U.S. Presidents

I know little to nothing about history. I'll start with that.
This morning, while I washed my hair, I was thinking about an ad I saw that claimed Andrew Jackson's parrot had a foul mouth.

This ad right here.
Then I was thinking about how I know two songs that list all the United States presidents and yet I still don't really know anything about United States presidents.
So, anyway, now I'm writing a blog where I list the presidents in order, not by name, but by how I see them. I'd like to thank the Wikipedia page that lists all the U.S. presidents in order for being my reference guide because it's not like I have them memorized.

1) President The First President
2) President I'm Distantly Related To Him The First
3) President Declaration Of Independence And Had Sex With A Slave With The Same First Name As Me And Thought A Sloth Was A Lion But I Only Found That Out Recently
4) President "Never Had A Son And He Fought The War Of 1812"
5) President Animaniacs Claimed He Had A Big Nose But I Was Just Looking At A Picture Of Him And I Don't See It
6) President I'm Distantly Related To Him The Second
7) President Badass The First
8) President Bald And Sideburns
9) President Died Really Early
10) President I Think I Had To Do A Report On Him In, Like, Seventh Grade
11) President They Might Be Giants Song
12) President Unless It Was This Guy I Had To Do A Report On
13) President Has A Comic Strip That I Never Read Named After Him
14) President "Young And Fierce Was Franklin Pierce The Man Without A Chin"
15) President The Guy Before Abraham Lincoln
16) Abraham Lincoln
17) President The Guy After Abraham Lincoln
18) President I Think He Was A General Or Something In The Civil War And I'm Pretty Sure He Drank A Lot
19) President Won By One Vote
20) President Hates Mondays
21) President "Fall Down"
22) President Furry Blue Monster
23) President Guy Who Was President Between Grover Cleveland And Grover Cleveland
24) President Furry Blue Monster Again
25) President I Cannot For The Life Of Me Come Up With Anything To Say About And Therefore Is Probably The Most Forgettable President
26) President Badass The Second
27) President Didn't Want To Be President And Would Rather Be Golfing And Got Stuck In The Bathtub So Bought A Bigger One (also President My Favorite President)
28) President Guy I Always Get Confused With Calvin Coolidge For Some Reason
29) President Name Sounds Like A Character In A 1930s Gangster Movie
30) President "You Lose" And Lena Lamont Has More Money Than Him Put Together
31) President Vacuum Cleaner
32) President World War Two
33) President Mindless Self Indulgence Song
34) President Fashionable Wife
35) President Assassination Inspired A Million Conspiracy Theories
36) President Guy After John F. Kennedy
37) President "Just Wrote An Article For Redbook"
38) President Actually Fall Down
39) President Electric Six Song
40) President Has A Library Near My House Who Loved Jelly Beans And Used To Be An Actor And My Mom Hates Him
41) President Hates Broccoli
42) President Saxophone
43) President Stupid
44) President The Guy Who's The President As I'm Writing This Who Will Probably Be Best Known In The Future By Kids Like Me Who Are Bad At History For Being "President Black Guy The First"

Be seeing you.
-Sally

I Broke Kevin Clash

Recently I wrote a review about Being Elmo where I talked about how awesome I think Kevin Clash is and how it was refreshing to see a documentary that isn't like an episode of Inside The Music and instead just tells an interesting story about an interesting person.
Apparently the universe read my review, said "Well, we can't have that" and threw a scandal on Kevin Clash's shoulders that is forcing him to resign from Sesame Street.
Kevin, if you're reading this, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make the universe try to balance out the lack of drama in your career.

Be seeing you.
-Sally

Come To Think Of It...

I don't think these pills are doing what they're supposed to at all. I've been pretty much withdrawing from the world for the past few weeks. I hide in my room and only come out to babysit my nieces. The only person I hang out with is my mom (admittedly, my mom is awesome, but she lives in the same house as me so it takes no effort to hang out with her). I don't call my friends anymore (I called Ivan yesterday but it was his birthday, and even then I put off calling him for several hours), I don't hang out with my friends anymore. I tried to take a break from Facebook; it lasted about five days and I'm pissed at myself for having gone back on so soon. I also went on Twitter for the first time since April, but I also narrowed down the amount of people I "follow" from thirty three to ten. And I'm mad that I logged back in there, too. I hate social networking sites because they're a pathetic excuse for actual human interaction but I'm making no effort to go out into the world and actually interact with humans. So what is the fucking point of anything? I'm scared. I'm scared by how negative my brain is, how much it hates me. I don't want to be "normal" for several reasons (the biggest being that I believe in "normal" as much as I believe in "weird," which is not at all) but I thought antidepressants were supposed to help you be not depressed anymore, not just rearrange your depression so you can observe and study it. I feel like that's all the Prozac has done. I've spent the past several hours unable to log off the computer. I haven't done much of anything; I went on Craigslist and looked up how much it costs to rent an apartment in Rutland, Vermont and I looked to see if anybody in Ventura County might be giving away a little dresser since mine is falling apart and I am broke. (In case you're curious: no, they're not). And I did the aforementioned logging back onto Facebook and Twitter. I've also played countless games of solitaire (how appropriate) and thought about what I would write if I were to place a personal ad on Craigslist. (Everything I came up with sounded negative and bitchy.) Not that I'd go through with it. 'Cause I know me; that's the sort of idea I get around midnight. If I were to post something, I'd feel embarrassed and stressed and cowardly about it tomorrow and go right back and delete it. So instead I'm sitting around and typing a blog post about how I'm hyper aware of my depression and wondering why I didn't realize that the pills were having this effect on me all along.

Be seeing you.
-Sally

One Month On Prozac

It's weird. I notice a difference but it's really hard to put my finger on exactly what that difference is.
It almost feels like it's just made me really okay with my depression. I spend as much, if not more, time alone as before and I'm still really unhappy about that, but I also just don't feel like making the effort to go anywhere or hang out with anybody and I'm not unhappy about that. I'm suddenly okay with the loneliness and not caring and not making an effort.
I still spend a lot of time thinking about how it would be fun to hang out with friends, go to concerts or parties or to, like, take a trip to visit out of town friends or go to the zoo or something. I don't make any effort to do any of those things. I just think about them and how they might be fun.
Every day for the past two weeks I've thought "I'll call Dan tonight and see if he wants to hang out." I have yet to do so. I'd like to; I haven't seen him in a while and I miss hanging out with him. But it takes too much effort to call or text and hope he responds, and then if he does want to hang out I'd have to leave the house and drive to his house and it'd be fun while I was there but then eventually I'd have to leave and come home again and that doesn't sound fun and I'm already at home, so why bother?
I started writing an exploitation movie. I read about them a lot (specific kinds of exploitation movies, anyway; the kinds that get written about in books and magazines about horror movies) and I decided I want to make one. It's going to be practically nothing but rape, cannibalism, nudity, gore and extended scenes of a band playing in a nightclub for padding because apparently exploitation films are often badly paced. I was alarmed at how quickly I came up with a synopsis for the movie (about five minutes; for comparison, it took me more than a month to come up with a proper outline for Sunny Ella) and even more alarmed by the fact that it is practically nothing but cannibalism and rape and so on, and how casually I come up with that sort of thing. I don't know how to write happy things or even just non-dysfunctional things.
I feel like I've spent the past however-long-it's-been-since-the-Prozac-kicked-in doing a lot of self-reflecting and I'm seeing myself very clearly. I realized that my brain is irreparably fucked up in a lot of ways. I'm remembering things I had blocked, I guess, mostly things about being picked on in school and shit like that. I always knew I didn't have a lot of friends when I was little but I'd forgotten how much people were mean to me when I was a kid.
I always just assumed I was normal and that everybody feels like this all the time, too, but apparently that's not the case. My brain is miswired and broken and malfunctioning and for the first time in my life I see that very, very clearly.
And I'm okay with it, I guess, because of the pills.
I'm not okay with the fact that I'm damn near thirty and I'm writing a blog post that may as well be coming from a whiny fifteen year old with no real problems.
Maybe that's part of the problem. Maybe my brain is wired to be that of a whiny fifteen year old forever and ever.
I fucking hate teenagers.

Be seeing you.
-Sally

Your Offense Offends Me

This is an article about the new Die Antwoord video and the fact that, in it, Yo-Landi Vi$$er is painted black. I guess the Rolling Stones got her. ("I see a South African rapper chick and I want to paint it black...")
Okay, the following I say as someone who is not black, nor South African but I'm far more offended by the article telling me I should be offended by something than I am about some broad in minstrel show makeup.
If you have to write several paragraphs explaining why something is offensive, it's not all that offensive.
Or, to put it another way, offense is a natural thing, a gut reaction. A person is either offended by something or they're not. If something requires research in order to be offended by it, it's not offensive.
I don't know the state of race relations in South Africa. I do know that it's 2012 and blackface is impossible to take seriously anymore.
Did The Slate throw a tantrum when they did a blackface gag on Stella, too? I bet they didn't.
The Slate is offended by the new Die Antwoord video. I am offended by The Slate telling me to be offended by the new Die Antwoord video.
To be honest, while I am not necessarily offended, I do think the vicious interpretation of Lady Gaga is uncalled for.
It's fine that they think her music is shitty (I enjoy it, but I'm not everyone) and I really, really respect them for turning down her offer to tour with her. Bands shouldn't tour with people they don't like.
However, the fact that they didn't let it go and made a video that brutally mocks and kills her for committing the horrible crime of ... asking them to open for her (?), that's just unnecessary.
I also really, really, really hate it when music videos pause the song in the middle for dialogue scenes. Music videos are supposed to illustrate the song and you can't do that properly if the song isn't fucking playing.
I also learned that Die Antwoord is not just a Sally's One Hit Wonder; they have at least two songs I like. Fatty Boom Boom is catchy as fuck. Not as good as I Fink U Freeky,



but good enough that I went and downloaded the song (legally, all you governmenty anti piracy watchdogs).

Be seeing you.
-Sally

Is It Hypocracy Or Something Else?

I write this knowing that I could alienate quite a few people I know if they were ever to read it. I don't necessarily want to do that, but this is how I feel and I just really want to get it out there.
For the past three summers I've been a counselor for the teen program at a Unitarian camp. And I really enjoy it; the kids are all good kids, I love the other counselors and I get a free week of food and lodging. It's awesome.
The problem I have is with the Unitarians. They try to sell their church as "We don't care what you believe, as long as you believe something," and "All are welcome" but the whole message of tolerance that they seem to think they're promoting is often clouded by a very "Us and Them" mentality.
Sometimes it's stated outright and sometimes it isn't, but I often get a very "We're so great because we're so accepting, not like some other people," be they other religions or non-hippies or whatever. That attitude being just as exclusive and segregatey as people who openly hate other religions or races or groups of people.
It's like the thing that sets them apart, their supposed acceptance of all people, is the thing that gives them a sort of holier than thou attitude. It bugs me.
Some of the other counselors keep expecting me to show up one year with a chalice tattoo but it's not going to happen. I enjoy camp for my one week out of the year, then I go back to my real life. It's fun for a while but it's not for me.
To be honest, I know some Unitarians in my "real life," too and they bug me even more than the people at camp. Now that I think about it, the "Us and Them" mentality is only ever implied at camp. The UUs I know out here are far more likely to state it outright and not even notice the double standard.
Sorry, I'm getting all bitter. I should stop now before things get ugly. To make myself feel better, I shall tie it all together with a line from Illumination by Gogol Bordello (which I love and makes me happy):
"Of course there is no Us and Them, but Them, they do not think the same."

Be seeing you.
-Sally

Songs That Are All A Very Specific Time

Always by Seapony
Any Minute Now from The Simpsons
Any Time At All by The Beatles
April Fool's Day by Rufus Wainwright
Back In '64 by The Rutles
Daybreak by Harry Nilsson
Day Of The Dead by Voltaire
Early Christmas Morning by Cyndi Lauper
Early In The Morning by Harry Nilsson
4 AM by Madness
Friday by Rebecca Black
Halloween by The Misfits
In The Middle Of The Night by Lick The Tins
Last Christmas by Wham
Last Friday Night by Katy Perry
Last Night by The Strokes
Midnight by Red Hot Chili Peppers
Monday Monday by The Mamas And The Papas
Monday Morning by Death Cab For Cutie
Monday Morning by Fleetwood Mac
Monday Tuesday Wednesday by The Kinks
1985 by Bowling For Soup
1989 by Mindless Self Indulgence
1941 by Harry Nilsson
1917 by The Fiery Furnaces
1979 by Smashing Pumpkins
Nowadays from Chicago
Nowadays by Eels
Right Now by Van Halen
Same Time Next Year by Johnny Mathis
Saturday Morning by Eels
Saturday Night by Bay City Rollers
Saturday Night by The Misfits
Saturday Night Sunday Morning by Madness
Summer Of '69 by Brian Adams
Summertime from Porgy And Bess
Sunday Morning by No Doubt
Sunday Morning by Velvet Underground
Suppertime from Little Shop Of Horrors
Suppertime from You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown
The Good Old Days by Eels
The Morning by Eels
The Morning After by Faith No More
The Night by Voltaire
The Night Before by The Beatles
3 AM by Matchbox Twenty
Thursday by Conan O'Brien
Today by Smashing Pumpkins
Tomorrow from Annie
Tomorrow by Wall Of Voodoo
Tonight from West Side Story
Tonight Tonight by Smashing Pumpkins
Tonight Tonight Tonight by Genesis
Tuesday Afternoon by The Moody Blues
Tuesday Morning by Melissa Etheridge
Tuesday Morning by The Pogues
2082 by They Might Be Giants
Two Minutes Till Lunch by Wall Of Voodoo
Wednesday by Tori Amos
Wednesday Morning 3 AM by Simon And Garfunkel
Yesterday by The Beatles

HONORABLE MENTION: every song on Suspended Animation by Fantomas

If anybody has any others, please let me know. I enjoy lists.

Be seeing you.
-Sally