How To Stop Wasting Time, Forever

Critics are calling this exercise "impossibly sobering" and "fun for all ages". Take it from someone that spends countless hours eating chcoolate bits and trolling the internet for the proper desktop wallpaper. "Time sucks," as people with hobbies refer to them, are a reality for everyone. Especially in the digital age where boredom is so easily solved by cat memes, celebrity instagrams, and shameless self promotion.

How To Stop Wasting Time, Forever

1. Calculate your age.

2. Multiply it by 365

3. Subtract that number from 36,500

4. That is how many days you have left on this earth, if you're lucky enough to live to 100.

5. Throw away all your junk and start living.

No One Is Ever Going To Believe You

Guys,

Today I accidentally charged $700 to my bosses credit card under the name "Party Animal". Want. to. die.

To Discuss Celebrity

It's a little known fact that celebrities age twice as fast as normal humans until age 18, at which point they age at half-speed until they reach 50 years of age, and are subsequently injected with embalming fluid til their death.

New Advice Column

Name: Steve
Subject: Do I deserve to live?
Message: I ran over my neighbors new dog yesterday backing out of the driveway....

It's not new , but someone started sending in to our Ask The Skirt section so we'll be answering all your dilemnas and woes in one place check out our advice column to find out if Steve deserves to live!

Should I Quit My Job? Flowchart

Because a pro's and con's list never does the trick.

On Sororities

Mimi, 76, on sororities.

"I'm not gonna say anything about groups...They're horrible"

I've Got Your Next Pick Up Line

Palm reading is something I've been doing off and on since I learned that you could actually just spit into someone's hand, right after exclaiming that you saw a swimming pool in their future. This does not work as well if you are trying to make a romantic gesture. However, the art of palm reading, also called Palmistry, dates back to well before Christ and has its roots in India therefore you should believe everything you read on google and wikipedia searches on the subject.

Women: The right hand is what you're born with, the left hand is what you have accumulated throughout your life.

Men: The left hand is what you're born with and the right hand is what you have accumulated throught out your life.

Both: The dominant hand is your present/past life, and your least dominant hand is the next card you will be dealt in your future life.

If this is all sounded a bit made up I suggest you refer to one of the many film and television shows that have featured palm reading: Teen Witch, The Simpsons, Eat, Pray, Love & more! 

Let's Go Back In Time & Uninvent The Internet

We can start with e-mail, closely followed by the refresh button. It is impossible to unsend an e-mail, an unforgivable flaw, and though you can't really unsend a letter either, you can beg someone to intercept and destroy said letter. E-mail has no such grace. People use :) and :( and lowercase flippantly. Grown men use acronyms meant for teen girls. 

Let's move on to chats of all types. How often are you accidentally leaving yourself open to comment or critique when you are simply trying to check on a gas bill or some other stray inbox item. Like a lingering voice mail these chats often contain too much important or too little information. Humans fumble awkwardly with these instant chat devices and rarely are able to carry on a cohesive and productive conversation. Almost always annoying the recipient or bludgeoning them with news far too emotional for the medium.

Too much: "Uncle Vince died."

Too little: "Did you know cats can open doors?"

Did the internet ever save your life? No. You actually were convinced by WebMD that you were dying when in fact you just had a small rash. This was much like the time you had a tingling armpit and prematurely associated it with Fibromyalgia. The internet is responsible for improper self-diagnosis. In fact the Internet is a brothel of misinformation. It is littered with poorly monitored and disturbingly specific messenger boards on every topic from dreadlocks to botany to hot mums.

We are meant to believe the internet is a resource. That it is making us better informed and equipped but in fact we would be alright without YouTube, Pinterest, and this awful blog. I've only once watched something educational on YouTube. It was a Swedish home video explaining how to use an Ikea can opener. Life could go on! I might even prefer watching Patches The Horse on a television set double the size without all the buffering and BS.

Let's go nuts and break iPhones too. Just do it. When you're on the subway or the bus tomorrow just start smashing. At first this will seem scary and forced but I assure you, watching that lifeless brick hit the floor will give you joy you haven't felt in years.

iPhones were originally designed to fool us into thinking we were having fun with buttons, much like Hooked on Phonics was actually a ploy to keep us thinking reading was fun up until 1994. With the invention of iPhones it becomes almost impossible to evade the truth. Old excuses die hard like "Stuck in traffic," and "Slept at Kevins." Kids won't be able to run away without being hunted down via GPS and Find My iPhone apps. Boyfriends can't lie to their girlfriends thanks to text keeping detailed written dialogues that allow every petty conversation to be rehashed with the swipe of a finger. And, forget lying to your potential employer, LinkedIn knows that you work at Chilis.

Heck, we could really one up ourselves and just forget about computers all together, bury them in a huge landfill or tower them to build a bridge across the pacific. According to US News, Humans are evolving to get dumber so not much can stop us now.

I'm Not Registered To Vote

I'm sure that if this were a bumper sticker on my car I would have been rear ended by now. For it seems there is something we can all agree on; everyone hates someone that isn't voting. So as I make my way to work today without the "I voted" button, try not to rattle me with deep concern and superiority when you ask.

"You're not registered to vote?" Repeat it out loud so everyone can hear me defend this asinine choice. 

Look at me like I'm a trust fund baby that doesn't know my own social security number. A pathetic and unacceptable half breed that should know better to than admit such things out loud. Act annoyed, as if my non-voting has unhinged some deep patriotic spirit that has dwelled in your soul only to come alive once every 4 years. Tell me there is no excuse for this complete and obvious oversight. Remind me how easy it is for someone with two thumbs and a car to vote. How could I have glossed over the check box at the DMV, idly driven by "Vote or Die" billboards and still go on living?

Remind me celebrities are also upset with my chocies.

"The time for publicly shaming nonvoters is upon us. Tom Hanks wants to spank them. “If you don’t vote,” says Alicia Keys, “the whole world could just burn.” Katy Perry has ensconced herself in a ballot. Lena Dunham is comparing voting to sex."

Tell me who to vote for, tell me it's my civic duty; the right thing to do. Tell me how important my sliver of a vote in a non-swing state could be. Repeat, the only way to truly earn my right to live in a democracy is to exercise it. Then throw in some sly plugs for your choice  candidate before vowing humbly not to care who I pick, so long as I vote. Beg me from your billboards and your cubicals.

"For the love of God, leave your meagerly paying office job and go to the rec center today and vote!"

No matter if I have no knowledge of what is going on, if I have never watched CNN, never heard of the Vice President. It doesn't matter my moral compass or how many people I may have cut off in traffic, punched in high school or insulted in my workplace. Never mind if I have other things I'd rather do or feel so insanely indifferent when I look at two clones argue that the 'lesser of two evils' argument need not apply. Never mind if I spend time reading or running and not keeping up with the rants, raves, and debates.

People will want to say that these are false choices—that you can do all of these things and also vote and also cure cancer and also amass a Dave-Weigel-like encyclopedic knowledge of American political factoids. But the constraints on leisure time are real. Do people, on their death beds, regret all the votes they failed to cast? I do not know.

Hold back your threatening contempt as I say I'm not voting today. A choice that happened like a slow moving accident. And now it's too late. But tomorrow will still be tomorrow and odds are life will go on. And though the world may burn if we were to all sit at home like me...

Among the many privileges of life in a stable democracy is the knowledge that it probably won’t.

_____

Another list of annoying questions:

• Do you recycle?
• Want to know what I ate today?
• Do you drive an SUV?
• Are you religious?
• Do you workout?

*Block excerpts taken from author Kerry Howley, from www.slate.com

10 Ways To Impress A Stranger

1. Mouth Shut
2. Head High
3. Hair Did
4. Fresh Breath
5. Pressed Threads
6. Big Smile
7. Firm Handshake
8. Open Ears
9. Jokes
10. No Smokes

via. Sartorialist

Word of The Moment

 Tingo

Pascuense (Easter Island) – Hopefully this isn’t a word you’d need often: “the act of taking objects one desires from the house of a friend by gradually borrowing all of them.” 

In the Event of a Water Landing...

Please return all seat backs to their upright position and make sure all carry ons are stowed where they can accompany you to your doom. Pam from our San Francisco based flight crew got on the speaker: "You never know when this information may save your life." 

We all know how to put on a seatbelt. A buckle is no concept to go on and on about. But what we are even more familiar with is all the times planes have crashed from 30,000 ft to their watery graves or into fields and marshes or mountain tops. We remember all those instances where the surviving parties announced on the 5 o'clock news how happy they were that they had been wearing their life vest and hugging their seat cushion.

They took out their headphones when Pam spoke.

Airport Security: "Hold on mam, we need to check your ponytail." (Inserts fingers).

Travelers: "Something about this kindle keeps actin' up! It's actin' up again. Just reset and I was on page two chirty three and now I gots a press this darn next button 233 times to get to the page. Oh geez." (Happened 5 separate times).

Traveler 2: Plays Angry Birds on iPad full volume for 1.5 hrs. Finally inserts in back into Angry Bird iPad sleeve and takes out video poker instead.

Fact: It's almost impossible to sleep on a plane without opening your mouth.

10 Legitimate Uses for the Word Bouffant

Recently, I made a promise to my friends and loved ones that I know I can keep: I solemnly swear not to have a summer wedding.  True, this isn't a promise I have to worry about in the near future considering that, unlike all my Facebook friends, I'm not engaged.  Actually, I'm nowhere near being engaged.  That's not really the point.  The point is that while I love summer and weddings individually, together they create the sweatiest mixture of smeared bronzer, upper-lip moisture beads, and black eyeliner that somehow ends up on your chin.  It's not my best look.

Anyways, tomorrow is the very fancy wedding of an old roommate of mine and I'm all in a tither about how to wear my hair.  Besides straightening it and putting it up in a ponytail for when I pretend to go to the gym, I'm completely helpless.  With all the things that could go wrong in tomorrow's projected 101-degree weather forecast, I've been frantically asking my friends where to get my hair done in host-city D.C.  Just now, my friend Nina mentioned that she's planning on putting her hair in a southern bouffant.

Bouffant.

God bless you?  Wait, no, people don't e-sneeze (yet).  I think I missed something here.  This is an actual thing?  She has since sent me a link and I think she's confused.  That is not a bouffant; that is a nice half-ponytail.  "Bouffant" has no place amongst all that hair spray.

So in the interest of delaying my four-hour car ride to our nation's Capitol, I've created some other meanings for "bouffant" that make much more sense than "Carrie Underwood's half-ponytail":

1. (n): A trendy new dessert.  "And we'll be having a three-tired bouffant cake, of course.  Tiramisou wedding cakes are just so pre-Pinterest weddings."
2. (adj.):  An insult used to describe over-privileged twenty-somethings.  Most commonly used by fellow over-privileged "betches".  "He's such an effing bouffant.  There he was in his sear-suckers going on and on about his parents new house in East Hampton.  Like, I'm sorry, is South Hampton not good enough for you anymore?"

(v.):  A highly embarrassing bodily function that can happen in bed.  "Everything was going fine and then - oh my god, I can't believe I'm even telling you this.  It's so embarrassing, please don't laugh - but I bouffanted."

3. (n.):  A prettier way of stating that you have an STD.  Most commonly used to deter a date from the unpleasant truth in hopes that he/she will still sleep with you.  "I'm not sure what herpes is but this here is bouffant.  It's okay, it's French"
4. (n.)  Something unfortunate contracted by one of Mitt Romney's horses.  "You think what happened to his dog was rough?  His horse had bouffant.  I mean, what else could the guy do but send it to the glue factory?"

(v.)  The literal French translation of "hand job".  "You are in your twenties.  Stop doling out bouffants."

5. (n.)  A somewhat expensive home decor item bought in hopes of making your studio apartment seem more adult-like to friends and visitors.  "And this is the bouffant I just bought at Pier 1, isn't it fabulous?  It can be used as a chip-and-dip, a center piece [to really tie this whole place together], and as a cooler for the refreshing beverages I made with vodka that - wait for it - costs more than $12.  It can also be used as a pillow for guests and it has streaming wifi.  Seriously the best bouffant ever."
6. (adj.)  An overly-ambiguous term to use describe someone you're not sure if you really like or hate.  Most often said directly to the person in question.  "'Oh you, you're such a bouffant', she said in a dead-pan voice, while the rest of the group smiled awkwardly, unsure if she loved him or actually couldn't stand him."
7. (adj./v.)  A way of starting a fight with your boyfriend after you accidentally get drunk off of four shots and he's done nothing wrong.  "What? (hic) What now? I know you (hic) think you're so much more (hic) bouffant than me, just admit it. Just (hic) admit it.  Well guess whose (hic) not getting any this weekend?  Yep (hic) Mr. Bouffant guy over here.  Shit (hic) do you have my purse?  (hic)  Wait (hic) what?  I love you."
8. (explitive)  An applicable answer to anything you don't like.  "Shut the bouffant up"

So there you have it.  Ten legitimate uses of the questionably-fake word "bouffant", all of which are undoubtedly better than it's original use. 

Hope all you all get a lot of bouffant this weekend, if you know what I'm saying.

By Alex Russo (far right) pictured with Nina and friends at a Summer Wedding.

Dear Diary: Pants That Make Noise

I just realized I'm wearing pants that make noise.. I'm at work it's too late to apologize.

Dear Diary: Trader Joes

Dear Diary,

Today I asked to use a step stool in Trader Joes. I took such precautions because of the time I knocked over several apple pyramids at the same location. Also, shelves in Trader Joes are only about 5' 6" in height. Have I gotten shorter or arm my arms shrinking?