I am seeking a nerdy woman with low self esteem who wears glasses, has a great body and great sexual appetite but considers herself unattractive or told that you were unattractive. This is a fetish of mine and I want to live it out…

okay, i think we can let that whole “nerd” thing go now.

(also, i pretty much meet this dude’s criteria - except for considering myself a nerd and having a “great” body - but there’s no way i would hook up with somebody who has this as a fetish. my self esteem ain’t THAT low. ten bucks says this dude is a serial killer.)

occasionally, i find that i’ve let somebody in my life and i can’t for the life of me figure out why. it could be someone i actually know (and in some cases, i know well) or it could be an acquaintance or it could be one of those internet-only relationships where we only speak through email or twitter or livejournal comments. whatever the circumstance, they’re in my life and as we interact (or as i watch them interact with others, internet stalker-style), i wonder why i keep them around. why and how am i putting up with people who annoy me? what’s wrong with me? what’s wrong with them? i try to pinpoint the thing that’s bothering me.

when i do figure it out, 7 times out of 10 it’s the same basic reason: they’re kind of humorless. i’m not saying they don’t have a sense of humor, just that everything out of them is like an alternative ziggy cartoon caption, all ending with “sigh…”

and you know what? that’s fine. it’s their life, their internet real estate, so i’d never dream of telling them to lighten the fuck up. i’m just going to be a decent kid and, for the sake of my own mental health, get off of their lawn.

[the other 3 times, it’s because they’re kind of negative assholes.]

you know, i kind of wish somebody had stood up on that plane and said to him,”hey. you’re not jack donaghy. right now, you’re not even alec baldwin. you’re that asshole who’s holding up this flight so you can PLAY A FUCKING WORD GAME ON YOUR POCKET COMPUTER. this is how the real world works - they tell us to turn off our stuff and for the most part we do, the plane takes off, we get to turn our stuff back on again. we’re not special creatures, we’re passengers on a plane and we want to get going. so join the herd for, like, 10 minutes - until we get in the air - then go back to fancypants land. turn off your fucking phone, you goddamn sack of shit.”

it’s 5:30am and i am fired up. hoo boy, am i fired up. i just read this article in the ny times and it’s one of the dumbest things i’ve ever read in my life. IN MY LIFE.

it’s about trying to come up with an original name for your child in this internet age. parents are coming up with possibilities and immediately googling them to check for negative connotations. okay, that in itself is not a bad idea. if you want to give your child a name that’s off the beaten path (like, say, shalewa niambi) then you should do the research. you may think carrion is an interesting variation of the name carrie, but you’re basically calling your daughter a dead animal carcass. so please, google that shit.

but here is where the article takes a ny times-like turn, i.e. the first-est of first world problems. and i quote:

But too little research can backfire, too. Deborah Goldstein, 43, and her partner, Gabriella Di Maggio, thought they had chosen unique names for their boys: Levi and Asher. To be sure, they checked the Social Security Administration’s list of most popular baby names. Neither was in the top 100…

But shortly after the couple moved to South Orange, N.J., in 2006, they had a rude awakening. While waiting at an ice cream parlor, they heard a woman shout “Asher!” at a different boy.

“It was two other Jewish lesbian moms with a child of the same name,” Ms. Goldstein said. Google had let her down. “It didn’t tell us it’s a unique name unless you move to a neighborhood outside New York City where other trendy Jews are moving, too.”

really? so did they just leave the kid at the ice cream parlor rather than deal with the shame of being yet another trendy jewish lesbian couple with kids and an internet connection?

speaking of kids and the internet:

The next thing Ms. Pollak did, of course, was to Google it. “One of the Web sites said Chloe means little green shoots, and we liked that,” Ms. Pollak said. Chloe it was. They even registered their unborn child’s first and last name as a domain name and signed her up on Tumblr, Twitter and G-mail.

The Kaslofskys wish they had had that foresight. When they Googled Kaleya in 2009, there were only a few relevant results. But since then, the parents of another child named Kaleya have started posting videos of that little girl’s adventures on YouTube, with titles like “Kaleya Makes a Snow Angel” and “Kaleya Runs From a Wave.”

Ms. Kaslofsky is miffed. “Things have changed in the last three years,” she said.

you are all officially the worst people ever.

out of curiosity, i just googled my first name. i’m aware that it’s a fairly popular nigerian name. the first two results are my rooftop comedy profile and this tumblr. [sorry about that, other shalewas.] third is a song by danny young, a nigerian pop singer. but get this - the sixth result is this: a webpage for a woman who has my first & middle names, only switched. and instead of being “miffed,” i’m fascinated. the world is bigger than your fucking mommy & me play group, you idiots.

trust me, that i’m posting this on tumblr is not lost on me. at any rate, here’s drake’s opinion on tumblr, via his interview in the source:

“I’m really scared for my generation, you know. The thing that scares me most is Tumblr. I hate what Tumblr has become. Because it like, it reminds me of those clique-y girls in high school that used to make fun of everyone else and define what was cool, but in five years, when you all graduate, that shit doesn’t matter. No one gives a fuck about that shit. Instead of kids going out and making their own moments, they’re just taking these images and living vicariously through other people’s moments. It just kills me. Then you’ll meet them and they’re just the biggest turkey in the world. They don’t actually embody any of those things. They just emulate. It’s scary man, simulation life that we’re living. It scares me.”

let the church say amen.

(also, do i have to like drake now? i mean, i’ve just been fairly indifferent to his stuff, but now…i dunno. somebody tell me the protocol, please.)

while i was stretched out on a patch of grass during the pitchfork music festival, a young woman named ruth approached me. she was working on a piece for nerve.com - a regular feature called talking to strangers - and she asked if i wanted to answer a few probing questions about love, sex, and dating.

of course i did.

so she sat down & we had a lovely conversation, which she taped on her iPhone. then she asked to take a few pictures for the site. i was immediately tense. picture of me? and i have on absolutely no makeup, just sunscreen & sweat & a thin layer of festival filth? and i hate my face to begin with? UGH.

but i figured that it’s a website so it would probably be thumbnail-sized, so what the hell. i took a few with sunglasses and a few without (ruth: “my editor likes eyes.”). ruth thanked me; i returned to guided by voices.

ruth found me on twitter a couple of days ago, thanks to our mutual friend, gaby dunn (who knows everybody, by the way). ruth tweeted a link to the article, which i retweeted & posted on the facebook. then i looked at the article. perfectly fine. i was pretty happy with the words, but the photo caught me off guard. it was HUUUUUUUUGE. my sweet lord. but maybe the most surprising thing was that i didn’t hate it. i thought it was a *gasp* nice picture.

then i read the comments. no big whoop. various people did not find the group of subjects attractive, lots of unfair railing on one girl in particular (so she’s 20 & a virgin - let her be, idiots). then one guy said that he wouldn’t touch me with a stolen dick and someone else pushing.

my first thought was, “ouch.” next thought was, “well, sure.” then i just laughed. this all happened within the course of a couple of minutes.

as i pursue comedy, i have to get comfortable with putting myself out there in ways that i have actively shunned for most of my life. and since out there is the internet, i have to be able to deal with fifty-‘levin peanut galleries, all saying terrible things about me. but i’m kind of proud at how quickly i reached the laughter stage. and i’m glad i waited until my 30’s to start comedy. in my 20’s this would have crushed me. but i’ve had an extra decade to be hard on myself - there’s nothing crappy you can say about me that i haven’t said to myself in a mirror. that hard shell ain’t going nowhere for a while.

also, i’m very lucky that i know a bunch of amazing people. they know what’s up. i have no time for the anonymous.