Crazy Blind Date

2 fast 2 furious

Posted on by Jennifer Heller

Last Wednesday, OkCupid.com released CrazyBlindDate.com (now defunct), or, as I like to call it, the Best Thing Since Sliced Bread (BTSSB).

I’m lucky to have the best domestic partner in the world, who informed me of the release that very day, with an intro of, “Let me live vicariously through you.”

No problem, Jules.

I signed up immediately. When they have a date for me, I get to see a blurry photo. I don’t get to read a profile, just a sentence or two. I just show up and agree to spend at least 20 minutes with this person. I was able to specify that I only want dates in bars, thank goodness.

My date sees this photo of me:

Crazy Blind Date

I’m trying to figure out if my five year plan is insane like all my friends say or good planning like I think. Please advise.

I met a new friend on Saturday night who informed me that all guys will interpret this as: “She wants kids.”

I explained that the beauty of this line is that I get to make up a new five year plan for every single crazy blind date I go on.

He wasn’t convinced.

Tonight I shall share my plan to establish sufficient passive income by signing up for a new pyramid scheme a month and buying misspelled domain names to fill with links to my various pyramid schemes (and plaster with other ads).**

If Eric, 31, lover of rock and roll, is still around after that…

…let’s just say it’s probably a pretty good litmus test.

I was rereading my nerve.com profile the other day (recreated, for your viewing pleasure, here*), and I realized I wrote it in search of hilarity.

Is that how I would like my next romantic relationship to be characterized? By hilarity?

There are worse things, I think.

In a rather perplexing twist, my popularity on nerve.com has increased dramatically since I joined the BTSSB. Which leads me to the point. I have a lot of dates coming up. Some of them I’ve exchanged emails with, and know what they look like. Some of them I haven’t. For you, my dear readers at home, I am including in an iframe the Google Calendar I have named “Susie’s Dates.”

Here it is:

As you can see if you scroll back in time until 2007, I have the previously mentioned date tonight, THREE dates tomorrow night, followed by a few nights off primarily due to the fact that I do, actually, have a life.

Who can’t wait? I can’t!! And, rest assured–recent evidence aside–this is the best and most accurate news source for the next installment of Susie J’s Crazy Blind and Other Date Adventures.

*My headline is now, “My friends call me Boss”, FYI. That’s all that’s changed though.
**What do you think?! Good Five Year Plan or Best Five Year Plan Ever?

but it's okay cause Alex picked up some curl creme at Walgreens today.

Posted on by Jennifer Heller

I left my wallet at Beckett’s the other night. Three days later, I left my watch at the security check point at the courthouse. I looked into the eyes of that security guard, and I solemnly pledged, as I had to the bar proprietor, “I have learned my lesson.”

Some lessons are so easy.

Some are so hard. Like keeping the toothpaste on the toothbrush. You have to keep the toothbrush vertical. I can’t seem to get that down. Today not only did I lose my first blob of toothpaste but the second glob fell out of my mouth into the bathroom sink!

Research is key, kids. Research is key.

Life==research? if so, then necessarily true?

I thought the Matrix was a good movie. I liked the idea of us living in a virtual reality. I’ve thought for awhile that if only I’d go into retirement homes–posh–that’d be the ticket. You know the key there is virtual reality. And drugs.*

And why, oh why, do we capitalize the word Internet? It’s like some freaky foreshadowing of this future where we live in a digital world.

right, okay, it’s been a long day.

*looking for investors!!

I think I'm deep

Posted on by Jennifer Heller

And I think I’m attractive, and I think I’m smart.

Today was my second Tupperware Party.

John gave it a C and I agree.

I missed my cat the entire time.

He just reached his paws around me and gave me a claw filled hug. And then he bit my leg.

When you asked what I was doing this weekend, I should have said, “Frantically preparing for my next Tupperware Party.”

Frantically preparing for life is more like it.

I have a new boss. But my fear of commitment remains. I may be on time today…tomorrow…all next week.

But that doesn’t mean anything.

My sister and I knew each other in a past life. My sister and I are opposite sides of a ribbon stretching through space and time. My cat is a fifteen year (?) stain on that ribbon.

I never claimed to know anything. I still don’t. I know about Tupperware; I know about super sponges. I hella know about co-ops.

But I still don’t know about me.

And I sure as hell still don’t know about you.

my second Jewish funeral today

Posted on by Jennifer Heller

and hopefully the last funeral of a close family member that I never knew that I will ever attend. Probably I will get this wish, unless family I never knew about starts coming out of the woodwork. And dying. Now that would be scary.

My favorite part of the Jewish funeral tradition: Getting to help to bury the dead! With shovels, dirt, and all.

My least favorite part of the Jewish funeral tradition: Not being Jewish. As I am not technically a Jew (though I am of Jewish heritage), I don’t get one of these black ribbon things to tear at the end of the funeral and pin to myself for seven days to symbolize my mourning. Which is appropriate given that I hardly knew both of my father’s parents, but also inconvenient given that one of the most appealing aspects of having a death in one’s life is getting to milk the sympathy from the utters of everyone you know for as long as society deems appropriate. Which I still plan on doing.

My least favorite part of death: The concept of burying one’s dead in a casket which is enclosed in another casket of concrete. The casket of concrete serves to keep decaying bodies from contaminating drinking water. But how is anyone going to rejoin the universe that gave them life if they remain for eternity decaying enclosed in concrete?!!

My favorite part of the family trip to the funeral: my father’s joke that I shall have my ashes kept in Tupperware. Apparently he wasn’t a fan of my blog back in 2005 when I wrote my living will.

I got a card in the mail

Posted on by Jennifer Heller

from this nonprofit I send money to. I like to think of it like I’m sending money straight to my adopted daughter in Vietnam, but I know it’s not really like that.

I sent her some colored pencils and a coloring book for her birthday. That wasn’t what the card was about though.

It’s been one year since I began supporting Nguyen. My thirty dollars a month makes so much available in her life.

That’s me. Philanthropic.

That’s me. Self-indulgent.

I had a conversation today about the nature of personality. It was my most favorite conversation today. And I had some doosies.

(How does one spell “doosies”? I’ve never known.)

Are we each a unique bundle of characteristics? Isn’t that what makes us each who we are? But if so, how many can change and yet can we still be the same?

And if not characteristics, then cells? No, cells are replaced in time. We are what we eat, and we grow out of our transient nutrients. The body is such a wonderfully dependable system.

Is the personality such a wonderfully dependable system?

Today, I’m freaking out. A week ago, I was ecstatic. Complete.

How funny how time goes.

In my cult the other day, we wrote down what we know about ourselves. For instance, I wrote, “I like to drink in airport bars and I abandoned my cat.” And so on for a half page or so.

Presumably, when I get my cat from my mom and dad’s on Friday, that particular characteristic will cease to be true.

But I’ll still be me.

I’m still me even though I freak out sometimes.

Isn’t the nature of a decision a limitation on the world? In which case, wouldn’t we be better off had we never decided to be a certain way? Or is it too intrinsic to the nature of dna that we should decide?

What is a decision anyway?

It all depends on your context, your world.

And my world is tired.

Today

Posted on by Jennifer Heller

Today, the world attacked me. “Hello,” it said as I crossed my legs. “Hello, this is the world.

“This is life.” In all its gory glory.

I’m pretty much to the point of general acceptance. “Okay, my plants are dead. Okay, my world is a mess. And all the universe gave me was an opportunity to move in with my mother.”

I read this poem the other day, and I will only relay a part. The important part:

“Imagine if a smile could make your day
because it meant someone saw your humanity.
Imagine if you made someone’s day
with your smile that recognizes their humanity.”

And you’re sitting there–or I’m sitting there–or we’re sitting there. And we’re across from a friend, simply sitting and having a beer. Where is the humanity? Who is this person across from us? They are a brother, a wife, a friend. Daily. But fundamentally, what? Who? An amalgamation of forgotten dreams? A ball of perceptions and impressions? No, not merely. Then what? This is our plague. The unknown answer to the question we forget to formulate, let alone ask.

I know so many people. I talk to so many people, and what does it mean? Do I know them? Do I recognize the miniscule yet indispensible traits that make them so unique and lovable? And if I do, what then? Does that even get me anywhere?

I do fear that it is that which is so unique and adorable (root: to adore) that we so often neglect in the day to day.

Or it is the deep seated story of a best friend before you know them that is so defining and yet unknown. This is humanity. Humanity begs for change, buys a beer, a carrot, a dog. It is what is so often forgotten as we retreat in our solipsist self-absorption. It is the unknown of those I know that hit me today. It was what I didn’t even know about myself.

And that’s–that’s–how my day was.

i got this job

Posted on by Jennifer Heller

I think I forgot to mention it. Anyway, it’s a great job. I really like it.

But it’s review time. I’m facing the Tyra of my office. The “congratulations, you’ve made it this far! And look how much you’ve accomplished!” followed by three pages of constructive criticism. How will I take it? Will I cry and blame my sister’s success for my own ineptitude? Or my parents recent divorce. Will I make the semi-finalists, or will I be cut from the running?

Cut from the running of life. My heart is in my throat.