The Starship Empressprise

Lascivious

2011-08-25T14:04:00.000-07:00

(If you haven’t already read this…)

Consider me a glutton for lust. I was so enamored of life at court that I returned to Medieval Times within one cycle of the moon. Another birthday, another bff, another opportunity for mischief. It was Libby’s birthday this time, and we’d made the decision to celebrate after the fashion of horses and glitter during a unicorn slumber party. It seemed appropriate timing. Libs has known for some years now my intrinsic love of things that are “just…. just SO BAD….. so bad……….” Having never been to The Past, she was willing to let me be her escort and guide, and I took up the challenge with fervor and honor.

In spite of my beguiling efforts, we were not able to sit in the Red Section. In fact we were once again shunted off to the section where everything is Black and White. Of the 3 occasions I’ve been to The Past now, it’s been in black and white every time. I suppose that’s apropos. We elbowed our way into the antechamber, and in spite of all the pre-warning I imagined Libs had, I reckon nothing can really prepare a person for having some blustering fool of a John Cleese impersonator bellowing out poorly crafted quips at you, and expecting you to actually respond. We were in hysterics inside of 4 minutes, not least because it turns out I have no ability to apply lip gloss to anyone else’s face without painting their teeth.

Even though we hadn’t sprung for the “Royalty Package” or whatever it was, and even though we arrived approximately 2 minutes before the seating assignments, we somehow wound up with seats in the 2nd row. I can’t even imagine what the first row is like, you’re practically under the horses. In a birthday care package from LisaDoll came appropriate accessories for the evening – DIY foam tiaras and pink wands. I obsessively crafted my tiara with the precision of a one-armed gorilla orchestra conductor, Libs did the same (hers was way better) and we waved our pink wands, and felt like visitors in our own skins as neither of us frequent the “cutesy girly pinksy sparkly” planet.

I was completely engrossed in tiara architecture through the opening “back story”, but from what I gathered it was similar to the prior back story, in that it was exactly the same back story. Hostage prince and kid with whip. Bring me soup. Horses dancing in lines for 10 minutes solid, and then a well trained bird of prey. Bring me a pig’s head. Introduction of gormless king and vapid princess, for the love of horses bring me some KNIGHTS. And then…. they rode out in style, one by one like they do, being announced by their color and banner. And lo and behold, once again putting life into the story of the Red Knight – “IT’S HIM LIBS IT’S HIM IT’S HIM IT’S HIM!!!!” *bounce flap point flap squeak*

Indeed it was him, the same Red Knight with all the handsome that had won my heart/eyes not a month ago. It was almost like The Past was repeating The Past, and we were even in the same section. I didn’t recognize any of the other nights but no matter, I rubbed my hands together energetically with the assurance that my eyes would be nourished with red candy. Blackandwhite be hanged, I would obviously be cheering for red. He was my veela.

He cantered past our section as he had before, with an air of taunting us and relishing in the negative attention, when suddenly our eyes locked… I could almost see his brain shouting “IT’S HER HORSE IT’S HER IT’S HER IT’S HER!!!” *bounce flap point flap squeak* He pointed right at my face, I blew him a kiss, he clutched his bosom, I waved at him, he winked at me, and I was pwned. Libs’ eyes were agog as two gogs, it’s not every day you watch true love unfold over chicken carcass. I was shocked that he’d remembered unobtrusive little me after a whole month, but as several people have said, “Ems…. He works at Medieval Times….” No doubt I was a bright purple spot of cleavage in his otherwise dreary families-with-little-kids day.

The rest of the events went by with me in a red haze, he would ride past us and look at me often, he did the heartbeat thump thing with his hand on his chest, he would point his sword at me when he passed one of the “tests”, winked and blew kisses a lot, mouthed that he’d missed me, and placed me into a very large cauldron until I melted. Our knight was no slouch in the handsome way either, in fact he threw one of the flowers right at us which I caught, in the absence of FPP. And our knight had a beard, which 9 times of 10 is the preferred look for men on horses. Unfortunately…. The beard wasn’t strong enough to save him from the pretend. He was killed the first time some half-hearted fool swung a sword through the air to his left. We barely knew what had happened before he was suddenly being lugged off the field like a sack of death. That’s what happens when you see everything in black and white.

Luckily, my allegiance had been turned several moments prior to a horse of a different color, who was still fighting with the best of them. Even though he sustained injury after injury by overdramatic gestures and oxygen (air swords > air guitar), he battled through and won the day. The prince came back with his Yanklish apocalypse accent and yadda yadda, none of this matters in the slightest you understand because the Red Knight was handsome and not dead with really really strong thighs.

Libs and I waited in the DMV-esque line for the loo afterwards and then wandered into the Knight Club (yes.), this is where the warriors gather for photo opportunities and to be niggled by small children or giddy teenage girls. Or me. As soon as he saw me, my knight pointed at me and grabbed me in a hug that nearly crushed my ribs, not least because he was still in his armor, pressed his cheek against my face and got sweat all over my glasses. There wasn’t any 40’s movie score swelling in the background but there should have been. We stood and chatted with him for a few minutes, I’m pretty sure he talked about things like horses and politics and the destruction of the Amazon, but I couldn’t swear to it because I was too busy staring at his mouth to listen. The transcript of the encounter in my brain would read something like *Tall, good gracious he’s TALL, omg I wonder how tall, his eyes are brown but that can be overlooked, he knows how to ride a horse and wield a sword and fling flags at foes and, wait hang on –* (“Yep, me too”) *- lips, he has them and I like boys with lips, why can’t I see him clearly out of this eye, oh because of the sweat smeared across my glasses, that’s really repulsive in a sexy way, and I just got bored so I’m already walking away but he still has lips*

It was the bliss of true love. Libs gave me the best present ever for her birthday, by letting me take her there. And for those who will understand, I have red bottomosity.

Monday night I’m going to the Pirate Place.

Chant Down Babylon

Neutralize

2011-08-11T15:04:00.000-07:00

Mini story, heavy on the choreography.

Floors 2-5 of my work building come equipped with a break/coffee/sink/microwave/copy machine/refrigerator/toaster/water cooler/file cabinet/speakeasy/closer than the bathroom to fart/group therapy/who can yell the loudest room. When you manage to be in them alone, you can microwave popcorn and make copies of your face and pass gas and cook 37 pieces of toast all at the same time. Every morning, these rooms are packed with dozens of people who are all attempting to do one or more of those things. I happen to sit right outside one of these rooms (the one that has 5 toasters. 5. Toasters. 5.). Most of the stories and quotes you guys hear from this place are because of my uncomfortable locale. For some reason, my coworkers seem to believe that this comprehensive room is soundproof, and smell proof. Neither is true, as I wish I could shout from the rooftop at the farters.

Over the past 6 months, the walls of the room have become peppered with various signs about food and farts and killer moths, and there’s even a sign about the signs now. All of this is beside the point. The one thing no one seemed to notice in this room was a phone. It hangs on the wall above our fax machine, with some odd number inscribed on it. It looks nothing like the rest of the phones we have here, it’s the receiver and buttons but no other useless gizmos or caller ID screens. It’s very Batphone, except that it’s sullen and beige.

The other day, 2 of the bosses were in the room chatting about breastmilk and fish, when suddenly…

Phone: *Ring ring*
Boss 1 and 2: …..……..*frozen*
Phone: *Ring ring*
Boss 1 and 2: ……..*sloooooowly look at phone*
Phone: *Ring ring*
Boss 1 and 2: ………*slooooooowly look at each other*
Phone: *Ring ring*
Boss 1: ………”What the hell?”
Phone: *RING RING*
Boss 2: ……… *hand wringing*
Phone: *Ring. Ring.*
Boss 1: *nervously shuffling feet*
Phone: *Sigh. Ring.*
Boss 2: “What do we DO??” *over the head hand flap spasm*
Phone: *(….seriously?) ring….*
Boss 1 and 2: *wordlessly mouthing*
Phone: *……..I have given up. (silence)*
Boss 2: “Oh!”
Boss 1: “Thank goodness…”
Boss 1 and 2: *meandering out of room* “….(*indistinct phrases like*) Close one…… Almost had to….. Why they even have that……….”

Close shaves abound in this place, we almost had our healthcare benefits changed, there’s almost been a strike amongst the clerical staff for a couple of years, and 2 bosses almost had to answer a phone.

Chant Down Babylon

Lust

2011-07-15T15:31:00.000-07:00

I never knew the daily life of being a medieval knight included the stitching of so many spangles and sequins. I feel extreme chagrin at having images of homespun and burlap tunics all these years, maintaining the practical over the romantic. I write this with relief and gratitude my friends, ebullient with the burning discovery that it is never too late to come face to horse with the truth, and that my stagnant tomes of murky British history can be tossed right out the door with one visit to Medieval Times.

Turning 35 is a very big deal, and I know this because I haven’t done it yet. My own FPP embarked on the big deal himself this week with a staunch constitution and stiff upper lip. We’d had a co-birthday dinner/golf incident with Laphone a couple of weeks ago, but he felt more was needed and is almost always right. We tossed around ideas of what to do on the actual day, which fell on a Monday so I was available (for those who don’t know, I’m one of those people who gets to work 4-10s, and you’re right to make that sound of malcontent in your throat and you absolutely should hate me, so don’t be hard on yourself), but everything seemed so……anticlimactic and subdued. The kinds of things that would better suit a 34th birthday, but not a 35th. In truth I don’t remember even a shred of anything else we talked about and not just because of Colander Brain Syndrome (CBS), but because nothing else mattered after I started gasping and flapping and shrieking “MEDIEVAL TIMES MEDIEVAL TIMES MEDIEVAL TIMES!!!!”? And then when I finished doing that I emailed FPP “MEDIEVAL TIMES MEDIEVAL TIMES MEDIEVAL TIMES!!!!”

FPP, compliant as ever, decided to incorporate the sequins into his birthday celebration in order to make me happy, since he could have fun making banana art and inventing British rap songs. They offer you a free ticket on your birthday as long as someone else goes with you and pays full price, I bought our tickets, and we were locked in or would gnaw our way through the stockade! I had been to the historical reenactment of Medieval Times once before as a wee thing, I remembered a huge arena and that our knight was rubbish and that I had always proudly believed I was a primitive savage until I was asked to eat without utensils. I was anxious to revisit the past via the past, and look with wizened eyes upon our noble ancestry across the pond.

We arrived without incident beyond the usual Emsy Meltdown in Traffic (EMT), and I was hopping/flapping as we walked through 3 versions of the wrong entrance. We were assigned to be supporters of the Black and White Knight and his banner, ironically these were the same colors I supported the wee thing time as well, and we fitted the paper crowns on our giant heads by utilizing the very last slot which I’m sure makes RayK proud. We loitered around an antechamber where some poor fool was trying to get everyone to do things like clap in unison and use their ears. Finally we were ushered into the arena, which is at least 4/5 smaller than it was when I was 4/5 smaller than I am, and luckily got seats right in the center. To FPP’s right was a small family, and to my left were two exquisite blond gay men, who when I introduced myself to them became my best friends ever.

I didn’t recall being presented with much back story in the show when I was wee, but again I thought as a child and spake as a child then, so I didn’t grasp the import of character pathos or complexity. I mean, what was these knights’ motivation? This time however, we were taught about the ongoing battle our kingdom was in with Leon, as in Spain and not just some guy, and that our prince had been taken hostage by some skinny interloper with a whip. There wasn’t a sequin to be found on the whip whelp’s garb either, and they shined red light as the prince was taken away, so I knew these were the bad guys. Destroyers and usurpers! This abduction left behind a flummoxed puffer fish of a king whose beard was more interesting than his speeches, and a wringing hands distraught Kardashian-esque princess without a scintilla of British affectation. Double fail. BUT now at least I understood, these knights were going to win back our prince by fighting against each other and tossing flags back and forth. Color me captivated, bring on the challenges!

The knights rode out one by one, introduced by that same blustering fool who tried to incite our rage in the antechamber, and I feel no shame in saying that a fair few of them made me and the gay boys go “…ooh….” One in particular, the red one, had a lot of handsome. Ours, the black and white one, had a lot of hair but a nice smile. The green one had a lot of nose. I couldn’t pick the others out of a crowd now if I had to, and it’s only been 4 days (CBS) but no matter, I’m certain they were there. Several airings of grievances and feats of strength were performed, mainly by the horses. Those poor horses…. As a person who has recently decided she really likes horses, I couldn’t stop myself from thinking about what their life must be like. I mean movie set horses have a raw enough deal, but Medieval Times horses? Having to bear the weight of all that hair and glitter? Even they must be thinking “You know, that’s not historically accurate….”

Being the technocrat zealots that we are, both FPP and I had our phones handy and were taking photos, as well as updating our Twitter/Facebook accounts for the benefit of all. FPP is an Android, and being in a close relationship with a fellow Android (Lanthorn) I know the darker workings of their minds… so as he typed in the description of where he was, along with the phrase “Let the jousting begin!”, it came as no surprise that the dark mind expected he meant the word “lusting”. I was engaged in some kind of rant on white supremacy with GaySquared and suddenly noticed that FPP was shaking with laughter, and after he explained the reasoning to me I began roaring and wheezing with laughter. Technically the lusting hadn’t even commenced yet and the knights were still in the dancing and drill teaming phase, honestly I lost track of how many ways they could make their horses do gymnastics.

Given the fact that we were in this hobbit-sized arena it was easy to make eye contact with the knights, they would frequently trot over to their color-coded section to beg for our validation and approval. Very like the royal guards in England, these men were loathe to break character as they valiantly acted out the story of honor and duty and sparkle, keeping only to the grand waving and gesticulating of the days of yore. During a key moment, I locked eyes with the red knight who had all the handsome, and winked at him or blew him a kiss or something else beguiling, because of the lusting… which shattered him out of his duties just long enough for him to make the most hilarious “WTF?” shrug at me that I’ve ever seen. His judgment and condemnation of me was evident upon his clear brow, me the turncoat traitor who follows looks instead of colors. He happened to be right next to the black and white knight when this happened, turned to nudge him and point at me, by which point I was howling with laughter along with FPP AND GaySquared. I quickly blew kisses to our knight as well, who waved merrily and trotted off, leaving the red man behind… who locked eyes with me yet again, so I winked and blew him another kiss. I’m nothing if not thorough. Several times throughout the show Red caught my eye, and even started riding past our section, the saucy minx. I’d changed the history of the lusting.

After one of the feats of strength, the princess of drama was tossing flowers down at the knights, who were in turn going and tossing them into their sections of the crowd – most often at the children. But our knight, who seemed to be aware of our little group now, tossed a flower right to us which FPP reached and leapt for – and missed, because the little kid next to him practically knocked his hand out of the way. FPP would make a better Beater than a Seeker. But upon the receipt of another set of flowers from Dramincess, our knight deliberately aimed and tossed the flower right at my face, and this time FPP caught it for me as the knight intended. I put it in my hair as any proud tinkling wanton would do.

I won’t spoil the rest of the show for anyone who is planning to go, but I’d encourage you to watch for the Mini Ring Spearing, the Blacklight Flashback Montage (…), and the Pirouetting Horse. And not to wreck the ending, but all of the sparkly paid off and we got our Prince back in the end. Result! 2nd best birthday celebration ever, and I only say that because of a place called the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. FPP and I both had multiple lusting blasts, and only if I’d gotten him a Delorean would we have been able to have such a first-hand journey through history such as we did.

Next, we’re going to the Pirate place. Textbooks in hand.

Chant Down Babylon

Heirship

2011-03-24T12:43:00.000-07:00

My mom and I have a lot in common, and one of those things is that we’re both Danish. Hence our JollyHobbitDay personas unless provoked, and then we’ll put sugar in your gas tank. Our people defeated the Nazis with sugar. Ask me to tell you that story on our next date. We sing Danish songs for special events, we use Danish names for family relationships, and we eat lots and lots of very rich food. There is much to be proud of. For example, Victor Borge.

I brought a dvd of “Victor’s Greatest Hits” with me to mum’s last time I was there. I’d seen several snippets of Borge concerts via public television growing up, but I wasn’t sure I’d recognize him without all the deafening static and image distortion. This was back in the Alien 80’s, after all. We watched the dvd while eating lots and lots of very rich beef stew, which I kept gurgling and choking on with all the laughter. If you’ve never seen Victor perform, do it. Few people know how to be funny anymore the way he did. I sensed a cosmic cellular genetic connection between my brain and his jokes, I’m pretty sure I’m funny because I’m Danish. One of his bits made me do that ugly wheezing red-faced “….is she passing away?” laugh. It is called “Inflationary Language.”

Many years ago in Denmark we had inflation, and you are familiar with that problem. In inflation, we have numbers rising. Prices go up. Anything that has to do with money goes up...except the language. See, we have hidden numbers in the words like "wonderful," "before," "create," "tenderly." All these numbers can be inflated and meet the economy, you know, by rising to the occasion. I suggest we add one to each of these numbers to be prepared. For example "wonderful" would be "two-derful." “Before” would be “Be-five”. “Create”, “cre-nine”. “Tenderly” should be “eleven-derly”. A “Lieutenant” would be a “Leiut-eleven-ant”. A sentence like, "I ate a tenderloin with my fork" would be "I nine an elevenderloin with my five-k." And so on and so fifth. I have a book here that I have brought, I have a story here that I would like to read to you so that you can get an idea of Inflationary Language, how it sounds when it's being used:

Twice upon a time, there lived in Sunny Califivenia a young man named Bob. He was a third leiutelevenant in the US Air Fiveces. Bob had been fond of Anna, his one-and-a-half sister, ever since she saw the light of day for the second time. And all three of them were proud of the fact that two of his fivefathers had been among the crenineders of the US Constithreetion.

They were dining on the terrace. "Anna," he said as he took a bite of a marinineded herring, "You look twoderful threenight. You never looked that lovely befive." Anna looked twoderful, despite the illness from which she had not yet recupinineded. "Yes," repeated Bob, "You look twoderful threenight...but you have three of the saddest eyes I have ever seen."

The table was tastefully deconineded with Anna's favorite flowers: Threelips. They were now talking about Anna's assiten husband, from whom she was sepenineded. While on the radio, an Irish elevenor sang "Tea For Three." It was midnight; a clock in the distance struck thirteen. And suddenly, there in the moonlight stood her husband Don Two, obviously intoxicnineded.
"Anna," he said, "Fivegive me. I am only young twice and you are my two and only." Bob jumped to his feet, "Get out of here, you three-faced triplecrosser!" But Anna warned, "Watch out, Bob. He is an officer."

Bob said, "Yes, he is two. But I am two, three! Anytwo five elevennis?”

"All right," said Don Two as he wiped his fivehead. He then left and when he was one-and-a-halfway through the revolving door, he muttered, "I'll go back to Elevennessee and be double again. Farewell, Anna. Three-de-loo, three-de-loo.”

I hope some of you were eating stew just then. Or an elevenderloin. Or nothing that followed would seem twoderous. But, three be or not three be… that is the question. Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind three suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fivetune, or three take arms against a sea of troubles…. Three die, three sleep, no more….. or gaze into the elevender eyes of Zachary Sexto. Never fiveget, we crenine our own destiny. May the fivece be with you.

Chant Down Babylon

Deleteriousness

2011-02-24T13:19:00.000-08:00

Being fancy means not being allowed to do anything for yourself. That was part of what drew me to my apartment complex, their promises that I wouldn’t have to lift a finger in my apartment, they would handle every single repair and mouse and leak and dust bunny there was, and all I had to do was exist. I’d been practicing my existence for several months then and I was confident that I could take on the task of professionally existing. They have been true to their word, they cleaned my entire kitchen when my upstairs neighbors stuffed a moose down their garbage disposal, they routinely parole the outer fortress walls to keep out any spiders, and they even hefted/bolted/stabilized/plugged in/watched my new tv while I sat on the couch existing. We need not delve into the 3NewWashingMachineReplacements Incident. I’ve felt pampered and indulged during my time there. I don’t even worry about the giant light bulbs over my vanity sink or the batteries in my smoke detectors.

I got home Tuesday night with my arms full of takeout food and leapt into the nude to professionally indulge my pampered existence. Movie, food and no clothes = best life ever. It was a few minutes of loud movie and my yummy sounds before I heard the noise. I looked at my phone even though I knew I didn’t have it set to “suspicious beeping” mode, and then went on a sleuth hunt around my living room to try to find the source. The least my mortal enemies could do would be to plant a bomb that didn’t beep loudly every few seconds, I scoffed to myself. The shortsighted fools. It didn’t take me long to realize the noise was coming from my bedroom, however, especially since the entire space of my apartment is basically a box with one wall. I scrambled in there and gaped open-mouthed at my smoke detector, which was beeping.

It wasn’t screeching, like I hoped it would do if I lit myself on fire, or even shouting, like it does when I burn eggs. Just chirruping cheerfully to itself, like it was singing The Doom Song. “Beep!..........Beep!...........Beep!............TheBeep!...........AaaaaaaandBeep!..............BoopityBeep!.........Giggle!............BEEEEEEP!!............Haha JK Beep!............Doom!..............” I stood staring at it with my hands on my hips, suppressing the surge of an internal battle of wills between my own existential boundaries, and this thing’s right to express itself in beeps. Marxism is mostly invalid when your opponent doesn’t have an arm to swing at your nose. Really I was just stalling because I didn’t have a clue what to do. I knew from experience that this fell under the jurisdiction of The Management Company and I couldn’t so much as reach up there to poke at the buttons without passing the retinal scan. And despite the omnipresence of The Company they still kept regular office hours, which meant their omnipresence had gone home for the evening 15 minutes ago. It was just me and the beeping, trapped together for the night in complete immobilization because of all the fancy.

I decided it was no big deal and I’d be able to tune it out. I mean when I lived in Colton there was a train track 5 feet from our backyard, for crying out loud. My cubicle is right outside our breakroom where the attention-hungry deaf congregate and bellow recipes at each other. I’ve become so tuned out that people can be standing in front of me asking me if I want some chocolate, and I wander past them totally distracted by the battle on Hoth replaying in my head. Desensitizing to this innocuous beeping would be no sweat, less than 5 minutes and I wouldn’t hear it at all. Starting…..now.

“Beep!.............Beep!..............Beep!”

………Any second now.

“Beep!...............Beep!...............Beep!”

…………………….now?

“Beep!.............Beep!.................AndTheBeep!”

…………………………snarf………………..

“Beep!.....................................................................”

…………………….???...............................................

“……………………………………………………………….Beep! (ha!)”

3 and some-odd hours later, I found myself curled into a tight and quivering ball on the couch with the volume up to 55, and Stanley Tucci’s voice still sounded like beeping. Even after shutting the door to my room and trying to muffle it with various linens, the detector cleared its throat and projected to the back row. Even the circumference of the detector seemed to be growing, along with its ego. I’d resigned myself to sleeping on the couch that night but by 11pm, I was no closer to falling asleep than I am after riding Space Mountain, and much much further from asleep than when I’m at work. The beeping seemed to be spreading its discord through the objects in my house, so that my squishy nap couch suddenly seemed to be made of jagged iron beams, and my fuzzy hug blanket seemed to be made of dry leaves and ice. Thrashing around and kicking didn’t help either of those things. At 1:45am, I finally stomped into my room and flung myself on my bed, thinking that the beeping may be 3 inches from my head but at least I’d be comfortable.

Wasn’t. Being that close to the detector was like being hooked up to electric shock machines. Every beep made my muscles involuntarily jolt and spasm. I could almost see flashes of light when my eyes were closed. I’d brace myself and try to count seconds between the beeps so I’d be prepared, but every single time my body reacted with surprise. I realized that a psychological fear of beeping was boring deeper and deeper into my subconscious, because in the few seconds between beeps where I managed to fall asleep, my dreams were of bombs and failing heart monitors and punching in the code at the hatch on “Lost”. What had seemed like a cheerful chirp 7 hours prior now sounded like “MMAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!......................RRRREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEENK!...................BLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOP!...................FNNNIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII!...............................THREATENINGGERMANPHRASES!.............................KNNNNNNNIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIVES!”

When my brain gave up and woke me for good at 4am, my blanket, fitted mattress sheet and pillowcase were twisted around my limbs and neck like they were auditioning to be skin. After fighting to free myself, which took several minutes, I slumped against the wall of my shower and just stared at the water. How precarious life is, thought I…. a simple, persistent noise from the 70s had drained my will to live. I fled from my house and ended up getting to work 45 minutes early, which is inexcusable. I resembled a caffeinated post-traumatic zombie whose nerves had been twisted by forks the rest of the day, startling violently and squeaking whenever someone’s phone beeped. I tried to remind myself how much better the beeping was than actually being on fire, and failed. When I got home, I walked straight to the detector and stood frozen for 70 seconds solid…………………………..and didn’t hear a sound. Either the Omnipresent Company had responded to my distress call, or I’d finally managed to tune out the noise. We may never know…

I’ve been initiated twice in my life, had people slop ketchup and mustard and honey and glitter and paint and multi-colored foam all over me and make me roll in mud, I’ve had nurses skewer me raw trying to find veins, I had both my hips dislocated just over a year ago, I’ve taken several math classes, and none of these brands of torture stripped my soul to the bearings like a night of beep. It’s possible this is a method being employed in Darfur or the misguided enforcers of the Patriot Act. My empathies.

Chant Down Babylon

Rhapsody

2011-02-02T15:20:00.000-08:00

I ate January. Now you can all stop asking where it went.

I decided a blog post was warranted, because I met Idina Menzel.

You know when you’re depressed to the point of being winded when you stand up straight and wishing you’d been killed in the Revolutionary War, you can’t work or go to school and you’re living in the asphyxiating toilet of dysfunction, and then your friend burns you the “Wicked” soundtrack which you play for 6 months straight and realize the whole problem is that you were born green, but there’s hope and anti-gravity and you can save the talking animals, and 5 years later you realize you lived through the black hole and met the wizard and don’t need to travel by bubble, and then the person you idolized through the mess walks in and sits 12 inches from your head? It was like that, only with more flapping.

Back when “Wicked” was first on Broadway, my friend Becca saw it in New York with Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth themselves in the lead roles. I’ve always harbored the blistering envy of that. About 6 months ago when Idina was filming for her spot on “Glee,” she was shooting at Citrus College and a couple of friends of mine met her. I was beside myself. 2 days before this happened, I was talking with my coworker friend about both of those things and how jealous I was of those friends of mine who got to be that close to her and actually talk to her. And a carrier pigeon took this message to The Universe, who owed me for the volcano.

Laphone and Mr. and I were at a showing of Point Break Live which we’d been planning on for over a month and nearly didn’t make it to. It was already a big deal because I’d found out the show was ending shortly and I’m going to have to pay other random people to spray fake blood at my face (Craigslist). I wanted to find out the story of what was going on and finally set eyes on this one guy who shall remain fictional. We’d also elected to sit right in the middle of the Moisture Action, rather than in the Fondle Section, which has a huge effect on the emotional drama of the story. My ADHD eyes were darting around with all the shadows and shapes, I watched this group of people come in and shuffle for their seats in the row ahead of us. One of them looked around her kind of shy and uncomfortable like, and I thought “Wow, that kind of looked like Idina Menzel’s jawline….hmm” but returned to watching for signs of nargles and the questing beast. Then I noticed how much the back of that girl’s head looked like Idina’s head…. And the shape if the crest of her ear was quite similar as well. And that when she was speaking to the friend next to her she was doing a spot on Idina impression. And that her friend was calling her Idina after she did that impression. And that when she took out her phone, the wallpaper was a picture of Taye Diggs and Baby Walker. At that point I felt this nebulous girl was going WAY too far with this impersonation, even for someone who was looking for a career as a professional Menzel double. I blamed her enabling friends. Until my steel trap brain started to realize it might….. actually…………… be………………………………. her……………………………………………………………..

You know that electricity sound in movies when everything shorts out or gets zapped or kills moths? My face made that sound. I turned to Laphone and said “I-…..th-……ththththhhh-……….I-……….w-w-w-w-w-…………..splurtz…………*point*…………..THERE!!!..............I-……………..possibly……….” She patiently said “What?” I said, in the loudest stage whisper ever, “I THINK THAT’S IDINA MENZEL!!! *points more and a lot*” She said “Who?” I almost inhaled her through my flared nostrils and shrieked “IDINAMENZELIDINAMENZELIDINAMENZEL!!!!! The ORIGINAL Elphaba!!! The woman who brought Wicked to life!!!! The first Marueen who worked with Jonathan Larson himself!!!! MY FAVORITE SINGER IN THE WORLD!!! WICKED!!!!!!!! SONGS!!!!!!!!!!!!! HER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” She said “Really? Wow!” She’s the cute. For the next hour, every few minutes I would turn to her with my giant bug eyes and say “Omg….*flap*” or “I’m so serious” or “Aims…..” or “Omg *flap* I’m so serious Aims”. Around this time is when many of you would have gotten my equally coherent mass text with all the dots. The replies I got were a half-and-half mixture of “Who?” or “WHAT?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!” (You “Who?” people know you are, and all the shame.) I decided that on the off chance this really was an imposter, which seemed more likely than Idina Menzel being at Point Break Live, I had to find out. Immediately after I made that decision, I suddenly transformed into a naked leper with bad hair and foul breath in the middle of a crowded marketplace. I was seized by the most staggering level of self consciousness and shyness I’ve had in years, actually since back before I was rescued by the Wicked Witch. Irony is never convenient. I knew it would be as easy as leaning forward, tapping her on the shoulder and asking if she was really herself. Totally graceful and charming and effortless. My mind’s eye painted a picture of a giant oozing earth worm flopping on top of her and slobbering all over her jacket, which is how I suddenly felt. Totally not any of the aforementioned adjectives. But I knew I couldn’t hate myself any more than if I passed up the chance, so I went in for the tap.

Idina: *turns around, pleasant*
Me: “Erm, excuse me, but are you Idina Menzel?”
Idina: *patient smile* “Ya.”
Me: “!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!*flap*!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!*heart clutch*!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
Idina: “……….lol………”
Me: “I’m the lamest person in the world, it’s SO NICE TO MEET YOU!!!!”
Idina: “What’s your name?”
Me: “EMILY!!!!!!!!!!!! *points at her shirt, doesn’t know why*”
Idina: “Lol. Hi.”
Me: “PICTURES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
Idina: “Um…………do you, um………. Do you think we could do that, like, later? *gestures to our yellow ponchos*”
Me: “YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
Idina: “*weak smile* Ok. *turns back around*”
Me: “SEEYOUTHENMOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

Alright I didn’t actually moooo, even though KMab told me I should. But the rest is word perfect accuracy. According to the earth worm camera in my brain, anyway. I was utterly transported the rest of the show, because even if I didn’t take a picture of her, I had shouted words at her face and told her my real name. It was a great show, everyone was in peak form, The Utah Of the Week was really pretty good in spite of the kaleidoscope of accents he kept wandering through. Even the group of drunk/loud/rude/lame 20-somethings clustered on the side didn’t wreck it completely, although they drove FictionalMan to distraction. I got more and more nervous as the show was drawing to a close, because to my dismay my acres of awkwardness didn’t abate in the LEAST after I spoke to her. I was even more nervous afterward, convinced she would flee into the shadows from Yelling Earthworm Girl, and she would be right to. I kept doing seizure hands to Laphone, who is very pretty and did silent chuckles at me to bolster my morale. When the show ended, we all stood up and started squirming out of our saturated ponchos and wiping the blood off our hands. I kept darting glances at ActuallyReallyIdina but nearly lost Laphone because she had to chase after Mr., who’d done a runner. I was torn. On one hand, I knew I could live happily with the mere memory forever, but on the other hand, every “WHAT?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!” person was insisting on a picture “or it didn’t happen”. I also wanted to chat with the cast boys and find out what was going on with the show. So I dawdled and did that for a few minutes, interrupting their explanation every few seconds by shrieking “IDINAMENZELISHEREDIDYOUKNOWTHAT!!!” I finally found Laphone again, and I said I thought Idina had left, and I was making my peace with that… but then I spotted her, over by the bar.

I think I hopped a couple of times or did some kind of jig, but that didn’t make me any less apprehensive about approaching her again. I wanted to peel all the flesh off my bones and paint my skeleton black, like you do when you’re really really self conscious. I finally decided, No Day But Today, and asked Laphone if she would go with me and take the picture. I shoved all the other people at the bar out of the way and hesitantly tapped her again.

Idina: *turns around and looks at me with her eyes*
Me: …………………..”oh hai…….” *spastic wave*
Idina: “Oh HI!! Good!” *clutches my arm*
Me: *somewhat mollified* “Sorrybotherpicturecouldhitherejustfriendphoneweok?”
Idina: “Oh sure!”
Laphone: *smiling*
Me: “YAY, ok here we are, a picture of the beauty *points at Idina* and the ugly *points at myself*”
Idina: “DON’T YOU SAY THAT!!!”
Me: “…………….gurgle…………………ok…………………..”
Idina: “GOOD.”
Me: “Justwantedtosay…..Tonyawardspeech…sobbing…..sobeautiful……mostinspiring…………”
Idina: “Omg.”
Me: “…………………*reaches for her arm* You make me want to sing.”
Idina: “Awe! *heart clasp*”
Me: “TAYE DIGGS!!!”
Idina: “Him!”
Me: “THE awesome.”
Idina: “Thanks. (Read: “Go away.”)
Me: “Well………….”
Idina: “……………………”
Me: “Kthxbye!!!”
Idina: “Have a beautiful and fulfilling life, loyal minion!”
Me: *falls down*

And then we left. I shuddered violently every few seconds and my voice would get really loud. I almost offered both Laphone and Mr. a piggyback ride up the side of the building to prove that earthworms can defy gravity. And the slime would probably wash out of Idina’s jacket. And I hadn’t crushed all of her bones by accidently stepping on her, because she is alarmingly tiny. These things counted as successes in spite of my blithering like Simple Jack.

All these years I’ve planned speeches and drafted note cards for the celebrities I knew I’d meet, like Elijah Wood and Leo DiCaprio and Tom Hanks and Drew Barrymore and George Clooney. How could I have forgotten Idina??? (Insert image of earthworm holding note cards here.)

Laphone and Gans say I need to talk about Zach Quinto more often in order to draw him to me by the magic, but I don’t think my talking about him more is actually possible.

Chant Down Babylon

Corrigendum

2010-09-23T11:35:00.000-07:00

I was standing in my shower singing the Fraggle Rock theme song and being very luxurious, when I realized there were words printed on my shower head. Pulse, Massage, and Viagra. ………wait………… Before I could even give it the green light, my brain was off and halfway around DoomSnort Mountain, where no depot is safe to pause at. When did showers start getting equipped with Viagra settings? What showerhead manufacturing CEO ok’d this idea? And why? What were those marketing and planning meetings like? How much does it cost to gain the rights to use the name Viagra on a showerhead? What about that water setting makes it Viagra-like? Is it the raw unrestrained power of the force of water? Is it the size/shape/style of the stream? Is it the effects it produces? Were there test groups? Were placebo Viagra showerhead settings used in the test groups? Are there testimonials? Side effects? What other Viagra’d household products will we see in the future? Hair brushes? Plungers? Toasters? Within a few seconds of being a captive passenger in my careening thoughts, I was slumped against the shower wall going deaf from the booming reverberations of my own laughter. I love the fact that more often than not I’m simply a witness to my own imagination and the words that come out of my own mouth. I love being one of those people who laughs at the voices in their heads. Or the words written on their showerheads.

Until I realized that I don’t wear my glasses in the shower and the word was actually Niagara.

Chant Down Babylon

Itinerant

2010-08-28T10:49:00.000-07:00

My week:

Monday

Tuesday

Wednesday

Thursday

Friday

Except for the RayK, Loyle, Bear and FPP sunbeams.

Hey remember that time I went to Europe?

Chant Down Babylon

Choleric

2010-07-28T08:58:00.000-07:00

*Please be advised that what follows draws upon no wellspring or theme of happiness.

I’m growing a third boob but it’s below my chin, I’ve reconciled myself to the fact that this edifice I come to for “employment” 4 days a week is actually a mental institution/giant maze experiment/sandbox/dreadful sex club from Wicked/boxing ring/group therapy for the very very needy, and I work next to a Me Monster who sharts. My carpet cube has lost some of its shimmer in the last couple of weeks, it doesn’t feel like the haven it did in my prior post. These shambling little walls do nothing to block out sound, odor, questions, earthquakes, or evil. I’ve actually reorganized my cubicle recently so that my back isn’t to the “door” anymore, so now when people walk by they see the back of my computer monitor and my sneer. This is helpful, as a particular individual who has slithered from a sweet friend to a suspicious buzzing sound to an alligator made of lava to the Eye of Sauron, seems to make it their business to wander around and “peek” in at what everyone else is doing. And then write what they’re doing on a strip of skin that they’ve sliced off a baby, and then drop that skin into a cauldron of spider venom, and then screech incantations with their arm around Voldemort who never died. But now they have to very deliberately step around the obstacle course of boxes of “more work I do in a day than they do in a week” and pretend to hug me with the back of their head pressed against my cheek so they can see what’s on my computer screen. By which time I’ve minimized all the Google search windows of “How to battle the forces of darkness when they bring you cookies” and email windows of “stop crying, don’t let the evil get the better of you!!” Usually when I’m quick on my game I can halt this absurd dance at the door and say “Yes what?” or “Hi what do you need?” or “GET THEE BEHIND ME RAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH”.

The best part is the fact that I’ve reorganized my desk has completely bollucksed EyeofSauron’s whole world and has prompted them (ok her, it’s a her, boo to all hers) to giggle and cuddle up next to Boss Squared Duo and whisper some fabricated series of “concerns” about my ineptitude and clandestine collusions with their arch enemy, Beelzebub.

Gah. I just came to the explosive realization of my Frodoness. In an effort to be kind and supportive, which as you all know kills mean things as though with fire, I went to a boutique at EoS’s house a few weeks ago and bought several pieces of lovely jewelry. In fact I’m wearing one now. This large crystal-type amulet that I was told would keep my spirit connected to the water-based energies of kelp in the Scottish lochs on days when it rains… but, could I have been duped?? Can evil beget pretty?? I may as well be wearing the One Ring for crying out loud!! I’m going to go bald and start coughing and yelling at my other personalities!!

Ok I feel better, I’ve plugged my ipod into my head to drown out Shart Monster’s 3 hour long explanation of the murder trial he just served as a jury member on and everything the murderer did to a series of little girls.

Part of the desk reorganization was prompted by the sudden possibility of getting a new computer monitor. We still have the massive computer towers and aren’t ready to move into laptops for all yet, but for the last few years the District has been slowly updating the monitors to lovely flat screens. One by one the old white refrigerator monitors have gone the way of the dodo. Except… mine. No one had ever asked about it and I’d never spoken up about it because I didn’t really care, until we realized we were going to have a spare flat screen in our unit when we got our new office assistant’s equipment. I timidly said “erm….could, um…..could I, do you think, could I, like, have it?.....maybe? Er, just some of it?” I should have known better, because this became a phone call I had to place to Boss Squared Duo explaining why I was an ungrateful wretch and felt I needed a new monitor when my old one was wheezing and clanking along just fine. And then BSD had to call this intrepid and invisible segment of the District called The Work Request Team, who you call to request that they work. If you don’t ask, they don’t work. No working without requests. Of course that implies that they work when they DO get requests. Bless their hearts.

They did work, because they passed on the request to other people, and “avoid responsibility” = “delegate” = “work” on this planet. The following Tuesday morning a cheerful guy who used to be friends with me bounced up to my desk, looked at my husky teenager-sized monitor and shrieked “WHAT THE @#%& IS THIS??” Even though he is 4 years older than me, evidently he skipped right from abacus to laptop. Both of which are sleek and compact. He promised that he would put folded slips of paper in suggestions boxes and whisper to people under bathroom stalls and play charades with his manager to try to get me something better and was all charming and then went away. Typical. A couple of hours later, 2 representatives of our Nerd Ninja tech team came sauntering up to my desk and stared. I stared at them. They stared at me. And then the monitor. And then me. One of them announced in a cowboy drawl “Now that’s just embarrassing.” The other smirked at my boobs. Typical. Finally somehow it all worked, all the staring and smirking ceased and I had a new flat screen monitor. *elven choir sounds* I never realized before this that my desk was actually big enough to sleep on. Yay for useful discoveries!

Shart Monster has finished his monologue now, and everyone’s going to some abysmal barbeque to celebrate working in the looneybinsexshopsandboxmazetherapyring which means I get to be left alone this afternoon, and I’m going to Europe in 2 weeks. Unless there’s another natural disaster, in which case I’ll blog from the dead.

Chant Down Babylon

PS) EoS just leapt in here to offer me cash while I was writing this, and now I can’t stop laughing.

Habromania

2010-06-22T20:23:00.000-07:00

I've had a series of encounters with humans in the last few weeks that have been sub normal, and which have reminded me of how thin the line we all tip-toe is between "unique" and "story someone blogs about," as well as why I prefer to stay in my house at all times.

I was in Sally's a couple of weeks ago looking for a new hair color project, and obstructing 3/4 of the aisle in front of me were a mother/daughter duo also looking for color. The one forming the biggest blockage was facing perpendicular to the displays, was impatiently barking orders to the other while she text clacked away on her phone with a tacky manicure, and was utterly oblivious to the idea that there could be someone else in the store that would need to move past her. The other one was 3 inches away from the displays as she picked up and put back down every single box of colors, saying "What about this one, well what about this one, but what about this one..." I must have said "Excuse me, please" at least 3 times, and not ony did neither of them move at the first 2 requests, but when I made the 3rd right next to their heads and very loudly, they both moved right up against the displays they could see I was looking at. It's like they were afraid I'd take every box of color ever and leave none for them to pick up and put back down. I finally stopped being polite and elbowed past them, which The Clacking One clacked her tongue at and the other one didn't seem to notice. The Clacking One started saying "Just PICK one you like for your hair and let's GOOOOO, GOSH!!!" Or something. By the time I'd chosen the things I wanted, they were still nowhere near done bickering. This whole incident in itself wouldn't be that bizarre, except The Clacking One was the mother, and the daughter looking for a new hair color was 7.

A couple of days ago I stopped by the grocery store after work, which I typically avoid because it's a zoo but there was nothing for it. As I was walking across the parking lot, the shopping cart collector kid suddenly ran towards me, screeched to a stop when his face touched my hair, and shouted "HAVE A GOOD DAY MA'AM!!!" Then turned around and headed back the way he'd come, which was leading a long line of shopping carts. Which he'd left unattended and drifting into people, so he could run across the crowded parking lot and yell in my ear.

Yesterday I was at a different grocery store selecting a cart out of the rows inside the long interior hall where they are kept. The cart steward was standing at the opposite end of the room staring at dust motes and humming, when suddenly he leapt forward and flung himself against the row of carts I was standing in front of. Luckily the crashing noise caught my attention and I jerked out of the way just in time. As it was the row of carts passed within centimeters of my torso and toes, had I not moved I'd have been crushed to death under 30 feet of carts. What kind of abysmal superhero death story would that make even? I looked back towards the kid with what was evidently a fairly alarming expression because he leapt again, and said "Oh Sorry lahlahlahlahlahlahaaaaa....." I blame whomever got the first kid wet and fed him after midnight.

Last weekend there was a knock on my door, I looked through the peeper to see one of our maintenance guys standing there with wicked intentions. I said "Yes?" through the door, and he shouted "Could you open your door for a second?" I said, "What for, please?" He said "Uh, I just wanted to, uh... show you something..." .... I decided to trust in the strength of my kicking muscles and opened the door. He said "How you doin?" I said nothing and gave him my blank face. He said "So, does this feel like a typical safe day in the neighborhood?" .....? I said "....Pardon?" He motioned for me to look up, where I saw a huge chunk of twisted metal that had broken off some equipment swaying precariously 10 feet over the edge of my roof. I looked back at him with huge eyes and he nodded ominously, saying "Safety is nothing to be taken lightly, miss." If he could have cued a thunder clap or frightening organ music he would have. He said "Just wanted to draw your attention to that" and started walking away. ?? What? Is that like the cops taking you outside to point at the crazed cannibal under your window and then not arresting him? I shouted after him "Is someone going to fix that??" He stopped with furrowed brow and said "Oh. Uh. Well. I suppose I could put in a call to our roofing guys... or let the city know... hmmm. I'll have to ask my manager." Apparently he got the green light to proceed with drafting some kind of plan and typing up the documents to be signed by the city because the next time I looked out my door, the Death Metal was gone. Maybe it was a shopping cart.

And I spend time wondering about the Space Cows' behavior?

Chant Down Babylon

*The title "Habromania" is brought to you by this site. I spent several minutes of horse laughter in the "Manias and Obsessions" category.

Blutterbunged

2010-06-16T11:38:00.001-07:00

I think it's the most amount exciting when we surprise our own selves. People who always do/think/say exactly what they sat and planned to do/think/say are boring, not just to other people but to themselves. But mainly to other people... Being predictable is something most people consider "comforting," people like to have a conversation with someone else and be able to say "I knew you were gonna say that!" It's like a soft gray flannel blanket on white sheets. Which is BORING. The conversations I have with myself inside my brain would be dismally dull if I kept repeating "I knew I was gonna say that!" at every turn. Trust me when I assure you that this doesn't happen. Living inside my brain is like traveling with an invisible toddler who's made up every movie/song line ever and has a flawless vocabulary, but alarmingly has control of my mouth.

Or fingers, as the case may be, seeing as I had no idea I was going to write all of that. My jumping off point was that I never thought I'd be happy to be back in a cubicle.

For those who don't know, which is everyone since I haven't blogged since I was 7, my current position at work is that of Senior Office Assistant. It's the next rung above Garden Variety Office Assistant, which isn't actually a rung so much as the bottom of bowling shoes. My main responsibility (*neatly sidesteps the hours of shrieking and yowling she could do about the contradictory and spontaneous oppositeness listed in her annual review*) has been to head up our efforts to become more "green." It's not easy....chortle....but we're taking decades worth of paperwork and scanning them into an imaging system rather than keeping them in file cabinets that crash onto passersby during earthquakes. The best part is that after a piece of paper is scanned it is either given to another unit or it is thrown away, which is my favorite. For this ground breaking process straight out of 1993, we have a designated Scanning Room. It's a room with 2 scanning stations set up (*neatly sidesteps the hours of weeping and blarfing she could do about how long it took to get those bloody stations working*) for 2 individuals to be scanning documents. Simultaneously! The room by its very nature is a multi-tasker because it is also where our water cooler is kept and where people who don't want to work wander in to gossip or be petty or gabble on about blue cardboard and giraffes. (*..........sidestep.........*)

So for the last year and change, I've come in to the office, gone to my personal desk, logged onto my personal computer, knitted a shawl, drawn a picture of a bear holding a beet, and then gathered up my worldly possessions to lumber off to The Scanning Room. You can see the tracks from my Ergo Humaniod Spacecraft chair (I got it after I got hurt, *sidestep*) ground deep into the floor between my desk and The Scanning Room. Especially since I lumber back to my desk for lunch, then back to TSR, then back to my desk at the end of the day. Pilgrimage, pumpkins. I got used to it after a while, and even started loathing my own computer after they put Vista on it. All my work was on the computer in TSR, tucked safely into the cracked and musty folds of Windows 2000. This was all ok while I was alone in there, with a whole room to my dastardly wiles.

But then the other pilgrims started to arrive....some even full time. More and more scanning needs surfaced for more and more people. It became more crowded inside the room than out. I didn't get my phone messages for hours. People with psychoses best known to themselves would sneak in there to go through my stuff and spy on my computer. (*misses the sidestep and plunges down the abyss onto the jutting crags of IHateEverything Ravine*) Perhaps if I were Lehi I'd take joy in the souls marching towards TSR, but I am no such thing and TSR is no such ToL. Soon we had to use the scanners in shifts because there was so much to do. Well. After some reflection I realized it wasn't the actual SCANNER I neeed, it was the software that the scanner functioned through. Which I could just as easily operate.... at my desk.......

Ahhhhhh.......:) All that's missing is palm trees and a hammock. I can listen to a song all the way through without interruption. I can put my naked feet up on my cube wall. I can answer my phone when it rings. I can point my little fan any which direction I please. I can pretend to work while I'm secretly reading or blogging and take furtive naps in PEACE.... the way the Deep Magic was written. I always thought I was claustrophobic in small spaces, but it turns out I was wrong. I'm claustrophobic of people. Walmart, Disneyland, the 10 freeway, all seemingly wide open spaces. Were it not for the slithering and scuttling racket of humans....

You guys should come visit me here in my soft little box. After I get the door installed on it we can eat chocolate chips and dance.

Chant Down Babylon

Bovine

2010-05-21T14:36:00.000-07:00

A blog post?!?

I think there's a space craft in the Grand Gorge en route to Diamond Bar. There's brown grass and cows, and the history of space craft visits to Earth yields evidence that those are the kinds of things they like. These cows in particular seem to dance to a different disco. The odd thing is they're always perfectly in sync with each other. There's cows just over the hill from my complex too, and those cows set to work in the normal way of standing and chewing and blinking and getting befuddled and lumbering and weeping through my complex late at night. Standard cow fare. The Gorge cows, though... the other day I drove by and they were all laying down. Not a one was standing, they were all just laying on their sides. My first thought was of alien mutilations until a few of them popped their heads up and glanced around to see who was noticing their behavior. Cow Strike, perhaps. A few weeks ago I drove past and they were all standing up and facing each other in a perfect circle, engaged in some sort of family conference. And then just a couple days ago as I drove past they were all lined up side to side along the fence glaring balefully out at everyone who went by. I almost careened off and crashed into the hill because I refused to back down from the staring contest.

In any other gorge I would find the cows delightful and not suspicious. But in THIS gorge I think they're conspirators in the subterfuge, along with the other frequent resident of the gorge. Fog. Dense, pea soup, utterly singular, middle of summer afternoon, not present anywhere else, fog. When I was a child I used to call fog "The Wind Ghost" because I was precious. Growing up in San Fran I am no stranger to fog, I have no prejudices or anxieties and don't think it lessens our property values. This fog, however, is bizarre. It seems to germinate in the small pond at the center of the gorge and billow up and out until it completely obscures visibility on the road for several feet. And then a-foof, it's gone. If the fog appeared every single morning, or in conjunction with a certain kind of weather, I would find it delightful and not suspicious. But on crystal clear days with absolutely no reason for it, it will be thick as a wool sweater, making it impossible to see the disco cows or the pond or the rest of the gorge.

Or, the aliens.

The greatest physical evidence of alien encounters is movies. Irrefutable. And 9 times out of 10, aliens bring packages of fog with them on their visits to cause car accidents and freak people out and hypnotize cows. I think fog is an alien creation actually, it's bizarre and nebulous and way too pretty to be caused by man. Only mutants and aliens, who share a common bond of summer blockbuster hits. Fog does weird things to people, they begin to doubt their own existence and forget the route to places they go every day and use nonsense phrases like "neither confirm nor deny". People are like that after alien abductions too, until something bursts out of their abdomen and skitters off into a darkened corner.

I really wonder what they're hiding in the gorge. Part of me would love to sneak onto the barren gorge lands and peer into the depths of the pond... but it's possible I'd end up staring balefully through the fence at the passing traffic and going on strike by laying down.

Chant Down Babylon

Vivify

2010-01-16T08:30:00.000-08:00

Holy horses!! Really?!?

So after an egregious stint of months in which I’ve been languishing in the gnarled stalactites of my own brain, I’ve emerged with no happiness or sense of humor whatsoever. It’s taken me a while to remember that I started this silly blog as a form of mental laxative, and to remember that my life has darling and delightful things in it in spite of all the not. And with that, I’m going to write about the day I came home from DC, 9 months ago now. I remember exactly nothing about it so pretty much I’m gonna be spinning a yarn round a campfire about aliens and ghosts and abandoned railways.

Kahlua! Of course.:) Elaina and I spent our final evening puppy-sitting for her friend’s dog Kahlua, who leapt about trying to eat air and the rug and most of Elaina’s face. We realized after several minutes that she might be hungry. I think we fed her pizza and were staring at her to make sure she wouldn’t die. I started repacking up all of my stuff, which had eerily tripled in size and items over the course of the 3 days. I performed immensely difficult feats of stretching and shoving and yelling but it just wasn’t all going to fit. The unfitting culprits were my 14 new sweatshirts and Kahlua. She was very interested in my suitcase as a house/snack/mate. Elaina started executing an intricate dance to distract her and I kept stomping on all of my stuff to try to make it fit. No love. Elaina suggested using some of those Vac-You-Suck bags, and they worked great as far as making everything flatter. But they also made everything wider. I must have blacked out at one point because somehow my zipper closed all the way and nothing exploded.

We got about 16 minutes of sleep, during which I didn’t sleep but stared and thought about bugs and bagels. I was sure Elaina was glad to see me go, so I woke her up and we dragged ourselves out to the car at 3am or whatever absurd hour it was. She dropped me off at the airport where I was promptly stopped by security and frog-marched into this tall clear cylinder. Like the one in A Wrinkle In Time…. I was too annoyed to be nervous that I’d suddenly go blind and be stuck behind The Black Thing, but this tube wasn’t even air pressurized or sound proofed. They did a full scan of my pajamas and scowl, and then pronounced that I wasn’t a knife-wielding threat of eastern descent, and the fact that I didn’t have my drivers’ license on me must just be one of those unlucky things that happens to nice girls from California. They let me out of the tube and I hauled all of my stuff onto the table to be scanned some more, placing everything in their little tubs, when some brisk businessman knocked everyone out of the way, grabbed his own tub, and shoved it ahead of mine in the scanning line. I stared at the back of his head, which didn’t show the slightest sign of remorse, and then made several impatient and growling sounds as I stepped up 3 inches from his back to make him as uncomfortable as possible. Clearly he thought I was going to take a while and he would breeze right through, but his tub was filled with an assortment of laptops and walkmans and lightsabers and a-bomb casings, which meant he took twice as long as I would have. I was not with the happy. I shouted things about rudeness and never having learned the crucial “no cutting in line” lesson in 2nd grade at the security guards but it was still 4am and they were thinking of pillows and warm socks. Finally we all made it through and I was pleased to note that he wasn’t on the same plane as me.

However… next to me on my 2nd pencil plane of the trip was his twin. The two princes of the Rules Don’t Apply To Me 3rd dynasty, Corporal CutsInLine and Passenger Problem. Passe, as we’ll call him for short, was deeply immersed in his laptops and walkmans (walkmen?) and lightsabers and a-bomb casings that he’d picked up from his twin on the way to the plane, and couldn’t be bothered to turn all these items off, or stop slicing the seat in front of him to bits and then blowing up the passengers, as the item may be. The flight attendant wobbled by to ask him 3 times to turn everything off so the plane could take off, and his response was somewhere in the eloquent region of “ya ya huff.” Finally when everyone started shooting him the evil eye because of the plane getting turned off by the pilot to show this man how to do it, he complied. For several seconds. Once we were taxiing down the runway he mystically produced a SECOND set of laptop/walkmen/saber/bombs and began juggling all of them around as well. The flight attendant was appalled on her next trip past us and asked him if he remembered that she’d just instructed him to turn all of those gadgets off. He replied “No, you told me to turn THOSE gadgets off. *points to other pile of gadgets* You’ve said nothing to me about THESE gadgets at all.” I wanted to hit him, except I had zero lightsabers and he had two, and his logic reminded me of too many people I know.

We made it through the flight without any more of the bombs exploding, although he did sneak several more peeks at his crappy old Nokia phone which I snickered at, and when the flight attendant noticed she put her foot down so hard it nearly cracked the pencil. I was very glad to get away from both him and the plane, and I can’t remember where the layover between flights was but I made it onto the second leg of my trip. The 2nd plane was normal sized, however it was filled with everyone. Ever. People who hadn’t been born yet and people who’d died years before were crammed onto this plane. Whether it was the hour of the day or the sobriety brought on by all the dead people, it was one of the quietest planes I’d ever been on. Until squirming past me came….Captain Cough. Of all the passengers I could have sat by who were dead and utterly silent, I get the one who’s just mildly unhealthy and loud about it. Every 10 seconds he would cough, even after sipping water, even after eating a box of cough drops, even after falling asleep. And none of the demure gentle coughing you might find at a New England tea in the 20’s, nono this was “RRAAAFFFHHHGGGGGKAAAAPPHTTTTTTHHHHHH!!” …….. “CCCHHHHOOROOOOORRRRRKKKKKKKFNNNAAAAALLLLLGHHH!!!!” …….. “ECCCCCKKKKKKKKKTHHHHHPPPPOOOOOFFFFFFFFSNFMLUUUUUUUURRRRTSSSS!!!” And each time with no hanky or even a hand over his mouth, his head seemed to be turned directly at me, like he was undergoing some awkward invisible examination or something. I really wondered if I was going mad for a while because even after staring at him for half an hour, and then staring around at everyone else to see if they were staring at him too, no one else seemed to be disturbed. No one else even seemed to hear him! Had I accidentally stumbled and flopped onto an airborne version of “Our Town”?!? I wanted to ask the couple across from our row if they could hear him, but they were intertwined in the same airplane seat with their lips wrapped around each others’ skulls in a very Italian way. No one else would catch my eye either, so cleared my throat and made a very loud snorting sound into the void….at which everyone within 6 rows leapt a mile out of their seats like I’d shrieked “FIRE!” or “SPIDER!” or something. Everyone, even the Italians, made it their business to spend the remainder of the flight staring at me, Weird Girl Who Snorted, which was not helped by my horse laughter or hysterical pointing at Captain Cough, who hadn’t noticed a thing.

Everyone, even the Italians, let me get off the plane first. I shoved and kicked my way to baggage claim, where I stood by myself while my fellow passengers gave me a wide berth and huddled on the other side of the turnstile. Apparently the baggage handlers gave names, stories and new hairstyles to every piece of luggage on the plane because we all stood there avoiding anymore snorting sounds for nearly an hour. During which I saw my mother’s car drive past 6 times, but being obstinately cel phone-less as she was I couldn’t call and tell her to be patient. After I finally collected my newly named Lindara the astronaut’s daughter with the blond bob suitcase from the turnstile, I waited outside and watched the Italians reunite with all 65 gathered family members whose greetings consisted of shouting and blowing cigarette smoke at each other. Mum eventually found me and squealed happily, she bought me food and we drove back to my house where I was surprised to find that my rental company had cleaned my rugs. And then I slept.

So, beginning April 15th of this year I’ll be going on another birthday trip, this one lasting 11 days and including 3 days in London, 3 in Paris and 3 in Italy…with Italians… Imminent shenanigans much? How many years d’you reckon it’ll take me to tell that story?

Chant Down Babylon

Insipid

2009-08-20T22:35:00.000-07:00

Ok shiz, does anyone even care if I finish this dalliance of a 4-month old story? Is there such a thing as an "anyone" who even reads this stodgy blog/life? I'm pretty sure I'm over the whole institution.

Peregrination

2009-07-22T20:03:00.000-07:00

GREAT HONK IT'S NEARLY AUGUST!! The other "A" month!! I gotta finish this freakin story raaaaahhhhhh!!

Day ??
I went to bed a 29-year old and woke up a brittle-boned pensioner. It was like my 30 years of life were marched in with the insectual army and just hovered, waiting to pounce on me in the taffy puller way. No one told me that part of getting older was that your feet hurt when you woke UP in the morning. What the deuce? How counterintuitive for a day of stomping around DC! Freakin age.

Elainagans and I gathered up food items including mini bagel pizzas which there aren't enough of anywhere on earth, because I'd have liked to eat more than the 50 we had. We headed for the freeway telling stories and coining a few of the day's catch phrases like danielvaughan, and the resurrected AL-A-BAM-A, not to mention BOOOP! The noises coming from our car were like those huge room-sized computers in the 80's that come to life and blow up the Russians. Because pizza bagels aren't enough ever we decided to stop at McDonalds, chattering away as we went around the drive thru, and then both leapt in our seats at the "SCREECHTWISTPIIIING!" sound as Elaina rolled down her window. Omg...the window found the missing door lock. It had become an innie instead of an outie, which is the less effective gender where door locks were concerned. Luckily the window didn't shatter into a thousand pieces, we coined another phrase in "snap racks" and off we went. The drive was fairly uneventful except for E writing a new song called "COKEONMYPAAAAANTS, COKEONMYPAAAAAAANTS!!!"

We started to see buildings that looked very monumental so we exited the freeway and drove around looking for parking. To our dismay the city was in a tropical way weather-wise that day, and neither of us had thought to bring our industrial electric fans along with the bagels, but we bravely started walking. I wanted to see a jillion things, but most especially The White House. Where you can find The West Wing. Which was the name of a tv show I liked. You see my logic. (Like how if I ever met Michael J Fox I'd be all "OMGOMG you had a line of dialogue with Elijah Wood once!!") I really don't remember what order we saw everything, but I took lots of pictures of pretty things.* I was seriously impressed with both my new camera and myself. When we got to one of the main roads of the town (help me out here, it's the one with all the grass down the middle) it turned out that it was "Green Day" day in DC. And not the 90's band, but a bunch of people on stage promoting the environment in a yelling way. They gave a 12-minute build up intro to some cover band no one had ever heard of, and who did one of the worst versions of some obscure song I'd never heard and still knew it was awful. Luckily the city council, who might actually be the President, had thought ahead about hosting all those 2-dozen people at the "concert" and had installed a 3-mile stretch of Portaloos. I lost count. And even though my tinkleometer was bouncing towards full, I couldn't make myself crawl into one of those. I'm just not that kind of girl.

It was around this time that I started to realize the bones in my feet were slowly disintegrating. We'd only been walking for about 20 minutes, which is nothing when compared to a Disneyland day, and already I was wishing I'd brought my peg leg. I couldn't believe it, it was like I was a newborn infant with no muscle tone who is also a 700 pound old man. I tried not to let this new found self disgust distract me from everything I was seeing, but by the time we were in the avenue between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial, my glass-shard feet and tinkleometer had me in a bit of a ditherspaz way. We found some park type restroom that was probably exactly as clean as the Portaloos, and in which my door wouldn't stay shut. Which made me do a lot of giggling. The poor people also peeing, dealing with tropical weather in Americatown while trying to piddle next to the weird giggling girl in the dirty restroom.

We kept on walking and taking pictures of everything, even flowers and parts of trees. And all the while, we couldn't find The White House. It was like they'd pick it up and move it every time we got close or something. We asked several people and were told a dozen different streets to walk down, and it was on none of them. We decided to take a rational approach that if we couldn't find the White House we should at least have 5 sweatshirts and a hot dog. We passed several little stands all selling variations on the "I stood in DC" theme, and finally found one with a very cute little couple running it. I walked away from there with 3 hoodies and 2 teeshirts, 1 of which was free for my birthday. They are awesome. My favorites are the black hoodie that says CIA on it (Alias rules) and the teeshirt that says "You don't know me.... FBI Witness Protection Program".

We realized it was getting later and we were do up in Baltimore for dinner. After a few more wrong turns, we finally found ourselves on the White House street. Which was about 3 feet away from where we'd parked. Had we turned a few degrees to the right when we started walking, we'd have bumped into it. They weren't letting us get very close but I took a couple of pictures and then started shrieking about wanting to find a cab. The glass shards had filtered up through my ankles and most of my shins at this point and I was insufferable to have to be acquainted with, even from a distance. We meander/hobbled through several more blocks until we found an intersection where several cabs were zipping past us. I nearly flung myself in front of one of them, preferring death by minivan cab to slow decay from gangrene in my legs. Finally some dear little man stopped for us and I blessed him and all his posterity for it. We made it back to the car with Elaina in one piece and me in several, and awaited the directions from JarelLaured.

I've never gotten so lost and still been going in the right direction. We would have turned into wandering orphans in rags had it not been for Google maps. I don't remember what life was like without a portable map in my hand, probably because I've blocked it out. We finally got there and had a very fun dinner with The Laneys, who I hadn't seen in years and who Elaina had never seen. I kind of wanted to make dolls based on their kids and sell them but so far I haven't even finished this freakin story. Their food was delicious, and we walked out full, tired and without my phone charger, which was still sitting on top of something in their house. Rats. Luckily they were nice enough to mail it to me. The drive home was going to take an ominous 4 days and Elainagans was exhausted, so I elected to break the law and drive us back. Me and my thoughts through black highways in another state with glass shard feet and 30 years of taffy-pull life. It was sobering. Especially when I got us lost on the freeway shaped like the One Ring, where there's actually no onramps or exits and no one can ever figure out how they got there or why they keep passing the same tree.

I think we may have stopped for more food, which made our day's meals pizza bagels, snap racks, hot dog entrails, amazing Laney food, and something else that escapes me. In fact most of the rest of the night is a total blur until we flopped back in the house and became heaps of lifeless carbon-based life forms, zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz - arrrr nrrrrrr... I.... still..... hadn't...... done..... my...... effing....... homework......... how much do I loathe school? Especially given that I'm almost a decade too old for it? So I grumbled and raahh'd my way through my homework which probably said something like aldfkjasldkfjasldfjaalskdfjaslkfjaslkjfwasteoftimeasldfkjasdflkjaslfkjaslkdfjsalfjaslkfjaslkfj and then zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz............

Chant Down Babylon

*The pretty pictures are on display in my Facebook account.

PS) Appropriately this was my 100th post. Woot!

Circumnutate

2009-07-01T09:00:00.001-07:00

Dude.....

Day 3 continued
After the Caper of the Wayward Card, we went back to Elaina's house to start getting ready for her opening party at work that night. Even though we were without new outfits in the tragic way, we decided to be brave and go vintage "3 months ago". We decided that I'd drop Elaina off at work since she needed to be there several days early, and then I'd come back and finish getting myself ready. We blathered around discussing how matching shoes affect the gravitational force of adjoining galaxies, when Elaina suddenly looked at the clock and realized she was due to be at work in just under 17 seconds. ZOOM. Off we flew, it was my first experience driving an automatic trans in another state in a couple of years so it felt very unnerving. I dropped her off and headed back to her house, crashed around in the shower knocking everything off the shelves and yelling loud "aslfkjaslkjf!"s again, and then commenced the ancient practice of laying down.

I'd been supine for just over 4 minutes and was nearly to the peaceful meadow where there's no invasion army of killer bugs mental place, when my phone rang. It was Elaina, and she needed ribbons. Apparently her quorum of bosses recognized that she was the only one qualified to get the ribbons, but she couldn't get them without her car. Which was sitting outside her house, where I was inside, laying down. I was obstructing the ribbons. I leapt back into the car, and after 25 minutes of pressing buttons and flapping hands and shushing her car alarm that went screeching off, I roared back to her work and collected her. We roared over to Walmart where I circled the parking lot like a criminal and she hopped inside to get ribbons. She could have also gotten bird seed and an anklet, which is why Walmart is cool. We zoomed back to her work, I leisurely flopped back home, and laid back down for another 80 seconds. No rest for the terminally foxy, so I selflessly got up off the floor and started rubbing various liquid and powder substances on my face. The good news was that after I'd re-washed my hair that afternoon, it was actually very nearly clean. I opted to wear clothes, and then warily approached the car again...after another 25 minutes of resigned sighing as the car alarm screeched, I went back to Dave and Busters for free food and strangers.

Elaina had a couple of friends who came to the opening too, and as I met them I made the quiet realization that I was appallingly overdressed. There was nothing for it though, I'd already burned half a tank of Elaina's gas going back and forth on the 3 blocks between her house and work, so I decided everyone around me would have to develop a complex about their plainness. The friends and I were seated at the bar while Elaina was whisked away to a darkened corner, and we immediately bonded over the heroics of firefighters and Harry Potter. We ate good food and were given a bunch of free game passes, but I gave mine to the friends because I hadn't made a very wise decision in the shoe way. So I left, went back to the house, and stared at the homework assignment I was completely not doing.

Elaina was ready to leave work a couple of hours later, after which our plan was to return to Walmart for not ribbons, and on my way to her work for the 73rd time that day I suddenly realized I didn't have my drivers license. Nor had I, all day, ever. It was stolen exactly a week before my trip, and the replacement hadn't arrived yet. And the paper copy was in my suitcase. Hahahahaha. So when I got to her work I switched seats with her and bid a gruff farewell to my illegal driving experience. For now...

As we got out of the car in the Walmart parking lot, I noticed Elaina fumbling at her driver's side door for a moment, and then bending down to either retrieve or see something. She slowly straightened and said "....come here...." I walked to her side of the car, where we both realized that the lock in her door was...gone. What? It was there when I unlocked it 3 minutes prior, no one visible had been jogging along side us to futz with it, and we hadn't driven over a series of jarring speed bumps or cliffs. The consensus was a collective WTF. How does that even happen? Anyone with theories, please submit. We decided not to linger in the parking lot staring at the lock that was no more, so we headed towards the store. Both of us wanted digital cameras, so we walked to the back of the store which turned out to be in West Africa, and were shown 1 or 2 good cameras out of the dozens that the employee guy accidentally threw on the floor. We both got the same camera and dobedites and warranty and big smiles from the 3 guys lurking around in the "it's late and you're cute" way. We chuckled our way up to sunglasses and keychains, I got myself a very fancy red pair of SG's that will lend themselves to future embarrassment. We went back to the car and to our dismay, the lock had not returned in our absence. We had to unlock my side and do the reach over, like heathens.

I'd been doing a little research about possible tours we could do for the next day, we went back and forth about a couple of them but finally decided to let our feet be in charge. I read a series of Happy Birthday texts and emails and FB shouts and listened to my mum sing on my voicemail, and was pleased with the fact that I still felt the same age as I had the day before.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Chant Down Babylon

Saturnalia

2009-05-28T10:09:00.000-07:00

Day 3
It was Age Day. Elaina and I woke up around the same time that my mum started having her first contractions 30 years prior. We decided there couldn't be a better way to celebrate an anniversary of birth than with low-class food and sub-standard cleanliness, so we burrowed into various articles of clothing that didn't match and headed to The Waffle House. I was nearly hopping with excitement, I mean it's not every day you get to go to a place that 2 of your favorite comedians have made frequent references to, on your 30th birthday. In fact that could only happen one day ever. We arrived and shoved our way inside, both being in mild surprise that the whole expanse of the "restaurant" was slightly shorter and more narrow than my closet. And even better, there was a waiting line. For the 6 tables. The fact that I didn't have a personal space meltdown was indicative of my exhaustion and very sudden maturity, since I don't even like it when people are sitting at the next table, much less standing on you.

While we were squished into the sticky chairs being trampled by people who were crawling over our knees, shoulders and heads to be seated, I idly watched the workers behind the counter. Their spatial situation wasn't that dissimilar to ours, all with the jostling and crashing into each other, however Elaina and I weren't attempting to prepare other peoples' food while strangers stomped in it. I noticed one of the guys behind the counter in particular, and murmured to Elaina "You know, that guy's not completely ugly." She agreed, and we both stared. In our heads we both imagined the life and times of this random guy, probably a gamer, living in his parents' basement, spending his weekends drinking beer at the WaWa, working at The Waffle House strictly on edict from his family. It seemed probable.

When we were finally seated, yet again I had to remember I was in another state because every person within 3 inches of us was smoking, which is legal there, and gives the waffles that excellent charred flavor. After about 3 seconds, who should push and shove his way over to us to be our server than the Not Ugly Gamer Guy...he handed us menus and said some assortment of welcoming words, which completely went over my head because I was rooted to the spot by his obscure eastern-European accent. What? But...but you're a VA-based gamer in your parents' basement! His whole story changed in an instant, instead with focuses on fishing boats and belongings tied in scarves. As Elaina put it, he went from a lazy loser to a hard-working man just by having an accent. I particularly noticed his eyes, as he took my order for 25 waffles and a piglet, because they were a beautiful assortment of golden brown mixed with turquoise blue. I turned to Elaina and remarked that she should see his eyes because they were beautiful, not realizing that when he'd turned away from our table he'd basically only spun in a circle in the closet/restaurant and was still within hearing, smelling and tasting range. I said "Oh, hahahahahahahahaha" as I usually do when I dance on my own tongue. He just grinned down at me and looked at me with his eyes so I only laughed harder.

Our food arrived which to my great shock wasn't spectacular, we gnawed through as many pounds of it as we could manage given our delicate natures, and decided it was time to leave. The arrangement was one of those "pay at a register as you leave" affairs, the trouble is the register is directly behind a booth. As in, people were sitting there. And with the dozen children that had come in with one woman who were plowing past us up and down the 4-foot space, I practically had to lay flat against the very not averse teenage boys who were sitting in that booth as Elaina paid for our food. As she handed back the signed receipt to Not Ugly guy, he remarked "Cool signature," along with smiling and looking at her with his eyes. She burbled a thank you and we kicked and punched our way out of the restaurant. That night was the big opening party at her new Dave and Buster's so we decided to go to the mall and look at big opening party outfits. We were in one of Elaina's favorite stores and I was developing a deep crush on a pair of purple shoes, when she swept up to me in a panic realizing she didn't have her debit card on her. Given that it had been in her pocket all morning this was a troublesome thing.

We headed back to the car which was approximately 6 square acres from the store we were in, I wanted to have a logos-based discussion with the individuals who sketched out the parking/shopping arrangement of the mall, and we scoured the ground and trees and skies for the errant debit card all along the way. No love. We got back to her car and started flinging napkins and floor mats and french fries around, but still nothing. It was no use trekking all the way back across the plains to that store, so we started driving dejectedly back in the direction of home. Elaina figured when she pulled her phone out of her pocket her card may have accidentally gotten flicked out too, and landed in some nether region of inner space. We wondered if that region could have been somewhere in the vicinity of The Waffle House, since Elaina knew she had it when we were there. In fact she knew she'd paid for our potty-fodder with it, and was feeling a growing suspicion that it might be in the nether region of Still Being Held By Not Ugly Guy. This suspicion made her lurk in a very red way about the face, so when we got there I was commissioned to go in and inquire. As soon as I kicked an elderly lady out of my way and toppled into the restaurant, I noticed there was no sign of Not Ugly Guy. And there's not many places to hide there. But one of the girls behind the counter immediately shrieked "Did you leave a debit card??" I shrieked "Yes!" She suddenly turned into a security guard at Fort Knox and said "Now, for security purposes I'll need you to verify the name that would be encoded on the card-" and I said "ELAINA DAVIS RAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!" She said "Whoa...ok ok, here." I skipped back out to the car but hid the card in my hoodie, and managed to play a forlorn bad news face for just over 4 seconds before I said "They only had this raaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh!!!" It was a yay. I think Elaina should tell her Wal-Mart story in the comments now.

This is getting egregious. I'll finish Day 3 later.

Chant Down Babylon

Infiltration

2009-05-14T08:58:00.001-07:00

Alright alright, I'm a lackadaisical trip story updater and I need to be slapped. I was going to combine days 2 and 3 as an endeavor for redemption, but I simply can't manage to do it because I'm hilarious.

Day 2
Elaina had to work on Friday much to our mutual dismay. She was up and out the door while I was still supine on the canoe-ton. I finally shoved myself out of it and into a standing position, when a sudden fit of masochism gripped me. Since I didn't have any glowing coals to walk on or bamboo shards to insert under my nails, I decided to go to the gym. Elaina left me her gym and house key so I put on my Sunday clothes and headed out the door. After wandering around for about 6 1/2 miles through Elaina's complex with a growing expression of discombobulated angst, I finally stomped up to what looked like a common area building and burst into the morning staff meeting of the Richmond mob. Apparently they run Elaina's complex and have a dress code of black suits and sunglasses at all times. Every head sloooowly turned in my direction and stared, which while I'm used to that to some degree still flustered me all the more because of the sunglasses. I managed to stammer "Erm...gym...woof...." and one of the ladies stood up, walked to me, placed her hand on my shoulder and turned me about 110 degrees to my left, and pointed. Wordless, the whole exchange was. I ran away. I finally found the gym under a padlocked steel door that had been buried under 6 feet of concrete, spent 10 minutes making up a silly dance on the elliptical and doing seizure faces in the wall-to-wall mirrors, and realized the whole plan had been dumb in the first place.

I got in the shower after my 20-minute walk trying to find the apartment again, and started inventing new expletives in the loud way each time I exhaled, which would knock over every object on her shower shelf. I returned to the canoe-ton for a few moments of reading and reflection before beginning the plaster of Paris process to be fancy for the night's impending party. After several minutes, my razor-sharp senses started to prickle, as I realized I was picking up a faint rustling noise directly to my right. I looked...and flooding in through the window was the entire invasion army of Obscure Insect Planet. It was like a scene from The Mummy, added to by my leaping and shrieking. My immediate thought was "Toxichouseholdproducttoxichouseholdproducttoxichouseholdproduct," I started opening cupboards and found a bottle of Windex. It worked for the dad in "Big Fat Greek Wedding" so I aimed and fired full blast at the buzzing winged things that outnumbered me 6 squillion to one. The bugs were very shiny with no streaks after this attempt, so I threw the half-empty bottle on the floor with another new expletive and texted Elaina in a panic. She said "EW!" and told me where to find the vacuum. The next 2 hours after the initial siege were filled with me perched on the very edge of the canoe-ton with the vacuum hose in hand, staring like a hawk at the window with my eyebrow raised. Every so often a lone bug would come blundering through the Windex swamp and would immediately join its comrades in the vacuum bag.

At this point I realized that it was approximately 7 seconds before the party was supposed to start, I was not appareled or covered in pretty goo, and that no where in the house was there a single sign of Elaina. I scrambled into her room and started flinging articles of clothing around until some of them landed on me in the right way, tried to wash the insect residue off my face, arms and torso, and did a Jetson's aerosol version of makeup. My hair was a different story, as the lack of bleach and solvent in the Richmond water system had failed to strip it clean so I may as well have styled it with Crisco. It was then 30 minutes after the party was set to start, no guests had arrived, and there was still not a particle of Elaina.

I was cleaning up the atomic disaster area around the Bug Window when the first people arrived, so I fabricated a calm face and radiant smile, opened the door and in my charming way barked "HI I'm not Elaina get inside before they eat you rahhh!!" More people arrived group by group and were introduced to wide-eyed frazzled and not Elaina me. Luckily they were all nice and the types of people who are entertained by shoes and ceiling fans. I learned a good 2/3 of their names after they repeated them 4 times, sweetly disintegrated one of the guys who sat next to me, took my phone, tried to crawl into my pocket and rest his cheek on my neck. Then I made another of the guys cry. I was a big hit. Elaina finally arrived home at 9 million p.m., bless her heart, they'd evidently shackled her by the wrist to the floor at work and wouldn't release her until some girl blew up a basketball. We all sat around and talked about things like blowing up basketballs and why the country is doomed, and I couldn't figure out why several of them were speaking in this extravagant southern accent until I realized I was in another state. All things considered it was very fun and I made several new one-night bff's.

Elaina and I had talked about going to the Waffle House at 3am to honor Jim Gaffigan, but at that point we'd both had such a weird day that we decided to collapse without another word and save that one more bad decision for the birthday morrow....zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz..........

Chant Down Babylon

Incommodious

2009-04-24T12:54:00.000-07:00

And so it begins, the bloggailic tale of The Trip. I've decided to divide the story up into days, since the full account would take 20 pages, and this will make up for not blogging for a month and a half.

Preface

Let me go back to several months ago when I suddenly realized that I've never been anywhere ever except inside my cubicle at work or at my apartment. I was looking at a map of the country I live in, which is marginally bigger than my cubicle, and realized I'd seen about 0.00001% of a third of it. This is right out. Especially seeing as I was plunging down the slippery slope towards the brick wall of 30. I decided that when I splattered against that wall it wasn't going to be at Honolulu Harry's like the last few walls have been, I wanted to splatter somewhere new and fun. I tossed around the idea of going on a cruise, debated nearly every one of the 50 states, and then finally decided I was going to my nation's capital. I figured the hub of the country was a good place to start.

Day 1

Thursday morning we got up ridiculously early to finish getting ready, Mum stayed at my house to drive me to the airport. We got there in plenty of time and I flopped and fumbled my way through all the check points. This process was not sped up by the fact that my drivers' license, SS card and other necessities vanished into the ether a couple weeks ago. After I'd taken off my shoes, outer shirt, inner shirt, sunglasses, hair band, toe ring, fake nails, neck brace, garter belt and peg leg, and placed them all into the little plastic bucket for scanning, I hopped my way through the rest of LAX in one sock. I settled in to wait for boarding, and apparently the one-leg effect gave me the appearance of a diving board, because the little boy next to me immediately began trying to jump onto and leap off of my lap. I'm sure his family will mourn his loss. Once I boarded the plane I realized I'd been put into the middle of 3 seats, between Sergeant Shaky Hands and Countess Curious. After I'd been grilled by the Countess about my book, explained it chapter by chapter, assured her I wasn't anyone famous, didn't laugh at her airplane joke, and had nearly every drop of 7-Up splashed out of Shaky Hand's cup onto my feet, I closed my eyes and pretended to sleep.

I landed in St Paul, Minnesota, in what turned out to be Great Wall of China airport. I believe it was approximately 37 miles from one end to the other, and seeing as I'd landed at mile 2 and needed to catch my next flight at mile 36, I had a lot of walking to do. Much to my delight I utilized the moving sidewalks and made several people jump a mile when they rode the left "Walk Walk Walk Walk" handrail, and I came up behind them shouting "It's fun da fly!!!" A couple of you will understand. I made my next flight with moments to spare and quickly surmised that the aircraft was a few inches smaller than my toilet. It was like flying on a pencil. This time I was in the aisle seat of only 2 seats, which if combined would be smaller than my desk chair. I gained a better understanding of the old cliché "connected at the hip", seeing as I was connected at the hip, waist, shoulder and parts of the neck to the man next to me. His super villain identity didn't stay under wraps for long, lo and behold he was the Notorious Nudger. As if we weren't touching enough. I think that twitchy elbow of his ended up touching parts of my face and the back of my ears. Apparently I'd also been seated directly above the landing gear, and when we touched down I'm pretty certain I formed a new bum split. I leaped off that plane as quickly as I could and was about to do a full wet-puppy-shake until I saw a man a few paces ahead of me in the airport suddenly drop his bag, extend his arms, and start doing toe touches. I was not about to look that silly, especially having to favor the new bum split and peg leg and all, so I just flopped all the way to baggage claim and avoided eye contact with the lady and her 3 noisy children who kept wanting me to take a picture of them.

Lest I give the impression that every moment on the aircrafts/pencils was wretched, let me insert here the Mecca of Sky Mall Magazine. Great honk... Bill Engvall was right. I could literally spend every cent I ever earn for the rest of my life in that catalog. Besides the life-sized voice activated R2D2, Star Wars Battleship and Marshmallow Shooter with laser siding, there was a portable hammock, a motion-sensor mole repeller for the garden, and toe-less socks.

Elaina arrived promptly, we went and got Taco Bell and were given 35,000 packets of hot sauce by the lonely guy at the drive through, went back to her cute apartment where I ooh'ed and ahh'ed, and then collapsed. ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ.....

Chant Down Babylon

Fatuity

2009-03-11T20:05:00.000-07:00

Have you ever wondered what a lunatic looks like? It looks like me, at 11pm driving with the heater on but all my windows down, doing the full torso Roxbury to Haddaway's "What Is Love", in my bathrobe.

I can't tell you how many times a day I have an out-of-body mind moment where I suddenly have a glimpse of myself and how I look doing what I'm doing, and what I'd say about someone if I saw how they looked doing what I'm doing. It's a lot of times a day.

The other night I went over to Niki's after a massage and liquefied on her air mattress. Ty had a couple of her girl friends over for a slumber party, so Nik and I gathered in the office and then Jon wandered in with us. Nik has a fancy Mac computer with a webcam on it, and whether or not every webcam can do this I just don't know, but hers has the feature that can distort a picture that's taken on the webcam. See below for samples.

The 3 of us spent about 45 minutes doing different faces (ok ok Niki and I watched Jon do different faces for about 45 minutes), and I honestly think I snapped a couple of ribs laughing. My laughing face looks like the distorted faces anyway which wasn't helping. By the end of that 45 minutes, the 3 of us were laughing so hard that Ty and the other teenage girls walked back to the office to ask us to keep it down. ... .......

Lunatics get told they're too noisy by teenagers.

Chant Down Babylon

Ascendancy

2009-02-19T07:59:00.000-08:00

I GOT THE PROMOTION!

I'm kind of a big deal.

Chant Down Babylon

PS) My computer at home has all but perished, I mean the simplest of web pages are crashing it completely. It's just old. Anyway because of this, I haven't been able to leave comments on all y'alls blogs very much. Seriously the other night I left someone a comment and it took me 45 minutes. So nothin but love to everyone and it's simply poor mechanics rather than lack of affection.

Disquietude

2009-01-29T08:38:00.000-08:00

You know, every so often in my life, the Lord gives me a little glimpse of something I'm not. That can be in the negative "Work Harder" way or the positive "Quit Labeling Yourself" way. I'd always seen myself as a bit of a worrier in my life, and the Lord has shown me I'm not by placing me next to one.

The Cupcake One could make worrying a novel, and should maybe have a star named Worry. Even in spite of the cupcakes. And the cookies and cakes and bagels and banana breads and whole catalog of things she trots into work with on a nearly daily basis. It's also in spite of her cubicle, which is every inch saturated with paraphernalia about Hawaii. A massive runner of hibiscus flowers, little tiki men, palm trees that dance, everything else you'd find in a cheap hotel gift shop. Oh, don't forget the fake flowers she puts in her hair every day. Last but not least, the worry is in spite of her constant monologues and accolades about herself, how she's perpetually positive, how nothing gets her down, how she always sees the bright side, and how she lives entirely by faith.

With that list of attributes and tendencies, I'm not sure how it happens that at least 3 mornings out of 4, my homegirl is all in the wringing hands, chewing beard and whimpering way. "Oh I'm just so worried because you know, my husband had that heart attack 25 years ago and all and so who knows how much longer he could stay alive and I just don't know what I'd do without him, and my daughter is about to have her baby and I'm so scared because I'm afraid she's gonna be in so much pain during the birth and what if they administer the epidural wrong and she has to feel everything, and then I mean I just worry all the time because what if something happens to BOTH me and my husband, I mean I almost got into that car accident 5 years ago and you just never know, you never know if the next accident on the freeway could be me, and then this morning I woke up because I heard a plane going over my house and I laid in bed thinking 'Oh please oh please don't let that crash into my house!', I mean what if that just crashed into my house, that happens all the time, and THEN when I went into my bathroom I heard this drip-drip-drip in the sink and I thought Ohmugawsh what if the pipes burst while I'm at work and I could come home and the whole house could be flooded and I'm just so scared that all our stuff could be ruined because you just never know, and I was queasy all night and I'm so worried that it might be because I ate some peanut butter a few weeks ago and now they're saying on the news about that peanut butter recall and I'm so scared because my husband was just saying the other day that he was craving some peanut butter and what if he goes and buys a package of those little cookies that THAT happens to be the one package that's infected with something and if he got sick and died I just don't know what would happen and oh my gawsh I'm just so worried I mean you just never know oh oh oh..."

That was all this morning. I listened patiently while I put on my mascara and tried not to think "Well what if I shoved you out that plate glass window and you fell spine-first onto that bare tree trunk down there, you could die instantly and then no longer have to worry so much and that could totally happen because you just never know." It's a lucky thing for most people that we can't read each others' minds. Now she's not only a worrier, she's a spreader. Jesse and I joke that she has the Ethel Mertz disease of repeating a story to the point of nausea. So not only did I get the 10-minute spew of fret, but Jesse called in sick and spoke to her, and he got it as well. Then someone came to say good morning to her and they got it. Then when Joyce came in I heard a little "Oh is that Joyce? Oh I've just gotta tell her..." and Joyce got it. Then the cubicle circuit started. Within an hour we were all swimming in fret. Word-for-word fret, too.

Apart from the whole murder-by-shoving-through-window bit, my heart seriously goes out to Cupcake. I mean, what a way to live your life. Or not to live, which is my way of looking at it. So many mornings I hear myself saying to her "Don't do this to yourself... this worry won't fix a thing." Which it won't, and never once has. Ever, ever ever. Find me some account in history of a battle being won or obstacle overcome because "so-and-so worried a lot." I am really lucky to have a fairly breezy persona in comparison.

I brought Mum into work to meet everyone yesterday, she's each of their best friend now. Everyone was greeted with a hug and a Yay and warm gurgles (Walter's ribs were nearly crushed). After she left, Cupcake said she just wanted to keep her, she wanted Mum to be her mommy too lol. Given that she and Mum are the same age, that's kind of indicative. She said that she saw some guy on an invention show who created this stuffed animal thing, round and fuzzy and soft, and when you hugged it, it said "Everything will be alright." She said that's my Mum.:) I should lend her my round and fuzzy and soft Mum once a week when she needs to be brought in off her ledge.

I'm interested in treatises on worry in response to this.

Chant Down Babylon

Nucleus

2008-12-30T08:43:00.000-08:00

It being the end of the year, a common blog trend I see is the Year In Review. I thought about doing that, there's been a lot of big and fun things from this year blended in with horrific and excruciating ones. My main deterrent from doing my own timeline review isn't fear of revisiting all the bad, or regrets of everything that wasn't accomplished, but a much more alarming issue of me not being able to remember anything before last week. Not in the "something violently struck my skull" way, but in the way that it's the perpetual length of time that my memory can access, it trails behind me like a ribbon and never gets any longer. So instead I thought I'd take a more apropos and common train of thought, and focus on me. I can quote you nearly every movie I've ever seen but I forget if I've already bought eggs and have to check my own phone number. It's...just...odd....

It may be appropriate here to introduce two characters named May and Wayne. May is what would happen if Bilbo Baggins crashed into Peregrin Took and they got eaten by Mrs. Butterworth. Wayne was what would happen if Jim Morrison crashed into Jeff Goldblum, and they got eaten by Charlie Callas. And then these two violent collage intelligences not only existed in the same air space without decimating the planet, but they also breeded. They breeded and formed...me.

I'm guessing a looootta question marks about me just got filled in (or got louder) and turned into exclamation points. Those of you who know my mum will be nodding, but as none of you got to know my father, you'll just have to let those images trickle unpleasantly through your senses. With those parents and original, I feel safe in saying there was little chance I would ever be sane. I could have watched all the real-life movies and tv and read all the non-fantasy books and abstained from all the lands of faraway completely, and that roaring loon genetic nature would have kicked the crap out of the timid nurture.

And y'all get to know me.:) Bless your souls. Are there a luckier group of people in the world than you, who get to experience and adore someone who, with no chemical enhancement, is genuinely bonkers?

Who crashed into who and eaten by who equals me? I've never figured it out, I'd like your opinions. I think everyone should join in the self-reflection vein and give me your own "so-and-so squished with so-and-so swallowed by so-and-so equals me" formula, as well as your chromosomal origins. It's an infallible modus operandi of diagnosis, ebullient collisions and digestion.

Chant Down Babylon

Notoriety

2008-12-17T18:21:00.000-08:00

My forte seems to be office-related stories, since I work in the valley on the planet in the solar system of the Bonkers, and I couldn't make them up if I tried. Here are a couple of recent ones from the last few weeks.

Yesterday I was standing at the sink rinsing out my oatmeal bowl, and Madame Fleep-Flaps comes wandering in to stand on my feet and try to crawl into my pocket until I was done at the sink. This didn't prompt me to rinse faster. Finally she backed off a little into her own 3 inches of personal space and was peering intently at my legs. I've gotten used to her enough that this didn't make me kick her with one of them, until she suddenly started cackling in full voice. Let me tell you something, her full-voice cackle is downright alarming. It would in fact make a good alarm. I turned and stared at her until she got herself under control, when she finally screeched "Your legs are so big!! Look!!" I looked, and then reconsidered the not kicking of her. She said "I am better than you because my legs is small, see! But Kim is better than me because her legs is so sleeeem, I say to her 'Oh your legs is sleeeem!' Hahahahahahahaha!" At this point I was halfway back to my desk while she was still in the break room washing her dishes, but unfortunately distance is not a deterrent factor in silencing her atmospheric-shattering voice.

After working here for nearly 2 years, the 4'9" oligarch learned just last week that I'm Mormon. And he learned it when I told it to him. You should have heard his "Ah!", his voice gets quite high when he's frightened and calculating, and this was only slightly less funny than the hasty couple of steps he trotted back from me. Poor soul. Now, how he didn't already know this, I have no idea, especially since everyone else within 3 floors knows, since I have pass-along cards at my desk, since my monitor wall paper is a Gospel Art Picture, since I read the Book of Mormon in the afternoon, since I talk about serving a mission for my church all the time, AND since it's on both my resume and job applications. Bizarre... but also intriguing enough to make me examine my work behavior for a couple of minutes.

That's for another day however... during the initial protests after the Prop 8 extravaganza (I owe someone a dime for mentioning the prop in my blog), I overheard him ranting and raving about the Mormons and how they deserved what they got and bluster-bluster-like-I-know-what-I'm-talking-about nonsense. I didn't think a thing of it, especially since not a single person agreed with him and everyone had clapped me on the back when the prop passed. However, a couple of days ago, on National Gay Day, the Cupcake Lady pulled a joke on 4'9" and packed up her stuff at around 3, telling him "Whew, I gotta go home, I'm starting to feel a little gay!" All in all it was quite funny, even after the 39th time it was repeated, and naturally the Prop Topic surfaced through it. Cupcake was gabbling on about it and several people were joining in, giggling about the whole gay excuse not to work thing, and that if it hadn't passed people would actually have to put in a full shift. When suddenly, in the midst of this large group of people, 4'9" pointed stiff-armed to my face and said loudly "Blame her!! It's all her fault that it passed!!" He followed this with his very high chuckle, expecting everyone else to join in...which no one did because they were too stunned at how lame he is. If it had been Fleep-Flap I would have bopped her on the head, but in the face of 4'9", I rose myself up to my full 5'8" and was all "Know what, damn right."

Last week, we had our annual Christmas luncheon at Cal Poly. It involves eating the rest of the prior year's food, chatting with people we chat with all day, listening to our supervisors (known around here by the phrase "A-Quacks") reminisce in near-tears laughter about landfill and rendering plant incidents, and having a drawing where the big bosses give away bottles of hard liquor. Seriously. You'd think this combination of things would be fascinating but I can assure you, it's almost impossible to describe how boring it is. I didn't even want to go this year, I figured if they were going to allow us 4 wasted hours in the middle of a work day I'd rather sleep or read or dance. But finally I decided to go with our temps, and before I left the office I set my Outlook Assistant to send an away message, something like "I'm away from my desk at a mandatory luncheon meeting about goodwill and joy." Completely true statement and utterly unnoteworthy.

I came back to the office to find a few emails that had been sent in my absence, including one from the boss's boss's boss's secretary reminding everyone about that luncheon. About 30 minutes later she comes crashing and storming up to my cubicle laughing like an inebriated loon. She yelled at the top of her lungs that my out-of-office response was the funniest thing she'd ever read in her life, as well as the most sarcastic, she couldn't believe I had that kind of guts and I should consider doing stand-up comedy. But I should also clear an hour in the afternoon to discuss my attitude problems with the Boss. I stared at her nonplussed for several minutes during her hysterics, wondering if she was serious, which she tried to assure me she wasn't but couldn't quite do it because she insisted she was being really funny like me. A couple of hours later, she came crashing and storming back up to my cubicle to inform me that she'd forwarded my "email" to half of the company, assuring them they were about to read the funniest thing that could have ever been said by a human or otherwise, ever. ?? And many of those people wrote her back like "Omg, I'm nearly crying in laughter over here, who is that girl??? Can we meet her??" So Secretary-Bonkers told them all where my cubicle was, and since then I've had the experience of hearing loud whispers approaching, in the way of "She said it was around here... like right near here....oh here she is!!" And turning around to see people staring at my name plate, staring at me, and then walking away.

I ask you this...when did I become the least crazy person within a 20-mile radius?

Chant Down Babylon

Burst

2008-12-10T08:40:00.000-08:00

You know, one of my favorite things about Mary Poppins is the underlying theme of laughter. Not only is it the cure for the father's hard heartedness and what makes him realize he loves his kids, but it also makes that other guy fly and flat out kills a third. That's awesome. I'm fairly certain that I will die by laughter as well, whether I want to or not.

See when I laugh, like REALLY laugh, the alarming red-faced phlegm rattle laugh from my toes, I get a headache. That's a small word for it really, my head thuds like a kangaroo is Riverdancing on it. You can nearly see my pulse in my hair. Often I can be seen to be clutching my skull after each laugh explosion. It's an interesting exercise in the law of opposition, to be feeling such euphoria and such agony at the same time.

There are a lot of things that make me laugh. For example, "Noises Off." I'm not sure why I initially saw the movie, unless it was shown during one of the free movie channel weekends in the old school days of cable. But it's been a favorite since I was in 7th or 8th grade. If you've never seen it, I fully recommend it. It was a film that was made from a play which is about a play. The play is still performed, Niki and my friend Jill and I went and saw it when we were in 8th grade. Well, Niki saw an ad for it several months ago, it was coming back to the Vic Gards playhouse. So for her birthday, I bought us tickets and we went and saw it again. It was well done except for the travesty of Brooke, and we laughed a lot.

Here's another thing that makes me laugh - Arizona. Libs and I road tripped there this past weekend, it was a whirlwind of cities and fondue and no sleep. We're both very funny people as is so the Riverdancing kangaroo started for me in the car on the way there. By Friday night I was certain that my scalp was bleeding, us + the AZians + Invader Zim = exquisite excruciation. Sunday was cause for scalp blood too, thanks to being mistaken for Winona Judd, a best friend/sister/life partner, lots of staring, and "Flight of the Conchords."

That deserves it's own paragraph. It is officially my new favorite thing. I can't quite think how to explain it, even. It's like what walking through my brain would be like, if I was male and from New Zealand. It is absolute random with singing and dancing. I want it. For those of you who are intelligent and have a sense of humor, add it to your Netflix/Blockbuster queue. Season 1, which was tragically the only season there was.

I don't know what causes the laughter headache, really. I think my head may actually be swelling, and not in the ego way. Like, the swelling way. All that hot air that's being forced up from my lungs is filling it up. Maybe I really will float up to the ceiling one day. Or maybe every vein will simultaneously burst. It'd be a fun way to go.

Chant Down Babylon

Alexipharmic

2008-11-12T19:08:00.001-08:00

You know what's a good antidote to all this political diatribe and falderal? "The West Wing." It's my mum's favorite show, they used to show it all the time on Bravo but their daily audience is not nearly intelligent enough for it now so they've stopped. However they had several marathons of the show during the last couple of weeks before the catastrophic election, and the couple of days I was out there at mum's house made me want to watch the show. I've bought a few of the seasons for mum for various birthdays and/or holidays, and I brought all the ones I bought her home with me last time I left her house. I've been slowly plugging through Season 1 while I've been torturing some very lovely fabric into a facsimile of a sham of a Roman costume, and to no one's surprise I've been laughing like a loon. If you've never watched the show you might be questioning that, most people say it looked like "Law and Order" for the White House. But I promise, Aaron Sorkin has a sordid love affair with words and oft times it's one of the funniest shows I've ever seen. If you need to be cured of election asphyxia as well, I recommend checking it out.

You know what's a good antidote to the zombie doldrums of adulthood? "My So-Called Life." I've been sluggishly working my way through Season Only of that for the last couple of weeks as well, and I've been lurking in stunned disbelief the whole time. How did I live as a teenager without this show?? How did I not watch this show?? How did I watch "90210" instead of this show?? How did my mother ALLOW me to watch "90210" instead of this show?? I couldn't ever claim to be a big fan of Claire Daines based on the films I had seen and things I've heard about her, and I've never understood why so many people had a gut devotion to her. Well, now I kind of get it. Contrary to myself she was much sweeter and less affected as a 15 year old. So, everyone who's ever tried to talk to me about the show and looked at me like a bonkers traitor to the plaid flannel shirt geno, I'm finally in. And know what, don't even get me started on Jared Leto...

You know what's a good antidote to coronary cryo-freeze? "Twilight." 5 by 5. I'll say no more of that, because I've decided I liked it better when no one else in the world had read the books and it was just my private thing for me.

You know what's a good antidote to having me admire your intellect? Being unoriginal. Why do people do this? Maybe it's just my own sensibilities, but I don't think there's anything lamer than someone saying/doing/experiencing/expressing something that they heard/saw/learned/absorbed from someone else and then claiming it as their own. Without even a mention of where you got it from. I can't begin to understand why people have a hard time with this, why it's painful or even remotely embarassing. How difficult is it to own the fact that you live on earth and encounter other people? You'll be viewed in much higher regard if you illustrate the point that you have friends. Seriously, does this bother anyone else? If you've ever been an oft perjured victim yourself maybe you get where I'm coming from. I'm thinking of forming a plastic chair support group where people hold hands and practice the phrase "Oh ya, I heard about that from..." All of us who are the ...'s will appreciate the effort.

You know what's a good antidote to shambling into work after a 4-day weekend? Caramel apples. My co-worker, the cupcake one, made us some for Halloween and I chomped my way through about 63 of them. Her daughter called her last week and asked if she'd make some more, and she did even though they're a pain in the brain to make and make your kitchen look like a caramel explosion. (I would eat my kitchen.) This morning when I grumped up to my desk there was a glistening caramel apple beaming at me from a little plate in the corner, and it's gone now. My co-worker makes them by dipping the whole apple into the caramel and then pressing the bottom of the caramel into chopped walnuts. It is the best kind of sin.

You know what's a good antidote to being any kind of productive while at work? Brick breaker. One of the oldest of the cel phone archives I realize, but I'm starting to regret that I downloaded the latest updates to my Curve. People at work probably think I have that shouting sickness for as many times a day as I suddenly shriek a colorful word. And it's only too apropos that as I'm playing I'm yelling things like "Nooooo not a gun!! Life!! I need a life!!!"

You know what's a good antidote to one of your Top 5's suddenly having their own Wonderful Life experience and acting like you were never born? Nothing.

Chant Down Babylon

Attrition

2008-10-28T07:50:00.000-07:00

A lot of people have opinions about things going on, or things threatening to go on, in our state and country and world right now. Whether it's the possibility of a new "leader," the altering of the foundation of the country and everything it means, or just the dissecting of individuals to sound smart, everyone's got buckets and buckets of words to say about it. If I read one more post about Prop 8 I'm gonna impale myself. The ironic thing is that no matter the side or point of view people have about what may happen a week from today, everyone's minds seem to be pointing towards the same end - we're all going to hell. I can't say I disagree, whatever the reasons. But here's mine:

A few days ago I flopped out to get my mail, I'd been expecting a few things for a couple weeks and was disappointed to see only a stack of bills and ads. I threw away the useless things and brought the rest inside. Mixed in with the advertisements for Walmart and Papa John's, I unearthed a cardstock coupon...for plastic surgery. And not in the serene, pastel, compassion for horrible disfigurement way. In the violent neon "2 for 1 sale on breast augmentations!" way. Pretty much buy one, get one free. OR, if you paid for both, there was a coupon for free liposuction on any area of your choice.

Good...grief.... you know having had a fairly white trash upbringing (or, "humble", if you prefer), in my mind things like liposuction and augmentations were not only megaphones of triteness and vanity, but were only sought out by washed up tv actors. And that wasn't just a childhood belief, plastic surgery wasn't exactly performed on every corner of Ontario. But apparently, in Chino Hills, it sure is. You can come visit me and see it for yourself. Shopping centers have a Starbucks, a donut shop, a McDonalds, and a plastic surgery clinic. That now issue blowout sale coupons. I think I even saw fine print that said "Limit one per household."

All the "redefining" of institutions in the world can't spiral us into Hades as quickly as the crushing disintegration of self worth. But the good news is that if you're on that path, it's getting cheaper.

Chant Down Babylon

Osculant

2008-10-19T22:23:00.000-07:00

My memory is quite selective, I remember every single detail of some things and absolutely none of others. Part of that is birthday memory. There are some peoples' birthdays that I'm sure I'll remember forever, even though I'll never speak to them again. And there are others who I speak to all the time, and yet still don't think I know when their birthdays are...hrm... would y'all mind telling me your birthdays? There are days of the year that are like that for me too, the Landmarks. I did a Looking Back Landmark on September 11th, which is a very touching day for me. And today is another. 7 years ago today I went through the temple for the first time.

I remember that it was a Friday, and I remember what room we were in (before they started moving rooms during the session), I remember moments with several people either coming in right as the session was starting or smiling at me. I remember who I stood with in the circle and a bunch of the people who hugged me in the Celestial room. (Will and Tracy Jolley, you guys stand out.:) Does anyone else have a memory of that day, of being there even though I may not remember it?

What I remember very strongly is making the right turn off the Overland exit and seeing the temple up at the top of the road at the Santa Monica intersection, and the closer we got, the more nervous I felt. I distinctly felt that I wasn't ready, that there was enough in me that was ugly that it didn't belong in such beauty. And I remember a peaceful feeling coming over me, an impression of words along the lines of "You don't have to be perfect to be in My home." I've had several experiences since then related to the temple where that phrase has come back to me.

We weren't able to go to the temple during the 3 weeks I was in the MTC because it was closed, and there wasn't a temple close enough to my mission for us to go while I was serving either. I wasn't able to go the whole 18 months and 3 weeks that I was a missionary. So it's the first thing I did when I got home. That WAS getting home for me, and I still feel that way whenever I'm there. I was able to be there yesterday morning, for a Tongan language session. So much fun.:) I think I'm fluent now. And as always, when I walk into the Celestial room, I feel the love of people who are suddenly quite close by and welcoming me home.

I've let lots of things get in my way, block the northbound Overland road and keep me from being in the temple over the last several years. Me, who is the most impatient driver on earth, who plows through traffic after a work day so I can get back to my house, I have let darts and arrows and quicksand keep me from getting to my home. And not a single one has been worth even a glimpse of the outside of the building. Nothing that keeps you out of the temple can be a good thing, for yourself or anyone else.

My favorite thought in the world is that one day, I'll be in a room that looks a lot like the Celestial room surrounded by everyone I love who all get to meet for the first time. Niki will meet Terry and Laurie who'll meet Mum who'll meet Dawna Rae who'll meet Libs who'll meet PDiddy who'll meet Ray-K and Liz who'll meet President Clifford who'll meet Wash, and on and on. That's the thought that keeps me going, that keeps my light shining brighter and brighter until the perfect day.

Chant Down Babylon

Parapraxis

2008-10-08T18:11:00.001-07:00

(I'm prefacing this one with another "possible inappropriate material" warning for those of you who don't like to laugh.) Freudian slips are a common enough thing, and I can't think of a place they're more likely to happen than the doctor's office. That it happened at the eye doctor's office was a bit more surprising.

For several weeks now, my eyes have been murmuring and plotting an exodus out of my face, or so it's felt. I've wondered if they're diabolical enough to try to aggravate me so much that I'll dig them out of my head myself. Actually it's not my eyeballs that's the problem, it's my eye lids. My ophthalmologist says the insides of my eye lids look like a cobblestone street. And not a smooth, worn one either. I found that image disgusting, but it helped explain the jagged red lines that were getting worse and worse on my eyeballs.

I thought at first that there was some kind of sinus-type catalyst for this irritation, but it turns out it's most likely due to allergens in the air. And I know exactly which air, too. The Powers have decided to build us new cubicles at work and shorten our old ones for the people who will be coming in. We're not in the new ones yet, they're just sitting empty, but that's a story for another day.

In the mean time, all of our file cabinets have had to be emptied of their contents, things like scraps of paper someone scribbled on in 1956 and carbon copies of receipts...basically things no one has looked for, thought of or touched since before there were 50 states. Goodness only knows what has grown and mutated and had babies in all those ancient files, but all of it has been flung out of its nest and into our air. In one week, 3 of us looked like we'd dripped red food coloring all over our eyes, it was awful. (We don't need to discuss the past blogs about other mutant toxins in the air at work.)

So, my eyes have been a mess. At my optometrist's office today, we were discussing my contacts and how they're probably just making the problem worse. He suggested a few things, including trying a different cleaning solution on them. I was aghast because I'd gone out and bought two industrial-sized bottles of the stuff, and was hoping it wouldn't go to waste. He said that what he would do instead was to give me another solution that I could incorporate with the one I'm using and assured me it would be fine because "he knew I had two big jugs"... ...... ........

After he unfroze from a few seconds of horror, he said "Uhhh, berightback" and scrambled out into the hall. I nearly rolled off the chair and into the wall, I was horse laughing with such abandon. There was no further mention made of the jugs, he gave me the new solution and pushed me out the door.

Poor guy. Usually the most embarrassing phrases are the most innocuous ones.

Chant Down Babylon

Surmise

2008-10-01T18:45:00.000-07:00

Since I lead an utterly dull life of yarn and one flashing hook these days, we're gonna plunge into the dusty archives and play Memory Bank! Which "you" is you? You're welcome to claim your own paragraph and correct any falsehoods, patch any leaks or cement any gaps.

I stood in a trembling circle while you and your cohort paced around us without a word, and then set to work slathering me and a couple others with facial mask, glitter gunk, and various other specimens of goo. I think I still shake glitter out of my hair in the shower.

You and I were out, uh, walking one day, and came across a doorstep mat that was handmade in blue glitter puffy paint with the words "Burnt Toast and Jam" emblazoned on it. Oh how we stared. And the longer we stared, the funnier it got. We even remembered where the street was so we could come back and take a picture. (You also used to come home at night and scream into the freezer, which apart from the rogue mouse and mutant mold, was the best thing about that place.)

You would incorporate your delicate criticisms of our singing with words we'd just sung. Hence, "Ok guys, 'Babylon shall pale with shame' was shameful." You also would prompt us to sing louder by tapping your sternum. I've no idea how I didn't spend the whole of each rehearsal just snorting and wheezing instead of screeching out those high notes.

You were sitting next to me being entertained by "persons developing a cold" and "luck being a lady," and I noticed a tiny white protrusion poking out of your sleeve. I pinched it between my fingernails and pulled...and out burst a feather the size of my thumb. Inside-out molting is a rare thing amongst mammals. I think I laughed for about 25 minutes. The sneaky feather no doubt tiptoed out of your foot-thick bed cover thing that I would dive bomb onto every day. That probably didn't help, either...

Many a morning in between Seminary and school we would make a swift run to Taco Bell for non-breakfast food. So swift were the trips that it was almost like riding on the wings of a Falcon... (3rd hand account)

Faced with the daunting task of getting me a birthday present, you brought a mutual friend with you to the mall and canvassed nearly every square inch. It was a proper and angsty dilemma of what "tone" of gift to get, I heard there were Seinfeld-esque mutterings of "...too mushy...too masculine...too morbid..." You got very excited when you came across a video store but quickly faced the same problem, based on overall themes or certain scenes of each movie, which apparently you picked up one by one. Finally you found "The Saint" with Val Kilmer and nearly burst, "This is it this is it!!" The tagalong friend said "..uh no honey, that won't work, we all just watched that at her house a couple of weeks ago remember?" To which you said "Yayaya exactly, this is perfect!!" Friend said "No, nono, what I'm saying is she already has it." And you looked her straight in the eye and said "Well then I know she'll like it." So, that's what you got me.

You and I were out doing some nebulous thrifting, and next to one of the most popular stores we saw a massive sign that said "BOOKS." You were all about the books, but we couldn't see any kind of book shop. Or any kind of shop. There was just this little decrepit house behind an ivy-covered chain link fence. We thought maybe the house was the center of a booming bookseller business, so we marched up the porch steps and knocked on the door. An abundantly crabby and terse person answered, and asked what we wanted. "Books," you announced, beaming. They looked at you like you'd fallen out of their nose. I can't remember what words they actually bellowed but the message was clearly "NO BOOKS HERE!!", and they shut the door on us. Like WE were the bonkers ones. (Know what, to this day, the Books sign is still there.)

During one of the rare cheerful PoD Parties, we were all lounging on my wretched couch discussing our feet. Both of our feet are fairly adorable, so you raised your foot and I raised mine, we spread our toes and finally managed to interlace them. We held toes. It was a moment.

You and I and your brother went to the movies one afternoon to see "Robin Hood: Men In Tights." During one of the final scenes where the witch swoops in with a magic tablet that will save the Sheriff's life, you leaned over to me and whispered "It's a Lifesaver." I whispered back "I know." Several seconds passed...and then the truth hit me, so I leaned over to you and whispered "Oh my gosh it's a Lifesaver." You turned and scrutinized me carefully to make sure I wasn't having a stroke or seizure, and whispered back "Uh, YA." Several more seconds passed...and apparently some of the breeze of truth wafted over to your brother, who leaned over to us and said "You guys, it's a Lifesaver!" We agreed. The joke had been over for about 10 minutes by then.

Go to it, you brave spelunkers!

Chant Down Babylon

Superannuated

2008-09-25T18:33:00.000-07:00

I've suspected for some time that I had entered a few corridors of adulthood. But I was beginning to worry that I'd skipped over the fun parts and galloped right into the dusty and croaky abyss of the antiquated. And since galloping isn't a talent in the range of the elderly, there was double worry.

The early pinpricks of worry started to form when I would find myself appalled and fish-mouthing wordlessly when someone suggested an activity that would keep me out until 9. That's an hour past my desired bed time! Yes I said "desired bed time" because it never happens, I'm usually up until the lunatic and graveyard hours of 10 or 11. But the fact that I desire to go to bed at 8 says a lot on its own. The worry spiraled when I became more engrossed in planning out my day's naps and meals than in what I would wear to a weekend party. The worry whipped-cream-and-cherry arrived when I heard myself say things like "The movies are too loud" and "Darn these little whippersnappers."

Well I officially moved past the worry and into resignation on Monday. Ray-K and I both have jobs that are not only filled with extravagant loons, but that give us Mondays off. We planned a breakfast and movie day. This sounds exactly like the kind of fresh and fabulous day that single women of our status and beauty should have. Indeed I felt very fresh and fabulous, until we realized that every other patron of Mimi's at 10am on a Monday is thinking fondly of the old days when they were 70. It was a sweater vest extravaganza.

We headed back to my house to watch a movie I'd never seen - the A&E "Pride and Prejudice." I'd heard it was an excellent version of the story but I'd never gotten around to seeing it. We settled into my bear hug couch with our individual crocheting projects* and went to town. And about 2 hours in I had a floating out of myself experience as I saw us, two ladies sitting reclined in a chair watching "Pride and Prejudice" and crocheting... .... .......

It felt odd to have teeth in my mouth and vibrant colored hair in that vision. Odder still to wonder what I'll actually be doing when I've lived for 85 years. I think by then I'll have come full circle and will be out dancing til dawn with my white-haired friends. All in crocheted sweater vests.

Chant Down Babylon

*Lib tried to teach me to crochet last year and I was hopeless. But somewhere between then and now the light bulb flickered on, and Rachel filled in the holes without too much laughter.

PS) Speaking of growing up, my lovely Ladytron turned 1 year old this past Friday.:) I'll give her all of your regards.

Infelicitous

2008-09-15T18:01:00.000-07:00

Ok, this post is being published as a command performance from Lib and Wash. For my more delicate readers, hold your breath, but for those of you who actually have a sense of humor, buckle up.

There's this man that I work with, we'll call him MoPo, who's real name is a game people play in pools. Like, no joke. Jesse makes up nicknames for everyone, and for a year and a half I thought that was just a nickname. Then I walked by his cubicle and saw his name plaque one day. So in trying to describe him, picture someone who's head never quite got back to a normal shape after being pushed through the birthing canal. He's got greasy, semi curly dark hair that's always unkempt. His eyes are unnaturally tiny, and this isn't helped by the fact that he wears Hubble telescope glasses. They shrink to nearly pin-pricks. His nose looks like some guy on the inside of his face is pulling it inwards, not in the Down's Syndrome way, but just like you're pressing your finger into a balloon. Only there's a round cherry nose protruding out of that area too. Conversely, his mouth looks like it's being sucked outward by something. It's always open too. He's got a very broad upper body, almost like a big square, his back is perpetually sweaty even in winter, and then he's got little stick legs. I don't know if it's his proportions or what, but he plods along like Herman Munster. So...do you have a visual?

You'd be convinced that I was describing someone who was handicapped, except that the guy is a genius. He could reconfigure NASA if push came to shove. His own awkwardness trips him up though, like 4'9" was talking to him a couple of months ago about trying to find a free website AQMD could use to make all of our old notifications available to the public. MoPo suggested Myspace. (...) I laughed for about 20 minutes. Be AQMD's friend on Myspace!! Our profile picture would be asbestos with the red circle and line through it.

So anyway, none of this about this dear man would be quite so noticeable, were it not for the fact that he doesn't seem to realize that he's not alone on the planet most of the time. And that "most of the time" is bathroom time. My workplace isn't the kind of atmosphere where we discuss restroom-type topics, and yet I've heard from more than one source about MoPo in the restroom. There is no "rest" going on whatsoever. In between the plops and splashes and monstrous elephant farts, there's grunts and groans that are reminiscent of monstrous elephants. I know this because our bathrooms share a wall (a 2-foot thick wall of concrete) and I have heard him through it. Jesse was discussing this with me one day, what it's like to be in the restroom at the same time as MoPo, and in his discrete way was all "Oh Lord... have you ever seen the old episodes of Star Trek?... When they go through an asteroid field?" He illustrated what he meant by bouncing up and down in his chair and crashing into his desk and the walls of his cubicle while shouting "Grab hold of something!" I very nearly collapsed a lung laughing.

Now, while the restroom is still a fairly private place, Homeboy has zero issue in letting rip the monstrous elephant farts wherever he is. This includes in the silent office, and in meetings. I've heard him many a time, and my desk is roughly 50 feet from his. The other day, one of our inspectors Michal (the man with the perpetual murf) was talking to him about something, and Wash came up to ask Michal something. Michal's conversation with MoPo was about nothing crucial whatsoever, but MoPo stayed standing there like Captain Goosegog. While Wash and Mike were talking, MoPo suddenly stepped one pace backwards, turned around so his back was to them, and just about exploded out of the atmosphere with the loudest and nastiest fart ever emitted by half beast/half man. Our friend Kim sits a couple of desks away and poked her head around the wall, like "??? what just happened? Was anyone hurt??" Yes I said he turned around so that his butt would be FACING them. He then turned back around and rejoined them like not a thing had just happened, like we don't live in a double standard society of acceptable public sneezing but not farting. Mike and Wash just stood there frozen, staring at each other, like MoPo had actually dropped a canister of freezing gas.

These are my coworkers.:) Let me also mention that MoPo is happily married and has several children. ... ...... ...........

Chant Down Babylon

Phoenix

2008-09-11T08:26:00.000-07:00

Today of course is an interesting and natural day for introspection. It's one of those days where our national and human race timeline meshes with our personal life timelines. Here's mine:

Sept 11, 2007: My first day as an official employee of the AQMD. Semi-tragic. Except for the mirth of built-in comedy co-workers and Mondays off.

Sept 11, 2003: John Ritter passed away. That was really sad, especially since it was also his daughter's 3rd birthday.

Sept 11, 2001: 2 planes hit the Twin Towers, killing thousands of people and ultimately collapsing the buildings. You know, me who is rarely at a loss for words, sitting here now I can't think of a single thing to say about this. Usually that event seems like something very far away that I only ever heard about, but today it feels a lot more real. It's just a wordless horror, and the most senseless disaster I can think of.

Sept 11, 2001: President Gordon B. Hinckley sat in the secret "Calling" room with my mission application and picture, and issued me the call to serve in Wisconsin.

You know, I had a bizarre lapse of focus or an unremembered blow to the head or something, because I just recently bought the DiCaprio "Romeo + Juliet." I watched it 5 times in the theater when I was 16 and hated it by the time I was 20. I'm somewhere in the middle now, I just see it as a laugh and one of the worst movies ever made (definitely the worst intro to a movie ever made). But not even as a teenager did I feel that it was a romantic story of true love, or tolerance between people. I think it was Shakespeare's treatise on stupid teenagers and bad parenting. Rashness begets rashness begets rashness with poison and knives. Why wasn't someone paying closer attention?? Granted, the "true love" of these 2 kids (who's combined age is less years than I've lived) was rather swift, started at a party one night, then bound in a secret marriage the next morning, and fulfilled the vow of "death do us part" by the following night. It takes me twice that many days to remember someone's name.

I think the reason the story is remembered as a tragedy is not because these kids were misunderstood and their parents were the immature ones, but because their deaths were for no good reason whatsoever. It wasn't even a case where dying for love was a noble cause. It was a whim, a drama, and a supreme act of pouting that was committed without a single thought as to how others would be affected. I think that's about the best description I could give to the Twin Towers disaster as well.

That type of event might be the worst of history. Great and atrocious outcomes that rolled into motion for no good reason, or no other reason than someone's pride or whim. Someone makes a choice that consequently wrecks lives for generations. It's the price we pay for fighting a war for agency. So, those events are fulfilling the law of opposition for those who choose good; those events are in fact making the good choices even more valid. And all of the wordless horror is being used for the greater and ultimate good of our humility and our understanding of the Plan.

It was never more real to me than on Sept 14, 2001 when I read the date that my mission call was issued - no matter the surrounding and deafening horror, the work of the Lord is ALWAYS progressing, and ALWAYS affording us opportunities to find our way back to Him.

This is the question everyone's asking around the office today - where were you on 9/11/01?

Chant Down Babylon

Maestro

2008-09-02T20:24:00.000-07:00

Being the small town farm girl that I am, it's rare for me to be out amongst the glitter of Hollywood. I stick out like a sore thumb in that crowd with my flip-flops and petticoat. The paper bag over my head doesn't help much either. But every so often I still prepare my oxygen tank and head for that little planet with the suffocating and dizzying atmosphere. That's where I was this Friday, in the only part of the planet that has a bowl named after it.

A month or two ago, Zherrian asked me if I wanted to go to the John Williams concert at the Bowl. My immediate answer was "YAR my good son, break out the grog!" I wasn't sure if I'd be able to afford it though, so my "yar" sounded more like a question. As I should have expected, a couple days later he texted me and said "I bought your ticket and you're going, the end." He's a pumpkin. I had a surprisingly swift drive out to Hollywood and Highland, and met up with him at the mall. We had dinner and then "walked" together up to the Bowl.

"Walked" is a fairly bright and cheerful word for what we did. If you'd have seen me, you'd have thought I was trekking across the desert in the blistering sun. It was actually quite hot on Planet Hollywood that night, but my appearance made it look like it was also quite wet. The backs of my hands were sweating, for crying out loud. That's what I get for bundling up for a "chilly outdoor concert" before we made the 3 mile walk, uphill. This was compounded by the fact that Zherrian is 70% legs, and so his natural gait is roughly 4 feet when he's walking slowly, where as my legs are less than a yard long from hip to ankle with a gait at about a foot and a half.

Anyway we finally made it and I only perished in flames a little bit. We sat on the benches and waited for the rest of the group, who were late. All that "walking" and we ended up waiting for 45 minutes. Oh well, I've always wanted to open a sweat shop. The others finally arrived after the concert had already started and we crashed on up the rest of the way to our seats. It was myself, Zherrian, and 6 of his friends who are all of a similar persuasion and lifestyle. I thought about developing a children's book as I was being flung around and squeezed between them, something like "The Empress and the Sodomites," or "A Day in Gay Bay." It turns out everyone in that bay was seated in the same section at the concert too, I was in a 360 degree sparkly rainbow fandango.

Well, much to my lack of surprise, the concert was FABULOUS. I'm tellin ya, my mum must have listened to a lot of John Williams when she was pregnant with me, I think it's in my very blood. Each of the numbers seemed to be electrically charged. He began with music of the Olympics, I had no idea he wrote the Olympic theme! There were big screens set up with video clips from the Olympics too, all the victories. So beautiful and emotional! The next number was an arrangement with video from "Close Encounters of the Third Kind." Then John brought out a sweet little man who it turns out was the original choreographer for people like Fred Astair and Gene Kelly! He was the one who arranged the number where Fred danced on the walls and ceiling, the number of Gene Kelly on the roller skates, him Singin' In the Rain, and he was even the human body double that they turned into the animated mouse that Gene Kelly danced with. Such an adorable man, and still in wonderful shape. He danced a little for us, it was awesome.

John did numbers from "Hook," "Sabrina," "Jaws," a whole montage from "Indiana Jones," all of which were amazing, telling little stories about them and how he'd pieced them together. He took little breaks between, to get a sip of water or something, and after one of the breaks he came out, and without a single word launched into the Imperial March. I'll tell ya, even though myself and everyone had been thoroughly enjoying the other numbers and movie clips, the sudden explosion of "Star Wars" was the Mecca. And if I wasn't already thrilled enough by it, Z nudged me and pointed at the rest of the audience...where about 400 lightsabers were waving in salute (picture shown above).

Since my emotions make no sense at all, rather than erupting in laughter which was my first inclination, I nearly burst into tears. I can't tell you how proud I was to be surrounded by all those geeks. In spite of being an alien life form on the Planet Hollywood, a short-legged yapping puppy amongst camels, and a shawl-knitting granny on the Hetero raft in sparkly Gay Bay, I realized in that moment that I was still immersed in my kind of people.:)

The concert ended with the theme from "Superman," and even though I've never been devout I was surprised at how thrilling that one was too. It was the perfect ending, and it was my quasi talisman as my little group sloshed and staggered back to the street. Turns out the bay is filled with champagne and wine. The walk back to my car was much, much better, we weren't in a hurry, we were going downhill, and I'd given strict instructions to Z and his friends to be mindful of my itty-bitty gams. I made it to my car by midnight and was safely home by 1.

It gave me a lot of food for thought, what a different place I'm in in my life in comparison to just a year or two ago. I'm no longer flashy and edgy even a little bit. I'm cardigan girl. I listen to church music and read the Baby-sitters Club and put myself to bed at 9. And apparently I'm in my mid to late 70's since I've actively started using the adjective "delightful." Make room at the home, Ray-K.

Chant Down Babylon

Blammo

2008-08-20T20:26:00.000-07:00

I've decided it's time for another NikEm.

So, you know the old phrase "It's as easy as falling off a log"? I'll bet you didn't know you were friends with the girls who coined it.

There's this thing that never happens where I live - it's called snow. It happens in far remote areas at the tippy-tops of our local mountains, but never at my house. Growing up in Southern California, our youth group would take summer beach trips and winter snow trips. My friends who did not grow up in Southern California can understand the principle of traveling to see the beach, but I'll never forget the looks I got when I'd talk to people in Wisconsin about traveling to see the snow. I remember one person saying "...wow. Did you drive to see the rain too?" The absurdity of it didn't hit me until then.

Absurd or not, each winter we would all smoosh ourselves into vans and drive up to the mountains to play with snow. There was this one spot we would always go to, it had a little lodge and was close to places to ski. We of course didn't ski, we were only there to watch the snow. (Watch it lay on the ground in heaps and do nothing, I should say. I didn't actually see snow falling from the sky until Provo.) The leaders would try to marshall the youth into making snowmen or angels or sledding down hills or whatever, but Niki and I being the rebellious loners we are, would always wander off on our own. I can't remember how old we were when we found the log, but we visited it several times. It was this massive tree that had fallen over, but was propped up by its roots and branches. So it made a fun little mini bridge-type thing. We'd scramble up there and sit and talk for hours, until someone found us.

This particular time, Niki had climbed up on the log before me and had scooted out towards the middle of it. Once I'd gotten up there, we sat facing each other and jabbering away. I'm certain it was about music and boys. What I remember is that I was in the middle of some brilliant thesis of some kind, when suddenly Niki flopped forward and wrapped her arms around the log. I hesitated in my monologue, I wasn't sure what she was doing, why she was staring at me with her eyes nearly bursting out of her face, or if I was supposed to lean over and hug the log too. It didn't take me long to figure it out though, as I watched her inch-by-inch go sliding off of one side of the log, still holding on for dear life. By the time her log orbit was done, she'd rotated all the way down to the underside of it. From my seat astride the log I could only see her two little mittens and two little shoes clutching around the top, and then a swishing of blond hair from underneath.

Niki hung like that for a few seconds, just long enough to realize that there was no way to twist back around to the top of the log, and that she probably looked silly. She let go, and gracefully landed in the snow a few feet below without so much as an "Oof." She got up and brushed herself off, walked over to where I was doubled over on the log wheezing and honking like an asthmatic goose on loon pills, and calmly shoved me once. I plummeted off the log like a stone and landed in a jumble, still laughing.

We've told that story about a jillion times, and it's still funny. I suppose the moral would be, if your best friend falls off a quasi-log bridge, does that mean you have to? And if you're friends with us, the answer is yes.

Chant Down Babylon

For a further NikEm, please head here.

Report

2008-08-15T18:21:00.000-07:00

So, what did I think of "Breaking Dawn"?

In 3 words, I LOVED it. I really did. I struggled with the first 130 pages or so, but as soon as I accepted that a fiction writer can do anything with a mythical race that she wants, I was all into it. After that I loved it. I don't want to write much more than that, but for those of you who've read it and want to talk about it, you have my email.

Just last night I finished another book, a recommendation from Libby - The Other Boleyn Girl. And WOW. What an incredible story! I have to admit that my only experiences with historical fiction had been "The Work and the Glory" and "Titanic" before now. At least I think so... anyone can argue with me if you know for a fact I've read/seen others. In spite of the monotonous blither of Elder Lund's fiction attempts and the Provo-ish 3-day true love of Jack and Rose (sorry Provo people), I love the history that is told in both works. There's something much more poignant, and often painful, with knowing that people actually did experience those things.

As an innate "Tudors" fan, I enjoyed the fact that while I was reading this very intricate story of the Boleyns and the hundreds of people in King Henry VIII's court, I could put "faces to names" in terms of recognizing characters from the show. One of the things I found most interesting was the common thread of many of the characters classifying themselves as either "somebodys" or "nobodys." People who clambered and squashed their way up the social success ladder to become a somebody, and people who humbly bowed to royalty and contented themselves with being a nobody. I'm certain that none of the servants and hand maidens of the royal court would have guessed that people would still read their names and know of the part they played in history. And I'm certain that those who crushed people out of their way to become a somebody would never guess how they would really go down in history.

While reading this story about ambition and love and sacrifice, I was struck over and over again by what freedom really means. I as an American in this century have the singular experience of real freedom. I can quite literally do anything I want. I can work and rest and travel and date and marry whomever I'd like - or I can NOT do any of those things. I can become as successful as I wish, I can become a face and name that everyone in the world knows. Or I can stay in my quiet little apartment and watch "Buffy." Because of this being my lot in life, I have never struggled with the gospel principle of agency. I have it, and I use it, daily.

Because of this, I cannot even fathom what it must have been like to be someone living in that time of history. Not only was your entire income and property and family based on the mood and approval of the king, but further on in his reign you lived or died by his approval too. While I was reading the commands that Mary Boleyn's family gave her, my head was shouting "Why doesn't she just tell them no??" But could she? Even following everything they told her to do, she had everything she loved taken from her at one point or another. And even the parts that may not have been historically accurate all lent themselves to illustrating that fact - there was no such thing as choice. I can't imagine what those spirits must have felt like who were sent to earth at that time...after fighting a war for the power of choice, most of their choices in life were taken from them.

I recognize that this is not just a plague of history. There are plenty of countries, cities, and homes of today where peoples' choices are also taken from them. Some people truly have to choose between life and death every day. How horrible. I prayed in thanks so many times while I read the book, in thanks for my rights and freedoms and ability to choose my life for myself.

I recommend it for anyone who hasn't read it!

Chant Down Babylon

Tonight

2008-08-01T08:10:00.001-07:00

Ballisticisimus.

Chant Down Babylon

Tomfool

2008-07-28T14:49:00.000-07:00

It's about time I had a lighthearted blog post again, and I can't think of better material than the life around my office. Those of you who've already heard these stories may shut your eyes.

A couple days ago I was standing at the fax machine waiting for something to send, and out of the corner of my eye I see someone walking calmly down the hall towards the restroom corridor. 2 seconds pause, and behind the first figure comes another, in full crouching and snickering mode, who leaps into this huge softball-pitcher swing motion as he chucks a handful of paperclips at the back of the first man. He straightens up and dusts off his hands, and then pats me on the arm as he heads to his desk. And which desk was that? The supervisor's desk. Because it was my supervisor. The one with the degree and the $300,000 a year salary. He said he was aiming for the guy's bald spot.

Well then, this past Thursday, we got an "FYI" type email from the boss of bosses, alerting us that we would be having a group of protesters stomping around our building on Friday. They'd apparently called in to schedule their protest as well as giving a head count of participants. We were to anticipate a storm of about 2000 workers (including their family, friends, friends of friends, and neighbors) from a founding facility that we shut down. The place had been belching toxins into the air and water for years, had jillions of complaints from the nearby neighborhood, and had received about a squillion citations from us. To no avail, they decided dirty was the way to go. And dagblastit their workers were gonna fight for it! All we were hoping here was that their bellowing and maracas wouldn't disrupt the memorial service of a co-worker who suffered an untimely and apparently self-inflicted demise this week. (Ok a little less lighthearted...)

So at about 9am, 6 buses arrived in our parking lot, and out tumbled the promised 2000. Complete with their hungry and near-naked toddlers and signs that said "Poverty Pollutes!" I'm sure this was well planned out for a pathos effect, which was certainly evident on all the AQMD employees' faces that were pressed up against the windows (which are not tinted), eating popcorn and snorting like loons. The police loomed around and kept waving at us. The marchers got bored after a couple hours and took up squat in our lobby, which is brimming with air conditioning and a cafeteria. A couple of them probably applied for jobs.

I snuck out of the window-watchers to go have my morning work out. I can do that at work, much to the grumbling of the rest of everyone, thanks to the gym we have downstairs as well as a handy little room one floor up from me. It's called The Quiet Room, and has a couple of couches, climate control, and is conveniently placed 3 miles from any restroom. The perfect place for a post-lunch nap, 3 hour phone call, or emergency snog. I choose to do my lunatic dance-ish cardio in there because the gym has less floor space and there's the danger of clobbering a bystander unconscious.

After I finished my routine I was collapsed on the couch, fanning off my sweat like a red-faced person on red tablets. I wanted to change out of my workout clothes so I took off my shirt and was rummaging through my bag, when I suddenly heard two approaching voices on the other side of the door, and the handle turned... I can't really describe my reaction in writing, except to say that it involved a lot of spectacular leaping about and some loud gurgling sounds. Now the sensible thing would have been to stay put and just throw on the shirt I had in my hands, but that didn't occur to me while I was hopping around in circles. Luckily whoever was on the other side of the door decided to finish their conversation before coming into the room, so they weren't trapped in the shrieking garment and half-clad basooma fandango.

Also, we got a new toaster oven. I think it's the Jetson's toaster oven. It is gleaming chrome, every inch, and greets you by name. And we just had some man call our complaint line to tell us he's unhappy with his carpet and drapes.

I defy anyone to have better office stories than this.

Chant Down Babylon

Staples

2008-07-24T18:07:00.000-07:00

In complete opposition to the tone of my last post, here is the antidote. The fact is that in spite of the occasional Me Monster dud, everyone's lives are full of priceless gems. Here are some of mine:

Shinehah alumni: I love the fact that when I go onto your blogs and see a picture of you, I yell your camp name.:) How much better fodder can you get for friendship than the bonkers lunacy of camp? I just sat and chatted with the Elders in my ward about my mission, about the winters when we'd ride bikes in our skirts with them flapping about as though we were floral pterodactyl, churning through snow and puddles and dead worms that would get flipped up by the tires and stick to our tights. Know what, that's all small time after you've had ketchup and mustard and hair gel and glitter and exfoliating mask carefully glopped over you during Sis initiation.:)

Blog sire mavens: Sister Wolfe and Sister Knecht, I don't know why you guys don't go on tour. Rachel, most people are funny by being crude and lame, you are one of very few who's funny based on brilliance and spirit. I love how your confidence and your faith in yourself touches everyone around you. Liz, we've got a lot of common background, and your choice to keep reaching for the light is such a good example. You are Greater Than Us All.:) (Ha.)

Burches: I've never met a family who are closer, happier, and more full of love than you guys! I kind of wish I could move into your house one day a week and just absorb. I'm so glad to know you!

Shelbys: I've known you guys since you were 2 families, Shelbys and Hendricksons. Then you crashed into each other and became one family, that now has 5 people! Isn't it amazing how "biology meets eternity" works?:) T, you were my best friend and brother, at exactly the time I needed exactly that. Cole, I remember how we made it our mission to teach everyone the phrase "Doubt not, fear not, pray always!", especially that one frightening year at camp, remember that? I'm so glad that there are 3 mini-you's and that we're all still in touch.

Wash: The eastern hemisphere, the twin amongst the smog and dust and chrome. Who else could I tell everything in the world to and yet not have to say a word? The day is just wrong without a hug. You're a keeper, you get it. Hey do you have a stamp?

Dawna Rae: You were my 24-7 during one of the worst times of the best time of my life.:) I love the fact that our emails get to be 3 and 4 pages long. I love the fact that we email at ALL and still share such like-mindedness! You're proof of distance being insignificant. I think you have one of the sweetest and strongest spirits on this planet.

Carrie: People around my office talk about the fact that they started working there 20-odd years ago. What was I doing 20-odd years ago? Hanging out with you.:) How else would I have joined the Baby-Sitters' Club or become a New Kid on the Block? Even though we didn't fulfill our dream of becoming sisters-in-law, you're still my sister. After years apart we can sit down and discuss a random array of stuff for hours. I can't wait to meet your 4th little angel and watch you be the best mom in the world!

Libs: I'm just so glad that we're here. That we made it back and made it better. The footrace can end. I LLLLLOVE that! You're doing so much good right now, touching hearts that need exactly you and your experiences. You get to bind up other's wounds before you fly away from home. Oh love, lovelovelovelovelove.

Nik: Good grief...I don't know if just typing "blub blub weep weep" is enough. You're my best friend in the world. You're the one that I know I would not live through if I lost. You're the only one I need! You're part of what "being home" means for me. (Ty you're kinda cool too.;) You're also my favorite person ever and an angel!)

Mum: You don't read my blog because the music scares you, but I love you more than anything. I wish I was more like you, more able to be so open and warm and welcoming. Everyone who knows us makes that their first question to me, "How's your mom?" You capture peoples' hearts. You're the most of what "being home" means for me, no matter where we are.:)

Ok really I'm gonna start blubbing which'll just gross me out, so I'm ripping this off of Cristtin's blog:

1.) As a comment on my blog, leave one memory that you and I had together. It doesn't matter if you knew me a little or a lot, anything you remember! You do not have to have met me in person as I have barely met any of you.

2.) Next, re-post these instructions on your blog and see how many people leave a memory about you. It's actually pretty cool (and funny) to see the responses. If you leave a memory about me, I'll assume you're playing the game and I'll come to your blog and leave one about you. :) If you don't want to play on your blog, or if you don't have a blog, I'll leave my memory of you in my comments.

Chant Down Babylon

Venom

2008-07-12T18:24:00.000-07:00

Ok...let me preempt this by saying this is not a post that’s in a charming frustrated tone, one of the raah’s, or even the cosmic droop. This one comes from a place of utter, absolute anger.

All I can say is I’m over it. I am over people’s lameness. I’m over people calling me up to make plans and have me shift around my schedule, only to bail on them 2 hours prior for something else. I am done being a friend people crap out on. I’m over people who call me one of their best friends and yet can’t tell you a single thing that is going on in my life. I am 100% done being someone who people expect to be around for them, but only when they have time and need to moan about something ridiculous. I’m absolutely over people who will cut me off when I need to talk so they can waffle on about their own useless pile of crap. I am done thinking that my company and life is less important, and can be put on the back burner while they trip off into the valley of the stupid and childish. I am done making excuses for peoples’ flakiness, their selfishness, their immaturity, and their overall unbearable patheticness. And I’m fully and thoroughly done with doing all this, giving everything I have, and then turning around when I’m going through my own hell and finding no one there.

Know what, it’s no wonder I’m a bloody recluse. No wonder I prefer my own company. No wonder it’s rare for me to seek people out when I do struggle.

For the people who have done, I absolutely mean you. You are Babylon and I am chanting you down. And don’t be under the misconception that I’ll do my whole friendly-yet-vague smile thing when I see you. This is war path scenario. And let me tell you, that’s not a fun side of mine to be on. Right, past war path survivors?

For the people who are thinking of doing this, don’t.

For the people who’ve never done this, thank you and well done.

Chant Down Babylon

Eska

2008-07-09T18:24:00.001-07:00

So, it's not often that I'm really captivated by a book or a film, at least not given the volume of books and films there are in the world. But on the rare occasion one of them really moves me, I become an uber fan. I may not join all the fan clubs or post messages on fan sites or buy every item that is mass produced about the book/film, but there's still a deep and abiding love that takes hold. I think that's what the makers hope for and I'm glad to oblige them. I've already dithered about my "Twilight" and "Harry Potter" loves, anyone who's met me knows that I live a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, AND, in that galaxy I occasionally visit the land of Middle Earth.

I wasn't actually exposed to "Lord of the Rings" as a kid, my mum isn't a fan of the fantasy genre and since that's the most fantastic of all, it was never in our home. I'd heard of it, heard of hobbits, I'd probably even seen cartoons of The Hobbit. And my high school male friends utterly worshipped "Lord of the Rings." I remember a game of Charades that went lumbering on for a good half hour while my friend Jacob nearly tore the skin off his face and threw it at us, in absolute disgust that we couldn't guess Lord of the Rings. Heck I even went to school with a Lothlorien Galadriel, and she just stared at me when I didn't understand her name. It was just never something I picked up and read for myself.

I heard they were making the movies some time in the year before my mission, and thought "...woo..." I reported to the MTC exactly one week before "Fellowship" premiered, same with Harry Potter, so I missed them both. And ALL the hysteria that ensued. One of my companion's families were LOTR freaks and would send her all sorts of stuff about the movies, but it was all lost on me. Especially since I'd been on my mission for 18 months at that point. But, I did realize that these were big deal movies that I'd probably want to see when I got home, after I read the books.

I didn't read the books. I watched "Fellowship" at someone's house a few weeks after getting home, and a-FOOF, I was hooked. I didn't realize that what I'd watched was the extended cut, which made it even better! I couldn't even tolerate the theatrical versions of the movies knowing there were extended cuts waiting out there. I still bought them all though. On VHS no less, I may as well have been showing slides on a big wrinkly sheet. I rented all of the extended editions with appendices one summer when I had a dvd player, and spent a solid 5 days in Middle Earth. Movies, commentaries and special features, oh my! My ears pointed and my feet started to grow hair by the end. It was AWESOME.

Since then I've bought the set for myself, and once or twice a year I settle in for a weekend of Middle Earth. That weekend was this weekend. It still takes me about 5 days, it would take less if I strapped myself in and watched straight through. But I can't do that lol, I did laundry and dishes and cleaned my floors and my bathroom and ran errands and lots of other things to keep myself form morphing into a human television. I hadn't watched them for a year, not since last 4th of July, and I'd been looking forward to it for a long time. I absolutely love those movies, and not just the story that is being told, but the making of them as well. The YEARS and YEARS that were spent, the HOURS upon HOURS that people gave to create something without knowing whether they'd ever be recognized or even successful. I mean it absolutely blows me away! What a Herculean, massive undertaking for an art form that can be one of the most trite and damaging ever. They have footage starting in 1998, the first gatherings of the people who would work on the movies until 2003, even 2004. You can see people sewing and carving and snipping and sculpting and painting and building things that would never even be seen on screen. They were made just for the sake of appreciating the other world of Middle Earth.

One of the best parts of the dvds is that on the "Return of the King" appendices, they include the footage of the Oscar ceremony. All these people that you've watched for hours on the dvds giving years of their lives, won a clean sweep for the movie. Including best director and best picture. And you feel it with them, it's so awesome, you understand how much every single one of them deserves it completely. I love the experience of watching them, it's very emotional and powerful and uplifting, it's become something that I've connected strongly to my mission experience. This is why I always watch the movies on New Years weekend (which was the weekend I got into the field) and 4th of July weekend (which is the weekend I got home.) It's so beautiful.

And what's it like the next day? Colossal, splintering let down. Ugh, it's like post-camp syndrome or post-Youth Conference syndrome. You feel like a listless and diffident sock. Maybe it's all the crying, which I seem to store up for months until LOTR and then I become the ocean. Maybe it's knowing what it's like to feel that you've left your entire insides in another place, one you gave 200% of your heart and soul to, where you finally felt like your real self even under a quasi assumed identity, which you knew was fleeting and some of the most excruciating time of your life, but miss every single day...like things here are all done in grays and you're used to color. After 5 years and 4 days of being home, I still feel that way about my mission. Maybe I will forever, which is ok. It's just more acute post-Shire.

If y'all ever get a spare 5 days, you should totally watch all the incredible stuff on the special edition dvds, it's so great.

Chant Down Babylon

Halcyon

2008-07-01T12:41:00.001-07:00

This is solid promotion blogging, so those of you whom I've already given fliers to and rung bells at, feel free to not read.

For everyone else, have you ever heard of a book called The Four Agreements? If not, I'm proud to be the one you're hearing about it from. And much love and thanks goes to my introducer, Dark Angel. Josh told me about this book a couple years ago now, and got so tired of me not getting it for myself that he got me a copy. Which I still didn't read lol... However, when I finally did, I can't tell you how much I loved it. This little 130 page book is simple, beautiful truth.

It's written by a man named Don Miguel Ruiz, and it draws on ancient beliefs of a people called the Toltecs. The basis of the book is that all human beings are stuck in their own "dream" of reality, we all see things completely different from each other, and these points of view we have are based on years and years of little "agreements" we have made. For example, I refuse to eat at Chili's. This is because I went there when I was 8 years old and ended up throwing up in the middle of the restaurant. On that day, I made an agreement with myself that Chili's was bad and that I would never eat there again unless I felt like getting sick. That's just one example of the kinds of agreements we all make, and if you sit and think about it, I'm sure you can come up with thousands.

The problem is that most, if not all, of the little agreements we've made are completely false, or based on things that don't give the full information. Things like "Oh, so and so ignored me this morning when I said hello, they must not like me." Or conversely, "Oh, so and so is looking at me again, they must be in love with me." Agreement after agreement is made in our own heads, and ultimately our heads become so clogged with them that we can barely see straight, much less effectively communicate with anyone else.

So, the author proposes Four Agreements that we can make with ourselves that, if turned into habits, can break all of our other little agreements one by one. They are:

1) Be impeccable with your word. This isn't just doing what you'll say you'll do, this includes all the words you say, ever. Make sure that the words you use, the words you don't use, and the words you think, are without sin and negativity. One of the worst sins is damaging your own self, which our words do most of the time. Even if we're talking about someone else, our negative words are hurting us. And if we're talking to someone we love about another person, we're hurting the person listening to us with our own emotional poison. AND, every single thing we're saying is based on our own agreements, our own point of view, and our own baggage. Now this doesn't just apply to how we speak of others, more than anything this is crucial for how we speak to ourselves. I didn't realize how much I mentally threw myself off cliffs and burned myself with lava in my own head until I sat and concentrated on it. Think about all the ways you are probably mentally abusing your own self, every single day... It's horrible. But by making this new agreement, over time you can break those habits and tell yourself the truth - that you are and have always been WONDERFUL.

2) Don't take anything personally. This is in direct relation to the first agreement - when it comes to someone's actions, someone's beliefs, and someone's opinions, don't take them personally. Whether they're telling you someone else is horrific, or someone else is wonderful, whether they're saying you are those things, don't take it personally. You don't have to make an agreement based on what anyone else is saying. And even if you have had your own firsthand negative experience with someone, don't take that personally. Their actions are part of THEIR agreements, their opinions and baggage, built up and crusted over with time. How can you possibly take anything another person says or does personally, for the bad or the good, when you think of all the little agreements that person must be functioning with every day? And everyone is functioning with every day?

3) Don't make assumptions. I'm a person who'd rather have someone scream "You are horrible!!" to my face than to wonder if they're really just thinking that and not saying it... but my wondering is 100% assumption. I'm assuming that based on someone's actions or words, they function like me and their true meaning is hatred. I'm assuming that they meant this or that, or are thinking this or that, when really this or that never even crossed their mind. This is one giant slippery slope too, let's say I assume that someone didn't call me to say they couldn't make our plans because they were distracted by someone else. That's an assumption..and from that assumption I might then assume that what they were distracted by was lame or was proof of them being a less-than-great friend. Which means I'll probably go to someone else to complain about them, being toxic with my word and spreading my own negative agreements to someone else. But yet all based on assumptions. Assumption after assumption, offense after offense, until I'm throwing rocks. Rather than just finding out the truth. And, even if my assumptions ended up being right, why should I take that personally?

4) Always do your best. That's something we've either heard or said our whole lives! But it's true. If you do your best, the best you are capable of at any given moment with your knowledge and energy levels, then you can't be hard on yourself or point out all of your own deficiencies. Doing your best is one of the most variable concepts ever, as several of my companions and I talked about. They'd be transferred into an area having been used to teaching more discussions and getting less invites, only in our area we were inviting a lot more and not teaching as much. And they'd feel like a failure. Rather than seeing that "our best" was going to be different not only according to area, but according to every single day. We all know that if we haven't gotten a ton of sleep on a given night, we won't do as well on a test the next day. But, if you're still doing your best on that test, that's the most we can do. Why sit and beat ourselves to a pulp over not getting enough sleep? If you did your best to try to sleep, then that's the most you or anyone can do. Doing your best varies all the time, my best cartwheel now is vastly inferior to my best cartwheel when I was taking 3 gymnastics classes a week as a kid. But my vocabulary is vastly superior now to when I was in 3rd grade. We all have different levels of "best," and being honest with yourself about what your best is right now will remove all of your toxic agreements about what should be "better" and what "wasn't enough."

That was a much longer synopsis than I'd planned, you're probably all saying "Why buy the book now?" Well trust me, my feeble little finger babble doesn't do these ideals justice. The book goes for about $10 at Barnes and Noble, and is totally worth it. Actually, the truth is that myself and most of the people who've read it struggled with the beginning... the author has his own set of beliefs and experiences that don't necessarily mesh with mine. So know what, you get to practice the agreements right off the bat! If you apply them to what he himself is saying, choosing to agree or not to agree with his points of view, you'll take away a lot more from the book. I'm about to finish the book for the first time after having owned it for 2 years, because I keep loaning it out to people! I love it, I feel healed when I read it. Yay for people being inspired to write truth. Everyone should get it!

Chant Down Babylon

Toggery

2008-06-24T18:50:00.000-07:00

Good grief. Sometimes I think the people at my office go about their day believing that John Hughes is holding auditions behind them. I just had the unpleasant experience of hearing someone go into my supervisor's cube and begin a murmured conversation featuring the word "Emily." And it was repeated several times with more increasing volume. Isn't it amazing that you can be singing along with a pod song one second and scooping your stomach off the floor the next?

This Emily delegation marched around the corner with their Emily banner, that in diplomatic and over-emphatic tone read "WHAT HAVE YOU DONE??!!??" The secretary of our supervisor's supervisor's supervisor began explaining that there'd been some email sent from me to her boss, Mr. Tops, that he was unsure about it, that he was questioning whether that was current policy and why he hadn't been updated on the change. My supervisor explained that it was not policy, that he hadn't thought to update anyone about it, that he didn't know what the email was and it couldn't have come from Emily because she is typically kept in the rear quadrant kennel. The secretary replied that she didn't know how Emily's name came up, perhaps he had just zeroed in on me as an example of what not to do and why not to unlock the kennel door, but that he needed to only receive emails concerning the lottery and his yacht from now on. My supervisor replied that all news about astronautic events are beamed to Emily as the official representative of the Starship Empressprise and therefore can be forwarded by her and none else. Ya ok none of that last stuff happened, but the ping-pong conversation went on for 5 minutes in front of my cubicle with them occasionally gesturing to my name plate. It's like I wasn't even there. And each of their auditions were done in the same forced smile, carefully chosen professional terminology voice. How boring.

Luckily when I started listening again, it turns out I hadn't done anything wrong. There was a day a couple of weeks ago where my supervisor was heading out for the day and had already turned off his computer. He asked me to look up a particular notification, had me assign it to one person and email it to another, which happened to be Mr. Tops. The email clearly said that he was instructing me to send it, but I guess my blessed name blinded Tops to all else. He liked it so much that he wanted those types of emails from me from now on. Or something... the secretary kept loudly joking that I should know better than to leave any fingerprint traces like that around here. ?? Everyone's an actor.

Speaking of acting, our printer seems to have chosen the role of demon machine. What was that one possessed car or something that Stephen King wrote about? Ya I should write my own version about the printer. For several weeks now, we've had to reconfigure the settings, reinstall the settings, readjust the settings, remember the settings, rebel against the settings, and then delete it all and start over again. It has been the most bizarre battle. At first the printer icon and name itself disappeared from all of our computer printer lists. There's about a squillion printers spread out over our building, and ours just vanished. So the tech guys downstairs had to reinstall it onto our printer lists. Along with this reinstall, all of our personal preferences disappeared as well. So me for example, I have to print labels just about every day. Not a full sheet or that'd be a little easier, but one or two labels at a time. For months, the dance I've done is to put my label sheet into the manual feed tray, run back to my desk and hit "Print," and race back to the printer to either hit the "OK to Go" button, or else grab the label sheet out of the tray before it gets sucked into someone else's printing task. Actually the "OK to Go" button was a later discovery, for ages I had to stand there poking and prodding the label sheet against the feed button in order to wake the printer up so it would take the sheet.

So, all of a sudden, my printing preferences show Automatic Feed. And it will not accept any changes. After printing up 10 sheets of regular paper with 2 little labels worth of information on them, and then emitting a loud roar, I finally put the label sheet into the auto feed drawer. I ran back to my desk, hit print, and heard...nothing... Ran back to the printer and saw the blinking light that means "You idiot, you don't have any sheet in the manual tray for your task." Rah... as I stood there glaring at the blinking light, someone else hit Print at their desk and out spat my label sheet, with another person's nonsense on it. We grumbled and growled at each other as we surveyed the damage, I went back for a fresh label sheet, and again put it face down in the auto drawer. And AGAIN the blinking "idiot" light just winked at me. So I hit the "OK to Go" button, and out spat my label sheet, with my actual labels on them! Yaaay! I figured I had the system figured out now.

3 guesses.

Apparently the printer was so huffy at my invasive labels in its underbelly, it decided it was fed up with Microsoft Word formatting and began only printing DOS. No lines, no fonts, no charts, it may as well have been in 1's and 0's code and had a Mr. Roboto voice. There's a chart I have to print up every other week for our inspectors, and rather than having columns for City, Street and Activity Type, the chart said Asaldfjasfblarf. In the Roboto voice. No matter what I did, I couldn't make my Lucida Sans Unicode appear on the page. The tech guys were tired of hearing from us at this point, but by their 5th or 6th trip, they fixed the DOS.

And so the pissed printer stopped printing in Landscape format. My chart didn't say Asaldfjasfblarf anymore, all of the proper words were on it...but all printed one on top of the other in a single, vertical line. It said Blotch. This was all very nearly funny at this point, except for how funny it wasn't.

For weeks, no one was able to print in Landscape format. Most of the documents we need to print are in Landscape, and none of them could get printed. We had to email documents to friends on other floors and ask them to print them, or we had to just do without. The tech guys entered denial stage and refused to accept that anything was really wrong with the printer, they were convinced that every one of the 40 of us who use this one printer had reset our preferences to Blarf and Blotch. I guess persistence and logic won out though, because up they came every single day to tinker, tamper, and kick the $3000 top-of-the-line machine.

Abuse is never good... something was evidently shaken loose in the printer, because although Landscape reappeared (and everything printed Landscape for a week and a half), the words that were printed were missing all the vowels. ?? What?? S r sly ll f th sh ts f p p r l k d l k th s. Like they'd all evaporated. Isn't there some movie or book where an entire segment of some kind of noun just disappears? Happened. At this point I laughed like a loon's donkey.

That was a fun phone call to overhear. "Hi tech support it's the Toxics unit, our printer won't print vowels. .... ....... Vowels. ...... ya, like the letters that are called vowels. .... No, nono, like A E I O U and sometimes Y. Those. ...... ya ok I'm glad you know what vowels are but the point is that our printer won't print them. .... no not even the Y.... no, nono, I'm saying that this particular selection of letters are not printing on any of our documents. ........ no not even in landscape..... no we didn't change our preferences...can you even set a printer preference not to print vowels? ..... we just want it to print vowels, man, can you make this happen for us?........ thank you. We'll see you in a few minutes. ...... no I'm not kidding."

I don't know how they fixed it, but they did. I printed labels from the manual feed tray in landscape format with vowels. That should be the title of John Hughes' next movie.

Chant Down Babylon

PS) Hey thanks to everyone for the props on my playlist. It is rather fabulous.

Enclave

2008-06-17T18:59:00.000-07:00

(Long blog, take a deep breath)

I heard a fun phrase the other day - "The UFO Community." Just let your brain produce images on that for a couple of seconds. The phrase was said by a clangorous, polemical, comb-over passé activist type in a plaid shirt as he was declaring that the rest of the world needs to "wake up and take an interest in the issues of the UFO community." I didn't know there was a community, much less that they had issues or that I needed to wake up to them. I suppose it was ignorance on my part not to realize that one of the most popular entertainment genres in the world would have its own community... What do you think their community center looks like? What kinds of neighborhood classes and activities might they have there? Do you think that's a community that our political leaders worry about getting on the bad side of? Do you think they worry about alienating them? (Haha, hahahahahahahahaaaaaa) How do you become part of that community? Do you send away for a pin or a decoder ring or something?

For that matter, how do you become a part of any community? Because there's a LOT out there, if you think about it. All "community" means is a group of people who share something in common, more or less, one that sees itself as distinct and a group within the group. Just looking at myself in the mirror, I could belong to dozens of communities that I'm not taking advantage of!! Glasses community, dimples community, ugly clothes and needs a hair appointment community for sure. There are even communities within communities. I am part of the Christian community. Within that, I'm part of the LDS community. Within that I'm part of the RM community, and the Single RM community at that. Outside of church, I'm part of the "Twilight" community and the classic rock community and the Star Wars community...which is actually right next door to the UFO Community so my chagrin has doubled.

I watched the Tonys with my mum this weekend. Hollywood is part of a community for sure, you might even call that community another planet. (Which is also next to the UFO's, rah. Maybe they have invisibility beams or something.) Well know what, on Planet Actor, there's a whole community in and of itself - stage performers. Wow. That is one intense community. I think that comparatively, in the whole of the UFO community, stage actors would be like the Haley Bop quadrant. It takes a special kind of soul to be able to act on stage, let alone do it professionally, and for ages. Did anyone else watch the Tonys?

So, apart from my glasses and ugly clothes, there's another couple of communities that it became clear to me that I belong to. One is the Anti-Victoria Gardens community. A controversial and minority group, by all accounts... pretty much every one I know loves Victoria Gardens. "Ohmugawsh let's go up to Victoria Gardennnnnsssssssss yaaaay!" Blah. Well I despise it. I've owned my hatred of going to the beach, so I'm owning this too. Actually they're both branches off of my main community, which is the Anti-Community. Loathing of being anywhere public with humans, that's the newsletter I get. I've been to the Gardens 3 times, once to have dinner with Ray and Cyn and Jam, once for my cousin's wedding luncheon, and once this weekend.

The first time it wasn't so horrific except for the parking. The second time involved Egg and I driving around for 45 minutes trying to find the hole in the wall we were eating at, parking in a different city, and then me trying to negotiate those rounded cobblestones in heels. I looked like a drunken noodle. Unfortunately I was still a noodle with bones, which I don't think have ever recovered from how much I twisted them. Finally when I gave up on the shoes and went barefoot, I stopped going "Ooofwoofwhoopseepargh" and started going "OWOWOWOWOWOWOWOWWW." Patient Egg stayed at my side in spite of his gut instinct to run. The 3rd time involved less skeletal destruction, just me wearing fleepflaps and sweat, and lugging a huge box full of stuff I needed to return.

I snorted and sneered at the place as I walked, being faithful to my community. And I know that I'm the minority on this because at 2pm on Saturday afternoon in volcanic heat, Victoria Gardens was PACKED. Why...in...the...WORLD... Maybe I could understand if it was Montclair Plaza the Mills or some other enclosed structure where people were trying to escape the outer oven. But to purposely choose being outside in the heat of both the sun and thousands of other bodies? There's only a few reasons I can think of, ever, why someone would do this. 1) To be seen. This is right out, and I avoid it at all costs. But that seemed to be the raison du jour, because in the course of the huge circle/square the I walked, I watched over a dozen people strolling along who didn't stop at at single store. Maybe they were going for option 2) To get exercise. Know what, there are gyms. Gyms with air conditioning. And even without gyms, there are other MALLS, aforementioned! #2 is booted. 3) Running errands. This was my community that day, and if anyone else was actually in it I extend my sympathies. Living in Chino Hills, the amount of time that I spend anywhere near the Gardens is zero. I had to work the visit into a very tight schedule of that day, or I wouldn't have been there at all. But, let's say there were erranders who live nearby, and who had a lot of time. Know what, if nothing else, those stores were all there earlier in the morning before the volcano eruption, or would also be there later at night once the lava had cooled a bit.

So, I don't get it. Can anyone illuminate the rationale behind it?

There's a final community I'm not in, or I'm in the anti one, apparently. We'll call it the Cupcake Community. There's a coworker of mine who brought in cupcakes a couple of weeks ago in honor of the Laker game that night. It was cute and everyone gushed over them. So the cupcakes came in the next week too. And then then again a couple of days later. Now they're pretty much a daily thing. Now let me be clear that I'm not against cupcakes, like at ALL... I'm saying a big yay to bringing them in every day! It's just that, I'm not part of the community that would do the making and bringing. Like at ALL. The thought of going to the store to get the ingredients, going home, getting everything together, baking them, and then decorating them, EVERY NIGHT... it just makes me laugh really, like trying to sneeze out a leprechaun. The trouble is I feel I've fallen out of favor in my workplace of late, little by little, because I'm not the girl who brings the cupcakes. I don't tell all my embarrassing and silly anecdotes to everyone who comes to my cubicle, I don't decorate every inch of that cubicle in homemade crafts, heck I don't even plan lunches with people. These things aren't even to enhance my loner mystique, they're just not my personality. Not my community!

I need some opinions here, should I be doing more to feather myself into other communities? Should I be bringing in strudel and pots of stew every day? Are any of you in my community?

Chant Down Babylon

Grieve

2008-06-10T07:41:00.000-07:00

I wrote this on Sunday

Did you know your life
would end that day? That you would
leave us, and go home?

Did you know that they
would look for you, and only
find an empty home?

Did you know there would
be so many arms, waiting
to welcome you back?

Did you know that we
would fracture, and sob a while,
a little, always?

Did you know people
love you? That your loss would crush
dozens and dozens?

Did you know heaven
is much closer than the moon?
It was here, in you.

"There's a point in every friendship where women stop being friends and become sisters."

Love you all my sisters

Chat Down Babylon

Forthwith

2008-06-05T09:12:00.000-07:00

Niki and I were talking yesterday about how old we are. I've been taking a nostalgic and nauseating stroll back through the early seasons of "Beverly Hills, 90210" this week. It's hilarious and tragic. It's also weird to think about how long it felt like I lived before that show came out, and how short my life has felt since then. Luckily that's not the only marker that feels that way in my personal history, I think the "pre" era of anything feels longer. The part of my life that I lived in the San Francisco area feels like FOREVER, and yet I've lived in Southern California for 20 years. The 2 halves of 2nd grade I spent, one in one school and one in another, feel altogether longer than the whole of high school. Actually Nik pointed out yesterday that Ty and her friends weren't even alive when "90210" came out. ... Gross...

I've always displayed the arrogance of my own age. Rolling my eyes at my elders who think they know more than me, and snorting at my juniors who obviously know less than me. But when I think back to me at 17, to all I'd experienced and learned and been able to do, I could have taught me a lot. And when I think back to the people who were my age when I was that age, I wish I'd let them teach me more. These people who would think to themselves "Ems wasn't even alive when disco started... Gross..."

On this day 40 years ago, Robert Kennedy was shot in the Ambassador Hotel. I can't imagine living in a time where open assassination of leaders was a regular event. I don't know if John and Robert's mom was alive during the 60's, but I cannot fathom what it must have been like for her. To lose a child is one thing, but to lose two of your sons in open, public execution style...what an alternate and horrific paradigm. I wasn't even a glimmer of an option when these things happened, but I studied the era and the whole of the Watershed year in History class and it affected me deeply. That was a time when the entire country swerved directions and became something else. Within the next 10 years, my cousins' children will be sitting in their history classes studying September 11, 2001, which none of them were alive for. I kind of hope they'll recognize the same thing, that an entire nation can morph overnight and be unrecognizable in the fall-out of the next morning.

If any of you haven't seen Bobby, I highly recommend it.

Know what, thank goodness for history. Thank goodness for people who write it down and remember it! As reflective and saddening as much of it is, I love the fact that we can put ourselves into the place of people who were on earth before us, and learn what it was like for them. My prayers this morning were in gratitude for the record of the Book Of Mormon, I've once again reached 3 Nephi 11. Isn't it amazing that we have this account, that we can read it whenever we want?

Chant Down Babylon

Flap

2008-06-04T08:34:00.000-07:00

Why is it that when I'm wearing my glasses, and then I take them off in front of someone and they see my eye color, they ask me if I wear contacts?

What is sneeze ettiquette in the restroom? Like, IN the restroom, stalls and all? Is offering a "Bless You" appropriate? Or is it preferred to pretend you're deaf to all bodily functions once you're in that fortress of solitude? How are the ettiquette rules affected when the person sneezes 7 times in succession? How about if they break the silence by bursting out laughing? Or gobbling into a high-pitched tyrade with themselves in an unknown language?

Where do prejudices come from, especially when they're against innanimate objects? I can understand a dislike, a preference against, even a fear of, but a condescending sniff-type experience? For the last several weeks this experience has been directed at my...feet. They've been decorated by various flip-flops that I got to welcome the summer weather, and have been just in time for the drizzle and cold instead. And a co-worker of mine thinks the flip-flops are some kind of juicy gossip. She wanders over to our cube section to look at my feet and then shriek "Flip-flops hahahahaaaaa!" She says to people I've never met "See I told you she was wearing flip-flops hahahahaaaaa!" when I pass by them in the hall. It has become part of the crusade of her day, the flip-flop brigade. (Let me point out here that she is the personal-tyrade-potty-monologue-in-tongues person of the above paragraph.) Actually in her accent I'm wearing "fleep-flaps." It'd be cute if it weren't annoying. I have no clue how this affects the goings on of her mind or air space, what her aversion is to fleep-flaps, or how to tell her that my fleeps are in better shape and a classier shoe option than her 40-year old brown tattered leather clogs.

How is it possible to lose something that you're holding in your hand? Yesterday when my lunch time finally rolled around, I looked around my wreck of a cube for my book...and couldn't find it. I panicked, too, I don't do well when I don't have a book with me at all times. I pawed through my bag, looked through my other bag, debated going down to the car to see if I'd forgotten to bring it upstairs with me...finally cast my mind back to the morning to remember that I'd left it on my bed. RATS. Thank goodness for the Free Books website or I'd have had to spend my lunchtime in thoughtful introspection. At the end of the day, I gathered up my things and the first that I reached for was...my book. Which had been sitting on my desk, all day. Under an errant pile of papers or my ridiculously huge calculator, you ask? Nay, on top of all of those things. 3 centimeters to the right of where I was frantically throwing things around looking for it. I think I even picked it up and looked underneath it when I was looking for it.

Apropos that the book is "Lord of the Rings," for I was Bilbo's frantic search in that 10 minutes.

I'm not just being charming and adorable, I need speculation on some of this stuff, lend me yours please!

Chant Down Babylon

Elucidation

2008-05-29T09:31:00.001-07:00

So ok, the Twilight devotion posts continue. I'm inserting the possible spoiler warning here, so those of you who haven't read them, or haven't read all of them, tread with caution.

I've been thinking about the weird and rare circumstance of performance versus character. Hopefully, those 2 things always compliment each other and help whatever story is being told. But that's not always the case. Several examples of this are coming to mind for me, one of them is Rupert Everett's performance of Oberon in "A Midsummer Night's Dream." That was the first Shakespeare I ever saw or read when I was 10, I love that play and I think the movie is just awesome. But I don't like his Oberon. Oberon is pompous, arrogant, drunk with delusions of grandeur, and completely pig-headed. And on that character it works. But Rupert played him brooding, pouty, soft-spoken and glittery emo. Hence the problem - I love the character, but didn't like the performance.

I think a flipped example of this is the Sheriff of Nottingham in the Costner "Robin Hood." What a horrible, wretched, brutal, disgusting man that character is! And yet we all loved him to death lol. He's still my favorite part of that movie. Alan Rickman took a 2-dimensional bad guy role and turned him into the star of the show. I'm always sad when he dies at the end, in spite of everything. Alan is a genius!! So, in that example, hate the character, love the performance.

The best example of this for me is none other than hero of heroes, Luke Skywalker. He's my favorite fiction of all time, ever. He's a lot of peoples' actually. And we've managed to love him and see the courage, loyalty, honesty and sweetness of him for all these years, in spite of Mark Hamill. I'm watching "Return of the Jedi" at home right now and even though that's the most pivotal movie for Luke's character and the one we cheer him on the most in, I end up shaking things loose in my skull for how many times my eyes roll. Freakin Hamill. And yet Luke hands down rocks!

A bunch of other examples of this are floating through my brain - Biff Tannen, Captain Hook, Spike, Legolas, Voldemort (rah...), but let me pull myself back to the Twilight at hand. Ever since I first read the books, I've been amazed that I could love a series so much in which I seriously can't stand, not just 1, but 2 of the lead characters. (Yep, 2. I'm sorry Hannah.) They drive me bonkers. I promise this isn't a result of peer pressure either lol, I've felt that way since I first read the books. I find Jacob to be immature, manipulative, and selfish. And Bella is, well, Bella. In my head, she has all the wrong emotional reactions at all the wrong times. My problem is that I just don't get her. I've never felt the way she feels about a person, or anything at all. Maybe my mission...but that's obviously a different thing. I don't understand her vulnerability, her weakness, and yet her contrary and stubborn refusal to accept people trying to help her. I think she makes some really dumb decisions. I still haven't figured out what it is that makes the other people love her so much.

But, they do. At all costs, they just fully and completely love her. It's so incredible. And in spite of wanting to shake her until her teeth fall out, I still root for her. I still pick up on her pain, her self doubt, and her total lack of understanding of how people see her. And the more I've read the books, the more I get her. I love the fact that through her eyes, we get glimpses of how people see her through their own eyes. Even though at her most basic functions she is fully opposite of me, I want things to work out for her and I feel for her as the "every girl." And the thing that I love the most about her is the most real, most powerful, and most perfect quality she has - her love of her true love. In book 2 the characters have conversations about "Wuthering Heights," and Bella says the reason she likes the book is that the main characters have only 1 redeeming quality, which is their love for each other. I think that summarizes her perfectly.

So let's keep discussing, because at the end of the 3rd book I felt exactly the way a few of you have expressed. I plowed through the books without stopping for breath even though I was shrieking at the characters most of the time. I loved them but they weren't my favorite ever. What about them is so compelling?? Why are they STILL so compelling? What was it for you guys?

Tangent - I love "LOTR." The movies, anyway. They're amazing... I shut all my doors and turn off my phone when I watch them. They strike such an emotional chord with me, it's very special. BUT, they're not Star Wars.:) So out of loyalty, I have to include that while I love Twilight completely and want to meet Edward, my favorite books ever, the first ones on my shelf, are still Potters. At least 1-5 and a grudging 6.

Chant Down Babylon

Twilight

2008-05-26T20:26:00.000-07:00

It's a mystery what this post is about, I'm sure. Any of you who know me know of my devotion to this series of books, that start with "Twilight." This might be one of many posts about these books, but I'm gonna begin at the beginning. To echo my last blog post format:

It all started with a catalog...

I am on the Deseret Book mailing list, I can't remember how that happened, but I get the book catalog in the mail from time to time. I rarely buy things from catalogs, but I love to go through them. They were the precursor to the internet, the first shop-at-home experience. I got one of their catalogs some time ago and flipped through it. Besides the novels published by or about our General Authorities, most of the books advertised in the LDS catalog are about marriage, families, food storage, and how to keep your chin up in spite of the curse of being single. They're usually bound in light blues, yellows, beiges, gingham or lace patterns, maybe an occasional one with a girl wistfully resting her chin in her hand. (That'd be the single books.) So my eye was immediately caught by the cover which is featured above.

I was watching "What Not To Wear" the other day at mum's, and the girl of the week said "You know, they always say 'You should never judge a book by its cover,' but it doesn't hurt to have a really good looking cover." I thought to myself when I saw the Twilight cover, wow...that's a beautiful and provocative cover. I wanted to know what the book was about just by looking at it. I think I probably would have even if it wasn't next to a bunch of beige and gingham. I read the description of the book, and my eyes popped open when I saw the word "vampire." ?? What? How did vampires end up next to food storage? I kind of felt a new respect for the LDS catalog! I had no idea at this point that the author was LDS.

So I made a mental to note to keep an eye out for the book, see if it was in the library or something. What happens with most catalogs I get is that they get buried in the wreck of my desk and I find them 8 months later, remember whatever the thing was, and find out it's out of stock. With this however, by the next day I was checking the library to see if they had the book. They did, and I would have been the 17th person on the waiting list for one of the 4 copies! Holy huff! So I looked online for it at a reasonable price, and didn't find one I was willing to pay for a book I hadn't read. I figured I'd settle for being 17th in line at the library.

Well, 2 weeks later, I was still thinking about the book all the time! The combination of vampires lurking next to apostles and the striking cover just had me totally intrigued, even if it turned out the book was trite nonsense. I stopped by Niki's house one night for something, and there laying on their desk was TWILIGHT. I think I spluttered for several seconds before I shouted something about "book" and "catalog" and "want." I remember Nik saying that she would have lent it to me if it didn't belong to Ty, and if it wasn't her favorite book in the world. She said Ty had read it once a week since she got it. So after this, I decided I had to have it. I found it on Half or eBay or something for about $7, and got it within a week. I spent a good long time just staring at the cover, and then started it the next day at work.

I'm pretty sure that was a Friday, because I remember there was a party going on that night at the Burches. I very nearly missed the party, because I couldn't put the book down. As soon as I got home, I picked the book back up and read until I finished at about 4am. Hooked.

I looked up the author's website the next day, and learned that not only was there a sequel, but there was to be a total of 4 books in the series! Woooo! And it turned out that I was #80 billion on the waiting list for the sequel book, "New Moon." Rats. There's no way I could wait that long, so I bought a copy almost new online for more than I've ever paid for a non-textbook. Finished that one in 12 hours and was sobbing by the end. I thought I'd have to wait for months for the 3rd book, just like I'd waited ages for Harry Potter, but found out from the website that book 3 ("Eclipse") was coming out in just 3 weeks! WOOOOO! I preordered it, got it 2 days after the release, and didn't put it down until I was done. I've been a happy Edward girl ever since.:)

I'd only ever had this happen with Potter. I read those first 5 books within a week and a half the first time, which was nearly 4 years ago now. Since then I've read the Potter series about 6 times. And that's about the same number of times I've reread "Twilight" in the last year since I got the first one. In contrast to the event that Potter becomes when I reread them, Twilight has become more like the event of washing my face or brushing my teeth. I can't go that long without it. I would finish the last and start over again at the first every single time if I could lol.

If you've already heard that story you have my full permission not to read any of what you just read. Haha.:) And you're probably diagnosing my love of the books as obsession meets addiction. Possible... But if you google search the amount of fan sites, fan art, and fan fic there is about Twilight, you'll see that I'm nowhere near as bad as it gets.

So, for those who haven't read the books, I sort of recommend it. And I can recommend it a lot louder if you like. This is a good time to start reading them, because the 4th (and final, until the tangent miracle of "Midnight Sun" is published) book of the series is being released on August 2nd. As opposed to Potter, I don't have a clue how this series will turn out.

This won't be my last Twilight blog, since obviously I haven't even touched on the story itself or discussed the upcoming movie. I'm hoping my fellow Twilight friends will lend their stories of discovery of the series as comments though. It's going around!

Chant Down Babylon

Spiral

2008-05-23T09:55:00.000-07:00

It all started with a groove...

After one of my rare tearful nights, I plopped my way down the hall to the loo. I passed 600 feet of mirror on the way but I've trained myself not to gawk and flirt at my reflection, so I kept my eyes on my toes. Once I'd finished brushing my teeth, I finally glanced up at myself and jumped a foot in the air, yelping "BLAAAAAAHHHH! LLAMA FAAAAACE!!!" I think there was even a traceable llama smell. I wanted to stomp around in circles and conjure fire, but the hooves wouldn't allow it.

I'm not a crier. My eyes may well up when I'm moved by a scripture or I'm watching a movie, but for me to actually physically do the weeping and sobbing and little gulps is a bi- to tri-annual event at most. So much so that my body seems to have become allergic to it. During the crying I produce enough stomach acid to dissolve metal, immediately post-crying I have a headache that could shatter a small moon, and the next morning I look like each part of my face has been stung by a bee. Altogether it's violent shades of grotesque. You might suggest that I try to cry more often in order to have it be less of a shock to my system, but no thanks. There's not a lot that affects me that way and I like it.

But it had happened, and I was a llama face. While reflecting on my reflection in the 600 feet of my birthday gift to me, I realized it had been a long time since I'd watched THE llama face in "Emperor's New Groove." I needed the groove. And I don't even own it. Flexing my muscles and stimulus check in the mirror, I decided that was about to change. I pried my cried eyes open and surfed through my two favorite sites, Amazon and Half.com. Both of them had the dvd, for roughly $30,000. What?? (Ok it was $10.) Preposterous. I refuse to pay more than $7 for any movie that isn't Star Wars or Jonathan. So, I put on my life vest to wade into the avalanche of eBay... I've talked about eBay before. In and of itself, it's nice. Like a sleeping dragon from 500 miles away. Some corners of it are disquieting, even nauseating... but the danger comes in the moments where I hear myself say "...omg... I have to have it..." Please see my keychain as evidence.

So anyway, I searched out "Emperor's New Groove" and found about 30 copies for auction, ranging in price from 1 cent to $15. Maybe David Spade came with the $15. The problem with the 1 cent ones was that the seller tacked on $5.99 for shipping. Psh. I finally found one that was cheap at auction and reasonable for shipping, so I placed a bid. If any of you are familiar with eBay you'll know that after you place your bid and are told that you're either the highest bidder or you need to try harder, there's a little section of the page below that which is labeled "View seller's other items". A little free advertising.

Within about 5 minutes I was gurgling. This seller's other items were all dvd's, including Dumbo, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast, Little Mermaid, Mulan, Pete's Dragon, Sword in the Stone, Fantasia, Alice in Wonderland, Bedknobs and Broomsticks, The Parent Trap, Pinocchio, Snow White, 101 Dalmatians, Peter Pan, Lion King, Newsies (!!), Monsters Inc, a couple Muppet fares, and on and on. It was like falling head first into a Disney chocolate cake.

When I came to, I was the high bidder on everything...

I was suddenly a llama face galloping down a slippery slope. The green tag on my "Winning Bids" listed the total price at $78. Not counting shipping, AND only factoring in the bids staying where they were. I sent a sheepish and panicked email to the seller, asking if she combined shipping costs because I was the high bidder on, well, all of her items. She kind of did, or at least she knocked a dollar off the multiple items. Wooo. My stimulus check wasn't flexing anymore.

Well. 279 of the 300 auctions have now ended. And so far I've won...3. ?? What?? Apparently people are willing to pay the $15 plus $5.99 shipping if it means they don't have to go to WalMart. One by one I got the blaring emails of "YOU'VE BEEN OUTBID!!" and then the mournful "So sorry, you lost." I wasn't crushed by this, in fact I felt relieved when the "Winning Bids" total dwindled down more and more. The final auctions are ending today, we'll see where the wheel of fortune stops.

Here's the best part, not one of the movies I've won is "Emperor's New Groove."

Chant Down Babylon

Walls

2008-05-17T12:04:00.000-07:00

..Ok... lol....

blog

Chant Down Babylon

Exigence

2008-05-15T08:58:00.000-07:00

So, the fact that I don't cheer when the forecast says it'll be 100 degrees today... does that mean I don't belong here? That I don't relish the thought of blistering heat stroke, is that an indication that I am not designed to reside in Southern California? The fact that I don't believe suspiring should be accompanied by perspiring? Am I a penguin?

My co-worker yesterday was doing a nyah-nyah sing-song at me, saying "I get to be out in the sun tomorrow, I get to be out in the sun tomorrow!" I repeated the 105-degree forecast I'd heard for today and asked him where my cue to be jealous was. I said "I get to walk on lava, I get to walk on lava!" The wind left his sails a little after he stopped laughing.

I'm my own dichotomy when it comes to weather. I love rain and fog and chilly weather that promotes hoodies and coats. And yet I get utterly and thoroughly depressed during the winter. The direct rays of sunlight hitting the earth during the spring and summer months are essential to my cheerfulness and Happy Place outlook. It's kind of like this kid I grew up with, who hated tomatoes but loved ketchup. Or even like myself, who loves being in the water but hates going to to the beach. Yep there I said it, I'm finally owning that truth. I hate going to the beach. It's not that I hate the beach per say, but I hate battling the sand and the people and feeling dirty and gross the rest of the day. Maybe it's just because I haven't been there in so long...the last time I was at the beach was with Niki and the guy she was dating, Jon. Nik I think we should go to the beach.

So...I guess I'm like a kid me, who'd like to live on brownies and cream puffs rather than eating my vegetables. Or even like an adult me, who'd like nothing more than to sleep in every day, to work in the temple, to take dance classes and write stories..but who has to get up and go to a job in order to be able to afford to survive. The Jeopardy category would probably be "Needs Vs Wants." I want to bluster along chilly Boston-type streets in cute jackets and scarves and boots and drink hot chocolate with Matt Damon, but I need vitamin D and serotonin. It'd be nice if D stood for Damon.

My bff is one of the best examples I know of someone who is able to suppress wants for needs. I have internal dialogues at 5pm that go like "What I need to do is swing by the grocery store after work because I'm out of salad stuff and chicken, and then I've gotta swing by the post office to get the new stamps (and R A H about that btw), and while I'm out I may stop by the soup kitchen and volunteer a couple nights a week while I give cash to the homeless I pass on the way... but what I want to do is go get a pizza and curl up in my jimjams to read the rest of the night..." This is followed by me being on the phone with Papa John's 5 minutes later... Nik's dialogues, however, are centered around what her family is in need of for the night and ways that she can help them all achieve exaltation. Since I am part of the YSA peer group that's comprised of some of the most selfish kind of people on earth, it always stuns me to see this woman give all of herself for the betterment of others.

How many people struggle as much as I do with want versus need? How many people are lucky enough to be able to occasionally give in to their own fluff wants? How many people have crossed the threshold to where their needs have turned into everything they want? How many people know the difference? Discuss this with me, friends.

Chant Down Babylon

Heave

2008-05-07T13:43:00.000-07:00

Ok... I'm gonna try a little experiment here. I'll call it Transcribing. See, while I regale my readers with my own exploits, I'm chock full of dozens of other stories that have never been put to print. I just retold one of them the other night at dinner in fact, and they're always received well. This is probably because I retell them with the other Co-star of them, playing the role of comedy relief, voice of reason, unsuspecting victim, or eyewitness. For 18 years she's been the Co-star, and that's a lot of time to accrue fables and legends. But for the most part, they've only ever stayed between us, maybe spilling out to whoever else was in the room staring at us in concern while we laughed like loons at them. So, thus begins the experiment - writing them down. And seeing if they're as funny to anyone else. I'll call them... the NikEms.

In late August/early September of 1993 (in fact I think it was a day or two before school started), there was a phenomenon that hit the Montclair area called Hogi Yogi. Sandwiches and frozen yogurt from the same place, it was ingenious. Some friends from church had bought the place so we all went to the grand opening to support them and eat our weight in free samples of sandwich and yogurt. I think I figured out the rip-off scam of "portions" at that young age of 14, because each sample was roughly the size of a post-it note. Which means you had to eat at least 2 more to get the full effect. Which means you needed at least 3 on top of that to feel satisfied. Which means you consumed at least 47 of each before anyone noticed you weren't still on your first and slapped you. I think I remember the poor people behind the counter looking perplexed, wondering how dozens of sandwichettes and shot cups of yogurt were vanishing as soon as they touched the counter. They didn't know that it was all in my belly.

And my belly was in high fashion that day. We'd done a bit of school shopping some time in the previous week, and I was decked out in a plaid flannel hoodie (...), a pair of black linen shorts, and brand new Doc Notens. Way too random/fancy to be grunge, but I was a 14-year old fox. With an extremely full belly. Luckily the hoodie had all the shape of a cardboard box so people couldn't see the protrusion.

So afterwards, Mum and Niki and I headed home. Niki and I flopped on the couch and gobbled about who knows what, boys and dances and movie stars and girls we didn't like. (I'm pretty sure that's what we talked about this past Friday too.) Niki was executing a monologue about something brilliant, when this feeling suddenly washed over me. Well "washed over" isn't right, more like it went splat against the invisible wall behind me and then slimed down onto my head. Not a feeling of warm fuzzy or awe or massive crush on my bff, but that horrible, inexorable feeling of "...arr nrr.... I'm gonna puke..."

Throwing up might be my least favorite thing I can do, ever. I'd rather cut off my own foot. My first reaction to the puke premonition is denial. Whatever, it'll pass, I'm asleep and dreaming about being on a boat right now, I'm strong enough to exorcise this demon. I have to say that's worked more than once too. But this time, the entire kitchen force of Hogi Yogi was resting just below my sternum, jeering at me. Niki was still telling me a story or something and didn't notice that I'd gone from fuscia to white to green in a matter of seconds. I finally accepted defeat and embraced this inevitable event with a small nod to myself, and started thinking about how I should handle it. The idea of leaping off the couch and running away while Nik was in mid-story seemed very rude, so that was right out. Plus I didn't think I'd make it to the bathroom anyway. I didn't even think I could get the word "bathroom" out. I turned my head and looked over the side of the couch, which seemed like the only option...until I saw my new Doc Notens sitting there. Nope, can't throw up on the shoes. It never occurred to me to move the shoes. I looked up from the shoes and into Niki's face, who was smiling serenely at me and didn't suspect the approaching doom...

I think I threw up socks, and an old walkman. And it felt like I was doing this for approximately 45 minutes. It's impossible to still feel like a fox when everything on your inside is suddenly on your outside. That poor couch... Once this repulsive function finally stopped, a shocked and horrified little voice from the other other side of the couch whispered "Oh my gosh..." I looked back up into Niki's face, which now had eyes the size of saucers and looked ready to donate me to medical science. She was curled up in a tight, trembling ball on the other side of the couch, where she'd scrambled so fast it was like she'd been beamed there. Neither of us really knew what to do, 14 year olds aren't good at logic and mortification, so Niki yelled "Uh...MAAAAY??" In bounced my cheerful Mum, who immediately went ballisticusimus. Words like "COUCH!" and "BATHROOM!" and "RAH!" came through the loud, but all I could say was "...I had to save my shoes..."

After she was rinsed off and safely back home, Niki forgave me. She is indeed a friend who puts up with crap, AND puke. Luckily I didn't choose the rude option and run out on her story eh?

Chant Down Babylon

Gladsome

2008-05-01T19:49:00.000-07:00

Did you know that a group of larks is referred to as an "exaltation"? I felt elation as I passed an exaltation of larks in the park. How marvelous is that? I love English. And in that vein, let me include this link. It's not the most profound piece ever written I'll admit, in fact it doesn't even make any sense. Perhaps to some of you it sounds like Shakespeare, or to others it sounds like 3 beat poet coffee houses crashed into each other. But yes, it is a PALINDROME!! G'head check it! How the HUFF did someone write this?? Is there some Palindrome formula that can generate one of any length?? Or was that someone's life's work? Let me tell ya, as gleeful as I was to check it backwards and forwards and know that such a thing exists, I would slam my head against a wall enough to make head cheese if I had to come up with it. Since I don't know the formula.

So the combination of hormones and decompression has made this a topsy-turvy week thus far. Wash is on vacation so life holds little meaning. I wasn't taking an active part in balancing things at first either. Sweet Fancy Moses's trousers... I need to be more conscientious about the movies I shouldn't watch during certain fragments of the cycle of the moon. "Steel Magnolias" is right out. I cried when all the eggs got squished in the trunk. And then I lapsed into "self under microscope and shrieking at all the germs" mode. My friends who are tempted to do this, don't. It is NEVER a good idea. I'm not saying it's not good to be aware of who you are, of what you have to work on, and of how much mercy the Lord extends you - ie: being humble. However, as I've learned from living in a house with a 10'-long full length mirror wall for the last 2 weeks, NOTHING looks good when examined too closely. Especially when you separate it from the whole picture, the whole balance and reasoning. I mean, someone can have really cute toes, but all the cute flies right off the globe if one of those toes is popped off and put under a magnifying glass.

Ya, borderline basket case. Like Ally Sheedy in "Breakfast Club" only loud. Poor Niki... between a 12-hour torture session of heavy things, backseat Tetris, and long iron poles, not to mention throwing my party, she should be exempt from manic nuclear fallout for a little while. Not so. She gets to be cheerleader and boxing coach and Zen master of the mountains for this week too! I'm sure she's been reviewing her friendship clause, and granted it's not as bad as when I'd write her pages of quasi-suicidal prose in 8th grade, but she's never faltered. Love you Nik!

Amid the neuroses sewage I've come up with a totally original and organic idea - a Happy Place. Surely none of you have heard the term before, have you? Ya ok... I'm about the last on the Happy Place bandwagon. Huff I've even had my own happy places before. But I'm putting it back into action, because I've realized just how much brain power and energy I'm expending on the total wrong things, that are in turn doing more harm than good. I was telling my friend the other day that I'm like Dr. Charles Xavier, if I focus too much of my brain power on any one thing I'm sure to destroy it completely. In this case that's been myself. Since I can't afford to be destroyed until I'm rich, I'm placing up mental dams that will deflect this surging flow of neurons to a safe, sweet, peaceful place. I won't go into what my happy place actually is, because the point is the principle behind it. Happiness.

Do any of you fall victim to this? This tendency to focus your gaze and thoughts and life on things that not only make no difference whatsoever, but that are falsehood fictions about yourself? Do y'all already have happy places? Not places of denial, not places of hiding, not a cave with Pegasus and whoever your hot guy of choice is, but a place where you draw yourself back to YOU. To who you really are and what really matters about you. If not, I encourage you to find one. It's only been about 24 hours since I started wandering into mine and I can't tell you the difference I already feel. You'll remember how much power you really have, how much potential, and how much about you that is and has always been good.

I'd love happy place stories, past, present and future!

Chant Down Babylon

Metamorphmagus

2008-04-26T14:38:00.000-07:00

Ok first a little insert because this just cracked me up. On my friend Josh's blog (listed as My Dark Angel on the right of your screen), there is a little bubble that pops up when you hover your mouse over your name after you leave a comment. It lists recent posts on your website, the web address, and key words. My words were Starship, Asbestos, Babylon, and Disneyland. LMAO. Fantasy toxic evil joy. Appropos.

I've surprised myself with full out of character behavior this week. The new environment must be paying off. I was pleasant and engaging with people 20-deep in front of me at Walmart last night, I'm reading 2 books at once, and I spent 10 minutes rescuing a snail and a pill bug that would assuredly have been crushed by Ladytron's toes.

I had a rough first couple of days in Chino Hills over the weekend and early this week... either there's no reputable driving school in the neighborhood or people with a lot money can just buy a license. I've rarely witnessed such oblivious driving outside of Provo. I'm becoming more mellow about it, luckily, but still find it a disappointing commentary on skills people esteem valuable. And I ran headlong into the fact that there's a lot of well-off people in my neighborhood when I went to Walmart early on a Monday afternoon and found it packed to the gills. Hundreds of strolling, slack-jawed, streaked-haired, pedicured Sahm's* wandering aimlessly and stopping dead center amid groups of people to rifle through a Prada bag and find their phone. Bizarre... I'm used to blue collar Walmart that's got crickets chirping and employees playing chair hockey at that hour. My levels of exhaustion weren't a bonus either, Roseanne Rosannadanna was awakening and examining sweat beads and nose hair. I got out of there as quick as I could, and wasn't looking forward to going back last night...

But I did, and very nearly skipped through the whole store. It wasn't any less crowded, but something in me had partially assimilated I guess. I smiled at people, had brief conversations, and helped a very pregnant mom reach something from a shelf. What the huff. I was unrecognizable. Not to mention that I was gurgling to find that everything I needed was substantially cheaper than where I'd previously been grocery shopping. I can now officially find everything I need in the world besides gas at Walmart, and the best part is that it's open 24 hours.:)

Then a few days ago, during the "Phantom" time travel, I found this website. Look closely, it is FULL versions of classic literature and text books all online!! Woo!! I've been reading "Phantom" ever since. I'm finding the history of it fascinating. I'm switching between that and "Dark Elf" throughout the day, yes Austin, Nicole and Josh I'm still trying. In all fairness it's less boring now. And really, I don't know if I've ever read two books at once. If I have, I have no memory of it. Do any of you who've known me forever remember me double-reading?

So ya, I was a savior of creepy-crawly things today. Both things had a very similar reaction when I bent down to touch them, they both immediately curled up to protect themselves. I think that must be an instinct present in just about all creatures. I curl up in self-protection more often than not as well, go into my shell or my brain or my house or Hogwarts or Middle Earth or something. A positive thing is that I've needed to do this less and less, either my skin is getting thicker or my perspective is getting better. Not all approaching entities seem like a certain threat or guaranteed pain. Sometimes they're just trying to help me get out of the way of crushing wheels. I wonder if little creatures like that will ever have the emotion of gratitude, if they'll scuttle up to me in heaven and try to thank me. I wonder what their voices would sound like...and if snails will have the gift of speed when they're resurrected. And if they're praises will be shouted down by the spider I crushed to pulp in my house the other day.

Chant Down Babylon

*To my friends who are Sahm's, please know how lucky you are to be able to wander around Walmart in the middle of a weekday and still afford a pedicure.

Teleport

2008-04-23T20:35:00.000-07:00

Isn't it amazing how any one of the senses can be a time-traveling transport? This happens to me all the time when I see something I haven't pulled out of a box in years, hear a song that I used to listen to as a kid, smell something that reminds me of my grandparents. Today's time travel is brought to me by the full original soundtrack of "Phantom." I bought it a couple months ago and this is the first time I've listened to it fully. Niki and I were talking about it the other day, how much we LOVED Phantom when we were pre-teen/teenagers. I even had the piano music! It's really taking me back today, I remember listening to it constantly as a kid. But I only ever listened to bits of it, just the songs I liked... and the truth is I never really got the plot. I knew there was some guy in a mask in an opera house who became enamored of one of the singers, and there was another guy who grew up with her that wanted to marry her. I never understood how dark and creepy a story it actually is. I had that happen when I watched a few episodes of "She-Ra" as an adult too. Great Fancy Moses's twirling beard, Batman... no wonder so many people of our generation are screwed up beyond recognition.

Anywho I digress, I'm happy to report that I'm slowly but surely settling into the new place, that all the moving and cleaning got done thanks to angels on earth, and that my birthday was a blast. Yay for all of those things! I think all those people who were at the party should have dinner with me once a week. And I think I'll wait to move again until I've perfected the sciences of levitation, worm hole travel and wand lore. This way I don't have to put anyone out or ever touch another Allen wrench. The place is feeling more like home every day, and happily the old "home" has fallen off me like a filthy and white trash leather coat. It's all forward from here.:) I didn't even have to buy a dvd/vcr combo machine! I fiddled with the two separate machines I have for a couple hours the first night, and no matter what I plugged in where or how I braided all the cords into knots, I could only get picture on one and sound on another. (Let me tell ya seeing the picture of "5th Element" with the audio of The Muppet Show is 100% hilarious.) But luckily the kid who came to install my cable internet fixed the problems and made it all pretty.

Thank you again everyone for all of your help and service, you'll never know how many vertebrae of mine you spared. This was my best birthday ever!

(Hey no one misses the crazy calendar challenges do they?)

Chant Down Babylon

(You know, the Muppet Show got a little risqué at times too...)

Peregrinate

2008-04-17T18:33:00.000-07:00

I have a story, and it's about a couch. A traveling couch. Like that story about those traveling pants only not nearly as purposeful or interesting. This couch, in the short time it's been in my ownership, has traveled by van from Colton to Upland, by truck from Upland to Upland, by another truck and strong pair of shoulders from Upland to Ontario...and then has sat there smugly for 2 years. It's been my sick bed, my real bed, my pouting bed, my nap bed, and my guest bed. Anyone who's been to my house, or actually the last 3 of my houses, has met this couch, probably sat on it, definitely despised it. I never realized how much it deserved to be despised until I realized all the bad memories it contained - pneumonia and devil child and ex boyfriends, oh my. So I decided that when I made the move to Chino Hills, the couch would not be tagging along.

It really took me a while to stop being so attached to it. I loved how comfy it was, how long it was, and how the curvature of my spine had twisted and kinked around to an impossible angle to fit it. It represented a lot of Spartan post-mission time, the fact that I don't need fancy things, and was a quasi-family heirloom. It had once belonged to my cousin or something, see.

I'm over all that now. Especially the cousin part.

So, for many months now I've wanted to get a new couch, even before I made the decision to get a new address. I've been looking on Craigslist for ages, keeping my eyes open for something affordable and not in shambles. Having now crossed to the other side of furniture-based Craigslist purchases, I can tell you I wasn't really thinking the whole arrangement through. I only have one trusted friend with a truck, and while I know she would drive to the ends of the earth to get me a soda, I'd kind of used up the favor booklet when she and her husband and brother moved my fridge. And even with my exquisite skills and a lot of axle grease, I don't think I could have maneuvered to stuff a couch into Ladytron and put-put home. Luckily I never got to that brick wall in the planning because there's been a big deterrent in a new couch from the get-go - my front door.

My front door is roughly the width of an anorexic stick man. Well...maybe a bloated anorexic stick man. In all fairness I am not the width of an anorexic stick man and I can walk through the door. However it does leave something to be desired in the spacious portal department. It's like in old movies where the last frame suddenly squishes together and makes everyone stretch up like Gumby, have y'all seen this? Imagine this happening to my door and never being set right. I'd used up the aforementioned favor booklet of Niki and Jon's with the fridge not just because picking up and hauling a fridge is a giant pain in the horse, but because in order to fit this thing through my front door and down my 90 foot corridor, the door and the back grate of the fridge had to be removed. Ya, so any couch or object over 3 feet in width is right out.

Once the new address was thought of, decided and secured, I started looking in more earnest for a new couch. And I decided to have a yard sale before I moved to try to sell off some of the furniture that I wasn't planning to take with me, the couch being high on the list. The morning of the sale I lifted and shoved and huffed and growled the couch halfway out the front door and was helped by Mum the rest of the way. We dressed it up, did its hair, put the fancy throw pillows on it, and set the price at $30. A steal really, because the couch was still in decent enough shape and the passers-by didn't have to know the demon child/ex boyfriend horror stories. I figured it would be one of the first things to go! Alas...

By noon people hadn't so much as sat on the thing to try it out. People walked right past it like it was invisible. A couple even averted their eyes a little. Maybe the stigma of it was louder than I'd thought. The first person at the yard sale was one of my new neighbors, the one who lives in the little house in the back. With her 2 small children, 3 boyfriends, an ex husband, 4 birds, and at least 3 tons of odds and ends, half of which are scattered across her little front yard. Oh and don't forget her teenage daughter, with her toddler son and 4 gang-type friends who stay there on weekends - hence the people I called the cops on a few weeks ago. Now, this lady is very nice, very friendly and outgoing, but doesn't keep her lack of couth a secret. I could hear her outside while I was wrestling with the couch, she was perusing our things and thoroughly unimpressing my mum. She ended up selecting 20 of our vhs tapes that she wanted and scampered off to the store to get cash for them.

The yard sale was a success for the most part, we sold 90% of the major things we wanted to and were willing to give all the rest to DI. The couch didn't sell, so with very little remorse I lifted and shoved and huffed and growled the thing to the edge of the curb for either a wandering gypsy or the garbage men. I took my mum to brunch on our profits, and when we came back the couch was still there. Minus the fancy throw pillows. Psh.

A night and a day and a night later, the couch was still there. I penned a sign that said "FREE!" and stuck it to a front cushion, hoping someone would be inspired by that. Nothin. I started to get nervous that it had absorbed more of that pneumonia/demon/ex boyfriend juice than I'd thought because it would not go away, and that I was gonna have to make some kind of call to the city or explain it to my landlords, or was debating listing it as free on Craigslist. I peeked out my window Monday afternoon and it was still sitting there snarling at me... peeked out again an hour later and, it was GONE! What?? Yaaaay! I said a prayer of thanks and hopes that it went to some family who really needed it because they were sending all their money to starving orphans or something. But either way I was relieved that it was off my hands and the grass outside was visible again.

The next morning I lugged all my bags out to my car to head to the gym and work, and looming out of the 5am darkness came the ghastly beige outline of...the couch. Sitting smug and thug in my backhouse neighbor's yard. She and her 2 "sperm donors" as she calls them waited until that thing was marked down to "Free" and then went to drag it into their lair. By that night, their tattered and torn orange couch was sitting in the front yard and the traveling couch had made one more trip into their house, where at least 12 drunken professional yellers were writhing around and laughing on it. For crying out loud.

Maybe the couch is glad it got out when it did, it would have had to endure B-movie hell this weekend. I made the thoughtless choice to watch "Cry Baby" and "Flash Gordon" on the same day. I don't advise this. I'm also happy to say that I've found another couch that I absolutely love and can't wait to get into the new place. Oh and, guess who's helping me pick it up and transport it Saturday morning....*hugs Niki and Jon*.

Chant Down Babylon.

Noodle

2008-04-12T14:42:00.001-07:00

I learned a new word today - arrearage. Wash slid a piece of paper under my nose that had it written (in bold), asking if I knew what it meant. I said it meant "typo." But nono, we looked it up and it's a word. It's not really a happy word, and is one I've had more unwitting experience with than I'd like. But still, yay for learning something new every day. For the interested, look it up on Dictionary.com.

I went to the 99c store down the street from my new house last night, and right next to it there's a little restaurant with a German name. It looked like a cute place, Mom and Popish, but I couldn't get past the fact that it was called The Doner Cafe. ... I'm someone who's brain is at the head of a steam train and I'm just kind of along for the ride, which means that I'm subject to blasts of frenetic imagery at the slightest intonation. I had to stop where I stood for several seconds until this particular blasting zone subsided, and let me tell ya...it was a BAD blasting zone. My initial thought was "...what kind of doner?" I've been a blood doner, and the back of my drivers license says I'm an organ doner. And neither of those personal facts make me think about a cafe. Maybe "The Donation Cafe" would be slightly better, hey drop off your unlabeled canned goods and torn boxes of stuff, we'll turn it into your meal! On second thought that's not exactly an improvement either. It'd be cute if it was next to a blood doner place and they had a fresh supply of orange juice for all the brave drained souls. But I'm not sure I'd feel comfortable eating next to a place that ships bags of blood in and out of it daily, and this from the girl with the vampire fixation.

All of this blasting soup happened in about 2 seconds until I finally noticed the two little dots above the "o" in Doner and my brain went back to normal.

The normal doesn't last though. I was driving behind a huge diesel truck with one of those 50 foot chrome cylinder things that look like they're transporting aliens inside. On the back of the truck was one of those hazard symbols and a huge WARNING, under which was printed "NON-EDIBLE MATERIAL". ?? What? A non-edible truck? How impractical. Or did that mean the volatile chemicals it was carrying? Or the aliens? Perhaps the naugahyde seats or the gas tank? It was a true statement because I've never fancied a bite of any of those things (maybe some Max Evans alien), but I wasn't sure that a 12-inch lettered Warning sign was warranted. It made me nervous when I thought about the individual who might need this warning, hey the diesel truck is here, break out the straws!! What switch is this individual flipping that controls our day to day? Is that warning for someone who builds our bridges or controls our traffic lights? Maybe the fabled Captain Obvious is actually a lawmaker who has drafted something about warnings on eating trucks. I bet you his ACLU colleagues are fit to be tied that the warning was only written in English.

I remembered within a few seconds that I was driving when I saw this, and that should be my primary focus. So I didn't die, or kill anyone else. But I pondered...

Input, please.

Chant Down Babylon

Frill

2008-04-09T21:50:00.000-07:00

I've gone through several goals as far as a future career during my years. As a little little little girl I wanted to be a slightly older girl. As a slightly older girl I wanted to be professionally 21. As a pre-pre teen girl I wanted to be a chemist, or an astronomer. I still kind of think the astronomer thing would be cool, were it not for the math bit... if it was just looking at stars and knowing the definition of spaghettification, I'd be in. And I really only wanted to be a chemist because I liked crushing rose petals in water to try to make perfume, and my cousins and I used to concoct "potions" whenever we'd go out to dinner. (Anything within reach mixed in a water glass.) In high school I wanted to become the female Indiana Jones and go dig up ancient artifacts that could burn through Nazis or grant me eternal life. In college I wanted to be the person on a film production that could say "You can't use this style of architecture because it wasn't created until 300 years after the period of your film."

Pre and during mission I wanted to be a teacher. I was already employed with the school district and figured that'd be a good start... and that was actually where I was headed for quite a few years. Until I'd spent enough time in the school district to realize how miserable most of the teachers were. The majority of them felt that to a point, their jobs were entirely counterproductive. After a few hours of intense hyperventilating one afternoon as I got a mental glimpse of my future in the district, I realized this just could not be. But, I was still enrolled in school, still taking classes, and therefore still had to be working towards something. I had to have something to say when people asked me what I was going to school for! So I cast my brain around wildly and searched...what possible career would I actually like doing, be good at, and not become a zombie in??

Interior Design! Also during my mission, there were many more times than once that we'd be sitting in someone's house and I'd find myself looking around, thinking of ways I'd redecorate it, colors I'd use, items I'd hang and/or place, themes... I can't remember what brought this back to me a few years ago, but back it came. That's been my "major" for the last few years.

Unfortunately I've never taken as much as one class in the subject. All of the classes are offered in the morning, which I have the indomitable task of working through. I also am no longer taking any classes in school...granted this saves me from having to give an answer when people ask me why I'm going to school. So my goal has been shrinking further and further away from me. I didn't even know if I wanted to go into interior design after all anymore, I didn't think I could be any good at it when I glanced around my rather spartan bearings at home. I realized I was way too practical to be bothered with things like throw pillows and wall mount candle holders.

Then I decided to move...and found this gorgeous place that I'm totally in love with...and got paid...and walked into the home furnishings section of a store. And then another store. And then another store. I think I actually walked through every store, ever. All the while hearing myself shriek and squeal over things like throw pillows and wall mount candle holders. Picture frames, statuettes... don't get me started on clocks. I have been ga-ga. On the ridiculous side of it, too, not even the useful side. I don't think I should be allowed to shop alone anymore, because my food and gas money are being turned into boxes of trinket crap.

All that being said, you all gotta come see my boxes of trinket crap. This stuff is SO CUTE!!

Chant Down Babylon

Startle

2008-04-08T19:52:00.001-07:00

I'm not sure why this is, but it takes me ages to wrap my brain around things. It may be a Scarlett O'Hara "I can't think about that today, I'll think about it tomorrow" self-preservation mechanism. I'm good at the whole denial thing... and I think that seeps into everything - good, bad or indifferent. If I ran headlong into Jonathan Rhys Meyers today, came to from the inevitable swoon, and managed to have a coherent and lovely conversation with him, this would not sink in until next month. When I got home from my mission, even though I spent every single day for the following 2 months doing things on my own, it didn't hit that I didn't have a companion with me until my mom spent a week in the hospital and I was alone. When I met and married Ladytron, simultaneously divorcing and abandoning Velvet, it didn't sink in for 3 whole weeks that I wasn't driving a car that would decide not to start out of the clear blue. When I move next week (NEXT WEEK!! Holy cats!!), it won't sink in for at least the first week that this place is actually my home. It won't hit me that I won't have to do a daily battle with the freeway anymore, that I'll be within 2 miles of every possible store imaginable, that I won't have to wear ear plugs to bed on Friday night to drown out The Louds.

This WILL all eventually sink in, and it will be during some quiet, dazed moment of being distracted by something else entirely. This happens to me all the time. "Oh my goof I have to tell so-and-so about this... oh wait... so-and-so and I aren't speaking..." Or "Oh ya I know that kid, I taught him just a couple years ago when he was 12...except now he's 18 and a married father..." Or "Holy huff I have to get home, it's Wednesday night and 'Roswell' is on!! ... except that it was cancelled 5 years ago..." I think I'm that kid from "Flight of the Navigator," only the space time continuum is being disrupted by my own brain. It's like my system says "And.... NOW you're ready to deal with this." So bizarre.

The reason I bring this up is that I had a little moment like that this weekend during Conference. Which was wonderful... I'm tellin you, the unity, spirit, love, and encouragement that our leaders prepare for us twice a year is such a mark of how special Heavenly Father knows we all are. I wasn't able to hear the Saturday morning session but I'm sure it was amazing, anyone want to give me their notes/highlights? Anyway, Mum was telling me about sweet Elder Uchdorf (sp?) conducting that solemn assembly meeting and reading off the names of all the new 70's, most of them being very foreign sounding names that didn't exactly roll off his German-accent tongue. She was chuckling while she told me this and I was halfway through the sentence "I'll bet President Hinckley was sitting there just chortling - " when it hit me. No, Ems... he's not there.

It's not like this was a shock, for weeks I've been looking forward to hearing our new Prophet address us and see the change that the mantle of the calling would cause in him. I was one of the first people in the text chain explosion who got the news about President Hinckley from Bestie... I even blogged about the loss. And read so many other beautiful and eloquent blogs about the same. But, in typical Me, it did not really hit me until that moment. The truth is I'm sure that President Hinckley was sitting and chortling during Elder Uchdorf's brave junket, but sitting there with his cane and glasses he was not. I actually got a little teary when this landed on me.

Does this happen to anyone else? I'm sure y'all are better at accepting and processing things than I am. But I'd be comforted to hear that President Hinckley's absence seemed especially real this past weekend.

Levity will happen tomorrow with updates on our Silly Life Challenges... but I love what the brethren were saying about using the internet for good. I've been so grateful to read everyone's stories and testimonies and sweet experiences on your blogs, I'm glad we're already part of that crusade. I love the thought that if someone hits "next blog" and ends up at mine, they can find testimony. Love to y'all!

Chant Down Babylon

Heft

2008-04-03T09:01:00.000-07:00

(The following are excerpts from the journals of Puppy and Goose)

For my avid readers, you’ll know that yesterday I was trekking up to Monrovia to look at and hopefully buy a tv. I’m kind of regretting using up both the “elephant” and “stairs” pictures in the earlier blogs this week now. I left work about 5:15, enjoyed a decent drive up the 57 to the 210 west, with minimal traffic the whole way to the Arcadia/Monrovia border. Wound my way through the streets and was pleasantly surprised to find that the house I was heading to was a HUGE, FANCY house that would be the equivalent of being at the top of Haven in Rancho. It was a sweet young dad who met me up there, and showed me the tv. Which was roughly the size of a pregnant tiger.

So I bought it. Both me and the sweet man stood hands on hips for several moments lost in our own thoughts. Which were centered around "... how the HUFF is this going to happen..." I pulled my car up into the driveway, which was on a huge hill, and we both crouched down to heft the tv. He's all "Ok, lift on 3 - 1, 2, 3........... ok.... …ok instead just tell me when you're ready..." I said "Unh... I did lift when you said 3..." Between the 2 of us, we finally managed to hoist this thing up on a rolling chair, after we'd accidentally knocked the chair down the driveway once and dropped the corner of the tv. (My corner.)

So right when the poor man was about to topple backwards down the driveway and be crushed by the tiger, I let go of the tv to open my car door. I’m amazed his eyes didn’t shoot out of his head and bounce off my face. He ended up balancing the 300lb beast on one leg for a few seconds, marathon hunk of 130lbs that he was. He grunted the thing into the front seat, only to find that it was about 3 centimeters too large on every side.

We got at least one solid corner into the car, and I realized that this guy was chickening out. He was worried about snagging my upholstery or scratching the inside of my door or something. I was like "Don't be ridiculous." Ultimately I was causing too much of a problem what with flapping my arms and laughing, so he sent me around to the driver's side so that I could try to pull from inside. I ended up having to put down my emergency brake and squish my seatbelt lock out of the way while Captain Dynamo was leaning his full body weight onto the tiger to get it up onto the seat. When it was finally settled, he had to lean his full body weight onto my door to get it to close, and the side of this thing was 6 inches over onto my seat and 3 inches from my stick shift.

To everyone’s inevitable disappointment, I didn’t take pictures. I was too busy trying to keep my hair from combusting in panic of how on earth I was going to drive home like this. I started up my car and discovered that if I held my arm at an angle that resembled having a seizure while bowling, I could still shift. And I decided that the freeway at 6pm was right out given my circumstances. So I pulled over to say a prayer and make sure that the passenger door was locked tight. I could just imagine this thing soaring out of my car on a turn and taking out a truck full of nuns or something. I chugged my way through the surface streets from Arcadia to freakin South San Dimas, which trip took me an hour. An hour of seizure bowling. This whole time I felt like my right forearm was swelling and going numb, it would have been less painful to just tie my tendons around the stick shift and pull it around that way.

Well I finally found faith that I was at least going in the right direction because I recognized the street names that I started to pass, and they were in the reverse order that I usually saw them fly by on the 10. And then I broke down and decided that it would probably be best if I just took the freeway the rest of way before Rigor Mortis set into my arm. I pulled gingerly into traffic, gingerly out of traffic, gingerly into my driveway, parked, and sat in shell-shocked silence for a few minutes.

Along the road I'd managed to place some frantic phone calls to brave friend-type souls, aka gluttons for punishment. I finally got one on the phone who was next to all the others I'd been looking for and asked him to have one of them call me. They were all "Ok a tv on your front seat, no sweat babe we'll be over in 20." So they get there, I pull the car back down the driveway towards my door, and they walk around and stare at this sleeping, pregnant tiger. Mario said "Sigh... leave it to Emily to fit something bigger than her car IN her car."

Between the two of them they managed to coax this thing out of the passenger seat and onto the wet dirt. They got tired of me shrieking about wet dirt so they quickly hoisted the thing back up, nearly dropping both their pants, and did this awkward rapid tip-toe shuffle with it up onto the porch. That was about a 14 inch journey. They mopped their brows and eyeballed the remaining 9 feet... and invoked the power of their sacred callings as my Home Teachers. Ultimately they got the thing inside my house and right in the spot I asked them to put it... where it sleeps, and waits for them to pick it up again in precisely 16 days.

Thank you Bry and Mario!

Kyle found all of this very funny.

Challenges:

Thursday, April 03rd, 2008:
“In Da House: Today Rap!”
“When you feel down and out a good way to snap out of it is to rap a little about all your hardships. Here are some lyrics to get you started and give you a feel for the genre:”
“My name is Chuck, I make my own luck, everyone else they suck, cos hey, I don’t give a… buck!”
(Unsigned artists: When you are up to scratch, send your demo to death row records, PO Box 3037, Beverly Hills, CA 90212)

LOL British rappers. I’m diggin it.

January 15th, 2008:
“Anti-Consumerism Day! Today stand at the tills and argue people out of their purchases before thy buy.”
“Did you know the packaging on these cookies caused a 1 inch hole in the ozone layer?”
“Buy those tampons and you’ll be propping up the dictatorial regime of Burma!”“Purchasing those chips perpetuates the cycle of working endlessly to fulfill unwanted needs created by faceless marketing execs, the handmaidens of global capitalism, so don’t.”

I feel very brave today. No more dictatorial regime in Burma.

Chant Down Babylon

Bits

2008-04-02T13:48:00.000-07:00

Bit 1: Craigslist is my version of online Vegas. A gamble, some sleaze, and occasional mounds of glittering gold. I have sold several pieces of furniture from listing them on Craigslist, I purchased a gorgeous solid wood dresser, and this evening I’m going to buy a 36” tv. I’ve been surfing daily for listings on couches too. I owe my entire introduction to Craigslist to Kyle, of course, who sold a boat, a goat, and a moat on there all in the same day. It really is a genius site, eBay with no fees and much higher probability of failure. But you never know what/who/where you’ll find on there… people trade back and forth THE most ridiculous things. It’s a peek-a-boo into the neuroses of our fellows. Speaking of, if you haven’t already heard this story, please check it out!

Bit 2: I’ve reached book 13 in the Stephanie series, the last full book until 14 comes out this summer. I’ve noticed that I’ve slowed WAAAAY down in my reading in the last few days, because I don’t want to finish the series. It’s been so much fun. Amidst fires and explosions and chases and tackles and drama, there’s dialogue like this (while reading through a file they’ve stolen from the office of a lawyer):
“The first summary is for Harry Slesnik. According to this, Slesnik is a self-described separatist who seceded from the United States and declared his town house a sovereign country. He was arrested when he tried to annex his neighbor’s garage. His lawyer quit the case after being paid in Slesnik dollars. The last piece of paper attached to this is a formal declaration of war against his lawyer.”
This made me laugh for half an hour. It’s a lucky thing I was alone in the gym.

Bit 3: I just tried to upload bit 3 via video for 20 minutes. Utter failure. Email me to get a clip of it.

Challenge bits:

Wednesday April 2nd, 2008:
“Stockpile as much free sugar as possible in one day.”
“Crazy but true: lots of people give out their hard-earned sugar entirely free such as in cafés, restaurants, the workplace kitchen, and so on. A person who collected it all and resold it at street value could make a small fortune. And that could be you!”
“Common sugar formats: white angled lump, white cubic lump, white sugar sachet”

Lol… “So, how’d you make your millions?” “I sold white cubic lumps of sugar on the street.”

January 14th, 2008:
“Public Ridicule Day! Your ego needs to be reined in. Do at least four of these in public today and savor the humiliation.”
“Chat someone up who’s way out of your league.”
“Lose control of your bladder.”
“Ask the pharmacist which is the best hemorrhoid cream”
“Suck your thumb”
“Rummage through garbage”
“Leave your fly undone”
“Hold hands to cross the street”

…2 down…

Chant Down Babylon

Zap

2008-04-01T12:09:00.000-07:00

I love “Titanic,” and I don’t care who knows it. I don’t have the same obsessive sackcloth and ashes sobbing devotion to it that I did when it first came out, but I love it all the same. It’s such a good movie, so well done and gorgeous. I never really liked Rose’s character when I was younger, I was all about the Leo. But I understand and even admire her character more now. I always, always cry at the end, not when she lets go of Jack, but when she rolls off the raft and starts blowing for all she’s worth on that whistle. It’s a very strong visual of the promise that she made to Jack that she would keep going and survive. Also known as Endure to the End. Amidst all that pain, exhaustion, fear, cold and loneliness, she turned into her own personal hero. When I reach those levels of my own limits, I turn into Roseanna Roseannadanna. I want to work on that, on reaching into my own reserves and finding strength, endurance, faith, and that fire that Jack loved about Rose.

I’m so glad for the recharge we have coming up next weekend. I can’t wait to sustain our living prophet. And then it’ll be only 2 weekends to go until New Home! Mum and Niki saw it yesterday and were properly awed. I think they should both get places on either side of me. And I think I should send the Dark Mark over my current house when I leave. I was trying to do laundry the other night, and when I came out to check my wash cycle, someone had opened the lid on the machine. And just left it open! My clothes had been sitting in stagnant water for an hour! I think my neighbors have figured out that it’s me tattling on them and all their breaking of lease hat dances that they thought they could keep a secret from my landlords. In that vein, I love my current landlords. They’re such great people, they’ve been good to me, prompt, understanding, and thorough. And they were SERIOUSLY upset to hear the things that have been going on at their property. I’m surprised that 2 of my neighbors (well, 2 of the apartments of the house, which equals about 9 people give or take) didn’t get tossed out on Saturday when my landlords came to inspect my house. And I didn’t even tell them everything that’s happened! I didn’t want to add any more to their burden… but they just feel so defeated, and very taken advantage of by these other people. Isn’t that awful, when you’ve allowed someone space in your home or life, trusted them, and they turn out to be nothing but false and filth?

Yay for enduring past false and filth.

Challenges:

Saturday/Sunday, March 29/30th, 2008:

“Humility Day! Overall, you’re pretty lucky to be here. Today remember that, and show some cosmic humility.”
“There is 1 chance in 795 billion that life should have evolved on Earth.”“There is 1 chance in 12 billion that mankind should have created the alphabet and thus civilization.”
“There is 1 chance in 89 billion that life should have evolved into mankind.”
“There is 1 chance in 6 billion that your parents should ever have met and got together.”
“There is 1 chance in 140 trillion that the Earth should exist.”
“There is 1 chance in 90 million that you should have been the lucky sperm that fertilized your mother’s egg.”

Lol. Food for thought all, and yay for the knowledge of a divine plan.

Monday March 31st, 2008:
“Today avoid all sources of electromagnetic energy. Clinical studies have conclusively established that continued exposure to man-made electromagnetic energy is associated with higher mortality and morbidity rates in the exposed population. Epidemiological studies have also demonstrated links to cancer and suicide.”
“Stay Away From: High voltage powerlines, Electric blankets, Microwave ovens, Cell phone base stations, Radio/TV towers, Pacemakers.”

Tuesday April 1st, 2008:
“’How To Recognize the Aliens Among Us’ Guide”
“Only a complete booby would deny that extraterrestrial visitors are here already, and here to stay, despite government lies to the contrary. Many have taken human shape, all the better to study us. Today, learn how to spot them.”
“Dead Eyes: The alien has glazed expression-less eyes. This is because these are only a front for his extrasensory perceptual apparatus.”
“Closed Mouth: Think about it. The aliens don’t need to speak, as they communicated telepathically. Whey they do speak to genuine humans, their speech is stilted, like they are stoned or something.”
“Ears Oozing Green Goo: Sometimes green goo will escape through the ears, if the alien cannot keep its head straight. This is a clear sign that something is seriously amiss.”

The DMV has been colonized…

Chant Down Babylon

Figment

2008-03-28T08:09:00.000-07:00

Happy joyous Friday! I love this day. It’s incredibly busy and typically filled with ridiculous questions and exhaustion, but it also means that I don’t have to get up at 4:30 tomorrow. Wooo! I actually don’t have to go and do ANYTHING tomorrow, my landlord is coming over at 11 to haggle with me about my fridge and perhaps try to convince me to stay, and that’s IT. I don’t even have to go to the library, because I already have the last 2 Stephanie books with me. I’m nearly done with #12 which means I’ve read 13 books in about 3 weeks. Wow. I read while I work out, while I eat lunch and dinner, and before I go to bed. I’ve started dreaming these characters, even though they’re only words on a page. This is ok with me because 2 of the characters are dream men anyway.

I was thinking about the recipe for my dream man the other day, which was a very fun few minutes. I think he’d have to be equal parts Morelli and Ranger, there’s things I’d give and take from either of them. There’d have to be a serious dose of Edward Cullen in there too. A nice chunk of Lloyd Dobbler, a top coat of Ferris Buhler, a dash of Hugh Jackman, and some drips of Duncan Playle.:) Well really we all know who my dream man is, but he’s been too busy gushing about how in love he is with his girlfriend lately. Atrocious. The more I thought about the dream man scenario, the more I realized that he could never possibly exist anywhere at any time ever. He’s five parts fiction, including some vampire, part Wolverine and British. I should move there and scour the countryside before I write him off completely but my gut tells me not to hold my breath.

I want to hear everyone else’s recipe, I think it would say a lot about each of us.*

Challenges, including the make up from yesterday:

Thursday, March 27th, 2008:
"Primal Scream Day! Get it out of your system, go on, let loose baby oh yeah."
"The Four Types of Scream:
1) YEEEEAAARRRRRGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!
2) RAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHRGH!!!!!
3) WHOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAARRRRRR!!!!!
4) EEEEEEEEEEEEEEKKK!!!! (Women only)"

I needed this yesterday. I actually called the cops on my neighbors late last night.

Friday, March 28th, 2008:
“Today, invent a new way of peeling potatoes.”
“No one is happy with the current situation. That’s why potato peeling is the province of the jailbird or the disgruntled housewife. Think laterally – perhaps peeling isn’t the real problem here… Anyhow: come up with a novel solution and your fortune is assured!”

This’ll turn Thanksgiving on its ear.

January 11th, 2008:
"Pretend To Be Pregnant Day!"
"Tuck a small pillow under your shirt and walk around in bare feet, holding your back all day long. Every once in a while, run to the bathroom and make vomiting noises. During your lunch break, go to a children's clothing store and coo over tiny socks and romper suits. Return to your place of work with three large packs of disposable diapers, claiming you're 'stocking up,' then cry hysterically with pure happiness or terror, depending on what kind of person you are. Spend your evening not drinking alcohol or coffee, or smoking, and instead rope your partner into choosing baby names."
Note: This day will prove particularly educational for men.

LOLOLOL!

January 12th/13th, 2008:
"Today count down to everything!"
"Make your life immediately more exciting by counting down to every event, NASA-style. From going to the toilet to starting your car, there is virtually nothing that can't be made more suspenseful with a countdown. Only remember to count out loud so other people can join in your fun."

3…2…1…Chant Down Babylon

*For my married friends, you are welcome to take the high and imperious road of “My husband is my perfect dream man,” or you can pretend to be human with the rest of us and still play.

Irascible

2008-03-27T12:55:00.001-07:00

I think I’ve taken up a new title as the patron saint of being wholly unimpressed, the mistress of dissatisfaction. Not just insatiability, which still has a semi positive connotation. But just plain old dissatisfaction with nearly everything there is. I’ve just gone through a phenomenon of my entire wardrobe being cute one month, passable the next, and atrocious now. I always look at my closet and berate myself for the things hanging there that I never wear. But I realized the other day that I never wear them because they’re ugly. Either ugly on me or ugly hanging on the hanger by themselves…it doesn’t matter. I need to SHOP. And I need to take someone with me who can actually find decent clothes!! I know many of you who have this talent… won’t someone take compassion on me?

It’s not just the clothes, it’s the hair, the drive, the food, the weather, the ipod selection, the morning workout. That part’s not so much dissatisfaction as “Ok I just finished an hour and a half, but I didn’t do two. Worthless.” What on earth. Even this morning, I can’t seem to drink enough water, like what I’m inhaling is just evaporating in my esophagus. I’ve never had a rich supply of rational thought but it seems to be getting dimmer and dimmer. I think part of the reason is that my home is no longer the sanctum it once was. That really messes with one’s head…my old non-schizoid roommate would agree with that. When you don’t even want to be there, when you don’t care enough to clean up messes, when you’re forced to wear earplugs at midnight in your own space to get sleep, that just tears it.

I hate to say that my new neighbors are mainly responsible for this. They’re not what you’d call… quiet… other words spring to mind that they aren’t, like educated, substance-free, civilized. But I’m more focused on the quiet. They’re the kind of people who hope everyone on the block hears how they’re doing when they have conversations on the front porch of our house. They foster their own egos as “nice people” by the fact that they like to strike up 40-minute conversations with the mail man, with the new screamy family in the back, with anyone who passes by the house even if they’re on the other side of the street. “You know, we just get along with everyone… we talk to our neighbors, people always want to be in and out of our house, we have conversations with people in the grocery store… we’re just lovely like that.” I guess in a skewed way I can see their logic. The trouble is that lots of people don’t want to be talked to. Lots of people would rather just walk from their car to their front door without being accosted by a clattering group of roaring drunks who breathe smoke and want to hear who I am, where I’m going, where I’ve been, what my sign is, what the weather is like on the other side of the city, and can I dance.

Deep breathing. Apparently I needed to vent. Ya and by “lots of people” I meant me. I don’t know if I have any right to be driven crazy by this stuff. I mean, most people would give anything for their own private space, period, much less one that’s not getting shot at. The fact that I can be stewing in these evil thoughts about The Louds while simultaneously laying on my couch, eating, watching and wearing whatever I want, says a lot about me and my level of lucky. Throw in that I have a vehicle of perfection that I can storm off to and escape in if it all gets too oppressive. Plus a very comfortable bed, a box that keeps all my food cold, and a mom who makes sure that box has stuff in it from time to time. AND that I’m counting down days until I never have to growl at The Louds again.

So… that should all blend together in the physics of earth and decrease their volume and lameness exponentially, right? Rachel and Liz, you guys are masters at making situations better, what are your suggestions? Should I pretend I’m on a submarine too? Wear headphones to avoid contact with them?* Be grateful that the Loud isn’t just huge fake sneezes?

Chant Down Babylon (quietly)

*Ya, to avoid getting sucked into a conversation the other day with Mayor Crass and First Lady Shout on the way to my front door, I put my ear bud in my ear and pretended to still be talking to someone I’d hung up with several minutes before I got out of my car.