The tangled web we weave

Here's why going to a small school is sometimes the worst:



Yesterday I sat down in the quad to make some important phone calls I've been putting off when my eccentric classmate came over and started ranting to me and this random basketball girl I had just met about his friend's girlfriend, who I know because she used to live right across the hall from me in the dorms and right next door to my current housemate, whose best friend used to date this guy I was kind of seeing earlier this semester, who I inadvertently sat practically right next to in the library yesterday afternoon as he studied with a group of people including the random basketball girl I had met earlier that morning. Also included in this study group was a guy who lived in my dorm freshman year, who had a girlfriend from home at the time but is now dating this dimepiece that one of my homies was crushing on sophomore year, a homie whose housemate and best friend is in the same teeny weeny academic department as me and the eccentric classmate who ranted to me in the quad yesterday about his friend's girlfriend.


And thus I reluctantly admit that we are all, including myself, essential ingredients blended into an eclectic social smoothie.

Follow the Spiders

This is a love story. 

Kind of.

I mean, to say that I fell in "love" with a spider just makes me sound like a loon or a character in a Stephenie Meyer novel.  

But let me just tell you about this bamf tarantula. 

This tarantula.

And yeah, you better believe I Instagrammed the shiz out of this bad boy

I ailed of the streptococcal infection of the pharynx this week and thus missed my zoology lab. Today after class I was given a whirlwind tour of all the arthropod action I missed in lab, and as Professor Martin was talking me through the arachnids, I saw this little guy out of the corner of my eye.

My first instinct was to to seize with horror as I immediately recalled the creepy-ass scene from Chamber of Secrets where Aragog sics his bloodthirsty giant spider-babies on Harry and Ron and there are like hairy legs and web junk flying everywhere and they're making those bloodthirsty giant spider-baby squeaks (which, for the record, real tarantulas do not make. They just put em in the movie for effect. And it worked). 

And y'all know at that point you were like "I AM FRIENDS OF HAGRID TOO I SWEAR"

But after I made my rounds through the crustaceans and the hexapods and such I felt weirdly compelled to go take another look at the big hairy arachnid. I sat down in front of his cage and just looked at him. He just chilled there. I looked. He chilled. I looked. He twitched a little bit and resumed chilling. 

The squirminess vanished and gave way to puzzlement. You have 8 legs. You are hairy. You crawl. You make webs that catch flies and suck out their guts. Big deal. Why are people so scared of you? Why do people hate you so much? We have a common enemy (flies)! Shouldn't that make us allies? 

It's so easy to love things that are beautiful. Too easy. At some point we completely cave to the love of beauty of the thing and forget about the thing itself. How do you know you love the thing and not just the pleasant qualia it evokes? At what point can you see past that? Can you ever?

It's kind of like when you see a couple, and one of them is beautiful and the other one is kind of unfortunate-looking, and you are amazed and are thinking in the direction of the unfortunate-looking one, "wow, he/she must love you. Like really LOVE you to be able to look at you."

I mean, that never happens to me because I'm not a shallow jerk. I'm talking about YOU. Of course.

The point is, I am as capable of loving an ugly horrifying spider as I am a beautiful blue butterfly or a lovely spring morning or a Monet painting or Ryan Gosling. Beauty is such a mirage, and honestly, I'm sick of it. It lies. It teases you. It is unattainable. 

F&%K OFF RYAN GOSLING

"Does this handsome young arachnid have a name?" I ask Professor Martin.
"Not that I know of. We raffle them off at the end of the semester though." He says.
"...."
"You can play with him if you want."

I did not play with Malvolio, although I did name him Malvolio. I have been trying ever since to imagine a scenario in which my roommates would not have horrifyingly massive cows if I brought home a tarantula, and I'm coming up with nothing. It wouldn't be like second grade, when Andra let me and my brothers keep this big-ass orange cat spider named George in the house in a jar for four days until he died from the stress of being exposed at one too many elementary school show-and-tells. My roommates would soil their pantaloons and violently fire extinguisher blast Malvolio in like four seconds.

The thing is, there is no math known to mankind that can calculate how few shits Malvolio gives about being taken to a home where he is loved and played with and given plentiful fly guts to nom on. He's a scrappy little mofo. He has been bred to be abhorred. He thrives on it. He's probably still chillin in his cage in that rancid lonely corner of the bioscience building going,

"You can love me."
"You can loathe me."
"You can fear me."
"But you WILL respect me."

And for that kind of badassery, I want to fist-bump each of his hairy little legs.

"Pantieth."

So mah roomdawg and I are chillin in our beds reflecting on our respective failed-in-a-big-way love lives and I actually dare to pose the deeply philosophical (and very very rhetorical) question "WHY DON'T GUYS LIKE ME?!?!?!"

We drop the subject and continue studying for a few minutes. She looks up. I look up. We make eye contact. I make my derpiest peeping tom creeper face and slur through a mouth full of retainer "I'm not wearing pantieth."

And suddenly I am fully aware of myself and laugh harder than I have in weeks, maybe months. 

My mouth is full of metal.
My dorky computer glasses are taking up half my face.
My hair is in a gross-ass bun with little wispies poking out like antennae.
I'm wearing a nasty t-shirt with crusty toothpaste slobber dribbled down the front of it.
I smell like Old Spice Figi because I ran out of girl deodorant. 
I own boy deodorant.

And I just admitted out loud for no reason to "not wearing pantieth." 

It just makes so much sense now. 

MORAL OF THE STORY: DON'T ASK QUESTIONS YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW THE ANSWER TO.

The years they fly but the days go oh so slow

Ya know what sucks about growing up?
Everything. Everything is awful when you are a grown up. 

I didn't start feeling like a "grown-up" until I got back from Turkey. Playing zombies and making cootie-catchers and dancing with 8-year-olds all summer kind of lulled me into this false childhood where the world was small and bugs were cool and vegetables were gross and "Call Me Maybe" was playing perpetually in the background. Then I get back to 'Murca and adulthood comes up to me wearing a skirt-suit, shakes my hand, then abruptly slaps me in the face and says "welcome to life, bitch!"

Growing up is...
Getting a letter from your doctor telling you that it's time to come in for a mammogram and realizing that the brief period of time between growing boobs and having to get them squished in a giant trash compactor to check for life-threatening diseases is unfortunately very much over.

Growing up is...
Sitting in the DMV with what are literally the dregs of humanity (and all their offspring, because apparently the DMV is like the new "Out of the Box") and realizing that at that particular moment you are absolutely no better than they are. 

Growing up is...
Bashfully admitting to the over-eager salesman at GNC that you are 21 and *gasp* still don't take a multi-vitamin. 

Growing up is...
Eating broccoli and going "this shit is delicious," and then you're like "wait..."

Growing up is...
Realizing that the gross 40-year-old man that just checked you out and then attempted to initiate conversation was not concerned that you were lost and wanted to help you find your parents, he wanted to touch your ass. 

Growing up is...
Feeling like the biggest perv in the world for thinking that J-Beibs is dreadfully sexy.

Growing up is...
Ordering a pear, spinach, and brie salad when all you really want is some mothereffing dino nugs off the kids menu. 

Growing up is...
Realizing that you're old, but your parents are FREAKING old. And for the first time in your life, you might actually be smarter than them. 

Growing up is...
Having to pay full price for a movie theater ticket because you finally accept that you can't "pass" for 12 anymore. 

Growing up is...
Trying to sautee rice with "I Can't Believe it's Not Butter" in a saucepan and realizing that you have no idea what on God's green earth you are doing.

Growing up is...
"Can I get a venti soy sugar-free vanilla latte with three shots and do you take credit cards?"

Growing up is...
Sooooo many job applications and interviews for people who focus on your mediocre accomplishments and slight social retardation and totally miss the awesome, charming, hardworking, spirited person you really are.  

Growing up is...
Having to bite your tongue to keep from going "Aye aye cap'n!" when you hear someone go, "Are you ready kids?" 

Growing up is...
Calling older adults by their first names but still feeling really weird about it. 

Growing up is...
Washing dishes. Locking your own front door at night. Shaving daily. Making lists. Sleeping 7 hours, no more no less. Using Microsoft Excel for something real. Not eating past 10 pm. Folding fitted sheets. Forgetting your high school friends' last names. Putting together furniture. Wearing less bracelets at once. Following the presidential campaign because this time it actually affects you. Planning more than one week ahead.

Growing up is...
Unfortunately inevitable.      

 
 

 

 

Sorry not sorry

I feel as though I should apologize to all of my loyal fans for many moons of absence, but I'm really not that sorry about it. I just spent the most amazing summer of my life in the most unbelievably awesome country in the world (admittedly up for debate, I've only been to like three countries), and instead of sitting on my happy ass on my computer I've been out actually doing shit. Really really cool shit. So once my life kind of winds down, which, let's be serious, will probably be sometime in the year 2063, maybe then I'll take the time to sit down and write all about the splendor of a summer in Istanbul. Until then, I'll be selfish with my memories of that place...

The Grand Springtime Voyage of the S.S. SpazzAttack

I know I know. I've been away for a while. But I figs it's better to be out living your life than blogging about it. Plus I haven't been very inspired, but I just spent roughly an hour browsing funnycatpix.com and listening to Skrillex to get myself AMPED for some heavy blogging. So let's gooooo!




The month of April went like this:

Where the big white space is Turkey and the black lines are my travel route

And I saw a lot of amazing things that made me feel like this:

 

Like:

• In Fethiye, an abandoned Lycian ghost town called Kayakoy. Getting there required hiking up a hill that went forever, sweating balls, and then eventually hitchhiking with an old man who was also transporting a box of precious tweeting baby chickens
• A rock that eerily resembled Abraham Lincoln 
• In Bodrum, a series of very ominous thunderstorms, a Byzantine castle, dogs the size of horses, and about a zillion free cups of cay and kahve from very friendly locals
• In Mardin, kilometers and kilometers and kilometers (still using metric system) of gorgeous rolling green fields and luxurious 1000-year-old hotels with shmancy showers
• A private Kurdish jam sesh, Kurdish snack time, and Kurds playing Tavala (they take that shizz sursly)
• In Midyat, 325843920 Orthodox monasteries that all looked and smelled the same but were majestic nonetheless
• Also in Midyat, children playing with goats (!!!)
• At Hasan Keyf, the Tigris River, the site of one of first civilizations of mankind that will soon be underwater, a group of picknicking children that I almost pillaged for food in another one of my infamous crazed hypoglycemic episodes
• In the middle of BF nowhere, an ancient Assyrian city covered with the poop of various wildlife
• In Ankara, the site of the dead rotting carcass of the legendary Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, a man whose pinky nail I will never amount to
• Jennifer Rhima shaming America in front of a group of Turkish politicians 
• In Konya, young boys who committed their lives to God and Sufism put on tall hats and long skirts and twirl in a circle for an hour so they could trance out of this world and into some other world where God is much closer 
• Neolithic archaeological site Catalhuyuk, which I don't remember much because of the heat-induced coma

I feel a little tug to insert every single detail of every single trip to every single place and write a biography of every incredible person I met during my travels, but for the sake of brevity and to be respectful of everybody's attention spans, I'll just throw some photos down (only the good ones):

Lycia

Kween Kleo Kitty Kween of Kayakoy

Fethiye at sunset

Kedi felt entitled to our beach picnic

Trying to scare the bunnies out on bunny island

Fethiye hotel room Easter egg hunt! (Emily is a good lil' hider)

Playin futbol with some kid in Bodrum

Bodrum Castle

The bluest water I seen yet

Who let the Bodrum dogs out?

Mardin

Dope Hotel

Gettin Kurd-ed out

Tavala with Kurds

One of many monasteries

Most magnificent...

NO MORE CAY

The dumb-ass kedi we had to set free from the dungeon twice at the Assyrian association

Hasan Keyf--This will all be underwater within the next 20 years!

EL TIGRE

Never trust anyone who gives you Ayran

Jammin out to "Call Me Maybe" on the roof of the association

Ataturk's turf

BEHOLD

Everyone is miserable

That was April, and the month of May involved a lot of parties, which involved a lot of alcohol, which invariably led to me, the patient, kind-hearted sober shepherd, peeling my friends off of gross old guys and hooking them to my drunk leash.  

An earlier prototype of the

Drunk Leash℗. The advanced model has pockets for phone, wallet, and camera 

and comes with a banana bag to intravenously pump your shitfaced friends full of fluids

There was a boat party on the Bosphorus, which I enjoyed thoroughly, although I had a hard time figuring out who didn't foresee this recipe for disaster:

• 1 parts exchange students
• 4 parts alcohol
• add boat and mix thoroughly

Yields 100 of these:

Then there was mine and Jennifer's birthweek, in which we both had the opportunity to turn 21 in a country where it doesn't matter.

During birthweek everyone else was like:

and I was like:

And that brings us here, to the last week of the semester. The end of the semester makes me feel like this :

 

which gives way to this:

and then this:

But....I have good news. 



IT AIN'T THE END. 
Because I get to stay in this amazing country all summer!

And that makes me feel like:

He shook some life back into me

I first noticed it in Turkish class this afternoon, at approximately three-twenty-something.


It started out as just like a tightness, a little bit of irritation, some kind of stinging, chafed feeling...Somehow so familiar....

I look down, at the skin on top of my arms, just above my elbow creases...

It's pink. Gloriously, gorgeously flushed.

And I'm like, "HEEELLLLLLSSSS YEEEEEAHHHH. First sunburn of the season."

I hadn't noticed it happening, but you rarely do. I guess I had just assumed that I was impervious to ultraviolet light. Just like I'm impervious to loud, repetitive music and attractive men. 

I had just started thinking that if no one could see me, if no one could find me, Mr. Golden Sun sure as shit wasn't looking my way.

I had just been slouched in some remote corner of the courtyard all afternoon with my five dollar sunglasses all askew on my face, my boots kicked off, arms folded across my chest, wind whipping my hair all in my face. I'm sure I looked as disheveled and slightly insane as I always do, like a hobo sleeping on the floor of a train station.

Except that no one sees me. No one touches me. No one cares. And I'm all sinking into this grass letting ants crawl all over me and plant matter all stick to me and time is all ticking away and I couldn't give two shits because I'm. So. Angsty. Like, old Taking Back Sunday albums style angsty. 


And I'm sitting there in all my contrived and awkwardly forced hardassery, totally oblivious to this hazy, wavy sun smacking me in my forehead. Running over my skin like lizards. Pumping me full of this pulsing and buzzing elan vital.

And sure, it's killing some perfectly healthy epidermal cells, but damn, it's bringing me life.

I tell this story to demonstrate the fact that I often feel like I am disappearing. Like if nothing calls me back right effing now, I'm just going to disintegrate into a cloud of atoms and float away into the cosmos.

If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?


If I am slumped over in this corner and no one sees me and no one knows where I am, do I even really exist?

And then there was this sunburn.

And it was like, yes, fool, you are here. You are now at a higher risk of getting skin cancer and you are here. 

If it walks like a dude and talks like a dude, it probably pisses like a dude

Turkey is getting warm(er), so I have finally been able to peek my head out of my 13 scarves that I wear every day and taste life. Every night I get black out drunk, experiment with hallucinogens, and engage in promiscuous sex with beautiful Turkish men. Oh and I also got the Turkish flag tattooed on my right butt cheek.  I probably have all kinds of diseases, but I caught one in particular that is making it impossible to live my life, and it's not AIDS.


I have wanderlust.

In fact, after I'm done failing this semester I am going to drop out of school, sell everything I own except a pair of Tevas and a hemp knapsack, stop washing my hair, and make the globe my BETCH. 

And I can already cross one of my destinations off of my 9-meter long list (yes I am using the metric system now)!

Last weekend I went to Prague with some girlfriends and 
IT
WAS
INCREDIBALLS.

If I'm being completely honest, I didn't even know where Prague was until about six months ago. In fact six months ago I probably still thought Prague was a jarred spaghetti sauce.  I don't know why all of a sudden I was dying to go to Prague, I just knew that it was cheap and beautiful and a two hour flight from Istanbul. So off we go.


The first thing I notice in Prague is that I am blind. No seriously. My eyeballs had adjusted to the weather in Turkey in such a way that they were prepared to never see the sun again. The weather was extraordinary. I felt like the picture on the VHS sleeve of the Sound of Music.

The second thing I notice is that there are a lot of cool things like this: 

and this:

and this:

and this:

and this:

and this:

The third thing I notice is that Prague is a city of dudes. Lots and lots of dudes. Tall dudes, short dudes, loud dudes, drunk dudes, tool-ey dudes, friendly dudes, dudes in groups, dudes on Segways, dudes on tours, dudes on Segway tours....I'm telling all you dudes out there right now, if you are looking for a city to pick up girls PRAGUE IS NOT IT.  


Due to a mix-up with the booking at the hostel in which they predictably thought I was a dude because of my name, my friend Hallie and I were forced to share a room with 6 American dudes and 2 British dudes. Despite growing up with brothers, this experience showed me how little I actually knew about our Y-chromosomed counterparts. I learned a lot of valuable lessons about dudes, and I think I totally get it now. If someone were to sneak into my room tonight and somehow perform a sex change without me being aware of it, I would be probably be able to adjust to life as a bloke pretty smoothly because my former female self would have drawn up a comprehensive guide to dudes that she will share with you all now.


1. Because you have the equipment that allows you to piss wherever you want, you are allowed to piss wherever you want.

The very first night at the hostel,  we all crashed at about 10 pm because we were exhausted from a long day of rain, traveling, and failing midterms. It was also the last night at the hostel for some 70 Irish dudes, so needless to say there was an offensive amount of partying, noise, and intoxicating beverages going on in the hostel. Hallie and I had our own "room" that didn't have a door but DID have the lockers and the bathroom in it, so we had loud drunk boys coming in and out all night, obviously unaware that we were there and that we were female. 


Now I can't give an accurate account of this story because I had miraculously managed to remain asleep, but Hallie and I have told it so many times that I know what obscene events unfolded. At around 4 am Hallie hears a strange sound and realizes in cold-blooded horror that an absolutely plastered dude is PEEING in the corner of the "room," three meters from the bathroom and no more than one meter from her head.  Fortunately she had the good sense not to try speaking to him lest he whip around and piss all over her bed. The next morning we examined the spot where he allegedly pissed and there was nothing there. So either it had already evaporated or he had by some act of God managed to to re-route his stream to the tiny trash can.


Two of my friends who shall remain unnamed took it as a challenge and pissed in the street a couple of nights later. YOU LADIES SURE SHOWED HIM. And I hope you have cleaned the urine off your shoes by now. 

2. If you can't afford to take your girlfriend to Paris, take her to Prague and just pretend its Paris.

Now see, there ARE some ladies in Prague, but they are usually attached to a dude by their tongues. There was so much coupley-ness bombarding us from all sides that I felt like I was an extra in one of the video montages in the middle of a romantic comedy where it shows the couple doing lots of fun things and getting caricatures drawn and kissing in scenic locations and sharing an ice cream cone. Which is really cute and all, until you bring the sex scene that gave the rom com its PG-13 rating straight to the Charles Bridge. Or the bagel shop. Or the chocolate museum. Or the tram, for hell's sake, which is definitely not a sanitary enough environment to have your tongue anywhere but tucked away safely inside your own mouth.


PDA= Prague's Dirty Action.








3. When it comes to Axe Body Spray, more is more and too much is perfect.

The "Axe Effect" in detail:




Open door.
Walk into solid wall of "Phoenix for Him."
Choke.
Gasp.
Momentarily lose consciousness.
Slowly regain senses.
Stagger to window.
Open all of them.




4. Try everything. No seriously, ANYTHING.


I get the distinct impression that dudes are a lot more willing to experiment with things that can potentially end human life. Must be the testosterone that lends to terribly awfully misled  "I am invincible" notion. 

We were all enjoying a rousing game of "Never Have I Ever" in the Chamber of Secrets (the bar in this dungeon at the hostel. Not its real name). Mark Zuckerberg doppleganger proposes, "Never have I ever done walrus tranquilizers." Silence. Giggles. An "awww maaaan!" and then who should put a finger down but Piss Boy himself.

Walrus Tranquilizers.
WALRUS tranquilizers.
Walrus TRANQUILIZERS.


This invariably begged many questions. First of all, Piss Boy hailed from St. Louis, which from what I understand has a very sparse walrus population. Did he have to import them from somewhere? Are tranquilizers common enough that they can be easily obtained?
"Oh sure. They got cat tranquilizers, moose tranquilizers..." Then he starts talking about how when you're on Kedamine it looks like you're really small and everything else is really tall and that's about the time I decided that I needed to cover my ears and rock back and forth in a dark corner or just go to bed. 


5. The douchier you act, the more edgy and interesting everyone will think you are.

I mean, the pink Vineyard Vines bowtie should have been an adequate tip-off.

His friends called him "Reagan" after his man-crush/favorite President of the United States, but the girls and I referred to him behind his back and maybe once to his face as Doucher McDouchenugget.


He managed to work how much he loved America into every conversation. And, okay, patriotism can be cool. But when you talk about your love for America in the context of how many houses you own in the U.S., and how much you hate Europe and Europeans, and how America should close its borders to immigrants, and how much you love Kid Rock, and how you wish you had a hair dryer to dry your goofy Donald Trump-ian hairstyle, IT BECOMES REALLY REALLY NOT COOL. 


Let's add to the "really really not cool" list: the barbed wire tattoo on D McD's upper arm. Totally clashed with yellow polo shirt. But at least it wasn't something like an American flag or "I <3 GOP" or something.


6. When trying to get into bed with a girl, "no" means "yes" and "get the hell out" means "keep trying."

Let us hearken back to the first story about Piss Boy. Back to the first night. Before he owned up to doing walrus tranquilizers.


After Piss Boy finishes pissing in the corner of our "room," he tries to sit on Hallie's bed and she kicks him out. This is the part where I wake up, because Piss Boy is now climbing UP the ladder into MY BED. He gets in MY BED, looks at me right in my face, and passes out. IN MY BED. Due to shock and trying to convince myself that I was not trippin balls, it took me about two minutes of looking desperately at Hallie to respond. I hit Piss Boy in the leg.
Me: "HEY."
PB: "rrmmmpph"
Me: "This bed is only big enough for one, homes."
silence.
Me: "HEY."
PB: "rrmmmphh"
Me: "Get out of my bed."
At this point Piss Boy sits up.
PB: "What? This is my bed."
Me: "No it's not.
PB:"Yes it is."
Hallie: "No. It's not."
PB: "Then where's my bed?"
Hallie: "Over there."

Thus I learned that getting rid of unsavory dudes requires a sharp tongue and a firm backhand. Hallie, however, didn't pick up on this right away. Two nights later, on the night that I didn't go out, our other roomie Allegedly Mike (allegedly because we were never really sure if that was his name) followed Hallie around like moths on a lightbulb. When she returned to the hostel later that night, Allegedly Mike was still hovering, all 5'1" of him, in our "room" in his wifebeat and dogtags. We tried to go to sleep, but he kept making excuses to come into our "room" After about 30 minutes he stopped beating around the bush and begged, I'm not kidding, BEGGED Hallie to let him get into bed with her. The only reason I didn't intervene right away was because I kept expecting her to zip on her badass pants and beat the daylights out of him right there, but instead she just kept saying, "Just go to bed...No, in your own bed." After way too many minutes of this I leaned over my bunk and saw Allegedly Mike kneeling by her bed in his skivvies in position that looked an awful lot like pleading and desperation.

I found that if you use phrases like "Aw HELL naw," and "You respect the lady's wishes," all in one sentence, it catches them off guard and they have to leave. Some threatening doesn't hurt either. 

We slept soundly that night.


And yes, I do provide bitch lessons, MWF, 30 Turkish Lira per hour. 

7. Honestly, it doesn't make much sense

I will never forget freshman year of college when one of my guy friends was flipping through one of my girly magazines and said, "It's funny that they have all these articles about what guys think. Honestly, we don't really think that much."

And I'm like, "Obviously."

I feel as though what I learned about dudes from Piss Boy, Mark Zuckerberg, Doucher McDouchenugget and Allegedly Mike was more valuable than the knowledge I gained from 21 years of having brothers. In addition to "always check the couch cushions for Gogurt wrappers before you sit down" and "if you don't know what it is, don't pick it up," I can add to my list of cautions gems like:

"If it walks like a dude and talks like a dude, it probably pisses like a dude" 

and "Don't jump over fences into closed parks with Mark Zuckerberg in the middle of the night in foreign cities, or else you will fall and break your arm and your friends will have to button your pants for you and make you a sling out of a scarf until you can receive medical attention."


and "Never, ever use your real name."*


*For the sake of future shenanigans I will not be providing the psuedonyms we used at this time

and "For the love of the Almighty, clearly indicate your gender when making lodging arrangements."