Simpler, Softer Ways to Make Friends

They say friends are hard to come by. There's the whole awkward 'getting-to-know-you' stage where you're trying to be nice and friendly and supportive and interesting in order to lure them blindly into your selfish, neurotic, Mr. Hyde-like realm without them realizing what they're getting themselves into and go blindly running to anyone who isn't you. Maybe that's just me. In any case, making friends is hard and so I've come up with a few simpler suggestions in aquiring an adequate gaggle of acquaintances who you can con into becoming you BFFs for life (yeah, I just 16-year-old-girl-talked at you, apologies.) without having to go through the hazing like process that is normally required of such an acquisition. They are as follows:

• Join a cult! Aside from the potential risk of financial loss/bankruptcy and group-induced suicide, cults can actually help you make many friends in a very short amount of time. Just sing along and refer to whomever the big cheese is as he or she wishes and things should go smoothly. Be sure to have a real good down-and-out-story so you can pose as one of those real devastated types willing to latch onto any kind of community just to feel whole again. Caution: do not tell them you are joining because you need friends, this may lead to a premature, force-feeding Kool-Aid ritual.
  
  
• Become an alcoholic! AA is a great way to meet friends for life. Drink yourself into a stuper, lose your house, your family, your dog, and your mind. Wander the streets a little bit. Once you're completely hooked on the sauce, find a nice detox, chill out for a little while and buy yourself a Big Book. Hit up meetings, make coffee, complain about the new drinking problem you've acquired. Caution: Do not pretend to be an alcoholic, as it will surely remove you from the circle of trust--you must actually have one. If you really can't hone your inner alcoholic/addict, abort mission and refer to cult suggestion. Buying a round for your new friends is strongly not recommended.
  
  
• Become a MySpace slut! Maybe you already are, but if so and you still want friends, you must not be doing it to your full potential. Browse bands, leave messages that say "just stoppin by for some lovin" under a glittery pair of graphic boobs. Accept all friend requests. Get a webcam if possible. Even if none of these virtual friendships transpire to reality-based relationships, you'll still feel great everytime you sign on and read that guy's message who's always so interested in what you're wearing right now. Caution: Do not agree to meet anyone who has a default picture in which the person is sporting a mustache. Stay away from meeting under bridges or in parks past 9. Do not agree to go out with girls who really want you to go to this club with them so they can ask you questions about where you want your career to go. Don't have MySpace-message-cybersex, that's just really fucking pathetic.
  
  
• Open a crack-den! While the downfalls to this suggestion are huge, it is a sure bet that you will never be physically alone. Rip up your furniture, ash your cigarettes on the carpet, break a window or two and get blankets form GoodWill because it's going to get cold. Tell everyone that they can always come over no matter what time and they can do whatever they want. Laugh when people break your things. Don't freak out when people start smoking out of your broken lightbulbs. Give yourself a cool nickname like Jimbo or RawDog. Caution: This may lead you to AA suggestion and you may have to give up substances forever. Of course you can always get in a knife fight, get gang-banged, get murdered, get arrested, and die. But you will probably die next to someone who will promptly steal your drugs and fuck your girlfriend before calling an ambulance. And maybe to you, that's better than dying alone.
  
  
• Go to church! More than once and on Easter. Go to church as if it were the local bar. Talk to the priests or the ministers or whatever and begin calling them by their first names. Actually listen to the sermons. Take notes if you have to and ask your 'neighbor' what she thought of it. Bake cookies and pat little children's heads. Say things like 'precious' and 'darling' and 'bless her heart.' Pray and be prayed for. Attend all Bible Studies, Church board meetings and midnight masses. Feel the light of God. Caution: You may actually start to believe in God. Your kids will most likely not. You may or may not begin wearing grandpa sweaters and whistling. Avoid chiming in on racist jokes--that's just not cool, man.
  
  
• Join a therapy group! Yes, it will cost you, but the people in your group will have to listen to your most deep-rooted issues and will be forced to be supportive because they are paying too. Read Freud and Jung, listen to books-on-tape that have men with beards on the cover and a Dr. prefix. Blame your parents for everything. Use "I feel" statements and be supportive of other by saying "I think what I'm hearing you say is..." Relate to everyone even if you don't think your situation is relateable (everything is). Caution: You may not like what is uncovered. You will not like listening to the woes of seven other people. You will spend a lot of money and might just gain seven new enemies rather than friends. Give advice only when asked for it.
  
  
• These are just a few, let me know if you have any other suggestion by e-mailing onwardawkward@gmail.com. Success stories welcome. Failure stories wanted.

Awkward Noir

Here are the 25 most awkward movies. These movies either depicted awkward situations or made me feel awkward just sitting in my seat watching them. Let me know if you have any additions. I will be making awkward lists from here on in.

1. Welcome to the Dollhouse

2. Waiting for Guffman

3. Rushmore

4. The Graduate

5. Cabin Fever

6. A Fish Called Wanda

7. Being John Malkovich

8. Napoleon Dynamite

9. Meet the Parents

10. Happiness

11. Grizzly Man

12. Deliverance

13. Life of Brian

14. The 40 Year Old Virgin

15. There's Something About Mary

16. Wet Hot American Summer

17. Reality Bites

18. Delicatessen

19. Heathers

20. Office Space

21. Ghost World

22. 1776

23. Dazed and Confused

24. Election

25. Children of the Corn

Vampires Are Sexy

I think it's time to bring vampires back. Not from the dead, but back into popular mainstream culture. Goth/punk culture is reaching an all time high yet again and this ever growing gang of pale restless male and female young adults are looking once again for their Nosferatu leader. And I'm not talking about Marilyn Manson or the whole Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt homoerotic vampire thing. We need a new vampire role model to appear on the big screen for the sake of pop culture. One who is hot and can actually hold a convincing accent. Perhaps it could be played by a Jonathan Rhys Meyers or Michael Pitt. When is the next good vampire movie going to come out? Because I don't know about you but I've been waiting for quite some time.

I for one aspire to be a vampire. No, I do not wish to kill people and drink blood out of their necks, but I want everything else that comes with being a vampire. I want their dark and mysterious energy. Their smooth ivory moonlit skin and thick silky black hair. I want to have permanent black eyeliner form around my eyes and I want the color of my lips to be such a pure blood red that they look as if they might drip away at any moment. I have met many people in my numerous awkward encounters who would want the same thing as well. What I wouldn't give to become one of those undead night creatures. But alas, it will never be because the neck sucking and killing people part is pretty much the main definition of being a vampire and I guess when it comes to murder I'm just not down. And with out that I'm just a moody bitch who doesn't like to wake up in the morning and hates sunny days. But it's more than that. I think the whole vampire culture is really hot. Vampires are so awkward that they go around full circle and become cool. They are so creepy that they are sexy. So I guess for an awkward creepy person like me, vampires are kind of the ultimate goal. What I wouldn't give to be one...

Rabbit Dancing on the Rise

Maybe it was because I was at Coachella this past weekend. Perhaps it's always been going on and I've just never really given it notice until recently. Whatever the case, rabbit dancing is here. You may be wondering what the hell rabbit dancing is. It's the act of dancing, or hopping up and down in a jerk-like motion with hands perched at 90 degree angles by their armpits. The dance can be found predominantly among the indie set and seems to be a favorite of the too-skinny androgenous lanky boys and girls hopped up on garage-made speed. When the music starts, the hands crawl forward in a digging motion or bop up and down depending on the tempo. I've even seen this move performed on one leg, giving it a whole rabbit-flamingo feel. All I know is that one minute Dan Deacon was about to spin and the next everyone's actually hopping to Wham City. It's fucking weird and probably the most awkward dance move to date. But it's almost too awkward in that everything flops and jangles and smacks and gets loose. I don't know. I just can't watch the dancing like rabbits without thinking 'fuck like rabbits' and I sort of want to vomit because that was my ex-boyfriend's speciality and, wow, am I glad that's over with.

Awkward-ature: The Meat and Spirit Plan

Awkward-ature: Literature that may be written about or in the style of the awkwardist cultural movement. Passages may make one laugh out of embarrassment or uncomfortableness. Sentences may induce pleasurable cringing and a deep-rooted connection between the awkward writing style of the author as well as his or her awkward readers. In reference to OnwardAwkward, Awkward-ature attempts to seek out the best and most enjoyable awkward literature around.

This week's Awkward-ature recommendation goes to:

Selah Saterstrom's Meat and Spirit Plan.

This book is completely awkward in all the best ways. With lonely, isolated paragraphs on random pages and black and white images of hard-to-make-out-paintings, there is everything to love about this book. It is an exemplary work of experimental fiction. The story itself is part loss of innocence, part coming of age (I hate that term, but so what), part despair and part survival. We see the narrator (who may or may not be an alcoholic/drug-addict--gotta love that) transform from a naive adolescent whom consistently finds herself in sexually compromising situations into a unique, autonomy-conscious female in a postmodern master's writing program located in a Dublin university. It is through art that the narrator comprehends her notion of self and ultimately through the deterioration of her physical self that she discovers the value within. If that sounds cheesy, it isn't. Bottom line: read it, it's quick and worth it. It's touching without meaning to be. And best of all, it's got plenty of well-developed and poignantly awkward moments.

Truth Be Told, We're All Liars

Are you tired of listening to people lie? I would rather listen to a schizophrenic person's skewed perception of reality than a normal person's attempt to control my mind with their exaggerations and distortions of the truth for the purpose of making me think that they're cool and exciting. And while I'm impressed for a second about their 2 year stint in jail for stabbing a person with a surgical knife on 1st and A, or how they smoke 3 ounces of weed each day, I feel deeply upset and slightly stupid when I realize later that this person must be full of shit. 

I understand that it is almost impossible to be truthful because the truth is something outside of what we see. When we tell the truth, we are not actually exuding truth. Reality is being filtered through our individual perception of it and is therefore no longer the truth. My friend might tell me that he met the coolest dude at his job the other day, but then when I meet him I think he's a douchebag. Is he cool or is he a douche? Nobody really knows because it is really a matter of perspective. When a schizophrenic talks about a person who is not there or a paranoid person thinks everyone hates them when they really just think they're kind of annoying, they are not telling lies either. These are merely that person's dramatically incorrect interpretation of what they think the truth is. But it is still the truth in a certain context. It is that individual's truth. Now shrink this down to a smaller level and you may realize that everyone's accounts are spoiled with tidbits of false information that they honestly thought were the truth. Like, "I was run over by a green car", when in reality the car was more blue than green. Or "I was beat up by a gang of midgets", when really they were beat up by a group of small children.

However, when a person perceives something and then retells the account in a different way, knowing they have shifted the truth, this makes me irate. I can not stand for this any longer. Sometimes I feel that everyone has a motive when they talk about almost anything, and that motive is what distracts all of us from the truth. But it doesn't change reality. The truth is still there, that person has merely forced us all to be ignorant of it. People's stories will change over and over again, but the truth is always the same, and that is what I want to hear. 

It is time to put away motives and selfish desires to be cool and seek the truth. If everyone tells it as they honestly and actually think it is, I believe we will start to see that everything is much different than we ever perceived it to be. As long as we keep being distracted by small, selfish trivial things, the bigger picture will continue to remain out of our reach and we will continue our pointless quests to figure out what needs to be done about everything.

Littering: the New Street Art

-What? You ask.  

-Is this some kind of anti-global warming message?  Your eyebrows pull together in angry confusion.  

Before you grab Al Gore's Assault on Reason and start highlighting your favorite sections, before you hit the comment button to give me a piece of his mind and suggesting I check out greenpeace.org or throw some stats at me about the depletion of the salmon in Oregon, chill.  All this global warming stuff gives me a headache honestly.  Dare I say I don't care?  I guess I do in that I-care-that-people-are-dying-in-third-world-countries kind of way.  We'll call it detached compassion.  But hear me out a sec.  I was in the car yesterday with this girl who's an avid social activist.  After discussing the French Revolution, anarchy, Obama, Osama, and Hillary, we found ourselves at a red light.  All of a sudden this girl (we'll call her S) gets this crazed look like we were about to score dope or something and starts looking near/far, right/left. 

-See any cops? She asked excitedly.  

I didn't and shook my head, getting kind of excited myself off of her energy--a contact high even.  And then she turns around in her seat to retrieve an old coffee cup, stained and semi-flattened.  S rolls down her window, stops momentarily to look over at me as she does it, smiling like a psycho who's about to do I don't know what and drops the thing out the window.  She rolls the window up quick after surveying the scene (this sounds like a really long red light, it wasn't, I just get caught in descriptions) and laughs like a fucking idiot.  Bitch killed the buzz that's for sure, but after the anticlimactic event of her blatant littering, I got to thinking about it.  Here's a girl who is so into social justice that she's got zines coming out her ears and every word she says ends in 'ism', whether it be fascism, racism or anarchism and she's getting a kick out of throwing shit out on the street like an oil guzzling, Hummer-driving redneck.  

Three days later, I think I got it.  With all the pro-green propaganda, all the global-warming apocalypse  warnings, everyone's car turning into buzzing gnats or deep-fryers, littering is becoming sort of cool.  That's right, cool.  Think about graffiti and how it started out as this gross depressing volatile act of vagrancy.  How it was a product of poverty and gloom and has somehow manifested it's way into the likes of established art institutions such as the MOMA.  Graffiti has become a brand and a label, being printed onto $150 t-shirts and well-bound coffee table books.  With sell-outs like BANKSY making books and profit off of the rebelliousness of drawing on walls, graffiti and street art has found its respected place in society.  Could littering have taken it's delinquent place?  It sounds ridiculous and it probably is.  But watching S. and how excited she was to throw that cup out the window made me think about the importance of defiance, no matter how regressive and counterproductive it may be, the simple act itself holds a great meaning within the rebellious.  Think about it next time you throw something on the ground--whether it be a cigarette or a trash bag from last night's party.  Are you an idiot or are you making a small statement against the status quo?  Maybe one day that scarlet-stained cigarette filter will be housed in an alarmed glass case in the Whitney or we'll all just die in a trash-infested, polluted, smog-suffocating Armageddon.  With detached compassion, it won't bother you too much either way.  

Getting Awkward

This can be defined by the following scenarios:

• leaving long rambling phone messages only to get cut off mid-sentence because it was way too long
• laughing at death or terminal illness
• squirming from text-convo silences
• telling jokes without punchlines
• stalking
• snarking
• attempting to sit down on chairs and missing
• talking really loudly about someone behind you
• seizure-dancing, saying "awkward" outloud
• laughing too loud
• not listening to conversations because of loud head thoughts and then trying to infer what they've just said when they ask you a question about it
• getting sweat-tank tans
• trying to interject a comment to someone next to you at a cafe while they're on the phone before realizing that it's creepy to do so
• coining lame catch-phrases like 'sham on!' and 'knarly' and reciting them to people who do not use such terms
• wearing your gang colors to an LAPD police benefit
• getting lockjaw when trying to eat a baguette sandwich
• making mixed cds for a guy who breaks up with you on myspace 2 days before he receives them because you're too much for him
• telling your boss ____ just died so you can go to the LA Times Book Festival and then he's there because he's a writer, remember?
• seeing famous people and looking the other way as if you don't know them because you're so cool even though they won't notice you trying not to notice them nor will they care if they do
• seeing famous people and commenting on how fans are 'so annoying' before asking for an autograph
• seeing a police officer on the other side of a divided highway and being so freaked out that you make an illegal right on red and consequently receive a ticket
• taking bong-rips before a party to 'loosen up' and end up sitting in a corner watching an intense game of strip poker while everyone asks; "you ok, man?"
• wanting to quit your job but not knowing how to quit your job so you just don't return your boss' phone calls or e-mails and run away when you see him rollerblading downtown
• waving back to someone who definitely wasn't waving to you or just waving to someone because you think you could be one of those friendly types and the guy looks back at you like 'you fucking creep' thus halting the action mid-wave
• not noticing someone on the phone and proceeding to engage in the conversation you think they're having with you despite their annoyed eyebrow arches and headshakes
• divulging secrets about your best friend who happens to be this 'really cool dj' to gain you street cred with this guy who's also a really cool dj and now you aren't friends with either of them
• being intimidated by wealthy welldressed teenagers
• gleeking at the wrong moment (is there a right one?)
• farting and being really quiet so they won't think it's you but it is you because it's just you and them
• saying goodbye while someone's still talking and then they say goodbye but you're still talking and you hang up wishing you'd never called them in the first place because the goodbye was so uncomfortable
• tripping on mushrooms at an exclusive resort and feigning a French accent to ask for "cOHca cOHLA s'il vous plait," but the bar's not even open and management asks you to please leave because you're scaring the guests
• lighting a ciagrette backwards and you are not drunk
• when asked a question and you accidentally burp the answer
• spitting on your own shoes, being sober at Coachella
• saying JINX! when you said something and thought the other person said the same thing but they really didnt and now they're looking at you bewildered because who still says JINX! when they're 22
• drinking coffee like a cool guy and overcompensating your wrist-pivoting abilities and dribbling all over your new shirt and laughing because it's just a stain! but really you're upset and it's ruined you're whole night and fuck that stupid coffee cup
• putting on Strangers With Candy and not telling anyone and they all look over because you're repeating every line really loud like a robot or a SWC cult freak and for some weird reason nobody else gets why it's funny that an ugly 40-year-old woman goes back to highschool but fuck them she stole the TV! and they turn the music up
• putting coins in your pocket when you don't have pockets and leaving them on the ground when they fall because you don't want to pick them up but everyone's looking at the quarters on the ground and you actually need them for the parking meter but there's no way you can pick them up now, no way.
• saying "i'm so awkward" when after saying something awkward and no one says no; they just smile and nod and steal glances at one another
• singing really loudly to a song who's words you thought were different
• rapping when you're a twenty-something female wearing a seersucker skirt
• exaggerating a story and then admitting to exaggerating a story and then realizing that there is no story without the exageration and quietly trail off becaue everyone's stopped listening anyway because it was so unbelievable and that was the draw, but now that they know you were making it up they all think you're a liar
• being put on anti-anxiety medication and not the fun kind but the really serious like whoa-you-actually-are-awkward-kind and accidentally letting it slip that you forgot to take your meds this morning
• having to pretend you care about some stupid lady's baby at your work and even offering to hold the baby because you think you're supposed to do things like that and then get worried because the lady walked away and the babies crying and you hate kids
• having a roommate who won't quit doing leg-lifts on the floor and so you're stuck in your room because you don't want to walk over her but you really have to pee and so you sit there and wait for her to be done even thought it's really bad now and hopefully you don't get a UTI you just wish she'd stop and why are you paying $800 a week to share a room anyway and fuck the economy
• trying to console someone who's crying and inadvertently laughing or patting her back too hard and she chokes a little and you're sorry
• losing someone's camera and telling him that this homeless guy stole it and then he finds it in your closet because you told him he could borrow your shaving cream
• urinating in a porta-potty
• having really bad ideas but you just can't stop sugsting them and you almost get high off of how many bad ideas you can come up with and now it's fun like a game and you just have to come up with more and more and someone just looks at you and says "will you shut up" and you blink twice and leave with your notebook of bad ideas
• silkscreening a shirt backwards so the logo or the text doesn't make any sense but you still wear it because you think you're cool (you silkscreened it yourself!) and everyone always asks you what it says with a look like 'you're an idiot, it's backwards'
• Segways and scooters
• high school and office parties
• when the neighbor's dog runs immediately to your crotch everytime it sees you
• starting a blog called onward awkward.
• This could go on forever (and I think it just has), but you get the gist. Send your awkward moments to onwardawkward@gmail.com and we'll post it on a Top Ten Awkward Moments List every Monday--yes, we actually will and yes, we're this lame.
  

If Dolphins Had Opposable Thumbs They Would Rule The World

I am a dolphin enthusiast and I strongly believe that dolphins secretly rule the world. Humans undoubtedly have control over the land, but they are powerless over the oceans and let's face it, over 75% of the earth is covered in water. Humans haven't even been to every part of the ocean and from what we know we have little understanding of it. I believe that dolphins are the kings of the sea. They travel in gangs and speak in a language unbeknown to us, yet it could be more complex than anything we've ever imagined. For example, in 2000 dolphins saved a young boy from drowning off the coast of Italy. After they got the boy, they carried him above water and brought him to shore because they knew for some reason that this human could not survive under water and that he needed to be brought to land. But how did they know this? It takes an intense level of understanding to recognize differences between species and then cater to the different needs of each animal you come in contact with. 
Sharks scare the shit out of humans. Yet, wherever you see a dolphin you will never find a shark because sharks are in turn scared shitless of dolphins. For a huge ferocious powerful animal to actually be scared of a smaller and weaker one, that animal must have an ability that overpowers the other animal's strength. Do you know what that power is? It's intelligence. However, sharks are not scared of humans, so Dolphins must posses a different kind of brainpower, one that we humans cannot even fathom. 
I think that dolphins know more than we think they do. Humans dump all their waste that is full of secrets and information about the land into the oceans and do you know who sees it? You guessed it, the magicians of the sea. Our flippered friends could be a great ally to have. If the humans formed an alliance with the dolphins they could potentially change the face of this planet as we know it. 
Did you know that in the 20th century both the Russians and the Americans performed many military procedures with the aid of dolphins? The navy used the aid of dolphins to attach bombs to enemy ships. While this is fucked up, it shows that humans and dolphins have worked together in the past. Now, if we could form a new bond with the dolphins, one based on the acquisition of peace instead of the desire to destroy our enemies I believe that together we could make the world a beautiful place. 

Stalking is the new way of saying, "I CARE".

So I was stalking my friend the other day on the A train and I realized that some people might think that what I was doing was obsessive, perhaps even creepy. Well, I think that it's time to change the way we think about stalkers because nowadays everyone is a stalker, whether it's secretly or in plain view. Yes, that guy that stalks his girlfriend and leaves notes saying "I'm going to kill you...you're mine...etc." is creepy, but what about the other degrees of stalking? Myspace and the Facebook are sites that are supposed to enable people to stay in touch with their friends and distant acquaintances, but in reality it's a stalker's playground and everyone is invited to play on the jungle gym. And you know what? Everyone does. Even people who have issued restraining orders against others are guilty of using these sites for the purpose of stalking others. How many times have you gone onto Myspace to check your mail and found yourself hours later looking obsessively at pictures of the friends of one of your friends, or reading over the messages received by an ex-boyfriend's/girlfriend's friend who you think they might be dating now even though you were told "we're just friends"? An hour later you know all about this person; Their life's goals, their favorite books and movies, where they are going to be tomorrow. Then, all of a sudden your roommate walks in and you are overcome by a surge of guilt and embarrassment. You panic and try to hide what you've been doing by clicking on a different window. You try to get involved in this other website you just clicked on but deep down inside can't stop thinking about how creepy and sketchy you really are. 

Is this any less creepy than someone who is physically stalking someone around the city? Probably, but it definitely fits into some type of stalker category. Call me crazy but I think the only thing that stops people from actually stalking others is the fear that they might seem weird or be labeled as a "stalker". But if you knew nobody would ever know or find out, is there not someone in your life that you would want to follow around to really know what they're up to? Well, I will be the first to put myself out there by saying, "I am a stalker and I am proud to be one". It's time for us to join forces and use our talents for good instead restraining orders. Stalkers of the world unite!