22

Taylor Swift does not know what it is really like to be twenty-two.

For those of you who don't know the song, here is a quick link and point of reference:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgFeZr5ptV8

Let me tell you something, I just turned twenty-two and I have no idea what this girl is talking about. Most twenty-two year olds I know are either in grad school, unemployed, or employed but hate our jobs. We have bills. Some of us still live with our parents. Some of us have moved out and need to figure out how the hell we're going to pay our rent. Most of us have college debt. And lastly, many of us have no clue what we want to do with our lives. It will not be alright if “we keep dancing like we're 22” Taylor. You shouldn't give such unrealistic expectations to tween girls who worship you. Then they'll think that being a twenty-two year old woman is all about acting like a thirteen year old girl. How about a real song about what it is like to be in your early twenties? That song would start off more like: “It seems like a perfect night, to get really drunk... and pretend we're successful on facebook.”

Because that's all post college life is about right? 

Posting as many pictures and statuses as you can in order to look good to those dicks you went to high school with.

        

So I'm going to be totally honest with you right now. Hello, my name is Rachel and I have a BA that I do nothing with. Most days I sit at home and publish crap to the internet I hope people read and go to work in a hotel. For the last eighteen years of my life there has never been a september I have not gone back to school. And I am scared.

                               According to Tay Tay this is what a 22 year old looks like at all times of the year.

Here are some actual 22 year-old thoughts I've had in the last four months:

1) When did I become over the age of twenty? I am older than Clarissa on Clarissa Explains it All, the teenagers in Archie comics, the kids in The Breakfast Club, and I have officially lost all hope at ever becoming a teenage piano prodigy or a teenage anything prodigy, although I do not know how to play the piano and never took lessons. I no longer need to worry about fake IDs, even though I still somehow get nervous whenever I have to show a bartender my real ID.

2) Whenever one of my friends with a business degree lands a really awesome job with a big salary I feel really inadequate. I never wanted to be an investment banker, but hearing about how much money they're going to make in the next few years makes me want to hide in the dark, eat cheetohs, and purchase a cat.

3) ALL I WANT TO EAT IS DONUTS AND ICE CREAM. But I no longer have the metabolism I did when I was fourteen. I can't believe I wasted all those teenage years thinking I was a fat because I don't look like Mischa Barton or Jennifer Love Hewitt

So dear Teenage Girls of the World,

You are beautiful. You are not fat. One day you will be though. So enjoy your body while you can!

4) Unemployment sucks. You know what else sucks? Being employed. You're going to bitch about whichever one you do so enjoy both!

5)  I think my daddy issues have started to spawn daddy issues because I find myself increasingly more attracted to old men with money.

6) Is Miley Cyrus one of the great voices of my generation? I just want to let her know that she can stop. Put down the beer. And the rest of the alcohol. For fucks sake, seriously, put it down. Where are your friends? And does that dude who keeps putting money into his mouth throughout the “We Can't Stop” music video know how dirty money is? I wouldn't do it. Not that I've ever had enough money to be able to eat some of it.

7)What the hell has happened to Amanda Bynes?

8)I wish I was Kate Middleton.

9) Sometimes, at 4 AM when I am freaking out about my future and can't sleep, there's this infomerical that comes on about a parakeet that's fake but makes bird sounds you can purchase for only 19.95, and occasionally I think it might actually be a good idea to buy it as a pet that I don't have to remember to feed.

10) I'm not even responsible enough to own a plant. I'm really into orchids, but I just feel that I am not in a place in my life where I can take care of one. I mean, orchids are a big responsibility that a woman should only have when she is mentally and physically ready. I don't know, maybe when I'm more like 32 and I've moved out of a basement apartment I'll feel more like I can handle one.

I guess my point is, as the great Taylor Swift has stated, just keep dancing like you're twenty -two and everything will be fine. If you're not blonde and you don't know how to dance, you're screwed.

XOXO

-Clown Girl

5 Bad Ideas When Trying to Pull An All-Nighter:

Well, it's finals season and you're totally screwed. You swear you had WAY more time to finish all the work you had to do like... yesterday, but you just actually looked at your calendar and realized that you only have like three days till your first paper is due.

While I can't offer very good advice on how to avoid this, I CAN offer advice on what not to do when you're trying to crap out a 15 page paper due tomorrow.


1) Stay off facebook. Because, well....you were only going to check your wall because you got a notification on your phone that someone messaged you (It's your friend in the same class pulling an all nighter checking to see if your paper is shittier than theirs or not) but then you saw this great post about an article about politics or cats or something on your roommates friends cousins wall (like you don't know him, but the post showed up on your newsfeed and you just HAD to click it) and then THAT article had these great links to these other cute pictures of baby pigs and recipes for cupcakes. Which reminds you of this cool brownie recipe you saw on Pintrest, which you're obviously going to have to go check out because like, duh you have time to make brownies right now. MMM...are those oreo truffles? Better go post the recipe on your friends wall. HAHA someone posted a hilarious status about how they're fucked for their paper and like seventeen people liked it! FUCK. You're fucked for your paper too!!  Wait, shouldn't you be writing it? NAHHH. You have to come up with a WAY cleverer fucked for school status.

2) Don't spend twenty-five minutes contemplating whether or not you should break into your roommates room because you KNOW she has chocolate in the top drawer of her desk. Because trust me, if she wakes up in the middle of you doing it, even if you're best friends, she WILL be creeped out and probably put a lock on her door.

3) Don't think it's a good idea to send a professor an email about your paper. You probably aren't as coherent as you think you are. I mean it's three in the morning. So you may end up with an draft like this:

"Dear Professor ____,
I'm just wondering if you would like us to focus more on the thesis of our original argument, or the new research we've gathered in our brains for the final paper which we've clearly been researching for the whole semester, and obviously didn't try to read all the material that exists in the entire world, on the internet and jstor in one night. That didn't make very much sense now did it? Fuck. Wait you can't write fuck in an email to a professor can you? My bad. I'm sorry man. No seriously I'm really sorry. That was disrespectful."

4) Try and find a solution to your life and future like RIGHT now. Because it can't wait till you finish the paper, you really need to figure out what you're going to do with your life at this moment and also solve world hunger.

5) Write or read a blogpost. You definitely shouldn't spend fifteen minutes doing that, should you?

Happy Finals Season,
Xoxo,
Clown Girl

You're a Closeted Junkfood Eater, and Your Little Dog Too:

A Public Service Announcement from the DJFB&EA (Designated Junk Food Buyers and Eaters Association):

Yup. That's me. 12th grade. Rockin' fashionable overalls I've had since I was 9 modeling "Chips Ahoy" by Nabisco.

  
And here. 2013. "Cupcakes" by Calvin Klein
--


Hi. My name is Clown Girl. You probably know me from the hit TV shows I was on in the '80s that I made up in my head. I'm coming at you live from this blog post in order to talk to you about a very serious and important issue going on in the world.

 --

This morning, I found out my roommate B. had baked a cake, eaten a piece of it and then proceeded to leave the entire cake on the counter uneaten. My first thought was "YES! CAKE!". My second thought was "Fuck I have no self control." And my third thought was, "Wait do women just bake for each other to make one another fat? " Now, you may think I'm crazy,  paranoid, and high strung which I will not disagree with-but think about it, do you really bake for the greater good of your friends,  or do you bake cupcakes so you can watch them eat them and sit on your high horse while I-I mean they- shove the entire tray of deliciousness into their mouth?


Have you ever noticed that most of the girls who bake don't actually eat what they bake? When you go to a potluck, do you ever notice that the girl who signed up to bring a dessert never eats it?

Par Exemple-I learned from going to college that scholars sometimes write french words in the middle of their books to make their argument sound more legit and shit so-PAR EXEMPLE:

You all know the kind of person I'm talking about. That one friend who brings crazy caramel fudge chunk raspberry chipperdoo (vegan?) cake she somehow had the time to make while studying, and then smirks on the couch while people tell her how good it is. Then she'll be all like, "Really? I haven't tried any and I didn't think it came out that good!"

Bull. Shit. She probably baked another cake separately and ate it entirely by herself. And you know it's good Little Miss Smirkey McSmirk Smirk, so why do you pretend you haven't even tried just one tasty little bit?

Look, we all like it when our friends get fat. Oh shut up, I'm not a bad person, you love being skinnier than your friends and you're a liar if you say you don't. Why do you think everyone spends so much time at the gym in college? To get in good shape? Right. Lies.  In reality, if you didn't want to be the thinnest, you would just own up to how much crap you actually consumed.

And can you all stop lying about wanting to eat candy?   I know you do. I know all of this-like other girls who are also designated junk food buyers-  because everyone always wants to eat my junk food.

Yeah, this is me. Getting my hair done like a bag lady eating ice cream I smuggled into the dressing room. You know you want a piece of that. (Me & the ice cream. We're a good team).

I mean look, I get it. You're a fit person. You probably like to go to the gym a lot. Maybe you like to eat Quinoa and broccoli. You probably also like kale. GREAT. I'm really happy for you. Now don't ask  me when you're stressed out in the library if you can have one of my fucking cookies. Because I need those all to myself and I smuggled them in inside my purse which now has icing all over it. Go ahead, laugh all you want. But I need this stuff. Because my body is addicted to sugar and I'm damn proud of it.  Now go to a yoga class you self righteous kale eating hippy.
I sense some hostility in the air. Someone must have farted.


XOXO,
Clown Girl

The Pocahontal Paradox:

When I last wrote, I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. I think I've figured it out (at least for this month). I made this list of "Things you can do with a Bachelors of Arts degree" and decided that I'm going to become a PROFESSOR innn (drumroll please...) DISNEY ANALYSIS!!!
Which means that right now I'm getting a B.A. D (a Bachelors of Arts degree in Disney) and am hoping to start my M.A.D. (Masters of (Art? Association?) in Disney) next fall!

Here's why:
I recently had to re-watch Pocahontas for a class I'm in, (I'm in my last semester of college, and I take a couple classes I'm ashamed to admit I do) and realized that when you're an adult Disney takes on a whole new perspective. I mean, I can't believe my parents watched this crap with me. And believe me, they had to watch it over and over, cause I was one of those special kids who like to re-watch scenes a lot. Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure my mom once tried to break 101 Dalmations after I made her watch it 101 times, cause I caught her standing over it with a hammer but when I asked her about it she just said she was trying to fix it.  LIES MOM. LIES. You can't fix VHS with a hammer. I now know that. Thank you for trying to protect me.
Anyways I bring you:

A Serious Analysis of Disney's Pocahontas (Seriously). 
Backround Research:
Is anyone else concerned that Disney characters never seem to have moms? A professor in a playwriting class once told me that, "good moms don't make good drama", which I guess is true like 90% of the time, but why does that have to be true for a children's story?  I mean can't a Disney character ever not have a dead mom or evil stepmother and still have a good story? Even Nemo's mom dies, and I get it, fish have short life spans and Disney wanted to keep it real, but couldn't the dad have gotten eaten instead?  Basically, Disney movies set me up to believe that I was supposed to have an awesome borderline creepy relationship with my dad and sing a songs with him, but every time I tried to sing a duet with my dad, he just told me "shut up." Okay, so maybe that was last week- but still.

Ariel has an Electra Complex. No big deal. 

#professorRachelatworktodiscovernewtruthsandhastagsforacademia

METHODOLOGY
I used to think she was kind of a cool role model because she didn't marry the dude her dad wanted her to and is supposed to be a free spirit, but then I realized that John Smith is a douche. THEN I realized... wait...So....no one in her village cares that she seems to have no friends (except for that bitchy girl in the canoe at the beginning) and talks to mostly animals? Her best friends are a raccoon and a hummingbird. And she thinks her grandmother is a singing tree. She thinks the wind has COLORS.  I mean maybe you're all smart enough to not literally look for the colors of the wind, but do you know how much of my childhood was wasted looking for them? Which means that this movie is dangerous for children and should be banned.

"Dude, where's my colors?"

ANALYSIS
I think it's pretty clear throughout this movie that she's on peyote or some other drug. And talk about serious reckless behavior?   Half the time, the movie is about her saying, "YOLO, fuck ya'll, I'm going to jump into the river." I think it's clear Pocahontas displays some socially deviant behavior. I know everything about social deviance, because I learned about it in my intro to psych class one time.  So glad I get to bestow my knowledge about it upon you here. Social. Deviance.

Also, Disney animal cruelty is not cool, and I am not going to stand for your support of it. Stop endangering the lives of innocent raccoons.  PETA WHERE ARE YOU?

                                                                                                    #animalcruelty

 CONCLUSION
I mean, maybe I shouldn't watch Pocahontas when I'm sleep deprived because this movie makes me so sad that I feel robbed of my childhood.  I don't know how I'm ever going to get over this. I hope that I have enlightened you all with my fairtrade, organic study on Pocahontal theory. Now somebody please  hand me a donut. I'm really shaken and ripped apart inside by these realizations. Also I don't really know what paradox means, I just really like alliteration. My book on this theory comes out next fall. I will be signing autographed copies for those of you who order it in advance. Please comment to reserve.
xoxo,
Clown Girl

My Quarter Life Crisis:

A month late Merry Christmas from Happy The Reindeer....

I don't know if things rings true for any of you guys about to graduate college, but the other day I found myself thinking a standard question I've asked myself my whole life. "What do you want to be when you grow up?" Two seconds later I realized, "holy shit, I am a grown up!"

Well..now what?

I mean when did that happen? Gone are the days when I can pretend that I want to be a marine biologist/weather girl/mad scientist/princess/journalist/stripper (Well...I guess I could still become a stripper....Or a princess. Kate Middleton did it.)

(Only drawback is that I don't think the Queen let's her eat.)

 I mean, seriously, three months from now I'm graduating with a B.A. in history with a minor in theatre studies and italian studies, which I like to refer to as my B.A. in starving and spaghetti and I have no idea what I want to do. See...I have this problem called, whenever I watch TV, I want grow up to do the jobs the characters are doing. IE: When I watch West Wing, I want to be the President of the United States. When I watch Mad Men, I want to be a hot 1960s secretary.  Grey's Anatomy makes me want to go to medical school, and when I watch Weeds, I want to be a drug dealer.

So where does this leave me? Well...obviously I can't do all of those things, so I'm just going to have to suck it up and say the six words every parent dreads hearing, "I want to be an actress."

You'd think that having a dad who is an artist would make it easier to break that kind of news, but sometimes I think artist parents are more against their kids becoming artists than parents with "normal" 9-5 jobs.

For example, every so often, my dad calls me and our conversation goes exactly like this:
--
Dad: "Hey. I'm pissed of about _____. I saw this ____(insert movie/TV show/article on the Internet) and it SUCKED.  Here is why: ______. Blah blah blah I'm also pissed about X,Y, and Z.  What do you think of this: ____? Well I thought it sucked. So what the hell are you studying? This guy asked me at work and I didn't know what to tell him."

Me: I'm getting a B.A.

Dad: What the hell is that?

Me: A Bachelor of Arts.

Dad: Oh, so you're going to go to law school right?

Me: No.

Dad: Yeah but if you wanted to, you could go to law school with that major, right?

Me: Uh....

Dad: Yeah I'm just going to tell everybody that you're going to law school.

Me: Okay.

 "Guys, I don't know what the fuck she's studying, but it's something to do with bachelors, art, and becoming a lawyer."

--
I have a similar situation that I need to approach with my grandmother. For my whole life, she's had a very specific vision of what I would be like when I grew up. First of all, I think when she imagined me in her head as a 21 year old, I was about 10 pounds thinner and much more lady like.  I mean, my grandmother is a very a feminine, classy lady and had high hopes of my sister and I becoming the same.
Check it out:

   

The first thing I ever remember her teaching me was that at restaurants I should always put my napkin on my lap, keep my elbows off of the table, and make sure that if I was ever going to eat bread, I had to  "take a tiny piece, put on a little butter and then eat that piece and only that piece before the meal came."  More advice included that I should always order a salad or a fruit cup.  When she realized that I was the type of girl who would eat an entire breadbasket, plus a cheese burger and three pieces of cake, she gave up on her advice missions and instead came up with more passive aggressive proper eating tactics. Sometimes, she asks me "If I'm going to eat all of that." When she met my boyfriend for the first time she put a basket of bagels in front of us for breakfast, and disapprovingly watched as I ate one of them.  In addition to all of this, when she realized I wasn't going to have a lucrative career as a trophy wife/model,  I think she started envisioning me as a doctor. Because, everybody knows if you're a woman with a career as respectable as that, you're allowed to eat bread. 

I mean...I'm afraid of blood. Watching House makes me think I have all the diseases.  I can't add.
But my grandmother still calls to ask me once a week if I'm applying to med school, so I'm not exactly sure how to break the news to her that I am not.

Well...I guess this blog is a start. HEY! GRANDMA IF YOU FIGURE OUT HOW TO USE THE INTERNET AND READ THIS I AM NOT APPLYING TO MED SCHOOL. OR ANY GRAD SCHOOL FOR THE MOMENT. I ALSO DO NOT WANT TO BE A TEACHER. AND ALSO I LIED WHEN I TOLD YOU I WAS ON A DIET ON THE PHONE THIS MORNING BECAUSE I WAS REALLY HUNG OVER AND JUST ATE A BUTTLOAD OF CANDY.

Although, to be fair to the whole grad school thing, on New Years Eve I did flip out and try to drunkenly turn in a bunch of ivy league applications right before the January 1st due date. My essays were about how my new years resolution was to find myself and "eat a piece of bread before I throw up all over this computer." I'm sure Harvard and Yale will be really impressed. Maybe I'll even get to have a stab at being Yale's version of a less perky Elle Woods. I can bring my chihuahua. Although I guess I'm not blonde. Damn it, blonde girls get everything. Hair dye, here I come.

Anyways, I'm sure eventually I'll figure it all out. In the meantime, I should probably go on a soul searching journey alla Eat, Pray, Love to find myself and figure out what the hell to do with my life now that I'm a grown up. At least I've already ruled out a domestic life. I don't think I could be a house wife since I hate doing laundry, and I've ruled out soccer mom since I'm a sore loser who would yell at their child if they sucked at it. I also don't have a drivers license so I can't drive a soccer mom van. I can see it now: "Son, you want to play soccer? Well, drive yourself. Mommy's busy being mommy. Go mack on some bitches at the play ground. Here's a juice box."
I guess most of all, I hope I don't become one of those girls who decides that all of a sudden, their life calling is to become a yoga instructor.  Although at this point in my quarter life crisis, that's starting to sound pretty good. I'll keep you updated.
Namaste.

Xoxo,
Clown Girl