CRUSHED: A Practical Guide

I have a confession to make: I'm a real person. I have feelings and relationships, I do Yoga...I know, it shatters your whole vision of me. I'll give you a minute. Ready to continue? OK.

As a person with feelings, I have, on occasion, burdened other people with my feelings and/or had the feelings of others foisted upon me. It happens to the best of us. So yeah, I DID click on the link to a spiritual self-help article about dealing with unrequited love. You wanna make it into a whole thing?

This is a serious subject, of course - nobody likes having their heart broken - so it should be treated with respect and dignity. I get that. On the other hand, though, sometimes the best advice isn't necessarily the most practical advice. I mean, people have been telling me to "love myself" for years. It's easier said than done, and when you're sitting on your couch in a pile of discarded Kleenex, you need something a little stronger. So while I certainly don't have anything against that kind of advice, and think it's a wonderful long-term plan, I'd like to offer you more immediate relief. Think of it as the difference between getting physical therapy for an injury (long-term), or taking a Vicodin (HELL YEAH!). And so, without further ado, here are 10 steps you can take to turn your heart-splitting anguish into a mind-numbing stupor from which you can safely emerge at such time as the danger has passed.

1. Go to Disney World. Trust me on this. You will see people a billion times uglier, meaner, ruder, more selfish, smellier, fatter, more acne-ridden, and just generally more revolting that you will ever, ever be. That in itself probably won't make you feel better, but what WILL make you feel better is the fact that all of these people are loved. Virtually all of them will be partnered up in some way, and many of them will also have children who love them dearly. No matter how crappy you feel about yourself in this moment, the message of the hordes of Disney World attendees is that you CAN find someone to love you. As my mother says, "There's a lid for every pot". As I like to say, "If you wait long enough, you'll eventually find someone as desperately lonely as you!"

2. Get really drunk and call the object of your affections to declare (or reiterate) your love. This is an excellent idea because when you sober up, you can know with ABSOLUTE CERTAINTY that nothing can EVER happen between the two of you because you will be far too busy trying to convince the federal government to let you into the Witness Protection Program. I speak from experience on this one. When they ask what murder you witnessed, you can't just say "The murder OF MY DIGNITY!!!!" No dice.

3. Write embarrassingly gut-wrenching poems about your situation and post them as your Facebook status. Here's an example to get you started:
How can you say you don't know me?
I gave you my heart
My soul
And you ripped them both out
And gnashed them between your incisors
You stupid jerk
I hope you get gangrene of the rectum
Yikes. You might think this serves no positive purpose, but once again, appearances prove to be deceiving! I myself have never taken the "horrifically wince-inducing Facebook poetry" approach, but I've seen other people do it ad infinitum and frankly, it's hilarious. If you're gonna sit around and mope, you could at least try to bring some joy to someone else's life; that's all I'm saying. Oh - and should you post that poem and have someone mistake it for song lyrics or an excerpt from a more famous poet, simply re-post it, adding your name and the date at the bottom. I mean, c'mon - who WOULDN'T want credit for that work of genius?

4. Attack the source. Your heart is killing you, right? I mean, the pain is so terrible - it physically hurts to be so unloved. Solution? Deep fry everything, eat salt by the spoonful, and adopt the motto: "It isn't dinner without a dozen Krispy Kremes!" This will definitely show your heart who's boss, and that you can stop it in its slimy little tracks whenever you so choose! See? Empowering.

5. Find someone new. This is the oldest trick in the book, I know, but you can't argue with results! The best way to get over someone is to find someone new to love! I mean, sure, your heart won't really be in it, and you'll spend all your time comparing the new person to your old flame. The new guy will be great on paper, but how could he hope to match the way your beloved used to smile? Or the nervous laughter you could elicit in the early days of your flirtation with no more than a knowing glance? But if you just give someone else a chance, you'll see that NO ONE ON EARTH CAN HOPE TO MEASURE UP TO THE LOVE YOU'VE LOST OH GOD WHY WON'T YOU LOVE ME I GAVE YOU EVERYTHIIIIIIIINNNNNNNNNGGGGG!
Abort! Abort! This one's a bad idea! What's #6? QUICKLY QUICKLY!

6. Remember what I said earlier about Vicodin? There's nothing wrong with literal interpretations. I'm just sayin'.

7. Watch Wicked Attraction. It's on Netflix Watch Instantly right now. I've been watching this for weeks, and I can't recommend it highly enough. It's just your typical true-story-of-ghastly-crime series, but what makes it different is that it's always about two or more people working together to torture/rape/kill innocent victims. Usually these two or more people are involved romantically, and usually there's a point where the forensic psychiatrist says "There were no prior indications that Person A would end up being a violent killer - no previous convictions, no terrible childhood, no mental problems. It's just that s/he loved Person B SO MUCH and wanted to please them..." The takeaway here is that if you love someone, you might end up accidentally becoming a serial killer! I KNOW, RIGHT?!?! Being single has its perks, y'all. My bed might be cold. My back might be itchy. I might be a cold, lonely, bitter spinster. But I'm no murderer.

8. Participate in NaNoWriMo. I am! It's one of the reasons I've been so conspicuously absent lately, actually. The other reason being a hypothetical boy issue that may or may not have distracted me up until it inspired me to write this post. But that's as may be. My point is that NaNoWriMo is a wonderful outlet - like a journal, but more awesome. In my case, the second I felt an infatuation coming on, I wrote this alleged boy into my story as THE Good Guy of the tale. Once I realized he didn't care if I lived or died, I blew his character up in a massive explosion that left his limbs strewn around a cesspool! See? Empowering.

9. Answer calls from telemarketers. Ordinarily I would advise against this - who wants to talk to those losers? But let's face it: the broken-hearted need someone to talk to, and your friends are only going to listen to the same crap a few hundred times before they change their numbers, move away, and/or get a restraining order. If other people are going to call you, why not make good use of that?

10. Win the lottery, lose 40 pounds, and become a Victoria's Secret model. I haven't tried this one myself yet, but I'm pretty sure it'd work.

Hello? Is It Me You're Looking For?

I bet you thought I forgot my password, didn't you? Well I didn't. And you probably weren't thinking that, either. You were probably thinking something more like "What a lazy slob! She writes 300 crappy pages of sketch comedy we don't even get to read and make fun of, and then we never hear from her again! The nerve!" And what if I HAD forgotten my password? I could've spent the last week running around tearing my home - and myself - apart searching for it, frantic at the thought that my loyal readership (BOTH of them) were being denied my razor-sharp wit! Then you'd feel pret-ty bad for being so mean to me.

But like I say, I wasn't. Still, my absence was still perfectly justified and you shouldn't judge me. Because I have

10 Perfectly Good Reasons Why I Haven't Blogged In Nearly A Week

1. This whole Facebook redesign thing has been very difficult for me. And yes, thank you, I did anticipate it by 5 days.
2. I had the Ebola for a while there. Or wait - maybe it was hay fever. Which one do you take Zyrtec for? That one.
3. Every time I tried to write a blog post, I thought about the "DANG MY CAPS WAS LOCKED" guy and laughed so hard I couldn't type.
4. I've been devoting all of my time to my personal campaign against the so-called "Buffet Rule". Keep your paws off my 7-figure income, Uncle Sam!!! I need that money to power the economy! It trickles down every time I tip the guy who dusts my polo ponies!
5. I had to camp out for Weird Al tickets.
6. I started reading He's Just Not That Into You and got completely sucked in by its nauseating, condescending tone! I couldn't put it down, so ultimately I just doused it in gasoline and set it on fire instead.
7. I lost a Twitter follower and spent the entire week trying to figure out who it was. (Answer: a bikini-clad spambot selling vitamin pills)
8. I was up past 10pm last Saturday night, and have been catching up on my sleep ever since.
9. 2 words: Angry Birds.
10. It's taken a week to get the head-to-toe full-body tattoo I'll be sporting for college football season!

Sketch Challenge, 4th & 5th Sets: It Is Done.

WARNING: CONTAINS GRATUITOUS SELF-INDULGENT YAMMERING

Oh.

My.

God.

It's done. It's over. I'm finished. I literally cannot believe it.

When I first hatched this bright-ass idea, I thought it would be fun! Then I thought it would be educational! Then I thought it would be a great way to sharpen my writing skills!

...and then I thought, "If I drink enough tequila to drown a horse, I will feel better."

Luckily I managed to come back with a vengeance these last two weeks and I FINISHED. I don't know what suddenly motivated me to get off my ass (or rather, to get back on my ass in front of my computer), but I'm glad I did! The thing is, I usually start a challenging creative project, get about 80% done, and quit/give up/whatever you want to call it. When progress ground to a halt in the 4th set, I feared I had gone as far as I was gonna go. So now, even though the last two sets aren't my best work, they're done. And I'm pretty ridiculously pleased about that.

So did I achieve my goals? And while I'm thinking about it, what the hell were my goals? I'm WAY too lazy to reread the original posts, but I'm pretty sure I was trying to:
1. amuse myself
2. find out what it's like to be a comedy writer working to a deadline (which is why the deadlines were modeled on John Finnemore's for his sketch show)
3. become a better writer

We'll take them individually. Because it's MY blog. And I have achieved something for a change, so I will talk about it for as long as I damn well please.

1. Did I amuse myself? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. More often than not, I would walk away from a writing session saying something like "Mother of GOD I suck!" This was decidedly unamusing, and was also a large part of the reason my liver took such a massive hit in the middle few weeks. But there were also numerous times when I would reread something a few weeks after writing it and find myself actually laughing, pleasantly surprised at the quality of my work. So I was amused some of the time. I'll say this for the overall project: it was consistently 100% amusing to watch myself try to rationalize my failures and procrastinations. Hilarious. Five stars.

2. Do I now know what it's like to be a comedy writer working to a deadline? Again: yes and no. I definitely got a healthy dose of reality about it. I mean, I read a lot (like, A LOT) of interviews with/blogs maintained by people who write comedy (not just John Finnemore), and I had seen patterns emerge in their collective characterization of the process. But when people keep saying writing comedy is like pulling teeth...I guess I just couldn't grasp it. I mean, writing my master's thesis was like pulling teeth. Doing writing samples for job applications is like pulling teeth. But comedy? Something funny? How can that ever be work?

I AM HERE TO TELL YOU THAT IT CAN VERY EASILY BE WORK. AND VERY VERY DIFFICULT WORK, AT THAT.

Now when I read those interviews/blogs, I can genuinely relate to what those people are saying. I know exactly what they mean. So in that respect, I "know what's like" now.

On the other hand, I still have no idea "what it's like" in terms of deadlines. It's fantastic that I finished today, but I was supposed to be done on August 27th. And that was after I gave myself a 2-week mental health break in the middle. I'm willing to give myself a little bit of leeway here, in that it was never possible for me to truly replicate Being a Full-Time Comedy Writer, since I'm already a Full-Time Something Else and a Part-Time Improv Actress. And then my Full-Time Something Else Employer went and staged a MAJOR acquisition right in the middle of my Sketch Challenge (the nerve!), which meant I ended up spending even more time and energy in that sphere than usual. So maybe it wasn't realistic to expect myself to meet the same deadlines as John Finnemore. On the other hand, he was doing sketch show stuff while doing Cabin Pressure stuff and becoming The Definitive Summarizer of the NOTW Scandal on The Now Show, so it's not like he was able to spend 24 hours a day, 7 days a week on sketch writing either. That's why I'm not completely excused. Quit yer bitchin', Welsh! We all have other shit going on! (<-- 99% sure this is not how John Finnemore would talk.)

3. Did it make me a better writer? In all honesty, I think the quality went steadily downhill from the middle of the 3rd set onward. The dialogue got more stilted, the jokes (on the rare occasion when there were discernible jokes after the 3rd set) weren't any good and tended to be ill-timed...everything just felt clunkier. Maybe it was because I had run out of ideas. Or maybe it was because I had too much other stuff going on (see: Employer situation). Or maybe it was because I went on vacation and lost my mojo. Or maybe I got bored and stopped paying attention - I will readily admit that by the time I got to the last 3 pages, I would gladly have written my name over and over again just to fill the space and be DONE. I think I'll just postpone this assessment. If there's one thing blogging has taught me, it's that everything gets better when extensively edited. And right now I'm putting the sketches aside for 2 weeks so I can come back completely fresh and edit the living crap out of them in October. I'll tell you on 1 November whether I've learned anything as a writer.

For now, here are 10 things I have learned during the Sketch Challenge:
1. The more tired I am, the less likely I am to fall asleep.
2. I can't write with ambient music playing. I just need the same 10 songs (with lyrics) to play over and over and over while I work.
3. "Butter London" is a Seattle-based company. WTF?!?!?
4. I have a friend who can do TEN official Disney character autographs!
5. Yellow roses symbolize jealousy(?!?!)
6. This: "?!?!!" is called an "interrobang". You're welcome.
7. There is a statue of a man walking a gator on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina.

In case anyone was confused as to the meaning of the term "baller"

8. I don't like eating doughnuts as much as I like thinking about eating doughnuts.
9. 97% of guys named Ben are hot. FACT.
10. The Scrivener project target bar really does turn green...eventually.

10 Ways to Deal with Writer's Block

1. Go for a run! Maybe you'll fall and break your hand and then you'll have an excuse not to write anymore!

2. Take a look through your Ideas Notebook! Maybe you'll find some inspiration there! More likely you'll read the whole thing, call yourself a rude name, and end up completely despondent. But you know - maybe you'll find some inspiration! There's, like, a 20% chance of that!

3. Get a lobotomy! We use this term a lot, but most people don't know what a lobotomy really was (they don't do them anymore). It involved someone "scrambling" your brains with long sharp metal sticks which had been rammed in through your temples. Still, that sounds better than staring at the screen any longer, amiright?

4. Call a friend or family member to chat. When they ask what you've been up to, say, "I'm SUPPOSED to be writing, but I CAN'T because I don't have anything to SAY and I SUCK, but THANKS FOR BRINGING IT UP!" Then slam the receiver down.

5. Try writing in someone else's voice. For example, I'm channeling Elizabeth Gilbert for this blog post, muthafucka!

6. Get out a sketchbook and try doodling to loosen up your brain muscles. Maybe you'll get a great idea from what you've drawn!

No?

7. Do some volunteer work! It'll make you feel better and HAAAA! HA HA! Oh God, I can never say that one with a straight face. AS IF you were going to do that! Next!

8. Try tidying up around the house. You know what they say: "A cluttered home is one in which the EMTs will have a harder time finding you when you finally get so drunk you need to have your stomach pumped!"

9. Get yourself an arranged marriage on the internet! This "writing" thing is clearly never going to support you in the lifestyle to which you'd like to become accustomed.

10. Give up on writing real text and just make a stupid list instead.

You Are Encouraged to Quote Me On That

For the last two Christmases, one of my best girlfriends has given me little quote-of-the-day calendars featuring quotes from famous/brilliant/funny/otherwise notable women. A lot of them are truly inspirational and/or entertaining, but every once in a while, there's one that's just kinda patronizing. Or too specific - having never had a single husband, it's hard for me to relate to the "none of my four husbands have had enough money to make me happy" genre. It's dangerous to let the quality of something like that slip, because this will inevitably lead to me thinking I could do it. And that's how I ended up wondering which great Kimberly Welsh truisms will someday be on just such a calendar. Here are the first ten; print 'em out before you have to pay $6.99 to buy them on tiny sheets of rippable paper!

Awesome/Helpful Sayings By Me, As Made Up Right This Very Second, With No Context Whatsoever

1. "Being a female writer is just like being a male writer, except you have to make a big show out of pretending to feel guilty if you eat a whole pizza."
2. "Purse dogs have it so easy. They don't even know."
3. "I just ate a TON of watermelon, and am not in any intestinal distress whatsoever. So I'm declaring that an urban myth and ordering everyone to keep their real or imagined intestinal distress to themselves in the future!"
4. "A person's laugh says a lot about them. For example, if you laugh like Snidely Whiplash, that says, 'I should stop laughing because it's disconcerting to those around me!'"
5. "There is no problem so great that it cannot be solved by a footlong mayo and provolone sandwich on french bread, washed down with a pint of NyQuil."
6. "Do you work in an inhumane cubicle environment? Why not try stabbing your eardrums with thumbtacks?"
7. "In the battle for the Most Adorable Version of the Twitter bird, Twitterrific has pecked out the eyeballs of its competition*!"
8. "I resent the implication that just because I am staggeringly gorgeous, I cannot also be funny."
9. "Sometimes people say things and I'm like, 'HUH?!?!?'"
10. "Soap is the worst breakup consolation gift. And yet two different people have presented me with soap on the occasion of two different breakups. What is that about? I mean, yeah, I was depressed, but I hadn't stopped bathing, for God's sake!"


*But Tweetcaster is a far superior application, just so we're clear.

A Very American Half-Birthday

You almost certainly don't know this about me, but July 4th is my half-birthday! That's right! This year I turned 32.5, and the entire country got a day off work to celebrate! People were even setting off fireworks! For a modest gal like me, all the attention is really kind of embarrassing.

This time of year also seems to coincide with an annual nationwide seizure of patriotism (unrelated). It's always a little awkward for me, not because I don't heart my country - I do  - but I import virtually all of my news and entertainment from across the pond. As a result, I'm somewhat out of step with the current cultural norms around here - I was embarrassingly late to the Modern Family party, I have no idea which sports season we're in, and for the life of me I don't know if I "realized" my blind date was a serial killer, or if I "realised" it. THEY BOTH LOOK RIGHT!

Upon realiz/sing that I was losing touch with my roots, I decided to get on the proverbial bandwagon for my half-birthday and do it up America-style.

Step 1: Road trip!
This part was easy, since my parents were going to visit my brother in Augusta. All I had to do was hitch a ride, and I was halfway to being a regular Betsy Ross! I have no idea what I mean by that. I certainly didn't sew anything.

Step 2: American cuisine
There was some debate over where we would have lunch, and we were deadlocked between Mexican food and pizza - not very American choices, I think you'll agree! I managed to fix the whole thing up with five magical words: "IHOP has funnel cakes now." And so we went to IHOP, one of the top 20 most American eateries I can think of off the top of my head!* I probably went a bit astray by ordering an omelet topped with hollandaise sauce (patriotism FAIL), but I like to think I made up for it by dutifully coloring in a kids menu.

This is what the CD cover would look like if my cat, my mom's cats, and my brother's cat formed a band. Note blood at tip of giant claw. They're hardcore.

I also stumbled upon a new educational initiative which reintroduces arts education for young children, presumably as part of the No Child Left Behind program. You won't be able to read the light grey print, but it says (emphasis mine): "Use the diagram to the right to learn to read music! Then draw notes below to create a special song."

My parents paid a lot of money over many years for me to learn the secrets I could just as easily have gotten from the diagram on the right WHILE eating a Funny Face Pancake!

Suzuki Method? More like So-Puke-y Method! OUR kids will learn to read music at the IHOP, thankyouverymuch!

Step 3: See a Disney movie
Cars 2, y'all!

Step 4: Road Cuisine
Because nothing tastes better than the months-old junk you dig up off a shelf at a convenience store during a long car ride. I'm not even being sarcastic, either - I love that crap. And since we stopped at a Circle K, I got myself one of the jewels in my country's culinary crown:

It's a frozen Mountain Dew. JEALOUS?

And that was my Very American Half-Birthday Road Trip. Fun, right? It was nice to have a day, just America and I, to reflect on why we like each other so darn much. And if you're one of the people who has dedicated your life (or even just some part of it) to protecting the awesome of America, thank you.

Still, I'm glad we made up with the Brits eventually; there's some really good stuff on the iPlayer this week.

*You didn't think I'd back that up, did you? Well SUCK IT! Here are the Top 20 Most American Eateries I Can Think Of Off The Top Of My Head, as determined by a scientific survey of yours truly staring at the wall and saying, "Hmmm...what else?" until I had filled in all the lines.
1. McDonald's
2. A&W 
3. Shoney's
4. Waffle House
5. White Castle
6. IHOP
7. The Cheesecake Factory
8. Red Lobster
9. Cracker Barrel (aside for those who love Cracker Barrel: I didn't make this, but it's awesome)
10. Taco Bell (that is NOT Mexican food)
11. Fuddruckers
12. Piccadilly Cafeteria
13. Ryan's
14. Steak 'n Shake
15. Every mall food court
16. Dunkin Donuts
17. Bob Evans
18. Denny's
19. Chick-fil-A
20. Anywhere that serves Frito Pie