What to Wear to a Barbeque

things that really bum me out.

• the desert - everything about the desert is horrible. It is too hot, everything is dead, there is no water, there are hard rocks on the ground that probably hurt your butt if you try to sit down, occasional sandstorms, cruel mirages, and thieves. There are lizards, there are snakes, and there are cactuses everywhere. Don't try to tell me cactuses aren't awful because they are... just... obviously horrible.

• having no time for dinner - now your life is busy and important and depressing

• texas - because there are no seasons, and there is a desert all around and to the west, and lots of people are obsessed with hats and hair, but they hate the gays

• tablecloths - for a restaurant, nothing says "trying too hard" like tablecloths. unless it is a LEGIT, FANCY RESTAURANT, if not, then it is just sad. And it bums me out, hard.

• the concept of going into outer space - space is kind of like the desert, but even worse, because there is literally nothing. I can't even fathom how hard it would be to enjoy food, or company, or sleep, or happiness, if I was shot into nothingness in what looks like a very uncomfortable outfit, in a big metal compartment. Where are they even going? And WHY? And do they have wine in space? I bet they don't. Can people hear in space? I am thinking no. There are no seasons, is no greenery, no gravity, who KNOWS what temperature it is, and there are a million ways to die in space. It really, really bums me out.

• malls - as if I didn't hate shopping enough. Now I am lost inside a huge maze of dressing rooms and the only food for miles is Chick-Fil-A and Taco Bell. No.

Dressing Issues: What To Wear When You Need to Be Fancy

Eating From the Ice Cream Pint

Pros:

- Melts slower. Something to do with mass/temperature/science. Melting ice cream eating is incredibly stressful. Big PRO.

- More fun digging for “chunks”. Lots of good leverage to dig, because of the way you can hold the pint/dig the spoon. Bowls are mostly for chopping ice cream/making clanging noises. Not as fun.

- Less dishes. But you will still have to wash the spoon, unless you use no spoon because you eat like The Beast/Have a Snout

- Melts slower. (again: BIG pro)

Cons:

-More difficult to have any sense of normal portions

-You may eat the whole pint and feel sick

-You may eat the whole pint because digging for chunks becomes a sort of compulsion that has no easy stopping point

-You may eat the whole pint because of compulsive “edging” or making the surface flat- which it will never actually be

-You pint-holding hand may get cold

-You MIGHT melt it too much and ruin some future ice cream. (Rare.)

HOW WILL YOU CHOOSE TO EAT YOUR ICE CREAM?

Everyone Looks Like Macklemore

Everywhere I look I think I see Macklemore. (I don't know what his real name is.)

But everytime I see a white, pale, freckled, fair-haired guy with slightly larger lips, it is Macklemore! it is HIM! These sighting have been on short guys, tall guys, buff guys, not buff guys, hipster-glasses-wearers, and sporty men types. This has been on people who may or may not have been homeless. And these sightings happen about twice a day.

Sometimes a wifebeatery top or a hipster-y buzzed side haircut will confirm for 2 extra seconds that it is, indeed, him. I always do a double and triple take.

"Are you Macklemore?!?!?!?!?!", my inquisitive stare will ask. "I wonder if your little man friend with you is the elusive Ryan Lewis?"

But, no, these men are never Macklemore.

I am not even obsessed with Macklemore- I swear!- I think there are just a lot of pale men out there who look like him.

OMG LOOK HE IS THERE ON THE BENCH!

WITH THE ELUSIVE RYAN LEWIS!

New Black Pants: New Grey Legs

Every once in a while, when your $59 BDG black pants from Urban Outfitters fade to a depressing gray color that represents the rest of your uninspired and slightly ill-fitting wardrobe, you need to get new ones.

You have a vague, distant memory that these exact pants had some color-bleeding issues, and dyed your legs a splotchy dark blue/gray that didn't come off in the shower. So you briefly consider buying "expensive jeans" from an expensive-jean-store. But then you think that maybe you are over-exaggerating about the pants dying your legs. Because that would mean actually finding an expensive jean store with jeans that are expensive but not like 400-dollars-expensive, and actually going in and then trying them on- in the dressing room- and that is hard.

Also, then you wouldn't be able to afford to go out with your friend to a random wine bar this Friday night and eat a small but expensive serving of artichoke dip with your quartino of sauvignon blanc.

So you grab those BDG jeans in the size you that know "fits you", and you pay the $59, and this time you don't let Urban Outfitters email you the receipt even though it is better for the environment, because that takes a lot of extra awkward time as you spell out your email for the mohawked man in the ironic overall-type outfit. Also, then Urban Outfitters won't stop sending you emails. They become obsessed with you.

So the first day you wear these awesome, blacker-than-a-gothic-night pants, you can't help but smell some intense chemicals.... Yep, its the pants! You should have washed them first by themselves! But that costs money and time in the building's basement with the cockroaches. We made our choice.

By the end of the day, you will notice that your new, summer, canvas bag is streaked with dark gray. And that your legs are entirely gray, with an underwear line where your underwear did what they could to protect you, but sacrificed themselves, because now they are weirdly gray too.

Now you don't know how to wash them. Do you spend a half a day doing a solo wash on these pants in the building's basement? Do you wash them by hand? Will that work? Will that even get to the root of them problem? Do we sacrifice our legs for a few weeks and just let the chemical-y color soak into our leg-skin organ?

There are no answers.

We made our choice.... but now there are many other follow-up choices to make.

What to Wear to a Party IN BROOKLYN

Because you have to look cool.

How I Actually Feel About Love

                                                 

Why Don't I Want To Travel?

Everybody wants to travel.

And everyone seems to say: "Be Young! Be Free! Travel!"

TRAVEL TRAVEL TRAVEL.

But what if I don't WANT to travel?

To me, travel is stressful, hurts my feet, and makes me want to take a week-long nap.

...I would, however, like to go on a lovely, free, non-stressful trip to England, Scotland, and back to the West of Ireland. I would like this trip to be able to take as long as it needs (no work waiting for me and lots of flexibility with plane-travel days and jet-lag recovery days). While I am there I would like to enjoy lots of sleeping and only mild/passive sight seeing. Lots of walks. Lots of food. Frequent drinks. And basically, be with fun friends that are a lot chiller than me, and remind me that nothing matters and everything is good. (I would also do this with the "love-of-my-life", but I have no timeframe for when they will come around and when this could happen. I could be 60 by then for all I know. Must plan without them.)

While I was abroad I would like to make friends with the people there, and just like hang and chill and go to their dinner parties and their cool like, underground comedy clubs and stuff. (....Do they have comedy in Europe?).

I would also like to be able to spend unlimited amounts of money on hotels and fresh squeezed orange juice and maybe buy a bicycle and then just donate it back to the country at the end.

I would also go to Italy, maybe Greece, maybe Prague and other pretty Eastern European countries. But only if I had a translator constantly by my side making sure that I can order my food properly. It is not that I refuse to try these languages, it is just that in France I have been ridiculed and/or yelled at by enough French people while trying to speak their language that I have been scared out of language adventures. (Oh, have you heard DIFFERENTLY about the French? Oh, so had I. Believe me.)

So, yea. I am still "young", for now, and now is the time for ultimate exploration. I do believe that. But to me... "travel".... I just... I just don't care.

Sure, I like the mountains. I like seeing pretty things. I would definitely like to take a mini 4 day break upstate in a forest by a lake somewhere chopping wood and drinking maple syrup. Yea! Sure!

But as far as international travel is concerned, I would even rather MOVE to Sweden or Portugal or Turkey before I just went there and spent a week stressing myself out in museums and with maps as a tourist.

WOA........ REALIZATIONTIME: It's not that I don't like the idea of being in distant locales. I just don't like being a TOURIST.

So... that is it, I guess.

DRESSING ISSUES: What To Wear To Happy Hour in 2013

... When all your pants are too tight