You know that headache you get where it feels like your whole head is strapped in a vise, and you can’t make it better because a) you’re probably grinding your teeth at night and b) your hair is too dirty to take out of its ponytail so it just hangs there and causes even more cranial tension?  I’ve got one of those right now.  It’s 100% from work, where I feel like I’m getting shit on for something retarded.  It’s not like I think my productivity makes me exempt from criticism, but being picked apart for something minuscule while other people get away with doing almost zero feels unfair.

One of those people called me a “Negative Nancy” today.  The person she said it to asked me what went with “lazy.”  I said “asshole.”

I like my bosses because they treat me like a human being, but today made me all GET OFF MY NUTS, BOSS.  That’s why I’m drinking right now.  It’s either get drunk or quit, and quitting work is not ever an option.  As awesome as Ephemera Etc. can be, I’m certainly not making any money off of it.  Nor would I want to, because I get into enough trouble with people who don’t want me writing about them here.*  I can only imagine what escandalo stuff I’d start if I had advertisers.  Still, though, it’s nice that apparently some people are making a living and possibly wearing bullshit uniforms because of it:

I’d like to personally assure each and every one of you that I have never worn a dress to write this blog.  Sheeeeit. You’re lucky I’m wearing pajama pants that I haven’t gotten a surprise period in (yet).  Just about the only truthful thing about that dress is that many blog writers do need the extra room, because you don’t get much cardiovascular exercise by sitting on the couch with a glass of wine and wondering if a semicolon is appropriate.

(I’d also like to let everyone know that ModCloth’s sizing is bullshit, too, because they were responsible for the giant tablecloth dress I got stuck wearing to a wedding.)

I found the above picture on The Doree Chronicles (she credited someone else, but click through because she’s the one with the Tumblr).  Doree is relatively my age and knows some of those People Who Know Better (ie, women who are Jewish, live in New York, and have worked in publishing)* and she talks a lot about 90210.

Sometimes I read blogs by people who are roughly my age, but they seem so much older than me because they talk about 90210 a lot.  I remember exactly three episodes of 90210.  One was the episode where Doug (at least I think his name was Doug; he was a nominally unimportant character until the show’s producers decided they had to do a “very special episode,” apparently in response to all the accidental deaths caused by teenagers playing the “whirl a gun around like Wild Dog Tannen” game at home) shot himself.  Two was when the girls had a sleepover on Halloween and played with the Ouija board.  Three was when the girls tried to pledge a sorority and Andrea Zuckerman wore her Star of David necklace, which let all the sorority girls know she was Jewish and exposed them as anti-Semites.

My next door neighbors were obsessed with 90210 and talked incessantly about Dylan when they weren’t trying to teach me to smoke cigarettes, but I never really understood the appeal of either activity.  While 90210 was decidedly cooler, I preferred to watch Saved By The Bell.  The jury is still out on which show is more valuable to nostaligize (making up words!) in reference to the 90’s, but I’m fine with choosing Bayside over West Beverly.

Although 90210 and Saved By The Bell were both two very 90’s shows, Saved By The Bell’s eternal syndication makes it feel, somehow, a little more current than 90210.  Like, I know that Mark-Paul Gosselaar is older than me, but I can still see him as this shrimpy little punk from Miss Bliss’ class.  Also, 90210’s subject matter was obviously more mature than Screech trying to put his arm around Lisa Turtle for .5 seconds, and at age 12, I had no interest in which friend — Brenda or Kelly — Dylan McKay was trying to sensitively nail that week.  It’s not that I was pubescently stunted or anything, I just didn’t care about a bunch of alleged high schoolers who were actually 35 years old.  But this is what probably caused me to miss out on all the blogged references to a show that was apparently huge for other writerly girls my age, and it sometimes kind of makes me feel like I didn’t grow up in the 90’s at all.

Which of course I know is dumb, because people who are so acutely aware of growing up in the 90’s are weird.  No one was aware of it at the time.  I mean, we all knew what year  it was, but to us, it was just life.  We were far more concerned with forging our parents’ signatures on demerit cards and finally getting someone to kiss us than we were conscious about the cultural significance of the decade.  There wasn’t a lot of cultural significance to the 90’s, actually, and anyone who claims there was has watched too much VH-1.

*I wrote about the People Who Know Better once because they are the examples of why I will never get to publish a book.  Not that I have anything against Jewish women, I just mean that it seems to be beneficial to be female, Jewish, live in New York, and have worked in publishing if you ever want to write a book.  Anyway, I wrote this once but I can’t find it, which leads me to believe that it was in a now-removed entry that pissed someone off at one point or another.  *curtsy*