In the Land of Lameness
By Jenn Zipp
So I took a vacation during the holidays. In the land of lameness.
I don’t know why my PMS lasts for a good 3 months straight during the winter. It could be that I’m part bear and I like to hibernate. It could be the weather. But I just think for the past few years, I’ve been so completely jaded by the holidays, consumerism, and the lost of all the magic that it once held when I was a kid.
That might also have something to do with my mother’s odd gift giving during Christmas. Two years ago, when my sister suffered a miscarriage, my mother gave her a maternity dress. This year, my bald sister due to chemotherapy received an economy sized bottle of shampoo and conditioner from “Santa”. I’m really waiting for the year that I lose my legs in a freak accident and she buys me a pair of slacks.
If there’s one good thing about the holidays, it’s that they end. And a new year begins.
Anyway… we’re back. We’re gonna try to be better this year.
Posted by The Better Blog on 02/15 at 09:40 PM
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Nerdgirl: (Un)Sexy Halloween
By Jenn Zipp
There’s all this talk about Halloween at work. Everyone wants to dress up.
”I want to be sexy. I want to be Rihanna.”
”I want to be a ballerina… but a sexy ballerina.”
”I’m going as Pocahontas… but sexy Pocahontas.”
”What about an ostrich… but a sexy ostrich?”
”I think I’m going as Samantha Ronson… but a sexy Samantha Ronson.”
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Posted by The Better Blog on 10/29 at 09:29 PM
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NerdGirl: Arriving at the Mecca
By Jenn Zipp
I think all Nerds want to fit in some place.
For a long time I wished I was Jewish. I don’t know why out of all the denominations and religions I could’ve chosen to envy, I chose Judaism. There is a certain elitist quality. The Jewish kids had their own summer camps. They had these parties for when they came of age. Hell, they even have their own dating website. (Which yes, I will admit, I made my own profile for. My best friend and I did it on a whim to find Jewish boyfriends). And the best part about being a young Jew is Birthright. You get a free trip to Israel before you turn 26. How many Roman Catholics do you know that get free trips to Italy?
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Posted by The Better Blog on 09/16 at 09:10 PM
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NerdGirl: Living with a Cheerleader
By Jenn Zipp
I’m a nerd. I’m not playing it safe when I say this. I’m not the beautiful starlet that sits down, one on one with Barbara Walters, and modestly plays down her stunning beauty by proclaiming herself as a former nerd (this is usually when black and white yearbook photos appear on screen of a frizzy haired, brace-faced, pimply teenager).
No. Instead I am the Before picture. I am the beginnings of a transformation. However… the transformation into something cooler, something more sophisticated and elegant hasn’t really materialized.
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Posted by The Better Blog on 08/30 at 08:21 AM
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Georgia
By Jenn Zipp
On my way to work, I thought about the way she looked. Her floppy mess of hair like a cape in the wind, the caked toothpaste at the corner of her mouth, her return to the commune that she lived in, her 18 year old logic and the patches of wood flooring are all etched in my memory.
I thought about the way she opened the envelope the day before and nonchalantly tossed it aside on her bed, not bothering with the contents, not even so much looking at the address to make sure that it belonged to her or that it was from me.
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Posted by The Better Blog on 07/12 at 02:34 PM
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Resurrecting the Boy Band
By Jenn Zipp
The return of the Boy Band.
And I’m not talking about anything from mastermind Lou Perlman (who, by the way, is Big Tony’s bitch right now in the slammer… that’s what money laundering will get you). There’s a new breed of boy band in town.
They play instruments (whaaa-?), they don’t do choreographed dances (no!) and your mother wouldn’t trust them as your senior prom date (you don’t say!). No, the new breed of boy band is dirtier, grimier, and dead sexier.
I didn’t jump on the Backstreet Boy Bandwagon or prayed to a Justin Timberlake altar at the foot of my bed in high school. I was too busy trying not to conform. So at the age of 26, when I’m just too tired to give a shit about being “mainstream”, I’m taking this resurrection of boy bands seriously. (However, I do have fits occasionally when I’ve come to the realization that these bands are no longer my bands. I hate sharing my music with the population.)
I think deep down inside, there’s some really good music in there… somewhere.
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Posted by The Better Blog on 07/01 at 09:00 AM
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The Garage Sale
By Jenn Zipp
There is a rhyme and a reason to all this chaos.
That’s what I try to explain to people when they see the room. It sucks that it’s the first room that you get a glimpse of when you first step into our house. The stoop that I sit on to smoke cigarettes with friends is a great stoop. It’s cozy and inviting. There’s a potted plant there. The soil is blanketed with Marlboro butts, but it’s still a house plant and gives you that sense of domesticity. And then you walk in, catch a whiff of that faint smell of dirty laundry and see the room out of the corner of your eye.
Out of sheer embarrassment, you think that I would clean it. But my laziness conquers all obligations of attempting to be organized. Instead, I let the mold grow, I let the dust collect and I don’t care if there are hairballs on the floor… enough hairballs to create a new genus of critter-creature. Like small pets that only the Japanese would know about (because after all, they were the geniuses behind gigapets).
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Posted by The Better Blog on 06/22 at 04:16 PM
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Getting Away With Murder: The Glory that is Thrifting
By Jenn Zipp
I’m not one of those girls that reminisce about shopping with my mother growing up. I have friends that gush over the wonderful, fond memories of going to Montgomery Ward with their mothers on Sunday afternoons after church, of browsing the perfume counters and having their first sniff of Chanel no. 5, of realizing the beauty of being a woman while watching their mothers shop for underpants at Macy’s.
No. I don’t have those memories. The only memory I have of shopping with my mother is being dragged through Chinatown trying to hold my breath in the fish markets. (She’s lucky I didn’t pass out.) My clothes came from a garbage bag kept in the closet stuffed with hand-me-down t-shirts from my sisters (they were teenagers in the 80s. While everyone in junior high was sporting their flannel and denim overalls, I was the only one sporting the Duran Duran Girls On Film Tour t-shirt. If only I knew then how retro I was…)
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Posted by The Better Blog on 06/14 at 02:38 PM
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A is for Adam
By Jenn Zipp
Adam.
It all started with a boy named Adam. He was the son of a family friend, a woman I was forced to call Aunty Patsy even though we had no blood connection. Which would make Adam my un-biological cousin… which makes this story more like a forbidden tale of incestuous love… or something.
Adam was my downfall. He’s the curiosity that killed the cat and has led me down this weird shame spiral I know as my fascination with men… but in particular; the male genitalia.
On weekends, Momma would watch Adam while his parents went to the doctors, which I later found out was grown-up talk for couple’s therapy. Adam would come over and sulk at the breakfast nook, convinced that his parents were off getting ice cream together without him. By mid day, he’d break out of whatever funk he was in, eat the slices of apple that Momma would cut for us, and take out his aggressions on me by making my life horrible.
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Posted by The Better Blog on 06/07 at 12:05 AM
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Generation Better
By Jenn Zipp
The Better Blog was an idea. That’s all it was. Just one of those passing things you get while sitting on the bus on your way to work, an idea that’s sandwiched between “I fucking forgot to feed the cat” and “I wonder if my hair’s gone flat by now.” And then over coffee, you mention it to a friend. They tell you what a good idea it is and then proceed with their story about how they got laid last Saturday night, etc. etc.
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Posted by The Better Blog on 06/05 at 12:16 AM
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