maarmie's musings

Friday, February 25, 2005

Marriage or Bust!

I'm going to Paris this summer. Not just to roam around the Louvre and sip espresso at a trendy cafe. I'm going for the express purpose of finding a husband. Yes, it's time to abandon these here United States, and that's going to require some fancy footwork on my part considering I'll only have 30 days at my disposal.

J'ai un mois chercher un mari. Translation: I have one month to find a husband. That's not the only phrase I'm going to need to know when I hop a plane to Orley, but it's certainly going to be the most important. The plan is to bedazzle and bewitch as many men as possible in one month, and to try and convince some poor sucker to take the plunge. I need to get fluent in French, and living there is the only way I'm going to be able to do it. - more to come -

Thursday, February 24, 2005

Things Everyone Should Do - updated regularly

Hike on the Appalachian Trail. One day. Three days. A week. A month. Seven months. Pick a time frame, and do it.

Confront friends and family members who hurt you. Draw the line, for once, and dare them to cross it. If they don't, that's progress. If they do, cut them out of your life. You don't need it.

Know thine enemy. The information will come in handy later.

Live in New York City for at least a year.

Stand up for things you believe in - no matter the cost.

Stand up for others, even strangers. Humanity deserves it, and the world always needs more good karma.

Protect your integrity at all times. No one (and no job) is worth the chipping away of your self esteem.

Write. It doesn't matter what you write or what form it takes or even if it's good. Just write. Often.

Take lots of photographs. Document your life and your adventures. You'll be sorry you didn't.

Drive through Arizona, New Mexico, west Texas. Just you, a car, Led Zeppelin and miles and miles of nothing except rocks, cacti and rattlesnakes. What could be better?

Things I Learned the Hard Way - updated regularly

If you think you're smart enough to take the LSAT on a whim after six weeks of study, think again. Unless you're a genius or you mind "just works that way," you'll freak out and fuck it all up.

If you insert a table from Dreamweaver into a page at Blogspot, be ready to spend a lot of time adjusting the HTML so it will look right.

If you have big tits and a vacuous head, you're sure to always get the man. If you don't threaten him with your stellar mind and personality, he will be yours. In general, men are nothing but insecure and weak.

Demand respect from all the people in your life: your family members, your friends, boyfriends, girlfriends, bosses, coworkers. If you don't, some will treat you like they treat themselves - poorly.

Never, never go hiking with a 20- to 25-pound pack for a couple of days in a pair of old-ass tennis shoes with the soles ripping off. You will end up having to duct tape the soles to the tops of the shoes and you might trip and fall and bust your fucking knee or your left ankle might give out a couple of times. Invest in a good pair of hiking boots, and break them in before you head out.

Sometimes, switching careers is the right thing to do. But don't make the jump just for the sake of a bigger salary and your own office. The grass isn't always greener on the other side.

Don't fall in love with a married man. Ever.

Never buy an eight-foot-tall bookcase at Ikea unless you have a way to get it home. You just might end up stranded at Penn Station with a box that's ripping apart at the seams. People might try and help you carry it to the cab station, but the cabs won't take you ALL THE WAY to Queens and you'll end up leaving the bookcase lying on the station floor for someone else to take home and enjoy.

Never trust most of your co-workers. They will only stab you in the back to get ahead - or stay where they are.

Even if you're faster, smarter, funnier or nicer, never compete with the boss. Even if you win, you will end up losing in the end.

Hard work and dedication never pay off if the boss only has one thing on his mind.

Real friends are worth more than any amount of money. But fake friends are everywhere.

Never date a member of the armed forces who appears to be mildly homophobic. He's gay.

HST Remembered

Hunter S. Thompson was an annoying, roughhousing miscreant who never grew up. Though I never shared his penchant for guns and mass quantities of drugs and alcohol, I wouldn't be who I am today if it weren't for HST and my fascination with both his talent for slinging words and his strikingly original brand of journalism.

I was first introduced to HST by a guy in college whose morning meals consisted of Cheerios topped with Miller Lite. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was the first bit of HST I ingested. While I think this was his most well-crafted piece of work, his letters to friends, bosses and family members are near poetic and always full of the gusto and insanity for which HST is known.

I later became a reporter after graduating from college and moving from Florida to New York to Oregon to Florida. While the small-town paper for which I worked would not have allowed any hint of "gonzo" in my stories, his penchant for digging beneath the surface and his unwavering defense of "the truth" kept me on the straight and narrow - telling the stories that needed to be told (in the way they needed to be told) even with a mayor, a city attorney, a police chief and a sheriff breathing down my back every time I wrote something they didn't like, which was often.

I once wrote a letter to HST at his Owl Creek compound. In gonzo style, I invited the bum to come live with me in my dorm at Florida State University. FSU had just been named "party school of the year." I figured we had an image to uphold, and I told Hunter that I needed his help to do it. My offer was sincere, but I never heard back from him. Perhaps he gets invitations like that every day. Perhaps he was scared. Whatever the case, I like to think that he either read it and laughed or thumbtacked it to a tree and shot it full of holes.

You are gone but not forgotten, Hunter S. Thompson. A part of you will always live on in me.
2.20.05

Wednesday, February 23, 2005

Introduction

This blog isn't for liars, cheats, thieves, weaklings, conformists or mean spirits. It's for people who value honesty, justice and equality and for those who don't mind getting their fingernails dirty to do the job and do it right - at any cost.

My name is maarmie, and I've had enough of backstabbers and misogynists and people whose minds and souls are as shallow as a puddle in the Sahara. Unfortunately, I've put my neck under the chopping block for people of this sort one too many times. Good executioners that they are, they never fail to swing the axe hard and end things in a mighty and swift manner.

I don't want to sound bitter just yet, though. I'd rather my personality be revealed to you slowly, methodically and in the time frame I have planned. Until then, sit back as I lay out my opinions for the world to see. Agree. Disagree. I couldn't care less. Just do me a favor, and think.

- maarmie