In th'cold Novembah rain.

Well hey there, friends, foes, and otherwise.  I swear, it's like I wind up having moments where I'm suddenly reminded that I have a goddamned blog - like tripping over a pair of shoes that have been left in my path by a careless housemate or something.

We're ramping up into the holiday season which, for a goodly many people, isn't the most wonderful time of the year.  It's a season fraught with peril, whether it's having less-than-ideal relationships with family or having expectations ratcheted up so high there's no possible way you'll escape without disappointment.  There's a lot of control involved, control you CAN exert but we're all so trained to believe we have to put on our happy faces and endure all sorts of fuckery in the name of the SEASON.  The easiest and quickest thing I think you can do is to lower those expectations immediately, because nothing kicks your ass faster than having an expectation of Person A, who nine times out of ten can't meet that expectation because that is how Person A simply is.  And you know deep down that's how Person A is but you get hornswaggled and hypnotized by the SEASON and this year, maybe THIS IS THE YEAR Person A isn't going to be a disappointment.  Don't bank on it.  That magical moment is most likely never going to come and the sooner you drop those expectations to "well, Person A didn't get lit and try to carve the turkey with a corncob holder", the better you will feel and better equipped to handle the holiday hoo-hah.

MEMO

TO: Those people inclined to tell others "blood is thicker than water/but they're FAMILY/you'll regret it one day"
FROM: Jane C. Nolan
RE: Holiday events

Hello, well-meaning but terminally busybodied people!  If you feel yourself inching towards opening up your own personal Lecture Loft to instruct others how they should do whatever it takes to patch up frayed relations with assorted family members or friends, my suggestion would be to CRAM IT.  Chances are you don't know the full details as to why your target isn't on speaking terms with whomever, so it's best to take hold of the nearest spoonful of mashed potato and place it right in your yapper when you feel the urge to elucidate on the SEASON.

This would also include you opining about how people should lose weight, gain weight, wear different clothing, have children, or live their lives in a fashion you approve of.

Yours sincerely,

Jane C. Nolan
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In other fairly exciting news, I actually had something I wroted appear on a website that isn't Blogger or my own violently neglected, outdated website intellectualbabe.com!  Since I yammered about it on pretty much every social network site I'm on (the facebook, the twitters, and a couple of message boardses), it probably won't come as a surprise to you, all two of you who read this blog on any given day, but link to it I shall!

It happened to me! I made an effort!

So that was neat.
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Finally, I have to spend a paragraph or so just delighting in he who is Paul F. Tompkins - comedian, podcast host (The Pod F. Tompkast), all-around cute-as-a-button motherfucker.  He's funny, he's insightful, and I must admit one of the things I enjoy about him best is how he is always so publicly goony for his wife, actress Janie Haddad Tompkins.  More often than not, it's the married man's role to bitch about how his wife is a harpy, how she tells him what to do, how being married is a nightmare, loss of freedom blah blah blah.  (Christ knows publicly expressing affection for one's partner is SUCH a loser move.)  But I've yet to hear such cliched claptrap come out of Tompkins, and it's so refreshing to hear a guy who thinks his wife/partner is awesome instead of bitching about how she's somehow made him "less of a man" or some such shit.  He's available on Twitter under @PFTompkins, and you should follow him and delight in his delightedness.  Plus, he's on, like, every podcast under the sun on an almost weekly basis.  Which is awesome.  And you should listen.

Well, other than that, not much is going on in this neck of the woods.  There very well may be an end in sight for the immigration festival I've been on for the last eight months or so with my partnerperson, so I may very well blog about it...in 2012?  Stay tuned and find out!

My September issues.

I remember, way back in my youth that was ever so long ago, getting fired up over fall and the idea of going out and buying all sorts of cute new outfits for school. I say “idea” because, as a young chubster, buying all sorts of cute new outfits simply wasn't going to happen because they didn't actually exist. I would buy the fall issue of Seventeen magazine, big and thick and crammed with all sorts of fashion ideas and tips and tricks and ooh and ahh over the assorted ensembles on their pages, and of course not a stitch of the ensembles came in a size bigger than 12.

I would try to cobble together something that could be interpreted as being sort of hip or current, but I had two stores from which to cobble – Lane Bryant (back before they decided to make clothing for women under 60) and Sizes Unlimited (lots of basics. Lots...of basics. LOTS). I remember buying a hot pink studded belt from maybe Claire's or Contempo Casuals or maybe Express (since all I could buy were accessories if I went shopping with my thin friends), a belt that was meant to go around one's torso twice. Of course, it only got around me once with perhaps another six or seven inches available, and I spent ages tweaking it so at least I could wear a COOL BELT (it was 1985). A particularly disagreeable male classmate decided to call me out on it, of course, since what business did I, Fat Girl, have trying to look like the thin girls?

Oh, there was so much polyester in my life. So much damn polyester. It wasn't until junior year of high school came along that it seemed like clothing from a planet closer to mine began to be made for the fat chick about town, and I had settled into my “I Am Robert Smith of the Cure In Drag” phase so I could slap together lots of black and skirts and such that made me feel more like ME than someone being forced to wear god-awful shit because that was all that was available. I want to say Mode Magazine appeared around that time as well, but the internet is not helping me and at some point, there's a lot of blurring beyond a certain date, if you feel me. Reader, I'm 39. BLURRING.

Had Torrid appeared when I was 16? HOLY. SHIT. I don't know what I would have done with myself from all the joy that would have been coursing through my veins. Mind you, I'm referring to version 1.0 of Torrid, when it was Goth-esque and DARK and I WEAR BLACK ON THE OUTSIDE BECAUSE BLACK IS HOW I FEEL ON THE INSIDE awesome for suburban teens such as myself. And I'm glad that Torrid exists for fat teengirls now because Lane still just doesn't quite cut it if you're below a certain age. Well shit, Lane doesn't really cut it for me at 39, but so few clothiers do. If I do decide I must buy something, my first stop is going to be Vive La Femme in Chicago's Wicker Park neighborhood because owner Stephanie Sack is made of 100 percent pure awesome and makes shopping for clothes so festive. I always thought I was sized out of what is carried at Vive La Femme, but Stephanie is magic. I also will snarf around LucieLu.com and I have some dresses from her that are also magic. Lane gets my business for my unmentionables and jeans and that's about it because I'm sniffy and refuse to be anything other than comfortable these days. That may mean I dress like a 20-something fat skater kid, but I'm not constantly pulling or yanking or adjusting something to get it over my belly/out of my ass/up above my knees. I can't present myself in a manner which I appreciate if I'm in shoes that are making my size Tenleven gunboats hurt.

I'm looking at my closet right....NOW and there are so many items in it that I haven't worn in literally years, but it's as if I'm keeping them for a rainy day where I'll suddenly come over all I MUST DRESS UP. I just hope they'll all go with jeans.

We hate it when our friends become soft pretzels.*

I had kind of a weird revelation today when I arrived home from my gig at the Evil Empire. I was named an employee of the month at the Empire and then my boss told me she wants to present me to my co-workers as, basically, someone to emulate. All of which, on paper, seems quite good.

However, in reality, I'm utterly horrified by it. If there's anything I've learned in my 39 years of existence it's that people being successful at something is kind of annoying. Sure, if you're “mature”, you are pleased when friends or family achieve something. But tucked deep down in a corner of the small bowel is a little wretched imp that breathes, “fuck you, sailor” whenever someone does something of an achievementy nature. Okay, fine, at least in me it does, but I know you've got a wretched imp in there too DON'T LIE TO ME.

It's not that I don't want to be good at my job. I like money and I like having some sort of say in how things are run in my little corner of the Evil Empire. But I am fretful that my co-worker pals will stop seeing me as Good Time Fun Janey and begin seeing me as the goddamned pain in the ass brownnoser who is making them do things or try things they don't want to do since all any of us want to do is do our work and go home and not have someone up our collective ass about how we do our work. Instead of being part of the team and saying “yeah, yeah, they need to go fuck themselves”, I'm going to be a part of the team that is going to be the target of the “go fuck yourselves”. I want to believe that I will be helpful and perhaps teach them some new tricks...but I suspect I'll just be painted as a meddling douchetron. They're not going to be glad that a member of the team is on the inside, they're going to be pissed that I'm possibly complicating things for them or, worse, making them look bad.

That's the rub, isn't it, being jealous or irritated when someone achieves something. It's not so much about that other person, but completely about us. About how we're somehow NOT succeeding as long as someone else is. Or that it's utterly impossible for us to succeed if Fang Watermelon has gone ahead and won the trophy for Best Whatever. Never mind that we might be trying for a different trophy, say, the Best HooHahery trophy – that motherfucking Fang Watermelon's gone and TAKEN ALL THE GLORY. And sure, if you're struggling to discover what it is you want to succeed at or it feels like you haven't caught a break or you're a little low on soul coal, seeing your peers or co-workers or whatever doing well or getting attention for something...it can blow rather hard. In those moments, all we can really do is dig our heels in and take stock of what things in one's life are actually good and, if not pleased with those results, see what it is that needs to be done in order to make things good...er. I know I have people skills (despite how much they can irritate the piss out of me) and that I can help my co-workers see that I'm not the enemy or trying to make things shitty for them.

Well, if nothing else, I'll dazzle them with candy since all the Halloween displays are up and YUM FUN SIZED.

*this is what an old friend used to call Morrissey's “We Hate It When Our Friends Become Successful”

Oh shit, I have a blog.

So yeah, it's been a while (and goddammit, whenever I say that phrase I wind up with that silly-ass Staind song stuck in my head), but what can I tell you except the 29-year-old me would have kept on bloggin' about the most useless of shit while the 39-year-old me doesn't assume that anyone gives a rat's ass about what I have to say because it's okay that no one gives a rat's ass about what I have to say.

Admittedly, operating under that assumption (that is, I don't have to zip open my innards and pour everything onto the page under the guise of “entertainment” or “a writing exercise”) has resulted in my creativity going straight into the dumper. Every now and again, it scratches at me, that kind of annoyance that comes when you're getting a tattoo and it feels like someone constantly scratching at your skin for an hour, complete with ooky bleeding and seeping. At the present time, I'm “enjoying” a grand ole time at the Stress Circus thanks to having one parent who decided having a stroke the day before my boyfriend was due to arrive from overseas for a visit was a great idea and the other parent deciding to throw all coping skills to the wind. (Note: said stroke was minor and the strokee is going great guns and doing quite well, etc. etc. Copercabana...well...uh-huh.) For me, stress manifests mostly physically – my carcass decides to basically cave in on itself and provides me with aches, pains, stomach troubles, and repellent events of a bathroomy nature. I handle my stress by giving into it for a couple days and then something in my brain clicks and allows me to ignore it, but not ignore the guilt that comes with not going to work for two days, not wanting to talk to anyone, and devoting whatever energy I can summon up to get out of bed/go to work/perform my duties/come home/perform my duties/retreat to cave. There isn't much room for anything else.

Ergo, despite the fleeting ideas (I loathe the fucking phrase “plot bunnies”) caroming around my head, the thought of sitting down and giving said ideas any sort of existence is horrifying to me. Which then leads me down the Depresso Path of “well, it's not like you'd actually be able to sell it/publish it/put it on a pamphlet and pass it to people outside of street festivals”, naturally. Then the Depresso Path sort of folds in on itself in an “Inception”-style fashion and Marion Cotillard is sad and mysterious and Leonardo DiCaprio's face just gets wider and his eyeballs get narrower. Kind of like Gollum, actually.

Holy shit, speaking of Gollum, I decided to read The Hobbit for the first time since I was a kid (I think I read it when I was a kid, though maybe I just saw a cartoon of it...maybe?) and I was not prepared for it to, well, kind of suck. I shouldn't say it sucked, because it certainly moved along and was well-written and whatnot, but oof, at the end of the day it was not my bag. After reading the ever-so-serious Lord of the Rings trilogy, digesting the utter romp that is The Hobbit is a bit rough. Thinking about how in the red-hot hell they're going to make a movie out of The Hobbit that doesn't make me seek out something to punch troubles me, reader, lo how it troubles me. Not to say I won't see it, I will see the SHIT out of it. But I'm steeling myself now for something that could possibly be a steaming pile. Trust me, I'm not one of those folks who gets super-tight when a film of a book I enjoyed gets loosey-goosey with the source material (though Bennie winding up with Jack in the film version of “Circle of Friends” was a bullshit cop-out and casting 98 percent of “The House of the Spirits” with white people was an absolute LOAD plus two hours is not enough to tell such an epic story and let's not get me rolling on “Memoirs of a Geisha”), but it just seems so...money-grubby to throw in appearances by Elijah Wood and Orlando Bloom to entice Ringers into seeing The Hobbit. There has to be Hobbiters, right? And I would assume Ringers and Hobbiters all kind of dine at the same restaurant. Unless there's some sort of vocal Ringers vs. Hobbiters gang war that I'm not hip to. I wouldn't be surprised if there was, since the internet has long taught me that if there's a goodly reason to fight, by gum, we shall fight. Whether it be over politics, religion, the “Star Wars” Blu-Rays or if Orlando Bloom looks better with short hair or when his lustrous mane is in full curly magnificence.

Don't judge me, you a-holes. I'm IN A STATE RIGHT NOW.

Hot for hyperbole.

I suppose one of my character flaws is that I have very little patience for other people’s personality “quirks”.  I go from zero to off-the-charts irritated quickly when confronted with nonsense generated to gain attention or solicit friendships.  Being a borderline shut-in for most of my twenties provided me with the opportunity to spend enormous amounts of time with my head up my own ass, examining what I was about and why, and I came out the other side with one eyebrow permanently cocked Spock-style with disdain at...well, pretty much the entire universe.

As the years have marched on, our general culture has morphed into that guy that stands in the background of news reports done live and on the street who jumps up and down, waving his hands, perhaps pointing at his genitals.  People pour every single thought, feeling, and deepest secret out into the world.  Once, it was done to perhaps find fellowship with others feeling and thinking the same sort of thing and, ultimately, lead to some sort of personal epiphany.  Nowadays?  It’s less about finding fellowship and more about FML.

130,418 blog posts for the price of one.

Yeah, so it’s been a bit since I’ve felt the need to put fingers to keyboard and whip up some sort of mildly interesting or vaguely entertaining blog post.  You know, not the greatest post you’ve ever seen in the history of bloggings, but not utter shit, either.  One of those that elicits as “oh, it was fine” or “how nice” or “well, most of the words were spelled correctly.”

I was chewing recently on my relationship – it’s a long-distance relationship, like, LOOOOONG distance.  We’re not talking I live in Illinois and he lives in Wisconsin, oh no, this is a distance that requires double-digit hours on an airplane long distance.  The kind of distance that makes roll my eyes at a movie like “Going the Distance”, where Drew Barrymore and Justin Long are pinin’ for the fjords because she lives in San Francisco and he lives in New York City.  Don’t get me wrong, I actually enjoyed the shit out of that movie because everyone cussed like sailors, they weren’t rolling in dough so flying to the coasts was not a no-big-deal proposition, and they captured some of the more agonizing bits of a long-distance relationship really nicely.  All that being said...I’d sit through a Carrot Top show once a week if it meant my fellow was a mere five-hour flight away from me.  

What the Fuck Friday.

So at my workplace, we have a cafeteria that features all sorts of delightful things, from a well-appointed salad bar to freshly made sandwiches and whatnot.  The selection is goodly-sized and it’s a nice perk to have.  I was in said cafeteria recently to get breakfast, as I am known to do, and I decided to have a flatbread sandwich-esque thing that involved cheddar cheese, egg, sausage, and mushrooms.  While I was awaiting my treat, two employees that I know in that “I see you frequently and will say ‘good morning’ to you but we don’t work in the same area” kind of way came into the cafeteria and proceeded to circle around the assorted offerings (fruit, yogurt, oatmeal, bagels, toast, and items from the grill) and loudly discuss what they “could” and “couldn’t” have.  Then, they proceeded to stand behind me (a little too closely behind me) to observe what I was having for breakfast.  They bemoaned their inability to have something like I was having – not because they didn’t have enough money to pay for it or lacked vocal cords to tell the grill cook what they wanted or were unable to hold the plate in their mitts.  No, they couldn’t have it because they were on diets.  Ahhhh.  But I guess standing practically up my snapper in order to verbally mourn items they “couldn’t” have somehow made up for it. 

It’s not unusual behavior in the workplace (or society in general) to have that segment of people groaning and moaning about what they are not “allowed” to have because of whatever diets they happen to be on that that given moment.  They loudly celebrate being “good” because they chose not to have a brownie and flagellate themselves when they are “bad” and have a brownie or “jokingly” hiss at the co-worker who dared to bring in those brownies or candy or whatever about how said co-worker is trying to make them “fat” – oh wait, *I* would be that co-worker who brought in that candy!  I was under the impression that having a treat available in our high-stress unit would be a nice thing, but apparently I’m trying to make my co-workers “fat”.  To which I said, “come join me” with arms widespread.  (No really, I did.) 

People on diets at any given time, it’s not my problem that you “can’t” have whatever it is I choose to be eating, whether it’s a flatbread with egg and whatnot or a brownie or any number of things on the assorted lists of “bad” things.  It’s not my problem that you’ve bought into the horseshit pumped out there about how you have no “willpower” or “self-control”.  When you prattle on about how “bad” you are for eating something that involves fat or sugar or white flour or chocolate, I’m not going to comfort you and tell you you’re okay and you can work it off on the treadmill or just have salads for the next 30 days in order to atone for your behavior.  I’m sorry that you’ve become terrified of food, but it’s not my problem.  I won’t stand over you and shove whatever evil foodstuff you’re avoiding into your face, and I would appreciate it if you could manage to shut your yap – I mean, maintain a polite silence  – when I’m enjoying whatever I’ve chosen to enjoy.  I’d love it if you could manage to have a meal or a conversation or whatever that doesn’t ultimately turn into a conversation about your diet and workout plan and how you’ve been “good” or “bad” in any given week.  You're more than welcome to do what you like with your body and your food intake, but perhaps you might want to find someone else to discuss it with. 

Meanwhile, over at Roger Ebert's reviews, he reviews a documentary called “Forks Over Knives” which is a doc in the vein of Morgan Spurlock’s “Supersize Me” where he ate nothing but McDonald’s for a month and, like, turned into the Grimace or some shit.  Never mind that a vast majority of humanity doesn’t eat McDonald’s for every meal, but whatever.  “Forks Over Knives” is about how animal protein is wrong and everyone should eat a plant-based diet and four people with assorted illnesses are magically transformed into healthy (read: virtuous and good) human beings because they ate fruits and vegetables and shunned the evil animal proteins and dairy and sugar.  I’m quite sure that the doc doesn’t touch on concepts like privilege or access or that sort of thing because so often the “you’re an asshole if you don’t eat perfectly” movement doesn’t go anywhere near realizing that not everyone is a middle-class white person.  But what bothered me was Roger Ebert’s belief that he was “weak and lazy” back in his fat days and the underlying tone that because he didn’t eat “correctly”, he brought his illness (the cancer that took his jaw) upon himself.  

I’m fat.  I’m neither weak nor lazy.  I eat fast food perhaps once a month, I avoid processed stuff because it makes me feel shitacular, I love the shit out of vegetables (which torments my vegetable-loathing boyfriend beyond belief) and fish and all sorts of things that fall both on those vaunted “good food” lists and “bad naughty evil awful food” lists.  I didn’t think Roger was weak or lazy when he was fat, and he’s not weak or lazy now, and he sure as motherfucking hell didn’t bring his cancer on himself.  I adore the shit out of Roger Ebert.  One of my most nerdliest of nerdy moments came years ago when I emailed him a question about a movie and OH. MY. GOD. HE. REPLIED. BACK. TO. ME. FOR. REAL.  He sent my mom a nice note after he wrote a column in the Sun-Times about being a recovering alcoholic and she wrote him a note of admiration for his candor (she was working as a nurse at a rehab center at that time).  I can't help but shake my head and feel sad for a moment that after all these years, he seems to be so strongly bothered by his years as a fat man.  After everything he’s accomplished, will the one thing he points to as the most important achievement of his life be losing 70 pounds and no longer being “weak and lazy”?  How many people who aren’t Pulitzer Prize-winning critics keep holding onto that notion that life can only be worthwhile if they fit into the approved definition of what “healthy” is (thin)? 

Anyway.  It's Friday, goddammit, it's been a hell of a week at the Evil Empire (picture me running around as if my head was on fire and only being able to put it out in a large bucket at about 2:40 p.m. today).  One of these weeks I'll write a post that doesn't involve opening up the Lecture Loft, I swear.  That is, if I'm not dead from the butter and animal protein and box of donuts I eat every hour on the hour, even in my sleep.  Let me tell you, my pillow smells delicious.