I have nothing else left to set on fire.

Oh Sarah Lawrence, I love you.

Mon, 21 May 2012 13:10:11 -0700

Oh Sarah Lawrence, I love you.

I Wrote This Email to Myself 5 Years Ago

Sat, 19 May 2012 10:20:44 -0700

And it just popped in my inbox thanks to futureme.org. Oh silly 25-year-old me.

One down, three to go… and yes, I still love “She’s the Man.” Some things don’t ever change.

Have you been able to cross everything off your Life Checklist? If not, what the fuck, get off your ass. Here’s a reminder of what you should have accomplished by now (in no particular order):

1.) Written a book.
2.) Bought a house.
3.) Bought a dog (is it a Corgi?).
4.) Adopted a child (or at least made one yourself).

—B

P.S. Do you still love “She’s the Man?” You should watch it right now because it’s the funniest movie ever.

Reason #29 Why I'm Glad to Be Home

Sun, 13 May 2012 13:19:00 -0700

Dad: Ugh. My back's been bothering me for a week.
Me: You should go to the chiropractor.
Dad: That's like going to a voodoo doctor.

"Once a little boy sent me a charming card with a little drawing on it. I loved it. I answer all my..."

Tue, 08 May 2012 17:27:00 -0700

““Once a little boy sent me a charming card with a little drawing on it. I loved it. I answer all my children’s letters — sometimes very hastily — but this one I lingered over. I sent him a card and I drew a picture of a Wild Thing on it. I wrote, “Dear Jim: I loved your card.” Then I got a letter back from his mother and she said, “Jim loved your card so much he ate it.” That to me was one of the highest compliments I’ve ever received. He didn’t care that it was an original Maurice Sendak drawing or anything. He saw it, he loved it, he ate it.””

- Maurice Sendak

Parenting 101 all the way from 1981.

Sun, 06 May 2012 12:00:38 -0700

Parenting 101 all the way from 1981.

sketcherazzi: Barbara at Swingers! (Taken with instagram) How...

Sat, 28 Apr 2012 22:21:28 -0700

sketcherazzi:

Barbara at Swingers! (Taken with instagram)

How fun to be a comic. And by that I don’t mean a comic book character, but rather a genuine drawn being. I think I’d like to switch worlds please and thank you. Imaginary for reality, yes. Sign me up.

Rejection Letter of the Day (#19)

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 09:57:00 -0700

Dear Writer:

Thank you for submitting your work to the 2012 Writers@Work Fellowship competition. Your work was carefully read by two readers. All submissions were blind. We appreciate the opportunity to read your work, but unfortunately this submission was not chosen as a finalist.

Thank you for your submission and please consider entering the 2013 Fellowship competition.

Sincerely,

The Fellowship Committee Writers@Work

"1. Run away to Brooklyn. Rent an apartment with a claw footed bathtub. Commute to Manhattan during..."

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 17:25:00 -0700

“

1. Run away to Brooklyn. Rent an apartment with a claw footed bathtub. Commute to Manhattan during the week and put in hours at a menial publishing job. Drive home to New Jersey on weekends to swim in the pool and cry to your mother. Smoke Gauloises on the fire escape. Let yellowing issues of Rolling Stone and Vogue pile into a protective fortress around your bed. Listen to Cat Power. Fall asleep mostly naked beneath the duvet watching Sportscenter and drinking earl grey. Date a Yankees fan and kiss his hands on the 4 Train into the Bronx.

2. Run away to Barcelona. Eat milk chocolate magnum bars and drink cheap champagne. Burst into charming fits of laughter whenever you get embarrassed about butchering the Catalan language. Wear denim cutoffs, Dr. Pepper chapstick, and very little else. Go dancing at 3 a.m. Whiten your teeth. Tan your shoulders. Braid feathers into your hair. Perpetually wake up with sand caught in the thin cotton sheets of your tiny bed. Listen to the Rolling Stones and kiss all the longhaired boys you can get your hands on without ever having to apologize.

3. Run away to Los Angeles. Sublet a studio in Venice three blocks from the beach. Listen to top 40 radio. Go to Chateau Marmont and charge drinks you can’t afford to a long-dormant credit card. Sleep with a television actor who lives in the valley. Sleep with a musician who lives in Bel Air. Break things off with both of them when gas prices begin to rise. Find Gilda Radner’s star on the Walk Of Fame and swallow a sob when you see the filthy cement around her name is cracked. Walk through the Venice Canals until the sun sets and you forget your own name. Call your mother crying from the parking lot of a 24-hour Ralph’s supermarket. Tell her you want to come home.

4. Run away to Paris. Gaze at the pink and pistachio glow of macarons in the window on Boulevard Saint-Germain. Listen to Joni Mitchell. Meet an Argentinean man in the Latin Quarter for drinks. Melt into his accent and kiss him goodnight, but return to your apartment alone because his face doesn’t look enough like the man’s you are trying to forget. Get lost in the Richelieu Wing of the Louvre, admiring Napoleon’s fine red damask. Walk alone along the Seine in an old dress, ten-dollar shoes, and an Hermes scarf. Fumble with the locks on the fence overlooking the river. They all have lovers’ names etched into them and the girl who left the red heart-shaped lock has the same name as you.

5. Run away to Martha’s Vineyard. Write heartbroken stories during the day in front of a large fan that blows curls of humid hair across your tired face. Take a waitress job at The Black Dog at night and try hard not to drop too many trays. Learn to ride a moped. Pretend you’re a Kennedy. Listen to Carly Simon. Eat hand-churned ice cream out of waffle cones. Visit the flying horses and consider how many girls just like you have sat on the same horse clutching for the same brass ring. Get stoned and dance barefoot down the length of the eroded Jaws beach. Date a Red Sox fan. Yell at each other during baseball games, and then kiss and make up between tangled sheets.

”

- 5 Fantasy Exit Strategies « Thought Catalog (via roguemonster)

I hearted this some time ago, meaning to send it to Barbara Sueko, begging her to attempt all 5 of these. I would be so jealous!!!

(via theluckycouple2011)

Liz, I love you. The most amazing exit strategies ever. I’m going to print them out and tape them to the back of my front door.

Unconditional love is in town from New York and it’s very...

Sun, 22 Apr 2012 10:07:00 -0700

Unconditional love is in town from New York and it’s very exciting.

Piggie Smalls makes everything better.

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 17:55:59 -0700

Piggie Smalls makes everything better.

Today is my best friend’s birthday. One year ago today she...

Thu, 19 Apr 2012 18:06:00 -0700

Today is my best friend’s birthday. One year ago today she came into my life and made it so much better. Here are just a few of the reasons why.

Rejection Letter of the Day (#18)

Wed, 18 Apr 2012 10:09:58 -0700

Dear Barbara Sueko McGuire,

I wish to offer my sincere apologies for the delay in responding to your submission. We’re a very small staff and have an enormous backlog of submissions, but we’re trying out best to catch up and keep up. Thank you for thinking of A Public Space for UnKnowing. We truly appreciated the chance to consider it, but feel that A Public Space is not the right magazine for this work. Thank you again.

Warm Regards,

Brigid Hughes
Editor

A Public Space
323 Dean Street
Brooklyn, NY 11217
718.858.8067
www.apublicspace.org

One year ago yesterday I moved back to LA from New York. I left...

Fri, 13 Apr 2012 18:23:00 -0700

One year ago yesterday I moved back to LA from New York. I left everything I had come to know and love and returned to where I was born and raised. I felt like an outsider then, and 365 days plus one later, I still do. I feel like a transplant to my own city. To the city of my birth, to the city that raised me, to the city which shaped me to into the person I am presently. It’s strange, how you can come to be uncomfortable in a place that is supposed to be home. Maybe you forget it, maybe it forgets you. Either way, Los Angeles and I are still getting used to each other, and I trying my damnedest to make it work, but New York, I think I will always miss you.

Photo: Neil Clayton Campbell

This kid is my new hero. Wow. My heart just melted.

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 10:11:17 -0700

This kid is my new hero. Wow. My heart just melted.

One of my top five most favorite things about my job is that...

Fri, 06 Apr 2012 19:32:00 -0700

One of my top five most favorite things about my job is that typically, the customers surrounding me are amazingly creative people. From musicians to comedians to writers to directors to actors to kung fu masters to producers to silly skateboarding professionals, you name it, they’re there.

Today, me and Pennypan were lucky enough to meet Steve, a most incredible artist who sketched us in mere moments.

I don’t think Steve realized just how much he made our day by his little act of kindness.

I Made Another Book

Thu, 05 Apr 2012 09:53:00 -0700

It makes me happy.

I hope it makes you happy, too.

The first one’s here:

My Friend is a Brilliant Writer

Mon, 02 Apr 2012 16:47:25 -0700

My Friend is a Brilliant Writer

Hah. Hah.

Sun, 01 Apr 2012 18:02:25 -0700

Hah. Hah.

This makes me extremely happy. Wish I could attribute the photo,...

Sat, 31 Mar 2012 10:18:46 -0700

This makes me extremely happy. Wish I could attribute the photo, but here’s the story that I found with it:

La historia es así: en Guanajuato, México, estaba todo listo para que pasara el Papa por las calles de la ciudad, pero minutos antes pasó el representante de la bondad, fidelidad y amor puro, ahí está miren la foto.

This morning I had a nightmare that one of my friends convinced...

Tue, 27 Mar 2012 17:25:00 -0700

This morning I had a nightmare that one of my friends convinced me to get an office job at the corporation where she worked. I went in to check it out and see what her days consisted of, only to find that they were painfully boring. Everyone sat behind desks, pretended they were working while surfing the net and were intimidated by the boss.

I sat down, looked around and started to have a panic attack accompanied by a flood of thoughts: “Why did I agree to do this? Why did I give up waitressing? What was I thinking? Holy fuck my life, how am I going to do this? How will I deal with the boredom? Why did I think this was a good idea? Can I still somehow get out of this? Fuck fuck fuck fuck.”

I woke up to the church bells of my alarm chiming, and although I never drag my feet on my way into work, my step was so light today I almost flew there.

3eanuts:

July 23, 1969 — see The Complete Peanuts 1967-1970