Monthly Archives: May 2013
Try and Whisper to My Cat
I’ve been hearing quite a bit lately about this show, “My Cat from Hell.” Well-meaning friends and family trying to tell me about this man who is an expert on cats and will come into your home to diagnose whatever emotional problems your cat apparently picked up somewhere between the litter box and the water dish. Sure, they act like they’re just mentioning it in passing, but the intention is clear: Your cats are assholes and all of you obviously need professional help and possibly some strong narcotics. While I appreciate the thought, I’ve seen this guy, and there is no way on God’s green earth or Satan’s hell that I am letting someone named Jackson Galaxy in my home. I don’t care WHAT he promises.
However, part of me wants to challenge him. Because I firmly believe that while dogs are trainable, cats are not. A dog, no matter how stupid, will eventually learn that sit = treat. A dog will learn that “NO!” is often followed by something undesirable, whether it be a lack of treat or a swat on the rear. A dog will hear his leash jangle and immediately associate it with “Walk.” A dog will almost always accept her fate when it’s time to go in a cage for the night, or in the tub for a bath, or in the car for a vet trip. This is why dogs are man’s best friend. Even the ones that are dumb as fuck will eventually learn basic commands.
Cats will do none of these things. Cats think that they are smarter than you, and will spend every minute of their ten-pound existence trying to prove it to you. I’m pretty sure if my cats could talk, their stream of consciousness would go something like this.
- “Hurry, she looks comfortable. Start barfing or something.”
- “OH MY GOD THERE’S A SHADOW ON THE CEILING AND MY ENTIRE EXISTENCE DEPENDS ON CATCHING IT!!!”
- “What do you mean, what am I doing on the counter? I’m clearly licking the plates you left out. Are you blind? Do you need a doctor?”
- “Oooh, oooh, ooh!!! Clean laundry! Ima curl up on it and molt like a snake!”
- “It’s three in the morning? Shit, where did I hide that golf ball? I need to start pouncing it across the wood floors. It’s funny to watch the blonde one wake up in a panic.”
- “Stop bringing people in the house, I’ll stop biting them. Problem solved.”
- “Go ahead and keep buying discount food. I can throw up like literally anywhere. It’s a lot harder for you to get underneath the dresser than me.”
- “Excuse me. EXCUSE ME. I was sleeping on this pillow and there’s no room for your giant head. If you insist on trying, I’ll have to keep pawing you in the face. And since I won’t sit still long enough for anyone to clip my nails, it’s probably going to be more uncomfortable for you than me.”
- “You think you were worried when that stupid small cat took off? Watch me streak out onto the porch and nearly fall out the third story window. You don’t even know panic, lady.”
- “You need to go to the bathroom? We’ll come hang out!”
- “Are you seriously telling me to stop meowing? I’m a cat, dumbass. You’d be just as successful reasoning with your toothbrush.”
- “Hey, asshole. I’m stuck to the window screen. Would you prefer I yowl like someone’s pulling my teeth out or tear a giant hole in it?”
- “What? I can only throw up properly when I’m walking around the bed while you’re sleeping in it. Stop acting all crazy.”
- “I wasn’t trying to trip you. I just like to hang out under your feet.”
- “Good morning! I’m going to stand on your head now.”
- “Please. Stop threatening to ‘Set me free.’ You don’t have the balls and you know it. You’re really just embarrassing us all here.”
Your move, Cat Whisperer. I’m sure as hell out of them.
See? As soon as I stop typing, they’re all, “What? We didn’t want to hang out on the computer. Leave us alone.”
Dirty Little Secrets
Last week, my lovely fellow blogger Sasha Cameron was kind enough to give me a a nomination for a Very Inspiring Blogger award. Which, if I’m being honest, made me super happy because 1) I haven’t won an award since Kirk Cameron was still popular for being cool and not a self-righteous douchecanoe, and 2) I’ve never met Sasha. It’s all sorts of cool to me that people I don’t even know read some of my stories. (I get a ton of readers from New Zealand. I cannot even fathom how they came to find me, but if any of you New Zealand folks would like to enlighten me, it’d be greatly appreciated.)
Anyhow, the rules of the contest are extremely simple – link back to the person that nominated, then link to some of your own favorite bloggers and ask them to state seven things about themselves that people don’t know. I’m going to do it a little differently – not because I’m oh-so-unconventional but because I’m kind of lazy and can be sort of a dick sometimes. Remember those MySpace questionnaires before Facebook took over the whole universe? I loved reading those. I love getting a little surpise glimpse into someone’s life, so I’m going to take it back 2003 style and ask you to return the favor that Sasha so greatly bestowed upon me. Tell me about yourself!
I’ll start.
1) I am addicted to stupid socks with designs on them.
Never mind that they look patently ridiculous with everything I own. I. cannot. stop. Flourescent green and pink stripes? Hell yes. Polka dots? The more the better. Socks with cats on them? Oh yes. Santa Clauses, Leprechauns, Easter Bunnies, Valentine’s Day hearts? Bring it ON.
2.) I hate silverware.
Not using it, mind you. I’m not some sort of heathen that can’t properly use a fork. Granted, sit me down at one of those fancy dinners which requires several forks and I’m likely to embarass you, but that’s more because I’m out of practice than lack of knowledge. What I hate? Is washing silverware. I don’t have a dishwasher, and while people I know recoil in horror when I tell them this, as though I’ve told them that I prefer to wash the dishes in my bathtub while I’m in it, it doesn’t bother me all that much. I haven’t had one since I moved out of my parents’ house, so I guess I’m used to it. But once I’m done with all of the pots and pans and plates and cups, believe you me, if you are anywhere in my vicinity I will do everything in my power to try and trick you into finishing the silverware. Some people have mentioned that perhaps I should just start with the cutlery, but that’s just plain wrong.
3.) I don’t like gum.
It took me about 30 years to figure it out, but I do not enjoy gum. It serves no purpose to me; why in the world would anyone want to be actively chewing all the time? I do everything I can to NOT chew in front of people – likely a holdover from my junior high days when it was kindly pointed out that I chewed like a horse due to my giant overbite – there is no way I want to do it constantly. However, I have some trouble turning down gum, for some reason. People are surprised when you don’t want a piece of gum. I always feel like I have to explain myself, which makes me super endearing to the unsuspecting person that was simply being polite by offering a stick.
4.) What most people find cheesy, I find absolutely fucking adorable.
It’s not really any secret that I’m kind of a sap. I like my books romantic, my movies to have a happy ending, my music to make me smile despite rendering everyone around me gobsmacked with horror that they’re listening to Justin Bieber, and my TV shows funny. A special aside to this? Commercials. You know the Folgers commercial with the little girl and the soldier that everyone else is creeped out by and tired of? Still love it. Completely unrealistic Budweiser Clydesdale commercial where the beautiful,gorgeous horsey remembers the owner that raised him? Forget it. I will shush you throughout it so I can enjoy the special moment.
5.) There’s four songs that will make me cry, every single time.
Baby Girl by Sugarland, The Star Spangled Banner – this one can quickly turn into the ugly cry if I happen to be at a sporting event where it’s being sung or if there are military personnel and/or children involved, American Pie by Don McClean, and Pomp and Circumstance. There’s not a whole lot I can say here that can make me NOT sound like a raving lunatic, so I’m just going to leave it.
6.) I remember names, faces, and birthdays like some sort of savant.
Seriously. I can tell you my first Jr. High boyfriend’s birthday and parents’ phone number. Sat behind me in science class sophomore year? I remember you. Did we work together for two weeks at Subway in college? I can find you on Facebook. It’s to the point that for the most part I don’t mention it when I recognize someone for fear that said person will think I’ve been building a shrine to them in my basement for the past 12 years, because who in the fuck remembers the birthday of someone they knew fleetingly in college?? (Also, this eidetic type memory is of absolutely no fucking benefit to me in everyday life; I routinely forget such things as the fact that I’m out of shampoo, where my shoes are, and the fact that I cannot drink gin without turning into a SNL caricature of myself.)
7.) I cannot listen to two things at once.
The fastest, easiest way to make me crazy is to turn on the radio juuuuuuuust loud enough that I can hear it while I’m watching television. Something about having two things to listen to at once makes me completely lose my shit. It’s like something short circuits in my brain; I get overstimulated and the only thing I can do is rock back and forth, stifling the urge to either mute the TV or pull the skin off of myself. I’m not sure if this means I have a high or low attention span, but I do know it makes everyone uncomforable when a grown woman puts her fingers in her ears in the middle of a party.
What about you?
I feel ya, kid. It doesn’t have to make sense.
Not One of the Cool Kids
I have to start by saying I was completely unaware that Abercrombie and Fitch was still considered the store for the cool kids. I was also unaware that teenagers still use the terms “cool,” and ” the in crowd,” when referencing the popular kids being that the last I checked, teenagers today are not characters from “Grease,” and use a whole slew of words that most of us born before 1990 don’t even understand. But if the backlash surrounding this article highlighting their CEO’s comments is any indication, the war between the popular kids and the geeks is still going strong. Only now there’s the added stipulation that you can’t be one of the cool girls if your pants size is in the double digits.
CEO Mike Jeffries made this comment in an interview with Salon (several years ago, to my understanding, if we’re all being fair,) ““In every school there are the cool and popular kids, and then there are the not-so-cool kids,” he told the site. “Candidly, we go after the cool kids. We go after the attractive all-American kid with a great attitude and a lot of friends. A lot of people don’t belong [in our clothes], and they can’t belong. Are we exclusionary? Absolutely. Those companies that are in trouble are trying to target everybody: young, old, fat, skinny. But then you become totally vanilla. You don’t alienate anybody, but you don’t excite anybody, either,” he told Salon.”
So let me get this straight. Essentially, the CEO of a clothing line known for their overtly sexual advertisements showcasing standard-sized fashion models – which is somewhere around a size 2 -stated that they make their clothes with their target demographic in mind. Their target demographic is teenagers who fit the common perception of beauty. And the common perception of beauty for a female is not a size 16. It’s just not.
Is that fair? Fuck no it’s not fair. Is it right? Of course it’s not. Does it need to change? Of course it does. But bear with me a minute. When I was a teenager, there was a store in Woodfield Mall – I’m not sure if they were a chain or not – called 5-7-9. Why were they called that? You guessed it – those were the sizes they carried. Of course, they also carried sizes 0-4, but they didn’t carry anything above a size 9. When I was a teenager, I would have sold my goddamn soul to have bought my dresses from 5-7-9. That’s where everyone who was ANYONE bought their clothes. However, Jesus blessed me with early puberty and a set of knockers that required underwire at the tender age of 12; juniors clothing was out of the question way before I was a junior. Was I overweight? No. Not at all. At 16, I was a solid size eight. (And yeah, it has to be said that OF COURSE I want to go back in time and bitch slap teenage me and tell her that that Mountain Dew addiction was going to catch up in a major way and manifest itself in a lifelong affair with sugar and fast food that she will never, ever shake.) But my point is that I was a very healthy 5’4, between 130-145 pounds, and a I felt like a GIANT compared to my girlfriends. And not being able to fit into clothes from 5-7-9 was kind of heartbreaking. I couldn’t understand. Why did all of their clothes look terrible on me? How did their size 9 jeans not pull over my hips? I wanted their dresses, I wanted their clothes, I wanted to fit in. I didn’t want to buy my damn dress in the Misses section of fucking Penneys, no matter that it looked a thousand times better on me. It wasn’t from the POPULAR store.
Fortunately, my mother has a low capacity for unwarranted histrionics and finally – likely after a hissyfit of giant proportions on my part – put her foot down and said something along the lines of, “Their. Clothes. Don’t. Fit. It doesn’t matter how mad you get about it, they’re still not going to fit. I’m not sitting here anymore.” And while at the time I was probably apoplectic with the anger only a teenage girl can muster, she was so right. And I am so, so damn glad she didn’t let me buy an ill-fitting dress just because it would have made me happy in the short term. Christ knows I have enough pictures of me with a mullet and with a tuba and braces and glasses and perms; I certainly didn’t need to add a too-tight, fuschia-feathered nightmare to the mix.
What’s my point? That was damn near twenty years ago. The stores and the trends might have changed, but the perception is the same. Mr. Jeffries certainly surprised people by coming outright and saying it, but to me, the backlash is misplaced. Saying that Abercrombie hates fat people because they don’t make sizes above a ten for women is like saying that Lane Bryant is discriminating against the single-digit ladies. Boiled down to semantics, it IS the same thing. They’re both making clothes to fit their target audience, to flatter and fit their customers. And Abercrombie isn’t the ones making their audience the cool kids – there’s about a million other societal factors that make the “cool” kids synonymous with the “beautiful” kids. Abercrombie is simply cashing in on it.
There’s no easy answer or quick fix. But I think my mama had it right: this doesn’t work for you, here’s something that DOES, go kick ass in that instead. Who the fuck cares where it’s from, who cares what the label says, who cares what size it is, look at how great you look. Concentrate on that, drill it into your daughter’s head every day. You look beautiful, you ARE beautiful, I love you. No clothing line is ever going to do that. no matter how popular it is.
And if your kids are part of Abercrombie’s “cool” standard and you don’t want them to shop there? Tell them why. They may not get it now, and they might not agree with you because, hey, they’re teenagers. But explain yourself. So many of the comments I’ve seen in response to Jeffries’ statement have been contradictory to what their point should have been, “Well, he obviously wants to try and be around the cool kids now because, look at him, he clearly wasn’t when he was in high school.” What is that proving? It’s okay to make fun of someone’s looks if they did it first? It’s okay to call someone ugly if they call you fat? What does that teach anyone?
No wonder kids are confused. I am too.
Yeah. I’m not sure why we’re surprised the CEO said something unpopular.
crazinessiscontagious 
