I'm a #@&* Genius: Volume II

It occurs to me, in this season of saving daylight time and voting, that humanity could use a dose of #@&* genius. My loyal readers are aware that I am a #@&* Genius, and exactly what that entails. For those of you who are NOT my loyal readers, fix your life. Clicking here will help.

Okay, now that we are all on the same page, behold the second iteration of “I’m a #@&* Genius.”

Idea #1: The Pie Protractor

It has been close to twenty years, but my mother is still taking this empty nest thing pretty badly. I have suggested that she take up a hobby, like gardening or tequila. Instead my parents started doing a thing that is actually real called “kick biking” (click here) which led to her catapulting over the handlebars and breaking her little mommy collarbone. Very sad, poor mommy. 

Point being, we visit them every few months, and while there, I suspect my mother is attempting to inject into my digestive tract the caloric equivalent of every meal she would have prepared for me if I was living there in the interim.To help balance this food-debt in her mind, she serves dessert after lunch. Just, very glibly. As if it were a Totally Normal Healthy Practice. Don’t get me wrong. She is an excellent cook and baker. This does not change the capacity at which my stomach perforates and I have green bean casserole glomming round in my chest cavity. And then, you know, sepsis, fever, coma, death. The whole rigmarole.

So, post-lunch, I’m rolling around on the living room floor, making submarine distress calls, and my mother says, brightly,

“I made your favorite! A cherry pie! What size piece do you want?”

“Mother,” I say with ragged breath, “You make the best cherry pie. I am SUPER FULL, though. So maybe a tiny piece?”

“Okay, sweetie!” she replies, and promptly serves me a quarter of a cherry pie. I eat it, perish, no more bloggily posts, everyone is sad. My final words are, There’s a hull breach, Captain!

BUT.

The Pie Protractor. This is a device that fits over the top of any pie, pizza, quiche, frittata, or even those dipshitty giant cookies. Like the protractors you used in math class, it can be used to demarcate an angle from the center point, to a specific degree. Ergo, you can request a MATHEMATICALLY EXACT volume of pie. In the scene above, I could have simply said, “Mother, please may I have 20 degrees of cherry pie?” and then no one had to go to the hospital.

Idea # 2: Automobile Message Screen

I feel like the world deserves to know my thoughts. Hence the blog. But I can’t write a blog post while I’m driving, nor make sure that the person that cut me off reads it.

But how? How to communicate without sacrificing roadway safety?

Imagine a narrow screen running horizontally around the width of a car: a digital screen that would display the text of whatever information I wish to disseminate (NOT WHAT IT MEANS, PERVS). Inside the car, a microphone on the dashboard with voice-to-text capability. (No naughty typing while driving!) Then, communication is as simple as saying,

Hey Ass-Gnome in the black Jeep! Use your turn signal! or

Stop steering with your vas deferens! And so on.

Although you should research the public profanity laws in your state, unless you have enough time and energy to take your case to the US Supreme Court. Yay freedom of speech!

In addition, if you have children, make sure the device is firmly switched off when not in use. If your car trips are anything like mine, you don’t want to drive around with the conversations that are happening inside of the car scrolling around on the outside. Mine generally consist of my children passionately discoursing on their hatred of where we are going, listing off which genitals each person in the car has, or freestyle rapping about poop.

[I feel like this automobile idea is slightly better than an earlier one, which involved running a catheter from the driver’s seat to the coolant tank, to solve two long-trip problems simultaneously! The world isn’t ready.]

I have more #@&* genius ideas rattling around in the old brain pan, but I don’t want to break your minds. Small doses, dear readers. Small doses.

The Antichrist gives out Helium Balloons

More specifically, if you hand out helium balloons, in an unsolicited fashion, to children that are not yours, YOU are the Antichrist.

Let’s have a traumatizing flashback together, shall we?

Rebecca is super pregnant with the third and final demon-spawn. The husband is studying for a certification that would be beneficial to his career. Rebecca, in her infinite helpfulness and wisdom, offers to “get the kids out of his face” each week by taking the two Already Birthed Ones, plus also the Incubating One (in her guts), to the grocery store for the week’s groceries so he can study in peace. This is a terrible experience each and every time, taking upwards of two hours. Rebecca is at that point in her pregnancy where her legs feel like garbage bags full of sand, and that her soul is being crushed into her spine by her own writhing uterus. The girls are at the point in their lives where they are…well…lively. Nevertheless, being a woman of her word, and determined, she persists.One week, she has barely made it into the grocery store when an entirely wretched human female from the grocery store floral department waltzes up and offers the girls (buckled in the cart seats) a bundle of NO FEWER THAN FIVE LARGE BALLOONS. So for the following two hours, she limps around the grocery store, attempting to purchase foodstuffs, vision completely obstructed by five large, evil balloons. The girls bounce them into her face, innocent bystanders, and delicate food items. They have an amazing time.

I have never forgiven that florist, and I never will.

Only three kinds of people would do this:

1. People who don't have children and authentically think they are making your day better
2. People whose children are adults now, and they either don't remember what parenthood was like, or balloons hadn't been invented yet
3. People who have children, but are weirdly vindictive

What is your problem, Rebecca? you ask. Well.

Because the Fighting

Even if you, the Antichrist, had the sense to give each child the same number, color, size, and quality of balloons (but you didn’t, did you?) you didn’t know that you just handed children #1 & 2 their favorite color, but child #3 her LEAST FAVORITE COLOR ON THE PLANET. Or, maybe, just for kicks, one of them is going to let go of his or her ribbon and release the balloons into the ionosphere. What now? What’s your contingency plan, you ass noodle? You got nothing. Point being, if you do not have the delicacy and perception of a hostage negotiator, and an apocalypse-grade child-soothing bug-out bag, you should not be giving children things. None things. Just stop.

Balloons are Terminally-Ill Kittens

Balloons are the bestest thing in the effing universe. They really are. They are shiny, they float, for the love of all that is holy. They dance whimsically at the end of a ribbon, enticing the senses, inspiring the imagination. My children yearn for them. They treasure them.

In this way, balloons are a cruel joke. Balloons have the life-span of an ice cube. Children go to sleep with their treasured toy hovering sweetly in the corner of their room, but wake to wonder why it has deflated, and is now draped sadly over the back of the chair like the testicles of a multicolored elephant. They react as though there has been a Death in the Family. You have to explain things you never wanted to have to explain, like the circle of life, and the laws of physics. You find yourself reading Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart aloud to them, as though that would somehow clarify things.

Balloons are Some Bullshit

Balloons are unfair. When one of you soulless douchebags meanders up to some innocent parent with a bunch of balloons, you have taken away that parent’s ability to choose. Would you like a balloon? you ask. They are in public. The children have seen the balloons. At this point, they must accept the balloon. Not only that, but they are socially obligated to manufacture the pretense of gratitude. When every part of them is crying out Stab! Stab that fuckwit! Staaaaaaaaab! they must instead say, between gritted teeth,

“Oh, thank you so much! How nice! Isn’t that nice, children? Say thank you!”

But they don’t mean it. They hate you. I hate you. We all hate you. Please. Just take the balloons in the back and euthanize them with your car keys. It is the right thing to do.

Parenting is basically a Health Spa

Shut the hell up for a second and hear me out.  I am totally willing to give myself and fellow parents props for all of our sacrifices; however, let’s not pretend like being a parent doesn’t have its advantages. People pay many rubles for things we take for granted in our everyday lives.

Tell me more, Rebecca. Okay.

Living with children is essentially a constant probiotic infusion. While you hipster DINKS pay five dollars a bottle for chia-brewed kombucha, I ingest literally ounces per day of my childrens’ bacteria-riddled saliva, snot, and skin cells (partially in my food and usually alcoholic beverages, partially just from having my mouth open at the wrong time). Also, Fecal Microbiota Transplant. Look it up. People pay thousands actual of dollars to have fecal matter transplanted from a donor into their own rumps. You know, to replenish their healthy bacteria. Hey, I’m all about gut health. But seriously folks, just come to my house and let my kids touch you. They say they wash their hands after they use the restroom, those little jerks are MADE OF LIES!! It’s all just Pooptown frolics.

Don’t even get me started on intermittent fasting. Want to jumpstart your metabolism? Try not eating for like an entire day because every time you try to, a kid hurts himself, breaks something, poops (see above) or PHYSICALLY SNATCHES THE FOOD OUT OF YOUR MOUTH. Then, when they are finally asleep, and you can eat, the only thing left in the house is tomato sauce, vodka, and fucking pickles. That’s keto-tastic, bitches!

My children restore my dermal biome every time they sneeze in my face, or scratch their disgusting crevices and then stick their fingers into my nose. My skin is like a cherub’s. Plus I never get to bathe, so I’m dewy AF.

Why go all the way to Sweden to be violently massaged when I can simply wait for the middle child to complete her nocturnal journey to my bed, then proceed to flail me with her scrawny and yet mighty arms and legs? Thank you, night terrors. The incoherent babbling only adds to the experience.

Finally, a good-old-fashioned cleanse. Look no further. If you really want to purify the old digestive tract, simply watch a child eat an ice cream cone. I challenge you to not vomit. There is nothing more nauseating on God’s Green Earth than a child eating an ice cream cone. The ropes of saliva mingling with the horribly disintegrating dairy abomination. The chocolate goatees. Whisking it into repellently foamy “ice cream soup” like a deranged celebrity chef and then slurping it down. I have watched a child balance an ice cream cone carefully on a table, and, hands folded properly in his lap, purse his lips and suckle the ice cream like a hungry baby goat. (I am honestly gagging as I type this, I hope you are too. Otherwise, why are we doing this?) I have watched children mouth-carve the ice cream into disturbingly phallic shapes and then use these shapes to apply “ice cream lipstick”. So save some money on that herbal cleanse packet you have been looking at on the interwebs. Just buy your kid some soft serve and let nature take its course.

That’s all I have for tonight, folks. Never stop not quitting, parents! Someone has to do it, and you were the one who couldn’t keep it in your pants.

Rebecca Wears Makeup (Sometimes)

Helpful Tips

Oh. Sorry. Did you think this was going to be one of those makeup tutorials? Maybe with one of those cute videos?

Get vivid cheekbones in three easy steps!

*chews gum loudly, arranges several thousand dollars' worth of beauty products on a table top*

Okay! Here is my base dabdabdabdabdabdabdabdabdabdabdab 
and then we add a pop of color with this! Blotblotblotblotblotblotblot. 
And then we finish here...dabdabdabdabdabblotblotblotblot 
brushabrushabrushabrushabrusha.

Seeeee? It's simplicious! Squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

No, my makeup tutorial would be more like this:

*deep sigh*

Let's see if we can do something about...all of this (gestures vaguely at face)
Okay, here is some eye shadow, it's kind of...grey. 

Yes, there we go. That's not so bad. 
Now no one will know. No one will know that.....
*bursts into hysterical sobs*
*sobs slowly turn into maniacal laughter*
*all the best bits from "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre"*
*screen goes black*

How Much is Too Much?

The problem is, when I look in the mirror, any makeup looks like too much to me. It just looks Odd On My Face. I swab on some mascara and suddenly: Tim Curry from Rocky Horror Picture Show. 

Or...Tim Curry from It.

That guy's eyebrows haunt my dreams. Like, in a good way.

But the point is, (if I can get it just right) makeup is like armor. It is a sparkly layer of protection from some daunting task. No matter how I actually feel, it makes me look like I kinda have my shit together.

The idea being that people will be so mesmerized by that smoky line along my eyelashes they will just TOTALLY OVERLOOK the fact that everything around it resembles one of Cthulhu's many buttholes.

Now. While wearing makeup makes ME feel more relaxed and confident in a stressful situation, it should definitely not make YOU feel more relaxed and confident. Quite the opposite, in fact. The following is a guide to how much alarm you should feel if you see me wearing makeup:

I am sporting the Porcelain-Like Shimmer of Edward Cullen; avoid eye contact and sudden movements. Maybe gingerly offer me a pastry. [Oooh, a pastry WITH ginger!]

I am somewhere in the Billy Joe Armstrong range: know where the exits are, and make a mental note to make sure your living will is in order.

I strut in looking like Divine: well, you should already have built a panic room. But it's too late now. You ass.

Makeup By Season

As all of my loyal readers know, Rebecca hates winter. For you horrible people who aren't my loyal readers, click here.

Some people's faces respond to the chilly kiss of winter by growing adorably rosy. Snow flakes cling to the precious tendrils of hair that escape their fashionable knit hats. These are the people that I want to murder with icicles, but I won't because that would make my hands cold.

Conversely, I shrivel into a pallid, reptilian-skinned horror. All of the blood in my body flees to my core in an effort to save itself. Among my red, irritated nose, hopeless eyes, and bloodless, dry lips, I look like the lovechild of some upsetting three-way among the Crypt Keeper, a komodo dragon, and a radish. If anyone can come up with a schematic for that sexual act, feel free to post it in the comments.

No, wait, don't.

The moral of the story is, I wear a lot more makeup in winter if only to avoid being carted off to the morgue by mistake.

But it is summer now, so everything is okay. Winter Is Coming, they tell me, but I'll think of SOMETHING before then. Global warming, perhaps?

My summer look consists of me being pale and super greasy and rashy from all of the sunscreen that my skin apparently hates. But you know what they say: "pale and rashy now, slightly less wrinkly when you're old." WORTH IT!

If there is some sort of event I may try to clump some Maybelline over the greasy rash. I call it my summer glow.

Why with the words?

I'm not really sure what the point of all of this is. Maybe just bookmark this post? Then if you are having a bad morning: you have fried your bangs off with a flat iron, or punctured your idiot retina with a mascara wand, reread this post (or have someone read it to you, if you are the mascara victim) and be comforted by the idea that somewhere out there is a fool who is that incompetent every day of her silly life.

Also, this is not a cry for help. I don't want to wake up one morning with some concerned citizen's knee in my chest, non-consensually contouring my shit.

Alright, off you go.

Those Dirty Kids You See

Every human does this. You see dirty kids and think raised by wolves, no doubt about it.

You see them at the grocery store. The ones whose faces have concentric circles  of everything they have eaten for the past eight hours radiating outward from their mouths.

You can tell where they have been simply by what is stuck to them. That little boy has been to the mall: he has Build-A-Bear entrails stuck to his back with Cinnabon residue. That little girl has been to the park. There is a live squirrel congealed in pine sap in her hair.

But before your unzip your judgy-judger nuts, hear me out.

Babies slither into the world in a slick of unspeakable gut goo. (Heck, they were FORGED in the midst of substantial stickiness as well, if you were doing it right. If not, I can give you some pointers. Just ask. I'm not shy.) They spend the next five to seven years in an ongoing effort to MAINTAIN that level of grottiness 24-7.

Mine are without question a small herd of the children we are referring to. The raised by wolves types.

"No, Rebecca," you say. "I have seen your children, they seem mostly cleanish."

Well. The only reason this is ever the case is because the twenty-five minutes before I leave the house to go Anywhere in the Continental United States and All Points West (or East for that matter) are spent in the following manner:

• Head-to-toe wardrobe change
• Aggressive, borderline painful washcloth scrubbing of face, hands, what ever else is really offensive at the moment. Usually Buttcrack.
• Non-consensual teeth-brushing
• Clawing at ever-present dreadlocks, collecting riotously-curly blonde hair into elastic hair-containment inventions
• Various threats

This is the only reason my children appear to be clean. Because they are dreadful. They Live to Smear Themselves in All Things Vile.

They are the moist candy stick and the world is their disgusting packet of fun dip.

At the grocery, they will relieve the sample lady of all of her organic maple syrup samples, drizzle themselves sensuously, then barrel-roll majestically down the cat litter aisle while Queen's We Are the Champions plays in the background. (I don't know why.) 

When I arrive at some sort of event with my children, I resist the urge to seize the nearest person and force him or her to look at my children, notice that they are cleanish, and then acknowledge it verbally. And possibly photo-document and/or sign a written statement in the presence of a notary.

Because it ain't gonna last, that shit ain't gonna last.

In fact, I would give them around 45 seconds until...the crash and splatter of some rare vintage...the yowl of a marmot in distress...whatever sound a no-bake cookie makes when hitting a vaulted ceiling...and all is undone.

Listen. I'm not saying I am the best parent in the universe. Necessarily. All I'm saying is that whoever is, their children would shellac themselves in armadillo feces given half a chance, the same as everyone else.

The next time you see those dirty dirty children, do the right thing. Don a medical-grade disposable glove and gingerly pat the sticky child on the head. Then give a hundred dollar bill and a bottle of tequila to each of the parents, just because they tried.

Thank you and goodnight.

Damnit: A Minivan

I may have talked a lot of shit.

Over the years.

I am…whatever the term is for bigoted against people who drive minivans. I subscribe to the stereotypes about minivan owners. I will NOT try to get to know you, to find out how you tick, what your likes and dislikes are. Because in my head, I already know.

• You think Applebees is a good restaurant
• You have a lot of beige in your closet
• There is at least one ribbon-wrapped abomination of eucalyptus twigs and tiny straw hats on your wall (and the eucalyptus isn’t even real, you douche)
• There is at least one Nicholas Sparks novel on your bookshelf (I don’t care what gender you are)

I don’t care at all if you own a minivan and none of these things are true about you. That is the beauty of stereotypes. They save SO MUCH TIME.

I can see inside your skull. I know things about you that you don’t even know.

At some point you ceremoniously removed whatever sexy body parts you had left after you gave birth to the wretched spawn that led you down this dark path to begin with. You put these sexy body parts into a shoe box, alongside your lust for life, your Constitutional Right to see live music, and your ability to talk to persons under 19 without ANNOYING THE SHIT OUT OF THEM.

There it goes, all of that, into the shoebox.

Then you handed that shoebox to your children. They immediately dumped it out in the backyard because the box was perfect for their dead spider collection. Then a squirrel found the pile of your old cool sexiness and ate it.

That’s what you get. I have no sympathy. You did this to yourself.

But the point is, I always said that I would never own a minivan. Swore, really. Ranted, raved. Eyes bulged out. Fists pounded tables. Cocktail glasses were hoisted (for emphasis). Crossbows were loaded and fired recklessly into the air. Again, for emphasis. I postulated. I used all two of the German words that I know. I was like: nope, never, bitches.

Where does your deep bigotry against minivans come from, Rebecca, you amusingly warped individual? Well, like every tale of emotional distress, it begins in middle school.

This may shock you, dear readers, but I was (am?) Terminally Dweeby. So, after a long, stimulating day of being unable to look anyone in the eye, I had the daily joy of watching my mother careen up to the curb to pick me up in a boxy, electric blue Chevrolet Astro Minivan. In the days when my internal monologue read like a Judy Bloom novel, this wasn’t the touch of death, this was the sloppy, graphic, open-mouth FRENCH KISS OF DEATH. You know, like the sloppy, open-mouth French kiss THAT I WOULD NEVER GET in the coat room at the middle school dance that I would NEVER GET ASKED TO because who wants to date a girl whose mom drives an electric blue Chevrolet Astro Minivan?

No one, that’s who.

Anyway, I think you can tell where this little story is headed.

For some reason, my children seem to be thriving. They are getting bigger and bigger and it’s pretty annoying. They are at that irritating stage where they all need giant, clunky, complicated child safety seats.  ALL OF THEM.  They take up so much stupid space.

So me, here, right here right now, I am in a sort of Bermuda triangle of my current financial limitations, my need to keep my kids safe, and karma from all of the terrible things I have done. So many terrible things.

 So I did it. I effing did it. I drank the Kool-aid. I am One Of You Now.

And, to be honest, it isn’t that bad. It has a lot of space for shenanigans. I could safely fit TWO ADDITIONAL humans into that automobile. Think of the mayhem seven people could incite. WILL INCITE.

Then there is the trunk space. Pounds of packing peanuts. Dozens of goat costumes. Probably three beehives. So. Many. Shenanigans.

I guess the point is, I have come to terms with it. I’m not going to join the International Mini-Van Owners Fan Club, but I will also only shudder a little when I walk into a parking lot and spot my new ride.

I think I’ll call it The Adventurepod.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, that sexy squirrel over there has something that belongs to me.

Dinner and a Movie

Life is a labor-intensive, expensive son-of-a-bitch.

It only follows, then, that when one manages to acquire that sparkly sliver of time that all the cool kids are calling a night out, it had better be approximately as delightful as accidentally wandering naked into a fluffer convention.

Having said that: no waitress deserves, when innocently asking what she can bring you tonight, to have the female customer sink her nails into her forearm and hiss, "My carefree youth, please." Then have to watch as she tosses back a flight of regional micro-brews like a frat boy with some Jagermeister. And laughs manically into the delicately-breaded, long-stemmed artichokes.

No one deserves that.


So. Bareburger, Columbus location. We walk in in the middle of a Weezer song, and are greeted (seemingly sincerely) by a well-dressed, patchouli-scented hostess. These are all good things. Clientele are groups of friends, a few families, a few couples-all seem happy to be there. The decor is quite eclectic. The lighting fixtures salvaged/vintage-looking wood and silverware, with old-fashiony incandescent bulbs. There is thick rope wrapped around a pillar and some of the visible ducting near the ceiling. The booths could have been from an elegant hotel lobby. There are some cool bear head sculptures on the walls.

Our (also patchouli-scented) waitress is interesting and friendly, and patient with my incessant questions. She laughs out loud when I order the Fig & Pig cocktail with the pig on the side (bacon garnish, happily taken care of by carnivorous husband). He orders a sarsaparilla so that we can continue our ongoing debate on the differences between that beverage and root beer. We decide to split the Guapo Chop as a starter.

The salad is a winner. Blue corn chips and cold nacho toppings on a bed of romaine. Nom nom.

The cocktail not so much. It features bourbon and the house tomato fig jam. The flavors are muddled and confusing. I recommend against.

Husband orders the Blue Elk burger (with Amish bleu cheese, country bacon, stout-soaked onions, and that mischievous tomato fig jam). He describes it as, "Uhhhh, ohhhhh. Uhhhhhh. Yeah." *Eyes roll back into head*

I devour the sweet potato and rice burger, rolled in collard greens. (Look at the picture at the top of the article. Loooooook at it.) I include Amish bleu, stout onions, spicy pickles, and paprika mayo.  It is everything I have ever wanted out of life. Words fail me. Wait, no they don't. The sweet tater is, well, sweet, the collards are succulent, the bleu has bite, the paprika mayo is zesty. Put. It. In. My Face.

In short, I recommend this restaurant. They have a good selection of vegan, vegetarian, & gluten-free items. All of their meats are free-range, pasture-raised, humanely-raised, and antibiotic and hormone-free. Although if you have an aversion to patchouli, you should probably avoid this place like the plague. For serious.

Then we sashay through the magical night to the movie theater. I'm just going to get right to the point. If you have not already watched Deadpool, fix the problem. If you have already watched it, you probably (like me) are trying to rationalize watching it again.

Change Your Life To Make This Movie Happen To Your Eyeballs.

The introduction credits are funny. By the time the first fight scene is over I have my arms wrapped around my middle out of concern that something is going to rupture. And it just doesn't stop.

The main character does not give a fuck about the fourth wall, and it is gloriously obnoxious. He is immature, crass, violent, arrogant, and....dick jokes. So. Many. Dick. Jokes.

Here are my thoughts on Ryan Reynolds. I am not particularly impressed by Dreamy Ryan Reynolds. Apparently I am in the minority. I much prefer Hilarious, Obnoxious Ryan Reynolds. I have the same theory about Brad Pitt. Brat Pitt a la 12 Monkeys or Burn After Reading over Brad Pitt a la Legends of the Fall, any day. Admittedly, I didn't actually watch Legends of the Fall. I saw a poster, one time, though.

I feel like you are still reading this instead of driving to the nearest movie theater to take in this orgy of razor-sharp, low-brow wit.

Go away. Go eat at Bareburger.