A few weeks ago, Time ran this cover … proclaiming the aughts “The Decade from Hell.” It’s provocative, to be sure. Unfortunately for Time Warner, it didn’t provoke me to read the article (or buy the magazine). It did get me to thinking, though, about my last ten years and just how much they, well, sucked.

It rolls off the tongue easily. This sucks. That sucks. And I way overuse the word (cf. awesome). However … when I say the last decade sucked, I am—if anything—downplaying matters.

2000 through 2009 saw: separation from husband, revelation of husband’s affair, uncle’s death, aunt’s death, grandmother’s death, betrayal by business partner, other grandmother’s death, bankruptcy, divorce, annulment, grandfather’s death, ex-husband’s engagement, ex-husband’s marriage, loss of business, return to live with parents, uncle’s death, layoff, Molly’s death, year of unemployment concomitant with nervous breakdown, uncle’s death, end of serious committed relationship.

These events span the time between December 2002 and December 2009, so, to be precise, the last seven years have sucked in earnest. The previous three were more of a low-grade kind of suck.

It goes without saying that I’m far from alone in facing adversity and suffering. Clearly, too, I’m leaving out the many unambiguously good things that happened. I don’t tell you any of this to court sympathy but simply to share more about myself than I have heretofore been willing, with the idea that it might just be liberating somehow.

See, I’ve come to think of the last several years as my dark night of the soul. And while a new decade provides as convenient a bookend as any, I don’t know that my dark night is necessarily coming to a close any time soon. (In my experience, these things are unmoved by the Gregorian calendar’s invitation to orderliness.)

I do know I’ve spent the last seven years struggling to push through it—to will it to be over—hoping the latest loss would be the last, frantically trying to keep from losing my shit altogether … to no avail.

…

Five years ago today, my grandmother passed away. She was 94, and at the end her memory was quite bad. On one of my last visits she said, “Is everything okay? I feel like I should be worried about something, but I can’t remember what it is.”

It broke my fucking heart, and not because she was old or because I knew she’d be gone soon. It broke my heart because I realized something disquieting: She’d lived so much of her life in fear that even when the content of her worries escaped her, the fear remained. And so it broke my heart, for her and for me. That is my legacy. Now, I think it may be my salvation, too.

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I put a lot of effort into taking a, well, journalistic approach to blogging. Hmm. No, no, I don’t think journalistic is too strong a word. I’m conscious, at every turn, that I must resist the biggest temptation of being a famous infamous blogger.

No … not the free blow I get at parties. And sure, the slavishly devoted male underwear models are enticing, but that’s not what I’m talking about either. The most dangerous pitfall of having a blog is turning it into a forum for self-validation.

You know what I’m talking about … those blogs where the author endlessly yabs about what a great writer she is, how witty she can be, and how her bod is smokin’ hot. (Okay, I couldn’t actually find a post where I brag about my bangin’ ass. It’s bangin’. Trust me.)

In all seriousness, it is tempting to present yourself in a flattering light, to try to control your so-called image, to put forward only the parts of yourself that (rightly or wrongly) you’re excessively fond of. Of course, this happens IRL as well. It’s human nature to want to make a good impression. In writing, though, there’s a level of calculation involved that just seems, I dunno, creepy to me.

I try to avoid self-spin … sometimes obsessively, in fact, but let’s face it … getting naked—emotionally, intellectually—ain’t easy. It’s the hardest thing there is. When Mimi told me recently to stop using the blog to brag, I began to wonder if I’ve been a little neglectful of my journalistic responsibilities lately.

To counter this possible trend, I’ve decided to begin making one post a week that’s just me … no spin. It may be a bit like trying to have a rational discussion with Bush about why we can’t use Norway as a penal colony, but the journey of a thousand miles and all that.

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At the risk of exposing myself as the immodest asshole that I am, I’ll let you in on a little secret … I have a way with words. It’s preternatural. What I mean is I haven’t done much of anything to earn this talent. Didn’t start really reading for pleasure until I was in my teens. Even now, I read less than you might imagine. I don’t workshop. Well, you get my point.

I bring this up only to say that I realize my verbal voodoo is not a hard-earned skill. It’s … well, something akin to a freak of nature. And what I am about to do—rip someone else’s writing without pity—is a classless thing. Nonetheless, here we go.

Now, I’ve never mentioned exactly what it is I do all day in my deluxe, non-Copley-facing, non-window cube. That’s because a) I like to cultivate an air of mystery around myself and b) I do a little of this and a little of that, none of which I am what they call “passionate” about.

At the moment, I am copyediting a textbook on broadcasting. It is bad. Poorly written, poorly punctuated, poorly organized. Bad. This is not unusual; in fact, it’s my bread and butter. Don’t misunderstand. I grouse about shitty writing, even when I’m being paid handsomely to fix it … what it says about the state of education, the world, the very survival of our species. I rant about all the reasons why people … even those without my god-given talents … should be able to avoid a comma splice.

Still, it’s highly usual. The banality of bad writing is precisely why when you come across an example of stunningly ill-conceived writing it is cause célèbre.

Yesterday, I was slogging through a chapter on copywriting for radio. I broke up the monotony by periodically bitching to Em Em about the maddening suckiness of it all and my unspeakable misfortune in having to expose my eyes to it.

Then it happened; I saw it. The thing all editors wait for: A phrase so exquisitely misshapen it transcends bad and loops back around again to something resembling the divine. A phrase that, without intending to, turns meaning on its ear … day into night, black into white … well, you know.

Avoid choppiness. Use transitions.

Corny as it may sound, as it may in fact be, at that moment the phrase was manna from heaven … a validation of my misguided career choices, my pathological ability to spot errors everyone else misses, my very being. I may be an aggressive driver, a bad singer, a mediocre dresser, a fair-weather sports fan, and a very, very [Ed. VERY] sore loser at Scrabble, but I can string words together better than this poor fucker and that’s not nothing.

Many thanks to the Uninvited Editor for accepting my invitation to edit this post.

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I don’t know if its just all the birthday-related attention I’m getting or if it’s a sublimation of the newly formed hole in my heart where my youth used to be, but I feel absolutely mad with the power. So, I’m posting not one, but TWO birthday posts to myself. Yea-uh!

And, yes, you have to comment in both, bitches. (And, uh, you forgot Myspace.) God-daayum. Don’t make me eliminate you and replace you with newer, shinier robo-friends … I mean, dedicated readers whom I’ve never met before in my life.

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Yesterday I was home sick from work. I watched me a little Beverly Hills 90210, ya know, on Soap Net. I napped a little. But even with this busy schedule, I became a smidge bored. So I did what I do sometimes to entertain myself … I posted an ad in craigslist’s w4m section and then enjoyed reading through the responses. All right, I’m totally breaking the girl code of ethics to admit this. Guys fear it, and, yes, it’s true … we sometimes post just for shits and giggles. (Okay, sometimes we post looking for meaningless sex, but 7 times out of 10, it’s just out of sheer boredom.)

Anyhoo, yesterday I posted this ad:

I’m a b*tch – 34

I’m a tease; I’m a goddess on my knees; When you hurt, when you suffer; I’m your angel undercover; I’ve been numb, I’m revived; Can’t say I’m not alive; You know I wouldn’t want it any other way.

Okay, not the most inspired hook (or song) ever, but I am a bit of a spitfire. You should know that up front. If you’re looking for a nice, normal girl next door, I know lots of em I’d be happy to introduce you to. That’s just not me.

I don’t own a pink Sox hat or watch Grey’s Anatomy, and I most certainly don’t dream of a McMansion in Wellesley. No, I’d rather go to roller derby. I download torrents of Entourage and Battlestar Galactica, and I fantasize about having a yurt on a lake somewhere.

…

Yada yada.

The responses rolled in, and I whiled away the afternoon reading them. Then this morning I got a response that read, in its entirety:

“Prozac or Zanex will help!”

I don’t know if I was feeling particularly cranky because I was still sick and had to go into work anyway or what, but it really got my Irish up. As I showered, I mentally drafted the perfect reply to the man only known to me as BNF61. I shot it off before I left for work, not really expecting a reply. When I got to work, though, I saw that the e-mail had bounced. The fucking smart ass had been too much of a pussy to even use a real e-mail address! Too perfect.

Naturally, I did what any bitch worth her weight in psychotropic meds would do … I posted my reply on craigslist.

Dear BNF61

Dear BNF61, aka the dude who’s too wimpy to write an e-mail using a real e-mail address,

Thanks for the tip, but next time I need stupid medical advice I’ll ask a rodeo clown or a chimp that knows sign language or something. See Prozac is used for depression and *Xanax* (not Zanex) is prescribed for anxiety, neither of which are indicated in my post. If there were a pill to make smart, vivacious women suddenly become boring prigs, I’d probably start a blog to warn everyone about it. Since you seem to prefer your women medicated, though, might I recommend Rohypnol? Maybe unconscious women won’t realize what a dumbass you are. Then again, I make no guarantees.

—

By this time, I had taken down my original post—having actual work to keep me occupied. Even without benefit of the original post or any backstory at all, about two dozen very sweet men wrote to give props, ask me out, etc.

Now I wonder if the best w4m ad isn’t an imaginary caustic response to some imaginary retard. Hmm.

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The lead in says (without any irony I can detect):

In 2006, the World Wide Web became a tool for bringing together the small contributions of millions of people and making them matter

Come on, now. You didn’t honestly think I was gonna be all like “Whoo hoo! Look at me … I’m Time‘s Person of the Year! Dood, so are you! We rawk!!!”

I don’t know about y’all, but I mattered way before the Internets and way before Time deigned to acknowledge the grandiosity de moi. So did my contributions, however wee and humble. Maybe not to Lev Grossman or the folks over at our friendly neighborhood media conglomerate, but to the people who matter I mattered. And that’s all that matters, as a matter of fact.

Furthermore, even if I didn’t hate sycophants and their phony-baloney ways (which I most ardently do), the time to kiss someone’s ass is when they’re still struggling to make it, not when they have a super rad blog and tremendously huge piles of money and pork belly futures and shit—like some people I know. Duh.

So, no, Mr. Parsons, you can’t “kick it” with me and Kanye in the Hamptons. Man, move on. This is getting embarrassing.

So say I. So say we all. (And, by we, I mean me … now with 10% more gusto.)

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I’m happy to report a new personal best. Got to work this morning in 34 minutes, door to door, including a stop at Starbies—slashing 6 minutes off my previous best time! Of course, I left at 6:15, so I was pretty much the only person on the roads. (Actually, I never cease to be amazed at how many people are up and about at that hour.) I suppose there are some perks to only sleeping from midnight to 4 a.m. Goodbye, rush hour.

In all honesty (and modesty), I am the best driver I know … I have scary-good predictive lane-changing abilities, and I can text message, tune the radio and apply lip gloss (the kind with a wand, no less) at the same time without veering off course. Sure, I may have grown up in the Midwest (home of the I’ve-got-no-place-to-go- and-nothin-to-do-so-please-by-all-means-cut-in-front-of-me school of driving), but I learned to drive here in New England and have spent the last ten-plus years honing my skills in Boston (home of the Masshole school of driving).

Noooo, I don’t use my turn signals most of the time—only when my movements will impact other drivers, to be more specific. Anything more is just a plain waste of a free hand.

Is my driving record spotless? Hell no. That’s the price you pay for gettin’ where you’re going. Here are the germane facts:

• number of fatalities caused: 0
• number of bodily injuries caused to self or others: 0
• number of fatalities caused to furry little creatures: 2
• number of bodily injuries caused to furry little creatures: 1
• time since most recent furry little creature incident: 12 years

The lesson here? Cars aren’t reflections of our worth as human beings. Anyway, driving’s not meant to be self-esteem camp. Getting from A to B … that’s all we’re doin. My superior navigational skills don’t mean you’re less worthy of love or happiness. If life were a game of Driver, however, you’d want to be on my side. That’s nothing to be ashamed of.

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After an unplanned hiatus of, oh, about five-ish weeks, CMG Unite is back. My apologies for the disappearing act … I hate disappointing my publics … but a confluence of so-called life events made it unavoidable.

Without going into too much detail (because, really, what’s less interesting than too much detail?), I will offer a few observations/bon mots about the last 34 days:

• I moved. As it turns out, if you were to take all of my shit, crap and junk, line it up end to end and stack it seven feet high, it would span the Charles River a half dozen times or so. It’s time to divest. That’s just too much stuff for one gal and two poochies.
• My ex—the very same ex you know and love from 63 Things—was trapped in Lebanon amidst a burgeoning and bloody war. Now, we all know the impulse to guard a loved one’s welfare is fierce … irrepressible maybe. As it turns out, it is also not easily extinguished … apparently extending even to previously loved ones.
  [Ed. More on 63 Things later.]
• Lastly, one of my favorite and, IMHO, very best men in the world suddenly became very ill and died. In his memory, I am creating a new post category … Funny Shit, Not Otherwise Classified, a compendium of things that would have made RH laugh. It’s no effigy in wax, but—since he was irreverence personified—I think he would prefer it this way.
• I get it already! Life is a long lesson in humility. I’m all set with the shakabuku, thank you.

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It’s official! I’m the funniest person alive.

Today I received a call from my friendly neighborhood collection agent. See, my bank account had slipped under the, um, preferred balance of greater than or equal to zero. Anyway, the collection agent begins to ask me the 80 billion questions they need to ask to confirm I’m me.

“What is your bank account number?” she asks.

I see where this is going, but I try to play nice. “I don’t have it on me … you called me.”

“Okay, we can look it up by your social security number.”

“It’s 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9.”

“What is your home telephone number?”

“6-1-7-5-5-5-1-2-1-2.”

“What’s your cell number?”

“Same.”

“Well, what is 6-1-7-5-5-5-2-3-2-3 then?”

Choosing to overlook the fact that, for all she knows, she has just given a customer’s cell number to an imposter, I try to cut to the chase.

“Uh, it’s an old number. What is this in regards to?”

“It is in regards to a personal banking matter. What is your maternal grandmother’s shoe size?”

We finally get through the security check, with her apparently convinced that I am me. When she comes up for air, I jump in to let her know about the deposit I made earlier in the day.

“Okay, let me go look that up.”

If you have access to this on your computer, why the fuck did you call me in the first place?!?

That’s what I’m thinkin’, but I just say, “Okay, sure.”

She comes back on the line and tells me a bunch more stuff I already know. “Your deposit was …” “Your balance is …”

I can tell we’re gettin’ to the home stretch. I can hear it in her voice. She kinda hesitates and asks, “Do you have any idea how this situation occurred?”

“Uh … I ran out of money,” I say.

For my frankness, I was rewarded with the most gratifying sound I have heard in quite a long time … she laughed! I made a fucking collection agent laugh. And it was no snort or guffaw either. It was full-on laughter.

Niiiice. That made the whole exercise in time wastage worthwhile.

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Okay, okay. I haven’t got my poll working just yet. Humbly beg indulgence, etc., as I’ve been sick as all get out for almost three weeks now. Thank you to everyone who sent best wishes for a speedy recovery/flowers/donations in my name to the Self-Righteous Prig Association. Well, I’ve got no fans, so clearly that’s a lie. It would have been cool, though … the flowers, I mean. I like flowers.

Anyhoo, back to the point of this post. A friend recently sent me links to several online diagnostic tools, which proclaim to measure a person’s relative nerd quotient. I accepted … nay, I embraced the challenge of once and for all bringing my nerdiness to light. Unflinchingly, I answered question after question on the first test, feeling pretty confident that my results would be sufficiently nerdy to, ya know, make my parents proud and yet not so nerdy as to lend credence to the kids in school who mocked my eagerness to be chosen for math relay. Yeah, like so many a fond wish … well, here’s how it shook out:

I really need to look into the methodology of a test that puts me in the 90th percentile of nerds. I mean, am I nerdier than 90% of all theoretical people? Am I nerdier than 90% of the people who’ve taken the test? Am I nerdier than 90% of the people who lived on the author’s floor freshman year at UNLV? I need to know these things before I can adequately adjust my worldview. My gut tells me the test is moderately well thought out. It does include a question that explores a person’s motives in taking the test, which seems a rather concise way to cut to the proverbial chase. I don’t think I have the strength to take the other tests. Not tonight anyway. I will let you know how things fare for me and my fragile self-image in a future post.

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