TMMA #4: The Thought That For The First Time In History It’s Gonna Start Raining Men

Okay, look. I understand that the song “It’s Raining Men” is really campy and kinda gay. And ordinarily there is nothing I enjoy more than something that is campy and gay. My life is filled with things that are campy and gay, and I delight in them! Camp is delightful. And the gay, too, it is delightful!

So what’s the problem here? I mean who doesn’t like rain? And men? I considerably enjoy both of those things. And sometimes, Rain IS a man! (In the form of a Korean pop star!) And that, too, is enjoyable in its own way:

Those abs! That vest! Clearly, CLEARLY, rain and men are both wonderful, wonderful things.

So it may come as a surprise when I say that the song “It’s Raining Men,” while it does indeed invoke certain things I like (such as people and dreary weather), is still a fundamentally disturbing piece. There are some things that just don’t go together, and precipitation and potential-sexual-partners is one such worrisome combination.

Don’t you agree? For example: the fantasy of kissing someone in the rain becomes a little more squicky when one interprets its meaning as kissing someone WHO IS MADE OUT OF RAIN and who at one point DESCENDED FROM THE SKY IN THE FORM OF LITTLE DROPLETS AND/OR AS A FULLY FORMED PERSON. I mean, I have my kinks and all, but that is not one of them.

Plus wouldn’t everyone just be crushed by the raining men, anyway? Fun fact: you will probably not be able to hook up with someone if you are squished flat by his falling on you from the sky, boosted by the acceleration of Earth’s gravity and all.

Therefore, I, for one, am not “gonna go out to run and let myself get / absolutely soaking wet” in man-rain (ew) should the opportunity imminently arise as this song so dreadfully portends.

I will say this only once: You will hear no gleeful hallelujahs and amens from this blogger when the song in question begins to play. So be warned: FOR THE FIRST TIME IN HISTORY IT’S GONNA START RAINING MEN. Get your umbrellas out, folks. This ain’t a drill.

TMMA #3: Escalators (Special Travel Edition!)

So a couple of weeks ago I flew back to America after 6+ months away. Crazy! I don’t really like America that much, but I like flying a lot, especially when I’m by myself. I mean I hate the actual flying part. But navigating airports is one of the best things ever. It makes me feel so competent and independent and successful, y’know? Which is nice because, let’s face it, I’m not actually any of those things at all. There is a stark difference between airport me and normal me (see below).

Airport!Me:

Normal!Me:

See? Being in an airport just automatically makes me a million times more awesome. It’s fabulous! Woo airports.

I guess it’s weird though that I’ve been talking about airports and flying and traveling for this long and I haven’t mentioned anything that makes me anxious yet. But the fact is, most things about these situations don’t make me anxious, strange as that sounds. I mean I know there are a lot of things that could go wrong with flying, that other people are sensibly anxious about. But really the only thing that worried me throughout this entire 24-hour cross-continental experience was the escalators. (Well, that and the lack of honey roasted peanuts.) If you are confused by that statement, let me clarify for you:

THERE IS NO OVERLAP. Aaaand I just realized that that is not how you draw a Venn diagram with no overlap, and that there should really just be two separate circles there. But I’m too lazy to redraw it so tough luck guys. Also I know that font looks a little like Comic Sans BUT IT ISN’T I SWEAR. Hint: You’ll have to deal with my failures at nerdiness if you’re going to successfully follow this blog.

Anyway, as I was saying, THERE IS NO OVERLAP between me and normal people when it comes to airport/flying/travel anxiety. Not gonna lie, this is probably because I am too fixated on the escalators to pay attention to anything else. Also because my frustration with people-who-are-scared-of-brown-people-with-beards is far, far greater than my (nonexistent) fear of brown-people-with-beards. I am probably a terrorist. It all makes sense now!

But, escalators. I have always been terrified of them. It is because while certain people (mistakenly) think they look like this:

In fact, however, they ACTUALLY look like THIS:

Every escalator is a scene of potential carnage. A serpent of doom, the escalator snakes up (or down) towards you, the wreckage of its previous victims still evident: an untied shoelace caught between steps, perhaps, led to half of the individual’s body being consumed by this metallic menace. A slight slip on the part of an elderly gentleman led to bodies after bodies tumbling down through the cracks in the mighty escalator’s frame, never to be heard of again. Perhaps just stepping into the escalator’s hungry maw (slash, onto its first step) is the greatest risk. My illustrations maybe do not do this scene justice but I’m sure you can imagine the devastation. I know I can. This is what escalators do. DO YOU KNOW WHERE YOUR CHILDREN ARE?

And do not try to argue against me on this point. My eyes do not deceive me. Escalators are a menace to society and you should all probably recognize that if you don’t already, lest you be swallowed whole the next time you encounter one.

Let this serve as a warning.

TMMA #2: People Tossing Food Into Their Mouths Instead Of Placing It There Gently

You know how it happens. You are sitting at a table with friends, or maybe family, separated by nothing more than a jar of peanuts. You carefully pour yourself a handful and start eating them one by one, placing each peanut gently in your mouth and chewing it 32 times just like they told you to do in elementary school.

Then, suddenly, you notice a violent, unexpected motion out of the corner of your eye. The person across the table from you has just launched a peanut from his hand. Your eyes carefully follow its trajectory as the peanut arcs through the air and lands neatly in the thrower’s mouth. The mouth closes, and you are left unable to know just what will happen next.

What if the peanut, traveling at such an unstoppable velocity, were to lodge itself into its consumer’s windpipe? What if it lodged itself into his throat? Both are unpleasant possibilities. You quickly try to assess your (in)ability to perform the Heimlich maneuver, or perhaps CPR. You scrutinize the peanut-thrower’s face, looking for signs of trauma. You try to calculate how fast an ambulance could get itself to this particular location, should emergency medical care become necessary.

WHAT SHOULD YOUR COURSE OF ACTION BE? You weigh your options:

(1) Do nothing, and continue your own peanut-eating process. In the meantime, provided the food-thrower survives this particular peanut, the process will begin ALL OVER AGAIN when he goes in for another one. Every peanut becomes an undue stressor until you can take it no more and you are forced to either (a) leave, or (b) say something (see below).

(2) Say something, knowing that the instant you do, you will be perceived as a prophet-of-doom paranoid naysayer and that none of your fears will ever be taken seriously. The peanut-thrower may even begin to perform MORE dangerous eating practices for the added benefit of seeing you all riled up. This will suck, and you will be forced to either (a) do nothing (see above), or (b) leave (see below).

(3) Leave, and miss out on the peanuts and the conversation, and make everyone else confused (because you are really bad at making up excuses) about why you needed to leave RIGHT THEN. You also have to remember that chances are, if you leave, you will encounter something else that will make you equally anxious once you get wherever it is you are going, or even on the way there.

It is thus a TRIPLE BIND, and you have no way out. One small peanut has now grown into a terrifyingly large problem for you to deal with.

Aw man.

Snacktime sucks.

TMMA #1: Blogging

I guess I should start out by saying that blogging itself is one of the things that makes me anxious. It doesn’t usually start out that way, though. It starts out as a hobby! as practice writing! as an outlet for creative expression!

It continues that way until I realize that I have no creativity to express, which mostly happens right before I try to start writing anything, ever. Then, things start spiraling downward. The pattern is something like this:

and then, once i can take it no longer:

And thus ends my blogging endeavor. EVERY TIME. And this one was no exception.

I always start out thinking blogging is an AWESOME IDEA and that I am SUPER CLEVER and therefore my blog will be the BEST BLOG OF ALL TIME(!!!!!), but then when the time comes to hit “publish,” I panic and realize that nothing I say is actually funny in any way. And it terrifies me. Plus I’m usually out of ideas about one post in.

But maybe I’ll stick with it longer this time? Who knows.

PS. if you’re wondering whether I just discovered Hyperbole and a Half and am copying her style except in a less awesome way, the answer is unequivocally yes. Also thanks to Hyperbole and a Half I discovered that Paintbrush exists, so for all you Mac users out there who have spent years lamenting your computer’s lack of MS Paint, lament no more! I HAD NO IDEA.

Beginnings

There are things that are a foot.

Unfortunately, this blog is not one of those things.

However, there are certain other things that are afoot.

And this is certainly one of them.

What I’m trying to say is:

WATCH THIS SPACE, KIDDOES.

-S