Actually taken from my Myspace blog, but still full of craziness.

Last night I went to a job "interview" and ended up driving past the apartment of a girl I dated when I was 19 years old and going to Harper. I hadn't really thought about this girl in years but after seeing her place a whole flood of memories came back that made me laugh and actually say out loud, "God, she was bonkers", while driving alone.

Today after work I was rummaging around on the Internet and came across a random site filled with stories of guy's crazy ex's and why they were classified as such and so of course I again remembered her.

Zenya.

What a nut-job.

1 of 2 goth girls that I've dated.
The 2 only goth girls I'll ever have dated as both of them proved something very important to me.

Being goth is dumb.
Looking it, not so bad as long as you look cool. But don't act goth, it doesn't work. Giving yourself a name like Baron Nocturnus or Mistress Gala-whatsis-whatever and whining about how life is painful only makes people around you wish you'd just go up the street and don't cross the tracks.

and don't get me started on Bauhaus. Don't.

quick goth joke;

Q) What's the difference between a goth girl and a goth guy?
A) About 300 pounds


I met this girl after an anatomy class while outside smoking a cigarette. Flame red hair, petite figure, rocking a corset. Me being the shy semi-retarded man boy that I am just stared at the ground. She asked for my lighter and when I noticed her accent I couldn't help but reply to her "thank you" in Russian.

"Pashalsta" I replied, and her eyes went insanely huge and this giant I-have-a-knife-with-your-name-on-it smile crept over her face. I was also wearing a Type O Negative t-shirt at the time which turned out to be her favorite band. She seemed cool though and so we decided to hang out.

My first visit to her apartment should have been enough to tell me to not come back. During the grand tour I was shown a figurine of "Bastet, The Cat Goddess". Here's the conversation in it's entirety.

Her- "This is Bastet, She's highly revered in Egyptian lore and represents the most sacred force or renewal and life in my religion."
Me- "That's a Josie and the Pussycats Doll."
Her- "No, it's Bastet"
Me- (Picking it up and looking at the bottom of the foot) "Hasbro makes pagan idols?"
Her- GASP!! "PUT THAT DOWN, IT'S SACRED!"

Yeah, flash forward a couple of days.

There was a small section that I guess you could call a quad near the exit of one of the buildings. I was eating my lunch with her and we noticed a baby squirrel had fallen out of a tree so me, being the animal lover that I am, decided to help it back in the tree and hope the mom would still take care of it.

When we approached it the baby squirrel ran up my pant leg and onto my chest and just froze. Zenya thought it was the sweetest thing,

Until it launched off my leg

Onto her face

There, it went completely ape-shit on her, leaving some minor cuts and one good one where the squirrel hooked it's little unholy talons into her nostril. It then launched off her face and onto my shoulder where it just chilled out and actually snuggled against my neck. I made sure she was alright and walked over to the tree, leaning in to it, and the squirrel ran up and joined it's mother, who'd been making really pissed off momma squirrel noises the entire time.

Even cute baby animals hated her.

A couple of days later I was asked to meet her by the lake near the math building. She had a present for me. At this point, we'd been dating for almost a week, so presents are common really. A little knick-nack or memento that reminds you of something about that other person and all. Whatever it was, it was probably sweet, right?

No.

It was a leaf.

It was dead.

A dead fucking leaf.

"It reminds me of you" she said as she smoked her Djarum Black (the choice clove cigarette for the up and coming goth)

I asked how and she went on some long and deluded rant explaining how the leaf "held secrets that couldn't be seen anymore since the life had left it but anyone that had seen it before knew the true beauty that it held inside." She then asked me if I'd want to come with her to Russia to meet her parents and while there look for housing as her mom would want us to live out there.

Somewhere right around there is when I broke up with her.

At the time, I probably weighed about 300 pounds, sort of the goth joke in reverse without me being goth in any way. I had hair that wasn't long but wasn't short either, it was in between, that stage where it looks bad no matter what you did with it and was sure that Zenya was going to be the hottest girl I could possible attract while looking like that and I also felt kind of bad, I mean, she never did anything mean. Just spouted crap about goddesses and leaves and passion in dramatic goth ways that made my skin crawl. I started to regret my decision.

I knew I made the right choice though around the time the phone calls started coming in telling me that she was going to cast spells to curse me and "get the revenge she deserved for that shit I did to her with the squirrel". She actually thought I had control over the baby squirrel and commanded it to attack her!


I wish

You know what I could do with that power?! An army of small, furry, tornados with teeth and claws and an endless reservoir of cuteness? The possibilities are frightening AND near-endless really.

You'd be surprised at the sound an angry squirrel makes, I mean, it's pretty fierce.

It's like a high-frequency war-cry.

Dan's Health Corner

Yeah people. I'm going to talk about Pilates. You might want to leave now though, lest it get too real for you to handle...

We'll start with a bit of history...
Pilates takes it's namesake after it's creator, Joseph Pilates. Born in Germany in 1887 to a swarthy greek gymnast and a german Naturapath, Joseph was a sickly child with rickets, asthma, rheumatic fever (and in my opinion, the vestigial remnants of horns, cloven feet, and a bifurcated tail).

All in all, not very healthy, with the local Fraulein having little interest in (insert your favorite sexual euphemism involving German culture here) with him. Not to be deterred by this, Joseph decided he was going to get healthy, as long as he believed he could. After years of tough training, studying bodybuilding, yoga, and selling his soul, he was competing in body competitions by the age of 14, which is freaky.

In 1912, he moved to England where he was a boxer, circus performer, and trainer. Described by neighbor Bartlby Cottington, young Joseph was a "pretty mellow guy, always carrying around those weights in his uni-tard though". With the onset of WWI, Joseph was taken and interned on the Isle of Man with all other German citizens in what was certainly NOT a prison camp (cheeky English bastards). Here, he began crafting his system and helped the other inmates train to stay healthy. Upon release he moved to the states, where he and his wife began to market the system that would become well known to college students and bored housewives everywhere.

This is Joseph Pilates four years before his death.



















He's basically the buffest octogenarian that has ever walked the Earth. It's been said that on his death bed, he executed one last side leg kick and accidentally kicked the live-in nurse so hard that her 40 year old son who lived five states over pissed blood for a week.

(okay, that last part is total fiction)

Anyways, so why did I go on that terrible rant? Because I'm currently doing pilates at Columbia. At the age of 27, I felt that I needed to do something healthy and opted for this and yoga. Thinking it to be nothing serious, I went to my first class on Tuesday and found out a couple of things;

1) I'm the only boy in the class.
2)I'm not flexible in any way, shape, or form.
3)I'm terribly out of shape.

After an hour and a half, my spine and abs were screaming at me for mercy that I was thankfully able to give them, but not before being absolutely humbled by the experience. I will never make fun of pilates again. Hopefully I'll get better with it and, when combined with yoga, get all sexified. That would be pretty keen.