Llamas get a bad rap.

Today, I want to discuss the word drama (OH MY GOD, NOOOOOO). Unless referring to some theatrical event or show or film of some kind, the word "drama" shouldn't be used. Seriously, people. Come on. All you're doing is asking for drama trouble.

My distaste for the term started in high school. An occasional friend of mine (and everyone has had at least one "occasional friend". The two of you get along amazingly well, and then something happens that escalates into an all-out rivalry, and then you both decide to put it behind you and be friends before it all happens again, on and on, for eternity or until you graduate and never share more than 3 sentences with one another) proclaimed, one day, that she was "No-Drama". That was her new slogan. Also, she declared that her drama-free lifestyle was to be categorized by the term "No-Labels", which I found endlessly amusing because that, in and of itself, is a label. Ahh, high school.

Anyway, this friend would loudly proclaim "No-Drama" anytime anything around her was lacking in magical unicorns and cotton candy clouds and fluffy woodland creatures that do your laundry with a smile and a song. Because most of the rest of us were living in reality (at least, as much as one can while in high school) this mantra became annoying as all hell. And trying to discuss it would lead to more cries of, "Hey, man. I'm just trying to avoid the bullshit. No drama." It was almost like she was calling no-homo or not it, or something. "Yeah, that cup you're wearing really accentuates your junk. Uh, no homo." "Did you see the mess left in the kitchen? Someone really ought to do the dishes-Not it."

Unfortunately for her, and for a lot of people, actually, reality doesn't work that way. If it did, I would spend my days chanting No-Mosquitos, because those bastards don't even NOTICE that I'm wearing half a bottle of bug spray when I take the dogs out. I swear, it looks like I have leg herpes or something (no-STDs). (And anytime I see the word "herpes" in print, I hear it in my head as "herp-s" and it makes me think of a clan of cute, squirrel-like creatures that dance and sing in the meadows of Ireland or something. And then I laugh to myself. And then I feel guilty for laughing at herpes, because some people have been seriously affected by them it, and it's not right to laugh at an STD that does... bad things... to your sexy bits....) And I would certainly call Not-Broke, double stamp, no erase-ies (and don't even try to triple stamp my double stamp. I will punch you in the mouth, [No Joke]).

Moving on.I'm not sure if this helps the miscellaneous situations, or hurts them, but the wails and moans of People Against Drama are so fucking dramatic already that I end up giggling (more than I giggle about herpes... the fictional creature, not the disease), which totally puts a halt on the ominous drama that's about to unfold. And then the person going through/discussing/creating said drama is usually offended that I think that reacting dramatically toward the approach of drama is like a double drama whammy (which, you HAVE to admit, is hysterical) and they are all of a sudden pissed at me for being insensitive and now I'M IN THE MIDDLE OF DRAMA.

So instead of calling miscommunication, disagreements, and hurt feelings "drama", we ought to refer to them as something else. I would say we should call it "Hamburger Time", but it seems Metalocalypse stole that one and uses it to refer to dying. Though, depending upon the situation, you may wish for Hamburger Time before the DRAMA is resolved.

Glass hates me more than the printer at my office does.

I came home last week to find a HUGE, fuck-off branch in the bush in front of my house. On the ground, there were some lovely shards of glass from the top right corner of the picture window I have (I'm calling it a "picture window" because it sounds fancy, and the duplex I live in is anything but fancy, but I don't want to call it the "super cheap, but still made of glass instead of plastic even though the glass is 100 years old" window).

It had been storming worse than normal that day, and I guess the branch was first chewed to a breaking point by evil squirrels, in preparation for some upcoming battle, and then aimed poorly and launched into the window. Picture window, I mean. So I did what any responsible tenant would do. I called my creepy, potentially a serial killer of a landlord.

He had all kinds of questions (a lot of them I had to answer with the phrase, "I wasn't home when it happened, so I'm not sure,"). And then the questions became somewhat rude. "Well, did the branch of the tree just, um, fall directly into the window?" What the hell do you say to that? "No, actually the neighbors put up a trampoline, and a complicated system of pulleys and levers, and the branch fell into the bush, which was strangely coated with springs that must have bounced it into the pulleys and levers that pulled some mouse-trap type shit and caused the branch to land on the trampoline, where it was catapulted into the window. Clearly. Why would you even ask me that? You're the one who leased the front yard to the guys from Spy vs. Spy." Jerk.

He told me that he and his maintenance man, Willy, would come look at the window the next day and decide what to do about it (by the way, with my landlord being as old and bizarre as he is, I wouldn't be surprised if Willy was a cliche, darling old black man that calls the landlord Guv'nah and does his bidding. Like a mix between the stereotypical oppressed slave and a chimney sweep from old school London). Well, the note I was left after Landlord and Willy's initial inspection basically said, "Fuck you, you're full of shit, you clearly broke this window and don't want to pay the $35 for two single panes of glass and a caulk gun to fix it, you're a liar and I'll take an extra $50 added to your rent check this month, thank you."

Um, excuse me? Because I CLEARLY went outside with a ladder, bashed in the window (because according to the glass and where it fell, it wasn't broken from the inside), went looking for a giant dead branch, placed said branch in the bushes, and then decided to CALL YOU instead of fixing it myself, because I thought it would be funny?

You know what? That's totally what happened. Fucking asshole.

Atlanta summers: quenching your thirst all season long

That's right. Atlanta summers suck. There are a lot of reasons why. By "a lot", I mean "two". Heat and humidity. Because guess what.... People were not made to breathe water. Well, unless you count Kevin Costner in Waterworld, who had those gills behind his ears, remember?  It always made me think if you were to chop off his body his head would have looked like a Kevin Costner Shark, because then his gills would have been right where a shark's gills are (I had to double check this fact, because I see more sharkbears [see: below] than sharks, and they're not the same, anatomically) and his hair would be a little brunette tail, and his ears would be his flippers. And yes, I know that "flippers" isn't the right word, but I can't remember what they're called and I know it starts with an f so flippers is close enough. And I don't even know the difference between flippers and the fish version of flippers, and think that the difference is probably just something that people made up so they could be pretentious and condescending to people that don't care about the proper terminology of fish appendages. And I have something that starts with an "f" for those people, and it isn't flippers. Or the word for the fish version of flippers. Anyway, the problem with Kevin Costnershark is that it took basically forever to grow those gills because evolution is pretty much globally recognized as the slowest way to change anything about anything. And I don't have 200 million years to wait for gills like Kevin Costnershark's, so instead I'm just going to bitch about attempting to breathe water anytime I leave the air conditioning, with much _thanks_ to the "can't cut me with a knife" Atlanta humidity.

I find myself gasping in saunas and steam rooms, too, because the heat and moisture suffocates me and I freeze and can only think about the 2 minutes I have left before I either drown standing there, or get enough liquid in my lungs to give me pneumonia and kill me slowly and painfully. And none of this would have happened if I hadn't been so clever and gone into the sauna/steam room in order to avoid the elliptical. Because everyone knows that the more you sweat the better your workout was, so I figured why not skip the workout entirely because I can sweat way more in the steam room or sauna than I can on the elliptical and curse you Mom and Dad for raising me to be so clever. YOU JUST DROWNED YOUR DAUGHTER WITH A STEAM ROOM. YOU CAN'T DO CPR WITH YOUR MIND, DAD (unless you're that brain from the old Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoons... but then you'd be busy being experimented on in a government lab somewhere and have no time for saunas or first aid training anyway).

I'm usually about 6 minutes into my internal monologue and 30 seconds away from dying with the expression of a goldfish on my face before I decide that I'm too young to die and anticlimactically swim walk out of the "What Hell is like Underwater" simulation otherwise known as those hot rooms at the gym. I'm certain that the weather in Atlanta during the summer is what they modeled steam rooms and the Everglades after. I'm also certain that there's really no good excuse for sucking in humid, hot Atlanta air like you ran a marathon while opening your eyes as wide as you can to try to get all the air you can, despite not being able to breath through your eyes (ew, gill eyes). Plus, people don't often understand the I-can't-breathe-water-unless-I-look-like-a-goldfish face, even with brilliantly crafted excuses....

"I'm practicing my goldfish impression so that I can lure my cat down from that tree without calling the fire department."

"You know, the 'plastic bag over my head' expression is what all the models are doing in this month's Vogue."

"My next client has a choking fetish and I'm just getting into character."

With the reactions I get, it would seem that people don't love their cats, read Vogue, enjoy hookers, or are aware of the fact that WE CAN'T BREATHE WATER, which isn't good because it's making up 79% of the Atlanta air at the moment (according to my random estimates current, and accurate, very scientific tests). When those excuses don't immediately come to mind, there is one thing that you can always use as a strange behavior scapegoat: performance art. No one questions art, because that means they clearly don't get it and must practically be neanderthals, so they just stand there and watch or stare with a look of "I totes understand and appreciate the emotion the artist is trying to convey," as they nod and hold their chin with their hand. Honest to god, as soon as you say "I'm in the middle of a street show! You can watch! It's called 'I can't breathe water, oh my god I'm dying and now I'll make this face as I skip-walk to my car and crank the a/c'," they stop looking at you in horror and confusion and start nodding and "getting it".

By the way, writing is a form of art. If you don't get it, you obviously didn't have parents as well-educated and aware as mine. It's true. Though you're probably also still alive because of your dumb parents, so point for you, I suppose.

 P.S. This is a sharkbear. It's art, too. Also, nature's most ultimate killing machine.

Oh, The Clermont Lounge.

Last night was a huge first for me. I went to The Clermont Lounge (okay, so that wasn’t a first. I’ve been there a few times….though usually I go with my dad. Wait, that doesn’t make this better). Well, I ended up there at the tail end of an awesome, monthly figure study for Dr. Sketchy’s (the reason Daddy and I attend a strip club together, on occasion) which usually consists of 20-30 people with cigarettes and cocktails, situated with their creative implement of choice (sketch pads, spiral notebooks, easels, paint, graphite, oil pastels, charcoal, markers, whatever) around a beautiful burlesque model that would still be too hot to strip at the Clermont if her teeth fell out and she gained 50 lbs. It’s good times.

There’s also a dancer that’s always there, and she’s heavy and older, but she’s well-proportioned and is absolutely hysterical (as she took off her top, she looked back at the three of us and whispered, "I need my Geritol,"). She looks like a 40 year old Bette Midler, and has the cutest little, black, Mary Jane kitty pumps. I’m not sure if anything in that sentence other than the phrase “Mary Jane” is an accurate way to describe shoes, but I figured they ought to sound every bit as cute as they looked. And I think that’s right, anyway. Maybe. Probably not. Chances are most people weren't looking at her shoes, or I would've asked. Thanks a lot, nudity.

Despite missing the art class, Shana, Ariel, and I decided to sit down at the bar and have a drink. I thought to myself, "Self, Shana has the strange ability to get you more drunk than you're used to. So just have one sex on the beach, because it's late and you're already tired. Plus, work with a hangover sucks almost as much as sleeping through your alarm and missing work with a hangover." Well, after the first drink (that Shana kept picking up when I wasn't looking) I went ahead and bought one more. Two drinks shared between two people equals one drink each. It's basic math. As I finished that drink, the three of us were bought a round of shots. And then I was bought another drink. And then we were bought another round of shots. And then I was bought yet another drink.

Now, I am aware that I’m not an extremely unattractive person, but I have never in my life had a stranger buy me a drink. Ever. And ESPECIALLY never had the bartender drop off a drink and say, “This is from the guy over there,” while pointing at some wanna-be frat boy who is doing his best to look suave, like they do in really bad romance movies where the girl thinks the guy is totally lame and then he woos her after she splashes the drink in his face and they ride off to be happy and free on his private jet because he's also a secret millionaire.

I felt like there was some giant joke being played on me, or something. But then the trashy, 5’1”, 190 lbs stripper that was onstage crushed a beer can with her boobs, a move their #1 stripper (named Blondie) is known for, and I was distracted and forgot to worry about why I had two drinks and a shot waiting eagerly to be downed by my suddenly thirsty face.

The moral of this story? If you let your friend cut your hair quite short, and then go to the sleaziest strip club you can find, guys will buy you drinks. And when you start to feel self-conscious, backwoods dancers will crush an empty PBR can with their tits, just for you.

And nothing calms an anxious mind like a smushed can of PBR glistening with stripper boobie sweat.