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OKAY SINCE I PROMISED TO TALK ABOUT IT: The gf and I came back to California! KCNOMO. Home where we belong.
I’m not going to explain in as much detail as I had planned on, but we have been back in L.A. for almost a month and OH MAN did I miss it so much more than I even thought I did. Basically: I left on my terms. I left with good experience and good feelings. I don’t regret going. And I got to do one of my dream jobs for three months. Not so bad!!
But whatever, that part is boring since I am still not going to talk about my actual work, so moving on:
THINGS I WILL MISS ABOUT KCMO:
1. bbq
2. small, accessible downtown
3. no traffic
4. fat people out in the world doing things!
5. old architecture
6. my job
7. having my own apartment
8. the income from my job
9. the weather
10. the awesome people at my job
11. steak ‘n’ shake
12. frozen custard
13. the cicada noise (only a little)
14. the amc main street and olathe studio 28 theaters (NO JOKE)
15. the fountains!
16. my landlady/kcmo momma
17. the hyvee
THINGS I WILL NOT MISS ABOUT KCMO:
1. getting my car vandalized
2. assholes who steal assigned parking spaces
3. cicada noise
4. DRIVERS
5. having to drive into a different state for a decent grocery store
6. phony niceness
7. SPORTS — gawd bless l.a. where no one gives a shit
8. weather
9. did I mention the fucking spectacularly terrible driving?
10. ridiculously low speed limits EVERYWHERE
There are more things I won’t miss, but I’m not going to kick the midwest while it’s down. I mean, it already lost me, it seems mean to also tear it to shit while I’m at it.
SO I AM HOME NOW. And job-hunting. Which is giving me so much anxiety and my gf is being SO AMAZING and patient and stuff. And everyone has been so excited about our return and supportive and yadda yadda, I am surrounded by really good people, gross.
Enjoy my face over the last two weeks. Such a good face. The best face.
So I’m trying not to feel weird and bummed about my internship and my attempts at avoidance are not going particularly well (and I will explain regardless of the outcome once I actually know what the outcome is) so I’m going to BLOG. The internet is millennial therapy, NO JOKE.
So my girlfriend has been trying to get me to watch the original Star Wars trilogy for… the entire four years I have known her? Because she was legitimately horrified that I hadn’t seen it. (I saw the third prequel in theaters, that counts for… absolutely nothing.) But I get sooooooooooooo impatient with sci-fi and fantasy that I can’t sit through anything. ANYTHING. Name a fantasy or sci-fi movie or series and there is an almost-certainty that I will not have seen it. Lord of the Rings? No. The Matrix? No. OG Star Trek? No. Battlestar Galactica? No. Jesus Chronicles of Narnia? No. The Neverending Story? No. Labyrinth? No. If I list anymore you’ll assume I grew up in a cave and I did not, I swear.
But ANYWAY, I finally gave in and started watching the Star Wars thing with her a couple of weeks ago and it was pretty okay! I think. I don’t know because I could only watch like 40 minutes at a time before I would have to take a break for three or four days. Or a week. Or two. But we’re done now! And whatever, I like the one with all the muppets! What’s wrong with you people. Ewoks, cute as fuck. Ewoks dancing. So many joyful, tiny dog-bears.
But there is something we have to talk about now. And no, that thing is not 1. Han Solo the babeatron or 2. Princess Leia the BOSS or 3. fuuuuuuuck Yoda sucks. It is this:
WHAT WHAT WHAT. HOW CAN ANYONE DEAL WITH THIS. I CAN’T DEAL WITH IT. I CAN’T. Why is everyone just walking around pretending that Yoda doesn’t sound EXACTLY LIKE MISS PIGGY?! I know Frank Oz did both, I KNEW THAT, but COME ON. I can’t, I just can’t, internet. I JUST CANNOT.
It’s like if Miss Piggy and Kermit had a real old baby. I tried to morph that on the internet, but it did not go well.
Muppets are clearly not meant for morph.
ANYWAY WHATEVER. Life-changer:
I just want to hug him and squeeze him and love him for life, you guys. I just want a Wicket of my own that lives with me and rubs my feet and lets me feed him starfruit while we watch British sitcoms. This is my ideal life, just give it to me.
This life does not include sex with a small, cute bear-dog Ewok creature. Just starfruit, okay.
NOT SEX WITH STARFRUIT EITHER OKAY. Stop it.
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.
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