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.

A Surprising Pop of Positivity

If you read even semi-regularly, you know that we’re not the sunniest people in the entire world. You could generously assume that our devastating humor comes from a dark place, it’s a coping mechanism as we deal with our deep seated issues in a decently productive way. You could more realistically assume that we’re just pretty fucking jaded for twenty somethings, and blame it on our upbringing/the state of the economy/our codependent relationship. Pick your (our?) poison! Regardless of the reason, it’s true that we’re not often brimming with optimism and love for our fellow man. But it can be exhausting spending so much time wishing people were better, you know? And we sleep the troubled sleep of the hopeful, despite our insistence that we’ve thrown in the towel on Everyone Ever.

So here we are, two desperately underemployed and underutilized young adults stuck in a place that prohibits us from starting our Adult Lives and Careers and Establishing Independence and things like that. You know your life is fucked up when your greatest joy in a week is that the token Self Righteous Christian from high school got knocked up by a dude whose “job” is online poker. So we’re changing shit up. We’re moving away and starting new things, and we plan to worry about paying rent instead of when we’re going to get out of this dead end situation. It’s nice to focus on whether we should put on ten pounds as a buffer for the poverty diet we’re about to endure, or if we should just let said diet run its course, leaving us looking like city waifs instead of tourists.

So, in the spirit of new things and sharing personal shit with you, dear reader, today we’re going to send you things that make us happy. Things that pull us out of the depths of despair, or just make us chuckle. Use them wisely! (That means frequently and with vigor). And don’t get used to this happy tone! We’ll be back with snark on snark on snark on Friday. Probably.

The Sound of Music

If you hate this movie, you are a Nazi. That is all. “I hate musicals, it’s so long, blah blah blah” NO. This entire film is a work of art, Julie Andrews is a force of nature, you’re a fool. The dialogue! Her voice! That part where the Captain gets all choked up singing “Edelweiss” before they flee “ALL the way to SWITZERLAND?!”? It makes us happy from start to finish, even the sad parts. Watch it when you’re doing just fine, watch it when you’re melancholy, watch it when your life is in upheaval. And enjoy that goddamn goat puppet show like the child you are.

Anya probably spent her lifetime allotment of her mother’s patience listening to this song on repeat.

“If I fits, I sits”

The more we see, the funnier it gets.

Somewhere along the way, this phrase got lodged into our vernacular. Not typically purveyors of the millions of cat pictures and videos on the internet, Anya literally woke up one day and had this dumb phrase stuck in her head. Now, every time we need a completely out of context giggle, it sends us into hysteria, no pics needed. No explanation for this one, folks, but we hope it works for you too.

British accents

"I'm just like any other regular mum."

If you haven’t figured it out by now, we may or may not be extreme Anglophiles. What began as a childhood obsession with Julie Andrews (see above), has grown and expanded into an enchantment for all things British, beginning and ending with those glorious accents. We love every damn ridiculous one of them, from prim and proper Lady Mary to scruffy little Eliza Doolittle and all the absurd Gwyneth and Madonnas in between.

Watermelon

The Fruit Demon of Deliciousness

Honesty time: Anya is a frequent puker. And a marathon puker. Some would consider vomiting a desirable way to deal with stress (better than eating your way through like six cookies and a Taco Bell meal in twenty minutes), but it’s not GREAT. And the only food that she kept down after a particularly nasty fight with the Stress Demon of Upchuck was...you guessed it, watermelon. Yes, watermelon has gotten us through some dark days...and you thought this one was going to be a paragraph extolling the vodka soaked virtues of a watermelon keg on a summer’s day, didn’t you? Sorry, not sorry.

Puppies (particularly of the corgi variety)

ARE YOU KIDDING ME WITH THAT FACE, CORGI?

Goddamnit. Look at that thing. You can just imagine how long we spent scouring the internet for a pic of a Corgi puppy. “Wait, there’s a couch full!” “That one is SLEEPING!” “Look at this costume!” “HE’S WINKING” etc. etc. etc. When we see one in real life, we become dangerous. Like knees giving out, pray to god neither of us are driving, dangerous. See Anglophilia above, for a partial explanation.

Witty puns

“You're an ice cream sundae with a cherry on top, and careful, Cherry, 'cause I'm the king of pop.”

None of the entries on this list (except for perhaps the watermelon one) should come as much of a surprise to you, this one being no exception. We always appreciate a well-placed pun and perfectly executed one has the ability to knock us out of commission for an entire afternoon (See: “NUNAVUT” tweet). Admittedly, you could make the argument that this is almost always a self-congratulating circlejerk of us laughing hysterically at each other (or to each other at ourselves), but... can you really blame us?

Sunshooooine

We all have seasonal depression (we, the denizens of Not Florida or California), and a bright day cheers us right up. Sure, they’re not made to order, and sure, we have a fifteen to twenty degree difference in temperature preference, but that Vitamin D really does do wonders for our mood. Plus, WAY more corgis outside in the sunshine. Plus it’s watermelon season, plus we can do our over the top Spike and Dru British accents. Really tying it all together here!

U Mad, Bro? A Compilation of the Most Ridiculous Things That Inspire Anonymous Internet Fury

Alternatively titled “We Don’t Comment and Neither Should You” or “Facebooking Lawyering: Never A Good Idea” (See “The Sequel: Facebook Evangelizing, Even Worse”)

Unless you look like this.

First of all, don’t you think we should be in charge of writing titles for theses? Just take a quick pass through our Archives and tell us we wouldn’t be great at that. Unfortunately, this is a relatively recent skill, and we’ve turned in more papers than we’d like to admit with just “Title” typed in at the top, waiting for a burst of creativity that never came. How sad. However, let’s turn from the emotional problems of our academic past, and focus instead on the topic of today’s article: things people get really goddamn upset about on the internet that they wouldn’t dream of touching in person.

What’s that you say? “But Anya, Paul, isn’t that list absolutely endless? Isn’t the anonymity of the internet almost wholly responsible for the slow decay of modern society? Haven’t we all agreed that that’s how the kids these days are bullying each other?” Yes, sure, the internet is a double edged sword, the one ring to rule them all, with great power comes great responsibility. But we’re not here to tackle those kind of topics. Those literally are thesis material (holla Master’s students! We’re here if you need us, drop us a line if you need a title, or want this one), and we’re more the sort to make mocking lists.

Per usual, our realm of expertise is specific.

As people who spend a fair amount of time online (like WAY too much), we’re pretty experienced in the ways of online forums/comments sections/etc. As people who exist, we’re totally guilty of confirmation bias, in that we seek out articles and sites and discussions that support our beliefs. Perhaps unsurprisingly, our strongest beliefs are centered squarely on some of the most controversial issues, which means a guaranteed load of bullshit by the time we get to the comments section. YAY.

Things like women’s rights, abortion, gay marriage, and whether or not we should care about the Royal Baby are things we expect to be hot button issues, with vitriolic fights between the right and the correct. You can visit any page that so much as mentions these issues, and read a series of tired arguments and quickly devolves into name calling. In fact, like fights with our parents, we might as well not even have them anymore, since we’re freakishly good and predicting exactly how the conversation will go, down to the turns of phrase.

“And then she’s going to make passive aggressive comments about your life decisions.”

But there are other, stranger forces at work here. There are things on the internet that make people into monsters, tear relationships asunder, turn perfectly normal (?) people into vicious trolls the likes of which the undersides of bridges have never seen. Why people choose to be so personally offended about things that are so obviously none of their business is really surprising to us...haha but really. If you’ve read much of this blog at all, you’ll have noticed that we’re pretty sassy and pretty hard on the general public. We just so badly want to everyone to get it together and be decent to each other! And no matter how snarky we seem when we’re taking out our fury on our poor little keyboards, we assure you that we are actually very pleasant in person. Sure, we have our fair share of anonymous internet fury, but we’re not directing it at specific people, demanding their ritual sacrifice for having naturally blonde hair or following the paleo diet.

But we would totes turn some of them into rats.

We’re not firing off emails to our legislators full of incomprehensible punctuation and a very evident lack of research on the topic at hand. We’re not leaving nasty reviews on Yelp because we don’t understand basic veterinary medicine (holla at the lady who was mad that she spent money on antibiotics and her kitten got better so she “obviously didn’t need them”!) or restaurant etiquette (holla at the guy who had passive aggressive fights with a three year old and seated himself next to us at breakfast last weekend!). As much as humankind tends to drive us crazy, we do operate under the premise “innocent until proven guilty and then also benefit of the doubt in case you’re having an especially bad day”.

Here are the things we have found that the denizens of the internet cannot read about without instantly turning into dickheads of epic proportions:

1) Vegetarianism (or Vegans, or really any kind of specific diet)

If we have to read “PETA = People Eating Tasty Animals” or the pseudo science of why meat protein is actually essential to our diets one more time, it will be just another day. Or how STUPID the Paleo diet is because OUR ANCESTORS ACTUALLY ATE X,Y,Z AND EVOLUTION GUYZ”. On the flip side “I will be laughing as all of you meat eaters die horrific deaths from heart attacks and cancer because I will never get sick or go to tell because of my respect for LYFE”. Stop the diet shaming! At least on the internet.

You’re all this guy.

We’re sorry everyone is so goddamn annoying, but shut.the.fuck.up. Eat what you’re going to eat, don’t eat what you’re not, and stop making everyone’s life decisions about you. WHY DO YOU CARE WHAT OTHER PEOPLE ARE PUTTING INTO THEIR BODIES? Literally we could not give two shits about strangers using heroin, why would we get on their dicks about carbs?

2) Talking during movies

Yes, we shit you not, the number of casual death threats over talking during movies is actually astronomical. Anya is a movie talker, and will never stop doing that. Her inability to stay silent during movies is something everyone around her has to either enjoy or put up with. HOWEVER, she would never do that shit in a movie theater unless it was empty or full of people that were being so inconsiderate that her “movie talking” morphs into “Can you honestly please shut the fuck up?” to the teenagers behind her. No one likes a loudmouth at the movies, let alone the cell phone answerers, the shriekers, and the children crying. Does that mean we have to summarily execute these people? No. Calm the fuck down and just get management to throw them out the movie.

Unless it’s this hot mess, then loud scoffing is allowed.

(To be fair, this type of inconsiderate behavior is often not an isolated trait, and if these people are just generally breaking the unspoken social contract, we support execution).

3) Breast feeding in public/any type of parenting shit

“If you’re not a mother you CAN’T POSSIBLY UNDERSTAND” “I give no shits about your feelings, this is a NATURAL PROCESS OF FOODZ FOR MY BAAAAABY”, etc. Unfortunately, the Great Kate Wait has given rise to the number of articles about our least favorite thing: children. Doubly unfortunate: the mommy bloggers are out in force, reading these articles and showing their “tiger stripes” or “mama bear instincts” by being incredibly judgmental and shitty to everyone who is not a parent/wants to go out to eat in a child free environment once in a goddamn while. Let us just say, they are setting a terrific example for the next generation of entitled, self obsessed, the entire world must bow down before my very specific preferences assholes they’re raising. THANKS.

We know this list could be endless...what ridiculous shit have you seen on the internet that made you go “really?”?

[Fake Kate Photo by Alison Jackson]

Facebook Friends, How Do I Hate Thee?

Let me count the ways.

Unlike Julia Stiles, we actually do HATE you.

Remember when Facebook required a college email address to sign up? Those were the days. That was technically a little before our time, but Anya got in on the ground floor when the kids in a summer class she was taking at our nearby school made her join so they could work on a group project via this great new social networking site. Before we had to worry about our grandmas seeing everything we did online, before you could access the site from your cell phone, back when your status had to start with “Paul Smith is...”

If you think we miss those days, you’re only partially correct. The thing that we miss most about olden times Facebook is the fact that no one really knew what they were doing on it. Don’t get us wrong, there was still the odd emo status, the beginnings of aggressive cyber-stalking carried over from MySpace and Xanga and Livejournal (remember that shit, you guys? Every once in awhile we still look up those old Xanga sites we used to stalk, and we have basically the same reactions now as we did then. We’ve matured from cackling hyena pups to cackling hyena pack leaders), etc. Nowadays? Ugh.

Here’s the thing, Facebook World: You’re doing it wrong. Luckily, we’re here to detail the right and the oh so wrong ways to use Facebook, complete with examples. Look, we get that for some reason there’s a push for creating a brand for ourselves. People like to be able to easily categorize ALL THE THINGS, including other people. Employers might be looking for a certain “type” and you want to be that guy! Sure. But it’s so goddamn annoying to watch all of these people you know in real life put on a persona that you know is bullshit.

The most common offenders:

1. Look how happy I am (with my new house/job/relationship)

 2. Look how smart I am (pursuing an advanced degree and being so busy)

 3. Look how pretty I am (please like my 2,376 photos of myself. Photoshopped.)

 4. Look how liberal I am (I support basic human rights by changing my profile pic)

 5. Look how brave I am (standing up for my intolerant religious beliefs)

 6. Look how cool I am (with my obscure bands and thrift-store clothes)

 7. Look how sensitive I am (with my sincere, heartfelt responses to the tragedies of strangers)

Find our thoughts on the oversharers (Look at me getting this cavity filled, look at me getting my prescriptions filled at Meijer, look at all of the friends I have, look at my stitches/surgery wounds/IV/hospital band, I neutered my dog, here’s a pic of his nuts! etc.) here.

So that’s pretty bad, right? When faced with that bullshit every time we log on, some of you might say “If you hate it that much, just get off Facebook! No one will miss you, you clearly spend enough time together that you don’t need it, stop complaining and deactivate!” If this is your attitude,

You guys, we NEED Facebook, and we have earned the privilege of using it by not being fucking assholes. Please find below our list of acceptable ways to use Facebook which do not entail annoying the snot out of other people. Because that’s kind of how we go about life.

Proper way to use Facebook (us)

-Share funny picture or video with friends, don’t have to wade through the shit that is tumblr.

-Spy on people and mock

-Blasts from the past

-Stalking work acquaintances

Phony Facebooking and Bullshit Weddings

I have a contemptuous relationship with the public sphere (despite have an online blog thinly veiled with anonymity), which causes me to look rather disdainfully on those who update their Facebooks, Twitters, and Tumblrs with pictures of every meal and notes on every trip to the bathroom.  What’s even more offensive to me than these transgressions are when people use social media to share things that I find extremely personal and private (e.g. mourning the death of a loved one, the start or end of a serious relationship, professional failures).  It always comes across as extremely disingenuous and causes a series of negative reactions in me, from disdainful scoffs to livid phone calls (“Anya, what the fuck is this!?  Why is Failed Freshman Math posting ‘it sux that ur mom died, bro’ on Elementary Companion’s Facebook!?  Can I send a nasty message?  Can we take a golf club to FFM’s car!?  JESUS FUCKING CHRIST.”).

So perhaps you can understand why I had a strong reaction when I logged onto Facebook and discovered that my Conservative Cousin (conservative in political views only; girl dresses like cheap call girl) had a secret wedding.  Towards the end of last week, Conservative Cousin posted a blurry picture of a tacky diamond-looking ring, which caused me to pause and wonder, “Is that an engagement ring?  No way, Movie 43 was in theaters longer than she’s been dating this one, it’s probably just her standard mobile update of whatever jewelry/hooker heel/too-tight dress she’s currently sporting,” and went about judging the other posts on my newsfeed.  Fast forward to Saturday, when I pulled up my web browser to see pictures of her in a white veil and mini dress posted from “Paradise,” Nevada, which I quickly learned is someplace within Las Vegas (the wedding district? A skeezy motel?).  And it’s obviously not actually a secret wedding if she’s posting all over Facebook about it, but none of her family members (including her parents, of whom she is the only child) were present at the wedding or invited (I can only assume), so I guess it’s more like the actual definition of eloping, which always strikes me as completely bizarre to actually do for anyone who isn’t a pair of star-crossed teen lovers.

Ah, to be 14 and have absolutely no concept of reality.

My thoughts in approximate order:
“Of course.”
“Thank god I didn’t have to go (to this one).”

“I have to have call my brother.”

“Here’s my trump card for whenever Mom tries to make me see her/be nice to her or defends her in any way.”

“Can you have a bachelorette party by yourself?”

“Wait, is she actually  wearing- Yep.”

“The ‘sanctity of marriage’ at its finest...”

After getting over the initial glee and subsequent critiquing, I called my brother and announced, “Drop whatever you’re doing and get on Facebook.  Go to Conservative Cousin’s page and enjoy.  I’ll wait.”  He did so and we had a nice group chuckle.  After a brief debate over whether the dudebros from the “reception” were random douchebags or friends of her husband’s (siding with randos), we discussed how to break the news to our mother.  While we were both having quite the time over this revelation, we doubted that our mother would find it quite as humorous as we had.  In lieu of making a belated Save the Date with one of their classy Vegas hotel pics, it was decided that I should just call her and relate the story in a serious-sounding manner.

“Mom, I have some bad news for you.”

So I attempt to call my mother to inform about the wedding in the least-mocking way I can manage.  Her response is that of disbelief, in a literal sense.

MOM: Paul, you know how goofy Conservative Cousin is, I’m sure she’s just kidding around.

PAUL: Mom, there are like pictures and everything.  It’s not like a fake Facebook marriage with your clearly platonic friend.

MOM: See?  You just said that it’s a thing that people do, I’m sure it’s that.

PAUL: Ugh, not the same thing at all.  Those are done to hide the end of a real relationship and then it’s with somebody who’s your best friend, and possibly in a relationship with somebody else, and everybody who looks at it instantly knows that it’s a joke.  You don’t do it with somebody you’re actually in a relationship with!

MOM: Paul, you know I’m not on Facebook, I have no idea how it works, I’m just sure that she’s pulling some kind of prank.

PAUL: Whatever, Mom.  I’m coming over tomorrow and showing you pictures.

Parents just don’t understand.

The next day upon arriving for dinner, I kept my promise and asked her to meet me in the computer room to settle her skepticism.  I pulled up my cousin’s Facebook page, where my mother was greeted by her new last name, and proceeded to walk her through the three-day engagement, lowest points being the her self-application of the wedding make-up in a public restroom with feet visible under stalls and reading her vows from an iPad.  As we neared the end of the rueful reception, before my mother tried to unpack what she had just seen.

MOM: Huh...  I really thought she was just kidding around, but it sure doesn’t look like that, huh?

PAUL: Nope.

MOM: Can you go back to the picture of them where they’re holding hands at the front of the... wherever they are?  Hmm...  Last time we visited, I met two of Conservative Cousin’s boyfriends.  I think he was one of them, at least.

PAUL: ‘Cuz that makes everything okay.

MOM: I’m not saying it’s okay, Paul.  Her mother is not going to be happy about this.

PAUL: How could anyone be happy about it!?  She’s insane!

MOM: Now Paul, you know that she has that ADHD.

PAUL: Mom, you CANNOT blame her secret Vegas wedding on her ADHD!

MOM: Part of it is making impulsive decisions!

PAUL: There’s the need for instant gratification and then there’s eloping. IN. VEGAS.  That’s nuts, no matter how you slice it!  And by the way, you’re welcome for not being the kind of child who would ever do that.

MOM: Never say never.

PAUL: What?

You may find his inability to pay attention in class annoying, but just wait until he grows up and gets a tattoo on his face!

Am I being a little harsh on a family member who deserves my love and support?  Maybe you think I should be a little less scornful, but our being related doesn’t change the fact that she has essentially zero redeeming qualities (she’s made jokes about the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, so... there’s that).  You could also argue that I’m a complete hypocrite for criticizing anyone’s hollow-hearted online presence when the forum I’m using is a public blog, but as Anya is wont to say, “When did I ever say I was fair?”  Am I alone here in perceiving rampant insincerity in our online interactions?

-Paul