Category: snark

Do you remember your President Nixon?

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I like to do quizzes. My favorite site for quizzes is Sporcle. And I’ve always been into presidential trivia, ever since I was a young child and got a book with weird presidential facts at the Scholastic book fair. So I’ve been doing a lot of history and president quizzes, and I was having trouble with for a bit with the “identify these presidents by their pictures” quizzes. Some of the presidents look way too fucking alike. Grant, Hayes and B. Harrison are all beardy, all served in the late 1800s, and just don’t give you a lot to work with. So I wrote a list of the presidents and how to identify them/tell them apart (and some fun facts.) Enjoy!

(I’m also trying to memorize them all in order, but Millard Fillmore fucks it up. Who cares about Millard Fillmore?)

How to tell the presidents apart:

  1. George Washington: Oh no, Grandpa forgot to put his teeth in, but his wig is perfect.
  2. John “The OG” Adams: Big hair, painted portrait, sideburns. Looks like he takes the weight of the republic very seriously.
  3. Thomas “Rights for All Men Except The Ones I Purchased” Jefferson: Redhead when young. Handsome. Ruddy cheeks. Looks like Thomas Jefferson.
  4. James “Mad Dog” Madison: Looks kinda haughty, not bad looking, painted portrait, clean-shaven
  5. James “Portraitists Hate Me” Monroe. Clean shaven, short brown hair. Painters were not kind to him.
  6. John Quincy Adams: Conservative muttonchops, close-cropped white hair.
  7. Andrew Jackson: Looks a lot like the guy on the $20 bill. Dessicated when older; he was probably exhausted from ordering the slaughter of all those “Injuns” on the Trail Of Tears.
  8. Martin Van Buren: Glorious white muttonchops and floofy white hair to match. The only president who spoke English as a second language, and the first born after the American Revolution.
  9. William Henry Harrison: Clean-shaven. Kinda looks like Sam Waterson. Shortest presidential term ever because he gave the lonest inauguration speech in history while standing in the pouring, freezing rain and apparently that’s a dumb thing to do. Got sick and died.
  10. John Tyler: Cadaverously thin. Clean-shaven. Way too thin. Like, seriously, hook a brother up with a sammy or something.
  11. James “Don’t Knox It Until You’ve Tried It” Polk: Clean shaven, had a man-about-town look to him, hair is white and kinda mullety, but cool?
  12. Zachary “Zed To My Friends” Taylor: Kinda craggy, didn’t look happy. Clean-shaven.
  13. Millard “Seriously? I was a president?” Fillmore: Bland-looking. Clean shaven. Kinda chubby. Who the fuck remembers Millard Fillmore?
  14. Franklin “Ugly On The Inside” Pierce: Youngish, handsome, but also like super racist tho. Popped collar like he was hot shit. Clean-shaven.
  15. James Buchanan: Older, handsome, bachelor, lookin’ for the hottest ladies. Popped collar, but more in a dandy sort of way. Clean-shaven.
  16. Abraham Lincoln. He kinda looks like the guy on the penny.
  17. Andrew Johnson: Looks like a vagrant that wandered into the presidency and is pissed about it. Clean-shaven, but looks like he thinks baths are for sissies.
  18. Ulysses Grant. Shortish beard, haunted expression. On the younger side when elected. Easy to distinguish from other beardy presidents because he looks like he sees the ghosts of dying soldiers everywhere. Drank himself to death.
  19. Rutherford “Ooh My Little Beardy One” Hayes: ONE OF THE CURSED BEARDED ONES. Uh… whiter beard than….
  20. James “Not a Cat” Garfield: Not a cat. Also beardy. Browner hair/beard. But seriously, what the fuck. Assassinated, clearing the way for…
  21. Chester A. Arthur: Inglorious muttonchips. From Vermont, but Vermonters are fine letting New York have him.
  22. Grover “Not a Muppet” Cleveland. Looks like Taft, less-fancy mustache, marginally less obese.
  23. Benjamin “Whitebeard” Harrison: The whitest beard of all the beardy beards. Also kept his beard rather well-groomed. Beard.
  24. Grover “Deja-vu” Cleveland: Looks like he was president twice.
  25. William “Denali” McKinley: Always looks like someone poked him in the butt and he’s offended. Assassinated.
  26. T-Roos: If you don’t know what Teddy Roosevelt looks like, you’re a dumb-dumb.
  27. William “Heavyweight” Taft: Fat, fancy mustache.
  28. Woodrow “World War Won” Wilson: Looks like he’s gonna smack you one. Sometimes glasses. Clean-shaven, stern. Looks like he led his country through WWI and the Spanish flu and he’ll have none of your shit.
  29. Warren Gamaliel Harding. Eyebrows. In many pictures looks like he’s on death’s door (he was!) Listed his middle name because for some reason I know it. Tenure marked by SCANDAL!
  30. Calvin “The Potomac Sphinx” Coolidge. Clean-shaven, looks kinda like Truman, NO GLASSES, kinda smug but like he earned it. Vermonter, and this one we’re proud of.
  31. Herbert “Damn Dam” Hoover: Chubby, looks nice enough to name homeless camps after. Clean-shaven.
  32. Franklin “Polio Sucks” Roosevelt: Looks more and more like he’s about to die (he was!)
  33. Harry “The S is for Sexy”. Truman: Glasses, looks like a swell guy other than that whole atomic bomb thing.
  34. Double-D Eisenhower: Looks like your cool great-uncle if he happened to be a 5-star general.
  35. John “The F is for Fuckmachine” Kennedy: Callow and wall-eyed.
  36. Lyndon “Let Me Show You My Penis” Johnson: Looks like a dirty old man.
  37. Tricky Dick Nixon: Looks hungover from all the souls he drank last night. Shifty.
  38. Gerald “Oopsie, I’m the President” Ford: Looks completely out of his depth
  39. Jimmy “Iran So Far Away” Carter: Just a simple peanut farmer! Looks like the kind of guy who’d not only give you directions, he’d draw you a map and send you off with a piece of his wife’s prize-winning cherry pie.
  40. Ronald “The Gipper” Reagan: Resembles a movie star’s corpse.
  41. George “READ MY LIPS NO NEW TAXES” Bush: Tends to look smug, taken aback, or a combination thereof.
  42. William “It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is” Clinton: Looks like he speaks with a drawl when he’s trying to steal your woman.
  43. George “Walker Texas Ranger” Bush: Like an adolescent chimpanzee who is very impressed with himself.
  44. Barack “Seriously, how can you think Kennedy was hotter than me?” Obama: Voted “Best Smile”
  45. ERROR ERROR NO DATA PROCESS INTERRUPTED
  46. Joseph Robinette Biden: Looks like grandpa still walks three miles a day and builds his own fences.

99 (er, 7) Problems

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I WOULD NOW LIKE TO OUTLINE FOR YOU THE WAYS THAT MEN ARE OPPRESSED IN AMERICAN SOCIETY:

1. They often lose in child custody cases.

2. Sometimes they’re accused of rape, and they didn’t do it. I mean, sure, this hardly ever goddamned happens, but it HAS happened. And it’s totally as bad as rape, even though it’s less prevalent. Even though people who make false accusations are often fined and/or jailed. It’s oppression. Obvs.

3. Jock itch.

4. Not being able to cry at movies without being thought of as a sissy.

5. Sometimes, like, some bitch sabotages the birth control, right? And then the guy has to make these fucking payments for, like, 18 goddamned years. Oppression.

6. Women and children first off of sinking ships or whatever.

7. The Friend Zone. You know what I’m talking about.

love is a hell you can not bear/give me mine back and then go there

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L’esprit d’escalier (literally, staircase wit) is a French term used in English that describes the predicament of thinking of the right comeback too late.

–From Wikipedia

So about four months ago, I wrote an email to a guy I used to be quite fond of, and he wrote back. At the time, it seemed we’d said what needed to be said, and I was comfortable trying to move on from the whole thing.

But, if you’ve been reading this here blahhhhg, you’ll know that I’ve been doing some work on self-blame lately, and damned if what he wrote to me doesn’t stick in my craw something fierce.

Because: We dated for a year. A year of hanging out and drinking in bars and spending time together in our respective houses and going out and doing things and having lots and lots of what was, quite frankly, amazing and unprecedented sex. For a goddamned year.

And that whole time, he was embarrassed by me? Afraid to let me around the other people in his  life that he cared about? I was good enough to fuck but not good enough to bring around his friends? For a year?

Let me tell you, the audience, and you, the guy who isn’t reading this (but whose network of little gnomes probably are) what my life was like during that year. I was losing my shit. Pretty much the whole time. My life was made up of three things: The Boy, numbness, and panic. I was not well. The drugs I was on to help my depression had turned me into a numb, panicky zombie who couldn’t function or even manage to leave the house very often, at least not when it was light out. I’d dropped out of school because I couldn’t sit still. I’d alienated a lot of my friends. I slept all day and stayed up all night and was making art with my own blood and was completely, balls-out obsessed with The Boy. Yes indeed.

He would have been entirely correct to have run the other way. He would have been more than justified in never seeing me again. But he didn’t stay away. He kept on having (crazy, wonderful) sex with me. He kept seeing me. For a year, until I deliberately sabotaged things so he’d stop coming around for free sex and emotional torture.

What the fuck does that say about him?

I might be crazy, dear readers, but I am not and have never been that much of an asshole.

whatever and ever, amen

Published on by Kate1 Comment

So K is getting married. I know this because I am an idiot and I checked his Google+ page the other night.  And he’s getting married.  Whoop-dee-fucking-doo.  I’m happy for him.  But I don’t know whom to be more jealous of– her, because she has HIM, the love of my life, my cute geeky boy, blah blah blah– or HIM because he found someone he wants to spend the rest of his fucking life with and I’m alone, all alone, forever alone.

He was like my poly role model, people.  And then pretty much as soon as we broke it off, he hooked up with this [redacted], and now they’re getting MARRIED.

Yeah, yeah, move on.  I know.  I have.

But he’s seared into my soul.  Never loved anyone like that, not before, not since.  Blah blah blah.

I met someone.  He’s older than me.  He’s kind.  I don’t want to jinx it.  It’s new.  It’s open.

My poly role model is getting married, and here I am four years later, still doin’ the free-love thing.  Odd how things work out.

And it’s odd how meeting someone new can throw all these things from my past into such sharp relief.  I forgot what it feels like to let my guard down.  I forgot what it feels like to be adored back.  But now I remember.

One night with K, after some private adult aerobics, he rested his head on my chest for a few moments.  That may have been the closest he ever came to tenderness.  I can’t believe I was so in love with someone who wouldn’t/couldn’t/didn’t even hold me.  Or that I spent 15 months of the last two years with a guy– well, I’m done saying mean shit about Emery for now.  BUT I AM THINKING IT.

I deserve better.  I’m gonna go out and get it.

Vintage Post #2 (Early 2008)

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[For an assignment in the greatest class I took in college, “Dangerous Words.”  We were supposed to write a cover letter for an imaginary job application.  This is mine.]

Dear Sir/Madam:

I am applying for your job as “Mattress Tester” which was listed in the Oregonian and on Craigslist.  As I have been sleeping in beds every night for nearly 27 years, I feel I am well and uniquely qualified for this job.

My parents raised me in a home in which beds were the norm.  I have slept on many different mattresses, and feel that I can distinguish not only good ones from bad ones, but which ones may be good for children or the elderly, due to issues of size and accessibility.  I can also evaluate frames as to their stability, durability and dimensions.  I have experience with cots, futons and the most luxurious of mattresses, including memory-foam mattresses, and can tell almost immediately whether a bed is comfortable or not.

In my past experience evaluating mattresses, I have often even worked double-shifts so that my assessments are thorough and detailed.  My dedication to sleep and the accoutrements that accompany it has been commented on many times by parents, friends and housemates.  Please consider me most seriously for this position.

Thank you for your time and kind attention.

Sincerely,

Kate Folsom

I really could use some emolliation right about now.

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(Mr. E and I are playing a game of Lexulous on Facebook, and he’s winning.  The following conversation takes place)

Mr. E: prepare to be FB ameliorated
Kate: …honey?
Kate: ameliorated means “relieved.”
Kate: or eased.
Kate: http://www.merriam-webster.com/netdict/ameliorate
Mr. E: humm, sigh. facepalm
Kate: Now you know. Isn’t it nice to know?
Mr. E: I will *emolliate* you.
Mr. E: and then ameliorate your ass.
Kate: You’re going to moisturize me?
Kate: Oh, honey.
Mr. E: With lotion.
Mr. E: Bitch.
Kate: You mean “immolate.”
Kate: You sweet, precious thing.
Mr. E: fuck double facepalm
Kate: I feel great affection for you right now.
Kate: You know big words! Let’s just work on the definitions, shall we?