What Kind of Stuff is Bill Gates Really Into?

I was just spell-checking an email I was sending to a friend in which the word "freakin'" appeared. Obviously spellcheck took issue with the word and immediately popped up my options for replacing my "typo". The first option was the word "foreskin's". Foreskin's!!

Now, I ask you, on what occasion would the word, foreskin, be possessive?

I love your foreskin's new sweater!

Bethany was always jealous of the foreskin's keen fashion sense.

Are you planning to attend Foreskin's Coming-Out Party?

Okay, so maybe the last one is understandable, but I mean, come on!! Okay, sorry - poor choice of words, but you know what I was getting at.

There Might Be Life Lesson in There Somewhere

Last night I attended a 6 year old's birthday party. I had a blast! We played Pretty, Pretty Princess, ate delicious spaghetti and cheesy, cheesy garlic bread, and made up T.V. shows that were "showing" on the static-filled channels. In retrospect, however, I feel maybe this should have been some sort of wake-up call for me. As the night went on I found each of the three children at the party (ages ranging between 6-10) patronizing me.

"That was a cute joke, Amanda. It's fine," they would say with a semi-reassuring pat to my head.

"You can't really date Batman, Amanda. But maybe you can find someone named 'Batman,' huh? How does that sound?"

"It's alwight, Amanda. You still awre a pwetty, pwetty, pwincess even without the cwown."

Maybe I should try to learn something from this.

On second thought, I could just find dumber kids to hang out with.

I Just Wanna Be Like You; Why Must You Hurt Me So?

As you probably know, St. Louis has been pretty much covered in ice the past few days, which has succeeded in making the city very beautiful and yet extremely treacherous. A real Femme Fatale of a city - gorgeous and tempting, while icy cold and deadly when you get too close.

Now, I know a thing or two about Femme Fatales. I have taken classes devoted to their nefarious ways and studied an endless amount of footage of their methods and tactics. Therefore, it came as quite a surprise to me that I fell victim to the Frost Princess - not once, but twice. I am left with two very scraped and swollen knees and a feeling of concern. What if the ol' F.F. is trying to teach me a lesson? I mean, I can't really pull off the whole Femme Fatale thing with knees looking like this. Maybe she is just saying that the apprentice is not yet ready to walk side by side with the master.

Oh well - back to smoking two packs a day and arching my brows. Maybe when my knees heal, I will be ready.

Pet Deception

I am going away for five days for a nice little vaykay – the first of this length in a loooong time. This trip will actually mark the longest time that I will have ever been away from my little dog. Normally, I relish a free day from my beautiful, barkilicious beagle – but the five days is hitting me kind of hard. So hard, in fact, that while on the phone with my mother the other day, I began to tear up – while at work, no less! – due to a story my mother was relating to me about my little cat-poop-breathed guy. She told me that while she was watching him recently, she was playing a message that I left her on speakerphone, and my intent dog stopped what he was doing and started to look around for me.

This is what made me want to sob with sentimentality. He recognized the sound of my voice. That’s it; He didn’t jump in front of a bullet. He didn’t fast until he and I could be reunited. He didn’t even leave me the carcass of some unidentifiable dead creature on my pillow. No – he just heard a very familiar sound and looked around for the source.

I guess this all just touches on a truth. The truth that most of us pet owners are neck-deep in denial. We think that somehow we are special to our animals. We spend most of our waking life, at least subconsciously, refusing to think that if someone happened to come by wearing a suit of raw meat or catnip that our little pal wouldn’t jump ship in a heartbeat.

For example, a couple of nights ago I laid in bed with my dog curled up next to me on one side and my cat on the other. I stared to drift off to sleep totally content and thrilled that my adored pets were so enamored with me that they couldn’t stand to be away from me. I did this while practically shivering because it was so cold in our apartment without the thought of how desired my body heat might be at that very moment. Ahh – denial really is a lovely state. You might want to get a furry friend and visit sometime.

"It is as if she has magic moonbeams for legs!"

I just found a WHITE hair on my leg! I should say, growing out of my leg. I can't decide whether to be upset about it or thrilled. Obviously taking it as a sign of aging is a total bummer. But then again, if the rest of my little leg hairs follow suit, that might mean that I can go longer without shaving. Or - even better - I could let all of my leg hair fill in for the winter creating silvery warm leg wraps, and people would marvel over how beautiful and shimmery my stunning legs would be.

I guess we'll just have to see how this plays out.

Who Knew Missouri Could Be So Intimidating??

I was planning on posting some blog today about how Missouri finally got its shit together and did something right. But SCREW THAT! Now we get the news that Rummy is stepping down! WHAT?! That's right - you heard! Apparently Rumsfeld must have had himself some scarytime nightmares last night all about the Demalumps and Demuzzles attacking him and decided to get out while he could be the one to make the call.

I just wonder what "office supplies" he will be pilfers before he goes.

Look Out Annie Sprinkle!

I have been getting the weirdest spam emails lately sent to my work account. I have been compiling them all in hopes that one day I will construct an elaborate performance art piece out of the best of them. For now, however due to my hectic schedule, I will have to settle with posting this incredible one that I received this morning.

"Rule #1: Mom is always right. Rule #2: If Mom is wrong, refer to rule #1. Never, Never... allow anyone to persuade you to suspend your common sense. Money for old rope. Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian Spring: We must take the bad with the good.
If you were born to be shot, you'll never be hung. This could also be read as, A friend in need is a friend in debt. A little Learning is a dang'rous Thing; The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Don't mend what ain't broken. Alternate: If at first you don't succeed, redefine success. Hope is life="

And, dear readers, I have saved the best for last - the subject heading for this particular gem was, "was salmonella is salmonella."

No Wonder Van Gogh Sliced his Ear!

I pride myself on my imagination. I grew up with parents encouraging me to explore the world of the unreal. I just wanted to take a second and say, “Thanks parents – thanks for introducing me into a world of nothing but disappointment!”

My stupid imagination has been so well harnessed that it’s to a point where I am slipping into a serious depression by the fact that my real life is neither my imaginary one – nor anything close. This guy is now just making it worse:

I have recently become so in love with him that I have imagined all the funtimes that we would have together: making each other laugh, bouncing comedy ideas off of each other, hanging out with him and his boys from Stella, going to shows together, and just having the best freakin’ time ever. But the chances of me meeting him, let alone dating, him are, sadly, slim. So I sit around being miserable that my one true chance at happiness will never come. In the end, I left with only my imagination and the desktop image of him offering me a box of chocolates and a dozen roses. If I only I was less creative, life would be so much less of a downer.

XXX Disney Princesses XXX

I LOVE Halloween! It is, by far, my favorite holiday. The spookiness of the month swaddled in candy wrappers, crunchy dead leaves, and stories of ghosties just makes me so happy. It is a time for spookiness, ghoulish make-up and fake blood. Not for ladies to take normal, regular fitting costumes and throw them into the hottest water possible followed by several hours in a VERY hot dryer until the entire costume becomes no larger than a hanky. Considering my feelings on this subject, it stands to reason that I was less than thrilled to see 4 scantily clad princesses giggling and prancing around my booth at dinner last night. I was, however, absolutely thrilled when a very attractive family stopped to talk to the Disney Whoresses and said the following to the little trampettes:

Dad: "Princesses, huh? I would have said Victoria Secret ladies."

Young Son Who Could Not Have Been Over 7 Years Old: "I mean, I've seen Alice in Wonderland, but . . ."

Three's Company

We have a house guest. A real life-of-the party type guy. Talkative when you want him to be. Dependable. Entertaining. You know, one of those lifesize, animatronic, talking zombie types.

That's right, folks - we are currently home to a stunningly charming animatronic Zombie aptly named Zombie. And although every night Liz and I vie for his affection, we cannot help but to be absolutely terrified every time we notice he's here. Every time!! He could be standing right beside the couch where we're sitting for hours and all of a sudden we notice him and scream.

Ahh, it's so hard entertaining.

I want to confess the truth, but then my life seems boring

To clarify, I am an adult because I picked up my dry cleanING - not, sadly, my dry cleanER. Although, that large black woman in her egyptian patterned moo-moo did seem to be givin' me the eye.

Yeah, I still got it!

They Said it Would Never Happen

Lists of things accomplished recently that make me a grown-up:

• Picked up my dry cleaner.
• Got a physical.
• Used the insurance plan under my own name for the physical.
• Got a promotion.
• Hung lights for Halloween.
• Turned down my music because it was too loud for me.
• Got a raise.
• Scheduled and planned a Reunion Show for Lizanda
• Planned my first Halloween party.
• Went to bed at 11:30pm so that I could get a cup of coffee before work.
• Started to make a budget.
• Began looking for a gym to join.

Look out, world - I am one power suit away from my one-way ticket to Adultsville!

And Carl Kasell Almost had me Convinced

I come from a long line of total night owls. We all stay up late and love sleeping in. So I just assumed that I would never be one of those people who would get set on a schedule of early rising and start waking up entirely on their own. Well apparently all that genetics nonsense is just a big joke because I, of the family most closely related on the evolutionary scale to bears (due in a large part to our repeated confusion over the differences between sleep and hibernation) have started regularly waking up early without the help of an alarm clock - all bright eyed and bushy tailed to boot! Now what sets me apart from those morning people is that I don't ever actually get up out of bed when this happens; I usually just lay there or go back to sleep for a while. If it happens to be one of those rare mornings where I am not incredibly lazy, I like to turn on NPR and listen to Morning Edition while I drift in and out of slumber. Today was one of those radio days. Unfortunately, it was also Pledge Day for the radio which is always a bummer.

While I lay in bed listening to Carl Kasell seemingly speak directly to me chiding me about loving public radio so much and being too cheap to contribute, I was almost convinced. I was just reaching for my phone (or dreaming about just reaching for my phone - reality and dreamworldsville get very mixed up during these mornings) when their next news story started up.

It was more than one of the normal quick 5 minute stories. It was a little segment. . . all about EYE SURGERY!!* I could have died! It started off with discussion of laser surgery and corneas. Painful for me, but doable. THEN they switched over to talk about the first man who figured out how help people who are nearsighted - which included talk of that round blinky thing that makes you see and a SCAPEL!! And of course, due to my Lazy Disease, I was forced to just lay there making loud humming noises so that couldn't hear the awful, awful words they were saying.

Ira, Carl, Diane, Steve, Renee, Garrison, Neil, Tom and Ray, I want you all to know that I love you and I love what you do. I want to support you with more than my ears and my laughs and my cries and my thoughtful introspection and my screams of fury. I wanted to become a member - and I tried (or, at least, dreamt about trying)! But if there is one thing that I will probably never be able to overcome it is the words eyeball and. Scalpel. Being in the same sentence.


*For those of you who have not spoken to me for longer than five minutes, you probably don't know that I have an incredible eye + vaguely sharp things phobia. To quote my uncle Matt - It's so bad that odds are pretty good that I will be the crazy old lady in goggles.

The Sacrifices One Makes to Reset the Balance of the Universe

I consider myself to be a regular good person. I care a lot about my friends and family while at the same time still caring about how much time I can ignore all of them and watch crappy TV. I listen when people talk to me when they are making sense. I give thoughtful gifts when I want attention. I love and care for my pets . . . most of the time. I'm one of those normally nice people. So when the forces aligned tonight to put me in the same room as one of the devil's underlings I was unsure that my mere average sized good personness would be enough to balance the cosmic good vs. evil scales. Yes, that's right; when my mom and I ran into Borders earlier tonight to grab two work-related books we were shocked to see none other than Mr. Never Again himself, John "Ashy" Ashcroft!

He and I exchanged a quick glance before he coddled and cuddled another tiny baby patriot with his clammy crazyhands.

My mom stalked between bookcases just to get a quick look at his wrinkly countenance. "He looked at me and squinted like a hawk!" My mom later said of their momentary exchange.

I went into a quiet panic. "I must do something," I thought, "to help the balance and make a point!" I began searching around, grabbing at every vaguely liberally-titled book I could see. "I'll buy every liberal book I can in order to offset the balance of his minimally well-attended book signing. That will affect . . . something. Right?"

I stood tottering at the edge of the line with at least 43 bold statements of my political slant weighing down my tired arms. Was this too much? Could it possibly be worth having these ridiculous comedy hand-on-hips, smirky, sarcastic jokey articles sitting around my apartment just to try to prove something about one person's beliefs vs. the 50 or so glassied-eyed, eager signees'? I dropped the stack of "RepublICKans" and so forth, picked up a compilation of American short stories, and was done with it all.

Take that, Ashy! In the end, I didn't even care enough to buy Garrison Keillor's political rants for $11 to make some point about you. How's them short-pants fittin' ya?

Will You Pinky-Swear on it, Mr. Ashcroft?

John Ashcroft, the former Attorney General and the poor fool who lost to Mel Carnahan's corpse here in Missouri, has written a book. (I know! I too was shocked that he could put together enough sentences.) The title of the book is "Never Again." Granted, the man is awful, but I still can't help feeling sorry for him for just really walking into that joke. Then again, perhaps he is finally doing something positive for us.

Do you promise, John? Could this possibly be the last that we will hear from you? Will you really never, never again make any decisions that will affect anymore than a dozen people? Because you owe us at least that much. Sure, you made us laugh with that great joke you told on NPR the other day. You know? - the one about how Bush has respected and done more for our personal freedoms during a time of war than ANY other president - ever. Yeah, that hearty guffaw you gave us was great, but if you keep this promise, you might actually go down in history as somewhat of a philanthropist (Whoops! Sorry, didn't mean to confuse you. That means a person who does good things for people just for the sake of doing good things.) It could be a good move for you - you know, once your singing career bottoms out, you'll have something to fall back on. Consider it, Ashy. For us?

Potato, Mai-tai-toe.

Call it being homebodies. Call it a love for our pets. Call it a love of our syndicated Law & Order. Whatever you want to call it, it all means the same thing: My roommate and I don’t like going out. For the most part, we spend our time coming up with good ideas and yelling at our pets, tucked away safe inside our metropolitan apartment. So the fact that she and I finally ventured into the world the other day was quite a feat. At first, everything seemed fine – we blended in seamlessly: tuned into the hip, in line with culture, and all set up to be normal people. Then dinner came. It was 4 in the afternoon, and we sat in a hip noodle joint surrounded by other “early birds” complete with their bibs and hall passes from the nursing home. We sat poised ready to continue our charade of normalcy – then came the Drink Menu.

“Play it cool,” we thought. “Just lay low, and no one will be the wiser.”

Our eyes understandably drifted towards the “Crazy Buddha,” which consisted of 60 ounces of delicious booze! “Done!” We thought. “Two straws + Crazy Buddha + us = goooood times!”

“No,” our social-awareness-conscience chimed in. “You must work towards not creating a constant spectacle of yourselves.”

“You’re right,” we thought. “Let us not undo the good done by the nice-times talk we had with the kindly elderly ladies at the table nearest to us. We should present ourselves as young, gentle, graceful ladies. . .

A pitcher of Mai Tai, please! Two glasses!” Ahhh. Subtlety achieved.

I Freakin' Love the Fall!!

I just need to say that I am IN LOVE with the cool, cool breeze pushing through my curtains lately. It blew in last weekend, and BOY, are we having an affair! It makes me cuddle up into my comforter tight at night while light-hearted dreams dance through my head. When it joins me for my walks with Ralphie it carries with it memories of fall - of Halloween and pumpkins and bonfires and multicolored leaves. The Breeze comes in clean, exciting and new and leaves me to feeling safe and at home.

It's almost enough to make it better while everthing falls apart.

Sickette & Tiredena

Okay. I’m ready to drop the pretenses. I am finally ready to put the lies to an end. This is me – honest and true.

Here it is - I am done with the idea of the independent woman. I no longer want to be the free-stylin’, free-livin’, flyin’-by-the-seat-of-my-pants modern lady that I currently present myself as.

I am ready for the knight. I am more than happy to give myself over to someone taking care of me and providing for his “little-lady.” Yeah, I grew up reading fairy tales. So one might think that this was the thing that I have wanted since pigtails and cotton candy, but my fairy tales were a little less sugar and sunshine than the majority of children’s sleepytime dreams. I guess if you spend your time wading through the gore, blood-covered eggs, step-children stew, and sliced & diced princesses to get to the happily-ever-after magical kiss between prince and princess of the actual Grimm Bros., you are a little more ready to work through a lot to get to the H.A.E.

However, I say "enough is enough;" I am done working towards something great. Now I am just ready to have someone come over a couple of times a week, walk Ralphie, do some dishes, give me a backrub and a hot cocoa after picking me up some delectable carry-out dinner, and then be on the way. I am ready for my return trip from Suffragette City. My bags are packed, with my liquids and fluids in my check-in bags, and a US Weekly under my arm. I am ready for my caretaking companion because I am D.O.N.E. taking care of my daddy-less babies and myself. Next!

It has Given Me Faith Once More!

I have many strong opinions about the war and our government. I am, however, happy to say that at least they have the resources available to help returning soldiers with all the hardships they will face. Thanks to a friend's brother* who is in the service, I have this actual posting from his army homepage:

August 29, 2006 - NATIONAL SUICIDE PREVENTION WEEK - 10 - 16 SEP 2006 - THIS YEAR'S THEME IS "SCIENCE AND PRACTICE IN SUICIDOLOGY: PROMOTING COLLABORATION, INTEGRATION, AND UNDERSTANDING". IT HIGHLIGHTS THE SYNERGISTIC BENEFITS OF WORKING TOGETHER TO PROMOTE SUICIDE AWARENESS.

Can we just talk about this for a second? Obviously it's the most geniusly hilarious thing ever, but let's dissect. It's the practice of suicide-study? In which they promote the, what?, collaborated efforts made towards suicide? And the integration!!? What are you lacking in your life? It's probably suicide because you know not enough people know the benefits of the integration of suicide into their everyday life.

Thank God my tax dollars aren't going to something awful like cutting down emissions.

*Thanks to Concerned Citizen and bro.

Some Sort of Penance

I know - I know. I'm an awful blogger. If anyone is still out there, I'm sorry. I hope that maybe this fantastic picture from an old PoSOoB theme might help you to forgive me.