What the hell, summer spell.

twentysixarias asked: How did you first get published and what was your experience like? I mean, actually finding out that something of yours was officially published.

Hey, when I was 18 I landed a thing in McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. That was my first published piece of writing under my own name that wasn’t for like, a school paper or something. It’s a review of Diet Pepsi Jazz Strawberries and Cream, which is still online here: http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/the-fifth-batch-2007

McSweeney’s submission instructions are somewhere on the site, so I just wrote a thingy, had a friend look it over, and then sent my piece in according to the instructions.

Man, I was pretty excited about getting a piece on that site! I listened to “Sing Songs Along” by Tilly and the Wall because it’s so upbeat, and because it was 2006. I thought my piece was going to be published during my college orientation week, and I was excited because I thought people might ask me about it. That is totally not how you make friends in college!

abcdemilyk asked: i like your writing and you're funny. sincerely, a random girl on the internet.

Thank you!

My personal experience of 2011

(my personal experience of 2010 is here: part 1, part 2)

2011 in…

MUSIC

• doing the mashed potato to “Nodding Off” by Wavves/Best Coast
• I don’t wanna be like the other girls, guess the Vivian Girls don’t wanna be like me either
• TV Girl made this great song that makes me think of riding bikes in the summer; too bad my face broke ;_;.
• Lil B is just as gay or HIV-positive as you need him to be, and also he wants to be unchained.
• THANK U BASED GGD for “Mindkilla”
• Beyoncé, duh
• RELAX RELAX RELAX RELAX

• Tune-Yards
• “I’m a rude bitch n word what are you made of?”

majority of bad bitches agree this is the best cut for straight hair

THREE BOOKS I READ AND ENJOYED

No More Nice Girls by Ellen Willis (an Emily Books pick) 

Memory Mambo by Achy Obejas (I excerpted a passage)

The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri

FAVORITE THINGS I WROTE

• An interview with Tune-Yards’ Merrill Garbus for The A.V. Club
• “I Like Fucking/I Hate Danger” for Emily Books (the blog and the quarterly)
• “Cool Kids Never Have the Time/In Which We Choose a Brutally Self-Negating Credo” for This Recording, which was 1) psycholocially taxing for me to write and 2) cathartic, making me feel as though I should a) write about my childhood more at b) some unnamed point in the future.
• Facebook is preeeetttty gnarly and Hairpin readers seem to agree

AUTHORS I MET

Emily Gould came to Chicago and she hung out with me and Britt. Beer and waffles were both involved.

I met Achy Obejas at this thingy hosted by Women and Children First where I went by myself, thinking there would be a lot more people than there were. But it wasn’t awkward at all! No, that’s a lie. That said, Obejas’ partner (wife?) gave birth this year, so maybe meeting me wasn’t the most memorable thing that happened to her. MAYBE.

Dave Eggers came to a party at my work in celebration of our collaborative program with 826 Chicago. He was able to guess that I was a Taurus without any hints (example hints: “so this astrological sign is stereotyped as being stable, shallow, materialistic, stubborn, basically every bad quality—wait, how did you know?”).

PEOPLE COMPARING ME TO EVERY BRUNETTE ACTRESS

just Aubrey Plaza this year

SOME THINGS THAT MADE ME SAD

* global warming

* Steve Jobs’ death and snark about his death

* some dudes

* NYT articles about my generation that sounded like,

“Browsing Constance’s home, you’d never get the sense it had been touched by the recession. Her parents, both professors, hang classical portraits along the walls; the stuffed bookshelves suggest ample leisure time and an impressive academic pedigree.

Constance graduated at the top of her class from Harvard in 2010 with a B.A. in Modern Aquitanian Sculpture (Stone Busts and Installations). When her initial attempts to find a job failed, she enrolled in Columbia University’s prestigious publishing program, only to graduate with more debt and fewer prospects than before. Her unstable financial situation forced her back into her parents’ Manhattan home, where she still sleeps in her childhood bedroom.

On her parents’ couch in the Upper East Side, Constance appears delicate and circumspect.

‘I just thought things would be different,’ she says, dissolving a kale chip on her quivering lower lip. ‘By 25, I thought I’d be putting down roots, but instead I’m swimming in debt.’”

SOME DUDE HELPED ME CLIMB ON A SCULPTURE

Internet, you have every right to make fun of me for this, but I do not regret what I did:

I DECIMATED MY FACE IN A BICYCLE ACCIDENT

My face! Oh my god, my face!

(Why is it that my eyeliner survived the accident but my front teeth didn’t?)

Sometimes when I pose for pictures I’m afraid that the flash will shine through my fake teeth and reveal my pathetic little shards but that’s impossible, I know.

BEST OF MY FRIENDS, MATTHEW AND ALLISON

Matthew: what’s doper than the earth

jakec asked: So re: suspending disbelief about the unlikelihood of the Santa in your town being the one true Santa, my parents used to tell me that the Santas you sit on the lap of are actually Santa's messengers/helpers, while the real Santa only emerges from the North Pole on the 25th. It seemed plausible.

Seems fair enough. This is in reference to a zine I made last year btw: itoldsantaiwasjewish.tumblr.com