Become an Organ Donor in 30 Seconds!!

I am innocently walking to class. I am not listening to my ipod as I can’t find my headphones, which is a huge problem in my life right now and has raised my awkward moment count exponentially. All of a sudden, my ears are accosted:

“Become an organ donor! It only takes 30 seconds! Become an organ donor! Save lives! You won’t be late for class, we promise!”

Whoa…hold up. I think (and I’m sure most feel the same way) that becoming an organ donor is like, kind of a HUGE decision. Wouldn’t I like, wanna talk to my family first about somethin’ like that? Maybe like, you know, THINK about it for more than thirty seconds…?

I think the real issue here is my completely irrational (or is it?) fear that, if I put my name on whatever organ donor list exists, that someone in the mob will wind up on a transplant list and their mob buddies will hunt me down and kill me for my organs. Thus my hesitation.

More bullshit helpful information from my trek across campus today: Ray Macaraeg of San Jose, California, blew 119 soap bubbles with a live tarantula in his mouth. Yeah, that’s right. He holds the record. Which means other people have tried too. This fun fact brought to you by the retarded girls handing out National Bubble Day flyers, blowing bubbles, and wishing people a “happy bubble day.”

Sad Life.

 

Tonight, on True Life: I Have a Sad Life, we will dive deeper into the sad lives of the following people:

 

MTV “News” reporters

People who listen to the Dixie Chicks

All MTV VJ’s

Kristin Cavallari

People whose memoirs can be written in 1-2 sentences on AIM

People who listen to Cutting Crew’s “(I Just) Died In Your Arms Tonight” without headphones when other people are around  My roommate

People who take Student Government seriously

That emo kid in your class that talks too much

Out-of-towners who move to Austin and wonder why Austinites are mean to them

People who still watch LOST

People who ever watched LOST

The TA on a powertrip

 

Later on, we will also be featuring the slightly less sad lives of:

 

Alicia Keys (a.k.a. the star of the new “micro” series, Fresh Takes, airing during commercial breaks of The Hills)

America’s Next Top Model winners (name two)

People who think Carlos Mencia is funny

Professors who don’t cancel class on Fridays before holiday weekends

 

 

Wearing Sorority Shirts: Day 1

So, the time has come in my life to test my college environment. That’s right, folks, a good old-fashioned social experiment. With the help of a former sorority member (is there a proper term for this? pledge? sister?), I obtained multiple t-shirts to put the experiment into action.

Let me note that a vast majority of sorority shirts are offensive to anyone and everyone who should happen to be walking in sight range of the person wearing the shirt. Of the shirts I obtained, two were especially tacky. One read “If you’re a XXX raise your hand, if not, raise your standards.” XXX, in this case, is obviously meant to symbolize any and every sorority – this tagline is not specific and has been adopted by nearly every sorority in the universe because they are, obviously, classier than the next. Another shirt read “In life there are leaders and there are followers…Please note you are reading the back of my shirt.” Okay, I get that this is supposed to be silly but seriously, how tacky do we need to get on a t-shirt? So ummmmm, did you really just target me simply because I’m walking behind you on my way to class? I am a follower because of this? I’m sorry, what about the fact that you wear this shirt offending everyone around you just because your sorority president decided it was like, perfect, and everyone else in the sorority is wearing it too… is that not also being a follower? You don’t need to get all high and mighty on a t-shirt, man…pipe down.

Okay, back to the plot line. On Day 1 of this experiment, I sported a tee that simply read “<Insert irrelevant university here> XXX.” There was a star in there somewhere, for artistic merit. Let me take this moment to point out that, on the day I wore this shirt, I looked worse than normal. Minimal makeup, minimal effort in the hairstyling department, unimpressive jeans, New Balance sneakers worn out to the max, you get the idea here. Not to say that my normal routine involves a lot of vamping, but this day I was clearly slacking.

So I leave my dorm in the morning, interested to find out what I will discover. Blah, blah, I’m leaving my building and I run into a friend. I am IMMEDIATELY called out on my “letters!” That is how much I am an outsider of SororityWorld – I can’t even get away with wearing a t-shirt. So I tell her of my wondrous experiment, and continue on my way. Okay. Never have I EVER gotten so many double-takes from frat guys. Excuse me, Mr. Frat Guy, but is this shirt so powerful that it can overcome my complete disregard for my appearance today? I look WORSE than usual, yet you’re totally scopin’ me out. No wonder sorority girls go around 24/7 wearin’ their letters…ultimate confidence booster! For those of you not in sororities, I highly recommend gettin’ your hands on a shirt and wearing it every now and again…you shall not regret it.

On a similar note, I noticed some people discounting me immediately based on the shirt. After giving normal people the awkward half-smile, they would just ignore me. Or avert their eyes. Imagine. They are most likely former victims of the offensive sorority shirts running rampant around campus. Their past experiences with these shirts have not been good…I can’t say I blame them.

After the morning encounter of being called out on the shirt, I became paranoid the rest of the day that someone would see through me. “Oh, you’re a XXX? I just never saw you wearing letters before! Where? Oh, really? What chapter? Are you an XXX here? Oh really? Okay…” Such a confrontation played over and over in my head all day. I did not feel safe from judging eyes until I removed the shirt and replaced with a much more friendly tie-dye tee.

Conclusion: On Day 1, I discovered that your appearance is irrelevant when wearing a sorority shirt. Letters have superpowers.

 If you’re interested, here is a crash course in how to identify someone’s sorority. ‘Cause I sure as hell have no clue.

For realz.

This is just my regular face, this is just how I look.

Today, I was on a sunny afternoon walk around campus, enjoying myself quite a bit, with the wind in my hair, Eddie Vedder singing in my ears and plenty of sunshine; I can’t imagine a more satisfying walk. I was peacefully enjoying my walk, minding my own business, when I was suddenly verbally interrupted by a girl in the Quad.  I was caught off guard because I thought by listening to my IPOD that I was expressing a CLEAR nonverbal cue that I didn’t want to talk. I guess I was wrong to consider headphones inserted and on full blast as = to DO NOT DISTURB. Due to the fact that I was in the zone, jammin’, I only caught the last part of what she said, “le.” Lucky FOR HER the song had just ended, explaining how I even noticed she was talking to me at all. If it was not for the song coming to an end she would have been ignored all together.

“What?” I asked.

“Smile,” she repeated…

So I gave her a smirk to satisfy her frankly rude demand. The ONLY reason I complied was because the next song had started and I didn’t want to interrupt Eddie mid-song and it would mess up the jam flow. With the end of a forced, awkward, fake smile and the start of a new song, I decided to ignore that rude display of how creepers are unable to keep the peace by always forcing their own opinions of what one SHOULD do onto everyone else around them. Then, to my dismay, I saw her lips STILL moving and looking at me, clearly STILL SPEAKING TO ME. I don’t know how I did it but I read her lips and she said:

“Smile bigger.”

Any expression of tranquility that might have existed in my face previous to her pushing me up against the wall this way morphed into a fit of rage, my eyebrows squished together, lips flattened against each other (also known as the expression used to express feeling called  “Achem!”), and nose crinkled as I responded, temporarily deafened by my music, with:

“No girl, you’re fuckin’ weird….”

I knew the words were coming out of my mouth but I couldn’t hear them. I kept walking and didn’t look at her or listen for her response. It was somewhat satisfying – surely the first time I have ever expressed my true feelings toward people telling me to smile. This shit happens to me way more than it should and it’s really annoying.

Hey people who tell me to smile – what if I’m just relaxin’ my facial muscles letting them be free to do whatev?  I mean, if I don’t feel like smiling I don’t have to walk around with a big fake forced grin across my face just to satisfy a bunch of strangers. I don’t go around telling other people what to do or how to use their own personal face.

Fuck off. It’s not like people are telling me a funny joke when they decide they need to demand a smile out of me, they are just simply bossing me around… Maybe if that bitch would have being doing something silly and I would have noticed I would have smiled for real, or maybe if she would shut her damn yapper and smile at me first I would have smiled back… I’m sorry, world, but just because someone doesn’t smile all the time doesn’t mean they are feeling emotional and unhappy, that’s just how my mother fucking face goes man, that’s just how I look.

So moral of the story:

If you observe someone that you do not know who is not smiling and perhaps you are perceiving the person is feeling sad or lonely or upset or depressed, do not be so rigid to assume those are the feelings they are really feeling, do something silly, I bet you they will smile… maybe they would go so far as to talk to you, maybe even become your best friend… both people involved will feel a lot better about the situation if a person wanting to see another person smile does something silly… things that are funny are a guaranteed way to get people to smile. People are allowed to not smile if they feel like it.

 A quote that a friend of mine told me after I expressed my anger to her about how strangers insist on telling me to “smile” :

“Never frown because you never know when someone is falling in love with your smile.”

Until today, I took this into consideration and tried not to rage at anyone for telling me to smile but…. FUCK THAT, what if your regular face resembles a little bit of a frown… what then? Nobody would say to me then “Well, maybe if you would have never let your face look normal then I would have fallen in love with you…but you did let your face look normal so, sorry, you don’t get to have love.” This would never come out of a guy’s mouth, and if it did that guy’s a queef anyways. Just because someone didn’t fall in love with me because I wasn’t running around like the big yellow Wal-Mart smiley face, doesn’t mean people don’t or won’t fall in love with me, for different reasons such as the fact that I’m a B.A. and I was born that way fo sho. DUH….

 The quote should instead read as follows:

“Never stop being a bad ass, because you never know when someone is falling in love with your badassness.”

How bout that man…. How bout THAT… If this was the quote I guarantee people wouldn’t be walking around saying “Be a bad ass”  to people listening to the music on their fucking iPod,  with the result from such a demand being the person suddenly changing their expression to badassness… just cause someone told them to (I’m not even sure this makes sense, but it doesn’t matter because it wouldn’t happen anyways). UH-uuhhh, no way… this would never happen.

If this quote was the replacement advice given to me from my friend or given to any friend from any of their friends… everyone be a lot more in love with me than anyone else in the world that’s for damn sure…

So fuck off man, it’s not okay to tell people when they should and should not smile… maybe they’re just like me and their regular face looks like a sad face but they are not, in fact, sad at all… they’re just chillin’, smiling or not. So don’t tell me what to do and leave me alone if your not gunna say or do something cool, silly, or interesting. K. Thanks.

My effing roommate…

Watching American Idol…with my roommate. She’s just in our room. All the time. I’ve taken to leaving the room at 8 in the morning and not coming back until at least 9 at night…and she’s ALWAYS here.

Anyway, we’re watching the show, and it’s the results, and Ryan Seacrest calls up Jason Castro. He has dreads, he goes to A&M, I can’t help but root for him. This dialogue ensues:

Roommate (about Jason Castro): He looks like a drag queen.

Me: No he doesn’t.

Roommate: No, look at his face. He looks like a man in drag.

Me: No he doesn’t.

Roommate (after a slight pause to emphasize her point): Yes he does.

 

Okay…why the eff you always wanna win? You’re such a wanna winner! YOU initiated this drag queen conversation…I was an innocent bystander. And when I proceeded to disagree with your retarded, inconsequential ranting, you HAD to get the last word. Bringing someone into a conversation they want no part of just so you can win…do you feel better now? Do ya?

 

He’s just a normal person…obviously not a drag queen.

Personal phone call? Nah.

I’m in the computer lab. There is a girl…I think she’s on the track team….she is having a highly personal phone call but she doesn’t seem to realize there are at least four other people in the room.

Here is a choice excerpt:

“Do you always have to be right?…If you didn’t mean it you shouldn’t have said it that way…I want somebody who doesn’t think they’re the shit!…Well you act like it, actions speak louder than words…Didn’t nobody say anything ’bout that, though…Cause you think you know everything…Like, WHAT is wrong with choo?…Yes there is, you like, hate people…Like what do you mean by that, what is that, like a ‘fuck you’ attitude?…I be thinkin’ how you think you know everything…I didn’t ask if she was with you, I asked you did she left…I don’t be wantin’ you like that, I don’t, you don’t even understand, like, I don’t…No, you’re just so mean…”

This goes on. I’ll spare you.