Or You’ll Be Leavin’ With a Fat Lip

Dear Diary,

Recently my feeling were hurt by a boy… no big deal… but I took the opportunity to listen to some angry music.  To be honest I haven’t been directly smote by a boy for some time.  The last time it took years for me to get the hint (I’m a little slow on the uptake).  This combined with a rebirth of my Chuck Taylors from the back of my closet really riled up some teenage angst inside of me.

Needless to say, I suddenly had the urge to listen to “angry” music.  So I searched my extensive (apparently not extensive enough) music collection for something that would personify my mood, and couldn’t find anything!  Sure I had a great collection of emo jams… if I felt like letting Rivers Cuomo tell me how sad I was or wanted a little Pet Sounds I was set.  But that wasn’t how I was feeling, I wanted to murder something with an air guitar… or even break stuff.  That’s when it hit me and I immediately downloaded Limp Bizkit’s Break Stuff.  I listened to it for the first time on the car ride home and was surprised that I knew ALL the words… I mean ALL the words.

When I first downloaded the song I didn’t even remember the tune… I just knew that I really wanted to break something.  But apparently it all got stuck up there, waiting in the wings for me to get pissed and bust out from my brain!

I’m not too sure why it hit such a cord with me, but it did.  Usually I’m a Death Cab or Bob Dylan girl, but there is something about Limp Bizkit’s raunchy violence that this little pink and blond haired girl needed.  I no longer wanted to break stuff, but I did want to listen to the song again and again.  Even now, days later, I still need a dose of Break Stuff on the way to school to get me through the day.

I now wonder if this is what it is like to be a teenage boy.  Suddenly being struck by the urge to break something.  Perhaps that’s where violent video games come in.  Unfortunately the only video game I have is Paper Boy on the original Nintendo so I can’t try that theory out.  Striking a bush down with a paper is not quite gonna do it.  That’s probably for the best, most newfangled controllers are too complicated and I’m not coordinated enough to work them…

I’m not too sure what the point of this entry is… I guess I just want to thank Limp Bizkit for being there for me in my time of need.  I now know that if I have a rough day and whiskey can’t help me out I always have Limp Bizkit waiting to step in and bust out a motha-fuckin’-chainsaw… WHAT?!!

Hugs and kisses till next time!!!

       …no contest.

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Is Happiness In The Pursuit?

Dear Diary,

I heard a story on the news a few weeks ago about how the United States was thinking about adding a Happiness Index to the monthly reports to gauge how well/not well the country is doing.  My first reaction was that this is ridiculous and I must blog about it!  Then I realized that the reasons it is ridiculous are a little too obvious, and when you examine the metrics that the index would be using the idea wasn’t all too crazy, but it actually made sense.  After all employment, income, traffic, and marriage status does determine a degree of people’s happiness.

But is that all happiness is?

What really determines my happiness?  Currently I love my job, I live in a city I love, I watch Netflix streaming when ever I want, and I will be an aunt next month.  Over all I am quite happy.  However there are certain things in my life looming over my head that constantly makes me unhappy.  (Watch out, shit’s about to get real)  The biggest of this is my singleness.

The truth is my current dating status has a lot to do with my happiness, and I think this is true for many singles.  As a single lady I am taught by society to be happy with being alone, and for the most part I am.  But when there is a boy in the picture my attitude changes dramatically.  I am nicer to my students at school, traffic doesn’t bother me, everything is 12 times funnier, and I truly do feel as though I am looking through the world through rose-colored glasses.

I’ve never been in love; my longest relationship lasted only 6 months, so I know these feelings can fade fast.  But if you are lucky enough to spend your life with a person you love and continue to love them, I imagine over time you adjust to the view through your tinted glasses of the world and it no longer looks so rosy.

With this in mind I am now forced to think about moments in life when I am my happiness.  Getting my dream job, laughing at something stupid so hard that I begin to cry, and stepping off a plane to some place new and foreign.  Then I realized that all these moments are fleeting.  The job soon becomes stressful, the joke looses its humor, and I eventually long for my own bed.  What once made me happy no longer does so.

After my dreams are realized I then begin setting my sights on something else.  A promotion, a higher salary, or a new trip across the globe.  It are these hopes and dreams that keep me going from day to day.  Perhaps that is what happiness really is… the optimism to gain something greater than what we have.

I think our founding fathers had it right.  I guess the pursuit of happiness is what defines happiness.  If this is the case, then as a single lady I guess I’m happier than the average married person.  I still have the hope and dream of bagging the “perfect man”.  “What makes him perfect?” you might ask.  I think the answer might be, “the fact that I don’t know.”

In my opinion the US should throw out the happiness index and replace it with an optimism index.  What matters more, what we have or what we think we can have?

Hugs and kissed till next time!!

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Marcia, Marcia, Marcia!!!

Dear Diary,

I know that it has been about a year and a half since my last post and I was so ashamed that I almost decided never to write again.  I’d like my excuse to be that I’ve been really busy.  For the past few years I went through grad school and a first year of teaching.  But the truth is I just didn’t have anything I felt passionate enough to write about.

Then this morning, while listening to NPR, I heard a story that shook me to my core:

Hasbro is changing Monopoly, and replacing the Iron with a fucking Cat! 

According to Good Morning America the whole thing is just a marketing scheme.  Hasbro put up a on their Facebook page a survey where people could vote for their favorite piece.  Apparently the Iron lost, and will no longer be passing Go or collecting $200.

The piece that got the most votes was the Scotty Dog (no fucking surprise there).  I hate to admit it, but as a little girl that was my favorite piece.  But as I got older I came to appreciate the obscurity of the Iron.  I used to alternate between the Iron and the Shoe.  Then one day I realized the genius of the Iron: it has a handle making it the easiest piece to pick up and move.  How have more people not noticed this?!  Perhaps they are all “sliders”, people who slide their piece along the board.  Personally I’m a tapper.  I love the “tap-tap” sound the metal makes as it hits the board while I count up to my new space.

This disgrace is the same as everyone getting together and voting off a member of the Brady Bunch and replacing him/her with Davy Jones.  We all know that Jan would lose, but then someone would become the new hated character.  (It would be Cindy, that lisp has got to go).  My question is:  which piece is going to become the next Iron?  Then what will they replace it with, a Boo dog?

Really I guess I’m just peeved because everyone knows you don’t mess with the classics.  It’s like the 1998 remake of Psycho.  It added nothing to the film world (using the same script just different cast) and made everyone appreciate the original more.  I mean, how many people after watching the remake rushed out and rented the original?  I did, and then I fell in love with it.

Perhaps that’s what Hasbro was after.  They just wanted to stir up the stagnant board game world.  After all they do have me thinking about Monopoly more and it got me to get back into writing after an 18-month hiatus.  I’d like to see the numbers on how many people rushed out today to buy Monopoly, one not tainted with the Cat.  Now perhaps people will have to own 2 sets, an Iron set and a Cat set… doubling their profit.  I guess their stunt was not a bad idea after all…

 

Hugs and kisses till next time!

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