Category — AIDS is not funny.

I just spent the last two hours searching the internet for videos of this Lemonheads song and found a LOT of super earnest covers by a LOT of average follicularly challenged white guys (which, to be perfectly honest, were very sweet and I’m sure resulted in them getting laid more than they would have otherwise) but I finally decided this one was my favorite - partly because of the spelling of “lemmonheads” and partly (mostly) because of the peppy uptempo-ness of it. And yes, maybe the accent helped a little. A LITTLE.

Also, I don’t understand why he’s singing from prison. I wonder who he killed? He seems like a nice kid. It’s always the quiet ones, I guess.

I will not giggle about the “lock climbing weekend”. I will NOT.

Remember last week when I told you about the HORRIFIC movie I saw?

Well here is my review, out today in The Merc.

Enjoy. I will be in the bathroom every five minutes, wondering what I did to deserve Cholera. I have a sneaking suspicion it has something to do with the title of this post.

We’ve got a wedding to go to in about 5 weeks and because I am a girl I am already panicking about what to wear.

This weekend it was suddenly about 900 degrees outside and beautiful. Unfortunately, I could not enjoy it very much because I believe it was nature’s way of kicking me in the balls about nutrition and possibly not drinking so many cocktails all the time. The truth is I’m in much better shape than I was last spring when this happened and I was coming down from a three month marathon of divorce karaoke, divorce jaeger shots, and divorce Jack in the Box so I’m not freaking the fuck out the way I was then. HOWEVER, I’m still not quite ready for tank tops and skirts and flip flops the way every girl wants to be all the time. So today begins my re-commitment ceremony to healthy living. And drinking wine at bars instead of delicious boozy margaritas because a glass of wine takes about 14 hours to drink and a chocolate martini takes about negative 5 seconds.

Maybe you shouldn’t drink any alcohol at all, you say?

Well, to that I say, keep your morals off my goddamn lawn, you hooligan! I do so love my delicious wine and it loves me back and who are you to put boundaries on a love that is hurting no one except my waistline and why are you judging me and subsequently marginalizing functional alcoholics everywhere? It’s hurtful and, dare I say it, IGNORANT.

So I’m going to dial back my portion sizes AGAIN and mostly just lay off the boozy drinks and up the exercising a little but mostly I am going to try not to obsess about it too much. If I was 22 I would be able to lose 9 pounds in a week just by forgetting to eat but now that I’m an adult I never forget to eat. EVER. I do however, still forget to pay bills because I have no ability to prioritize. Like, two months ago right now I should be doing our taxes. Instead I am writing a blog post about dieting and alcohol and that is because I would rather talk about dieting and alcohol than discuss the merits of a five party system (although that sounds alcohol-y, right?) or Sudanese politics. And this should explain to you why I will never, ever be a respected journalist at The New Republic. I will just forever be known as that one blogger who thinks AIDS is funny.

Do as I say, not as I do.

I am just sitting here in a full on panic attack waiting for my interview to happen. It’s times like this when I yearn for a Time Machine. I’d climb into the Time Machine (which would, fingers crossed, look exactly like an english phone booth) and plug in 4:30 PST and a whir and a click later I’d be bathed in relief and flopsweat, ready to take a klonopin bubble bath and go out to dinner.

But that is not going to happen, is it? And I am going to have to talk to the Famous Person on the phone and ask them questions and not stutter or pass out and I ASKED TO DO THIS because it’s exciting and good for my career and it’s supposed to be fun, right?

And none of this would be so bad if I had been able to watch The Hills last night. Do you know why I was not able to watch The Hills? Because someone, who’s name rhymes with Dane Flesselball, somehow DELETED it from the DVR. And where I come from, that is grounds for divorce.

I will update you all at or near 4:30 and let you know if I managed to make it through the next two hours without having an AIDS attack.

UPDATE! I DID NOT DIE. It was fine. I will link to my interview next Thursday when it comes out and we can all laugh about how stupid I can sometimes be.

People are still mad at me for comparing my cold to cancer (Well, not cancer - we can rest assured people still think cancer is funny or at least inconsequential) and AIDS. I have now been invited via another blog post to travel to Africa and volunteer with some kind of AIDS prevention and treatment center and then blog about how funny or not funny it is. This, I suppose, will Teach Me A Lesson about Taking Things Seriously.

God.

I DO NOT THINK WATCHING A LOVED ONE OR ANY LIVING THING DIE OF A HORRIBLE DISEASE IS FUNNY. I think using humor to ease a bad situation is, however, funny and HEALING. It’s called gallows humor. Look it up.

And anyway, how did we get to this point? Comments taken out of context and reposted elsewhere, I guess - which by the way is just poor journalism - and reactionary blogging by everyone. I made a twitter comment about my flu, someone reacted to it badly, I reacted to their reaction, my readers reacted to that, and so forth. And that is how you start a war. It’s stupid.

Do these people really think that WE think a child wearing a silly hat who has tourettes and is dying of AIDS is funny? It’s not funny, although typing it did just make me giggle a little. And you know why? Because it’s inappropriate, like laughing in church (actually, laughing in church is the only appropriate thing to do, in my opinion).

I really did not want to talk about this anymore, but then I got called out again and I was all “It is ON” and my fingers were all “Let’s type this shit OUT” and also, no, I do not want the world thinking I’m some kind of hate monger who is evil and wants people to die of diseases so that I can make fun of them. Way to blow it all out of proportion, Portland.

Sometimes, I do not like the internet. I hops it gets the cancer.