Currently the slow death of my blog is tearing me to pieces. I haven’t been able to publish as often as I’d like. I’ve been working on a cool blog post for the past few days now, but I haven’t had the time to polish it up because of my workload.

Ideally, I’d like to post every day. But I’m such a perfectionist about getting the pictures, grammar, and overall content right that I don’t want to hit “publish” until it’s perfect. And perfection sometimes takes a couple of hours, which currently need to be spent working towards my “future” — some glimmering peak on a mountain top in heaven or hell, depending upon the effort I put into it.

But sometimes you have to get over your own need for perfection, and just put out a post saying you’re alive, and you’re here, and isn’t it wonderful? And while I’m busy working towards my “future”, I’m stopping here to write because it’s what I love, and if you’re not pausing to do the things you love once in awhile, the things you’re working so hard for in the “future” won’t mean as much.

So in the mean time, while you’re out there, trying to figure out who you are after all these years and wondering who’s turn it is when you all arrive at a stop sign at the same time, I wanted to share with you a little reminder that life is beautiful, and the importance of pause. 

Warning: no two drunks are alike. The degree to which alcohol affects the average human’s body, mind, and soul, differs from human to human. The below advice should be considered as a general plan of attack to tame ‘the intoxicated’, and may or may not be applicable to every drunk.

Second warning: It’s Halloween. Witching hour. Your typical happy drunk may stab you in the back or stab themselves in the front. Either way, following these steps should keep all stabbing to a minimum.

1. Identify the type of drunk. This is the first step in properly assessing how to tame ‘the intoxicated’ Lady Gaga, Sexy Warrior Princess, or Sassy Daisy Bee. Persons that become weepy, tired, angry, loud, or just too fucking happy, will need to be handled differently.

2. Sympathize. Gage the number of drinks ‘the intoxicated’ has had, and put yourself in their shoes. Remember, you too have once been at their level, after 4 beers, a shot of tequila, and a Midori sour someone gave you for no reason at all but who cares you guzzled it. Try and gauge where their head’s at, before you start yelling “Shut up, Jenn! You’re fucking drunk!” and pushing them towards the door. This will keep an overly happy drunk happy, and an angry drunk less so.

3. Listen. They’re telling you about their cat, how much they hate fucking Facebook, how they love dressing like a slut on Halloween because it’s their only chance. Listen to them. They can’t talk like this when they’re sober, it’s awkward. This is their chance to express how they feel. At the very least pretend to listen. They won’t know the difference. And when you don’t listen, their decibel level increases exponentially.

4. Agree. ‘The Intoxicated’ wants to go skydiving! Tomorrow! Will you come with? Yes. It’s important to agree with ‘the intoxicated’ because they are sensitive to everything you say. If you say no, they’ll make a commotion to try and convince you by either being loud, telling all the other Sexy Jail Birds, Harry Potters, and Naughty Nurses you’re no fun, or making you ‘owe’ them something for not following them in their plane-jumping glory. Just say yes and deal with the consequences when they’re sober.

5. Distract them. When they want to leave you to tell that stranger dressed as Snow White how much they’ve always wanted to be a princess, it’s important to keep them in their place. Once ‘the intoxicated’ starts chatting it up with every Jason, Freddy, and Mike Myers in their periphery, things fall apart.  Especially when Jason, Freddy, and Mike Myers are less drunk. Once ‘the intoxicated’ starts making their move, distract them with something, anything. (Not another drink). What were you saying about skydiving with a cape?

All in all, let’s try and have a memorable Halloween, one in which blacking out simply means stumbling into a dark closet. Try not to lose your soul to the demons of the drink.

Who is Kimbra? You’ll know her best from the Somebody I Used to Know video, but that’s besides the point. The point is she’s got a number one fan right here, who is ready to tell all other number one fans and anyone disinterested, how to best prepare for a concert in which Kimbra will be headlining, in the ever-obnoxious city of Los Angeles. (P.S. I love L.A.)

1. Buff your hair up the day before. This will do nothing for your hair come concert time, but it is how you get in the mood.

2. Make a Kimbra playlist and play it on repeat until someone tells you “If I hear Cameo Lover one more time I’m turning this car around.”

 3. Make sure to remind everyone you know that you are seeing Kimbra tomorrow night at the Music Box at the Fonda in Hollywood at 8pm row GA4 Seats 3,4 Floor

4. Semi-obsessively, ogle over the picture/gif/video treasure that is the Kimbra tumblr account with your mouth half open and your eyes all glazed like you’re seeing diamonds for the first time.

5. Find your outfit in your sister’s closet. Or go to the nearest Forever 21 with that birthday gift card when she says no, and take endless pictures of yourself in every dress in the fitting room until you reach absolutely no decision.

6. And then decide on one.

Ok seriously.

Make sure to tell everyone confused about your decision that you intend to make the dress poofy underneath, channeling the Two-Way Street video.

7. Make sure your camera, video recorder, and lipstick are charged up and ready to go.

 8. Check the Kimbra Facebook page so you can see if she is as excited as you to perform in L.A. (she is).

9. Make sure she’s actually in L.A. via Instagram

(she is, that’s her band.)

10. And finally…GET THE FUCK EXCITED CAUSE KIMBRA’S ABOUT TO ROCK YOUR FUCKING TOWN!

And you’d better believe I’m gonna tell you all the fuck about it.

Blogging is oxygen to the internet’s lungs in the sense that it keeps all the moving parts thriving and pumping with life. There are more blogs than people named Doug. There are more blogs about how to blog better, than women named Stacey. There might be a couple about how to  blog horribly, and while this entire blog isn’t dedicated to such a daunting topic, this blog post is dedicated to all those blogs out there, this one namely, doing everything wrong.

Ladies and gents, this is how you have a horrible blog.

1. Never settle on a blog category. Once you’ve discovered you want your blog to be a diary about your life, realize your life isn’t all that interesting and change it to something about a quest to write a novel. Once you realize you’re not writing a novel anymore, change the topic of your blog to something like ‘personal growth’ and maybe structure each post to be kind of like a story, so you don’t forget your roots. Once you realize you’re not exactly happy doing that, change it again. This will throw people off every time, making them never want to return because they realize you’re a bunch of scattered puzzle pieces and they don’t have the time to put you together. (You need to be a bunch of scattered puzzle pieces to be horrible).

2. Make sure each post is no less than 1,000 words. By keeping your posts long and winded, people get tired of hearing about your crap. They read the first few lines, the last few lines, and then they think ‘ain’t nobody got time for dat‘ and move the fuck on. This is a great way to be irritating, and make people never want to read about you or even hang out with you.

3. Blog once a month. Because when people come to your blog and see that you’re rarely there, there isn’t a single fan big enough who is willing to wait around for you. And THAT is what makes a blog pretty horrible, because people get crazy when you don’t update them. And what’s worse, Google gets irritated, and excommunicates you to some sad, lonely, and ultimately horrible place.

Last but not least, tell your now zero following that this is going to be a post about three easy steps to blogging horribly, and carefully mislead them by actually writing down 4 steps. To top it all off, tell them there are about 35 more steps to a horrific blog but you don’t have time to go into them (because you’re a horrible blogger) and don’t even hint at them.