Reality Newzzz!!!

Listen, shit be going down around the globe. The Middle East is eating itself alive, Africa is eating itself alive, South America is eating itself alive, New Zealand is crawling out from under the rubble of Mt. Doom. I know. We know Madison, WI. We got it Indiana. Congrats Rahm. Yeah, I know, soon, my ovaries will be owned by some white man in an expensive suit sitting up on Capital Hill.

Print may be dead, and I'm not saying DON'T watch the news. By all means do. The news, and all news affiliated networks, blogs, newspapers, etc. are some of the most hilarious and entertaining outlets around. HIGHLARIOUS!!! What's even more hilarious is how mad everyone is getting about all the news coverage! Everyone is pointing fingers and accusing everyone of being liars, and various stones being thrown at respective glass houses and pots and kettles and the color black. Like, OMG Becky! Did you hear what ACoops said about Piers Morgan? OMG like, yeah, it's like that time when Christiane Amanpour showed up at that Haiti benefit wearing the same outfit as Brian WILLIAMS!!! WTF!!!!

This just in. The news is just like reality TV only everyone is old and ugly and no one is drunk, except maybe Chris Matthews. Glenn Beck is HIGH AS SHIT!!! Seriously, have you guys ever watched that show? Homeboy is on the worst trip of his LIFE!

The point is, watch the news because it helps to understand what other people are doing, and to get a general sense of geography and world events, but PLEASE stop believing what ANY of them are saying/doing. ACoops may have gotten beat in the dome by some angry Egyptians, but he scurried back to his hotel, and then back to the U.S., and his posh Vanderbilt heritage.

All those men and women sitting in their virtual offices are in no way connected to the information they are reading off that teleprompter, and if they are, then they need to make that cylon shell a skosh more emotive. Just sayin;. Ya'll are stiffer than my special edition Dorothy Barbie.

Both sides are ignorant fear mongers, and this is no way to get anything done, so, in an effort to drastically change the subject and bring back the allegedly deceased paper media, I.AM.STARTING.A.ZINE. Oh yes. It has been a long time coming, and it will be called.....are you ready...are you suuuuuuurrrrreeeeee? Ok. It will be called, PIZZA FACE AND TOTAL BARF!!!! I know right!!!

Here's what's up. Today I had my first session with a therapist who I decided to continue to see from here on out. As a compliment to that, and also a way to exorcise my demons, I will be writing about rather personal things about myself, and how I came to be where I am today, and why therapy is the right move. Before you come down with a major case of the sads, I promise that besides the seriousness and sometimes sadness teenage angst can bring, it'll be FUNNNNNNEEEEEEEE! And also available at Quimby's. Also, I will prolly toss some in with the free papers.

The way I see it, when the Apocalypse happens, and all electronic media is made obsolete, paper media will rise from all those electrical fires, and even that skeleton dude won't be able to resist my wit and creative use of the Engrish language! Viva PRINT!!!

XOXO ya'll
Betsy

That ain't no sock in my crotch.

Recently it has become apparent that The United States would prefer to believe that Mad Men, and the male-centric world of the early 1960s should be a time worth revisiting. Now, I know in the past I've taken more of a lightly toasted approach to this subject, but, as of recently, the goverment has provoked me to throw open my windows in the middle of this Chicago winter and scream, "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!!!" I suggest all of you to do the same.

Sexist attitudes have been creepin' around all forms of media for a very long time. This we know. We also all know, or at least, we should know, even if we weren't around when it happened first, that women's roles in this country were fucked up. I'm a woman living in America in the 21st century, and you would think, that by this time in my life, I wouldn't be seeing sexist ads on television. Haven't we progressed past all of this? Oh we haven't? We've regressed to this and this? Perfect.

The notion that women are still treated as if we have no control over who we are or what we choose to have or not have growing inside of us is ridiculous. As is the idea that women are simply to be thought of as objects or as nagging ugly hags. Oh! Check this encouraging image out. This makes me want to castrate every man on this planet. Even the ones I like! Watch out assholes! You're about to be able to hit all the high notes. To be fair, stereotypes of men are equal in how ridiculous they are. The perfect example of this entire blog could be any episode of Everybody Loves Raymond. That show is by far the worst piece of shit on television because it decides for you, dear viewer, that these are the truths about men and women. Your husband should be a bumbling lazy idiot and you should be the always nagging wife who has a strained relationship with your mother in law. While you're at home taking care of your three kids, cooking all the meals, cleaning, in a constant state of errand running, and walking the dog, your husband is either asleep on the couch "watching" television or out with the boys playing some boring old white person game of golf. These characters are modeled after real people. I. Am. Sure.

When I was working at Public Outreach, one of the twenty-year olds I worked with was going on and on about how he knew so much about Planned Parenthood and women yabba dabba doo doo doo, and I just said, "That's great, but when was the last time you WERE a woman?" I applaud the gentlemen who are willing to get down with the feminist movement, but the sad fact is, you will never understand that these old white fools in Washington want to take away from me my choice in literally everything I can think of.

Check out this bullshit. I just looked up "Planned Parenthood petition" and what came up was about a million sites spewing all manner of propaganda regarding Planned Parenthood's funding. This situation, for me, results in my decision to tell you that I don't care if you are pro-choice or pro-life. I just ask you, as a woman, to understand that either is a choice, and you are lucky right now to be able to decide (for the most part) by yourself. These old white men, who have never had lady parts, (unless I missed that part of the State of the Union) are trying to make sure that you NEVER have a choice. F.A.S.C.I.S.M. That's right. I said it. Because I can.

You know what else I can say, as a free woman, who can make her own choices? I can say to you that right now, thatthat 100% of all commercials on your television right now are sexist towards both women AND men. 100% of commercials pitching cleaning products have a woman in the commercial. Oh you're looking for a commercial selling you some bullshit food product that is 99% preservatives and chemicals you can't pronounce? I bet a woman can help you cook that because boy do we know our way around a kitchen! At the end of the preview for that horrifying Adam Sandler/Jennifer Aniston movie Just Go With It, the announcer urges you men to "tell your girlfriend it's a romantic comedy." Buhscuse me??? In the beginning of that Taco Bell commercial where the man and woman are in a piano bar, the pianist's intro says something to the effect of "that chick-sized steak." Buhscuse me part 2!!! We are surrounded by a sort of casual sexism and methinks it be time to move forward and not backward. Women gained the right to vote in the 20s. First of all, the 20s were not THAT long ago, second, THE FUCKING VOTE! Now we have to go after it again with these crusty old women-haters to try to get birth control pillsto be included in the GD healthcare reform.

I'm no femi-nazi (OFFENSIVE), but I don't appreciate any of this treatment. Dear Washington assholes, let the gays get married, and include birth control as preventative care on your mythic health care reform. Also, tell the ad men on Madison Ave. that what they're doing is sexual harassment. Finally, if a woman is sexually assaulted, let's not throw shade and cop that attitude that "she asked for it." Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.

XOXO
Betsy

oops we did it again!

Stop all the damn presses!!! Tonight, I joined a dating site. First of all, by "dating site," NO I do not mean I put an ad up in the craigslist "casual encounters" section. Pervs. I joined an actual site called OkCupid. Everyone seems to be doing this online dating thing. I suppose this is the wrath of the 21st century. Instead of IMing and creepy chat rooms on someone's Angelfire page, we're doing this online thing. Ok, I get it, people meet people on these things, and it all ends up working out. Fine, perfect. All that keeps running through my mind is that time we all joined Hot or Not in like, 2003, and met all the creeps and weirdos on that mess, and, well, the internet, and meeting people have just never sat right with me since.

However, this is a massive trend, and you know trends are like the crack in my mind. This is how people meet people these days, and it's not as scary or as weird as it was in the 90's. People be out there meetin' fools and havin' fun times and shit, so I thought, "hey girl, get out of your apartment and go out with someone who isn't in your immediate circle of friends." So I am. I mean, not yet. I "quickmatched" for myself earlier, and the site came up with some douchey looking bro who "is really into music." Terrifically Specific!

I really want to be proved wrong OkCupid, and I want at least 5 free dinners out of this thing. Also, if I do score some D8s and dinners out of this thing, please believe I will be blogging about it. We can all laugh together, and then Reese Witherspoon can play me in the movie. A romantic comedy about a young writer who is skeptical about love and relationships, so she joins a D8ing site and meets this really terrif guy, and they have a GR8 time, and then she fucks it up, and get the sads for about a montage worth of a Norah Jones song, and then she realizes that she's an idiot, and he's an idiot, and then they live idiotically ever after. Co-starring Ryan Reynolds(as the guy) and RuPaul(as my sassy gay friend). The end.

OMG this is gonna be so funny! I can't wait! Bring it on OkCupid.

See youse guys on the internets!!!

XOXO
Betsy

....and then my bed frame broke, and oh how we laughed...

Sometimes things happen to us and when they happen at first, we don't really know what to do with ourselves because we've been doing that same thing for so long, that every day seems like the same routine place, and we know everybody, and everybody knows us, and we get comfortable, and we slack off, while trying to look like we still give a shit, and most days we do, but then there are days where you just feel like your soul is being sucked out of you, or already has been, and you feel completely dead in every way. You know you should try something else, something that will make you feel the excitement of being like you were on that very first day, but you don't know where to start because every day when you get home, you are so goddamn tired, you would rather just cook yourself some dinner and watch the Jersey Shore marathon of season one on MTV2. And you do. Oh boy do you ever watch the shit out of some cable, and drink 1-2 bottles of wine a night by yourself, and you think, while you crack open that second bottle, "man, this really is the worst. My life really is a fucking joke." You drink more wine, pass out, wake up the next day, and lather, rinse and repeat. Propped up in a corner next to your bed is a graduate course catalogue that you've been staring at every single day since it arrived in the mail three years ago. Notebooks of blabber jabber and art magazines and things that you used to really love to do and see and listen to are collecting dust and cat hair and glitter shards. Books and movies and people talking about things you like to talk about, but you feel like you can't because you've been out of it for so long, you don't remember where you left off.

Every fucking day was the same unti this day. I lost my job today, and while i was upset and severely bummed out, I take this as a message, whether it be from some higher God-ish incarnation, or just the way time should naturally progress in my life, this is what was supposed to happen because otherwise I would have been there too long, and I would never have been given the opportunity to make a serious change in my life, in myself, in everything I once had a passion for, but threw to the wayside because I was too busy being one fake fuck. Change on the key change, and because I am awesome, maybe I have a chance to be an artist again, and write, and sing, and learn, and teach, and get back to who I was a few years ago.

This stings like a motherfucker, but, after that part wears off, we'll be back in business and maybe I can write something that doesn't sound like I'm listening to Jenny Lewis, which I am, and I can write you all something to bring the laughs back.

As always, thanks for reading, and thanks for being my friends( lame-o I know, that's the Jenny Lewis sads talking). Without you, I'm just some lonely cat lady talkin to her cat.

Love,
Betsy

They make it so hard on us baby.

The world is ending tomorrow. Well, please hold. Not so dramatic this time. Take two. This year is ending tomorrow. We've got one more night to do whatever we think we should have done all year, and we've got one night to try to remember all of the things we did and all of the things we said and did not say all year. All the people we should or should not have met, or known, or spent the time to meet or know. We've got hours people. Roughly twenty four hours from now, i will be wrapped around someone somewhere telling them that I love them, and that I couldn't have possibly lived this far in my time without them, even though it is a person I just met, this year, that minute, the follow spot on my cue into a rousing rendition of Auld Lang Syne. Dear Lord, Dear all ya'll. Are you ready? Are you ready for all of the love that is going to be barfed onto you in a few hours?


Every year I build the New Year celebration up to be something I think is going to be the best night of my life. Something to the effect of the first time I ever got drunk or did any drugs, or rode down Lake Shore Drive at six in the morning listening to "1979" and watching the sunrise on Montrose Beach, or spent the night with someone I truly loved on a massive level, and every year, the hangover of the New Years celebration begins before the actual hangover begins.

I love a celebration, please believe. I also love any time where it is customary to guzzle champagne and hug everyone. Right now, I've got the Jenny Lewis sads, and while taking a trip back in my time machine of patchy memories of what happened this summer/this year, makes me wish it would've never ended, I wished that before the summer ended. I've got the sads in a good way. This year, as opposed to the past few years, has provided me with enough hilarious stories, and loves of my life to last me the rest of my life. All sentimentality aside, this year I felt everything I could possibly feel with every single person who is important to me in my life. Uppers and downers. I haven't felt that in a long time, and I will admit that the majority of the time it was NOT chemically induced.

I had the best year of my life, and it was all thanks to every person I met/know/took in along the way to wherever I decided I was going to try to go, but then ended up somewhere absolutely different.

I wouldn't change any of this for anything, and I want you to know, that while I think resolutions are a waste of time, and sure, it is just another year, and sure we can all do the same thing next year, sure we can. We can do whatever you want babe.

This is an important time for me. I like an end of the year "wrap up" special, like what you see on the E! channel. I like watching things happen again that have already happened, and you think, "Oh mah gawd. That def happened! How totes perf!" "I can't believe that happened!" "I can't believe we spent the entire summer on my stoop watching the neighborhood get down with itself, and drank a milli beers, and sang songs together, and spent hot ass summer nights trying to figure out how to stop it with all the sweating..." we sure did learn a lot about ourselves didn't we? I mean, didn't we? At least a little? I'd like to think that I ring in the dead end of my 20s as something truly spectacular and then, once I turn 30, it will be like being born again.

The countdown has already begun, and I want you all to know, that even if things didn't work out exactly as you thought this year( I did try my best to love you, I reallly did, and, whatever, I still probably do, but these things have a way of not working out, but working out, and that is something that will just have to heal itself), we have another year, and another one after that, and then yet another after that etc. etc. etcetra. We have the rest of our lives to be everything that we think we want to be tonight. Tonight we will be everything we want, whether it makes us hate ourselves Saturday morning or not.

This New Years party is our perfect match, and I cannot wait to spend it with all of you. Wear something sparkly, and meet me at my place around 8. There will be champagne, and jams, and hugs, and everything will be perfect, we will all be each other's perfect mate, even if it is just for one night.

XOXO
Betsy

Betrayal and my betrayals

Tonight's post is brought to you by a Spanish wine named "Wrongo Dongo" that was recommended to me by the nice gay at the Kafka wine shop. So helpful! This wine is perf.

After the semi-rambling I puked out last night, I felt as if I needed to write about a little something else. I've been thinking heavily, while drinking heavily, about Harold Pinter. I've been thinking about minimalism, and I've been thinking about Harold Pinter, and I've been thinking about Betrayal.

I've been a performer for my entire life. Even though I spent my formative years on the stage, I never felt anything as painful and as bizarre as when I saw Betrayal for the first time. I was either a freshman or a sophomore in college, and I was taking an introductory acting class at my very bourgeois, very tiny private college, in a very small town in Wisconsin. The story is as follows: Three people spend their entire lives figuring out that they have all fucked each other in various sexual and non-sexual ways. There are the two marrieds, Emma and Robert, and then Robert's BFF Jerry(who is also married) who enters into an affair with Emma whilst at a party thrown by Robert and Emma. The story is told beginning with the end of Emma and Jerry's affair, and we take the horrifying trip backwards through all of the stolen moments, and almost uncoverings of the affair, right up to the very first illicit kiss between Emma and Jerry.


I want to hate these men, and this woman. I want to stop them from making mistakes that will ultimately ruin their lives. Every time I have the opportunity to see this show, I will see it. Harold Pinter is the master of minimalist theater because he doesn't waste your time talking and singing about every single arbitrary thing the people in the cast are doing at any given time. The dialogue is so short and loaded, and that is why it is so uncomfortable. It is possible to communicate with truncated language instead of a Gilmore Girls-esque verbal diarrhea landslide.

Any time I start thinking about Betrayal, I start thinking about our relationships with the people who are closest to us. I start to think about all the threesomes and foursomes, and in some sad, silly cases, twosomes we get ourselves into.

Two days ago, I was getting my hair cut, and my stylist, who is also my friend said, as we gossiped about our relationships and non-relationships, that "we never like who actually likes us. We always want the asshole." I don't mean to get all superficial, selfish, sonofabitch Carrie Bradshaw, but.....the FUCK? As much as I want to hate Harold Pinter for being a misogynistic man, I can't help but agree with Emma. Why not try to have both of the men you want? Because threesomes never work out as glamourously as the movies allow them to be. In real-time, they are very much like Betrayal. We start something with one person, knowing goddamn well that this is the person that is mean to be the "right" choice, and, then, cue the third party who is more exciting, even a titty bit dangerous, and absolutely the wrong choice. The wrong choice will always win because it makes a person disassociate. Psychologically, you spend the vast majority of your time rationalizing why spending time with the wrong person is ok, and why spending time with the right person is boring and will never go anywhere.

Betrayal can serve as a morality tale for all of us who are in-between friends/lovers. Telling a person you are in love with, that you are in love with them is terrifying, and can be, in some cases, totally out of line and a case of mistaken identity. The line you cross can and will become unclear, and you will decide that the wrong is the right, and the wrong is the absolute.

Pretty words are what sways us in the end. Both the "right" and the "wrong" have said the right things, and I have said the right things, but we cannot all live together in peace and harmoneeeeeeeeee...Make a choice. Claim this person or lose them forever to the shit show that is non-descript relationships.

Claim a person and eliminate the prospect of a Betrayal like betrayal.

I can never love you both the same way.

XOXO
Betsy

p.s. Even if you thought it was Chopin's Nocturne in C Sharp Minor, this is my favorite piece of music ever written.

Private Lives.

In my youth, I spent many nights wasted out of my skull, entertaining the idea that somebody out there gave an ounce of a fuck about what I had to say. I would spend my nights writing about everything all over the place on MySpace, and, even though the medium, for a few seconds of sobriety, felt like a diary that no one would read unless instructed to(in a last will and testament sort of way), i knew that it was basically like jizzing my feelings all over the internet. I used to mainly write when I was 100% drunk, and I only wrote about people I knew were not "subscribers." Jesus I am so cool. Every once in awhile I'd get a case of the sads, and write about some poor fool named Patrick who I used and abused for many years. All of this information is free to the public. Anyone can go into my old ass generic ridiculous MySpace profile, and not only see old embarassing photographs of me, but you can read all about it. If you want the LOL of your life, take a trip back in time with me.

I'm J/K. The story is that I'm home alone all weekend, and if you are my friend on the internet, you would already know this. If you're not, then I don't know you, because if we're not friends online, then who are you really? All night I have been updating my status about what movies I'm watching, what I'm doing while I'm watching them, what I think about them, how I'm teaching myself Chinese phrases so I can go to Chinatown and feel cool and show off my totally excellent learning skills, how I drank a whole bottle of Malbec(no big deal, I'm Italian, so my blood is actually wine), how I took some pictures of my cat, my apartment's cold, etc. etc. etc.

My point is that while everyone is pissing and moaning about how their privacy is being violated in a non-sexy way by Mark Zuckerberg and palz, I am over here writing(drunkenly, thus, more sharingly than normal) about all the shit I'm doing, where I'm doing it, and who I'm doing it or not doing it with (everyone who wouldn't hang out with me tonight thus forcing me to drink alone I'm directing this at you). At this point in my relationship with the internet, I could not give less of a fuck who knows what I'm doing. I'll tell you. All you have to do is become my friend on some friend thing on the internet, and I will tell you every single thing I am doing at all times. I will show you photographs of things I am doing and projects I am in the process of completing. I will tell you what movies I am watching and give you my opinions about said movies. I will relay to you a series of adventures I have had on any given weekend and most likely will post the accompanying photos. We will all laugh the next day, and then, I will ignore all the comments I receive that are redundant and idiotic and remind me that my attitude towards the internet can be, at times, for lack of a better descriptive terms, chilly and dismissive.

This thing is powerful in ways that it shouldn't be, and that is both confusing and exciting. I know that I am going to share this entry on Facebook, and that people will read it and mostly not know exactly how to process it. Wait, it's not funny, or about DJ Pauly D, or some art thing she's into, wait what? It's not celebrity gossip, or nail polish sparkles, or, for FUCK'S SAKE HALLOWEEN??????? WTFLOLROTFLKITRIPXYZ.

I enjoy talking to people in my real life, why not share with people online. If I want to share private moments in my life(which I don't unless you are a person I see regularly), then I will do so how I please. I can't be intimidated by the prospect that someone might find some information I have posted online and attempt to use it against me in some childish and insufficient way. I left that information out there in the middle of cyberspace for a reason. I was just some emo wino searching for some boy to love me in a way I'd only seen in the movies. That is where these things originate, and that is where they will shrivel and die.

If you people wanted privacy, you wouldn't be on the internet every waking second of every day, and you wouldn't spend all your damn time checking yourself into Facebook Places. You would tell all social networking sites to suck a dick, and you would go about your business as if they never existed.

Since I'm kinda drunk and sharing, and remembering the good 'ol embarassing days, here's a link to my blog on myspace. I just read the first few and boy am I wishing the internet would self destruct. I just keeeeeedingggg!!!! Read away. I love the attention.

XOXO
Betsy