Friday , July 30, 2010
nogoodforme ix: Our Most Satisfying Vices
BITING MY NAILS/GNAWING ON PENS/HAVING AN ORAL FIXATION GENERALLY
If a given object is in any way chewable, I'm already chewin' on it. Fingernails, bubblegum, writing implements, straws, wires, metal bars, woodchips, other people's fingernails, whatevs- I'm not picky. In addition to being the title of an album by Shakira, an "oral fixation" is a maladaptive obsession with putting things in your mouth that occurs when a baby is either under- or over-indulged. According to Sigmund Freud, people with oral fixations often accompany their desire to chew on shit with a similarly "biting" personality; this is decidedly true of me. According to Laura Jane Faulds, having an oral fixation sucks but also rules. Non-nailbiters will never understand how great it feels to let your nails grow out for a bit and then rip that shit off. Another thing non-nailbiters will never understand the shame of being a nailbiter at a job interview. According to Sigmund Freud, this is called "oral sadism". Maybe my oral fixation is not satisfying, and is actually "sad"-isfying. Oh God. It's a good thing I'm in therapy. (LJ)
BLOWIN' ALL MY CASH ON CLOTHES IN THE 818
(L: When I'm at the Galleria, I magically transform into Loryn from Valley Girl. R: But really I want to be Randy.)
Probably the thing I miss most about not being self-employed is having somebody bankroll all those three-hour lunch breaks I used to take at the epic malls of the 818 (aka "The Valley"). I can't really justify it now that I'm on my own clock, but oh how I long for those brain-melting afternoons spent tangled up in the stupid clutter of Westfield Topanga's Forever 21. The Galleria's a good time too, but now I mostly just stick with the Sherman Oaks Buffalo Exchange and the Studio City Crossroads, which is right near Du-par's, which makes me really want blueberry pie right now. (Liz)
DIET COKE + RED VINES = CRAZY-DELICIOUS
(L: Andy Samberg being wrong. R: One of my alternate spirit animals.)
"Lazy Sunday" got it wrong; the real magic combo is Diet Coke and Red Vines (Mr. Pibb = ewww). For a little while sometime last year, my favorite thing was to get a Big Gulp of Aspartame Juice (TM Laura Jane Faulds) and a package of Red Vines from the 7-Eleven across the street just before midnight on a Sunday, then fly back home just in time for Rodney on the ROQ. The fake-sweet of Diet Coke, the very real sweet of Rodney Bingenheimer, and the shitty plastic-y non-sweet of Red Vines is like some kinda magic formula that makes life feel like love. Nancy Botwin understands, at least about the soda: After weathering the worst day ever, just before ripping her clothes off and screaming her lungs out in the pool, our heroine makes a quick stop at the fridge to chug a whole can of DC. I GET THAT. (Liz)
MAKING FUN OF PEOPLE ON THE INTERNET
The Internet rules, and I am one of the hugest benefactors of its rule-age. Living in the Information Age has vastly enabled me to share my writing with the world and generate an amount of interest in my work that would have been 100% unattainable without the ol' superhighway on my side. Yet, the Internet has kinda fucked me in the wake of the semi-recent ubiquity of social networking sites: everybody has a Facebook profile, and everybody's Facebook profile exposes their mega-lameness, and so I can no longer delude myself into thinking that losers are cool, which is possibly awesome, but often depressing. Thanks to Facebook profiles, my peers can no longer hide behind sexy bone structure, Irish accents, and knowledge of Side D of The White Album's tracklisting. Facebook profiles tell no lies, and the truth is: everyone's a loser. But, as I always say: When life gives you lemons, make Lennon-ade! This means the exact same thing as its lemonade-oriented equivalent, only with John Lennon. So, in the true spirit of my winsome, sarcastic and societally-ambivalent anti-hero, I forgive my losery peers for their Internet crappiness, and deal with my feelings of resentment by stalking their Facebooks and making hilarious jokes about their bad taste. Stabbing lockfaces in the back ain't never done felt so good. Thanks, Internet! (LJ)
MALLS
I used to hate on malls, till I travelled to Asia and realized the mall, as practiced in cities like Bangkok and Tokyo, was actually the architectural art form of the late 20th century, so complete in their carving out of pre-fab psycho-geography that one can even go horseback riding in the best of them. Now I love malls in this really bizarre, happy way, like, "Oh, look at you, Wet Seal! Look at you, Bath and Body Works! How utterly lame yet comforting you are with your cleanly regulated space and weird mall acoustics!" Plus, I love me a good food court, especially when it has wi-fi. (Kat)
SALTY POTATOES IN ALL FORMS
Fries, frites, chips, baked, twice-baked, home-sliced, julienned, shoestring, whatever...you give me a salty potato in some form or another and I will be your creature, especially if you give them to me with one of my other favorite vices, ALCOHOL. My favorites are actually good old-fashioned McDonald's fries, which is totally terrible in so many ways. The terribleness can't make me forgo the perfect hot salty mess that are their fries, however; they could take the skin of babies and put it in there and I'd be all "Oh no!" for about five seconds before I crave them again. (Kat)
SEX
I actually don't think sex is a vice. But it sure can be satisfying, no? (Kat)
SMOKING WHERE I'M NOT SUPPOSED TO
Unless I've been deprived of a cig for a larger chunk of time than I'm used to, plain old smoking is rarely satisfying. Mostly it's just stinky, and makes cute non-smoker boys not want to date me. Also, it kills you. Death, in my opinion, is unsatisfying (although really, what do I know? I've never died- maybe death is the most satisfying vice of all?) There is pretty much no one in the world I want to punch in the face more than my bratty teenage self; like all smokers, I took it up at a young age to be cool. "The more rebellion, the better!" thought teenage Laura Jane, "I'm like Keith Richards now!" Nowadays, the only time I can tap into the satisfaction of loving smoking for smoking's sake is when I smoke in places where smoking is not allowed. If there is a No Smoking sign in my presence, y'all better believe I'm lighting up. It's also fun to sneak into fancy hotel bathrooms with a scrappy girlfriend or two, then all smoke individual cigarettes in individual stalls (that way, you can flush them down the toilet if hotel management approaches). And finally, it's pretty damned satisfying to charm your way into the heart of a dude who would "never date a smoker" and convince him to let you smoke out his window because it's cold. But this one's kind of a deathtrap- you can only do it once, or the rest is smelly, grubby, nasty-ashtray history. (LJ)
SUGAR + SALT + JUNK-FOOD JOURNALISM
(L to R: Coca-Cola makes you sexy; apparently there's a breed of deer called Rold Gold, which is cooler to look at than pretzels; a band I love on the cover of Spin.)
While I hate that I love Diet Coke, I love that I love plain old sugary-syrupy-fructosey Coca-Cola. It's the sweetest evil, and I totally feel Vivi from Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood (the book, not the lame-ass movie) when she says how Coke is her friend. Coke is my friend too, and it's best when paired with Rold Gold pretzels and some junk-foodie kinda reading material like band profiles in Spin or "Chuck Klosterman's America." The main reason I want magazines to survive is I need them to keep assigning me stories so I can buy groceries and stuff; the third or fourth main reason is I really love that crunchy sound that the Rold Gold salt crystals make when you turn the page after having spilled all over your new issue of Esquire. (Liz)
Tags: Andy Samberg, Chuck Klosterman, Coke, Diet Coke, Facebook, getting to know us better, Rodney Bingenheimer, s-e-x, salt, save print media, smoking, spirit animals, sugar, the mall, The Valley, Valley Girl, vices, Weeds
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6 Comments!!
Say something so insightful and witty, it will blow us away. (No pressure.)
Got something to say? We'd love to hear it! Name, email and "type in the weirdo drunken text" thingie are all required to comment; don't worry, we won't email you or anything, we just want to make sure you're not an evil spambot. Keeping in mind the good-times mentality we like to keep going here, we've worked hard to keep NOGOODFORME.COM as fun as possible. We welcome all kinds of comments, but insults/abuse/general bitchery are not tolerated. In other words, we put the smackdown on evil troll posts. If you want to be a hater, please go elsewhere. Now, as Salt 'N Pepa say, "Only the sexy people..."
Out of everything we've ever posted to nogoodforme.com, this post is the one that most directly relates to our blog's name. RIGHT?????
I like malls, too.
And clearly, another vice of mine is "taking an absurd amount of digicam self-portraits and posting them to the Internet," but it's kind of more embarrassing than satisfying.
By Laura
on March 11, 2009 6:01 PM
the only way it'd be more perfect would be if our name was 'vice.'
i wanna go the mall right now - waaaahhhhhh...i hate the recession!!
By Liz
on March 11, 2009 9:35 PM
Malls? In Tokyo? What malls? Like an indoor, American-style mall?
By John on March 11, 2009 11:57 PM
total nail-biter.
By brittney on March 12, 2009 1:34 AM
i can't believe you found the coke girl picture, liz. i have such fond memories of that poster on a dorm room wall. vices are what make us so human, no?
i'll end the way i'm ending lately: I LOVE NGFM.
By sarah on March 12, 2009 10:48 AM
whoa, i didn't realize that was the same poster! i must've been psychically drawn to it...
By Liz
on March 12, 2009 4:51 PM