Pearls of wisdom cast freely before ye swine

Greetings from St. George, or as I call it, the Palm Springs of Utah. 

It’s 4 AM in the desert and I’m busy not sleeping because I thought it would be a really good idea after being completely sedentary for five days to drink lots of Dr. Pepper right before bedtime.

Anyway, I hope everyone has had a blissful holiday season surrounded by family and old friends. Myself, I made some new friends this winter break, all of whom are contractors and/or construction workers invading and destroying my house like metastatic cancer.

There’s Chatty Cathy, a nice man who drives a Lexus and ropes you into painfully long conversations like a boa constrictor strangling its helpless prey. 

And there’s Vernon Dursley, whose face is roughly the color of an eggplant. So now I kind of have a visual basis of what J.K. Rowling was describing.

Then there’s Silent Killer, who doesn’t say much, but his eyes say “I have body parts in an ice box in my garage.”

And of course, there’s the legions of strange foreign men who listen to really bad Latin pop and set up their scaffolds RIGHT outside my bathroom window. We’re all such good amigos that they want to make sure I don’t fall in the shower. 

Fortunately in two weeks I depart for a semester abroad in ISTANBUL and I couldn’t be more anxious and excited and scared. I’ve had a lot of time over the break to wring my hands in apprehension and reflect on my past two and a half years in college. I’ve assessed the most important lessons that I’ve learned in college so far, none of which pertain to that science-for-non-scientists baloney (bologna?) I’ve been busting my ass over.  I think I have a pretty solid compilation so far.

Valuable lessons I learned in college that don't have much to do with academia

LESSON ONE: PARTIES ARE NOT FUN

The first fatal flaw of most parties is that the word “party” implies that there is something to celebrate, and there is rarely anything legitimate to celebrate besides having bullshat our way through another week of classes. Then there’s the fact that campus safety doesn’t allow any party to survive past midnight, so you spend more time GOING to the party than actually BEING at the party. Towards the end of the semester I purposely dress down for parties because I don’t ACTUALLY plan on ever getting there.

 I go to fewer and fewer parties each semester, I think because it is gradually dawning on me that there is actually nothing to do at parties. You can get absurdly drunk and then doing nothing is really fun, but if you don’t drink, doing nothing is pretty much as fun as it sounds.  The real Friday night fun happens in my room, where between a paper about metabotropic receptors and the next episode of Grey’s Anatomy, I like to yell out my window at the drunken frosh stumbling by dressed to the nines stuff like:

“WHEREVER YOU’RE GOING, IT’S NOT GOING TO BE FUN!”

“YOUR FATHER ISN’T PAYING FIFTY GRAND A SEMESTER SO YOU CAN LEARN HOW TO SUCK MORE AT BEER PONG!”

And

“YOU’RE FOOLING NOBODY! THAT IS NOT VITAMIN WATER!”

…

So basically I’m just a dick.

LESSON TWO: WOMEN ARE PASSIVE LEARNERS

Cue feminist uproar.

The statistics speak for themselves. Seven out of ten times, the loudmouth dummy making poorly-thought out comments and shouting out poorly-thought out questions is male. Two out of ten times, the class gets tense and quiet and watches some poor girl timidly ask a simple question with judgy-face expressions that say something like “Dumbitch doesn’t know what she’s talking about.” The remaining ten percent of the time, there is a girl with some balls. This in no context should be a good thing, but is somehow refreshingly awesome. 

I’m sure there are a zillion ways to explain this phenomenon, but I’ll just wait for a man to do it and in the meantime sit here and look pretty and submissively accept the way things are. 

And while I'm at it, I may as well make you a sandwich, wrap my feet, and make out with another girl while you and your friends watch

LESSON THREE: ONCE AN EAST COAST PREP SCHOOL DOUCHEBAG, ALWAYS AN EAST COAST PREP SCHOOL DOUCHEBAG

The ECPSDB can usually be seen:

• Smoking a cigarette
• Wearing suede footwear
• Reading the business section of the New York Times
• Casually hanging out and shooting the breeze with an esteemed professor, administrator, or other authority figure
• Trying to dictatorially head too many student organizations at once
• Playing lacrosse

And I’m pretty sure the only way to get a Mass-hole or upstate New York hipster to express human emotion is to insult his hometown.Then they just can't be tamed.

Like Miley Cyrus in her creepy XXX music video "Can't Be Tamed"

LESSON FOUR:  PEOPLE DON’T DRINK COFFEE BECAUSE IT TASTES GOOD

It’s expensive and makes your breath smell like shit. But I think I get it now.

LESSON FIVE: COLLEGE BOYS CANNOT DRESS THEMSELVES

Basketball shorts are for basketball.

Running shoes are for running.

Football jerseys are for football.

Baseball caps are for baseball.

The fact that the sports industry is male-dominated does not (should not) give college boys a four-year pass to avoid civilian clothing. 

And o ye gods, please send a plague that will destroy all men’s plaid shorts, as well as plaid quilts and Scottish kilts for good measure. 

Because better safe than WHAT THE !*#@ IS THAT

LESSON SIX: DON’T TELL PEOPLE YOU HAVE A CAR, BECAUSE YOU WILL BECOME THE SUBSTITUTE FOR AN ADEQUATE LOS ANGELES PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION SYSTEM 

This one was kind of intuitive for me, so I avoided telling anyone but my close friends that I had a car for the better part of a year. But people started figuring it out. It might have been that my car is stupidly red in a sea of silver Priuses (Prii?) so it was bound to get noticed, or the fact that it is the only car at Oxy with Utah license plates and I am the only kid at Oxy from Utah. Or word of mouth. Or seeing me drive it. Or whatever. At any rate, I’ve been able to avoid people deliberately getting plastered to make me DD by default (the whole vow of sobriety thing) by simply not ever going out (see lesson one). So now all I use my car for are trips to CVS and Trader Joe's for conditioner and Puffins. Someone else who is not so willing to sacrifice their social life might to well by just not mentioning the car.

LESSON SEVEN: DORM BATHROOM ETIQUETTE

Thou shalt not leave wads of thy hair in the shower.

Thou shalt not occupy the stall directly next to another occupied stall.

Thou shalt not take up multiple sink areas with all of thine crap.

Thou shalt flush.

Thou shalt not enter the bathroom and stomp all over it with thine soiled boots whilst the cleaning women are cleaning.

Thou shalt make deliberate attempts to speak to thine hallmates in the bathroom, lest the electricity should go out and one of thy hallmates be required to hold her iPhone light over thy sink while thou finishest brushing thine teeth, and thou shalt feel like an asshole for not knowing her name.

Thou shalt not steal toiletries from the cubbies of thine hallmates, and if thou must borrow, thou shalt leave a note explaining the borrowment in humble and ironic tone that shall not be understood nor appreciated, and thou shalt offer to pay back the borrowment in full with friendship or fiber tabs. 

LESSON EIGHT: YOUR REAL FRIENDS ARE THE ONES WHO KNOW WHERE YOU ARE WITHOUT ASKING, STOP WHAT THEY ARE DOING TO COME SIT WITH YOU WHILE YOU EAT EVEN THOUGH THEY JUST ATE, AND INSTEAD OF ASKING “WHAT ARE YOU DOING TONIGHT?” ASK “WHAT ARE WE DOING TONIGHT, SLUTFACE?”

"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.