Sad Day in Seattle. / May 30 2012.

Five people are dead and the shooter shot himself.

There are no words to describe how much I hate this kind of senseless violence.

I hate it even more that it happened in my city.

No one needed to die like this today.

-Anecdotes. Vol. 1

Greener Grass. / First Secret to Happiness.

The grass is always greener on someone else’s lawn. Always.

There are like, five secrets to happiness. One of them is to stop looking at other people’s lawns and finding ways to being happy with the grass you currently have.

Some people do, in fact, have better grass than you, but sometimes you might have better grass than other people. Maybe you can grow better flowers than other people or maybe you have a better lawn for building certain houses.

If you’d like, I can beat this metaphor to death but I’d rather not. It’s a terribly dreadful metaphor but it gets the point across. All the world’s a stage, full of actors and metaphors, trying to convey meaningful stories for us to remember in our thoughts but instead, we just remember the bad acting and the terribly worded metaphors.

I’ll tell you what the other four secrets are later. There are probably more than that, but I don’t believe in being boxed in or capitalizing off of happiness secrets.

-Anecdotes. Vol. 1

Another Message From E.

Hey Followers and people just passing by…

So my condition is no longer a mystery.

But the problem is, I hesitate to come out with it because it’s incredibly rare.

And not many people have it and I’m afraid if I come out with it, anyone who knows me in Seattle will know who I am.

Plus if I come out with my other disorder which I thought about doing, it will definitely give me away.

Apparently my body is collecting rare diseases like Pokemon or some shit.

The weirdest part is that my brain chemistry seems has changed and so have aspects of my personality. It’s like some freaky Dr. House shit, except this is the episode where House freaks out because there’s no cure.

Batt says it’s like parts of me are blocked off and I feel that way too.

Unfortunately, it feels like the snarky creative writing ability part is also blocked off.

It breaks my fucking heart.

But I am not giving up.

I have not abandoned Anecdotes. If you know what it’s like to have chronic health problems you know that sometimes you have to take breaks from things you love.

It’s also been emotionally hard on me, to find out I now have two rare incurable diseases. And the doctors know very little about this neurological one. And it has some potentially fatal risks like stroke and coma and even though these risks are very rare, this still scares me. And since the doctors don’t know much to begin with, I’m still not sure how they know that statistic… the entire situation is just frightening, emotionally and physically taxing.

The worst part is that I can’t even take the proper medication for it because my blood pressure is too low, which is a common characteristic of myother rare disorder.

C’est la vie. Or whatever the French say that make them sound so fucking profound all of the time.

I hope you keep following me. Or not. The project is probably going to change a bit, perhaps for better or for worse, but I think I’ll still be a decent writer. Or maybe I suck and no one has told me which is a fear that I’ll always have with any creative endeavor.

Anyways… well, remember that nothing happens for a reason, we’re all here because your mom fucked your dad and you were one lucky clump of cells! And bad things happen to average people as well as good and bad people and hopefully I’ll come out of this a good person but there is a chance this pain and suffering could make me hateful and bitter. Honestly I already hate like 95% of humanity but I’m not bitter about it.

But I love my followers!

-E. the writer of Anecdotes. 

Seattle Problems. Part 1.

My medical marijuana is too damn strong.

This organic Trader Joes salad is talking to me. Fuck.

Every moment up until now has happened, chronologically, for some reason but without reason simultaneously, lead me to this salad.

Maybe the moments after these moments will lead me to cake. One can hope all moments will lead to cake.

But sometimes they do not.

-Anecdotes. Vol. 1

Adventures in Bed Bath & The Beyond. Part 1.

“Trying to decide if you need a circular cake pan or a square one.”

“Which one is better?”

“They’re both $14.99.”

“I don’t care.”

“How do you find the area of a circle?”

“Pie.”

“Okay…”

“I still don’t care.”

“We need to pick one.”

“Okay well, in Tibetan Buddism, the circle represents a mandala which represents like the entire universe so if we bake cakes in circles they will be representational of our lives.”

“Okay.”

“And if we get the square cake pan, it will represent that man on NPR last night who went into the forest every day and looked at the same square meter every day because he had nothing better to do but he was really awesome.”

“Okay.”

“So either way, these cakes will be of some sort of significance.”

“I think we should go with the square.”

“Yeah, NPR forest guy.”

-Anecdotes. Vol. 1

Leave Patricia Krentcil Alone.

If you haven’t read about the New Jersey mother who is being accused of bringing her 6 year old daughter into a tanning booth, then you probably live in a cave with bats in the mountains of eastern Washington where they don’t have internet access or something.

She says her daughter got sun burned from playing outside, which I think is totally possible since her daughter is a red head and red heads are notorious for not tanning. But apparently the salon owner says he’s seen the mom take her daughter to the salon, but unless someone saw her daughter get into the tanning bed, there is not enough evidence.

Her kid says she “went tanning with mommy” which could mean she went to the salon with her mom, or got in the booth with her mom. No one knows for certain. And kids don’t know what they’re saying most of the time. When I was 6, I had imaginary friends and told people my family was Jewish even though we are not, so there’s that.

What scares me the most is that this woman obviously suffers from body dysmorphia, tanning addiction and obvious insecurities, and not a single person in the media seems to understand this. And they want to put this woman in jail for suffering from mental illness.

People don’t just tan themselves over and over like that for no reason. I don’t know her personally and I don’t know what her life is like and that’s why I feel very sorry for her.

Calling her “ugly” and an “oompa loompa” doesn’t help the situation. She’s probably never felt attractive the way she is. And now she has the media making her feel even worse about her self.

Why would anyone want to do that to another human being?

This woman needs help, she has an addiction and I’m not okay with making fun of people with addictions and mental illness.

It bothers me that society is okay with discarding those who suffer with addictions and mental illness, but they do it all the time. No one cares about mentally ill people.

Patricia Krentcil could face 10 years in jail if she is found guilty of putting her daughter in a tanning booth.

I can think of worse things a parent could do, such as corporal punishment. Parents beat their children as punishment all the time but this is an accepted parenting practice, and I’ve heard people justify “swats” and “beatings” ALL the time! But they’re not given 10 years in jail.

People worry that this mother could pass on the tanning habit to her daughter. Well I know parents who smoke cigarettes and pass on that habit to their children but we don’t put them in jail.

Patricia Krentcil does not need jail time. She needs rehab. She needs counseling and so does her daughter, especially after all of this traumatizing media frenzy.

And who gives a shit if she is now calling her critics “ugly,” “fat,” and “jealous.” This woman is now extremely defensive because the entire internet is criticizing her, so what do you expect?

So leave this woman alone. Lets get her some help, not jail. Have some fucking compassion.

-Anecdotes. Vol. 1

Instant Grams.

So for some reason, people have asked me how I feel about the app Instagram. More specifically, they want to know if I consider it to be “real art” or “real photography.”

In my serious life I’m a photographer and I’m not sure why they care about my opinion on the matter so I’ll write about it here, where people probably also shouldn’t care about my opinion on the matter.

I don’t use it because I don’t have an iPhone though someone informed me I could use this with my android. Well my android has barely worked in months so I can’t even use this app anyways. But I have a general idea of how it works. You take a photo and you slap on a filter and bam, you have a cute little hipster photo to share on Facebook or Flickr.

Is this art or photography?

Well, technically anything can be art. And technically any photo can be photography.

When anything is technically art and/or photography, that also doesn’t mean it’s good art and/or photography.

I think Instagram is a trendy little app that’s fun for social networking and it’s not going to make any great photographers. I have yet to see anything with Instagram that makes me say “Oh wow, what an amazing piece of photography!”

But that doesn’t mean people can’t have fun with it.

I have seen some cool stuff shot with an iPhone - I’m just not really impressed by the Instagram filters. They’re cute and there’s nothing wrong with cute.

I believe that photography should be shared with the world and if the only piece of camera equipment someone has is an iPhone - well, why not work with that?

But maybe not use Instagram because then the photos will look like everything everyone else shot using Instagram.

I do feel like people take Instagram a little too seriously. Who cares if Facebook bought it? Facebook will eventually purchase America and Mark Zuckerberg will become dictator, forcing us to “Like” this country.

I’m a fan of vintage processing and all but there is also beauty in subtly. I also don’t like it when people call Instagram “processing” when from what I understand, it’s a 2 second button click, not actual processing. That’s more like a FILTER.

So is there a conclusion to this?

Not really. But when I get a new phone, I might have to do Anecdotes. Instagram Edition.

-Anecdotes. Vol. 1

Waking Up in Seattle Sun.

pale warmth
slowly caresses
the window sill
and creeps in
onto the carpet
and climbs up the bed
and onto my eyes
making me open them

fuck I wish I had blinds
the manager of my apartment
is kind of a dick
and did not give me blinds
to my new place

I did not want to
wake up this early
I should plant a nest of owls
out side of his unit
or maybe some bees

-Anecdotes. Vol. 1

Rare.

You know you have a rare disease when you call 911 and you have to spell out the name and explain the nature of your disease to the EMTs and the doctors at the Emergency Room.

That said, I am very thankful for the health care that I have been receiving in Seattle.

Just wish I had diseases that were more common… and you know maybe had funding, that might be kind of nice. They don’t make drugs for them so treatment options are pretty much non existent, and I sure as hell won’t ever see a cure. Not many people have my conditions so there’s not really a demand and research is expensive.

I’ll be lucky if I ever see a fund raiser! I don’t even think I’ve seen those stupid fucking rubber awareness wrist bands. Well, I hate those things anyways so it’s just as well.

-Anecdotes. Vol. 1

Isn’t it Ironic.

I have ten thousand pens, and all I need is a goddamn sharpie.

-Anecdotes. Vol. 1