Don't Fear the Ringbearer

Yesterday was Khrysten’s Anniversary. Upon thinking about this I realized just how semi-retarded/stupid Anniversaries are. Anniversaries are the short-bus of personal holidays.

I see it like this: An anniversary is just a couple’s way of celebrating the fact that they both stuck around for an allotted period of time. Example: we’ve been dating for 6 months, go us. That’s fucking stupid. If we are going to celebrate sticking around, shouldn’t you do it every single day? As in Hooray! I didn’t leave you again today, lets have cake!

Now to me, if there is marriage involved it is self-implied by being married, that you are going to stick around. That’s sort of the purpose of the whole paper you signed and that pretty ring you are wearing. Celebrating that you made it through another year just seems self-congratulatory. Yay! We are succeeding in this whole marriage thing unlike 55% of Americans! Yay!

As someone who couldn’t actually keep a relationship longer than 8 months (it’s my record) I’ve never gotten to celebrate that year mark. Then again when you are so drunk you almost black out the night you meet and agree to date someone, that actual date of meeting becomes hard to remember, and thus hard to celebrate.

The whole thing made me wonder if I really want to ever be married at all. I mean, technically a marriage is an agreement to legitimize the children and to pay each others bills when someone gets cancer. There is other stuff too but it’s mostly of the I will make chicken soup for you when you are sick or I’ll clean up the dog barf only if I think you will realize I saw it before you were awake kinds. I mean I can do all that without a ring and piece of paper. I can get legal documents that say when I am dying in the hospital of random cancer X that you can visit me and make decisions about my care. It’s called an advanced directive. I didn’t need a ring or a dress for that, just the internet and a few minutes of quality time with my pen.

So to me the only real thing that the piece of paper and ring combo does is this: it binds the two of you together so you cannot leave, so you have to listen to the person, you have to pay attention. I mean you can physically leave but you are fucked in a legal sense. Shouldn’t there be other things keeping the two of you together? For instance, that you care about each other, and that you want each other to be happy and stuff?

I look at Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell and see a good thing. They are not married, have a child together, have been with each other and lived together for over 2 decades, and there is no ring or paper. They are free to leave at any time. They don’t because they are friends as well as partners.

I am sad that the word partner now has such a gay vibe attached to it. I mean, I love my gays, but straight people can enter into partnerships that don’t involve multi-national corporations with off-shore bank accounts too. I’d rather have a good friend, a partner in crime who I can have copious amounts of sex with, make dinner for and watch movies with. I want someone that if something goes wrong or we bore of each other or whatever that we are both free to fucking leave. No papers involved, no court, no nothing, just end it already.

I will not name names, but there are women I know in the late 20’s- early 30’s range who are ready to settle. They are ready to go ahead and marry the next bastard that treats them good enough and has a job. To me that’s just not fucking good enough. No, I don’t want romance and flowers and candlelit dinners, but I want mutual respect and intellect and all of the things I won’t get if I just settle for some schmuck because society tells me that this is what I am supposed to do.

I am supposed to start bordering on desperate as a female on the latter side of 25, I’m supposed to start putting out the husband traps and checking them daily in hopes that a real keep has gotten tangled in the box. But that’s just not who I am. I don’t want to trap anyone. I want someone who is with me out of free fucking will. I don’t want to steal someone’s soul or eat their still beating heart or trap their balls in a jar on top of the fridge so I can forever emasculate them into the perfect little man-slave. I don’t know why anyone, man or woman would want to be with someone under such false pretenses. But it’s societies way, so line up for your ring, and get ready for your anniversary. I hear the second one is the Crack anniversary.

Catholicism Wow!

This weekend I had the pleasure of attending a wedding with my friend Neil. It was a Catholic wedding which for the uninitiated can be quite a trip. As a recovering Catholic (I’m all Atheist, but at some point I had to do the Eucharist and my grandmother and great aunt lit enough candles at Holy Hill to torture altar boys with candle wax for decades), I was not so freaked out by all of it. Here are some highlights:

#1 We sit down, to which Neil proclaims “Jesus fucking Christ.” I am pretty sure his middle name was not fucking, nor was it the initial ‘H’ like so many others have chosen. Regardless, Neil is going to hell. If he were a real Catholic though he would know that we are all going to hell and only through the redeeming love of the Catholic church (boy on man love, love created by donating lots of money) could he be redeemed and guaranteed a spot in heaven.

#2 There are no Bibles in the Catholic church, with exemption to the one which lives up on the pulpit with the priest. As a child I was convinced the priest hid a knife in that Bible and that it was not an actual Bible. Instead of Bibles Catholics get Hymnals and these other books who have a formal name, but it’s fancy so instead I will call them the Fire and Brimstone Chronicles (F&BC). In the F&BC there are all the readings that you will hear in church for the next 3-4 months. Which is handy, cos you can steal it and skip out on church. In a minor scanning of the book I found a story about dragons, a story about a winemaker and another story about a winemaker. Seems the Catholics like their wine. We already knew this.

#3 Stand up, Sit Down, Fight, Fight, Fight. Yes in Church as a Catholic in order to make sure you are not asleep you are required to, for no apparent reason, stand up and sit down. Sometimes you have to chant back at the priest some crap about loving god or Amen. Occasionally you have to kneel, at least you aren’t asked to take the body of Christ into your mouth while on your knees anymore, cos that’s just dirty. Overall with the standing and sitting and chanting it’s like you are Jesus’ and Mary’s Cheer-squad, only without the cute skirts and pompoms.

#4 Communion. I was not allowed to take the body and blood of Christ. Why? Because the F&BC said so. In the back was a warning about how if I was aware of grave sin, and had not confessed as such I could not take the communion. Now if I were to confess all the grave sin I know about God would get bored, God himself might off himself just to make me stop. Some poor priest would keel over in the little box (not that Catholic Churches have these any more, now you are supposed to confess your sins to god and let him pass down judgement or some shit, sounds like an excuse to make time for more altar boy bangin’), if he heard just what I’ve been up to in the last 3 months. So, no body of Christ for me, no Jesus wafer of eww. No crap red wine that was only appealing as a child (cos it was an easy way to get drunk, if we could only find where they stored the jugs o’ Christ blood. I wonder if there is a wine company that makes a wine called Christ’s Blood, if not, all you sommeliers out there take heed, make this wine and I will buy all of it!). Nothing. I was denied my Jesus snack.

#5 Shake hands with your neighbor to show them your Christian Love. ‘nuff said on that.

The priest rambled a lot, I was more interested in reading the F&BC. I considered stealing the F&BC and now have decided that leaving it behind was a bad idea. I want the dragon story damnit!

On my way home from Milwaukee I had a car thought. This thought went something like, OMG Holy Communion is church sanctioned cannibalism! The Catholics eat people, not just any people, but their lord and savior! Holy Shit! The wafers are made of Christ! The wafers are made of Christ! I had a very Hestonian moment. No Soilent Green here just Jebus. I am not a cannibal, so now I am kinda glad the church was too busy banging altar boys to hear my sins so I could eat Christ. Yay Church!

Secrets Are No Fun...

According to the stars (the astrology), today Venus is in Pluto making it a day about secrets. Secrets being revealed, secrets being pulled out of someone like their own intestines being ripped out by a serial killer, it is secrets day. I do not plan on revealing any secrets, that is unless someone busts me or some shit.

I do want to share one of the most interesting sites on earth (and one of my guilty pleasures) http://www.postsecret.com/ this is where you can send a postcard through the mail with your anonymous secret on it. It is a way to cleanse your soul. Whenever I go and read other people’s secrets, it makes me feel less fucked up; I also revel in it cos it’s like being a fly on the wall in someone’s brain. Some of the secrets are lame, and some of them are scary strange, or just plain scary. But it tells you that the people around you, they are always holding secrets, some are small but others are gigantic and if revealed could really be cataclysmic to someone’s life. It makes me wonder what the people around me are hiding, what darkness is inside of them, or even what lame ass secret resides in there (I love Tapioca!).

Seeing as I am not hanging at the end of my sanity rope this week, my blog will suffer. I need summer to start to wind down, or for massive rain storms to hit the US so my ebay sales stop suffering. Seriously there is no reason I should barely be pulling in $15 a week. I mean that’s not even enough to buy me cigarettes! I am gearing up for the big childhood selling, cos it’s not like I have any kids (or will anytime soon) and all this shit does is clutter my life and my brain.

I partially blame this need to purge all excess crap from my life on Neil and Gene. See they are men, and thus live with a lot less crap than us girls do. Honestly, I feel like the queen of crapville compared to the two of them. I know that often I end up with this uncontrollable need to collect. Every year there is something new I must collect, and it becomes an obsession.

Shit I have collected:
Orchids, Charming Tails figurines, Buffy and Angel Trading Cards, Depeche Mode bootlegs and concert books and anything else with Depeche Mode on it, My Little Pony (vintage and new), Fairies, Butterflies, Tiffany-style stained glass lamps, can you see I have a problem???

So I am trying to drudge through these collections to determine what is actually important, what I can live without and what I will die over if I get rid of. So far the orchids live with my mother and are her responsibility, if she kills them, so be it. The Buffy and Angel trading cards have been offered to a trading card company in England for purchase as a collection, which could bring me some hefty cash. The Depeche Mode bootlegs and excess CDs are going to be burned and sold on eBay if I can figure a way around it. Otherwise I will just head to one of those damn DM sites and put a list of sale items up on the boards. The new MLPs which are mint in box, if they have an out of box counterpart, are going to be sold on eBay for roughly 5 times their original value. I will NOT be selling off my Kimono MIB ponies or any in foreign boxes just yet. My collection of Argentinian Mint on Card vintage ponies are probably going to be put up for sale on first the My Little Pony Trading Post and then onto eBay. The doubles in my Charming Tails collection are first off going to be found (I need to take an inventory), and then put up on eBay.

As you can see I am getting pretty good about dumping off the excess. In addition to this I am selling off all my VHS and a heap load of books I either are never going to read, or have read and don’t need to keep, or that I have taken en masse from my mother to sell in lots on eBay without sharing the cash with her. Now I also have my childhood toys of which not all will be sold. I just don’t see how a 26 year old woman needs 20+ Barbies and all the shit that goes with them, or how 6 Cabbage Patch Kids are really necessary. And why is it that no one remembers the Get-Along Gang?

Top 5 dating tips...

Dating Lessons I have learned:

#1 Do not take home drunk bitches from parties. Inevitably they will shoot you in the gut with your own gun, kidnap your dog and steal your car, although not necessarily in that order.

#2 There is a certain age range that one should observe. For instance if you are over 25, a 20 year old is probably not your best choice, you may want to go with someone closer to your age. This rule is only applicable to women, cos men will date anything with 2 breasts and a giggle, age is not important to the cock.

#3 Buying gifts that can die isn’t your best bet. Living animals and cut flowers being the biggest offenders in this group, with houseplants running a close second, are just a bad bad bad idea.

#4 Dating outside your intellect is like playing with fire, sometimes you get burned and sometimes it’s just ‘Ooo pretty.’

#5 Never trust someone who just wants to ‘share’ a bed. They will break your heart in a million ways and not even realize it.

Better Now...

So after the tattoo excursion of last Saturday I am finally back in pants! Oh yes, last Saturday I got a lovely floral motif tattoo on my right calf. I now feel unbalanced and think I should get the other version of this tattoo on my left calf just so as to not be uneven. My tattoo artist Skully http://www.skullytattoo.com/ did an excellent job. Saturday night my leg started to ooze blue ink, as in running down my leg oh god what’s wrong with my leg. My solution? Drink some wine. Then on Sunday it started oozing green ink. My solution? Drive 3 hours and think about the possibility of gangrene as the skin around my tattoo grows ever redder and more swollen, then go home and research tattoo infections on the internet. Monday morning it was a lot better, and it’s been steadily improving since. Now my dad who also got a tattoo from the owner of the tattoo shop, Bill, and he did an amazing job hand drawing a custom tattoo for my dad on the spot. The shop of course is Black Dragon Tattoo http://www.blackdragontattoo.com. They are probably in the top 2 shops in Wisconsin (with Steve’s Tattoo in Madison probably taking the cake). My best friend Amanda also got tattooed on Saturday and you can see hers in her blog: http://kinkypoe.blogspot.com/ . Now after many many days in Capri and short pants I am finally back in full pants. Which when you work in an ice box is a huge relief, cos now I am not shivering at my desk.

My emotional stability has also dramatically improved. This could be blamed on me finally getting back on schedule with my meds or the improved hormonal levels courtesy of my new nuvaring. Regardless, I am in a much better place and think I might be able to stop crying long enough to have a fun weekend. It looks like I am probably heading back down to Milwaukee, which let's face it, not going down to was only going to make me feel worse.

Last night I watched 2 new comedies on FX. The first being Starved, you would have never thought eating disorders could be this funny! But they are. This show was hilarious, but it also had enough pain to make you feel sympathy for the characters. I’ll tune into the second episode, but this seems like a show that will either get better and better as we get to know the characters, or alternately it will be a show that runs out of plot ideas too quickly. The second show was called It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. This show too, fucking hysterical. It has the guy from Naked Josh in it who I have this gigantic crush on cos he’s just adorable. This show too has a lot of potential. I will definitely be tuning in next week.

So tonight I am apparently attending some sort of party with Gene. Which I gotta say, not complaining about at all. I called him to tell him I wasn't coming down and he was about to call me to tell me we had a place to be. How can I say no to that? Plus it's apparently a party at a gigantic house on LaFayette Hill in Milwaukee, and I have driven past those beauties for years. I'd just like to get inside once and see how the other half lives. I am trying to be very much in a I am a Leaf on the Wind frame of mind.