I've been thinking I need to do something with this blog. Successful blogs offer readers something - recipes, advice, hijacked celebrity cell phone photos (stupid, but we'll get to that later). Something besides the trivial minutia of their horribly uninteresting life. So I started to think of the things I'm good at and what I could offer the world.

And then I realized that those things aren't really going to work. For example, I know oodles about the publishing industry, but I can't offer any advice, as I have yet to join the elusive club of published authors. Therefore, I have absolutely no credibility.

Similarly, I'm a pretty damn good amateur. baker However, somehow the idea of sharing what I bake just seemed like a one way ticket to an even fatter ass. I don't want that. Also, I usually just steal my recipes from other baking bloggers anyway, so that idea is just no good all around.

But I must have something, right? I'm an intelligent woman. I have stuff to say and a decent way to say it. And then I realized - my greatest talent is being an insufferable know-it-all. So that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to use that talent to solve all the problems ever!* 

(Sometimes.I might get bored and forget. For now let's go with it.)

I've had this horribly bitter rant building about how terribly rude people are these days. Society at large is like sick, sad storm of rudeness. Bad dates who check a phone every three seconds like they're waiting for a kidney transplant. People who quote what celebrities wrote on Twitter as if it were an actual conversation they joined.** People who use Facebook to pout in cryptic and passive-aggressive fashion. Anyone who assumes that because they decided to pay attention, things must happen on-demand. I can't take it any more.

This is my multi-pronged solution:

Part One: The part where people learn manners.
Everyone gets a few basic lessons in manners. Phone etiquette. Table manners. How to politely disagree with someone. Why you shouldn't stop to have a conversation in the middle of the crowded hallway. And, most importantly, basic hygiene (it is rude to be smelly). Far too many adults have no idea how to act in this world.

Part Two: The part where we stop telling people they're special.
This is part personal philosophy, part practical, so let me just get it out of the way: You're not special. You may be a wonderful person. You may be warm and giving and have birds following you everywhere singing love songs, but you are just a person. You don't really matter that much when you consider the universe as a whole. Sure, I think it's really funny for me to tell people how special and important I am, but a good deal of the humor in that is simply because I know it isn't really true. I think the best anyone can do is to try and be warm and wonderful to the people around them and get on with their lives. Thinking you're special, that the rules don't apply to you is unbelievably rude.


Part Three: The part where if you are rude, you pay.
Any solution for fixing a problem has to come with consequences for those who don't follow the new rules.  Consequences must be such that they are worth avoiding. From what I can tell two things motivate people, sex and money. Therefore, I propose if you're rude, you're cut off.  Want to keep both? Stop acting like an entitled little bitch.


See, don't you feel better about the world now that there's a solution available? I know I do.

* Okay, not ALL the problems. I'm good, but come on.
** I admit, that may be more stupid than rude. Maybe I'll just say it's rude to be so stupid.

*

* Is it just me, or is there something really scary about this picture? Like her neck is at a weird angle and at any moment he's going to fall on her and there will be this wicked snap? I'm getting shivers just thinking about it. Obviously I need to try harder to find images. Or learn to take pictures. One of the two. I digress....

I'm having far too much trouble coming up with exactly what I want to say. It's sort of a jumble of thoughts about the romance novel I read yesterday that was a whole lot of "What the fuck was that?" and how I'm re-reading my way through a stack of books (both a digital stack and an actual stack), my inability to do laundry and how I like to have sets of things. It doesn't make much sense to me now that I list out everything I was trying to say, but somehow when I thought "Yeah, I should update that new blog I started," those are thoughts that came to me.

So, let's just go with the What The Fuckery: This book I read was part of series. There's something off-putting about romance series books when you haven't read them all and the author does a lot of "and course so and so is one of this group of dashing people," and you have to accept that it's both true and that said group is so fabulous after all. Usually if I've read the first one it doesn't bother me so much because book 1 lays the ground work, but when I haven't read it and it does, it's straight-up telling and an author should have to work harder than that to make me believe.

Whatever, there was so much wrong with this book, and that's a shame because the actual romantic-ness was very cute. But that does not excuse the blatant  Cinderella rip-off, or the inexplicable stupidity that acts as the premise, or the cross-dressing giantess who may or may not have some sort of mental issue but can rip a lemon tree in half.

Yeah, I'm not kidding.

Also: it has the oddest epiloge I have ever read. Usually in a romance novel, the last few pages show some sweet scene in which the couple cuddle their children or whatnot. Harmless. Cute. In this book, the author decided that the couple have a troupe of adopted children (which was fine, but there wasn't a lot of ground work for it), but also in the midst of all this family togetherness that they needed to lock themselves in a hidden room, have anal sex, and then go greet adopted baby number 8. Which was just a gross juxtaposition, of which I'm still not over. Oh, and the cross-dresser married and lived happily ever after.

I'm still dumbfounded. It's sort of got me thinking though about how hard it can be to take a simple concept like love and turn it into a fully fleshed out story. Because what the author did really well was the lovey-doveyness. I'm struggling with re-writes for a couple of projects (as in, I can't seem to get anything done), and so as much as I want to call this writer out and say "Yeah, that was so stinking weird" I can't be too hard on her. Cause she's done what I can't seem to: finish something and have it published. It may have left my right eyebrow permanently arched higher than normal, but it is a finished book.

But still: What the heck was that? I mean seriously, there was so much wrong. So, so much.

This may be the closest I get to having my own puppy this year, even though it's the one thing I want out of this year. Having to admit that, just over a week into the new year really sucks. Reality, however, is not lost of me and not much has changed in my life that I'd be able to adequately care for a dog. Even though I would be an awesome pet owner, never dressing the poor thing up like a reindeer at Christmas or throwing a tutu on her for spontaneous self-shot Facebook pictures.

As it happens, though, I work 2 jobs. I'm doing the whole lose weight, write a book, try to remember to call my friends-thing. A dog wouldn't jive so much with how my life works. My desire for a cute little bundle of unconditional puppy love will have to wait until I change something significant.

Insert heavy sigh here.

I'm attempting to get over it and look at things objectively. I live in a 500 square foot apartment. It's perfectly big enough for me but I firmly believe that an apartment isn't the best place for an active dog to live. They need space to run. An apartment with a 10 foot strip of grass outside that happens to run along a major state road is not ideal. I'll need a house with a yard and possibly a fence.

I'd also need to be home more than I am. I leave by about 8:15 in the morning. At least 2 nights a week I work until nearly 10, and for large portions of the weekend I'm out and about being awesome. Bringing a puppy into this kind of schedule would be like asking to give up my security deposit, not to mention really unkind to the puppy.

So where does this leave me?

Without a puppy.

But, that said, I'm pretty determined to change things so that I can work only 1 job, buy a house, and pay for a pet nanny to come in and walk her when I'm not home. To me that means: 1. Finish my book. 2. Sell my book. 3. Do everything in my earthly power to promote my book so that it sells to the general public. 4. In the event that doesn't work, take really drastic measures, like say, goat sacrifice (although I've got nothing against goats, per say). Something has to work, hopefully before innocent barn animals go missing.

So this was me in 1993. Yes, I wore that hat in public. No, I had no idea it looked that bad. Yes, I'm aware that but for smaller glasses, an absence of unfortunate hats and turtlenecks as fashion choices, I haven't really changed that much. Let's just get that out of the way.

Moving on.

So here's what's been turning me into a judgmental bitch lately - those "before I die" or "someday" photos online. You may or may not have seen them depending on how much time you spend online. Basically, it's a soft-focus color-saturated photo of something, say, a tray of cupcakes, with words over them, say "Own a bakery." I've seen them posted on a few different websites (mostly through Pinterest, world's best time suck).

When I first started seeing them, I kind of liked them. I too would like to state a desire to visit Prague over a lovely shot of the Charles Bridge. Like so:

See, nice. Aspirational goal, entirely possible, but just expensive enough to be currently out of reach.

The judgmental bitch part comes in when I start seeing really stupid goals. Here are some I've re-created to show you what I mean.:

Really? This is your goal? Unless you've got a stash of magic hats in your coat closet, Frosty is not coming to life, Sweetie.

Wait, it gets worse:

Seriously? Seriously. For God sakes, if your dream is to work at a store, GO PUT IN AN APPLICATION. And then get some better dreams because that's pathetic.

Most of the ones that annoy me are clearly written by teenagers with desires to meet celebrities and get tattoos. But I suspect a fair few are written by adults with nothing better to do and very little natural taste or discernment.  If you want a tattoo or purple hair or to own a Chanel purse, save your money and get to the salon or the store or wherever. Just do it already.

Of course I say these things, and then I feel bad because what if that girl posting about working at Hollister is ugly and would never get hired there... I mean she can't help bad DNA.  Oh, but wait: GET BETTER DREAMS.

Perhaps because my parents raised me to believe I was awesome without touching base with the reality of being short, fat and four-eyed, I continually fail to understand why people dream so small. Dreams should be big and over the top. If they're not, how are they ever worth dreaming in the first place?