I’ve begun to take the Angela Keaton approach to commenting on my site: comments will be approved, unapproved, edited, or deleted at my whim.

This is a paid website, and while I do hysterically laugh at the amount of traffic I receive from idiots, I’m under no obligation to publish racist, sexist, homophobic, or otherwise ridiculous and harassing comments.

Comments that do not fit into this category are, however, welcome and encouraged.

New glasses and (relatively) freshly dyed Fuschia Fatale hair, win!

If you needed a reminder of why Cindy Sheehan is an awesomeschmaltz human being and why Glenn Beck is a douchnozzled asshole, there it is. What the fuck have you done with your life?

Clearly, I’ve been a little reclusive. Getting dental surgery (separate entry about that hot mess will be coming soon) and dealing with baggage and bullshit has all taken precedence. You know how it is.

I’m a little drained and just going through one of those completely unmotivated phases. I’ll think “hey, I ought to blog about that,” but I stop before slapping together a piddly three paragraphs of “LiLo a LOLA? LOLWHUT?” (Though now that I have a title for that blog post, maybe I will write it!)

Yeah. So I’ve been spending my time playing around with Perler fuse beads, rearranging my apartment, and dispensing my wit and humor around the tubes. Oh, and doing a bunch of navel gazing. We can’t forget about the navel gazing.

For a really long time during horrendous breakups, as in breakups from horrible relationships where the aftermath was almost bad enough to wish it never happened, I’d get pretty pissed about friend fallout. It holds true even if it’s a platonic or friend “breakup.” I thought I’d have more to babble about this, but I’m going to leave it in the ever capable hands of “Harriet J.” from fugitivus.net. (And yeah, I know that I now run the risk of her getting her blog trolled. Full disclosure: I generally agree with everything she’s said, specifically on abuse, leaving abusive friend/relationships. If you feel compelled to comment to her, don’t act like a douchebag.)

Anyway. This is important shit. Read it. Emphasis throughout is mine, not hers:

I want to tell the full story of what propelled me to start this blog in the first place.

After I left Flint, I had to deal with friend fallout. Everybody does after a break-up, no matter how good or bad the break-up was. It’s crap no matter what, but there’s this narrative that you can avoid most of the bullshit just by acting with dignity: don’t talk heinous inappropriate shit about your ex, don’t “force” your friends to choose, and just generally move on with grace. That all sounds reasonable enough, if what you had was a reasonable relationship and a reasonable break-up. If what you had was years of abuse and a rape to top it off, doing something reasonable like seeking out crucial emotional support from friends is seen as talking heinous shit, forcing them to choose, and refusing to move on – which also makes it easy for your friends to dismiss you as a vengeful lying bitch, fucking up their ethics. All your rapist has to do is cry a little and say, “I really hope the best for her, she’s a great person,” and suddenly he’s this awesome guy that you, the rape victim, should really shut the fuck up about.

[...]

How I did it was ugly. I used a lot of kinda sort maybe could you I guess the thing is not that I’ saying you would and I don’t really care but what I mean is you know? I had almost no skills in standing up for myself, and didn’t really feel like developing them during an argument about whether or not I was really raped, and if so, whether or not I ought to just shut the fuck up about it already. I was determined to be some dignified picture of you-can’t-tell-I’m-a-rape-victim-because-I’m-so-strong, hoping this would gain me some kind of foothold against Flint.

I mean, I had no interest in playing little power games by trying to steal all our mutual friends away, but Flint did. Fighting back by not fighting sounded like the noble way, but it also sounded and felt a lot like abuse.

More located here. A lot of her posts have resonated with me since I started reading her blog about a month ago, and finding it gave me one of those “ILU INTERTUBES, LET’S NEVER BE APART EVER AGAIN!” moments.

At least she wasn’t a loli.

Libertarian Boyfriend and I often joke that undercover cops will show up to college parties, bars, and Phish concerts in BDUs, jackboots, and t-shirts with their freshly trimmed crew cuts to announce “EXCUSE ME, DO YOU KNOW WHERE I CAN GET SOME GREEN, STICKY BUD? THANK YOU, CITIZEN!”

You know, this video doesn’t exactly destroy that theory.

Is Al Gore gonna have to choke a bitch?

A national tabloid magazine has published a story discussing allegations made by a Portland woman against former Vice President Al Gore. The Portland Police Bureau does not generally disclose information regarding sex crimes, as they are deemed confidential. However, because of the high-profile nature of this case and the fact that the woman involved provided reports to a media outlet, we will provide the following information:

In December 2006, a local attorney contacted the Portland Police Bureau and said he had a client that wanted to report an unwanted sexual contact by Mr. Gore. This allegation stemmed from an incident on October 24, 2006, when the woman involved, a Licensed Massage Therapist, was called to a local hotel to provide a massage to Mr. Gore.

Source: The Portlander.

I feel like there’s a Manbearpig joke waiting to be made.

Finally, I’m almost at stage two of completing my major dental work.  In 6 days, I will be heading up to Penn Dental to get my dental implant.  I am so not looking forward to it.  Luckily, it’s only going to set us back around $300 (thank the gods I do not believe in for dental studies), so that’s one good aspect of this scary surgery that I DO NOT WANT.

Okay, so maybe a week of ice cream, soup, and pudding will make up for the hour of oral surgery hell!

I’m not going to lie.  I am super nervous about this surgery.  I’m sort of convinced they’re going to slice my jaw in half or the anesthesia will break halfway through or some other completely irrational fear.  I’m not sure which one I’m going to roll with this week.  All last week, it was the wide-eyed “b-b-b-b-but how doya think they’re gonna do it?” to Libertarian Boyfriend.

His thoughtful response?  Nail gun, of course.

Luckily, after this, all I have to do is wait for the surgical site to heal and then they can pop on the crown.  I think they have to recut part of my gums, but I’m in my happy place.  My happy place includes puppies and balloons and Ben & Jerry’s Boston Cream Pie ice cream.  It does not include gum sawing.  (You know, in case you couldn’t piece together that part.)

I know, I ought to be positive and remember that this gets one step closer to being done with this mess, but I’m like a little kid here.  I don’t want to be poked and prodded and sliced and diced.  :(

I made the mistake of adding an acquaintance from elementary/middle/high school on Facebook and every day since then, I’ve been treated to some griping via Facebook status about her life.   These gripes make up the bulk of her Facebook statuses and usually consist of the following:

1. Wah, my job sucks.
2. Wah, where I live sucks.
3. Yippee! I’m drunk!
4. Passive-aggressive bullshit in AOL textspeak, usually about how “ppl open their mouths and look like asses.”
5. And, my favorite: bemoaning the lack of a man in her life.

When all you show is a negative, unhappy person on a public forum, I can’t imagine why you’re having difficulties getting into and maintaining a healthy, long-term romantic relationship.  Can’t imagine why at all.

From 06-08, most of my friendships have been with people significantly younger than me (anywhere from 10 years to about 6); including my current relationship, the last three romantic relationships I’ve had where 6, 10, and 6 years younger than me (respectively).  In spite of this, I don’t think I’ve seen anywhere near as much negativity pouring out of the internets as from this one woman.

No exaggeration.

Let’s not forget that in my last major social circle, there was an intense amount of drama (which, unfortunately, still rears its ugly head every now and again two years after the fact).  These kids are STILL COLLECTIVELY LESS NEGATIVE than this woman.  (And generally speaking, any negativity would have been far more justifiable from them.  Given how little I defend any of those folks, this should tell you something.)

Why did I add the girl back?  Curiosity, lulz, a smidge of pity, but mainly the fact that I just don’t care that much about Facebook.  Okay, so mainly lulz and not caring about Facebook.  I didn’t realize how far she felt the need to embody the term “Negative Nancy.”

Dude, I am NOT an optimist by any means, but when everything pouring the fuck out of you is nothing but goddamn negative bullshit that makes me want to scream “JESUS CHRIST, THE GLASS IS HALF FUCKING FULL,” then you know you’re probably a bit on the downer side.  I finally had to drop her because I hit my limit and commented on a paranoid, suburban white woman status all about crime in our hometown.

I dropped some real talk.  Most of my real talk included correcting an idiot about national drug statistics, as well as crime stats for Deptford, pointing out the fact that regardless of the town, you will always have isolated incidences of violent crime.  It’s just the way it goes, dude.  I then commented that for all the griping about crime and dealing with homeless people (on other statuses), it’s pretty stupid to say things like “I want to move to Philly!”

I got flooded with responses – none of which I read, because I’ve been online long enough to know that it’s just a slew of paranoid butthurt.  I said what I needed to say and that was it.  I was done and we’re all good here.  Shockingly, I was treated to a passive-aggressive status of nonsense calling me “stupid,” labeling me an “idiot,” and basically a bunch of “I AM HOSTILE TO FACTS” AOL textspeak.

Yo, I’m 31 years old.  I’m at the point in my life where I’ll add friends I lost touch with, acquaintances, and even people I didn’t know well to my account.  For those reasons, Facebook (and other soc nets) are a great tool.  But, you know, I don’t really need to even have online contact with fellow 30-somethings who respond to criticism like this.  The awesome thing about internet social interactions is that you have the easy ability to cut out people who make you feel like crap.  While the internet is a useful tool, it still should be one that brings ease to your life, not headaches.

I guess I ought to just be happy that I didn’t invite her out for a drink when I’m bored one night.  That could have been an awkward evening.

(Related anecdote!  One time, in 8th grade, I wound up walking past her in the hallway.  I think she may have shoved past me or given me a dirty look or some shit.  I called her a “bitch” under my breath.  She ran home after school and cried to her mommy, who then called my mom.  I heard my mom say “Ummmm, I don’t know. I’ll ask her and talk to her.”  Mom hung up, looked at me and said “Yeah, that was A.B.  Did you call J ‘a bitch’?”  I lied and said “no.”  [Sorry Mom!]  My mom snorted, told me that I should have called her a bitch, and then asked why the hell she got a phone call over it.  17/18 years later, and I still lol like crazy over that.)

Yes kids, Ice-T wasn’t always that streetwise cop on SVU. He was actually a pretty hardcore muthafucker.

And I think that’s all I should probably say, given that I’m two mint juleps deep and it’s one of Libertarian Boyfriend’s few nights off.