Kristen and I were the coolest girls in Belford for Halloween, 1985. The B stood for Belford, I think. Or perhaps, "Befuddled." These are two ladies who could definitely beat your ass up. We are not fucking around. 

I have been wanting a kid lately. There's a lot of things that would be awesome about raising a cool, strange little daughter, I think, like reading to her and going for walks and talking about all kinds of stuff, but I would like to think I would come up with some creative ways to be pissed at her. For instance. If she were to make a gigantic mess all over the den and I walked in I would scan the room with squinted, world-weary eyes and say, "My sweet God in heaven" in a low voice as I surveyed the damage. Very quietly I would say, in a Clint Eastwood type voice, "I want it cleaned up. Do it. Now." and then I would turn and walk out all serious-like. Yeah. That's the way I'd do it.

I am getting ready to do closed auditions for my next show. I will be directing "The Boys Next Door" by Tom Griffin this summer, and this is a high-profile, very elite type of show concerning retards. I am handpicking people to come to my audition so there is no chance any douchebags will end up in my show. I am inviting people and they are accepting the invitations. Trish is going to be my assistant director and we are going to have such a goddamn awesome good time telling people: "No, go back, do it again, and this time, be more retarded." The show is about 4 men living in a group home; two are retarded and one is schizophrenic and the other is just weird, mostly. It's going to be the Numero Uno Hit of the Season, and You'll Want to Be There! No really, DO IT.

I really like directing and telling people what to do. Mostly I just like controlling a story. It's so gratifying the night the show opens and you can sit there all proud of your work. I have acted in tons of shows, but nothing beats the applause I heard for the show I directed. That was the shit. I don't really care about being the star anymore at all; I would way more prefer controlling the stars. It's just so fun to find a story and get the "tools" to tell it right, and watch as it evolves as the tools try new things and the story changes a little here, a little there, until it is a show. Wow. I am getting a little nipply just thinking about!

Last night I shared some of my boyfriend war-stories with Tom and Matt on the backporch. I really can't tell all of them here, but the thing is, I am so fucking happy I had the weird experiences I have had, because these stories are so fun to tell and I honestly don't have to embellish anything in the telling of them. It's all 100% true, and that is why it's so funny they happened-- one day I really might turn some of these into a book or something.

I will share one gem today:

So I didn't know this one rebound boyfriend was a closet homosexual at first. Here are the clues I had:
a) when a close guy friend of his would call him as we were hanging out at his house, he would literally take the call in the closet. He would go into this large walk in closet and talk low on the phone to him.
b) One evening he made me a romantic dinner and then said, "Your hair is kind of dry. I have this really great conditioner I buy in the city that would help. Come on, let's go upstairs and I will wash and condition your hair." And he did. And I felt stupid.
c) He once called me, crying. "Can you come over?" he blubbered on the phone. He wouldn't tell me what was wrong, and I panicked and drove over to his house. When I got there, a note on the door said, "Come in, I am upstairs." Small post-it notes on the steps led me to the correct bathroom. I go in, and he is having a fucking bubble bath, a BUBBLE BATH, and crying! He said through his tears, "I miss my Mom!" NO joke. He really, truly said that. Umm, yeah, I know.
d) On a double-date with the close guy friend in question one evening, me and the anonymous female date he brought ended up witnessing a 45-minute+ wrestling match on the floor in front of the couch as we were watching "Shawshank Redemption." The boyfriend and his "friend" started shoving each other playfully, and then full-out wrestling and giggling. It went on so long, and me and this girl I didn't know just sat there awkwardly watching this man-on-man action unfold before us. Finally, me and her went into the kitchen to get something to drink. The girl goes, "Umm, does this happen a lot with them?" I shook my head, because this was the first time I had seen this myself. We ended up creeping back into the room in time to see them just sort of resting up against each other breathlessly, looking excited and aroused. Well, the next day, I broke up with this guy.
A few weeks later my pal Mike spotted them in Monmouth Mall, and he called me and said, "They're here right now, and they are holding hands walking to the car!" The gayest boyfriend ever.

This same dude used to try to get in good with my sister by calling her "Rat." He would go, "Hey, Rat, what's up?" I don't recommend you do that. I don't know how she tolerated it. But in retrospect, I am sure it was way harder to handle getting bone in her throat from the deer antler bowl that time. She has had to weather some of the worst from Lisa's boyfriends. We should probably send her a fruit basket or something to ease her suffering memories. Yeah, that would do it. Fruit basket. Fuck.

You Are Ichabod Crane From "Sleepy Hollow." You're a deep thinker - most times logically. You're a bit of a neat freak and a wuss (hey, you do faint a lot!) but you do have the ability to overcome your fears and come out stronger in the end. And you never lose your head over things. (Gufaw gufaw!)

Take The Johnny Depp Quiz!

Here is an interesting little poem I just made up in the bathroom:

i flossed
and
i found garlic.

It's an artsy poem. You might not understand. And that's okay, we can try to get you into a good school in the fall, okay, sweetie? Now eat your ham.

When I was little I really liked taking standardized tests. I liked how the teachers would block off our desks with wooden blocks so we couldn't copy one another-- little did I know this "sectioning off" of the tables and desks was a precursor to life in a cubicle. But I liked having my "own little office," you know?

I also liked how we got to go home early those days. I would go home and watch cartoons and eat a salad with Catalina dressing; or perhaps have a KitKat.

Not to brag or anything, but I was way smart in those days. I always scored in something like the top 1 percentile in anything relating to language skills, including reading and writing. Don't y'all worry about my math scores. They were enough to get me by.

The best was the Iowa test, circa 1985 or so. I was in fourth grade. Mrs. Jones was my teacher and she was the best ever. After all, she let us cut into math time, when we should have been doing long division until we were developing boobies and pubes, all so we could practice and plan our spring talent show. What a good grade fourth grade was. It was all Cyndi Lauper, pre-scary Michael Jackson and boys breakdancing to "Human Beat Box" by the Fat Boys on strips of cardboard. And me, well, let's just say I wowed the crowd with a jazz dance to the song "Ghostbusters." Get this-- I even moonwalked in to make my entrance, with a sheet over my head and everything, like I was a ghost. I was like, RAD, or something equally nine years old.

OK, anyway, the Iowa test that year was the BEST, as I have already stated. Why? Because the "word usage" section was hilarious. There we are, all squirreled away in our little wooden-blocked-off desk areas, with our sharpened #2 pencils and the Iowa test booklets spread out before us. The room was quiet, nothing but the sound of pencils scratching standardized paper and the occasional cough from Beau, the Kid With the Perpetual Hacking Seal Cough.

We had to find the mistakes hidden in short paragraphs. Each line was given a letter, like Line A, Line B-- you know. The question was worded perfectly. I will never forget it, I swear. I will be laying in my own filth on my death bed one day, unable to see from the 8 strokes I had the previous Thursday and unable to recognize my dead husband's picture, but I WILL be able to quote the following:

"BEN GOTS FAT FINGERS. HE ONCE GOT THEM STUCK IN A PHONE."

It was more than just the visual of some poor fat schlep named Ben with his pudgy fingers jammed into a phone (At the time, rotaries were still in use, remember). It was the "gots" part that had me rolling. I did one of those snorty laughs and tried to keep from laughing really loud. But everytime I tried to calm down and think of something else, I would start giggling again. Kids started peeking around the wooden blocks, and Mrs. Jones walked over to see what was so funny. I really worked hard to quiet down, but it was so hard I am pretty sure I must have been close to tears. It was more than one finger-- somehow Ben got MULTIPLE fingers stuck. How fat WAS Ben, anyway? How did he get loose? DID he get loose? Is Ben still there, tethered to the phone and crying greasy tears down his doughy cheeks? We may never know. But it sure as hell fucked my shit up that day. And even now, to be honest.

Isn't that trying-really-hard-not-to-laugh thing the greatest and worst feeling ever? It always happened in church when I was a kid. Man, it was bad. I would be shaking as I tried not to make eye contact with my friend Tracy as we sat there in our "pew," ha ha. Then it was Kristen Marsh and Karen Stanley (yeah, you both deserve a name drop for the trouble you got us in; the desks we had to have moved away and the 'separation' if we happened to end up picked on the same teams in gym class...) who led me down the path to ruin. I was always getting in trouble laughing with those two.

IN FACT... one time I was performing in a show-- and I like to throw around the part that this was technically an "Off Broadway" show because we performed it at the Producer's Club in Manhattan-- and Kristen came to see it. So there I was on stage, in the middle of a performance. I have done this show about 50 times. But because Kristen is there, and I know she is, something is different. We get to this part in the show where this older guy holds up this thing that is supposed to be a butterfly cocoon, and I was acutely aware of how he was pronouncing the words and how it must look to Kristen, and I felt the dreaded feeling of the corners of my lips moving upward into a grin. I was losing it. I was starting to crack up. On stage. I actually heard Kristen clear her throat out in the audience in that way that I know means, "I am trying not to laugh." Tears started rising in my eyes from not laughing. I instinctively turned my head a little and tried to do something, anything, to turn the movement and tears into-- disturbed? Maybe? I have no idea how that show ended. All I know is, it was the worst feeling ever, and it was fun as hell at the same time.

That's not the only time I have cracked up on stage, as anyone in IWII around 1999 can attest to. HMMM. But this cracking up thing happens all the time.

When I worked in the video store with my friend Robin, we would sometimes crack up really bad about something while we were waiting on customers. Man, that felt awful. It felt like we were just these two mean bitches laughing at people, and well, ok, sometimes we were laughing at people (there was, for instance, a lady who wore a necklace with a gold tooth hanging off it for God's sake, what were we supposed to do?), but most of the time it was because we were just talking about something funny or reminiscing about that scene in "Billy Madison" where the clown falls and splits his head on the pavement and everyone is laughing. Harmless fun. But those were often inappropriate times to be laughing so hard tears are coming out of your eyes and you can't breathe. (I am one of those laughers who just shuts down and STOPS breathing; I wish I had a fun, crowd-pleasing laugh that everyone would hear and go, "Hey, who is that with the infectious laughter, ha ha ha!" but all I do is practically pass out.)

In one of my last meetings at the horrid bus magazine job a couple months ago, Rob and I were sitting in a company meeting next to each other and counting the times this one guy who was talking would say the word, "Alright?" as he talked. We were using our fingers under the table to keep track, and it started totally cracking me up. I had to put my head down and everything. I got to something like 70 before I lost count; Rob said it was closer to 200. Either way, it was hilarious. The whole board room was quiet, and I couldn't stop laughing and I couldn't think of making eye contact with Rob. Maybe that was why they laid me off. Awesome!

One of the main reasons I could NEVER go into the military is I really think the drill sergeants would make me wet my pants. You're supposed to be all serious and straight-faced as they are yelling shit at you and the people around you? No way. That shit is FUNNY. I see it in the movies all the time. Drill sergeants are the best comedians; so effective at ripping on their audience. Those putdowns they come up with; the creative euphemisms ("Boy, is that your dead grannny hangin' out of your fly or are those pants not zippered to regulation??") and the screaming stares and the sweating and the spit flying-- I would be so dead in the military because I would catch pneumonia from doing pushups in the rain as I laughed and laughed and laughed like a crazed bunyip from ancient Aussie lore.

MONKEY HATE BLINK 182 

In the event I am ever paralyzed, please order me a monkey. Earlier this week I read a news story about something called "Monkey College" and I keep thinking about it. It's cool because it's some program that trains lil' capuchin monkeys to do the bidding of paralyzed folks. They are trained to do things like pick up phone receivers and hold it to their owner's faces; turn pages of a phone book and even change CDs in a CD player. Now that is more than I can do on most days. Anyway, there was a part of the story where they talked about that monkeys live in "dorms" (probably just glorified cages) and in their downtime the watch TV. Apparently they like to watch things like the Food Network (oh me too! There is lots of fun to be had watching "Unwrapped")and Animal Planet, but sometimes the content on Animal Planet scares the monkeys.

I don't know what to do with this knowledge, really. I guess I just wanted to report that there is a Monkey College.

What if a monkey graduates from MC and realizes it was just a waste of his time and he'd really rather go on a cross country road trip-- all he needs are those Bob Marley CDs, a bunch of Mountain Dew and some chips. We are training monkeys that have the skills to do this now. I know I would love to be in some dusty old truck stop somewhere, bellied up to the greasy counter eating a piece o' pie, and see a little capuchin monkey pull in to a spot outside the smudgy window in his beat-up Caprice station wagon, and get out and come in and join me in some good conversation and pie. I would like the pie to be french silk, but I would settle for pumpkin.

The first week of my job went exceptionally well. I like it and I like my bosses and the people in my department. I went to lunch with four of the guys I work with yesterday--how studly am I? Anyway, one of them is an older gentleman who once worked for British Intelligence. I realized all the sudden I recognized him from the company's Christmas party this past year (I was there as a guest)... he was the one who got up during the entertainment segment and sang "Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport" while wearing an Australian outbacker's-type of outfit. He was all shocked I recognized him from that, and even more so that I knew all the words to that song. I sit right next to this dude, so I think we will end up having a lot in common, being that I too once worked for British Intelligence, too.

And yesterday, at 3pm, my boss gathered me and two other people up and he took us to Cold Stone for ice cream! Now that's a boss. Then he offered us some primo smack, which I thought was really nice for my first week. We all ended up wasted and sunburned in the parking lot. Laughing.

I saw "Kill Bill 2" last night and I loved it! I really think these movies are the shit right now. I will personally shake the hand of anyone who can e-mail me with the answer to this trivia question:
When Budd dies and there is a shot of him laying on the floor of his dilapidated trailer, what does the random magazine shown just behind his head advertise?

For the record, my handshakes are outta sight!

It's Thursday and I am bumming because there are no more Joss Whedon shows on TV anymore; which is a crime as far as I am concerned. Also, I totally LOVE my new job but there is one small problem: no time or privacy for blogging! I am currently squirrelled away on a breakroom computer typing this as quick as I can.

Yeah so Angel ended last night. It was good. I haven't read her blog yet, but Trish apparently has talked about it a bit. I should go read that now, I s'pose.

I remember really kind of liking the movie "Antz" (this was also during my really-liking-Woody Allen-stage) but one thing I don't like is when real-life ants show up. Ants, man. Why? What the hell, ya know? This morning there were a whole mess of 'em in the laundry room when I went to feed the dogs. Tom has arranged for an exterminator to come out tomorrow because even though there were no ants there last night, they sure as hell were here today, and we are not gonna take it, just like Dee Snyder says we shouldn't.

Ants are going to take over this planet, we all know this. But do they have to be so pushy about it? Can't they just continue their secret plans in shadowy places; can't they just keep working out so they can lift all those super heavy leaves and shit and just focus on their physiques for a couple hundred more years before they leave the anthill gym or something? I really dont appreciate you, ants. Please, leave.

Today as I was driving home from a promising job interview, I was sitting in a long-ass line of traffic waiting to turn right at a light. They had shut down the righthand lane to do road work (which is a constant, it seems, anywhere you go in AZ). The road crew was apparently pouring fresh asphalt and smoothing it out with those machines that look like a big rolling pin with a little car on top with controls. Anyway, I sat and watched them as I slowly moved up to the light. I noticed there was a Mexican woman on the crew, which was interesting-- she was hauling shovels full of gravel and asphalt and smacking them down into place just like the guys were.

Suddenly a fight broke out. One guy wearing a straw hat had climbed up into the driving rolling pin and sat behind the controls. Apparently he wasn't supposed to do that. A supervisor-looking guy climbed up there and I could see him yelling at Straw Hat. Straw Hat made big animated gestures that pretty much spelled it out that he was wanting to get to know the supervisor in a sexual manner. Supervisor screamed something at the top of lungs (I couldn't hear it though thanks to A/C and windows up) and Straw Hat took off his faithful straw hat and threw it at Supervisor, and it flew past him and into the fresh asphalt below. At this point I was getting up to the turn, and I was so disappointed it was actually my time to drive because Supervisor actually raised an angry fist up and looked like he was going to clock Recently De-Strawed Hat. Why couldn't I have been just a few cars back in this particular traffic jam so I could have seen what happened next? It's one of the only times I wished to be further back. It was so exciting and dramatic. I could watch guys in reflective vests fighting on top of an asphalt rolling pin-thing all day.

Well, maybe not all day, because that would get boring. But say, 40 minutes. That might be enough.

Whoa, I go away for a few days and Blogger changes the look of the whole damn thing. If you don't blog yourself, don't worry about it. But it threw me when I went to actually write this sucker.

My dad left this morning and it was very sad. Trish and I are bummed out because we had fun just doing a bunch of stuff and talking with him. While he was here, we:

* Went to the zoo (he got sunburned, I had an Icee, mmm-mmm! And we all saw baboon ass.)
* Went to Rawhide (we didn't eat there, we just sort of wandered for about an hour, petting goats and trying to avoid the theme actors and then left to go to Borders and some little italian place for dinner)
* Went to Jerome, where we went to that old mine/ junkyard place/ ghost town that he totally loves. We also ate in a very good little hole in the wall restaurant called the Haunted Hamburger. You had to climb up a very steep staircase in the town, cut into a mountain, to get there. It was worth the climb though. Deelicious.
* Introduced Dad to my Onion books, which we all sat around the table after dinner last night and read aloud from before we all went over to take Callie to the dog park, where she played and had a good time despite 4 attempted humps from enamored male dogs.

I really like being able to see my Dad, and it sucks that we can't do that more often. They should totally cut out the middle of the country, and sort of slide it up and over somewhere, so that the two coasts are a lot closer so maybe he would only be an hour's flight away from us or something. Why can't they do this, you know? Damn.

Tomorrow I have an interview, so we shall see how that one goes. I hope I get something, especially now, because now that my Dad isn't here to distract me anymore, I feel a little idle and stircrazy. I already watched most of "Jaws 2", and I am also running out of guano to smear on the walls as I work to recreate the story of "Candide" in an excrement mural in the bathroom. And I can only exhude so much fahrfegnugen to get me through the week. Things are getting, how you say.... weird.

My father will be here in about 5 hours, and I still have to get rid of all these empty pizza boxes, sleeping drunk high school kids, beer bottles and panties off the ceiling fans before he gets here! Who's gonna help me? Ahhh!

I wish I had at some point thrown a teen party, like the ones in the movies. Sure I had some good parties in my time, but to be fair, they were when I was in the 20s. Trish and I were talking the other day about how we both had this one strange realization hit us the day we each turned 20... that realization was, "Wow, I will never be a teen mom." It was both a relief and sort of a limitation. The life of a teen mom had passed us by. Oh well.

Anyway, Jeff is coming to town. I have written about how fun my Dad is before, with his weird, dry sense of bathroom humor. One of our favorite things from our chidlhood is when my Dad would make this fake crazy face and wander through the house with crazy eyes and say in a low voice as he walked past my sister and I, shaking his hands slowly and sort of like a maniac: "The children are going to DIE tonight!" God, I really hope that translates OK to blog. I hope no one is thinking we had a weird childhood or anything. Hell, OK, I admit it: we had a weird childhood and I liked it that way. So there.

Among other fun and exciting Arizona destinations, we plan to take Daddums to Rawhide, the place where they did Clown Day that time. It's good n' touristy. I really wish I had a digital camera so I could post pictures of our adventures here, because I can already tell we are going to find a lot of stuff funny.

In case you're wondering, I still haven't found a job but I am beginning to enjoy the laziness of unemployment. I wonder if I will ever reach Food Stamp point. I just want to be able to get some Government Cheese. Just so I can holler at the person who hands out Government Cheese: "I want my gov'mint cheese!"

I watched the "Friends" finale last night, and it was good and all that, but the thing is, I still don't like that David Schwimmer guy. I didn't like that he "got" Rachel. The most disturbing thing though is, where the hell was their baby? The friends are all standing around the empty apartment and saying their goodbyes and in the case of RossandRachel, hugging and fondling. There were the new little twins for Chandler and Monica, but where was the baby "Emma"? I guess the convenient Rachel's mom scenario was in effect again, but damn, that kid was going to have a fucked up adulthood because Mom was constantly flipflopping between moving to Paris, not moving to Paris and dating some goofy-jawed asswipe with a Droopy Dawg voice. All while the baby was stuck at home with Marlo Thomas, who you know is too busy changing Phil Donahue's adult diapers to watch a baby properly. My guess is that baby got packed up in a brown moving box and shipped out somewhere.

Overall, Friends was an OK show, made me laugh sometimes and was good eye candy because of the colors in the apartment, but it didn't warrant the hours of live TV coverage for every "Friends Good-bye Party" that was going on in every sport bar in town last night. All we Americans care about is shallow, fabricated TV sitcoms and humiliating naked foreigners with women's underpants. Sometimes it is so wickedly awesome to be an American.

I am very excited for July 30 to roll around, because that is the day I will officially be finished with my chlamydia treatments! Just kidding, folks. What I am really excited for is the opening of "The Village," from M. Night Shyamalan.

I simply adore "Signs." It kills me everytime I watch it. I love the whole idea of following one family in one isolated farmhouse during a big event like aliens coming here to fuck out shit up. Love the use of sound... the way you can hear the aliens moving around outside the house and even tapping the windchime on the porch... I love the way you don't see the aliens, really, until that very end scene. M. Night is really one of my favorite directors right now. Say what you will, but the man knows how to tell a story and how to generate old-fashioned suspense.

I'm actually all finished up with the antibiotics for the chlamydia, thanks for asking.

Yesterday I had an interview. Which I thought was pretty cool... laid off one day, have an interview the very next day. It was a second interview for the radio station producer position I wrote about a couple of weeks ago; sure, the pay is kind of low but honestly, it would be a very fun job. I would just really like to get back behind a board and learn how to edit things on computer, because I was in college when everything was still on carts and reels. I have a very good shot at getting it, since it was down to me and one other geek, but I have learned not to expect anything at all. I sent out two more resumes today.

Also yesterday, Callie was shaved for the summer. She looks so funny without all her red fur. But it is sort of fun to pet her now because it's not as messy. She doesn't seem to care that we defrocked her. My old dog, Sam, was very neurotic and sensitive. He was a collie/ lab mix, with a very long and heavy coat. I would get him shaved in the summer, and he hated how he looked. He was very self-conscious, and if you laughed or pointed at him, it hurt his feelings for days. He would slink around the outskirts of the room to avoid being seen as best he could, and would avoid eye contact with anyone who "shamed" him. I had to go out of my way to hide my giggling and tell him loudly how beautiful he was. I loved so many things about that dog, but another awesome thing was we shared the fear of balloons. If someone started blowing up a balloon anywhere near him, he would start barking furiously. If it popped, he would jump a mile and then attack the mangled balloon carcass. This is just like me. I do all that stuff too. It's hard to get the taste of rubber out of your mouth. And other places, hence, the chlamydia. ZING!

PSA MOMENT: Chlamydia strikes billions of people around the globe each year. From Bayonne to Bombay, people are suffering from lowered fertility and uncomfortable feelings "down there." If you think you might have chlamydia, call a help line or tell your doctor. By all means, cut back on your use of whores and wash thoroughly with a wire bottle brush if you have to use one. For a free brochure, "Who's Afraid of the Infected Snatch?" please write to Chlamydia: It Isn't Just for Sluts Anymore, PO Box 33598, Phoenix AZ. Chlamydia. Sure, it's funny when it happens to someone else, as long as it isn't your mother.

Today is the first day of the rest of my life.

Yesterday I was laid off from my job at the bus magazine. Downsizing casualty; my higher editor salary made me a target among the lower-paid editors, so swoosh, they put me on the chopping block and lowered that proverbial axe. Horrors! Gasp! Swoon! Smile! Jump for joy! Feel a weight lifted from my shoulder and hurled down a steep rockface cliff, where it shatters into a million pieces far below!

Yeah, so it's not a bad thing. Of course, it's scary because I don't have a job lined up right now, but I really can focus on a job search more than I could before. I can do whatever, and I love that. I wrote my last bus transmission article last week, and I don't have to feel so cold and yucky for 40 hours of my week anymore. Man that job blew. REALLY sucked.

I have to go now and search job listings and put "feelers out" with associates around town and the globe. Watch out for my "feelers," they can be a little grabby with the hands. But heck, it is a beautiful day here, the sun is shiny hot and the breeze is blowing, and I have an itch for a Malcolm bike ride as I daydream about what I can do from here on out. Seriously, I feel like I have been released on parole, but without the electronic ankle bracelet.

I need to remind myself not to go to concerts on Sunday nights, no matter how tempting it might be, because the next day at work I am having episodes that are almost hallucinations.

For one thing, as I was driving to work today I really thought I saw a camel. It turned out I was just thinking about camels for some reason, and out of the corner of my eye the beige-y SUV coming around the corner up ahead looked like a camel. Then I started panicking that I might have charged something I bought this weekend while out shopping to my company credit card by mistake. The only thing was, I couldn't think of what I could have bought or what store it would have been in, or why I would simply put that credit card down on the counter when it looks nothing like my regular credit card or my debit card. I was thinking I need to go to our company accounting person and warn her there might be an erroneously-made charge to the card and I would pay for it when the bill came in, but then I was thinking of something else: I might have dreamed the whole thing. My dreams are getting incredibly, scarily vivid these days.

Now I have been at work for about 3 hours and I have actually got a lot of things finished, but I feel so out of it. I can't remember who I said good morning to so far today. Do I risk repeating a friendly "good morning" to my neighbors? I could look like I have amnesia or am high. Crap, who knows anymore. I just want to go chill out somewhere that isn't work.

I saw V.A.S.T at a little dingy club called the Mason Jar last night. It was pretty good, but not great. For several reasons, really. One was that the opening band sucked ass. It was this stupid little goth-metal(?) band with an obnoxious lead singer with a really bad haircut and too much malcontented eyeliner. He even wrapped black electrical tape around his troubled forearms for maximum trying-too-hard effect. That band, whoever the hell they were (because no one seemed to catch their name) played for EVER. The doors had opened at 8, the opening band came on at 9 something, and VAST didn't get on stage until 10. This was the second problem: I felt REALLY OLD there. Really responsible, really boring-- all I was concerned with was getting home at "a decent hour" so I wouldn't be too tired at work today. I didn't even get any alcohol because I looked at what they had on tap and realized I'd never tried any of it before so I basically chickened out and found myself saying, "give me a coke," before I knew what was happening. I am so pussy when it comes to the devil's libations. So there I am, feeling VERY ALMOST 29, standing amongst a lot of young people about 20 years old with their thin 20 year old bodies and drinking their Bass Ales as I sipped a coke and thought about how, when I got home, I could probably just use Sea-Breeze on my face alone rather than wash the whole thing to save time so I could go to sleep faster. Didn't feel any better when I spotted a kind of interesting looking fellow that was friends-through-association with us and when I inquired, found out he was 22 years old. Ahhh, jeez, here we go with the age thing. I just sort of stopped thinking anyone in the room was game after that and slipped back into Old Maid mode. Unfortunate? Perhaps. But believe me, blog, there were lots of loser people in there and I wasn't having any of it. Safer to just stay put for now until I learn to spot people that, in my world, are age-appropriate for dating.

The third problem was that VAST just didn't play as well as I was hoping they would. I think it was the venue: tiny, cramped, dirty and horrendous sound system. Lots of reverb and feedback, and you just couldn't hear the music well because it didn't even seem to be mixed all that well at times. The lead singer was a relatively dumpy-looking guy, kind of overweight with a dumb shirt on; he looked like he was a manager of an ACE Hardware for his day job. Not the sort of person most women would like to see sing the words, "I didn't want to fuck you baby, but you're pretty when you're mine." Oh really. I guess I just expected a little more. That brings me to a point: I hate it when I finally see what the people look like who sing songs I like, and sometimes if they are really ugly it's enough to turn me off from the song altogether because from there on out I picture their ugly face as they sing and it ruins it. Some musicians are just so unattractive, and I come from the School of Being Superficial When it Comes to The Looks of Musicians. On this note, I never would have liked Bob Dylan, even if I could manage to understand what he was saying.

Off the subject, but for good reason (as I don't want everyone who reads this to think I am consuming with appearances): I notice that today on my calendar, it says that it is a Bank Holiday in the U.K. What does that mean? Does it mean the banks are on holiday? Or is it like a bank of a river or something? I am thinking the Brits are partying on the banks of a river somewhere all day today. Watching the barges float by and shit as they get drunk on ale. Boy, I will tell you one thing: if this is the case, I wish I was a Brit today. But to clarify my position: if it is just a day that the banks are closed, that's OK: I will be happy to stay American.