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"What'd you do over the weekend?" "Oh, nothing."

When people ask what I've done over the weekend, I typically reply something like "nothing much." But when I went to document my weekend as it went along in cartoon form, I discovered that a LOT happened last weekend.

Like falling down:

I, luckily, didn't land on the dog. Thinking about it has made me realize that I fall down a lot. Or get hit by cars. Or trip up or down stairs. I may be the clumsiest person alive, which, according to the America's Funniest Home Videos index (see below), might make me the funniest person ever.

These things describe me!

Then I gave a bunch of stuff to the Goodwill, including my wedding dress.

I figured I wasn't going to ever fit into it again (this illustration is not quite to scale, but still) so someone else might like it. Perhaps one of those thuggish fellows that works in the back and hauls the stuff inside would like to parade around the house in it. And that's okay with me. I'm hip. I'm with it. I'm liberal.

But seriously, when I told my best friend (the maid of honor) that I was going to Goodwill the dress, she was appalled. She was like "What if your daughter wants to see the dress? What if she wants to wear it on her wedding day?" (She's intending to wear her mom's dress.) I replied, "Ugh, if her tastes are just like mine and she winds up being my exact weight and size when her day comes, I will have to fork over another $30 to ChineseMoods.com for another cheap dress. The horrors!" (Yes, I wore a $30 wedding dress.) (And no, I don't even have any children, so the whole thing was hypothetical.)

Then I went to a potluck and poured myself a glass of wine. Apparently, it was a bit too generous:

The hostess later informed me she was kidding. There was wine left over at the end of the night, but I did not have any more, even when pressed to finish it off, because I was still frightened.

Instead, I sat around with the pets on the couch:

This image is a slight exaggeration. But only slightly. My friend's basset hound fell asleep on my lap and my legs went numb.

 I also force-fed myself a lot of cranberry sauce.

I brought one for me, and one for everyone else. (Stop judging.)

Then I went home and listened to Usher and did household chores, including vacuuming:

The next day my two friends were supposed to battle in Ms. Pac-Man, but only the one showed up. So I watched him play a few rounds then went home. Anticlimactic? Yes.

Did you know that if you survive long enough, she meets regular Pac-Man and they wind up making a baby? It gets dropped off via stork; you don't actually get to see them doing it.

Not that I'd want to see them doing it.

Just saying.

And finally, to top off the weekend, I saw Harry Potter 7a:

Helena Bonham-Carter as Bellatrix LeStrange was, honestly, my favorite part of the movie. She can work up a good, solid crazy.

So that's what happened this weekend. Next time you ask about my weekend, and I reply "oh, nothing," you'll know that there was a lot. Sort of.

A former Facebook whore speaks out

I have a shameful yet true secret: I used to be a Facebook whore.

I friended everyone and everything. People I marginally knew in a class a few semesters ago? Sure. Friended. Someone I ran into at a party last week? In. Plus every art major and every design major and most communications majors and most people in the honors college. At one point, I friended someone I thought I knew, then later, when she changed her profile picture, I realized that I'd friended a complete stranger, and, even weirder, she'd confirmed it. Every person I went to elementary, middle, and high school was a candidate for friending.

I was running almost 800 friends when I realized that I had a problem.

It occurred to me that the people I really respected on Facebook weren't the ones that had 1,000 friends; they were the ones that had 50-200 friends. They weren't whores with shriveled egos and bloated friends lists. They chose the people that were really their friends and confidently stopped.

It was time.

Here were my criteria:

People had to achieve at least one "yes" to stay.

They had to be people I communicated with regularly, who would notice if I eliminated them.

Or they had to be people who could be useful (I know, Machiavellian of me).

Or they had to be really interesting people that I followed because I was interested in their art, or their careers, or their lives. Some people just are genuinely interesting and when they post, they post cool stuff. I'm keen on art, design, and fun links. I also dig pictures of pets and babies (sadly, in that order. I know: I'm bad person).

Or they had to be people I felt residual goodwill toward. Some people are just always friends. They're kind of in there for life unless they do something really terrible. My metaphorical and literal house is open to them (at least for the weekend). These people are also assumed not to be kleptomaniacs or dog-abusers. (Anyone who won't at least pretend to love my dog is a robot and not allowed in my home.)

It's amazing how many people are uninteresting, useless, incommunicado, and unwelcome in my house.

I went from 800 or so friends to about 250. This was a few years ago; I'm currently at 258. I've gained and deleted a few in the interim, but am holding pretty steady.

All of this gets brought up because yesterday was Jimmy Kimmel's Unfriend Day. It's a good idea and I'm glad someone brought it up. I highly recommend cutting out your friends-that-aren't-friends.

Not me, though. Don't cut me. Because I find you interesting, useful, communicative, and/or a potential houseguest, and I hope you feel the same way.

Ink on my hands and lovebirds on my brain

Trying to explain at work that I have a "thing for pen nibs" only made me sound stranger than I usually do. "You know? The pointy part at the bottom of a feather pen, like in movies? The part you dunk in the ink? Yeah. I love those. I could play with those all day."

"Why would you want to dunk it in the ink? Wouldn't it be better to use regular pens?"

"Because the ink gets EVERYWHERE! And that's GREAT!"

"Uh?"

"Right. Well. I collect them. Erm."

I mean, what can be more fun? More spontaneous? More messy?

Patterns and sad frogs HOORAY!

Now that the farmer's market is kaput for the season, I'll have to draw my own flowers. I'll miss you, Amish buddies.

Aw, it's a page of love birds. Not the breed, but the pun.

I rather hate literal lovebirds because those fuckers bite. We used to have two, Kate and Henry, but then one developed some kind of bird cancer and died. Then we had one and she (potentially he) sat alone in a cage and glared at us all the time and tried to attack me when I got close. No love there. Absolutely none.

The day when Kate (or Henry) eventually died, leaving us thankfully birdless, my brother and I let ourselves in the side door after school to encounter our babysitter in the kitchen. She was staring at us eerily and sadly in a way meant only one thing: death. (I’d seen this expression on TV right before a soap opera doctor declared somberly, “She didn’t survive the surgery.”)

“I hope it’s the bird,” I thought, “And not Mom or Dad or the dog.”

“Did the bird die?” I asked, fingers crossed behind my back.

“Yes,” she whispered, pointing back at the TV room.

“Okay,” I replied. Unphased. I think the babysitter was expecting more theatrics.

My little brother followed me to the cage, where the brightly green and red/pink creature was lying on its side, eyes wide open.

After a bit of discussion, I ascertained that our babysitter was not going to touch the thing, so I wound up using the thick gloves my dad used to feed it (I’m telling you: it was a violent monster, and even my six-foot-tall dad was afraid of it) to pick its hard, stiff little lump of a frame up and toss it into the trash can in the garage. The only other contact I’d had with the bird was when its beak was clenched tight on my finger, drawing blood. I’d always imagined Kate/Henry would be softer. (The concept of “rigor mortis” was foreign.)

Anyway, we never got another bird after that. Which is a-OK, because our dog was so much cooler, even though my brother was disappointed he couldn’t have a rabbit.

 

(Unlike my “Love” bird, my childhood dog never bit me, and I never had to deal with his corpse. A+ work, Buddy.)

I don’t know why that memory popped into my head. It’s pretty gruesome, actually. But there it is. Hope everyone enjoys their Tuesday regardless!

My girl Marie

Here lies a recent illustration of my homegirl, Marie Antoinette. My love of this woman knows no bounds.

As I was illustrating this, a coworker leaned over and exclaimed at the weird stuff people used to find attractive, and I pointed out that people would be laughing at him in time -- or perhaps even now.