Being Poor CAN Be Funny

We were talking about minimum wage and living conditions these days in my English class today. Instead of super analyzing and getting mad intellectual, we just ended up swapping stories from our past min wage jobs.

This one is my favorite. This dude named Juan told it to us and we were all cracked up for a good five minutes straight.

"I had this job once where I had to wear a suit. So I bought one and the motherfucker paid me less than the suit."

This just in: poor, even now, can still be funny.

E

Weird Things Erika Says

Anyone who knows me well pretty much knows that aside from very rare ocassions, there is basically no filter from my brain to my mouth. I tend to say anything, anytime, usually for no real reason. I'm thinking of making this a daily feature, since I always say at least one weird thing a day. Maybe, maybe not. But for now, let's take a look back at weird shit I've said in the past.

"You make me so mad I wish I could grow a million fists and then punch you with all of them."

"I didn't pay ten dollars to stare at the backs of dudes' heads, I paid ten dollars to see some naked women!"

"She looked like the grown up version of those scary little pageant girls."

"I'm convinced the place where she used to live didn't have doors, it just had open walkways, because she doesn't know how to close a door without slamming it."

"We're going to the park. Oh, um, nevermind, no we're not. I'm going to commit suicide instead."

"Your toothpaste smells like ham."

"Can you mail me some quarters so I can do my laundry?"

"I don't know the Heinrich Manuever!"

"You choked into my glass of water!"

"Well you could have at least asked me something exciting, like 'Are you hungry?'"

"The dentist was drilling my teeth forever. It sounded like an Animal Collective song."

"Hurricane Ike is a gas killer!"

"That dog is a hypochondriac!"

"I like candy corn. It tastes like sugar and wax."

Deuces,
Erika

Well The High School Kids Are All Fucked Up

It's like no surprise to anyone that as much as I thought my life was shitty back in the A, I still enjoyed it. I had really great friends, the love of my life, and the amazing support system that is my mom. But I had to get out of there. There was too much undesirable emotional baggage constantly weighing on my mind and my heart. I guess that's why we drove here, because I couldn't take all that baggage with me on a plane...

And it's crazy because my mom was right when she told me not to bank all my happiness on LA, because I did, and like she said, I was disappointed. And thus with the realization that I did put all my eggs in one basket and that basket got run over by a Mack truck, I got kind of depressed. I would spend my days drifting aimlessly in and out of class, and my nights listening to Dr. Dog and Modest Mouse and crying myself to sleep. I kept telling the various people who called me that this was a mistake. That I should have stayed in Atlanta. That I was going to transfer. That maybe I wasn't strong enough to do this.

But then I read the most hopeful piece of advice ever on Missbehave. It was a comment on Emilia's post about how she moved to America and then started playing the guitar. You know what they say, sometimes inspiration finds you in the strangest places. It read:

"...It’s hard to move on with your life and leave people you love behind but just knowing that they love you and will be there when all of this is done and you’ve reached the goals you wanted to reach is something to hold on to."

Wow. Thank you Jewels! I wrote this down and this quote is actually hanging on my wall right now. V, this is so the quote for you. I don't know what else to say, except thank you again, because you kinda just gave me an epiphany.

Now everyone go buy a Bubblegum Pony's tote bag!

Deuces,
Erika

Magazines And Me

I like to collage. Why? Gawd, you ask sooo many questions! Well because I like to put things together in a creative way and I like being able to use random shots and words to form something meaningful. And because I can draw fairly decently, but I can collage circles around my art friends.

So as I was rounding up a few magazines to get a start on my new collage (old Nylons, double issues of Teen Vogue, a few Cosmos, but I never touch the Missbehaves because they come out quarterly and are therefore a hot commodity), I got to thinking about how I felt about magazines.

I love them. I love how for some they can be 290 page bibles, filled with glossy pages of mantras, wisdom, and life advice, but for some they can be a way to get through the day. When I was in school, I read the same issue of Nylon over and over and over again, just to combat the boredom. I can almost dictate that issue to you now.

Some people buy magazines for the articles, and some people buy them for the cover model (how I impulsively bought ElleGirl for the Adam Brody cover), and some people buy them purely based on the faith that it, based on what it says on the cover, will have all the things they want to read about.

It amazes me how a group of people can fit hours of conversation about fashion, culture, music, or food neatly into 100 pages. Certain articles can change people's lives, cause an epiphany, make your sex life better, update your wardrobe, or help someone lose 20 pounds. People live for magazines, people die for magazines. Editors-In-Chief of magazines are like celebrities. Anna Wintour, Amy Astley, Mary HK Choi, and Marvin Scott Jarrett can transform the masthead into a calling card of all-knowers of pop culture and style.

And I love zines. I love the idea of people turning to an organic creative outlet to voice their beliefs and opinions instead of just logging into Blogger and typing it out for people to randomly stumble upon.

In fact, I used to have a zine. I became antsy after endlessly pouring over my Nylons and Missbehaves and dreaming of writing for one, one day. So I made one of my own. It was called White Rice Magazine, and it was 2 only pages long because I made it on Microsoft Word, which is the only computer program I've mastered save for Powerpoint, but I wrote every article in it happily. It covered new music, fashion trends, upcoming Atlanta shows, recommended reading and a rant about whatever retarded celebrity was being retarded. It even included a current events story. It was published every 2 weeks. I distributed it to three of my friends and my mother and I was soooo proud of it.

I guess I have waxed poetic about magazines long enough, but I truly do love them. I even wrote a little love letter to a certain AWEsome mag awhile back. Now I almost buy them just to collect them. I have two years of Seventeen, two years of Teen Vogue, a year of Nylon, all the Missbehaves except for the first issue, a year of Under the Radar, assorted issues of Cosmopolitan, CosmoGirl, Jane, Entertainment Weekly, and even a year of issues from Dog Fancy back when my mom let me buy a magazine subscription in middle school.

So I'm done. The end. I sort of want to start writing White Rice again; I'd kind of just let it go, but I suppose I might when I get to the Valley and have people to distribute it to. Kthxbai.

“All "little" magazines have the luxury of thinking the reader is the same person as their editors.”

---William Whitworth

Deuces,
Erika

Shomer Shabbas

It's, er, Sunday, last time I checked, and there's nothing to do. You know, like that song..."easy like Sunday morning"...hmmm, whatev. Anyways, since news is slow, the Sartorialist hasn't posted anything new, the Long Blondes' new album isn't really worth talking about, and I've just been eating out of an economy sized bag of Sugar Smacks with the same spoon for 5 days, I'm just gonna kick it casual with a really AWEsome quote.

(de NME)

"It's totally racist. Everyone is just so shocked that I don't like R&B. It's stupid. It's pissing me off."
---Santogold

Awwwww...Santi....The world needs more women like her. Unafraid to stand up and confront social norms while sounding like a thirteen year old.

Snaps for Santogold!

Deuces,
Erika