Our Guide to Accepting Compliments Without Sounding Like an Asshole

As you have probably noticed, we’ve been undergoing all kinds of turmoil here in at Minds Melding Central. We’re working on figuring out a schedule that we can handle with the new city and new job situation. If you hadn’t guessed, we had PLENTY of time at our jobs in the Small Town to brainstorm, collaborate, quote, and otherwise spray our creative juices everywhere while still doing a stellar job at...well, our actual jobs. Here in the Big City, we thought that might not be the case. So far we’re trying to stay on top of moving, living, functioning, working, and blogging at the same rapid pace we did before, but forgive us if the schedule starts to slow down a bit.

You know how it goes.

Anyway, as we’re doing all of those things, we’re also trying to catch up on all of the comic gold surrounding our last week in Small Town, and at work. Our families, friends and co-workers were very busy making sure that we had everything we needed (or that they had everything they needed out of our brains) before we ventured off into the wider world. Amidst all of the “Where are all of the newsletters saved?!” “In the “Newsletter” folder…” type nonsense, we got a lot of nice, if strange compliments.

As you may have sensed from the tone of our blog, we’re not historically stellar at giving or receiving compliments. We get that there are lots of reasons why people don’t want to accept compliments: you don’t want to appear conceited, you don’t trust the motives of the giver, you generally have low self-esteem, etc. Unfortunately, this is one of those areas where you just have to suck it up and put on a brave face (unless it’s a thinly-veiled critique masquerading as a compliment from your mother/frienemy) and shove all your neuroses into a corner. For all of you awkwards out there like us, please see below for our Guide to Accepting Compliments Without Sounding Like an Asshole: All We Can Hope For, Really.

Do:

1) Smile.
No matter how much it hurts your face/pride, you need to arrange your face into something that looks less like a scowl. We know how Bitchy Resting Face goes, but you do need to acknowledge a compliment with some sort of change in expression that does not head into the grimace territory. Try.

2) Say something.
Preferably “Thank you!”, but almost anything will do. Anya’s mother has had to remind her more than once that “I know” is not an acceptable response to a compliment, but even that is better than silence.
“Oh thanks, I got them for like $6!” is an awkward response to “I love those shoes!” but acknowledging is the key here. Don’t make them repeat themselves and don’t pretend like it never happened. However...see below for responses that are even worse than not speaking at all.

Do not:

1) Argue with the giver of compliment.
These people are the worst. We hate, hate, HATE talking to strangers, making small talk, admitting that other people are winning at something and the like, so we recognize that giving a compliment can be an ordeal in and of itself for people like us. If we make the Herculean effort to squeeze out an “I love those pants” to a stranger, we had best not be rewarded with an “Oh, really? I think this pattern is really weird, I just have everything else in the wash.” I SAID SOMETHING NICE AND YOU IMPUGNED MY TASTE? Keep it.

2) Respond with another compliment.
This one is tricky because it could be coming from a potentially good place. Maybe you genuinely did admire your co-worker’s perfectly coiffed hair, but were too shy to say anything until he initiated the conversation and complimented you on your fashionable boots. However, a compliment does not open the floor to a narcissistic circle jerk of homages. Any attempts at boomeranging it back to the giver makes you appear not only ungrateful, but also rather insincere. Not to mention you run the very real risk of looking like you’re making a veiled criticism. As people who have semi-accidentally done such a thing, we’re warning you now. Don’t!

3) Completely ignore the compliment.
This is probably the rudest (non) response you could possibly give, an absolute refusal to acknowledge the fact that a compliment was given. Almost any poorly delivered deflection would be better, as long as it recognizes that a compliment was given. Observe:
CLASSMATE: You kicked ass on your project presentation today! You blew everyone else out of the water.
YOU: There were a lot of presentations in class today… Uh, I’m getting hungry, do you want to grab something to eat?
You don’t want to sound like a mega-prick, right? No matter how strange and complicated they can be, compliments are nice gestures that you just need to learn how to deal with. Sorry, not sorry, just whip out a smile and a “thanks,” and move on.

What are the best/worst compliments you have ever received? Your best/worst reactions? Hit us with some comments!

Things We Did to Occupy Ourselves Offline

That was a close one, guys! A big apology to our legions of loyal followers. If you follow us on the Twitter, you know that we’ve spent the last week, which is also the first week in our new apartment in the exciting New City, sans Internet. Trust us when we say there were dark days, especially for Paul, who was both in charge of acquiring Internet access and relying upon it for his ongoing job hunt. After quickly unpacking and settling in, we experienced the “you don’t know what you have until it’s gone” phenomenon (we’re sure we’ll also experience this with home at some point, probably when our $20/week food budget has taken us past “goal weight” and left us stranded at “meth head”) as we fired up our computers and realized we didn’t have a whole to do on them.

Anya was abruptly cut off from her pretty dedicated Buffy watching regimen, Paul had to stop playing his silly internet games and had nothing to keep him going through those long and lonely night hours that he usually spends staying awake for NO REASON, and we don’t even have a budget that allows drowning our sorrow in Oreos or sightseeing! The horror. So, we did as we always do, and we whined a lot. And then lived like Victorians who time traveled to the 21st century and were trying their best to preserve their way of life. we shit you not, we spent a lot of time cross stitching and reading silently in the living room together, along with the following:

Watch Homeland

The first question, of course, was ‘For the love of God does anyone have anything downloaded on their computer that can occupy our empty hours?!’. Luckily, Paul came to the rescue with the first two seasons of Homeland. We got hooked on the political and personal intrigue, Claire Danes’ cryface, and Anya’s repeated attempts to prove her screenwriting “skills” by guessing upcoming character lines. We’re almost done with the first season, but have so far failed to come up with any fully-fleshed blog articles for it (Top 5 Moments We Identified with Carrie Mathison? Top 6 Weird Homeland Hookups Between Unstable Fucks?). We’ll see.

Costco samples

Ah, the delights of a warehouse/bulk grocer. Coming from an area that did not have a Costco, we were familiar with the theory, but not the execution. Since this is the only grocery store within actual walking distance of our new apartment, we quickly bought a membership and hoped we’d end up doing more than breaking even. Honestly, we’re getting there on free samples alone. Paul and Anya went to Costco two days in a row for “lunch” and to “get groceries”. Who knew they didn’t supply bags at the checkout? Not us! So our afternoon of sightseeing in the confines of a cheesecake and mahi burger smorgesbord was stretched even further into a walk from hell, involving a cast off cardboard box that we found near the entrance and some serious muscle development hauling two gallons of milk homeward.

Creep on neighborhood dogs

One major upside to our apartment is the abundance of windows, and therefore natural light. Added bonus? We’re on the fourth floor, so no one can see us walking around without pants at all hours. Yay! Unfortunately for them, our neighbors in the cute little houses across the street don’t have that advantage, so we spent our time without internet developing an active fantasy life surrounding Henry, the English Sheepdog, and his owner who is an avid runner even on the swampiest of days.
Likes: Car rides, playing ball, people who come to visit, the porch.
Dislikes: The weird third floor tenant, the stand-offish greyhounds from around the corner, flip-flops.

Invent sad meals

We would have been doing this regardless (see above food budget), but when you remove the handy Internet function of being able to search for recipes based on the ingredients you have… it gets pretty fucking dismal.
“What if we cut up the bagel and kind of made it like garlic bread?”
“That could work… if we had garlic or butter.”
“Hmm… Well, what if we cooked it in the leftover olive oil from the vegetable (read: mushrooms) stir fry at the bottom of the wok? Maybe some of the vegetable (still just mushrooms) flavors will soak into it while it toasts?”
“You think this will go with our can of baked chickpeas?”
“Sure!”
“Which one’s the main dish?”
Repressing, but edible. So far we’ve avoided the horrifying concoctions created by Swiss Miss that featured jaunty names like Hot Dog Surprise.

Clean the apartment

This is something that Anya does only when pushed to her limits by one of the following: boredom, disgust, impending visit by outsiders. Luckily for Paul and the Libertarian, she was insanely bored and now her parents are coming for a visit, so the place is getting the kind of vacuuming attention it will likely only be able to dream of in the coming months.

Sleep at reasonable hours

And it was over as quickly as it started.

Our Guide to Running into People You Unfriended on Facebook in Public

You probably won’t be surprised to learn that our Facebook friend lists are similar to our real life friend lists, in that they are both smaller and hopefully more meaningful than those kept by many of our peers. We are more than simply not impressed by your 1500+ “friend” list, we are in full-on “Really!?” mode. This is just another way that you’re doing it wrong (“it” being Facebook, but also probably life). Are you maintaining any sort of meaningful relationships with all of these people? Do you think that you could answer, “Who’s [NAME]?” to every single single entry if we went through your list?

We could go on and on, but we’re not here to rant or lecture today, we’re here to help. If you’re anything like us, you semi-annually have a Facebook purge (which should never be annoyingly advertised with a “If you’re still reading this, then I didn’t delete you!” post). To stay on our Facebook friend list, a person must be someone who:
A. Hasn’t completely fucked us over/broken our hearts
B. We would actually call a friend
C. We have seen in the past year and will likely see in the next year (mutual friends, co-workers, classmates, etc.)
D. We cannot delete because of obligations/guilt (childhood friends, weird family members, references, etc.)
E. Provides us with some form of entertainment (funny cat pictures, links to thought-provoking articles, general ineptitude, etc.)

Rarely is the deletion a malicious act. Time goes by. We change schools, jobs, locations, and group affiliations, and we cannot keep up all of the relationships we begin during all these different periods of our lives. Life goes on and we gotta clean that shit up. However, it’s inevitable that you will, at some point in your life, run into an ex-Facebook friend. This can be a difficult situation for both parties, the unfriender and the unfriendee, especially when each of them almost always knows who did what.

Oh God, I wish this wasn’t happening

Last weekend, Anya went out with the Libertarian to the local breakfast joint/drug den and was OF COURSE seated next to a booth full of people we went to high school with, the makeup of which ranged from ex-lover to vague enemy. After the typical “how long can I go pretending that I haven’t noticed you sitting there?” she and Paul’s ex-lover feigned surprise and greeting at the same time. Now, obviously the dynamics here are many and varied, but the real fuckup here was that Anya mentioned to one girl at the table how much she enjoys seeing her dog pictures on Facebook (this was genuine, but also a good indicator of how swimmingly that conversation was going).

Fine, the dog is not quite this adorable.

Having unfriended at least two other people at the table in the name of Why Should I Give You A Window Into My Life You Creepass, this probably wasn’t the best thing she could have said. Learn from her mistakes, and adopt one of the following techniques to deal with the icy silence or hurt confrontations from those you thought you had left behind.

Option A: Lie, lie, lie some more
Coming in very low on the maturity scale is our first option, just lie about it. This works especially well for people who are technologically incompetent and/or prone to believing things like “if babies are born underwater they have gills”. When confronted about your sudden disappearance from their Newsfeed feel free to say anything ranging from “Oh my gosh, it’s so weird, I think Facebook just deleted a bunch of my friends for no reason!” to “Yeah, I’ve been trying to rebuild my friend list since my Facebook was hacked.” (Also can be used to explain your Spotify boy band fetish) You’ll both feel pretty bad afterwards, but it’s better than admitting “I don’t wish ill upon you, I just literally couldn’t care less about your crappy job/sad engagement/Tumblr reposts/life.”

Option B: Completely awkward and inappropriate avoidance
Anya opted for this, the middle of the road on the maturity scale. This maneuver is only good for encounters that you know for a fact will be brief and situations where you have an obvious and readily available escape route. It’s very simple: avoid eye contact, talk about very generic topics with anyone in the group that’s not them (the weather! your pancakes! that unfortunate looking baby your mutual ex friend just had!), and then flee as quickly as possible. If you’re good at this sort of thing, definitely do the all encompassing smile greet so they can’t say you completely ignored them, because you were addressing the whole group with your concerns about the state of the five year class reunion plans (namely, that it’s happening). Hit it and quit it, rip it off like a band-aid, etc.

Option C: Be an adult and pretend like it never happened (ideal)
This is how we deal with the people in our lives who have fallen out of favor or are on the shit list: we suck it up and have a civil conversation with them. In order to apply Option C, we need to believe that the person we’ve unfortunately encountered has the good sense to join us in ignoring the fact that we don’t care for each other and just focus on getting all of our humblebrags in before we are able to go our separate ways in the elevator/on the street corner/down the hallway. In this case, you will need to rush in and get busy catching up before they have time to bring up the fact that you must not care that much about what they’re doing since you UNFRIENDED THEM like six months ago.

Hannah’s “friend” on her recently published memoir: “It just really poured out of me!”

Good luck!

Honestly, How Do You Make Your Hair Do That?

Ok so we’re moving, and starting new jobs (hopefully) in a new place (definitely). Hooray! We’re upgrading to a New City, and some of us are feeling the stress. The Libertarian is already there, working away at his Real Job, wearing dress clothes and doing dry cleaning and matching his watches to his outfits like an Adult, and we’re more in this stage:

And I can assure you, I don’t look like this.

Just going to start with this text exchange so hopefully you can understand the level of lazy we reached this weekend:

ANYA: Can I wear peep toes shoes in a professional workplace in New City?
PAUL: Yep, as long as you’re prepared to do your little toesies
ANYA: Bah, ok fine. Or at least just the first three
PAUL: Lol right.

Yes, those last two toes are just TOO MUCH WORK. The fact that Paul was on board with this should be shocking to you, given the fact that he makes a habit of giving Anya’s...less put together looks...the once over with raised eyebrows and pursed lips. The thing is, somedays she just can’t be bothered to hunt down a chic pair of cigarette pants, some nice black heels, and a boatneck shirt to tie it all together. Any day? This is our state of affairs.

But there are ladies and gentlemen out there in the world, who wake up every morning and put themselves together. Sometimes in misguided attempts that make them look like orange floozies,or witches, or bros, but at least they’re trying?

And some of them are most definitely pulling. it. off. They know terms like “second day hair” and “highlighting and contouring”. They own products like “texturizing spray” and “pomade” and have tools that end in the word “wand”. Literal magic. And the thing is, we went through a sadly enormous chunk of our lives pretty sure that they just won some sort of genetic lottery, and had hair the likes of which we would never see, and they had it naturally.

Oh, just casual Friday

Well, times have changed, the internet has exposed the seedy underbelly of people who put in effort, and we would love to tell you that now Anya does her hair every day and has learned invaluable tips for making her eyes look bigger and her cheekbones more pronounced. Alas, no. Despite many a tutorial pinned and many a product available to her by virtue of her very put together sister, every goddamn day the girl goes to work with wet hair and let’s it “air dry” (how quaint) into a quasi-wave that evolves into a ponytail by mid-afternoon. Once she straightened her hair, and THREE CO-WORKERS commented in a way that suggested they were deeply impressed(surprised). A sad state of affairs indeed.

Here’s the thing though: how do you make your hair do these things? Does she need some sort of master/apprentice relationship to master the messy side fishtail bun? Why are we even doing things that require a black belt in hair?!

Step 1, have amazing hair, steps 2-4, be a unicorn, step 5, repeat step 1, step 6, SORCERY!

At the end of the day, it also comes down to the laziness you see at the top of the screen. You would be hard pressed to find a weekend that she’s not wearing jeans and a super lazy hairstyle because “What if I’m out doing activities and I see a dog that I need to pet! I can’t be all ‘not on my J. Crew’ to a puppy! What if I do my hair all perfectly and then I want to have afternoon sex? Then I’d have to do it AGAIN and I probably couldn’t get it quite right or have the requisite equipment and then I’m fucked both literally and figuratively!”

But, when better to change our ways than during a time when we’re facing general upheaval? Shouldn’t this move be the time to fix our (her) errant hair? Steps one (buy work shoes that are not moccasins) and two (purchase a straightener) are complete. Who wants to mentor Anya through difficult path ahead? (ha, get it?). She’ll pay you in puns! And on the plus side, has a very healthy head of hair, almost untouched by heat or product for the last twenty something years.

The Economics of Friendship

Today we’re tackling a topic that has torn asunder many a relationship. Friends, family, that “girl” that has been catfishing your ass on the internet for the past two years...whoever. What is it? Ca$h money. Or checks. Or electronic transfers. Fine, just currency.

Man, get.it.together.

If you’re old and internet savvy enough to have found our little blog, you’ve probably had some run ins with various financial scams in your day. Maybe you’ve overheard your parents arguing about whether or not to make another loan to some deadbeat in-laws. Maybe you’re always the one buying pitchers and shots at the bar from your deadbeat friends. Maybe you are the deadbeat friend but the only reason you aren’t buying rounds is that you loaned your small fortune to a Nigerian prince in trouble. He’ll totally pay you back bro, just give it time.

All of those situations can be tough and awkward, but nothing is worse than trying to extract money from friends/siblings/roommates that owe you, but have conveniently forgotten about their debt. Or worse, feel that they don’t owe you any money because of some mystery x factor that allows them to go through life never paying for things that they really want, or worse, “need”. Many’s the time Anya and her sister have each been keeping a secret mental tab of who put gas in the tank when, and how far they drove. They are both one hundred percent sure they are getting cheated by the other person’s wanton disregard for fueling the vehicle as needed, and yet it only comes to a head once every six months or so in a fight that would put most reality television show reunions to shame.

Let’s face it, some people are “tighter than bark on a tree” as parents might say, and don’t like coughing up the cash for anything, even if it’s their third of the electric bill. When Anya and Paul lived with Swiss Miss, she was so averse to putting out the dollaz for anything, that by the end of the term, she owed Anya over $100 for everything from her share of the monthly internet bill to pet care supplies. Hints to people trying to get out of paying what you owe to your roommates:

1) Don’t fucking do it. Don’t be that person!

2) If you are going to insist on doing it, you can claim that they actually owe you for things like “half of the gas that time you kept me company on a two hour long car ride back home to pick up my prescription” or “those shots I bought on your birthday that were really just a loan.”
Oh here, let me vomit them back up on you!

Taking interest into account, you now owe me 2.36 shots.

3) Vanishing off the face of the earth and refusing to take their phone call and emails is an option. This is decidedly less effective if the person you’re avoiding is a blood relative or coworker. Usually.

4) A tip for siblings: take credit for buying things that mom and dad actually paid for when tallying up the credits on either side. They gave you money for a tank of gas? YOU bought it. They purchased some vegan meals for you to eat for lunch and your sister took one? Bitch owes you five dollars. This is particularly helpful if you are the favored sibling (or the more manipulative one).

5) Roommates: Always advocate for grocery shopping together and splitting the bill. There is no easier way to cut corners on paying your fair share than to make an equal purchase and take more than half of the goods. Squirrel snack foods into your little hidey holes and munch away while your roomie is at work (someone has to support your food addiction!). If they suggest buying food separately, call them wasteful and point out how quickly the milk will spoil.

Unfortunately for your wallet/stomach, we’ve got a handle on fuzzy fractions.

Be prepared for the money lender you’ve crossed to take revenge in invisible but seriously disgusting ways. If you think we’ve never strongly considered peeing on someone’s toothbrush, you know nothing Jon Snow. So here’s our list of hints for those who are owed money by one of the miscreants taking the tips above:

Don’t fuck with wildings, their moral code is twisted, sister.

1) For the high maintenance: Dump out their eyelash glue the day of an important event. We have reason to believe it will not clog the sink, and they’ll be forced to go au naturel, which is apparently a serious challenge for some people. This is not acceptable if said person has alopecia, unless they are a seriously huge bitch. Alternatives including hiding bronzer, watering down mascara, and melting lipstick.

2) For the germophobic: Sneeze on their donuts, infect their contact solution with your pink eye germs (or those of a friend who has a very conveniently timed but disgusting infection), don’t stop your boyfriend from farting on their pillows (we know a lot of disgusting people, evidently. Not that ANY of this has EVER happened to ANYONE we know). Towels in shared bathrooms are also fair game.

3) Find a way to get the money back on your own, whether that means robbing their secret cash stash or selling their belongings on Craigslist. If they didn’t want their family heirlooms stolen out from under them, they should have paid you back for that birthday gift and the card you both signed.

4) Turn off the air conditioning in the unit until further notice. You maybe have to break off the switch of smash the control pad. Tough shit! Nothing would make us cough up money faster than life in an apartment that feels like the butterfly house at the zoo. Literally put them in hell until they pay you back. The trick here is making it look like the a/c break is an accident, while still sending the message that the solution is to pay their debts. We suggest writing on the fog that will be permanently cast over all glass surfaces in the house.

5) Be the bigger person and use normal, adult techniques like speaking directly to them about your issues. We tend to go with this option, and haven’t regretted it...much.

He Said/She Said: Our Weekend Away

Even apart, we’re together. Last weekend, we both had spontaneous and separately planned mini vacations to the same small resort town, Paul with his family from Thursday to Sunday and Anya for camping from Friday to Monday, because that’s just how melded our lives are. Welcome to He Said/She Said!

Vacationing with family is always...something...but this weekend we got extra lucky with the straight up crazy being thrown our way. No amount of texting “save me!” in the world really made this okay, but we’re reunited and it feels so good. Also, ready to publish the notable quotables, because why else do we do these things if not for blog fodder? Also, we love our families. Usually.

Weekends with the family rarely end well.

HIM

My grandma is almost 93. She is deaf, mostly blind, barely able to walk, diabetic, and slightly demented. She is thus unable to care for herself, but thanks to a heaping dose of Catholic guilt, she goes back and forth between my parents’ house and my mother’s sister’s house, desperately avoiding being tucked away in “the home.” Last week my mother made the three-hour trek to my aunt’s in Small Resort Town to drop my grandma off at my aunt’s. Upon realizing that my aunt’s husband (AKA Universally-Hated Uncle) was out of town, she decided to stay for a few extra days and convinced me to drive up and visit. My aunt has a child who is six and a hyperactive Hell fiend. My mother does not often swear, but upon my arrival, I was greeted with:

MOM: Between the young one and the old one, it’s a fucking zoo.

Which accurately set the tone for the trip. Highlights include fixing the lawnmower from the at-home tune up the ever unhandy Universally-Hated Uncle attempted, listening to my grandmother’s half-assed threats of suicide (remember the Catholicism), and an in-depth discussion about my mother’s first period at my super foreign great-grandmother’s house when she was ten. Further points of amusement/contention/sadness include:

GRANDMA: Paul, while we’re alone, I wanna ask you something.
ME: Okay?
GRANDMA: How come you don’t have a girlfriend yet? I’m not being nosy or anything, but you’re old enough now that you should be looking for one!
ME: Haha...
Extra great because for awhile Grandma thought that Paul was sowing his wild oats with both Anya and Swiss Miss. We are discernibly different to her based solely on our hair color.

GRANDMA: Where’s my purse!?
MOM: We’re looking for it!
GRANDMA: I don’t see anybody moving!

GRANDMA: I didn’t bring my comb; I look like a wild (adjective as noun) from Borneo.
AUNT: Ma, it’s a casino, nobody cares!

I will close with the exchange that I can only imagine occurs biweekly:

COUSIN: Do you still love me?
AUNT: I don’t like you.
COUSIN: But do you love me!?
AUNT: Not right now.

HER

I love my boyfriend and his family, but sometimes they kill me. The family is this insane combination of the nicest, most giving and generous people you’ll ever meet, and a pervasive and willful blindness of their white privilege that I have never before seen manifested in person. Not to mention what I would call problematic political and religious views. You’ll find yourself nodding away in sympathy as they’re telling a story, and then it takes a sudden political turn that veers into the “holy shit stop moving your head in agreement territory”. Worst case scenario, it’s fucking offensive, best case scenario there is some serious oddity going on. We decided to take a camping trip up to Small Resort Town to visit with the family, where a lovely time was had by all, minus, of course, these moments:

THE UNCLE: I guess she still wants to be a doctor. I think she should do radiology, being a radiologist is a good career for a girl that’s going to get married and have kids, you can just work Tuesdays and Wednesdays.

All you can hope for a daughter...

THE MOTHER: Oh yeah, their milkshakes are really good but I think they cook with some kind of weird oil, because last time I went there it was...not...good...digestively you know? So I would stick to the desserts.

THE FATHER: Well, we have running water in here, but it’s a limited amount, so just don’t use too much of it?
THE MOTHER: Otherwise we have to go get some and we really don’t want to do that, so maybe just use very little.
THE LIBERTARIAN: I mean, I could go get some more.
ANYA: I’ll just use the showers that are like twenty feet away?

THE UNCLE: For the past ten or fifteen years the crops haven’t been ready at quite the right time. It’s always something!
*ten minutes later*
THE UNCLE: Yeah, I mean look at this weather! Ha, global warming...right.
ANYA: *under her breath* it’s called goddamn climate change.

Tell it to this guy, asshole.

THE UNCLE: I can’t believe that they never really released his birth certificate, and it just took so long. I think we should impeach him with two weeks left in his term, just to send a message, you know? That we’re not taking this crap.

I close with an excerpt from a typical conversation:

THE MOTHER: This woman worked with me, and she was just not quite right. Like during her second wedding. Third wedding? Second wedding, third long term boyfriend? Anyway, she like couldn’t walk she was so drunk. She used to put alcohol in her coffee every morning, but she worked with kids! And her license was always getting taken away. But then I drove her sometimes because I wanted to be nice, but she was like addicted to working out. Once I was on the treadmill next to her, and her mother was having surgery and there she was at the gym! And tanning. All the men liked her, but I think she started doing cocaine too. Where was I going with this?

The Impossible Trifecta

Last week, we told you about our friend Swiss Miss, who thinks she’s basically the greatest human to live in recent history. It’s not a stretch to say that if you asked her, she would tell you that she’s prettier than Natalie Portman (because who likes brunettes? ugh), she’s smarter than that one guy who studies shit in space (because who cares?), and she’s nicer than anyone else she knows or has heard of, including Mother Teresa (just because she’s a nun, it doesn’t mean she’s the kindest, most generous soul evar). Her presence is a present, and all that.

No one man can have all that power.

What Swiss Miss doesn’t understand (well...that list is actually endless but ONE thing she definitely doesn’t understand) is that no one is genuinely nice, smart, AND pretty. It just doesn’t happen. Having spent an inordinate amount of time studying this phenomena, we are here to tell you exactly why no one is really the total package. The answer is so simple, and yet elegant in the way it captures the human condition. People are not all of these things because: it is way too much work for no discernible payoff except perhaps higher attendance at your funeral.

Yes, we know, it’s upsetting. Some of you are probably either saying “but I know someone who IS all three of those things!” or “I AM the total package!”. You are all lying. Sorry, not sorry. The important thing to remember is that all of these traits involve a spectrum, personal taste, etc. What we’re saying is that everyone is just enough of each to get by in life. Or they’re delusional and confused about why they have no friends/their coworkers hate them/their relationships never work out.

So here’s our hypothesis and reasoning:

You’ve all played The Sims. You know how you can assign points on each spectrum for their personalities? So when you make your Sim a genius, you have to sacrifice points in the neatness/social aptitude/work ethic category. That shit is real life, people. But here we have only three categories, and a much wider spectrum.

Everyone has to be at least one of these things to get through life. You can be extremely beautiful in a way that appeals to the vast majority of people but not terribly intelligent or nice (Kim Kardashian), you can be a genius who is also an ugly asshole (take your pick on this one), or you can be the kind of person about whom people say “but he’s so nice” (Xander Harris). All of these people have something to rely on in their dealings with other people. They all have currency, whether it’s sexual, intellectual, or moral.

“Hmm, I know you don’t, that’s ‘cause you’re my friend. You’re my Xander-shaped friend.”

You can be two of these things, and most people are, since they’re not on the extreme end of gorgeous or saintly. We would posit that this is why old people have a reputation for being assholes. They grew up relying on pretty/smart ratio that outweighed their personality, and never adjusted once their looks faded (I already know this is totally going to happen to me, and I’m fine with it. I look forward to being a bitchy old lady who is only nice to service people and her dogs. Like the Queen, if she were nice to service people).

Some people are smart enough to function in life, fairly normal looking, and generally nice people. They have extremely evenly distributed Sims points. And they’re boring. You can think of a dozen people like this off the top of your head, because there are millions of them in the world. Other people are good looking and nice, but kind of stupid. They’re nice to people because they know they can’t get by without some intellectual assistance. Still others are smart and nice, because they’re pretty heinous looking and they can’t get away with the kind of assholery that seems to come specifically with good looks. And then there’s our combo: apparently smart and pretty enough to get through life successfully despite the distinctly dark color of our hearts/souls. Anya’s mother despairs, but until she gets uglier or dumber, she doesn’t have to be nice.

Out of all of these traits, only once is choice (which is why my mother despairs that I don’t choose to be nicer). But, for once we will follow the logic of our co-workers and say “Why put in the work when I get everything I want without doing it?”. Embrace it, people!

But if you have enough money, you can be none of these things and apparently you’re still fine.

Half Baked Schemes: More Evidence That We're Underemployed

If you haven’t figured it out by now, we have quite a bit of time on our hands. Between fulfilling our job duties and managing our social obligations, we still end up with about four days worth of time with nothing to do but express our creative genius and talk shit to each other. If you weren’t jealous of our glamorous lives before, you definitely are now, sorry about that. Despite the outlet this blog has created for us, we’re full of schemes galore. Cooking up revenge fantasies for exes, ruining weddings, scamming our way into the professional world a la Bob Benson (minus the sexual slavery), etc.

We need to get out before we get this professional.

Nefarious schemes, one and all, none of which we can actually put into action without more or less destroying our integrity, and more importantly the moral high ground we seem to possess in every situation we encounter. We’re completely unbiased in that particular judgment call, of course, it just always happens that way! Crazy.

Many’s the time Anya has said “if only my job were more demanding, I wouldn’t have so much spare brainpower to spend on scheming and manipulation. It’s appalling how many fantastically evil things I have plotted and never put into action”. Alternatively, she could become a force for good but...ha. That’s boring. No, we’re not motivated by solving societal problems where the world’s greatest minds have failed. We’re more into coming up with some truly useless plots designed to make the world in our immediate vicinity more comfortable.

“Wouldn’t it be great if they had a thing where you just never had to leave the bathtub?” That kind of thing. “You know what we need? Something to just make us fall asleep at night without thinking and wake up feeling like a human at a reasonable hour. Like a nightmare zapper.” While those things will probably never come to fruition (guess we’re stuck with ineffective dream catchers and those trays you drape over your clawfoot tub to hold your erotica and/or snacks), we do have some slightly more thoroughly baked schemes in the making.

I’ll never leave!

If you make any of  these ideas happen and somehow make a bunch of money off of them...throw us a few bones or we’ll sue your ass(es). Unless it’s the child free ones, in which case please send us an engraved invitation and a free pass for life and we’ll let it go.

Our first idea was born of our opportunistic tendencies mixed with the impeccable timing of The Libertarian’s job interview. He was trying to decide on a place in his house to have this Skype sesh, one that looked professional and didn’t expose his bunkbed/tractor lamp/

kitchen/landscape wallpaper to the world. Which we just did, yay! Smelling a chance to make a few bucks off of the millions of unemployed people, we decided to manufacture a line of boring Skype backgrounds that send the right message to interviewers. Messages like “Look at all of these books behind me, I am an Educated Person!” or “I wasn’t lying about living in the area, look at this notable landmark out my apartment window!” or “Let’s both pretend I don’t need this job, at least for the duration of the interview!” We’re open to branding ideas. (Any thoughts on names for this product?)

Or you can use them to get out of doing the job you already have.

You’ve already read about our fake engagement videos on YouTube plot, which may not be a money maker, but then again who knows? Maybe Wonderful Pistachios will give us a commercial...”Anya and Paul do it insincerely!”. Faking a relationship is a slippery slope (especially in these dark days where even your grandmother can use Facebook), but in our situation it’s hard to resist the temptation. The demographics of our office are such that while a handful of co-workers have fully grasped our asexual, opposite sex but completely platonic relationship for what it is, and understand why there is no chance it will go further, most of the others are...well...over fifty and Republicans that really like Paul and can’t imagine that he’s not chasin’ skirts. You can see why we want to fuck with these people, can’t you?

We’ve dreamt up the worst office relationship you can imagine: fights at the office, having flowers delivered from other people giving rise to fits of public sulking, jealous rage inspired by talks with co-workers, confiding in all the wrong people about our issues, mixed in with an unhealthy dose of togetherness. Most tempting of all are those emails that our co-workers far too often send to their entire address book, possibly because they don’t know exactly how to use our email system, more likely because they’re widening the passive aggressive net for “To whoever left their coffee cup in the sixth floor sink for three days”. Reading the replies to those notes is always hilarious, but we’ve cooked up some truly cringeworthy “reply all”s that would expose our “relationship” to the office in terribly confusing ways.

But we kind of have to keep our jobs so...on the back burner it all goes.

Out of all the schemes in all the stages of baked, one really stands out to us as a money maker and a lifestyle. Child. Free. Days. We think every restaurant/theme park/zoo/store/place in the world really, should have days where children are not allowed to be there. Can you imagine the bliss? The relative silence? The ability to curse without people staring you down with murder eyes for perverting their innocent children’s ears? Walking around without worrying about tripping over creatures crawling on the floor? Since we can’t legislate good parenting, can we just kick them all out for ONE DAY a week? Fine, a month? CAN YOU IMAGINE A FLIGHT THAT DOESN’T ALLOW CHILDREN? We would pay so much extra for that shit.

Keep. It.

Make it happen, internet.

Any other brilliant schemes we’re missing? 

Pinspirations (Pinspired? No Matter What, It Sounds Like Sweating)

Having recently fallen prey to the amazing time suck that is Pinterest, Anya has been spending quite a bit of time looking at pictures of hairstyles she will never be able to recreate, DIY projects she’ll never get around to, and interior decorating schemes that are SO TOTALLY DOABLE if you have a million hours to devote to it, a good eye and, you know, a real job to fund all of it. Worst of all, the inevitable “Wedding Plans” board has been taking shape in her head, and during a particularly stressful Brideday Friday on TLC, took shape on the internet. Shame. On. Her.

One day there will be a diagnosis for the nervous disorder associated with watching everyone in the whole world plan their weddings before they even have a life companion that’s not a cat. HOW CAN I NOT FEEL BEHIND WHEN CAT PEOPLE ARE PLANNING THEIR WEDDINGS?!

One thing that always helps pull her back from the brink of insanity (at least temporarily) is a page of pins full of those stupid, insipid inspirational quotes that are supposed to be encouraging for some reason? Whether you’re painting them onto your walls, stenciling them into your garden’s walkway, or embossing them on every glass surface you can find since you totally learned to do it and it’s actually super easy all you need is Modge Podge, this shit is everywhere.

True to form, we had to snark all over it.

One man’s inspiration sets off another man’s bullshit alarm? Sorry not sorry if any of these actually make you feel better. Unless you’re in high school and it just really speaks to you. High schoolers get a free pass on their inner feelings, you’re welcome!

Unless it’s because they murdered your family. Or dog. Or they’re a total fuck. And really, if you just TRY to stop thinking about them for a month or two, you will.

What is this fucking color scheme? Nude and dusty navy? Sexxxxxi. Also, a fact that needs more promotion: nothing is less sexy than someone who wants you WAY MORE than you want them, it’s a fine, fine line.

Everything happens for a reason is the shittiest thing to ever say to someone who is having a hard time. Or to say to anyone, ever. THAT IS JUST NOT TRUE.

Because it worked out so great for Sid and Nancy.

 

Unless he has satellite images of Earth from space...and we do!

This poor fucking polar bear is still going to die thanks to climate change whether she makes the best of it or not, JOHN.

Do not like this mixed metaphor of standing bravely through a storm and also sailing like an Independent Woman. We all know sailing in storm looks more like this (minus the savior mermaid):

And also the phrase “any port in a storm” rings a lot more true. We should make an inspirational picture of that.

Insensitive at best.

Grown older? Fine. Grown up? Clearly not.

Pretty fucking sure he is not the originator of quote. Poor Winston.

Not sure what exactly this is going for, but the image directly under it in our Google search disagrees:

Which poorly edited image is correct?? What should we be aiming for in life??