Carly's Into That

This December, I’ve been experiencing some pretty serious holiday-related cognitive dissonance. Right now is “the most wonderful time of the year”, but also probably “the last Christmas ever before Dictator Dump blows up the entire planet over a Twitter fight.” 2016 was a goddamn hellscape, and there’s no promise that 2017 will be any better—in fact, it will likely be SO much worse!

So how can we be merry and bright this holiday season, considering all the horrors we’ll likely face in 2017? The answer, my friends, is alcohol. This Christmas, surprise your family by tossing that worn paper bag full of Evan Williams and whipping up a festive cocktail! Here are a few recipes to consider.

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Y’all, the upcoming election is really fucking up my life. Everyone is angry about something, most of us are scared about lots more things, and there is currently a 42% chance that America’s next president will be the reanimated corpse of a white supremacist’s jack-o-lantern. For the past few months, I’ve felt helpless, overwhelmed, and close to a rage-coma every time I log onto Facebook. So last week, I temporarily deactivated my account.

I know. I am so #brave.

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Earlier this week, my friend Adam Avitable hateshared an article on Facebook called “15 Thoughts Every Guy Has When Dating A Bigger Woman”, published on a platform called TheRichest (really? no y’all not.)

As you can imagine, people of all genders and sizes saw the title, clicked the bait, and got heated (myself included.) If I make it to 100 years old, the secret to longevity that I’ll share with the world in my Times article will surely be, “I made it a point to get mad about something on the internet every single day.”

In the midst of my #FeministRage, I knew this toilet-clogging wordlog needed to be expertly torn apart, and who better to do it than I, a not-size-0 person who has been striving toward unattainable weight loss goals for almost 10 years? #TheHeroGothamNeeds

The piece is now mysteriously gone from TheRichest’s absolutely-not-rich-at-all website, presumably because the lone female employee got a look at it, murdered the author (a man named Jim Hogue, with whom no one should ever engage in sexual intercourse), and threatened a sexual harassment lawsuit if it wasn’t immediately scrubbed from existence. But thanks to the magic of Google Cache, I can still drown in a maelstrom of hate over something that technically no longer exists. Thanks, The Internet!

Without further ado, here are some screencaps from The Worst Thing I’ve Seen This Month, Which Is Saying Something Considering The Month Ends Tomorrow: “15 Thoughts Every Guy Has When Dating A Bigger Woman” by Jim Hogue, who apparently cannot count higher than the number 15 (probably because that is his secret age)(and with whom no one should ever engage in sexual intercourse)(especially if he is, as I suspect, a minor).

Let me begin by saying: Jim, are you sure we can’t convince you to write poetry?

Picture it scribbled on a napkin in your freshman dining hall and left on a table for two:

Lots of times you see a guy/
he could be normal sized or he/
could be overweight himself

*sheds single tear*

Anyway, let’s get to the underlying issue, which is this: when Jim sees a man walking happily with a woman whose thighs have a greater circumference than his dick, he feels sorry for the dude. Is it really because fatties are gross, or because of the crushing loneliness in which his shitass worldview has prompted him to exist? WHY WILL NO ONE HOLD JIM’S HAND?

Ashley Graham, JESUS, could you PLEASE stop blowing up Jim Hogue’s phone. How many times does he have to tell you? Unlike these other desperate CHUBBY CHASERS, Jim is just not willing to prioritize “happiness over appearance”, and he will not take your call even when he is done sending pleading, comma-less emails to Kate Moss. #ThirstyForJim

“14. My Girl Can Cook”

This article is 2,502 words long. It could have been… *counts words in above sentence*… 17.

“12. It Is Good For His Confidence”

“Some guys. HAHA, NOT ME THO! Definitely not me! I get so much… *discreetly looks at word written on palm* …vageema! HA! Bitches, amirite????? *chokes back sob*”

“10. They Are Easy To Talk To”

Last month, I was roadtripping home from a wedding and stopped in a mid-Florida McDonald’s for some hangover nuggets. While I was waiting for my order, an older gentleman sat down at my booth with me, complimented my hair/nail polish/toenail polish, and launched into a 5-minute story about his recent career change/health problems/grandchild (whom he loves very much). IT’S BECAUSE I SKIPPED THE GYM LAST WEEK, ISN’T IT?

“8. The Cuddling Is The Best”

a) Fact:”Overweight women should hire themselves out as professional cuddlers” is the sentence most likely to be found in the secret diary of a serial killer!
b) It’s likely that Jim Hogue tries to sit next to bigger women on the subway so he can take a gentle nap on their breasts. They “are always willing!” The police report and brief probationary period were just one big misunderstanding!
c) …is your brother ok 😦 why so much snuggling 😦 can somebody check on him 😦

It’s not til 11 long-winded, brutally oblivious entries later that we get a look at what the fuck is actually Jim’s problem.

“6. There Is Less Pressure On How You Look”

Jim-ese to Basic English translation: “Bro, you remember when I was dating that bitch Jessica who always complained about the dumbest shit? Like, ‘Take a shower, Jim, it’s been 3 weeks’ and ‘You’ve been wearing those sweatpants since Christmas morning and they’re falling apart’ and ‘Maybe we could have dinner together sometime this month instead of you going to Burger King and eating by yourself at 10pm?’? Man, I don’t know what her problem was. Must’ve been that she was a size 2. Never stick your dick in crazy, amirite???”

Basic English to Intuitive English Translation: “I am so alone. Do you wanna snuggle, man? My 12-year-old brother is at school.”

Jim, if I’m reading you correctly, several women of varying sizes have probably told you to fuck right off in your lifetime, and while you probably deserved it, I’m sorry if it made you sad. Regardless, there’s no need take your hurt feefees and turn them into a 15-item thinkpiece, generalizing one of your shittiest opinions to every living, bepenised human being.

I realize this is hypocritical coming from a person who just wrote an angry 1,000 word response to a shitty 2,500 word thinkpiece, when instead, this post could have consisted of a single screencap:

Am I a size 6? No.

Would I lie and say I’ve never eaten an entire pizza by myself? Nah.

Do I, or any other women, care what the fuck Jim Hogue thinks?

Ever since the introduction of Facebook’s Like button, users have whined about the lack of a Dislike button. It’s a fair point, and one that’s often clarified in the comment section: “I don’t ‘like’ that someone sideswiped your car while it was parked in the garage and didn’t leave a note! I’m just showing my support!!!”

After something like 8 years, Facebook finally decided it was tired of watching your Great Aunt Martha try to explain why her clicking the Like button does not mean that she likes it when bad things happen to you.

But rather than just adding the oft-requested Dislike button to the mix, they added a whole host of new “Reactions”. Now, when someone posts a picture of their brunch with the caption “#sundayfunday #mimosas #yaassskween #blessed <3“, we have the following choices:

I felt weird about these new additions at first. It makes me nervous when the number of Likes on my posts is smaller than normal because everyone is clicking Love or Haha instead (I am universally adored). But then I realized that most of us are missing out on the best possible uses of these new emojis: pettiness, childish behavior, and general headfuckery.

If you are “nice” or “mature” or “an adult”, this strategy may not be for you. For the rest of us, I’ve compiled a helpful guide to using the new Reactions in a petty-as-fuck manner, guaranteed to warm your cold heart with the anger and bewilderment of the innocent. Read More

Buzzfeed posted an article yesterday called Here’s What Trump Supporters Believe Will Happen If He Doesn’t Win. Within, Trump voters proudly posed with their predictions for the U.S. in the event that it does not elect a cantaloupe that’s been sitting in a closed Igloo cooler since July 2007, somehow becoming both sentient and horrifyingly racist, as its next president. As you’ll see, they tried, but most of them are way off the mark.Let’s take a look at where they went wrong. All photos of people (besides Trogdor the Burninator) are credited to the above-referenced Buzzfeed post. Read More

When I started grad school last fall, I was a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed little shit. “I’m an adult now. I’m going to kill this. I will be organized and do my homework and PUSH THROUGH and have a Masters degree and make so much money that I just build a house out of money and eat money for breakfast and set money on fire in the fireplace which is also made out of money”, I thought, in that annoying high-pitched voice that women use when they’re making fun of something another woman said.

“This time is different,” I smirked, head held high as I walked out of an 8-hour workday and into my first night class in my classiest biz-caj outfit. There was NO WAY I’d fall back into the same patterns that plagued me during my undergraduate, high school, middle school, elementary, pre-k/daycare, and in-utero educational careers.

Bless my little heart. Even now, 2 semesters later, I truly remember believing these things about myself. Denial is a powerful drug. For a fleeting second, I could almost understand how my ex still thinks he’s “a good person” and “handsome”.

Friends, I’m talking about procrastination. According to a study that I just made up, procrastination is the 2nd biggest problem facing people in my generation (right after that new strain of medication-resistant gonorrhea). Procrastination is a nasty habit to break, and that’s coming from someone who’s successfully quit smoking more than 50 times!

I’m not here to tell you how to quit procrastinating- if I knew, I wouldn’t be sitting here writing a fucking blog post about it instead of reading about transactional cost theory. I’m here to propose that, like many other bad habits, procrastination sneaks up on us using the same distinct pattern every time, and EVERY TIME, we fall for it.

1. BRIEF ANNOYANCE

Uuuuuuuggggghhhhhh. A 5-page paper, due in 2 weeks?? But… why? Why, at an institution with a solid academic program for the field in which I’ve chosen to pursue permanent employment, would I have to write… a PAPER???

2. OVERCONFIDENT INITIAL PLAN

Okay. 2 weeks is 14 days. Here’s what I’m going to do: I’m going to read the 8 suggested articles this week. That’s 2 per day. Then next week, I will write 1 page per day. BOOM. 5 pages. Piece of fucking cake. I am Shiva, Destroyer of Worlds.

3. A CRACK IN THE FAÇADE

Scene:
*settles down on couch with glasses, articles, highlighter, mug of tea, trophy for being the smuggest little douchebag*
“Here we go! 2 articles tonight, no excuses.”
*reads 1 page*
*rewards self with 5-minute Twitter break*
*phone buzzes* “GIRL WHERE ARE YOU, WE’RE ALL AT WINE WEDNESDAY AND WE MISS YOU”

*sprints out door*

Repeat for 10 days.

4. MANIA

HAHAHAHA! EVERYTHING IS FIIIIINE! First plan was stupid anyway. YOLO; jagerbombs; sleep til noon. You still have 3 days which is basically 3 years. For 5 pages?! Please. You’re Shiva, Destroyer of Worlds, remember?

5. BARGAINING

Dear Lord Baby Jesus, lying there in your…your little ghost manger, lookin’ at your Baby Einstein developmental…videos, learnin’ ’bout shapes and colors…

Forgive me, for I have sinned. I have besmirched the name of academia, and all that it stands for. For my transgressions, I could not be sorrier.

But maybe if you could just drop a small meteor near campus over the weekend while it’s empty and no one is there and I would have JUST ONE MORE WEEK TO

6. DESPERATION

2am, the night before the deadline. Palms are sweaty, knees weak, arms are heavy.

After staring at my tiny laptop for 6+ hours, my tiny, ineffectual words begin to blur on the screen.

Why do I continue to inflict upon myself this constant cycle of psychological torture? Life could be so easy. And yet here I sit. Toiling. Miserable. A rubber band stretched just shy of snapping.

7. COMPLETION

“Hey, this is pretty fucking good!…

(clicks submit button)

8. DAMAGING BRAVADO/REINFORCEMENT OF NORMS

…and behold. I did it all… in only 2 days.”

9. REPEAT

Because life is too short to spend in a textbook (or a mental state that doesn’t involve near-constant tension headaches)!