For the last time, I am NOT stealing that dog.

A few nights ago, while in the midst of a conversation with somebody who I did not know nearly well enough to bring this up, I made an attempt to explain what's recently been going wrong with my brain.

It went something like this.
“So it's like this,” I said, waving my beer around the way people do when they're really making sense. “Sometimes I think about hijacking people in wheelchairs.”

I know exactly the face you are making right now, readers, because the person I was talking to made the exact same one. Okay, lesson learned! Clearly, the wheelchairs were a bad place to start. But let me try this again:

One of the side effects of hanging out with myself all day is that the inside of my head has turned into a sort of echo chamber for weird, wacky, un-say-able things that (I assume) would normally be drowned out by daily interaction with other human beings. It seems like other people – coworkers, fellow commuters, the coffee cart guy – serve as a reset button for my obnoxious, intrusive brainchatter. A reset button that I don't have anymore; instead, I have a bored brain which now likes to entertain itself by a) identifying the single most horrible thing I could do in any given situation, and then b) reminding me about said horrible thing relentlessly, at increasing volume, until I really just want to find the nearest shovel and smack myself in the face with it.

As far as I can tell, this is how it works.

1. I am standing around, minding my own business.
2. My brain, independently and of its own accord, notices that there's something I could do in this situation to get myself killed, arrested, or ostracized from society.
3. “HEY!” says Brain. “What if you did this horrible thing I just thought of!”
4. “What?! That's horrible!” I reply. “I would never do that!”
5. But Brain is relentless. “But you COULD!” it shouts. “Just think about it! Just think about it until you're so freaked out that you have no choice but to run into the streets naked, wearing a clown mask, and steal the nearest dog!”
6. “I WOULD NEVER DO THAT EITHER!” I scream (sometimes out loud), and then go find a bottle of bourbon, which I drink until I pass out.

So, if I am standing on a rooftop, a mountain, or the side of the Grand Canyon, my brain will start gleefully shouting, “HEY! What if you JUMPED?!” The fact that I don't want to die is immaterial. Brain doesn't care. Brain is all, “But you COULD! Just sayin!”, as I see myself pitching forward into space, screaming through a brief and terrifying free fall, and then splatting (or, in the case of the Grand Canyon, exploding into very small bits) on the pavement.

If I'm hanging out with my mother-in-law, my brain will occasionally pipe up with, “Hey, what if you called her a whore?!”
“What?” I say. “Shut up! She's not a whore, she's lovely! I would never say anything like that to my mother-in-law!”
“I know, right?!” says Brain. “Everyone would get soooooo mad at you! Can you imagine! Can you imagine?!”

And occasionally, yes, my brain will note the presence of a gentleman in a wheelchair and suddenly fill my head with the image of me, grabbing ahold of the handles, and pushing it away down the street at high speed shouting, “Wheeeeee! Isn't this fun!”, while the hapless veteran I've just hijacked shouts, “Oh my God, somebody call the police!”

Me: I'm not doing that.
Brain: Hey, whatever, dude! I'm just sayin'!

Fortunately, I have the internet – where the wikipedia entry for “Intrusive Thoughts” describes all this to a tee and mentions that it's a universal human experience (although it doesn't specifically mention wheelchair hijacking or clown suits, so I can't be completely sure.) But Christ, universal or not, it is getting really annoying. And Brain, if you're reading this...

SHUT UP.

More girlfriends can only be a good thing.

One of the interesting things about working with social media is how much it can really blur the lines between the personal and the professional. Take me, for instance: I never thought I'd find myself in a position to do much of anything with this blog beside telling stories about wangs, but lo, it turns out that the internet changes everything.

So, two things about this post:

1. Full disclosure: This event is being run by a client. I'm helping her get the word out.
2. I am sincerely hoping that some of you will assist me in getting the word out by alerting your readers, be it on your blog, or on Twitter, or on Facebook, or by tattooing the relevant information on your butt and hiring someone to drive you around town on a float festooned with balloons and streamers with your pants off.

And now, the details:

On November 19th, GirlfriendCircles.com is hosting an NYC "speed-friending" event at Sweet Revenge in the West Village. This is for women only. (Sorry, guys. We get speed-friending; you get to pee standing up. Sounds fair to me.)

If you've ever moved to a new city, worked in a male-dominated industry, or for some other reason found yourself living sans a group of super-cool women to hang out with, you know what a good idea this is. The premise is simple: $15 buys you an evening of wine, cupcakes, and a roomful of potential BFFs who are looking to make new friends. The rest of it works just like speed-dating (quick meetings with individual women during which you snap-judge your compatibility), except that none of the participants will eventually try to have sex with you. Which is nice.

Tickets are available at a discount for the next day ONLY. So, if you -- or your readers -- live in New York City and are interested in meeting and mingling with a group of cool ladyfolk next week, please do the following:

1. Visit the event page for a ticket. (As previously mentioned, we're all being offered an early sign-up discount right now -- score!)
2. Tell people about it via Twitter, Facebook, your blog, your butt.
3. Alert me to your illustrious internet activities in whatever way you see fit.

That's it!
We now return to our regularly scheduled programming.


...Oh, one more thing: I sort of forgot to mention this, but I... um... joined Twitter. So if you want to follow me, you can do it here.

She's cheer captain, and I'm... on the floor next to that static ab-work bench, crying.

Longtime readers might remember this post from last year, in which I recounted a series of unfortunate events that ultimately resulted in a decision to never, ever engage in formal exercise again. (For those disinclined to click through, suffice to say that my left boob was involved, as was half the hipster population of Williamsburg.) This decision made sense at the time; when your daily commute involves three miles of walking, it's easy to be all, Gym? HA! Why should I go to one, when French people don't?!

But then, I got a job. A job that required daily commute by car, to the most unwalkable place on the planet. A job so soul-sucking that I had no choice but to spend every lunch break comforting myself with bagels! And in the absence of regular exercise --and in the presence of my undeniably enlargened ass -- I began to reconsider the whole "gym" thing. I actually reconsidered myself all the way into the parking lot of a local fitness center, armed with $200 worth of signup money, ready to fork it all over for the privilege of giving up Bagel Time in favor of spending my lunch break sweating on an elliptical machine.

I reconsidered, until the point at which I saw people exiting the fitness center -- frowning, unhappy, clammy-looking people in ill-fitting gym wear -- and plodding joylessly to their cars whilst shrieking at each other with Long Island accents.

At which point I reconsidered myself over to a nearby TJ Maxx, where I successfully eradicated the horror of what I had just witnessed by spending my signup money on several pairs of really cute boots.

And that was that.
Until I got laid off, after which one of my first rational thoughts was: Well, maybe I can take this as an opportunity to lose those couple-of-ass-pounds I seem to have acquired during the past year!

(Admittedly: I have no idea whether such a thing is possible. I'm sure I'm not the only person around here who has a 10-pound-ish range of weights that I can see on the scale and think, "Yeah, I'm okay with that"; however, I do wonder if I'm the only one for whom 7 of the 10 acceptable pounds correspond to a number I have never weighed. Those bottom seven are aspirational weights that I might, MIGHT, have seen on the scale sometime before my 7th grade growth spurt. But dammit, a girl has to have dreams!)

And that is why, when my little brother said, "Hey, do you want to come to the gym with me tonight?", I thought about it for a second and said, "Yeah, okay."

Yeah. Okay.

I'd like to say that this ended up being a rebirth of sorts, in which I discovered that I was wrong all this time -- that I love the gym, and its sleek machines, and its burly occupants, and its saturated walls that positively resonate with the sound of free-weight grunting and the heavy scent of MAN MUSK. But instead, this happened:

1. My toes fell asleep on the elliptical machine.

2. And then some random dude came through the door and caught me right in the middle of trying to belt the words to "You Belong With Me" while running on the elliptical machine. (Note: This is more difficult than it sounds.)

3. And then I completely abandoned the embarrassing and toe-deadening elliptical machine in favor of the Slanted Bench That You Lie On To Do Crunches, only to find, when I tried to get up from said bench, that I had gotten stuck in it.

4. And then I fell on the floor and hurt myself.


Yeah.
NO.

I suppose I might attempt the gym again, someday -- for instance, if I become wealthy enough to afford a personal trainer and/or state-of-the-art bionic body parts. But right now, I'm anticipating a winter full of a lot of walking.

On the downside, it will be very cold.

On the upside, I do have several pairs of really cute boots.

In which I have a lot of time on my hands.

One of the most overwhelming things about being unexpectedly jobless is the sheer volume of unscheduled time that's suddenly dumped in your lap. Readers, if you've ever been laid off, you know what I'm talking about. It turns out that the job you've been going to every day isn't just a source of income; it's the foundation from which you build your day-to-day, and when you take it away, everything else crumbles. The metronome stops ticking. When there's nowhere to go, every step feels purposeless. You wake up, you walk your dog, you buy a coffee, and then, realizing that there is no "and then", you go back to your apartment and stare at the wall and wonder why you got out of bed in the first place.

Yep, that's how it goes.
The first time around, I mean. This time, however -- because I am, apparently, so unlucky and/or generally untalented that I've managed to lose my job twice in the span of a year -- I knew exactly what was coming. And so, with the help of my brother, who is also currently feeling the sting of our loveless and impenetrable economy, I have taken it upon myself to fill the void with VERY IMPORTANT PROJECTS that require GREAT INTELLECTUAL STRENGTH AND STAMINA.

Like, say, gluing googly eyes onto Doritos and using them to make a video.

Yes, we did.

This blog is on 24-hour hiatus for the following epic event.

If you happen to see this handsome son of a bitch walking around today, wish him a happy 31st. And then slap his ass, 'cause he likes it.

Briefly

Today, in an effort to feel like a functional and productive human being, I decided to do all the things that functional and productive human beings do. I got up early, bought a coffee, and walked the dog.

Then, I worked until noon.

Then, I took a shower. I got dressed, threw on some shoes and a jacket, and went to the grocery store. I bought an apple and some cheese.

And then I came back, and made myself some lunch.

"Ho!" I said to myself. "Look at all I have accomplished today! I am, dare I say, productive!"

And then I took off my pants.

Because really.