Drivers, a pedestrian's perspective

Alternatively titled: "A completely biased view of a large class of people."

• You are literally always on your phone. You might be talking, or texting, or changing a song, or looking at a map, but no matter what, you are definitely holding it. Sometimes you hold it right in front of your face. This is most noticeable when you do it at night because it GLOWS.
• When you get to an intersection, you generally only look in one direction. I've noticed this because it's usually not the direction in which I'm standing. It's a good thing I've come to this realization otherwise I would have died many times by now. Like a cat!
• My life and health is not important to you.
• Having to stop at a crosswalk for 30 seconds causes you severe mental strife. Why are you in such a rush? Is your favorite TV show about to come on? You should really consider investing in a DVR if TV is more important to you than human life.
• Sometimes you hit bikers. Like that time I was late to work because I had to call 911 and wait for the ambulance to arrive.
• Sometimes bikers hit you. Like that time I saw a woman with a child on the back of her bike run into a parked car.
• You probably complain a lot about your commute because traffic is the worst thing ever! But there is nothing you can do about it which makes you a victim! You probably live close to a commuter rail stop, but never mind that, you are a victim! Even so, I want you to know that your coworkers would love for you to stop talking to them about your commute / in general.
• Maybe you live in the middle of the city but have to have a car so you can go to Applebees on the weekend (or wherever people with cars go). But ugh, parking! Why do so many people in your neighborhood have to have cars?! Victim!
• Shoveling - the worst!
• Gas - the worst!
• Humans - the worst!

Okay, I'm done now, but I had to get that all out because I nearly get hit by a car every day. GET IT TOGETHER, PEOPLE.

Editor's note: I do not discriminate. I hate bikers, too.

Things I learned this weekend

1. Sometimes, the first thing I do when I meet strangers is talk to them about vaginal mesh.
2. I like to pregame before I go on dates.

3. I fell in love with a bartender this weekend... while I was on said date.
4. You really shouldn't ask me out, is what I'm saying.

5. If you invite me over for brunch, I'll probably bring my laundry and spill at least one mimosa on your tablecloth.

Ladies luncheon.

6. Literally everything should have an egg on it.

7. Broad City is what Girls should be.

Get More: Comedy Central,Funny Videos,Funny TV Shows

8. I want my own TV show.
9. Or maybe just a podcast.

Cat selfies.

10. SOMEONE MAKE ME FAMOUS.

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Katie Que&A

Dear Katie Que&A, My boyfriend and I have been together for over a year and things are going well. But lately he has been talking about kids in a very presumptuous way. He says things like, "when we have kids, they will so and so" or "I'll never let our kids do such and such." We haven't even discussed marriage, so I'm not sure how to approach this sensitive topic. How can I get him on the right track without hurting or relationship? Sincerely, Barren in Bethesda

This is the rest of your life.

Dear "Barren in Bathesda", 

Kids? Run away, girl. As fast as you can. 

Or, show him this natural birth video* and tell him you want him to videotape one of your own, when the time comes. OR, tell him that childbirth increases your chances of needing vaginal mesh one day. VAGINAL MESH. 

If that doesn't terrify him, then I recommend that you have him sign a legal document that says he will provide at least 50% of the support, both financially and in terms of care. I mean, this was really his idea so you should probably up that to 75%. You could even write in a clause that says he is required to change every diaper. You would never touch a single diaper! Think about it. Also, please be sure to do this before you stop taking birth control. Sort of like a prenuptial agreement. A pre-conceptional agreement, if you will. 

Tell your uterus I said I'm sorry. 

Hearts and stars, 

Katie Qué

Contributing Editor: Dan Fenner

*DO NOT CLICK THAT.

Wednesday Confessions

• I sort of feel bad for these geese because it looks like they have been shackled like little slaves.

Fuck birds, though.

• Or maybe they are just on house arrest. 
• Amy Schumer's show is fantastic.  I still sort of resent her for stealing a joke I wrote (privately in my dorm room) in 2006, but IT'S FINE.

• This chick brought a book lamp to a Sox/Yankees game. I'm confessing on her behalf.

• I am very, very white.

No flash.

• I eat dessert after every meal, including breakfast.
• On that note, today is National Zucchini Bread day. I think we should all celebrate. 

Have confessions? Link up here.

Things I learned this weekend

• I do not know how I lived without this item for so many years. So many lemon squares to come, you guys.

• My sister's dog does not like to take selfies.

D-o-g-g.

• Do not try to take the bus from Plymouth back to Boston on Easter because you will get left on the side of the highway. Bus driver was all like, "This bus is full and there are no other busses coming, sorry." and then just ghosted right off.

• My art skills could use some work.

Flawless?

• If you ask nicely, your friends will let you reenact The Babysitters Club in the middle of a party.

• I met a girl from NYC who writes for magazines and got to interview DRAKE. And she was all like, "But it was only over the phone."  

• Sometimes when it's really nice out, I like to go to windowless bars and play video games.

• Going to Brighton on Marathon Monday is a stark reminder that you are now old as shit.
• Apparently, Boston Strong just means wearing blue and yellow and drinking in your front yard.
• The major effect terrorism had on the Marathon was that no one was allowed to cross the street; therefore, I was separated from half of my friends for most of the day.

• Daenerys is like a smaller, cuter Abraham Lincoln.
• I'm pretty sure I made that joke last year. 
• I AM WASHED UP. 

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Katie Que&A

I am always shocked when people ask me for dating/relationship advice, given the fact that I'm perpetually single, but I actually get asked quite a bit. So, an internet friend of mine suggested that I start an advice column, and thus, Katie Qué&A was born.

Each week, I will provide someone with sage advice about dating, using my extensive research in the field. Some of my experience includes:

• Stalking 
• Friend-zoning
• Ghosting
• Tweeting 

@Drake CALL ME.
— Katie Qué (@imyourkatieque) April 11, 2014

• Tindering
• Binge eating
• Cats

This concept will only work if you all send me your questions, so please do so in the comments or via email at imyourkatieque@gmail.com. I envision this primarily being a dating advice column, but other questions are welcome, too. I also have a lot of expertise in peanut butter, for example.

We'll start off this week with an easy question, suggested by my aforementioned internet friend:

Dear Katie Qué,

What advice would you give to a guy going on a first date?

Sincerely,
I didn't know you in high school

Dear "I didn't know you in high school", 

First of all, arrive on time. No one wants to wait around for you (on that note, my sincerest apology to every guy I've ever gone out with). Also, bring a bag of bagels. At least a dozen -- you can freeze them. Why? Girls love carbs, for one thing.  Secondly, it would be a subtle suggestion that maybe you'll have breakfast together the next day. Either way, it's a win win. Unless you fucking blow it. 

Love,
Katie Qué

Need advice? Then contact me immediately because my blog depends on it. Otherwise, have a great weekend.


Disclaimer: Katie Qué is not qualified to give advice on dating, or really anything, for that matter. She has never been in a serious relationship, unless you include that with fast food establishments, particularly Domino's. Please take everything she says with a grain of salt. Better yet, a slice of pizza.

Wednesday Confessions

• I almost always have crumbs in my hair and/or shirt.

• I feel like a deadbeat mom because I'm hardly ever home these days. Is there a DSS for cats?

Love me.

• When I'm trying to "watch my language" in public I say, "What the flink?" or "What the sneech?" instead of "What the fuck?" #doitforthekids
• I think there are too many burger places in Boston. There, I said it.
• I almost never brush my hair

• I shattered my phone screen a few weeks ago, when I fell in the middle of the street and some bitches made fun of me ("That girl just ate shit!"). I was planning on living with it for the next year and a half until it actually cut my finger. So there's another $150 down the drain. 
• It only took me 8 months to figure out how to update to iOS7 (slash give up and have my IT guy do it for me), so transferring all my data from one phone to another should be a breeze.
• I keep getting severe headaches every time I do squats. I'm terrified I'm going to have an aneurysm at the gym. (Note: I am a hypochondriac.)

• I'm all girl power and shit, but I could really use a boyfriend to help supplement my income.
• Then again, I'm starting to worry that I'll never feel the way about a real man as I do Kit Harington.

Still posting pictures of him.

• I love Kat for starting this linkup since it gives me another excuse to use bullet points and avoid actually writing.

Fat Talk

As you may already know, I am on a personal crusade to stop fat talking. I've written about this before, but in case you are unfamiliar with what fat talk is, it's basically the shaming of what we look like and what we eat.

Fat talk is extremely counterproductive. For example, people convince themselves that pointing out how "bad" the food is they are eating gives them the "permission" to eat it.  As if they are absolving the sin of chewing. The problem here is that they believe it is a sin in the first place. When we demonize food, when we focus on it constantly, it temps us; it controls us. It also puts us in a perpetual cycle of guilt. This is no way to live!  I'm telling you this as someone who has lived in this cycle for most of my life, and I want out of it.

For the most part, I've been pretty good about not fat talking lately. But, my major obstacle is that fat talk is EVERYWHERE. It happens at work; it happens in social settings; it happens constantly, it seems. The last time I was with a group of girl friends, we spent almost the entire time eating while simultaneously pointing out how "fat" we were being, how unfair it is that some people "can eat whatever they want", how "the diet starts tomorrow". But, did that stop us from eating? No. Did it make us feel bad about ourselves? Absolutely.

In my opinion, fat talk isn't just negatively talking about your body or food. To me, it's the constant obsession and focus on food and body in general -- your own and everyone else's. "Those jeans make you look so skinny" might seem like a compliment, but to me it only reinforces the idea that thinness is what makes you attractive.  Saying "You're being so good today" to someone who is eating a salad again perpetuates this idea that some foods are evil, and that your value and virtue is connected to how much lettuce you eat. Alternatively, I have been told multiple times that I'm "bad" for eating candy at work. SHUT THE FUCK UP, is what I want to scream most of the time, but I can't because I'm in a professional setting.

"Female 'fat talk' socially mandatory, study finds"

I do think there is a common misconception that fat talk is a women's issue. Articles and websites dedicated to body image discussions are generally geared toward women (e.g. the article above). And, don't get me wrong, girls' and women's perceptions of themselves are at an all-time low (81% of ten year olds are afraid of being fat). But this bullshit affects men, too.

I got the following message from one of my male friends the other day:

I remember a while back you were talking about being sick of hearing people talk about eating/food shaming/dieting at work.... I can tell you, I work with nearly all dudes and they talk SO MUCH about what they're eating, why they're eating it, the new exercise routine they're doing... it's the worst. In fact, my boss literally just walked by somebody and yelled,  "BETTER STAY OUT THEM GIRL SCOUT COOKIES BOY! SAW YOU SNEAKIN' EM." 

(I'm just going to gloss right over the grammar there.)

I've heard similar stories from a number of my other guy friends as well. One of them told me his coworkers always comment on what he's having for lunch. They even ask him how much he weighs! WTF, people?! Why do we think it's appropriate to talk like this to everyone, including our coworkers, or people we don't even know? Fat talk has become commonplace, and it's insulting and destructive.  I don't believe people are intentionally malicious; they are simply insecure. But we have all got to stop projecting our insecurities on other people. We've also got to stop equating food/weight/etc to self-worth. We're all in this together.

Barely relevant.

Here are some helpful tips to stop fat talk (adapted from www.operationbeautiful.com):

• Consciously correct yourself if you fat talk. 
• Don’t compare your body (or food) to others'.
• Direct conversations away from food or appearance.
• Disregard/ignore other people's fat talk.
• Appreciate your body for what it can do. 
• Turn a negative into a positive.  Instead of "I’m stocky," try "I’m strong!"
• Never fat talk front of your kids or friends or coworkers (or anyone, really).

Let me know how it goes!

*Disclaimer: I love food  - looking at it, eating it, and talking about it, but this is only healthy when we do it in a positive, appreciative way.

Things I learned this weekend

1. It's always great to get out of the city and appreciate nature sometimes, especially if that nature is outside of a 4 bedroom house equipped with surround sound and a wine fridge.

Lake George, NY

2. In college, girls demonstrate friendship by cleaning up after you when you throw up.

Friends by choice.

3. I made a bomb playlist during our road trip to Lake George this weekend. I definitely should have been a DJ.

4. If you take Mariah's vocals out of this song, it's mostly just Puff Daddy making random comments and giggling.

5. And then ODB introduces himself. #RIP

6. Taco Bell really stops serving breakfast at 11 am, so don't show up at 11:06. 

7. If you say your name is "Tricky" on Tinder, you can expect this from me:

8. The opposite of a dick pic is a "snatchsnap". 

9. If you're going to say something (allegedly) brilliant on Twitter, you should spell-check it first.

10. On that note, this is the most important thing that has ever happened to me.

P.S. Today marks my first Things I Learned This Weekend linkup. I'm still new to this whole linkup concept, so I'm not even quite sure what it means or what to do, but if you want to recap your weekend bullet-point style, then follow my lead and also use this fancy image created for me by my new blog friend, Jessi. (Thanks, girl!)

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Ghost Stories

I've received a number of emails/messages/comments about my post on Wednesday. Apparently ghosting is a world-wide epidemic. Just to clarify, that post was not meant as an attack on anyone specifically. If anything, it was a criticism of myself for being emotionally immature when it comes to relationships. It was also another excuse to keep looking at pictures of Kit Harington.

But, like, WHAT?

Anyway, I'm sorry if I offended any ghosts out there. Let it be known that we shall all be ghosts some day...

Needless to say, my post seemed to resonate with a lot of you who were gracious enough to share with me your own ghost stories. Here are a few notable quotes:

"I'm currently ghosting on someone. No text, no call, blocked on gchat, disappeared." Male, 31

"I went on a date with a guy from Match. It was good. Went on a second date a few days later. It, too, was good. He said he wanted to see me again, and  I left the ball in his court...silence." Female, 26

"She asked if I wanted to go to something with her, and I was like, 'Sorry, work is crazy, I can't go...' and then I disappeared." Male, 26

"I think I'm being ghosted on right now." Male, 27

And lastly, one of my own. This might ruin a chapter of my book for you, but oh well:

I had been dating this guy for a couple of months. One night, we were supposed to meet up for happy hour, and he never showed up. I also never heard from him again... A few months later, I bumped into him at a beer festival and he literally ran away from me. Literally ran.

Here's the thing, friends, unless you're Casper, you can't actually disappear, especially if you live in the same city. Just something to keep in mind.

Ghosts

I do a lot of self-reflection, mainly about why I'm single and whether or not I want to be. I go back and forth between wanting to live my M-F life and also worrying that I'm going to die alone. Anyway, I have come to very few conclusions, though it is clearly evident that I generally tend to like men who are emotionally and/or physically distant, men who aren't even real, men who are GHOSTS.

Beyonce - Mine (feat. Drake) HD by hdimax
"Don't go ghost on me."

"Ghosting": The act of disappearing in a phantom-like fashion from someone you are seeing.

Tip: Do not do this.

I realized this the other day as I spent about 2 hours looking at pictures of The Weeknd and Kit Harington online, wondering when and how I could meet them and/or touch them IRL. I can't, so, that's the thing.

Similarly, my dating history goes something like this:

Meets totally disinterested man, falls in love, ~DISAPPEARS~.

OR

Meets totally interested man, is automatically turned off, ~DISAPPEARS~.

In the first instance, the man disappears; in the second, I do. Either way, someone is ghosting. Moreover, in the past few months, I've listened to multiple guys tell me that I have "commitment issues" ("but it's okay!"). It's real fun to hear, let me tell you. But it seems like they're probably right... This is problem. Or will be, if it turns out that I really don't want to die alone.

On that note, let's go back to Kit Harington because this:

WHAT?!

I have actual feelings for him. Like, I feel sensations when I see him on screen. ~SENSATIONS~.

Okay, I'm done here. Disappearing now...

When (Elite) Women Lead

On Monday, I attended a lecture at Harvard entitled: "When Women Lead: Insights and Experience from Women in Power."  As you may have guessed, the audience was predominantly female, which was disappointing to me. Discussions about women and leadership are pretty much worthless if they do not involve men, but whatever. I'm sure all the guys were busy drinking beer and playing sports, or whatever (jokes).

Anyway, the lecture featured a panel of esteemed women, including:

Karen Gordon Mills, Administrator of the U.S. Small Business Administration Harvard University Class of '75 and '77

Jill Abramson, Executive Editor of The New York Times, Harvard University Class of '76

Edith Cooper, Executive Vice President and Global Head of Human Capital Management at Goldman Sachs, Harvard University class of '83

Janet Napolitano, President of University of California, former Secretary of Homeland Security, didn't go to Harvard University, so who cares? (more jokes)

Obviously, this is a group of remarkable women, but do you notice what most of them have in common? Harvard. Harvard affiliates speaking to a room full of Harvard affiliates. What I'm saying is this is an elite group of women. Had there been time, I would have asked the panel: "What would your advice be to women outside the Harvard community?

I don't mean to minimize any of these women's accomplishments - they are indeed impressive and important. And all of them are making strides to empower future women leaders, which is critical if we want to close the gender gap. But I couldn't help but notice and fixate on their elite backgrounds. I confess that I don't know these women's full stories, but I think it is fair to assume they were pretty fortunate, or at least lucky. Abramsom talked about spending her summers on Nantucket, where she was introduced to a family friend who worked for Time Magazine; this event spurred her career in journalism. Even Napolitano, who was the minority of the group as she never attended Harvard, admitted to having the financial means to be able to take risks.

This idea of wealth or privilege comes up a lot when we talk about Sheryl Sandberg and her Lean In campaign. That is to say, it's hard to imagine the average woman leaning in -- the single mom paying for daycare, the recent graduate with $60k in debt, women in public service making approximately 0 dollars, etc. Leaning in is not necessarily a possibility for everyone. It's like when we (and by we, I mean never me) tell people to pick themselves up by their bootstraps - some bitches don't have boots to begin with.

So, I guess the takeaway for me, though it wasn't even discussed, was that gender issues, like every issue I suppose, are deeply socioeconomic issues. I mean, duh. Women still get paid less than men, blah blah blah. Ultimately, closing the gender gap requires investing (financially) in women. You can only lean in so far when you're poor, nah mean?

For the record, my follow-up question would have been: "How do ya'll feel about Beyonce?"

The Weeknd

On Saturday night, I had a dream that I met The Weeknd in line for the bathroom at a bar and he invited me to sit with him and talk about feminism. WHAT?! I woke up sweating and panting. It was the most wondrous dream I've had since whenever the last time I dreamt about dragons was.

It's the dreads; they get me every time.

Are you all familiar with The Weeknd? If not, let me tell you about him: His name is Abel (!), and he's from Canada. He's also disgusting, misogynistic, possibly a sexual predator, and I'm in love with him. I'm not sure how to negotiate my feelings for him because he personifies everything I stand against, clearly. I feel guilty listening to his music, which I do almost always. I try to justify this by fantasizing (and apparently dreaming) that his musical identity is ironic, that he is drawing on people's most basic impulses to prove some kind of point (I haven't figured out what that point is yet...). Most likely, though, he is just high and entitled.

BUT THAT VOICE.

Everything I've ever said about girl power can be discounted by listening to this remix. I feel like I need to go to therapy about this.  Do you know how hard it is to be a feminist who likes hip-hop?

See what I did there?