Things that we decided a lobster could kick the shit out of if you dropped them in the tank:
1) a cat.
2) a puppy.
3) squirrells; a bunch at one time, even.
4) a mongoose. Maybe. We've never really seen one. They could be badass motherfuckers.
5) a ferret. No contest.
6) a weasel.
7) hamsters; again, pour them in there.
8) a cute widdle bunny wif the ears and the widdle tail and he screams, "nooooooooooo"...
9) me. But only after I jump in to save the bunny.
Things that we think could kick a lobster's ass if you dropped them in the tank:
1) a snake; preferably a cobra.
2) the Giant Mystery Chicken.
3) an elephant.
4) a panther.
5) a pterodactyl.
Lobsters are tough and mean.
Lobsters keep it real.
Lobsters should wear tiny gold chains and doo-rags over their pointy little orange heads.
That was a
looooong dinner.
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The mirror in dressing room number four at Nordstrom is my mortal enemy. I'm meeting the mirror at dawn in a frosty field with my revolver and a silk glove. The mirror will bring a pair of microscopic jeans. And some of those hangers with the metal clamps for distraction. I'll be naked (again), and the mirror will chortle (again). Laugh it up, Mr. Hilarious Mirrorhead. It's a shiny, shiny death for
you in the morning.
And your shithead hanger gang.
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"Independent Study" = "Banana Republic Pants Frenzy"
or
"Two Hours In The Library Is Seventeen Hours Earth Time And Now I'm Going To Starve To Death"
Couple of things:
1) The ASU Research Library is a wood-paneled, orange-carpeted, entire secret
floors, thirty-year-old lighting nightmare. Seriously. The chairs are all either those bullshit wooden jobbies that are held together with horsehair and vinyl or those overstuffed all-one-piece-including-the-cushion deals. Which you
know haven't been cleaned in a decade
at best. The hum of the fluorescent lights is louder than any fluorescent lighting EVER. It's like these
particular fluorescent lights are evangelist fluorescent lights, and they must spread their monotoned message of hum to the people until we start drooling and slapping ourselves. And the first time I went in there I got trapped in a forgotten stairwell and had to bust out of the emergency exit. So it's a pretty nice place to be.
2) Whoever gave the ASU Kindness Brigade unlimited chalk and access to the entire campus should be shot in the face. Or else they should have to follow through on all of the loopy pastel hints: "Visit the Sick!" is my personal favorite.
3) I spilled my diet Dr. Pepper all over myself while I was driving to school. What is
with me and
liquids?
4) I gave C a ride to school today, and because he's a big fan of the Gogurt I actually got to say, "Get out, and take your nasty little tubes with you."
5) When in the library, is it normal to be consumed with food? I could have
just eaten five minutes before, but once I walk into the building I'm famished. I'm all Chick-Fil-A dreaming in the stacks.
6) Hey, do you guys know that Chevy jingle that goes, " I love... baseball, hotdogs, apple pie and Chevorelet!"? Am I the only person who jams out to that? I wish it were a song. Just... baseball, hotdogs, apple pie and Chevorelet for three and a half minutes.
7) I am the Queen of Xxerox. I'm the most efficient copier around. And I can prove it to you. People actually turn around to watch my Super Copy Skills; it's apparently the one concrete skill I've obtained in college. (HINT: The key to Super Copy Skills is leaving the pesky lid open. It's unconventional, I know, but you'll get used to being a Xxerox Renegade. Now you have the power. So go drop out of college; the rest of that bullshit is pointless.)
8) Banana Republic has the cutest cargo pants in the world right now. Go to the library, leave, go to Chick-Fil-A and then go get some pants.
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Just Some Shit From School Yesterday... Some Of Which Made Me Feel Like An Orphan:
1) I forgot my PIN number. I guess that's what happens when you carry a three dollar balance in your checking account for four months. So if any of you know my PIN, cough it up. I need it.
2) I
did manage to scrape up enough change to buy myself a bottle of water... which I promptly dropped and spilled all over myself. In front of, say, a
billion people. All of whom were carrying beverages successfully-- some with only one hand. Show offs. I immediately felt like an orphan. A thirsty orphan.
3) Professor H (who could be the thinnest, tallest, palest woman on the planet, by the way; I could barely see her against the walls in her office, and every time she moved she almost stabbed me in the eye with an elbow) is "hesitant" to chair my committee, as she is a poet. (That was pretty much the only explanation I got. Apparently being a poet eliminates you from all kinds of unpleasant duties, ie: "Prof. H? Could you help with these dishes?" "Oh, I would, but I'm a poet, you know." or "Honey, could we fool around tonight?" "Nope. Poet.") Given the flimsiness of her excuse, however, she
is willing to oversee my research this semester and potentially chair in the spring. I plan to bombard her with work (and flattery of the poet variety) until she feels too obligated
not to chair. Good plan.
4) In the meantime I went and cried to the department head, who has signed me up for thesis hours
even though I have no chair. She stated that "she doesn't normally do this, but she's making an exception." Once again,
orphan.
5) Is it currently "en vogue" to carry yourself as though you've been battling
malaria for the last six months?? I see all of these adorable freshmen girls on campus with their tiny little jeans and their teeny little halter tops... and they shuffle around all round-shouldered and neckless. I'm
this close to carrying a ruler around with me, which makes me feel
sort of like an orphan, because aren't orphans sticklers for good posture? Wait, maybe that's
nuns. Yeah, I don't really feel much like a nun. Nevermind.
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So I just wrote this whole involved story post about Bobby the Scorpion; this sad, sweet, balding scorpion who bakes cupcakes for his coworkers who laugh at him. He's clammy all the time, and he eats lunch alone at his desk in his limp brown suit while the other guys eat together in the conference room. Sometimes Bobby pats his hair down and drags his husky tail slowly past the conference room door hoping they will ask him in, but they never do. He's in love with Marcia in accounting and he'd like to buy her a nice steak dinner and an orchid that matches her pretty pink earrings and he'd like to hold the car door open for her, but she just tacks his sweet and hesitant and carefully-corrected love letters on the breakroom door where everyone snorts back laughter and writes "LOSER" across them. So long story short, Bobby decides to take a vacation to the Bathroom-- the coolest vacation spot in town-- because he thinks that maybe then the guys will want to be his friend. He buys his first bathing suit ever and a disposable camera and some cheap sunglasses and he packs a threadbare towel, and he sets off for the Bathroom, all by himself and a little queasy with the excitement.
So I wrote this
whole involved story. With more pathetic detail than here, even, And I was working up to the part where Bobby gets sprayed and spattered with the full-pressure shower attatchment until he's heaving and clawing and crying and he has no choice but to get swept into the drain because that water is hot and unrelenting and Bobby's arms are shaking too hard to hold on to the tile.
But I had to erase it.
Because I'm about to cry.
And now I'm thinking about that scorpion this morning, and I think maybe he was just
waving at me.
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A Few Of The Conversations That I've Had Today:
R: (
answers phone) "This is R."
ME: "Hey, it's me. Hey, why aren't the clock or the radio working in the Nissan?"
R: "Oh, shit. You know, I didn't even think about that. I just jammed that one starter wire into the battery terminal so it would
go. I'm sure I didn't connect that electrical wire."
ME: "Oh, okay. So it's normal, then. Everything is cool-- the wire's just not plugged in, right?"
R: "Yeah. Sorry. The car should run, though."
ME: "Yeah, no, that's great. Totally cool. Thanks for fixing it for me. Oh, hey, do you have my cell phone charger thingie?"
R: "... Yeah. But... it won't work in your car right now anyway, right? No electrical?"
ME: "Oh! Ha! Right. Cool. Okay, bye."
R: "Bye."
(ten minutes later.)
R: (
answers phone) "This is R."
ME: "Yeah, you know what
else doesn't work without electrical? The AIR CONDITIONER."
R: (
snorts) "How's the speedometer?"
ME: "The...???? SHIT! It's at zero! And I'm going, like, a MILLION judging by the amount of BURNING WIND hitting me in the head right now. I'm pretty glad I did my fucking hair. Goddamn, it's hot in here. There's some guy in a Mercedes next to me who's
shivering. He's chilling fucking
ice cream in the passenger seat."
R: "Just go get your check and get it to the Nissan place."
ME: "..."
R: "..."
ME: "Trade cars with me."
R: "No."
NISSAN GUY: "So... he just sort of jammed this wire into the battery terminal?"
ME: "Yeah."
NISSAN GUY: "And all of this electrical tape... that's him too, then?"
ME: "Yeah."
NISSAN GUY: "And then he actually...
started the car. Like...
started it."
ME: "Yeah. It worked, so..."
NISSAN GUY: "Right. And did he mention any of these...
vapors coming from the battery?"
ME: "Yeah, I don't really know."
NISSAN GUY: "But he started it. Like this. (
points to battery terminal, stripped wire and electrical tape ball)"
ME: "..."
NISSAN GUY: "Okay. Give us a couple hours."
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I discovered a fundamental difference between Americans and Brits this morning; I was emotionally involved in the British reality show "Faking It", in which an endearing short-order cook named Ed was transformed-- via his own tearful work and staunch determination-- into a fake professional chef. That is, he left his little hamburger trailer to sleep in someone's bunk bed somewhere for four weeks and have really mean and sweaty chefs scream at him until-- after blood, sweat and tears have been
literally shed by Ed-- he wins a professional chef competition by bossing around his kitchen staff and creating a very impressive chocolate fondant. I was ecstatic! Not only did he beat the other,
actual chefs, but none of the judges guessed that he was a big faker! He won! Yay! Then suddenly Ed's on camera thanking the mean and sweaty chefs for their help, and there's lots of tearful man-back-clapping... and then just as I'm feeling very satisfied and proud and I'm wiping my eyes... Ed happily gets on the bus with his duffel bag and goes back to selling hamburgers out of a trailer.
If that were an American show, Ed would have been presented with his very own posh New York City eatery.
And a new Lexus.
And (this goes without saying) his own show.
God, I love the Brits.
(SIDENOTE: I have to stop calling things "brilliant"-- according to R, I don't sound British; I only sound like Madonna. Which, you know, is the antithesis of what I'm going for.)
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Twenty-Five Thousand Dollar Pyramid! The Mexican Vacation Version!
...brush your teeth... look sheepish... quick put on some lipgloss... purposefully don't put on a bra... squint a lot at the sun... open a beer with one hand still asleep... make exploratory small talk to discover level of acknowledged incrimination resulting from previous night's conversation...
DING! Things you do first thing in the morning!
... Professor L... Professor W... Daniel Day-Lewis in "The Age of Innocence"... Johnny Depp in anything... that cute cop on Dateline who got shot protecting some kid... Professor R... Billy Zane in "Titanic" even though he was a dick... the mummy in "The Mummy" once he gets his skin back... Bambi's father in "Bambi"...
DING! Men you both find yourselves strangely sexually attracted to!
... Catherine Zeta-Jones... Angelina Jolie... three women at the pool... that woman at the taco stand... that hottie blond in the Crest commercial... Michelle Pfieffer when she was Catwoman... Disney's Pocahontas...
DING! Women you both find yourselves strangely sexually attracted to!
... large-breasted naked women in cowboy hats... drunk men passed out in sombreros... a naked woman hugging a dog... couples engaged in thinly veiled sexual activity... cacti...
DING! Things they put on shotglasses!
... wear floppy hats... burn your feet on the sand... find electric blue jellyfish... examine hermit crabs brought to you in a Solo cup... examine panicky baby squid brought to you in a Solo cup full of hermit crabs... buy a wooden Cobra... pull babies on Boogie boards... pack a cooler with Dos Equis, limes and Juicy Juice... repeatedly act frightened that your feet are somehow gone after giggly and furtive Solo cup activity... rhetorically ask,"Man, what's wrong with
this?" thirty-two times...
DING! Things you do on Thursday!
... stand in line at four in the morning with the unwashed undergraduates to pick up student loan dispersement that DID NOT automatically deposit into your bank account... explain to Nissan Man that freakish fossilized stalagmite battery corrosion has eaten through apparently crucial wiring and ask, hypothetically, who would win if Battery Corrosion and Duct Tape had a wrestling match... beg Merciful and Unknown Professor H. to take you on as thesis candidate in the vein of Princess Leia's "only hope" speech... continue rehydrating efforts... continue to get sick thinking about cheese...
DING! Things you're not looking forward to!
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Just for the record:I'm back.
If I don't go to the bathroom I'm going to die.
These shotglasses are seriously grossing me out. I never knew cheap ceramic could make me blush.
My thumb is raw from opening beer bottles, but I feel like a badass.
The glass wafers came in my absence. Now I can get my proverbial "magnet on".
I started my second beer of the day at 8:12 this morning.
I was serious about the bathroom.
I'll see you tomorrow.
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Nothing Says "Road Trip" Like A Mouth Full Of Gasoline
or
It's A Good Thing My Car Runs On Ice Cream
I don't know how much the rest of the world cares about this godforsaken desert that I call my godforsaken home, but if you've been watching the news you may have heard that we're almost completely out of gasoline. This giant fuel pipeline burst out in the literal middle of nowhere, and so now three million people are fighting over whatever gas they can bring in with trucks. Which is roughly equivalent to three million people fighting over a bottle of sun tea. The best part is that the trucked-in dispersals are totally random, so we have these ongoing broadcasts throughout the day... "There is gas at the Chevron on Thunderbird and 42nd Avenue!.... oh, wait! Now there's gas at the 76 Station on Eliot and Priest! Hurry! HURRY!!" No one is driving anywhere... the streets are deserted save for the miles of cars parked along the road, waiting for their turn at the "pump of the minute." It's about a two and a half hour wait, average. Which is what I want to do on an August afternoon in Arizona... sit in my car while it doesn't move. R and I went ahead and siphoned all the gas out of the ski boat and the toy hauler... I feel like such a renegade. I'm all psyched to start building tire cities and setting shit on fire.
In other news, I was finally granted an audience with the elusive graduate studies counselor guru, and I discovered to my unending delight and surprise that I am completely through with my coursework save for one class. AND! I'm getting ready to call Professor Vagina in Chicago to "DISCUSS" the possibility of her signing on to chair my committee. I received an email from her yesterday in which she wrote that she would "be happy" to chair (at which point she asked if I was MA or PhD., which quite frankly made me question her sanity a little) but then said that there were some "issues" at her end that "might make me want to reconsider." (Don't you love all of the quotation marks? If you were here right now, and I was telling you this to your face, I'd totally be making those little marks in the air with my fingers.) I can't imagine what those "issues" could be, unless she's going on sabbatical or something. I'll keep you posted.
(UPDATE: Good news!
No, not really. She can't. Ha ha!
Okay. Not really funny. But overall she was extremely helpful and pleasant. It's not her fault that she's decided to to take Oxford up on that offer. (Huff.) Hey, and when I mistakingly called Anne Tyler a modernist, she didn't even hang up on me. Which I think was generous. I really am, by the way, just that fucking retarded. Like last night? When she was going to call me? I gave her the wrong number. Yeah. I'm a fucking genius; now give me my goddamned post-graduate degree.
So she said she would happily be a reader. I now have eleven hundred readers and no chair. But I feel so much better having
sorted out the
sordid (shut up) details that I don't even care. I'll fix it on Friday. Maybe
B will chair. END OF UPDATE.)
I got my hair done yesterday. You know how when you get your hair done, part of the fun is that it always smells so good afterwards? Yeah. Well, apparently when you're only willing to drop $40 on a weave, you leave smelling like Minwax. Whatever. It looks good, even if it smells like insecticide. There's this girl at the hair place that I went to high school with. She's a stupid bitch like no one has ever been a stupid bitch before. All she's accomplished since high school is having two kids with random bar guys and the consistent-- nay continuous-- perming of her hair. She's the one who never has any clients, either; if someone is going to be sitting on her fat ass reading People and eating a Reese's cup, it's gonna be her. She finally did get a walk-in yesterday--an older man in a business suit who needed a trim-- and as she was leading him back to her hovel of a station I see her reach down the neck of her shirt to WHAT HAD TO BE HER WAIST to fix her bra strap. It was like she was scratching her knee via her collar. I would have made my disdain more obvious but I was at somewhat of a visceral disadvantage what with no lipstick, a giant apron and aluminum foil in my hair.
I'm leaving for Mexico in a couple hours. I'm told that the gas stations south of here are adequately supplied. Which is sort of disappointing. I was looking forward to going all commando; you know, roping full gas cans to the bumper, maybe going whole hog and sautering the roof of the car off. I could wear some greasy old boots with no toes and tie strips of leather around my forearms, and then maybe try to barter with a box of old hammers.
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Google Fiction: Searches Incorporated into Brief and Awesome Tales.Lauren huddled at her kitchen table, her head cradled in her shaky hands. The rest of the windows were finally boarded up, and she could afford to rest a little. All night as she had feverishly hammered she could hear the anguished screams from those outside who had not been so lucky, those who had not caught it in time. Maybe they had been innocently planning a stew, or a nice piece of liver, or perhaps even kabobs. It didn't matter now. They were forced to gather on the sidewalks, their waving cutting boards the tell-tale sign. The constant crying ate into Lauren's brain; all those tears! Crying and crying and more crying! She could hardly stand it! When the gas-masked teams had barged in, armed with M-16s, Ziploc bags and Clorox sanitizing wipes, Lauren had let them brush by her without a fight. Let them search her refrigerator, her crisper drawer, her pantry! Anything to keep her from joining the legions of The Tearful that lay writhing on the sidewalks even now, their paper-thin skin shedding grotesquely away on the concrete. Peering through a small peephole in the otherwise covered glass, Lauren grimaced as she saw the uniformed officers igniting another pile of ravaged bodies. The smell of dirty chives wafted through the streets. Damn this
rotten onion sickness. Damn it to hell.
Okay. A couple of things:
First, I'd like to give a shout out to Kim for sending me those spider pictures. Props for going after your camera; I would set the house on fire, myself.
Second, I'm having a small issue with the magnets. I had to special order some
large glass wafers and they're apparently backordered. I can't imagine why there would be a mad run on clear glass wafers, but whatever. I can use the small ones, but then the macabre isn't as macabre as it could be. My Magnet Recon Trial Team agrees that they're just kind of... macaaaa. So I'm offering you guys a choice: if you don't want to wait indefinitely for your magnet, you can opt to be sent a macabre trinket from Mexico. It might be a ceramic couple having oral sex on the side of a shot glass, it might be a tiny bobble-head skeleton. I just don't know yet. I'm still banking on getting those wafers, myself; I already bought all of this fake hair and mayonnaise. But if you want to take Mexican Tourist Beach Town Door Number Uno, let me know and I'll get your fifty-cent piece of Tourist Beach Town shit in the mail. It won't be shellfish. Or prescription medication.
Or a Mexican person. (Get off me, L'Immigre.)
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Things I'm going to post pictures of when I get a freaking camera:
1) The Giant Mystery Chicken. From either very close-up, right before he mauls me with his Giant Mystery Talons, or from very far away, right before he doesn't.
2) The spider web hanging in the bathroom skylight. It won't be as good (or as freakishly scary) as
Clamhead's, but it's enormous and convoluted and I feel like I should try.
(note to
B: The black widows and the brown recluses on the patio are still "getting the hose", so to speak. They are welcome to fester in all their poisonous fecundity in the garage, under the hot tub and in the tangled purgatory of ivy covering the front of the house, but the patio is mine. Did I ever tell you about the time I was bitten by a tarantula? Yeah. IN MY SLEEP. But I digress. The daddy long-legged guys are fine and helpful, I agree. Except when they say they'll get the mail and pick up the paper when you're out of town. Then they're just lazy.)
3) My tarantula bite scar. I was bitten a couple of years ago. IN MY SLEEP. Believe it or not, tarantulas are actually VERY FRAGILE CREATURES, AND I KILLED IT WHEN I ROLLED OVER IT. PROMPTING IT TO BITE ME. IN MY BED. IN MY SLEEP. I STILL HAVE SOME ISSUES WITH THIS. AND IT'S PROBABLY BETTER IF I STOP TALKING ABOUT IT.
...4) I'M ALL FUCKED UP ON TARANTULAS NOW. I CAN'T THINK OF ANYTHING ELSE. IT BIT ME IN MY
SLEEP, DUDE. I'M GOING TO GO TAKE A HOT BATH. MAYBE LIE DOWN. YEAH, MAYBE STRIP THE SHEETS AND LIE DOWN WITH MY EYES OPEN AND A CAN OF RAID AND A CARDBOARD CUTOUT OF A HAWK. AND A CITRONELLA CANDLE.
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Saturday Night Birthday Party: 6:19 pm to 12:09 am...
6:19 pm-- when in the grocery store looking for a funny card, and when I scream to R on the next aisle, "Where are the
funny cards? These are all
Mormon funny," and then go to his aisle, exasperated, only to run (literally) into my mother pushing a shopping cart full of seltzer and chicken, we will have a pleasant and amusing conversation for six minutes about new puppies, Los Angeles and wine while the only thing that she's thinking is, "That skirt is much too short," and the only thing that I'm thinking is, "THERE ARE
SHORTS UNDER HERE! THEY'RE REALLY
SHORTS! I KNOW! I KNOW!"
8:22 pm-- I don't smoke anymore. So I'm not allowed to sit at the patio table where all of the cigarette boxes are left with the lighters in a sort of "smoker's trust camaraderie". It makes me feel lonely. A little superior, but still mournful. I (HEART) SMOKE.
9:54 pm-- when I go into the kitchen and come back to R with a hunk of turkey in my palm and a baby pickle between my pinkie and ring finger, and I go, "Turkey? Pickle. Turkey? Pickle." over and over while flashing him each food, I'm the only one who thinks it's funnier than shit.
10:13 pm-- when the birthday boy (who got shot last year) unwraps a hunting vest, it is
not funny to ask loudly and repeatedly whether it's "made out of mylar." Particularly, as R will point out after time number three, since they make bulletproof vests out of
KEVlar, and those shiny metallic balloons out of
MYlar.
10:15 pm-- stop laughing.
12:09 am-- when said birthday boy scratches off a lottery ticket that turns out to have three like amounts of $10,000 showing, I shouldn't be the first one out of my chair to authenticate. Because when I do, and everyone starts jumping around and hugging and going ape shit, and then he reads on the back that to claim it you should send it to Santa Claus via the Tooth Fairy, well, there's just no coming back from that.
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Last night R was upset when he couldn't find Fred. He thought for a minute that maybe Fred had moved from the bathroom into the bedroom, but no luck. He's actually still walking sort of slumped over this morning, eyes low, hoping that Fred will surprise him.
Fred was a dust bunny. He was mostly hair, but he was some blue lint, too. It's all really very sad.
I need to clean the floors either
more often or
less often. We can't keep handling this kind of heartache.
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C's truck is in the shop, and he just asked if he could borrow my car. "Of course!" I answered, overcome by a freakish paranoia that somehow I had left (a) adult bookstore receipts, (b) heroin, or (c) a bullet point list of all of my deepest secretive faults lying on the front seat. I haven't been to an adult bookstore in years, I've never even
seen heroin, and the bullet point list goes without saying. But I still had to mentally check the glove compartment. You know, in case I really
am a porn-freak heroin-addict with a confidence death wish and I just
forget about it when I'm not in my car.
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My student loan should be resting snugly in my bank account in four days, fifteen hours and sixteen minutes. I can barely contain my twitching urge to run out and buy shit I don't need. Hair care products and lipgloss appear to me in dreams, seducing me and whoring themselves out in exchange for my borrowed cash. S and I have a tradition of going to Mexico the day that we get our loans; we stock up on silver jewelry and shrimp tacos and bubbly hand-blown margarita glasses, and then we lay for hours face-down in the sand clutching one of a billion Dos Equis with the kind of casual, gluttonous abandon I can only imagine comes naturally to royalty. Or the Hilton sisters. Same thing. So needless to say I'm looking forward to that.
(INTERJECTION: In good faith here I feel I should point out that last semester we got lost in the dark for hours and then I left my wallet replete with all cash in a parking lot somewhere. In case I gave too strong an impression of cotton candy and buttery springtime. Last time blew.)
I would also like to invest in a good digital camera, but every time I walk into a Circuit City or Comp USA or Best Buy and see the glittering acres and legions of camera options, I get all shaky and noncommittal. There must be eighty thousand digital cameras on display at Best Buy, I swear to God. I walk over to the counter and some guy pops his head out of a giant stack of them, buried alive up to his neck in polished chrome and lanyards. If anyone has any advice here I'd be glad to hear it, because left to my own devices it's a given that I will purchase the slowest, weakest, lamest camera ever to come out of Slovenia. The same goes for MP3 players. The last one I bought had enough memory for exactly four songs, the buttons were invisible and the earphones stabbed my brain. I'd be better off just carrying an AM radio next to my head.
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Today I gathered up all of my marginal html skill (not to mention some crucial help from the ultra-efficient Blogger team, who I'm sure have been pointing and laughing at me all day, even through my effusive and tearfully thankful marriage proposals [gender regardless; I'm down]) and I created myself some pages. I'll be cleaning up and adding photo pages soon, but in the meantime, have any of you
ever seen a better representation of a scary
sea creature? I submit that you have
not.
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Google Fiction: Searches Incorporated Into Brief and Awesome Tales.Cheryl woke up bleary-eyed to the incessant buzzing of her alarm. "Oh, God," she groaned, hiding her head under the pillow. It was Wednesday. Cheryl hated Wednesdays. Slowly she slouched her way out of bed, dragging the comforter into the bathroom. Her dark mood pervaded through the hot shower, through the morning coffee, through the teeth-tapping clothes selection. Staring at herself in the mirror while she buttoned her blouse, Cheryl once again contemplated the pros and cons of leaving her job. And as she hooked her black lace bra securely around her head, tucking the straps into her collar and arranging her hair around the C-cup, she had almost convinced herself to look for something else. Her mood was not heightened when she reached the office; for it was not "Bra On Your Head Wednesday", but "
No Pantie Tuesday". Cheryl sighed. Her secretary tittered. Goddamned job.
I emailed Professor Vagina yesterday. Finally. I figured it was either that or take another graduate round of " Native American Saints, Mystics and Martyrs in Seventeenth Century Romania." So I apologized for my (apparently) horrific paper last semester, assured her that there was an explanation (which I'm working on), and asked her to chair my thesis committee. In two weeks. Yeah. Oh, I also mentioned that I had been doing "exploratory preemptive research". So I'm a big fat liar in every capacity. If I don't just get a "YOU SUCK" in reply, she'll want to meet and hear the explanation (I suck?) and see the research (funny). If she won't do it I'm going to chair my
own thesis committee. Fuck you guys. I rock.
Hey, does anybody think it's weird that I won't wear my prescription sunglasses because they were too expensive? That I drive around in Arizona in August, examining traffic though my squinty eyelashes and thinking with responsible relief about the $400 Armani sunglasses that I left poshly and safely on the kitchen counter?
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Sweetest thing I heard a kid say in Washington:
"Ooooooooh! You're sitting on the sacred memories!"
(This was at the Vietnam Memorial, where someone's little sister was barely perched on one tiny, tapered end of the wall thinking it was innocent curb.)
Funniest thing I heard a kid say in Washington:
"Okay, are you a Gemini, a Leo, or a Sacrilegious?"
(A little girl was examining an "astrolabe" in the Air and Space Museum. Even funnier, her dad laughed and answered, "I'm a Libra, but your mom is a Sacrilegious.")
My grandfather is eighty-four years old. He's pissed this morning because his wheelbarrow is broken, and he needs it to haul away the old slabs of concrete that he's been chawing up with a jackhammer all morning. A jackhammer. He's eighty-four. He said that he was going to stop and get a new wheel when he picks up my eighty-two year old grandmother from aerobics. Next week they're ripping out all of their carpet by hand and sanding the floors. And I assume that the week after
that they're going to break into the FBI building and reconfigure the mainframe. Or else build a helicopter.
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Two incredibly inconvenient and annoying happenings that heightened my comedic leverage in D.C.:
1) R forgot to pack the garment bag.
Now, as a rule I generally do all of our packing because R has no actual concept of space. He will always disdainfully ask, "Do you really think that we need the giant suitcase?", and I always answer, "We will be
lucky to get all of our shit into
one giant suitcase," and then he shakes his head because he is a man and men should be light and mobile and carefree, not lugging around a suitcase the size of a Buick Le Sabre making low and pathetic eye contact with the guy carrying a car seat on his back. But then he'll ask, "If I bring four pairs of wingtips, that should be enough, right?" And I'll answer, "For a three day weekend in Cancun? Yes. Four pairs of hard-soled lace-ups should be sufficient." And then he gets caught up in scarves and sport coats and I'm free to pack us in the Big Mamoo (our pet name for the Buick Le Sabre suitcase).
This particular trip required the Big Mamoo AND the garment bag. A veritable "crap load" of unnecessary items, if you will. Now, I can
pack the garment bag, but it always looks as if I've been wrestling with the clothes; they get all desperate and wrung-out sweaty looking. So I asked R to do it. He said yes, that he would, but being the garment guru sage that he is, he decided to wait until the last minute to avoid the "wrestled clothes" look. He went ahead and waited until we were on the plane, our still-closeted fancy clothes no doubt rejoicing and high-fiving, safe and snug in their dry cleaning bags.
No harm, no foul; I enjoy eating lobster in cargo shorts. But the comedic leverage went something like:
R: "[insert any clever, jocular criticism of Estella here.]"
ME: "I'm sorry, what? Ohhhhh! GARMENT bag!"
It worked out really well, and was just beautifully flexible. By the time we'd landed at home, the kids had appropriated it:
R: "Be careful with that [
gameboy, hand grenade, infant], C. You'll be sorry if you drop it and it breaks."
C: "Oh, okay Dad. You're right. Hey, where's the garment bag?"
2) The kids and R spent two hours waiting for me to show up at the museum while I spent two hours waiting for them at the opposite entrance.
The Gap has ingeniously come out with a new line of adorable sandals that are, apparently, made completely out of broken glass shards and fire ants. I walked three miles, then limped two more, then hobbled another half, then looked down at the blood coursing over the leather and went to the Air and Space Museum bathroom to wash up, apply band-aids and throw the shoes away. Fuck
that shit. But you can only walk around barefoot in a federal building for so long without feeling a little homeless-- not to mention how it tends to limit where the group can have lunch-- so I told R that I would catch a cab back to the hotel and meet them, with some shoes on, at the next museum. I did this.
They did this. But museums are big. And they have lots of doors. So we all sat at our respective doors until for the second time that day I avowed to "fuck
that shit", and took a stormy cab
back to the hotel. Whereupon I called R. Who was at the museum. Waiting. Here are a list of questions I couldn't answer:
Why didn't I call R on his cell phone?
Why didn't I ask inside the museum if there was an entrance that
didn't have a docking bay and a dumpster?
Why aren't there any mummies in the Museum of Natural History? Aren't mummies natural? I mean, where are all the goddamned mummies?
So. Two hours wasted. Thanks to me. I'm a genius. But! Every dirty mummy has a silver lining. The comedic leverage went something like:
R: "[insert clever, jocular criticism of Estella here.]"
ME: "I'm sorry, what? Ohhhh! GARMENT bag!"
R: "Yeah! I must have left it at the MAIN ENTRANCE."
or:
ME: "I could have sworn that the baggage arrow pointed this way..."
C: "Oh, shit, have we been following Estella??"
R: "She's probably trying to take us to the main entrance."
ME: "Hey, I'm just trying to find the garment bag."
So it all worked out pretty well. Except for all the missing mummies. Where the hell are those guys?
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I'm either at home or I'm in some sort of denial airplane coma brought on by a screaming Italian three-year old and a travel-trailer adulteress drinking Bailey's at (on) my right elbow. Rest assured that the trip will be outlined tomorrow. In the meantime, I wanted to thank everybody for their interest in the magnets. I love magnets, I love email, and I love email from people who love magnets. I'm sending a magnet to everyone who inquired, because EVERYONE LOVES A WINNER. So start looking for yours in the next week to ten days. It will be the package that's trembling and whimpering.
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I'm completely addicted to
making magnets now. I'm a magnet making machine. I must confess that my magnets border on the... macabre. Macabre Magnets. In fact, I'm so impressed with myself and my potentially offensive magnets that I've decided to share. Magnets are small, and magnets are light. I'm leaving tomorrow for D.C., but the first twenty-five people who
email me between now and Sunday (the tenth) with a mailing address will receive ONE OFFENSIVE MAGNET. Count em... ONE.
Or, if you prefer, you can have a pretty magnet with a sequin flower or a glittery heart on it. But you have to specify in your email that you are too frightened and that this is your preference. And that you are a pussy. And that you are scared of a magnet.
If you want a magnet but you don't want to give me your address, just tell me which state or country you live in and I will go outside and throw the magnet as hard as I can in your direction.
I'll see you on Sunday.
Hey, and sorry about losing all of the comments. Again. It was the price I had to pay for a new server.
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Thanks a lot, Stupid:
1) I've come to the slow but inevitable and horrifying realization that my natural hair color is
somehow even darker than the DARK ASS BROWN I had it colored. Thanks, stupid roots. Stupid genetics. Stupid hair.
2) The Aesthetician Girl should have known that when I said to "take my eyebrows to the bone", I was EXAGGERATING. Thanks, stupid Aesthetician Girl. Stupid sense of humor. Stupid bloody scraps of eyebrow flesh.
3) That girl who got knocked up our senior year of high school apparently owns two auto-glass install places, a water treatment facility, a house in Paradise Valley and she just offered to pick me up for the reunion in her husband's Hummer limo. Thanks, stupid college degree. Stupid high school abstinence. Stupid barren womb.
4) If you took every single scrap of money on the planet, and you set it on fire, that's how much money I have right now. Minus thirty grand. Thanks, stupid things that cost money. Stupid catalogues. Stupid will power LACK.
5) I can have either a dill pickle or Gatorade for breakfast. I love options.
And where are my archives??? Thanks, stupid archives.
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There was a fleeting scene during Sex and the City last night in which three whorish girls in a dive bar attempt to thrash Samantha for kissing some dude. It was one of those scenes where three girls are needed to
look like whores, but only one of the whores gets to speak. And that one said something like, "I'm gonna slap the shit outta ya," and then they all started running. So I'm watching the credits, and I notice that one of the actresses who "played" the "2nd girl in bar" only has
one name: Olla or Odala or something. And I'm thinking, shouldn't she probably get a
little bit more work under her belt first? I really can't see some casting agent going, "Oh, Odepha? Is she available? No, you know her; she was "fourth bridesmaid" in that TNT thing, and then "girl in taxi" on Law and Order. Thank God she decided to just call herself some
word. I'm so tired of fledgling actresses who use their
names. Get her. And pay her whatever she wants."
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Three times this week that I had to shut R down with a "Dude... that's not cool.":
1) When R called four different Sam's Clubs to find one that had some totally pointless portable DVD player for C's birthday. He spoke with some 16-year old newbie named Chad who took seven months to find it (the last one in the western hemisphere, obviously) and assured R that he would save it for him until we got there. At the end of the half-hour car ride, R announced that if the DVD player was not, in fact, waiting at the counter, R was going to, quote, "shoot Chad right in the face."
(I should mention here that R can barely operate a can opener, let alone anything resembling a firearm. The worst he would ever do would be to
not invite Chad to go waterskiing. Which, ultimately, he did do. [That's how R and I met, actually; he said I looked like I could hold my own "on a couple of branches".])
2) When R suggested an hour into our semi-spontaneous hike through the Tonto Natural Forest that next time (you know, that mythical "next time" when I wear sneakers and not high heels, and when I bring water to drink and not a Fosters oil can) we could check into reserving a camp site.
3) Okay. So it's just those two times. But I'll shut him down later tonight when he asks me to bring him more tea or something, and then that will be the third time. So just hang tight.
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R just asked me in all seriousness if I washed the dog in the shower.
I had shaved my legs.
The dog was offended.
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I've never wanted a digital camera like I want one after just finding that avacado half smushed into the back of the fridge. Just so that when I say it was "gross", you know I mean "
gross".
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I'm calling everyone I know and making them do
this. Thanks
Chasing Daisy et al for the link.
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