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So! Kansas City is BEAUTIFUL. And hot. And humid. And kind of awesome. There’s a lot of good food, even though the gf and I are too lazy to really go anywhere after work. It turns out that working eight hours a day is, like, a lot lot different than going to class once or twice a week and playing video games in your underwear the rest of the time. Work is great, but they get real weird when I play Tetris topless.
Jokes aside, work is AMAZING. I don’t want to talk about my company here because they probably wouldn’t want to associate themselves publicly with someone who calls Jesse Eisenberg a rapscallion and makes as many poop jokes as I do — BUT. I get to WRITE all day in my own happy little booth and be surrounded by people who are kind and talented in a variety of fascinating and jealousy-inducing disciplines and wander around this beautiful and massively confusing building with a bunch of other interns who are turning out to be way more excellent than I imagined. Most of them are leaving on the 12th of August, but I’m here for an entire month after that — the joys of being the last to arrive — and I am ACTUALLY going to miss other human beings when they start to disappear. I’m going to miss coworkers! How is that even a thing?!
Our apartment is lovely and our landlady is great and friendly and sort of like having a mom out here who politely stays out of the way, but gets really excited and or angry on your behalf when necessary. At the end of my second week at work, the back window of my car was smashed in by shit-bag vandals and EVERYONE was scandalized and furious on my behalf. People in the midwest are NICE. REALLY NICE. L.A. nice is a different kind of nice — we’re polite, we want to be friendly, but we don’t really have time for you — here, people CARE and are INTERESTED and want to hear all about your life and stuff. It’s weird and has not yet stopped being weird.
I miss my family and friends desperately. DESPERATELY. Like, wake up when the alarm goes off at six and cry once a week while rolling around on the bed because you just WANT TO GO HOME ALREADY EVERYTHING SUCKS WHERE IS MY MOM SOMEONE MAKE ME A SANDWICH AND HUG ME. But I am so happy with my job that it’s keeping me sane. Crystal is putting up with SO MUCH and being SO EXCELLENT and she doesn’t even complain or cry or tell me how much she hates me for forcing her to come here. Instead she just makes dinner and does the laundry and does weird sex things with me sometimes. She’s the best. And she’s made this entire experience so much more survivable and excellent that it ever could’ve been if I had to come alone.
So yeah, people out here talk funny (it’s ADORABLE) and they apologize a lot, like, for things that are completely out of their control. Like the weather. EVERYONE HAS APOLOGIZED FOR THE HEAT. I feel like the governor of Missouri is going to send me a letter soon, just to check in and apologize.
Today an unmanned rolling cart rolled into me of its own volition while I was standing near it and I apologized to it. THE MIDWEST HAS GOT ME, SEND HELP.
I’ve said, “Oh, the heat’s not that bad, it’s the HUMIDITY” so many times I want to slap myself. Also, “CALIFORNIA DOESN’T HAVE…”, especially re: terrifying insects, food chains, grocery stores, coupons, milk in glass bottles in the regular grocery store, delicious Sonic-esque PERFECT ICE everywhere we go, etc. See also: “CALIFORNIA HAS…”, re: EVERYTHING ELSE EVER.
Here are some pictures of things!
 
Midwestern thunderstorms is NO JOKE, yo. Crystal locked herself in the bathroom while I stuck the camera out the window and tried to catch some lightning while yelling at my parents via Skype. I have NEVER seen lightning like that. INSANE. And amazing. And a little terrifying. The Midwest is the weirdest.
In other news, Michael Cera looks like a turtle.
So I have tried writing a post about this at least four times. Once when it first happened, then at 60 days, then 30 days, then one week, and none of those attempts has really captured exactly what I am ~feeling~ adequately. But now I am out of time and have to write SOMETHING before it’s too late.
Tomorrow, my gf and I move 1600 miles to Kansas City, Missouri so that I can spend three months doing my dream job at a paid internship!
This is both exciting and terrifying! Exciting because: dream job, adventure, all that. Terrifying because: dream job, adventure, brand new place when I’ve lived in southern California for my ENTIRE LIFE.
The gf and I are trying to treat the traveling to Missouri portion as a fun and exciting road trip vacation extravaganza! We have to take both of our cars, so we wanted 9 hour driving blocks to keep from exhausting ourselves. I LOVE ROAD TRIPS. And I’ve never been through that part of the country (save Las Vegas, ’cause duh) so it is extra exciting to me. And terrifying. Because when we stop at the end of the road trip, I have to live there.
I also graduated from my MFA program on Saturday. After endless hoop-jumping to get my thesis approved by our idiotic graduate studies department and two years of feeling like I was constantly missing a step on a long, long staircase of both misery and joy, I AM DONE.
 
Right now I am really excited to be done with school, but I know I’ll be itching to go back in a year or so. I probably won’t, but I’ll WANT to.
I’m not going to miss my program. Or at least, I don’t think I will, not for a long time at least. But I am going to SEVERELY miss my classmates. Even when shit was bad, they continued to be awesome. I am going to miss them and my longtime friends and my family and WHY AM I MOVING 1600 MILES AWAY?!?!
Oh, right, adventure. Or whatever. Opportunity. Dream job. WHATEVER.
LET’S DO THIS!!
I have all of my best ideas while driving or in the shower and I start all my best projects around two or three in the morning. Granted, “best” is really up for debate here, since most of those ideas are just poop or dick jokes and the projects are just Google image searched images with transparent Helvetica slapped over them in Photoshop. THEY MAKE ME LAUGH ALRIGHT? I am my most important audience, for now and forever.
So, I was in the shower a couple of weeks ago thinking about Jesse Eisenberg, like I do, and I was like, DAMN, that kid’s like… a RAPSCALLION or some shit. Because he is! Google that face and tell me it doesn’t scream old-timey adjectives at you! If you can, you are LYING.
And so it kind of began with this dumb shit:
SCAMP, guys. Jesse Eisenberg is a SCAMP. He is ruined for me forever in the BEST WAY because I cannot look at him without thinking something Old Timey. RASCAL! RAPSCALLION! He’s like the sort of handsy son of a really wealthy southern oil baron guy who is charming and good looking and also RICH who is at least a little hesitant about groping you against your will, so he doesn’t really seem like a bad guy, just like maybe he had a drink or two too many and got REAL FRIENDLY so you just brush it off and giggle and say shit like, “Oh, dear, I had heard those rumors that you were QUITE the rapscallion and I do believe they’re true!” but really it sounds sort of sexy and delightful. And then he gropes you under your petticoats in a hallway. Something like that. OR WHATEVER.
I think this Old Timey Thing applies to Donald Glover too, but I have a harder time looking at pictures of him because they are like lightning directly to my genitals. SO ATTRACTIVE. I can’t deal with it. I just can’t.
But anyway, that dumb shit rapidly escalates into this dumb shit:
Kittens are a point of no return, right? I mean, really. There is no coming back from slapping text over the top of adorable kittens. There just isn’t. And then it just turns into transcribing your dumb tweets on pictures snagged from NASA and it’s over. It’s just all over.
SO: sometimes when I am having those brilliant thoughts late at night, my brain says, “YO BITCH SUBMIT SOME OF YOUR WRITING YO” and because it’s two in the fucking morning, I am like, “YEAH ALRIIIIIGHT.” And whatever, I’m hitting 50/50 acceptance to rejection at this point (because I don’t write almost ever unless it’s for fun, which means I have nothing to submit, which is a great excuse not to put yourself out there. FOOLPROOF.) so I don’t really care about the process. I come across a place that seems like they might take me, I submit, no big.
SO ANYWAY. I was reading a submission to the lit mag I work on at school and she mentioned another lit mag that I was unfamiliar with (This happens a lot. Generally, if someone mentions one, I haven’t heard of it.) so I checked it out, saw they had a nice selection of flash fiction and threw something their way. I logged it in my little submissions file (anal retentive, what what!) and put it in my calendar (redundancy!) and went about watching BBC comedies (Miranda) and forgot about it.
Guys, I am pretty sure I won the speed award for rejection turnaround tonight. Seriously. One hour and four minutes. ONE HOUR AND FOUR MINUTES. IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT. I submitted the story AFTER MIDNIGHT and had a rejection shortly after one. THAT IS SOME EFFICIENT LIT MAGGING.
Holy shit. I didn’t even have time to worry! I didn’t even have time to obsess and then forget about it entirely, which is my usual submission coping mechanism. And let me tell you, this was a much more awesome way to get rejected. I know the longer someone keeps your work, the closer you are to getting in. And that’s great! But instant gratification is always SO SATISFYING and it turns out it actually kind of applies to rejection!
I know part of my cavalier attitude is because I just didn’t care too much, you know? I have extremely low expectations when it comes to anything having to do with my writing (greeting cards and hilarious poop twitters aside) but there was something about that rapid response — like ripping off a band-aid maybe — that I don’t think I will soon forget.
Aaaaaaanyway, it turns out this is all just a long way to say that if you don’t remember Bonsai Kitties, you have not been on the internet long enough.
PS: For the like… two of you who read this BLAHG, would cutting my insanely long and stupid posts be helpful or irritating? I HATE cut posts because I read everything on GReader and am also incredibly lazy, but I am down to do whatevah whatevah because I live to serve, guys. I live to serve.
Christmas is over! And I am bummed.
I am not 100% bummed. I mean, I love Christmas. I’m an atheist that loves Santa and all things Christmas (except Jesus, obviously) and spent most of my adolescence wishing I was Jewish, so I am a big fan of the winter holidays. But Christmas was basically a bust this year.
I ate some food and got some presents and had some good times, but I never felt the wintery-Christmas-sparkle and then BAM it was over. Lame. And it happens EVERY YEAR and yet every year I am surprised. Two thumbs, not so good with learning, etc etc.
Anyway, whatever, here’s some disjointed bullshit:
I am nothing if not really good at doing the same shit everyone else is doing!
 But it’s SPACE, you guys. I would take a space flight even if they GUARANTEED that I would die on reentry. I mean, SPACE, guys. SPACE. Sending my name up is a pretty okay facsimile of space-travel-importance. It’s at least as good as going all the way through astronaut training and then not making the final launch team. BASICALLY. Self-aggrandizement is my 2k11 resolution numero uno.
 A bunch of people are using their new Facebook ~photostream~ to express friendly/jovial sentiments. Or that thing where they break their face into pieces. I am not into either of those things.
 Dyed my hair right before Thanksgiving and heard, “You look like a mermaid” three different times. I felt distinctly cartoonish and it took me three days to figure out that I was reminding myself of Sailor Neptune. Yeeeeeeeah! I think I have seen one half of one Sailor Moon episode in my entire life, but whatever, whatever, I DO WHAT I WANT.
 Favorite new picture of my favorite person on the earth. She is getting peed on by a tree.
I have a couple of funny/interesting/whatever things to say that I have scribbled down in a notebook, but I am not feeling the focus to turn them into full-fledged words. Mostly all I am interested in right now is laying in bed and sleeping and not having to do anything except stay in blankets. I am like Scrooge McDuck if instead of swan-diving into a vault of coins, it was just a great big pile of dogs and blankets and he never surfaced for air.
(I would like to point out that this atrocious font is called “Thug” and 1. That’s racist 2. That’s stupid, and 3. I had to mouse-draw the plus and equal signs because they were just dots in the font. Like, wtf, thugs can’t math? Thugs need not plus and equal signs? RACIST, FONT, RACIST.)
I will, however, briefly talk about how “This Time of the Year” by Brooke Benton and “Little Saint Nick” by the Beach Boys are great Christmas songs that INFURIATE me because “Christmas always comes this time of the year” and “Christmas comes this time of year” are the two most idiotic lyrics to ever occur in holiday music. NO SHIT IT ALWAYS HAPPENS AT THIS TIME OF THE YEAR THAT IS WHEN CHRISTMAS HAPPENS. Christmas has been happening for like MANY YEARS NOW and for most of those it has been happening on December 25th. I THINK WE GOT THAT SHIT ON LOCK, SONGWRITERS. Sort it out.
Anyway:
 Merry Belated Whatever-The-Fuck! Merry Past-Tense Ballsmas!
Day 5: Your Definition of Love
UGH. Again. I mean, seriously, meme. Failing me yet again and yet again, here we go.
I think this is probably not a TERRIBLE topic for someone who is into emotions and feelings more than I am, but I’m just not. Emotions are for other people to think about and for me to have and be really good at hiding, THANK YOU.
Anyway. I didn’t believe in romantic love or marriage or any of that stuff until the love thing happened to me. I think this is a normal/common/average thing coming from people who are weird/ugly/fat/geeky/outside the traditional norm because you just kind of get disenchanted about the whole thing. Love is an illusion! A shared hallucination!
I still believe that, I just get to participate now.
I knew that I was in love with my girlfriend because I wanted to be around her A LOT. And, like, let’s be honest: I did not, nor do I now have a lot of friends.
I have talked about being unlikeable before! I’m NOT LYING. And I spent a lot of time with those few people who WOULD put up with me.
But Crystal… I don’t know. We spent a truly astounding amount of time together and yet, when she was gone, I still really, really missed her. It was actually pretty disgusting and I tried not to talk about it to other people because it embarrassed me that I had feelings at all, let alone this weird needy desperate ones.
I think I realized in like, August of 2007 (four months after we met) that I was basically in love with her, whatever the fuck I thought that actually meant. I wanted to tell her one time, while we were walking around my grandma’s backyard, but I pussied out because I still wasn’t sure she was gay. And I thought she was a slut! (No joke! Untruer thoughts have never been had.)
And it was basically like, “Well, I guess I’m in love with this dumb bitch.” And she was my best friend and we didn’t start dating until May of 2008, so I spent a lot of months feeling really tortured and unhappy and TERRIBLE. Because you are not, NOT supposed to fall in love with your straight, slutty best friend. Especially when you don’t even believe in love.
I was all fucked up.
Basically, I know/knew that I love(d) my girlfriend because I want(ed) to be with her. I liked being with her. Spending a day with her was comfortable and satisfying and good. And even though I was miserable and hurting and wanting because I didn’t have her, because she didn’t love me back, it never once (ONCE!) occurred to me to just… stop hanging out with her.
Also, I like to hold her hand.
I have never in my entire life liked holding hands. I hold hands with my mom sometimes in public because she gets embarrassed and says, “ASHLEY, people will think we’re lesbians!” But otherwise, handholding is not an activity I ever engaged in. But now I want to hold Crystal’s hand all the time. Not kiss, not touch her boobs. Hold hands. In public and not. It’s gross. And I hate myself.
Also, the idea of not being a couple makes me uncomfortable and unhappy. And the idea of her dying makes me miserable in the vomiting all over myself and having a panic attack kind of way.
I think love is whatever the fuck you make of it. The girlfriend and I have figured out a life together that makes us pretty happy and I think the person you manage to do that with is worth hanging on to, generally speaking.
I think loving your family and loving your friends is just as important as loving your partner. I think cultivating relationships with people who will laugh at your jokes and take you to the airport and drive you around for three hours when you’re crying and losing your shit because everything is awful and buy you ice cream in the middle of the night is incredibly hard and important and scary and amazing.
Vulnerability is literally the hardest thing in the entire history of human beings. Being straight up honest about the fact that you have feelings and that you NEED things, the entire idea that you need things from other people? That’s fucked up! And awful.
Which is exactly why I prefer to leave emotions to people who are better at having a lot of them. Like… Mexican soap opera actresses and teenagers.
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