NASA is requesting that the people of Earth compose haiku, which will then be included onboard the MAVEN spacecraft when they launch it into Mars’ orbit.

Obviously, I’ve spent the entire day writing haiku poems because I don’t have better things to do with my time:

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I just want to be canonized in a space monument.  Is that so much to ask?

My usual doctor, Doc Martin, was running late to our appointment, so he asked his associate, Doctor Hu, to start without him.  Another associate joined and before he could introduce himself I said, “Let me guess - Dr. Watson?”

I was the only one that laughed.

I was so preoccupied with telling my sister how “smart people” behave that I turned on the wrong burner and melted this spatula to this pan.

In 2005 I was dividing my time between wrapping my sophomore year of college and obsessively reading the latest installment of the Harry Potter series: Half Blood Prince. 

My friend, tired of sitting next to me while I read, convinced me that I needed to be more social and dragged me to a party.  Unfortunately, we arrived at that point where things had already digressed into the “we’ve lost all sense of what makes us human” phase.  People were passing out and setting fires and making proclamations of everlasting love to bags of chips. 

Somehow, I made my way into the kitchen and managed to wedge myself between some cupboards just as the host of the party was drunkenly scrambling into a standing position on the island counter.  He started screaming that someone had broken the faucet off his kitchen sink.

“Who fucking did this?”

It’s silent.

“Someone better fucking fess up.”

Again, silence.

“FINE.  This is how its gonna be?  Well you know what?  You’re going to ruin my night, I’m going to ruin yours.  Fuck you all, DUMBLEDORE DIES!”   

Then he stood there like this:

This is the moment where the sink became the least of his worries.

Last month I was sitting in a waiting room staring blankly at the wall and silently debating which flavor cupcake would be best suited for a post-errand reward, when a little girl watching SHREK on an iPhone plopped herself into the chair directly next to mine.  There were twenty other chairs she could’ve sat in, but she chose the only one in the entire room that would require me to passive-aggressively battle for the armrest.

She hummed while she watched and laughed with a wild abandon that caused her to slide out of her seat at every punchline.  Her dad sat down next to her and watched silently over her shoulder.

One of the Ugly Stepsisters popped up on the screen and he asked, “Is that supposed to be a man or a woman?”

And the girl scrunched up her face and said, “I don’t know.  If she’s happy and her friends like her then I don’t think it matters.”

I gave her the armrest.

She freaking earned it.

1.  Argue.

2. Reluctantly accept the news.

3. Steal all the disposable thermometers, just to feel something.

As a borderline hermit, it takes a lot to get me to leave the warmth and comfort of my apartment.  I have to put on pants, I have to find a bra, I have to stand on the inside of the front door for fifteen minutes giving myself a pep talk so I don’t just say, “Fuck it,” and go back to binge-watching PORTLANDIA on Netflix.

If I agree to do something that entails going out into Los Angeles, where parking is decided by the laws of Thunderdome, that is my way of telling you that I think you are très awesome.  Your worth is greater than my dislike of pants.

If you end up being sick that’s fine.  I will buy you some cat-shaped Mylar balloons and a little card with a narwhal in a top hat.

But when you tell me you are sick and you have to reschedule, THE ONLY THING I BETTER SEE YOU “CHECKING IN” TO IS A BOTTLE OF ROBITUSSIN.

Social Media 101 says, at the very least, pretend to actually be sick.  Like, do a Mobile Upload of a thermometer or something.

But don’t clutter my Facebook newsfeed - that you know I’m reading because I’m definitely at home because you canceled - with Instagram photos of the suhweet cheese soufflé apps at the regatta you decided to attend instead.

One Sunday evening when we ran out of TV and things to talk about, my boyfriend taught me how to juggle.  Some couples cuddle or feed each other Milanos, I suppose.  We practice circus acts.

For once in my life, I’m actually pretty fucking spectacular at something just right off the bat.  Ryan says it’s because he’s an amazing teacher, but I’m convinced I have a natural ball-handling talent (I SAID IT FIRST).  I am flush with overconfidence and I don’t even care that it’s the most basic juggling pattern, nothing you say will convince me that I do not naturally possess the talent of gods.

I’ve spent more time imagining a scenario where juggling will be boast-worthy than I have actually practicing. 

Like, one glorious day, I’ll be sitting in a room full of people and someone will frantically run in screaming, “Can someone JUGGLE? It has to be someone in this room!  Goddamnit, it’s a matter of life and death!” Then, while everyone is completely overwhelmed by the gravity of the request, I will timidly raise my hand and say, “I can.”  I’ll mumble something else, something self-deprecating, so that when I actually start juggling everyone’ll be blown away by my surprising dexterity because, “wasn’t she just saying that she was only okay at it?”  

Anyway, as the only capable volunteer in the room, I’ll be rushed to some secret government facility where I’ll have to juggle ball-shaped keys to sync a machine that will prevent a black hole from rapidly forming in the center of the sun, or something similarly awful but easily solved by juggling.  And everyone is just awed.

Days later, as I’m updating the “Other Skills” section of my resume and simultaneously preparing my acceptance speech for the aptly named, Hero Award Ceremony (during which I will receive the Key to the City), I find out that James Van Der Beek is super jealous that no one asked HIM to do it and I’m like, “My dear, sweet James. You weren’t in the room.”

In the movie version I’ll be played by Anne Hathaway with an English accent and James Van Der Beek will be played by Daniel Day Lewis.

My number one pet peeve is being asked to sign for other people’s packages.  I don’t want or need the responsibility of watching a fruit bouquet go room temperature because someone picked 1-Day Guaranteed Shipping and then didn’t bother to verify if anyone would be around to accept it.

Coming in at a close second is opening my Facebook newsfeed to see a cluster of quotes, misappropriated or taken out of context by my female peers.  LADIES.  You are literally using an information machine with your browser open!  You’re telling me you can’t be bothered to click into a new tab and just shitting Google the origin of that apparent Kate Winslet mouth-gem?  It’s the epitome of lazy, AND it makes you look like a jerk.

In all honesty, it feels like an epidemic; like a plague that swept through the high schools and then quickly spread to college girls, their mothers, and beyond.  No one is immune, and the only cure is not being so fucking indifferent and that’s never going to happen.

So, with an angry swarm of bees nesting under my sternum, I’ve compiled a few of the quote types I see slaughtered the most.

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1. The “Chivalry is Dead” Quote

I see this Fitzgerald quote ALL THE TIME.  It pops up in my newsfeed on an almost daily basis, with increased frequency as the calendar approaches Valentine’s Day.  Annoyingly, I also usually find that it’s hashtagged to death with things like #whenmenweremen, #romance, #borninthewrongera, #chivalry, #realmen - you get the point.

First of all, YOU WERE BORN IN THE RIGHT ERA.  I often hear girls bemoan their time placement because, once upon a time, men held doors and used creative adjectives.  But I’m sure you also enjoy voting and going to college and being able to wear pants without being stoned as a witch, so yeah, you’re pretty fortunate.  I too have found myself thinking that my child-bearing hips would be better suited to a time when I could’ve been immortalized in oil by Peter Paul Rubens - but then, I’d also have died at 19 of appendicitis.  So count your blessings and your flu shots.

Second, before you hashtagged that photo about F. Scott being a “real man” and “chivalrous,” did you bother to check out the history of his love life with the subject of the above quote?  That particular note was written in a private letter after F. Scott and Zelda broke off their engagement.  They did eventually marry, but the marriage was tumultuously unhappy and riddled with affairs, fights, and dishonesty.  Not to mention, he plagiarized Zelda’s private diaries and used excerpts freely and without credit in This Side of Paradise.

The fact that huge sections of that quote are MISSING aside, before you post stuff like that on your Facebook - because you’re pissed a date didn’t pay for dinner or didn’t respond instantaneously to your seventeen rapid text messages about NEW GIRL - Zelda and F. Scott never divorced, but they never saw each other again after 1938.  Zelda died when a fire engulfed the mental institution in which she was confined and F. Scott drank himself into cardiac arrest while living and having an affair with Sheila Graham.

I think there might be better examples of true love - and please, I don’t want to hear anything about teenagers offing themselves after seeing each other once at a party.

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2. The “All You Need Is Love and Not Things” Quote

Since I already ripped into Fitzy, it’s only fair that Zelda gets her share. 

I see this quote more than I’d like, from girls who sandwich it between pictures of Coach purses and duck-faced selfies.

I understand wanting to feel all the things and live honestly with your entire heart - but I’m not sure Zelda is the ideal role model for loving first and living second.  I mean, this is the woman who was asked to contribute a recipe for a cookbook and offered, “See if there is any bacon, and if there is, ask the cook which pan to fry it in.“  It’s not really something that screams, “I’m living incidentally!”  And when speaking of her husband’s about-to-be-published book The Beautiful and the Damned she hoped it would sell, only because she knew “where there is the cutest cloth of gold dress for only $300 in a store on Forty-second Street, and, also, if enough people buy it where there is a platinum ring with a complete circlet”….to buy for herself.  In the same breath she admits that her husband needs a new winter jacket, but that gold plates and rings are far more important.

Though, I could be totally wrong and she could’ve very well made loving others her primary concern.  But something tells me that isn’t the case, and your Instagram account dedicated to photos of champagne don’t reassure me that it’s your primary objective either.

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3. The “Born Original” Quote

If you actually read The Bell Jar in high school, then you know that Sylvia Plath was not known for her measured reactions.  But, she shared everything truthfully and honestly and the quote above certainly speaks to that.

The issue is, I often find this quote on Pinterest boards titled, “We Are Like Snowflakes” or “Don’t Die a Copy”…and that’s the part that really gets my sweater in a knot.  The above bit is so out of context; it’s probable that the original quote hit a wall of irony, exploded into sad fragments, and this was all that remained.  The actual excerpt, in it’s entirety, is from Plath’s Abridged Journals where she describes a gaggle of party-goers as being monotonously identical.  

She says, “But everybody has exactly the same smiling frightened face, with the look that says, ‘I’m important. If you only get to know me, you will see how important I am. Look into my eyes. Kiss me, and you will see how important I am.”’  Plath then proceeds to expand on how every girl present at the gathering is alike in her thoughts and desires.

So really, when you use the above quote to remind people that you’re unique and original, you’re really just reaffirming Plath’s lamentation that everyone suffers from delusions of grandeur mixed with same-y sameness.  Not to mention, when you post this out of context, it feels like you’re equating your importance with your ability to offer sex.  I feel like Plath would want you to aspire to more.

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4. The “I’m a Free Spirit” Quote

If I had a nickel for every hipster girl sporting a leather headband with this tattoo scrawled across her ribcage, I’d be richer than J.K. Rowling. 

I honestly don’t know if any of them even bothered to look it up, or if they just saw “wild” and “free” and immediately proceeded inking it into their flesh.  And really, I can’t think of what’s worse: THAT or the fact that when I Googled it, the first thing to come up was not the original lecture, but a Yahoo! Answers page from a girl wanting this as a tattoo and not knowing the source.  I have nothing against tattoos, I just think you should know exactly what you’re putting on your body.

And here’s the thing, Henry David Thoreau is not talking about drinking all night at Drais or making out with a DJ to rebel against your conservative father - he’s talking about walking in the woods.  As in, taking a long, peaceful saunter through the forest.  Alone.

In his essay “Walking,” which started as a lecture given in 1851, Thoreau talks about his loathing of the American society system and how industrialization is killing our souls; and begs his audience to part with all of that and just stroll by a river.  Seriously.  Did you read it?  Because there is an entire paragraph dedicated to how blue the sky is in Canada, followed by a list of North American plants.

Maybe you take a lot of nature walks, and so, I’m not talking to you.  But I bring this up because I feel like girls are using this quote as an excuse to make poor life decisions and exhibit bad behavior.  They drop references to it and expect that it totally forgives that time they vomited in a public fountain.  Do you really want to be an example of Thoreau’s “wild and free?”  Start a compost pile.  Hunt your own meat.  Move out of the city and become a farmer.  But don’t drop acid and then run through Coachella wearing only glowsticks while calling on Thoreau to defend you - because you’re doing it wrong.

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5. The “Beauty Is On the Inside” Quote

This is the one I see the most.  Right up there with choice bits of Marilyn Monroe’s relationship advice, I see variations on this Audrey Hepburn quote constantly.  It almost has a life of it’s own in decals, t-shirts, picture frames and Pinterest boards.  I see a lot of pictures of baby girl nurseries, bedazzled in pink, with this quote painted above the crib.

I’d want my daughter to think the same things: help the needy, be kind, learn, find the good in people.  It’s definitely sweet and made sweeter by the fact that someone as aesthetically pleasing as Hepburn wanted to bring the focus off of her outward appearance.

But she didn’t say it.  At least, she wasn’t the first.  Hepburn was often asked for vapid beauty tips by magazines and newspapers, something she disliked.  She found her answer in an essay by humorist, Sam Levenson.  While she is quoted saying the above list many times, she was always careful to give Levenson credit.  But somewhere along the line, this Catskills comedian got cut out completely.

And I’m guessing it’s because this:

doesn’t look as good above your shabby chic mantlepiece.
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Admittedly, the Internet can be a hard beast to navigate.  There’s a lot to take in and a ton of untruths to avoid - but that doesn’t mean you should just give up trying to find facts and blindly repost something because that’s the easier option.

Barring that, if you honestly can’t be bothered to verify a quote, then make one of your own.  REALLY be original and use your own words to describe how you feel, instead of using someone else’s.

Here, I’ll go first: “Be original and use your own words to describe how you feel, instead of using someone else’s.” - Averie Huffine, 4 seconds ago.

That one’s for free.

Friend:  What does that say?  Hello my name is Circles?

Me:  No, it says the Doctor’s name in Gallifreyan.

Friend:  Who’s the Doctor?

Me:  He’s…uhm….like, how much time do you have?