Category: No One Dies Playing Tetherball
The Rocky Mountain Way: Better Than the Way We Had
I live in Colorado and I’m annoyed every single day by its beauty.
SHUT UP, MOUNTAINS, WE GET IT ALREADY. (Credit: Adam Ginsburg)
Colorado is so obnoxiously beautiful that it’s really easy to take for granted. There were deer and elk in our yard almost every day when I was growing up. I put a picture of one on Facebook as an afterthought last time I was home. When I came back an hour later, it had become the most popular picture I’ve ever posted, and that includes a hilarious photo of a bagel stuck to a tree.
Living here comes with certain obligations. Continue reading
Oh! You Pretty Thing
I’ll be the first to admit I’m not brave. I’m scared of choking while alone in my apartment, I once had a massive panic attack brought on by thinking about ringworm, and I live in fear of the day my boss realizes my job is not difficult and sends me home forever.
This is a cold, unfriendly planet, fraught with incidents of asphyxiation, fungal infections, and job termination. I often want to escape for a while, maybe by popping in a movie. I do not want that movie to be scary.
For the record, I’m not a baby. I’ve seen things that would curl your hair– fire and brimstone coming down from the skies! Rivers and seas boiling! The dead rising from the grave! Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria! Things were pretty grim, but then four guys in coveralls climbed onto the roof of a skyscraper, challenged a god with an ’80s haircut, toasted a giant marshmallow man, and solved the whole problem. I ain’t afraid of no ghosts.
Ghostbusters counts as a horror movie, right?
A Handbook for the Recently Unemployed
Are you out of work? Maybe school’s out, maybe you quit your job in a fit of rage, or maybe you were laid off. The point is, you’ve played so many games of the Sims that even locking them in a room until they pee themselves has lost its former appeal. Until recently, you were a contributing member of society and the knowledge that you’re now basically a leach is slowly pulling you into a miasma of shame and sloth. Or maybe you’re having fun, I don’t know.
I’ve been unemployed for a month now. (I KNOW.) I was doing that whole “job hunt” thing and it really wasn’t working out for me. I knew it was over when I interviewed in a clothing store at the mall and they asked me one question (“Why did you wear what you’re wearing today?”) and then told me they’d let me know. They did not let me know. Several rejections and many unanswered applications later, I’ve been forced to embrace the fact that for the next month and a half, I’ll have a lot of time off. All the time off, in fact. I’m sort of drifting through life, so I wrote this guide. It hasn’t helped me, but maybe it will help you.
