"Now Will Him Over Here With Your Garbage Bag Eyes"

Deven Green is back!

Horrifying Youtube of the Day

Help! I'm trapped in a musical and I can't get out!

Pretzel Pose

I am not a fan of group activities. That's why I don't live in China. Take that, ghost of Mao! I reject you! I totally deleted all your text messages! So I was apprehensive about going to a hot yoga class in Greenlake. I don't like when people yell at me to correct my posture unless they are Wii Fit's computer animated trainers and they balance their critiques with motivational remarks like "Great form!" and "Way to go!" Even when Wii yells at me to "Straighten up!" I barely blush because, after all, I'm standing in front of a television in my basement.

Also, I am against Yoga culture. Namaste my ass. Yoga's whole "calm" aura is really grating. I don't believe people who do Yoga are really as calm as they say they are. I think some of them have issues that are not necessarily resolved by turning their body into a pretzel.

But I couldn't pass up I Love Hot Yoga's 10 session trial (just 30 bucks for a month of unlimited Yoga!). Some things, I figure, you really just have to give a try. As I waited outside the doors of the Yoga studio apprehensively, I scanned the faces of the departed for signs of heat exhaustion or mortification.

The studio was as dark and hot as a mother's womb. The women in the studio were on their backs, breathing heavily and purposefully as if they they were trying to rid themselves of evil spirits.

"Will people please make space in the front of the room?" the yoga instructor asked us in a slight guilting tone, as if we were already members in her moderately dysfunctional family.

I bent down and tried to touch my hands to the floor. It hurt a little bit, and I came back up. I've always treated my body as fearfully as one treats stray dogs or drunk Australians. "Are you sure you can do that?" I'm constantly asking myself.

Still, I did all the bends. I became a pretzel, a cadaver, then an airplane, a boat, a tee pee, a lounge chair, a tree with a penis, and the statue of liberty. My face got sweatier and angrier than a woman giving birth to triplets. On multiple occasions, I thought I was about to die. "This is it," I thought, "and the last thing I'll ever see is that nonsensical Lululemon logo."

By the end, I smelled like a sailor but I felt supernaturally relaxed. So relaxed, in fact, that I sat outside a Starbucks and stared at a cute boy until he stared back. I got his number.

I am now a fan of group activities. Sorry for ever doubting you, Mao. The only way to really burn ass fat, it seems, is with a slightly scary Bikram instructor standing over you and correcting your posture in a room that's 103 degrees.

I'm Graduating Soon

Can you believe it?? CAN YOU?? I CAN'T! I was just talking to my friend Jeremy about this. I was having a very wayward youth moment. Forgive the Daria-esque deadpan. "I've gotta do stuff when I graduate, you know... be things." "You don't have to graduate to be things" "Yes I do Jeremy, that's why I spent so much money on this."

But seriously guys. The following is a tentative list of future accomplishments:

cure youth in asia
save the pigeons
cut twigs on all the trees so they don't bring hurt to people's eyes.
teach old people how to sext
bring back the clog
eliminate all awkward pauses, fill in the dead noise with lady gaga's bad romance
cure death

It's going to be hard. But that's why I'm getting my B.A. in English.

Inside the Head of the Racoon Down the Street

Hi. I am a racoon. I know you are not. I'm just going to sit. So still. Right now. By the door.

Oop. You just moved. I was just moving my head because you moved.

Hi.

Your house is bright. Your garbage: So yummy. Was that organic chocolate? I'm full or I'd eat your leg. Mmmmmmmm.

Leg.

Was that your friend practicing her ridiculous dance by the window? She looks like a hooker.

I'm a conservative racoon.

Are you going to walk towards me or away from me?

Oh well, I'll tell you anyway. Today I was listening to NPR and it made me angry. Someone British was talking and it made me realize how much I hate Americans. Whenever a Brit is talking to an American, it's always just so much clearer who's the moral one! Anyway, they were interviewing this man about this great tragedy in some third world, an American by the way, and he kept on saying how he was so enamored by the way these poor people had held up despite the crisis. They had such nobility, he'd said. As if all poor people have nobility. My head wanted to explode! Hadn't he read all those essays in the back of "Heart of Darkness!" DISUGUSTING! If I could sign language some grotesque emotocon I would!

By the way: I don't respect your life.

I saw you watching that Buddhist film last night. I saw you wanting to laugh. And you call yourself a multiculturalist! Your whole lifestyle is a sham.

I know you mistrust me because of that thing I have going on around my eyes, but really you should mistrust me because I don't respect your life.

Sigh.

I'm done.

But you really are a silly people.

All I do is eat your garbage....

La, la, la.

You're still looking at me.

Do you think you're just staring at two disembodied floating shiny fireflies?

Those are my eyes.

Okay. Well. If you're just going to stand there, I'll continue.

Now I'm no intimidatingly muscley man myself, but I'd say you need to exercise more. I can tell. I see those shoulders. So hunched. I know, I know. You think it's more complicated than that. You think that happiness is some magical combination of funny SNL clips on Hulu and good books and bars with cute boys and the right cologne...but really you just need to work out more.

If you lived in the Himalayas with those Buddhists you watch in movies, you'd feel naturally energetic and happy every day because you'd be picking wheat and tying prayer flags and things like that. But you don't. That's why you're a mess.

(Racoons don't feel guilt. I don't regret just saying that. BTW!)

Also: okay. Now I know I'm going to sound like your mother (if your mother was a hip therapist who understood cultural phenoms like facebook and the debilitating power of the internet) but seriously, no more endlessly thinking about what kind of status update you want to write and then refreshing your Gmail inbox obsessively to see if someone's commented on your facebook status update. Have a little more self-respect. Phew. I really had to say that one.

Why can't you be more like that girl who played the fat girl in Precious? You saw those interviews. She has self-respect.

Basically, I wish you were a black woman.

Are you about to lunge for me? I hope you know I just stepped back so I could spring forward with renewed vigor and appetite for human flesh!

You're getting closer. You know I have friends in the honeybucket next door? I do. Really. You heard that story about how we ganged up on that old lady in Florida and ate her hair? We'll totally eat your hair. No more Mr. Jew Hair!

Oh, you're getting the mail.

Oh, and now you're gone.

So silent now.

So at peace.

Now I feel bad.

I think I need a more creative job where I can vent my frustrations through some kind of art. Not even for the attention. I just don't like being this angry all the time.

I'm going to go make a bath and listen to Feist.

Yes, I'm a hipster racoon. Bitch, don't even start.