A Letter to the Early Morning Conversationalist

Dear fellow bus rider,

Don’t get me wrong. This judgment look of hate isn’t because I’m tired or hung over.

It’s because I hate you.

I understand that you may be the next greatest poet/musician/politician/hobo. Good for you.

But, I don’t know if anyone told you, it’s 7 in the morning. Sure, your exciting day full of happy-deep-feeling-emotional-awesomeness is just starting—but stop. Just stop. No. Sit down. Stop.

I don’t care if your professor is on crack and likes to tell stories about his trippy hippy days that, you’re pretty sure, are still going on. Believe it or not, I don’t care what your boyfriend’s baby momma thinks about rising gas prices. For that matter, I don’t care what you think about the presidential election, Ben and Jerry’s ice cream, the weather in Nepal, OR the latest soccer match.

Oh! And guess what? These things in my ears aren’t some strange fashion accessory. Oh, no, my friend. They’re headphones. The universal symbol for ‘if you talk to me, I will kick you’.

Watch your back, early morning conversationalist. Watch your back.

I’ve never kicked anybody before, but I’m ready to change that,

-A Bus Zombie

My Sewing Machine Might Be a Decepticon

Around my birthday, I decided to get an adult skill and try sewing. As it turns out, those sewing machines are full of lies.

The box reads “easy to use”, but it’s just a trap! You get the machine out and situated on the table, and, at this point, you’re still full of hope and wonder at all the things you’ll make. Then you look at the instruction packet—this is your biggest mistake.

This Barbie-sized instruction packet has images and words and arrows, but none of it makes sense! It’s all like “Put the string on the knob, loop it around Point A, bring it down to knob X, past the fires of Mount Doom, and get it into the tiny needle hole”.

And you’re left to ask “What the hell? What does that even mean?!”

After weeks of trying to work this machine, I began to wonder; maybe this isn’t supposed to be this difficult. Maybe, there’s something else going on here. Maybe… this machine is some kind of Transformer (you know, a robot in disguise).

Transformers are robots that can turn into machines, and my sewing machine is defiantly a machine– so it qualifies. However, for all the pain that thing has given me, my sewing machine would defiantly be an evil transformer. Clearly, my sewing machine is a Decepticon.

When I leave my room, this is what my sewing machine looks like

Which Decepticon is it? Starscream, probably.

For those of you who don’t believe me, I offer some evidence… that I created in Paint, but is loosely based off reality.

The evil ways of the sewing Decepticon are infinite...

And then there’s that foot pedal. It’s supposed to make the thing make stitches, but no. It’s deceptively design like a gas pedal so that any unsuspecting novice will look at it and think: “Oh, if I press it harder, it’ll go faster! I’ll be done so quickly!” No.

The gas pedal of lies...

You wanna see the biggest knot of string woven into a piece of knotted cloth? Press that pedal harder.

Occupation: Awesome

So, I recently decided that when I graduate from college I am going to pursue a career of being awesome.

You see, when I tell people that I’m graduating next winter and that I’m majoring in English and Economics, they’re all like:

“Oh, so you plan to be a teacher.”

Then, I have to be all like,

“Uh… no. Large groups of children sounds like torture.”

Typically, they’ll then tend to tilt their head and squint at me as they ask,

“Are you going to law school?”

I’m a moderately indecisive person, so the answer to that question changes every once and a while.

Nonetheless, this interrogation happens with every adult that I come across– sometimes twice with the same adult. From what I can gather, they’re trying to gauge how successful I’ll be as an adult. So I’ve some up with the answer that they’re really looking for:

“When I graduate I’m gonna be awesome.”

I’ve known for a while now that I’d be awesome once I graduated– but it always seemed weird to tell people. They’d ask skeptical questions like:

“Oh, so how much does that pay?” or “Haha, but really. What do you plan to do?”

I’ve come up to answers for both of those though:

1. It pays a hell of a lot more than you’re making.

2. Be awesome, clearly. It’s part of job description.

Because In Middle School, Everyone’s Soul Is a Black Abyss

Earlier last August, my brother entered middle school, and it was around this time that he decided that he was G—yeah, he’s gangsta’. Apparently, though, you don’t have be a thug to be gangsta’ anymore.

If my brother is anything to go by, the process of become a legit gangsta’ is something like this:

1. Buy some expensive clothes that are big enough to fit the bear at your local zoo.

2. Put the clothes on the bear—hope he doesn’t rip them—and let him wear them for a few days.

3. Take the clothes back (Oh, and if you wanna seem extra legit, let the bear hit you a couple of times and tell everyone you got in a fight).

4. Wear the clothes.

5. Abandon all concepts of grammar and utilize some gangsta’ colloquialisms (ex. Homie, legit, fo’ realz, hustla, crib, etc.)

6. Randomly punch something (like a wall or a human), just to let people know that you’re serious.

On some level though, I can understand this. Middle school is crap. It’s crap for everyone. There’s something about it that makes us try to fit an image and fail misarably.

I was a nerdy kid in middle school with a fierce obsession with Harry Potter and Buffy the Vampire Slayer—but I would’ve jumped at the chance to be considered gangsta’. But as things were, I just did my best to be Buffy. Sure, I didn’t have tight clothes, but I did have black clothes. Same Thing, right?

I could have been a vampire slayer

Fo’ Realz.

I noticed too, that a similar phenomena occurred to many of the other girls:

I figure if my idol was Buffy, their makeup and skimpy outfits must mean they wanted to be JLo

So, I reasoned Josh’s strange behavior and wardrobe choices are likely because of this:

T-Pain: one of my brother's many idols.

Clearly, this is the only reasonable explanation.