Archive for the ‘friendshippiness’ Category

My cat, who is named Fang, is fat and round, neurotic, a little retarded, cuddly and dog-like. My cat Fang is the greatest of all cats. He is the platonic ideal of cats, and without him I would never get any work done because he sits and supervises very carefully and puts his paw in my face if he senses I am slacking off, or if he wants to put his paw in my face.

I lucked out in the cat lottery, and because of that I am not afraid to sing the praises of my sweet little man, to acknowledge that I am a Cat Person, possibly verging on Crazy and Lady, if I’m going to be honest with you. I am crazy—about my cat (see what I did there?), to the point where I will talk about him on the internet without shame, and I will tell you also that he worries me.

I can’t keep up with whether it is cool to like Valentine’s Day now because it celebrates the universal spirit of togetherness we must embrace in order to make it through these dark times and to honor our renewed spirit of national hope and optimism, or cool in the spirit of irony and the embracing of dorky things like Care Bears and heart-shaped boxes of chocolate, or uncool because it is cliched and commercial and who really needs another pair of edible panties and it is exclusionary of those not in relationships and also cheesy or lame.

My personal stance, my plank in the platform, is that I am very fond of Valentine’s Day. I am a fan of love; I am glad that there is a day that honors love, in all its forms, filial and fornicatory, penetrative and otherwise.

One of my cherished notions about myself is that no one knows the extent to which I am a nerd. Oh, I have plenty of geek cred, just enough to make you think that I am so smart and interesting and alternative. You know, totally hipster. I love Doctor Who and I grew up watching Star Treks and will follow Joss Whedon around with love in my eyes if only he’d lift the restraining order, but that’s all okay, right, because it makes me cool yeah?

That level of nerdery is okay, even totally awesome; when I start going deeper into nerdtown, I start to get embarrassed. I start to feel uncomfortable about the fact that I like computer games, that I have nostalgic thoughts about the Dragonlance series, that I accept invitations to go play D&D on a Saturday night.

Since I moved to Utah, I have been inviting people to come visit Utah. Come visit Utah! I say. It has got fry sauce and mountains! Mormons and me! You will love Utah! You will come because of a sense of obligation and because you feel a little bit sorry for me, the way that I live in Utah, but you will want to stay for the “scones” (deep-fried sugary bread) and how cute I look in my giant white down jacket that looks more like a comforter and less like an article of clothing.

Weirdly, I wasn’t really taken up on my offer, and I can’t imagine why. When Mo Pie and I talked about seeing Twilight–we share a sick fascination for its magnificent awfulness and balls-to-the-wall determination to be thoroughly offensive in every possible way–we said how cool it would be, if she came to visit and we saw the movie and we had a weekend where I could go look, here is my town and my house and my life and how things are for me. I spend a lot of time talking and writing and telling about how it is and where I live and what I do, but I have had the urge and the desire and the need–I don’t even know why, and I wish I did–to take someone around and show them and say look, this is what I am talking about, do you see?