The Boot Camp for Lost Boys

I live in a city of over 300,000 people, but in a way, none of us really live in the same city. We see our different parts of it, live our different lives in it. We all have personal landmarks, and they're rarely shared, communal ones. Other people don't drive past the Chatterbox on France and think, "That's where I had what I thought was my best date of '08. Man, was I wrong about that." Other people don't see the Figlio billboard and remember their awkward dinner with a burly guy who not only finished a plate of pasta so enormous it could feed a small village but who roughly stopped the waitress from taking his CLEARLY EMPTY plate by spouting through a mouthful of bread, "No! I'm DIPPING!" And I'm guessing (though I could be wrong, of course) that not a lot of other people think, every time they drive past that big house on Emerson, "Heh. I was deflowered there."

I was out with Carrie last night and we found ourselves stopped at the traffic light beside another of my personal landmarks. It was the corner where I had my first (and thus far only) truly angry, yelly, incredulous breakup. Previously, my only reference point for the restaurant on that corner was that it was the venue for my urban family's second annual Easter Orphans and Heathens Brunch. Now it will always be the place where I stood chastising a soulless, unrepentant manchild in the cold while his new girlfriend watched from a bar stool inside.

I'm talking about Jimmy, of course. The pothead. The damn Buddhist. Remember him? Remember what a sweet story it was originally but how spectacularly it went awry?

I still sort of can't believe that happened. It's absurd, really, and as such, I have to laugh at it. Or maybe not laugh, but at least shake my head and roll my eyes. I'm not angry anymore. I knew I wouldn't be. There's no reason to stay upset over losing a person I'm better off without. But I do still think about him. I do wonder what he's doing. And though I'm not hurt anymore, I'm also not perfect, so when I wonder about him, I'll admit that I hope he's not doing well.

It's not [entirely] that I'm bitter. It's that I honestly think the man needs to hit rock bottom. He has been down, yes. He has been broke and destitute. He's even spent the night in a jail cell at least once. But I don't think he's ever really gotten it. I'm not sure he's realized that any of it is his own damn fault. And I don't think it helps that through all of it, he's always had someone saying, "You are awesome, Jimmy. You're a great person." And I think he needs to stop hearing that. Because he is NOT awesome. He is a flake. He is a fuckup. He is a great big irresponsible child. And you know what? Children get reprimanded when their behavior is inappropriate. Children get punished when they misbehave. Jimmy got fired, skipped out on his rent, lied to his friends, and vanished on me, and what was his punishment? Free room and board with a new girlfriend and a free vacation on said new girlfriend's dime.

I really didn't mean to go into so long a rant about someone who's worth so little energy. I didn't mean to launch into a similar rant when Carrie and I pulled up to that stop light last night. But Carrie, no stranger to fuckwits and manchildren herself, didn't stop me. No, instead, she joined right in.

"It's too bad there's not a boot camp for lost boys," she said. It was a flash of brilliance. Yes! A boot camp for lost boys! We can probably all think of a few candidates for new recruits.

"Do you think it would really work as a boot camp, though?" I asked.

Carrie: "What do you mean?"

Me: "Boot camp is a short-term program for immediate results. Lost boys are driven by instant gratification, but they've also got short memory spans. We need to shoot for long-term change. It might need to be a reform school."

Carrie: "Yeah. They need to go AWAY. Maybe for a long while."

Me: "Or at the very least, an ongoing outpatient program."

Carrie: "Like social work. They'd be assigned a case number."

Me: "And a case manager. They'd have to report in on their progress. And the case manager would talk to their friends, too."

Carrie: "And their parents!"

Me: "None of that manipulating and revising history and skewing the story to make themselves the victim. The case manager would need context. She'd talk to the people who actually KNOW the guy so she'd know what's really up."

Carrie: "But the lost boys would have to meet with each other regularly, too, right? Like an AA meeting?"

Me: "Definitely. And they'd go around the circle.... I'm Adam. I'm a lost boy. It's been six weeks since my last irresponsible, capricious act. And a chorus of lost boys would reply, Hi, Adam. Oh! And they'd get chips after each milestone!"

Carrie: "Chips? People in AA get chips?"

Me: "It's like a little medallion to mark an accomplishment. 'One month sober,' 'One year sober.' That sort of thing."

Carrie: "Oh, so they wouldn't cash them in for anything... not like poker chips, or skee ball tickets..."

Me: "Ha! No, but that would be awesome. I applied for six jobs this week. Here is my chip. I would like to trade it in for that bottle of Jaegermeister."

Carrie: "Nooo! We'd have to take their alcohol AWAY, not reward them with it! Their cigarettes, too. Maybe even movies."

Me: "They definitely wouldn't be allowed to watch Swingers or Fight Club or Reservoir Dogs. And nothing that glorifies life as a manchild."

Carrie: "Would there be twelve steps? And the Serenity prayer?"

Me: "They should at least have some sort of creed. I will not be careless with hearts. Or finances."

Carrie: "I will do no irreparable harm to women."

Me: "I will take responsibility for my actions."

Carrie: "We should totally transcribe this conversation and put it on the Internet."

Me: "I'm way ahead of you on that."


Of course, gauging success in the lost boys program might be difficult. An alcoholic measures progress in concrete milestones that are easily quantifiable. "I haven't had a drink in thirty days." That's clear cut. Black and white. But "It's been six months since I frustrated a woman to tears in the privacy of her own bedroom"? "It's been two months since my mother silently wondered to herself where she went wrong with me"? These things are harder to verify. Still, it's an idea whose time has come, I say. Any social workers out there looking for a new project?

This post may start with the usual complaints about Daylight Saving Time, but I promise it complains about several other things as well.

Is it my imagination, or is this "Spring Forward" thing happening earlier than usual the past couple years? Don't answer that, actually. It is not my imagination. Starting Daylight Saving Time three weeks early was yet another brilliant idea from the Bush administration, and now as a result, every spring and fall when I make the tour of my house to reset my clocks, I say a special thank you to my least favorite ex-president as I reset the ONE clock that previously was smart enough to reset itself on its own. That would be my VCR's clock, which, while an ancient and archaic appliance according to most people, was actually advanced enough to know when Daylight Saving Time was supposed to start and end and adjusted its time automatically. That is, until George W. got his hands on it. (Daylight Saving Time, I mean. Not my VCR. Even now that he's out of office, I'm pretty sure Bush has better things to do than rifle through my humble home.) This may be the least of the legacies of the Bush presidency, but it's an especially annoying one to me. Grr.

Speaking of annoyances, I started my weekend off on a fantastic one by getting into a car accident on my way out to meet friends Friday night. I am fine, and I'm well aware that is the most important part, but it's unsettling anyway. The jerk who I hit was making a left turn at an intersection where I was proceeding straight from the oncoming line of traffic, and he claims that since the light was yellow, HE had the right of way. I don't actually remember learning that rule in driver's ed; I'm pretty sure that in lieu of a green arrow signal, the rule is always "Left turn must YIELD," but this guy also said it was legal for up to two cars to turn left on a red light if they don't have a chance to make their turn before the light changes, so clearly he's working off a different manual than the one I received. Let's just hope our insurance company goes by the same manual I'm familiar with and not the wacky "make your own rules" one that jackass seems to own.

On the up side, while the delusional jackass's fancy silver Mustang has a giant dent in its right side, my car sustained almost no damage at all. People may malign my aging Saturn, but I'm telling you, it may in fact be invincible. The bumper is clearly made of titanium, as it has sustained notable impact and force from other vehicles at least four times now and has nary a crack or scratch to show for it. My license plate is mangled, yes, and there's some silver paint from the jackass's side body mingling along with the red paint I still hadn't touched up from that mishap last summer. But actual damage? None, as far as my untrained eye can see. So... GO Saturn, I suppose. Could the Honda Civic a friend of mine recently told me I should be driving instead promise the same?

While I'm looking for silver linings, I could also mention that I finally figured out how to file my taxes almost for free this year, and I was happy to see that my refund was already in my bank account, mere days after clicking "Send return." I saw that, and I promptly did the least fun and most grown-up and responsible thing possible with it--I made a second payment to my credit card bill this month, and I paid my $596 medical bill in full. And then I transferred the rest to savings, because my savings account and I have had a rather unbalanced relationship lately, and I thought it would be nice to give a little for once instead of always being a "take, take, take" sort of girl.

The medical bill, by the way, was for an echocardiogram I had back in January, which I don't think I actually blogged about, despite the fact that a strangely flirtatious Middle Eastern cardio technician slathering goop on my chest and then fondling me with a plastic wand while making uncomfortable small talk would ordinarily spell prime blog fodder. If I worked for a larger company (or lived in Canada), that test would have cost me nothing, of course, but since I do not, $596 was my portion of the bill. Frankly, I am tired of all the criticisms about national health care. In this case, Socialism sounds like a fine plan if you ask me.

I did allow myself at least one small impulse purchase knowing that tax return was in my bank account, though. I've realized it might be time for a new handbag, but rather than let one of my experienced handbag mentors guide me to a proper all-leather investment with a three-digit price tag, I bought this one at Target instead. Carrie and Angela, I'm well aware that neither of you would approve of this PVC, polyester-lined purchase, but at a mere $19.99, I promise I'm not opposed to investing in something more appropriate under your guidance as well.

Let's see. What else have I been up to lately? Well, Tuesday I put on my civics nerd hat (kidding; I actually look terrible in hats) and went to my precinct caucus. I wasn't feeling committed and ambitious enough to volunteer as a Ward or City Convention delegate, but I did volunteer to help with some data entry work this weekend. My friends Amy and Mark, who live 12 blocks and one precinct away, are both delegates, and had I been in the same room as them, perhaps I would have stepped up to that plate as well. As it happened, the only one egging me on in my precinct room was an egg-shaped guy in an R.T. Rybak shirt, nodding and pointing at me in a strange but encouraging way as our caucus leader asked for delegates. Naturally I assumed he thought I was cute and wanted me to be a delegate simply so we'd find ourselves in the same room again sometime soon, but alas, it quickly occurred to me that he probably saw the Rybak sticker on my sweater and was just trying to load the delegation in his candidate's favor. Pish posh.

So I will not be attending this year's Ward 1 or City convention, but I did spend most of the day yesterday helping to enter caucus attendee details into the state voter database. A surprisingly small number turned out, and a few hours in, the woman in charge started slightly badmouthing a few other active party members for transgressions during the caucus. When I said goodbye that afternoon, she thanked me for my help and said that she hoped her catty talk didn't dissuade me from getting involved in additional future events. I didn't have the nerve to say, "Au contraire! If anything, cattiness makes me MORE inclined to participate!" but the sentiment was in my head nonetheless.

And I guess that's about all I've been up to lately. Please tell me that your weekend was more positively eventful than any of that.

'Nuf said.

Seriously, THINK of the kittens!

I took the day off today to do some Get Out the Vote volunteering, and since I knew I had to get up only early enough to vote before my 12:00 shift, I stayed up entirely too late doing nothing particularly important. You know, like trying to get the very buggy Someecards Facebook application to work so that I could post this on my profile and send it to all of my Facebook-connected friends.



Remember, when in doubt, just say NO to the crazy old white guy. Also, remember this:



I'm sorry. For me, that one just never gets old. But I'll stop now before I entirely alienate and offend my three Republican readers.

I joke, but obviously I do feel strongly and care deeply about the outcome of this year's election, so I can't pretend the sentiment isn't at least partly real. I should try to articulate it with thoughtful comments, however, rather than just cheap jokes, and yet I just don't have the energy or the words for that right now. You know who I voted for. If you voted for the same guy, then you know why. Other people have expressed their support for Obama far more eloquently than I feel capable of doing right now. I am tired. I am nervous. (Having CNN on in my living room while I type this really isn't helping with that last one.) And I need to get off my computer already and decorate the "Yes We Can" cake I'm bringing to an Election Night party tonight.

I'm supposed to be sharing a date story, though. And today, Election Day, the date that's on my mind is my very first meMarmony date. I already wrote about that date, actually, although I wrote about it before I was ready to publicly state where I met him. It was nearly three years ago, it was shortly after my first foray on meMarmony, it did not go particularly well. It was very, very many bad dates ago, however, so in retrospect, it's merely a blip. The only reason I'm thinking about him today has to do with what he wrote in his first set of free-form questions to me.

I don't remember answering any political questions in the approximately 427-item assessment used to match me with people, and I certainly didn't mention politics on my profile, either, but apparently he knew I was decidedly liberal (or just wanted to weed me out if I wasn't), because for his very first question to me, he asked the following: "So, if things don't go the way I hope they will, and the Democrats don't take back control of Congress this year [Note: It was early 2006 at the time], and our country becomes even more fascist than it already is, will you move to Canada with me?"

We hadn't even met face-to-face and already he was asking me to cohabitate! Maybe men WEREN'T stereotypically afraid of commitment, I thought! OK, I didn't think that at all. What I thought was, "OK, creative approach. Maybe I'll like this guy."

As it turned out, I did not like this guy. We had several things in common on the surface, but no connection whatsoever deeper than that. Hence, he became the first in a long (long, long) string of meMarmony first dates that were also only dates. C'est la vie. Perhaps today he's sitting at home with an equally stone-faced, humorless, ironically gun-toting liberal girl, nervously watching election results on TV and researching Canadian citizenship guidelines just in case.

Mission accomplished (if our mission was "drink and heckle")

Well, we did it. Last night, two friends and I ventured past the first tier of security guards and made our way within steps of the Xcel. And as much as I would love to tell you all about it with the level of detail and amusement you deserve, I stayed out entirely too late infiltrating the Republicans and hence, a list of highlights is all you're gonna get before my tired head falls flat against my keyboard with an unmomentous thud.

So then. The highlights, as I recall them, in traditionally lazy list form, but this time with NUMBERS instead of bullets, in an effort to prove that this isn't just like Tuesday's post; I'm totally shaking things up here.

1. Absurd things I cannot believe I saw while pacing the stretch of street just outside the security fence:
   
   a. A 20-something man wearing a button that said, "I'm Pro-Hot VP." (I have typed three different sentences trying to sum up my reaction to this, but I've deleted all of them and instead just have to shake my head and say "No comment.")
   
   b. An international antiques shop window filled at all angles with rows of elephants.
   
   c. The divey bar where I once saw a college kid vomit on the floor five feet away from me, temporarily(?) converted into a much flashier establishment labeled in superfluous neon as "The CNN Grill."
   
   
2. Me, at the Liffey, shortly before Palin's speech: "Let's turn it into a drinking game!" Unfortunately, none of us knew enough about her to predict any repetitive phrases or talking points. "Do you think she'll say 'terrorists' a lot? What about 'hockey mom'? Oh! Moose! Do you think she'll mention moose more than once??"
   
   
3. Me, once our new friend (who is visiting the Twin Cities from San Francisco) began openly and loudly heckling the TV screen: "Are we going to get kicked out??" Answer: No. However at one point, someone not amused by his comments shouted back in our direction, "She can't hear you, you know!" To which our new friend immediately quipped, "Yeah, but YOU GUYS can!" It may have been my favorite moment of the night.
   
   
4. Except wait. Maybe my favorite point was when the attractive guy Carrie and I had both been eyeing made his way over to our table and let us know that despite the fact that he was in a suit, he was not ONE OF THEM. "I'm here to infiltrate!" he said. "That's what WE'RE doing!" I replied.
   
   
5. Also of note: the very drunk, late-middle aged east coast delegate with seven houses (he assured me he had counted them) who slurred to me that if I want to live a happy life, I should never get married and--oh yeah--also that the reason I'm not a fan of Sarah Palin must be that I'm gay. Gay. Because that makes sense. Stellar reasoning from the drunk Republican. Maybe that's why he was only an alternate delegate. Incidentally, I tried to take a picture of this charming man, but he ran from my camera as though he thought I was going to post his picture on the Internet. Which, you know, I would never do. Not me. No how. Nope.
   
   
   
   I had no idea the quickest way to make an unwanted Republican go away was to threaten to photograph him. My friend Carrie suggested that perhaps he's a vampire. A Republican vampire. And cameras are to Republican vampires what garlic and crosses are to regular ones. (It's a theory.)
   
   
6. Oh, and I was also told three times in the same evening that I "kinda look like [Palin]." You know, because just like Asians and black men, all brown-haired women with glasses look alike. Or so it would seem.
   

And with that, I believe I am officially DONE talking about the visiting blowhards and we can get back to our regularly scheduled frivolity about bad dates and misadventures and the absurd ways I routinely injure myself. 3Carnations? Are you still here? I promise it's safe to come out now (for a while, anyway).

Jumping on the bandwagon late as usual (pretty much par for the course for me)

I suppose you've all heard this already, but today is was Blog Action Day. As far as I can tell, this means that we're all supposed to post about the environment in some way or another with the express intent of getting Al Gore's attention so that he will either (A. run for President again or (B. marry one of us. Much as I'm a fan of the man, he actually seems pretty happy with Tipper, so if I'm rooting for either one of those, I'll go with A.

I like to think I'm fairly environmentally minded... I am probably the only one at my office who actually turns off her monitor when she leaves, and I routinely fish aluminum cans out of the garbage can in the kitchen and transfer them to the recycling bin a mere two inches away. At home, I wash my clothes in cold water and hang almost everything to dry. I've replaced most of my light bulbs with compact fluorescents (and I have perfectly logical excuses reasons for not replacing the few regular bulbs that remain). I recycle everything I can, even when it means cleaning out a quite nasty neglected jar of something or other that's grown moldy in the fridge. I use rags instead of napkins or paper towels at least 98% of the time. I reuse Ziploc bags and wash or recycle aluminum foil. I don't bag and toss my grass clippings; I leave them messily on the lawn. I pay extra on my Xcel Energy bill to support Windsource wind energy. I have a programmable thermostat. I turn the water off while I brush my teeth. Hell, today, I didn't even take a shower! That's my contribution to Blog Action Day! OK, actually, that's my contribution to the cause of "Damn, I was tired this morning, and another twenty minutes of sleep sounded way more important than a shower, particularly when I showered yesterday afternoon." Potato, po-tah-toe. Pish posh.

Anyway. My point is, I thought I was doing enough small things as to be considered a fairly greenish sort of girl. It's the small things that add up and matter, after all, is it not? Then I took the Earth Day Footprint Quiz (which Sognatrice linked to in her Blog Action Day post today). And OH MY WORD. Suddenly I'm looking at people in Hummers drinking out of Styrofoam cups and saying, "Oh hello, Kettle. I'm Pot. You sure do look black."

People, I don't even want to tell you how I scored on that quiz. I am far, far, far too ashamed. I did so poorly that, if our results were cataloged in some national database for our nation's leaders to peruse, I would probably be invited to the next $1,000 per plate dinner put on by George W. and his crew. If those results are right, then if everyone lived like me, we'd need 72 planets to sustain us. OK, so I am exaggerating. It wasn't anywhere near 72. But it was a far cry from the 1.2 Sognatrice scored, so it jarred me anyway.

I'd actually like to take issue with the Footprint Quiz, as I think there are plenty of things it doesn't measure that could marginally balance out the things it does. The things that hurt my results most severely are significant, sure, but they'd also involve major lifestyle changes to remedy: (1. I drive too damn far to work, and there is no feasible public transport to take instead, and (2. I'm a lazy, convenience foods sort of girl who doesn't pay near enough attention to how far her food traveled or how many resources were used in packaging it. The latter I can work on (baby steps, baby steps). The former is tougher to remedy.

In truth, though, there are a whole lot more things I could be doing. I could renew my recently expired TerraPass, for starters. That would assuage at least a bit of my driving guilt. I could remember to bring my Chico Bags every time I go shopping, instead of just one in three. I could turn off my kitchen light when I'm not in there. (And how often am I in there, really? You all know how infrequently I cook!) I could refuse to buy any more Lean Cuisines or Healthy Choice lunches until they package them in burnable paper (like Amy's Organic and Cedarlane) instead of non-recyclable plastic. (Yes, burning is a problem as well, but in Minneapolis, burned garbage is converted into energy, so supposedly none of it goes in a landfill, making it at least a partially justified trade-off, anyway.) I could do some of the things mentioned in the posts and comments at Bleeding Espresso and Marmite Breath today.

Or, I could do some of the things all of YOU suggest. Tell me, what are YOU doing to make sure we're not living in a horrific wasteland by 2016? We'll get back to my normally scheduled frivolity soon enough, really, but for now, I'm curious about everyone's thoughts on this.