Things That Suck (vol. I?)

I've noticed I've been really negative lately because a lot of negative things are happening in my life at the moment, so why not make it official and put it on ye olde blog.

1. cars

I'll do my best to make this brief, since fully detailing the history of my car's suckiness would take 26 paragraphs. I have a 2000 Saturn wagon. When I bought it in 2008, it had just under 60,000 miles on it and was in top condition. Since then, I shudder to realize I've spent somewhere in the neighborhood of $3000 on repairs.

My car hates me. And it's just me. On three separate occasions at two different mechanics, the car has been operating perfectly after being worked on for hours, the bills paid and the keys handed over to me, only to shut off spontaneously within a few miles of the garage. When taken back to the mechanics, the car behaves like a saint. They can't find a trace of the shenanigans that caused me to break down in the middle of traffic.

I'm currently suffering from the latest spate of this behavior. After two weeks at the mechanics (he was shorthanded and really busy, but I mean still, come on) and a number of parts replaced, I still have service lights illuminated on my dashboard and the spontaneous-shutting-off syndrome. All of this just reinforces my desperation to move to Europe where vehicle-free living is perfectly possible.

2. Apple

image from http://www.allaboutapple.com/museo/appleii.htm

For a company that was started to make computers for mentally handicapped people, they sure make it pretty hard to get in contact with them.

I'm having problems with my ipod (first and not last evidence of this anecdote that Apple is lame) so I set up an appointment on the Apple website at the salt lake store to meet with a "genius" (their label not mine). It soon became clear that my car would prohibit me from going to my appointment, so I looked up the number of the Salt Lake store to cancel.

Instead of connecting me with a store associate, it connected me to an automated computer system, but not before playing a lengthy greeting listing what Apple products my loved ones would most enjoy this holiday season.

Once I got to the numbered menu, none of the choices even vaguely resembled "talk to a store associate, " so I went with option 5 for "other miscellaneous questions." After letting the phone ring about 286 times, I realized that Apple was never going to let me talk to a store associate, or even a real person for that matter. The Salt Lake Apple store probably doesn't even have a phone in their building; the listing that I found for them is most likely a flimsy facade to temporarily pacify people like me who are trying to honor common courtesy by saving some harried Apple employee a little time during the holiday season. Sorry for trying to be polite.

3. eating- No matter how many times I do it, I always just get hungry again a few hours later. Greedy stomach.

4. working out- No matter how many times I do it, my abs refuse to resemble a washboard. Greedy stomach muscles.

Questions I Am Tired of Being Asked: 4th ed. How did you start playing the harp?

This is not an interesting story people, but I suppose I get asked so often because the harp is a less common instrument. I mean, I don't think I've ever asked anyone how they started playing the piano. That could just be because I'm incredibly self-centered though.

Hey it's me! OR it's a picture of a stranger I took from a stock photo website. We'll never know.

See that woman on the left side of the picture my mom failed to include in the photo? That's my harp teacher, and my mom met her at a wedding reception she was playing at. When she took a break, my mom started chatting with her and asked if she gave lessons and if I could come try it out. I had never expressed any actual interest in picking up the harp, but that didn't stop my mom from setting up my first lesson, and the rest is history. She wanted a child who played the harp, and I had no objection to learning. I mean, why wouldn't you want to play the harp?

Ok, THAT one's definitely me. I was 17 and still had that ugly mole that I later got remo... um, wait! No, this a stock photo too!

At the same time, I never applied myself as hard as I could during those high school years of weekly lessons due to my crippling laziness. I enjoyed playing the harp very much and still do, but I was definitely more excited about getting my driver's license than becoming accomplished at a beautiful and unique instrument. Typical teenage ingrate. If I ever have kids, I'm shipping them off to an isolated farm during their teenage years.

Questions I Am Tired of Being Asked: 3rd ed. What ethnicity are you?

Or any other variation of that question. (Hint: I'm white.)

I wouldn't be tired of hearing this question if people didn't ask it so awkwardly. I think they are worried they'll offend me or be politically incorrect if they straight up ask me what race or ethnicity I am. Instead, people come up with really roundabout ways of asking me this, i.e.

Why are you so exotic looking?

Your eyes look so Asian!

What is your genealogical background/ancestry/gene pool/etc...

(Side note: Is it un-P.C. to directly ask someone what race/ethnicity they are? I would not be offended, but one girl I worked with years ago who was half black got really mad at me when I commented that I couldn't tell what ethnicity a certain customer was. Oh, and then she wouldn't tell me why she was mad, so I remain puzzled.)

Egyptian has been a common guess, along with Asian, but I'm about 99% Caucasian. Exciting, no? I do have a Native American greatgreatgreatgreat (more greats?) grandmother on my Father's side, as do many Caucasian Americans. Her name was Running Deer and she was Mohawk.

an authentic depiction of my Grandma and Grandpa on their first date

However, I have a hard time believing whatever exotic qualities people see in me can be attributed to that tiny fraction of my genetics, so the original question goes unanswered. We can speculate that my mom fooled around with the postman, but he was white too so I don't know where that leaves us.

Questions I Am Tired of Being Asked: 2nd ed. So if you don't eat meat, like, what do you eat?

No I am not kidding. Apparently some people really eat THAT much meat that they would starve if they couldn't eat it anymore.

The problem is that whenever I am asked this, I never know what to answer because I barely have to think about it in day to day life- I am never struggling to think of things to eat.

Some of my favorite foods:

-any kind of fresh fruit

-peanut butter

-Kefir (basically just a yogurt drink that's really good for digestion)

-cereal and the entire rest of the carb world

-lots of different kinds of soup

-Mexican food

-Indian food

-Italian food

-Chinese/Japanese/Thai/Korean food

-Middle Eastern food

Let's not forget about all the meat substitute products available in all supermarkets these days. I can still have burgers, chicken nuggets, ground beef, and corn dogs. I have more recipes saved up that I want to try than I will ever have time for. And the size 10 dresses and pants in my closet testify that I'm not about to starve anytime soon. It is so easy to eat vegetarian and it disappoints me when this has to be explained to others.

Thrifty Makeup Secrets

I am by no means a professional makeup artist or even makeup junkie, but when I do bother to put on makeup, people often ask me if I'm wearing fake eyelashes or where I get my eyeshadow from. The answers to those questions are, respectively, no and Coastal Scents. I'll come back to the mascara part in a second, but coastal scents is for girls (and boys. I don't hate. but guyliner is still dumb.) like me who lust after MAC products but not MAC prices. I have this 78-color palette that I bought for about $20 but they have lots of variations if you want more or fewer colors in your palette or ones with shimmer, etc.

I've tried so many eyeshadows, and this one definitely bests them for how long they last and how intense the color is. Can I reiterate how freaking good a deal this is? $20 for this quality and quantity of eyeshadow? Steal of a lifetime.

As for the mascara, I am addicted to huge black exaggerated eyelashes, but the one time I tried on false lashes, it just weighed my eyelids down and made my eyes all squinty. Not hot. So I've done my research, kissed a lot of frogs, read a lot of online customer reviews, and my favorite mascaras are L'oreal Lash Architect (sadly, not manufactured anymore so it has to be bought online. Try ebay.) and L'oreal Double Extend- available in most any grocery or drug store.

I highly recommend getting the waterproof version. It's just better. No, I don't know why. It's slightly more expensive than a few other drugstore variety mascaras (like $10 or so if I'm remembering correctly, but I get coupons in the mail for l'oreal all the time) , but you get what you pay for. Remember, you're getting a mascara AND a primer, and the primer really does make all the difference in the world. I just do the primer and then two coats of the actual mascara and I'm all set. It's really not clumpy but I do keep a hi-tech safety pin around when I put mascara on so that I can separate my lashes as needed. It works a lot better than those dumb eyelash combs.

WARNING: Be so so so SO careful if you put a pin anywhere near your eyeball. Always keep the pin pointing straight up and down and never horizontal toward your eye to minimize chances of poking. I've poked my eye a couple times when I wasn't being careful and it's not fun. Luckily it didn't do permanent damage but my eye freaking HURT for like a half hour.

DISCLAIMER: This is not a paid endorsement, I'm just spreading the gospel of cheap but worthwhile makeup for those of us not interested in spending $14 on one eyeshadow.

Social ineptitude around celebrities, 1st ed: David Macklovitch

The singer of the wonderful duo Chromeo. I've blogged...no, written. I hate when people use blog as a verb. Or a noun. It's a stupid word. I've written about my love for him previously so go back and read that if you don't know who he is. He's not paparazzi/tabloid famous, but that didn't stop me from acting special ed when I met him a few weeks ago.

It was at the W Lounge in Salt Lake, where Chromeo was doing a DJ set/after party after opening for Big Boi at the Twilight free concert series (no relation to the vampire books).

I spent about a half hour trying to get up the courage to go talk to him, which is saying something considering the amount of liquid courage I had in me at that point. They finished DJ-ing and he was just hanging out in the club, talking to fans here and there like a totally normal person and not the god that he is. Remmington finally pushed me off the dancing stage and toward him as he was starting to migrate toward the exit. My suave and clearly infallible plan was to speak French to him since he is a phD candidate in French lit at Columbia, so that would surely set me apart from the rest of the adoring fans there that night as special, intelligent, intriguing, etc, inducing him to want to get to know me and eventually, marry me. Brilliant plan, right?

What actually happened is that when I got within five feet of him and he graciously stopped so that I could say hi to him, I conveniently forgot how to speak ANY language, let alone French. So I stood there for an undetermined period, gawking at him while I tried frantically to make my brain and my mouth communicate with one another, and he quizzically looked at Remmington standing behind me, who just shrugged and shook his head.

Finally I squawked out a "hi!" and stepped a little closer so I could mumble some probably grammatically incompetent French sentence about how great I think he is. He was wonderful, laughed politely and let me say a couple more sentences in French about how I wish I went to Columbia (huh??), blah blah blah, est-ce que je peux prendre un photo avec toi? THANK GOD FOR REMMINGTON'S IPHONE, because I did not have my camera on me.

Remmington and my other friend there, Ryan, both made fun of me for about a week after the incident because apparently I couldn't stop grinning like a moron or re-hashing it for a couple hours after it happened. Did he really have his arm around me? Did I look cute? I hope my French accent wasn't too terrible. How long did I really stand there awkwardly before I said anything? Wait, let me look at the picture again, are you sure I didn't have my sunglasses on? And so on... Needless to say he hasn't proposed to me yet, but I'll keep you updated.

Questions I Am Tired of Being Asked: 1st ed. Why are you a vegetarian?

As the title suggests, this will be the first in a series of blog posts. Today's edition is the inaugural post for a reason: it is the question I am MOST tired of being asked. It is a sad sign of today's American society that so many people cannot fathom on their own why anyone would choose to abstain from meat and thus feel the need to ask me, apparently the first vegetarian they have ever encountered, why? Dear God, why?!

My story begins in the tenth grade. I was 15 years old, in honors biology class, and we were in the middle of the fetal pig dissection unit. Rotting, putrid baby piglet carcasses stored in formaldehyde, with morsels of their decaying insides occasionally migrating up through their digestive tracks to other parts of the body, which I then had to clean out. Appetizing, no? NO.

After several days of this, I remember sitting down to lunch in the cafeteria with my friends, beginning to eat the lunch meat-turkey sandwich my mom had packed for me. As I chewed the cold, moist meat in my mouth and thought about its texture, I was strongly reminded of those rotting, brownish green specks of who knows what that I had to clean off the pig's tongue, and of the brown/gray-tinged layer of fat and tissue lining the inside of the pig's skin, aka the part where meat comes from. It didn't help that I could ALWAYS smell formaldehyde on my hands no matter how long I washed them during the two to three week fetal pig unit.

Trying to eat my turkey sandwich that day triggered my gag reflex and I had to stop eating for fear of throwing up. I had no appetite or interest for meat from that moment on, and I remember thinking in my 15 year old brain, what if I became a vegetarian? Why not? I can just see how it goes, it doesn't sound that hard. The thing I was most scared of was not being able to eat Taco Bell mexican pizzas anymore, which is not all that heavy of a cross to bear when you think about it. I would later find out that Taco Bell employees everywhere are happy to make me my beloved mexican pizzas without the beef. They're just as good, and I've never once looked back.

Reinforcing my vegetarian choices was the Persuasive Paper I wrote the following year in my 11th grade English class on treating animals more humanely. I read heartbreaking stories about the mistreatment of circus elephants and baby bears and the insensitivity cows in the beef industry undergo. I even touched on research about how much more detrimental to the environment the beef industry is than the transportation industry; a topic that has been thoroughly canvassed in today's media but was only just starting to grab attention in 2002.

This November, I will have been a vegetarian for nine years, and my motivations are largely the same as when I was 15.

1. Inhumanity: animals in the food production industry are often killed inhumanely and kept in unsanitary and cruel conditions while they wait to be slaughtered.

2. Environment: the amount of oil needed to run the beef industry is shameful, as is the degradation to our world's farmlands. Furthermore, the inordinate number of cows that are bred for the food industry are destroying the ozone layer with all the methane gas they emit. (i.e. if people ate less red meat and milk, cattle operations would keep fewer cows around and greenhouse gas levels would decrease)

3. Health: The current average American's consumption of meat (especially red) is gluttonous, unnatural, and unnecessary, even harmful to human health.

4. Unsustainability: The oceans are rapidly being depleted of marine wildlife because of the demand for sushi and other seafood. I love sushi, but I want fishies to still be around in 100 years so I get mine with just veggies (it's still scrumptious).

5. Frugality: Not actually a motivation, just a nice benefit- food without meat is pretty much always cheaper than chicken, beef, pork, seafood, etc. so I'm saving on my food costs in the grocery store and when I eat out.

Do I miss meat? Most people I talk to think they would miss meat too much to stick with being vegetarian, and maybe they would. I don't though, ever. I'm notoriously lazy and unregimented, so if being a vegetarian was hard, believe me I would not be one. I used to miss corndogs of all things, but they make meat-substitute versions of those now (they're not bad!), plus it's been long enough that I stopped missing them several years ago. And no need to tease me about the corndog thing, I realize it's the equivalent of saying I gave up TV and all I really miss watching is vH1.