pulling the trigger

Too many times in my life I come up with what I think are an awesome ideas, but something inside tells me not to follow through on them. I highly doubt it is my conscience, because I stopped listening to her a long time ago. Perhaps it is my track record of pulling the trigger and regretting it. Like that time I thought it would be awesome to wear a thong to work, or attend a spin class, or anytime I think I can sing a Kelly Clarkson song at karaoke...

The simplest example of a time I always regret pulling the trigger occurs almost daily. The age old question every teenager has asked him or herself at some point: to pop or not to pop? 

I mean, if it is a vicious, hideous-looking white head, that sucker has got to go faster than a Canadian at a dinner party. But, what about those you know are coming that you just wanna nip in the bud? 

Yeah, I can't resist. Letting the blemish 'run its course' is far too passive and annoying. I want revenge on this face invader. But, in my efforts to destroy it, I end up looking like I checked the heat on a deep fryer with my face.

These missteps all make me fairly confident I should NEVER pull the trigger, but I'm not the kind of person who wants to live a life full of regrets (or with food in my teeth). Maybe there are moments where I can act on my urges without regretting it later...

For instance, the other night I got home and was going to make myself dinner. I always keep staples in my fridge for quick weeknight meals, so I began thinking about what I could make... Then I thought of a hot dog omelet. Yes, I consider hot dogs 'key ingredients.'

Part of me thought it would be worst idea ever, and another part of me thought I should probably start writing the first draft of my Nobel prize acceptance speech.

I ended up resisting and made one with asparagus. So, now I was stuck with zero Nobel prizes and lots of stinky pee.

Other times, it is moments of comic genius that never come to fruition. Like, every time I see someone walk into a bathroom talking on a cellphone, I want to run into the stall and make noises that would make an OB-GYN blush. Like this:

But, I don't.

While I think it would be a golden opportunity to teach that person to NEVER talk on the phone in a semi-public restroom, I am terrified that I will walk out of the stall and there will others in there who just heard what sounded like me giving birth vaginally to conjoined wallaby twins.

And I just can't walk around the office with that reputation. Maybe I'll do this the next time I'm on vacation...

Speaking of my office, our fire drills are SO lame. What's with all the calm single-file walking and grabbing of sunglasses, cell phones, and purses?

I want to suggest to my manager that I pretend I caught on fire and/or am actively dying of smoke inhalation during the next drill to make it more authentic. It would totally teach my coworkers that sometimes you just have to leave someone behind and not everyone makes it out of real fires alive. Plus, I mean, pretend dying by fire was one of my primary focuses in acting school. That and traumatically recalling my sexual assault by a trusted family friend or coworker. Neither of which have ever gotten me on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.

Whatever. Today is a new day, I'm gonna pull the trigger. I'm drafting a proposal to my manager right now to play the part of burning rape victim at the next drill.

In the meantime, can someone PLEASE make a hot dog omelet and report back?!

UPDATED: planking + owling, your time is up

I mean planking was fun when Rosario Dawson and Ellen Paige were doing it. Then everybody, everywhere was doing it like it was the Cupid Shuffle and I was drunk at a wedding reception.

Then someone was like, "oh this is slavery related," and people were all, "that's not cool."

You hear that, Ellen Paige?! Slavery = not cool.

So, someone came up with 'owling.'

Hilary Duff and others jumped on the band wagon, yet again, and the Interned exploded with tons of pictures of people awkwardly hunched over staring into the woods. Then shortly after that, I got bored again...

So, this past Saturday I stumbled upon the newest, most awesome trend ever.

It is called 'wigging.'

Also known as 'weaving.' I say 'known,' but this is a relatively unknown thing, but it is trend I want to get started and I'm sure it will take off like wildfire. Much like using a flame thrower near a fireworks stand.

All you have to do is find a woman with long beautiful hair, walk up behind her, and gracefully drape her hair over your hair as if it were your own.

I can't possibly stress how important it is for this woman to look clean and healthy, because lice was only cool in Pre-K. I guess it would help if you know her personally, but legally speaking, this is by no means a requirement.

If your efforts are successful, you will have a picture that looks THIS awesome.

Something about this felt so familiar. So I reviewed my old pictures. Turns out, this guy has been 'wigging' for over three years now. Here I am 'ginger weaving':

Warning! Pay attention y'all. This warning is in bold AND italics. "Ginger wigging" is NOT for beginners. Since they were born soulless, anytime you approach a ginger, they will most likely always try to steal your soul while you are tangled up in their straw-like locks.

UPDATE: When wigging with artificial hair, be careful. Sometimes it goes VERY wrong. Read here.

UPDATE 2.0: So, I am disappointed that wigging has yet to trend on twitter or be reinterpreted by any major celebrities, but my friend, Dan, is dead set on keeping owling alive. This Labor Day weekend, at a fun poolside cocktail event, he brought it to whole new level: stealth owling. If you don't appreciate this as much as I do, you probably aren't a person.

Being that my friend is working against my efforts of wigging, he should probably, more accurately be labeled my nemesis... or at least frenemy. Are people still saying 'frenemy'? Alas! I love and respect him for his dedication too much.

UPDATED: how to be a domestic drunk

As most train wrecks do, this started with the very best intentions.

I love to cook. It is therapeutic, creates a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction and is one of the very few only hobbies I partake in where I actually follow the rules.

So, I thought I would step away from my stove and dive into the oven! No, not like Sylvia Plath. I'm talking about baking! The fact that I hate sweets, chocolate, and lack the patience to execute recipes with the precision baking requires were all completely irrelevant. I wanted to go Donna Reed on my kitchen, and nothing was gonna stop me... Or so I thought...

Per my good friend's recommendation, I recently purchased Nigella Lawson's Bible on baking and comfort food: How To Be A Domestic Goddess. 

The very first recipe I saw was for Chocolate Raspberry Tarts. Again, I hate chocolate, but the picture was so delicious looking I felt like I was looking at porn for the morbidly obese. I was dead set on making them. Partly because they looked so pretty and but mainly because I spent money on a cookbook and had to justify the purchase by going out and spending even more money on baking crap to bake these beautiful little desserts!

Again, not to eat, but so I could upload a 'look what I can do' picture to facebook eliciting jealousy and hatred from my gay friends who have been living on steamed Tic Tacs and diet water because it is pool season and no one judges you like a gay guy with a vodka tonic in hand wearing a bathing suit that looks like it came from a Baby GAP.

Anyway, I read the recipe and headed to the store for the ingredients and the pans I needed. After perusing three different stores, I was unable to locate the 5" tart pans the recipe called for. I was defeated, still wearing my work clothes, and tired of being judged by the shoppers at Crate & Barrel who were watching me furiously walk in circles around the store and were probably thinking I was casing the joint. 

So... I bought three bottles of wine and went home and downed one of them while I looked sadly at the recipe I failed to complete. 

Halfway into said bottle, I logged into Amazon.com, ordered the pans, drank the rest of my wine, and watched Desperate Housewives.

This is me baking AKA 'having it all.'

For now, I will wait the 5-7 business days to receive my pans. Until that joyous day, I have two more bottles of wine... which will most definitely not be enough... Damn my lack of foresight and cheaping out on expedited shipping!!!

Also, if you are looking for good online baking porn, please check out my former coworker's blog. She calls it her hobby, I call it food porn and the start of a small business. www.puresugarbakeshop.blogspot.com

UPDATE: Well I did it. Exactly a week later, I have achieved my goal. I made the tarts, and I was only slightly buzzed! Granted, rolling dough is so frustrating it makes me want to blow up a Chevy Malibu, I wasn't drinking wine. I had to pull out the whiskey.

The moment I finished them, I ran a few over to friend's house for a taste test. Unfortunately, we were all a bit underwhelmed by the end result. They were by no means bad. They were tasty enough. But the shell wasn't sweet enough, and the filling was just OK. 

The recipe needs to be tweeked and tried again. Either that or I need to be drunker  before I eat them...

I can't be your facebook friend if...

I've sort of blogged about general facebook etiquette here and here but this is a bit different...

This might be a plight of the homosexual facebook user, but adding complete strangers based on amounts of mutual friends, cuteness of profile picture, and amount of skin and/or muscles in said profile picture is still a concept that alludes me.

Perhaps it is because I link my facebook to this blog and post with insane frequency, but I can't bring myself to add complete strangers. It's uncomfortable, because I share a lot of personal stuff. I mean, not consistency, color, and frequency of my bowel movements personal.

But stuff that I don't want just anyone reading.

However, in my efforts at Internet domination, I have sort of starting bending the rules and accepting friend requests from people I don't know extremely well, but I still believe I can't be your facebook friend if...

...your profile picture looks like an advertisement for some sort of sex based trade.

...our only mutual friends are people I wish I had never met before.

...your profile picture looks like you have been photo-shopped within an inch of your life.

...you have 2,000+ friends.

...your profile picture was taken by you, with your cell phone, in a mirror. You clearly either have no friends or have forgotten you aren't a d-bag circa 2002 MySpace.

...your network is a high school. I really don't feel like being featured on To Catch A Predator.

...you have no profile picture. Seriously, what is up this? I am NOT accepting friend requests from Darth Vader's silhouette. Possibly, Chewbacca. But that's what fan pages are for.

...your profile picture has eleventy-thousand people in it. Why are you hiding in the shuffle, Creeper?

...you are a business. Again, this is what fan pages are for. I even have one. 'Like' it here.

...you are couple sharing ONE account. Words cannot explain how lame this is.

...your profile picture hasn't changed for the last 6 months facebook has been insisting you are 'People I May Know.'

I probably take facebook too seriously and there's nothing wrong with networking, but if Emily Post were alive today - wait, she's dead right? - I'm sure she would agree with some of my simple disqualifiers listed above.

And to my current and/or former facebook friends, you might have found yourself defriended for any of the reasons listed above or for idiotic statuses about politics, religion, etc. that contain more profanity than your actual views or post a Nickelback song.

Also, rest assured if you have poor grammar, spelling, or punctuation, you have been hidden from my mini-feed from the moment you abused they're/there/their and other rules most 4th graders should know. Same goes for people who use wall posts that should be text messages and overly aggressive Check-Ins/Four-Squaring. No one cares that you are home. Ok? Thanks. Bye!

Finally, with the exception of people with extremely cute children, this is your account, not your child's online baby book. Nine times out of ten, I couldn't care less what your offspring is doing, unless you are balloon boying your child, I definitely want to see that.

PS - It took almost all of my self control to not use screen shots from my friends' profiles to illustrate these offenses. Some of them are close friends, and I prefer not to have an alcoholic beverage thrown in my face at the next party I go to... 

I hate summer.

That's right. Every gay man that has been killing himself at the gym and eating celery just to fit into the perfect swimsuit since April and every girl dying to show off their lower back tattoo of a Chinese symbol that she thinks means 'love' but really means 'damaged goods,' just gasped and hates me now. But it's true.

I mean, I like getting drunk by pools and wearing short shorts as much as anybody, but there is no law saying I have to be by a pool to be drunk. I get drunk lots of places, including but not whatsoever limited to: bars, patios, children's birthday parties, home alone while wrapped in a leopard Snuggie.

Come to think of it, the pool drunk might be my least favorite...

1) I'm sucking in my stomach / flexing the ENTIRE time because gay-body-issue judgement is unrivaled in any society even worse than Sorority girl judgement.

2) I don't think I could ever drown drinking wine directly out of the bottle on my couch, and

3) Sun damage. I don't wanna look like a old bag lady when I'm 35 because I insist on buying generic SPF that is probably just milk with a little bit of lotion.

Also, I like to cook and all of my favorite foods are savory warm dishes that are best served in the Fall and Winter months. Have you ever tried eating boeuf bourguignon in Texas in June?!

I did.

What I experienced fell somewhere between a heat stroke and a hot flash. As my mouth enjoyed the savory flavors of mushroom, beef, red wine, and onions, the rest of my body was just waiting to burst into flames.

Simply: no one ever got pit stains from a little shivering.

I work in a semi-professional environment. Shocking! I know, right? I hate walking into my office from the 100 degree weather in slacks and a long-sleeved button down dress shirt whilst the females of my office wear strappy sandals, racerback tank tops, and skirts so short I don't know if they are going to work or streamlining their afternoon gynecologist appointment. It's not fair or appropriate and is a good justification on why women make less.

OK. That was rude. The wardrobe thing is absolutely coming from a place of jealousy. Because if I could find a job outside of any sort of sex trade occupation that considered Daisy Duke shorts and halter tops appropriate work attire, believe you me, I would be doing it.

Finally, my sloth-like ways are better justified when it is cold and ugly outside. When it is a beautiful day, people wanna do things like be outside and run. They are also less inclined to watch all three of the Lord Of The Rings movies in a row while eating pizza and photo-shopping Paula Deen Riding Things on my laptop.

This holiday weekend was no exception. I almost suffered from no less than eleventy thousand heat strokes. So, after a Saturday pool day where I stood in the shade all afternoon and a Sunday of regulating my body temperature with Miller Lite while getting my patio drink on, I spent the actual 4th of July watching the ENTIRE 4th season of Desperate Housewives.

Yes, I own the DVDs.

No, I am neither proud or regretful of that statement.  Whatsoever.