auto fun. (!!!) seven-two-two thousand and eight.

Remember that one time that contest ended a day early, right when I was just about to have a last-minute comeback? I wouldn't wanna do that to y'all. To be fair, you've got 'til midnight on July 2nd to get to page 165 of Oscar Wao. I finished it last week, obvs, 'cause Diaz's prose has serious velocity and I had no choice but to ride it to the finish line. Okay, really ... I'm still ironing out my discussion questions/finding out what a book club is and then at 12:01 on July 3rd (give or take 12 hours), I'm gonna start attacking you with spoilers so BE READY. Read, grasshoppers, READ!

Speaking of attacks, tonight our Urban Professionals Basketball Team, The Rockford Peaches, took on "The Stars." Guess what kind of stars? I'll give you a hint: I accidentally foreshadowed this in the post about our last game.

Luckily, the Peaches had already exchanged emails about our relative skills (mine included typing and trash-talk), which really helped today -- like we all learned that one of our players is secretly a Nike all-star. And this time we DID NOT get crushed! It was super-close, we were close, it was a tight game! We scored a lot of points! (Not me. I'm defo not an asset, but I did get a little skinned knee! BATTLE WOUND!) We scored the first basket!

Our skills were possibly on par with the other team, but how do you beat seven girls who've probs been in Yeshiva together since 1985 [& their gigantic blonde friend who I believe was imported from the Swedish hinterlands to offer some height and some thigh-reveal]? You can't. We did good. Dayenu.

Obviously if I knew more about basketball, which I actually thought I did until I tried to play it again, I'd talk more about the game and less about the cultural background and outfits of the opposing team. I'd have better "game plans" than "throw a bunch of meat and milk out there -- TOGETHER!" You wouldn't think a girl in a below-the-knee skirt and below-the-elbows shirt would have such a killer shot, but that particular girl was particularly good. Therefore, I have come to the conclusion that the only way to win a basketball game is to be good at basketball. I'm Jewish too, but Hashem was not listening to my prayers, although I believe G-d heard me when a girl threw a basketball at Carly's face and I yelled "YOU GUYS ARE REALLY MEAN!"

As you can see in that photo of our pre-pre-pre game huddle, I was already over it.

We had lots of fans though! E.g., Haviland! and Brooklyn Boy! [see Lozo, if you don't come and coach us, someone else will. Ha - HA!]

GO (kosher) PEACHES!

---

quote: "Come back to me sometimes. I wander now too, / am a shadow with you here in this other life." (from "Keepsake" by Phillip White)

---

links:
1. The Most Anticipated Books of 2008. (@the millions)
2. How an Independent Bookstore Can Survive. (@the guardian uk books)
3. Minister Explores the Spiritual Side of Bruce Springsteen. (@la times via truthdig)
4. The Secret, Pro-Life Message of The Secret Life of the American Teenager (@jezebel)
5. NPR is actually expanding its book coverage! Go Bobos! (@publisher's weekly)
6. Proof of what I've been saying all along: flip-flops are bad for you. (@live science)
7. Liz Phair on "Guyville" (@culture vulture)
8. Apparently, it's time for facebook addicts to "face the music." (@the times online)
9. You Can't Take it With You: Rauschenberg's fascination with the objects of the world (@the smart set)
10. Where Has all the Passion Gone? (what happened to campus radicalism?) (@the times higher ed)

Sunday Top Ten: If We Took a Holiday, Took Some Time to Celebrate

Hallo! First off, check out the list of books on the Saturday Auto-Fun and let me know which one you'd like to be the first Auto-Win Book Club selection. I'll make a decision soon and I la-la-love/need your input ... I'm pretty sure that we've reached a consensus, but you never know, look what happened to Al Gore! Hey, speaking of voting, are you going to VOTE? -- WAIT! this just in ... I could've sworn I saw Wao in paperback at a store recently, but all online booksellers seem to suggest it's not coming out in paperback 'til September. In which case, it can't be our book club selection 'cause $24.95 is a lot of money, right? (Or, rather ... $15 on amazon, it'd seem)

Anyhow ... Happy Father's Day! Hm, obviously this isn't my favorite holiday. What IS my favorite holiday, you ask? Do you like ANYTHING, Riese, or are you all rainshowers and spoiled pudding? Yes, I do like things, I am rainy pudding but I'm also sunshine and bunny rabbits. I like Tinkerbell, matzoh ball soup, presents, unicorns, the smell of rain, making out, the next joke, tweezers, wax museums, ipods, books and children in puffy coats. Also; always been a fan of Administrative Assistant's Day.

I don't mean to pull a Lozo and execute an entire post just to complain, but the topic of "holidays I don't like" offers a mine[field] of possibilities. You step inside it, and there's ten smiling children all saying "no" while shaking their heads "yes." There are nine pictures of children who enjoy the company of other children. In the tenth picture, a child is eating pudding underneath a giant red rain-hat and she's ready to go home. The tenth picture is me.

Sunday Top Ten: Hello Holiday. It's me, Tinkerbell. I'm Just Not That Into You.
*
10. Fourth of July

The hot outdoors. Sticky hands. The inevitable consumption of beer, subsequent desire to nap and/or feeling of belly bloated by froth & bubbles & popsicle. Grilling meat into humid air, the clank of cheering bottles, the anticipation of watermelon never matching the pleasure of the fruit itself. Lying in dry grass, near dirt. The assumption that we ought to love America so badly we explode of it. Sometimes I avoid this holiday altogether, and instead write crazy blog entries ...

... but this year, we're celebrating! 'Cause it's Caitlin's favorite holiday and Alex is "really serious" about it. I've actually had some really spectacular July 4ths in my life ... and this year, it'll be the most fun ever. Like independence, which was also fun for the [white male] Americans.

Best July 4th Ever: 2001 -- my diary says; "What's better than the world -- literally -- bursting into sky? Cliches are cliches for a reason." I met up w/Olive Garden friends and we snuck into a private party at a riverside apartment complex to watch the fireworks. I wasn't carded so we drank free beer, ate from big bags of candy and shared candy with children. It rained afterwards and we dashed through it like sparklers.

New Best Fourth of July Ever: 2008! Can't wait!

*
9. Lent

[fumiko shibata]

When I'm like, "I want to eat a cookie" or "I want to get sloshed," and you're like, "OMG, I gave that up 'cause of Jesus and Easter and bunnies," I'll be like, "That is lame, I hate you and your holiday, you're gay." Though I liked it when my friends would give up Nintendo, then we could play Pretend or House instead and I wouldn't be left out.

*
8. Yom Kippur

This is the day of atonement. Though fasting is a thrilling & self-destructive way to pass the day, it's this holiday's persistent habit of falling on my birthday that makes me dislike it. 'Cause I don't want to atone on my birthday, I want to celebrate, I want cake, I was told there'd be cake, you know?

Best Yom Kippur Ever - 1999: Alone at Sarah Lawrence with an unstable body & mind, I managed Yom Kippur. I went to four services that day at the temple synagogue, fasted, slept, sat in the library with books and pencils and then went back to temple. I broke fast alone, and slowly. I felt actually quite connected to my spirituality that day -- to something larger, and to everything wrong inside of me -- and I'd like to get back to that place some day. Where I could be like, "Are you there, G-d, it's me Marieeee?!?!"

Also, I've been known to enjoy a noodle koogle or two. Break-Fast is the best.

*
7. Malcom X's Birthday

I realized I'd been in Planet Harlem for way over a year when I went to 125th to get some coffee and found EVERY SINGLE STORE shuttered for five hours, just like LAST YEAR! -- even the corporate chains closed in "observance" of Malcom X's birthday. If Malcom X were still alive, he'd march right into CVS and get some Aveeno even if he had to get violent, I don't think this was his dream. So it's like a double penalty holiday. Personally, I like to celebrate birthdays of important political leaders by treating myself to a nice cold beverage at Starbucks, but that's just me, keep marching and yelling, wheee!

*
6. Thanksgiving

I don't like meat that's on the bone, let alone the whole honking animal sitting there looking at everyone. Either I eat a lot of potato products or there's not anything I want to eat and then I'm hungry. So as you can see it never ends well, look what happened to the American Indians, I rest my case.

Best Thanksgiving Ever: 1999 - So weird that the holidays of my semester at SLC are far more memorable & brighter than my other SLC days and also brighter than holidays celebrated in other years. We made dinner in Meg's NYU dorm with portobellos instead of turkey and we drank Pepsi One and I read The Iliad and Stephen Dunn and wrote. I transcribed "Essay on the Personal" into my journal next to a postcard of a purple & yellow watercolor painting.

2006 was a good one too, 'cause my brother came all the way from New Orleans with home-made macaroni and cheese as his carry-on.

*
5. Valentine's Day

[artist]

I think we should all buy each other presents every minute we want to, and sweet things for our lover's mouths. The problem with Valentine's Day is that everything is too crowded to make a reservation except way ahead of time, which means you'll need to have been in a relationship for at least a month, and who has that kind of time, you know? JK. It's just a lot of pressure on an arbitrary day of the year, I like things to mean exactly what they mean, no less or more. I feel gross about buying into the corporate hoo-ha. I do it anyway, but that's 'cause I've been brainwashed by The Man.

Best V-Day Ever: 1998 - Ryan pulled out all the stops. At boarding school, this was difficult, but he did, and he did and he did. The first Valentine's Day on which I had a Valentine, even if he was a homosexual.
*
4. Ash Wednesday
'Cause the first four ashed-up people I see make me really confused. On the fifth I say "A-ha!" but those first four were like : "whoa, where's the fire?"
*
3. St. Patrick's Day/Puerto Rican Day (TIE)

I don't like anything where streets are blocked from cars and opened to drunk lusty boys & parades, unless it's the Gay Pride Parade. Hey it's raining outside, someone's raining on my parade! Everybody loves a parade, except me. We used to go to a circus parade every year in Ann Arbor, there was always a big elephant and then little people running around the elephant cleaning up after it. I thought, I'd like to have little people like that, following me around with a bucket of water and a proactive protective spirit.

Best Puerto Rican Day Parade Day Ever: 2008! I saw Gypsy with my Mum and Alexandra and Caitlin while the parade raged on, then afterwards we dined at 44x10 at a table by the window. The atmosphere @44x10 is a lot like Cafeteria, so sometimes I mix up my memories from those places 'cause I've got a handful where I'm with Alex and Caitlin and Alex's hand is on my knee and I'm eating smashed potatoes and around us bright spritely servers with perfect gay hair weave between tables, their slim hips bopping in and out of eye level. The first time I ate there was w/Haviland for Kelli's birthday, and the costume of the day was "Tipping the Velvet," but I hadn't read it yet.

Best St. Patrick's Day Ever: Probs 2002. 'Cause I was with Chris at the fraternity, and I believed in jungle juice (that's what they called the red vat of alcohol and fruit we drank from, it was too dark to see the syphillis in the moonlight) and the pure, green holiday. I sat on the stairwell gossiping with two younger girls I'd befriended (other frat "girlfriends" -- we stuck together), one of whom would eventually be using my drivers license as her fake ID, and I told them all my ugly eager secrets as if they weren't ugly but glossy grasshopper gemstones. In the juice, the pineapples turned red, and then our mouths.

*
1. Father's DayLast year's Father's Day was one of the worst days of my life, but that was just a coincidence. I was gonna do this topic last year actually but then got distracted. I like that on father's day I can say things about fathers without anyone worrying I'm thinking/talking about my father on purpose and therefore must be whining again, or truly upset. I will buy myself a tie or a pie, or maybe tell a lie to the sky, or have a baby and name him "Guy." The thing about Father's Day ... and Valentine's Day ... is that they're basically created to make us spend money at Sears or get a Chili's gift card or something, and so if you can't celebrate it and that makes you upset, you're letting Sears and Chili's win.

I remember me and Lewis on the couch, watching television in our bathrobes while our friends ate creamy breakfast foods with their stalwart fathers. We weren't the only kids on our couches, I'm sure. I didn't know that then though. Now I do.

Also, 'cause my parents apparently enjoy conceiving nine months prior to unhappy holidays, Lewis's birthday often falls on Father's Day. Not this year! Lewis's birthday is tomorrow! What are you gonna get him? I haven't decided yet personally, but probs an orange or a squeaky dog toy.

That's one of the things I heart about NYC; on any given holiday, there's at least a bazillion other people not celebrating. In other towns if you're not doing Christmas or St.Patty's, you're well aware that everyone else is. Skipping Independence Day or sans Valentine? You're never alone in New York! And we're all far away from our families -- logistically, tangibly. Or not at all, for some people. la-di-da!

*
Just FYI, these are my favorite holidays (in random order):

10. Pride: good costumes, many gays, ppl feeling not alone and loathed in the world, lots of big gay parties.
9. Passover: Matzoh ball soup. Egg whites in saltwater. Honey Cake w/matzah meal. Macaroons. Passover Marshmallows. Atkins Diet.
8. Christmas: The spirit and everything. the ritual.
7. Columbus Day: ''cause that was always exactly when you needed a day off from school, not 'cause I like Columbus, obvs.
6. Halloween : I do not know who I am, but I know who I can wear.
5. Hannukah: Latkes, hot crackling oil, presents.
4. Take Your Daughter to Work Day: I love GapKids
3. Election Day!: Vote or DIE
2. Martin Luther King Day : liked going to the gym and singing "we shall overcome" with the whole school holding hands.
1. Rex Manning Day:
We mustn't dwell... no, not today.
We CAN'T.

Not on Rex Manning day!

Sunday Top Ten: Entries From a Smokin' Hot Pink Notebook

When I was a little girl in Dork Middle School, anybody who was anybody (which was almost everybody, 'cause there were only 16 girls in my graduating class) read Lurlene McDaniel novels ravenously -- stories which confirmed our suspicions that the world was a cruel, cruel place. Also, anybody who was anybody was allowed to go to the mall alone w/o parental supervision, except me, 'cause my mother was a fascist dictator who didn't want me to have fun or be happy. (JK Mom! Love you! Loved going to the mall with you too!) (Wouldn't it be fun if instead of Mother's Day being "Celebrate Mom" day, it was an April Fool's Day combo? The fam pools collective wisdom to play a big trick on Mom? Like in Home Alone, when Kevin sets booby traps for the thieves? Mom'll get up expecting breakfast in bed and then be like wtf are there micro-machines on the floor, um, hello blowtorch, KEVIN!") Anyhow. What was I talking? Oh yes. Literature.

Since leaving my Dork School peer group for greener pastures, I've not met another fan of McDaniel's cannon of Dying Children Lit -- until last weekend when I met my friend's sister who was also a big fan, which is AMAZING, and we bonded over it.

Also, I just started reading Rachel Shukert's Have You No Shame, in which the author's mother uncovers her daughter's collection of Holocaust Lit and replaces the books with Babysitters Club and Sweet Valley High, delaring that: "I'd rather have you shallow and sexually precocious than morbidly psychotic."

So I started thinking about all the morbidly psychotic books I read as a kid. I wasn't allowed to read Christopher Pike or R.L Stine like everyone else (see: mother's general desire for me to be ostracized from peers), but I feel like the shit I was allowed to read was probs way worse for my little baby mind than those authors' straightforward & blatant horror/violence.

Which brings us to an actual Sunday Top Ten. For the first time since um ... oh, I don't know.

---

SUNDAY TOP TEN: SEEMINGLY INNOCUOUS YOUNG ADULT BOOKS THAT PLEASED MY TWISTED LITTLE SOUL, AND WHY
or "Things that affected me more than going to the mall w/o a parent would've."

*

10. Cynthia Voigt's "Tillerman" Series: Homecoming, Dicey's Song, et al., also The Boxcar Children
Amped up my desire to be an orphan forced to live by my wits,
as well as my certainty that I'd be better off alone like the pop song "Better Off Alone,"
therefore increasing my implicitly unfair & ungrateful resentment towards my family for feeding, clothing and loving me,
inspiring me to write my own bad novels about runaways.

In Homecoming, 13-year old Dicey Tillerman and her three younger siblings experience the literal opposite of my life situation -- they're actually abandoned at the shopping mall by their mother, who subsequently lands herself in a psychiatric hospital. Meanwhile, I was being followed around the mall by my psychiatric mother (ten steps behind, providing both protection and distance), therefore preventing me from Having Adventures like Hunger, Misery, Orphanhood, Eccentric Aunts on Dilapidated Farms and Evil Catholics. Reading the plot summary of Homecoming, I realize it's possible I stole it for my epic novel Fly by Night, in which young pyromaniac Erin leaves her abusive home w/precocious brother Tommie, eventually meeting a guy named "Fly," who looks a lot like Jordan Catalano. 'Cause Erin can't stop burning things down & 'cause their number-one income source is carrying groceries to cars (in real life, I suspect this is not the growth sector Voigt's novels implied), they're forced into homelessness and then communal living with Fly and his super-fly buddies. There's a happy ending, I won't spoil it!

Also, how dykey does Dicey look on that book cover? Yow.

As I mentioned in the "Family Film Edition" of "What I Learned from the Teevee," I was a big fan of Orphan Lit and wanted to live in a Boxcar, eat hobo stew and scavenge for loaves of bread, etc. Unfortunately, I was never orphaned, though I enjoyed building forts and pretending to run away from home. Honestly, my coping mechanisms haven't really changed much since then.

---

9. The Face on the Milk Carton, by Caroline B. Cooney

Among other imaginary acts of heroism, I often hoped to find a classmate or friend on a milk carton and save the day, like in America's Most Wanted which I wasn't allowed to watch. Once a lax babysitter let us watch the show (she was fired, clearly) -- this guy killed his wife and hid her in an egg incubator behind his trailer, I still have nightmares about it. Also I believe this book fueled my fear of being kidnapped, and a ridiculous obsession with cults. Later, this became a TV movie staring the foxy Kellie Martin.

---

8. The Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess

I know what you're thinking -- "The Clockwork Orange" is not a young adult novel. This is true. Howevs, my father felt I was very mature, and 'cause he wanted me to become a great filmmaker like Stanley Kubrick, he made me read this book (we had a serious book-before-the-movie policy) when I was 13. Though most grown-up lit was off limits (e.g., Stephen King, other crap), I was permitted both this and Lolita. This is the essence of hippie intellectual spirit. I was like "Dad, what's 'the ol' in-out-in-out'"? Which was a very special moment for everyone and eliminated any perceived need for a "birds and the bees" convo.

---

7. Face at the Edge of the World, by Eve Bunting
Romanticisation of Suicide, Additional Reasons to Fuck it All

I'm not sure if this is the right book, 'cause I probs read more than my fair share of suicide-related narratives. But I think this is the one where the protagonist spends the whole book trying to figure out why his successful and talented BFF suddenly offed himself, eventually (SPOILER ALERT!) determining that perhaps he simply wanted to "quit while he was ahead." So basically all bets are off, re: offing oneself, not good news for me as I believe I was diagnosed with clinical chronic depression at the age of 5. Logistically, it would've been impossible to do myself in since I was so well supervised, especially at the mall.

---

6. Eating Disorder Lit, including:
Second Star to the Right, Stick Figure, and Little Girls in Pretty Boxes

As I've noted previously, I was the scrawniest little kid you ever did see. Howevs: my Mom was a nutritionist who helped people diet, I wanted desperately to gain weight, I was a first worldian adolescent in the 80's/90's surrounded by body image obsessed girls. Therefore, I was totally fascinated by everyone else's fascination with thigh girth. As a chronically pre-pubescent teen, I looked to literature to psych me into understanding wtf the deal was ... later, I employed this background when counseling the reedonkulous number of severely anorexic and/or bulimic friends I acquired over the years. I think it's 'cause subconsciously, ED'ed peeps are drawn to me, thinking "what is her secret of svelte-hood?" and then eventually they learn that I hate myself too, it's just more annoying coming from me, 'cause I'm not actually fat, just completely insane, and have read too many books about eating disorders (late-adds include Appetites, The Body Project and Wasted) and also; the media, etc. Calvin Klien fashion magazines hoo-ha. Kazaam.

---

Teacher: How would you describe Anne Frank?
Angela [distracted]: Lucky.
Teacher: "Anne Frank perished in a concentration camp. Anne Frank is a tragic figure. How could Anne Frank be lucky?"
[Jordan Catalano walks in, late]
Angela: "I don't know... Because she was trapped in an attic for three years with this guy she really liked?"
(My So-Called Life)

---

5. Judy Blume Novels

As I've mentioned 500 times, I'm essentially a human sponge, willing to take orders and absorb desire from whomever's speaking the loudest. Through Judy Blume, I verified that I was, indeed, justified to angst over my bust which wasn't increasing though I thought it must, it must, and that the best way to bond with other girls was via boy-related discussions. I've since learned otherwise, but I still love Judy. The girls in Blume novels are relentlessly catty and tell me srsly if you can't imagine this on the back of a porn DVD: "Rachel is Stephanie's best friend. Since second grade they've shared secrets, good and bad. So when Alison moves into the neighborhood, Stephanie hopes all three of them can be best friends since Stephanie really likes Alison. But it looks as if it's going to be a case of two's company and three's a crowd." Anyone? "In bed"? I know I was reading Lolita at 12, but c'mon now ...

---

4. The Quiet Room, by Lori Schiller and Amanda Bennet

I'm 99.9% sure schizophrenia is one disorder I defo don't have, but I seriously used to hear voices sometimes as a kid (probs it was G-d, before She lost faith in me altogether), and reading this book really freaked me out -- clearly I had enough neurosis w/o worrying that one day the voices would stop arguing with each other about my self-worth and instead command me to kill someone. Luckily they went away ... now the only voice I hear is Tegan in my iPod. Who's going on MONDAY!?! TO TEGAN & SARA?!!!

---

3. Entries From a Hot Pink Notebook, by Todd D. Brown
Felt I related to the protagonist's psyche deeply,
began early fascination with gay male culture,
subsequently realizing literally as I write this that perhaps I identified with the narrator's feelings of alienation and outsiderdom for other reasons,
e.g., personal gayness.

So, it featured my fave plot device, the gay reveal and subsequent gay crush gay reveal (y'know, the "OMG, my BFF I'm in love with is kissing ME BACK!" thing) and it's actually a really good book, though I realize the title suggests otherwise. Sometimes it hurts: the titles given to brill books. It's much easier to recommend a book called "The Sound and the Fury" than "Entries from a Hot Pink Notebook." I read this approximately around the same time I was writing in my own diary: "my greatest fear is that I'll turn out to be a lesbian. Yuck." Also, gay men were sorta "in" in the mid-nineties amongst liberals -- Rickie Vasquez, etc.

---

2. Lurlene McDaniel books

According to Lurlene McDaniel's website, "everyone loves a good cry," which's why McD's written 40+ books about "kids who face life-threatening illnesses, who sometimes do not survive." Sample titles include: She Died Too Young, Sixteen and Dying, Please Don't Let Him Die, The Girl Death Left Behind, Letting Go Of Lisa, When Happily Ever After Ends, Goodbye Doesn't Mean Forever, etc. The best was when two kids with different illnesses fell in love (e.g., cystic fibrosis + leukemia = true love) or when everyone would get into a car accident right before they were supposed to go to college on scholarship (w/bright futures, obvs) except for one girl who'd be left behind to angst. In a rare appearance by an African-American character, McD brought us Baby Alicia is Dying, in which a teenage girl grows attached to the HIV-positive black baby abandoned by her crack is whack mother, probs in Planet Harlem.

Basically, Lurlene McDaniel peddles the most demented books of all time, and I somehow ate them up. We all did. I imitated them, too, with similar plots in novels I wrote (for fun?). I guess we all felt strange and sad all the time for no reason, our little Dork School, filled with kids who suspected that, given the chance, public school would eat us alive and stuff us into lockers, and also: that perhaps we weren't fooling anyone (least of all ourselves) by avoiding the resolute knowledge that our problems weren't really problems, actually. We read the newspaper. We had politically aware parents. We didn't know jackshit, hadn't lived through anything worth crying over. Faces on Spilled Milk Cartons.

I coped w/my sense of alienation as a kid by reading, constantly, both intelligent books not mentioned here and the lame stuff I'm talking about here ... or by trying to be like everyone else as best I could though I felt hopelessly different. I'd been sad all the time for no reason as long as I can remember ... while driving w/my Mom from one place I was running from to another place, I mentioned wanting to get back to some childhood place where I'd been happy and she said I'd actually never been. "Intense," was her word. I guess I knew that already, I just wanted her to disagree, or blow it off. 'Cause I mean, seriously. I don't mention Elizabeth Wurtzel all the time for no reason, I'm legitimately afraid of her & her entitled torture, her ... whining.

I had an association and fascination with terrible & morbid circumstances and latched onto the littlest things to excuse my moodiness -- these books tapped into the part of me that wanted a reason for it. I wanted to be told, again and again, that tragedy waited around the corner. I'm certain there must've been wood nearby worth knocking on, if I'd known enough to do so. Clearly; I knew nothing.

*
"I know sad stories aren't for every reader, but it's the kind of story that most of my readers like from me. When I write "happy" books, many readers complain. So I focus on what I do best---stories that might bring a tear, but that focus on real life (where happily ever after rarely occurs). And while the books may not have "happy" endings, I try to give readers a satisfying ending---life is full of trouble and matters out of our control. How we deal with troubles determines our own character."
(Words of Wisdom from Lurlene McDaniel, clearly a Sick Puppy)

---

1. Sweet Valley High

I actually was prohibited from reading these books an account of their apparent vapidity, etc., But I finally sneaked one home, probs using crafty techniques learned from another YA novel. Just my luck: I got the book where Elizabeth gets kidnapped. Not good. This verified, to me, that my Mom was Right about these books being Bad; which's why Mothers have special powers that cannot be questioned. Like how the first time I drank alcohol, I threw up all night, which's exactly what she'd told me would happen. Actually, that still happens. Yet I continue drinking. Hm.

Howevs, I'd like to once again point out that nothing scary ever happened to me at the mall, except for this:

On that note of "things I did 'cause everyone else was doing it," if anyone's got a bridge in Brooklyn they'd like to sell me ...

The Year in Review: Swift-Footed Winged Mess

Firstly, I forgot to say that Mom and Lewis guilt-tripped me into breaking my important "2007: Year of No Movies" resolution. Yes, that's right, on Jesus's B-day, I was forced against my will to attend an afternoon show of Juno, Hipster Movie of the Year. Wizard, that ain't no etch a sketch, I'm down with the lingo, yeah, it was pretty cute & precious, a good flick to ease me back into the movie-going experience, and always good for family time as there's not a lot of intra-family communication during a film. Afterwards, I offered: "Anyone who believes in love now, raise your hand!" and Lew and my Mom both raised their hands, as did I. How about that? I'll watch anything with C.J Cregg in it, but also, speaking of cute ... Ellen Page: I'd like to lie down w/her in a field of brightly painted flowers and play with her hair, if she's got the time, whatevs. Michael Sera reminds me so much of my brother Lewis, thus I imagine Lewis's girlfriend looking like Juno McGuff, which's a nice mental image of my brother and his girlfriend, in lieu of any actual images provided by my brother. Speaking of girlfriends w/o photographs, let's get on to the Year in Review. [Oh! Also! If you're wondering what's on that CD you got w/your clothes ... check it out here]

... in April & May I was more alive than I've ever been before or since ... which is just to say that I had a lot of feelings. Every moment was rich and full: terrifying & beautiful, perfect & ugly, heartbreaking & heartbursting, devastating & hopeful, thunder perfect shameless strength & fear. We lived lifetimes in a day. My brain was called upon to perform daily & hourly emotional, logistical and intellectual leaps rapidly & unexpectedly and the crazy thing is that it actually did -- and coming down took months. I was and often still am a Post Traumatic Stressed Out Mess. [Also, April & May: a picnic compared to June.] It's been a long path towards my "recovery" and she, too, after a few false starts, is truly recovering now, and by doing so is making this particular story one that actually ends well, instead of one that ends with me damaged & reeling and her still manic-as-ever. I lost all my faith in everything at one point: and sometimes you have to lose everything in order to get it all back, but more grateful & humble this time around.

It's tough to figure out how to write about serious madness and mental illness respectfully but truthfully, and here. I'm scared of TMI and unfinished thoughts ... I dunno ... so ... I don't know how to write about this. I may've been better equipped to when I took a stab at it in August. I was still pissed and suffering in the aftermath, she was still mad, and I hadn't even acknowledged on my blog the wide-scale internet attack launched at the height of her madness that most readers witnessed (the elephant in the cyber-room) ... and I had to say something, and so I did, and now, I'm at peace with it. Number "One" on that Top Ten covers what we've determined was defo The Weirdest Day of My Life and kinda gives you an idea of what April and May was often like -- moreso than I can communicate now. 'Cause I'm not angry anymore.

*
"For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world;
but that the world through him might be saved."
(The Holy Bible. St. John: 3.)
*
"To err is human, to forgive divine."
(Alexander Pope, "An Essay on Criticism")
*

Because to be honest: what I've gained in the aftermath -- which I think (I'm not sure) are things I wouldn't have gained, or not quite in the manner that I did, had things w/Tara worked out better -- are beautiful things. It'd be rotten not to admit & recognise that many friendships and creative collaborations were enabled by my damaged aftermath and most of all, that my increased and loyal readership was enabled by my unavoidable vulnerability and the devotion I developed to this space because of/following that.

I've been blessed by so many heroes, and angels, since. This almost killed me, but it didn't.

"Between angels, on this earth/absurdly between angels, I/try to navigate
in the bluesy middle ground/of desire and withdrawal,/in the industrial air,
among the bittersweet/efforts of people to connect,/make sense, endure.
The angels out there,/what are they?"
(from "Between Angels," by Stephen Dunn)
*

It'll all be in the book. It takes chapters. There's no way I could do any of it justice here, but I'll try sorta, whatevs. Bla blablatypetypetypememememe.

**
There's this Dave Chapelle skit that was super popular, everyone quoted it all the time, the "It's Rick James, bitch!" skit? Remember that? This might seem like the most randomized association of all time, but there's a part in that skit where Rick James, following a story of him acting crazy, goes "Cocaine is a hell of a drug." I'd often think, in that same voice: "Bipolar is a hell of an illness."

April is the cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
-T.S. Eliot, "The Waste Land"

Anyhow, these months were like the mega-important transitional period of this blog. Number "5" on Live Through This holds the most important point.

April/May

4/22/2007

5/24/2007

WTF 2007 EVENT #4: Girlfriend begins her worst & most damaging manic episode ever, a.k.a. becomes TB.
WTF 2007 EVENT #5: While girlfriend is in hospital, my article gets killed.
WTF 2007 EVENT #6: While girlfriend is in hospital, the doctors do nothing productive.
WTF 2007 EVENT #7: "6" a few more times, and all of that. That happened.

The first weekend of April, my Mom visited -- totes charmed by Tara & Haviland and vice versa. We had dinner with Peter & Natalie. Tara took her out so I could finish my article. The next weekend, TB got arrested, a photographer from [redacted] magazine came. Then it was Easter, then ... and then. I published a Second OurChart post, about how I met Haviland. And so on.

So: holy shit, I totally funneled boatloads of energy into April and May posts ... hyperlinking, Tara's copyediting, needing somewhere to focus all this ridiculous energy ... each blog post was like a full scale project, like a mini-zine every week. Like, reading these, is just like ... surreal, and it makes me happy that I learned how to spell. Mostly I knew people were actually reading so I felt legit about putting more effort into it. This is where some of the stuff I like best is, like the Top 15 Clubs thing: Part One, Part Two.

There's a lot of first comments, like Razia, Crystal, Carly, LK, Caitlinmae, Brooklyn Boy and so many it makes my head explode to even begin to list them. This kinda got me a job: The Unpaid Internship You've Waited All Your Life For (later, we'd joke that I'd actually hired Carly for this unpaid internship -- she did apply) and prompted genius responses from everyone. Aw, the short-lived obvs segment Carousel of Progress Parts One and Two, my first run-down of my Automatic Skills. Yeah. Urm. A lot of over-compensating for things I couldn't say.

**

Great Moments in Commenting

I Heart HPSDiva The Most Award (@Top 10 Opposites Attract 4.03):

Haviland: "i have tried to comment about 14 times and the blog rejects my words. waah. obvs so happy for you two. let's go get on a big gay boat!"

Anonymous: "Haviland I am in love with you. I will track you down and find you."

Haviland: "oooh, really? This is exciting, can't wait to see how THAT unfolds!"

**

The Drunk Comment Award -- Before Semicolon, There Was This Brilliant Gem From Moonkiller ("seconde" is the new "ettempy"):

Moonkiller: "To start if this makes no sense it's cause i'm semi/VERY drunk. I love this entry I can relate to it an awful lot. It's fabulous if you will. Like I nearly alwys say U never fail to make me giggle and donnt half cheeeer me up. I thino tojnihght I might be the drunkenust I've ever been inmy hole lige ever. So sorry if I'v said anythinnng offenive lol. I wil most prbhely cokmmt angain in teh morning sorrecting mistakes in thikis scomment

ps. Taken me 4 ettempys to do the word veri."
**
Subtext Award: Presented Only to Myself as only I Know My Subtext
Nalia: "Tara is so stupendous/arresting looking, like and I hate to be intrusive, but what genetic mix has produced this?"
Riese: "Arresting indeed ... the literal irony here is INCREDIBLE."
**
The Lozo Award for Bold & Inappropriate Sexual Come-Ons: Presented Only to Lozo
Lozo's First Time: "i'm not sure who you are, and i'm not sure where exactly you linked to me, but i just wanted to say you really remind me of elliot from scrubs, so i'm going to fall in love with you in about 7 minutes."
Lozo's Second Time:"i just wanted to say that you are my new, what people would call, "blog crush." i think i've only had two ever. but i prefer to call it what it really is, a blog horniness-toward-a-girl-i-really-don't-know-who-may-or-may-not-be-a-lesbian-because-i-haven't-read-everything-yet-but-i've-seen-"L-Word"-a-lot-so-i'm-not-sure-but-i-totally-want-to-have-sex-with-her-anyway-because she-looks-like-elliot-from-scrubs.
i hope you appreciate all that hyphening."
**
Best Comment Posted in October, Six Months After the Post Went Up In April, (while I was reposting my whole blog after deleting it all):
Tara: "Um. I nearly spit out my coffee when I saw this. I forgot this was here. Sigh ... I'm such a weirdo. And, I just look frightening I think. Anyhow, good morning Autowin."
**
Best Response to Commenters Wanting to Call Her Out [for Repeating the Dead-Dog Story]
m: "My OTHER friend, unknowingly ate a bag of pop rocks while she was drinking a coke, and exploded. I swear."
**
Best Suggestion for Saying Goodbye to All That
merc: "Peace corps sounds fun? Like you'd have a lot to make jokes about in blog posts? It would totally, like. EXPAND YOUR WORLD. And um, have this wole new element to your writing? Like, DIMENSION or DEPTH or SHINE -- oh, sorry, I was thinking about hair."
**
The Earnest Award -- featuring excerpts from -
[stef's first time]: "totally no reason for writing this comment but whatever, i fucking love this blog. i originally wrote a long comment about how i found it and what i love about it and it was so cheesy and i am too new york cool for that, so let me just say i love this blog."
[stef's second time]: "ps, this blog is still awesome, but i live in brooklyn and it's illegal for me to be enthusiastic about anything. i am bound to a life of wearing sunglasses on the subway and sneering at tourists."
**
Putting Graduate School to Good Use Award
Ingrid: "Ri, From my reading today, I would guess that being an African woman forced to strip down naked for photographs to be published in 19th century Anthro-porno-gynecological medical books, books that would be perused (and probably jerked of to) by Picasso as source material for paintings that have come to symbolize modernity, would have been worse than software breakdowns. But this isn't meant to take away from your pain; it's all relative! Love you!"
**
I'd Like to Quote Awesomeness from the Intern-Applicant Thread ... but I already basically did that in this post about the comment awesomeness from the intern applicant thread (in the "teleportation" section), so, you know. On with it.
**

"If they say in the car that I am insane, I will take over the wheel." (Thomas McGuane, 92 in the Shade)
-My senior quote in my high school yearbook

For my 25th birthday, I wrote a parody of the Esquire "What I've Learned" feature -- one of my favorite magazine features, and when I was reading this month's Esquire, entirely devoted to "What I've Learned"s, I decided that this is how I'd write about April and May. This format assumes a certain authority: its subjects, e.g., Evil Kenivel, Tim Burton, Mia Farrow, Otis Redding, Muhammad Ali, Homer Simpson, Carrie Fisher, David Bowie, Mel Brooks, Yogi Berra, etc., generally have authority. I don't. I'm totally irrelevant and highly unwise. If you're not familiar with this format, you might think I'm a pretentious fuck. I assure you, it's a guise, I'm totally insecure, otherwise I wouldn't have to talk so much about myself or need all this attention.

-Tara described me as "sunshiney/bright" and herself as "moonshiney/dark" in her guest Sunday Top Ten. I'll take that.
-Zoho Writer crashes and the help-line is not helpful, they are outsourced and speak fuzz. Don't use it.
-Actually ... use Zoho Writer. Because that crash was serendipitious, proving even the most frustrating things happen for a reason: I asked silent readers to comment on their own electronic tragedies, and they did, and then I shared their stories, and then they kept talking, and that's everything.
-The mental health system in this country doesn't focus on "curing"/helping the mentally ill, but rather directly on ensuring the mentally ill won't become violent criminals. Sanity for sanity's sake? Ha! Every single employee of every NY psychiatric institution she checked into let us down. Nobody did a good job. Nobody did a mediocre job. Everyone did a notably terrible job. [I know: they're overworked & overburdened, tired, beaten by the system too] Instead they cared only if she'd possibly kill herself or others and once that liability seemed muted, they'd let her go. Everyone just held their breath til it wasn't their problem anymore, and thus it became mine. It turned out, not surprisingly, I wasn't qualified.
-The Auto-Win Equation of Coolness: x+2x=y (x=quality and rockstar factor of my actual life, y=quality and rockstar factor of autowin's life), unless my whole life is falling apart, in which case, x=y.
-"We're in love with our sadness sometimes" (Chris Pureka)
-Yeah, it's true, you're better off than the third world children who live in shacks. Do you feel better now? Urm, me neither.
-The psych ward is actually nothing like Girl, Interrupted. But they do have karaoke on Friday nights, there is yelling, and the nurses subscribe to the general philosophy that it's always easiest just to shoot 'er up with Ativan.
-It's really crazy how fast you can get used to really crazy shit.
-We had fun, too. Like, a lot of kick-ass fun.
-I think the world could do a better job of proving its lunatics wrong. Could've provided better material for me to argue against impending mass apocalyptic extinction and the human race's desperate unknowing need of redemption. Seriously: the snow in April, the Virginia Tech shooting (one of my favorite posts, I think), the Bush Administration, national disregard of moral responsibility in favor of celebrity, mirror, artifice, false idol worship and consumerism. You know, your average, run-of-the-mill firstworldian douchebaggery. (Auto-Lexicon)
-There comes a point when you've gotta cut your losses -- usually it's the sixth or seventh time you've thought to yourself "I oughta cut my losses."
-Miss Girl Nation, Haviland, is pretty much the hottest thing ever. Howevs, Miss Hot n' Fit turned out to be like amateur night at Deja Vu but with more expensive drinks.
-In high school, I watched a lot of "Slacker" films. These movies, best watched when it all seems so far away, characterised the unemployed/underachieving twentysomething as a beer-guzzling, television-watching, psychic-hotline-calling, mall-crawling, pot-smoking, shampoo-foregoing, ironic-vintage-t-shirt-wearing quasi-hipster who spends 95% of their time tucking their hair behind their ears and pontificating. But I'd never been so busy as I was whilst 100% unemployed: reading like crazy, playing Sancho to crazy adventures, looking for employment, writing, trying to figure out how to save someone when I still thought people were things you could always save without killing yourself, or leaving.
-I'm not entirely convinced that a liberal arts education prepares its graduates for anything aside from a career as a liberal arts educator.
-I love Rosie O'Donnell because she's moved so much by national/global problems that it affects her, deeply, and makes her depressed. We should all feel that way but if we did, we'd all fall to pieces. She does what I hope to do: create a relationship w/the mainstream through non-controversial entertainment to eventually earn the "power" to speak out and be listened to by people on all sides.
-I'm still an advocate of "running away" as a top ten coping mechanism, but I'm glad that I didn't.
-There's a book out there to validate everyone, whether it be The Bible or Kathy Acker, Elizabeth Wurtzel or the Marquis de Sade, or my old friend Matty's choice "The DaVinci Code," there's a book for you. Reading a lot of books about crazy people can make you a little crazy. Look what happened to Don Quijote. Don't even get me started on the internet and what that's done for maniacs all over the world.
-There's a fascinating cultural history related to madness. It's enough to distract you from its logical application to your actual life for a long time.
-Scattergories is the best game ever and fun for people of all ages.
-I deleted my MySpace because it made me feel safer -- one less public & vulnerable space, also cutting off my friends' ability to keep close tabs -- that day was, we agree, one of the worst, TB-wise. I was drunk when I wrote that post, because I was fully resorting to such things, anything for oblivion. Officially surrendering control of the situation. I was sad to lose all my friends' comments, but I think it's good, sometimes, to delete all of something. I still find the click-to-impact ratio stunning.
-Cream: the color. My blog became much better the day I switched from black to cream.
-Poland Spring Water Bottles Will Explode in your bag every time. Unlike people, they will never change. They will not stop exploding.
-If you are sad, try highlights and a manicure.
-It is impossible to argue with someone who is totally both wrong and 100% convinced of their own absolute rightness. I mean; where do you begin?
-She'd ask "What do you need, autowin? Are you okay?" but by that point, I was done accepting her offers cause I knew they'd be used against me later. My answer, which she affirmed proudly, was always: "I don't need anything." It was untrue, unfair, and I've always believed strongly in the validity of relative needs/wants, but for me to lose, temporarily, the privilege of my small tears, the forum to freak out over nothing, the ability to even buy stupid things for myself w/o inciting a fight ... it was very humbling. It wasn't the healthiest way to earn humility, but nevertheless, I did.
-Really, you save yourself by checking in -- therapy, emailing Haviland, ichatting w/Lainy and Chase, phone convos w/Natalie. That's how I maintained perspective, and was able to participate, strategise, without losing my mind myself ... errr ... mostly.
-When you've been on the Metro North with a woman yelling at the entire train about messages from her father in heaven and their first world Angelina Jolie-worshiping-problems, you develop an extremely high tolerance for being embarrassed in public. Seriously, just try to embarrass me in public, I dare ya. Impossible. Also I'm not ticklish.
-I am a decent writer. I'd never taken myself seriously enough to even proofread before, and hiding behind sloppy syntax was part of my subconscious announcement to the world that I didn't think I was good enough for it to matter. But yeah, I believe in myself now, holla.
-I now know: that [TB] wasn't her [Tara].
-The difference between crazy people that run corporations and have huge record deals and crazy people on the street yelling at strangers is money.
-One of the most fascinating aspect of mania is how it challenges commonly accepted limits of the human body. Maybe R-Kelly really could fly, you know, 'cause he believed? It's incredible what some bodies can tolerate, it is amazing how much the mind's conception of its own capabilities translates into what is commonly conceived as hyper-human power. Consequently, being able to break barriers we all could break if we desired to (but why? why would we want to walk barefoot on glass? get mugged and walk 105 blocks?) proves, to the manic mind, superpowers.
-The Book of Revelation is a manic's wet dream. It has become, over time, fodder for thousands of manic-bipolar-schizo episodes the world over. It validates the following: hearing voices, delusions of grandeur, the validity of yelling at people as a way to change things ...
-Also; Revelation probably was a manic's wet dream, like that literally might be what it is. There's a lot of theories. I know all of them. Also, it's beautifully written, stunning, a fantastic grand story. It's kinda awesome, as long as you don't think it's actually true.
-Being forced to accept the possibility of certain circumstances -- a solider, resolutely alive but always prepared for the fatal shot -- and the lasting impact of paying heightened attention to the immediate possibility of highly unpleasant circumstances -- can change the way you think a whole lot, can make you care a lot less about things you used to care about.
-It is possible to survive on Ramen noodles, eggs, peanut butter crackers, vodka and coffee.
-Madness is highly contagious.
-Taking too many amphetamines is a lot like madness.
-From an article about the double suicide of Jeremy Duncan and Theresa Blake: "You could, in a sense, rationalize their occasional erratic behavior. They were artists, after all, and artists are allowed a degree of lunacy." (The article's title: "Conspiracy of Two: A Chronicle of Their Descent Into Madness.")
-If you give money to every homeless person you pass, you can go broke in approximately two blocks. Also, as the only one doing so, many will ask for more. Another five, cigarettes, baby formula (seriously), another ten. A sandwich. Crack. JK about the crack. Crack is expensive, probs, otherwise there wouldn't be crack whores.
-You should probs still give money to homeless people, sometimes. Or food. Whatevs. I understand why you would or wouldn't, and why I do or don't.
-People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones, but if you're totally chilling naked in your glass house like, what's up, here I am in my glass house, and someone starts throwing stones at you, you should probs reconsider your battle plan.
-[From the Club Blog, Part Two]: "No one ever guessed anything about me just from looking: no one'd guess that I'm queer, or a writer or a or even smart. "I would never guess that _______" I can be anybody, I can be anything, tell me what to do, you say jump I say I'm already jumping, look-- For every apparent revelation: a million secrets, stories denied and squelched by each reincarnation. A love/hate relationship with everything I've stood behind. Gay/straight, Jewish/Quaker, Genius/Airhead, Sane/Insane, Artist/Robot, Social/Recluse ... It's like I've been everything and it's opposite, and've gathered enough narratives to hold my own amongst any of them, now. Though I refrain from anything of import following "I am." Maybe here's a place where I can be all of those things at once and be validated instantly simply by the very fact that I'm writing it and I have a sitemeter. In fact, this particular truth feels indulgent, why should anyone care, that even acting as though I think you should care is breaking into another character, which's the only one I've yet to actually play: confidence."
-"You have to laugh at yourself, because you'd cry your eyes out if you didn't." (Emily Saliers) That's what I did more often than not, was try to turn it into a joke. I mean, it was really fucking funny sometimes. We laughed a lot. You take what you can get, you know? You wait for the next joke.
-Madness + Genius = Toxic
-Anything that can be said in three syllables can be said better in one syllable.
-There Were Good Times. More Good than Bad, srsly.

Auto-Lexicon:
Like Emily Dickinson: Seriously, I've really never read any of her stuff, I just think it's awesome that she spent so much time in her attic.

-I do not regret visiting every day, or trying to understand/rationalise or sticking it out. I wanted her back, I needed Tara back, she needed me there. There were moments when she'd return, and those kept me going through the truly gruesome terrible things. The ups and downs in one day -- mind-boggling.
-I don't regret losing what I lost, because I eventually got it back and then some.
-I only regret ... no. Nothing.
**
I weathered the accusations: masochist, depressive. Trying to distract myself from my own problems. Enjoying the drama. Voyeuristic satisfaction. Doing it all for the good writing material. I guess if I'd felt like any of those accusations were remotely true, I would've been more self conscious about my choices, but they weren't -- and I know this because before Tara/TB, I'd made a lot of choices for those reasons, those up there, and I know what that had felt like. I was bored and tired of all that. But no ... I went into the relationship seeking stability. I didn't want or expect what I got. And I wasn't going to turn my back on someone I loved because they were sick, I just couldn't -- I've compared this inability to the basic web template you can't change, no matter how much HTML you learn. That seemed awfully selfish to me? Eventually, I had to lose everything in order to walk away -- eventually, she had to lose everything¹ in order to choose, willingly, medicated health "forevs and evs" over the endless highs of provided by oh-so-seductive immortal mania. I tried to make the best of it -- "I never would've read The Book of John, it's a good thing to read!" -- which really isn't the same thing as being manipulated into believing it's okay. Trust me. I knew. Things.were.not.okay.
**
Why'd I stick it out? Because of love, obvs. Because she would have done it for me. Beneath this white-on-black retina-burning agoraphobic cynical depressive emo exterior is a heart made of cream and purple, fo'serious.
**

¹ TB's Sunday Top Ten: "And meanwhile, back @ Marie's shower, she's blasting showtunes. I'm cringing. Cause music is nearly everything to me. Therefore, Marie and I agree to disagree, re: tastes, and that's cool. Cause now she's nearly everything."^2
2Speaking of music, I like these: "A Better Son/Daughter" (Rilo Kiley) ["And sometimes when you're on, you're really fucking on, and your friends they sing along and they love you, but the lows are so extreme that the good seems fucking cheap and it teases you for weeks in its absence, but you'll fight and you'll make it through, you'll fake it if you have to."], "Manic Depression" (Jimi Hendrix) ["Music sweet music, wish I could caress caress caress"],"This is Everything" (Tegan & Sara).

When You Get So Into your VLOG

I am 95% sure that today is my Mom's birthday. It is, right? Mom? Actually, 'cause you have dialup, by the time your computer finishes loading this page it might not be your birthday anymore. Anyhoo, watching this vlog might make you question your success as a parent -- I've been editing clips of myself for the last hour and I've subsequently discovered that I'm really irritating. Also: I say "you guys" and "like" way too often, the lighting in the Halloween blog was the most flattering for both of us, rock bottom is super-fly, gold pants save the day every time, and I nearly have a full body seizure every time I laugh. Also, I obvs need to lay off the smack, because crack is whack.

Looking back on my life so far I'd like to say that my mother has always been there. From day one, she's been around or relatively available via telephone. For that reason and many others, including love, warmth and caring, I'd like to say, Shalom! That means "hello," "peace," and "goodbye" in Hebrew, which is way more than any one English word means, which is why the Jews are the chosen people. My Mom is Jewish, coincidentally. If you're not Jewish, that's cool, we can still be friends, even more than friends if you're cute and I love you. That's not related to my Mom, this is a tangent now.

You guys, I love editing Vlogs. It's like, a bad habit. Almost like a drug, except I don't have to find a dealer that'll deliver to West Harlem, like I do when I want a pizza or a pretty girl or a bottle of Hypnotiq.

I wrote deep things the other day, now I am a monkey with feta cheese for brains. I wanted to clear out my hard drive from all the un-used random footage that's accumulated from unfulfilled "to be continued ..."s, so, this VLOG has got clips running the gamut from A to Z and beyond, all NEVER BEFORE SEEN ON TEEVEE OR THE WEB. We reference a lot of stuff from other Vlogs so you should probs watch them all again, just to be sure you're up on it. I find that re-watching my Vlogs is very soothing, like warm milk or a similarly temperated bath on a summer's day, in the poppies.

Sunday Top Ten: Twenty Six Years of Auto-Mechanics/Living

"Do you actually want to do nothing for your birthday, or do you just think that's clever?"
-Carly, re: my birthday wishes

Apparently, I turn 26 today. Perhaps Facebook, MySpace or Haviland told you about this. I'm being a weirdo about it this year; it's highly uncharacteristic. I mean, I write a blog, so clearly I enjoy heaps of unjustified attention lavished upon me at all times, and consequently I've always enjoyed birthday parties — though, falling as they do in mid-September [prime-time for "life-changing events" such as starting new schools, living situations, jobs, various phases of self-destructive behavior], my birthday celebrations often attract a haphazard assortment of celebrants AND I'm often blessed by having my birthday coincide with Yom Kippur. In the past, when I was a better Jew, this meant I spent the day in temple starving and atoning for my sins when I should've been eating ice cream cake.

I've always been that girl who writes her birthday in your planner in marker with circles and stars. But this year ... it just seems kinda overwhelming — I mean, it's awesome for people to call me and mail/send me things, OBVS . But the idea of having some sort of live in-person celebration is too much for me to handle ... feels inappropriate, feels like a lie ...

I've become a hermit, or the Bell Jar. Maybe it's just a phase. My therapist has suggested that I'm becoming agoraphobic like Emily Dickinson, my hero. I just wanna be alone. Like, maybe go somewhere and write my book or something.

See the thing is I'm supposed to be writing this book. And I've sort of let it fall to the wayside because it became a relatively significant aspect of my relationship and I needed to step back from it right afterwards, and now "right afterwards" is over, and I still haven't opened a single doc in the "Some of my Parts" folder (h/t Jenny Schecter) since June. And my agent is going to slaughter me with a machete.

So, are you ready for my thesis statement? Yeah you are! "This post attempts to do two things; one, reignite the author's interest in her own boring life and consequently fuel the fire of her "book," two, explore the 26 birthdays before this birthday in an effort to understand how we got here. Three, provide an easy reference point/timeline for readers to understand the ridiculous tangents that the author tends to go off on, often."

That's a trick thesis statement, because just "exploring" something doesn't count as an actual thesis. I need a point and then I need to prove it.

But luckily this is my blog so I can do whatever I want. Even rehash my entire life via birthday celebrations, much to your total amusement I'm sure. I actually have my entire life journaled, which is useful for the book. But I can't find all the journals right now and I think some of them are still in Michigan. So I'm working with limited tools here.

*

Birth: 1981. Fetus, Illinois- I think I spent the day crying, probs. Good start.

One: Baybay, Illinois- Again, no memory of this. Probs: cried, ate something pureed like smashed up apricots or applesauce, was likely dressed up in a wig and/or ridiculous party hat by my father and then subjected to multiple photographs.

Two: Baybay, Michigan-I'd imagine somewhat similar to "one," but perhaps by then we had acquired Wig #2, The Blonde Wig, to compliment Wig #1, the black-curly-haired wig, offering additional sources of baby dress-up amusement.

Three: Baby, Michigan- By this point, I was eating solid foods, right? I don't even know what three-year-olds look like. I hope when I have my own kids, they can give me a heads-up about these things so I don't have to look it up myself. "Mom, I'm ready for solid food now!"

Four: Toddler, Michigan- Definitely eating solid foods and reading. My brother would've been alive by this point, keeping the smushed-up foods economy thriving in our home.

Five: Eberwhite School, Michigan- I turned five in kindergarten 'cause I started kindergarten when I was four. So I could read pretty much anything. That's all I got. Perhaps I received some books. To read.

Six: Eberwhite School, Michigan

I GOT THIS ONE. I had a party, wore a cute Margot Tennenbaum dress I'd definitely wear right now if I still owned it, had a similar haircut to my present haircut, and participated in activities including bobbing for apples, making Mr. Potato Heads, and pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey. At some point I acquired a necklace made out of organic Froot Loops. Looks like a hot party, honestly. Now that I know my Mom was stoned for most of my childhood, I can see these memories in an even brighter and more beautiful light, like she was probs like "Oh man ... lets have the kids BOB for APPLES!" and my Dad was like "DUDEEEE."

Seven: Eberwhite School, Michigan-Urm. I think this may've been when I got the Bangles cassette, 'Walk like an Egyptian'? Went to Bill Knapps maybe?

Eight: Emerson School, Michigan- THIS IS THE YEAR I GOT THE SAMANTHA DOLL!!!!!

Nine: Thoreau School, Concord, Massachusetts- Probs went to Walden Pond or something. I got Paula Abdul's "Shut Up and Dance" cassette, that was exciting. I didn't have very many friends yet.

Ten: Emerson School, Michigan- We went to Flint for the weekend... like, Roger & Me Flint. My three best friends and I. We stayed in a hotel and went to a restaurant with a big buffet, because I fucking LOVE BUFFETS, and then we went to museums the next day because I LOVE MUSEUMS and we got astronaut ice cream. It melted in our mouths.

Eleven: Emerson School, Michigan

Activities cited in my diary as occurring for birthday-related festivities include: Champion House ("It's a Japanese steakhouse, they cook the food right in front of you. I got shrimp."), a scavenger hunt, a round or two of Tabloid Teasers, and pizza. Gifts received include "letter-writing stuff" and trolls.

Twelve: Emerson School, Michigan

My Dad had just moved out, so we were doing that thing where we pretend like things are still normal. I remember a sleepover, and that we cried all night; my friends and I. That was the beginning of our sick habit — other girls were cutting or drinking, we were crying. It was a relief, I guess. It was something. You know. Kurt Cobain, etc.

Thirteen: Emerson School, Michigan

I'd just had my Bat Mitzvah so the b-day party itself was low-key since there was so much put into my Bat Mitzvah. In the photos I'm wearing overalls from The Gap, we're eating chocolate cake with our hands and there's green frosting. I feel like we went to Major Magics. God, I fucking LOVED THOSE OVERALLS.

Fourteen: Pioneer High School, MI- I was so sad this year, I hated my new school and my face and body and didn't have any friends. I invited five friends from middle school for a party my Dad was organizing but he wouldn't tell me what it was going to entail. I couldn't guess and it was driving me crazy. He knew I was sad at my new school and was trying really hard to help me be happy.

Before the advent of competition-style product tie-in reality television programs, it was still possible for someone to totally rock your socks simply by having a limousine parked outside your house on your birthday. Now we know that scene ("Oh my God! A PRIUS!"), but then it was perfect, and lovely. I was 14. He'd arranged an extravagant scavenger hunt and printed out instructions for us. We felt like little tiny queens.

My diary: "Daddy gave me the best birthday party ever. He rented a limousine and me and my friends rode around for a while and went on a scavenger hunt. Everyone wanted to get in."

He took photos. But when he died about seven weeks later they hadn't been developed yet, and we never figured out what happened to that film, like so many things we never found after that.

Fifteen: Community High School, MI

We went to Cedar Point, ROLLER COASTER CAPITAL of the Midwest. This was the age where having a party wasn't cool anymore if there were no drugs or liquor at it, so if your parents didn't allow that, you'd have a small thing like this thing.

*

Sixteen: Interlochen/boarding school- Diary, 9/23/97:

"Today was my b-day. At first it was kinda sad, but things picked up. Ryan switched into 8th hour, which rocks. Then, when I got back to my dorm, I had all these packages, including one from Magali and Becky. I got so much FOOD yum! Then me and this girl Carly went and filmed stuff, that was kewl. She just got a new camera. Then I got to talk to my friends on the phone. Ryan is having an emotional crisis."

*

Seventeen: Interlochen/boarding school- Ryan was my gay best friend — my "soulmate" — my everything. He'd just started college, I was starting my senior year at Interlochen. On the 22nd, I told Ryan about John and then Ryan yelled at me. I cried. He said scathing fatal things to me, stuff I never expected, but I guess I didn't really understand, yet, what he was going through.

The next day — my birthday — I couldn't make it out of bed or to class and my friends took turns visiting me on their off-hours. "There's no way Ryan can live without you," Krista assured me. No one believed that Ryan was honestly going to cut me out, but he did, for six weeks. It was like having my heart removed.

My friends dragged me to the cafeteria that night — the tables were covered in construction paper, a gigantic birthday card for me, and they blared Puff Daddy on Sheetal's boom box and sang to me until the boob box was confiscated. Everyone was so sweet and so patient. The next day John asked me to be his girlfriend. I had to say yes — I'd just lost Ryan over him, after all — and I did. We were together all year.


*

Eighteen: Sarah Lawrence & NYC/living in Bronxville a house-dorm-thing, they're hippies, whatever

Everyone gave me cookies and cakes. Girls I'd just met made me sweet cards.

I wrote in my diary: "I can't believe they love me so much. Why?"

Ryan showered me with gifts, as was his way, including the stuffed dog named after him that I still sleep with, and he took me to Chez Es Saada in the East Village; it's underground, the descending stairwell's littered with rose petals, like a movie about a dangerous man and a sweet birthday. Afterwards, we met up with Meg at Madame X for drinks, and got served.

Then that weekend I hosted an 18th Birthday Cocktail Party. I needed all my high school friends in the same room. We missed each other so much and none of us liked college as much as we missed each other. We mailed invitations -- remember that? When you actually had to MAIL invitations? Formal dress required. Since all of us, including our bartender, were underage and living in dorms, I got a hotel suite on the Upper West for the night using my savings from working at GapKids that summer. Everyone came. It was perfect, except for when we went to McDonalds for McFlurries at 1am and they'd already turned off the machine, like nobody cared it was my 18th birthday!

Nineteen: U of Michigan/living in the dorms

I had a group dinner at Seva — vegetarian place — my typical mishmash assortment of residential college kids, future sorority girls, and hall-mates. September birthdays are a good test at a new school of who's interested in your life, as in; being a part of it. And later: how lucky that Becky, who I barely knew then but ended up becoming my best friend, had come along that night. Samara got me a Super-Soaker 3000. Later, in the dorms, Jessie and I tried to open a cheap bottle of red wine without a corkscrew and it exploded everywhere, crazy big eruption like champagne; Chianti all over her fresh white walls, like someone'd been killed and it'd been violent. She didn't wash it off for weeks.

*

Twenty: U of Michigan/living with friends — Fancy-pants brunch with my Mom and brother, Colliders [frozen yogurt & candy smash up delight] w/my boys. Mejiers [it's like Wal Mart] with Natalie: we stole handfuls of bulk candy and I listened to voice mails and waited for this boy to call. Eventually, he did, and we went out. I can't tell you what we did, it's too embarrassing.

Diary, 9.24.01:
a) My life is fun and games.
b) My life is in shambles.
Reading tonight, gym tonight, birthday, homework, sex blah blah blah. Meanwhile, America is declaring war and people are buried in rubble in New York. Fuckin' A. I do no work. I sicken myself.

*

Twenty-One: U of Michigan/living with boyfriend off-campus- I'll tell you how it ended; dark blue-ish light, Chris and I's bedroom. Screaming, crying. I told him, "I'm leaving!" I wasn't nearly drunk enough for my 21st, but my mind was everywhere and therefore crazy — it was with Another Boy I'd Just Met, it was with my friends who loved me, it was with my mother, it was with myself, and I'd lost myself by this point, so that was a really far-away place for my mind to be.

My Mom wanted to buy me my first drink [ha!], so I met her at The Earle. In the dark reddish light, she told me more about her divorce than I'd ever been privy to before ... how there comes a time ... and Chris, as if on cue, called cranky for directions to the restaurant we were meeting up w/my friends at.

I gave him just-barely-incorrect directions to Champion House; he used this as an excuse to show up in a rotten mood, pout all through dinner and refuse to speak to my friends: Natalie, Becky, Jessie, Bobby, Lauren. Also he'd done bad on a test or something, I don't remember. He clearly wasn't good at sucking it up.

We tried to let conversation fly around him. He responded to my friends' inquires about his state of being with "I've been better." His justification, later, for sulking through my entire birthday dinner: "You know not getting directions right is my pet peeve." Which isn't even the correct usage of "pet peeve" and literally I was one block off, he coulda seen the place from where I'd accidentally led him. It's not like, the Labyrinth. It's Ann Arbor. I was a quick phone call away, and I answered.

On our way to the car after dinner, he started in bitching about how he couldn't talk to my friends because they went to Michigan and he went to Eastern, he was poor and they were rich. I didn't understand this claim in all its complexities at the time. I did know that if he'd talked to my friends instead of ignoring them, he would've found out that not all of them were rich at all, and that even the ones better off than him had been through shit he could relate to. I wondered how he could know anything about them when he never listened to me talk, and, after nearly a year of us dating, still hadn't read a single piece of my writing.

We went to his frat house and once we got there, I ditched him to hang out with boys who were nice to me, and the Other Boy, who read poetry and wanted to be an actor. Then we got home and yelled at each other and I told him I would leave him. I told him I couldn't keep living with someone who expected me to cook him dinner every night and yelled at me for every misstep and, you know, like I said, hadn't read a single word I'd ever written. He said I was too drunk to drive.

He said we're so different, my friends and him.

I said, How's this for different? Let's sleep in different beds. Live in different apartments. Let me leave. Let me leave you. But he wouldn't let me leave. And we went on. I wanted to love him, was used to him — was dying, was dead. Four months later, I ran after my life.

*

Twenty-Two: U of Michigan/living with friends including Natalie

The night before, S begged to see me though I'd refused: "I don't want you to ruin my birthday."

He promised he wouldn't ruin my birthday, he just needed to deliver a letter. He asked me to meet him in the Law Quad. He gave me the letter. It was incredible, honestly, the letter. It was everything I'd ever wanted him to say to me.

But I confused him sharing his feelings with him sharing feelings he actually wanted to do something about. I was hopeful.

The next morning, I wrote in my diary: "There's this dream I keep having about SD where he comes to me and tells me everything -- how much he loves me, how much I mean to him, that he knows that he did an undefendable thing and that he's sorry and he knows he doesn't deserve my apology." [NAME THAT TELEVISION SHOW REFERENCE!!]

My Mom came over in the afternoon with presents, told me, about SD, "Marie, sometimes you've gotta just know when to cut your losses." I had dinner @ The Macaroni Grill (my place of employment) with my friends. They'd ripped out the USA Today Crossword puzzle and put it on my chair, and we all got drunk and ate heaping plates of gooey pasta. I felt very blessed to have all these wonderful people in my life when I felt I'd neglected them so recently to chase this true mean love.

Speakerboxx / The Love Below came out that day too, I remember that.

*

Twenty-Three: New York City/living with Krista in Sparlem- JH told me he was Really Good at Birthdays. I obvs did not believe him, but he was right. He took me, Krista and Ingrid to dinner at Atlantic Grill, got me a Tiffany's bracelet 'cause I'd joked to him that a Tiffany's bracelet is "Every Jewish girl's dream." "Rent" tickets, books — dreamboat. Obvs on his birthday I had to do even better: a weekend in D.C., tickets to see Steve Nash play there, a hotel. That weekend was almost foiled when they refused to rent me a car because of my "moving violations" and him "not having a drivers license" but then we found a FLIGHT that was super-cheap and fast, and that's when JH said one of my most favorite things he ever said:

I'd dropped a "fuck" in my language and he goes: "Marie, do not use foul language in the Reagan International Airport." Like how some people would shush you in church? Because Reagan was his favorite president!! Can you believe it?

*

Twenty-Four: New York City/living with Krista in Sparlem- The end of the summer of my sweet romance with drugs and general trashwhoriness. Everything felt unstable then, everything, except the brief momentary but overwhelming sensation of that particular inhalation, that particular hand darting into the darkness and underneath. Of girls, and what I took to handle that. Ryan emailed me that day after months of non-communication. I worked; I believe there was a cake and some ceremony of sorts at the lit agency. Krista and I went to Cafe Mozart and shared everything, ate sweet food and talked about Who I Was Before Ryan, and who I Was With Ryan — how crazy it is, how far we'd come since then, how long since I last saw him. For a moment the room was blurry as I almost cried, stabbed my salad. How far we'd come since then?

*

Twenty-Five: New York City/living on 106th

To: All my friends
From: Haviland Stillwell

Subject: And at the end of the day she'll be another day older ....

And that hot barely-there shirt on her back won't be keepin' out the HEAT...(10 points to whoever gets that reference)

SATURDAY IS THE 25TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE BIRTH OF MARIE (AKA RIESE) LYN BERNARD!!!

which means.....

we are going to a girl on girl establishment and riese has one task and one task only!! --

******TO KISS 25 GIRLS ON HER 25TH BDAY BEFORE THE NIGHT IS OVER******

Of course, I'll be piggy backing off of the cause, when I feel it's warranted...

If you are available and up to having mind blowing amounts of ass-kicking fun, email me back and i'll coordinate the details.

I won't subject you to another recap. But if you so desire, I obvs blogged about it.

*

So — the theme of this — no matter who I am or where I am or what's going on or how I feel I've failed or exceeded expectations, I've been consistently blessed with generous and kind friends who always rally together to celebrate that somehow I've managed to defy death for one additional year.

I can tell you about the birthday parties of all my friends from those missing years but not my own. Because I suppose it was theirs I really anticipated, because it was a chance to direct my focus onto someone other than myself, because "myself" didn't seem to be a very productive place to focus.

One day, I will grow old. Until then, there are stars to ride, invitations to consider. Today, I guess, I'm 26. That's how old my Mom was at my 2nd birthday. Crazy, right? Crazy.

Tomorrow I'm going to go for some long strategic walks. I have a lot of thinking to do.

Peace.

When I feel like this/When I get so into myself
And lose track of where I'm going
and then lose track of how to get going again
feel myself slowing down/feel myself turning round
is this taken/when I feel like this
I get so sick/Tell myself, where are you going now
-Tegan and Sara

On the topic of having short hair that I play with all the time now--

Carly: You're like, worse than me.
Me: Hey what if I did like, 26 hairstyles for my 26th birthday? For my blog?
Carly: That would be AMAZING.

Right now I'm eating Chocolate Covered bananas from an Edible Creations Bouquet -o- Birthday Magic, so I can't really complain.