind things they were doing for me. They didn't know I had a demented imagination. So, despite my efforts, the clown would find its way back onto my dresser, and my dad would tuck me in and suggest I listen to some cosmic tunes. And I would nod and say "Okay."

I understand now that he wouldn't have cared. He would have put on my Mister Rogers tape about being brave, kissed me goodnight, and never given it another thought. A few years ago we were driving and as he scanned through the stations on the satellite radio, I heard the familiar, abyssal drones. "Hey! Space Music! Remember how you guys used to love that?" he said. He lingered on the station, and I thought about confessing my true feelings on space music, but I kept my mouth shut. He remembered it as something nice he did for me, and I didn't want to sully that. And it was nice. How many fathers would stay up and record weird music to help his daughter fall asleep?

But I took that clown into the basement, broke its neck, and hid it behind a box of Christmas ornaments. You can't tell me that thing wasn't possessed. 

How to annoy me at a concert.

1. If we're seated, get up to buy more beer every 15 minutes or so.

2. Look up the lyrics to the songs on you phone and read them instead of watching the show.

3. Eat a smelly sandwich.

4. Spill your beer on my head.

5. Whip my face with your dreads while you dance/grind on someone.

6.Touch me.