Archive for the 'Great moments in narcissism' Category

Sporadic verbosity

December 17, 2007 | Filed under: "Oh night divine", Great moments in narcissism, Planes trains and automobiles

“In everyone’s life, at some time, our inner fire goes out.  It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being.  We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit.”  ~Albert Schweitzer

I hate to be a downer but every time someone asks me how I am or how things are going I shrug my shoulders, sigh heavily, and say “It’s OK”. I sound like Eeyore and anyone who crosses my path half expects my tail to fall off or for me to keel over due to an extreme bout of ennui. I can’t even get into the spirit of the season without it all feeling extremely forced and obvious. I’ve baked cookies while listening to Ella Fitzgerald with a fire crackling in the background and yet I would look outside at the snow, the thing that signifies the loveliness that should come this time of year, and the only thing I wanted to do was beat myself in the head with a crowbar. Nothing says “Joy” like blunt force trauma.

I’ve actually kept most everything to myself – especially as of late - because I don’t want to be a bother and I’m boring and most people find whining to be abhorrent. So I stay silent. In general though I tend to be shy and quiet. Some call it aloof but I like to refer to it as observing my surroundings intently so that later I can write about all the drunk dumbshits within five miles. So my rather subdued behavior ends up being advantageous.What really ends up happening is that I keep it all inside, bottled up and under pressure. And much like a bottle of Brut, once the cork is popped, everything comes pouring out. Sometimes it’s messy and I end up with verbal diarrhea and tell my life story to some unsuspecting friend and other times I try to let a little out at a time so as not to frighten everyone away. And if you were wondering, several glasses of wine might cause things to spill out as well and suddenly I’m telling people about shit that happened in 1995 and apparently I am not over an incident involving my brother, a bike and a pool cue.

God willing, barring any ill winter and something I’ve been trying to keep from discussing due to jinxing it all but I just cannot hold it inside: I will be going to Oklahoma City for a brief vacation. Susan thinks that it is just to drink wine and bask in her presence when in reality so that I can unload all of the shit that has been plaguing me for months and months and months. Thankfully I’m being quite nice to her and writing everything out in list form; that way I know what I want to say and it will keep my thoughts in place. It will be a lovely way to spend the pre-Holiday: Me talking endlessly about myself, because I don’t get to do enough of that already and Susan sitting there possibly bored to death but oh so very happy that someone came to visit her in one of the reddest states in the country. For nothing says “Merry Christmas” like slowly killing the ones you love with loquaciousness.

I bet you think this post is about you

November 19, 2007 | Filed under: Blogology, Great moments in narcissism

“To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.” ~e.e. cummingsYou know what is funny? Narcissism. How perfectly pot/kettle black of me for pointing that out given that I’ve spent the last two and half years meticulously documenting every moment only to write about it and share with several thousand people. The funny narcissism is from those who do not realize that they are behaving as such. Like perhaps those that make disparaging remarks about a blogger and say “Watch out what you say to her in a conversation. It might end up on the blog.” Well ho, ho, ho, isn’t that rich? To automatically assume that anything said to me is going to be blog fodder. Especially when the conversation is between myself and someone that I a) can’t stand b) don’t even know and c) occurs between the hours of 9 AM and 6 PM. The chances that a conversation about printer usage and effective pedagogy are going to increase site traffic are pretty slim to none. Actually, it’s just none.I’m at a reception the other day when a coworker asks me to tell him the calamari story. A really disturbing story about eating calamari then drinking several glasses of pinot noir and then puking up the calamari to find that the calamari had turned purple. A story that I told while speaking at BlogHer this summer and then kind of forgot about. Well this coworker hadn’t and when I asked what he was speaking of he said “Well you wrote about it on the blog” and I subsequently had several margaritas and a panic attack. Though I must admit that the best time to find out that one of your coworkers has perused your archives is with a very large drink in hand.Even though it has become common there still is that shock, tightening of the chest and then sphincter clenching that inevitably comes when someone you deal with from nine to five and nine to five, only, is reading some very intimate details of your life. Like the way too much vodka makes you cry or that you have a bipolar disorder. The following question would be “Then why are you sharing if you don’t want people to read?” There is an interesting dichotomy there, on the one hand, I do write publicly about some personal things but nothing that I’m embarrassed about, yet there is just something very odd about a colleague being all up in your business, especially when others have been particularly cruel about it. I don’t care that they read, it’s comments like “You better watch out what you say to her, it might end up on the blog” that make me want to ask someone just how important they think they are in my life, because the answer would be not at all. Which means the odds of me announcing to the world every minute detail of our conversation about ink cartridges are far less likely than me announcing the world that I hate your hair or that you probably haven’t gotten laid in years, in public. Now that? People might find interesting.Thinking about it now, I suppose that those who find blogging to be somewhere out in the realm of UFO sightings and eating Foie Gras, might be bored with their lives. They need someone else’s life to make fun of and dissect as if it is their own. They are rather small people who obviously need to get some ass or perhaps enjoy some wine that doesn’t come in a box. But I guess now I’m becoming just like them by being judgmental though I can always pride myself by saying at least I never tattled on them and told their mothers, because I can be a judgmental, honest, bitch, but at least I moved away from my five year old tendencies like 19 years ago. And the next time I get drunk I’ll be sure to share every intimate detail like puking up a veggie dog on my bedroom floor. You can thank me for that one later.

24

October 26, 2007 | Filed under: Great moments in narcissism, Mmhmm That's Right

“Birthdays are good for you. Statistics show that the people who have the most live the longest.” ~Larry Lorenzon

When I was eight, before the world was dominated by Bushs and Clintons, I made this timeline of every event in my life from my high school graduation to when I would get married and start having children. 24 was apparently the age that my eight year old mind thought would be a good time to start in on the whole marriage and parenting one-two punch. Normally I’d say that my eight year old self was high, but instead I will say Aww. Because eight year olds are cute and wistful and think that 24 is ‘old’. Eight year olds have yet to become cynical and pessimisstic. They are wonderfully optimistic most of the time and one must admit that it can be adorable.

Today is my 24th birthday and I am a tad more pragmatic and would like to set my goals a little lower. All I really want is to have a good year. There are also more personal things like the ability to eat a burrito without analyzing every bite and calming the fuck down because some things won’t ever change. But other than that it’s all very simple and the rest written down and tucked away for a rainy day. I think that if I told my eight year old self that having a baby at 24 really wouldn’t bode well for her career (never mind what she would do if I told her that she would have enough money to fill her closet with shoes, because she HATED shopping with a passion) or for her relationship with her roommate, but at 24 there could be as many cupcakes as she wanted because her mother won’t be around to say No; then she would totally be down with that. So I think I’ll shuffle things around and save those major life events for another year.

Flaws

October 3, 2007 | Filed under: Blogology, Great moments in narcissism, Listy, Socially Awkward Barbie™

“Certain flaws are necessary for the whole. It would seem strange if old friends lacked certain quirks.” ~Goethe

Today is The Great Mofo Delurk. I like the word Mofo though I use it so rarely because I’m much more fond of the more formal ‘Motherfucker’. As such, I am presenting you with a few of my pretty bad but not as bad as my propensity to drink two bottles of wine just because it’s in my line of sight, flaws. Feel free to delurk and divulge your flaws or just delurk and tell me how drop dead gorgeous I am or delurk and ask me a question like how I’ve managed to get through almost 24 years of life without spontaneously combusting from my overwhelming social awkwardness.

1) There are days that I feel like my only contribution to society will be rampant socially awkward behavior that will make others feel much better about their ability to communicate with other human beings. Whereas I kind of just stand there looking like I’m in severe pain, other people are able to, you know, open their mouths while making semi-coherent sounds. Though I was recently told, during a dinner, that one could sense that I’m a ‘writer’ (the noise you just heard was the sound of my eyes rolling). I choked on my fourth glass of cheap merlot and asked how and the woman seated next to me said that she could tell by the way I chose and used words very carefully. I laughed and patted myself on the back for being able to carry on a conversation for twenty minutes without sounding like I may have been dropped on my head and landed right on my soft spot as a baby.

2) I think that the telephone is the invention of Stalin and the Devil. Therefore using the phone requires deep cleansing breaths, acupuncture and a little hypnosis so that I can actually pick up the receiver. Prior to most any phone call, I write down notes on a 3×5 index card to lessen the chance of an untimely heart attack due to being unprepared for a difficult question. The ones that usually catch me off guard are the toughies, like “Is this Heather?” or “How are you?” I figure that with it being 2007 and all and with the wifi and the ability to listen to music on your telephone while wikipedia-ing ‘Squeaky Fromme’ means that one should be able to simply email a question. The phone doesn’t need to be used in every situation, in fact, I’m pretty sure that it’s use can be limited to dialing 911, ordering Chinese food, and possibly can be fashioned into some sort of weapon.

3) I received an email yesterday afternoon asking if when I said ‘Versailles’ I meant VERSAILLES. Is there another Versailles that I am not aware of? The Versailles I plan to visit next month has a Hall of Mirrors and Orange trees and Louis XIV once lived there and it’s located in a little place called France. The thing about my upcoming visit to France is that I am a notoriously awful planner. I say I’m going somewhere and then everything fizzles and my enthusiasm shrinks like a raisin in the sun, for prior to any trip there is thing called work which pretty much trumps everything at time, including eating and breathing and my ability to pee without bringing my crackberry into the stall with me. Because of this, I have two trips coming up that I have approximately zero plans for because when the enthusiasm doesn’t wane for me wanting a vacation but it wanes for deciding exactly what I want to do and see. Thus, my having to enlist Abigail to make up an itinerary for my upcoming trip to LA and the help I need right now from people that have actually been to France to tell me what I should see. I know the Louvre and Versailles and that big pointy phallus looking thing called the Eiffel Tower. Other than that I’m at a loss and the person going with me only wants to buy a bracelet at Cartier. So! Suggestions would be appreciated. For example, where can I go to get a croissant full of butter that won’t go straight to my ass?

Protocol

September 19, 2007 | Filed under: Great moments in narcissism, The Great Moving Caper

“When we ask advice we are usually looking for an accomplice.”  ~Charles Varlet de La Grange

A few weeks before moving, I found out that people in Upstate NY had been read my blog, noted that I had occasionally enjoyed a fermented beverage and then told my mother. Causing memories of the fifth grade to come flooding back to me because telling on someone is about as grade school as it gets. Telling on someone to their mother when you are over 30 means you deserve a sharp jab to the ribs and possibly some animal crackers and a juice box. Cry baby. Though I suppose that their lives were so incredibly vapid and coma inducing that they decided to share in my life. Which for the record, is about as interesting as watching someone pick their nose.

The other night The Roommate and I were discussing sharing and how we know very little about each other. In fact I didn’t even know what she did for a living until two days ago. So we shared the superficial stuff like middle names and how when I see a bottle of wine just sitting there with wine still in it, I feel compelled to drink it. She agreed, because then we split two bottles of wine. The quandary that has presented itself is whether or not to divulge that I get great pleasure out of writing about my life on the internet. While there is possibility that she’s already aware and is waiting for me to just tell her there is also the tiny bit of me that is protective.

It’s not like this is a secret or something as I do recall the glorious year of having my full name as my URL because I thought, “who the hell would use Google?” But part of me has some odd privacy issue wherein it is perfectly acceptable to tell tales of drunken debauchery and general lack of intellect with a heap of ignorance and stupidity to several hundred people. And though I’m sure it is perfectly fine to tell The Roommate the same, there’s something about her reading about it on the internet that makes me want to remove every instance of the ‘C’ word and all of those times I mentioned vomit.

It’s some sort of odd boundary issue. The kind that plagues me when I meet someone new. How much is too much to know? It’s like any other relationship; you want to share as much as possible but there will come a point when that person will annoy to the point of making your brain come out of your ears and you’ll want so badly to write about wanting to kick that person in the crotch. But you can’t, because they read your fucking blog. And then you’re left with internalized feelings of detest and dreaming of tap dancing on that person’s head because Really? Your mother taught you to put the toilet paper on the roll like that?