humor – Page 66 – The only certainty is bad grammar

that brief time in south dakota / my friend bronson rocks

Published: March 10, 2009 / Updated: March 10, 2009 Crystal humor, medium

i swear. every time i hang out with my friend bronson i eat crap i tell you.

for the past few days i have been living on restaurant fettuccine alfredo, alcohol and garlic bread. also m&ms.

oh. and i don’t sleep worth a hot d*mn when he’s around. because he’s so much fun of course. the boy is a party in a button-down shirt and jeans.

i met him back when i was wondering from state to state job skipping, and had landed in south dakota for 8 months. i had the fortune of only living there from feburary to november so i missed most of the blizzard season, and as a result quite enjoyed my time.

actually, i really enjoyed my time. the state has a way of stealing your heart. and seeing bronson the last few days has made me miss it so.

made me miss the freedom i had to write whatever the heck i felt like at the paper i worked for because the staff was too small for anyone to pay any attention to me. the freedom be a selfish twit because my family was 14 hours east. the freedom to be whomever i felt like because nobody in a 500 miles radius had ever met me before.

and ya, it was a little weird to be the only vegetarian in an ENTIRE state. and one of 7 liberals. and to be told i spoke with an accent. but deep down, i kind of liked being different. being the cool, mysterious outsider. the strange girl who didn’t eat meat.

just as i started to fall in love with the mount rushmore state, i met bronson. the coolest cat in town. he wasn’t from there either. and although he ate meat, we had about 6 million other things in common. like the fact that journalism literally spilled out of our veins. and that we thought political people like governors qualified as famous. and our love of spinach dip. and gossip.

needless to say, we clicked super quick. totally platonic and whatnot, but it was the kind of friendship that i’ve learned not to take for granted.

and while he’s been visiting me here in chicagoland these last few days, we’ve reminisced about the freedom, cheap liquor and south dakota sunsets as much as we could.

he left today though, so i have to sink back into reality. back into lean cuisine fettuccine alfredo, water and aldi garlic bread. back to going to bed at a normal time. back to a life so full of responsibilities that sometimes i feel like i’ve been dumped in the ocean 65 feet from shore, with water 75-feet deep that’s filled with sharks and no life jackets.

but at least i know i had that brief time in south dakota. that time to find myself before adult hood really took hold. i’m grateful for that. and for bronson.

i just hope he visits again soon.

me? oh. i’ll be to your left coughing, and drooling.

Published: March 8, 2009 / Updated: March 8, 2009 Crystal humor, medium, sh*tty things that happen to me

woah. did you guys see that cold i had?! holy nyquil.

sorry i haven’t posted in awhile, it’s just that a virus from hades has been s.l.o.w.l.y. working it’s way from my head to my chest, and so i’ve spent any and all free time over the last few days highly medicated and attempting to sleep.

but i missed you guys. i did. and even though im not fully recovered (see: cough, perpetual) i thought I’d drop in, say hello and do my best to pass along any lingering germs to my readers. 🙂

so, ya, let’s talk about the 732 cold medications currently on the market.

wow. it’s just one big racket i tell you, because when im miserable and feeling like death would be better than my sore throat, i will fork over ALL my money for anything that even looks like it might have a slim chance of maybe working.

since tuesday i have bought or used:

nyquil, dayquil, tylenol “warming liquid” for cough and sore throat, citrus cough drops, cherry cough drops, and Chloraseptic.

first things first, why the HECK can nobody find a way to make a cough drop that doesn’t taste like expired gum?

i mean, obviously, there are people in the world who have found ways to make things taste good. for instance, taco-bell. they have MANY products that taste good. oh? you don’t want taco bell when you have a cold, well fine. then Halls should at least be able to pull off a nice orange-flavored cough drop, but NO! their orange cough drops taste nothing likes oranges. rather, they taste like an orange peel that has been devoid of all flavor, let for dead behind a microwave and then turned into an unnaturally hard substance that produces random vapors.

ick.

also, chloraseptic is GROSS.

have you ever tried it? in the commercials the guy using it always sprays it directly on his sore throat and then goes about his business swallowing and laughing like he is now all better. but when i went to actually use it in real life, i found it’s not so easy to just hit your throat. and the stuff has a pretty strong numbing effect, so even though i spit it out right after i sprayed it in my mouth, i managed to accidentally numb like half my tongue for two hours.

that sucked.

now, im not going to lie. im usually a nyquil/dayquil evangelist. but this cold, was having none of it. not only did they do squat to relieve my symptoms, but the flagship medicine of the company -NyQuil – couldn’t even do it’s most basic function – put me to sleep. on Thursday night, when it felt like someone had taken two square pieces of sandpaper and rubbed my throat raw, i laid awake drooling on my pillow all night because swallowing hurt too much to consider. i had hoped the nyquil would kick in and knock me out, but alas, in my time of need, it failed me. what the crap?

thankfully, that sore throat has since (mostly) passed. and i am now on the upswing of my cold. i just popped two dayquil, because even though they probably won’t work, it’s my only hope right now. the plan is to finish watching whatever the heck bad movie USA has on right now (i think it’s one of thouse mummy ones with the Rock), and then wash my pillow and it’s accompyaning case because let me tell you, that thing is GROSS.

does this mean i can finally ask penelope trunk to connect on LinkedIn without looking crazy? / lessons in marketing

Published: March 3, 2009 / Updated: March 3, 2009 Crystal humor, im cool, long

holy mocha do people have some strong emotions about starbucks.

i sit around thinking about my blog all day long, trying to come up with clever ways to spin my tales, and it ends up being the post i write in six and a half minutes about starbucks needing to grow up and get free wifi that garners attention.

ok. let me back up a second. see, because im addicted to online networking (see here) and because i have an unhealthy fascination with Penelope Trunk, i joined brazen careerist a while ago, which aside from having the great honor of being THE hardest url to spell in all the world, also connects you to people. I’m pretty sure it’s supposed to connect you to potential employers, but I don’t really understand that. so instead, i use it to spread my blog around the globe ( aka, give a full rss feed of my work to the site for free in hopes that maybe, someday, three people will click over to my actual blog).

i was under the impression that my posts disappeared into oblivion and that it was just another failed attempt to get the word out about how awesome i am, but alas, the folks at brazen careerist had other plans. yesterday, they randomly decided to feature my post about starbucks on the home page.

i was so happy that i took a screen shot and saved it to my desktop. but then. THEN, people started to explain to me how much of an idiot i was. Here’s a link to the starbucks post on brazen careerist, where you can view the comments in their entirety. don’t get me wrong, i pretty much think im an idiot all the time. but it was weird to have random peopled deciding that they thought i was stupid enough that they MUST, in an effort to save humankind itself, take the time express their disgust in my decisions so that maybe, hopefully, i will one day fix my evil ways and CHANGE!

don’t fret. for those of you too lazy to click over, i have decided to include a couple of the comments below:

so… you’re complaining because “free stuff” isn’t perfectly convenient and because *you* didn’t bother to take the time to read up the fine print? oh wait… didn’t those people who signed up for sub-prime mortgages do the same thing?

wow. that man just compared me to people who got bad mortgages. for the record, my credit is so far beyond repair that i really don’t think it’s fair to the people who could qualify for ANY kind of mortgage to be compared to me.

AND

Is it just me, or did this entire post just seem like an internet tantrum?

nope. not just you. that’s exactly what it was. i had NO freaking idea it was going to be a featured post on brazen careerist. if i had, i a. would have capitalized at least a FEW of the words, and b. would have presented less of a tantrum and more of a coherent argument.

AND (from the same commenter who said it was a tantrum)

Starbucks is not required to uphold your ridiculous fantasy of what the overly-trendy-yet-still-totally-“unique” coffee shop chain SHOULD be. They’re a business, as others above me have said, and are going to try to make as much money as possible. I’ve never heard it said that Starbucks offered free wifi, and why should they?

to be fair, a majority of the commenters seemed to sympathize with my plight:

Starbucks always had this arrangement. However, I agree with you that it is super annoying. Ever other coffee shop and restaurant on the planet is starting to offer free wi-fi, I don’t know why Starbucks thinks they are any more special.

AND

“It’s not a fun time.” Haha, at least their employees are empathetic. Don’t worry, I did this exact same thing one day last summer.

anywho, i have a learned a few things from this experience. A. all my posts should have the word starbucks in the title, just in case featured posts are chosen based on a list of pre-determined words. B. i need to start back linking like a crazy person in case this happens again. that way people will find it easy to read my other work. c. in the online world, what sticks and what doesn’t has nothing to do with talent, and everything to do with how controversial your topic is.

and for those interested, i have taken my coffee business elsewhere. to a lovely, magical place where the wifi is ALWAYS free, the soup comes in bowls made from BREAD! and there’s plenty of booths to spread out on. that’s right, i have become a super loyal panera bread patron.