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!

Something is missing

I just received my Iphone 5, and there is absolutely no new feature spawning unicorn vomit. Also, when I said my boyfriend's name to Siri, she asked me "Do you mean death?". She's like a deaf tarot dealer. I feel betrayed.

In other news, I'm hung over like never before. Who would've thought that drinking half a bottle of whisky on an empty stomach could go wrong? I did not see that one coming. I started the evening drinking classy drinks, yet I ended up in the bathroom chanting "I never want to drink again" like a drunken hobo mantra. Thankfully I am a very responsible person; I remembered to cut my hair short before the party so I wouldn't get vomit in my hair. However, I have realized that, similar to five stages of grief, I experience the five stages of drunkenness: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.

Stage 1: Denial
"WHAT? I'm not drunk, I'm perfectly sober! The fact that I jumped up on the table singing musical hits from my own imaginary Victorian hip hop-band (with hits like "Shake your angelmaker" and "Smack dat ankle" is just my way of expressing my inner artist!"

Stage 2: Anger
"NO, I don't want a friggin virgin strawberry daquiri! And when we're at it, why are non alcoholic drinks called virgin drinks? I for one prefer my drinks not having had much sexual experience, but I'm kind of a prude that way. On another note, SHUT YOUR STUPID MOUTH!"

Stage 3: Bargaining
"OK, I'll just have this drink, and then I will quit drinking for tonight. So... do you have any opium on you?"

Stage 4: Depression
"They took away my whisky. They. took. away. my. whisky. Don Draper would never stand for this bullshit. Can I please get a pair of boobs to motorboat? It will easy the ache in my soul."

Stage 5: Acceptance
Accepting the fact that your boyfriend has to carry you home because you have decided to make snow angels in your friend's shower whilst yelling "DON'T RUIN MY VISION, I'M TRYING TO EXPRESS MYSELF".

Yeah, I might have a problem.

If one could overdose on self pity, I would be on a Jimi-Hendrix-choking-on-own-vomit-level by now

I'm on my 11th consecutive sick-day, and I'm losing it completely. Purely by coincidence, by boyfriend left me to spend time with his busty hooker because I consist largely of snot and self pity. He told me he was going to visit his parents, but I read between the lines. For the past 10 days, I have done nothing but sneeze, blow my nose, yell at my cats for not giving me more sympathy and watch tv. And man, have I watched tv. I've planned my entire day around Real Housewives of New Jersey's menopause striptease tea parties, I didn't know I was pregnant until 2 years after I gave birth, American Gipsy Cupcake weddings and divorces and Gordon Ramsay telling small children making mudcakes to go fuck themselves. I have quite high fever, so all of that might not have happened. However, it made me think: Why do people watch this crap? And more importantly, why do I watch this crap? Why is there something so enticing with Honey Boo Boo, Mob Wives, Toddlers and Tiaras and Coupon crazy people? In the good old days, people entertained themselves with real, proper freaks: conjoined twins, bearded ladies, snakemen and so forth: nowadays we only have chainsmoking pregnant teenagers, housewives with botoxed livers and mormon families with housing problems. The tv shows are just getting more and more ridiculous, and the lengths people are willing to go to are seriously terrifying - yet I cannot avert my gaze from the trainwreck that is TLC. What is the most frightening is the thought of the impending future: if this is what tv shows contain these days, what will people be watching in ten years.

Ten tv shows I predict will show up in the near future:

1. You are what your husband eats - a repressed woman's dieting show
2. Mormon Bachelor - 100 contestants fight for the chance to be one of the 10 wives of hot mormon bachelor
3. How I met your motherland - Kim Jong Un tells small children about the glory of North Korea
4. Top Chef Zimbabwe - Ten famous chefs try to do the best dish possible with only half a scoop of rice
5. Women can do it all - A show about strong women who manage to take care of two kids and a home whilst simultaneously managing a crack factory
6.  Baywatch Coastguard - Four beautiful women work to secure US borders from swimming mexican families who just want to have a decent life
7. War and the City - Men in their 40's starting wars with whoever they want, no feelings or strings attached
8. Genocide Wives - We follow the wives of men convicted of genocide through every day routines such as grocery shopping, partying and hiding secret files documenting the extinction of millions of people
9. People Hoarders - a show that visits serial killers with a serious lack of  organizing skills
10. Siamese twins in Tiaras

Scratch the last one, TLC is apparently already launching a show about conjoined twins. I feel like I am entitled to royalties. However, TLC and other terrible TV channels still fill one function: Looking at reality shows about chainsmoking pregnant ladies makes my breakfast consisting of 6 cinnamon buns, 4 cups of coffee with a touch of caramel liqeur and some icecream looks healthy by comparison. Aristotle once spoke about the golden mean of moderation, that the perfect virtue was the one between two extremes: generosity is the mean between profligacy and scantiness, courage is the mean between cowardice and arrogance etc.
Thus, thanks to TLC's depraved life forms and the teachings of my homeboy Aristotle, I will henceforth view my diet as the mean between antioxidants and heroin.

I feel good about this.

Yes, it's another list. A list that smells heavily of cheap whisky.

I recently took some blood tests to check my vitals, and was pleasantly surprised when I found out that not only was I pretty much healthy, but my liver was also perfectly fine. To most people, that wouldn't come as a surprise, but living in a city mostly inhabited by university students and having a fondness of whisky and Tom Waitsy alcoholism (I have a thermos filled with absinthe. That's what.)  made me expect the worst. However, when I found out I was absolutely fine, I sat down and wondered about what aspects of life are enhanced with alcohol, and what aspects of life are just made worse by inebriation - there are always red flags around the act of drinking more than one glass of wine at home, but drinking until you vomit at parties is socially acceptable; is that really a sensible approach to alcohol? So, I present to you my list of things you should do drunk and things you shouldn't do drunk.

THINGS YOU SHOULD DO DRUNK:
- Do your grocery shopping drunk. You make an every day dull task interesting, and the worst thing you can do by accident/ lack of judgement is to buy way too much garlic.
- Go to the gym drunk. Anyone who has been drunk know that when drinking, you are fucking invincible - run 5 miles just to tell your friend you love him/her and to borrow a fiver? Absolutely! Have a fist fight with a mugger cleverly disguised as a fire hydrant? Check! Do any number of pushups for a free burger at 4 a.m? Oh yes!
- Read classic literature drunk. Because even Dostoevsky becomes slapstick comedy after half a bottle of vodka.

THINGS YOU SHOULDN'T DO DRUNK:

- Don't write your exams drunk. I drank whisky to calm my nerves before an important exam once, and then I spent 15 minutes rewriting my name on the top of the exam sheet because I felt that the vowels looked like they were judging me.
- Don't shop for clothing when you're drunk. When inebriated, you will believe that anything, and I mean ANYTHING, will suit you perfectly, until you wake up sober and realize you just bought 2000 dollars worth of Crocs and a pink onesie with "SUPAHSTAR" written on the butt in rhinestones. My biggest drunk-shopping-mistake is Amazon and other internet-based stores; you can order for hundreds of dollars in just a few seconds without even the safety mechanism of a judgmental store assistant to hinder you from buying things you don't need or cannot afford. One perk however is ordering things you actually want when very drunk, and then receiving the packages in the mail. It's like Christmas. A very, very sad Christmas where you buy yourselves all the presents and then pretend that they are from someone else.
- You shouldn't do lists drunk, because you never come up with anything funny by the end of it, and instead think of things like "Are genocides setting unrealistically high standards for serial killers?" and inventing your own superhero such as "COWMAN - HE HAS FOUR STOMACHS IN ORDER TO DIGEST INJUSTICE!".



It's the circle of life. If life was directed by Charlie Sheen.

God is dead but my hair is perfect

I'm not sure what caused me to cease to believe, but at the age of 8, I became an atheist. My father, a devout christian, had urged me to pray twice times a day since I could talk, and one day I just woke up and didn't see the logic in believing in something which existence there was no scientific evidence in support of. And this came from the girl who the very same year ate three snails on a dare. It should also be mentioned that I didn't stop believing in Santa Claus until I was ten. You know, he at least brought me gift - that's a deity I could believe in. However, the very day I stopped believing in God, I discovered my own and my family's mortality, so that was a bummer. The years went on and I became a very angry Richard Dawkins/Marilyn Manson-loving teenager who loved to bash any Christian person I could get my hands on, until I met a friend who believed in God and still was one of the smartest people I had ever met - a person who made me realize that I had been trying to convert religious people to atheism more than they had tried to convert me. Since then, I am still a firm believer in the non-existence of any form of deity, but I have realized that religion is just a way of coping with death and questions regarding the meaning of life, and if it helps some people, religion could actually have a place in a society without being that fundamentalist cult I have always perceived it as. I for one know that I would love to believe in an afterlife in order not to be so afraid of death, but I just can't believe, and I have seen too much of the horrible effects of organized religion to be able to stand religion in anything but on an individual level, and sometimes not even that. However, atheists aren't always much better: atheist like to be the voice of science and rationality, but some of them, including teenage me, are just condescending assholes.

So, here's the pros and cons of being an atheist according to me.

PROS:
- No harsh moral constraints or rules; you can have awesome gay divorce-whiskey-evolution-abortion-picnics and no one will judge you. OK, a little. I'm judging you already.
- You feel in control of your life by defining your own set of moral values and purpose in life. The meaning of life? Eating onion rings and watching 30 Rock? All right then!
- You get to respond to your Christian friend yelling from the bathroom that the toilet paper is out by screaming "WHERE'S YOUR GOD NOW?!"
- You share a trait with Stephen Fry. Nuff said.

CONS:
- The lack of an afterlife. For atheists, I believe death is even more terrifying than for believers, because our entire belief-system is based on the belief that there is no such thing as heaven or hell, and that all that awaits us after death is soil and silence. Atheist death consoling is really the worst: "Don't cry, I'm sure he's rotting away peacefully in his coffin! He'll always be present in your life, in the form of that unpaid student loan! Please stop crying, it'll be your turn soon to enter the eternal darkness!".
- The lack of cool religious rituals and decadence. Come on, Pope Borgia's orgies wouldn't be half as indulgent if he didn't justify it by referring to the protection of an all-mighty deity. Catholicism has done a lot of terrible things, but man, the bling and the shame-sex is to die for.
- Free will. Because sometimes it would be great to have a God who could decide all the trivial things - not whom I should marry or what I can or can't do with my body, but things like deciding what laundry detergent to buy or if I really should eat that sixteenth cookie.

 I have met many Christians who refuse to interpret the bible literally and instead propose a religion based on actual love and understanding, and I have met atheists who quote Richard Dawkins as their bible - fundamentalists exist everywhere, no matter what religion or anti-religion. In the end, it's really all about what moral rules you let guide your life - your own, or guidance from a two thousand year old book (or in the Dawkins-case, a six year old book)? We all have that moral voice of conscience, the question is just whether it is your own voice or someone else's. My problem is that my conscience mostly consists of a urine-drenched hobo rummaging around my brain yelling "WHERE ARE MY FECKING MOZZARELLA STICKS??". But you know, you can't have it all.

The Quirky Girl Scale

I've always been a geeky person. Not in that hot supposedly-geeky-but-has-no-knowledge-of-the-game girl "Oh, I love Zelda, he's so hot I'm going to lick my xbox control" way, but in a "Why would I need friends? I have 142 Pokemon! Please don't leave me" way: I spent my childhood collecting dolls, making up very odd scenarios between them (I actually had a doll wedding which ended up in divorce. Twice.) and writing stories about deep, meaningful literary themes such as "Mora, the candy queen" and "Princess Rose spends entire day describing different types of mythological nymphs". As I aged, I developed a lot of new interests, but kept a few - such as my fondness for Pokemon. During Elementary School, my nerdy interests suddenly turned to popularity - I had breasts and a level 100 Espeon, and I'm still not sure which of them made me attractive in the eyes of teenage boys. However, as other girls also developed breasts and more appropriate interests such as giggling and breathing on a daily basis, I was lost. Luckily I found a boyfriend who actually encouraged my somewhat childish interests (mostly because he loves My Little Pony and thus didn't really have any moral leverage), but it made me think - what is the appropriate amount of Quirkiness for a girl? Where is the line drawn between loving an 80's videogame and collecting cats dressed as The Simpsons characters? I seem to use that line like a skipping rope: I get points for playing and loving Mass Effect and knowing a little too much about World War II, but it was frowned upon when I told a friend I wanted to buy another Pokemon Onesie (I already have a Pikachu, but definitely need a Snorlax), and he specifically asked me not to. I said oppression, he said all my friends would leave me.  I for one viewed this as a feminist crusade: no woman should ever be denied the fundamental right to get drunk and purchase Japanese fleece costumes on ebay! Or maybe it was the right to vote. Potato, Potato.

My point with this post is to investigate what level of quirkiness is viewed as acceptable and interesting in a girl - where is the line drawn between quirkiness and weirdness?

Knowing all the characters in Mass Effect, Metal Gear Solid and Dragon Age: QUIRKY
Writing quite intense turian-on-human fan-fiction about Garrus and FemShep: WEIRD

Having a Pikachu bag which is specifically made for 10-year-olds ironically: QUIRKY
Spending half an hour describing to random person in club why evolving your Pikachu to a Raichu is mere treachery to the character: WEIRD

Being able to recite every important battle in WWII and how it affected the outcome of the war without hesitating: QUIRKY
Exclaiming "WOW, I know Hitler was a dick, but he loved the exact same pastries as I do! Do you think pastry is a gateway drug to genocide?": WEIRD

Having that sort of odd and random sense of humour a la Zoey Deschanel that mesmererizes men : QUIRKY
Constantly joking about dwarves, genocide and impending alcoholism: WEIRD

Taking good care of your cat, whom you have named Mr Whiskers: QUIRKY
Getting angry at your cat Nietzsche for contracting cat chlamydia instead of cat syphilis BECAUSE IT IS JUST NOT FUCKING HISTORICALLY CORRECT: WEIRD

Conclusion: Weird is awesome and quirky is terrible - I won't let society dictate what I can or can't do because some men would find it weird and not quirky or feminine: I have standards and class. Now excuse me, I have a giant fleece Pokemon costume from Japan that might originally be intended for furries to order.