A Guide to Canceling Plans

Don’t be the person to initiate the canceling. Hold off on all contact until the other party reaches out, wondering why you have been avoiding “cementing the details.” If you are lucky, they have also read this guide, and are also sitting on their couch not calling you. If that’s the case, read no further.

If they do call, act surprised at the mention of the plans. Perhaps it may guilt them into thinking they’ve invested too much into your friendship and that they should reconsider their eagerness. Hopefully, they will be shamed into retreat. If that’s the case, read no further.

Though, it is likely they will remind you, “Kady, we’ve had these dinner plans for weeks” to which you enthusiastically respond, “Of course, I’ve been looking forward to it so much!” Allow for a three second linger. Feel free to add in a slight cough or wheeze. Hopefully they will get the immediate hint that you might be coming down with a cold and for fear of their sacred health, cancel the plans themselves. If that’s the case, read no further.

 Post-linger and still no relinquishment from the other party? Verbalize the state of your health and reenact the exact moment of your day when you started to feel ill. “Right after lunch, I was riding the elevator back up.” Press further.  “And I passed the most acute gas.” Elaborate. “I usually pass a little gas after lunch, but this was more severe.  I definitely noticed this pass of gas.” Back down a little, allow them to show concern. “Oh no, don’t worry, I don’t think I’m dying.” Bring up possibility of dying. “But I don’t want to aggravate anything. There is always a chance of dying.” Surely, at this stage, they will understand that this dinner date is not worth risking the possibility of death. If that’s the case, read no further.

Of course, the other party is your friend and they are concerned for you. They might concede to canceling dinner, only to offer showing up at your residence and taking care of you. And of course you are not avoiding the actual dining part of the plans. In fact, you have already microwaved an Amy’s Pot Pie and are standing in the kitchen devouring it in your underwear, rifling through the freezer to find that half eaten Ben and Jerry’s pint. You are avoiding the social part of the plans. In what is hopefully the last attempt to tell your goodhearted leach of a friend you just want to indulge in a solo Say Yes to the Dress marathon and not discuss Hilary Clinton or that creepy dude at your office, just pretend to die on the phone. Ideally, link it to the back story of being sick earlier, but don’t hesitate to pretend to trip over your cat and fracture your spine. Whisper your final wishes into the receiver.

Let the matter rest a day or two, and send a courteous follow up text, “Not dead, feeling better. Drinks Friday?”

You Can't Instagram Everything, But You Should Try

What a week? Am I right? First we celebrate some dead white guys and an alive half white guy, and then it's Smokey Robinson AND Jeff Daniel's birthday, and it's like seriously, how am I supposed to keep up with how exciting this week is?! Do I even OWN enough Aderall?!?!

So, like everyone, I've spent more time than usual on the computer trolling my high school classmates' new boyfriends and the food they've instagrammed. (Both look delicious--get it, girl!) Feeling super up to date on people I don't care about's lives makes me feel both accomplished and creepy. But here is the thing, y'all, I don't deny it. I have a Facebook and I use it. Not a lot of things bother me (loljk, I have a blog, clearly a TON of things irk me) but something that really gets on my nerves is when people* pretend like they 1) don't Facebook stalk people when they clearly do and 2) that their participation in social media is somehow accidental. (No one is that whimsical!)

Example: I ran into a friend the other day who I hadn't seen in a few months. Really nice guy. Okay face. Soul of Gold. Body of soft maleable lumpy gold. Anyways, here is an excerpt of our conversation.

Me: Glad things are going well for you. I've been doing great, too!
Him: Yeah? Awesome. Oh man, I heard you didn't have heat in your apartment...
Me: Heard? Oh you mean--
Him: No, someone told me you didn't have heat in your apartment. Ok, gotta go, haha, BYE. 

And just like *that* he tripped down an entire flight of subway stairs. But I knew that no one had told him I didn't have heat because 1) we have very few mutual friends and 2) I highly doubt anyone cared past raising their eyebrows about me not having heat. He read it on my blog. And he found my blog because I purposely post it on every social media platform my work computer let's me access. (Still working on linking from my YouPorn account.) (just joking) (I'll never link from there.)

This also works vice versa when people try to make you feel creepy because you reference/remember their tweets. But don't act coy! Those tweets didn't mistakenly make it from your secret diary to your twitter/Facebook/whatever. You were clearly sitting on the toilet drafting the most clever way to let everyone know something funny happened at work and when you hit send being like, "BINGO! Bring on the retweets!" We're living in a share-share-share world. That's why we watch Catfishing Housewives of LA. That is why I don't unfriend people's ex boyfriends who now have face tattoos.

Take pride in all those grilled cheeses you instagram, the selfies you post, or the song lyrics you tweet. Or don't. Whatever. But don't pretend like anything you post on the internet is ultra-personal, secret, and not being checked out by some creepy dude at 3 in the morning.


* 'people' here being people who are active on the internet/social media. This might not necessarily be you, and if that's the case I probably think you are mysterious and have a super huge crush on you.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Girls, please

Did you watch the Super Bowl? And if you didn’t, did you come up with a witty Facebook status about not watching the Super Bowl? Did you Beyonce yourself while watching Beyonce?

Personally, last night’s footsy kick and brawl and Michelle Williams’ Make-A-Wish foundation to sing along with Bey one more time, was all a grand Illuminati extravaganza to distract us from what was really going on last night: Episode 4 of Girls HBO, written/directed/produced/and tweeted about by Lena Dunham.

That’s right. There was an episode of Girls that had to be aired EARLIER THAN NORMAL because of the Super Bowl. Though, to be fair, both spectacles involve wardrobe malfunctions, angry feminists, and boys in tight pants, so I couldn’t really tell a difference.  I understand Girls is a controversial show, and by that I mean, it is actually a very tame show whose cultural importance has been exponentially blown out of proportion, which in itself has become a controversy. Everyone from Kareem Abdul Jabbar to your high school US History teacher has a really intense opinion about the merit or lack thereof of the show. Also, on a side note, wouldn’t it be cool if Kareem Abdul Jabbar WAS your high school US History teacher? I digress…

What really matters is not how you feel about Girls, but just that you feel something about it. So for those who have yet to assemble an opinion on the show, I provide you with a handy 6 step guide to taking a side to the greatest debate that has happened in the past year (Mitt Romney, once again, defeated.)

Exclusive pic of me in a bed in Bushwick
(AKA the set of Girls)

• First off, it is completely unnecessary to actually watch the show. The show is pretty boring and the articles being written about it definitely steal the spotlight. Feel free to base your opinion solely to oppose your annoying cousin’s feelings on the show.
• Throughout the show, while the people on the screen are moving their mouths and putting food in their mouths, the girls take their shirts off and you see their boobs. Think long and hard how you feel about boobs. 
• Though technically noted as being a realistic and grounded representation of the post-grad abyss, I’ve found the second season’s sudden and forced introduction of black people AND Republicans (two birds, one Donald Glover) to resemble a bizarre Sci-fi movie. There is vague explanation of how he came about, but like the white liberal heroes of the genre, Dunham’s character Hannah successfully gets him to retreat. As she continues her peaceful existence, she can conveniently bring up their relationship as bragging rights. So, do you like sci-fi? Do you like my bad metaphor trying to explore Dunham’s problematic ‘color splash’ in her second season?
• If your favorite activity is “bathing with your friends” then this is the show for you.
• The one thing I really relate to is complaining about my rent. So if you pay rent, you can definitely relate to the characters. But don’t worry—if you don’t pay rent/aren’t ever stressed about rent*, you can definitely relate to the actors.
• There is an old belief that everyone is at least six degrees separated from whoever’s HBO Go account they use. So in my humble opinion, if you ignore my first step and decide to watch the show, find an ex’s cousin’s freshman year roommate, steal their HBO Go info, and watch the entirety of either The Sopranos or The Wire. Those are really good shows.

*go die.

Judging OkCupid First Dates Based Solely on Usernames (pt. 2)

Mhm, yah, ok, I am wine drunk and am not listening.

BankingOnLove
This guy went to Syracuse and majored in American Studies. You might have thought he would be a Finance or Business major, but you'd be mistaken. He didn't really get his shit together to impress his dad, plus he clearly has a knack for word play and nostalgic cheeky humor. We would go to a nice dinner with table cloths. One that maybe had two or three $'s next to it in NYMag.

PureIntentionX
He wears a fedora 6 days a week. Bowler cap on his day off.

DaftPun
If you were at a party with this dude, he would know at exactly at what point to start playing 90's nostalgia music. Which is cool, but he prides himself on it too much. And our date would consist of watching Youtube videos of sports bloopers.

HeyhiWhoa
Genuinely nice dude, and not like the 'nice guy' that the internet is suddenly hating on. OkCupid is still incredibly overwhelming to him and it is 85% luck, 15% slapstick humor that he managed to show up to the right place at the right time for your date (5pm, Happy Hour Nachos.) It'll be a fun date, but for some reason you won't be able to stop humming the Rocket Power theme song for a few days after.

sportssports22
Oh man, what is one thing this dude likes? Sports! Okay, okay, lets try hard to think of ONE MORE THING thing dude likes. Aw, fuck it, he just LOVES sports. You'll go to a pre-season baseball game which is super dope, but he won't notice when he spills an entire beer on your head from jumping up and down with excitement. Also, when he courteously asks you what you're interested in, and you mention liking Joni Mitchell and folk music, he'll just blurt out BOB DYLAN and smugly return his attention to the game.

ThiefOfYourHeart22
See "PureIntentionsX"


*as always, I did not actually go on dates with any of these bachelors.