pretend this isn't here. i will be attempting a real blog of sorts in early august. leave a comment if for some crazy reason you would like to be notified of its whereabouts.

my dog died. and when i say died, well, i mean my dog euthanized, for lack of an existing word. when i walked outside i was magically transported to 2002. we were surrounded by people from the future. i couldn't help but want... well, you, in some capacity. i wanted to ask you what happens to a dog when it dies, but then, maybe i don't want the answer to that.

craigslist missed connections are so funny. it never ceases to amaze me that so many people think they have found love in walmart.

i keep making these commitments to columbia - meanwhile everyone i know is slowly but surely moving away. if you're not moving to a little house on a hillside, what exactly is it that you are doing?

the things i do for libraries...

i was going to write something, but then i realized i didn't have anything particularly dramatic to say.

:)

it occurred to me recently that while a lot of my relationships with various people have changed over time, my feelings regarding those people have not necessarily dissipated. i don't really understand this ideal that we hold ourselves to. we look for love, and maybe we find it and maybe we don't, but in any event, if you are in the mindset that you could love a person, and it doesn't work out, why on earth are we then supposed to hate said person? i am finding i much prefer to know a person and speak with them on occasion than flat out hate a person and avoid them whenever possible. the latter approach is far too tiring and lacks, well, humanity, in essence. when i say this i feel like i am saying it with at least 10 people in mind, but seriously - if we are not lovers, or the closest of friends, this doesn't mean i am immediately going to erase you in my mind and never again want to know you. maybe it took me all of 2007 to figure that out, but at least i did.

there are specific examples i would site, at least four of which involved various interactions with people i ran into at the last instance of shattered ever. however, what i've definitely learned over years of e-ranting - and yes, over half my life i've been "blogging", sad but true - is that when you mention these things on a public forum and allow people to know how they have affected you without directly telling them, well, it puts this thing out in the open that can only be alluded to and never discussed, which is far more difficult to deal with than just SAYING things.

so, livejournal, for now you will not be a catalyst for my aggression. suffice it to say that if i have ever been your friend, some part of me will probably always want to be your friend. i won't be ashamed of that. it's only human.

shattered, there are things i will miss about you. tribune, there are even things i will miss about you. what's done is done, what's said has been said. now, onto the next chapter...

so apparently there are men like this in the world, but they're mostly in hiding. seriously - why don't i know people like this?

http://red3.blogspot.com/2007/06/differently-straight.html

so my refrigerator continues to be broken, giving me even more reason to continue visiting my friendly neighborhood taco bell for purposes of lunching. that said, i was feeling up to a change of scenery today, so i went to - oh yes - a different taco bell. i applauded myself for my originality, and my ability to eat the same deliciously cheap tacos while yet avoiding the unfortunate conundrum of having a taco bell "the usual".

and so, there i am, innocently ordering, when the employee helping me says, oh, what do you do for the tribune?
finding this to be an innocent enough question, i reply amicably that i am a secretary, and that is in, in fact, the most boring job on earth.
he then says, and i quote, because i certainly, wouldn't want to be responsible for these words, "well they should give you a column, it'd be better than's hank's, that's for sure. he's become a goddamned liberal if you ask me. of course, i'm so conservative, some people say i'm so conservative i may as well be a nazi!"

blink, blink.

you know those moments when you realize you are involved in a conversation with a person that you definitely should not be involved in conversation with? this reminded me greatly of a sordid experience i had, grateful to be sitting next to a normal person on a grayhound bus, only to discover that he was a soldier of god put on this earth for the sole purpose of fighting and dying for his country. i back away slowly, cradling my tray of tacos.

i wouldn't say this employee followed me, exactly, or even that he continued to talk directly at me. as it were, i sat at a table by myself, engaged by my sub-par tex-mex and a more thoroughly delicious book, when i noticed the aforementioned employee cleaning tables and muttering, halfway to me, halfway to himself... about just how conservative he was.

and that, ladies and gentlemen, is the last time i shall broaden my taco bell horizons for quite some time.

this morning i was wandering around the back office doing something mildly productive when, after a mere fifteen minutes of the workday, a generally amicable and mild mannered long term customer service representative screamed, and i quote, "FUCK! I CAN'T DO THIS ANYMORE!" and ran out of the room.

it is always nice, when you lack the senority to say something, when someone more important than you says it for you.

oh my lord they are making a dead like me movie.
!!!!!!

dear coffee,

not to be overly forward or anything, but um, i want you inside me.

with love,

brittany.

you have never read me, but there have been days that i have clung to your every word. that is over now. goodbye.

yesterday i found myself parked behind a car whose liscense plate was - and i am not making this up - DRWORM.

i dare you to try driving with a straight face with memories of this song stuck in your head:

my name is dr. worm
good morning, how are you? i'm dr worm
i'm interested in things
i'm not a real doctor
but i am a real worm,
i am an actual worm.
i like to play the drums...

i have been awake twentyeight hours, and experienced a ridiculous range of emotions - over a book. i imagine you may do the same.
and of course, as often happens at the end of things, i can't believe its really over.
goodnight.

now, i don't think anyone here is under the illusion that i frequently bow to the cosmos as they proclaim my fate. horoscopes to me are generally a fun, silly way to amuse myself, and i certaintly don't take the ones facebook of all things provides me with very seriously. that said, this is what greeted me today:

Aries: A friend's drama is driving you crazy. You have to remind yourself - why is this person in my life again? And is it worth it?

now, before you jump to any conclusions, let me say that i don't believe this is really fortelling anything i don't already know, and let me also say i don't believe it is really about one person.

i am doing this thing soon that is, i must say, completely amazing for me. i am moving in on my own and i'm excited and terrified at the same time. if you know me at all, you know that the thing i fear the most is not public speaking OR death - it is, in fact, my own company. i really couldn't tell you why. it's not that i don't like myself, because i do - very much, actually. i simply fear being alone. i don't like being alone with my own thoughts. it is a strange thing to fear your own mind, and i think i come off as this weird, self-loathing yet self-obsessed person, and i daresay these were not the qualities i ever meant to posess.

well, i can't say i've conquered any fears about death, but i suppose most people haven't. as for the public speaking, well, communication classes solved most of that anxiety - that and knowing i don't have to do that pretty much ever again. but imagine my suprise when i assessed my possible living situations and realized that the only person i really wanted to live with again was - myself? do i even like me that much? i wasn't sure, but it made sense.

is this part of becoming an adult? is this what growing up is, to realize that there is more to life than constant companionship, to know that there is virtue in your own company? i have never had a friend that didn't have his or her faults, because that would be impossible. i have an unfortunate tendency of attaching myself to people and wondering why i am not my own person; wondering why those people have faults. it is an unfair habit, but i don't think its ever to late to reform.

here is what i've realized about people, that i have never really wanted to acknowledge: they change. they grow, not necessarily in the direction of good or bad or wrong or right, but they do grow. they branch off and out and they meet new people, different people, and sometimes they sever ties with other people, and as painful and horrible as that can be, it is, well, life.

so here is my advice to you, and to myself - be your own friend. a good friend of mine recently told me that another friend of ours, while discussing another friend we have all been having diffculties relating to, was asked how he dealt with it, and he responded to her by saying "i like me better". so, from now on, i am going to try to like me the best.

i know it probably isn't that interesting to read about how much trash i am taking out of my house, but SERIOUSLY.
friday i took out two bags.
saturday i took out two bags.
sunday i took out four bags.
and this morning at 7 something am i took out 4 bags and two pizza boxes.
i can't even imagine what it will be like to only be responsible for one person's trash!

wow, i hope thats not the most interesting thing i have to say.

okay, well, saturday was raven's goodbye birthday party at shattered, but unfortunately i didn't actually get to see much of her. i saw a little too much of evan jones - okay, lets face it, EVERYONE has seen too much of evan jones, but it's really hard to take a guy seriously when hes wearing a roller derby skirt. um, yeah. then i hit on a guy who hit on kevin, which makes me very curious about what it might be like to be attracted to straight men. i mean, that, and the guy in the skirt.

what the wtf. maybe i should go back to talking about trash!

i am not a ro-bot-ro-bot-bot-bot-ro-bot. and anyway, robots have feelings too. it would be incredibly nice if you'd stop treating me like dirt on your shoe.

she felt as if she lived in a bubble all of her days. she bought designer sunscreen to go with her new swimming suit and a taser gun to go with her new lifestyle. as she walked down the street alone, clutching her leather handbag to her chest, she imagined acid rain, nuclear war; the impending apocalypse. she squeezed her weapon for comfort.

in the distance, there were sirens.

years ago i kept an online journal entitled "we stay up late; drink coffee at work."

this would be an appropriate title for my life.

and so it goes - someone passes by my in the hallway, smiles, says, "hi, how are you?" this is what i want to say:

"well, actually, i'm feeling really shitty because... well, for a lot of reasons, but mostly because way back in the fall of 2002 i met this person, for all intents and purposes lets call him Marco BiPolo, and he changed my life, but lately it hasn't been for the better, and we have all these problems but i'm not brave enough to talk about them, so i sit and listen to him bitch about other people when what i want to be telling him is, how can you expect me to be here for you now when you have not been here for me?
and i'm also feeling shitty because i finally met this nice guy, i mean, i FINALLY met an ACTUAL NICE GUY, the kind of guy i've been waiting my whole life to meet, and the burn is that BECAUSE he's a nice guy he had to tell me there was someone else. what does that mean, someone else? why is there ALWAYS someone else?
and why, in a group of people who are as close as the goddamned babysitters club, does there have to be so much fucking drama? why can't a group of seemingly grown adults act like adults and not like, oh i don't know, the characters in the bratz movie? (yes, yes, there is a bratz movie, and sometimes i think i am living in it.)
but really, you want to know why i really feel shitty? its all of the above and the fact that i stayed up until two in the morning talking about it, and that no matter what i always feel cut off from people because two am is ridiculously late now. i can't support this lifestyle anymore - i can't afford to drink every day and i can't afford the stomachaches, nor the heartache. some days even this coffee addiction sickens me. this morning i woke up, had a bowl of cereal, and prompty threw it all up. but the truth of the matter is that at eight am i don't WANT to be awake. i want to be home in bed, having stayed up with people that i love and care about until the wee hours of the morning. of course, these days i'm not entirely sure who that group is comprised of, and no amount of coffee can make me feel alive right now."

now heres the truth: your coworkers don't really care about your lives, not any more than mine do. so, when asked that terrifying question, that, "good morning, brittany, how are you?" i clench my teeth and my fists together in unision and say, "well good morning, i'm fabulous, how are you?"

and then i drink some coffee, because i'm all grown up.

so this brittany walks into a bar with a jar of pesto...

and then plays lotr pinball. lmfao!

also, i took 11 bags (and a box) of trash out of my house today. that is a lot of trash. 4 serious!!!1 i should be buff now.