rants

Old people, the Royal Rumble, SD cards that can S my D

by margotsmokes

I swear I’m not technologically incompetent. If anything, I’d rank myself slightly above average, maybe a nice 7.5/10. Maybe it’s just the nature of the beast, or Murphy’s Law, or that other variety of Murphy’s Law from that show I never remember the name of, ‘everything that can go wrong will go wrong at the worst possible moment,’ but somehow my cell phone, my sister’s camera, and my computer all failed at the same time, and I lost my camera.

I have since found the camera, in a backpack that got put in the hall closet. Never again with the compact cameras. I shouldn’t be able to lose a means of recording in a backpack pocket. I need my cameras to inconvenience me.

Anyway I decided I wanted to make a Royal Rumble reaction video because I made one last year and I’ve played it over a couple times since then and it amuses me. My thought process is basically, well, do you find this funny? Then do it, at this point. The urgency of the Royal Rumble reaction video is entirely my family’s fault. My Mom broke her foot what feels like several years ago, but was really about a month ago, and I don’t think I’ve taken a deep breath, like in a literal sense, since then. My Mom has the physical grace of a donkey, which is all the more amazing given she is maybe 100lbs. Her lack of control of her being is so acute it somehow manipulates the laws of space and gravity and physics and I’m sure there’s a blanket concept for those three things I would know if I learned science in high school but I didn’t. Usually it’s just annoying but with the lack of foot and added crutches and even if I keep making fun of her, very real injury, it’s scary. She fell literally seconds after we got back from the hospital, flat on her back in the middle of a dark road, no less, and took a header ironically, going to the physical therapist’s office. I learned it’s really hard to pick another human being up, even if they are light. If they have a satin-y puffer jacket on, it’s worse. If you haven’t cut your bangs in a while and you can’t see and also it’s pitch black out, that also ups the difficulty.

It’s gross to see your Mom in pain or incapacitated like that. I have no other way to describe the wrongness that goes beyond just empathy. Both my grandparents died recently, and the terror of their mobility has been high on everyone’s minds. I don’t know so much that my Mom is flying to close to the sun, so much as she has some innate drive to hurl herself into it and then refuse help. Like my grandma, my grandma who in the last months of her life, with 100% mental clarity, and nearly 0% vision, decided to deep fry potatoes, blind, because it was a waste of money to order takeout french fries when they had perfectly good ones in the freezer.

I’m so fucked. My grandparents deteriorating health destroyed their half-dozen kids, and billion grandkids or however many there are. I have my sister, who makes my Mom Uber to appointments when she is home, and once cancelled on my birthday lunch with our Dad because she forgot to call off work, only she didn’t go to work, she was at home. I know this because we live in the same house. I mean what?

So that has been heavy. The thinking about caretaking. Which great news, I am fucking horrible at. Then that’s setting off good old-fashioned sibling rage. Rage.

So I haven’t been doing much besides trying to stay calm. My Mom was feeling good enough we went to return some stuff from Christmas that never got done. Thank God for 90 day return policies. A nice girl held the door for us. I got a new pair of sunglasses. We went to get groceries and I got a bunch of movie theater snacks and a motherfuckin’ sub. I ingeniously taped a selfie stick to my bookshelf and got my little reaction capturing set up going and did a little test video and things are looking up.

I recorded about 25 minutes (light on, counter going up, everything) and decided you know what, I’ll be smart and hit stop, and start a new video, so I don’t have one 2 hour video to contend with, and if something fucks up it will be contained. So I hit stop, I watch the video ‘save,’ go to play it back, and THAT FUCKER DISAPPEARED. NOTHING IN THE GALLERY. NO FILE. NOT ON THE MEMORY CARD. NOT ON THE PHONE. WTF!?!?!

I pulled the memory card, because motherfuck you SD card, this ain’t my first rodeo, so it wouldn’t get overwritten, but so far so shitty. I borrowed my sister’s camera (I realize my borrowing something from her/my talking shit about her in the same couple paragraph span is sort of wrong, though I do think her, trust me, abandoning me with our theoretical elderly parents is a different realm,) and recorded the last bit of the Rumble, but at that point my heart wasn’t in it as I was distraught about what new means my phone had discovered of torturing me.

To be clear, I realize this all sounds silly as fuck, and is in the grand scheme of things, incredibly minor, it’s just been a genuinely hard month, and I was so looking forward to that little spot of dumb indulgence. I managed to get so gutted I had to make a trip to my old cryin’ spot, sitting on the (lidded) toilet in our basement bathroom while praying there were no centipedes in there. I think I’ve classical conditioned myself to cry in there, because if I’m going to cry, it is virtually always in the worst room in the house.

I’m so glamorous.

Sometimes my tenacity is a bad thing and now is one of those times, because I’ve devoted far too much of this week to trying to recover a file of me eating a sub while hating Baron Corbin. I just don’t want that memory card to win, and right now I feel like it is. I hate forgetting things, losing things, and being one upped by machines.

Also my music lesson sucked this week. Where is sanctuary. Ugh.

A Tale of Two Manns

by margotsmokes

I don’t know why I buy fashion magazines, I really don’t. I don’t know why I buy any magazine really, it’s one of those things I do like order the Wisconsin Mac & Cheese from Noodles & Company when I’m both lactose intolerant and bad with wheat, or change the channel to Toddlers & Tiaras. I know I’m just spending time and money to bring about my own eventual paralyzing agitation, but I can’t help myself. Like a fat Georgian housewife to televised child abuse.

Flipping through the September 2012 issue of Elle, I only managed to hit a couple articles before my diarrhea ended and I got off the toilet I wanted to turn into she-Hulk and beat everyone around me with a blunt object.

The first was an old blurb about old women making music again and why we should care. There wasn’t much attention to genre or any overarching trend, just you know, here are some olds who play instruments. Diana Krall. Gwen Stefani. Tori Amos. Aimee Mann. Not being treated as women with long, insanely successful careers, and dedicated fan bases who have you know, changed the face of music, just like, ‘hey remember when it was 1993 and there was that lady that temporarily made it alright to like jazz? Yeah she is like still alive or something.’

That’s not satire, that’s a near exact quote.

The one that really chapped my ass got my panties in a twist caused my tampons to grow arms and try to punch everyone at Hearst in the goddamn face was their describing Aimee Mann’s lyrics as “Twitter-sharpened.” Are you kidding me? Are you attributing anything about the verbal dexterity of a woman who has been making music since 1982 to a ephemeral internet phenomenon where 12-year-olds go to threaten to kill Justin Bieber’s recess partners? And you’re supposed to be making a magazine for women?

The second was a longer piece on actress/comedian Leslie Mann which I admittedly did not finish because there is only so much excess verbiage I can take. I don’t know if this is a new trend or just something I was too stupid to notice or magazines have come under new regulations to make more words or something, but every article I read is like 90% “as she nibbled on a plate of truffles made from cocoa beans from the finest of Peru and dabbled with gold foil mined by the orphans of same-sex Swedish amputees; in a Bengali cat hair woven blazer by Alexander McQueen in a capsule collection for Imitation of Christ available only in countries beginning with the letter S…” and 10% press release. Like word for word press release.

All I know is I know more about Leslie Mann’s cardigan than I do about Leslie Mann. It was described as “filmy.” I’m not sure that’s really a complimentary adjective for a cardigan. Some venti Americano’d out intern was probably sent to thesaurus.com to look up a synonym for gauzy or diaphanous which are according to my own personal studies are the #1 and #2 adjectives respectively to appear in fashion magazines. S/he probably went a little astray, like how Timbaland knew vaguely what promiscuous meant, but not enough to know it wasn’t a compliment.

And then we all spent 2006 lining Nelly Furtado’s bank account.

Anyways, back to the article, it just seemed like it was apologizing for claiming Leslie Mann was funny for a woman, like it had some primitive notion that that idea is sexist, but had no idea how else to describe her. There were a lot of lines like ‘she’s not just funny in scenes with Paul Rudd!’ or ‘this is a film where women take center stage, but don’t worry you’ll laugh at it!’ It was like watching a toddler at the mall scream “look at that fat person!” and when scolded by their parents they give that look that says “I am vaguely aware I did something wrong, but that person is fat, what else do you want me to do.”

Oh and Leslie Mann is also really hot you guys. Remember that. She is 40 but she can pass for 25. Her skin is poreless and she wears skinny jeans even though she has two children.

Sexual Poison

by margotsmokes

I’m beginning to think I was custom engineered by Jesus/Allah/Christopher Walken as punishment for men. Or punishment for myself. Or punishment for something. Or maybe we won’t go creationist on this one, because I believe in fossils and Bill Nye. Maybe I am a cluster of seriously shitty genetics. Or maybe Greek/Roman myths are real. If my Mom had her choice she would have named me Cassandra, after Mama Cass, who she loved, and who did not die choking on a ham sandwich, but died a tragic death nonetheless. I always identified more with Cassandra, the mythological figure who could foresee the future but was never believed. Either way that’s got to have left a negative imprint, although my Dad wanted to name me Debbie so maybe the larger crisis was avoided.

I have scrawny little legs on an otherwise average sized body. Kind of like a bipedal deer. I have emotional problems which have so far confounded 4 psychiatrists, including one who was like “hold on, I gotta write this shit down.” He looked like a Wes Anderson character and constantly made what I thought were inappropriate jokes but he would then glare at me when I laughed. He prescribed me Ambien, for my insomnia, then said “be careful with this, we don’t wanna have you goin’ down like Whitney Houston.” I chuckled, and then he looked me straight in the eye and said “it’s not funny lots of people die that way.”

I’m lactose intolerant. I’m gluten intolerant. I probably have irritable bowel syndrome. I get an insatiable urge to hit people while drunk. I’m smart but in the useless way where I question everything and enjoy nothing. I have Daddy issues. I have Mommy issues. I’m terrible at small talk. I have a bitch face and a loud mouth which do not go well with being painfully shy. I have the combination of self-loathing and the desperate need to be liked that seems to be a prerequisite for anyone who wants to be an artist. The possibility of dying alone arises every once and a while, but I think my deeper fear is that one day someone will love me despite all the shit mentioned above. Because then it will be reckoning day. Then I’ll have to figure out if I’m capable of feeling loved.

And I’m really scared I’ll feel nothing

In which I write a spoiler-filled movie review for Celeste & Jesse Forever

by margotsmokes

The movie was good but so not what I needed during this delicate point in my life. I’m like really treading water here, and have been treading for a long time. My ass is tired. It’s taking everything I have not to go under. Anything that doesn’t say life is wonderful and everything will work out perfectly is not what I need right now.

It was a lot like Like Crazy with older actors and it was more heartbreaking because the characters weren’t annoying as shit. Essentially they fall in and out of love with each other at all the opposite times, then Andy Samberg knocks a bitch up and forces a decision that way. The whole time I kept wishing the baby would die. Or she gets an abortion. Or he decides to parent the child and man-up but realizes just because he knocked this woman up doesn’t mean they’re in love. Or Hollywood, with your love of *the sacredness of motherhood* how about a well timed miscarriage. Then she’s a saint, and problem solved. But no, they gotta get married and try to work it out and he suddenly does a 180 personality wise.

Bullshit, I don’t care if life is complicated, if you love someone you need those two people together at the end of the movie. At least in Like Crazy they were ambivalent towards each other. Don’t tell me they’re perfect for each other but can never be together because of a stupid baby and the stupid nuclear family. What a crock of shit. I still hope that fake baby dies. I’m going to contact whoever wrote that script and ask them to keep writing and that fake baby will croak. That Belgian “dancer” (OMFG, they’re always dancers, how many dancers to you know in real life? and they always do pilates. everyone has done pilates. how many people do you know who consistently do pilates? no one. no one keeps up with pilates. who is from Belgium. no one.) can go fuck herself.

Here it is: Andy Samberg and Rashida Jones work out their issues. Andy moves out of the garage and Rashida’s gorgeous living quarters stay perfect with the addition of some of Andy’s quirky art and some man shit. The robot stays. Its a sign of their love. Andy grows up a bit and Rashida slightly removes the stick from her ass and the yoga guy can bang the Belgian bitch and everyone else can get super fucking high with the awesome weed dealer and watch the Beijing Olympics. Hollywood you’re welcome, I just fixed your script.

The Peanut Butter Solution

by margotsmokes

Honestly, why would you package something spreadable in a container taller than a knife. I am so tired of having to stick my entire damn hand in there to get shit out. Memo to Kraft – take a note from cream cheese and put that shit in a shallower vessel, so for once I can not end up smearing peanut butter all over my counter and putting anyone who enters my door at risk of anaphylactic shock.