Just now in the drugstore, I was standing online getting annoyed because the line was moving slow, and I look over and read the following headline on this week's Weekly World News:

SADDAM AND OSAMA ADOPT SHAVED APE BABY

I fucking lost it. I started giggling and by the time I got up to the cashier I was smirking all over the goddamn place. I was mildly worried the cashier would think I was laughing at her, but then I realized I simply didn't care that much.

Then the lady is looking at my business credit card (I was purchasing film for a little road trip to a bus company later today) and then at me, then back at the card. Finally, she asks: "Is it... Arn-seth?"
I am used to people being unable to pronounce my name. "Yes."
"What kind of name is that?"
"I think it's Norwegian or German or something."
"Hmm, that's a different name. Never heard it before." I notice she has the letters "RDM" tattooed on her hand above her thumb and I start picturing her in women's prison. Probably her job there was to shave ape babies and ship them out to insane foreign dictators. I don't know what RDM stands for.

A frightening aspect of my everyday reality is the very real fact that, at any given time, I could be driving down the street, minding my own business, and have Glen Campbell hit my car.

This is because the Rhinestone Cowboy lives in my town. In fact, he apparently lives a mere half a mile from my place of employment. And more disturbingly, he lives feet from the home of Pearl, the white donkey that I love to look at during my drive to and from work each day. God help Mr. Drunken-Drive-Away if he ever hurts Pearl! I would lose it.
Other people that I run the risk of colliding with include "rock temptress" Stevie Nicks, Alice Cooper, Bil Keane ("Family Circus" dude) and, apparently, David Spade's father.
Phoenix is a dangerous place to live. If these people were to ever join forces I am pretty sure they would mess the fabric of society up pretty badly.

Tricia once had the pleasure of handling Glen Campbell's rhinestone suit! This was back during the days of her employment at Biltmore Cleaners. And I believe that Mr. Glen Campbell came in himself to pick up the shiny suit. Trish is so lucky she got that sort of personal contact. Another time, she says could have sworn she saw David Spade walk past the window of the dry cleaners and get into a car with actress Kristy Swanson. That dry cleaners was a hotbed of celebrity activity. If we had known what we know now about the E! Television network, we should have arranged to set up video cameras all over the place and then we coulda made a small fortune (probably about $45.) selling our exclusive footage to them. Hindsight is 20/20, or so they say.

Here's something to pass the time until you can gorge on turkey and get annoyed at your relatives: The local paper is running this poll for everyone to vote for the scariest celebrity mug shot. Put democracy to work and place your vote today! Do it in the name of our beautiful country.

Otherwise all those sexually transmitted diseases the pilgrims caught from the dirty injuns on Thanksgiving was all in vain.

One of my friends just informed me that Just Born, Inc. (the company that makes marshmallow Peeps) will be having a float in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade this year! Wooo hooo!

Apparently the Peeps People are creating new and exciting "barnyard shaped" Peeps and the float will feature said barnyard shapes. Peeps are, incidentally, celebrating their 50th birthday this year. That's some old Peeps.

I think there should be all kinds of weird floats and balloons in this parade. Granted, it has been several years since I have actually watched this parade, but still. Here are some of my best ideas-- I will call them my "top tier" ideas, if you will-- for new floats/balloons for the parade:

* A Mickey Rooney balloon, featuring Rooney at current age
* "A Celebration of Mr. Whimple, The Charmin Guy" featuring the Bay City Rollers for some reason
* Noreen McFlannigan, Dental Hygienist from Cheboygan, riding atop that Turkey-float thing and throwing floss to the crowds
* "Mr. Nanny" balloon
* Parade of Genetically Engineered Mice, You Know, The Ones With the Human Ears Growing Out of Their Backs
* Fudge-stravaganza with a Rain of Fudge Cubes
* Big Floating Bag of Trash balloon, sponsored by Hefty
* Crispin Glover, just walking down the street with a Downs Syndrome child
* Pink Sings Manilow
* Spinning Stainless Steel Spikes of Death with Loose Lug Nuts float
* Condoleeza Rice balloon
* Say Hello to Your Meat float sponsored by PETA (that'll show those turkey munching punks)

Oh joy, that was fun. I hope you had as much fun as I did. Oh, my.

Say hi to yer Momma for me, and check out Trish, she just updated her blog after a long, unintended hiatus. Let's give her a great big Peeps-laden hug! Yayyy!

I smell oranges.

I don't mean this as a verb; as in, "I go around sniffing oranges." I mean that I am sitting here at my desk and the pungent scent of fresh oranges is drifting in and annoying me.

Probably a lot of people like the orange smell. Not me. See, I associate it with the gross smell of the school cafeteria. Mix it with that soggy meatball-sandwich smell and some spilled milk souring in the garbage can, and that's bad scensory memory times for me. Ha, "scensory." Get it?

I wish people would eat things that don't stink. Well, it's better than Microwaved Fish Day. Someone who works here sometimes heats up some random seafood dish and the whole place smells like cat food all day.

Lucky for me, I only eat air and popsicles.

And now I am back from my NJ trip. It was certainly crammed with all sorts of adventures of busy times and laughter and shopping...man, it was just crammed. I am now taking a deep breath from all the cramming. Which of course sounds dirty, which is, of course, what I was going for. Are you laughing yet? Ha.

Well, we flew out in wicked turbulence. Not around Phoenix, of course, since all is pristine and clear in the Valley of the Sun. But over in the fair city of Newark the wind was howling away and it delayed our landing. Plus, at the precise moment I chose to lean over to Trish and say, "I'm surprised that, with all this turbulence that no one is throwing up yet," a woman two rows back began to heave and vomit repeatedly for the remainder of the flight. And it was the kind of puking that sounds like she was gargling on her own refuse. Oh, man, it sounded awful. I was waiting for a chain reaction thing, like when Lard Ass started throwing up at the pie eating contest in Stand By Me-- but as luck would have it, that didn't happen. Trish and I just started giggling and laughing silently, though. Why was it so funny? I don't know, except it sounded sort of like the sound South Park uses when people die on the show. It's hard to explain here, and frankly, I should get off the subject already and on to more interesting things about the visit.

We drove all over Monmouth County. In Belford, we were saddened to see that our old house looks sort of crappy now (and for some reason, it was speckled with over 5 satellite dishes... what the hell are they doing in there, anyway?) but we were excited because the small, overgrown and forgotten cemetary on the corner of Jane Street and Church Street had been cared for! Back in The Day, this cemetary of graves from the 1700s and so on was hidden from the road by dense trees and overgrowth. Me and my friend Cory stumbled onto it one day while playing there-- we saw all these broken tombstones and were amazed that a cemetary was right there and no one seemed to even know about it. I went back numerous times and tried to read the names on the broken stones over the years, even doing grave rubbings at one point. So anyway, to go back last Friday and see the trees cleared away, the stones washed and cared for-- hell, some of the broken white stones were even cemented back together!-- and a sign proclaiming it "Belford Cemetary"; it was so cool. We took lots of pictures and couldn't stop talking about it. I love it when people care enough to preserve the past. It's just one of my "things."

I also drove down through Navesink, where we visited another awesome cemetary at the Stone Church (yeah, I happen to really love cemetaries) and walked through dense piles of fallen leaves. I hadn't realized how much I missed the smell of dried, brown leaves and the sensation of my shoes crunching them underfoot and sinking into them up to my shins. Everything is so old and picturesque in Navesink. I love the old bridge and the little mossy ponds with geese swimming in them. The houses rock. You just don't get houses with two stories out here in Arizona. And they certainly don't have character or histories. I was imagining curling up with some hot chocolate in front of a window with slightly-off windowpanes in one of these houses we passed, and reading a good book while the rain came down.

Drove past all the old schools. They've all had additions or new buildings built on campus. Monmouth has a bunch of new buildings and parking lots; Bayshore doesn't even look the same, except for the scary, evil "dolphin" cartoon character on the wall out on Leonardville Road (the dolphin is wearing a blue and gold sailor outfit and is smiling a wicked smile that shows teeth-- this always disturbed me).

We ate in a lot of the old favorite restaurants, which was a mixed bag. Romeo's Pizza sucks now. I heard they changed ownership. Friendly's (which you can't find out here) no longer has that really good French salad dressing so we couldn't get a salad. (We believe that a salad isn't worth it if the dressings suck.) Steak N' Ale, alma mater of such Blogging superstars as Mike Toole, was delicious although the menu changed a little. We had a nice family dinner in which my crazy Oma started hassling me about my idea of adopting a kid from another country (she says a kid is better off not being adopted at all because they will, according to her worldview, get made fun of in school for being adopted-- and she knows it's true because she has seen it on TV!), and my Dad got hassled for putting salt on his food. Some racist comments were made and Trish and I got all loud and beligerent at the insanity of some older family members--OK, Oma. It was a hilarious, dysfunctional time over all.

Going back to NJ is somehow or other all about eating. Seriously, I don't know why that is, but we made sure to get NJ bagels, NJ pizza, NJ chinese food, and NJ subs. All this eating has got to stop. But damn it was tasty eats.

We also went shopping at H&M. At last. And it was damn cool. I wish they had one of these stores out here.

On Monday, me, my father and Trish took the Belford Ferry into Manhattan. We walked from the pier all the way around to fifth Avenue and up to Central Park, where we went to the zoo (which we all deemed a "rip off zoo") and then back down again to Rockefeller Center, where we stopped in the NBC store and watched an old Indian guy gracefully skate around the ice in R.Center as the tree was being worked on by the Light Hanging Crew, and finally taking a cab to South Street Seaport. Is it just me, or was SSSP once a place that had more going on? I thought it was more than a mini-mall with an old schooner parked along side it. Maybe we missed something. We also ate a very overpriced dinner off of Water Street and got annoyed at the lady sitting next to us on the ferry ride back to Belford. Yes, by the end of the day we were regular New Yorkers.

Let's see-- we also visited a crapload of people. Some of my favorites included seeing the Marsh family and watching home movies from 1986 or so; seeing Mike Toole again (an' he ain't that bad-looking either, ladies! Line up now!) as well as high school guys like the Rubinsons, Paul Basquil and the incomparable Kevin French. Kevin, if you are reading this, I was highly impressed with your instant crayfish reference. I love that you haven't forgotten that inside joke. (If you are not Kevin, ignore the following. If you are Kevin, I say: "I wanna look like Diana Ross!" in a high-pitched crayfish voice. Ha! Ha!); and finally, seeing Mike Sojka at Houlihan's bar yet another time. We are turning this into a yearly event.

Yup, it was a good time all around. I was bummed about coming back to Arizona for the first time since I moved out here. I think it is because I just feel like Arizona is a little sterile compared with the messiness and character of NJ. Granted, there was a time not that long ago that I really liked that. I was completely caught unawares that I would feel this way about NJ/AZ. It sucks because I wouldn't want to leave Arizona, either, to move back. Because there are so many things about this place I would miss too much. I feel like I have two homes, and I don't really want to move to a third home, ever, because I would be way too confused. But as the plane landed in Phoenix and I was looking out at the carefully-laid out landscape, sprawling in the afternoon sun and surrounded by pretty mountains, I thought about how Phoenix is a new city built on top of very old land. The history, the fabric of the place hasn't yet sunken into the ground and created a true personality yet. Phoenix is like an inexperienced college student. Sure, it's got great potential and all the essentials it needs to "make it," but the depth and the experience isn't there yet. New Jersey, particularly the parts that are still green and lush in parts, like Middletown, is a patriarch. Sure, he's crass and whiny sometimes, but when you look in his eyes, he has been around the block and has lots of unique stories to tell. NJ has had a chance to grow into its roots. It's an older human settlement, built on equally old land. You can feel its character in every old, battered tree and broken tombstone; in the rusted metal on the cars and in the stinky fish-water in the ponds and rivers. I really respect it now that I have been away from it for five years. And I am happy about appreciating the place where I grew up and formed all my opinions and tastes. Because, of course, I spent many years cursing the place and wanting to move somewhere "pretty." In reality, I know a lot of different shades of pretty now, and I love that.

Well, I am off for my NJ excursion with my sister. So if you see no blogs for awhile, that's why. But it should be a fun time out there, seeing me Pops and visiitng what the old timers call "the ole stompin' grounds." Aww yeah.
In the meantime, god bless Art Carney. I meant to say my favorite Art Carney quote ever here, so now's the time:
"Ready, Captain Video!"
Thanks.

So help me God, I still laugh a little whenever I am writing out my bills for the month and I think to myself, "OK, now where are my checks?" Because I always, always think of Czechs. And I think of how neat it would be to have a small squadron of Czechs that are ready and waiting to do my bidding at a moment's notice. They are always just out of my peripheral vision, never in the way, until I call them over. My Czechs are so cool. But sometimes I do have to order new Czechs when I run out of Czechs.
In a restaurant, after the waiter asks if I want anything else and I have answered, "No, just the Czech, please," I have thought of someone bringing out a Czech dishwasher guy or something. He stands at the table, coughs uncomfortably, looks around, and ends up shuffling away confused. And I giggle like an ass.

My dreams have been infinitely more interesting lately than life, so here's a quote from last night's dream:
"If that's cranberry sauce, please get it away because I will swim in that shit!" --spoken by me to, I think, a toddler inside my car.
(I don't have a toddler, and I am not particularly fond of cranberry sauce, and I certainly wouldn't swim in it, and I wouldn't say the word shit to a toddler. Just for record.)

I think I am just ready for it to be Thanksgiving or something. And I think I am ready to start talking to toddlers like they are sitting next to me on a barstool in some dive bar.

I have been having the strangest dreams lately. And they've been gory. If you don't want to read anything gory, stop reading now. But if you are OK with it, I am going to talk about them because frankly I want to get them off my chest and I have nothing else to write about at the moment, so here's what I dreamed in the past week that qualified as "alarming":

* A dream where nameless man and I are beating up this guy Rod with boards and kicking him very hard in the face and stomach, and he turns into another guy who happens to be playing Macbeth in a play I once saw, and he starts crying and begging us for mercy and I lose it in the dream... I can't go on beating him, but we know we have gone too far and need to "put him out of his misery" at this point. I woke up before we dealt a death blow. Whew.

* A dream in which my Granny is dead (she did die in 1995) and the policy at the hopsital where she died was to drain the body of blood and cut it up into parts and seal them in a big Rubbermaid storage tub, which looks exactly like the teal-and-purple one I have in my real-life living room right now. Anyway, my job as the granddaughter was to go and wash the body parts and prepare them for this elaborate funeral ceremony. Apparently, in the dream, this was just the way we as a society did things. There was nothing unusual about this process of washing your dead relative's body parts. When I woke up, I was grossed out though.

* Rosie O'Donnell is eating some sort of Hungarian goulosh out of a big bowl at some press conference, and she lifts her head up and the whole bottom half of her face is gone and she is sort of like a demon-vampire thing with a leering smile like the Gentlemen in the Buffy episode, "Hush." It was really scary! (I think I dreamed this because of the thing Horatio Sanz did on Weekend Update on SNL this week; where one side of him was Nice Rosie and the other half was Scary Mean Lesbian Rosie. Was I the only person creeped out by that sketch? And I was surely not the only person who thought that SNL's cast SUCKS right now and the writing is even worse. I didn't laugh once. Bring back Will Ferrell!)

Those are a sampling of my dreams. Oh, I should also note that I was lucky enough to catch a showing of "Motel Hell" on AMC on cable this weekend one night. This is the movie that scarred me for life and started me off on a weird trajectory in which I am afraid of guys running around with chainsaws while wearing a pig's head on their heads and of being buried in the ground with my larynx cut out so I can't scream. Other little girls were watching cute things like Sigmund and the SeaMonsters or Solid Gold in the early 80's. I was the weird kid sneaking downstairs and seeing Motel Hell on TV at age 7. (I saw that other shit too, but it was Motel Hell that made the true impression. I was too young to catch the humor at the time.)

OK, I'm done. Thanks for reading. Go rent Motel Hell so we can discuss it.

In a show of hands, who knows what World War One was fought about? Not me!

This morning I was reading the editorial section of yesterday's paper and this occurred to me. Now I can tell you a lot about World War II, that's for sure... tons of movies, plays, books, TV specials, and let's face it, that's about all they ever talk about on the History channel. But no one ever talks about the first World War. Why?

So anyway, today I got to work and started researching the war. I am pretty bothered that I didn't know a thing about it. The editorial in the paper was reminding people that there was a first World War, and it was the reason we have what we call Veteran's Day today. It was actually Armistice Day, and later on it was changed to Veteran's Day to remember vets of all wars. I started to try to recall what I had learned in school about WWI, and all I could come up with was this: 1) first war to use gas in attacks on troops 2) involved Germany somehow 3) had something to do with borders of countries in Europe changing.

As it turns out, I was right on some things but it was obviously about more than that. Here's the funny thing: I have read for about an hour, and I STILL don't know a lot of the key things to this war. I know it was from 1914-1918, and it began when Serbian rebels, a group called the Dark Hand, assassinated Archduke Ferdinand of Austro-Hungary. This lead to Germany saying it would back up Austro-Hungary if the Serbs refused to give up the members of the Dark Hand, and Russia backing up Serbia in the event that Germany attacked them. Turns out, Germany did attack, and Russia went after the Germans through Belgium. War on!
There's more to it than that, but in all actuality, I can't start reiterating the WWI facts because I am too "new" to it and I am bound to get something wrong. Next thing you know, some WWI history buff is sending me angry e-mails. And then next thing after that, they are finding me black and blue behind the bowling alley. Trust me, it wouldn't be pretty.
OK< so here's the challenge I am putting out there to all history teachers across this country: TEACH MORE ABOUT WWI. See, we lazy Americans can get our history on the more juicy, scandalous tidbits of history through entertainment channels easy enough. But hell, make our time worthwhile when we're in school and teach us shit you just can't find out anywhere these days.
And here's another thing. There was some cool things to find out about WWI. Today, in my brief research efforts, I found out that chlorine gas was used at the Battle of Yvres (misspelled, possibly) and that the gas smelled like "pepper and pineapples" and caused respiratory failure that sometimes took days to kill someone. Days. One way the Allied troops defended themselves was by wearing cloth soaked in urine over their mouths--the ammonia in urine helped block the gas. Seriously; they didn't have adequate gas masks yet at this point. So given the choice of slow death and urine on your face, which would you choose? Imagine having to make this choice?
The best story I read had to do with the very first Christmas day that passed during the war. Here's something I found:
Second Lieutenant Dougan Chater, letter to his mother (25th December, 1914)

I think I have seen one of the most extraordinary sights today that anyone has ever seen. About 10 o'clock this morning I was peeping over the parapet when I saw a German, waving his arms, and presently two of them got out of their trenches and some came towards ours. We were just going to fire on them when we saw they had no rifles so one of our men went out to meet them and in about two minutes the ground between the two lines of trenches was swarming with men and officers of both sides, shaking hands and wishing each other a happy Christmas.

I am going to do a lot of reading about this war so I feel a little better about being an American and knowing my own history. You always hear--or run into-- people from other countries who know way more about our history than Americans, on average, do. That's so embarrassing.

Anyway, because today is Veteran's Day observed, I am going to remember all this stuff. Especially since we are in the midst of losing American troops everyday and it hardly gets any news coverage anymore. Gotta love that conservative media! I can hardly fathom what going to war must actually be like. I really appreciate those who have, and who do. Damn.

Oh, last thought: I did think about "Farewell to Arms" when I was thinking of what reminded me of WWI. But I wasn't sure if it was about WWI or if it was WWII. Turns out I was right; it is about WWI. It's also the only Hemingway book I really liked. (I don't mind the ideas and themes behind "The Old Man and the Sea," but really, there is only so much I can read about an old man fishing for a marlin before I start sighing loudly and looking around for some M&Ms to pass the time, maybe the remote to see what's on TV.) In 11th grade, I wrote an essay about the book for english class and it's one of the only papers I remember writing. I made some very heady parallel to the hopelessness of the war to an image near the back of the book of a stray dog nosing through a garbage can in some alley. My teacher thought I was a goddamn genius. Probably because everyone else in the class was looking for the scene where someone gets their arms amputated in a very graphic way. "Well, it was called Farewell to Arms, right? So where's the part where them arms come off?"
Last test: Remember the book "Johnny Tremain"? What do you remember about that one? If you answered "The fact that Johnny Tremain has a brutal accident with getting his hand encased in silver," you are typical of about 45% of our generation. The other 55% have not read the book nor do they care to; even if some irrleveant punk band were to come out and call themselves Johnny Tremain, they still wouldn't read that shit.
The moral of this blog is, history is some weird shit.

One of the greatest things Kristen and I ever made up was the Ray Brower Deer. You know the dead kid in the movie "Stand By Me"? His name was Ray Brower, right, and at the end of the movie Vern and his boys all find his body down near the river. The voiceover says, "The kid wasn't sick, the kid wasn't breathing. The kid was dead." Then there's a shot of this kid with blood trickling out of his nose and his eyes open and glazed.
It was really creepy, especially when you are 11 and highly impressionable when it comes to gross images.
And the creepiness didn't abate as we got older. Nope, instead we built on it when we were in college. We were driving through 'rural' Manalapan on a moonlit night listening to Dead Can Dance, and Kristen says, "Picture if a ghostly deer came running over that hill over there by the woods, all floaty and coming down in the moonlight towards the road. And when it gets down here, it has the face of Ray Brower."
College kids should not listen to Dead Can Dance.
And watch out, the Ray Brower Deer is probably still out there, not sick, not breathing, but DEAD. And the sudden appearance of Keifer Sutherland and Eyeball Chambers ain't gonna change that.
That is all. Just wanted to share that.

At work yesterday we were talking about the magical number of 69. I remembered something I had forgotten: In high school, I was ranked number 69 in my class.
There were lots of wise guys (I like to call them 'wise guys' even though they were actually not that bright; rather, they were a little caveman-ish) who went around the hallways saying to their buddies, "Yeah, man, I'm number 69! Yeah!" and slapping each other's hands. I was quiet and reserved back then and grumbled over the fact that other people were trying to claim my number just because of its crude sexual implications. I had worked hard to be book-smarter than most of my graduating class. Granted, 68 people were more book-smarter (!) than I was, but still...
Well, there was some injustice there somewhere. I just don't think it matters much.
And, hey, DUDE! I am NUMBER 69!! Wooooooooo! (smashes beer can into forehead)

Last night I was half-heartedly flipping through the channels before I went to bed and I saw that the local news station is doing an expose into nursing homes to see how well they really care for the old folks. The voiceover was saying things in an ominous voice like, "We went undercover and found shocking evidence of employees sleeping on the job and doors left unlocked, leaving residents open to potential dangers." Then they show an image of an old man rolling his wheelchair through an open door, only they put a green filter-effect over the image so it looked more "sensational." They closed the commerical with "Tomorrow night at 8, watch 'Neglecting Grandpa' on Fox Five."

Neglecting Grandpa would make a great band name. I should submit this one to Dave Barry.

In other news, I suspect someone has been stealing office supplies out of my desk when I am not in the office. I am now missing my calculator and my china markers. In the past I have lost scissors and a prized stapler (not a swingline, but still nice). This has gone on long enough, people. Quit burglaring my stuff or else. I know people. That's all I'm sayin, a'ight? I have connections. Watch your ass.

Last night while out at dinner, me and the sister made up a very dirty version of Billy Joel's "Keeping the Faith" that is actually about sex through the 'rear entrance' with someone's mother. I swear, I don't know why we can't just have a normal conversation at dinner like everyone else. We also ate a delicious ball of chocolate ice cream with sprinkles on it. Food is awesome sometimes. I love food.

And on Monday, I was behind the wheel of a 35-foot, ABC M1000 mid-size coach, taking it through an obstacle course out in Palm Springs. I have never driven a bus before, but on my first try I parallel parked that bitch and everything. It was fun. It's the closest thing to a perk I can get while traveling for work. All these bus driver guys were teasing me and giving me shit. I got to tell one guy he was "real smooth." I could explain the context, but trust me, it would take too long and you'd definitely lose interest after a couple sentences. Point is, it was fun in an oddball kind of way to be talking shit with a bunch of bus drivers out in a windy parking lot for three hours.