The Lifecycle of a Taylor Swift Song

It is a fact - Taylor Swift is an unstoppable force. You can peg yourself as being above her, but in reality, there is no act of musical valor that can completely shut her out. The only thing you can do is learn to accept the inevitable lifecycle of a Taylor Swift song:

  1. Oh no, she’s at it again. What’s this? A pop number? Wasn’t she just in a denim gown, heading off to prom in a Chevy? How did yet another musical abomination slip through the cracks? C’mon Pharrell, P Diddy, Randy Jackson - do your job!
  2. You’re driving around flipping through radio stations and whoop! There it is. A catchy beat layered with that sweet, yet auto-tuned voice. Before changing the station you pause to listen for a moment, making absolutely sure that this is, in fact, Taylor Swift’s new song. Suddenly, the whiny bridge kicks in with lyrics about an ex-boyfriend. It’s like a haiku written by a 3rd grader - classic T.Swift.  
  3. You’re driving around flipping through radio stations and whoop! There it is, again. A catchy beat layered with that sweet, yet auto-tuned voice. Except this time, you listen to it. You listen to the whole thing. MAYBE you even switch to a different station where it happens to be playing again.
  4. It’s a Tuesday morning. You’re getting ready for work. As you brush your teeth with the electric toothbrush you got last Christmas, the vibrations begin to resemble a certain country-slash-pop ditty. You rinse. You spit.  And then you belt it out like it’s 1998 and you’re Shania Twain.
  5. Pretty soon this song becomes your motivational “screw you, human-with-a-penis” anthem. Because if nothing else, a Taylor Swift song gives you the confidence to face the world, despite the fact that you haven’t had reason to shave in the past month.
  6. A void emerges when you don’t have access to this song at any moment in time. You give in and buy Spotify Premium...
  7. ...BUT WAIT. You can’t listen to this horrendous three minutes and forty-seven seconds of garbage because little Miss I’m-Still-Human-Enough-To-Laugh-At-Myself took a bite out of a Georgia peach and crapped out a pile of entitlement atop her redundant love lyrics.
  8. In an act of defiance, you risk going over your monthly data plan by pulling up the song on YouTube, because your $1.29 is better spent on 5.15 gumballs than this Cowgirl Barbie. More importantly, who actually pays for music anymore?
  9. Just as you’re about to post a self-deprecating tweet about your T.Swift sorrows, you stumble upon the adorable advertisement of Taylor Swift drinking Diet Coke and magically producing a room full of kittens. Suddenly your half-baked anger escapes you, and your life resumes without constant thoughts of Taylor Swift.
  10. Six months later, Taylor Swift comes out with a new song (probably about a kitten that symbolically justifies her rights as a musician). REPEAT CYCLE

You can collect vinyl, you can worship Wu Tang, but this cycle plagues even the most musically eclectic folk. The only solution is to just Shake It Off.

A Woman's Guide To Tinder

View the original post at Zoku & Juice.

You wanna know why your Tinder gets less action than a white crayon? For starters, it probably has something to do with that flagship picture of you and your friend with the “great personality” wearing bridesmaid dresses and pearls. 

I’m not ashamed to admit that I was a Tinder expert in my swiping heyday.  Every now and then I get back on to rattle the cages, but for the most part, I feel it is time to pass the knowledge of my success on to the women who still seek out the red flame.

1. Picture order is a science

Follow this regimen and I guarantee your message box will floweth ever-so abundantly.

#1 - A picture that evokes enough curiosity to go through the rest of your pictures.  And I’m not talking about an obscurely angled cleavage pic.

 #2 - A picture where you look hot with a couple other hot friends.  Men need to know that their friends have options too in this “relationship”.

 #3 - A personality pic.  Note: this is only necessary if you have a personality.

 #4 - A hobby pic. Ladies, this is your opportunity to show that you've run a 5k or have stepped foot in the wilderness, if only for the photo opp.

 #5 - The best picture you have of yourself. Like what your parents have framed in your house.

 #6 - People who use all their picture slots are overzealous.  5 says it all. 6 says you’re desperate.

2. Pictures can't talk

While I've never spent ample time swiping through female Tinder profiles, I've heard it’s pretty much the same thing as reading Chicken Soup for the Marilyn Monroe Lovers Soul.  Live, laugh, love and all that crap. Look, I get it. Not everyone is witty or good with words.  And yeah, Marilyn Monroe was a sex icon, but for the love of fro-yo, whatever you do, don’t leave your profile blank.

3. Be honest with yourself

Are you using Tinder as a gateway drug to bigger things like OkCupid or Match.com? Are you really  the kind of girl who would meet up with a guy just for sex? Knowing the answers to these questions is important in knowing your Tinder game.

4. Have a Tinder game

Those who Tinder aimlessly, shouldn't Tinder at all.  There are better outlets for a confidence boost, like watching My 600lb Life.

5. Your number is a temple

Covet it and unveil it to only the most eligible suitors.  Women who abundantly toss their phone numbers out into the abyss of the online dating world are the prostitutes of the digital age.  And as a result, guys are getting lazy–thinking they can jump from a "What's up" straight to a "We should meet up".  Please, demand a higher level of impressionability before you go spreading your emojis far and wide.

Bonus Rule: If you do reach the point of a number exchange, never take a guys number. I like to be a steadfast bitch and tell them this, straight up. (This tip may or may not have been extracted from the movie He's Just Not That Into You.)

6. Research: it's not just for scientists

It's crucial to get a 360° idea of this dude before you meet up and embark down the delicate path of pretending like you're ready to pay for half the drink bill.  You don't need to ask a guy for his last name.  You’re not interested in marrying him; you’re interested in seeing him in pictures without his sunglasses.  Doing so requiresat least one of the following bits of information: hometown, college attended/year graduated, current city, place of employment.  You can literally find anyone on the internet with this knowledge AND the answers to these questions can all be obtained nonchalantly via casual conversation. So, you can pretend like you're not a stalker!

7. Speak, damn it!

Women who wait for the guy to say something first deserve the generic "hello" that they're gonna get.  I like to take matters into my own hands and throw them something that will really test their personalities.  You want to beat them to the punch and gain control over the conversation.  Size 'em up. Show those potatoes how you mash, or something? 

There is no right way to Tinder, but there is a difference between a Tinder Trixie and a Tinder Vixen.  While I really have no authority in proclaiming myself the latter, I will say that I have yet to miss a match since I've adopted these rules.  Whether or not men respond well to my communication efforts is an entirely different story, which is why I have been vague in my actual conversation suggestions.

I wish you the best of luck in your Tinder endeavors and may the swiping odds be ever in your favor.

6.1 Reasons Twentysomethings Need Advice About Being Twentysomethings

It seems that every time I open up Twitter, there is a new Thought Catalog post guiding twenty-somethings through some existential crisis. And of course, this advice is almost always laid out in some obscurely numbered list—“17 tips for twenty-somethings to land a dream job”, “23 Relatable quotes about being in your twenties”, “796 signs that you are a huge twenty-year-old dick”.

As one of society’s charity cases, I started to ponder why the hell we lend ourselves to so much step-by-step guidance. And these are the reasons I numerically came up with:

1. 90’s TV didn’t accurately prepare us for life. The reality is that the Cory and Topanga’s of the world break up then get back together then break up and hate each other passive aggressively. If you get your wife get knocked up with twins, chances are you’re not going to have a “Full House” to care for them. Moreover, both of those situations are absolute train wrecks that in real life, would hardly lend to soundboard laughter and FCC approved puns.

1.1 We have a severe lack of survival skills because most of us weren't selected to participate in Legends of the Hidden Temple.

2. Hagrid never showed up at our doorstep. It’s incredibly frustrating to know every spell that could make our lives a living dream. Yet, when we command the word “accio” (and, be honest – you've tried it at least once) there is only stillness where we await remote controls and condoms to veer towards our bodies. The reality is that we’re all just a bunch of muggles. Filthy muggles.

3. We've lost sight of neighborhood street games. It was a simpler time – not knowing how to tell time. Where the only thing we knew was that once the sun went down, we had to head in for the night or we’d get the living daylights spanked out of us, as was the norm before the No Child Left (with a sore) Behind Act. Maybe if we could all get back to cherishing the little things in life, like writing things on cement with firefly goo, our bigger problems would start to solve themselves?

4. AIM was a catalyst to a false sense of necessary openness. We are now the people who post poorly lit photos of our food, seemingly ambiguous quotes hinting at our personal lives, and sonogram pictures of our accidents for the world to see.  Then we turn around and complain about how annoying all those things are, because we are hypocritical idiots.

5. Color changing spoons no longer exist. Or, at least none are being found at the bottom of Froot Loops boxes (to my knowledge). And while it truly has been an arduous process getting used to regular spoons, our bigger issue is that we grew up expecting every box of cereal to come with a free prize.  We expected everything to be handed to us on a color-changing platter when the real world is full of aggressive fork-bearing jerks, who will stick it to our regular spoon-ed asses.

6. Society isn't ready for a new breed of young’ins who can’t afford to move out of our parent’s basements when we’re twenty-something. SORRY MOM! We've been left to convince a generation of technology illiterate humans that despite working several crappy part-time jobs, we’re a’ight. We’re just growing up differently – slower. But that’s ok! By the time we’re our parents age, our country will be so broke it will be illegal to procreate anyway. Thus leaving us with a substantial portion of our incomes to be spent on the necessities, like Anthropologie candles.

In short, we better get some fucking help now, because it’s going to be our responsibility to guide the current seedlings through their twenties. And lord only knows that a person who doesn't understand the words “Leggo My Eggo” has serious issues ahead of them.