Understanding Your Boyfriend

Men are really very easy to understand, as long as you are capable of rational thinking and reasoning. If you happen to be female, however, you might not have the benefit of rational thought, (which is likely the source of any problems you might encounter in your relationship.) Your boyfriend isn't stupid or insensitive, you're probably just not actually listening to him. So if you've ever been labeled a "crazy bitch" by a guy, here are some tips that may come in handy:


Lesson Number 1: Guys Enjoy Doing Things that are Fun.



This may seem obvious, but we females tend overlook this one on a regular basis. Ever wonder why your boyfriend didn't look thrilled when you got him tickets to go and see Rihanna with you? Well, it's because he hates Rihanna, but he knows that if he tells you that, you'll start to cry, so he has to go with you, which sucks for him. Maybe, if he's lucky, one of her boobs will fall out mid-concert or something. You see, what sounds like fun to you might end up being some unusual form of torture for him. Here are some things that you should never, under any circumstance, ask your boyfriend to do unless you are prepared to offer him something he wants in return:

*Go shopping for clothes, shoes, or make-up
*Listen to pop music of any kind
*Attend your friends' weddings
*Watch anything starring Zac Efron
*Dress up
*Cut his hair
*Purchase any sort of feminine hygeine product

These are all big no-nos. The more you ask him to do things that are not-fun, the less cool he will think you are. Eventually, he will remember that he was having a much better time hanging out with his friends and occaisonally sleeping around, and will dump you. If you must ask him to do something he hates, at least tell him that you'd be willing to do something that you hate in return. Here's the catch though: You have to act like you are enjoying yourself while you do it. It's not a very fair trade if you make him spend 3 hours in Forever 21 and then whine and complain while you're giving him a blow job later.


Lesson Number 2: He Doesn't Give a Crap About How You Look.



Now before you start arguing with me, please note that I said, "he doesn't give a crap about how you look," not "he doesn't give a crap about how girls look." Guys are drawn to sexy women the way moths are drawn to a light. This makes sense, since hot girls are pleasing to look at. Fortunately for us, most guys have widely differing standards of what they consider "sexy," and if he's dating you, that means he thinks you are sexy. Therefore, you do not have to spend 6 hours in front of the mirror every day checking the size of your pores and making sure that your mascara isn't clumpy. He thinks you're beautiful the way you are, and you will only piss him off by obsessing over your appearance. Every hour you spend making yourself look beautiful is one you could have spent doing something fun with him. Eventually, he'll realize that you are self-centered and that your beauty regimen is more important than he is, at which point he'll leave you for an ugly chick who is at least willing to wear the same pair of shoes two days in a row. Also, you're going to really screw yourself over by constantly asking him how you look. After awhile he'll start saying, "you look great," and "I love you" all the time, just to shut you up, while secretly wishing for you to die in a car fire.


Lesson Number 3: The Fact that He Wants to See His Friends Does Not Mean He Hates You.



How would you feel if every time you wanted to go bar hopping with your friends, your boyfriend started crying about how used and unappreciated it made him feel? Do you see where I'm going with this yet? Don't act like an abused puppy if he chooses not to include you in his plans every now and then. You may not be the only human being on the planet that he's in contact with. If he wants to go out with the guys for a few hours one night, he shouldn't feel like he has to ask permission from you first. If you act clingy and needy, it makes you far less attractive to him since you're behaving like his mom. He'll also start to think that you're a huge loser, since it would appear that you don't have any friends of your own, and you can't do anything without him. Remember lesson number 1? If he's going out for awhile, do something you enjoy that he doesn't. Go to the mall, get your hair done, or sit at home and watch "A Walk to Remember." Do anything you want, just give him some space.


Lesson Number 4: Offer Sex:



"But we have sex all the time!" you say. Even if your sex life is more than active, which of you is one initiating it? I'll bet it's him. Guys have very fragile egos, so it's important to let them know that they're attractive, strong, and bad-ass. As long as you pretend you think your boyfriend is God, he'll be satisfied. If you don't act like you want him every now and then, you cripple his sense of manliness, and that's just not cool. If you don't find yourself ever wanting to have sex with your boyfriend, then you don't actually like him and should break it off as soon as possible so that he can find someone who's not a giant bitch like you!


Lesson Number 5: Never Pressure Him Into Doing Something He Doesn't Want to Do.



No, I don't have this backwards. The entire male gender may be stigmatized with pressuring women into sex, but women are just as guilty of forcing guys to do things they don't want to do. This is especially true when it comes to getting married and having babies. Now, it's pretty bad if you pressure a guy into marrying you. If you've been dating him for over a year and he hasn't asked you yet, he's either not going to, or not ready yet. Either way, he's going to feel threatened and annoyed, and one of two things will happen: He'll do it just to shut you up, or he'll break up with you, and you're much better off if he breaks up with you. If he does marry you, it will inevitably end in divorce 5 years down the road, and alimony is just no fun. As bad as this scenario sounds, it's nothing compared to what will happen if you pressure him into having a baby with you. He'll have to give up all of his free time and most of his paycheck, and he will hate you forever. Eventually you'll divorce, except now you have to figure out what to do with the kid. Seriously, just don't ask those sorts of questions. If you're really dying to make a life-altering change, don't go dragging innocent people along for the ride.

Understanding Your Girlfriend

Girls are really hard to understand, especially if you don't happen to be one, so I thought I'd provide a small window of insight into the complicated and often completely nonsensical brains of girls.


Lesson Number 1: Even if She Says She's "OK" with something, That Doesn't Mean that She Actually Is.



This happens a lot! More frequently than I'd like to admit, actually. Hey, remember that time the two of you were supposed to go over to her parents' house for dinner, but at the last second you asked her if it would be OK to go watch the game with the guys? Well that actually wasn't OK. In fact, she's probably still pissed off at you about it. Females tend to say "OK" to a lot of things they aren't actually OK with, which leads to unpleasant circumstances; like date rape, for instance! It's not that we're trying to be nice, it's usually that we want you to figure out that we're mad. There is really no fun in simply telling you that we do or don't want you to do something. We're counting on the fact that if you figure it out later for yourself, then you will probably feel guilty about it and apologize. Then, after you apologize, we can use your guilt as leverage to get something that we want. Depending on the size of your mistake, the "something" can range from a back rub to that pair of $350 shoes she's had her eye on at the mall. Also, if a woman ever tries to use an engagement ring or a baby as a bargaining tool, break up with her immediately.


Lesson Number 2: Girls Think Guys Who Show Obvious Interest in Them are Creepy.



Let's be honest with ourselves here; nothing is more boring than having what you want. We women hate to see men throwing themselves at our feet. Even if you think she's the sweet, innocent type who's into that romantic shit, she will still spurn you if you come on too strongly...or at all, actually. Guys who make a habit of aggressively pursuing women come off as desperate losers, and no one likes a desperate loser. In case you are wondering what sort of actions would qualify you as a desperate loser, here's a handy dandy list:

*Using pick-up lines of any nature
*Giving flowers for any reason, especially if you're not dating. (A quick side note on flowers: Flowers should only be given in circumstances of sympathy or congratulations. That means if her grandma dies or she performs at Carnegie Hall, it's OK. If you do it at any other time, it's uncalled for, and eventually the flowers will die, prompting her to draw parallels between the withering flowers and her relationship with you.)
*Buying her anything until you've been dating for at least a year, with the exceptions of Christmas (or whichever gift giving holiday you enjoy celebrating) and her birthday.
*Growing a goatee. (What are you trying to hide with that thing?)
*Talking about marriage early in the relationship. (Am I the only girl who has ever agreed to date you? If so, what does everyone else know that I don't?)
*Talking about children early in the relationship.
*Inviting her to meet your parents, go to your family reunion, or generally do anything else with your relatives when it's obvious you just want to show her off.
*Tanning, frosting your hair, displaying any form of gold or diamond jewelry, popping your collar, or wearing anything from American Apparel.

Girls like guys who show zero interest in them. It makes us think, "Gee, why isn't he falling all over himself in front of me? Does he think he's too good for me!? No one is too good for me, damn it!" At that point she'll start coming onto you really hard, but don't let on that you like her yet. Keep ignoring her for a couple of weeks. It'll drive her crazy and it's also quite humorous. When she seems like she's close to giving up on you, give her a call and ask her on a date, but make sure you don't sound even the least bit hopeful; you know, act like she'll be the 6th girl you've gone out with this week. It will work, I promise.



Lesson Number 3: "I Just Don't Feel Like It."



If a girl "just doesn't feel like it," just don't push it, especially if your "pushing it" is sexual in nature. In case you haven't figured it out yet, no, we don't sit around all day talking to our friends on the phone, and excitedly discussing which of us gets to give a blow job that evening. We have other thoughts and interests and hobbies that occupy much of our thinking space, and it may be that we're just not in the mood for sex. For instance, The Holocaust is decidedly un-sexy, but that may be what she's thinking about when you walk up behind her and unzip your pants. It's also possible that she's weighed the pros and cons and made up her mind that losing 20 minutes of her life pleasuring you is worse than simply allowing your relationship to deteriorate slightly. If you really want to have sex, do something sexy around her. We're really not that hard to please. Do you have awesome abs? Then lounge around the house with no shirt on. Does she love your smile? Then flash her a really sexy one. Remember, if all else fails, you can always just get her completely wasted and then ask her if she wants to screw.


Lesson Number 4: When We Ask You Crappy Questions, It Means You're Not Doing Something You Should Be:



There are certain questions that girls are compelled to ask that fill men with dread. Questions like, "Do I look like I've gained weight?" Or, "Do you think she's prettier than me?" Let me state just for the record that there are no correct answers to these sorts of questions. For example, if your girlfriend was to ask you, "Do you like this dress?" She'd kill you if you said "no," and if you say "yes," it won't matter. After that, she'll probably be pissed off for the rest of the night, and here's the reason why: The reason girls ask these questions is because they have noticed something that you have not. What the girl who asks if her boyfriend likes her dress is actually trying to say, is "Hey you fucking asshat! I made myself all pretty and you look like you couldn't care less. Why don't you notice these things?" What she may be failing to understand is that you wouldn't be dating her if you didn't find her attractive. Unfortunately, her chances of ever realizing this fact are slim to none, so you'll just have to deal with the fact that she's never going to act like a rational human being, and resort to complimenting her every now and then, even if you really don't mean it.


Lesson Number 5: If You are Going to Try to Share Your Interests with Her, Don't be a Dick About It:



If you have ever heard your girlfriend say, "Sports are stupid!" or "Video games are for little kids, why don't you grow up already?" Then this tip is for you. Contrary to popular belief, females are not born with aversions to things like team sports, video games, drinking contests, and good music. Those are all traits that have been learned from experience. If your girlfriend seems totally uninterested or even opposed to the things you enjoy the most, chances are, she's had a bad experience with those things in the past. Let's use video games as an example. Here is an instance of the proper method to use when introducing her to video games:

"Hey honey! You should check out this game I'm playing, I think you'd really like it!"

("I doubt that. What is it?")

"It's called 'Little Big Planet!' You get to design these adorable little sack people and dress them up. Then you play through these little stories and collect stickers and clothing! We can play together; and look! I made mine a kitty!"

At this point, she should be intrigued, and will gladly sit down and play with you. Now that we've explained the right way, let's explain the wrong way:

"Hey honey! You should play 'Counter Strike' with me!"

("What's 'Counter Strike'?")

"It's this totally sweet game where you get online and play on teams with other people and you shoot at them! Uh...it's kind of like capture the flag! Here, let me just get you set up really quick..."

("Ok, now um, what do I press?")

"Oh just those keys over there, on the left side of your keyboard. Ok, ready? Here we go..."

("Wait, what am I supposed to do?")

"Wait for it...wait for it...BOOM HEADSHOT!" Ha ha ha, damn, I nailed you, bitch!"

("What the fuck, Brandon why did you kill me?")

"Well, c'mon, honey. I mean, you were standing right out in the open like the biggest n00b on the planet! I mean, you sort of suck at this game, you know? Honey? Honey, where are you going with the car keys?"

This type of interaction will screw you over pretty badly, since she will come to associate video games with you being the world's biggest asshole, and no one likes the world's biggest asshole. You've actually done more damage than you realize, because she will spread the news of your assholdom to all her friends, who in turn will spread it to theirs, until everyone in town knows just how much you suck. If you ever want to date another girl again, you're going to have to find one who lives under a rock. You have also managed to fuck up the relationships of every other guy in town, whose girlfriends now hate video games. Good job, loser.

I hoped these pointers have helped, and if for some reason they haven't, your relationship sucks. End it.

Math I Use at Work

I'm terrible at math. I mean really, truly, utterly terrible. It's not that I can't solve simple problems when they're placed in front of me; my issue is that as soon as the problem is placed in any sort of context, I can't solve it...period. Fortunately, working at a public library, my horrid math skills don't get much use. (Except when kids ask me what they're supposed to do on their homework and I explain it to them wrong.) There are, however, a few crucial equations I've invented myself that help me to predict exactly what is going to happen when different variables come into contact with one another inside the library. Here are some examples:


Old People + Electronics = Problems for me


Sometimes I hate the fact that the children's desk faces the copier. At least 60% of the people who use it are total idiots, even though it's relatively simple to operate. (Want to change the size of the copy? Hit the big button that says, "Reduce/Enlarge." Want to make a color copy? Hit the big button that says, "color.") Now, granted, you have to put your money in the coin box before you can copy anything, and the coin box has a non-adjustable 15 second timer on it, so it can be tricky to set the copier to the desired settings before the timer runs out. I don't mind helping people with that. The real problem comes when old people try to use it. Even though copiers have been around for over 20 years, they always get that wide-eyed look of panic as soon as they walk up to it and start yelling for help. Maybe I'm just not explaining things well enough, but every time I have to help anyone over the age of 65 with the photocopier, there's some horrible problem that inevitably takes at least half an hour to fix. My favorite was the time I asked an elderly woman to go ahead and put her money in the coin box, and while I had my back turned, she folded up her dollar bill so that it was very tiny and stuffed that motherfucker right into the coin slot. We had to find tweezers to pull it out, and she never even figured out why what she did was wrong.


The library is not a daycare center

This one seems to go over many people's heads. The library is a public institution that provides free information to the community, not free babysitting. Unfortunately, there seems to be a large percentage of young mothers who don't understand this. Most of the time, they come in to use the Internet and drop their offspring off in the children's department, assuming we'll just watch their kids for them. It wouldn't be a problem if they simply needed to check their e-mail for 5 minutes, but most of these people tend to spend 4 or 5 hours at a time online. Now, anyone who has ever spent any time around small children knows that they get bored very quickly. It's not fair to take your 3 year-old to the library and then abandon them. They can't read yet and can only color so many pictures before a destructive level of boredom starts to set in. At that point they start messing with the computers, stealing things from the librarian's desk, and running around while throwing their shoes at people. I don't care how poor you are; these days anyone can afford a computer. You can get one for about $300. Anyone can save up $300, it just might take some people longer than others. If you really want to use the Internet for 5 hours straight and you have a small child, don't be a dick and come to the library. Save up some cash and buy a PC so that we don't have to deal with your neglected kids. Also, placing a tracking device on your child that beeps loudly every time he moves more than 5 feet away from you and then coming to the library to use the computer for many hours is a bad idea. Period.


Storytime + Child Neglect = FAIL


For crying out loud, if you are going to take your child to storytime, pay at least a little bit of attention to them. Library storytimes are designed to help parents interact with children in ways which promote early literacy skills. It is not time to socialize with your friends. It is not the equivalent of plopping your kid down in front of the television for half an hour. And no, you can't leave your child in storytime and come back when it's over; you are missing the point entirely. I understand that having kids cuts back on a mom's time to do the things she used to enjoy, like talking to other adults or getting to spend more than 5 minutes alone without interruption. Unfortunately, when you have children, you automatically forfeit everything that compromises your life. It becomes your responsibility to make sure that your child grows up to be a functional adult, and to achieve that, you have to pay attention to them. Therefore, if you are going to bring a kid to a library storytime, you can't treat it as social hour or time to escape to the coffee machine in the lobby. You need to sit there with your kid, do the rhymes, sing the songs, and dance the dances. Yes, you will look like a complete moron doing it, but acting like an idiot is a sure-fire way to get your child to remember how to count to ten. Besides, you'll have plenty of time to socialize when they're teenagers and they hate you.


Teachers - brains = a huge waste of my time


It's unfair of me to say that all teachers are idiots. I've met plenty of teachers who are intelligent and excellent mentors. I have discovered, however, that there are a disproportionate number of brainless people who somehow thought it was a good idea to teach elementary school, (specifically 1st and 2nd grade.) It's not that they're all bad--many of them are quite good in a classroom setting--it's simply that they don't seem to understand how the world works once they walk out of the classroom. You would think that if one is planning to become an educator of any sort, it might be a good idea to figure out how a library works. Unfortunately, many of them can't seem to read signs, follow directions, or use the Internet, which means that every time one of these people comes into the building, I have to spend half an hour collecting material for them and essentially doing their job. At my library, we even offer to pull collections for teachers on specific topics, as long as they give us at least two weeks notice, which seems to come as a shock to many of them. One would hope that a teacher would plan out her curriculum more than 2 weeks in advance, but alas, it is usually not so. What we often end up with are people who come into the department, refuse to learn how to use the catalog, and ask me to pull 30 or more books for them. They also always manage to come in when we're busiest, so everyone who has the misfortune of walking into the children's department after the teacher has to wait an unacceptable amount of time to be helped. It wouldn't be so bad if they came in asking for 30 picture books on food, or 30 books on dinosaurs, but they always manage to ask for something that doesn't exist. No matter how hard I try, I can't seem to make these people understand that we don't have books on the cold war at a first-grade level, and there simply haven't been 30 titles on blind African American gardeners published yet. (I wish I was kidding.) And it never fails that as soon as I impart this wisdom onto whomever I'm helping, they're shocked. Really though, who could have guessed that we wouldn't have any fun storybooks on quadratic equations?

My Hometown: All Assholes

Everyone loves to hate their hometown, and I'm certainly no exception. I spent most of my childhood and adolescence in a wealthy suburb (we'll call it, "Upper Assholdom") of a medium-sized city, (which we'll call "Bolumbus.") In case you don't know where "Bolumbus" is, here is a map, which I have painstakingly edited for you:

The filled-in black stars = don't ever go there for any reason.

Now, anyone who has ever lived in Bolumbus will tell you that everyone from Upper Assholdom is an asshole. The people in Upper Assholdom are such enormous assholes that I'm fairly sure they would turn their town into an independently governed city-state if they were allowed to, since that way they could write up their own laws and kick out all the African Americans, immigrants, and homosexuals. When I was about 16 I read over our property deed, and discovered a clause strictly stating that the house was not to be sold to anyone of African American descent until 1999. Of course, that's completely illegal and stupid, but the suburb has somehow mysteriously managed to maintain it's homogeneously white demographic. In case you live in a normal part of the world and are wondering what living in a snobby, homogeneously white town is like, it's a lot like this:

Except instead of drinking red wine, they would be snorting lines of coke, and afterward the man would hop on a plane to the Bahamas so that he could fuck his secretary without his boring trophy wife around. Just to make sure you really get the full picture of what Upper Assholdom is like, here's an actual picture:

See, here's the thing about this place though: Most of the people who live there really aren't that rich. They live in modest 3 bedroom houses and just pay stupidly large amounts of money on property tax. The problem is that the community is so damned proud of it's coke head doctors and lawyers that it teaches everyone who happens to live there that they are better than everyone else...in the universe.

Children in this particular community start learning how awesome they are sometime in early elementary school. For me, it happened in 3rd grade when our teacher sat us down to ask us if it made us feel "sad" when others picked on us because of "who we were." I hadn't quite gotten to the point where anyone was picking on me yet, so I piped up and asked, "What do you mean?" Our teacher opened her mouth to answer, but one of my classmates cut her off, saying, "You know like when other people don't like us because we have money and they don't." I was just kind of confused, since my family really didn't have any more money than my friends' families who lived elsewhere in the city, but our teacher validated the girl's point by going on to lecture us about how we were going to have to stick up for ourselves, since we'd have lots of people who were jealous of us...right. Early elementary school is also the time when all children in Upper Assholdom learn to be terrified of blacks, Hispanics, and poor people. It only gets worse when these kids grow up.

If you asked a high-schooler from Upper Assholdom to draw a map of the world, you would likely see something like this:


The best part is that all of these kids graduate from high school and go to Emory, Stanford, or M.I.T. for 4 years and party since they're just pissing away their parents money; but when they finish with school, they're 10 times more fucked than anyone else in the world because they have no clue how to do anything for themselves. It's really funny to watch.

So anyway, if you happen to meet an asshole from Upper Assholdom. Go ahead and punch them and take their money. They won't fight back and we all certainly know they can afford it.

Religion is Stupid, Period.

Working at a public library is interesting, and I'll tell you why: It's the only job I know of in which you're able to see a completely accurate cross-section of the community you live in. Therefore, if your library is in a crappy part of town, the patrons who frequent it are far more likely to be certifiably insane than if it's located in a suburb. At my library, we get a mix of a little bit of everything. The fact that we're located between two wealthy suburbs and the city of Columbus means that we get everything from wealthy, stay-at-home white moms to illegal immigrants forging documents with the copier.

Now, I need to start this off by saying that I'm generally a pretty congenial person. I'm pleasant with people who ask me questions, (no matter how inane those questions might be) and I try to be as helpful as possible without tearing my eyeballs out of their sockets in frustration. There is, however, one group of people in the community that I love to fuck with: The religious nuts.

There is a sizable homeschooling community around the library, and nearly every family that is a part of it is "Christian." You see what I did there? I put "Christian" in parentheses because this particular demographic believes that to be Christian you have to think and do the exact same things that they do. ("Oh you didn't have Corn Flakes for breakfast? Well I did, and I'm Christian so you're going to hell!") I really wouldn't mind these people if they would all go hide in a cave somewhere and quit bothering the rest of us, but the problem is that they seem to be fond of breeding and then filling the heads of their offspring with nonsense, while completely sheltering them from anything real or tangible. Home-schooled kids aren't kept at home because their parents actually think they could do a better job of teaching the required curriculum than certified teachers. No, these kids are kept at home so that they don't "accidentally" learn anything that might cause them to question their steadfast faith in a book that was hastily thrown together almost two thousand years ago, and whose misogynistic authors spent more time promoting their own, personal agendas than actually trying to make logical sense of anything.

There is one little boy in particular who visits the library at least once or twice a week and is an avid reader. He would be very intelligent if his mother could pull her head out of her ass for long enough to realize that filling innocent children's heads with complete nonsense is probably some form of child abuse. Here is how my encounters with this boy usually play out:

Me: "Hi!"

Kid: "Hi! I'm looking for a good book to read."

Me: "Ok, well do you have a favorite type of book?"

Kid: "I like fantasy! Oh, but I'm not allowed to read anything with magic, witchcraft, superheroes, monsters, killing, or scary things."

Me: "........."

On occasion, he's also asked me for non-fiction titles:

Me: "Hi!"

Kid: "Hi! I'm looking for this one book. It's got a long-necked dinosaur on the cover."

Me: "Hmmm, well we have lots of books about dinosaurs. Do you remember anything else that was on the cover of the book?"

Kid: "Yeah! It had Jesus on the cover too!"

Me: ".........."

To be fair, the kid actually made my job a lot easier with that qualifier, since I simply had to swivel around in my chair so that I was facing our delightfully small section of 290s, and pull out the only world "history" book that's shelved in that section. Sure enough, there was a brachiosaurus and Jesus on the book jacket. Had this child been allowed to attend a regular public school, I'll bet he would have known that it was a brachiosaurus, but since he lives under a rock, he had to resort to calling the animal by its "Land Before Time" name. Fantastic.

So you see, you really can't blame me for deciding to take matters into my own hands with these kids. If their parents are going to try to destroy any chance of them ever becoming productive, functional human beings, it becomes my job to plant the seeds of doubt into their heads, one book at a time. If I can't give them the Harry Potter books, I can at least give them The Giver by Lois Lowry, and I know their parents won't complain or try to find "questionable content" in that one because it's a Newbery winner...suckers. (On a side note, the majority of religious nuts who refuse to allow their children to read the Harry Potter books do so not because the books have magic in them, but because J.K. Rowling is a champion of reason, logic, and tolerance, and her characters who exhibit overly religious qualities such as blind faith and xenophobia are punished with not only their own deaths, but the death of everything they stand for.)

Unfortunately, I work at a public library, which means we must serve the needs of the public, and if our patrons demand books full of religious bullshit, then that's what we have to buy. For instance, yesterday I was unpacking some new books, and we received a series of books called, "The Chosen Girls." In case you are unfamiliar with "The Chosen Girls," (and I certainly hope you are) they're three teenagers who decide that God wants them to form a Christian rock band so that they can share their religion with those who actually like that kind of music, and force it down the throats of those who don't. Also, they look like Bratz except with crosses on their eyeballs:

I tried reading the first couple of pages of one of these monstrosities and I almost lost my breakfast, so I had to stop. No child deserves this kind of torment, and those crossy eyeballs are enough to give any normal kid nightmares for a week. Also, last time I checked, most "Christian" parents were kind of against the whole "Jem" look. If I didn't think it would possibly get me fired, I would slip notes inside each and every one of these excuses for books that read:

Dear Kids!
Jesus is make-believe, just like Santa! He is a tool
your parents are using to control your behavior,
except they want you to believe that if you get on
Jesus' "naughty" list, he doesn't bring you coal, he
simply allows you to be raped by demons and set on
fire for all eternity.

Your parents don't KNOW what happens after death.
They're just so freaked out by the idea that we
might simply cease to exist that they're desperate
to believe anyone's ideas, no matter how stupid they
are. If you truly believe that in order to be a good
person, every Sunday you have to drink the blood and
eat the body of a zombie carpenter who claimed to
be his own father, and force other people to do it
too, for the sake of the rest of the world, please
move to Texas and stay there. Once we've got you
all in the same state, we're going to go ahead and
nuke it.
Thanks!!:)

Maybe I will stick notes in those books. After all, it's not defacing the book in any way, and religious people shove pamphlets in my hands all the time. Why shouldn't I do the same to them?

Lastly, I'd like to say that if you're religious and you've been offended by this post, "GET OVER IT." Religion is going the way of the dodo, and we're just going to have to be satisfied that there are some questions we can't answer. If Jesus were alive today, he would hate Christians so much that he would build a time machine, set the dial to 2,000 years ago, and beat the crap out of himself so that the whole religion would never come to exist. Then he'd set the dial forward about 600 years and find Muhammad so that they could compare their awesome beardage.




Yes, I drew a picture of Muhammad, I will draw more pictures of Muhammad, and all of them will be comical. Deal with it. Also, the next time that one kid asks for a fantasy book, I'm handing him the Bible.

I Got Two Results

So, here's a fun little story that I don't share with many people:




When I was in the 8th grade, shop class was canceled because of building renovations and they made everyone take typing classes instead. That was fine by me, since I was already a fast and accurate typist, and knew I was way better off than If I'd been stuck around sharp tools all day. (More on that later.) It also provided ample time to zone out, and possibly fall asleep, seeing how our 7 ft GIANT of a teacher preferred to keep the lights off in the windowless computer lab.

Now, I have to explain that we did absolutely nothing in this class. We either talked about "life lessons" or we sat on the computers and typed gibberish for an hour, so it came as quite a surprise the day we were told that we'd be taking a career test. Everyone was excited, and even though we were reminded that the results were simply "suggestions," none of us actually believed that. No, we were dead fucking sure that whatever answer came out on that piece of paper was a quantifiable measure of your worth. If you got something like pediatrician or defense lawyer, you were in the clear, but kiss any popularity you had goodbye if the results "suggested" you be a sanitation worker or supply clerk.

A career test, (if you've somehow never taken or seen one) is essentially a long personality test, except it matches your personality, likes, and dislikes with a list of possible careers. Now, I thought I was picking pretty average answers to the questions it was asking me. "Do you like sunshine and happiness?" (Sometimes.) "Do you like to feel respected by others?" (Yes?) So I didn't really think I would get anything strange on my printout of the list. When I was done with the test I hit "print" and went to stand in line by the printer.

I could see that everyone else in the class was getting long lists. Some people even had multiple pages of careers. When I finally saw a piece of paper coming out that had my name written on the top, I was really excited. Finally, I would know my true destiny! Shortly after printing my name, the printer spit the piece of paper out. There had to be something wrong. There were only two results. I folded it up quickly so no one would see how small my list was and took it over my chair to read it. When I opened it up, I quickly read the first result. It said, "Runway Model." I read the second result, "Forestry." That was it. I was going to be a model or a lumberjack. Model was out by default because I was not pretty. (I'm not self-hating here--I really wasn't pretty.) Forestry was out because I simply wasn't built for lumberjacking, not that I would ever want to do it in any context anyway. That left me with no results. I was going to be nothing. Why did everyone else have such long lists? Did I fail the career test? Can you fail a career test? It didn't strike me at the time, but what combination of answers could I possibly have given that would somehow place "model" and "lumberjack" in the same category?

When I told my parents about the test, they told me it was all bullcrap and that none of it meant anything, except I was 14 and I knew that they didn't understand me at all, which every 14 year-old knows for a fact, and that's how we get stuck with sad emo kids who have unspoken cutting contests with each other and pride themselves on the fact that they can't see in two dimensions because they're only looking through one eye, but I digress... So I basically told my parents that they were crazy, and that it was obvious that I should just go kill myself because I was going to grow up to be a parasitic leech on society.

The rest of that whole year sucked just like that.

Oh, and I work at a library. It's a great job, and sometimes I still get to zone out.