Times I have felt like Liz Lemon

1. Liz Lemon, staunch new-wave feminist
Me, Jackie, friend of Jackie's, and a friend of Jackie's friend lounge in the living room of the apartment at school, nursing glasses of wines and engaging in girl talk. As opposed to dude talk, of which I am an active participant 95% of the time. In the case of the friend of friend and friend of friend of friend, this is a pre-party visit--the party theme is announced to be "CEOs and corporate hos" and the ladies are dressed accordingly. Flicker of Liz Lemon first appears when my thoughts to plunge in the direction of "Oh, that is so typical, with women relegated to the role of corporate 'ho'... oh what an idea for a party indeed, that is just--". No, Shan, stop being a Douglass woman for two seconds, and lay down four years' worth of gender theory weaponry down. I consider whether I would attend such a party and decide that I wouldn't, on principle. This realization should have been a warning sign.
Jackie's friend: "I just sent a picture of me to [insert boyfriend name] and said, 'if I were your secretary, would you do me?" Everyone is merrily appreciative of this comment, and before I realize what I'm saying I blurt, "or, you know, you could be like 'if I were your boss would you do me? ....AmIright?" They look at me as though they have never encountered someone so socially inept, and they simply have no words to capture their awe, and then I feel myself in the process of filling the silencio by mumblecoughing "..feminism?" I think things could only have been made worse had I tried to high-five myself afterward.

2. Liz Lemon, Inadvertent Racist
On the night before Halloween, for all the reasons you can guess, I was dressed in a banana costume. I will not put on airs and tell you that it was even an adult-sized banana costume, for no, indeed it was intended for both children and Shans alike. I could have done with a larger costume, but the miniature costume was a whole ten dollars cheaper, and what can I say, in this economy we can't all afford to be large fruits. At a bar I pull away from Jackie-as-not-quite-obvious-enough Ke$ha in order to commend these two guys on what were, by far, the most fabulous of costumes. I am talking about Will Smith as the Fresh Prince, and Carlton. Now, I love Will Smith. I can't, however, stand his progeny--Willow and Jaden just irk me. But that's because I hate most children who are pimped out to showbiz, and plus, I just like Will too much to accept little subpar imitations. Anyway, I see them and I beeline to talk to them. It goes like this--
"Oh my goodness I love the fresh prince"
"Mmhm" Will Smith responds. He appears disinterested, and barely capable of acknowledging my gushing.
"Those wayfarers are fantastic," I persist, because I am too big a fan of the Fresh Prince to do otherwise, and then turning to his friend "Will and Carlton, such a great idea..."
"I'm not Carlton."
"Come again?"
Carlton frowns down at me. My mind cannot compute.
"I'm Steve Jobs."
I look at his turtleneck. His glasses. Carlton didn't have glasses, did he? Actually, perhaps this guy does not look like Carlton at all.
Oh, no, no. What defense do I have? "I'm sorry but you were a black nerd standing next to Will Smith, I just didn't immediately think... that you were a recently deceased white man." No, that would not do. So obviously I just laughed and backed away swiftly.

3. Liz Lemon, ranting queen, staunchly pro-sock
I once went on a five minute rant about why anyone would elect to wear ankle socks in the winter, as I had just purchased crew socks and experienced some kind of sock euphoria/revelation. "You don't realize what you've been missing in ankle warmth until you wear this, I'm telling you"--and proceeding to tell you for five minutes more.

4. Liz Lemon, unkempt like harried mother of five, but is not actually mother
After a movie I went to the bathroom to whizz and discovered popcorn kernels had found their way into the leg of my pants. Which is just illogical.

St. Valenpoop's

Wishing a happy Valentine's to happy couples and a tolerable one to everyone else!

Apart from a mysterious shooting pain in my left elbow right now, I'm doing not-so-bad. There are worse ways to spend V-Day than, um, at a Chevys with your parents and brother (I don't know why, but my parents like celebrating traditionally couple-y occasions, like V-Day and their anniversary, with their children). OK I know that sounds bad. But I do like going out to dinners, yes, even with my family, and besides, Chevys is delicious. I had fish tacos, still in keeping with my pesky pesce diet. And I had fried ice cream! Things aren't so bad!

But the highlight of my day might have been when I went for a quick run. A run in February! Who'd have thought. Indeed the weather today was unbelievably springlike, as if winter is cruelly trying to lure us into thinking it will be kind to us from here on out. What sheer baloney/malarkey/poppycock that is. Well anyway, I was wrapping up my run when I spotted an innocent pink carnation laying on the sidewalk in front of me. It was near the high school so someone must've dropped it on the way home. It goes without saying that I took it home. So now I'm a girl fat on fish tacos, whose night stand is housing a copy of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, on top of which there is a secondhand flower bequeathed to her by a sidewalk.

No big deal. And as Liz Lemon would say, it's not V-Day anyway--it's Anna Howard Shaw Day, people.

The flower really did make me happy. I'm all about my facebook statuses so I put "on my run just now i found an abandoned pink carnation laying on the sidewalk. shoutout to my secret admirer--the universe." It felt like the universe, despite all its senselessness and absurdity and cruelty, was trying to send me some (really lame) message. Maybe it was a reward for all the self-love and taking care of my health recently. Or maybe it was just subtle encouragement to a girl who never had those carnations sent to her in high school.

In fact, there was a really excellent online journal entry I wrote on Valentine's Day 2004, unfortunately long ago deleted, in which I describe "love and quiet giggles flickering across the room", or something like that, and (because flowers were passed out first period, in this case geometry class) how "finding the angle of hypotenuses (hypotenii?) couldn't heal the pain in my chest, and even if it could, I suck at math." It's so MELODRAMATIC, and actually, I was awesome at geometry so I don't know what I was going on about.

Valentine's Day can really suck. But it doesn't suck the most for people like me--it sucks for those going through painful breakups, or even still holding on to the residual pain of one. Or worse, it sucks for people like poor Liam Neeson, whose wife passed away at the age of 45. The love of your life is gone, but you still have to put up with this tiresome, obnoxiously saccharine pink-and-red holiday.

So while I can and have pulled a Bridget Jones before (in spirit, but not yet in spirits, i.e. drinking wine all by myself and singing "All By Myself") I know it's idiotic, too. After all, I'm young and my pathetic love life still holds potential, at least. I am both young and an incorrigible romantic whose heart is (embarrassingly) convinced that one day I'll be 1/2 of an annoyingly in-love couple, and I'll have lame Valentine's dates, and I'll buy right into this tiresome, obnoxiously saccharine holiday. For single people is this day all about being as bitter as the darkest of chocolates or is there a way to make it about hope? (Ugh, the question at the end makes me sound like a second-rate Carrie Bradshaw). Psh, in an hour this day will be old news anyway. But I am in the mood to watch Bridget Jones' Diary all of a sudden.

taking the me out of meat. mabes.

So it has been almost exactly one week since my last non-pescetarian meal. Soooo, the trial's over? But, perhaps surprisingly, I find myself at a loss for what to do now. I don't really want to stop but I don't know that I could really do this for the long haul.

Well, my reasons for doing it in the first place: curiosity, just for kicks (I guess I have to say that, since under my new no-swearing policy "shits and gigs" is verboten? FROWN.), just to see if I could, and a vague concern for my health. Well, also a vague concern for the negative environmental impact of the meat industry (I don't know the details per se, but I know it's bad. Like cow farts = methane etc. etc.). Maybe a teeny tiny piece of me is worried about animal cruelty and such, but I'm sorry to say, not a great part. I'm a stone-cold biznatch in that regard, maybe. If I get my little mind a-pondering about it, it's just very natural for animals to eat other animals, and humans are of course animals--so that checks out just fine.

I will admit though, that every once in a while I might be nibbling on a delicious fried chicken wing when it suddenly dawns on me oh my god I am nibbling the meat off of a dead animal's disembodied arm. And this is coming from someone whose favorite food for a long time was hot wings (before that, it was probably steak). Another example of meat bugging me out would be the time I was at the dining hall maybe a year ago. I started to dig into their veal parmesan, but was ultimately too freaked out that I was eating a poor baby cow. Although maybe if the parm was more delicious I might've been able to overcome this. I'm not sure.

Anyway, I mostly don't have qualms about eating meat. But, but I know that, at the very least, I should eat much less of it. Because, in this, er, one week journey I have come to realize that I have a bit of a problem (of course, a very Liz Lemon-y problem). My problem is that I eat sketchy foods a little too often (Liz Lemon eating cheesy blasters, anyone?), and in doses that are probably not acceptable. The fact is, these sketchy foods are always sketchy by virtue of their meat.

death in patty form

I mean, I just get this whirlwind visual of questionable sludge-looking containers of "chili"--that I devoured, avec tortilla chips, obviously--or a grocery store-bought package of supposed Jamaican beef patties that my roommate Agata and I shared, much to the horror of the other roomies. That whole affair was actually a riot because Agata and I were so enthralled to see the patties in the frozen food isle, so psyched to eat the first patties, and then so, so alarmed when mysterious hard objects were found in the "meat"(?). But because we were such TROOPERS, or rather, we paid good money for a whole box of ten, we continued to torture ourselves by harming our bodies and ingesting them. It was probably after enduring three of those demons that I heated one up, stared at it with pure loathing in my heart, and then immediately had to throw it in the garbage. Anyway, I've since moved out of the apartment but I've been informed that there is still totally a patty left in the freezer, if anyone is interested?

Well, point is, I was really flabbergasted, finally realizing this sad, sad fact about my eating habits. And once I've reached that point, I'd like to think and hope that I might be able to turn a corner. And so, pescetarian for a week. Now maybe what I really need to do is not say Nay to meats, but just be much smarter about what I do eat. But it felt right to go cold turkey on it. Because, honestly, I think I'm a "give an inch and I'll take a mile" type of gal when it comes to crap foods. It's easier to say NO MEAT, NO NO NO and have it be black and white, cut and dry, because as soon as the rule becomes more abstract ("don't eat... so much meat... and don't eat sketchy meat especially... so much" I'm worried I'd bust into a Chick-fil-a and go nom nom nom on a thousand nuggets. Their nuggets are so good, by the way.

It's a bit of an extreme example but it makes me think of Craig Ferguson talking about his past alcoholism, and how he realizes, as anyone should, that alcohol isn't inherently bad, you just need moderation... Yet he knows himself by now, and he knows that he personally isn't capable of moderation. "Just a glass" will inevitably multiply and before he knows it, he's waking up god knows where, soaked in his or someone else's urine. Um. My point being maybe I don't have the self-control to eat meat responsibly??

Oh, by the way, I chose to keep eating seafood because it is on the whole a lot healthier than them cows or chickens or pigs. Plus that leaves me with so many food options still, and I don't feel as tremendously constrained. Not to mention, shrimp and salmon and crab? Deliciousssss. No, I couldn't give that up.

All this said, I think maybe I'll just... try for another week of this. I'm already a little surprised at how relatively easy it's been (who would have thought that Shan could go longer not eating meat than not cursing? Yes, I've slipped on that just a few times, teehee) (but if you think about it, how much easier is it to accidentally say something than it is to accidentally put something in your mouth and swallow it?) There have been some struggles, forsooth, and I think my family is still weirded out by this change in me all of a sudden. But they've been pretty accommodating too; today they nearly bought fried chicken for themselves, and I was all melodramatically "please don't do that to meeee," which convinced them (I don't think I'm strong enough for that kind of temptation yet), and my mom has made a shrimp version of the Filipino dish sinigang (though it wasn't as good as the beef version, I admit). So yeah, it aint easy, but so far it's been doable.

Naturally though, to think of trying something like this in Germany, land of the Wurst... my soul weeps. And oh, those döner kebabs! My sweet darling döner. I would break any vow to eat one of those things right now. See, this raises the issue I have with cutting out meat... I feel like I am missing out on a lot of culturally important things. And I just can't do that. Can I? IT FEELS SO WRONG. Half of the allure of going off to foreign lands is to eat their specialties. But this is an issue I can ponder another time.

The döner kebab is proof that God loves us.

In other news, this picture is truly upsetting me.

One more week. And if I'm already feeling so much healthier, what will another week do for me (and my tummy--here's hoping)? Already the thought of eating meat again turns me off, just a little bit (if I picture a decapitated cow head with vacant eyes, it helps especially). In any case, I'm pleased to be trying something new, especially something that I thought I would never-in-a-million-years even test drive. It's exciting when you realize that what you are is simply what you think you are; it isn't set in stone. For the longest time I always thought of myself as this super-inactive lazy person, but then how is it I got into hour long running a year ago? Riddle me that.

My vow to stop swearing? Also, WWTFD (what would Tina Fey do)

About a month late I have (in this state of idleness) come up with a few new year's resolutions of various levels of attainability and seriousness. Partly (mostly?) in order to... I don't know, give myself something to do. They came out to be:

1. go pescetarian (no meat except for seafood) for a week
2. stop swearing like such a g*ddamn sailor
3. drive more often and possibly LEARN TO DRIVE STICK SHIFT??
4. limit drinking to beer (I mean limit alcoholic drinking to beer. Not ALL drinking. That would be unwise, and, er achieve the opposite effect that I want)

The idea to try out a pescetarian diet came first, when I was at the tail end of my stay in LA, and then the others sort of came along after that. I guess the whole thing I'm trying for is to create a healthier body and mind. It's funny, though, all of these things... anyone who knows me well enough (ok, mostly the roommate Jackie again) would say that it'd be a joke to think I could do any of these things. BUT YOU UNDERESTIMATE MY WILLPOWER.

The pescetarian thing deserves a post of its own, but as far as the other stuff... okay. Swearing. I once described myself as "speaking as though I was raised by Kathy Griffin and Triumph the insult comic dog." That's just not the kind of image you want to project, generally. My brother gives me grief about it especially, citing the time we were eating at Wendy's when I said something proper ladies should not say and a little kid nearby repeated it. And then his mom smacked him :| I am a little uncertain as to the validity of this, but my bro swears it happened.

Aside from preventing future child abuse, I got to thinking about how my adaption of good, positive words and thoughts, not foul language, would be such a change for the better, not just for myself but for the people who surround me. Ugh, that sounds cheesy. But yeah, positive ...energy. And stuff. I don't know what I'm trying to say--it just feels right. But obviously I can make exceptions. For example, if a giant anvil falls out of the sky and onto my house. That's just f*cked up.

What really took me from "haaa, wouldn't it be funny and futile if I tried to stop cursing" to "maybe I'm serious about this" was the realization that my personal hero, (whose character on TV I strongly identify with/possibly am) Tina Fey, doesn't swear. She is clever, fantastic, successful and seriously funny without swearing. (Makes me think of Will Smith, WHOSE AWESOMENESS IS UNPARALLELED AND IRREFUTABLE, rapping without swearing.) As Jackie pointed out to me, part of what makes Tina funny is actually what she says in lieu of swears. "Nerds!" or "BLERG" or, the one I use way often, "What the WHAT?" The fact is, she is, well, wholesome. So if I aspire to be anything like her--and oh, I do--then I can go without f-bomb and co., can't I?

Except I'm not sure where to draw the line yet. Like "ass", is ass ok? I think the occasional ass will be ok. I mean, Conan regularly refers to himself as an ass (I base all my decisions off of Tina Fey and Conan O'Brien--you got me). "Shit" might be sketchy. I feel better about using "shite." Also I kind of really love the word "whore", but I should probably scale back on that one...

By the way my self-improvement kick has "Liz Lemon" painted all over it. She's all "I'm trying new things" and "One of my New Year’s resolutions is to say YES." She also does pretty much whatever Oprah tells her to do. Which is funny since it was watching the recent Oprah episode on veganism that inspired me to try out a diet change. Cough cough onceagaindon'tjudgeme cough.

I leave you with a prime example of why I feel I am Elizabeth Lemon