The Opposite of Writer's Block

You hear plenty about writer's block, but what about when the opposite occurs?

Those times when you spend hours writing furiously. You forget about things like food and showering until something far more immediate manages to tear you away from the keyboard.

I shouldn't have had all that beer and coffee and watermelon!

 Even when you're away, you're still there, trapped in lala-land. You're still writing.

Your usual goal is 1,000 words. Heck, you're glad when you've got 500, it's still a good night.

But now?

Now you're cranking out 1,500 one night, 2,600 the next. Your muse, she's not just inspiring you, she's out having a house party (house = your head) with tons of other people, there are smoke machines everywhere, colored lights, and music that goes thumpa thumpa thumpa thumpa.

Like this, but with more glowsticks.

It's been four, maybe five hours, you want to keep going, you really do, but it's time for bed and you've already stayed up a bit later than usual.

When you wake the next morning the bright light of day is crisp. Your muse is passed out on the lawn, the house is a wreck and, for some reason, there is a goat eating your couch.

Normally I don't condone the myth that goats eat everything but this is a goat that lives inside your head.

You think back to all that work you've done, that feeling of being in the zone, and you smile.

This, my friends, is one of the perks of being a writer.

I Hate the Mall

Last weekend I went clothes shopping with my brother. He decided he wanted a new look while I realized I was wearing nothing but overly large, frumpy t-shirts that make my head look weirdly small.

So we went shopping at...The Mall.

Cue ominous lightning.

Apparently hating the mall is a rather common thing, but my mall is special. People complain that their mall is overly crowded and filled with teeniboppers, and so is mine, but I hate my mall for different reasons.

1. It's designed stupidly

Let's give you an example of how stupid it is through the use of the food court. The food court is the one place where you, as an inevitable group of teenagers, can split up momentarily to enjoy a variety of food options.

All crappy options, but still options.

Jessica hates tandoori chicken? Well nuts to her, she can have her pretzel and smoothie. Anyway, Barnes and Noble was feeling a bit too closed in and moved into the mall and the food court was demolished in favor of the bookstore.

Here's where it gets stupid.


So instead of having a single food court, they decide to spread the food stores (they don't even have the dignity to be called "restaurants") all over the mall. You want a burger but want an Orange Julius to drink with it? You're going to have to go waaaaay the heck to the other side of the mall. And what about chairs and tables? I can't even remember what they did for that because, one by one, they closed down. These days we have two food stores: a pretzel place and a Subway right across from each other. I like to think they throw things at each other like they're embroiled in some kind of turf war to be the last one standing.

And that's just the food court. What kind of variety do we have in our stores besides Barnes and Noble? I'll list them:

Clothing store.
Clothing store.
Clothing store.
Clothing store.
Clothing store.

Granted, you have your overpriced jewelry stores and Game Stop with obligatory crappy customer service ("We ran out" my massive, jiggly butt) but that's it. I used to complain about how boring our mall really is, but no one believed me (even me to an extent) until we went to the mall across the state while visiting family. It has:

A movie theater
A bank
A toy store
A miniature golf course
An arcade
A highly offensive novelty shop that would make even the most rebellious youth of this area faint.
A liquor store

Idaho is a repressed place (it has its pros and cons) where I live in Idaho, however, is extra repressed. The best way to put it is that the most conservative of people take one look and go "This place is weeeeeeird." (Except you guys, my lovely local readers. You're all awesome.) This is all represented in how stupid our mall is.

You know what? Previously mentioning my massive, jiggly butt is a great lead into my next point, which is...

2. They have weird sizes

Let me tell you my origin story.

I am actually a chimera: a fusion of two different things. It all started in a freak magic act. The magician was sawing two women in half when horror struck. Panicking, the magician put them back together, but he had gotten the halves mixed up, and it was too late to correct it. It wouldn't have been so bad if the women not been such different weights.

And that, my friends, is how I have the torso of a 120 pound woman but the lower half of a 200 pound woman.

In all seriousness, I do recognize I'm pear-shaped:

Like the woman in red, minus the jaundice.

I also recognize it's primarily my own fault. Yes, I can claim genetics has a hand in this, but I also write this as I am eating a bagel with cream cheese and about to start in on a 20 ounce Dr. Pepper. My favorite hobbies are sitting, laying, sleeping, lolling, and generally doing nothing. I hope to make some changes this summer but that's not what this is about. I'm a size 14 to 16 in pants which is, apparently, the average for women in the US. That means, logically, half the women in the US are a size larger than 14.

So why don't places in the mall carry anything above a size 12?

And don't tell me it's because only teenagers shop at the mall. I saw plenty of women with a toddler and a stroller in tow. So, either the place I live in has the most depressing rate of teenage pregnancies, or else women in their twenties shop there.

I was looking for a pair of jeans but found nothing but a surprising bunch of size 00. Is size 00, or even size 3, really so common that they stock the majority of their denim in those sizes?

What about their tops?

I'm a size Medium, though I occasionally prefer a Large. Already frustrated by their size in jeans, I expected a similar theme in that sizes only came in Small, Extra Small, or XXS. Instead I saw everything from Small to as big as Extra Large.

At that point what little bit of logic I tried to hold onto died a terrible death.

Not that I ever really bother buying much at the mall because....

3. It's expensive

Everyone probably complains of this, but malls really do jack up their prices just so that the tag can say Old Navy even though no one but you is ever going to read it. That's okay though, because it's Mommy and Daddy's money anyway. I meanwhile, have to keep from vomiting rage when I see a $40 price tag on what is a T-shirt.

Actual picture of me.

Then, they confuse you by throwing Clearance and Sale and BOGO at you. While there I saw a clothing rack that had 40% OFF CLEARANCE PRICE!!! slapped all over it. Original price? $80.00, clearance price? $79.99. I checked to make sure the one item wasn't just a fluke. Nope, the entire rack. Brilliant!

I've seen Hot Topic waffle every week between BOGO (buy one get one) 50% off and then have everything 25% off. Anyone with a modicum of math skills would be able to figure out it's the exact same thing (and don't judge me, I go there for the gamer shirts.)

I spent all of $20 at the entire mall despite walking into every single store. It took hours.

All of that overly-expensive merchandise, combined with their target demographic of risk-taking teenagers, is probably why...

4. They treat you like a shoplifter

 As I said, I only spent $20 at the mall, and it was for a single top, but you can be assured it will certainly be memorable.

I picked out a top I liked, it was certainly different from what I have ever worn before, and I wanted to see what I looked like in it. You know those scenes in movies where girls go to the mall and it has a montage of them trying on different things? It doesn't work that way thanks to the store employee having the key and there being a maximum of 2-3 items. Montages are created so you don't see all that fuss.

Anyway, I'm trying on a top. It's got spaghetti straps, which I'm completely unfamiliar with. Only since last year have I even delved into the mysterious world of tank tops. I choose my clothing as though I were the child of a stuffy librarian and an Amish. I like to think I look really good in this top, but my Amish/librarian clothing sensibilities start kicking in and I begin to wonder how it would look if I wore it over the top I'm already wearing. I'm spinning around while the thing tangles up everywhere because I have no idea how to dress myself. It currently resembles something between a lacy turban and a facehugger when I freeze at hearing a sound...

Wham wham wham!

Getting closer...

WHAM WHAM WHAM!

I'm next...

WHAM WHAM WHAM!!!

"EVERYTHING-GOING-OKAY-IN-THERE!?" she shouts while banging at the door like Johnny Quinn trapped in a Sochi bathroom stall (haha, I made a joke based on current affairs!)


"I'm fine," I say, coughing on plaster dust as it rains down from the ceiling.

But what I want to say is:


"Girl, I am a 26 year old woman pathetically trying to reclaim my squandered teenage youth through dressing like a skank! I am not currently stuffing that top into a pant leg or something so leave me the hell alone!!"

I discard the idea of trying it on over my current top, because I just can't now. It's a lot like the same reason some people can't use public bathrooms or two guys standing next to each other at the urinals.

As soon as I come out:

"Can I take that to the register for you while you keep shopping!?" she asks in that too-friendly way store employees are forced to act like.

"Er, sure," I reply, handing it over because I know she's taking it so I don't just walk out with it...or something.

Yes, I like the top, but you know what it needs? A good jacket. It has to be just the right length though. They have one, but it's a size Medium. I said I could fit Medium normally, but in this case me trying to wear a size Medium is like watching The Hulk squeeze into a pair of Size 4 thong (which you now cannot unsee) I didn't find anything else I liked, and the place was starting to creep me out, so I paid for my top and left in a hurry.

I'm not offended as being seen as a possible shoplifter. It's okay, I can understand being cautious, and I think I probably attract more attention than most: I'm twitchy, awkward, and quiet, I meander aimlessly a lot, and I wear big, heavy coats that make me look weird. If people want to keep a close eye on me, that's fine, but never, until that day, was I physically treated as a probable shoplifter.

Of course, I would think stores in the mall are some of the most likely places to be shoplifted. When I tried to look it up, I got this:

There are as many, if not more, searches to shoplift than there are to prevent shoplifting.





Ironically what made me feel better was shopping somewhere else the next day. Retail therapy, if you will (a phrase that just made me die a little inside to use.) Where did I go? My local thrift store. I found exactly what I wanted, including the exact kind of jacket I had been looking for at $6 instead of $40+, new jeans in my jiggly arse size, and a couple of new tops that, when they didn't have price tags on them, were given to me for $1 and $0.50.

So, the moral of the story today is go to the thrift store first: people will leave you the heck alone, save for the occasional hopeless, fish-eyed glance your way; there are no sales, so you don't have to do complex math to figure out what something costs; and no one will care if you try to steal a fifty cent, stringy spandex shirt.

....But seriously kids, don't shoplift. It's bad karma.

Valentine's Day is Boring

Valentine's Day is always rife with complainers, and I used to be one of those many people until I read this (contains swearing and suggestive content in hilarious cartoon form), so today I figured I would take a step in another direction with the power of learning!

This post brought to you by Lt. Commander Geordi La Forge.

In many countries Valentine's Day is seen as kitsch and celebrated about as heartily as we celebrate Lincoln's birthday.

We celebrate heartily by growing beards and throwing pennies at people who don't wear stovepipe hats.

In others they celebrate it as we do, or have their own holiday.

A foreign tradition I'm familiar with (off the top of my head without any research) is that in Japan it is actually women who present chocolate to men on Valentine's Day (they can also give gifts of chocolate to friends, usually other girls). Only recently has there been invented White Day, a day that men provide gifts to women in return for their giving on Valentine's Day.

I'm also familiar with Ostara, which seems to be a combination of Easter and Valentine's Day, but let's go even further back than that.

The furthest back I can find would be Lupercalia, done on Feburary 13 through 15 when people try to ward off evil and promote health and fertility (I'm way narrowing this down as a description, so I suggest reading about it rather than going by my word). This holiday has connections with wolves, it being translated to "Wolf Festival" pretty much literally, and satyrs. There appears to be some dog and goat sacrifices, as well as lashings from whips to promote fertility in women, so I can understand why it fell out of favor.

Then again, I think the whole fertility-lashing might be making a comeback.

Here's my thoughts after all of this, I think Valentine's Day could use a major overhaul using a lot of other people's traditions. Men get enough grief about gift-giving during Mother's day, birthdays, and anniversaries, so let's adopt the Eastern tradition of women giving chocolate to men. While we're at it, we'll go ahead and throw in the fun parts of Lupercalia and have people dress up in furs, and instead of wasting a whole goat, we'll have a delicious chevon barbecue. We can't stop there though, there's too much cutesy-bordering-on-creepy imagery.

Bleh.

How about the wolves and satyrs instead?

Cool!

Awesome!

 So everyone, dressed like this...

Hawt.

Gives out this:

I was too scared to type in "satyr chocolate."

To which the day ends like this:

Derp

I think we'd have a lot fewer complainers, then.