Shame Spiral Monday

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Shame Spiral
An emotional condition commonly experienced during the recovery period following extreme intoxication. The shame spiral consists of continued, connected thoughts and emotions of lack of self-worth, shame, regret, embarrassment and commitments to refuse to intoxicate oneself ever again. – The Urban Dictionary 

To experience the perfect Shame Spiral, it’s important that you start at a high point.  The success of your spiral is measured by the magnitude of your impact at the bottom.  The impressiveness of your impact is determined by the height from which you fall.

I would suggest leaving for Vegas on a Friday after work.  After a week of drudgery and a seven hour slog through desert traffic, the sight of the strip peeking over the horizon and then engulfing your car is a thrill, no matter how many times you’ve made this mistake before.  Elevate yourself further by listening to pump up hip-hop jams and enjoying a roadie as you enter the city.  So far you have only spent enough money to pay for your share of a tank of gas split four ways, you are wearing clean clothes, and you are still certain of the whereabouts of your possessions and your pride.  You are on top of the world; you are perched atop your spiral, gazing up at the lights.

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Ode to My Favorite Gym Boyfriends

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O MMA Fighter Guy!

I know you are an MMA Fighter Guy because you are wearing one of those bulky hats with a perfectly flat brim, rotated just slightly to the right.  You are often barefoot or in socks, despite the urging of several signs in your immediate vicinity.  I swoon knowing that this rebellious, devil-may-care attitude will mean the certain annihilation of your opponent in the MMA Fighter Guy Championship Match for which you are surely preparing. 

Most gym rats make methodic sex noises whilst they lift; three grunts of exertion with the heaviest weight and then…done.  BORRRING!  You, MMA Fighter Guy, make karate chop sounds and jump erratically in a circle around the cable machine, yanking that handle toward the floor like you’re laying the smack down – each rep a titillating hi-YAH!  I can only assume, nay, fantasize, that being in the throes of passion with you would be like making sweet love to a character from Mortal Kombat. 

I’ve seen the TV show The Ultimate Fighter and I know that there are special gyms for MMA Fighter Guys like you.  They have cages and mat space where you can wrap your legs around other MMA Fighter Guys and perform very intimate sit-ups.  I don’t know if you can’t afford a membership at one of these establishments or if you have been banished (for a sit-up faux pas?).  Either way, your presence gives me a secret thrill, and keeps alive my hope that maybe, just maybe, you are doing very fast pushups with pronounced exhales in my neighborhood 24 Hour Fitness out of … love.

TKO...of my heart.

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Comment dit-on…dumb American?

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I was enjoying Injun Joe’s hilarious disruption of Porky Pig’s frontier adventure on an episode of Looney Tunes when my father first introduced me to the concept of stereotypes.   I was five.  From that point on, under the tyranny of my hippie parents, my life became a constant examination of the prejudice already present in my tiny world, from my favorite games (“Smear the Queer”), to my favorite terms of derision (“Retard”), to my favorite tattle-tailing verbs (“My brother just gyped me out of $20!).  I have been hypersensitive to labels and the harmful perceptions that accompany them ever since. 

Oh yes, this happened.

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FUNdraising

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The thing is Cory, you caught me on the wrong day.  I’m not a huge fan of Christmas.  And I know that statement makes you want to say “bah humbug” and lightly squeeze my shoulder in a jovial, salesy way, but please save it.  I don’t mean it like that.  I’m not anti merriment or goodwill – I like taking off work to spend time with my family and justifying my over consumption of sweets just as much as the next guy – but I hate crowds, gaudy inflatable Santas, Mariah Carrey Christmas albums that refuse to die, and our perceived obligation as a culture to buy each other shit to prove our affection. 

I was at Fashion Valley begrudgingly participating in this most trying of seasons (which, if I may uncharacteristically side with the religious right for a second, I would be perfectly happy having Jesus be the “ONLY reason for”), when you came my way.

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The Office Handbook: A Guide for the Reluctant Corporate Employee – Chapter 3

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Introduction
Chapter 1: Combating Office Awkwardness
Chapter 2: The Fundamentals of Office Real Estate

Chapter 3: Tools of Forced Social Interaction – Mastering the 15 Second Conversation
You’re leaving the office down a narrow back stairwell, but this alternative to an awkward elevator encounter doesn’t go as planned.  Suddenly, another employee comes bounding down the stairs from the floor above you and you find yourself caught in a classic piggy back stair walk.  Do you continue down at the same pace, pretending your new companion isn’t a mere two steps behind you?  Do you slow down and hope they pass, risking an awkward shoulder to shoulder, synchronized descent?  You have 15 seconds of stairs to go; what do you say?

You’ve gone into the kitchen to fill your enormous water bottle and Nick, the sales guy whose open office door you pass three times a day on the way to the bathroom (?) enters.  Or maybe it’s Rod, the dev guy you email on a weekly basis but have never formally met (?) who walks in.  You seem to be blocking the vending machine where he gets his 3:00 daily fix of Blazin Hot Cheetos and your bottle is filling painfully slow.  Nick/Rod shuffles awkwardly, you smile apologetically.  15 seconds of pouring remains; what do you say?

Fig. 3.1. - It takes less than 15 seconds to say something completely regrettable.

 

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I Might Lose You

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A rainbow sweater AND a bowl cut?! I never had a chance, Mom.

When I complain about my issues with orientation, I am usually talking about one of two things.  The first, which I have already used this blog to discuss at length, I only partially attribute to my mother, who adorned me in liberal amounts of plaid as a child.  The second is one hundred percent her fault, as my complete lack of directional aptitude is a genetic gift that like my prematurely graying hair, clearly came from her.   

My mother, bless her heart, still gets confused picking me up from the airport located twenty minutes from my childhood home.  She used to create mnemonic devices to remember how to get from downtown Hayward to places our family drove several times a year:          

“We turn on B street, Marea, because we want to BE at the cabin!  C street because we’re going to the Little Theater to SEE a play!”          

My mom once flew into Arizona and rented a car to watch me play rugby, and finding her hotel and the pitch without incident remains one of her proudest life accomplishments.  She still talks nostalgically about Phoenix’s large, well-lit signage.       

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Michael Flatley, Lucky the Leprechaun and Other Things of Questionable Irish Descent

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As a student of Urban Studies (a major I damn near completed) at UCSD, I was introduced to the concept of “tourist bubbles”: urban spaces designed to give visitors an “authentic” regional experience while keeping them comfortably separate from the yucky parts of a city that might compel them to reach less frequently into their fashionable money belts.  A vacation in a tourist bubble is like a Small World-type theme park ride; tourists are transported on a track by the city’s most impressive landmarks and dancing stereotypes of its citizens, circumventing anything that may expose the interworkings of the ride, such as poverty, urban decay or actual residents.

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My New Diet

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Shitty pop songs are like simple carbs.  You know they’re not good for you, but when you get in the habit of consuming them on a regular basis, it’s kinda hard to stop.  They’re a mindless burst of pleasure, a shot of energy to your bloodstream that often doesn’t even last the duration of the jam. Sometimes you’ve had so much that you’re no longer even enjoying them as they enter your system, but you still can’t stop shoving them in an uncontrollable manner into your mouth and ears. 

 Jason Derulo, really?  Are they STILL playing this terrible song?, you wonder, as your hand, guided by some force outside of your conscious control, reaches toward the volume like it’s the bowl of chips on the coffee table. 

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To All Organizations Playing a Role in my Overall Flight Experience:

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Rugby practice started this month and you know what that means! Soon my teammates and I will be taking bi-monthly flights on Southwest – the Greyhound of the sky!  The American equivalent of traveling in the back of a crowded truck with live chickens! – to glamorous destinations all around the country. Our sightseeing highlights will include grass fields miles from the city center and if we’re lucky, hotels boasting an hourly rate and Super Wal-Mart accessibility. We couldn’t take these fabulous vacations without you! Boy do we appreciate all you do! That said, our entire hypothetical retirement fund and mortgage does go directly into your pockets, so we’d be ever so grateful if you made a few minor changes to help make our travel experience as pleasurable as possible.

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A Debbie Downer Blog about Prop 8

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I was going to try to stay away from the topic of sexual orientation for a while so as not to alienate my hordes of straight readers, but I am sitting in a coffee shop in the San Diego gayborhood watching a happy crowd of triumphant homos, and as is the case with my gayness itself, I simply can’t help myself.  This impromptu pride parade is in celebration of today’s court decision to overturn Prop 8, a measure that reaffirmed the proper definition of marriage for these pesky California queers back in 2008.  From what I can remember, the definition goes something like, “Marriage, queers, is between a man and a woman, even if they are considerably less compatible and attractive than you and your same-sex partner. ”

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