Note to self

Note to self: Just because there is a yellow liquid in a wine glass, you shouldn't drink it assuming it is white wine. On the other hand, now I know that old orange juice mixed with water and soap looks exactly like chardonnay. I'm like the Martha Stewart of hobos. 

My life is chaos. And not even sexy, James Dean-crashed-and-burned-and-ripped-his-leather-jacket chaos. Just sad-everything-is-covered-in-cat hair chaos.

So, I haven't written anything here for ages because I've been busy not cleaning my apartment and not writing my thesis. In fact, I have been so busy not doing anything that I think I have a stress-induced ulcer. My apartment is covered in crap: old coffee cups, tissues, milk cartons, candy wrappers and cat hair. My current theory is that this is all some sort of Agatha Christie-like conspiracy. Like "Murder on the Orient Express", when everyone stabbed the victim once, but instead of stabbing, all of my friends have broken into my apartment and littered. So passive aggressive murder, basically.

But I'm gonna write something soon. Something hilarious. Something that will bring you to tears and make you question everything you've even believed in. Something that will restore your faith in humanity.

It's probably gonna be about donuts, I haven't decided yet.

Too young to die, to old to play Pokemon. You just can't win, can you?

Lately, I've been thinking a lot about death (Yes, it is going to be one of those posts. I truly am a bringer of joy to the internet), especially dying of cancer. Being the daughter of two doctors, I have always experienced the more gruesome side of medicine: when other children were told that babies are made when a unicorn blinks at a sunrise or whatever kids get to hear these days, I was told that I had been pushed through my poor mother's vagina, and if I wasn't careful, I would have to push the equivalent of a watermelon out of my vagina one day. No unicorns. Just vaginas. While other kids lived oblivious of things like incest, my parents told me that marrying my cousin would lead to me giving birth to dragons. Which was really the worst thing you can tell a kid - I ran to my cousin and told him this story, and we decided it was the coolest thing ever and that we should totally go through with the marriage. Man, we could have been  like Targaryens. And, to get to my point, while other kids were told that their grandfather passed away because he was tired, my dad showed me pictures of a cancer-ridden lung and yelled "IF YOU SMOKE YOU WILL ROT FROM THE INSIDE OUT". Needless to say, I am now and have always been frightened of cancer, beyond any other fears.

Now, when I have reached adulthood, I try to stay away from the obvious types of behavior that can elevate the risk of cancer: I try not to smoke too much, I try to restrict my bacon-intake to 5 days a week and I only sniff asbest at parties. The problem is, it seems to me like there is nothing you can't get cancer from nowadays: smoking, passive smoking, drinking, not drinking, not giving birth, eating meat, using makeup, eating sugar, not eating fibres, eating too much fibres, living in the city, not exercising, not drinking coffee, drinking too much coffee and so on.

Here is my list of things that probably also gives you cancer:

1. Hugging little children
2. Breathing on a regular basis
3. Staring for too long at a smoker
4. Enjoying life a little too much
5. Not helping old ladies cross the street
6. Laughing at jokes about WWII
7. Leaving the toilet seat up
8. Yelling at your TV
9. Under-tipping
10. Posting stupid lists about cancer in a blog which no one reads

My conclusion is that if I try to avoid all the things that might give me cancer, I would have to go Amish. I mean, is a life without whisky, bacon, getting restraining orders against my personal trainer and wearing lipstick to bed really worth living? I have been too cautious for too long (My bucket list consists of one paragraph: dying of old age. That's what.), and spending my entire life worrying that something might happen to me will do me nothing but harm - so from now on, I'll ignore all the cancer warnings and just go with what feels natural. If natural means eating an entire cake in one sitting, using snuff and drinking whisky in front of the TV and being a little bit too curious about trying opium (19th century drug addiction is just too retro to avoid).

Yes, this feels like a wise choice. What could possibly go wrong?

The five levels of badboyhood

The phenomena of women loving badboys is a well known one; why be with a man who will treat you well, hug you when you are crying and tell you that you are beautiful when you can be with a guy who forgets your birthday and hits on your mom? Characters like Edward Cullen, Christian Grey, Mr Rochester, Chuck Bass and other well shaped bastards are the dream men for many girls and boys all over the world (I for one prefer Hemingway, Han Solo, Sherlock, Don Draper, Dylan Moran and Tom Waits, mostly because I seem to have a thing for men trying to drink and smoke themselves to death. It seems to be a reliable character trait), and people seem to tolerate all kinds of crap from their boyfriends: "Well, he did cheat on me with my pet rabbit, but he did it wearing a foxy leather jacket, so it's all right!". The phenomena doesn't seem to apply to women; if a women would act like the typical badboy, people would just call her a bitch and burn her. Or is that witches? I don't know anymore. A lot of people would criticize me for generalizing like this, but generalizing is one of my finer character traits, so I'm just going to go with it: no woman or man can resist a well shaped badboy. Looks is a necessity; you will never see a badboy being 100 pounds overweight and living in his mother's basement - people accept all kind of crap from beautiful people. Yet many boys today seem to claim that they are gangsta or badboys without actually being bad in any way, and other boys are so terrible and depraved that they are soaring into Charlie Sheen-territory.

Therefore, here are the five levels of badboyhood:

Level 1: The young poser badboy
What he claims he is: "I'm gangsta, I commited tamagoochi-genocide at the tender age of 8"
What he actually is: A 15-year-old boy trying to impress his friends and promote his self produced rap songs  "Why all girls who won't kiss me are lesbians" and "Mom won't cook for me anymore - a rapper's blues"

Level 2: The hipster badboy
What he claims he is: "I just made this tattoo of a skull making out with a Japanese school girl. It represents my mother's breast cancer. I only eat chips and I won't shower until Tibet is free."
What he actually is: A man who spent all his money on Halo 3 and can't afford to pay his bills or dress like anything other than a hobo. A sexy hobo.

Level 3:  The daredevil badboy
What he claims he is: "I like living on the edge: I eat yogurt that has expired and I bravely defy traffic lights!"
What he actually is: probably a Mormon

Level 4: The Hollywood badboy
What he claims he is: A misunderstood and tender hearted artist
What he actually is: Probably rummaging around your purse right now for coins to buy meth with. Very bad meth. AND HE WON'T SHARE IT WITH YOU. So very bad manners, basically.
What you claim: Choking on your own vomit and dying at the age of 27 IS truly the ultimate romantic gesture.

Level 5: The genocide badboy
What he claims he is: The savior of the Aryan race. He likes long walks on the beach and hates Jews and Mondays.
What he actually is: A war criminal responsible for a vast genocide.
What you claim: "I can change him: He used to kill 7000 people a day, but I just know he will go down to 2000 a day for me. Because of our deep love."

My conclusion is, unless you found a badboy who will treat you like a human being whilst also dress like a drunken Jimi Hendrix, the best thing is to ignore any men reading "The game" and trying to win your heart by spitting in your coffee and start looking for cute nerdy boys with sexy neuroses and Doctor Who-hair, because they are the guys who will hug you when you are crying for four hours because all the good people in Downton Abbey are dying. If that isn't love, I don't know what is.

"A New Year: Big fucking whoop" and other optimistic musings

I've never seen the point of celebrating New Years; I love the chance to get wasted and fire off explosives into the faces of small children as much as the next person, but celebrating the fact that another cycle in our method of measuring time has begun is as much fun as doing your taxes. If doing your taxes ends with your lying in a puddle of your own vomit. So doing taxes, basically. Yet every New Years eve I dress up in something shiny, buy the bastard child of champagne and mountain dew and run around yelling "Happy New Years!", mostly because people won't talk to me when I yell "Happy new step towards our impending death-day!". The thought of becoming a hermit is becoming more and more appealing. This is what happens when you are so bored that you try to reenact all scenes from Der Üntergang using only your cats and a homemade bunker made out of a laundry basket. I might have a problem.

However, this New Year's Eve made me think: why are we so obsessed with rebirth? Every single New Year, we promise ourselves to work out more, eat more vegetables, breathe less, get promoted - and yet every year, we get disappointed. I mean, what are the chances that I, a whisky-drinking, exercise-resenting, marzipan-binging history-geek, will just wake up January 1st 2013 and feel inclined to start eating beets and paying machines to violate me at the gym? Why not make New Year's resolutions that we actually might fulfill, such as "I promise to breathe on a regular basis" or "I promise to keep a strict diet consisting mainly of quesadillas and cinnamon buns", or "I promise to start hiding bodies in less noticeable places" if you're a serial killer. I don't want to exclude anyone.

Basically, what I want to say is that celebrating a new year is merely celebrating the fact that we are one more step closer to death, and one step away from everything wonderful; wonderful things like Victorian corsets, the roaring 20's, Clark Gable, French artists sipping absinthe in cafés, happy prostitutes and sexy dandies with less-sexy syphilis.

Hang on, Sherlock season 3 is due December 2013. Ignore this entire post, there is hope for the future! HAPPY NEW YEAR, SIMPLE MINIONS!