Stereotypes

I turned the TV on to ESPN last night so I could fall asleep.

It wasn’t the first time I’ve used ESPN for its snooze powers. It’s the only reason why I know it’s on channel 7.

I discovered ESPN’s zzzz effect while visiting a friend’s house, and quickly fell asleep on the couch listening the announcers go on and on about things I didn’t understand or care about.
I wouldn’t have fallen asleep, for example, if Project Runway was on. Or Jersey Shore. GTL people!!

I don’t care to follow sports unless it’s the Saints or LSU football. Or women’s gymnastics.

As I laid in bed waiting for all the NCAA talk (zzzzzzzz) to wash over me, I realized how girly it is for me to find ESPN so boring that it induces sleep.

I mean, I don’t consider myself that girly really. I hardly ever wear makeup, purses and handbags don’t excite me and I have no problem drinking canned PBR.
I’m on a flag football team, I use the microwave more than the oven to cook, and I’m really good at driving stick shift. (insert voice of Tim Allen: ho ho ho!!!)

I played lots of sports growing up, and my mother, a feminist, would scoff at the idea of me and my twin sister, Joy, being cheerleaders.
“You want people cheering for YOU!” she would say, as she signed us up for cabbage ball, softball and gymnastics.
We would joke and say we were going to be servers at Hooters just to see her reaction.

The independent woman-mentality has carried over into adulthood. I enjoy, yet still get slightly uncomfortable, when the MAN pays on a date.
“You don’t want to have to owe him anything,” my mother warned us.

Right mom!! I pay my own tab! I carry my own bags! I have a large assortment of T-shirts! I’m AWESOME!

Yet, in the midst of my woman empowerment, I began to think of all the things that actually are really girly about me.
I can’t build anything, for one. Especially IKEA wood furniture. Have you ever had to follow IKEA directions? They're in pictures. Pictures! You have to figure out which screw and nail and piece of wood corresponds with which picture and number, and I always get it wrong.

The latest thing I’ve tried to build was a TV stand (not IKEA) and I ended up with a half a bag of screws left over.
“How nice that they give you extras!” I told Joy.
“I don’t think there are supposed to be any extra,” she said, as we both re-read the directions and took another sip of wine.

Other girly confessions? I’m not as natural a blonde as I appear, I enjoy pedicures and shopping for clothes and I don’t hate the TV show Wife Swap.
I take online quizzes entitled “What kind of garden are you?” and “What’s your love style?,” and I hate bacon! What boy hates bacon??

I’m petrified of roaches, (like…petrified), my bathroom has more bottles of products than days of the week and sometimes I tear up at sappy commercials. Joy and I have also always gotten a boyfriend to mow our lawn for us.

But, wait! I don’t use fabric softener! I dress like a boy at the gym! (No matching cutesy outfits here!!) and I hate the color pink!
Plants die under my care! I own a pair of cleats! I burp out loud! (Ho! Ho! Ho!)

Yea, I’m beyond tough! I reassured myself as I started to doze off to the TV. Practically a boy!

But, wait… what exactly does NCAA stand for?







BROTHER!!!

-Jenny

Got Jesus?

Of course I’m craving a hamburger on Good Friday.

Too bad! I can NOT have a large, juicy, mouth-watering piece of meat today because my Catholic background states that Jesus was buried today, and we followers must sacrifice.

Personally, I don’t think Jesus would have a problem with me eating a burger. (He’d probably also give me permission to wear white pants all year round, and not wait until the day he rises from the dead, but, hey, I didn’t make up these rules.)

I went to an all-girls Catholic High School in New Orleans, and every Friday during Lent they only served fish sticks and cheese pizza in the cafeteria, no ifs, ands or buts.
The lunch ladies didn’t care if you were Jewish or an atheist — no meat, end of story.

We had to go to mass during school once a month (twice during Easter!!), and we had to wear these horrible wool blazers.
The priest at our school had a speech impediment and had to talk in a sing-song voice or else he would stutter.

The only reason we knew about his stutter/sing-song problem is that Joy, my twin sister, laughed aloud at his musical range on our first day of school and got into trouble.

Joy figured there was a time and place for singing in church, and it wasn’t during the greeting and homily.
She tried to muffle her laughs into the large shoulder pads of her blazer and pretend she was coughing, but a school official spotted her and snatched her from the “pew” (gym bleachers).

“Father has a speech impediment and it’s not funny!” the large lady who worked in the sanctuary told her. That lady was always lurking around campus looking for troublemakers.
“Oh, I didn’t know he had a speech problem,” Joy said. It was the first day of school.
“How would you feel if someone made fun of you when you were trying to talk to a large crowd?” she scolded.

Joy wanted to ask why he was talking to a large crowd if he had a speech impediment, and still maintains that our friend, Nicole, was the one who started the giggling.
No matter, she still got a detention for it.

We took four years of religion in high school and some classes were taught by a nun with a funny accent.
It was especially entertaining when the nun was chosen to teach human sexuality class.
I wasn’t sure she knew anything about human sexuality, proven by her opening lecture: “I am married to Jesus!” she proclaimed, showing off the gold band on her ring finger.

"Where's the diamond?" someone asked aloud. Everyone laughed.

One year, we took a Bible study class. We had to pick a verse from the Bible we were particularly “moved” by and read it aloud to the class along with a journal entry reflecting on the message.
We also had to play a song from a CD that went along with the passage’s “theme.”

I got a “B” grade for my pairing of a Bible verse about how “God will provide” with Bob Marley’s “Three Little Birds.”
I protested.

“How did I get a B on this?” I asked. “The song goes, ‘every little thing….gonna be allright!’” (In Sing-song, like the priest!!)

The teacher looked at me and blinked.
“Like, with God, every…little…thing…gonna be…allright?? Get it???? Get it???”
When she didn’t change the grade, I wrote her off as someone who didn’t appreciate the Rastafarian culture.

At least she didn’t stop my song in the middle, like she did to another classmate. I guess she didn’t see the relation between a Bible verse and the song “Tennessee” by Arrested Development.

Rachel, the student, had attempted to make a connection between the song and going to Heaven, since the lyrics state at one point, “take me to another place, take me to another land.”

“Ok, Rachel, that’s enough,” the teacher said.
I’m pretty sure she got rid of that lesson after our class.
The only people that got A’s were those that played Brad Paisley songs. Blech!!

I went with my parents to church last week when they came to visit me in South Carolina, and I promised them I would attend Easter mass on Sunday.
Since I normally don’t go to church (unless it’s Christmas or a wedding), those times I do attend, I’m reminded of mass at school.

Oh, there was lots of drama during school mass.
I remember how certain students were selected to hand out communion and us commoners were overly judgmental.

The students chosen for the task of handing out communion were the ones who “embodied the religious spirit” (and had an A average). But, (uh, the horror!) one girl handing out communion would smoke cigarettes in her school uniform at the nearby park after school. NOT RELIGIOUS, we’d say. NOT RELIGIOUS AT ALL! DON'T GET COMMUNION FROM HER!

During mass, we all sat with our class and had to shake hands or acknowledge one another during the “peace be with you” portion of the service.
Often, high school girls would be in fights with one another, and we’d sometimes go out of our way to ignore our neighbors. NOT RELIGIOUS.

“Uh, did you see her totally snub me during peace? I mean, GOD!” (haha)

Nearly 10 years (gasp!) have passed since I graduated high school, and I’d like to think I’m a bit more reverent these days.

I have my palm fronds from Palm Sunday mass in a vase in my house and I don’t ignore people anymore during the “Peace be with you” portion of church. I hardly even judge those handing out communion. Unless they're wearing a horrible outfit.
Just kidding.

Now, excuse me while I scarf down this cheese pizza.

-Jenny

NOLA pride

If you are at the home of someone from New Orleans, chances are you will see at least one Fleur de lis on display.

This is not (entirely) because of the Saints’ Superbowl win. New Orleans natives like to show off their NOLA pride whenever they can. When you love something, you show it. I’m surprised I don’t have a framed picture of Drew Brees by my bed.

For one thing, we’re an excessive culture, and overdo everything. It's not just one modest New Orleans T-shirt; it's a hat, a sweatshirt, a bag, a tie, a bumper sticker, a bottle opener, bedroom slippers and a watch.

It also helps that the Fleur de lis is super cute and looks good on everything: Jewelry, flags, posters, glasses, belt buckles, cufflinks, dog collars.
It's a city-wide staple, like red beans and rice on Mondays.

Even though my twin sister, Joy, and I live in South Carolina, our New Orleans pride still remains intact.
You can see two Fleur de lis emblems before you even walk into our house — one on a garden flag in the front yard and another on a WHO DAT flag, still hanging on the front door.

Inside, you will see an iron Fleur de lis in the front room, a Fleur de lis mirror, a Fleur de lis stand next to the TV and two Jazz Fest posters framed and hanging on the wall.

In the kitchen, we have a Fleur de lis pot holder, Fleur de lis glasses, a photo of crawfish spread out on Times Picayune newspaper, a brass band in the CD player and a picture of us with a superimposed Drew Brees on the fridge.

**(For the true New Orleanians: we also have K&B coasters, refrigerator magnets of both McKenzie’s and Venezia's, a Michalopolous print, a New Orleans Water Meter doormat and a T-shirt that says “Makin’ groceries").

And that’s not counting the LSU paraphernalia — coasters, pitchers, flags and a door mat leading to the porch. (Go Tygas!!!)

Whenever I’m away from New Orleans for a long period of time, I forget how commonplace showing NOLA pride is.
I’ll come back to the city and get all excited when I see someone with a Saints jersey, forgetting that everyone in New Orleans has a Saints jersey.

In South Carolina, when I see a New Orleans shirt or Louisiana license plate, I freak out and run over and make small talk, wave wildly or give a thumbs up sign, depending on the circumstance.

“Who Dat!!!!!” I’ll yell, which usually does the trick. It makes me feel like I’m a part of a special New Orleans club. (Hey, I’ve got an LSU hat, too!! Let’s be friends!!)

When Joy and I went to visit her married college friends (Go Tygas!!!) in Tampa, Florida on New Years, I was delighted to see all the New Orleans touches throughout the house: NOLA paintings, Fleur de lis symbols on plates, napkins, photo albums. Their dog is even named Gumbo for crying out loud.

When I heard that they got engaged after he put the ring inside a piece of king cake during Mardi Gras, I thought it was the most romantic thing I’d ever heard.

I went to our town's annual Cajun Festival this past weekend, which made me dreadfully homesick.
For one thing, there was drinking….in public….outdoors.
(If I were president, the first thing I’d do is make open containers legal everywhere. It immediately lightens up the mood).

It was easy to spot the Louisiana natives at the Cajun festival: they were the ones huddled under an LSU tent draped in Mardi Gras beads. The ones that were dancing in the rain and wearing shirts that said “Make Levees Not War.” (True dat!!)

They also weren’t afraid to dive right into the boiled crawfish.
Have you ever had crawfish? Not many people in this part of the country have. They even call it crayfish, that silly bunch. I tell them it’s like spicy shrimp.

I often wonder if my New Orleans pride will subside once I eventually move back to the city.

I know that when I do move back, I’ll have to tell myself that everyone in the city wears New Orleans clothing and, no, that is not an open invitation to talk about where they went to high school, what year they graduated and if they know so-and-so.

But, would I still deck out my house with New Orleans emblems and posters? Will the WHO DAT flag make it? Would I still wear Fleur de lis's on my shirt??







You bet ya mamma and dem!!!!

-Jenny

Jackholes and wet hens

I’m a big fan of good quotes.

I’m not talking about movie quotes, motivational quotes or even Mitch Hedberg quotes (although, Mitch Hedberg quotes never get old).

I’m talking about standout quotes from everyday people who are mad about something, happy about something or just talking about life.

It’s the newspaper reporter in me; I hear a good quote and my ears perk up. My hand starts scribbling down every word as if its got a mind of its own. The more bizarre a quote, the happier I get.

Take this one woman, who called our office because she wanted to organize a city-wide “prayer day” to pray for all the people who are in jail.
“Can you put something in the paper about it??” she asked.
I had a few questions.
“They may be locked in, but they’re not locked out from God’s love!” she exclaimed.
Then she hung up.

This week, I spoke with the sheriff of the small town where I work, about dancers at a club showing too much skin. You may remember I went undercover to check out the bar myself and found it terribly raunchy.

The old, Southern sheriff was giving me general quotes about what his undercover officers saw when they went in the bar, but nothing the sheriff said was very interesting.

“In my opinion, it was stripping,” he said.

“They were naked?” I asked.

“No, but their panty lines were really low, especially in the back.”

“Low? Like really low? How low would you say?” I asked.

“One girl had panties down below her butt cheeks and the crack of her backside was showing!”
He paused.
“Great, that’ll do it,” I said.

Hearing the sheriff say the words cheeks, crack and backside was just one of many *gems* I’ve heard over the years.
I follow a basic rule of thumb: If it makes me laugh, it’s getting printed.

Several years ago, I had to cover a meeting where a group of residents were mad that they couldn’t take their dogs out on the beach without a leash anymore.
The month before, a dog (who nobody claimed) had bitten a tourist and the council enforced a strict “leash only” policy.

One openly gay man led the fight for “leash-off” time, and he served as a spokesperson for the group.

“Look!” he said to the council. A slight flick of the wrist. “We just want to play with our pooches! (Although, with his fluctuation, it sounded like "pew-chiz”)
“Is there something wrong with wanting to throw the ball around with our pew-chiz??” he exclaimed.

He wore shorts and loafers with no socks. The council settled on leash off time from 5-7 p.m. on weekdays.

I covered a beach town for several years, and wrote about a neighborhood bar that started a game called the “Crabby 500.” It pitted hermit crabs against other hermit crabs to see which one could get to the edge of the table first.

A council member was playing the game one night, and I asked him to weigh in.
“As a single guy, I would recommend the crabby 500 as a great first date,” he said.
Oh yea? Why's that? I asked.
“Because It’s very socially active.”
His quote was helped by the fact that he was short with a high-pitched voice like a cartoon character.

I’m just scratching the surface here. I hear new quotes everyday. I wish I could record them and put them all together in a montage. Here are a few I remember, all said by old men at council meetings:

“I’m as mad as a wet hen!” (Are wet hens mad? Really?)

“This is Malarkey! Malarkey I tell you!”

“Lend me your ear.” (This was seriously used in a sentence.)

“Jackhole!” (Jackass and asshole combined? Or did he say “Jackel?” I can never tell with these accents.)

“Now look who’s wagging the dog’s tail!”

“You’re all just a bunch of birdbrains!” (Pretty sure this insult was used in a Full House episode once)

“I never met a hog I didn’t like.” (A judge in a BBQ competition)

“Oh, look at Captain Underpants over here!!” (The name given to an unpopular council member. I have no idea what this means.)

Unfortuantely, we can't print all good quotes.
One letter I received made me laugh considerably, although it was a letter in response to an error in our paper (NOBODY’S PERFECT, PEOPLE!!)

The article stated (incorrectly): “The issue arouse when…”
instead of: “The issue arose when...”
(D’OH!)

I got a handwritten letter in the mail two days after the paper printed, addressed to me in black permanent marker.
Inside was my article, cut out of the newspaper and marked up with a red pen like an English paper.
The offending paragraph was circled and the word “arouse” was underlined with two X’s on either side and the word NO!!!!! scribbled above it.

The accompanying note (and underlined words) said,

“Dear Jenny, I was so aroused when I read your article that I arose from the table to write this letter.
Oh well, as Alexander Pope said, ‘To err is human, to forgive is divine.’”

Thanks. Jackhole.

Just kiddin

-Jenny

For Project Runway Fans…

I attended Fashion Week in South Carolina with wide-eyed wonder.
Models walking the catwalk? Here?
It almost seemed like an oxymoron.

But, no, this was real. On a particularly cold Tuesday, I found myself sitting in the front row of a long catwalk under a big tent in the middle of a downtown park, wearing my most fashionable purple top.

I was in the front row because I am a member of the media, and, therefore, fit to judge the outfits from up close.
I felt like Heidi Klum. Auf wiedersehen!

Now, don’t tell the bored-looking PR girls who gave me my media pass, but I wasn’t there to cover the show for the newspaper.

We had already run an article about the featured designer in last week's paper, so I was there for fun. And for fashion!

For that night’s show, several clothing stores downtown had put together a “spring collection,” including Banana Republic (man, do they love khaki!) and a new store that sells Seersucker jeans.

(Yes! Seersucker jeans! Talk about an oxymoron!)


Welcome to South Carolina!

As the models walked down the runway, I took mental notes for how to copy the looks from clothes I already own, and then thought about how terrible, yet funny it would be if one of the models fell (I may be going to hell).

Someone then interrupted my thoughts by tapping me on the shoulder.
“Is that seat taken?” asked an effeminate, well-dressed black guy.

“No, go ahead,” I said. He loudly stepped over the other chairs making quite a scene to get to the front row with a large camera and reporter’s notebook in his hand.

He started scribbling notes as the models paraded down the runway. I couldn’t imagine what he was writing. I snuck a peek at his notes and saw he had written down, “interesting pant.”
Haha. Pant. Singular.



Interesting pant indeed!



"Purple pant."


Later that week, I continued to abuse my Fashion Week media pass by attending the end-of-week gala (also under the big tent), which was quite the soiree.
Seventy bottles of vodka lined the walls and there was a very small platter of vegetables and cubes of cheese. I was not surpised.

Don’t tempt the models with food! Some are wearing leotards for Christ's sake!

My mom keeps telling me that no one pays attention to shoes, but that was certainly not the case at this party.
I actually saw photographers taking pictures of just people’s shoes, mom.

I wondered for a moment if my runway reporter friend refers to them as just “shoe."
The perfect shoe to complement the perfect pant perhaps?

I, for one, was not wearing the perfect anything to the gala that night.
The plan was to wear the most fashionable dress in my twin sister’s closet, but my spray sunscreen failed me that day and I got embarrassingly burned at the beach. The dress would have put my splotchy red arms on display for everyone to see. Not fashionable.

Really, I looked like a burn victim with an odd-shaped red slash on my body. I joked with my other media friends at the gala that some designer would try and use me for a charity.

"Just because she's deformed does NOT mean she can't be IN FASHION!" I imagined a designer saying, as I paraded out on the catwalk with a custom-made S-shaped dress strategically covering my burn.
"Look, now she's a swan!"

I ended up having to wear a shrug (yes, shrug! Fashion word!) which meant I had to change my outfit entirely which made me fashionably late to the gala. Ha

The music was hip and current, with lots of Lady Gaga songs that I didn't know, and I even got up and danced on the catwalk with a crowd of people. (Everyone was doing it!!)

Oh and I met a celebrity! Carol Hannah Whitfield, the season 3 final candidate for Project Runway!! Do you watch Project Runway? It’s one of my favorite shows. I keep trying to get people to watch it.

I’m a curious person by nature, and I had a ton of questions for Carol Hannah:

Do you still keep up with any of the other contestants? Yes.

Do people recognize you and come up to you, like, all the time?? Yes.

How much of the show is real? “99 percent.”

Awesome.


Me and Carol Hannah, y'all! Look, she's wearing a shrug too! Made out of...a sherpa??

Yes, it was quite the weekend I had imagined. Now, I know what you're thinking:
"Jenny, do you feel more fashionable now that you've experienced a real-life fashion show? Do you have any tips on how to act more like a model?"

The answer is no, not at all. My feet are killing me from the shoes nobody noticed, and I’m still sunburned.

But, this week I’m going to check out those seersucker pants. Ahem. Pant.



Interesting.

-Jenny

I’m not on crack, I’m just really tired

I’ve never had a problem with Daylight Savings time before. None at all. In fact, I distinctly remember asking one year if the time really changed, because I hadn’t noticed.

Not this year. No, this year, for some reason, losing an hour has literally kicked my ass.
I have been tired since Monday, which means I have had a headache since Monday.

And this week has been so busy with work-related functions/meetings/kickball playoffs!! that I haven’t been able to take as much as a cat nap.

Maybe it doesn’t help that all the clocks in my house (that don’t automatically reset themselves) still display the old time.
Well no wonder I’m tired, it’s REALLY six-thirty in the morning! I thought as I looked at my car clock on the way to work this morning.

The oven clock falsely told me earlier this week that it was 10 p.m. so I stayed up a little later watching recorded episodes of The Office on DVR.
Then, all of a sudden it was eleven — no, actually midnight. Stupid oven.

What is it about Daylight Savings this year that’s got me all turned around? Losing an hour seems like losing a week. I can’t seem to catch up. Maybe I have meningitis.

(Yes, I actually considered that I might have meningitis, based on my symptoms on WebMD. Some might find that paranoid.
“Maybe you’re just anemic and you need to take vitamins,” instructed my mother.)

It doesn’t help that it was terribly, unseasonably cold this week — who wants to be up early when it’s cold??? No one, that’s who.

Perhaps the bigger problem is that I’m not a morning person. I set my alarm 30 minutes early on purpose to allow myself to snooze, because I need to “transition” into actually waking up.

And then, when I finally manage to sit upright, I punch the air in front of me, whining.

My dad is a morning person, and his enthusiasm and general good mood before 9 a.m. baffles me. My mom, brother and twin sister did not inherit the early morning gene.

“I’ve already done all my errands and made breakfast and lunch!” My dad would say when we would stumble downstairs blurry-eyed on Saturdays. “The only thing up before noon around here is the damn cat!”

In the small South Carolina town where I work, the 94-year-old mayor is quite the man about town.
He’s been the mayor for 50 years now, and still runs a large lumber company in the heart of downtown.
Today, I had to take a photo of him and some other important people, in true Southern fashion, at a BBQ restaurant.

“How are you hungry at 11:30?” I asked him, as he sat down to order a basket of ribs.
“I’ve been up since 5,” he said.
“What?”
“Yep, I’ve woken up at 5 a.m. every day of my life,” the mayor told me. “And, as long as I have a good breakfast with eggs, grits and bacon, I’m good for the day.”
“But, it’s still dark at 5 a.m.!” I said.
He laughed.
“I doesn’t matter to me!” he said. “A good businessman gets up early!”
I politely ended the conversation right then, hoping he forgot that I was almost ten minutes late to take the photo.

It's not like I hate Daylight Savings time. I actually love it. Longer happy hours! No driving home from work in the dark! It’s the first sign of summer.
It’s just the getting acclimated part that’s killing me.

I have come up with a solution to this problem: have a nationwide accepted siesta, like they do in Spain. olé!

Afternoon siestas were one of my favorite things about Spain when I studied abroad during a semester in college. Daily mandated afternoon naps?? Yes, please!

I studied in a very, very, very, very ,very small town that was heavy on tradition. During the two-hour siestas, all the shops and restaurants would close, nothing was on TV and the streets were quiet.

There was literally nothing to do but sleep, sleep, sleep. I had no problem immersing myself into that custom. I miss it everyday.

When I came back from my trip abroad, I spent the next three months sitting at a desk all day for an internship. Like clockwork, 20 minutes after I ate lunch, my head would drop to the desk, SIESTA mode in full effect.

Nothing worked. I drank diet coke, pinched myself and shook out my entire body, trying to get the tiredness to leave. But, with heavy eyelids, I still longed for my bed.

One time, in true desperation, I tried to remember if there was a closet I could lock myself in for an hour in order to sleep (I didn’t find one that was suitable).

“Oh, well, you’re probably just anemic,” my mother said. “You should take vitamins.”

-Jenny

People are strange

I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you that people are strange. They get married by Elvis in Las Vegas, take baths with their cats and then enter them into cat shows and they rock mullets for real.

There’s a man in the small South Carolina town where I work who walks up and down Main Street all day and night dragging a 10-foot-tall wooden cross on his back. When it gets dark, he plugs in Christmas Lights to it so you can see the illuminated cross from the road.

Some people considered the French Quarter “duck lady” in New Orleans strange, as she would talk to her pet duck as if it were a person, giving it commands normally reserved for dogs like “stay” and “speak.”

Some weirdos even order nacho cheese as their salad dressing at Applebee’s.

The Doors figured out that People Are Strange in 1967. Here, take a listen while you read on….

Add to a playlist   More from this artist

Now, I’m sure you have your own “people are strange” stories, perhaps I am even included in them (so, what, sometimes I like to dance by myself in the kitchen. And separate my cereal and milk. And, yes, that is a sleeping mask I wear to bed. Sometimes.)
But, enough about me. Let me tell you about a few standout weirdos I have encountered:

In late 2005, two months after Hurricane Katrina destroyed my hometown of New Orleans, I was at a party in South Carolina and began talking to some people about the terrible disaster.

"Yes, my parents are OK, they evacuated even though that in itself was a nightmare.
No, we don’t know if their house was flooded or not. They can’t get back in the city and Google Earth hasn’t updated yet."

Naturally, Hurricane Katrina was the most devastating thing that I’ve ever experienced and it quite literally broke my heart.

I was living in South Carolina at the time and felt helpless 800 miles away. I was glued to the TV for updates, frantically calling my parents even though the 504 area code for cell phones was spotty for weeks.

As I was discussing Hurricane Katrina with fellow party-goers, out of the shadows came a weird, sweaty guy wearing all black who I had noticed earlier standing by himself in the corner.

“You know,” he said in a soft voice, interrupting me mid-sentence. “The government makes hurricanes.”
I immediately spun around on my heels to look at him face to face.

“WHAT did you just say?” I asked firmly, loudly.

“The government makes hurricanes,” he said. “My uncle is in this really secret part of the military and said there’s this base in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico where they make the water really, really warm on purpose so hurricanes gain strength.”

I kind of lost it.
“WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?” I sort of screamed at him. (We were outside on the porch, so I didn’t make too big of a scene.)

“YOU’RE TELLING ME THAT THE WORST THING TO HAPPEN, EVER, WAS INTENTIONAL? IS THAT WHAT YOU ARE SAYING TO ME? YOU'RE SAYING THE HURRICANE WAS ON PURPOSE???”

He backed off a little, and the other people on the porch took over berating him for that nonsense.

"GO BACK TO THE CORNER!" I shouted.

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I was at a Wal Mart in McComb, Mississippi and I was wearing a T-shirt with a gargoyle-like face on it. As I was walking down the main aisle, an old man came right up to me, and pointed to my chest.
“Is..that…man….sticking…his tongue out at me?” he asked in his Southern Mississippi drawl.

I looked down at my shirt. Yes, I suppose the gargoyle is indeed sticking his tongue out, I didn’t think anyone would take it personally but, yes.

I politely smiled and walked away, feeling his eyes on me until I got to the sporting goods department.
What a weird dude, I told myself.

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Another weirdo I encountered I had never actually met. But he did wreak havoc on my email account.
I was logged on at a “shared” computer at the college library, desperately sending out my resume to any newspaper that was hiring: South Carolina, New Orleans, Las Vegas (seriously, haha) New York. And I didn’t log off when I was done.

I continued to send out emails with resumes and cover letters to professional newspaper editors and publishers.
Then I sent an email to my twin sister, Joy, who called to tell me that there was something….odd at the end of my email. I suddenly had an email signature, on the bottom of every email I had sent out, she said.

“What?” I asked. “What does it say?”
“Um…”

Horrified, I looked in my sent folder and saw an email I had sent to a business publication.
Written at the bottom of the page, underneath my long list of qualifications and credentials was:

“I kept my email logged on to a public computer and I’m lucky this is the only thing that happened to me: Quimby for Mayor.”

“NOOOOOOOOOOOO!” I screamed so loud my roommate woke up. “Who the F*CK does that?????”
Clearly a nerdy Simpsons-lover, my roommate pointed out. What a freak.

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And aren’t there just some real weirdos on Facebook now, too? I’ve got a “friend” who constantly posts photos of what she ate for lunch….a burger? With ketchup? Really?? Get. Out.

Another person on Facebook posts suicidal status updates daily. To make it more bizarre, no one ever comments on them, not even her husband, who is also on Facebook. Let’s call her Samantha Smith.

Samantha Smith I wish I had a happier place to work. I can't stand the sterility so quiet you can hear a cricket fart.

Samantha Smith I am five fuckin seconds from telling them. where to stick this fuckin place -- hate it hate it

Samantha Smith when in doubt -- the good old standby * TRUST NO ONE* so true. could anyone remove the fuckin knife in my back ??

Samantha Smith I hate my life and I wish I were dead. !!! maybe I should just pull into oncomig traffic.

Samantha Smith my new Mantra. DIE bitch DIE. and don't touch me. I am NOT your friend or even frienemy. DUH

Samantha Smith gonna pull out the OUJI board and see if I can contact my dead life

Samantha Smith crapfuckingtastic.

Samantha Smith I have decided b-days suck. I haven't had a good one since I was 7.

Woah now. Weirdo. Would you like to borrow my sleeping mask?

-Jenny