This isn’t really a very funny holiday. At all. Forgiveness is actually rather sticky and serious. I have asked for it many times and found the strength in myself to give it far fewer times than that. But we all have stuff to be sorry for, and we all have people who have wronged us who deserve to be forgiven.

If you’ve ever been through a 12-step program, then you know about the ninth one: ask forgiveness from those you’ve wronged and make amends. And if you don’t know about it then clearly there is something wrong with you and you dont hang out with enough drug addicts (awesome people, btw) or watch enough popular television (yeah, “The Cleaner” that was a shout out to Bejamin Bratt) and you should really work on sullying up your cultural sphere of knowledge.

Wait, sorry, clean-cut readers, I’m sorry I lashed out at you. Seriously.

I’m gonna celebrate the holiday by thinking really hard about all the grudges I’ve been holding (and which are probably the reason I’m going prematurely gray) and picking a few to give up forever. Like, for instance, that girl from high school I still hate simply bc she was the most beautiful thing in the world. Uh, yeah, it’s time to forgive her for her god-given good looks and bc she was better at soccer than me. I can recognize that my 15-year old, chubby self was being irrational and that she totally didnt deserve to be hated. Uh, and then I will try to forgive myself for being such a petty, petty asshole. Sorry, teenage self, it wasn’t your fault. You were just an idiot.

Whatever you have to forgive someone for, whether it be,  I don’t know, stealing your favorite shirt, being snippy with you when you ordered coffee, cheating on you, breaking plans, dying before you were ready to say goodbye, peeing on your geraniums, or listening to music too loudly in the next room late at night, it’s always hard.

But you should do it. I’m gonna try. And then I’m going to drink beer.

My bad, folks. Some friends of mine got married on Saturday in the one place in California without wireless or cell phone signal and thus with poor planning on my part, I missed a precious, precious holiday, one in which you get some exercise, impersonate young hooligans, and infuriate parking lot attendants: skateboarding day. So, I thought, since we weren’t able to go out and tear through our neighborhoods riding rails and doing flip twists (is that a thing?) on Saturday, we should honor the missed holiday (honor, not mourn) by celebrating it today. If you haven’t left for work yet, forget the bus, take your board! If you don’t have one, use your rommie’s (I’m sure she won’t mind). If you have already left, tell your boss you aren’t feeling well, get yourself to Mission Skateboards (or wherever the kids are buying boards in your locale), buy a board, and then try to not hurt yourself.

Yes, it is embarrassing to be that dude at the skate park dressed from head to toe in protective padding, ostentatiously wearing your knowledge of our crushing mortality on your sleeve (or elbow guard), but hey, you are right: we are fragile and one special way to celebrate Go Skate Day is to go skate safely.

I promise, if I see you at the skate park by my house (i.e., the abandoned parking lot and shuttered factory) I won’t laugh at all at your huge knee pads, if you promise not to mention my butt pad. Protect those tail bones, ladies!

So forget your diet and the imminence of bathing suit weather and eat one of those fried, sugary suckers. It’s sort of a duty. If you want that beauty right there, head over to Dynamo Doughnuts on 24th St., in the Mission and ask for the maple bacon dream doughnut. Oh god, you’ll love it.  If you are capable of love, that is.

(Via my favorite wonkish food blog, The Internet Food Association)

(Photo credit:  In Praise of Sardines)

Today is National Waiters and Waitresses Day, and you know what that means: time to splurge on a fancy meal and then leave an inappropriately large tip because you’re making up for all those times you just left the pennies and lint you found in your pockets! Yay! What joy! What bliss! What fully bellies!

I won’t keep you, because I’m sure there is a breakfast place with buttermilk pancakes sitting warm under a heat lamp that you should be heading off to, from which you can plan where to be served a burger lunch and then dream of what French Bistro or Vietnamese hole-in-the-wall to find your dinner, but I’ll tell a quick anecdote, bc hey, why not?

Once, I fell in love with my waiter. His name way Cayo, though I have no idea if that was how his name was spelled bc it was summer love and you don’t ask the spelling of your summer fling’s exotic name; it’s simply not done. I was eating brunch with my mother. He was pouring water into my glass.

And then, when in his broken English he told me I was a “a much nice-looking girl” my mom allowed me to run off with him after his shift to go swimming in the river. It was the first time I jumped off a cliff into a swimming hole, and the first time I’d ever heard Radiohead. I was 16 years old, and Cayo was 22 (scandalous!).

Anyway…I’m just saying, sometimes your waiter can bring you more than chicken pot pie and pea soup; sometimes he comes bearing your first summer love and a thick, Peruvian accent. So go on out there and find some love, or at least, dinner. And don’t forget to say thank you.

UPDATE: Granted, you should be careful about falling in love (with waiters or otherwise), bc as it turned out, Cayo was also the first person I ever knew who went to jail and then was deported from America for stabbing a dude. Not very hard. Not very hard at all, but yeah, there was some blood. It turns out that good taste in music, chiseled cheekbones, and blue eyes the color of the scariest depths of the ocean are not necessarily an indication of a person’s, you know, suitability.

And you know what turns out not to be much fun? Visiting your summer fling in the county lockup and talking to him through that glass partition. You think it’ll be all Sopranos-esque, but really, it’s more of a “how the hell did I let myself fall in love with this crazy waiter” experience. I’m sure you can all relate.

So, as you are peering lovingly into your waitresses eyes today, remember, sometimes her rocking tattoos don’t just make her seem badass. She could be the real thing.

It’s Save the Rhino Day, folks. The Rhinoceros, also known as the family of odd-toed ungulates, is a pretty sweet and pretty endangered animal. For some of you, Rhino Day may mean thinking real hard about the importance of Rhinos in the ecosystem, maybe going to a zoo, buying a stuffed Rhino and giving it to your infant, painting a Rhino mural on your city block, changing your cat’s name from Leonard to Odd-Toed Javan, but to others it’s about tattoos. Now, bear with me here: I know getting a tattoo of a Rhino won’t actually save the species, but…it couldn’t hurt, right?

Full disclosure: My boyfriend, a very handsome bearded man who from this moment on shall go by the name of Lawler on this blog, has decided to get a Rhino tattooed on his arm somewhere. Whether or not this is a tacit homage to me and the baby elephant I just inked on my arm remains to be seen, but for purposes of narcissism I’m going to assume it is. (I’m very Rhinolike, what with my noticeable hump and my temper.) And he’s not just getting any Rhino, might I add, but the very first scientific rendering of an animal, ever! Read the full story, because it’s pretty cool, but it basically boils down to this: Some English European dude, as I understand it (I haven’t read it, because I have a day job folks, and I can’t do all the reading for you), was sent a Rhino from Africa for the purposes of study. Unfortunately, that Rhino died en route to the scientist, and all that was left for the man to look at were crude drawings some sailors had made. From them and from other accounts, he drew this masterpiece, which, if you look closely, you’ll notice has some major errors. But hell, that’s what makes it awesome!

In all seriousness, though, Rhinos are rad. A few facts:

1.) There are five distinct types of Rhinoceros: The Sumatran, The Javan, The Indian, The Black, and The White. The Javan Rhinoceros (Rhinoceros sondaicus) is one of the rarest and most endangered large mammals anywhere in the world.

2.) Rhinos have been around for over a million years.

3.) Native to Africa and Asia, they are leftover from the age of Dinosaurs! That just blows my mind.

4.) They have a prominent and beautiful horn on their faces and it is for this they have been hunted to the brink of extinction. Apparently, the horn can be used to create handles and statues (much like Ivory is used) or for medicinal purposes. (Though I don’t quite understand the medicinal properties of the horn, since it is made from the same material as your finger nails, keratin. And if my fingernails could cure, oh I don’t know…swine flu, then I wouldn’t clip them all over the carpet and hoover them up later. Jeez.)

5.) Rhinos have 82 chromosomes (the Black Rhinoceros has 84). That’s the highest known chromosome number for any mammal

Now, ink it up of you love it, and take some time to look at pictures of Rhinos on the InterWeb’s if you aren’t brave enough for tattoos but are bored at work and have a heart filled with love.

Mazel Tov!