Hi, All!
I just finished putting away the excess cardboard boxes, the copious amounts of tape and have filled the holes in the wall with toothpaste. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, Brain Barf is moving.
I basically wanted to create a more stream-lined, professional and focused blog. Check out the new and improved site (but the content will still be much the same) at: www.mdaniells.blogspot.com
Hope to see you there!!!
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xoxo
Marian
I’ve been kinda caught up in a project lately, throwing myself into research and lists and flow charts and making everything organized and pretty (read: I’m a perfectionist sociopath). I can’t quite spill the details yet, but there’s a lot of exciting stuff going on in my life đ
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On a completely different note, Jenny is leaving town this weekend and I’ll more or less be on my own. So I’ve decided that (weather permitting) I want to be a total girly tourist and see a bunch of things in the city. This site had a lot of good ideas! I’ve started compiling a list (shocker!) and The plan for the weekend is::
SATURDAY::
SUNDAY (Instead of watching the Super Bowl)::
I went out last night. Some friend of a friend knew a promoter that offered free vodka all night and free entry to a club that typically has a $40 cover and where the cheapest bottle is $300. I spent $4 for my coat check.
Anyway, the place was pretty slow when we first got there, but we had a table and just relaxed and talked like girls for an hour so. Others started trickling in around 11:30 and I took a look around the place.
To the friend of a friend next to me, I marveled how clubs before 1 a.m. are remarkably like middle school dances, complete with awkward judging up the competition and gender segregation. Boys stand in their little circles looking awkward and uncomfortable and warm in their shirts and sweaters. And girls sit in their little table clusters and drink mixed drinks and just soak up each others prettiness.
I don’t really know where I am going with this. Obviously, around the witching hour, everyone is sufficiently boozed enough to dance with other smelly strangers and everyone ends up on the sweltering, deafening dance floor with the scantily clad, stilt-wearing go-go dancers (no, I’m not kidding).
I enjoyed myself immensely, but I had a built-in dance partner in my friend. I’m a Dane Cook cliche; I love dancing with my girlfriends. Random creepers offered us shots (read: cheapest drink at the bar and the fastest way to get a random girl drunk), which we kindly turned down and insisted that we were only interested in each other.
Other girls, however, were less inclined to turn down free alcohol from wealthy greasers. By about 2 or 3, the place was paired off and the only guys not dancing or sloppily making out with girls were Indian randoms who looked incredibly awkward (not racist, just an observation).
Anyway, I was way too sober for any of that. I’m sure that, had any of the impromptu couples released the suction between their slobbery mouths long enough to look at me, they would have seen a face wrinkled up in disgust. I’m just much too old fashioned for such practices.
I don’t really drink. I don’t talk to strangers, let alone make out with them. I like to be in bed at 11 p.m. The only reason I ended up there was to be with a close friend and to dance my little heart out.
But why in God’s name do people of my generation insist on going to bars and clubs to meet people of the opposite gender? Do you really think that because some guy is choking you with his tongue that he wants to be with you? I mean, realistically (which may be too far-fetched), what relationships really blossom from clubs??
I wouldn’t want to be with some guy that I met at the club. The music is so loud, that conversation is out of the question and the only thing I could be sure I had in common with the schlup was our choice of late night hangouts.
I want to be with someone I met in a class or at the library or at some philanthropy event. Someone I have things in common with, someone who doesn’t have to compete with the music or who is willing to drop hundreds of dollars in a night in the hopes of sealing the deal with some STD-ridden stranger. I want someone with substance.
I digress… but I guess I realize that clubs are not the place to look.
I’ve spent the last umpteen hours and days and months
driving towards that pinprick in the horizon,
that neat little microscopic point where everything comes together.
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There, that “vanishing point,”
that’s were everything makes sense.
It’s my rainbow and I’m constantly chasing it.
How am I, amateur navigator that I am, to know when I’ve reached the destination?
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I need a tour-guide, a wing man.
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I push harder on the accelerator and set new records,
I blow past signs and lights and detours and alerts,
my vision so narrowed and tunneled.
I never bothered to read any of them.
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And I missed the turnoff.
too busy hurling myself toward some impossible pinprick of a future.
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You were my poor, lonely dirt road,
poorly marked but ever-so-promising.
You could have been my super secret detour to happily-ever-after.
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And I blindly blew past.
So, I just read this post on Marie Claire and it kind of got me going.
I’m a Pearl girl myself and never really understood the appeal of o.b. tampons. They hurt and just don’t cut it for me. And, I’ve got copious supply currently, so I don’t think the Tampax “glitch in the manufacturing” will really affect me right now. But have any of you ever heard of The Keeper?
Yeah, me neither. That is, not until last semester when my (super awesome) sociology professor–Justin Betz–told us about it. We were discussing modern media and how adds portray the different genders (and pretty much fail to mention any alternative genders). But he pointed out some interesting things.
Pardon my feminist rampage, but there are ads about ERECTILE DYSFUNCTION. So why can’t we say VAGINA on TV? Because God forbid we be women.. God forbid we have periods or control whether or not we’re preggers. As advanced as our technology, our society is still stuck in Leviticus, which (in case you were wondering) includes a bunch of outdated bullpucky, including:
19 ââWhen a woman has her regular flow of blood, the impurity of her monthly period will last seven days, and anyone who touches her will be unclean till evening.
20 ââAnything she lies on during her period will be unclean, and anything she sits on will be unclean. 21 Anyone who touches her bed will be unclean; they must wash their clothes and bathe with water, and they will be unclean till evening. 22 Anyone who touches anything she sits on will be unclean; they must wash their clothes and bathe with water, and they will be unclean till evening. 23 Whether it is the bed or anything she was sitting on, when anyone touches it, they will be unclean till evening.
24 ââIf a man has sexual relations with her and her monthly flow touches him, he will be unclean for seven days; any bed he lies on will be unclean.
And now for some comedic relief… Have you seen these commercials??? Hilarious.
When you were a baby,
I used to love the feeling of your whole hand
barely grasping my one finger.
Mom and I used to lean over you and envelop you with our hair.
I don’t know that you’ve laughed like that since then.
I miss my baby brother.
I miss yelling at you,
I miss the way you used to cry when you spilled water.
You were always a little younger than you thought.
I wish you’d let yourself be the kid you are.
There’s a lot of scary stuff out there, Stooch.
Responsibility, consequences…
And they’ll catch up to you, no matter
how fast your track-stud legs will take you.
I (crazy) love you.
But…
Baby boy, you drive me insane.
To those that know me or my writing, this post will come as no surprise. But today, to fight the morning blues, to beat away all negative energy, to empower myself and boost my confidence… Today, ladies and gentlemen, I am wearing red lipstick. And to honor the occasion (and perhaps to explain why this is so epically awesome and a big deal), here is the essay that started it all:
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The Red Badge of Courage
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Visualize a âpower woman.â A sleek and classic leather bag hanging loosely from her shoulder; four-inch high, sturdy designer stilettos strangling her feet; a ridiculously stylish and sexy outfitâmost likely a mod pantsuitâaccentuating her feminine curves; classy, natural hair gently gathered at the nape of her neck or falling over her shoulders; and simple, natural makeup highlighting her strong cheekbones and long eyelashes. Ah, but donât forget the one necessity: bold, beautiful, va-va-voom red lipstick. Oh, the lipstick! The scarlet magic wand that takes a woman from blah to AH-HA! What is it about red lipstick that is so classic and sexy? So quintessentially feminine and beautiful? Red is confidence, passion, lust, power, beauty, maturity. And what woman wouldnât want to wear such characteristics prominently on her lips or plaster them all over perfume-sprayed envelopes, overlapping the âS.W.A.K.â written beside?
Beeswax, Candelilla wax, Carmine, coloring, iron oxides, lanolin, and petrolatum: some ingredients are harmful and some can cause allergic reactions. So what would compel a woman to paste them all over her pucker? Well, money, attention, confidence, power, and sex for starters. Simply put, red lipstick makes a woman feel sexy. She can be whoever or whatever she wants to be. Gloria Swanson, Greta Garbo, Judy Garlandâwho stylishly paired her ruby lips with matching shoes, Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn, Julia Roberts, Jessica Alba, Gwen Stefani, and Katy Perry all characteristically wear red lipstick (or, in Katy Perryâs case, cherry chapstick). They are all classic beauties possessing panache, talent, etiquette. And maturity. Because thereâs something about red lipstick that signifies the transition from girlhood to womanhood.
See, lipstick very much relates to underwear. From the time they are born until their âtweenâ years, girls wear simple underwear that does the job. Diapers, training pants, and, of course, the simple pink cotton panties with the bow on the front. These are the chapstick and BonneBell years. They are years of simplicity and innocence when looks are genetic and legs unshaven. Then, girls cautiously venture into the early teen years, maybe try a new, more risquĂ©, underwear style or color, still too naive to wonder why their underwear is missing its butt cheeks. They might venture to shave their legs, brush their hair, or wear training bras. Ah, yes, the teeny-bopper years of shopping at Claireâs and wearing sticky, super glue-esque glitter lipgloss, constantly reapplied before breaks and lunch so as to attract that special âsk8er boiâsâ attention.
And then comes a day of bloody underwear and everything changes. A womanâs puberty marks her womanhood, her independence. It is a small, private, Red Badge of Courage that signals her readiness to wear a more prominently displayed, public, red badge of courage.
The first time a woman tries on red lipstick, it comes as a shock, even to the wearer herself. Welcomed into a new sisterhood, she often rebels and tries to cling to the glitter glue of old days. But eventually the time comes when she feels comfortable enough with herself to display her confidence and sexuality in public. By that time, her top drawer is filled with a different kind of underwear, underwear foreign to the girl from the BonneBell years. Black and red and see-through thingsâall that effortlessly match the ever-present red lipstick. And from that point, she never goes back. Even old ladies who sport no other makeup wear red lipstick. Their drawers may not be filled with sexy lingerie, but at that point, it no longer matters. Theyâve earned their place in the sisterhood and their right to wear red. It is their femininity, their womanhood, and it canât be taken away.
Like a varsity jacket or a sorority pin, red lipstick is a manifestation of acceptance into the Sisterhood of Femininity. The BonneBell key chains and Claireâs Club cards are tossed aside to be replaced by copies of Cosmo and Vanity Fair, couture dresses and four-inch heels. Red lipstick is a coming of age and an acceptance of the loss of innocence. It is power, class, confidence, sexiness, and womanhood. Always womanhood.
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When I was younger, it was all the rage to have one of those frilly little mosquito nets over your bed. They turned an otherwise ordinary bed into this magical kingdom of fairy princess awesome-ness. I had one, the kind with the velvety white trim on the ends that I would play with obsessively (I have this weird compulsion to pet soft things… velvet, teddy bears, the blunt ends of my hair. It drives my mother insane). My bed became my own little castle on a cloud.
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Even now, little has changed. Though I long ago discarded the cheap mosquito cocoon, my bed is and will forever be a sacred place.
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My bed is where I spend the most free time, it’s a place that sucks me in and always makes me comfortable. It’s fluffy and familiar and pretty. When I first started moving all over the place and feeling a little more out of my element, I was struggling to find a definition for home. Was San Diego my home? Boston? New York? My laptop, which is arguably where I spend the majority of my time? I had a lot of conflicting opinions… Some people thought that home was where I grew up, some argued home was where my family is. I tended to think that home (which, it should be noted, has little or nothing to do with a physical house) was more of a concept, something I could take with me wherever I went, even if I couldn’t pack it up all neatly in one of my many boxes.
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To me, home is transitory. But my bed is as close to a physical representation of home as I can get. My bed is the single thing that can make any plain room look like it’s mine. I’d like to think that I can take the connection even further… my bedding (which I change out every couple of years for a fresh “breakover”) kinda represents my personality. It’s double sided (striped on one side, flowery weirdness on the other) like my innate Gemini, and it’s all earthy, natural tones. Blue, teal, green, tan, brown… I’d like to think it’s a nice contrast to the bright bubble gum pink it was before.
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The green in my bedding is the most important part. I try to surround myself with green because it makes me feel happy and because it makes me think and more thoughts=better writing. Before (with the pink), I was spastic, stressed and high-strung. And though my commitments doubled, the greenery makes me more collected and reflective. I love having a nicely made bed. No matter how cluttered my room or my life, if my bed is neat and tide and put together, then my head is too. My bed is where I do my best thinking.
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As such, I should also mention that when I say my bed is a “sacred place,” I also mean that it is a chaste place. There is no hooking up in my beloved haven. You know how people tell you not to watch TV in your “sleep place” because it messes with your REM cycles and whatnot? Well, I can’t be hooking up in my “think space.” Mixing sex and thoughts never really works out; it just makes for dirty thoughts. Plus, I can’t be bothered to clean my sheets.
Brain Barf 