Warden Shmuley Has Worms!

I like plants. I like vegetable plants and flower plants and all sorts of outside plants, but most of all I like houseplants. Despite my love for houseplants, though, I tend to kill them. It's not entirely my fault; I come from a long line of plant murderers. My mother has killed a series of hanging plants, windowsill plants, and table plants throughout my entire life. I think it's a genetic condition: black thumb.

But every spring and summer I forget this fact and I buy houseplants. This year I bought two -- an aloe plant and a hanging basket Purple Wandering Jew. And I let Ryan name them. The aloe plant is Allie (duh) and the Wandering Jew is Warden Shmuley. Warden because it sort of guards the house by hanging over the sink, right in front of the kitchen window, and Shmuley because in this WASP town I live in, it's the only distinctly Jewish name my daughter knows.
I bought the plant, and determined to let it live no matter the cost, because it was beautiful and lush and combined my favorite color (green) with Ryan's (purple). But sadly, I am afraid its fate is to be met soon. Because the other day, I found this!
Warden Shmuley's leaves are being eaten. When I put him outside a couple weeks ago to get some fresh air, some gnats or something must have gotten to him. So I cut off all the parts with eaten leaves and wished him well. This amputation made him appear a little less lush and full, but I love him despite his disability! But then this morning I awoke to find THIS behind the sink under Warden Shmuley! But what could it be? The answer was disgusting. WORMS! And WORM POOP! Worms just like this one, but blurrier when photographed, on MY HOUSEPLANT SUCCESS STORY!
I found three of them and carried them outside. I went outside in my workout clothes, in the daylight, because I was so eager to save Warden Shmuley. I feel bad for my neighbors since my workout clothes are basically just an old sport bra and a pair of tracksuit pants, but still, this was life or death. I did have the presence of mind to suck my navel back against my spine though, so that was good, although it does nothing for my backfat and I end up looking like I just put on weight really weirdly and unevenly. Hell, what do I care? My neighbors are fat.

So, does anyone know how I can kill these worms, which google tells me are called Yellow Striped Armyworms? I fear them because they are killing my plant, will hatch into something no doubt menacing and capable of flight, probably while I am asleep with my mouth open, and because they seem to produce copious amounts of poop, judging from what they deposited in only one night. And also, the term "Army"worm implies troops, perhaps a troop surge even. I only found three, but there could be more. I could wake up tomorrow to find only a basket of stems covered with worms! Will Shmuley make it? Or will his legacy have to be carried on by his infant son?
You know, I never really looked before, but it seems as if the frog may be doing something naughty to the teddy bear, on the windowsill back there. I should keep better tabs on my knick knacks.

Black Horse & The Cherry Tree, an in depth analysis

Okay, so I've liked this song for a while. I mean, it's catchy and just watch how she does it! The one-man band has come a long way since the days of harmonica stands and accordions, huh. But it was just this morning that I thought to myself, "Self, that simply cannot be a song about a horse who wants to marry a woman. You've heard it wrong and now you sound like the people who sing 'Excuse me while I kiss this guy' in Purple Haze. I mean, horses can't talk, for one, so a marriage proposal would have to take an unbelievable number of precise hoof-beats, probably in Morse Code. I suppose a cavalry horse might know Morse Code so we'll go with that for now. But still, there must be some taboo in the horse community against interspecies dating. The horse that killed that guy in Seattle or whatever was probably known as a human-fucking pervert to all the other ponies."

So I finally just googled the lyrics, and guess what I found out. It is not a song about a horse who wants to marry a woman. No, it's a song about a woman with A) internal organs capable of independent thought, desire, and movement, and B) the ability to live without vital internal organs. Oh, and also a horse wants to marry her. So, from the lyrics, this is the storyline produced by what I can only imagine was a drug-fueled song writing session, with a few details provided by my twisted imagination.

The story, as (apparently)told by a talking human heart:

Well my heart knows me better than I know myself
So I'm gonna let it do all the talking.
I came across a place in the middle of nowhere
With a big black horse and a cherry tree.

A woman is walking along in the middle of nowhere when she comes upon a cherry tree, with a big black horse tethered to it, perhaps the famine and pestilence member of the four horses of the apocalypse.

I felt a little fear upon my back
He said "Don't look back, just keep on walking."
When the big black horse said, "Look this way"
Said, "Hey, lady, will you marry me?"

Suddenly, the woman is afraid, but not of the horse. No, she feels a presence behind her - probably that biblical rider coming back from taking a leak in the woods - and the horse tells her not to look back, just leave. Yes, the horse is talking, but if it's a biblical horse I guess it's okay. I mean, there's an apocalyptic horseman shaking it behind a tree here and you're worrying about why the horse can talk? Get with the program. So the horse tells her to basically run for her life. Oh, but first, could you do me a favor? Now, does the horse ask her to perhaps untie him to he can get away from his master, a shadowy figure bent on the destruction of the human race? No, he proposes marriage.

But I said no, no, no, no-no-no
I said no, no, you're not the one for me
No, no, no, no-no-no
I said no, no, you're not the one for me

And she turns him down, explaining that it's nothing personal, he's just not the one for her. Me, I'd be all running away screaming like a little girl, but she seemed to be concerned about letting the horse down gently. That was sweet.

And my heart hit a problem, in the early hours,
So I stopped it dead for a beat or two.
But I cut some chord, and I shouldn't have done it,
And it won't forgive me after all these years

Later that night - or maybe some other night, the song isn't really clear on that point - this woman wakes up with some sort of angina chest pain heart problem thing going on. So she, with her super-human powers, just shuts her heart off for a beat or two. Because really, rebooting is what the old people should think to do when they wake up mid-coronary in their beds, not reaching for the nitro pills. But, it would seem that this woman's heart was merely playing a song, and she screwed up the opening chord. So her heart got all uppity and pissy and for years just became a grumpy Gus.

So I sent it to a place in the middle of nowhere
With a big black horse and a cherry tree.
Now it won't come back, 'cause it's oh so happy
And now I've got a hole for the world to see

So finally she just sent it away, got tired of the grouchy thing always complaining about it's failed musical career, and it left. And she survived, which really shouldn't surprise you after all the other stuff. The heart went to find the horse, which was apparently still hanging out by the cherry tree, which implies a very unmotivated horseman. I mean, sure he can scare strangers by walking up behind them, but he can't even muster the ambition to untie his horse and go spread the pestilence and famine he was hired to spread! So the heart, probably bouncing along like some gruesome sing-along ball, finds its way to the horse and becomes happy once again. And, since it's happy with the horse, it now refuses to come back. So now this woman has the horrible embarrassment of a big gaping chest wound the whole world can see. I'm not sure why she's walking around bare-chested, or maybe the wind just pushes her shirt in the hole and people give her funny looks on the sidewalk. Me, I'd try to patch my heart-escape-hole with some duct tape and a sports bra or something, but she doesn't seem to have thought of that.

And it said no, no, no, no-no-no
Said no, no, you're not the one for me
No, no, no, no-no-no-no
Said no, no, you're not the one for me

She just mopes around and begs her heart to please come back again but it says no, she's just not the one for it. That's right, her heart throws her own words to the horse right back in her face, so you know the horse and it have bonded over their mutual disdain for her. Poor lady. She's got a big gaping hole in her solar plexus, her heart left her for another horse, and she has to play every single instrument all by herself.

Big black horse and a cherry tree
I can't quite get there 'cause my heart's forsaken me

And to top it all off, now she can't go to the place in the middle of nowhere with the horse, the tree, and her bloody beating heart, because apparently you have to have a heart to get there and hers has disowned her! Talk about a rough life!

*These are the thoughts and images of a crazy woman. I'm on a diet and I can actually hear my stomach threatening to run off and find KT Tunstall's heart. I can only assume it wants to go to eat the cherries. Mmmmm, cherries.

"Don't tase me, bro!"

Police providing security at a University of Florida function decided, in their infinite policey wisdom, to taser a student who asked too many questions. You can watch the video on youtube pretty easily if you really want to see cops tasering college students. Personally, being raised by a hairy legged braless hippy like I was, I could easily envision it before I saw it. A college student asks a politician a question which criticises the current administration (such as "How could you concede the election?") , during an unnecessary and unwinnable war, and the police rush in to attack. Just another reason to compare Iraq to Vietnam, Bush to Nixon, tasers to fire hoses.

So, what should the cops have done? I don't know, honestly. If the kid was coming off as a nutjob (apparently he rushed security to even get in the place) and the cops thought he might waste Kerry's whole appearance by monopolizing the forum and rambling on about Bush, then yeah, they had to get him out of there. Other kids have a right to ask questions too. So yeah, I blame it on the overworked, under-trained cops scared of being blamed for an event going bust because they didn't get the wackjob out. But more, I blame it on the system.

Politicians, especially the far-right Republican ones, love to throw around the founding fathers bit and talk about what this country was founded on. Apparently, my public education was all wrong. See, I thought this country was founded on being able to question your elected officials, on liberty for all and basic freedoms. Schoolhouse Rock taught me some of this. But I learn now that this country was founded on homophobia and Christian Theocracy and on "Love it or leave it!" Sad, really. Someone should start a country based on freedom and liberty. Otherwise this little experiment in democracy may be forgotten in the annals of time. I guess it was kinda doomed from the start anyway, being built upon a foundation of genocidal land theft and all. Oh well. Sing with me: Oh Canada!

Look, how are we supposed to question out elected officials? I have written to my congressman, and been ignored and responded to with dismissive form letters. I have called the state capitol and been thanked for my time and interest by lackey volunteers who probably are just glad they can work the phones. Don't get me wrong, I would be the lackey volunteer if I could, and I probably wouldn't be able to figure out the Capitol phone system. But come on, only a few hand-picked people ever get to ask a question from an elected official, and even they don't get an answer, just spin and rhetoric. I can't even get a candidate to add me as a friend on MySpace! And yes, I realize that John Kerry isn't an official in Florida, but who do you go to for answers? Cindy Sheehan had the power of the press and legions of supporters behind her and all she wanted was to talk to the president. Sure, she got the pat party-line condolences visit once while she was in shock from the death of her son. But after that, when she was thinking a little more clearly and a couple more questions had occurred to her, she tried to get a hold of her buddy George, the guy who had been so sympathetic before, and couldn't get through. I understand the frustration, especially compounded by grief. The brain sort of reroutes it's purpose during grieving, shifts the focus from the pain to whatever other task happens to pop up. This is why people devote so much energy to funeral plans. This is also why women have historically done their best cooking after the death of a loved one. Cindy, however, had a more important task. She had a question or two and she was not going to be ignored. Schoolhouse Rock had taught her that it was okay for her to question her leaders. And suddenly her world was one where nothing was okay and she had no power, so she was not going to give up on this. Her son had died and she wanted answers, and Bush hid behind gates and fences and Secret Service agents and ignored her. Her son had died in his war and he didn't have the decency to take five minutes out of his months of vacations to sit down and be a human, a fellow parent, and talk to her.

Cindy Sheehan, the kid at U of F, just people who desperately wanted a question or two answered. Why can't anyone be heard anymore?

How To Quit Smoking With Sadistic Glee

Oh yeah, I quit smoking, finally. The chantix didn't work so I quit taking that. You're not supposed to take it if you're pregnant and since we're trying . . . you get the idea. So, if you smoke, and you don't want to, I suggest you read this here book. It sounds corny, a book to cure an adddiction, but it works. And ten bucks for a book is a lot smaller risk than a hundred for a month's worth of pills.


He was fun to kill.

Ten Reasons Joey Ramone Is NOT The Ugliest Frontman In The History Of Rock

Iggy Pop, primarily a solo artist

Mick Jagger, The Rolling Stones

Brian Johnson, AC/DC

Peter Steele, Type O Negative

Glenn Danzig, Danzig

Marilyn Manson, solo artist

John Popper, Blues Traveler

Bob Dylan, The Band, The Traveling Wilburys, prolific solo career

Tom Petty, Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, The Traveling Wilburys

And finally . . . . . .

Michael Jackson, through his own hard work and dedication

In Defense Of My Weight

I've been told that I'm not fat. I've been told that it's rude to fat people, me saying I'm fat. I've been accused of fishing for compliments by saying I'm fat. So here's the deal: to me, based on my own opinion of my size in relation to the many sizes I've been in my life, I feel fat. Not obese, not roly-poly, but fat. I do not want to get obese or roly-poly, so I am exercising. No, I am not saying that anyone any larger than me is fat. And no, I am not saying that anyone who wears my current clothing size is fat. All I am saying is that when I stand naked in front of a mirror, I can see bulges and creases where I do not want them to be.

So, you can take this as a thinly veiled insult to yourself, or as me fishing for compliments, or whatever. Personally, I like to see it as just another reminder that all us women have a common bond.

None of us like how we look naked in front of the mirror.

I'm Allergic To Missouri

Tom quit his job. He's buying his very own truck and going to work for Schneider hauling big ugly orange trailers all across America. So yesterday he had to turn his old truck in at CFI headquarters in Joplin, Missouri. I had to follow him down there, through Kansas City rush hour (scares me all over again about moving to Omaha -- city traffic!) so he would have a ride home. No big deal, right?

Wrong.

I am allergic to Missouri. Maybe it's the barley fields, or maybe it's the sunflower fields, I don't know. All I know is that today, I can't breathe through my nose. But, I do have pecan fudge from Ozarkland and Tom is home again until Saturday so I guess I'm happy.

I really hope I'm not allergic to the sunflower fields. I think I would like to be a sunflower farmer someday. What could be better? Name me one happier career than one that requires you to be surrounded by fields of flowers all day. Maybe just for fun someday, I will find myself a field and plant sunflowers in it, just so I could run through them and surround myself with their sunny cheerfulness. IF I'm not allergic to them. Somehow I think the inability to breath would be able to dampen the cheer.

I hate Missouri.

An Epic Battle

Ryan and Tom ganged up on me. They freaking kicked my ass, is what they did. And they giggled the whole damn time. And to think, the Epic Battle was my idea!


I bought thirty glow-sticks. I bought thirty glow-sticks and we chose teams, which ended up being me against everyone else in the house, and turned off all the lights, and we had an Epic battle. I suppose it could have been considered a small playful fight, but why do things halfway? If you're going to have a glow-stick war, have a glow-stick Epic Battle. Not enough people capitalize these days; it's sad. Also, too many people are afraid of breaking things and therefor don't want to lob glow-sticks at each other across a darkened room. But, life should be fun. I mean, isn't it every parent's goal to have our children's peers jealous of our kids? I don't wan to spoil her, but why not have fun at times?

I highly recommend the glow-stick Epic battle. It's an educational experience for a kid. Ryan learned vocabulary (a shoe-box is an armory) and strategy (throwing one stick short to lure me into the open). And she also earned that Mom and Dad can whip glowing hunks of hard plastic at each other and still be okay and happy afterward.

It was a fun night. But a word of advice to anyone planning an Epic Battle of their own: grab the lid to your biggest chili pot and use it to deflect potential blows to the head. And periodically check your hair for snagged weapons. Nothing gives away your location like a glowing beacon stuck in your pony-tail.

Why Men Eat Take-Out

Tom took my grocery list and is right now attempting to buy the household groceries. The problem with this? Well A) I didn't write the list for him, I wrote it for me. Therefore it has on it things like 'brn rice bag 2' and 'me shamp / cond'. And 2) He spends my money wrong. See, I get a set amount of money every payday to spend on household food and supplies. This is the only money I get to touch. And it bothers me when he comes back from Walmart and I have three dollars left, but look at the good deal he got on bulk apples! I wanted four apples, for Ryan's lunches, but he bought ten pounds of apples for only eight times the price. See? Great deal on apples, but it screws me in the money department. This is why I've been on the phone talking him through Walmart for the last half hour. This is how he helps me with the domestic duties, by making me spend just as much time on them as I would have anyway, while simultaneously depriving me the joy of actually leaving the house and forcing me to try to describe the freezer section so he can find the things he can't decipher anyway.

He is asking me if I want him to pick up some calf liver. He giggles. He seems to think that this is just the height of personal comedy, asking me if I want calf liver, because it crosses almost all of my personal food boundaries. I won't eat baby animals and I won't eat anything you could reasonably expect to find on an autopsy table. Also, it wasn't on my list and he's spending my allowance!

He didn't go to Office Max to get the Original Scent Lysol which I had thought was discontinued until I found it online at officemax.com. He has kindly volunteered to go buy it after he leaves Walmart. With a trunk full of frozen food. In the ninety degree heat. While I sit at home with no car hoping that Ryan doesn't call for a ride home from her friend's house across town. Why didn't Tom go buy it before he went to Walmart? Because it's just Lysol, and they sell Lysol at Walmart. And because he didn't read the list. And because he didn't think it was a big deal. And because he didn't hear me when I asked him to call me before he went shopping, even though he agreed to at the time.

This is proof that sexual orientation isn't a choice. No one would ever choose to spend their life dealing with the opposite sex, not without a HUGE genetic push. I think gay people have it right. Live with someone you can talk to, someone who speaks the same language, someone who understands the importance of the original scent Lysol you remember from your youth!







Sadly, I do appreciate it all, and he did save me getting dressed and running to Clinton first thing in the morning. It's just, I never get to go anywhere!

I'm Not Crazy, I'm An Artist

I've been psychoanalyzed, on and off, since I was four years old. I've gone to child psychiatrists, family psychiatrists, on-call psychiatrists, and amateur psychiatrists, and gotten a different diagnosis from almost every one. I suffered from depression, anxiety, borderline personality disorder (think Winona Ryder in Girl Interrupted), bipolar disorder and gods know how many other horrible syndromes and disorders they told my mother about rather than me. I have also been fed some pretty outlandish bullshit. One lady, a hack brought in by my high school due to my obvious need for mental help (I wore black and didn't talk for a year in a world of pep rallies and football games, had it been post-Columbine I probably would have been expelled for being strange) tried to convince me that I would transform overnight into a pastel-wearing icon of teenage happiness if only I would accept that deep down I wanted to have sex with my father. I walked out and never looked back. She sells real estate now; I believe she may have found her calling. I've also been told that I irrefutably and without doubt was molested as a child and that my absolute lack of memories on the subject prove it to be true. I tried to explain the stupidity of this approach to the shrink in question, a lady I found because she was the only one covered by my father's insurance, but to no avail. No, the fact that I could not remember being abused proved how heinous the abuse must have been! This sort of circular logic proved to me that the therapist had majored in theology before switching to psychology.

My point is that I have been taught by experience to pretty much disregard all psychiatric diagnoses. But, it has recently been brought to my attention that my living room redecorating experience just screams "Manic Episode!!! Helloooooo!" So I thought I'd go with it. Maybe I am bipolar. So, for the last week or so, I've been watching myself to see if the label fits. It seems to, but it, like all labels, brings with it a whole host of problems. Like for instance, not knowing how to think. If all of my thoughts are to be attributed to either mania or depression, what happened to the ones that should be attributed to me? My ideas, my plans, all my newly thought-up undertakings, can I trust none of them? Are they merely the delusional goals of a manic person? Is my attempt to write a novel akin to another crazy person's attempt to gamble his way to riches? If I accept this diagnosis, if I embrace manic-depression, I lose all confidence in my own judgement!

If I am simply a slightly odd person with anger issues and related impulse control problems, then I can feel free to objectively look at myself and make decisions based on my own judgement. But if I am a manic-depressive person with many various symptoms as laid out in the DSM-IV then I must second-guess every thought in my head, and then disregard the second guess because even that is the thought of a crazy person. And my kid, instead of having a bizarre mom who occasionally, but with no diminished mental capacity, yells at inanimate objects, becomes a victim. Suddenly she has to endure the horrors of being raised by a mentally ill person rather than just someone who overreacts and has lots of energy as well as the occasional bad mood.

I think I'd rather be 'sane but really weird' than 'crazy but doing quite well considering'. Is it so wrong to do things on a whim? Is my child going to be damaged somehow by late night weekend glowstick-wars across the living room, or dance contests before school, or impromptu carpet-removal? As long as she does her homework on time and has a bed-time routine, what's the harm? Is it better that Tom be married to a crazy woman who really should have her moods chemically stabilized, or that he be married to a funny, spontaneous, passionate woman? I cry sometimes and I blow up about little things, especially before my period, but what wife doesn't?

No, I think I'm gonna keep my denial if it's all the same. I can't afford any medication, and wouldn't take any even if I could due to wanting to get pregnant soon, so the simple awareness of my own mental defects seems to me to accomplish nothing good. Of course, I could be wrong. That opinion could simply be the product of a mania-driven mind incapable of thinking clearly. Lucky I don't have any mania then, isn't it.

God, and Stuff

I was reading an article about the military tombstone pentacle controversy and in the comments section, I found a comment containing the following words:

Being an Hellenic Reconstructionist Pagan (though non-practicing)

I don't have any idea what Hellenic Reconstructionist Pagans believe. I've never heard the term before in my life, but as a pagan myself, I can tell you that a non-practicing pagan is an animal I'm not familiar with. I'm willing to assume that that's more about my not understanding the term 'practicing', but still it seems odd.

On another, not completely unrelated note, my friend Marv, who regular readers might remember, has a long-time girlfriend. She apparently clicked me in his myspace friends list, and found my personal space to be full of pentagrams and "Blessed Be" banners. This well-meaning young lass branded me, per her churches teachings no doubt, a Satanist. So Marv, who has never expressed an interest in my or anyone else's religion that I know of, had to ask me to explain my faith so that he could relate the story to his girlfriend and assure her that I was not about to attempt to sacrifice her children to Jeff Goldblum.

Both of these things have given me a brilliant idea. I shall blog about my religion! Nothing could be safer and less controversial than religion, right? Especially an intent-based pagan religion I tend to make up as I go along. So here goes.

I worship Jeff Goldblum. Geena Davis is Evil.
Just kidding. Ha ha

I am pagan, with a definite Wiccan bent. I'm also kind of pantheistic, which meshes pretty well with the whole Wicca angle too. Basically, I believe that if you are a good person, you won't have a crappy life. I think that divine punishment, if there is such a thing, is reserved for bad people who tried to impose their will in life, regardless of who they prayed to or asked forgiveness from. I think that the preacher who tries to make you live life by his rules is about as bad as the abusive boyfriend who tried to make you live life by his rules. Both tend to use scare tactics, whether they scare you with threats of eternal hellfire or with actual beatings, they are trying to bend your will to their own and I believe it is bad.

The god aspect, an intelligent designer (Versace?), a creator. Hmmm. Well, I do believe in that, out of cowardice and simple-mindedness. See, I can't imagine anything with a pattern that wasn't created. My mind is incapable of grasping the concept, as I believe most human minds are. Also, I fear death, which is the final unknown. It gives me comfort to believe that I have a creator who will make sure that it's not lights out and who will, I secretly hope, see me in the same rosy light I tend to see myself. I do not believe any of these things with any positive certainty, rather in the same way I continue to believe in Santa Claus. I believe because it makes me happy and because I want to, no matter what anyone says.

Now, the official Wiccan philosophy, as I've come to understand it, is that in the beginning there was a female presence, the Goddess. She got lonely and so she split herself in two and created the God, a male presence to keep her company. They came together (watch out now, it gets sexy) and from that union came the planets and stars and all that goes with it, including us. (And I thought labor hurt when it was just a baby. Imagine a whole solar system!) So the Goddess and the God wanted to keep watch over all of their little babies, especially the ones who had the ability to self-propel, so they took up working in shifts, looking down at us at all times. She became the moon, calm and cool and ever-changing. (Think, the lunar month as it relates to women's fertility and mood swings.)He became the sun, fiery and powerful and also strong. (Think, life-giving energy that can blind you if you stare at it.) Now, here's where the spells and chants start to make sense. Since everything, including people, came from the God and Goddess, we should all have that same inherited power, right? So, why can't we maybe influence things? In all honesty, the spells are more along the lines of lighting a candle for a blessing in a Catholic Church, just a ritualized prayer. But there's also the theory that if we are all the same, we should have the same power. If the Earth can quake and rain and do all sorts of nifty natural things, why can't we? Look at it this way, science teaches us that everything, way down deep, is energy. You, me, this computer, a dead tree, it's all just energy. Well, Wiccan's call that energy god. Actually, since it's in everything, they call it The All. And The All is more a force than a god. "God" created the Earth, but The All is God and the Earth. Deep, huh.

So, that's what I've been told is the official party line. Do I believe it? I don't know. It's certainly no less feasible than a bored deity rotting alone in space creating everything in six days and then needing a rest. I mean, why does a god need to rest? Wouldn't God, if anyone, have unlimited stamina? But I digress. I believe that I can't know all the answers. And I believe that the people who claim to know the answers are almost universally assholish. And of all of the religions which I have studied (only maybe three but honestly most people haven't even studied that many), the pagan tend to be the only ones that don't possess two main deal-breaking flaws. 1) The belief that it, and only it, is the truth. And 2) The belief that it is a follower's duty to correct everyone else who is, by definition, wrong. See, my own brand of unschooled Wicca has only one rule, really. "And it harm none, do what ye will." No rules against gays. No rules against working on Sundays or wearing cotton with linen. Just a different wording of the Golden Rule. Don't pee on people and you'll be alright.

Well, you might say, how convenient to choose a religion with no consequence. But, no, there's consequence. We have the Law Of Three. It's like Karma squared. Whatever energy you put out into the universe, negative or positive, you get back times three. Good person, does charity work, good life. Cynical thieving adulterer, bad life. No penance to erase it here. No asking for forgiveness or human-gods dying to save your ass. Nope, if you do the crime you will do the time. Guaranteed. I know I've earned the bad shit that's happened to me. And I sure as hell know I have more coming to me. And, if you max out your lifetime's allotment of retribution, there's always next time. Yes, even Wiccans have an afterlife. See, you're born and then you die and then you're born again. Lather, rinse repeat. After you die all your former lives are made clear to you and you get to set a goal, a lesson to learn that perhaps you never quite got before. Then maybe you hang around for a while, watching your kids grow up or whatever, until you decide to jump back into the game and be reborn. After a while you might run out of lessons to learn, and then you go back into the God-Goddess combination you came from in the first place. I picture it being kind of like those Hubble telescope pictures. I also find it explains a lot about how this guy and this guy can be the same species. I'm thinking Mr Tyson might have been around this block a few more times, or at least finished the job more often, than the guy who taped himself. For an even clearer comparison, click here and here.

Now, why does the lady who claimed to be a non-practicing Hellenic Reconstructionist Pagan baffle me? Because I'm pretty sure Hellenic Reconstructionist Paganism isn't something your parents drag you to every Sunday like, say, Catholicism. I can understand a non-practicing Jew or a non-practicing Catholic. Your parents tell you from birth on that this is truth and fact, and you believe them the same way you believe things like that the sky is blue and that four follows three. Mom and Dad said it so it's real. (By the way, don't teach your kid pi during the formative years. It totally screws them up when they go off to preschool and they're the only kid who counts one, two, three, pi, four. I learned that one the hard way. Poor Ryan.) So to me, non-practicing means that they believe it, whatever "it" is, because it is a universal fact in their life, but they don't necessarily attend all of the functions or pray a lot, or maybe they eat beef on Fridays or whatever they're technically not supposed to do. But with the pagan religions, usually if you claim it you chose it. Very few people have been raised pagan, so far. So it's not like there's some twenty-something computer tech telling his friends "Well, I was raised Neo-Druid, but I've kind of strayed since high school." How can you, if you've personally looked for a religion, sought out what made sense to you, and then found it and learned it, can you then cease to practice?

I guess I could be considered a non-practicing pagan. I don't do ritual more than once or twice a year and the closest I have to an altar is a sage stick I keep unlit because I think it smells like pot. Maybe I am non-practicing, but I wouldn't identify as such. I just say I'm a solitary witch and leave it at that. I really need a better title. Maybe I could be a Brigidic Neo-Pagan Sabbatist. But, despite sounding fancy, that just means I follow a relatively new incarnation of an old religion with holidays, and that it all revolves around the goddess Brigid.

Ahh, goddesses. That's another thing I left out. How, if I personally have the Goddess (moon) and the God (sun) and all of everything is the All, do I somehow squeeze in gods and goddesses? The answer is simple. Delegation! See, the All is a force, Nature if you will. And the God and the Goddess are really kind of busy with things like karma and being all stuck to each other forever. The ones who anser the lottery requests and such are a little lower on the totem pole. So, the minor deities are more along the lines of the Christian saints. Christian or Catholic? I can't tell. Either way, if Francis can protect your dog and Christopher can keep you safe on vacation, then there's no reason why any number of Celtic or Roman or Egyptian deities can't attempt to do the same.

Well, hopefully I have educated the people (person) who may have wondered about my religious beliefs. Personally , I just think that good is rewarded and bad is punished, in life rather than after it. The rest is just to make me feel better and after all, isn't that what religion is for? To serve as a crutch for the only species unfortunate enough to be aware of its own mortality?




PS. Maybe it's a stretch to believe that getting charged twice for the same sweater is punishment from God for cheating on a seventh grade spelling test, but is it really any worse than believing that if I lied to my mother once, about anything, and forgot to ask forgiveness that I will burn in Hell for eternity? Really?

Easy Like Sunday Morning

Ahhh, Sunday morning. How peaceful, how tranquil, how completely full of shit that I should be doing but choose not to because society has instilled in me a false belief that Sunday mornings should be peaceful and tranquil.

I'm not completely lazy. I did my 20 minutes on the Gazelle. With weights. And, I'm proud to say, I only nearly fell off the thing, and only once, since the Gazelle is kind of harder to do when trying to coordinate lifting weights with a poor impression of cross-country skiing. Apparently the handles aren't just for show. And then I made my daily lunch of brown rice seasoned with soy sauce, and burned my tongue trying to choke it down because I kind of over-cooked it and it was all clumpy and sticky. And then I looked up TAIACS on imdb and then wandered the internet following random links until I found the newest Perry Hilton video. If you read the comments you will see that so many people don't get it. This is a PARODY of Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears, all of the better-than-you I love my fans, paparazzi-stalked, paparazzi-loving professional bimbos out there. TAIACS replaced "That's hot" with "That's tasty" , named his character Perry Hilton, and ran with it. Yes, the man mocking the dumb has a career made up almost exclusively of that very role. Yes, he's trying to be the next vapid pretty-boy "IT" actor in Hollywood, a la Brad Pitt Keanu Reeves Ashton Kutcher the list goes on and on. And yes, he may meet the same fate as that blond guy from Blue Lagoon. But he's semi-local here so I am biased to cheer for him succeeding rather than failing. Keep in mind though, that the Perry Hilton bits are hilarious. Not so much the Jeremy Piven one, but the other ones are dead on, as far as parody goes.

In case you haven't guessed, I'm not exactly writing the novel right now like I should be. I'm trying to figure out though, and maybe you can help me, are those girls who are size twelve but wear size four funny, or just pathetic and kinda gross? I mean, I realize the undeniable sex appeal an exposed fat roll gives off, but does that sex appeal have to fall over into the produce section at the grocery store? If shopping for fruit leaves pineapple burn on your belly, you aren't wearing enough clothes! And if the only thing holding your low-rider jeans on is that the waistband digs two inches into your hips, at least wear a long and loose shirt, not a spandexy tank top which rolls up into a sport bra all by itself. FASHION TIP: If your clothes roll anywhere by themselves, they are too tight for your body. If the size of your calves turns your socks into cotton knit foot condoms, buy bigger socks. If your belly jelly pushes your top up into the sweat-drenched fold beneath your boobs, buy bigger tops. If the idea of wearing anything larger than a size six bothers you, eat healthy foods and exercise. I don't like the idea that when naked, I look like an albino sea lion. So, I wear clothes that protect the public from that image and I Gazelle in front of a mirror in a sport bra and low-rider tracksuit pants. Maybe If I have to see what an albino sea lion with tattoos looks like, I will be motivated not to put the weights down even when it feels like I got hit in the arms and shoulders with a pipe.

Well, I guess I should now either write my novel or pick up the weights, a Jenna Jameson inspired endeavor the tale of which I no doubt will bless you with later. I wanted to leave you with a photo of an albino sea lion with tattoos wearing a sport bra, but no amount of googling could get me that image. So instead, I will leave you with the links to two photos, and an open invitation to please photoshop them at your will and then email them to me, and I will choose the winner and post the picture here. I fully expect that no one will do this, but I invite nonetheless.

Photo One: an albino seal on the beach

Photo Two: an albino sea lion reclining in a zoo (But if you use this one, please do something about the camel-toe. You can portray me as blubber with a head without offending me, but not as blubber with a head and exposed labia. It just crosses a line.)

It's Not A Fat Roll, It's Side Cleavage.

I've gotten fat. Well, my friends still tell me I'm not fat, but they say that because they're my friends, and possibly because they're afraid I'll eat them. But either way, I now weigh two pounds more than I did when Ryan was born and have decided to do something about it. So I made Tom buy me excercise equipment. The conversation went something like this:

ME: Remember when I asked what you'd do if I ever got fat?

TOM: Yeah. . .

ME: And you said you'd buy me a treadmill and refuse me affection?

TOM: Well that's not exactly what I said but, yeah. . .

ME: WHERE THE HELL IS MY DAMNED TREADMILL?? YOU OWE ME!!!


So, I got my machine. Not a treadmill, since I have bad knees, but close. I got a Tony Little Gazelle. So now I can swing my legs back and forth with no semblance of coordination until I am a thin and desirable woman. Well, a worn out and sore woman, anyway. But I am doing the Gazelle thing for an hour a day (for the most part) and am waiting for the pounds to melt away. They are not melting. I fear they are unable to melt. I also fear they are reproducing. The next step is diet, which I dread. I don't eat much, but I drink a lot of Mountain Dew. I read the can; Mountain Dew is 170 calories per can. I did the Gazelle for an hour and a half today and only burned 100 calories. Mountain Dew is evil. I know I should switch to diet, but diet Dew tastes like 7Up and I hate 7Up. When I was little my dad would make me drink 7Up if I puked and that association is hard to work past. Why can't Tom like fat chicks like I do? My life would be so much easier if Tom could just see my belly fat as a gigantic third boob, with a naval nipple.

Women, we should totally push that philosophy. Maybe a girdle with an underwire or something, like a cummerbund by Wonderbra. That might help. I mean, belly fat takes inches off the penis, but it does nothing to our naughty bits. We should embrace our fat, if for no other reason than that it would be easier than a lifetime on the Gazelle.

Jorge, You Gots Some 'Splainin To Do!

Okay so explain something to me. Why is it that it's perfectly fine to hassle a guy about his sex life, which breaks no laws, but it's just purely political to inquire about ILLEGAL FIRINGS? I mean, what is worse here, getting a blowjob from the easy intern, or firing qualified government employees for their political alliances? Getting an extramarital blowjob is, while immoral, not illegal. Firing people for failing to religiously support your boss's megalomania is illegal however. And even if it weren't, doesn't eight years of Paula Jones, Gennifer Flowers, Whitewater, and the impeachment proceedings for the infamous Lewinski chubby-gobble, doesn't all of that sort of kill the Republican party's right to claim political witch hunt?

You can't chase a guy down for eight years desperately searching for dirt on him even though he's a great president, only to go ruining the country when you get your turn and then go all Howard Hughs paranoid when people notice your federal offenses.

A Desperate Call For Help, So HELP!!

My mother mentioned to me a story or book she had to read in college. It was mandatory required reading for her and so this must have been some undergraduate English class, since my mother only attended actual college classes for two years and was going for an English degree. Later she took night and weekend classes and got her degree and we are all very proud of her, but since she had to read this particular story or book for a class she attended some time in the pre-menopause years, it must have been an undergraduate class requirement. So, back on subject: this story, or book, is about a lawyer/barrister/solicitor who hires an assistant/copy-maker to work in some Victorian or Edwardian or whatever legal office. The guy does good work, steady and legible, and the boss has no problem with him, until he comes in early or late or on a weekend or something and finds the assistant in his pajamas. The guy lives at the office, which seemed to tick off the lawyer. So the boss tells the guy that he needs to find a different place to live, except that he doesn't leave. He never leaves. He continues to do excellent work, but he still lives there as well. So finally the lawyer decides that the nerve this guy has to blatantly NOT move out is somehow more important than the good work he does and has him arrested. After all, why shouldn't the guy have to pay his way like everyone else, right? So the guy gets arrested and sent to jail, which in this time period or maybe just in this part of the world, is a pay your own way kind of place. Except, no one is paying the guy's way so he has no food or clothes or blanket. And the lawyer realizes that maybe he overreacted when he had the guy sent away, especially now that he has no assistant or copy-maker or whatever, so he gives the poor guy some money, so he can have food and clothes. So, after all is said and done, he STILL pays the guy and the guy STILL doesn't have to pay his own way, and now no one is making legal copies!

Now, my mom swears the assistant was named Barnabas, but no amount of googling will bring up anything even remotely resembling fictional lawyers in Olde England. However, there are plenty of stories about Saint Barnabas and what seems to be a very incompetent medical system in the New York Department of Corrections run by St Barnabas Hospital. Now, I never went to college, although I always check "some college" on questionnaires since I took that one Saturday writing class out at the junior college. But I know that some of you (Dawn, Chandos) went to actual accredited higher-learning places and got credit for learning highly. So maybe you read this story or book and can tell me what it was? I want to know the name of it so I can buy my mom a copy. There's a lady who works with her who lives at work and so Mom calls her Barnabas behind her back, and I hate when there's a literary reference I don't get. I read The Picture of Dorian Gray just to understand a James Blunt lyric last winter.

So please please please save me from redundancy. (No wait, that's a habit if I say please too many times in a row I have to follow it with "save me from redundancy".) Please please please help me find out what this story and/or book about the barrister and/or solicitor's assistant and/or copy-maker is. Google has finally failed me.

Stupid People and Cannibal Fish

You ever have a friend who seems intelligent, easy to talk to, relatively normal, a person who seems to display only one personality for years and then all of a sudden one day goes batshit crazy and decides to let Unstable Bad Decision Making Personality out to play? Like they woke up one day and said "I am tired of living life by the minimum of rules generally agreed upon by society such as Don't tattoo your face and Don't paint-bomb hobos" (invented examples, but still) "I am hereby making the decision to start doing really stupid things. Not stupid in a 'Oh you know better than that' sort of way but rather, stupid in a way usually experienced only by those women who for some reason try to marry serial killers". Why do people do that? Why have a midlife crisis meltdown and decide to wreck your life before the age of 30? And why talk to me in public after you've done that?

BTW, my fish tank is all cloudy and I fear it may be divine-fishy retribution for my fish turning cannibal on the new guy. Do they sell drops for that, do you think?

Update Post! Yaaayyyy!

Hmmm, where to start? Let's go backwards, from most recent post to wherever I get tired of going back.

Blue Lagoon SUCKED. Yes it had a penis, but as Edith Anne says, if you want to see a penis all you have to do is ask. Yes it had a Brooke Shields body double wandering naked around a hut. But it had HORRIBLE writing, which actually boosts my confidence as a writer cuz hey, if that guy got published . . . But when the guy got all pissed and exploded with "And I don't know why all these strange hairs keep growing out of me!" as a subtle sign that he's hit puberty, it lost a little something. And where did they get baby clothes? And who the fuck were the people on the other side of the island? I feel a little less bad for the blond guy and a little more in awe of Brook Shields and Kristy MacNichol. I mean, how did their careers ever take off?

Tom has admitted to his dirty secret. He watches Big Brother, I mean. Not the other one. (Although, it's either that or he's in love with his Hanes beefy-T Pocket T's. Tee hee hee, boys are so messy.)* He watches Big Brother and for some reason, not that he has unburdened this shame to me, he gives me random updates on the Tommy Lee guy and his porn-star-looking daughter. I don't like this on many levels. 1) It makes me aware that Big Brother is still on the air, which I am sure is a sign of the apocalypse. And to think, some people think Gay Marriage is the sign of declining morals! 2) It makes me aware that I married a man who watches Big Brother. 3) It fills valuable brain-space with facts such as there is a bar owner somewhere who looks like Tommy Lee and that he has a daughter who looks like post-anorexia Jenna Jameson. 4) It is the only reason I have spent the past two minutes of my life, two minutes I will never get back, googling pictures of Dick, Danielle, Tommy Lee, and Jenna Jameson, not to mention the time I had to spend on the CBS website slash Big Brother, which I'm sure has made me dirty. To pay Tom back for this, I may delete Eureka after I watch it this week.

I am still not smoking, nor do I want to. According to The Prophet Allen Carr, I only have five days of withdrawal left. I certainly hope he was right.

I am very close to the part of my novel-writing process where I start writing. I have a plot, an outline, character profiles, and assorted clever lines and descriptions thought up. Now, I have to write it. This will be the hard part. Wish me luck.

Add to my reading list Fluke, Practical Demonkeeping, The Lust Lizard Of Melancholy Cove, and Island Of The Sequined Love Nun. Keep in mind, these were all research for my novel and as such, I plan to deduct their cover price from my taxes.

Okay, that's about it for updates for now. Tune in for new stuff and if the stuff I wrote today sucked, you can blame Dawn.


*I really hope Tom doesn't read this.

From Carpet-Muncher to Carpet-Killer, The Downward Spiral of Chuck

Let me begin by saying that I have anger issues. I get to feeling overwhelmed by something and then some sort of adrenaline-fueled defense mechanism kicks in and basically says Don't get mad, get even. And then I almost inevitably do something stupid. About two weeks ago, this stupid mental italics voice told me to murder my carpet. Never, and I mean NEVER listen to a disembodied voice in italics.

I killed my carpet. It smelled like years of dog pee and potty-training toddler pee and spilt instant cappuccino and I was shampooing it weekly but I could still smell it all in a nauseating bouquet of uck. Not ick; it was clearly uck. So, I killed it. I ripped it up in pieces and drug it's stinking corpse to the curb. I pulled up the tack-strip along the walls and the rusted staples some idiot had randomly shot into the floor (Coulda been me - I got mad at the staple gun a few months ago) and after all was said and done I had bare wood floors and one impending medical bill for a tetanus shot. But, adrenaline's a funny thing. It can make it possible for a woman to lift a Volkswagen off her baby, but it cannot seem to make me strong enough to move a corner curio cabinet. So I actually had bare floor except for where the furniture I couldn't move was. Those parts had to wait for Tom, sitting alone on tiny islands of frayed reeking carpet.

So Tom came home to take Ryan to the fair and demonstrate his penis size by wasting money on "easy", though obviously rigged, carnival games. Think, "I'll win you that there stuffed dog" followed by two hours of skee-ball. Anyway, he came home and I made him move the furniture so I could get rid of what was left of my gruesomely dismembered living room carpet. Yes, it does make me feel better to constantly refer to it as a horrific murder victim, thank you very much.

But . . . as long as Tom's moving the furniture away from the walls, and we've both quit smoking, we should really wash down the smoke-stained walls. So we go to Home Depot and buy gallons of TSP heavy-duty wall cleaner. But not sponges. We buy those at a Dollar Store after it finally occurs to us that we will need some way to actually get the cleaner onto the walls. No, we're not bright.

But . . . as long as we're washing down the walls, and since apparently no amount of scrubbing can get all of the yucky color off and the streaky running rivers of brown tar and nicotine are making the place look like a crack-house in a Law & Order rerun, we might as well paint.

But . . . Tom's only got a couple of days home so we have to get two coats on the walls AND the ceiling in, oh say, one day. And we can't let the dogs in the living room because they might brush the walls (if I knew how to keep them out of the living room none of this would have started). And, all the furniture has to be shoved into the middle of the room because the house is only 800 square feet and there's no place else to put it, which makes it oh so much fun to paint the ceiling.

So, finally, after the chain reaction from Hell, I have no pissy stinky carpet, clean freshly painted walls, and seven years of immunity to tetanus, and what do I find this morning when I wake up?

The dogs have pissed, and shit, on the one small area rug I allowed myself. I can only imagine they did it because they hate me and find my tears to be an endless source of amusement. Either that or they didn't want to get their feet wet outside since it had rained. Yeah, because feet stay so much drier when you live with a floor COVERED IN DOG URINE! I don't think even PETA would get mad if I killed these dogs. Fur is bad. Meat is bad. But heinously and joyously strangling incontinent beagles, not so much.

The Pointless Pizza Boys of Bettendorf, IA (and other weekend ramblings)

(For years, too many years to count, I have known of a movie. It had the plot of Pirates of Penzance, but with better set design. And in the end, the girl romantic lead stopped time and set the pirates up with her sisters so she could marry the boy romantic lead. I finally, through the wonder of the Interweb, found that movie. And it is TACKY. Never ever watch a movie you vaguely recall from childhood which might have in fact been part of a dream if not for the fact that it mirrored a piece of musical theater you were never exposed to. Because it will invariably SUCK and ruin your memories. Which is also why I will not buy The Hoboken Chicken Emergency, even though it is on my amazon.com wish list.)

I have a night to myself. Ryan is at my mother's. I have library books I haven't even cracked which are due back in two days. I have twelve hours of suspenseful prime-time crime dramas inside my DVR. I have last night's Monk and Psych to watch yet. I have a movie trapped inside of my computer which refuses to be burned to disc or even discs and which I will have to watch at my desk which is awkward because the chair rolls around on the newly carpetless floor (Long story but basically I got mad at the carpet for smelling like dog pee and took a box-knife to it at 9:00 Monday night and ripped it all out. Eighteen hours and one tetanus shot later I had ugly, but odorless, pee-stained hardwood floors.) making it difficult not to miss the action. I have a notebook full of character ideas and the wispy memories of a vaguely homo-erotic third person dream I had and want to write into a story. I have all of these things to do and what am I doing? I'm reading and copy/pasting (with props, mad props) Savage Love chunks (that just sounded horribly wrong) and blogging while NOT talking to Tom on the phone. I mean, he's on the phone, and I'm on the phone, but we're not talking. We're not fighting or even arguing, we simply have nothing really interesting to say anymore. I think after three years (almost) of a telephone-based marriage, that we may have run out of topics.

Why am I not hanging up to watch TV, read books, write books, or finally see this movie I've had for over a month already? Because it's late! Because it's late and if I

OMG!I.broke.my.keyboard!...I.took.the.button.off.to.clean.under.it.
and.there's.a.piece.of.wire.thing.in.it.and.I.don't.know.how.to.
replace.it.the.right.way!Oh.crap...Let.the.IRC.guys.be.able.to.help! Thank the gods for alphablu. I can always count on him for funny links and computer help. He was the guy who made me realize how horribly wrong it is to buy generic lubricant. I mean, if it's KY that's pushing your budget over then you have some serious issues, and probably some loss of muscle control to look forward, or backward, to.

Okay, now that that little trauma/drama is over with, and Tom finally had to hang up to watch reality television or whack off or whatever other dirty things he thinks I don't suspect, I am going to go too. I have to watch Blue Lagoon.

I always feel sorry for that poor blond guy from Blue Lagoon. He was the male lead in the movie that made Brooke Shields (I think. I don't really know since I was only born in 1976) and the movie that made Kristy MacNichol (again an assumption) and he's never really had his big break. (See? I was going somewhere with that parentheses pirate lead-in.) I mean, he can't act, but neither can Keanu, or Ashton, or Brad, and he had the same pecs, I mean credentials, they have. It makes me worry about the future of The Actor I Almost Could've Shagged.

TAIACS is my age, from very near here. If I'd only bumped into him during my high school years I could be selling my story to the tabloids. Or at least I'd have a cutey to point out to my friends instead of random long-haired pizza boys.

My Gods why am I still blogging? I have incestuous skinny dipping to watch!

Props To Dan Savage

So I was reading my favorite advice columnist, and I came across a letter from last week (I can't believe I missed last week's column but that's off-point) which was a thinly veiled attempt for some 18 year old kid to brag about all the awesome kinky sex he has. So Dan pretty much outed him for that and then went on to point out the irony of the awesome-sex-having teen demographic after so many years of Republican-sanctioned abstinence only programs. The following is a DIRECT EXCERPT from the column dated August 2, 2007. I am right now giving mad props to Dan Savage and am in no way attempting to circumvent copyright laws.

"Politically speaking, RSCI, this may not be the best time for teenagers to gloat about the totally awesome, amazingly kinky, and sinfully premarital sex they're having. A study released last week showed that the rate of teen sexual activity, which had long been in decline, stopped falling in 2001—despite the hundreds of millions of dollars the Bush administration has poured into abstinence education.

"The percentage of teenagers having intercourse began to plateau in 2001 and has failed to budge since," wrote the Washington Post. "Experts are unsure of the reasons for the change, but [point to] the possibility that some irreducible portion of the teenage population can never be dissuaded from having sex."

Hello, George W. Bush? You've spent hundreds of millions of dollars trying to dissuade teenagers from having sex and what are teenagers like RSCI doing? Bragging about all the awesome sex they're having. Are you going to stand for that? Or are you finally going to get serious about winning the war on teenage sex?

If you believe that premarital sex is always wrong, Mr. President, then act like it. (Let the liberals laugh about Senator David Vitter, the conservative GOP senator from Louisiana caught up in the "D.C. Madam" scandal. At least Vitter had the decency to wait until after marriage before hiring hookers to diaper him.) The current status quo is unacceptable! We can't continue to spend hundreds of millions of dollars trying to talk teenagers into remaining abstinent while their gonads and hormones implore them to do the opposite.

The time has come to take the fight to the hormones, Mr. President. The time has come to chemically castrate American teenagers.

Instead of wasting money on failed abstinence-education programs, Mr. President, put Depo-Provera and Tamoxifen, the two most effective chemical-castration drugs, into products consumed by teenagers—Doritos, Mountain Dew, lip gloss, and Axe body spray. (Some adults also consume these products, of course, but not any we want reproducing.) A chemical-castration program would not only be cheaper and more effective than your failed abstinence-education programs, Mr. President, it would also lower rates of sexually transmitted infections, decrease the number of unwanted pregnancies, save souls, prevent hurricanes, and spare elected officials who can't have kinky sex themselves anymore (thanks to fallout from the D.C. Madam scandal) from having to listen to teenagers like RSCI brag about all the kinky sex they're having."


Amen, Dan Savage. Amen.

But . . . since when do I say "mad props"?

On Old Friends, Good and Bad

Marv update: I went to talk to Marv and alas, he isn't my past. He is a pretty cool guy and a dear old friend but he's not my past. I fear I have been nostalgic for my pre-motherhood days and when a friend from those days popped up I went overboard on the nostalgia. So seeing Marv isn't the big deal I made it into because it isn't really a big deal at all, mainly because we live in different towns and lead perpendicular, rather than parallel, lives. But I will continue to email him and talk to him on the phone, basically because I have nothing better to do late at night, at least not on nights when Tom has to go to sleep early, and also because he is a cool person and a dear old friend.

Smoking update: I know it's been months since I announced my intention to quit smoking, but it's been a weird process. I went on the Chantix pill and quit smoking after two weeks with no problems. After two more months I called my doctor for a refill and also to ask him some questions about side effects. Like, how long would I continue to feel nauseaus all day? Well, by all day I mean not counting the 18 hours I seem to be sleeping lately. So he cut my dosage back to half a pill twice a day rather than one pill twice a day. So for the last two months I have been on half-dose, which is the same as saying I have been in a continual nicotine fit. But I have been diligently waiting for the desire to smoke to disappear. The problem was, I slipped up every now and then. So I never, after the first two weeks last spring, went more than a week without a cigarette.
Then Tom got his vasectomy reversed, and Chantix is not approved for pregnant women, which I may soon become, so I quit taking the pills at all. I felt stuck. Either I start smoking again and hate myself with a near-suicidal passion, or I quit and feel deprived for the rest of my life, an endeavor I wasn't sure I could pull off anyway. So I researched ways to quit smoking and found Allen Carr and liked the success rate stats. So I read the book and swore to follow the instructions and so far, four days after my last half pill and two days after my last cigarette, I feel great. I feel better today than I did when I was on the pills regularly. I don't want a cigarette. I don't feel like I need a cigarette. I don't see any appeal in the concept of having a cigarette. I am a non-smoker. I love Allen Carr. I highly recommend him, especially for people who are having trouble on Chantix. I don't know if this book would have worked without the pills, but I do know that the pills weren't working for me without the book.
And I always wondered, if the pills imitate nicotine to the the nicotine receptors in my brain then what's to stop me becoming addicted to the pills? The problem was that I feared the withdrawal. Now I enjoy nicotine withdrawal, because I see it as A) the desperate death throws of addiction, and B) not even bad enough to wake me up or send me to the doctor. It is mild and laughable and pathetic. Like the tiny arrows the tribesmen shot at Larry in Night At The Museum.

An old friend

An old friend found me and we've been talking. Marv manages a pizza place now and sometimes he calls me between Super-Pepperonis.

Perhaps I should preface this with, "My husband thinks I'm a slut."

See, back in the days before motherhood and marriage, actually in the days directly leading up to motherhood, from a biology point of view, I was friendly. I won't say I was easy, because I did have my standards. But that whole joke about how girls know in the first five minutes whether they're going to do it or not? It's true, and I never wasted much time after that. So Tom, bless his heart, thinks I was easy. And he doesn't judge me for it; he was easy too. But whenever I mention an old friend, he thinks I've slept with him. Especially if it's a long-haired pizza boy. Come on, how many professions let a guy grow his hair out? And I did love the long hair...

Anyway, an old friend found me. Old as in pre-motherhood. Pre stretch marks, pre- telletubbies, pre "to Gardasil or not to Gardasil" (I Gardasiled). He was my friend when I was young and fancy-free, and he was a good friend too. I have missed him over the years. And now I have heard back from him and it's nice.

For one thing, it's nice to hear from someone who has no choice but to picture you skinny. For another thing, it's nice to hear from someone who remembers you before you could name the Telletubbies. By color. With their favorite toys. (ball, hat, skirt, purse) But Tom, well Tom may not understand. Because I was friendly with Marv. He had long hair. He made pizza. What was a girl to do? But Marv was a friend, despite that. And I like talking to him now that he's resurfaced.

So, my faithful reader(s), is it so wrong that I talk to Marv? Would it be wrong to introduce Marv and Tom? Am I too sleepy to blog right now? Any comment would be good. Just.....let 'er rip.

Reading, Writing, Nuts, & Tomatoes

I have felt, since the Harry Potter party (which went until 2AM because apparently reserving a copy online guarantees you the 1200th place in line), that I should be updating this blog. But I've been busy and life has been dull.

I have, since Independence Day, read 7 full size novels. And they were all great books. So, because I highly recommend them, I will tell you what they were and then you can go right out and buy them and suck them all down in less than a month like I did.

Middlesex; Jeffrey Eugenides
Invisible Prey; John Sandford
Slaughterhouse Five; Kurt Vonnegut
Jennifer Government; Max Barry
A Dirty Job; Christopher Moore
The Stupidest Angel; Christopher Moore
You Suck, A Love Story; Christopher Moore

I bought the first two to read in the waiting room during Tom's vasectomy reversal and then I bought the next three during the FIVE HOUR Harry Potter release party. And I loved, and was inspired by, A Dirty Job so much that I went straight to the local(ish) book store and bought the only two Christopher Moore books they had, which I justify by classifying them as research, since I'm trying to write in a style similar to his.

So that was three weeks of my summer reading. I am such a nerd. But I've started writing. I knew the time was coming; I could feel the story gelling, knew the characters, and finally I began my Great American Novel.

After 3 days I have 4 pages. Which is why I needed the research books. And which is also why I haven't been writing here that much. Between the reading, the writing, Tom's nuts, and Ryan's vegetable stand, I haven't had the time.

Every spring Ryan plants a vegetable garden. And every summer she tries to sell the vegetables to family and friends to get money for the county fair in August. This year she drug a drink cart off the neighbor's curb on garbage day and declared it to be her vegetable stand. She has supplemented the produce with Kool-Aid and so far has made about $50. How am I supposed to teach her not to steal from peoples' garbage when it makes her $50? But it should save me some money at the fair so I'm fine with it.

Oh yeah, and she's declared herself gothic and asked if she could have more skulls on her school clothes this year. Damn you, Abby from NCIS!

It's Gonna Be A Long Night

Last fall, I noticed that Ryan, once an avid reader, was now a television junkie. On weekend nights, when I allowed her to stay up reading and watching TV, she would have the TV on and not a book in sight. Only the summer before, she had devoured 75 Babysitters Club books, so I knew that this was a new thing and that probably I could lure her away from the Food Network and Discovery Channel if only I found the right book. So at the very first opportunity, I went to Walmart and bought the first three Harry Potter books. That afternoon, I handed the brand new paperback copy of Harry Potter And The Sorcerer's Stone to her and watched her face fall.

"Mom, that's Harry Potter. It's a boy's book," she told me.

"Just read the back cover for me. Please."

She slumped to the couch, eyes rolling, and fell back into the cushions to read the description. Now this was a kid who watched The Princess Diaries and spent the next week wishing that Julie Andrews would come tell her she was a princess. She watched The Thirteenth Year and wanted to be a mermaid. I was pretty sure that the idea of a normal everyday picked-on kid suddenly being whisked away to an interesting and fantastical world of magic would be one that appealed to her. I was right, and in less than two months I was buying books four and five.

Now I didn't know anything about Harry Potter. I knew there was a kid with glasses who went to magic school and had a lightening bolt scar and a friend with an unpronounceable name. I think I read it as Hermy-own. The only reason I bought those books in the first place was that I was desperate and they were almost guaranteed. Harry Potter was The Book That Every Kid Will Read! I thought all of the books had been written, that I would buy them a couple at a time and she would whiz through the series to it's exciting final conclusion. And I made a deal with her from the beginning, that she could not watch any of the movies until she had finished it's corresponding book. I didn't realize that there were movies still to be made.

Why do I write about my daughter's Harry Potter obsession? Because these last two weeks have been Harry Potter Mania at my house. First the movie, which we didn't attend until the thirteenth due to Tom having surgery on the ninth, and tonight at midnight: book seven. The movie she watched half-folded in her theater seat, dressed in last Halloween's Hermione costume, completely entranced by death eaters and patronuses (patronii?) and CGI effects better (I think) than any Star Wars movie. I spent most of the film staring at her, trying to memorize her reactions. For a couple short hours in the dark she was a little kid again, and not the eye-rolling, sighing, "Whatever"-spouting adolescent she's become, which may account for why I bought her an entire new outfit to wear to the Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows release party tonight.

Hermione has brown hair, and is almost a decade older than Ryan, and until last Friday that had no effect on the pale blond child I live with. But on Friday a new character made the scene: a blond, younger, slightly off-beat and decidedly more amusing character. Luna Lovegood looked a lot more like Ryan, and acted a bit like her too. But the Hermione costume won't work for Luna, because despite Hogwarts being a boarding school with assigned uniforms, the uniform colors have to correspond to a student's house, and Luna and Hermione belong to different houses. So off we went to Kohl's and Walmart, desperately looking for navy blue and silver to replace her red, gray, and gold. I have no idea why one house has more colors than the other but having one less to match didn't help us as much as you'd think. See, Luna accessorizes. Radish earrings (and Ryan let her ears close) and a necklace featuring the cork from a fictional drink. Enter the Sculpey and a wine cork "borrowed" from my mother. Last year's Hermione costume won a costume contest but with this one, I'm just hoping it's not the worst one in the room.

Also, I'm hoping I don't get trampled by hundreds of Weasleys and Potters and Grangers tonight, although I know I probably will. But I can't in good conscience deny her the experience. Some day these midnight Harry Potter parties will turn out to be a universal memory for her generation, like getting a Cabbage Patch doll is for mine. I don't want Ryan to be that humorless bully who never had a Cabbage Patch doll. Although, how will I get her to read once she's done with this series? She's already gone through all the Narnia books just waiting for Deathly Hallows to get published.

And My Name Can Be Myrtle.

In life we grow, we mature, we evolve. And hopefully, we change. We stop being the selfish thoughtless inconsiderate little children we used to be, and we become selfish thoughtless inconsiderate teenagers. Then we turn twenty-one and become barely functioning drunks for a while. And eventually we become adults, and let's all hope we know what we're doing by then. The glory of the internet is that the stupid things we do when we are young can now be recorded and posted for all the world to see. That drunk college guy who passed out and had a dick drawn on his face by his roommates? Well instead of being dusted off to laugh about at class reunions, that horrifying moment is now fresh for millions of people on YouTube.

Luckily, I am just old enough, and technologically retarded enough, that none of my youthful mistakes have been recorded on the internet, except that time I got caught with my head down a mannequin's pants, but still the internet reminds me of the idiot I once was. Reminisce with me, won't you?

I was nineteen and in love. For the record, at nineteen I was a moron. Most people are at that age though, since they think they know everything and therefor are willing to learn nothing. Oh well, whatever the reason I was a class A nincompoop. But I was a nincompoop with a hot girlfriend. Yes I, the quasi-goth geek from high school, had the hot girlfriend. Let's call her, oh I don't know, Evelyn. Well Evelyn was hot. And, unfortunately, in the closet. I finally had the hot girlfriend and she didn't want anyone to know. You can see where this is going can't you?

Yeah, so anyway a lot of people found out about us, and just enough other personal information that it was very apparent that I was the one who had spilled the lesbian beans. And so she tried to kick my ass. And by "tried" I don't mean she landed some good punches but in the end I won. No, by "tried" I mean she was about to knock my head off my shoulders when a friend of mine called the cops. And I never saw Evelyn again. Mostly because she scared the holy fuck out of me and I avoided her, but also because really hot women and I never did run in the same circles to start with. What does all of this have to do with the internet and the mistakes which can haunt us? Well. . .

Evelyn was dating a guy. Let's call him Bruce. And at the time Bruce and Evelyn were quite the item. Except that, in another town and with an entirely different social circle, Evelyn was also dating, hmm let me think, Cosmo. Yeah well, I kinda let that whole triangle thing slip. To a stripper. An out of work stripper but still, strippers apparently aren't paragons of discretion.

Wait a second. If she was dating me, and Bruce, and Cosmo, wouldn't that have made it more of a love pyramid than a triangle, per se?

Where was I? Oh yeah. Evelyn wanted me dead, both guys dumped her (so I heard), and I never again got the hot girl. Any hot girl. Oh, I got girls I thought were hot. My last girlfriend was beautiful. But Evelyn was hot by popular consensus. If a casting director was told to find someone to play "Hot Chick Number One", he'd cast her. I still think of her, sometimes. But no one wants to hear about that. Anyway, here I am some twelve years later, older and wiser and consciously not thinking about all of the many stupid mistakes I have made in my life, when I get a message on MySpace. From Bruce. It says simply, "I know you, don't I?" And deep down, a very large part of me thinks he may kick my ass. After all, he was with Evelyn, cheering her on, when she tried to kick my ass. And again, my use of the word "tried" in no way implies that she couldn't have, easily. So I answered him. I told him that he had known me, once long ago, and then I invited him to please kick my ass from afar because I simply do not have enough time for every person I treated poorly in my youth to take their rightful turn. And then I searched his friends list and I think, based on name and age, that he may still be in touch with Evelyn.

So if I don't post here for a while, and you begin to suspect that something may have happened to me, let it be known that I might have been killed by people whose names do not, in reality, sound anything like Evelyn, Bruce, or Cosmo. Wish me luck, though.

On a lighter note, Tom and I spent a few days in Minnesota getting his nuts hacked into. Big cuts, and bruises in places a man doesn't want to see bruised. Well, bruises in one place a man doesn't want to see bruised. The main place, I would think. But really, as a woman, I don't know anything about nuts. I pretend to, but I don't. To all my male readers, should I have enough to warrant using the plural, I will tell you a secret. There is no one place on the female body comparable to the testicles. We know not to hit them and we know that it hurts really really bad if we do, but we can't empathize. All we know about balls is that they hurt a lot and that they are really fun to watch when they get cold. Have you guys ever really bent down to look at those things? They're amazing! Hold a cold pop can against them for just a second and they're off like it's the Kentucky Derby of balls. They are the only part of the human body to crawl away of their own accord, and we don't have them. I'm jealous. If I had balls I would play with them all day. I would sit at home and play with them all day every day until I starved to death, a skeleton with my balls in my hand. And yet, even knowing this, I still bitch at Tom when he watches TV with his hand in his pants. Go figure.

So, to recap: I fear the ex-boyfriend of my murderous ex-girlfriend, and balls are fun to play with. The End.