GTFO MY WOMB!!

There’s this idea that girls wander about after a certain age constantly obsessing over their biological clock. We plot, connive, and fornicate until we’re Glenn Close agonizing “this may be my last chance to have a child” and end up dead in the bathtub.

I hate to be the breaker of a bad myth, but this isn’t true. There are many people out there that just flat out don’t want children. Many people have babies just because it seems like the thing to do at a certain age. And sure, there are those of us that do want kids eventually, but it’s not something to obsess over everyday.

Now having said that, there is a teeny bit of basis to the myth. Every so often your body sneak attacks with an OMG BABIES moment. Logically you know there is no way on this green earth you want a child at the time. Your body has other ideas. The good news is this normally passes very quickly. The better news is that if you ever run into this situation, I have compiled a list of the best movies to make you definitely not want to even think about the word “baby” for at least a year, if not a decade. Brace for spoilers and grossness ahead.

3. The Fly (1986)

I love Geena Davis and Jeff Goldblum. They are adorable together. If you’ve never seen Earth Girls Are Easy you should definitely get on that. However, I will probably never watch The Fly again. There are limits to how much ooze and ick I can take. 

So Jeff Goldblum is a crazy scientist (so fitting) and he ends up merging with a fly. At first, he looks all amped up and sexy. Then he starts getting more disfigured and disgusting until he eventually becomes this weird fly-ish creature.

Who knew you could make Jeff Goldblum not sexy...

Why would this make you want to go into womb lockdown mode? Well, Geena Davis has been getting it on with Jeff Goldblum and winds up pregnant. Was it normal sperm? Fly-mutated sperm? We just don’t know. But her dream about the child is enough to keep me from having kids for quite a few.

2. Joshua

This is a movie we randomly found back in college when we were in the habit of arbitrarily grabbing horror movies from Blockbuster. Sadly this movie is not widely recognized as it’s not a traditional horror movie by any means, but it is TERRIFYING.

I almost hate to spoil this one.

Joshua is the story of a family adjusting to a new baby. It’s not a perfect family. There are hints that the maternal grandmother was off her rocker, the older child, Joshua, randomly throws up around the house, and all of a sudden the new baby switches from happy and adorable to a screaming nightmare. The dog dies, the mother starts to lose her mind, and Joshua gets creepier and creepier.

The face of evil.

So how does this inspire you to NOT procreate? The scary thing about this movie is it’s a psychological thriller and entirely possible (as opposed to having larva babies which seems a bit unlikely) that you could spawn children that are not quite right in the head and torment their entire family. I mean really, somebody gave birth to people like Jeffrey Dahmer and Ted Bundy.

1. Prometheus

Ok, as this movie is more recent, warning, MORE SPOILERS AHEAD. I mean sure everyone should have seen it back in theaters, but considering I just saw the movie for the first time yesterday I will make allowances.

Now one could argue that any of the Alien movies can cause some pregnancy pause as they consistently feature aliens popping out of bodies in a twisted birth parody. I won’t discredit those films, but in general those are the results of an alien forcing its nastiness down your throat, chilling in your abdominal cavity (as opposed to your womb as it happens to men too) and again, not the likeliest thing in the world.

In Prometheus, things start to go bad when android Michael Fassbender decides to put a little something extra in Logan Marshall-Green’s drink. LMG then goes back to his quarters and is having a little conversation with girlfriend and fellow scientist Noomi Rapace. To summarize what happens next, I will relay our commentary during this scene:

Me: DON’T KISS HIM! He has black goo in his body! Stop kissing him!

My brother: If you think kissing him is bad, imagine what happens if she receives his seed.

Me: Wait, what? DON’T RECEIVE HIS SEED! NO! DO NOT RECEIVE HIS SEED!!

Guess what? Idget warrior receives his seed. LMG dies, Noomi Rapace freaks out, and when they’re scanning her to see if she was infected they find out she’s 3 months pregnant with something that looks a little off. Michael Fassbender thinks they should just put her back to sleep, but luckily Noomi Rapace has the will to live and handles the situation in what I now considering one of the most disturbing movie sequences of all time.

Yeah… I wandered around for the rest of the day clutching my abdomen in panic. Should I ever end up in space, I’m planning to wear a chastity belt.

The Penis Mightier

The end of November is quickly approaching. We are right in the midst of the holiday season between Thanksgiving and your December holiday of choice (Hanukkah, Yule, Christmas… whatever your flavor) where people eat and shop a lot. This is also when I start my yearly debate over whether or not to send out a holiday letter.

Now on another topic, before we move into December, November is National Novel Writing Month. It also has a lot of random holidays for writing such as “I Love to Write Day.” This wonderful emphasis on writing, combined with my internal argument over sending a holiday letter, has made me realize that I have never yet explained to you folks WHY I am occasionally (I swear I’ll get better) writing a blog.

I do love to write. I’ve been writing fanfiction off and on since early high school. I’ve written quite a few short stories, and started quite a few novels that I will probably never finish. During college I had my assignments to write personal essays, David Sedaris style, and I realized those were my new love. Because there are two big problems when it comes to me and writing:

1. I have absolutely no discipline when it comes to writing. I like to write. I can write short things. However, when it comes to writing anything too long I don’t have the focus to come back, make myself sit down, and just write. I could complete stories for college because they were due for a class. Now I have nothing due, and it doesn’t really matter if I finish something or not. I really hope to work past this at some point. I have ideas I’d really like to get out there someday.

2. It may seem strange, but I have no confidence in my voice as a writer. In fact, I had the fear for the longest time that I did not have a voice at all. I felt like anyone could write what I wrote. They were just sentences on a page, with no life or meaning.

Considering my dream was to become a decent, semi-famous author, that was totally quotable and eventually had a movie or HBO series based off my books, I should have a good writing voice. Think of the “Pen Is Mightier” category on Jeopardy. You recognize quotes from books not because you memorize the entire book (unless you're lame and have no friends), but because the voice of the quote or character stands out.

This issue with my writing voice is why I write this blog, and why I used to send a family Christmas letter ever year.

The Christmas letter was a huge issue in my household growing up. It was something my parents decided I should do, and thus something I fought bitterly against. It normally ended with me being confined to a chair in front of the computer until I typed one out.

They weren’t long letters. Just one page announcements about my family and what had been going on for the year. Of course I felt like we had fairly stagnant lives. There’s only so many ways to say we’re all working excessively at our various jobs that haven’t changed. It was with the Christmas letter that I first started to feel like I had a bit of a writing voice, because I tended to write it different ways to keep myself amused. And the response was overall positive. Everyone in the larger family started clamoring for the yearly letters and said how much they loved them. I have to admit when I moved off on my own and my mother started writing the letters, it just wasn’t the same. I then decided I should continue to do letters for my own adventures, and have done 2 so far since moving out.

However this year, I’ve been blogging. I started blogging because I was impressed with my friend Erin’s witticism and thought this would be a good method for continuing to improve my written voice. This was a chance to write short entries (good for my attention span), but write consistently (good for building up writing stamina), and discuss whatever I want. So far, it’s been mostly a success. There are certainly posts that I enjoyed more than others, but if my goal is to further develop my voice I think I’m starting to get there. One of the best complements I’ve gotten so far is that my friend Callie has told me whenever she reads my posts, the whole time she just hears me speaking in her mind because it sounds so much like how I talk. So perfect!!

Of course there’s still more work to do in my voice training. Once one gets a voice, you then need to be able to change the expressions and tone to achieve different results.

I think I struggle with this so much in writing because I DON’T have this issue talking. I know I’ve discussed before that apparently I cannot tell a good story. Well the truth is: I suck a bit at conversations, but actual story telling? I excel. I have a very expressive voice. The voice itself still sucks, but by god when you hear me speak there are emotions and nuances and funny voices all over the place. I want that in my writing. I want to keep the reader involved and entertained. And I know I can get there eventually if I finally just knuckle down and practice.

So that, my friends, is why I write this blog.

Of course how is this tied into this year’s argument over whether or not to send a holiday letter? Well, if I’m writing the blog, I don’t really need the practice of also sending out a holiday letter. Plus, I feel like a large portion of the people I would send it to are actually reading this, and they know a lot of what’s been going on this year. But I do so like sending out pretty cards with the letter… hmm.

To end though, I thought I’d give you a little early holiday present. If you haven’t ever watched the SNL Celebrity Jeopardy skits (we watched them A LOT in college, you have no idea), here’s one of my favorites where Sean Connery isn’t quite clear on the aforementioned pen category. As Sean wisely says, what matters is, "DOES IT WORK?" I think this is an excellent mindframe for writing as well. Does it work? The final result should be - yes!

It’s Just a Flesh Wound

My views on illness and injuries are practically from the middle ages. I generally do not go to the doctor. I don’t believe in personally being sick (because it’s all mental, so mind over matter, right?). I’m very much part of the “walk it off” group.

However in other ways, I verge on acting like a hypochondriac. I actually do have some general knowledge of the body and the various systems that make it up. We had this totally awesome computer “game” when I was little where you had Adam and Eve and you could pick something like lymph nodes or the cardiovascular system and they had fun little videos explaining how it worked. I took all the bio courses offered in high school, and way back in the day had quite a few toy medical kits. I also had my dad’s old travel medical bag. All of a sudden my dolls and teddy bears were suffering horrible injuries and subject to all kinds of emergency surgeries. My mother was quite distraught when she realized a real scalpel had been hidden at the bottom of Dad’s bag. Oops.

This just means that I like to use my slight knowledge to diagnose myself. Now I know lots of people do this through internet research. I like to just make random guesses and then come up with what I feel are appropriate treatments (face hurts? Probably sinuses. Must drink tea and take baths. Excessive vomiting? Have some sort of mint stuff and make sure to keep fluids down. Headache? Drink something with a bit of caffeine). Thus why I am convinced I’m dyslexic, and also suspect I have some sort of clotting/circulation issues.

Back in college this drove my roommates insane as I was obsessed with attempting to staple a wound closed. They sometimes use staples instead of stitches for bad cuts in the ER. I mean sure, they have their own medical staples, but I felt like the idea could be applied with normal staples. When I worked at The Meadows we once stapled ourselves. The boys were trying to out man each other which led to Nate stapling his arm. Being of the if-you-can-do-it-I-can-do-it mind frame we then stapled me, and one of the other guys. Not a big deal. However the staple couldn’t really fully imbed in the skin, which made me curious to see if it would work better elsewhere and with an actual injury. Which is why whenever somebody in college had any sort of cut, I ran around imploring them to let me staple it.

I can’t say I’ve ever had any serious injuries where it would matter that I tend to ignore real medical treatment. The one time I broke my wrist we did actually go to a doctor (I was only 12, and rather hysterical for a whole lot of other reasons than just breaking my wrist). Otherwise I’ve made it through things like food poisoning, chemical burns, broken toes, and some sort of ankle injury.

Now that one might have actually not been that bad at first. It’s hard to say. We were heading to the Pennsylvania Renaissance Faire. I was wearing very thin shoes, and stepped on a rock which then caused me to twist my ankle in some direction I don’t think it wanted to go. I breathed for a minute while I determined whether or not it was broken. Since I was driving, and it was my left ankle, I told everyone we could continue on. I figured it was a long drive and it could rest. Once we got there I ignored it. All was fine and dandy until we were back home at the end of the day and I decided to actually take a look at the stupid thing. I pretty much had half a baseball sticking out of my ankle. It took a month of ice and wrapping it until it seemed back to normal.

The Toe, several days after breaking.

When I broke my toes, I was yet again running around on them all day and laughing here and there while announcing “I think I broke my toes, guys.” I’m not sure anyone really believed me until we were getting mani-pedis and I declined as my entire pinky toe, part of my foot, and the next toe over were the most interesting shade of purple. But really, they’re toes. I taped them up later and wore flip flops for a month.

I just don’t find most external injuries that big of a deal. Generally you know what caused them, and you can see and fix them.

Illnesses should really be a whole other story. What I hate about illness though is it’s generally not as visible. You’re just going off what someone says they feel. Are they overreacting? Are they underplaying symptoms?? Who knows. I’m probably one of the worst offenders. I don’t mention anything that I don’t think is relevant. I only go to the doctor once I feel it’s necessary, which is how I managed to be sick for over a month in college with who knows what. A virus? Mono? A blood clot? No one’s really sure.

While when I talk to others I tend to push the “walk it off” philosophy, on the other hand I am very likely to tell them to go to the doctor whenever they have weird symptoms. You never really know what’s going on in your body. There’s so much they can fix now, as long as you catch it early. It’s much better to swallow your pride and talk to the doctor over ignoring something until it’s past being treatable.

Yeah this makes me a bit of a hypocrite, but I can live with that. To be fair, while I don’t actually go in to the doctor I do talk to doctors, which is practically the same thing as a regular consultation.

As you may or may not know, November, besides being NaNoWriMo (which I’m still not doing. One of these years it’ll happen by god), is also Movember. Men across the world are growing some very fun mustaches to earn awareness for men’s health issues. Since some men have a tendency to ignore preventive health measures (they treat it like asking for directions…) I think this is brilliant. While we can’t all grow amazing mustaches, we can all do our part to support them. If you have a spare dollar or two you can head over here to my friend Marc’s page and donate. Make sure to vote for the Hulk Hogan. The Cop scares me.

Keep in mind that all the things you can be doing at any point to promote your own health. Be somewhat active. Eat healthy-ish. Wear a seat belt. Everyone has their own version of being healthy (for instance, I only eat a half pound of bacon at one sitting rather than a full pound) but it’s important to just keep these ideas in mind. You don’t want to end up dying at The Heart Attack Grill (fascinating place I found in Vegas).