"I need to go clean myself up"--Brett's tagline

I feel that I owe all seven of my dedicated readers an explanation as why I haven't been blogging recently. 

SCHOOL IS CRUEL.

And I'm actually really bad at it, so I have to try approximately 64.5x harder than a normal "smart" student in order to not fail at it, or worse, do "average." Ugh.


But I really just wanted to share this story about how I spilled crap on myself four different times today. 

Not literal crap.
That's disgusting.

8:17 am

It all started this morning when I made myself some Honey-Nut Cheerios with vanilla Silk, a culinary masterpiece that scored me 10K on the Food Network's hit series "Chopped." The Cheerios were balanced precariously on the edge of my desk, but I noticed and moved them before anything disastrous happened. And I'm thinking to myself "Wow, it really is remarkable that I've made it most of the way through the semester without spilling anything on this floor."

It was then I noticed that my garbage was getting full.


(But first a little background is necessary. I inherited an unfortunate autosomal recessive mutation called "butterfingers." And I don't mean the delicious chocolatey crispy peanut buttery candy bars, because that would be awesome, and this trait is really not awesome. It is really not awesome because it involves me dropping and spilling anything that is:
a) liquidy
b) sticky
c) gooey
d) really hot

e) stains easily
I am also naturally clumsy. The two traits are usually inherited together)


I took the garbage bag and out started to tie it closed, but it somehow flipped out of my baby-smooth fingertips. Next thing I knew, my dress and chair cushion were covered in Silk dribbles and a half-full cup of stale organic peppermint tea was overturned on the floor and rapidly spreading to the four corners of the earth like deadly pepperminty lava. 


My roommate/domestic partner Melissa was out of the room at the time of the incident and when she came back she thought I had literally pissed on our bedroom floor. I wouldn't put it past me either. 


12:11 pm

I was rehashing the Tale of the Renegade Garbage Juice to my friends and lunch, and I guess I was so engrossed in the drama of the story to notice that cream of spinach soup was dripping out of my overturned cup, through the holes in the table and onto my expensive leather boots. Everyone else noticed though, and while they were trying to avoid the soup drip I think they missed the end part of the story where MELISSA ACTUALLY THOUGHT I PISSED ON THE FLOOR. 


1:23 pm

I was on my way to biology and I had just snagged an environmentally unfriendly water bottle out of the library vendo. I was walking past one of the many many people I'm kind of acquaintances with but I'm never really sure if I should acknowledge, and instead of acknowledging him I opted to look like a badass and take a really dramatic swig out of my Arrowhead bottle. Except that I straight up missed my mouth and dumped chilly (and expensive) spring water all over the front of myself. 

7:21 pm

A few hours before, I had been at CVS and purchased one of those reusable plastic coffee cups, allegedly to reduce my carbon footprint, but a small part of me just wanted to avoid future incidents due to improper cup disposal (see 8:17 am). I was waiting for glee rehearsal to start and killing the time by admiring my new cup, fascinated by the lid that defies the laws of the universe and goes lefty-tighty righty-loosey. I guess I had screwed it on a little bit too lefty-tighty, because when I tried to take the lid off to see if my tea was cool enough to not scorch my esophagus, I unscrewed it with too much force and spilled MORE organic peppermint all over my hand and my jeggings. Some good did come of this however; I was able to determine that the tea was indeed too hot to drink, as evidenced by the second degree burns on my left hand. 

I think I'm just going to tell people that I spill on myself on purpose because I can ingest substances by absorbing them through my clothes and skin. 


(Cool parlor trick, not so cool superpower??)

"It is neither beast nor man, nay, it is but the face of a frosty betch."

There are two types of people in this world.

Can you name them?

.....

....

...

..

.

*chirp chirp*

*chirp chirp*

*chirp chirp*

  

Okay, I'll just tell you.

1. The people who look cool until they prove themselves to be assholes.

2. The people who look like assholes until they prove themselves to be cool.

(there is a small, enigmatic colony of people who actually look like what they are, but they only exist in poorly written and poorer-ly cast ABC family teen dramas)   

It took me five years of sitting at home alone on weekends watching That '70s Show and eating whole cartons of CalSmart ice cream, wondering why I had no friends, to realize that not only do I belong to the second group, I AM THEIR LEADER. 

This is because when I was a baby a wicked witch cast a spell on me that I would forever be cursed with what has no medical term but what I refer to as bitchface. 

Which means that regardless of how I feel on the inside, I have approximately one facial  expression that looks more or less like this:

RESTING FACE

HAPPY

SAD

BORED

PENSIVE

SOMEONE JUST BURPED REALLY LOUD AND IT WAS HILARIOUS

If you think I'm exaggerating, please note that this has been substantiated by a large body of evidence. Check out this caustic bitch:

It's a good thing this is blurry because high-resolution bitchface could put holes in your MF retinas

As if I weren't already painfully aware of the heavy cross I have to bear, lately all these adorably tactless fools have been crawling out of the woodwork and telling me some derivative of:


"Yo Brett, before I knew you, I thought you were the biggest stuck-up whoreskank, but once I was involuntarily forced into X-arbitrary situation with you, I learned that you're actually just a lovably awkward and clueless spaz who I will probably never be able to take seriously ever again!"


To which I respond:


"I am so grateful you were involuntarily forced into my life lest you still carry those awful misconceptions."

I don't think anyone realizes how hard I have to try to make myself appear like I don't want to go shanking bitches all the time. It's so exhausting, in fact, that I have to eat an extra meal every day to compensate for the calories I burn contorting my face and struggling to come up with something funny to say so the person next to me will stop shaking uncontrollably and avoiding eye contact.  Something like:


"HI I'M BRETT I LEFT MY SHANKS AT HOME TODAY SO YOU CAN CALM DOWN OKAY."


"BE MAH FREN PLZ." 


"LOVE ME NOT MY FACE."


I'm still trying to work it out. 




And I mean, sure, bitchface makes people want to hate me, but  it could be worse. My face could have gotten stuck like this:

.....

en reminiscence...

For some reason this story came to mind the other day...

The year is 2008 and I'm about to go on my first college tour at Pomona. I'm getting ready and Matt is loitering around the kitchen of the condo we rented for the week and eating all the raisins out of the trail mix.

Matt: Tell me again what Mrs. Porter said about your essay writing?

Me: She said I'm an excellent writer because I notice things that other people miss.

Matt: Huh. So how is it that you didn't notice your dress is tucked into the back of your underwear right now?

Moral of the story: Cheekiness is hereditary.

OMG "CHEEKINESS" THAT'S SO PUNNY LOLZZZ.

.....

Some rich white dude is ROFL.

This is kind of indicative of how my life has gone so far....

My adventures today led me to Marshall's with Katie to buy some dress pants for Glee Club, or rather, the closest possible thing we can get to yoga pants that still bear some semblance to dress pants. 

Watch yourselves, Pajama Jeans, because Pajama Slacks are hot on your heels

I'm standing in line to purchase a pair of just about the ugliest pants I've ever bought (they don't have butt pockets, like ghetto slut jeans but dressier) and I'm admiring the big wall o' fragrance they strategically place at the checkout along with the socks and the water bottles and the stupidly cute boxes of jelly beans to make you go "holy mother eff I need these things."

One little blue box on the wall o' fragrance catches my eye because I happen to love this particular scent and this particular scent has been off the market since like, 2006. I hoarded some samples of it a while back but I just used up the last of it yesterday trying to get the Mexican food smell out of my pajamas.

The checkout line is doing its little black magic trick on my mind and making me think that I must buy it or I will lose my soul. The checkout line reminds me of all the bottles of smell-goods I still have that are mostly empty except for the little puddle at the bottom that can never seem to get through the straw, rendering them all useless. I need this.

The perfumey shtuff is sixteen bucks, which is no chump change to a starving college student, but I figure you only live once and you might as well live smelling like a pristine beach with clear turquoise water and a light breeze and hints of citrus and green tea. I want Katie to smell it because I have a deep and unresolved need for approval, but they put all the perfumes in those strait-jacket boxes so you can't smell them before you buy them, which I think is absurd. You get to try on clothes and shoes before you buy them. You get to test drive a car before you buy it, even though you could potentially just dent the salesman's skull and drive off in it (not that I've thought about it). But you can't dab a little goshdamn eu de toilette on your wrist before you spend sixteen dollars plus sales tax on it? EFF CENTRALIZED GOVERNMENT AND BIG CORPORATIONS (college has taught me that it's always their fault).

I take a leap of faith because those always work out reeeeally well for me. When we get back to Katie's I take it out of the box so I can spritz some on and maybe cover up the potent smell of Jergen's Natural Glow. And...

It isn't even the right perfume. It's some Kimora Lee Simmons shit that smells like flowers dipped in syrup wrapped in your grandmother's panties.

Which just makes me wonder, who has the audacity to put garbage in a costume and sell it off as something entirely different from what it really is?
Oh wait...

HI MY NAME IS BRETT AND I AM A VICTIM OF CORPORATE AMERICA.

(Epilogue: Brett decides to keep the Kimora Lee Simmons because the bottle is pretty)

"Mawage. Mawage is wot bwings us togeder, tooday"

So I've been a tad bit busy the past couple of weeks...
...
...
(you know sarcasm is being implemented when someone says "tad bit," because no one under 50 uses "tad bit" under any other circumstances)


Anywhoseywhatsit, even through all the excitement of hauling ass to dozens of appointments, getting my wisdom teeth yanked out of my skull, convalescing from getting my wisdom teeth yanked out of my skull, fighting with Matt, trying desperately to contact my friends, driving twelve hours on virtually no sleep, and somehow making it back to LA in one piece, there is one event that trumps all.
And that is that....


MY DARLING BESTIE ALEXA MAE CRANDALL IS ENGAGED TO BE MARRIED.

Time has done some good things for us

Sorry gents, that means she's off the market.
"Already?!" you say. "It's totally the norm where I come from," I respond.


(Lex I hope you don't mind that I'm making it a big spectacle. It's just funny because I know you're going to read this. T and I already have plans in the works to hit up Blue Boutique and buy you some absurdly skanky lingerie that will make you really uncomfortable)


It's funny how our lives diverge from the lives of our friends as we get older. It seems like just yesterday Lexa and I were making up dances to "Wannabe" and pretending to play tennis. And then all of a sudden she was out getting tethered to the love of her life while I was high on Lortab and yelling incoherently through mouthfuls of KFC fake mashed spuds at Megavideo for only letting me watch 72 minutes of White Collar.


I'm feeling a little nostalgic and a little melancholy, not prime conditions for blog-posting. I also have a study abroad application that I should probably go stare at and then decide not to do before getting up to watch TV with Katie, so I'm going to postpone the toooootalllly awweeeesoommmme rant I had in mind for...some other time maybe I guess? 


I hate people who are vague and uncommitted.


If you happen to see Alexa, tell her congratulations but don't ask to see her ring because it is PUNY and totally NOT gorgeous AT ALL.


psh.

"Wherefore art thou Brett?" they ask. She asks herself the same thing, every day

Hallloooo lovays! Before I embark on this post of all posts, I want to wish a GINORMOUS happy birthday to my best friend in the whole world, Danica Nicole Moran!!! She is the greatest so if you see her today or within the next 5 days (the approximate length of "birth week") congratulate her on making it to 20 and give her things!

So today is a happy day for that reason ^
But it is also a sad day because I am currently incarcerated.
Not literally incarcerated, but I can't leave my room because there are contractors and movers all about the house (getting remodeled, Matt and Andra refused to wait until after I go back to school), and I can't leave the house because the left side of my face isn't working properly yet (just returned triumphantly from getting a root canal, novacaine makes me look like a Bassett hound, or at least makes me feel like I do)

Do you love meh? Are you playin your love games with meh?

So I am going to take this opportunity to sit here and reflect on my life and pull some gud cautionary tales out of my butt because I promised I would. It shouldn't' be that hard because my life is like one end-to-end awkward moment. I imagine that if my life were a TV show, it would be one of those shows that makes you really uneasy and embarrassed but you watch it anyway because you secretly like feeling that way. It's how I feel when I watch The Glee Project.

I DVR this every week and sometimes watch it more than once

As promised, here it is, The Third Installment of "Dealing with Awkward Situations and Not Getting Burned, Only a Little Charred" Series:

Cautionary Tales

If no one minds, I'll start with my favorite. Most people who have heard me talk have already heard it, but this is the exclusive tell-all edition that I've never told because it literally makes my skin crawl. Like, my skin is gearing up to run for the hills right about now. 

What Not to Do at a "Dance" (or whatever they call em these days):

The year is 2010. It is my first year at Oxy and I am still painfully socially underdeveloped (let's be serious, some things never change). I am about to attend my first ever college dance, Winter Formal (dun dun DUN). Technically it wasn't my first college dance, but Toga 2009 is disqualified from the running for being the biggest shitshow I've ever seen in my life. 

Ahem.

So it was my FIRST college dance. I'd been to dances in high school, but dances at Bountiful High were a bit different from the fabled high school dances I hear about from my peers, for several reasons:

1. Each student had to abide by the provisions of the "Dance Contract" which stated that skin must be appropriately covered, there could be no grinding moshing or disorderly conduct, and there had to be enough space between a boy and a girl for Jesus to cut in at any time. The contract had to be signed in blood, sealed with spinal fluid, and delivered via purebred centaur to the office of Sue Baylis. If provisions were not met, Sue would sic her band of goons with scythes on you and you would never see the light of a strobe ever again.

2. We often dressed like this:

So I didn't really know what I was getting myself into. College dances don't come with a syllabus. No one tells you that the only reason you go to a dance is so some bro who is freshly drunk on CVS vodka can slobber all over your H&M cocktail dress in the hopes that he will get to pass out on you in the top bunk of his forced triple while his roommates have drunken wheelbarrow races in the hall. You have to figure all this out for yourself. 

That fateful night, Melissa and I donned our hot girl masks and kitten heels and took off to have some genuine fun. 

The only picture from that night. You can't tell but I  was actually wearing the same hot pink tights from the previous picture, taken 2 years earlier

We spent the first few minutes stashing our purses and jackets in a potted plant and indulging in free desserty things and whore durves (liberties taken with spelling). Once we actually started dancing I was already ready to leave. That is, until I caught the eye of a dashing young gentleman who I will refer to as PSDMH for reasons that will become evident in due time. 

PSDMH asked me to dance and I accepted, but it became obvious in less than twelve seconds that I didn't know what "dance" meant in this scenario. I was trying to get my Napoleon Dynamite on to whatever indiscernible T-Pain remix was playing, but grope-y pincer hands put me in a vice grip and then tried to funnel slobbery small talk directly into my earlobe. 

--What's your name?

--Brett. Please don't make me repeat it.

--Like from Hemingway?

--Yeah! English major or prep school pansy? Toss-up. 

--Where are you from?

pause.

--Salt Lake City. Hopefully he's never heard of Mormons.

pause. 

--Are you Mormon?

pause. 

--Shit. I uh...I do...I mean...I am...

silence.

The vice grip loosened and PSDMH was gone in a flash.

It was that moment they'd been talking about in Sunday School since I was a little girl in patent mary-janes. The moment where you get to stand up for what you believe in and you will be respected for it and you will feel great about yourself. Except I didn't feel great about myself. For a second I saw myself how PSDMH must have seen me. In a pioneer gown with a lace collar and a waist-length french braid and a chastity belt. It felt awful. I slinked back to Melissa and Friends and told them about it. They were sympathetic, but I knew they didn't really get it.

When douchebag #2 asked me to dance I should've said no. 

Everything I need to know I learned from Taylor

I said okay. 

Douchebag #2 found it in his heart to keep a Jesus-approved distance until he at least knew my name. 

--What's your name?

--Brett. Please don't make me say it again.

--Sorry, what?

--This isn't gonna work. Brett.

--Brett?

--Yes. I will never understand why it's always this difficult.

--Oh cool. Where are you from?

It was a moment of weakness. I didn't want to deal with the baggage of being from Utah again. 

--San Diego. I was born there, so it's not a TOTAL lie

--Oh yeah? What part?

I don't like the expression "deer in headlights" because I've never actually seen a deer in headlights, so I will opt for the expression "sad fool who just pooped their pants in public."

I imagine I looked very much like a sad fool who just pooped their pants in public. 

I racked my brains trying to remember which part of San Diego I wasn't from. All my energy was going to my brain so I was momentarily paralyzed. I just stood. And stared. At some distant point past D2's shoulder. 

--Are you okay?

--Yeah sorry. What'd you say? Please do not repeat your previous question. It's not like you even actually care.

--What part of San Diego are you from? 

More standing. More staring. I think I thought that if I stood there all stoic like a British guard for long enough it would all go away. 

--Are you sure you're okay?

--Yeah I uh, I thought I just saw someone I was looking for

I don't remember what D2 looked like, but I remember his expression. Concern mixed with pity mixed with resignation with a splash of I've-never-spoken-to-someone-with-a-social-handicap-and-I-don't-plan-to-now. He patted my shoulder and disappeared into the crowd.

PATTED my SHOULDER.

My shoulder still resents me for telling someone I was from San Diego when I am not, in fact, from San Diego. My shoulder likes to remind me often that when these situations arise, I should, at the very least, know where in San Diego I am pretending to be from. 

If anything else happened after that my memory has repressed it. I have a blurry snapshot of PSDMH (Pre-San Diego Mormon Hater, you should know now) making out with a girl with mom hair and a tube dress. I also remember fishing my blazer and purse out of the potted plant and trying to storm out, but almost running smack into the douchebro I was kinda crushing on at the time( we actually became decent friends much later. He would still hook up with just about anyone but me). I finally made it out, sweaty, teary, and covered in potted plant dirt, but I made it out. And I swore I would never go to another dance.

But I totally have. And everyone already knows I'm from Utah. 

So I guess the moral of the story is...

Well...

Don't be ashamed of your awkwardness. Because if you try to hack the head off of your awkwardness, ten more heads will spring up in its place. And then you will have a Hydra of awkwardness. I named my Hydra of awkwardness Ernest after Ernest Hemingway. 

And if anyone is still wondering....

Tierra Santa. I'm from Tierra Santa.

They met each other's eyes and saw to infinity. Avoidance tactics had finally been exhausted.

Second Installment of "Dealing with Awkward Situations and Not Getting Burned, Only a Little Charred" series:
Dealing with Awkward Things that Happen in Passing


Awkward Situation #1: You are approaching someone you know from a long distance and you don't know the appropriate time to initiate contact


Classic n00b mistake: You say hi too early and then share way too many seconds of uncomfortable silence, or you say hi too late and the person is already well on their merry way and done deciding you are a raging douche for not saying hi.


How to avoid this misfortune: Do not make eye contact with the person until the appropriate distance has been covered. Create the illusion that you have a perfect-timing mechanism installed in your brain by looking busy until the opportune "oh hey didn't see you there" moment has arrived. Modern technology has given us cellphones not only to make it easier for the wicked tax people to find us, but to make us look like we are busy with something important. I used this one all through high school and I successfully had no friends. You may also choose to tie your shoe or greet another passerby. Just make sure you are wearing shoes with laces or that the person you greet actually knows who you are, or you could be creating a whole new world of awkward for yourself. 


Awkward Situation #2: Someone you don't know waves/bro-nods at the person behind you, and because you are awkward, you wave/bro-nod back


Classic n00b mistake: You apologize. Heaven forbid you try to explain your actions to the passerby, you have just descended to a level of awkward only the likes of myself and Michael Cera have ever experienced. 

Totally done this. I'm sure it didn't end well for either of us.

How to avoid this misfortune: The easy way out is to pretend it didn't happen, but you have to accept that pretending something awkward didn't happen will ALWAYS leave you charred. The better option is to pretend that you are waving/bro-nodding to the person behind the person who just waved/bro-nodded to the person behind you. It's a dead simple gambit, really. Pick someone. Make up someone. Whatever you do, just pretend that you are reeeealllly happy to see them.


Your second option is to go along with it and follow-up with a "Hey how's it goin' Jerry?"
WHO'S AWKWARD NOW, BETCH?!?!?!


Awkward Situation #3: You start having a conversation with someone, and after way too long you realize they are talking on one of those bluetooth headset thingies


Classic n00b mistake: You walk away. Not so fast champ, you get to be creative here.


How to avoid this misfortune: Easy peasy fo sweezy. Just pretend you are talking on a bluetooth headset thingy too. Enough people have them these days that it's totally plausible, and you only have to pretend to be pompous-ass techie for a few seconds before you're allowed to walk. The best way to pull it off is to take the fake conversation to the most outlandish place you can possibly think of. Here is a sample of a bluetooth-to-bluetooth conversation pulled off brilliantly:
Bluetoother: Hey, how you doin?
Awkward Person: I'm doing okay, but how bout this weather, yeah?!
BT: Good good. Hey tell Chareese to put those files on my desk and I'll pick 'em up at noon 
AP ( who has just realized bluetoother is bluetoothing and doesn't actually care how he is doing):  
I said no way Abel! Trident Layers does not count as adequate compensation, no matter how many private islands you own! (puts hand to ear and storms away)


If you're lucky, the bluetoother won't have even realized you were there. But let's be serious, you're way too appallingly awkward to not be noticed. And this guy is on bluetooth, he's probably someone important who will be withholding a job from you in the near future.


*None of these guidelines apply if you start having a conversation with a person who is Skyping.Then you're just screwed and the other person thinks you're a nut forever. I speak from true experience on this one, burn marks don't lie


Awkward Situation #4: You are a humble pedestrian trying to cross the street, and an angry motorist is about to turn into the crosswalk you are trying to use (because you are a law-abiding citizen who uses crosswalks)


Classic n00b mistake: You wait for the motorist to go. Because then the motorist will wait for you. You proceed to do a pedestrian-motorist dance in which you will both go and stop at the same time, waving your arms at each other like fools, and making all parties involved grumpy and irritated.


How to avoid this misfortune: Cross the street the other way. Go back the way you came. Take a sidestreet. Do whatever you have to do to look like you have a destination that is somewhere other than across that crosswalk. Once the motorist is out of sight, you can go the way you intended to go and everyone is happy. 




I hope this guide was helpful to some of you. The next installment of the series will be:
"Cautionary Tales: what NOT to do"

Under the dark, velvety cover of night, we escape to the world of dreams, a place that is never as restful as we hope

During our weekly Bountiful Boulevard Sunday Stroll, over a chorus of "Nice bum where you from!" from low-IQ jailbait high school boys, Danica Nicole Moran suggests that I write a comprehensive guide to dealing with awkward situations because I've been in so many of them and emerged triumphant. I check the dictionary.com definition of "triumphant" from my imaginary iPhone and it doesn't say anything about wounded dignity or people sometimes thinking you have a speech impediment. But I decide to write a comprehensive guide to dealing with awkward situations even though I evidently can't deal with them myself. It's kind of like how they say the best therapists are the kind of people who hide babies in dumpsters or have unresolved Oedipus complexes.  

First Installment of "Dealing with Awkward Situations and Not Getting Burned, Only a Little Charred" series:

Dealing with Awkward Things that Happen While You're Asleep

(I realize this is a weird one to start with, just go with it)

Awkward Situation #1: You fall asleep on your arm and it goes completely dead

Your first thought upon waking might be: OMFG WHOSE ARM IS IN MY BED RIGHT NOW?!

How to deal with it:

• Remain calm. Check to make sure the arm is actually attached to your body without actually looking at the arm so you don't have to think about how weird it is that it's not moving. 
• If the arm is attached to your body:
• Scooch to the edge of the bed (or couch if you have transgressed against your partner) and use your undead arm (zombie arm ooooOOOOooo) to toss your dead arm over the side so the fingers are pointing towards the ground.
• As the blood creeps creepily back into your arm, twitch your fingers one by one to determine whether or not they are receiving messages from your brain yet. If they are not, repeat steps 1 and 2.
• Resume sleeping.

• If the arm is not attached to your body:
• If it's not your arm, scream, cry, puke, pass out or whatever you have to do, then run away and call 911 immediately because THERE IS A &%*# ARM IN YOUR BED.
• If it is your arm, stifle the bleeding and report to the hospital immediately. Embark on your new life as an amputee. Make a cardboard sign and find a high-traffic underpass for street peddling. 

Awkward Situation #2: You crunch up one of your blankets at the foot of the bed and in your delirious state, you cannot seem find it

Your first thought upon waking might be: OMFG THE BLANKET SNATCHER IS AT LARGE

How to deal with it:

• Remain calm. Try your best to remember if you actually even had the blanket when you went to sleep. Neglecting to do this is a common blanket-cruncher mistake which causes undue anxiety.
• As sleep-delirium subsides, use your dominant foot to do a sweep of the foot of the bed to find any crunched up fabric.
• To re-cover yourself with the blanket, do what I coined three seconds ago as the "caterpillar": hook the blanket around your foot and bring your knee to your chest. Then use your hands to grab the blanket and spread it over yourself.
• Resume sleeping.

Awkward Situation #3: You expel some kind of bodily fluid 

(I can think of 9, can you name them all?)

Your first thought upon waking might be: OMFG HOW DID I NOT NOTICE UNTIL NOW?!

How to deal with it:

• Remain calm. Try to determine which bodily fluid it is. You may have to do a sniff test, which is super gross but often necessary. You may also have to use common sense: for example, if only your pillow is wet, it is most likely not pee. And if it IS pee, congratulations on pulling that off because that must have involved some pretty spectacular sleep-acrobatics.
• If it is a harmless fluid such as sweat, drool, or tears
• Change your sheets/pillowcase if you deem it necessary. Turn on the A/C (or take your menopause medication), close your mouth, fix your broken heart, or make any other necessary accommodations to ensure that it won't happen again. Resume sleeping.
• If it is ANYTHING ELSE (*it should be noted that this has never actually happened to me, so don't assume that I'm speaking from experience here):
• If you are a nasty person with terrible hygiene, resume sleeping.
• If you have any self-respect, remove sheets/blankets/all affected areas at once to avoid seepage. If someone else is in the bed with you, wake them up and tell them a brilliantly crafted lie that will get them out of bed and into a garage or closet, which you will lock them in for approximately fifteen minutes. Take everything off the bed, throw it in the bathtub, dump some Shout over the top of it, and turn the water on. When it's kinda clean, drape all linens awkwardly over the furniture to dry. Make SURE to wash them properly in the washing machine on a warm cycle at your earliest convenience.
• Replace linens, fetch your bed mate from the garage or closet, and resume sleeping if you can forgive yourself.

Awkward Situation #4: Your partner/person you are forced to share a bed with due to space limitations is a compulsive covers-hogger

Your first thought upon waking might be: OMFG I'M SO COLD RIGHT NOW

How to deal with it:

• Remain calm. Do not wake up the other person. The point is to be the least rude you possibly can. You are not the villain here. They are. 
• If there is something else you can cover yourself with. i.e., a blanket that is not currently in use, a towel, a sweatshirt, a cat, use that. Then the other person will feel bad the whole next day while you assert that "really, it's fine. I was fine."
• If there is no adequate covers-substitute readily available:
• Do not pull the covers away all at once. A huge yank will wake the other person up and begin a covers war that you are much too passive to win. You must recover the covers (hehe) by degrees. 
• To do this, grab a corner or whatever slice of the covers you can get your mildly hypothermic hands on and (slowly!) pull it towards you. Then you must roll onto your other side. Then wait a few moments and do it again. Doing this will gradually unroll the covers off the other person and onto yourself. If the other person wakes up, they will assume you are just harmlessly sleep-rolling and will be more likely to forgive you. 
• Once you are adequately covered, resume sleeping. 

Stay tuned for the next installment of "Dealing with Awkward Situations and Not Getting Burned, Only a Little Charred" series with "Dealing with Awkward Things that Happen in Passing."

"If music be the food of love, play on," Will Shakespeare wrote, a line he borrowed from Brett's 4th grade diary

Tic Tac mutha effin' Toe, Three 'na Row! I know incessa-blogging is sooooper obnoxious, but this stuff just comes into my head while I'm out diligently training for the Legacy Half Marathon (I had  to slip that in there) and I just don't know what else to do about it. 

Anyway, I have to don my hypercritical know-it-all pants (I said I was sorry, Mam!) for this post because it is about song lyrics. Since I spend most of my day every day listening to songs, singing songs, writing songs, coming up with ideas for songs, or any combination of those things, I have pretty much ascended to the pinnacle of pretentious douchery as it pertains to song lyrics. Just typing that sentence made me feel like a huge bitch-I-hate-myself, and I'm okay with that. 

I like to listen to the radio when I'm driving in my car. It gives me a sense of community, like I'm connected to something bigger, or some kind of romanticized bull like that. And I do this knowing FULL WELL that most of the songs on the radio suck balls. Occasionally they'll toss a good one into the mix to keep snobs like me tuned in, but mostly Top 40 radio stuff speaks volumes to the 8th grade education of the three boneheads sitting inside RCA Records coming up with lyrics like "Jesus on my neck-a-lus-us-us." 

Jesus, if you're reading this, please stay far away from Ke$ha's neck-a-lus-us-us, and in fact, anything that is associated with...Her? It? Her?

I am consoled by reminding myself that there are still some awesomely genuine and talented singer-songwriters on the radio, and then I hear this:


"You make me wanna say I do
I do
I do do do do do do do do"

Aw HELL naw. 

Not only are those lyrics super annoying, they make me want to make so many poop jokes that I don't even know what to do with myself.

Come on now Colbie. What is that? How could she write such crappy lyrics? Look how cute she is!

On the other hand, she wrote some pretty amazeballs lyrics for songs like "One Fine Wire" and "Droplets," so I'll let this one slide.


These Cobra Starship lyrics, however, are unpardonable:


"You make me feel like la la la la la"

I had so many questions, so I took to the streets* and asked some partakers of hard drugs what "la la la la la" feels like. They told me it feels kind of like the ground is water and everyone is a silver clamshell named Hollis that wants to stake you in the heart. I then asked them if they had ever done drugs with Cobra Starship, and they said that they had not.

*This didn't actually ever happen

I switch to another station and I get the great pleasure of listening to "Give Me Everything" for the 952nd time, and I cringe just like I did the first 951 times when I hear the line

"Got it locked up like Lindsay Lohan"

And I'm like, oh girl, hold up.  

Did Pitbull for reals just compare himself with America's most despised redheaded, cracked-out, sometimes-incarcerated, child-star-turned-monumental-train-wreck?

WHY WOULD ANYBODY EVER DO THAT EVER??? 

I see no resemblance

I'm not about to claim that all crap lyrics come from Top 40. I sang in the Occidental College Glee Club (I say with equal parts pride and shame) this past year and we were forced to sing one or two or three appalling selections, like this one that slipped through the sensors because it is cleverly disguised in Spanish:

"Y si negro no se due'me, viene diablo blanco y zas! Le come la patica chica bu"

Which loosely translates to mean:

"If the black kid doesn't go to sleep, the white devil is going to come and boo! Eat his little feet" 

Question mark.

That's what I imagine Hell to be like.

Fortunately that, whatever that is, was counterbalanced with gems such as "America" by Paul Simon, a gorgeous narrative of two wistful beatniks such as myself *snicker*  trying to find themselves as they travel across our great country.  Homie Paul's lyrics crack my heart like an egg and let the contents run unfettered into my chest cavity. That means they're good, in case my graphic metaphor didn't resonate with you.

All I'm saying is that we have this beautiful and humane gift of language that can give life or death to the even beautiful-er and humane-er gift of music, and if the lyrics are going to spell death for the music, I would rather not hear them at all.

Like, actually though. Slice of truth.

I would rather listen to a sick track sans vocals than a sick track that is disgraced by Enrique wailing "Tonight I'm f**kin yoooooou" over the top of it.  Because, okay Enrique, maybe you are planning on f**kin me tonight, but right now I'm just trying to drive to Rite-Aid to snag some Suave Naturals and I'm not really dying to hear about it.

Although I may eventually want to hear about it

CAVEAT. All of this should be taken with a grain or maybe a large barrel of salt because as it turns out, I'm actually NOT the ultimate authority on "good" songs. I've been pretty emotionally invested in the show "Platinum Hit" on Bravo (Johnny and Jes ftw <333333), and sometimes the contestants write a song that I think is totes rad (and I definitely say "totes rad"), but then Jewel and Kara are like "That was the worst song I've ever heard." So I think it's kind of a crapshoot.

But as for radio songs, someone please get some professionals in the studio with these poor fools and write some songs that will give me hope for humanity whilst I drive to Rite-Aid on a Wednesday. 

And that's how Brett "C's" it.

If you don't watch Glee, dishonor on you and your family

So I'm going to take off my hypercritical know-it-all pants and put my XXL boxer shorts back on.

I'm taking a small hiatus from the blog for the rest of the week because I have important stuff to do, but next week we will return to your regularly scheduled hot mess with some funny stories about things that have happened to me in my life as a result of having abysmal social skills.

Until then, chaps.