flavors of mannequin

I haven’t quite figured out the mannequins here in Turkey. It's possible that Turkish people don't think that their mannequins are weird -- which would be weird. But there is a big part of me that believes that Turkish distributors know exactly what they are doing. They understand that their dummies will get more attention if it appears that they are part of an underground methamphetamine ring. I don’t know much, but I DO know that Turks have a fairly good sense of humor. And everyone probably agrees that a plastic model that appears to have been beat up by it's pimp is funny. It just is.

It kind of looks like she is wearing a trendy wrist band.
But don't be fooled. It's packaging tape so that she doesn't lose a hand.

                                                

They, like, glued on chest hair. I'm thinking pirate.

                                               

Bag of baby heads. Whatevs.

Child gang touting ill-fitting athletic wear for adults

Obviously you will be successful enough to own a tuxedo at age seven if you have that kind of a mullet.

Mullets help you to win at life.

My Favorite.

 

Oh Turkey. I love your little details.

drinking bags of chocolate chips

Lately I have been coming home from work each day and drinking bags of chocolate chips. What I do is this: I tip the bag directly into my mouth and then chew until the pieces are just small enough to swallow. I do this over and over again. I have become a chocolate beast. (That’s a real thing.)

This lady is a chocolate beast too. It's a pretty gross club.

Throughout this process of over consumption I have actually built up a tolerance to chocolate. (ps: Who knew that could happen? Not I.) After awhile, the chocolate chips alone ceased to satisfy my chocolate need. As a result, I began shopping the candy bar sales racks at the drug store. Behaving like this made me feel as if I were a crack addict. (Which is also a real thing, but I am not actually addicted to crack. Just sugar. Which kind of acts like crack in my life. A crack substitute, if you will.) But I wasn’t gaining weight and when I privately admitted my behavior to some of my close confidantes they laughed at me. Which made me feel like I was making ok choices since it was funny.

But then last week I hit an all time low. I really felt that I needed an extra boost of chocolate endorphins and so instead of my typical sugar rampage I decided to gorge myself on an entire 80% cocoa chocolate bar in one sitting instead. (In my mind this was ok because really dark chocolate is healthful.) But I found out shortly thereafter that this type of behavior will make one violently ill. (Becoming violently ill made me feel un-healthful.) It was then that I realized that I have a problem.

As it turns out, it’s possible that I have more than one problem.

I’m moving away soon and so I don’t care about stuff as much anymore. Like going to work or having standards, that kind of stuff.

The men that I have been recently attracted to my friends have been referencing as “mistake # 1” or “mistake # 2” etc. I’ve been falling asleep in public. I’ve been shopping at Plato’s Closet (which is an establishment that targets 22 year old prostitutes, if you don’t already know.) I’ve been opting out of going to the gym to drink mimosas instead. A few days ago I forgot to get up. (And by “get up” I mean out of bed. But don’t worry, eventually I left the house and picked up the first movie title that seemed attractive to me – Seven Psychopaths – as well as a whoopee pie. They were both good.)

My point is this: drinking chocolate chips has been a gateway drug to distasteful college behavior. It’s not just marijuana anymore, friends.

Anyway, I wanted to admit to everyone that I understand my life is degenerating into a series of bad choices. But I do plan to get better at being a grown up. Soon.  

God Bless America...A place where so many things exist together

I like this so much. Nutrish. I say it in a small voice.

This is scary and was found in a public restroom. I hate it for it's truth.

The worst show on television. It is upsetting just to flip past. This program showcases the people I dislike most in my country. I was going to embed a video of a really bad AFV montage but then I decided to not litter my blog. I just hit it's dislike button on youtube instead. A small stand, but a stand nonetheless.

Hi friends

I think I would love these people. They are glorious. They are not my real friends, I just want them to be. I'm sad to report that I have made no new friends in the recent past, regardless of any and all efforts on my part. 

On a more upbeat note, I have become personal with a really large insect that has moved into my house. He actually lives on my porch, but I'm throwing semantics to the wayside.

Yes, he is cuddled up on a lamppost right outside my front door and he is frighteningly large. I'd classify him as "prehistorically proportional." I think of him as my bodyguard/bouncer. He sleeps at his post every night. 

Nothing about the situation makes any sense whatsoever.

I named him Godzilla. 

I think he was attracted to the ladies that hang out underneath my lamppost. 

Or perhaps he was lured over by the fresh scent of plastic flowers. Whatever the case may be, I'm glad he is here now.

How Not to Impress Your Coworkers

• Don’t talk to them in small voices or a British accent. I know I know, I think it’s charming when I do it too, but other people hate it. Trust me.
• Don’t stand inside their office with the door slightly ajar and the lights turned out. It’s funny to see their reactions when they turn on the lights and HEY! there you are, but the thing is, they will hate you.
• Don’t complain to older co-workers about how strangers are always telling you that you look so young.
• Don’t steal their lunches. Pretty soon someone will catch you and then you will look cheap AND fat.

If you're going to steal food, just eat in the bathroom.

• Don’t ask them about their facial inadequacies like pimples or dark circles. I guess they already know that they are there.     
• Don’t tell them about your dreams. Don’t tell anyone about your dreams. As it turns out, no one cares about your dreams.
• Don’t high five in passing and then try to catch your co-workers foot “on the flip-side. ” They will never raise their foot high enough for it to work, A, and B sometimes your foot ends up connecting with their face and then you look like an asshole. When really you were just trying to be a homey.

Check out these foot fives! These guys probably had a TON of  practice.
They look really natural .

• Don't floss your teeth at work. Or in public ever. I guess it's not okay.
• Don’t dress up like Bart Simpson for the day, even if you have the over-sized head version of the costume.

I think it's funny. Don't you think it's funny?

• Don't sing. People tell me to stop singing all the time. Especially when I sing -narrate the things going on around me.

I'm not awesome at everything

I’m not a really good driver. Take the first time I rented a car for instance. I had wrecked my own car within the first week of owning it but I needed to go to a festival the weekend following my wreckage. So I rented a car and responsibly stopped at the gas station to fill up my tank before I hit the highway.

The problem came into play after I paid for my fuel and I was trying to leave. There was a LOT of traffic. With each passing minute of watching cars whiz by the exit of the station, I began hyperventilating a little bit more.

After about ten minutes I decided that I needed to just bite the bullet and step on the gas. But here’s the thing -- I wasn’t actually at the exit portion of the gas station. When I floored my gas pedal, my rental car picked up enough speed to lift itself over an extremely large and brightly painted curb, but NOT enough to get me over to the other side and into traffic. It kind of looked like this:

 Except it was worse. And there were a lot more witnesses.

Anyway, to make a long story short my car only moved far enough to hang midway across a large cement block – the front facing into traffic, the rear safely dangling in the softly glowing lights of the gas station.

I didn’t immediately understand what was happening. I knew I wasn’t moving anymore. My gut told me that I was in a pickle but I couldn’t fully comprehend why. Eventually I got out of my rental car to investigate. I walked around it a few times. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for but I expected there might be some type of damage. I didn’t find any and after I was done looking I wasn’t quite sure what to do next, so I got back into the driver seat and sat there for a bit longer.

After awhile I figured that I should call someone. I didn’t own a cell phone at the time so I scrounged around my bag for change to use at the payphone. After that, I had to make a decision about who I might call. My father? He would just yell. A tow truck? How would I get a phone number for one of those? A friend? They would all laugh at me and offer no useful advice. I was in the middle of this train of thought when I was startled by a knock at my window. I looked up to see a man’s face just inches from my own. I rolled down the window.

Man: Do you need some help?

Me: Oh my god, do you think you can help me?!?

Man: Yes ma’am, I think I can. Put your car into neutral.

Me: What does that mean?

Man: The “N” on your shifter means neutral.

Then he proceeded to walk around to the front of my car and try to lift it up and over the large curb that it was resting on.

Clearly that didn’t work. Because he was a person and people can't usually lift cars.

But then three body builders walked onto the scene.

Body Builder 1: Excuse me ma’am. We noticed that your friend here couldn’t lift your car on his own…but maybe he could do it with our help.

Me: Silence.

I thought for a second that I was on that 80’s show, Candid Camera, but then I remembered that nobody could have possibly set me up to drive my car over a curb into oncoming traffic.

After I decided that I wasn’t on National television, I curtly nodded my head yes to the body builder. And the four men saved me.

The point of my story is that I never learned my lesson and I’m still a bad driver.

Isn't it clear that they are evil?

Seriously. Get out of my house.

Disgusting. And how in the hell did this one get on the ceiling?

     

 

This one has a scary human mouth. I wonder if it ate a person and then decided to attach the mouth of it's victim to it's unfortunate cephalopod face.

 

Let me tell you what is about to happen. First it's going to eat the scuba diver. Then it's going to take over the world. Believe me -- I know about these things. I've done a TON of research. The ocotopus is probably going to take the human feet so it can become more land mobile.

 

See.

It's us against them.